And then, naturally, I went to school. When I started school I was 7 years old. I completed 7 years of elementary school, this is all there was before the war – and this was all, my entire pre-war education. I believe the school was on Kolejowa Street; where the rail tracks went in Radomsko. So every day on my way to school I had to cross the tracks, I still remember the path – it went along the embankment. The school was Jewish, I mean, the classes were all taught in Polish, but only Jews went to this school. And then, of course, I went to the cheder after school, in the late afternoon, although I do not remember much of that any more. I can’t tell you whether it was state-owned or Jewish, it was the sort of thing that interested me at the time. Our math professor, I mean teacher, he was Polish, and I remember him because he was such a good maths teacher. But then there was also the lady who taught us Polish, her name was Panska, and her husband owned a printing shop in Radomsko. This Mrs Panska would teach us elements of Judaism, but without the prayers, we did not pray, and there were no special religious rituals at school. Also, at school we did not speak in Yiddish or Hebrew, everything was in Polish. There were portraits of great statesmen, Pilsudski [3], Moscicki [Ignacy Moscicki, president of Poland 1926 - 1939], but no crosses, and no Jewish religious symbols either. The history lessons were all Polish history, the reading and writing was Polish, then there were gym lessons, because we had a small gymnasium, and a small yard for playing sports, and then the other subjects, such as singing, but there were no special Jewish subjects taught.
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Displaying 44491 - 44520 of 50826 results
Stanislaw Wierzba
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I was just a small boy, a kid really. I kept close to my mother, I did not venture far from her. The wedding ceremony was inside their home, it all took place in this one room. But I remember the ...[chuppah], the festive clothes, all that. It was all so pretty. This was, in fact, the only Jewish wedding I ever went to.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
I went to the synagogue up until the war. My father always took me with him – me and one of my brothers. The other one was too little. And my sister didn’t go either. But I want to stress that this was not a systematic weekly thing – we only went occasionally, on holidays an other special occasions. At the synagogue, naturally, I used those devices [tallit, tefillin, phylacteries], my father had them all at home, you know, and later I also owned such things, but I only used a prayer shawl [tallit], while my father had a special briefcase [parokhet], he would take it along when we went home or to the synagogue. My father used to pray at home quite often, too.
I remember the synagogue [in Radomsko]. It was big, made of brick. It must have been several centuries old. It had a women’s gallery all around, the traditional way. There were these beautiful banisters, benches. And in the middle there was a ... [bimah]. It was all very handsome looking. [The Great Synagogue of Radomsko was built in 1899. It is probable that an older synagogue, built in 1822, existed before it]. I can still remember the cantor’s singing, it was very beautiful. Even today I can hear [that voice] reaching me.
I also remember the circumcision. This ceremony – the circumcision of my youngest brother – took place at home. I might have been 10 years old at the time. I mean, I was not allowed to see it directly, but I was present in the same room. There were several people, a prayer, the child screaming.
I remember the synagogue [in Radomsko]. It was big, made of brick. It must have been several centuries old. It had a women’s gallery all around, the traditional way. There were these beautiful banisters, benches. And in the middle there was a ... [bimah]. It was all very handsome looking. [The Great Synagogue of Radomsko was built in 1899. It is probable that an older synagogue, built in 1822, existed before it]. I can still remember the cantor’s singing, it was very beautiful. Even today I can hear [that voice] reaching me.
I also remember the circumcision. This ceremony – the circumcision of my youngest brother – took place at home. I might have been 10 years old at the time. I mean, I was not allowed to see it directly, but I was present in the same room. There were several people, a prayer, the child screaming.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
On New Year’s or Yom Kippur my parents would observe the fast, but I did not. Much later, in the thirties, they began pressing me to fast as well. I was always in the synagogue with my father on Yom Kippur: my father would spend almost the entire day there, but I would slip out at some point. Before the war broke out there must have been about two years when I endured the whole thing [all the prayers at the synagogue]. What I saw in Radomsko, all the prayers at the synagogue, it was so full of pathos, so serious.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Near our home there was a Jewish bakery. My mother’s chulent, which she made herself – we used to take it there on Fridays. A bit later, when I was bigger, I would often run to this bakery on Saturday, with my brother, and we would bring the chulent back home.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My mother really liked Sabbath. We always observed it at home. We sat down to the meal as a family – all six of us. My mother would light the candles, and there was always fish on Friday, and challah bread. This I like till this day, and I sometimes buy it in this downstairs shop of ours [kosher food store in the basement of the Jewish Religiuous Community in Warsaw] - I get both fish and some challah, they go together, that’s how it should be.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
they are doing quite well. The older grand-daughter is completing her MA in journalism. The younger one is studying biology. And just yesterday my daughter earned the highest academic degree [post-doctoral degree, ‘habilitacja’ in the history of literature, 8 March 2005].
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I rarely go to the synagogue, but when there is a special celebration I do go there, with pleasure. Sometimes I come for Yom Kippur, but I don’t fast. And to be honest with you, I don’t know how to pray. It seems to me there is a big difference between this synagogue [the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw] [29] and that one [the pre-war synagogue in Radomsko].
,
After WW2
See text in interview
And here is how it began. I am awfully grateful to [Halina] Elczewska [Jewish social activist] because it is thanks to her that I began to go there [to The Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of Prosecutions during World War Two] [25]. She had to drag me over there, and I was still young at the time. It must have been in the early 90s. When my wife died, I was left alone, my daughter busy with her own life – this is when I began to get more involved. Eventually I was so much a part of it all that when they had their elections, I was chosen as board member, and I am on the board for the Warsaw section of the Association. I am so much used to it that I don’t think I could live without it...
I met Jozefina [Jozefina Descours – Mr. Wierzba’s companion], who got me involved in the Senior’s Club at the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw] [26]. I also joined the Children of the Holocaust [Children of the Holocaust Association in Poland] [27], but it turned out that I was too old – by just 3 months. You see, I was born in October [1925], and they only accepted those who were born from January 1926 onwards. Still, I did join, and I am a member now, but without full voting rights, an associate member. I belong to the community, and all the Jewish organizations. I am glad to pay my fees, and to participate in meetings. It’s been many years now that I’ve belonged to the TSKZ [Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews] [28]. All of that, all four organizations. When New Year comes, Jozefina and I pay all the fees, and in a sense this is a pleasure to me. It’s not that I have to pay. And I have no special profits from it. It’s just that I want to. Now I want to do it. When I joined the Jewish organizations and then became familiar with all the issues it became a big source of pleasure for me. If it were not a pleasure, no one would force me to do it. But as things now stand, I know I have a responsibility. Today it is the Veterans [The Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of Prosecutions during World War Two] – they meet Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. I’m always there for the meetings, and now I also come on Tuesdays and Thursdays because we are updating our files. I am also a guest 3 times a week at the Seniors’ club. I like to play cards there or read the newspapers. In any case, I feel good in all this here. And then I also come to eat at the Jewish community dining hall. So that nowadays I do not hide my Jewishness, quite the opposite.
I met Jozefina [Jozefina Descours – Mr. Wierzba’s companion], who got me involved in the Senior’s Club at the Jewish Religious Community in Warsaw] [26]. I also joined the Children of the Holocaust [Children of the Holocaust Association in Poland] [27], but it turned out that I was too old – by just 3 months. You see, I was born in October [1925], and they only accepted those who were born from January 1926 onwards. Still, I did join, and I am a member now, but without full voting rights, an associate member. I belong to the community, and all the Jewish organizations. I am glad to pay my fees, and to participate in meetings. It’s been many years now that I’ve belonged to the TSKZ [Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews] [28]. All of that, all four organizations. When New Year comes, Jozefina and I pay all the fees, and in a sense this is a pleasure to me. It’s not that I have to pay. And I have no special profits from it. It’s just that I want to. Now I want to do it. When I joined the Jewish organizations and then became familiar with all the issues it became a big source of pleasure for me. If it were not a pleasure, no one would force me to do it. But as things now stand, I know I have a responsibility. Today it is the Veterans [The Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of Prosecutions during World War Two] – they meet Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. I’m always there for the meetings, and now I also come on Tuesdays and Thursdays because we are updating our files. I am also a guest 3 times a week at the Seniors’ club. I like to play cards there or read the newspapers. In any case, I feel good in all this here. And then I also come to eat at the Jewish community dining hall. So that nowadays I do not hide my Jewishness, quite the opposite.
In Legnica there was an officer school. I often visited this school: I would go to the headquarters for the entry exams, the advancement exams, we were in charge of those committees, it was not just me. And Legnica was full of Jews at the time [24]. I would think to myself, dear God, as I passed them, but I didn’t have the courage – I don’t quite know why – to approach one of them.
Until this very day I still have obsessions of this sort. Two years ago I went to the opening of the commemorative plaque at the Gdanski Station [plaque commemorating the forced emigration of Jews from Poland after March 1968]. A few days later I ran into my old neighbor, from where I lived before. I saw you over there, at the station, she says... It was easy to see me because they showed snippets of it on TV. I didn’t know this, but she saw me on TV. I have been in hiding. I was afraid, and until this day the feeling has stayed inside me, this secrecy, though things are so different now. I don’t feel so tied up by it all any more, and anyway both my daughter and my daughter’s mother-in-law, and my son-in-law, and my grandchildren – they all know I am Jewish. My daughter even said to me once, dad, it makes me feel proud. And so I don’t hide it any more, but somewhere deep inside me there is still something [a fear].
Until this very day I still have obsessions of this sort. Two years ago I went to the opening of the commemorative plaque at the Gdanski Station [plaque commemorating the forced emigration of Jews from Poland after March 1968]. A few days later I ran into my old neighbor, from where I lived before. I saw you over there, at the station, she says... It was easy to see me because they showed snippets of it on TV. I didn’t know this, but she saw me on TV. I have been in hiding. I was afraid, and until this day the feeling has stayed inside me, this secrecy, though things are so different now. I don’t feel so tied up by it all any more, and anyway both my daughter and my daughter’s mother-in-law, and my son-in-law, and my grandchildren – they all know I am Jewish. My daughter even said to me once, dad, it makes me feel proud. And so I don’t hide it any more, but somewhere deep inside me there is still something [a fear].
I see now the mistakes [of the communist system], sure, we can say that now, but in those days... But when I heard about the post-war anti-Semitism, I just kept quiet like a mouse. Like when the Kielce pogrom [23] happened. But then, I ask myself: how could I have reacted, when I myself was in danger. It was a time when I didn’t really want to reveal myself. I just kept quiet.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I don’t try to conceal the fact that I was a party member. First, I belonged to PPR [Polish Workers’ Party]. There were three of us in Poznan who belonged to it. I was recruited by a friend of mine – he asked me, and I said: sure thing, I’d be glad to join. This was secret. There were a dozen or so of us in the unit. It must have been 1946. And later, in 1948, there was the unification [of the Polish Workers’ Party and the Polish Socialist Party] so then I was just a regular member of PZPR [Polish United Workers’ Party] [22]. And unfortunately I stayed there until the very end.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
In 1968 [21] they suddenly remembered that I was Jewish and they kicked me out of the military. Of course, they did not make me feel this directly. But somehow there was this coincidence that at the same time I got quite ill, I had a resection of the stomach, I was in bed, away from work, on sick leave. So they sent me to a military medical committee. And the committee proclaimed ‘unfitness for military service in time of peace’ – this was their final verdict. So now I could retire, because I had been in the army for quite a long time, since April 1945. Except that I had the so called ‘old wallet retirement’ [low pension]. But later they added some extra money to it, so now it is not so bad.
Right after the war I had nothing to do with Jewish organizations. My wife knew that I was Jewish. And she told my sister-in-law. And in the place where she worked there was a Jewish woman working, who was married to a Jew, and she put me in touch with him. He directed me to the Jewish Historical Institute: he said, go, look up your documents, get some sort of paper made out for you. And so I started living a Jewish life at last, I got in touch with the Institute, it must have been some time in the early 1990s. I joined some Jewish organizations, I have my ID here.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I got married when I was 30. It was not really on my mind before that. I had girlfriends, various adventures, if you know what I mean, but when I turned 30, I said to myself: it’s time to get serious. This was in 1955, and my daughter was born 2 years later, in 1957. Except that with my first wife the situation was such that we lived together for quite some time, for 3 or 4 years, before the wedding. Why? Because she came from a rich family, a Polish one, and there was a regulation in the military that officers had to take wives from the ‘non-bourgeois’ social classes.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
My daughter sometimes complains to me: dad, why didn't you try harder...We had some distant relatives in the United States. I know they tried to get in touch. My father's sister emigrated to the USA on the Batory ship before the war, it was 1935 or 1936. I also remember how they sent these brochures showing the journey on the Batory, how they tried to encourage us to emigrate. I don't know why, but I somehow never established contact after the war.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
When the lawyer asked about the names of my mother and father, I told him it was just like in the birth certificate. But in the kenkarta it was a whole other story: Adam and Felicja. My mother’s name was Fajga, starts with an ‘f’, so I said to myself – why not make it Felicja. I said to the lawyer: keep the last names the way they are in the kenkarta. So it is only the last name that I changed. The birth date, all that is according to the old version.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I did not report anywhere after the war. Not to the Jewish Committee [20]. Today I think of it as a terrible mistake. All that time I spent, so to speak, hiding in the closet, I mean hiding my Jewish roots. Though when I went drinking vodka with the other officers, they would often come out with anti-Semitic speeches. I would just sit and listen to it all, but mostly I just avoided any sort of discussions. Well, they didn’t realize I was a Jew – had they known, they wouldn’t have even talked with me. The commander of the corpus was a Jew, the commander in chief Koninski was also a Jew, all those in charge – all of them were Jews in the Internal Security Corpus.
So when it was all over I read an announcement they were recruiting for the army. I hurried to Filtrowa street, to the RKU [Regional Recruitment Center]. They drafted me on the basis of my kenkarta. This was 21st April 1945. I wasn’t yet 20 years old when I volunteered for the army. They immediately sent me to the Officers’ School in Andrzejewo, near Lodz. I was so glad to be alive, so happy, the food, the uniforms, the sleep – this was a whole new world! It was really something! I was overwhelmed. And I tried my best, because all that was there for me! I was quick to learn – so quick that they thought of sending me to Warsaw after graduation. But I said no. So where do you want to go? To Poznan! I don’t know why. So they sent me to Poznan. I stayed there for 6 years in a unit that was under the KBW [Internal Security Corpus] [19]. It was 1947-1953. This is where I began my military career. It wasn’t until 1953 that I came to Warsaw.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
As soon as the Warsaw Uprising began [18] I worked with them in a mechanical workshop. It was in Wspolna Street 46. We were putting together weapons for the uprising. At the time the English were making deliveries of arms for the fighters, but they had to be assembled, because they came in separate parts – these ‘stens’, as they were called, or automatic guns. We kept working for another two or three weeks into the uprising, as long as there was electricity in Warsaw. It was pretty good there. They brought us food.
I would sometimes go to the ghetto walls. I remember, I was even there several times with the other boys, to watch the ghetto burning [the ghetto was burning in the Spring of 1943, during the uprising]. I was afraid someone might recognize me. There were so many onlookers around, the Poles staring. I avoided people, let’s be honest here, I had no direct contacts, I was afraid. I can remember the explosions, the fire going up in flames. If I am not mistaken, there were cannons in the square, shooting into the ghetto. Because they [the Germans] did not bomb from airplanes – they only used cannons. So there was shooting, explosions, howitzers, shells, machine gun shooting in series. I could not discuss this with anyone, but you can imagine what I was thinking. I couldn’t even touch any topic vaguely connected to it. I was afraid of all that. Among the orphanage boys we rarely talked about such things, and I never had anything to do with older folks, and the boys were pretty indifferent to it all. I kept as far away from these topics as I could. I preferred not to touch them, because I knew that a single word could do me in, I would get tangled up, give myself away – I was conscious enough of my situation to know this.
After the [Warsaw] uprising the Germans began moving everyone out of the city. I ended up in Puszkow [small town about 20 km from the center of Warsaw], but soon I ran away from there as well. Where to go? Near Grojec I got myself a place with a farmer, in a sort of colony, with several buildings. They needed some men, and I worked for this man until liberation. He was glad to take me on, not knowing I was Jewish, thinking I was an escapee from the uprising. Nobody ever asked me who I was exactly. I showed them my kenkarta, everything was in order, last name, first name. Whatever happened to your parents? I don’t know, my parents ran away. But are they alive? I don’t know, maybe later I will try to get in touch with them after the war.
I would sometimes go to the ghetto walls. I remember, I was even there several times with the other boys, to watch the ghetto burning [the ghetto was burning in the Spring of 1943, during the uprising]. I was afraid someone might recognize me. There were so many onlookers around, the Poles staring. I avoided people, let’s be honest here, I had no direct contacts, I was afraid. I can remember the explosions, the fire going up in flames. If I am not mistaken, there were cannons in the square, shooting into the ghetto. Because they [the Germans] did not bomb from airplanes – they only used cannons. So there was shooting, explosions, howitzers, shells, machine gun shooting in series. I could not discuss this with anyone, but you can imagine what I was thinking. I couldn’t even touch any topic vaguely connected to it. I was afraid of all that. Among the orphanage boys we rarely talked about such things, and I never had anything to do with older folks, and the boys were pretty indifferent to it all. I kept as far away from these topics as I could. I preferred not to touch them, because I knew that a single word could do me in, I would get tangled up, give myself away – I was conscious enough of my situation to know this.
After the [Warsaw] uprising the Germans began moving everyone out of the city. I ended up in Puszkow [small town about 20 km from the center of Warsaw], but soon I ran away from there as well. Where to go? Near Grojec I got myself a place with a farmer, in a sort of colony, with several buildings. They needed some men, and I worked for this man until liberation. He was glad to take me on, not knowing I was Jewish, thinking I was an escapee from the uprising. Nobody ever asked me who I was exactly. I showed them my kenkarta, everything was in order, last name, first name. Whatever happened to your parents? I don’t know, my parents ran away. But are they alive? I don’t know, maybe later I will try to get in touch with them after the war.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
After my 18th birthday it was time to get an ID card. Where would I get a birth certificate. So I told them: Wierzba Stanislaw, born in such and a place, and I didn’t say ‘Radomsko,’ but I said ‘Radom,’ no idea how that came to me, and I mentioned a monastery where I was baptized. They sent out these documents, and the managers arranged for the so called kenkartas [17] for us.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
And when I got into the orphanage, I was immediately sent to work, along with all the other boys of 16, 17. I was directed to a mechanical workshop and I stared to work there, I became the helper of the turner, and since I was quick to learn, I was soon working independently. I got paid, and I had to contribute part of my pay to the orphanage. The people working in the orphanage would come to check on us, and the director would come and he would always ask how I was behaving, and he would always be told nothing but praise, because I was trying the best I could.
My last name? In the mechanical workshop where I worked in Radomsko there was this fellow, his name was Stanislaw Wierzba, and so now I just took his name. Just like that, for no special reason.
One day a nun comes by and says: ‘What are you doing here?’ And she took us to an orphanage. It was at Czerniakowska Street 219, right opposite Wilanowska Street, but I don’t what it is called nowadays [Aleja Wilanowska]. I think there is a memorial in that spot there now, for the soldiers who died when they were forcing their way across the Vistula [River] in 1944. The orphanage was in these fairly decent barracks, it had a fence around it, and there must have been several dozen of us. All boys, all my age. You can see in this photo here, they were all my age. It is hard for me to say if there were other Jews in that group. It was an orphanage under the supervision of nuns, only the director was a layman. His name was Lada. He and his wife were very decent people. I was basically restored to life in there, cleaned of lice. They had no idea I was Jewish.
,
During WW2
See text in interview
At last, I said to myself: what the hell, why should I live in such conditions, when there are Jews around here – and so I went to the ghetto [14]. Voluntarily. Once I was there, it was another story entirely. I lived in a passageway, there was sort of hole there, maybe you could even call it an apartment. There were rags lying around, so I would sleep on them. I was close to a kitchen [one of the communal soup-kitchens ran by Jewish Social Self-Help], where they gave away food, and I would always get a bowl of soup there. So I was glad that my stomach was not empty, that’s all. I don’t even know what street this was on. There was some sort of life going on in the ghetto, some announcements, but none of this interested me; only one thing mattered to me – to have a place to lie down, and something to eat. No matter where. I was being eaten by lice, there was no place to bathe, and of course no question of changing my clothes. I kept living in the same place. I was an outsider, I was not part of that community.
I stayed in the ghetto almost until the uprising [15]. Quite a chunk of time. Later, when I escaped from the ghetto, I went back to the train station again. I ran off right before the uprising, or maybe it had already began by then. I think so because you could hear the Germans, and some shouting. A lot of moving about, some sort of selection again [between January and April 1943]. They were leading us off to work [16] in groups of 150, 200 – overseen mostly by the Navy-Blue Police, and by one or two Germans. I look around, I see a gap. A lapse of attention... and I ran away again. Just me alone. It was even like this that some of the Poles threw a piece of bread once or twice, but that was outside the ghetto. And so I managed to run off. And again, I headed straight for the station.
I stayed in the ghetto almost until the uprising [15]. Quite a chunk of time. Later, when I escaped from the ghetto, I went back to the train station again. I ran off right before the uprising, or maybe it had already began by then. I think so because you could hear the Germans, and some shouting. A lot of moving about, some sort of selection again [between January and April 1943]. They were leading us off to work [16] in groups of 150, 200 – overseen mostly by the Navy-Blue Police, and by one or two Germans. I look around, I see a gap. A lapse of attention... and I ran away again. Just me alone. It was even like this that some of the Poles threw a piece of bread once or twice, but that was outside the ghetto. And so I managed to run off. And again, I headed straight for the station.
I didn’t own a thing except for a photograph of my father which I kept. I didn’t know anyone in Warsaw. I began life as a bum in the station. Sometimes I would make a bit of money: a German was leaving with some suitcases, so I would jump up and carry those. I befriended this boy, I am not sure what sort he was. We would carry a suitcase together to the tram stop, and someone would give us a pack of cigarettes for that. Then I would trade the cigarettes for bread – so there would be something to live on. This is how we got by. I slept in the station. I don’t remember how long this lasted.
So what happened? How did I get away? My father pushed me out. ‘Run!’ – he said It was a moment. There was a gap and I used it. At the exit routes from the ghetto there was police, Germans. There was commotion, shouting, noise, and I used that moment to run away, no one even looked at me. I went all alone – and that was it. I managed to escape. And so my solitary life began.
I headed straight for home. And I ran into one of our neighbors – before the war this was a person my family was quite close with. Sure, they fed me, gave me some food for the road, but then the neighbor says to me: ‘You’d better leave, quick, because we are scared as well.’ I understood them, and later I understood even better – at first I was a bit bitter about it, why they treated me this way. These were good friends, we were quite close, and so I am not surprised at them at all. The intimidation was really powerful, so that everyone was just watching out not to get in trouble. I never went there again afterwards.
Where was I to go? I went to the Polish man for whom I had worked earlier on. He always said to me, when I was still in the ghetto: listen, if you manage to run away, you just head for Warsaw. And this is what I did. So he helped me quite a bit. One more thing I remembered just now. The man I worked for, or maybe it was his wife, they gave me a chain and a cross. And I wore it afterwards, even when I lived in the orphanage. Perhaps this is what protected me in a sense? I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have anything of my own, so I went to the train station, got on a train, and went to Warsaw, where I had never been before in my life. At such a time – and without a ticket, on top of everything else. But I got through, with nobody even looking at me in the train, because this was period when a lot of people traveled, and there were special cars for Germans, where the Poles were not allowed to enter: Nur fűr Deutsche.... Lots of people with luggage, with bundles, and I just somehow stuck myself among them.
I headed straight for home. And I ran into one of our neighbors – before the war this was a person my family was quite close with. Sure, they fed me, gave me some food for the road, but then the neighbor says to me: ‘You’d better leave, quick, because we are scared as well.’ I understood them, and later I understood even better – at first I was a bit bitter about it, why they treated me this way. These were good friends, we were quite close, and so I am not surprised at them at all. The intimidation was really powerful, so that everyone was just watching out not to get in trouble. I never went there again afterwards.
Where was I to go? I went to the Polish man for whom I had worked earlier on. He always said to me, when I was still in the ghetto: listen, if you manage to run away, you just head for Warsaw. And this is what I did. So he helped me quite a bit. One more thing I remembered just now. The man I worked for, or maybe it was his wife, they gave me a chain and a cross. And I wore it afterwards, even when I lived in the orphanage. Perhaps this is what protected me in a sense? I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t have anything of my own, so I went to the train station, got on a train, and went to Warsaw, where I had never been before in my life. At such a time – and without a ticket, on top of everything else. But I got through, with nobody even looking at me in the train, because this was period when a lot of people traveled, and there were special cars for Germans, where the Poles were not allowed to enter: Nur fűr Deutsche.... Lots of people with luggage, with bundles, and I just somehow stuck myself among them.
But later, after the war, I found out that my father’s brother, the tailor I have told you about, he also managed to run away and he joined the underground somewhere in the Swietokrzyskie mountains. I don’t know how much truth there is in this story, I was never able to confirm it – but I was told he was recognized and killed by men from AK [soldiers of AK – the Home Army] [12].
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During WW2
See text in interview
Which year was it? In 1941 [ed. note: 1942] they run us all into the Sports Plaza in Radomsko – and this is where the real gehenna began. It seems to me that in Radomsko these things happened quite differently than in Warsaw, where Jews were transported gradually, in groups. The ghetto in Radomsko didn’t have a center, of the kind I hear they had in Lodz, some factory where Jews worked till the very end [11]. These were completely different conditions. The Germans in Lodz had to keep some Jews alive because they were making products that were needed by the German army. Like the sawmill where my father worked, that made wagons for the Geramans. But other than that, there was no industry in Radomsko.
And so they rushed the entire ghetto out on a single day, I don’t remember the exact date [ed. note: 9th October 1942]. I know the weather was quite nice, there was no rain, it might have been late in the Spring [ed. note: it was in the Fall]. Nobody was writing chronicles, and later people were just happy if they lived through it. What can I tell you, the place was crawling with Germans and the Navy-Blue police, everything was surrounded. There was weeping, screaming, crying – it went on and on all day, from dawn onwards. The Germans began calling the names of people they still needed. Later they made us form rows, and rushed us into the train station, and into the train cars. Later I was told how it was done: the train cars were all set up, everyone was rushed into them, and everything went off. I don’t know where exactly they took them all... all the Jews. My parents, everybody. Where did they all die? Most likely, in Treblinka. I was the only one to escape.
And so they rushed the entire ghetto out on a single day, I don’t remember the exact date [ed. note: 9th October 1942]. I know the weather was quite nice, there was no rain, it might have been late in the Spring [ed. note: it was in the Fall]. Nobody was writing chronicles, and later people were just happy if they lived through it. What can I tell you, the place was crawling with Germans and the Navy-Blue police, everything was surrounded. There was weeping, screaming, crying – it went on and on all day, from dawn onwards. The Germans began calling the names of people they still needed. Later they made us form rows, and rushed us into the train station, and into the train cars. Later I was told how it was done: the train cars were all set up, everyone was rushed into them, and everything went off. I don’t know where exactly they took them all... all the Jews. My parents, everybody. Where did they all die? Most likely, in Treblinka. I was the only one to escape.
Our family was not very religious, but we did observe all the basic religious rituals: Friday, Saturday, the candles, the dinners, all the holidays. During the meals the men were always wearing their kippahs – without one you would not eat, but otherwise, on daily basis, they did not wear them. And we kept kosher. I often went shopping with my mother. I was not aware at the time whether or not the food was kosher. There was a grocery store ran by a Jew, one had to go downtown, that’s where mother would buy all the supplies: milk, flour, sugar – but did she buy meat there? The meat she would buy from a Jewish butcher. There were no refrigerators or freezers in those days, blocks of ice were brought and meat was kept in the ice. We always kept intervals between meals. When Easter came we only ate what was allowed – you were not supposed to eat soured foods. We were used to it, anyway, so it was never a problem. We also knew that if, for instance, you had milk for breakfast, then you had to wait a certain length of time, before you could eat something else, say, a piece of meat or something of that sort.
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Before WW2
See text in interview