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As for my paternal relatives, I don’t really know because [I didn’t even know them all]. Uncle Ma was in the Soviet Union, he didn’t die, returned after the war. Aunt Hela was in a camp in France and Jean was born there. [Today] all the relatives that I knew are dead, except my cousins Jeanie and Bianca.
Staszek’s parents were teachers and ran a rural school in Kalusz. Staszek forced his mother to come near the ghetto, he took me out, by a miracle in fact, I took off the badge in the nearest gate and I went following her, not with her, because she was afraid to go with me. We also had to swear we wouldn’t be seeing each other. That was the condition on which she agreed to hide me, because she was anxious about him.
We got off at the station where the rural school was, waited until it got dark, and [walked] some 25 kilometers in the night to get there unnoticed. It was August, the summer break, no classes. The school stood away from the center of the village, I didn’t go out, I was locked away in a classroom and I didn’t even go to the lavatory, there was a free-standing one outside, but Staszek’s mother instead brought out the potties.
I can’t remember how long I was there. After a couple of days she said people in the village were talking there was a Jewess hiding in the school and that I had to leave. She was good enough, though, not to throw me out completely but again walked the 25 kilometers in the night with me to the nearest train station and took me to Staszek’s uncle, the brother of Staszek’s father, whose name was also Podchaniuk.
He was an old bachelor, the headmaster of a school in Stryj [city 70 km south of Lwow, today in Ukraine]. She brought me there in the morning, four or five o’clock, and told me I’d stay there until she found some hiding place for me. We arrive there, and we saw a drinking party, an orgy, it turned out the guy Podchaniuk had signed the Volksdeutsch list [13], the place was full of uniformed Germans, drinking.
When we went in and saw all that, she told him we’d just have a tea in the kitchen, and we fled from that kitchen so that they didn’t see me. She took me to Stanislawow [today Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine, city 70 km south-east of Lwow] where, in the suburbs, there lived Staszek’s grandfather, who was in his eighties but had a nasty daughter.
[My mother-in-law] told him I was Staszek’s friend and I was to be sent to Germany for forced labor and I was hiding. They hid me in the barn so that the daughter didn’t find me. They were liquidating the Jews in Stanislawow, it was August 1942, they were liquidating Jews everywhere.
I hear shots all the time and I heard the daughter telling her father how they were hanging Jews on trees. I overheard that because it was a plank barn, and when the daughter wasn’t home, he slid the bowl with food under those planks for me. Once, when she wasn’t home, because she worked somewhere, I begged him successfully to give me a pen and a piece of paper and then to send my letter to Staszek. And Staszek came and took me away from there.
There was a rural school in Wygoda [today in Ukraine] where his parents’ friend, not much older than me, was the headmistress and a teacher. [Staszek] took me to her and she took me in as Staszek’s fiancée who is hiding away from being sent to forced labor to Germany, while Staszek went to Dolina [today in Ukraine] to [fix me up] with a job at a sawmill.
Staszek’s parents were teachers and ran a rural school in Kalusz. Staszek forced his mother to come near the ghetto, he took me out, by a miracle in fact, I took off the badge in the nearest gate and I went following her, not with her, because she was afraid to go with me. We also had to swear we wouldn’t be seeing each other. That was the condition on which she agreed to hide me, because she was anxious about him.
We got off at the station where the rural school was, waited until it got dark, and [walked] some 25 kilometers in the night to get there unnoticed. It was August, the summer break, no classes. The school stood away from the center of the village, I didn’t go out, I was locked away in a classroom and I didn’t even go to the lavatory, there was a free-standing one outside, but Staszek’s mother instead brought out the potties.
I can’t remember how long I was there. After a couple of days she said people in the village were talking there was a Jewess hiding in the school and that I had to leave. She was good enough, though, not to throw me out completely but again walked the 25 kilometers in the night with me to the nearest train station and took me to Staszek’s uncle, the brother of Staszek’s father, whose name was also Podchaniuk.
He was an old bachelor, the headmaster of a school in Stryj [city 70 km south of Lwow, today in Ukraine]. She brought me there in the morning, four or five o’clock, and told me I’d stay there until she found some hiding place for me. We arrive there, and we saw a drinking party, an orgy, it turned out the guy Podchaniuk had signed the Volksdeutsch list [13], the place was full of uniformed Germans, drinking.
When we went in and saw all that, she told him we’d just have a tea in the kitchen, and we fled from that kitchen so that they didn’t see me. She took me to Stanislawow [today Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine, city 70 km south-east of Lwow] where, in the suburbs, there lived Staszek’s grandfather, who was in his eighties but had a nasty daughter.
[My mother-in-law] told him I was Staszek’s friend and I was to be sent to Germany for forced labor and I was hiding. They hid me in the barn so that the daughter didn’t find me. They were liquidating the Jews in Stanislawow, it was August 1942, they were liquidating Jews everywhere.
I hear shots all the time and I heard the daughter telling her father how they were hanging Jews on trees. I overheard that because it was a plank barn, and when the daughter wasn’t home, he slid the bowl with food under those planks for me. Once, when she wasn’t home, because she worked somewhere, I begged him successfully to give me a pen and a piece of paper and then to send my letter to Staszek. And Staszek came and took me away from there.
There was a rural school in Wygoda [today in Ukraine] where his parents’ friend, not much older than me, was the headmistress and a teacher. [Staszek] took me to her and she took me in as Staszek’s fiancée who is hiding away from being sent to forced labor to Germany, while Staszek went to Dolina [today in Ukraine] to [fix me up] with a job at a sawmill.
Period
Interview
Matylda Wyszynska