Tag #122333 - Interview #78781 (Gustawa Birencwajg)

Then the war broke out in 1939 [2]. My daughter was ten years old by then. I came back from a summer holiday [in Kolumna-Las, a town southeast of Lodz], it was in the morning, I heard this commotion in the hallway. I went out and asked about what had happened, 'You don't know anything? There's a war, the men are leaving to save Warsaw.' I stood there for a while, went up to the bed to wake my husband up: 'Dawid, get up, there's a war. People are going to the army.' And he said, 'Stop bugging me.' But I didn't give up and he had to wake up. He got up and said to me, 'Dress the child and let's go.'

So we went, we went outside to the gate. These high galoshes were in fashion then, with a zipper, but it was unbearably hot. So my husband said to me, 'Put on these shoes' [the galoshes]. I left the child with him, I started looking for them, I couldn't find them. As if they'd disappeared off the face of the earth. I went out, I told him I couldn't find them. My husband said, 'So stay, I'll go.' And he went.

He went, I stayed with the child, I didn't have a lot of money. I was lucky not to have gone with him. Because they would have trampled me with the child and we would have been lost. And he went and disappeared without a trace. I had a guilty conscience, I felt guilty that I had woken him up and he went away. I was hoping we'd meet after the war, but it was difficult to think about that. Bombs were flying over our heads. Very low. And you kept hearing about how they'd rape and take you for forced labor. The Germans were cruel. They had no mercy.