Tag #157300 - Interview #78187 (Waclaw Iglicki)

One night I went to a forest and couldn't find a path; it was dark everywhere. I wandered around the forest all night, until by the morning I found some path and I got to a settlement where there was one farmer's house. I went to that farmer to ask for help. He gave me food, but said this: 'Listen, I can't keep you here, but go back into the forest' - and he told me exactly where - 'in that forest there is a bunker, a huge dugout 18, and your countrymen [Jews] are there. And they'll surely take you in.' I listened. I went there. That farmer knew about that hiding place, he even used to help them. And they were in there. There were four or five of them, extremely packed, conditions horrible, they didn't accept me happily. Rather Reluctantly. Why? Because they were afraid: maybe I'd betray them. Or, maybe because it had already been packed, and now one more came, it'd be even worse. I couldn't lie down there, there was no room.

So I was sitting on a ladder that led down to that hole, and all of a sudden I could hear something coming. Well, it was a terror down there. They already thought I had brought at least the Germans. Despair. It turned out that it was two partisans, I think one Russian and one Polish. They came and they wanted to recruit two young men, bring them to the division. 'And who wants to go?' I said, 'Me, please, I'll go.' I didn't care either way any more. Nobody else but me went. The others didn't move. I went with them, to the same house where I had been before, that farmer's house! It turned out the partisans were staying at that farmer's. They didn't live in the house, but in the cow shed. When I arrived there, first thing was to feed me, clothe me, and then basic information, how to deal with the guns. Long and short. And basic information about the underground.