Tag #157467 - Interview #91690 (Umow Henryk)

I nearly wound up in the Russian police force. I was asked to join, but I thought I didn’t know Polish well enough, and besides, how could I boss around the old [Polish] authorities? So I escaped again, heading toward Bialystok. And then when the Germans came back, we all wound up in the Lomza ghetto. But I don’t want to talk about that. I lost my mother and two sisters there, and it’s too hard for me to talk about it. Too painful. I only know that when the ghetto was liquidated [The ghetto that was formed in July 1941 was liquidated in November 1942, and the surviving residents were transported to Zambrow (20 km south of Lomza) and from there to the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau], I managed to escape and I hid in the home of a communist in the village of Zawady [3 km south of Lomza]. And that’s where I hung out until the liberation.