Tag #156351 - Interview #91684 (Szulim Rozenberg )

At the committee they told us that the one who collected the most money could go on the camp free. The director of the Medem Sanatorium 13, Leo Brumberg, took a month’s vacation to run the camp. It was he who said to me, at the SKIF headquarters: ‘Listen, tomorrow evening is a committee meeting, and we’ll know who’s going.’ He said: ‘You come, and when you’re there we’ll see.’ I get there, I’m sitting there, it’s 10.30, and they’re going out, and he comes up to me and says: ‘Come here, Szulim. You know what? You collected the most money, and we have decided that for 10 zloty you can go for 2 weeks.’ So I burst into tears. I was 13. ‘Why are you crying? You should be happy!’ So I say: ‘But where’s my mother going to get 10 zloty?’ ‘Listen, I’ll see that no-one will ever know about this.’ And he took out 10 zloty.

At the camp everything was planned. We got up in the morning and did gymnastics. On the first day we had to dig a hole, which we put a plank over and that was the toilet. Then we had to make tables and we had to make a kitchen. So we had to get a few bricks and lay the bricks so that the pot could stand. And then we had to put a pole up so that the red pennant could be hoisted. That was a great honor, to hoist the pennant, a different child every day. So there were things to do all day. We had to peel potatoes, we had to go to town to buy something – we did everything ourselves. There wasn’t anyone hired. There was one teacher and then there was one deputy for that teacher, that was Emanuel Pat. At night we stood on guard for 2 hours. We drove to Gabin by ship, and in other years we drove to Brok [85 km north-east of Warsaw] and to Kazimierz [150 km south-west of Warsaw] by ship too.

After that every year I went on camp.