Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Sara Kay

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0087.82 | RG Number: RG-50.091.0082

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Sara Kay
    Transcript
    Good afternoon.
    Today we're interviewing Sara Kay, a Holocaust survivor
    and my mother.
    My name is Abraham Kay.
    And this project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, the Cleveland Section.
    Let me ask you if you could please tell us
    just a little bit about what your life is like today,
    your husband, what your occupation is, your family,
    just a little bit of information along those lines.
    Well, I'm a grandmother, and I'm a mother, and I'm a wife.
    In the other order, but that's what I am.
    And I'm very proud of my children.
    And I'm happy to be here.
    Because Cleveland is really the place where it's my home.
    And until we came to Cleveland, life was not so simple at all.
    But we're happy here.
    And we're very, very happy, very proud.
    And the memories are not so happy.
    And it's not so easy to talk about them.
    Let me ask you, going back really to your earliest
    memories, you're from Poland.
    Yes.
    What was your home?
    Wielen, Poland.
    And where was that located?
    We were right on the German border.
    And we were the very first to be bombed,
    I don't even know if the war was declared.
    Friday morning, September 1, we heard the sirens.
    And we really thought that this was a civil defense alarm.
    It was called LOP.
    Lotnicza Obrona Przeciwpowietrzna.
    And we knew that the Germans are supposed to attack Poland.
    But we didn't believe it.
    And we were hoping they weren't.
    But when the sirens started blowing,
    pretty soon we heard big booms.
    And I was a little girl.
    We had big windows at home, which
    opened, French windows you would call them.
    And I climbed on the window to close it.
    And I saw the plane did not have the Polish markings on it.
    It had the white crosses, which we knew were German.
    And it just didn't add up to me.
    But while I was on the window, our room
    was much bigger than this.
    And I was blown to the next wall, like a little ball.
    I was blown all across the room from--
    it was such a air.
    And I didn't know what was going on.
    But it sounded awful.
    And it felt bad.
    And my father was not of military age.
    So he had a band.
    He was a captain of the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    because the civil defense, which is the LOP,
    had given people jobs, just in case something would happen.
    And my mother was in bed.
    I was just in my nightgown.
    And I had a little sister who was 4 and 1/2 years old.
    So I grabbed my skirt and my sweater and I put on her.
    Because we just didn't know what was going on.
    There was such a strange experience.
    And it was terrifying.
    Somehow, I don't remember why, we ran into a basement, which
    was under us.
    But it wasn't our basement.
    People lived there.
    Our house was made from stones, cut stones.
    And the basement was like you would call cathedral.
    The ceilings were very, very thick.
    And near the chimney, near the ends of the wall,
    it was yardstick, not just inches.
    And while we were in the basement,
    the bombs were blow-- really, we heard really terrible noises.
    And I was there with my mother and a few other neighbors.
    And my father wasn't even downstairs yet.
    Then it quieted down for a couple of minutes.
    And in the meantime, my father came down, too.
    And he brought down some clothes for us,
    because we were naked out of the beds.
    I grabbed the coat.
    Because I had my nightgown.
    And I grabbed the coat.
    And my skirt was on my sister.
    And my mother had something on.
    I don't even remember what.
    And this happened three times, with a couple of minutes
    in between, a pause.
    And then my father didn't go out anymore
    to take care because everything was coming apart.
    The buildings were falling.
    People were dying.
    Horses were dying.
    And all the electric wires were down.
    And a week before this, we had a storm.
    And one of the wires on our street was down.
    And there was water.
    It was what you would call a flash flood?
    Flash flood.
    Flash flood, and a horse got killed
    because it didn't see the wire.
    The driver of the wagon didn't see the wire.
    So we wanted to get out of the house, but we were afraid.
    Because the wires were all over, and we didn't
    know if they're alive or dead.
    And it was great panic.
    And people didn't know what to do.
    One thing we were afraid of was gas.
    For some reason we thought, if this has to be war,
    and we were sure that everything will be gassed.
    So we put something in a tin, the kuchen.
    Because this was Friday morning, and the kuchen
    was ready for the Shabbat, so we had some food.
    It was, like, you just did anything
    that came to your mind.
    And pretty soon, we were out.
    It took about a half hour.
    And it quieted down.
    We didn't know if this is over, but we
    started going out on the road.
    And somehow I had a knapsack.
    I don't know how, either my father brought it down, out.
    And I was with my father, with my mother,
    and my little sister, and also the neighbors.
    And as we started going, I was in charge of that knapsack
    for some reason.
    And a neighbor had a wagon with two wheels.
    I think the kind that you push.
    Because he used to deliver milk or something.
    And I put this knapsack on.
    And in a few minutes, maybe in two,
    three minutes, I didn't see my parents.
    And we started going faster because we
    thought the parents are ahead.
    So I was lost.
    Because you had to hold on to somebody very tight not to get
    lost.
    Because the road was right away full with
    people, the ones who were alive.
    And there were dead horses and other things
    on the side of the road.
    And we were going toward East.
    It was, like, nobody said anything.
    It's just we knew that this is the direction away
    from the border.
    And this is the direction East.
    So that's where we went.
    And we waited a few minutes.
    And we were going quicker and quicker.
    And when we didn't see our parents,
    the neighbors didn't want the responsibility.
    I was less than 13 years old.
    And they had three of their own children.
    And I was very upset.
    I didn't know what to do.
    On top of the bombs and everything, I was alone.
    So we waited a few minutes.
    We still didn't see the parents.
    So this was my fate.
    So once we got out of town, I saw planes again.
    But the planes were diving.
    And they weren't bombing us anymore.
    And then I saw a Polish soldier.
    And he had what you call a field shovel.
    And he was trying to dig a trench with one hand.
    And when he saw the plane, he tried to shoot.
    And I said to myself, this couldn't be happening.
    This is the Polish army.
    I was always so proud to be Polish.
    And I believed everything I heard in school.
    And everything we learned.
    The slogans were we won't even give a button of our uniform,
    [NON-ENGLISH] uniform.
    And I really felt I'm part of a great country
    and how could this be happening, one soldier
    trying to shoot at a plane.
    Even I was so young, I just thought this was ridiculous.
    I mean, this is just not possible.
    But that's what was happening.
    And people were going naked and half naked
    because it was such an early time.
    And I couldn't keep up with the grown ups.
    So I took off the shoes.
    And I walked barefoot.
    And the rucksack was on their wagon.
    We walked all day without stopping
    for water or for anything.
    We were running, not walking, as fast as we could.
    And there were some people who had a buggy or a horse
    or something, but very few.
    The majority was just running.
    And there was great panic.
    By early evening, we got off the road.
    Again, I don't know how these things were happening.
    But some people went off the road.
    Evidently, they realized-- and a farmer
    was boiling a big pot of potatoes, which you
    do for cattle, with the skins.
    And he tried to give them to us.
    But the potatoes weren't ready yet when we heard planes.
    So, again, we were afraid.
    We were afraid to be in the house all together.
    We felt that outside is already better than being in the house.
    So we grabbed the potatoes, which were half-cooked.
    They were hard inside.
    And by then, I couldn't chew anymore.
    My gums were all--
    it was strange.
    I couldn't even chew.
    And so we ate the potatoes, just the part on the outside.
    And we ran again.
    And it was dark.
    Finally, I guess the grownups decided
    that it's time to stay for the night someplace.
    So another farmer let us stay in a barn.
    And it was very, very cold.
    It was September 1.
    But during the night, it was very cold.
    So I tried to find underwear in the rucksack,
    because it wasn't really underwear.
    It was my gym shorts.
    But somehow, this was packed.
    Because we intended to leave.
    We were sort of dividing everything.
    My father had a business.
    So half of the machines he was trying to keep.
    And half we were trying to send away.
    Because we figured even wars don't last forever.
    If something would happen, then half of it
    would be at my mother's cousin's place in Piotrkow.
    And my mother and I and my sister
    were supposed to go there.
    So that's why things some of the things were packed.
    And the rest, he didn't want to just leave everything.
    He wanted to stay and keep his business.
    So that's why this rucksack was packed.
    So I put on my gym shorts.
    In the meantime, I lost a shoe.
    I had a pair of shoes there, too.
    And I didn't realize it, but I could never
    find the shoe anymore.
    And we slept a few hours.
    And then we started walking again.
    And we came into a village or a little city.
    It was called Belchatow.
    This was Saturday morning.
    And by a day over there, in the first place, when we were
    was Oceacov.
    When we got there, it was very close to our city.
    People thought we were a bunch of beggars.
    They said what's happening?
    A bunch of naked beggars are running.
    What's going on?
    We told them it's war.
    We're bombed.
    They said you're crazy.
    There is no war.
    But the war was on already.
    And when we came to Belchatow the next morning, not only
    did they know that there was war,
    but they already knew that the Russians
    are coming from the other side.
    And the Red Cross had set up help stations.
    I had very big blisters on my soles from running all day.
    So the people said if you go there,
    they'll cut them open for you.
    And I was scared.
    So I said I already do without cutting it.
    And I'm not going to put on shoes.
    And I'll manage how I can.
    And in Belchatow, I found an aunt and an uncle,
    which was my father's brother and his wife and two cousins.
    What were their names?
    It's Itzik Hersh Lipszyc and Mendel Lipszyc.
    And the older cousin was Jakob Lipszyc.
    And the younger one was Shlomik.
    The younger was my best friend, anyway.
    We grew up together.
    Because he was my age.
    And my sister was eight years younger than I.
    Somehow I always liked to play with him.
    And they used to live, for a long time,
    they used to live, like, next door almost.
    And we played a lot with each other.
    So I was comfortable with them rather than with the stranger.
    And I don't even know if it was so much my decision
    as the grown ups', but at that time,
    I felt relieved to be with an uncle
    rather than with a neighbor.
    And the same day, also in Belchatow, because we
    weren't running so fast.
    When we heard the Russians are coming from the other side,
    and that the army is going with tanks
    and trucks and everything, we realized we weren't out random.
    And also, then in the same day, we
    found another uncle and aunt, which was my mother's brother.
    And his name was Idalia Abramovich.
    And my aunt's name was Hannah Abramovich.
    And she had a son.
    But I don't remember that the son was with them.
    But she was with two sisters and her parents.
    And I had a little cousin, her little boy, Srulik.
    And she had a four weeks old baby, Hindzia,
    who was named like my sister, after the same grandmother.
    And they couldn't go quick, either.
    So I liked this end better than I liked the other end,
    for some reason.
    Even though I liked the cousins there,
    I felt more comfortable with my uncle from my mother's side.
    And so I was with them.
    And I think we stayed overnight in Belchatow, or maybe
    a little longer.
    Because this end couldn't move that fast.
    She was nursing the child.
    And there wasn't so much food available.
    There was very little food.
    But the Jewish people somehow helped already.
    They knew we were not beggars.
    And they heard people ahead of us,
    because some people were much quicker already than I was.
    There were young people on bicycles and stuff.
    So by then everybody knew there is s war.
    And we didn't know what to do.
    And since my aunt's parents were with her,
    I think they were really making the decisions.
    And she had a sister living in Pabianice, which was not
    very far from Piotrkow, either.
    And there was a tramway, because actually, this
    was like suburbs.
    But before the war, we didn't know anything is suburbs.
    And everything had a name.
    And everything was a city or whatever.
    So we stayed there.
    And we didn't move on till Tuesday.
    And Tuesday was the last tramway going to Pabianice.
    So I guess that's when they decided
    we're going on the tramway.
    So I remember it was already dark, so I didn't walk anymore.
    I don't know how many kilometers we walked that first day.
    But it was probably about 25, 30, at least.
    We walked, we ran all day, straight.
    So we went already on a tramway to Pabianice.
    We came in in the evening.
    And they tried to give me stockings or something,
    because I was half-naked.
    I had the coat and I had summer shoes,
    but no stockings or anything like that, no dress, nothing
    like that.
    But I had a coat, a summer coat.
    And they were talking and talking.
    And the sister lived a little bit on the outskirts of town.
    And somehow, I don't think the first day,
    but sooner or later, we were in that place.
    And I think it was called the 11 Listopada, or so.
    And this was the road to Lodz.
    Pabianice was in the direction northeast of Wielen.
    And it was in the direction toward Lodz.
    And it was a smaller house.
    It wasn't in the main city.
    In the city, there were mostly buildings.
    And many people lived together.
    And this was a smaller place where they were renting.
    And I only remember one room.
    But since there were so many of us, and she also had--
    I think it was a little boy.
    But she had a little baby which she was nursing
    and was also very young.
    This was my aunt's sister.
    And by the time we were there, Friday morning,
    which was one week after the first Friday,
    the Germans started coming with the motorcycles
    and [INAUDIBLE].
    And these were like scouts, I think.
    And this was early.
    And after this, they marched in full force
    with all the paraphernalia.
    And soldiers came to the room.
    And they were cutting through-- in Europe,
    we don't have built in closets.
    We have what we call garderobe, which were wooden closets,
    furniture.
    And you keep your clothes there.
    So with the bayonets, they were cutting through the clothes,
    searching.
    They said they're searching for Waffen.
    And we knew German.
    Because in the First World War-- see, on one side,
    we were afraid.
    But on the other hand, the First World War,
    Germans were in our place.
    They called it Warthegau.
    We were part of Germany.
    And people had memories that the Germans were civilized,
    they were educated.
    So even though Hitler was saying all these things,
    people always felt we'll manage with him.
    People even did business during the first war with the Germans.
    So on one hand, we were afraid.
    But we figured we were more afraid of the war than
    of the Germans itself.
    We were running from the bombs and from the bullets,
    but we felt that sooner or later it will slow down
    and there'll be some kind of normalcy.
    So when they came in that Friday,
    they started rounding up the people.
    They took my uncle.
    And they took my aunt's brother-in-law.
    These were the two younger men.
    Because their father was already an older man.
    And the rest of us were all women or girls or younger kids
    yet.
    And they took them.
    And the father-in-law was staying and praying
    Tehillim, which is a very special prayer.
    I didn't know what to think first.
    I didn't understand that much.
    And my aunt was crying.
    And her sister was crying.
    And there was too much for me to understand everything
    that's going on.
    I wasn't happy, but I wasn't crying, either.
    I just was completely baffled.
    Here we were.
    And we weren't thinking about food or stuff like this.
    But we knew we were not safe.
    And we didn't know what's going on exactly.
    Later that evening, my uncle and his brother-in-law came back.
    And everybody was kissing and hugging them.
    And it was so strange to me.
    And in Europe, you didn't tell children everything.
    But somehow, not my uncle, but the other brother-in-law
    sat down.
    And he told us what's happened.
    They were all lined up.
    The Germans lined them up with their hands up.
    They took men, any kind of men.
    At that time, it wasn't just Jewish men, any young men.
    By young, I'm talking early thirties or people
    who were not in the army.
    Because when you were younger, you were already in the army.
    It was mobilized.
    And they shot 10 men.
    And my uncle and his brother-in-law were 11 and 12.
    So they were the first two for whom the bullets had stopped.
    They came home all shook up.
    And like I said, my uncle, I don't remember talking.
    But the other one was telling everything.
    And then I understood already what's going on.
    And actually, we slept on the floor, not just in beds.
    But we were already afraid.
    The one girl even survived with me afterwards in camp,
    and she was older than I. She was already engaged.
    She was probably 20 or something, Golda.
    Golda Bornstein is her name, because that
    was my aunt's maiden name.
    And there was another sister who was engaged,
    an older one of her, but also in her 20s or something.
    And for some reason, they put us in another room.
    And I remember it must have been like a storage
    room or something.
    We were sleeping there.
    And the mice were creeping on our bed.
    And I wasn't allowed to make a peep.
    I didn't-- you know, there was so much going on.
    Naturally, I was scared of a mouse.
    But I knew I had to be quiet.
    And when I saw what went on that day,
    and when I saw my uncle come home,
    when they told me to be quiet, I knew
    that my life depends on it.
    And a mouse or whatever it was, it could have been even a rat,
    but we knew something was crawling on us.
    We kept quiet.
    And we were relatively safe for a few days there.
    And then, again, the grown ups made the decision.
    The Germans kept making announcements
    that people should go home.
    If they will go home to their own places, they won't be hurt.
    And they won't be punished.
    Because they wanted to have everything normal.
    So the grown ups decided it's time to go home.
    And, again, we started walking.
    And a little bit, we already had transportation, but not much.
    By transportation, I'm talking, like, a wagon and horse.
    Because everything was very upsetting.
    But I think when people saw a woman with a small baby
    on her arm--
    so we started walking home.
    And we came home two weeks--
    the war was already on two weeks.
    When we came home to the city, our house was just a chimney.
    And it wasn't a house.
    It was a building with a few buildings around,
    with a courtyard, like in Europe.
    There was just a chimney.
    And most of it was just chimneys.
    We lived in the city.
    It was either chimneys or rubble.
    It was very, very scary.
    And I didn't know what's going on.
    But where my aunt lived, the place was all right.
    Because she lived a little bit out of town.
    But already, I don't remember.
    The Polish people were taking over whatever they could find.
    If their places were bombed out, or if they
    used to live in a basement, they went into a Jewish place.
    And for the Jewish people, there was really nothing
    that you could say this is mine, or I want it,
    or I want to go back.
    But my aunt still went for a little while
    back into the place where she lived.
    And I was with them.
    And I don't know how we got, you know, communication.
    We didn't have telephones.
    And I think even if you had a phone then, it wasn't working.
    Because the main city was bombed.
    The electric company was bombed.
    The first bombs fell on the hospital.
    And one line, the hospital was the very first to be bombed.
    And the buildings had white crosses on them.
    But they were the very first to be bombed.
    The surgeon from the hospital left in his underpants.
    He didn't even have a top on.
    Because he lived in a villa right next to the hospital.
    The synagogue was bombed, which was very close.
    The church was bombed.
    And these are the things that was left.
    That's how our city looked.
    Now what are these photographs of?
    I really don't remember, exactly.
    But this, I think, was the German church.
    And I think this one was left.
    That's the German church on the bottom?
    I think so.
    This was left.
    But this is how our city looked.
    And this is already when we were working and clearing
    the rubble.
    This was taking in the very beginning of the war.
    And we didn't take this.
    We got this after the war because the Germans took it.
    And one of the Germans recognized--
    this is a friend of ours, from our city.
    And his name is?
    His name is [? Israel ?] [? Yakubovich. ?] And he lives
    in Lakewood, New Jersey.
    Now he's not so young anymore.
    But this was in 1939.
    And so we didn't know that--
    somehow we got the messages across.
    And we heard from my father's side--
    my maiden name is Lipszyc, and my father
    was one of nine children.
    And everybody lived in the city.
    And also, we had cousins.
    And my grandfather had a cousin which had established family.
    And Lipszyc, was a big name.
    Because this was a city, there were quite a few of us,
    and we were in all different things.
    And somehow they said that this home of Lipszyc,
    which was not my grandfather, but was
    my grandfather's cousin, Abraham Lipszyc, was his name.
    But he wasn't alive.
    But the wife was alive.
    She was, like, you would call a patriarch.
    She also had, I think, six or seven children.
    And she couldn't leave town because she was an older woman.
    And she couldn't run or walk.
    So two sons stayed with her, one single son and one married son.
    Anyway, their house was not bombed.
    And that we should go there.
    And we went there.
    My grandfather-- in the meantime,
    I was always asking have you seen my parents?
    Have you seen?
    So at one time, somebody told me they had seen my parents.
    My grandfather and two of my aunts and my parents
    were together.
    And one of my little cousins, because my aunt had
    a little cousin, and one aunt was single, and my mother,
    and my little sister.
    So that made me happy.
    So then I heard that they're coming home.
    And they did come home.
    So Mrs. Lipszyc, who was the patriarch called us in.
    And she said, listen let all of us fill up these places.
    And let's stay together.
    Because whatever building the Germans are not taking over,
    the Polish are taking the Jewish places to live.
    And at least this way we'll have a place to live.
    So I was happy to see my mother and my sister.
    And I wanted to know where is my father.
    So they said they're waiting.
    My father should be coming.
    My father should be coming.
    So what was the story?
    They were happy to see me, they said.
    When I got lost right at home on Friday the 1st,
    they were waiting for me.
    They thought I'm behind them.
    And they started going.
    And they were waiting, waiting.
    Then my grandfather came, and my two aunts, and my cousin.
    Her name was Shifra Blitz, because that
    was my aunt's name, Blitz.
    Her maiden name was Lipszyc, but her married name was Blitz.
    And from then on, they were together again.
    They weren't going very fast.
    Because my grandfather was already,
    I think, 60, or in the 60s.
    And they were sort of waiting there, maybe they'll find me.
    And by that time, it was, I think,
    Monday, or Sunday or Monday.
    They got taken prisoner because they hadn't gone very far.
    And the German army came to our city.
    At 12 o'clock, they were in the city already on Friday.
    So naturally, they caught up with my parents very quickly.
    And even though they were civilians
    and not young or anything, they took them prisoners.
    And they had other people as prisoners, too, not just
    my parents.
    And somebody was shooting at them or bombing them,
    or there were bullets, there were things coming.
    Something was going on.
    I don't know if this was the English or this was the Polish.
    There was some shooting going on.
    So the officer in charge took them.
    And they were outside in a field.
    And the officer had seen my sister,
    who was 4 and 1/2 years old.
    She was a very pretty girl.
    And he gave her a pound of kunst Honig.
    We had never seen kunst Honig before,
    which is artificial honey.
    In Poland, I had never seen it.
    We had the real honey.
    And we didn't know what kunst Honig means.
    And this was, I think, a German invention.
    And he had given her 50 pfennig.
    And, again, we hadn't had German money.
    And he said to her, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And my mother was telling me this.
    Which means?
    Which means it's a shame, child, that you are Jewish.
    No good times are coming for you Jewish people.
    But, again, we weren't in such luxury before the war.
    We had a rich life, but not a luxurious life.
    And we didn't worry.
    We figured we can survive a lot more than they can give us.
    We never believed that they can kill us.
    We always felt if they put us in one room,
    if we sleep on a straw sack, and we have to stand it up
    in the day, so what?
    This isn't going to last forever.
    Wars don't last forever.
    We felt that, too, shall pass by and everything
    will be back to normal again.
    We always felt, I especially felt,
    that the war will be over.
    Everything will be back to normal.
    So they didn't scare us.
    No matter what they did, we were never scared.
    We always believed that things will be over
    and things will be back, again, to normal.
    So in the meantime, when they were being bombed,
    then one officer in charge finally
    told them, if you go this way and this way,
    this was in the fields, this wasn't in a building
    and not on a road, you will get to the road.
    And if you take this direction, you
    end up going where you're supposed to, which was Oceacov,
    but which was already on the road to Wielen.
    And my father started.
    There was a little stream.
    And my father started helping.
    So the first, he helped my mother and my sister.
    Then he helped my aunt with my little cousin,
    who was about 8 or 9.
    And then he helped the single aunt.
    And then he helped my grandfather.
    And my mother was in front.
    She was calling to my father.
    My father's name was Wolfe.
    And she called Wolfe, Wolfe.
    And my grandfather said Wolfe is right with me.
    And as I said, my grandfather was not young anymore.
    He was 60, or in the 60s, something like this.
    I never asked for age.
    But pretty soon, they walked a little while.
    And when they were out of the sound of the bullets.
    My father wasn't there.
    And they went to the road.
    And they kept waiting.
    My father didn't come.
    And they didn't go back, which they should have.
    But they were afraid of the bullets and of the Germans.
    Then they went into Oceacov and they waited again.
    And my father never came back to this day.
    So in the beginning of the war, we
    kept waiting and asking, waiting and asking.
    We wrote to the Red Cross.
    We never heard of my father.
    Today, I feel that same officer probably
    shot my father, the one who let them go.
    When he saw my father by himself, the last one,
    he probably shot him because my father was younger then
    and he was a man.
    Anyway, we never knew what happened to my father.
    I never knew.
    So my parents were waiting my father should
    come-- my mother was waiting.
    Was that the first Friday?
    That was a few days, like, by Tuesday, I think.
    Because I wasn't with them by then, see.
    I was lost.
    And then they started coming back.
    When I came back, I found them also home, but not my father.
    And we still kept hoping that my father would come back.
    So we separated.
    In the building, we separated.
    They took a place downstairs, my two aunts and my grandfather.
    And my mother and I and my sister were upstairs.
    We were holding two rooms.
    And we didn't dare to go places other than for food.
    And stores were closed.
    And only one or two bakeries had bread or anything.
    And you had to line up for it.
    So my aunt would go with me.
    And she would wait someplace far away.
    I didn't understand at that age why they were afraid.
    But I wasn't so much afraid, especially
    when I knew I have an aunt waiting someplace.
    I was the one who got bread.
    And it was closed before Rosh Hashanah.
    We didn't have anything.
    I went and I heard people are digging potatoes.
    So I dug out the potatoes with my hands.
    I got tomatoes.
    When I came, my grandfather was blessing me.
    This was our Rosh Hashanah.
    We had potatoes and we had tomatoes and we had bread.
    So this was terrific.
    And whenever we had to go in line, at that time,
    anybody could go in line.
    But if the Polish people recognized you
    that you're Jewish, they said [POLISH]..
    And they pulled you out of line, or the Germans
    pulled you out of line when you were pointed out as Jewish.
    So that's why I was the one who stood in lines.
    And then we started digging out salt and things.
    We knew where the stores were.
    And things were still smoldering lots of places.
    Because there were cans in stores,
    there were things which were burnable,
    but they were covered with rubble.
    But in the meantime, it was after burning, also.
    And then more people came home.
    And one of the people who came home
    was Tovie Haim Lipszyc, which was one of the young--
    he was, I think, the youngest son of the patriarch, Mrs.
    Lipszyc, who was cousins of my father.
    So he was living in one room and we
    were living in the first room.
    And pretty soon, he became president
    of the Jewish community.
    Because in Poland, church and state were not separated.
    Before the war, when my father had a Jewish person working
    for him, he had to pay to the Jewish Kultusgemeinde
    and Jewish kehilla, we called it, Yiddish kehilla.
    And if you had a Gentile person working,
    you paid [GERMAN], church taxes.
    So the Jewish community in Wielen
    was a very beautiful community.
    There were 7,000 Jewish people.
    And we had a center which was the Jewish ritual baths,
    the Jewish slaughterhouse.
    And it was called the beis medrash, which is a school.
    But this was a religious.
    And it was also for prayers there and teaching.
    And it was quite a few acres.
    As a matter of fact, this was left.
    See this was one of the places which was not bombed.
    Even after the war, this was left intact.
    So over there, they made the Jewish Kultusgemeinde.
    And my cousin, which was really my father's second cousin,
    he was president.
    And I was living with-- we were living
    with the president in the same apartment, the same rooms.
    It was advantageous and it was disadvantageous.
    We saw many things that other people didn't see.
    For instance, when the Germans came in,
    they knew Jewish people still had things, even though we
    were bombed and everything.
    So they said if you deliver so much gold,
    if you deliver so much jewelry, we won't bother you.
    We have to pay this as a ransom.
    And we won't bother you.
    So I saw briefcases filled up with gold watches
    and all kinds of gold jewelry.
    This was handed over to the Germans
    in the hope that they will let us be as a community
    and that they wouldn't be so bad to us.
    And I don't remember what they called it,
    but they wanted people to clear the rubble.
    So they wanted the Jewish people.
    So I, too, lined up in the street.
    And you lined up--
    we had two squares.
    One was called the old square and one
    was called the new square.
    So in the old square, we used to line up.
    And they would take you to work.
    And in the beginning, I worked with rubble,
    clearing the rubble.
    When was this?
    This was in September, right away in September.
    Still right after.
    As soon as we came home, we wouldn't
    get any rations, any food.
    Because in the beginning, we just
    lined up for food the first two weeks or three weeks.
    Then they started making some kind of order.
    Made the Jewish Kultusgemeinde.
    And they said don't worry.
    There'll be bread.
    But you have to work and then you get rations.
    And if you work, you get food.
    For working, we used to get, I think,
    either three zloty or three mark.
    I think it was either 50 pfennig a day or 50 groschen.
    And right away, they said the Polish money is good.
    Don't worry.
    But whatever a Jewish person had in the bank was gone.
    It's just if you had money on your person,
    if you had any money.
    And we were not that lucky.
    Because my father had the money on him.
    And some families were smarter.
    They slept with money on their heart.
    Each child had some money, which was much smarter.
    But like I said, we knew a war is coming.
    But we didn't believe it.
    We still hoped maybe it isn't coming.
    So I was lined up to work.
    And my mother was lined up to work.
    And Sundays, we would clean the streets
    with brooms and the parks.
    And also some days, we worked in a factory of sugar.
    It was called cukrownia.
    And they were driving the beets, you know, sugar beets?
    And we were working with that.
    But we used to walk.
    This was quite a few kilometer out of town.
    Was in [PLACE NAME],, which was like a suburb of Wielen.
    And we worked on these jobs.
    As long as it didn't get so cold, it wasn't so bad.
    But I had no shoes and nothing.
    And slowly, we sort of settled in.
    And my little sister didn't want to stay home alone.
    First of all, school was nonexistent.
    Jewish people were not allowed to go to school.
    It didn't matter how old you were,
    even if you just wanted to go to first grade or something.
    And the Polish people were very happy
    that there were no schools for Jewish people.
    I remember a girl who lived in the basement before the war
    and whom I always considered as a decent person
    because her father was an alcoholic, but the rest of them
    were nice people.
    Her name was Zoha Kolesinska.
    And I thought that she was an intelligent person I considered
    her as a fine person.
    And she was going home from school.
    She saw me working in the rubble.
    She said you won't be a good student anymore.
    I'm in school.
    And you're clearing the rubble.
    She was very happy about it, that I had to clear the rubble
    and she could go to school.
    What I'm trying to say, when I was working
    and my mother was working, my sister
    could have stayed with my grandfather
    and my little cousin who was a little older than she,
    but younger than I. She was 9 or something.
    She didn't work, either.
    And my grandfather didn't move out of the house
    because he didn't go in the street.
    He tied his chin because he didn't want his beard cut.
    He was a rabbi.
    He didn't want to have his beard cut off.
    And when the Germans came into our house,
    and when they saw people with beards, they would pull them.
    They would put them in front of a wagon like horses.
    They would denigrate the people, whatever they could do.
    And some they killed.
    They made them run.
    And they had pneumonia right afterwards,
    run in front of a wagon, pull a wagon.
    These were the things they were doing.
    It was like a sport to them.
    They were having so much fun.
    But we sort of thought this was the individuals who
    were doing it.
    We didn't realize this was the law, that they were probably
    getting medals for doing it.
    It was too much to catch it all, to understand it all.
    Anyway, my sister said I already lost my daddy.
    And I'm not going to let you go to work.
    I have to know where you are.
    So she was outside already.
    When it got cold, my sister's hands
    were all sore because they were frozen.
    She was less than five years old.
    Her hands were all open from wounds from being frozen.
    In the meantime, my father was one out of nine children.
    But not one of us, not one of the aunts or uncles
    had anything left.
    Because we all lived in the city.
    And everybody was either bombed out or burned out.
    One of my aunts who got married shortly before the war,
    her name was Haya and her husband's name was Krzynian.
    And he was a candy maker.
    They had a candy store.
    She was bombed in the house where she lived.
    And supposedly, from what I heard,
    she was pregnant at the time.
    Because people didn't tell children your aunt is pregnant,
    you know?
    So she and her husband were killed.
    One of my uncles was in the hospital.
    And his name was Moishe.
    And he had a wife and three children.
    One was a little boy born two months before the war.
    And one was [NON-ENGLISH].
    I don't know if he was six or seven, six years old,
    I think, and a little cousin, four years old,
    [PERSONAL NAME], beautiful girl.
    So my aunt was also left alone.
    Because he was killed right in the hospital.
    Then one uncle was missing.
    He wasn't home yet.
    We were hoping he would come home.
    And actually, he did come home.
    He was with the army and he was taken prisoner.
    And in the beginning, they let the prisoners go home.
    They didn't pay so much attention if you're Jewish
    or not.
    This was still in '39.
    So my sister didn't want to be home alone,
    not even in the warm room.
    She wanted to be where my mother was.
    So my mother originally came from another city,
    which was named Krzepice.
    And a young man who was engaged to a Lipszyc, girl,
    and we were in the same building, told them.
    And he was coming on a bicycle.
    And this was 36 kilometer away, but he was coming on a bicycle.
    It wasn't legal for Jewish people
    to go out of town by any means, walking or riding,
    and we had a train.
    But it wasn't legal.
    So he was coming on a bicycle, and he managed.
    So he told them what's going on, that we
    have no clothes and no bedding, and winter is coming.
    And my mother's family tried to help us.
    So first of all, they send us something.
    I think they sent us a cover or a pillow.
    From Krzepice?
    From Krzepice.
    They sent us something on a bicycle, whatever
    he was willing to bring.
    Because on a bicycle, 36 kilometers,
    you don't carry that much.
    This man is alive today, too.
    He's in Australia, if he's still alive.
    So whatever he could bring for us, they sent us something.
    It was already a little bit more helpful.
    Because it wasn't enough that somebody wanted to help you.
    If nobody had anything, nobody could help you.
    Out of the whole family, nobody had anything left.
    So how could anybody help each other?
    So when they heard that we are working like this--
    in the meantime, I turned 13.
    And the water was going in and out of my shoes,
    because I had summer sandals.
    My feet had healed up.
    I had sandals.
    And a doctor we weren't allowed to go to.
    Because there was one Jewish doctor and he
    had to take care of the whole Jewish community.
    And we were not allowed to go to a Gentile doctor.
    But the Gentile doctor who was a surgeon,
    Dr. Patrin is his name.
    I don't know if he's still alive.
    Because the Jewish people helped him,
    he learned a lot during the bombing.
    And the Jewish people were the ones
    who gave him clothes, because he ran away without clothes
    like everybody else.
    And they gave him some money and they helped him.
    So then he tried to help the Jewish people
    by telling this doctor what to do if there
    were things to be done.
    Because this was just a young doctor.
    I don't know if he was really done with residency.
    His name was Dr. Froehlich.
    But how can one doctor take care of everybody
    in times like this, when everybody was having problems?
    So help was nonexistent.
    And we were just existing.
    We were hoping a war like this cannot last forever.
    In the meantime, again, we heard-- at that time,
    I think we still had radios.
    I don't remember for sure.
    But I knew that we knew that Warsaw was
    under siege in the beginning.
    And then we knew it was fallen.
    And we felt in a few months the war will be over.
    How long can a war like this last?
    But in the meantime, it was already so cold.
    And I was going to work in the morning.
    I had some kind of a wool babushka.
    And somebody gave me a coat, I think from my aunt,
    from her parents who lived in a little place which was called--
    oh, I forgot what it was called, my aunt.
    So I had some kind of a coat.
    And we tied around things.
    So my eyebrows would freeze.
    And my eyelashes would freeze.
    And in the afternoon, my cheeks were so red
    that when I was going home once, a Polish boy
    said to me in this kind of life, you still paint your cheeks?
    I never painted my cheeks in my life.
    I didn't have to, not after a day being out.
    But it was so cold sometimes we were afraid to go near--
    but sometimes we would burn a little wood,
    which wasn't legal.
    But sometimes if we had a person who
    was watching us that wasn't so bad,
    they let us use some of the--
    the wood was bad, anyway.
    But that's what people were using.
    People were collecting wood.
    And the ones who were in charge of us, I think,
    were really from Austria.
    They had the black uniforms.
    And most of them were very mean.
    They tried to do all kinds of things.
    I used to hear-- the older girls were talking to themselves.
    And they didn't want to me to hear.
    But I used to hear that they said that they're not
    going straight home.
    They're afraid to go home.
    Somebody will follow them.
    But in every home, in a room like this,
    there were at least six people sleeping.
    So in the daytime, you stuff the straw into burlap mattresses.
    And you had it standing upright.
    And during the night, sometimes people
    had to sleep under the table and on the table.
    Because people were so crowded in that just to be inside
    was a privilege.
    And like I said, the people who did come home
    to their own homes were happy to get
    people whom they know rather than somebody
    would come and make them leave.
    And some places which were better, people did
    have to leave.
    And a Polish person who said he was a Volksdeutsche
    came, you had to leave.
    Because they had priority.
    Let me ask you.
    When you go back to your earliest memories in Wielen,
    before the war, how do you remember the city?
    That it was a beautiful city.
    And we had good schools.
    We had four public schools.
    And one of the public schools--
    I didn't start in public school.
    I started in a Jewish school.
    But by the time I went to public school,
    it was only five days a week.
    And it was only for Jewish people.
    But the teachers were not all Jewish.
    The teachers were mixed.
    The principal was Gentile.
    As a matter of fact, he was taken to Auschwitz.
    And he came back.
    He survived.
    So we had Jewish theater.
    And we had Jewish sports club, which
    was called Maccabi, and a band.
    And we had many Jewish schools.
    But the school I went to was just for girls.
    But for boys, we had many schools.
    And some schools, most of them were religious schools.
    But it was a full day school.
    I mean, we learned Polish.
    And we learned all the subjects.
    And we learned Yiddish.
    And we learned two prayers, which is Hebrew.
    And then, when I was already out of it,
    I think they started teaching modern Hebrew.
    But I didn't go there for very long, because then when
    we didn't have to go to school on the Shabbat,
    I went to a public school.
    How old were you when you changed?
    What grade?
    I changed into the third grade.
    And you had to take a test.
    And some teachers were not very nice to Jewish people.
    Out of, maybe, a dozen kids, they let two pass.
    And I was one of the two who passed.
    One of the reasons was we were younger, too.
    I was the youngest in my class.
    And the girl who went with me was also the youngest.
    I mean, she was, maybe, a couple of months older.
    But we were a year younger.
    Because we were allowed to start a year younger
    than public school started.
    But we had very good curriculum.
    And from our school, we were supposed
    to go to gymnasium, which would be like high school here.
    And everybody knew when you came from our school
    that you had to have a test again.
    But they knew that we make the test.
    Nobody ever failed from our school to make the tests.
    And the teachers were very dedicated
    and we had clubs in the afternoon.
    And we had all kinds of things and life was fun.
    Did you belong to any clubs?
    Playing -- not clubs like you had to belong.
    You just came to school.
    The teachers, really, were running it.
    And we didn't call it clubs.
    Like, we had Red Cross.
    So what did we do?
    Part of it what I did was getting food
    from kids in the afternoon.
    Because we had classes till about 1:30
    most of the week and Friday we came home earlier.
    And 10 minutes was the biggest recess.
    This was our breakfast recess.
    And otherwise, we had five minutes for recess.
    So it was not too much extra.
    In the afternoon, we would have more
    what you would have here as extracurricular activities.
    That's what it really was.
    And I remember I would collect sandwiches and hand it out
    to other kids.
    And it was signed up, which kids are lining up.
    And I always had time.
    Because I came home, I did my homework,
    and then I went to school.
    And we played checkers, or we played ball, and whatever.
    We did things like this.
    And we had our own plays.
    And we were running programs for holidays.
    Like 11 of November was called [NON-ENGLISH],,
    because Poland became independent.
    And we considered ourselves Polish.
    I mean, before the war, I was Polish like everybody else.
    We had art shows with our things which we had made,
    which we painted, and different things.
    And people made woodwork, whatever.
    We had art shows from this.
    And the Jewish community, like I said,
    had many Jewish schools and everything.
    But you had to be a little bit older already to belong.
    And they made all kinds of things.
    And quite a few people had left for Israel.
    And I think they all belonged to one club.
    But I wasn't with the grownups yet.
    And sort of you stayed with your own age group.
    This was more than anything else, more
    than going with an older cousin.
    You went with a younger person your own age.
    Because the older people, they didn't want to associate
    with the younger ones.
    If you were with people a year or two older,
    it was a big deal already because they didn't have
    that much in common with you.
    What was your family life like at that time?
    Well, I was the oldest of two kids.
    And my father had a business.
    It was called [NON-ENGLISH],, which means he was making
    the upper parts for the shoes.
    And he was already in business when he was single.
    So all I knew is that I went to school and I had a good life
    and didn't worry about anything.
    If I would compare it to life here, life was simple then.
    And we didn't have so many things.
    But we had a very rich and happy life.
    We would get together with cousins
    and celebrate birthdays.
    Not the way we celebrate here, not with a cake, even.
    We would throw candy and raisins and almonds
    on the head of the one who had the birthday.
    We would make a circle and dance around and have fun and play
    games.
    And every holiday was fun.
    My grandfather would listen to me, how I know Hebrew.
    And he would say that I know it well,
    he would give me a dime, which was 10 groschen.
    It looked like a dime.
    And it was, at that time, to me, it was a big deal.
    Because people would give you a penny or two pennies,
    or not even that.
    But a dime was a big thing to get.
    And we had a park in the city, which we used to play ball.
    And also, we used to play ball in school.
    Then there was a new park, which was already
    on the outskirts of the city.
    And that park you had to go already more out of the city.
    And I wouldn't go there alone already.
    Because the Polish people, before the war,
    the last year before the war, they
    were already very anti-Semitic.
    And part of it was because there were so many Volksdeutsche
    in our city.
    And they were agitating the people.
    So we knew that if there were a few of us,
    and if one or two boys would try to do something to us,
    we would fight back.
    And if we felt that there were more
    of the boys or girls who were throwing sand at us,
    then we would run.
    But in the city, it was so close,
    we were at home in the park.
    And in the park, there were different things always going
    on.
    And there was ice skating in the park
    because there was a little pond which
    was right across from the synagogue.
    And I didn't worry about anything.
    I didn't know what to worry about anything.
    I had my favorite aunt and another aunt.
    And one was more favorite and one was less favorite.
    And this uncle loved to teach me this,
    and this one was doing this.
    And I didn't know to worry.
    I didn't understand to worry.
    I made good grades.
    And I worried about what's in school if I--
    All right.
    We're going to take a break now for just a minute.
    OK.
    OK?
    Hello.
    My name is Abraham Kay.
    Today we're continuing our interview
    with Sara Kay, a Holocaust survivor.
    This project is sponsored by the National
    Council of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    Now you were describing a little bit about your home life
    from before the war.
    You were born in October of 1926, up until really the time
    that the war started.
    And you were talking a little bit about your schooling
    and about the religious life in your community.
    Well, I think I'll start when I was really young.
    Life was simpler in Poland.
    Because first of all, it's so many years ago, in 1930s
    that I remember.
    And I remember when I was a young girl,
    my father was a [GERMAN],, and we had two big rooms.
    And in the one room my father had part of it
    was where his warsztat, where he worked.
    And we had about five machines, and he had a special place
    where you cut leather.
    Because you have to cut it on a big board.
    It doesn't have to be so big, but so
    that the knife doesn't cut through tables.
    And he was what was considered a meister which
    meant that he had young boys who came in
    and they were apprentice, and then they were journeymen.
    And what my father was a member of what was called cech.
    I don't think it's like a union, but it's
    of people who are in the trade and they give diplomas.
    A guild.
    A guild I guess.
    And the person who was before he got the diploma,
    he had to show to the other people what he learned.
    And I was alone till I was eight years old,
    so I was always underfoot.
    I was always trying to be with everybody else.
    I was never alone.
    I always wanted to be where the action was.
    If I couldn't be in my father's place, I went next door.
    And next door were two young sisters
    and they were doing embroidery on the machine,
    and they also had girls whom they were teaching.
    And the places weren't so big.
    This was where you lived where the business was.
    So sometimes in order to stay there,
    they made me sit under the table.
    But I was so happy to be with them and get to watch them,
    and get their magazines, which had all the designs,
    and they were so colorful, it was all
    right to sit under the table.
    And with my father when we had people, so
    I tried to teach them how to pedal the machines.
    Because the first thing you had to learn so that the wheel
    doesn't turn back.
    And I don't remember when I didn't know it.
    It seemed that I always knew it.
    Because I was always watching.
    There was no TV.
    And you could only play that much outside in Poland.
    The weather wasn't so terrific.
    So I was always watching.
    And if I went to the dressmaker who was making my clothes,
    I was watching there too.
    This seemed to be my favorite place.
    If they were building a home, I like to watch.
    But they chased me away, because they were mixing--
    I don't know what it was, but we called it wapno.
    It's very hot, white, and you can get burnt.
    So they would chase me away.
    But I used to like to watch.
    So naturally, in my father's place, I watched too.
    They had big machines.
    I used to draw my teachers when I was already in school,
    I used to draw my teachers on those boards.
    And the boys used to laugh.
    They were bigger than I was, so I was just a nuisance to them.
    But I used to like to be, and watch,
    and I always knew how to sew on the machine.
    Because if I was watching all the time, I knew how to do it.
    And the first time I went, my mother took me to school,
    I was almost six years old.
    It was Bais Yaakov.
    It was a girl's school.
    And it was a religious school.
    But we learned everything in the religious school.
    And we had plays for the holidays.
    And I was always a little bit of an independent spirit,
    because I remember when our teacher let all the girls watch
    our rehearsals, and she didn't allow
    us to watch the rehearsals from the older classes.
    I said this isn't fair.
    We should be able to watch their rehearsals.
    If they are allowed to watch this.
    And we were like one family.
    If you went to that school, no matter what grade you were in,
    it was like one group.
    And I still have one friend who survived from that school.
    She's a year older.
    But I still feel a kinship with her.
    And who is that?
    Havcia.
    Her name is--
    And her last name is--
    Hava [PERSONAL NAME] now, but her name used to be Horowicz.
    Havcia Horowicz was her name when she was in school.
    And so we were all like one family.
    Then when I went to the public school, again,
    I had friends always.
    And I was always a very good student.
    So in Poland, you didn't pass your classes
    unless you knew everything really well.
    So there were girls and boys who were
    a few years older than I was.
    I think because Poland wasn't so wealthy,
    they only kept the people in school
    till they were 14 years old, or if they were already
    in sixth or seventh grade and they were good students,
    they let them stay.
    But if a person got to be 12 or 13, and third or fourth grade,
    they didn't care if the people dropped out.
    They encouraged them to drop out.
    And I was with people who were already big and tall.
    And I was younger.
    And I was shorter.
    But I used to help them.
    And we had lots of fun.
    Whenever we had a chance, we played ball and everything.
    And school to me was just like something
    like eating breakfast or eating lunch, one, two, three.
    I was done.
    And I had no problem.
    What about life in your house?
    And in the house, we always used to have company.
    I had for my two aunts got married shortly
    before the war, one the year before the war,
    and one I think two years before the war.
    And she was my favorite aunt.
    And she had a place with upstairs where we lived,
    not in our house.
    I mean we weren't in a building and there were stairs to go up.
    And she was making wigs.
    And I used to like to sit and watch her too.
    This was another place I used to like to watch.
    And she would sing to me.
    And she would eat with us.
    And she was my favorite aunt.
    Then in the evening the women would
    sit and crochet, beautiful vests, and different things.
    And my mother would go to the theater
    and my father would go places, and shopping in the evening.
    During the day, they were working.
    But not my mother.
    My mother wasn't working.
    And she was cooking.
    She was being a housewife, visiting her own friends,
    and doing shopping.
    And at that time, if she wanted for me a dress,
    I had to go to one store, buy the material,
    then take it to the dressmaker, find a design,
    and everything was custom made.
    If you needed, whatever you needed,
    everything was custom made-- shoes, boots,
    everything was made.
    And people didn't have so many things, but we had good things,
    quality came first, because you only bought so much,
    but it had to be right.
    Then my sister was born January 20, 1935.
    And all my friends were all excited for me.
    But I don't know, it didn't mean that much to me.
    I guess if she would have been bigger, it was all right.
    But a little sister wasn't such a big deal.
    And I used to take her before the war, close before the war,
    I used to take her to the park.
    And my friends liked her.
    But I was kind of bothered.
    Because I felt I want to play ball.
    But most of the time we had help when she was little
    and like I said, I was busy in school.
    And I always managed to go back in the afternoon to school
    because we were doing something.
    We were getting ready for a play, or for a show, or games.
    Or some people needed help with homework.
    I liked to do my homework by myself.
    But then friends wanted to do homework with me.
    So I figured, OK, so I used to help them out.
    But my homework was done.
    I didn't go before I had my homework done.
    And also I used to go to buy milk.
    This was my place to go shopping.
    And this place was a historical place,
    only I didn't realize so much till I went there
    with the teachers from school.
    It was a tower which had walls which were yardstick,
    and it was built by Kazimierz Wielki.
    And this was in the city.
    But this is how the farm was, and the people's name was
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    And because we were religious, we
    couldn't buy milk just anyplace.
    So the lady was milking the cows at one time every day
    at noon at a certain time.
    In the morning, she was milking them,
    and another person was watching.
    And one of us had to be there and watch.
    And then she would measure out how much we would buy,
    a quart or a quarter and a half.
    We did not have refrigeration.
    So we bought milk every day.
    In the summer we bought more, because we liked sour milk.
    And the reason I'm telling this because this man,
    although he was Christian, was also
    taken in the beginning of the war to Auschwitz.
    And he did not come back.
    And I went back there after the war.
    And Mrs. [NON-ENGLISH] gave me straw for a mattress.
    And so because she had also suffered,
    so she was not so bitter like some people who didn't suffer.
    And we had all kinds of excitement.
    We played with the kids in the neighborhood.
    And this was everybody, Jewish and not Jewish,
    and we played with everybody.
    Now you were saying your family was pretty religious.
    What was the religious life like from day to day,
    or season to season?
    Well, Sabbath was Sabbath.
    Nobody would dare to do anything on the Sabbath,
    like go shopping, or anything like this.
    Friday afternoon, everything was covered with white cloths.
    My mother lit candles when the time was.
    And my father would go to shul.
    Saturday morning, my father would go to shul.
    And on Saturday I would go with my father
    to shul, up to a certain age.
    But I remembered where exactly where we were sitting.
    This was in the big synagogue.
    And my mother had a place upstairs,
    and the balcony was like--
    I think it was like wrought iron,
    because you could see through.
    And it was beautiful work.
    Then I don't remember why, but if it was a little too
    far to go.
    My mother was going already to a place where I said
    beis medrash, which was closer.
    And there were also prayers.
    But it was only one kind of Jewish.
    Everything was Orthodox.
    We didn't know anything else.
    And there were some people already closer
    to the war who didn't want to be so Orthodox.
    But it was a community of 7,000 Jewish people.
    And I guess if you weren't behaving,
    if you weren't doing what everybody else,
    it wasn't proper.
    So people hid if they didn't do something right.
    They didn't dare not to do what was right.
    Was the community at all Hasidic?
    There were some Hasidim, but they had their own shtiebel.
    But it was no big deal.
    I mean we didn't pay so much attention if this one was
    a Hasid, and they had this kind of Gerrer shtiebel
    and this kind of a shtiebel.
    But my father belonged to the synagogue.
    He was not that Hasidic.
    And my father wore European close,
    which means he did not wear the small hat.
    I had one uncle who did wear this,
    and my grandfather wore the hat with the coat,
    my grandfather did.
    But my father--
    And his name was?
    My grandfather's name?
    Meyer Shmuel Lipszyc.
    And he was really a rabbi, so he raised the children religious.
    And we were plenty religious by the standards for here.
    But my father wore regular clothes.
    And if you wore a hat and a coat,
    and if you didn't wear the other kind of hats,
    it was already not special.
    It was-- I don't know.
    To me this was called modern Orthodox you would call it.
    How many people lived in the whole city, Jews and non-Jews
    as well?
    25,000 people were all together.
    And out of this, there were 7,000 Jewish people.
    Was there a special section of the city?
    Not officially, but because the Jewish people had
    the businesses, and you didn't live away from your business,
    you lived where your business was, the most of us
    were in the city, but not necessarily all the city
    was Jewish in the center.
    There were other businesses too.
    But the majority of Jewish people lived in the city.
    And that part got bombed out and burned out, the city.
    Either the Germans did it by design, or not.
    I don't know exactly.
    But they knew exactly where everything was.
    Because in the first minutes they bombed the places
    they wanted to bomb.
    They came, and the very first few minutes they
    bombed exactly what they wanted to bomb.
    First of all, they were flying so low,
    and they could tell where everything was anyway.
    So the Jewish people were hit harder already
    when the war started.
    And because we were the underdogs afterwards,
    we were hit even harder then.
    But before the war, I went to my girlfriend's.
    And my worry was about a dress, or if I didn't get the right
    grade, or things like this.
    And I don't remember worrying before the war.
    Now, I think you said that Wielen had been part of Germany
    before World War II.
    At one time.
    My grandfather spoke German.
    And at one time during the First World War,
    Germany had occupied where we were.
    And that's why I said, the people were afraid of war.
    And they were afraid of the Germans.
    Because Hitler was persecuting Jewish people.
    But the grown-ups always felt that the Germans are civilized
    and that there's enough good Germans among them
    that they couldn't do bestial things.
    People didn't imagine that the Germans
    could be the way they were.
    Nobody believed that it's possible.
    Even I mean we didn't dream of anything.
    People felt that they're going to get along with Germans.
    In the beginning, some people who had their business left,
    got you see, when the Germans walked in,
    they took over everything they wanted to take over.
    So business was one of the things
    they took over instantly, property and business.
    So people thought they called it Treuhander.
    I don't know why they call it Treuhander,
    when they set in somebody in the Jewish business.
    So the Jewish people thought maybe
    if they help him run the business,
    they'll make a living out of it too.
    But it wasn't the case in the Second World War.
    Maybe one in a city would be this way
    that he would give to the Jewish person
    to whom the business belonged something.
    But most of them didn't.
    My husband's parents had land.
    And the German who took over--
    Now where was this?
    In Wielen-- it was right on the outskirts of the city.
    And the potatoes were being ready to be
    dug at the beginning of the war because.
    Potatoes are dug in November.
    In October, they're dug.
    And when my husband's father asked for some potatoes
    from his field, the Germans kicked him.
    He said, you have nothing to look for here.
    So this was kind of a shock too.
    People thought the Germans are more civilized.
    They thought they'd be able to get along with him.
    They didn't think what was coming.
    And then when the Germans came, and when they were taking
    people away, some of them were saying [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which means on the word of honor nothing will happen to you,
    we believed.
    We always kept hoping that it's just temporary
    and that we can manage.
    We can manage.
    We can manage.
    But it wasn't manageable.
    Before, say, the year before the war,
    did you have contacts with non-Jewish people in Wielen?
    Yes.
    What was that like?
    It was already being anti-Semitic,
    because they stood in the front of the Jewish stores and they
    had signs, [NON-ENGLISH],, which means this pig is buying from
    a Jewish person.
    And they were being agitated.
    But it was organized.
    And the people who came from the villages to the city
    were afraid.
    They were afraid to buy.
    Also, we lived in a city where we had twice a week,
    we had fair.
    And once a month we had big fair which was designated
    so many communities came.
    We had two squares.
    And the two squares were filled up.
    And there were different places for vegetables, and for fruit,
    for chickens.
    There was a special market out of the town for livestock.
    And also they were selling clothes,
    and yard goods, everything had designated places.
    So before the war, there were already
    what we call rough guys like who were going among the aisles
    and say that the Jewish people shouldn't be selling,
    that the Polish people shouldn't be
    buying from the Jewish people.
    But Jewish people were in business for years and years,
    and they knew how to have merchandise
    for reasonable prices.
    They had some customers for generations.
    In Europe, things don't change.
    People don't move.
    So generation after generation, and it was kind of a shock.
    How long had your family actually been in Wielen?
    I don't know.
    But my family was in Poland for I don't know how long.
    And my father was from Wielun.
    My mother was from Krzepice.
    But my grandfather I think was originally
    from Dzialoszyn, which was right near Wielen.
    But it was all one, here, it would be like suburbs.
    But because there were no cars, everything
    was a little bit farther apart.
    And one of his brothers was living in Pajeczno,
    which was also very close.
    And this was at one time, Poland encouraged the Jewish people
    to come in.
    And once you settled you stayed.
    You didn't move.
    You married from one city to the next.
    Or sometimes for a reason, you moved away.
    But out of all the uncles and aunts,
    everybody was in the city.
    My uncle, who was the oldest had the same trade as my father.
    And then one uncle--
    Did he work with your father?
    No, he had his own.
    He was independent.
    People didn't have big business.
    People had more of what you would call artisans.
    Everybody had their own business.
    You didn't hire too many people.
    We didn't have factories.
    We had a sugar factory and stuff.
    But in our city, there weren't so many factories.
    Like Lodz, that was known for factories.
    They had weaving and stuff like that, making yarn and weaving.
    But our city was not heavy industry.
    It was mostly people were for themselves.
    And in the business, you have to have people working for you,
    but not big business.
    It was all smaller, and independent,
    and it stayed in families.
    Sometimes when parents had a business, dry goods
    or something, then the kids took over, and two sisters were.
    So the two brothers-in-law were, and then the third generation
    took over the store.
    If it was run well, it stayed for generations.
    Before the war, what were your plans for when you grew up?
    I wanted to go to school, not that I wanted to.
    I mean it was common knowledge.
    I was a very, very good student.
    And everybody knew I'll be going to school.
    And in school, at that time, I wasn't at the age
    where I figured out exactly what I wanted to do.
    My favorite subject was math.
    And I was better in math than people who
    were a grade higher than I was.
    So the teacher used to brag about me.
    And then all the boys used to tease me.
    And it didn't make me so happy because they were teasing me.
    They said, the teacher said, if you don't know what--
    if you're complaining this is a big problem,
    I'm going to bring Lipszyc over from the lower grade
    and she'll tell you what to do.
    So sometimes it used to annoy me.
    But I didn't worry far ahead.
    I just worried, the war was not in my plans.
    And I knew I'm going to be going to school.
    But when the war started, we weren't
    allowed to go to school.
    Not only weren't we allowed to go to school,
    because Jewish people don't give up schooling
    so easily, after working in the street all day
    I had an hour in which I was allowed to go home.
    Because we were only allowed on the street from certain hours
    to certain hours.
    That hour I stopped at a girl's house,
    and I taught her the ABCs, and I taught her things so that she
    has a little bit of a start.
    And most people when the children
    got to be six or seven years old,
    somebody tried to teach them.
    And this was not legal.
    But that's what we were doing.
    And that one hour, I used to stop.
    And for this I think I got 50 groschen a week
    or something, which was every little bit
    helps since my father wasn't back.
    And if you had money in the bank, you didn't get it.
    And we didn't have nothing, no clothes or nothing.
    And I liked to do it anyway.
    So and then in the evening, we used to crochet and do things,
    because if you make things by hand you can unravel them
    and it's one piece of wool or one piece of yarn
    and you can make them over again.
    So that was what we used during the war.
    And if you had a coat, you took it apart,
    and you used it on the inside.
    It was not that worn out.
    And you made exactly what was absolutely necessary
    for survival.
    If whoever had some clothes left,
    it had to be enough for the whole family.
    We divided up everything so that everybody
    has something on them.
    And there were no clothes coming in from any place, no help
    whatsoever, or bedding or nothing.
    Nobody worried.
    I don't even remember a store that had anything.
    Now, you were saying right after the war September, October,
    you were in Wielen again.
    After the war--
    After the war started.
    In the summer, after the war, oh yeah, when the war started,
    yeah, during the war.
    How long did you stay in Wielen?
    I stayed the first winter.
    And then since my mother's family
    heard what bad shape we're in, they
    felt that they could help her better in the city
    where she was.
    And my mother was one out of six kids.
    And also my grandfather had a sister.
    And she had a family grown-up children also.
    In other words, my mother had cousins.
    My mother had cousins from two aunts actually.
    And one aunt was also bombed out.
    Because the bomb fell in her business, and her husband,
    something happened to him and he survived for a few weeks.
    But I think something happened in his brain.
    He was not all right for the first few weeks,
    and then he died.
    Because they run in the basement.
    And when the bomb fell right above them,
    something busted in him, in his head I think.
    But most of her kids were there.
    Two were not there.
    So one of her oldest sons, Baru Seligfelt or Seligman?
    Seligman.
    Seligman was their name, was the one who came.
    And I remember he got me on a train.
    It was not legal to go on a train.
    First, he took my mother and my little sister.
    And my mother didn't want to stay there
    because she kept hoping that my father will come,
    and she wanted to be in Wielen when my father came.
    In other words, she stuck with my father's family,
    with my grandfather who was my father's father, and two
    of my father's sisters.
    And we were in the same complex, in the same building,
    not in the same room, but in the same building.
    But my father never came.
    But this was not how we figured it.
    My mother was sure that my father will come back
    and will come back.
    And our place was burned down.
    And at one time, my mother and I went without any tools,
    and we tried to dig out things.
    So what we dug out was a brass--
    pharmacists use, what is it called?
    A mortar and pestle.
    A mortar and pestle.
    We dug that out.
    That was solid brass.
    And we found a salt dish which was covered.
    It was blue and the salt was still clean in it.
    And we used it even.
    This is what we found.
    And what we looked other things for, we couldn't find.
    After we dug this out, the rule came right away
    that Jewish people naturally had to hand in jewelry and brass
    too.
    So my mother wasn't very keen on handing it in.
    And we were afraid to bury it, because if somebody
    would see you dig, because there was
    a garden in the place where we lived, there was a big garden.
    But next door were already Germans and both sides.
    So we were afraid to dig.
    They would know.
    So my mother gave it to somebody.
    And I think they dug it into a place that didn't have,
    it was like before the war it was
    a place for storage, a shed.
    And I think they buried it there.
    Because they didn't want to give it to the Germans for bullets,
    and it wasn't legal to have, and it
    wasn't worth risking your life for either.
    We were so afraid that nothing was worth risking your life.
    And the jewelry, she hid.
    She made buttons out of it.
    She hid it in her clothes.
    And that's what most people did, because nothing
    was legal to have.
    You're supposed to hand everything in.
    And people handed in a certain amount
    for appeasement, because they said
    if you hand in this much jewelry,
    you'll be able to stay in the city.
    Otherwise we have to liquidate the city.
    So it was actually like a ransom you had to pay.
    But nevertheless my mother hid certain things that she had on,
    only what she had on, because she couldn't grab.
    Nothing, you run.
    You didn't stop to take things.
    So what was I trying to tell you?
    You were telling that you were going to get on the train.
    Yes.
    So first my mother went to Krzepice.
    And my mother didn't want to stay.
    But they taught her how to make something that she shouldn't
    have to work with the rubble.
    And since our cousin was president and our name was also
    Lipszyc, he said he cannot exempt all the Lipszyc from
    working on what was called rubble or cleaning work.
    But he said maybe he'll find an inside job or something.
    But he kept saying because our name is Lipszyc,
    it's hard for him to do.
    That wasn't the reason.
    But that's how he said it.
    And so they taught my mother how to make--
    it's not tea, but they bought a little rum
    and you burn sugar with water, a flavoring for tea.
    Because we didn't have tea, or coffee, or anything.
    And in Poland, it's hot.
    And if you don't have so much food, for sure
    need something to drink.
    So my mother learned how to do this.
    You burn sugar, and you make it.
    And they figured that maybe this will help her make some money,
    and maybe with the president being our cousin,
    maybe she won't have to work.
    It wasn't so much that people felt sorry for my mother.
    They felt sorry for my little sister,
    because I told you my sister had her hands frozen off.
    And it was really heartbreaking.
    So my mother didn't want to stay in Krzepice.
    She said, if you want to, take my daughter
    and they wanted to help.
    Because there were so many of them.
    And that was you?
    That was me.
    And I was older.
    I didn't have to be with my mother they felt.
    And they should teach me something.
    So a friend of hers who was a little younger
    than my mother, a few years, but they were friends as children.
    They grew up together, was a seamstress.
    And she promised that she'll take me and teach me
    how to sew.
    And she could have taken anybody.
    Because again, she didn't have a place
    where to teach the people.
    And she could only take one or two girls.
    So it was like getting into a special place.
    But everybody tried to help everybody.
    And I remember thinking, I'm going
    to support my mother I was thinking.
    I was 13 years old by then.
    And I was thinking, I'm going to learn.
    For me to sit and sew was like being in prison.
    I never liked to sit long in one place.
    And I never sat long in one place.
    But I knew how to sew on a sewing machine.
    So I felt, what's the big deal?
    I already know how to sew on a sewing machine.
    I can sew one, two, three.
    Which wasn't true.
    But at least that's how I thought.
    And a cousin of my mother took me in.
    And I stayed with them.
    And for a little while my sister was with me.
    So I took care of my sister.
    First, she didn't take me in right away.
    When was that?
    This was already 1940, in summer 1940.
    And this was in Krzepice.
    This was in Krzepice, yeah.
    And I went on the train.
    Like I said, this wasn't legal.
    But my cousin had more gumption.
    And I was a little girl and the Germans
    didn't look so much for me.
    They looked for men and they looked
    for more grown-up people.
    And I used to, like you would say, get by the cracks.
    I could do many things that grown-ups couldn't do
    and I got away with it.
    Now, how long did you stay in Krzepice?
    Till 1942, at which time, in May 1942.
    Between '40 and '42, did you get to go back to Wielen at all?
    Yes.
    I got to go back to Wielen, but not so easy.
    The first time I went, I took my sister back.
    So I couldn't walk.
    It's 36 kilometers.
    So we went on the wagon.
    And we went as Polish girls.
    And at that time, we even helped an older lady
    who came from Warsaw.
    She was the mother of a mechanic who
    used to take care of our machines
    before the war, not just ours other people's too,
    but that's how I knew him, Rabinowicz.
    Achim Rabinowicz.
    And I was the big shot.
    When they stopped on the road, I was the one
    who was doing the talking.
    Somehow we knew German always.
    I don't know why.
    But we knew German pretty well.
    Besides Polish and Yiddish, we knew quite a bit of German.
    And I got by.
    Did you wear a star at that time?
    At that time, in Wielen, we were registered and fingerprinted
    when they came in.
    And we right away, we had to wear stars.
    But in Krzepice, it wasn't that strict.
    It was considered a border between us and Krzepice
    during the war.
    We were called Warthegau, which means we were part of Germany.
    Which we were not when the war started,
    and Krzepice was called something else.
    They belonged to Sosnowiec.
    And they only wore a white band with a blue star at that time.
    And that was much easier to hide.
    In Europe, you wear I don't know what you call it,
    like stoles or something.
    They're made of wool.
    And you fold them in two they have fringes around.
    And then when you fold them in two, they have four sides.
    So if you put your star on the inside.
    If worse comes to worse, you have two stars there,
    but they don't show.
    So that's what I used to put on a lot.
    And you could carry something under those stoles.
    We called it a [NON-ENGLISH].
    And this was part of the clothing.
    Before the war, people wore it, but not too much.
    But during the war, this became the most popular item.
    It did keep you warm.
    And it was good protection.
    Because everything was under penalty of death,
    no questions asked.
    If they called somebody and the person didn't stop,
    which happened to a Gentile person who was deaf.
    They shot him.
    So it didn't have to be Jewish necessarily.
    If you didn't stop when they said halt, they shot.
    And there was never any inquiries.
    This was part of what they were allowed to do,
    and this is what they were doing.
    So I went back the first time on the wagon.
    Then to go back, then my mother decided in Wielen,
    it was getting worse and worse.
    The president's wife took over more and more of the space
    where we lived.
    And at first we had two beds.
    So I slept in one bed and my mother
    and my sister slept in the other bed.
    Then when I came back, the one bed was gone already.
    So my mother and sister had one bed,
    and with me already I didn't have a bed.
    And everybody was telling my mother,
    she has such a good chance to learn something, so
    and also to feed me.
    I mean there was no food.
    And my mother just barely made out on what she could do.
    She had no stove to cook on.
    And the president's wife didn't like
    that she should cook there.
    And I came to Wielen, and I remember
    going down in the basement someplace,
    and made soup from potatoes.
    I was 13 or maybe 13 years old, 13 and 1/2.
    So I was the one who made the soup.
    So when my mother came home, there
    was a potato soup, which was a big thing, something cooked.
    Because if you don't have a stove and you
    don't have firewood, but we picked up some pieces.
    Everybody was picking up, so it wasn't
    easy to find firewood or anything.
    And by that time, it was already a little ration.
    So we got coal.
    One time I went, and I got in a sack coal.
    I'm not a big person now, so I wasn't big then either.
    And how I dragged that coal home, I don't remember.
    But I was dragging, it and dragging it,
    and I got the coal home.
    It was very heavy and hard.
    But I got it home.
    So my mother has a little coal, and still she
    didn't have a place to cook.
    But it helped when she gave the coal to another neighbor,
    she could cook a little bit.
    Then when I went back to Krzepice,
    we weren't allowed to write either.
    So we wrote there was a Jewish family in Krzepice,
    whose name was Zawadski.
    They were a very religious family.
    But Zawadski was also a Polish name.
    So my mother would write to them,
    and I would pick up mail from them.
    And occasionally, I would write to a Polish woman
    whose name was Pavlovski.
    And my mother would pick up the mail from there.
    Because to a Lipszyc, they wouldn't
    deliver in our building.
    That's how they did it.
    So I kept in touch with my mother through other people.
    And other people were also working.
    So then when in Krzepice, when they started taking people
    to concentration camp, and so I was already 14.
    And then--
    When did that actually start in Krzepice?
    I think in '41, they took the first people.
    And the first people were men.
    They just lined up.
    They went from door to door, and they
    had everybody was registered in Krzepice, too.
    You couldn't be during the war someplace
    without having papers.
    In other words, you had to have-- we had [NON-ENGLISH],,
    it was called.
    You had to have a registration.
    You had to have something.
    And that was for everybody, not just Jewish people.
    In other words, if somebody was a soldier
    and he wanted to run away from the army, he couldn't either.
    He had to have papers.
    So they knew where everybody was.
    And they lined up the people.
    The first time, people were caught off guard
    and quite a number of young people got caught.
    And they were allowed to write home one a month.
    And they were writing to us things about what they're doing
    and they were working in a Zwangsarbeitslager.
    And they were being bombed already.
    And they couldn't-- on a postcard which was sent,
    you don't write you're being bombed.
    So they wrote the wrens are laying eggs.
    And we understood what it meant.
    Because why would they write about birds
    laying eggs, the wrens?
    So we knew that they were being bombed.
    And all this time the grown-ups, because I was young
    and I didn't join the conversation,
    but the grown-ups were always talking,
    the Germans are getting it over, and they're going to lose,
    and is going to be over, and it's going to be over.
    And everybody thought the war is going
    to be over any day, any day.
    Always we knew that the Germans are getting hit.
    Also in one summer, I don't remember.
    I think it was 1940 or '41.
    And the German army was going toward Russia.
    They were going through our city also.
    So when there were soldiers in town, we didn't go in the city
    at all.
    We didn't go in the street.
    So I remember, they helped me climb a couple fences,
    so I could go from the place where I worked to the place
    where I live.
    And I climbed three fences.
    And some were very high.
    I managed to go home, because I was afraid to go in the street.
    We were afraid.
    And also when people wanted to go in the evening,
    Krzepice was a smaller city.
    And it wasn't that much bombed, not like Wielen, just a little.
    People went over fences.
    And most places you could go, if you went a couple fences,
    then you crossed one street or something
    but you didn't walk on the street,
    just because we were afraid.
    And so then when they started taking people,
    people tried to hide.
    And my cousin, it was my mother's cousin's husband
    was also on the list for going to the camp.
    And then we all hid.
    There were places to hide.
    We made places to hide.
    See, we didn't think that they would ever come and take
    everybody.
    But everybody had a place to hide,
    which we could last a few hours, or even a day or two
    without food.
    We didn't have food or water in those places.
    But you could survive a day or two.
    And we thought that after a day or two, they would leave.
    That's what usually happened.
    They came.
    In a day or two, it was over.
    In two days, they took the transport, and went away.
    So we thought if we could hide, we had a place.
    One place was under a baking in a bakery, where you bake,
    under this was the place where we were hiding.
    So we stayed above the place first, and when the dog barked.
    We were running under and put the boards from inside
    and you couldn't tell.
    But if the Germans would bring dogs, which they usually did,
    they would find us anyway.
    But we thought we had a good place to hide.
    And there was one place in the attic where we had to hide.
    The young people would hide.
    We tried to hide.
    We always felt it's going to be over.
    And who will survive will survive.
    But eventually that's not how it was.
    Eventually, they send you notices to come.
    And then in 1942, my cousin in [NON-ENGLISH] man,
    was secretary in the Jewish Kultusgemeinde.
    The Germans didn't know who was Jewish and who was--
    This was in Krzepice?
    In Krzepice, yeah.
    He was secretary.
    So one day he told me.
    By then, I think my mother was already
    probably wasn't alive anymore.
    But we didn't know for sure.
    Now what had you-- how did you learn that?
    How I learned?
    I never learned anything for sure.
    But what happened was this.
    It was Pesach 1942, and people came running
    from Wielen, single people.
    One of the persons who came survived with me
    in concentration camp.
    Who was that?
    And she said-- Rivcia Landau.
    And she said, the reason she came
    to Krzepice also because her father was there for a while.
    Her father was one of the first to be taken in November.
    At the beginning of November or end of October,
    before November 11, the Germans rounded up
    people what they called intelligentsia.
    This is '39 now?
    '39.
    And they had a list.
    And they took Polish people who were like the druggists,
    and like I said, the person who we were buying milk from.
    He was szlachta, which is nobility.
    Burchaczynski, they took him.
    They took the principal from our school, Josef Kosnicki.
    They took him.
    They took quite a group of people and those people
    wound up in Auschwitz.
    And somehow Rivcia Landau's father got out of there yet.
    And at that time he got out.
    I don't know how.
    And he was in Krzepice.
    So she came to Krzepice.
    She came also on foot.
    And then we found out that the day
    before Passover 1942, which was Sunday, because Passover
    ended on Saturday.
    The Germans came with tanks and trucks and everything,
    and they circled around a certain section
    where the Jewish people lived.
    Because by then, we lived only in certain sections.
    Not that it was not legal, but there was no place to live.
    And this was called [NON-ENGLISH],,
    part of it where my mother lived by then.
    Because eventually she had to move out from the place
    where she originally was.
    Mrs. Lipszyc wanted her to live.
    Her daughter-in-law didn't want her to be there.
    She wanted to have two rooms for herself.
    After all, they were presidents.
    So why did she have to put up with my mother?
    She didn't want my mother to be there.
    And my mother lived what was called [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which was a block of homes with one courtyard.
    The whole street was one yard.
    And I don't know why they called it [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And by Tuesday, they took the people from there.
    And these were the trucks that later we found out
    that these were the trucks that they probably
    gassed on the road.
    And this happened, started on Sunday.
    And they did it the whole week.
    And some Gentile boys, one Gentile boy on a motorcycle
    tried to follow, because there was one girl
    for whom he cared very much.
    She was on one of the transports.
    But they didn't let him follow.
    And we don't know if they took them to Chelm,
    or they took them--
    or they killed them in the trucks.
    Till today, we don't know.
    But I know that where my mother lived on Tuesday,
    she was taken.
    And I didn't have mail anymore.
    And this was either March or April.
    And I couldn't get in touch with her.
    And my cousins couldn't get in touch.
    I never had any mail from my mother anymore.
    And then in May--
    And your sister as well?
    My sister was with my mother.
    Yes.
    So this was the last that I can figure out
    that my mother and my sister were taken the third day
    after Pesach, because from where they lived,
    because some people were taken the first day.
    And if some people were out, like we have friends.
    Moshe Jakubowicz, the father and three sons survived.
    And the mother and her son and a sister
    didn't survive because the others were out of their house
    at that time.
    And they only took.
    They didn't come with a list at that time.
    They came to take whoever they could.
    They took young and old, and the people were very upset
    because they were mistreating the people, throwing them
    on the truck.
    And if somebody had a cane, they didn't
    let them take it or anything.
    So some of them would say, where you're
    going you don't need anything.
    And some of the soldiers were saying [GERMAN]..
    They were given the word of honor, you'll be all right.
    And it was, we didn't know what was going.
    On but this was really close to the end.
    Because in '42, they really were making judenrein.
    But we didn't believe and we didn't understand.
    And they had made so many borders
    that they were doing section at a time.
    And Warthegau was one of their main sections.
    Because we were like Germany, we were supposed to be Germany.
    You were then in Krzepice?
    I was in Krzepice, And from then, I
    didn't hear about my mother anymore.
    And in Krzepice, I used to help my cousins.
    I used to help everybody.
    Because like I said, nobody was looking for me so much.
    And for a long time I wasn't registered in Krzepice.
    I still had my [NON-ENGLISH] from the Wielen,
    so I wasn't on the list.
    So when they were catching people,
    at one time I went to the person we were buying milk from.
    Because everything was illegal.
    To have milk was illegal.
    And I was the one who was running the errands.
    I would take the shawl.
    I would take a bottle.
    It was a quart bottle.
    But it was like you have a beer bottle with a cap.
    In Europe, you had lots of those bottles
    that you could even lie down and the milk wouldn't spill.
    And this was the bottle I was buying milk in.
    And we were getting milk three times a week.
    And I was the one who was shopping there for the milk.
    One time I was coming home.
    It was winter.
    And the snow from the street was cleared.
    And it was taller than I was, a very big pile of snow.
    And the house we lived in at that time
    was already in a corner house.
    And when I saw the commandant of the city
    almost a few yards away from me facing, walking toward me,
    I was very scared.
    He could have shot me on the spot
    because that's what they were doing.
    And having milk was just like you will kill somebody.
    So I went and I had the milk drop into the snow.
    I just didn't know what to do.
    I had to think quickly.
    And the milk got into the snow you didn't see it anymore.
    It fell in and I don't even know if it broke
    or not because the snow was more than a yard high.
    It was a couple of yards high.
    And then I opened my scarf to show
    that I don't have anything.
    Because they suspected that we carry things under those
    shawls.
    But I opened it and I walked into the front.
    And when I came home, my cousin said what happened?
    She knew right away something happened.
    Because I guess I was green.
    And when I explained to her, we were
    scared that he would come in.
    But he had already taken from my cousin so much,
    they all took on their own and they
    took legally and illegally, so that my cousin
    felt if he come in, he already knows him.
    Because my cousin was also a [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And the commandant and another one who was in charge came in,
    I think in summer '41.
    And they confiscated everything, all the letters.
    And what was the confiscating?
    Sooner or later, they got to talk.
    They gave measurements for their wives and for themselves.
    And he had to make boots for everybody.
    Naturally, for boots they had to leave him leather,
    so they left him more leather than he needed for boots.
    But it was his leather in the first place.
    But if they would come in and say, I needed boots,
    my cousin would say I have no leather.
    But when they confiscated in every corner
    they looked for, whatever you did you had to hide.
    You couldn't have food lying around.
    Everything was illegal it was illegal for us to have wheat.
    It was illegal for us to buy poultry or meat or anything.
    Everything it was illegal to kill poultry.
    So when they wanted to scare the people,
    in every city in Wielen, they hung 10 Jewish people.
    They did it in more cities.
    But in Wielen, they rounded up 20 people.
    10 they were holding was called [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which means like a hostage.
    And 10 were for killing.
    And then the 10 people who were the second 10
    had to hang the other people.
    And they wanted everybody should watch.
    But I wasn't in the city then.
    And I was glad.
    But when I went to the city, I walked.
    And that wasn't legal either.
    And also, the Germans had taken their people who
    wanted to be German, who weren't German
    but they said their grandfather or somebody was German,
    they were called Volksdeutsche.
    And they called them [NON-ENGLISH]..
    They were from Ukraine, from Romania,
    from I don't know, from all over.
    Some of them didn't know how to read or write.
    They were just unbelievable.
    I don't know what to say.
    But they came in to a few Jewish people
    and they took away everything from the Jewish people.
    And naturally the property they took away.
    And they made them, so they were living
    on farms and on the road.
    So when you went, and if you had to stop in
    for two minutes someplace, you didn't to whom you go in.
    Because if you went into [NON-ENGLISH],,
    he would have the gendarmes in a minute.
    And they would kill you.
    And when you walked, I didn't carry anything.
    I looked like a village girl if I had to go to the village.
    And then I learned one time, because after they caught me
    I was already afraid to go again,
    and I wanted to go back already to my cousins on the way back.
    So a woman, an older woman, showed me
    how to go a little bit through the side.
    There was a stream and there was a board.
    So I could stand, and then I found my way on the road again.
    But we were afraid to go.
    One time after I left with my girlfriend's sister, an older
    sister, we went back to Wielen.
    And this was in 1941, in summer.
    That was the last time I saw my mother.
    We left in the morning and it started raining
    and it rained all day long.
    And we had a bread sandwich with us.
    And we knew in the one little city [NON-ENGLISH],,
    was a village like Jewish people lived there.
    We were so soaked wet, we wanted to get in
    for a few minutes at least.
    We were afraid to go into a Gentile person or to a German.
    We didn't know.
    And we were so desperate to go into a house
    that I said to her, Frania Pilcer was her name.
    My girlfriend's name was Hania Pilcer,
    and this was Frania Pilcer.
    And I said, I think this have to be Jewish people.
    The reason I said so, they had awnings from wood
    that you could close, and that was like a storefront.
    But it was just a private place.
    And everything had foreclosing.
    So that's why I figured they're Jewish people.
    And it was.
    So she had an oven going.
    She let us dry up a little bit.
    And we ate our bread up.
    And we left.
    When I came home, I was so soaked,
    and my mother was still living with the presidents
    in the same place, that the wife who was not a nice person,
    she wasn't nice to my mother.
    She even let me wash up and dry up.
    And so that I get into dry clothes.
    When did you finally leave Krzepice for the--
    For concentration camp?
    In I think it was the end of May.
    Of '42?
    Of '42.
    And at that time my cousin came and we
    had like a family meeting.
    And he told us already I had my mother's one
    cousin was in camp.
    And he told us it was like almost
    like he didn't want to tell us, but he
    had to tell us that this is the beginning of the end.
    That they're making judenrein.
    It was either we could go through the border
    to Czestochowa, which was another 35 kilometer,
    but it was considered government they called it.
    There was another-- somebody else was in charge there.
    It wasn't considered like Wielen.
    It wasn't considered like Krzepice.
    It was considered government.
    Krzepice belonged to the Sosnowiec.
    And I forgot what they called it.
    But they called it something else.
    And that he suggests that the young people like
    me shouldn't hide anymore, and shouldn't run anymore.
    That we should just let ourselves
    be caught and sent to an arbeitslager.
    Because one of his brothers, the youngest brother,
    Harsha Wiselikman was in the camp at that time.
    And he felt already then, there must have been rumors
    that things are not going to be to good end,
    and we won't be able to hide anymore.
    Because it's not going to be for a day or two
    or for a week, and that they're going to liquidate.
    He told us a little bit.
    But he didn't tell us everything.
    And he must have known a lot more.
    Because he and his wife and their two children,
    one boy who was a couple of years younger and the girl
    was probably 12 by the time in '42.
    She was maybe 12, and the boy was
    maybe 14, Matusz, and Hanna.
    And they were in Sosnowiec.
    Later, I heard from people who came to camp that they saw them
    in Sosnowiec.
    But they did not survive.
    I am the only one who survived.
    From my father's side I don't have any body at all.
    And from my mother's side I have one cousin
    who landed in Israel in September 1, 1939.
    He was already a teenager.
    He was older.
    He was already with an organization.
    And he wanted to go to Israel.
    So he landed in Israel.
    But otherwise, of all the people who were running and hiding,
    and all the things we did, was all for nothing.
    In the end, everybody perished.
    Everybody perished.
    Where were you taken in '42?
    It was just a plain building.
    It was called dulag.
    And I even have at that time, I have a picture,
    a girl who was with me.
    And I understand that she's alive in Israel now.
    Her name is Helem.
    Not anymore, but her name used to be Helem Monat.
    And she gave me that picture.
    And this was one of the things that I managed to have.
    This is a picture of her from the dulag?
    In the dulag.
    Yes.
    She's got the Jewish star.
    I see it--
    Yeah, we had to have the star not just on the outer cloth,
    we had to have a star on everything.
    And this was inside.
    But she had the star.
    And she gave me this.
    And we thought we'll be in the same camp, coming from dulag.
    But from--
    What was dulag?
    Was that a place?
    Durchgangslager, this was not an official even durchgangslager.
    This was just for Krzepice, because they only
    needed a temporary.
    Was it a city?
    No.
    This was in Krzepice.
    It was just a building in a place where guards were there.
    The German police and the Jewish police was there.
    It was called dulag.
    Then from there we went to Sosnowiec,
    and there it was called durchgangslager, which
    dulag is really for short.
    Over there, it was already a big thing.
    And from there, they were sending us to camps,
    to different camps.
    And we didn't know exactly what they were doing.
    How long were you in Sosnowiec?
    I don't remember.
    If it was a week or something like this, a short while,
    not very long.
    Because they send me.
    They were lining up people.
    I guess they had the order like you have
    an order for a dozen donuts.
    That's how they had the order for 50 people,
    or for 100, or for 300.
    And they kept lining us up every day.
    And then when my turn came, I was the only one
    even from Krzepice.
    I didn't have anybody from Wielen.
    I didn't have anybody from Krzepice.
    I wound up completely alone with girls
    from all different cities.
    And I made friends with two sisters from a city, and then
    one taller girl from Sosnowiec.
    The two sisters, I don't remember their names.
    But they did not survive.
    And where were you sent from Sosnowiec?
    From Sosnowiec, I was sent to Parschnitz.
    Which was where?
    And that's in Czechoslovakia.
    And it's near Trautenau.
    It was called Parschnitz.
    And it was called Porici in Czech.
    We didn't know where we were going.
    But that's where we were sent.
    And we came to a camp.
    And there were lots of girls looking at us.
    And some of the girls recognized me.
    And they were from Krzepice.
    And they were girls who were sent
    to the camp a few weeks before.
    And this was a transport.
    See, they tried to do so many things.
    Every time they tried to tell us something
    we probably didn't have any choice, but we believed.
    They said that if a person from a household
    will go to camp voluntarily, will sign up for arbeitslager,
    then the family will not be touched.
    And the family will stay, be allowed to stay in Krzepice.
    So parents send two girls, they didn't
    want to send one girl alone.
    So whoever had a large family, two and three sisters
    would go together.
    And these were the girls who were in that transport, two
    and three sisters, everybody had somebody.
    And when they recognize me I was so happy
    because I didn't know anybody.
    It made me feel already like a kinship with them even,
    I didn't know them Krzepice.
    I knew their faces.
    And it made me feel already a little bit at ease.
    They told me right away, what to hide, where to hide,
    and they took stuff from me.
    Because when I was in dulag, in Krzepice,
    my family brought bread for me.
    In Europe, you had the big loaves of bread.
    And the first thing you always wanted was bread.
    And somehow, I managed to bring a bread.
    So I gave it to them.
    And it was safe.
    And we were checked for everything.
    And they took our clothes.
    And they left us a little bit clothes.
    And they said that the other clothes are for safekeeping.
    But we didn't get back those other clothes,
    just what we had on.
    And I had given some stuff to the other girls.
    So I had a good pair of shoes, which was lucky because we
    didn't get shoes in camp.
    They didn't last through the war,
    but they lasted a long time.
    And in camp, place we lived in a place that used
    to be in the First World War--
    OK, we're going to take just a short break here.
    And then we'll come right back.
    OK.
    Our interview with Sara Kay, a Holocaust survivor.
    And this project is sponsored by the National Council
    of Jewish Women, Cleveland section.
    You were describing how you had arrived at the labor
    camp in Parschnitz.
    - Parschnitz, and this was 1942, June 1942.
    And by the time we got off, there were 300 girls.
    And we were housed in a factory, an old factory,
    which supposedly there were prisoners of war from France
    during the First World War.
    And we had beds, four together, and for on top, bunk beds.
    And in the middle we have tables.
    And on the other side, there were beds again.
    And the windows were factory windows.
    And at that time a woman was in charge of us,
    her name was I think Elsa Havlicik.
    Havlicik, I remember for sure.
    Or Ilsa-- Havlicik was her name.
    She was called the lagerführer.
    Now, was she Jewish or Czech?
    Oh, no no.
    She was German.
    She was German.
    And maybe her husband was Czech.
    But she was German.
    And she was really in charge of us, not her husband.
    But we were working in a Spinnerei factory,
    which is where you make thread.
    And the firm we were working, actually all of us I think were
    at that time were working in that factory, [NON-ENGLISH]..
    Because we were only 300.
    And this was like supposedly the last transport from Sosnowiec.
    And when we got there, the people
    were complaining mostly about hunger.
    Other conditions weren't so bad.
    So you had to work six days a week.
    And you didn't have enough food.
    But people seemed to be all right otherwise.
    And they had a nice Judenalteste,
    [PERSONAL NAME] Schneider was her name.
    But on our transport arrived a woman
    whose name was Sala Neustatter.
    And she should have been German instead of Jewish,
    because she was not good at all.
    As a matter of fact, she was as bad as the Germans.
    Then things started turning around from bad to worse.
    At first, we were called arbeitslager.
    Then I don't know exactly how these things were going on.
    We were called Zwangsarbeitslager,
    which means forced labor.
    Then we were called Konzentrationslager
    And in the meantime, we were getting