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Two days later we reached Lwow. We knew there was still a ghetto there. Who is a Jew always drawn to? To other Jews. Well, but how to get in there? In the end, somewhere near the railway station we saw a Jewish policeman leading a group of a few dozen Jews with armbands on to work, and we asked them the way to the ghetto. That was probably sometime during the last ten days of October 1942. The ghetto had not been totally fenced off by then. We decided to go to the Jewish police, as we didn't have anywhere to go. They took us in and gave us a piece of bread. We had to tell them everything that had happened in Kolomyja. From there we sent a telegram to our father: 'We are well, in Lwow.' And the telegram arrived in the ghetto, but Father was no longer there.
We found out that in the cellars of 28 Zamarstynowska Street, there was a young man from Kolomyja, he was called Nachman Nusbaum, and that he took in stray boys of our age, 12-17, and looked after them. There were twelve of us kids, and we had our shakedown there, and we would go out looking for food; some of the older ones hired themselves out to work. Nachman was an interesting figure. He was maybe 20, 22 years old. He was passionate about literature by Korczak [21] and Antoni Makarenko [22]. He had resolved that if he survived the war he would do what Korczak had done in Warsaw and open an orphanage in Galicia. Nachman had found a wooden milk pail from somewhere, and he would always take the older boys to the soup kitchen, bring back half a pail of soup and share it out very fairly among the kids in the cellar.
One day I went out to work in the city in a group of 20, and all of a sudden some Germans rounded us up and took us off to the concentration camp on Janowska Street [Janowska Camp]. There were about 3,000 people in those barracks. I met some of the older residents of Horodenka there. After more or less two weeks I went out with a gang to load coal at the railway station in Lwow. After work I hid in a heap of planks under some coal. At night I got back into the ghetto and went back to the cellars on Zamarstynowska Street. I found Szmulek there, but Nachman wasn't there any longer. One day he had gone out into the town, that is the ghetto, and never came back.
We found out that in the cellars of 28 Zamarstynowska Street, there was a young man from Kolomyja, he was called Nachman Nusbaum, and that he took in stray boys of our age, 12-17, and looked after them. There were twelve of us kids, and we had our shakedown there, and we would go out looking for food; some of the older ones hired themselves out to work. Nachman was an interesting figure. He was maybe 20, 22 years old. He was passionate about literature by Korczak [21] and Antoni Makarenko [22]. He had resolved that if he survived the war he would do what Korczak had done in Warsaw and open an orphanage in Galicia. Nachman had found a wooden milk pail from somewhere, and he would always take the older boys to the soup kitchen, bring back half a pail of soup and share it out very fairly among the kids in the cellar.
One day I went out to work in the city in a group of 20, and all of a sudden some Germans rounded us up and took us off to the concentration camp on Janowska Street [Janowska Camp]. There were about 3,000 people in those barracks. I met some of the older residents of Horodenka there. After more or less two weeks I went out with a gang to load coal at the railway station in Lwow. After work I hid in a heap of planks under some coal. At night I got back into the ghetto and went back to the cellars on Zamarstynowska Street. I found Szmulek there, but Nachman wasn't there any longer. One day he had gone out into the town, that is the ghetto, and never came back.
Period
Interview
tomasz miedzinski