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The Jewish circle was in Limanowskiego Street – that’s where the synagogue was. And this is where they set up the ghetto. In 1940, I believe it was at the end of 1940, I can’t remember exactly, but they set up the ghetto really quickly [8]. It was quite a large area. It seems to me that the ghetto covered about ¼ of Radomsko. But it did not reach as far as our home, and so we were kicked out. Awful things went on. There was a regulation: at such and such an hour all the Jews have to report at the ghetto. And we were resettled, all six of us. Anyway, we were ready, because news had been going around that they were setting up a ghetto. I remember the bundles my mother made. There was bedding, some clothes, and whatever food we had – and we were ready to go. Germans supervised the move, but mostly it was the Navy-Blue Police [9]. I remember their shouting: quick, quick, quick, and the Germans just standing off to the side, giving orders.
We were given space in a sort of shack and this is where we lived – a dark hole it was, really, with six persons, two makeshift beds, because we had left almost everything we had in our house. Right next to us there lived my uncle and aunt with their daughter, I mean my father’s brother, Henryk, and my mother’s sister, Zofia. They got a room in this shack right next to ours. I believe it was some Jewish community that helped arrange and prepare all this.
Once we were in the ghetto, I don’t really know what we lived on. My father kept on working until we were all ordered into the Sports Plaza [the resettlement action took place in Radomsko on 9th October 1942]. What did we eat? – it’s hard to say. We certainly did not have any meat or milk. Potatoes, then some more potatoes, a watery soup called ‘zalewajka’ some sort of borscht – all the same things you would eat 2 or 3 times a day, if you could afford it. It was terrible poverty. When my mother boiled potatoes, we would drink the water afterwards, so it wouldn’t go to waste. If she boiled some sort of noodles, she would also keep the water, and we would drink that, too. Mother... she was just a typical Jewish mother. She took care of us kids, as much as she could, and sometimes she would give up her own portion. There was a time when I would have liked more soup but there was not enough to go around. It was a gloomy fact of everyday life, this struggle for life, just to survive.
I would sometimes run into a boy or a girl, someone I had gone to school with , but everyone was so busy with their own problems, that there was no question of a friendly chat about school, like sharing a memory. Every one was so down, so depressed, even the kids felt it. I was 14, 15 years old, so I was already thinking, but it wasn’t exactly profound or specific thinking. I did not go into the street at all by then, and back in the barracks all the kids kept together, we did everything together, each one of us listening for some news. I would try to overhear what the adults were saying, and things were getting quite bad, but until the end there was still hope in people. The parents would try to keep us away from the misery, if they talked, it was among themselves, it did not reach us, they didn’t want us to sink deeper into desperation. But how can you keep a secret if you are six people living together in a tiny space? Now it is more clear to me, this feeling. There was talk, there were stories going around about Shoah, I can even remember the name of the town, Treblinka [10]... Maybe my parents were talking about these things, about possible escape from the ghetto, but none of it reached us kids. And we couldn’t have afforded to do it, to give someone a bribe. With what money? No, my parents did not have that sort of money.
We were given space in a sort of shack and this is where we lived – a dark hole it was, really, with six persons, two makeshift beds, because we had left almost everything we had in our house. Right next to us there lived my uncle and aunt with their daughter, I mean my father’s brother, Henryk, and my mother’s sister, Zofia. They got a room in this shack right next to ours. I believe it was some Jewish community that helped arrange and prepare all this.
Once we were in the ghetto, I don’t really know what we lived on. My father kept on working until we were all ordered into the Sports Plaza [the resettlement action took place in Radomsko on 9th October 1942]. What did we eat? – it’s hard to say. We certainly did not have any meat or milk. Potatoes, then some more potatoes, a watery soup called ‘zalewajka’ some sort of borscht – all the same things you would eat 2 or 3 times a day, if you could afford it. It was terrible poverty. When my mother boiled potatoes, we would drink the water afterwards, so it wouldn’t go to waste. If she boiled some sort of noodles, she would also keep the water, and we would drink that, too. Mother... she was just a typical Jewish mother. She took care of us kids, as much as she could, and sometimes she would give up her own portion. There was a time when I would have liked more soup but there was not enough to go around. It was a gloomy fact of everyday life, this struggle for life, just to survive.
I would sometimes run into a boy or a girl, someone I had gone to school with , but everyone was so busy with their own problems, that there was no question of a friendly chat about school, like sharing a memory. Every one was so down, so depressed, even the kids felt it. I was 14, 15 years old, so I was already thinking, but it wasn’t exactly profound or specific thinking. I did not go into the street at all by then, and back in the barracks all the kids kept together, we did everything together, each one of us listening for some news. I would try to overhear what the adults were saying, and things were getting quite bad, but until the end there was still hope in people. The parents would try to keep us away from the misery, if they talked, it was among themselves, it did not reach us, they didn’t want us to sink deeper into desperation. But how can you keep a secret if you are six people living together in a tiny space? Now it is more clear to me, this feeling. There was talk, there were stories going around about Shoah, I can even remember the name of the town, Treblinka [10]... Maybe my parents were talking about these things, about possible escape from the ghetto, but none of it reached us kids. And we couldn’t have afforded to do it, to give someone a bribe. With what money? No, my parents did not have that sort of money.
Period
Location
Poland
Interview
Stanislaw Wierzba
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