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Oral history interview with Michael Kishel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1992.A.0125.61 | RG Number: RG-50.233.0061

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    Oral history interview with Michael Kishel
    Transcript
    I'm interviewing Majlech Kisielnicki--
    Majleck Kisielnicki.
    --on July--
    Kisielnicki, Michael--
    --or Michael Kishel--
    --Kishel.
    --on July 1, 1990.
    My name is Michael Kishel.
    I was born Kisielnicki.
    At my bris, I was giving the name of Majleck.
    I lived in Kaluszyn, Poland, which
    is 56 kilometers east of Warsaw on the way to Brest-Litovsk
    and beyond.
    The first years of--
    when I was a young boy, I was attending cheder.
    And later, I was attending Betasefer,
    which was a Hebrew school only, to learn Hebrew,
    and the public school till the seventh grade.
    My family consisted of parents, my father Moishe, my mother
    Reizel, my brother Abram, and my sister Heisura.
    We had lived very well.
    And we had-- in the late 1920s, early '30s,
    my father had a business of retail and wholesale groceries.
    In the early '30s, my father got to make a gasoline station,
    as the road--
    as this town that we lived in was
    a main road from Warsaw to the east,
    which was very heavy in traffic.
    And [INAUDIBLE] very good things.
    He also made a restaurant that was open 24 hours a day,
    and practically 365 days a year.
    Of course, we only had closed on major holidays.
    Saturdays, we closed the front, but business
    was done in the back.
    We also had a business in wholesale kosher products
    such as petroleum, nafta, coal, rice, sugar,
    salt, and many products that had to be brought in from Warsaw
    to sell to the local grocery stores.
    We were very well-off in many ways.
    What was [INAUDIBLE] your father's [INAUDIBLE]??
    My father was born also in Kaluszyn.
    I believe he was in 1895.
    And my mother was born in 1900, also in Kaluszyn.
    They were young people when they got married.
    Thinking-- my mother would have been 17 or 18 years old,
    as you can see on the picture.
    Could you tell me a little bit about your--
    both of your parents' family?
    Your father had a lot of siblings?
    My father had-- my father's family consisted of--
    there were two brothers and two sisters.
    And where was he?
    One sister emigrated to Argentina in the '20s.
    And another sister emigrated to France, also in the '20s.
    And he also had a brother, who also lived in Poland.
    And my father's brother had--
    the family consisted of him and his wife.
    And they had nine children.
    And they all perished.
    My mother had-- there were four sisters and two brothers.
    One sister lives now in Israel.
    She's the only one that remained.
    One sister died in Russia after she ran away from the Germans
    in 1939.
    And one sister and my mother died in the Holocaust
    in September 1939 when--
    September 1942 when they were taken to Treblinka.
    What did your father's father do?
    Was he also a businessman, a grocer, or--
    I don't remember what my father's father did,
    because he died in the '20s.
    And I don't recall exactly what he was doing.
    I believe he was dealing in produce
    they brought in from Kaluszyn to Warsaw during market days.
    And from there, he brought back merchandise for stores that
    ordered certain merchandise.
    I see.
    So he was wholesaler.
    Some kind.
    He would be called a supplier of things,
    whatever, that someone needed.
    My mother's father, I was told, they
    used to work for someone that lived in the forest,
    like the princess or very rich gentiles.
    And they used to sell their woods.
    And he used to be, I suppose, their accountant,
    or something like that in that respect.
    My grandfather died in the early '30s.
    Did your-- what kind of education
    did your parents have?
    My mother had an education.
    She was attending, during the First World
    War, the Russian schools-- and, of course, Jewish education.
    My father only had a Jewish education.
    Do you know what age he was when he left school?
    No.
    This, I don't know.
    I do not know when my father left school, or my mother.
    But I do know that they could go along
    with knowledge and on many, many different things.
    What languages did you speak in your household?
    In the household, we spoke mainly Yiddish.
    Occasionally, when there are people that came from--
    gentiles that came to visit us, we spoke Polish.
    Did your parents ever discuss the circumstances
    of their meeting?
    I believe my parents did not discuss
    with us the circumstances of their meeting.
    But we know that my mother wanted to marry my father
    because he was very industrious, although the family
    of my mother's was more prominent than my father's.
    But you think they just met through friends?
    Oh, no.
    No, they did not meet through friends.
    But they were about the same age, although it
    was different about five years.
    But when it comes to marry, this is the ages
    that you marry, between four to six, seven years apart.
    OK.
    And did you always live in the same house as a child?
    As a child, I remember, until the 1929 or '30,
    we lived in an apartment, which was a one-bedroom apartment.
    And we were three children, which
    was a little too high, too tight in today's standards.
    But in those years, the more the merrier.
    There was no such thing as there is no space, you cannot sleep,
    or sleep there.
    Right.
    There's no such thing.
    And if somebody came to visit, there
    was always a place to find for them.
    And later on, when we had the business in the late '20s,
    we had rented-- it was a house that my father rented
    at the beginning, which later on we bought.
    It was on a lot that we consider here
    75 feet by 200 feet in the length--
    or not to say 75, maybe 60 feet wide, and about 200 feet long.
    And there was that house that we lived in.
    And the house had a store.
    In the back of the store, we had the living quarters.
    We also had an attic, which a tenant lived there before.
    And then, because we needed the apartment,
    we paid him to move out.
    And we occupied that apartment also.
    Because of the space that we needed more,
    my family rented an apartment that we used only
    for a bedroom about two houses away, which
    was only about 10 steps away.
    The back of the lot or warehouse--
    of course, all the things that was necessary for the business.
    And sometimes, there was a lot of space
    that we used to plant fruits, or onions, or potatoes,
    or strawberries, or whatever my mother or the people that
    worked for us liked to do, because we always
    had people helping us out in many, many ways.
    Non-Jewish people?
    That's right.
    I don't want to mention it over there.
    Yeah.
    That sounds nice.
    So you remember growing up in this environment?
    Yes.
    What kind of a street and neighborhood was it?
    Well, the neighborhood-- our town
    was a town of a population of about 10,000.
    And we had about 75%, 80% Jewish.
    Maybe not exactly 75%, but it was about a 65% Jewish.
    And that, I remember from many, many years.
    The town lived mainly from different trades.
    There were a lot of people that had a trade making
    prayer shawls, tallisem.
    There were also a lot of people that made sheepskin coats.
    There were a few people that dealt in skin, making leather,
    tannery.
    And of course, shoemakers and tailors were abundant.
    And the majority of it, the rest were mostly, I would say,
    about 30% of the people that did have
    businesses, businesses of textile,
    like selling materials for suits.
    There was no such thing as ready-made suits here.
    There were tailors that made ready-made suits.
    But they were making them for out-of-town, maybe
    for business people in Warsaw or other ones.
    But if you wanted to have a suit, you went to the store
    to buy 3 yards or 3 meters of material,
    and give it to a tailor, who made it for you.
    I remember that we always had two suits a year,
    for Passover and for high holidays.
    After that year, the following year,
    my mother gave the suits away to relatives
    who were less fortunate.
    And if they were still good in the same condition,
    they wore it that way.
    If not, they turned it over on the other side, the material,
    and remade it.
    It would look like new.
    The same thing was with shoes and other things.
    How would you describe the relations
    between the Jewish families and the non-Jewish?
    Were they Catholics?
    The gentles in our town were 99% Catholics.
    The relations between the gentiles and the Jews
    officially were supposedly good.
    We, in particular, had no problem,
    because all the gentiles that used to come around
    had respect for my father.
    And especially the precinct, the police,
    were practically stationed in our house,
    because it was a station that the trucks and buses that
    used to pass by our town made a stopover.
    They can gas, fill in with gas.
    And all the passengers came into our restaurants to eat.
    And for this, it was very lively in our area.
    And the town was-- every evening,
    young people used to stroll along the streets,
    especially the main street, which it was called
    Warsaw Street, or Warszawska.
    And especially when it came Friday night
    and Saturday night, you could not pass the certain area
    without bumping into one another,
    because they were walking four or five in a width,
    and all friends and young people.
    And everybody was very happy.
    Of course, there occasionally were anti-Semitic slogans not
    to buy from Jews, because--
    this came from other places that instigated against Jews.
    And of course, it dropped off among other populations,
    other areas.
    And the same thing rubbed off on Jews in our area.
    So there were local fascists, youths?
    Yes.
    There were fascists.
    But officially, they did not come up
    to say exactly what they are.
    But in a group, they were barking.
    But many times, the gentiles had very much respect
    for my family, for my father.
    And there was no hesitation that if someone came into our house
    and said something against the Jews,
    that my father could take his neck
    and throw him out with a kick in the back, in the rear end.
    And it was OK.
    And as the decade, the '30s progressed, did things
    get tougher?
    Well, it start to get a little tougher
    after Hitler came to power.
    And there was a lot of writings about how
    he's treating the Jews.
    And of course, there was a Polish anti-Semitic party.
    It's called Endek, the National Polish Party.
    I don't remember exactly what they called it.
    But there were a few of them.
    And they had their newspapers.
    And they used to write many articles about the Jews,
    how bad the Jews are, and what the Jews did bad to Poland,
    and what they do with this, and what they do that.
    And of course, many Poles that did not have anything,
    or did not have any incentives to go out and work and better
    themselves, only saw that the Jews take everything away,
    that the Jews have everything.
    And this made anti-Semitism a little more.
    So there were more incidents?
    Well, actually, no incidents.
    The only incident that was once was in the county.
    Someone had killed--
    I don't remember exactly.
    But this was that someone had killed someone in the county.
    Or it was at a time when a German ambassador,
    or councilor, was killed in Paris.
    And that person that killed him was from Minsk Mazowiecki.
    I don't remember exactly whether this was the case.
    But there was some incident in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    And of course, it did not do much good.
    But people still lived.
    And there was no other choice to do.
    But you had to live with them, to make the best you can.
    But your freedom of movement or opportunity wasn't restricted?
    No, freedom movement was not restricted.
    And of course, there were restrictions
    on higher education in schools.
    But there was no higher education in our town.
    Our town was only public school up to the seventh grade.
    OK.
    And tell me again what your schooling was.
    Yeah.
    My schooling was that, when I was a boy-- let's say,
    four or five years old-- the first thing you attend
    is a cheder.
    I remember that, till my time of the Jewish education,
    I went to four different rabbis, from the one that
    starts with small children, and bigger children,
    and so on, and so forth.
    And then, when I was about 11, 12 years old,
    I was attending a school which taught only Hebrew,
    because my father was a Zionist.
    And he wanted us to know Hebrew.
    So we went.
    In that day, 11, 12, and 13, I was going to Hebrew school
    in the morning, let's say from 9:00 to 12:00.
    From 1:00 to 6:00, I went to public school.
    And from 7:00 to 8:00 or 7:00 to 9:99,
    the rabbi came to the house to finish my religious education.
    So for a time, we were busy educating ourselves.
    And you were bar mitzvahed when you were 13.
    Yeah.
    Bar mitzvah, I got when I was 13.
    What was the ceremony like then?
    Well, the bar mitzvah ceremony was new to me
    when I came to United States.
    There was no such thing as elaborate bar mitzvahs
    that they have here that was there.
    There was only, at a time when I was bar mitzvah,
    it came on a Saturday.
    I was given an Aliyah.
    And I was reading from the Torah.
    Or I don't remember exactly what I read,
    the part that I supposed to.
    I don't-- but after that, there was a big Kiddush
    in the synagogue.
    And a lot of friends came to the house.
    And we had a separate party in the house.
    But were you--
    I just went to a bar mitzvah on Saturday.
    It was very elaborate.
    And the little kid was just put out on a pedestal.
    You just want to a bar mitzvah.
    Do you want to say it?
    Yes.
    We'll get back to the bar mitzvah.
    But you were going to talk about your great grandmother, Mariam
    Gelbard.
    The picture you see here is my great grandmother.
    Her name was Mariam Gelbard.
    She was a baker woman.
    And the whole town knew her.
    She also made boxes for tefillin.
    She died in 1934 at the age of 100.
    A story comes--
    I was told a story here in the States when
    I came in 1947 through her son, that her son ran away
    from Kaluszyn.
    And he came as a young boy, maybe 16 or 17 years old.
    He came to America.
    His name was Wallace Gilbert.
    And he told the--
    And when he contacted after the war to some Kaluszyn landsmans,
    I was told by some landsmans that went away
    before First World War or right after the First World War
    that, when her son ran away to the United States,
    ran away from home, she did not know where she is.
    And she almost forgot him.
    When one time came a picture from him and without a hat
    on his head, while sitting in front
    of the oven in the bakery, she saw the picture
    and threw it into the oven.
    And you remember her?
    I remember her being sick, laying in bed,
    in the early '30s.
    I see.
    So she was a character.
    Very religious--
    Yeah.
    --obviously.
    These two pictures are of my grandmother,
    who is the daughter of my great grandmother,
    and my grandfather.
    This picture was taken, I believe, in the 1930s.
    Her name was Rivka Rzondzinski.
    She perished during the Holocaust in 1942.
    My grandfather's name was Fischl Rzondzinski.
    And he died before World War II, sometime around '32 or '33.
    And your grandmother Rivka Rzondzinski,
    R-Z-O-N-D-Z-I-N-S-K-I, lived in Kaluszyn?
    Lived in Kaluszyn until the--
    This is-- we went--
    No, because I am not--
    I don't want to come out on the tape that that's why I'm--
    OK, so--
    My grandmother originally lived with my aunt
    in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    Since 1939, after the Kaluszyn was burned out,
    lived with her daughter and her son-in-law in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    In 1942, after they start to liquidate the town of Minsk
    Mazowiecki, my aunt and my grandmother
    came to live with us in Kaluszyn.
    And my grandmother perished in the Holocaust in 1942
    on the way to Treblinka or in Treblinka.
    OK.
    And so--
    My--
    --she was living-- were living with you for a while.
    Yeah.
    Was she born in Minsk?
    No.
    She was born in Kaluszyn, as far as I know.
    Yeah, they were born in Kaluszyn.
    Oh.
    Oh, OK.
    And do you know anything about her background, how many
    brothers and sisters she had?
    Yes.
    My grandmother had-- on my grandmother's side,
    there were three sisters.
    One sister died a long time ago that I did not know,
    that lived in Kaluszyn, who had together the bakery, who
    attended the bakery together with my great-grandmother.
    Her husband, Moishe Aaron Siroka, lived until 1939--
    I'm sorry, until 1939 when the city was
    destroyed, with his wife, and also had a bakery.
    After the city was destroyed, he went away and went out of town.
    But I do not know what happened to him.
    All right.
    He was born in Kaluszyn also?
    You don't know.
    Do you have any idea how old he was in 1939?
    This great-uncle of mine, Moishe Aaron Siroka,
    must have been, in 1939, maybe 65, 70 years old.
    All right.
    And he and his wife, they ran a bakery.
    So your great-uncle Moishe Aaron Siranka--
    Siroka owned a bakery, or he ran a bakery?
    He ran a bakery when my great-grandmother was still
    alive.
    But later on, he ran the bakery also.
    But his wife died early.
    But I don't remember her.
    But he remarried.
    And he ran the bakery.
    Oh.
    How many children did they have?
    They had four children, three sons and one daughter.
    One son died during the Holocaust in 1942.
    One son went to Israel in the 1930s.
    One son went to Russia in 1939, as you
    will see with a family picture, as well as the daughter.
    So those would be your second cousins?
    My second cousins.
    They would be my second cousins.
    So your Uncle Moishe Aaron, did you
    know him when you were a kid?
    Yes.
    I know him very well, because we had a restaurant,
    and we needed cakes.
    And he was the baker that made cakes.
    Oh, OK.
    That's great.
    And did he have people employed in his shop?
    They employ in his shop, but only
    he, his wife, and his daughter, and a son,
    because the other son went away to Israel.
    And one son had a shop in Warsaw with my aunt in partnership.
    They were making knitted goods.
    I mean they were knitting and making garments for--
    they were contractors.
    So your Great-Uncle Moishe Aaron,
    do you remember, what was he like?
    He was a man like you see today.
    I could see it today.
    You go in, in an area where a lot of Jews live.
    You can see the same type of man that he was then.
    You can see today also.
    He was very pious.
    If you look at a picture, you can visualize and go in,
    let's say, if you know New York, Borough Park, or Williamsburg,
    or the east side, you can see Jews like this just like him.
    Do you remember him as being nice to you?
    Well, he had no reason not to be nice to me.
    We were not the type of young boys that went out
    and making mischief to all the people.
    We had, as you call in Yiddish, [YIDDISH]..
    We honored the older people.
    We had respect for them.
    And so do you know--
    he probably had Yiddish schooling, and then--
    Oh, yes.
    He was very well versed in--
    He's not Hasidim, though is he?
    Or was he?
    Yes, he was a Hasid.
    He was?
    Yeah.
    Oh.
    Whether he was a Hasid with his brother-in-law, my grandfather,
    I don't know.
    But my grandfather was a Hasid.
    We used to call this [? Kernowitz ?] Hasidim.
    Used to be, say, they have a Ger Hasid,
    or you have different, from different towns, rabbis.
    People go to him for holidays.
    They go to him for benedictions.
    They go to him for very important questions.
    My grandfather was a Hasid of a rabbi called [NON-ENGLISH]..
    You need the spellings.
    I'll--
    OK.
    So it was a very religious family--
    Yes.
    --the whole, extended family.
    But you--
    My mother's side was very religious.
    But my mother herself not that way,
    because she was already another generation and more modern,
    although she knew all the rights and wrongs of religion.
    And in the house, we practiced religion.
    It was kosher?
    There was no such thing as a non-kosher home.
    In Europe, there was no such thing.
    You could not visualize, even the people
    that did not have much, to go out
    and buy for the house non-kosher meat.
    Younger people of my age at that time--
    13, 14, 16-- to be considered to be a wise guy
    went into a Polish delicatessen and bought
    himself a piece of kielbasa, and said
    he had it, like he conquered who knows what.
    Did you ever do that?
    I did that, too.
    But I didn't eat it.
    But I just had to.
    You had rebel.
    I had to be someone with a group, although my group,
    we did not go there, because it is required to--
    maybe it was cheaper than Jewish salami then.
    Although I had it in our house, this salami,
    which was better quality.
    Of course, it was more expensive.
    But to me, it would cost me nothing.
    But it was a big thing to go in with a group
    and to participate.
    So in your household, you celebrated all the holidays?
    All the-- in our house, everything was 100% kosher.
    We celebrate all the holidays, although as I mentioned before,
    we did conduct business.
    The main thing, the restaurant was not open on a Friday night
    or till Saturday.
    But we did sell gasoline, because we had employees
    that was a whole night.
    And they were gentiles.
    And they were selling the gas and brought the money in.
    So there were a lot of vehicles at this time running on gas?
    I always get the picture of these--
    Pardon me?
    | were a lot of vehicles running on gas?
    Oh, yes.
    If you ask about the vehicles, this
    was a main road, same thing like you have New York to Boston,
    or New York to Washington.
    It was a main road, traffic of trucks and buses,
    that were going with passengers to Warsaw.
    OK.
    But there would be a lot of horse and wagons in town.
    Oh, yes, there were horse and wagons, too.
    But we had nothing to do with the horses,
    since we had the gasoline station.
    Did your family have a car or truck?
    We had a truck for business.
    You ask me if my family had a car.
    I remember, in 1937 or '36, there was an old,
    beaten up Ford.
    And it was called a Model T Ford.
    And because we had two trucks, and we had chauffeurs,
    we were depending upon them to fix it, to run it.
    And my brother bought the Model T Ford and was fixing it.
    It did run, but it looks like--
    I don't remember what happened to it, because my father did
    not allow, because it was too taking away from things that he
    is supposed to do otherwise.
    Maybe it wasn't good enough or something.
    But we had two trucks that were--
    I don't remember exactly.
    But there was two.
    Or maybe, because two, there was different models
    at a later time.
    I remember the first truck we had was a 1926.
    Then it was a 1933 or 1936, Chevrolet trucks.
    So if we can just finish the story of your--
    I know we're skipping around-- of your--
    great-uncle.
    --great-uncle.
    So did he live also with your great-grandmother?
    No.
    My great-grandmother lived with her daughter, Mariam.
    Right.
    But was she--
    --at the time when I knew her.
    Before, maybe she lived with her daughter, with his--
    Where did your great-uncle live, what kind of--
    In his house, in his place.
    Oh, what was his house like?
    He had the bakery.
    The bakery was downstairs.
    And upstairs, they lived.
    OK.
    With four children.
    With four children.
    OK.
    And his wife-- what was his wife's name?
    I don't remember his wife or his wife's name,
    because she died before I even knew her.
    But then he remarried.
    And he remarried.
    Oh.
    Who did he remarry?
    He remarried a very nice lady who worked
    with him continuously till--
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And were the four children all by the first wife?
    The four children were all from the first wife.
    OK.
    And he didn't have any children--
    No.
    --by the second?
    OK.
    So did you ever get together with this great-uncle
    for family occasions?
    The family occasions, we were together.
    This is not with the uncle.
    This was already the younger children, because the uncle
    was the age of my grandmother.
    And the age of the get together was my mother
    with her sisters and brothers and their children.
    So the older generation was not included
    in the gathering, unless the grandmother came, or the--
    But the same thing like you have here.
    You invite the parents.
    Or you invite the children of the parents.
    Or you invite the cousins.
    Or the cousins are excluded.
    It was something like that, but not to that extent
    as it's here.
    So you started to talk about your bar mitzvah and family
    party.
    How many members of the family--
    There was no family party.
    The only bar mitzvah that I had was a Kiddush in shul.
    And there were a lot of people that
    were more friendly with-- more friends of my father.
    I invited them to our house to have
    another drink, and another fish, or another because usually,
    in the shul, you give parties.
    You give whiskey, cake, like sponge cake, and herring.
    And you're inviting them into the house.
    You give them fish.
    Or you give them challah.
    You give them some other things.
    You give them beer.
    This was the party in the house, but no family things.
    There was no such thing as gifts here--
    There wasn't?
    --as a check.
    I don't remember that I got it, but I probably did.
    Maybe I got another talis kuten, a small towel.
    You know what a talis kuten is?
    It's a small towel that you wear on--
    maybe I got it.
    But I stopped wearing it when I was maybe 10, 11 years old.
    Oh.
    But you were 13 when you were bar mitzvahed.
    Yes.
    But you see, that talis kuten you wear when you're a child.
    Oh, OK.
    Many times, you see the young kids.
    They run around.
    The fringe is still outside, and they're running.
    And so just about the same time, you left school?
    The school-- when I left school, I was about 14.
    And that was the end of elementary school.
    That was the end of the elementary.
    And then you--
    I went--
    --to [INAUDIBLE]?
    Yes.
    After I finished the elementary school,
    I went to Warsaw to attend a trade school, which
    was run by the Jewish community, by the Jewish community
    on the Grzybowska.
    It was a street where the Jewish--
    how do you call it?
    I attended that school for about six months.
    And I lived with a family that were very religious.
    It was not too much to my liking.
    And I was a little bit of homesick.
    That was 1934?
    That was 1934.
    What do you mean by they were too religious?
    What were they expecting from you?
    What do I mean by too religious?
    That I had to sleep with a yarmulke on my head.
    I had to pray every morning.
    And the people that I lived with were distant relatives
    of my mother.
    He was a barber that worked in the house only for those people
    that cannot go take shaves.
    Only very religious people came to take haircuts,
    and special haircuts that you cannot use a razor.
    Or just that was such a thing that was very--
    Special.
    --very special.
    I was too restricted.
    And this gave me a little bit--
    made me a little bit lonely.
    And I came back to Kaluszyn, to the house.
    And from there, I worked in our business, because we needed me.
    And my main work was-- we had the shifts, daytime
    and nighttime.
    And most of the time, I worked my nighttime,
    because in the evenings, we used to go out with friends,
    I'd say till about 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock.
    And after that, I came home.
    And I attended the business at night till about 5:00,
    6 o'clock in the morning.
    Wow.
    You mean you worked at the restaurant and the gas station?
    And the gas-- the gas, pumping gas, at the restaurant.
    Oh, wow.
    What sort of things would you do with your friends
    in the early evenings?
    We used to go--
    Go to the movies?
    The movies, we only went Friday night, Saturday night,
    or Sunday.
    Or we used to go out and--
    let's see.
    Summertime, during the daytime, we used to go on bike ridings.
    In the evenings, we used to go out just walk on the street--
    what do you call it-- strolling and telling story,
    just like you have fun here, but not such a degree that
    many time you see here.
    The public school also supplied--
    one school was open evenings so that children,
    that the students could come in and congregate there.
    And we used to play various games, domino or checkers.
    And we used to develop--
    I don't know if you ever heard of literary cards.
    You take-- you have in a deck four cards of each,
    four kings, four queens, four jacks, four aces, and so on.
    We used to make those cards--
    by literary cards, we mean known literary people, like poets,
    or musicians.
    Or matter of fact, I wrote down here--
    writers.
    Composers?
    Composers, musicians, writers.
    They were different type of well-known people--
    politicians.
    And we used to play cards, just like you
    pull a card from someone.
    If you have four kings or you have four composers,
    you go out.
    First you go out with the cards.
    Then you win.
    Oh.
    Oh, that's good.
    We also played the blackjack and other types of games
    with cards.
    And this was our times we--
    Did you start dating in your teens?
    We had a group of friends, dating.
    But we did not go directly with each other.
    We were always going in a group, two friends, two boys and two
    girls, or three boys and three girls.
    I have some pictures of those friends.
    These are my first two girlfriends.
    This is my first one.
    This is my second one.
    I did not bring my third one.
    I forgot to take the picture, which
    the third one was during the war from 1940 till 1942.
    But my fourth and last one--
    This looks like a very modern girl wearing pants.
    And that's my-- ultimate and last one
    is this one with my two daughters.
    Wait a minute.
    This, your wife?
    This is my wife.
    She's not in this picture.
    No.
    But you met your wife in--
    I met my wife in New York.
    Oh, OK.
    She is not-- my wife is not a Holocaust survivor.
    Oh, I see what you're saying, your last girlfriend.
    This picture was taken in 1936, '37 on vacation in Mrozy.
    Mrozy was a railroad station.
    We used to go out there for vacations.
    It's 5 kilometers from Kaluszyn-- with friends.
    It's M-R-O-Z-Y.
    That's right.
    On my right, [? Iża ?] Pięknawieś, that's her--
    to my left, Masha Tennenbaum.
    All died in Treblinka from Kaluszyn December 9.
    [? Iża ?] Pięknawieś had a sister whose name was Lali.
    Lala, we used to call her.
    We called her Lala.
    This is what we called her, because she was a doll
    and looked like a doll.
    Mm, cute girl.
    The family had a store of liquor, a liquor store.
    She was my friend for many, many years.
    And--
    Did she go to the same school as you?
    We went to the same school, the same public schools.
    Oh.
    And she left when she was 14 also?
    Yes.
    And she--
    What did the girls do when they left school?
    Girls didn't do much.
    Some girls, that their family were not well-off,
    while needed, some girls went to work as a seamstress,
    to learn a trade.
    But these girls were well-off.
    The people were well-off.
    So they did not send them to [INAUDIBLE]..
    As I can remember, maybe--
    because I did visit her when she was in Warsaw.
    Maybe she attended a school in Warsaw.
    I don't remember exactly.
    I don't remember exactly.
    Because I did see her in Warsaw a few times where she was.
    But maybe you could talk about this being together in 1936
    or '37 in Mrozy--
    Mrozy, yeah.
    --because I could write about that--
    Yeah.
    --episode.
    what
    Were you doing there?
    During summertime, we used to go--
    Yeah, it's on.
    --for vacation to a town called Mrozy,
    which is a railroad station 5 kilometers from our town.
    Our parents sent us there, because they
    had a friend that was running a vacation house for children
    of our groups.
    And we were there for about six weeks, four to six weeks.
    Was it on water, or--
    No.
    Water was about a mile away.
    And it was mainly in the woods, the house.
    And we used to get up in the morning.
    We used to play ball and go on hikes.
    And although there wasn't much to do,
    but we enjoyed it, because it was in the air.
    We had fresh air.
    We had no one to tell us what we can do and not do,
    because the people that wanted us to be there treated us
    very well.
    How many years did you go there?
    I believe I went there two years, two consecutive years.
    I went there.
    And my sister went also there.
    There was no need for me to go home during this time,
    as the parents wanted to see us.
    So they used to come to see us, how
    we're progressing, because to send children on vacation
    was mainly that they should eat more.
    And because we had everything in the house,
    we had to get paid to eat.
    So they sent us away to a place where we can stay with friends,
    and eat together, and be there.
    And of course, we--
    I don't understand that.
    What do you mean, eat more?
    So you ate very good food at this?
    So you are on fresh air.
    You get more appetite to eat.
    I see.
    OK.
    Well, that's good.
    And you remember the food was good?
    The food was-- they was catering us good food, mostly butter,
    and cream cheese, and the sweet cream,
    and fishes, and herrings, and all kinds
    of things, what we like, because nobody
    knew about cholesterol then.
    We had eggs practically every day.
    So how many of you teenagers would be together here?
    We were there about 18 to 20 teenagers.
    Oh, it must have been fun.
    That's good.
    Did you sing songs together at night or--
    Yes, we sang songs.
    Yes.
    I want to put on another picture.
    Here, I'll show you two pictures again.
    One picture is also myself with friends.
    We also attended the same school.
    The one that stays with me, her name is Sarah Aaronsohn.
    She was married.
    She married after the war with a man by the name of Cooper.
    He died in France.
    She lives now in Nancy, France.
    Do you still stay in touch with her?
    Yes.
    I'm staying in touch with her by telephone.
    And she visit us a few times.
    I saw her a few times in her house.
    And--
    So where were you rowing here?
    That was also in Mrozy.
    That was also on vacation time.
    There was a pond there?
    Yes.
    The person that sits at the end of the boat,
    he is the son of the woman that was running
    the house, the vacation house.
    And this is [? Iża ?] Pięknawieś.
    The person in the middle, the two in the middle, one's name
    is Adam [? Kamieni. ?] He now lives in Israel.
    And his name now is [? Sela. ?] And the girl next to him
    is a girl that came to visit my sister.
    She's from Warsaw.
    She died.
    I don't know where she is now.
    So she came to stay with us one summer.
    And she went for a vacation.
    You look quite old here, all of you,
    to be doing this camp thing.
    You like you're in your--
    well, you were.
    You were 17 or 18 years old.
    So that was really a luxury--
    That's right.
    --for kids that age not to be working.
    This is a picture of the--
    this is the mother of my friend that you
    see in the picture with the two girls, and the other one here.
    The one below her is her daughter, her younger daughter.
    The one next to her is the daughter
    of the woman that runs the summer house, which
    is a sister of hers.
    Next to her is my sister.
    And the couple above are parents of the boy on the left,
    of this boy.
    This picture was also taken in that summer camp.
    See there?
    Around there.
    So--
    It's getting complicated.
    Yeah.
    So you had a very--
    it was a nice break from your regular routine. there.
    But you don't remember what these two
    girls did when they went back to town after that summer camp?
    How young-- neither of them married before the war?
    No.
    No.
    Masza Tennenbaum had relatives.
    They originally came from a town called Kobryn.
    That's about 50 kilometers east or northeast of Brest-Litovsk.
    That would be about 200 kilometers from our town.
    She had relatives there.
    And her parents were not druggists.
    In New York or in Kaluszyn, there were not such a--
    there were a drugstore.
    But there was also a store that used to sell
    ready-made prescriptions.
    You could get pills against a headache, like aspirins,
    or special soaps, like you have a drugstore today,
    but without the drugs.
    But her father could have made drugs.
    But he was not allowed to, maybe because he was Jewish,
    or because maybe he didn't have the license to be a druggist.
    But he was there.
    So--
    Did he own the store?
    He owned that store.
    And they lived in the store?
    They lived there.
    They lived there in Kaluszyn for a time, all that.
    You don't know if she was born in Kaluszyn?
    She was born in Kaluszyn.
    OK.
    Yes.
    But she had an older sister and a brother.
    I don't know whether they were born in Kaluszyn
    or they were born in another town.
    And she had an older sister and an older brother.
    An older brother.
    And she was the youngest.
    Yeah, she was the youngest.
    OK.
    And she had the same schooling as you.
    That's right.
    The school you went to was mixed.
    In school, we went all together.
    Boys and girls.
    Boys and girls.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    So it wasn't-- the Hasidic schools were segregated,
    weren't they?
    No, this was a public school.
    Oh, OK.
    But there were a lot of Jewish--
    Yes.
    --students.
    As a matter of fact, the public school--
    we had two public schools, one public school
    that only Jewish students attended,
    only Jews, although it was a public school.
    The only school that non-Jews attended with the gentiles
    were those that had very heavy accents.
    And to straighten out the accent,
    or teaching them better the Polish language,
    those had to go to a Polish public school.
    But we went-- everything was conducted in Polish only.
    Oh.
    Oh, I see.
    The public school-- although the attendance was all Jewish.
    But the schooling was only in Polish.
    And teachers were--
    Teachers were Jewish and Polish teachers.
    Oh.
    Was Maja a good student?
    Masza.
    Masza a good student?
    Yes.
    Were you a good student?
    We were all good students.
    Oh.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    OK.
    But there was never any idea that any of you
    would go on to some secondary school in another city.
    She went back to a school from where her parents came.
    How many years she went there, I don't remember.
    The name of the town again is?
    Kobryn, K-O-B-R-I-N.
    OK.
    And her parents were from that town?
    Her parents were from that town.
    And they settled in Kaluszyn.
    Since I knew them, they were living in Kaluszyn.
    Before she was born.
    I don't know.
    I only know her because we went to school together.
    Oh, OK.
    All right.
    And you've told me a little bit about--
    Idza.
    --Idza.
    Her father was the one who owned the liquor store.
    Liquor store.
    And she had sisters and brothers?
    She had one sister.
    Right.
    She just had one younger sister.
    She only had one younger sister.
    She's adorable.
    Lala.
    Now, the word [YIDDISH] is a doll.
    The word [YIDDISH] in Yiddish is a doll.
    Her name was different, but we didn't call
    her anything else but Lala.
    Oh, she was beautiful.
    And Id-- Idzia--
    Idza.
    Idza?
    Idza, is there anything special about here that you remember?
    We we're very good friends, all of us,
    with Masza and with Idza.
    As I said, she was my first girlfriend.
    How did she became my first girlfriend
    is a whole different story.
    And the story goes back as follows.
    After each school year, the school
    made trips to towns in Poland, historic towns like Warsaw,
    Krakow, Kazimierz-- which was a king, Kazimierz,
    which was very good to Jews-- and to Gdynia, which
    is on the north on a port.
    And supposedly, on the way back-- we had gone by train.
    On the way back, we were sitting at the benches.
    I was sitting supposedly next to her.
    And was was next to me.
    And we were sleeping, or having our heads this way, that way.
    And supposedly, my head touched hers.
    And her head touched mine.
    And it came to know that a maid that
    used to work for us a certain time
    worked later on for her parents.
    And she used to come to us and go there,
    and used to tell stories, whether the stories were true,
    that she likes me.
    And she came to tell me.
    And I said, I like here, too.
    And this was the story.
    But besides her, she was a very nice girl.
    And there was no reason not to like her.
    At the time, we did not think--
    we were 13, 14-year-old children.
    We would not think to go out tomorrow and get married.
    But we were very good friends.
    But then you said that this was also a girlfriend?
    Yes.
    But just a girlfriend, meaning--
    That was a girlfriend.
    --a friend who was a girl.
    We can say more than a girlfriend.
    Oh.
    You were very close.
    Thank you.
    Maybe she-- she looks nice.
    Well, tell me something a little bit more about here.
    She went to the same school as you also?
    Yes.
    We all went.
    There was only one public school.
    One public school was one large building that had--
    in that school we had from the fourth, fifth, sixth,
    and seventh grade.
    All other grades were located in different parts of the town.
    There were a building that had the first and second grade,
    and second and third grade, different grades.
    But that school was a large school with a large yard.
    We used to come there.
    And that was the main school.
    And what did she do?
    Do you know what she did after she left school?
    Did she help in the liquor store?
    No, she wouldn't help in the liquor store.
    Most of the girls didn't do much.
    What did they do?
    I mean, I'm really--
    There was not much to do.
    They used to--
    Did they babysit littler kids, little sisters?
    There was no-- no.
    Maybe she used to babysit for her sister.
    But--
    Did she weave, sew--
    Oh, yes.
    We were--
    --embroider?
    Maybe.
    But as I mentioned before, I believe
    that she went to Warsaw to a school,
    because I met her a few times in Warsaw,
    because I used to travel to Warsaw occasionally,
    because I had nothing to do also.
    I wanted to take a trip to Warsaw.
    So '18, '19, '20, she didn't have any specific work
    that she did?
    Then?
    No.
    She wasn't--
    '20s was already the war--
    Yeah, that was 19--
    --during the wartime, in 1939.
    Oh, OK.
    So that changed.
    That changed.
    And there was not much--
    in a small town, there was not much to do.
    OK.
    So between the ages of--
    but most of these girls would generally married pretty young,
    eventually.
    No.
    I would say there was no such thing as marrying young.
    They married in their 20s.
    Oh, early 20s.
    There was no--
    20, 21.
    There was very few that would marry younger, very few.
    And there was no accidents, I had to marry.
    There weren't?
    No.
    I wouldn't say to.
    No.
    There were more respect for girls than it's--
    Even in the 1930s?
    We never thought-- all right, say
    we used to be in love with the girls-- kiss, and hug,
    and touch.
    But to go to extremes, the risk--
    No one did that.
    I say it for myself that I wouldn't
    take a chance, because you never know what can happen.
    So nobody wanted to.
    OK.
    So a nice Jewish boy wouldn't--
    Do that.
    That's right.
    All right.
    Even though you were very good looking.
    Thank you.
    Wait till you see another picture.
    All right, so to return to your grandmother--
    I remember that, after my grandfather died--
    Rifka.
    Rifka Rzondzinski.
    R-Z-O-N-D-Z-I-N-S-K-I--
    Yeah.
    -- was your--
    Grandmother.
    Mother's?
    My mother's mother, my maternal grandmother.
    All right.
    After my grandfather died--
    In the early '30s.
    --in the early '30s, my grandmother
    got herself a kiosk to sell newspapers.
    And I remember there was a time they came--
    an area that they made a train to go
    to the train, a small train, a feeder,
    because before, and even during that time and later on,
    there used to be special porters, special guys.
    They used to have a horse and buggy, horse and special--
    what do you call it?
    Not a van.
    It's a-- there used to be a horse and carriage.
    It used to take passengers from our town
    to Mrozy to go to Warsaw, which is west,
    or to go to Siedlec, which is east, to other places, wherever
    they need to go.
    Then it became-- the city made a train, a small train,
    with a huff-and-puff locomotive with one caboose,
    with one to carry passengers to the train.
    And my grandmother had there a kiosk
    to sell candy, and newspapers, and the sodas,
    and whatever there was.
    And when the newspaper used to come in from Warsaw,
    it came by train to Mrozy.
    And from Mrozy, they used to bring
    in with that train to Kaluszyn.
    And she used to sell it.
    Later on, the train stopped going,
    because the city was losing.
    The owner of it was losing money.
    And a man that used to be the conductor of the train
    bought himself a horse.
    And he was riding with a horse on the rails
    with a train to Mrozy.
    But it did not do good enough, because he didn't have
    enough money to feed the horse.
    So it's tough going.
    So that kiosk was transferred to another part of town.
    And she had that kiosk in the town.
    Then we had to bring in the newspapers
    from Mrozy to Kaluszyn with the regular drivers,
    with the regular horse and carriage that was running.
    But because there was competition--
    there was another man that had a kiosk--
    we as grandchildren, my brother or I, or my grandmother's son,
    used to go with a bicycle to Mrozy
    and get the pack of newspaper, Jewish newspapers
    and Polish newspapers, on the back,
    load it up on the back of the bicycle, and bring it faster.
    Who brings her faster the newspapers
    is able to sell it to those who were interested to read,
    because not everybody wants to buy a paper.
    There was one that-- if one bought a paper,
    he used to give it to all his neighbors to read it.
    Or two of them bought a paper.
    You buy it today, I'll buy it tomorrow,
    because a paper used to cost 15 or 20 groschen, or maybe more.
    I don't remember exactly.
    But it was a matter of money that no one
    wanted to spend day, after day, after day.
    So from this, she was making a living.
    Later on--
    How old was she then?
    I don't think you told me her approximate birthday.
    I would say that, when she died, she must have been in her 70s.
    OK.
    OK.
    Your grandmother was born about--
    Around 1875.
    In Kaluszyn?
    Yeah, I would say in Kaluszyn.
    Yeah, I believe, because they all came from Kaluszyn.
    All right.
    They went back for generations.
    Yes.
    OK.
    So she had the kiosk.
    And after your grandfather died around--
    did you say 1933?
    Yes, in the early 30s.
    And her husband was a Hasid?
    Was a Hasid.
    Yeah.
    But he did not live from the Hasidic.
    He lived-- he had a job going to the places of woods.
    How do yo call it?
    The--
    You said he was in the--
    Forest-- the forest.
    And he used to--
    when they used to sell the trees to make the wood,
    he used to give a assessment.
    I really don't know what he was doing.
    But I do know that he was connected
    with a forest kind of business.
    All right.
    And your grandmother was just at home then with the children?
    Yeah.
    OK.
    And she only started working outside the home
    after her husband died?
    This is what I know.
    OK.
    Well, that's very difficult, a woman
    her age to start working outside.
    Well, to start.
    Yeah.
    But there was not much-- to run a kiosk is just
    to stay there and take her part.
    But because her daughter helped out--
    because her daughter remained with the kiosk later on.
    Her daughter--
    The daughter, the oldest daughter.
    What was the oldest daughter's name again?
    Hanne.
    I did not put a name on.
    Hanne.
    Yeah.
    H-A-N-N-E?
    Yes.
    She helped her mother with the kiosk.
    Yes.
    So her mother wouldn't have to stand up outside.
    That's right.
    She helped in her family--
    That's when it was cold and stuff.
    Yeah.
    It was colder than that.
    She helped out.
    And her family helped out.
    And they remained with the newspaper business,
    with the kiosk.
    So she did that after 1933.
    And then that kept going until--
    That kept going till 1939.
    Oh, OK.
    She was still doing that.
    Did she only speak--
    she spoke Yiddish in Poland?
    Yiddish, yeah.
    My grandmother, she understood.
    I believe she spoke Russian, too.
    But not to me, because I did not understand Russian.
    And Polish, we did not talk to our parents in--
    to our great grandparents in Polish.
    We talked to our grandparents only in Yiddish.
    OK.
    Do you know what your--
    it would be your great-great-grandfather.
    Did you tell me anything about him?
    No.
    About my great-grandfather, I know nothing about--
    OK.
    --nothing of.
    All right.
    Well, do you know how your grandparents met,
    by any chance?
    No, I do not.
    In those days, there were no such thing as meet.
    My grandparents was only a made-up marriage,
    because you did not go--
    they were more religious in that they would not be--
    not to say they wouldn't be interested.
    But their parents would not allow
    for them to go out to see each other,
    and then say, we want to get married.
    Right.
    So it was an arranged--
    It was arranged marriages
    Were they happy?
    Evidently, if you've see Fiddler on the Roof.
    His dream, he said it-- do you love me?
    What's today's love?
    His parents told him.
    They'll get to like each other.
    Do you remember anything about her house, where she lived?
    I remember only that they lived in a house
    where my great-grandmother was with her, in a house.
    And my great-- she was in a bed there.
    I always remember my great-grandmother
    laying in a bed.
    She was sick.
    Occasionally, she was out.
    But the few times that I went in to see my grandmother,
    she was there.
    I saw her there.
    But there was not--
    what can I tell you?
    Did she live near you?
    No, that was not far away, maybe 100 yards.
    Oh.
    Oh, she was very near you.
    Yeah, near.
    OK.
    Did a lot of the family members live in the same neighborhood?
    Yes.
    You did?
    Yes.
    Most of the family lived in the same, unless they moved out.
    Which family members are you talking about?
    It's only my grandparents and my aunt, this aunt,
    that she lived in Kaluszyn.
    The other ones did not live there.
    For instance--
    Well, you talked about your great-grandmother
    and your great-uncle.
    They didn't?
    Yeah, all right, they lived 100 yards further.
    But this is already considered their second generation,
    the third generation of me.
    Right.
    OK.
    Just trying to get the picture.
    Yes.
    All right.
    Before 1939, some of your family members emigrated to Israel?
    Yes.
    Before 1939, my mother's sister--
    Whose name was?
    --whose name is Nechama Hausmann.
    Left for Israel with her husband, Meyer Hausmann.
    They were Zionists?
    Before I do that, I'll say it differently.
    Before the war-- let's say, about in the '30s, maybe
    '34 or '35--
    my mother's sister, Nechama had a partnership
    with a cousin whose name was Fischl Siroka in Warsaw where
    they made the knit goods.
    They knitted goods and cut into articles,
    like sweaters and jumpsuits, for children.
    Later on, my mother's sister married and went to Israel.
    Another sister--
    But were they Zionists?
    Yes.
    They were.
    So a lot of your family--
    Practically all the family was Zionists, Zionist oriented.
    How was the decision made?
    How did certain people decide to leave then for Israel?
    Was it a matter of-- because I understand
    there were only few places.
    Or--
    They decided because-- first of all,
    they decided to leave because they were idealists.
    And they wanted to go to Israel.
    And of course, they also had to have a certificate, which
    the certificate is a permit from the British government
    that they can get into the country.
    So that's what they did.
    When they got the permit, there was-- just like today,
    somebody gets a visa from a country
    that it's out of someplace, and tries
    to get here, which is the most important thing.
    But was there any idea of escaping
    something that might happen?
    At that time, there was no thought about escaping.
    The only reason people went to Israel--
    because they were Zionists.
    They wanted to help build a country.
    About what year did she leave?
    That was in the early '30s.
    OK.
    And you mentioned some other family members
    who emigrated to South America?
    The other families that emigrated to South America
    was my father's sister, to Argentina.
    That was much earlier?
    That was in the late '20s.
    That was-- maybe not late '20s, maybe in the middle '20s.
    And another sister went to France, also
    about the same time.
    Just to make better lives for themselves?
    Or because--
    That's right.
    --they married people who--
    They married people.
    And they were making for themself a better life,
    for their husbands to make a better life in those countries.
    One was making wooden articles for toys and for furniture.
    And that was for Argentina.
    And the one that emigrated to France was a tailor.
    He had a very important tailor shop in Paris.
    And you kept in contact with the cousins?
    Yeah, we kept--
    I remember the addresses from the cousins,
    from the relatives in Argentina and in France,
    because when they were writing letters in there,
    I used to read the addresses or address the letters,
    the envelopes to them.
    So when I came back after the war,
    I remembered the address in France of my uncle
    to see whether they are alive.
    And after the war, somebody was traveling there.
    And I gave him the address, they should
    look up and see whether that address exists,
    and if they are there.
    And they did bring me a notice that a son was
    alive of that uncle of mine, which is my cousin.
    And we were in touch with them since.
    Were his parents killed?
    Parents were killed.
    They were deported?
    They were deported in 1939, in 1941 or '42,
    when the Germans started sending all
    the people to the concentration camps and to gas chambers.
    They were deported from Paris?
    From Paris.
    But they are not in this picture.
    This, I'm talking about my father's family,
    from my father's side.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And--
    So those were the family members that were.
    Otherwise--
    Those family members in this picture
    are all family members, from my mother's side.
    Right.
    From my father's side, I only have one picture,
    which is my father's cousins.
    And this picture was taken sometime,
    I would say, in the '30s or '20s.
    And did all these cousins live in Kaluszyn?
    They all lived in Kaluszyn.
    They all perished in the Holocaust.
    So please talk about what happened
    after Germany invaded Poland.
    After Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939,
    we were on the belief, as we were
    told by the Polish government, that the war will not
    take long, that the German armaments are made out
    of wood and cardboard things, and things will fall apart,
    and they will not last long.
    But soon afterwards, maybe two or three days
    in the war, a plane passed by.
    And we thought that these is a friendly plane,
    because it came in so low.
    And what it did, it just threw down a little bomb in our town,
    as there was a line in front of a bakery to buy bread.
    And a lot of people got killed.
    After this had happened, we realized
    that all the propaganda that we were told about before
    is not as true as it seems to be.
    And being that we had trucks and some other people and friends
    of our family had trucks, we decided
    that we'll take two trucks and go away
    to the east towards Russia.
    In the meantime, things will slow down and stabilize itself.
    The reason why we went away is because the older people
    knew from the First World War that when the Germans come in,
    the first thing they do is they take
    the young men and the older men to work.
    And they tell them to work on the roads, forced labor,
    to work for them.
    And being that Hitler came to power,
    the fright was a little bit more than before.
    So everyone said for the young people to move away.
    But in 1938, after Kristallnacht in Germany,
    nothing happened in your town?
    After 1938, we were only frightened.
    But we did not think that this thing will come up,
    because when Hitler went to war with Poland,
    it was only that he wanted to have the corridor
    to go through to Danzig, to take away that right, and so on.
    But nobody knew that this is going to come so far.
    And later on, everything-- his propaganda
    was that the Poles want to attack him, and so on.
    But when the war came, all our thoughts
    were how to escape from Hitler, that they're coming in,
    because the radio and the news came in the Germans have
    entered Poland, and they are pushing certain areas
    into the country more and more.
    So my father and his friends took two trucks,
    and went away, about 20 people.
    And we took some food with us towards the Russian border.
    Your whole family, your whole immediate family?
    No.
    Only my father, my brother and I, and friends of ours,
    and friends of other people, and their families.
    Your mother and sister stayed there?
    My mother and sister--
    at that time, my mother and sister and my grandmother,
    my father's mother, was living with us,
    as her husband passed away some 8, 10 years before.
    And they remained, because there were no--
    nothing was taught that they will do anything to the women.
    So they remained.
    After we went back about 200 kilometers from our town,
    we heard that the town has already been taken.
    But we did not realize at what cost.
    And we waited later on to go further and further away.
    We were up to the Russian border, about 3 kilometers
    from the Russian border.
    The name of the town was Mezhyrich.
    It's a town past Ratno, Kowel, Lutsk, Rowno, and so on.
    Then, on September 17, the Russians came in.
    And the Russians came in from the other side, started
    to occupy the Russian area.
    At the same time also came news that the pact
    that the Russians made with the Germans
    was that the Russians will go up to the Vistula.
    And the Germans will go up to the Vistula.
    And that will be the dividing line.
    Being that we were on the east side of the Vistula,
    we presumed, which is logically, that we
    will belong to the Russians.
    So while the Russians were pushing forwards,
    we were behind the Russians going with our trucks,
    going home to see our parents, to see our mother and sister
    and the family.
    When we came to a town 33 kilometers from Kaluszyn--
    which the town's name is Siedlce--
    we were told that the Russians are not going
    to occupy until the Vistula.
    They're going back to the Bug, which
    is another demarcation line.
    And at that time, we heard the news that the town of Kaluszyn
    was bombed out, all, everything.
    There was a big fight there, because there were many--
    many groups of soldiers were there congregating.
    And they had to put up a big fight against the Germans.
    So the only thing the Germans could take revenge
    is they burned down the whole town.
    Our house was on the outskirts of the city.
    Well, actually, we were coming from Warsaw to our town.
    We were the first or the second house entering the city.
    So the outskirts of the town remained.
    So our house remained standing.
    So being that we were in Siedlce,
    we heard the bad news about it.
    We decided that, no matter what, we will go back
    to see our mother and sister and the other relatives
    and see what happened.
    When we came, we saw the very bad situation
    with the town burned out, and we were
    told how the fight had happened, that they
    took all the Jews and other people into the church
    and were closing the doors.
    They supposedly wanted to kill all the people.
    But anyhow, when we came in, we started
    to realize that many people were living in our house,
    because they did not have anyplace else to live.
    So we see more strangers than our own.
    And so we start to negotiate with the people that were there
    either to go to their relatives to live there,
    as we had our relatives to take into our house,
    or to some people to give money to go to other towns,
    because they did not have anything.
    And slowly-- it took about maybe a week, maybe 10 days,
    I don't remember exactly--
    the people vacated our house.
    And we took in our relatives to stay with us at the time.
    Then the town was without any government.
    The Germans weren't in.
    The Russians did not come in.
    And the Poles did not know what to do.
    But there were the militia, the civil--
    Wait.
    The Germans did not occupy the town?
    The Germans-- being that the Russians
    were supposed to go up to the Vistula, the Germans moved out.
    And the Russians did not go in.
    It was very close--
    did not go in.
    So the Russians didn't come in there.
    So the town was by itself.
    But there were civilian employees of the town hall,
    of the town government.
    They patrolled.
    The city should remain and see what happened.
    A few days after we returned, the Germans started to come in.
    And they started to come in.
    And they told the mayor of the city, which
    was a neighbor of us, to order the Jews to make a Judenrat,
    to make a Jewish government to attend to the Jewish things.
    But what they had in mind was not
    so much as to attend to the Jewish problems
    as to supply them with whatever they want.
    And their appetite became bigger and bigger.
    They wanted for the Jews to supply them
    with furnitures for their occupation
    that they're going make to be there.
    And being that they did not have a place in the town,
    because the town was burned out, they moved into a town
    5 kilometers from our town, which is Mrozy.
    And they settled there.
    And the Jewish Judenrat, the Jewish community,
    had to supply all the tables, and chairs, and beds,
    and everything there.
    They also ordered the mayor of the town, which his name was
    Plywaczewski, to nominate 10 rich Jews that they
    should be responsible for anything they will want to.
    Among the 10 Jews was my father also.
    I wrote a separate article in Yiddish
    about the functioning of the Judenrat.
    This article I wrote in request of some Jews
    that came back from Russia and settled in Israel.
    Being that we were very few from our town that remained alive,
    he wrote to me.
    And I responded to him.
    And I wrote a letter, an article in Yiddish,
    sent to them to Israel to publish it.
    They took out a lot of items that needed, and put it
    in the book, of a yizkor book, of a commemoration book
    for our town.
    Maybe they have it.
    YIVO has it.
    It's in Yiddish.
    It's in Yiddish.
    I brought it with me here.
    All right.
    Well, we'll deposit that in the archives.
    That will be useful.
    So--
    To be exactly-- what happened, how it went through,
    through the time the Jews lived under the German occupation
    until 1942, is mostly described in this article.
    Being that my father was in Judenrat
    and doing all the things what the Germans wanted--
    What specifically did he do?
    Specifically, his main object was
    to make the laws, or their requests, or their orders
    smaller, which he many times succeeded, most of the time
    succeeded.
    For instance, although the town was living mainly
    in the center of the town before the war,
    when the town was burned, all the Jews--
    there were also people that lived
    in the outskirts of the town.
    When the ghetto was made, the Germans
    ordered that all the Jews should go into the center,
    they should have more of them.
    What my father did is to make the Jews live the way they are
    in the outskirts of the town-- wherever they were before,
    make it like that.
    When they closed the ghetto, because the ghetto was
    an open ghetto-- that means you could go in, you could go out.
    When they closed the ghetto, it also remained the way it was.
    Jews had no right to go out of town.
    And most of the Jews that lived there, that remained there,
    made their livelihood from the villages,
    from the farmers that lived in the outskirt.
    They used to go out and sell them a shirt, buy from them
    the cheese, or the eggs, or anything.
    And this was their business.
    This is how they--
    their livelihood.
    The orders were not to go, because they will be shot.
    Of course, there were many instances
    that some were shot going to the railroad.
    My father succeeded in getting many permits for those people
    to go out during daytime.
    And there were many things, for instance,
    for the community itself.
    There were--
    There are many orders that the Germans
    came in requesting that they want
    to have for their families--
    rings, and earrings, and dresses, and things like that.
    The first thing they did is they came in to us
    because we were the first house almost in town.
    And my father was the person that used to deal with them.
    They came in, they gave all of us orders.
    They need this and they need that, if not, they will do this
    and they will that as punishment.
    And most of the time he succeeded to annul this
    or to come down with the orders that they wanted.
    And sometimes happened that they couldn't do it either.
    They killed a family of two children and a friend of one
    of them was a very bad situation.
    But most of the time, although it was very painful, but it did
    succeed a lot of them.
    Now there was no wired ghetto though?
    No.
    It was just a designated area?
    There was a designated, the ghetto
    was whatever the Jew lived, in Kaluszyn it was the ghetto.
    That means--
    But it was not closed in?
    There was no closed in like you had
    in Warsaw ghetto with a gate or with a closed around.
    There was no closed in.
    But the closing in the ghetto, but meant that they cannot go
    beyond the area where they live.
    They can only go in the town.
    They're not allowed to go to the village.
    They're not allowed to go out of the city without a permit.
    There was also was succeeded, my father succeeded
    is to bring back food from the County, because the gendarmes,
    the police, the German police used
    to confiscate from the farmers.
    They used to bring to take food to sell
    in Warsaw and other places.
    When they passed by, they did not allow to do it.
    They used to confiscate it.
    So they used to give out to the churches
    and to different areas.
    So my father used to go there and ask
    him to give some of them to the town where they made a kitchen
    to feed the poor people and children.
    My mother was attending this kitchen for a long time
    to see that they would supplies are enough.
    But your father's business was totally disrupted?
    Or did he continue to [INAUDIBLE]??
    There were no, the business was disrupted in 1939
    because there was no guests.
    Jews could have no guest business and the trucks,
    they were not available and we did not have any supplies.
    The only thing is what he had was
    the store that we could still have,
    the restaurant going for a part time,
    and some groceries to sell.
    But most of time my father was busy
    because they made my father busy with Judenrat business.
    What did you do?
    I was also getting there.
    They also requested that the Judenrat get
    the Jewish police and Jewish sanitation people,
    people that help out to keep the clean,
    to keep clean the houses because on top of that,
    our town was destroyed in 1939.
    They send in a transport of Jews from two other towns
    that the Germans annexed to Germany.
    There was a town called Pabianice and Kalisz.
    A few hundred people from each of those towns
    were brought into Kalisz.
    And they were settled there.
    Said this is where they have to live.
    They had to be given a place to live and to other families
    and some to live to repair in the buildings that
    were destroyed.
    And many of them couldn't do it.
    And they felt that to go away someplace else where
    all of their relatives lived.
    And that remained.
    Then to be able to keep the apartments, or their houses,
    or their houses clean, there was no facilities to bathe.
    There was only one mikveh.
    And to have these people, they did not have much.
    And to have these people to have clean to where
    to take them properly by inducing them with bread
    or with other things.
    They should go and take it because they were afraid
    that going to the mikveh or something
    being that is an order from the Germans
    will be something wrong.
    And being that everything was closed,
    the city had became infected with typhus.
    I was one of the men going to the sanitary committee, about
    a dozen friends.
    Not friends, a dozen friends and non-friends,
    other people that were designated
    to go out to those houses to see that the people keep clean.
    There were times that we used to take a brush
    and clean up so many, you could see on the floor
    so many lice walking like bugs, was terrible.
    And slowly we had to induce the people to come to get clean.
    So every day, every day of the week,
    we had other groups of people to take in to the mikveh
    so they can go in there and take baths and get clean.
    And the meantime some people leftover,
    while they were in the bath to clean out the house that they
    can go back and clean.
    What would the non-Jewish have?
    The non-Jewish population, they had not do anything.
    They were staying--
    Lived there?
    --They still lived there because many of them,
    they all got burned out.
    But they had the right to go anywhere they wanted.
    They were not restricted.
    It's only the Jews that were restricted.
    And that went on and on.
    And then came the German companies.
    Wait, what was your sister?
    My sister wasn't do anything.
    They occasionally they used to-- yes, occasionally
    my sister also helped out to induce
    people to go because they needed to have people direct them
    where to go.
    Because some of them were children without families.
    Some of them were older people and they needed help.
    And so all of you were involved in some way in the effort?
    Yes.
    In the effort to, yes.
    And this went on to in many ways that the beginning of 1940,
    1939, '40.
    And your grandmother and your grand uncle, they were all--
    I don't know what happened to my grand uncle during the war.
    I don't know what happened to him.
    But he died.
    But was still in--
    I don't remember him what happened to the war.
    But my grandmother went to live because they were burned out.
    They went to live with my uncle's family, with my uncle.
    Which uncle?
    My mother's sister, my mother's brother-in-law.
    My mother's sister's husband had relatives in Minsk Mazowiecki.
    And Minsk Mazowiecki was not destroyed.
    So he went to live in that town.
    And it took along my grandmother.
    My aunt with her husband took along my grandmother.
    She lived there until 1942 or even before 1941 because they,
    my aunt did not have a apartment large enough,
    so they send in my grandmother to live with us.
    My grandmother, my mother's mother, lived with us.
    My father's mother also lived with us during a time.
    And she died of heart failure.
    My mother--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --My father, my father's mother.
    In 1940?
    In 1940 or '41.
    '40 and '41.
    But did people have enough to eat?
    Did your family have enough to eat [INAUDIBLE]??
    There was always enough, not enough to eat.
    But you could always get for money to buy,
    was very expensive.
    We managed, there was a lot of, of course, there were--
    there was a flour mill nearby.
    They used to mill flour.
    We used to get it, and the food was a problem.
    It was expensive.
    But things a lot of people did not have the money.
    And they did not have much to do in the work.
    So I'm coming back now to work, they came in a time
    that the Germans came in to take people to work.
    But they needed to clean up the roads
    because the army used to pass by and the road was full of snow.
    They could not pass by and they grabbed Jews to clean.
    Later on, they had to repair the roads and came in a civilian
    company, a German civilian company by the name
    [? Vulffer ?] & [? Gable. ?] And they used to grab Jews to come
    to work for them without anything just to come
    in as Germans.
    Although they were in civilian clothes, but he was a German,
    he had the power.
    Nobody could go fight against them.
    They used to go for days.
    Grab every day some other people to come to work, and take them
    away four or five kilometers from the house, from the town,
    and used the work on the roads.
    Break stones and work on the road, and do different things.
    Later on, being that this has happened,
    and my father used to go to the Germans for many things
    that they wanted.
    So he said, you always coming to bring me this
    and bring me that.
    Why don't you see that the company that takes the Jews
    to work that they should pay?
    So he was calling the German civilian company,
    told them that they have to pay for the work that they did.
    And although before, more people wanted
    to go to work because they got beaten up.
    They didn't get paid.
    After there was the arrangement that they have to pay,
    a lot of people wanted to go to work.
    But it still was not enough payment
    what they wanted to pay because at that time,
    they paid 5 zlotys a day, which is a kilo bread, which is
    about 2 and 1/4 pounds cost 10.
    So all they could make is a half a kilo bread.
    So how could they go to work?
    So being that the people, the Judenrat
    wanted to have the people work and do
    in something, so the Judenrat supplied with the bread
    with each worker that goes to work
    will get a half a kilo bread.
    And the money, what we will get for the work,
    you will have for other things.
    And there was also some other supplies
    that used to bring in from sequestrated merchandise.
    The potatoes, or onions, or salad, or some vegetables
    just to bring in for the kitchen.
    There used to many times to be extra potatoes used
    to give the poor people to, and this is how they lived.
    Was very hard and, but this how they--
    They were alive, yes.
    --Yeah.
    But you had typhus.
    That's right.
    A matter of fact, [INAUDIBLE] typhus a matter of fact,
    I got sick of typhus, too.
    And your family was able to get medicine, or?
    Yeah, the only thing we got is there was strychnine,
    there was the injections.
    And my brother was also got sick of typhus.
    That was in 19--
    That was in 1940.
    And they established--
    You were really sick?
    Yeah.
    I was sick.
    I had a lot of fever.
    The typhus, it's not water typhus, no.
    It's [INAUDIBLE] typhus that you get a very high fever.
    I say to--
    [INAUDIBLE]?
    --Well, a lot of people died.
    And there was also they built a hospital.
    They established a hospital.
    There was only one doctor and there was one nurse.
    One, she was actually, before the war she was a midwife.
    And when the hospital established,
    she was supposedly running it.
    And the only thing the hospital to do
    is to at least take out the patients
    from the house that they should not infect the others
    and attend to that.
    But later on, other patients from that family also came.
    A lot of them died, which there was no medicine to support,
    and some of them came out.
    So how long were you sick?
    I was sick about I would say about three, four weeks.
    And you and your brother were the only ones who got it?
    Yes.
    My brother and I was the only ones
    that got it, because we stayed in our house
    because we tried to keep the house clean that should not
    get someone else get infected.
    And this is how we got out of it.
    But a lot of people got out from the hospital [INAUDIBLE]
    it's the luck, it's the attention, and everything.
    So well more explanations is in the story
    that I wrote in Yiddish when different sections
    of different times.
    What the Judenrats had to do and how they did it,
    and who was responsible, where, and how, and so on.
    How many people were working and what the work was there.
    If it would work out from on the pages,
    what would be if you are someone that reads Yiddish?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah.
    If you will make the copies, so if there's any question,
    you'll tell me which page it is, then I'll call on the phone
    and I'll talk to the person exactly what it is.
    Then when it came in 1942 when they started
    to send the Jews to the gas chambers
    and supposedly to work in the East
    for the start of the Warsaw.
    Then we get closer and closer again to Minsk,
    and they came to Kaluszyn.
    And--
    Did you have news of what was happening in the war?
    --Yes.
    We had news of the fact.
    Matter fact, we had news because there was a time
    that we could get a permit from the German authorities
    to allow us to bring in the family from Warsaw.
    And there was also many German wehrmacht soldiers that
    were drivers that were there.
    That was in 1941, '41 or '42.
    They were working and to dismantling the synagogue.
    So we used to induce him to go to Warsaw
    and bring out some people.
    So my brother used to go out with him to Warsaw
    and bring out the relatives and some other relatives
    of other people who used to be there.
    And of course, we took them out from there,
    and they came in to us.
    And they perished through later on.
    It was very hard, but this is what happened.
    Did they have to sneak out of the ghetto in Warsaw?
    Oh yes, unless they come with a group that was going
    to work outside the ghetto.
    This is what happened when I was in Warsaw.
    Didn't the East German army people know what was going on?
    They were bribed, or?
    Most of them knew.
    Those that knew that were working in around
    say if there were guards around the ghetto,
    they knew, they guarded the Jews not to go out.
    Or many, many Germans that were just in the wehrmacht,
    just in the army did not know, they just
    knew that the Jews are their enemies,
    but they didn't tell them anything.
    But those that they used to take care of all these
    the re-settlements are mostly SS,
    and their helpers were mostly Ukrainians, Lithuanians,
    Estonians, Latvians from Latvia, and Poles.
    Or Volksdeutsche-- the Germans they
    used to live in Poland before, we used
    to call them Volksdeutsche.
    That means they're Germans--
    Poles of German extraction.
    And they were the worst, because they knew exactly who was who,
    and what is what, and they were the biggest obstacles.
    So you got some people out and then what now?
    When Germans came in 1942.
    What month was that?
    It was in September, which I already told in the beginning.
    Yes, when I ran away, then I ran away to they came to Warsaw.
    Can you repeat that story?
    Yeah.
    Or [INAUDIBLE].
    In 1942 when the Germans came, it was in Yom Kippur,
    it's 21st of September.
    And told the Judenrat that they have
    to have people to go to the camps to work in camps,
    because they need a lot of people there.
    Whether they needed or not because Germans want,
    a lot of Jews don't want to go.
    But some of them, a lot of them went
    and they remained alive until later on.
    And those that didn't want to go, there used to,
    they remained there.
    Four days later they came and they
    had an action to take to send them out to Treblinka.
    At that time, I ran away from the marketplace
    through a [INAUDIBLE] that I took pails of water
    to supply the people that were on the market.
    And I went a few times with a friend of mine.
    And later on, at the evening when the evening approached,
    his name by [? Yosef ?] [? Gontarski ?] he was
    a neighbor of mine and lived across the street.
    And after we watched them taking away
    the people in the horse and buggy to the railroad station.
    And when the night approached, we
    ran away to a camp to our labor camp called [? Nienya. ?] There
    I was for about a month.
    And I met my brother that was in another camp.
    So we got together and we stayed there
    in a little place working on the roads until December 1st.
    On December 1st, the Germans released all the labor camps,
    which were around the city, around the coalition,
    and other places, and sent them all into town
    to make a new ghetto, supposedly.
    But that was only for the reason to make another settlement
    instead of sending each one from 15 different places,
    they got everybody in one place and sent them out together.
    At that time, I ran away again and tried to run away,
    but one of the policemen tried to cut us
    and was aiming at me and at a friend of mine
    running together.
    And he killed him.
    I ran back and hid in a cellar all through the night
    and about 3:00, 4 o'clock in the morning,
    I walked to another to the County town, Minsk Mazowiecki
    where there still remained a place of work.
    And I was there for a few days, and I
    met another friend that was came there
    and we both made passports, Polish passports
    that we are Poles, that we are Christians.
    And he looked for a place for us in Warsaw, and they are inside.
    We lived with a woman whose husband supposedly
    was in a prisoner of war camps with the Germans
    or was killed during the war.
    And she was a poor woman, and we paid her well.
    And we were there since more or less December 15
    'till about January 10 or January 15.
    Where we heard that there's still
    a lot of Jews in the ghetto and that life goes on as before,
    and there is nothing much is expected.
    So we decided that we'll go into the ghetto to see what's what.
    My friend had a sister with a family living in ghetto.
    In Warsaw?
    In Warsaw ghetto.
    And while there, I found out that I had cousins
    living in Warsaw ghetto.
    So he went to the sister and I went to the cousins.
    We were only about a block away, let's say about 200 yards
    from each other.
    And we saw each other occasionally.
    And this, we were only there about a week,
    maybe less than a week, 'till January 18, 1943, when we got
    caught in another deportation.
    The Germans surrounded again the Warsaw ghetto
    and took out a lot of people, a lot of people
    to send them to Treblinka.
    So my cousins and I were going to the place
    to the gathering place.
    And at the gathering place, I met my friend with his family
    together.
    So I said to them and they said to me, let's stay together.
    Whatever we decide to do, we'll do it together.
    Meantime, my cousins were wise guys.
    They did not let themself go that easy.
    And they run away right away from the gathering place.
    They went back and hid and then was all right.
    My friend and his family, which was
    a couple of mother and father and two sons.
    One son remained hiding.
    And just the couple, and the son, and I, and the friend
    went into the train.
    We were together with a plan that as soon as we move out,
    we will jump the train.
    And we made up that whoever jumped--
    This a regular train with--
    --No, not a regular train.
    Not with seats.
    There was no first class train, or second, or even third class.
    It was a cattle train.
    OK.
    So this was a deportation?
    It was a deportation.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    It was a deportation to Treblinka, not a--
    Forced labor?
    --Forced labor.
    This a deportation to Treblinka.
    So my friend, and his family, and I
    decided that he will jump first to go forward
    to meet the other jumpers.
    And this one that will jump the last to go
    backwards to meet the jumpers.
    So the first one jumped, the woman, my friend's sister.
    She was also from Kaluszyn but she lived in Warsaw.
    His father, his name was Michelson.
    I mean my friend's.
    His father was originally the president
    of the Jewish community in Kaluszyn
    His name was Michelson.
    In that explanation in that story what I have
    there is written about that he was there.
    Anyhow, when she jumped perfect, very good.
    Then jumped her husband.
    What was it below?
    Was there a ravine or?
    Below was just a train.
    But on top on the roof were the Germans with guns.
    And you only had to jump to realize where you're
    jumping because along the railway,
    there were poles of telegraph, or electric poles
    that you should not hit.
    The second one that jumped was the husband of the woman.
    The third one jumped, the son.
    I jumped the fourth one and I started to go back.
    So I found the son a little injured.
    Then going more forward, I found the father more injured
    on his head here.
    And we were waiting to go forwards the three of us
    because we didn't see the woman coming forward because it
    was already quite a distance.
    So we presumed whatever happened to her,
    she has to be on her own.
    We were three of us.
    So I said, let's go forward and we'll
    see whether his relative, my friend,
    which was a brother-in-law of the father, whether he jumped.
    Wait, so the train was moving very fast?
    The train was moving very fast and to me,
    the only thing that happened to me is a button.
    I button from my overcoat on my jacket that broke.
    But the two, Michelson, the two friends,
    the two people from the family, one
    got injured alongside on his face,
    and the other one on his head, very heavy injury.
    But we had no choice.
    I could not take him the way they are.
    And we went over to where I knocked on the door.
    And a farmer saw a village.
    There was--
    Did a lot people try to jump?
    Oh yes, there were a lot of people jumping
    and a lot of people got killed.
    They were being shot at [INAUDIBLE]..
    [INAUDIBLE] they got shot because you were,
    you had no-- there was no other way out.
    You got to take your chance here while you can.
    But you knew that you were taken to be killed?
    Yes, Yes.
    How did you know that?
    Because we already knew that everything goes to Treblinka.
    The way the road took, because see, I know the area Warsaw.
    Then the whole land of the road, I
    know whether the goes if the train goes East,
    it's on the way to Treblinka.
    And Treblinka was from Kaluszyn was about 50, 60 kilometers.
    And you had already heard [INAUDIBLE]..
    We already-- at that time, we already
    knew because when they started at the beginning
    to resettle the Jews, the news was
    that they are resettling to the East
    because they need a lot of workers to help on the front
    because they are attacked the Russians in 1941.
    And they need people to work there,
    and this is what they need people.
    So this was the thought.
    But later on, we knew because there
    were a lot of people that ran away from Treblinka.
    So being that I knew that I'm going,
    here is my chance to do it now or to do it later.
    If out right now, I have a chance.
    So I jumped from the train and nothing happened to me.
    But I had to do something with my two friends.
    I could not leave them.
    So I knocked on the door.
    And there was a woman that opened up and she let us in.
    She gave us some water.
    She gave us some things to clean them up,
    that they should not be visible on his face and his head
    that something happened to him.
    Being that was wintertime, took heavy clothes.
    They had a big hat.
    I fixed him up good and then she said we have to pay her.
    All of us had money.
    The money we had were bills, not double bills,
    they were bills that you could put in money
    in between belt. He had money, the son had money,
    and I had money.
    But he told me he cannot take out the money yet
    because she'll see it.
    I should pay her.
    So I had actually money in the belt
    and I had money in my pockets.
    So I took out the money and I paid her a few thousand zlotys,
    I don't remember how much it was,
    but quite a lot and quite nothing, but we were saved.
    We went back to the station, to station was a station away from
    Warsaw was Rembertów.
    The name of the station was Rembertów.
    I went to Rembertów--
    How far was that?
    We walked about three kilometers to the station.
    And I went in and I bought three tickets back to Warsaw.
    My looks were like a Pole.
    Nobody could recognize me that I am a Jew, because I
    had from pictures that you will see,
    you will see if you know the features of Poles
    and see my features.
    I bought the tickets.
    They had a place, my friends had a place in Praga.
    Warsaw was a two town, there was one side
    of Vistula called Praga, on the other side of Vistula
    called Warsaw.
    But together was Warsaw.
    They had a place prepared.
    So I took the train, and he went off with his son
    where they supposed to.
    And they got to the place where they
    were hiding then right when I took him back.
    I went further to Warsaw, and I had also a place
    that I could go in because my brother had
    a friend, a Polish girl, and she took him.
    That Polish girl's sister got an apartment in Warsaw.
    And she took my brother there.
    She was hiding him for them.
    When I came back, I had to go someplace in.
    I went in to that place together with my brother.
    We were staying there together 'till a few weeks, maybe two,
    three weeks.
    At that time, there were two ghettos in Warsaw.
    There was the regular ghetto and a small ghetto.
    The small ghetto was a place where
    many Jews and tradesmen, tailors, or [INAUDIBLE] to work
    and letter things to provide the Germans with their needs
    for their clothing, for whatever they needed.
    So they needed people that know how to sew, how to cut things.
    So we thought we'll go in, my brother
    and I, we'll go into that ghetto and see maybe
    we can stay there, because we did not want to antagonize
    the people that took us in.
    But being that there is a place in case something
    will happen, we have a place to fall back.
    So we went in there, but we couldn't arrange anything.
    We couldn't do anything.
    So we went back.
    He was staying there, but being that my brother was there
    and I seen that this will not be too good to stay two together,
    if something will happen let happen to one, not to two.
    So we'll look for another place.
    And I went to a separate place to another Pole.
    He was a shoemaker, and I remember
    how much money I paid him.
    And every time I paid him for the week,
    he said oh, the price went up so much,
    it cost so much money and this, and this.
    I've seen that shortly I'll be out of money
    and I want to have a place to be there.
    At the same time, I knew that there
    is a place that the regular ghetto is still alive,
    still there.
    And so I thought, I'll go into the ghetto again.
    When I came in to the ghetto again,
    I found my cousins, the same ones
    that we were taken to the umschlagplatz,
    to the gathering place to go away.
    And they hollered at me, why didn't you stay with me?
    Why did you run away?
    Why did you went with them?
    I said look, he's also [? calashina. ?]
    Well I started to live with them, period.
    And we went occasionally we went out from the ghetto
    because you could go out with a group,
    supposedly to work to get the bricks here and there.
    And I saw my brother and told him
    what's going on that they're still alive,
    and we could come in there.
    And being that they were my cousins
    were dealing in food, the place what they had,
    where they lived was called [? Smutcher ?] and Miller.
    There was almost a corner building.
    And right after the building was the wall.
    From one side of the wall used to come in the workers that
    used to work in the canals in not the underground, the,
    you call it?
    Where all the water goes through, the sewers,
    to work in the sewers.
    They brought in through the sewers,
    they brought in to my cousins hams, and butter, and breads,
    and everything.
    And there was a regular business going on.
    So it came up with the story in case something
    will happen, those Poles will lead us out
    to the inside to take us away from there, which was good.
    But nobody trusted them it was said,
    and we built a bunker in the building we were there.
    The bunker, what was you call the bunker?
    That was closed from all the sides.
    They could only know one opening to get inside
    and was so camouflaged that seldom anybody could find it.
    Of course, we did.
    As a fact, when the--
    Say that again.
    The bunker was made of?
    --It was a basement.
    It was so camouflaged to get in there that you could not
    see that this wall, one touch of this wall
    would come out and be able to go in.
    Was camouflaged.
    So we were there until May 8 since--
    May 8.
    --1943 when the action started I think in the 19th or the 18th
    or 19th in Warsaw ghetto.
    I have it written someplace.
    So we were there up almost three weeks.
    We were there and we couldn't be found, because we always
    heard that the Germans are coming in through the walls
    to the places and they're looking
    because they were knocking in places, they couldn't find it.
    Finally what they did--
    You hid in the basement?
    --We hid, we hid under the building.
    Three weeks?
    For three weeks.
    How many of [INAUDIBLE]?
    How many we were?
    Well, my cousins there were three boys and two had wives.
    Is five, the wife had a sister, is six.
    Is six and there were all, those people
    that live in the building was a dentist
    and his brother was eight.
    The brother has a girlfriend is nine and a child.
    We were about 15 people.
    In this cellar?
    In this cellar.
    That was connected by sewers [INAUDIBLE]??
    Yeah.
    We could go out through the sewer.
    And from there, we could go out into the sewer
    and go out, in and out.
    You did that all the time?
    You went in?
    No, we did not go in.
    The workers, the Poles that sold all the merchandise,
    they delivered to us through the sewers.
    Was this common in the ghetto?
    Were the other people building bunkers like this?
    That's right.
    That's right.
    And the Germans, they didn't know about it?
    They knew, but they didn't know which way to get in there.
    But you see, there is when to get into a building in Warsaw
    were built in such a way that there's an arch.
    The two sides of the building, inside is an arch.
    When you go in the middle, usually
    was concrete in the middle and the like trucks or wagons used
    to go in used to pass by here and then
    they realized maybe they should bomb here.
    So they started to throw in bombs
    into that concrete while getting into the building
    into the complex with gas.
    And this gas got to us.
    So instead of being caught by them,
    we went out through the sewer to another place
    to another bunker, which that bunker was already raided.
    And that was a bakery, we went there and we hid behind,
    my two cousins and I hid in that bakery behind the flowers,
    because a lot of-- the bunker was already raided
    so there was nobody there.
    There are few people came back.
    But my brother meantime wanted and another cousin and one
    of the other people that were in the bunker
    wanted to know what happened to the people across the street,
    because we were live in the side of the street.
    And another side of the street was another bunker.
    We were connected.
    We could go to them, they could come to us.
    So while they went to see what happened to them,
    my brother got caught from the Germans.
    And they took him to the umschlagplatz.
    And they sent him away.
    We were waiting a whole night.
    He survived?
    He survived.
    We were waiting almost the whole night or a day,
    we don't remember whether it was day or night.
    And they didn't come back.
    So we presumed that what happened.
    Meantime, the Germans knocked us out from our bunker
    and we went into the bakery.
    And they came, later on, they came into the bakery.
    We had some guns with us.
    And--
    You did?
    --Yes, we did, but we were afraid to shoot
    because as long as you were quiet, they did not find us.
    And they find us this way, we would been there much longer.
    But we were thinking the only time
    we'll use the gun is for last resort, you or me.
    How did the Germans try to find you?
    They knew that each building, they
    know that each building had people in there.
    The upper floors were bombed.
    There was nobody there.
    But the main floors were also nothing there.
    But they knew that people in there, but how they get there,
    they didn't know.
    Then they would put tear gas?
    So they put tear gas in.
    First they bombed it to make a hole,
    and then they put tear gas in.
    Or there was tear gas or whatever kinds of mustard gas,
    or other kind of gas.
    As matter of fact, I got gassed, which I'll
    come later on to tell about it.
    So they came in to the get us out from the bakery bunker.
    We, my friends, my cousins and I we had,
    there were two guns between us.
    We were three of us.
    And we threw the gun away.
    When they took us out, they found the gun [INAUDIBLE]
    and they ask, whose gun is it?
    Said, we don't know.
    We just came in this morning.
    We know nothing about the guns.
    And they looked us and they didn't find anything.
    What language did you speak?
    German.
    Oh.
    I speak German.
    Oh, you speak German.
    Yeah everybody spoke German.
    I mean, they spoke Yiddish, they spoke German.
    I speak German well.
    So they took us into the gathering place,
    the umschlagplatz, to the place where this and that.
    I was gassed heavily from the gas they threw in.
    I could not breathe too well.
    But my cousin, one of my cousins was worse.
    So I ask to drag him to come to the place because he
    at least while they're pushing you
    and they shoving you and this, so you should not
    get killed on the way there.
    Maybe you'll sit down and relax and feel better.
    Whatever happens later on.
    Before we got into the umschlagplatz,
    he came over a German says, why your [INAUDIBLE]
    this dog or something.
    He took me away from him, put a bullet in his head, finished.
    So I remained.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    His name was Manischewitz.
    This leave this now because we'll cover a lot of thing.
    And I remain by myself there with two of them
    with another cousin because there were two of them.
    One cousin was been my brother.
    And somehow, the other cousin either he wanted to run away,
    I didn't hear from him since then.
    And I came in on the road to my Majdanek.
    I could not escape anymore, because I felt very bad.
    I could not get into another window to crawl out to escape.
    And then in the condition that I was then,
    I wasn't sure that I would make it.
    But I'll see what happens where we go.
    Where did you go?
    We went to Majdanek.
    Majdanek is a camp near Lublin.
    It was a concentration camp.
    You were deported in the train?
    Deported in the train, whole train to Majdanek.
    How long did it you to get there?
    Overnight.
    Well, I don't know what time it took,
    but we left in the evening and we will not
    how long we were sitting in the trains until we were send out.
    That was what month?
    That was in May, in May 10.
    I came to Majdanek May 10.
    Then we had to, Majdanek we had to strip.
    They said whoever has a double built
    throws it away over there, because they
    knew that double belts contain money,
    jewelry, anything that they wanted.
    So I happen to have a double belt.
    I throw it away, a single belt, but means it's only
    a piece of leather like this.
    No danger, so you could keep it.
    OK and then they were taking, go here, go there.
    There's and Majdanek also had gas chambers.
    They also had the people that did not take into the camp.
    So they killed by various means.
    I was into the line to go into the camp.
    I showered, and they throw us, they gave us some new clothes,
    camp clothing.
    And I went into the camp.
    I was assigned in a certain bunker, a certain bunk
    to be there.
    And that's what there.
    The following day, they took us out to work.
    Yeah, while they were assigning us, they name this.
    I got a number 14677.
    My number in Majdanek was 14677.
    I realized later that I not the 14,000th men there.
    These numbers are taken away from one
    died before and given new ones.
    So that same number could have gone out four or five, 10 times
    of the quantity that the number said.
    But did they put that on your--
    No, no.
    It was a not a bracelet, but a piece
    of metal, a piece of thing you put on
    and scraped on the uniform, the number what you have.
    There was no tattoo.
    In Majdanek was no tattoo.
    In the barracks in Majdanek was it mostly men your age?
    Mostly men my age, older ones, younger ones mostly my age.
    How old would you say the youngest was?
    The youngest was, later on came younger ones.
    The oldest must have been about 16 at that time.
    But because I felt very bad, I was afraid if I would go out,
    they took us to work to dig ditches, what kind of dishes
    was for before, I don't know.
    But we had to do whatever they wanted us.
    And I felt that one of go another day, another day, I'll
    collapse.
    And at the end of the work, they m
    the Kapo ask who wants to go to the hospital?
    Who feels bad?
    I volunteered.
    I had no choice, because if I'm not going to hospital,
    I'll be shot on the road going or coming.
    You couldn't breath.
    Lucky me, I couldn't breath.
    Lucky me, I got into a hospital.
    The [INAUDIBLE] hospital and I was there
    and they gave me medicine.
    I remember that I was on a diet.
    They gave me a hard boiled egg where nobody else
    got a hard boiled egg.
    The medicine that they gave me, everything was on my chest.
    I couldn't breathe heavily.
    I couldn't breathe.
    And they gave me a medicine like a liqueur, a little sweet,
    and it put the flag down and it helped me.
    By coincidence, I found a man in the hospital that
    was a son-in-law of somebody that I knew in Kaluszyn he
    lived in Warsaw.
    And I asked him what happened to your family?
    No.
    And he was there and I said, your here, they treat you,
    it'll go out.
    I never heard from him again, because he went probably went--
    either he was in another--
    what happened to the man, I do not know.
    But anyhow, I felt better.
    And I went back to work in Majdanek.
    By coincidence, I heard that my brother
    is in Majdanek but in another camp, in another part.
    And going to work or from work I met him.
    And we talked, and we greeted each other
    and we'll say we'll talk.
    We hope that we'll see [INAUDIBLE]..
    We did see another time also.
    At that time what also happened to be transports.
    There was picking up people that were there
    to send of transport to some other places.
    So being that it was end of transport,
    I communicated with my brother and he