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Oral history interview with Helena Tygier-Bialek

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.189.1 | RG Number: RG-50.116.0001

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    Oral history interview with Helena Tygier-Bialek
    Transcript
    My name is Helena Bialek Tygier.
    At the present time, I live in the United States.
    I was born and lived in Poland during my formative years.
    A Polish woman named Rozalia Lojszczyk
    was instrumental in helping me survive the war
    during the German occupation.
    She was recognized and honored as righteous
    among the nations in Jerusalem in Israel in November 1992.
    On this diploma is written in Polish and in Hebrew
    that Rozalia was honored because she
    risked her own life to save Jews because they
    were persecuted by the Nazis.
    In remembrance, her name will be inscribed
    on the wall as righteous among the nations in Jerusalem.
    Both of my parents came from Poland.
    My father came from Zyrardów and my mother from Mszczonów.
    Both Zyrardów and Mszczonów are small towns
    about 45 minutes from Warsaw.
    My father's family lived in a small house
    on the street called Szulmana number 3.
    This is the street, Szulmana, where my father's family lived.
    And this is where the house was--
    as you can see, the only fragments that are left.
    And this was the house.
    And in front of it was a garden.
    And next to the street, closer to the street,
    there was another house, which was not made out of bricks.
    This is the house, or actually fragments of the house,
    where my grandparents lived.
    And as I can recall, this must--
    this building was much taller than it is now.
    But I-- right now, it seems to me like the top is missing.
    And I do remember, there were windows
    on both sides of this building.
    This is the small town, called Mszczonów,
    where my parents lived when they first got
    married and with the children.
    And here, in this place, where I am standing now,
    was the house made of wood that where my parents lived.
    It was a moderate house.
    And in the back of the house, just walking straight up there,
    was a big, big field with--
    actually, a lot of things were growing in the back.
    And it was a large area, a beautiful-- now,
    it looks still very nice and lovely.
    But I don't remember the trees.
    I'm here on Jaracza Street, on number 25 in Lódz.
    Lódz is a relatively large city.
    The sign I was pointing to is this theater
    next to the building where I lived.
    Here I am in the courtyard of the building
    and trying to look around, all around the building,
    to see how, and how much, and what I remember.
    Here, on the upper-left side, the third floor,
    the two windows, is the apartment
    where I lived with my parents at the time
    when the war broke out.
    I'm still sort of looking, and gazing, and trying to remember.
    And here I am actually in the apartment
    where I lived with my family.
    This oven, which gave us heat in the wintertime,
    is still there, as you saw it on the left side.
    Here, the lady is telling me-- that lives in the apartment
    that the war--
    that the floor is so old that it's beginning to shake.
    These-- here we are, looking through the window
    on the other side of the building opposite.
    And I am in the kitchen.
    This is the-- I frankly believe is the same stove when
    I lived there.
    And if the stove was here, where I'm pointing to,
    then in this direction was a window,
    looking out to the courtyard in the back.
    It's unbelievable that I was able to see the place where
    I lived with my family so long ago.
    And here, I am leaving the building,
    going into the street.
    Here I am, still in Lódz.
    I found the school that I attended kindergarten.
    And I am trying to remember--
    and I'm saying to myself, all the way in the back,
    to the right, if there is a door, then this is the place.
    I have not-- I'm not certain up to this moment.
    If there is a door to go in, then this is my school.
    And I'm trying to explain that where the grass is growing,
    there was no grass, it was like cement.
    And after having lunch, we would come out here,
    and the children would be playing in this courtyard.
    Here, I'm entering the door to the building.
    And it was-- this was my kindergarten class.
    I believe there may have been first grade and second grade
    there.
    Here, I could see the doors where the classes were.
    However, today, this is no longer a school.
    It is now an office, some kind of government office.
    Here, I am leaving the building.
    I'm feeling very good and elated that I was able to find.
    We are still in Lódz now.
    And I-- we are looking at the building
    where I lived with a family right after the war.
    The name of the family was Poznanski.
    And that was a beautiful, comfortable place for me
    to stay.
    Here, we are in a little room.
    This used to be my room, my bedroom.
    And it was--
    I remember it to be a small room.
    And I walk out.
    And we are now in the garden.
    I wanted to get an idea, looking around the house.
    If I remember the house correctly from one side,
    there was a balcony, and the other side.
    I walked around the garden, and I'm walking out.
    When the World War II broke out in Poland in 1939,
    I lived with my family in Lódz on Jaracza 25.
    Life became extremely difficult. Jews
    were persecuted and oppressed.
    My parents decided to go to Zyrardów,
    where my father's family lived, hoping that life there
    will be more bearable.
    There, things were quiet, but only for a short time.
    After a few months, all the Jews were forced to leave,
    carrying little of their own belongings.
    We were forced to march in the middle of the street
    to the trains, which eventually took us to the Warsaw ghetto.
    I remember that before entering the ghetto,
    our hair was shaved.
    We were forced to take off all our clothes.
    And we entered a huge public shower
    rooms, which seemed to me, they must have been at least 40
    to 50 people going in at the same time.
    In the Warsaw ghetto, we--
    my family, consisting of seven people--
    parents and children-- were squeezed into one room,
    not a large room, and sharing it, this room,
    with another family consisting of four people--
    parents and two children.
    We were together in this room 11 people.
    The room was about 15 to 16 square meters.
    As time went on, life in the ghetto
    was getting more difficult. We were hungry and weak.
    My mother knew some Polish people in a small village
    called Radziejowice.
    She sent me there with my older sister
    to get food in order to bring it back
    to the ghetto for my starving family.
    We had to go out of the ghetto secretly.
    Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto.
    It was dangerous, and the penalty was death.
    We left the ghetto about two to three times.
    And in order to get out, we dressed like Polish girls.
    We had to do it when it was dark.
    We got up in the middle of the night.
    I remember, we walked and walked towards a tall brick wall.
    It must have been at least seven feet tall.
    We jumped over that wall to get out of the ghetto.
    Then we took a train to a small town called Grodzisk.
    We walked and walked through fields
    and trying to find the village.
    A Polish woman named Rozalia Lojszczyk, who
    lived in the village, suggested that I come to her,
    and she would send me to her brother in order
    for me to recuperate from feeling weak, and sickly,
    and pale.
    And I was supposed to stay there about three weeks.
    And after three weeks, I was supposed
    to return to the ghetto.
    In the meantime, there was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,
    which completely destroyed it.
    I have a feeling that I lost my entire family in the Warsaw
    ghetto and in Treblinka, which is an extermination camp.
    Here is Treblinka, the extermination camp.
    As we look and see all these stones, small ones
    and big ones, they are merely symbols
    of towns, little towns, larger towns,
    representing Jews in each town who came here to Treblinka
    and were exterminated.
    There are here hundreds and hundreds of stones.
    The camps were all the way in the back there, near the trees.
    And the Germans destroyed everything
    at the end of the war.
    They destroyed everything.
    Here is a stone of Zyrardów, where
    my father's family came from.
    Next to it Mszczonów, where my mother and father lived,
    and her family came from.
    Here, I'm looking around, and I see
    the big stone of the Warsaw.
    And also, in the back of Mszczonów's stone
    is Janusz Korczak, a Polish professor
    who kept a group of Jewish children and helped them.
    And the Germans wanted to kill the children.
    And he insisted, no, if going to kill the children,
    take me also.
    And they did.
    And they are buried here.
    And there's a nice, big stone there.
    Here, we see a massive grave of bodies.
    These bodies were first gassed.
    It took about 15 minutes for each person to die.
    After they were all dead, they just were thrown in there
    and they were burned.
    And we see just the black sort of coal.
    I have a feeling that I lost my entire family in the Warsaw
    ghetto and here in Treblinka.
    And I wanted very much to come here because I don't know when,
    and where, and how I lost my family.
    So I came here to say goodbye to them.
    Here is a stone, as we can see, for the Warsaw ghetto.
    And it's a large stone, representing
    that there was a large number of people
    in that ghetto, which I was, and from where
    I was able to escape.
    And somehow, miraculously, I survived.
    This silence here tells everything.
    [SPEAKING POLISH]
    [SPEAKING POLISH]
    For safety reasons, I had to move from place to place.
    I stayed with Rozalia's brother and his family
    in another village as long as it was safely possible.
    When we heard that a Jewish child was killed
    and the Polish family was killed as well for helping and hiding
    Jews, I had to leave this area, even though that I was blonde
    and looked like the others.
    It was dangerous for me because I had no identification.
    I returned to Rozalia.
    I stayed there a few days, then she sent me
    to her second brother, who lived in another village.
    I helped in the house and with a small child.
    I stayed there until the time came I no longer could
    stay and be safe.
    I then returned to Rozalia again,
    to the village of Bukówka, and stayed with her and her family.
    One day, Rozalia looked out the window
    and saw a large truck with German Gestapos.
    And one of them was walking towards her house.
    We all got terribly frightened.
    And there wasn't enough time to do anything,
    to think, or to run.
    Suddenly, Rozalia says to me, take this large pitcher of milk
    and go out.
    You must not be nervous.
    And if he asks you what you are doing here,
    where are you going, tell him that you came to get milk.
    I walked outright under the Gestapo's gun.
    It was sheer luck that he didn't stop me and ask me who I was.
    This is the village of Bukówka, the big road.
    And nearby is where Rozalia lived,
    in a small, moderate house.
    We'll come.
    The house is no longer there.
    We see here the ruins, just some of the rocks
    remains of the house and a little garden of vegetables
    next to it.
    Here are the rocks.
    As we can see, here is the sidewalk
    and the highway with the trucks of the Germans were standing.
    One of them-- one of the Germans are coming towards the house.
    And I am just passing by him, and going towards the road,
    making a right turn, and walking.
    The time came that it was no longer safe for me
    to stay here in this entire vicinity.
    The Lojszczyk family decided to get together,
    and decided to send me to a local church,
    and to ask the priest to give me a birth certificate.
    I went to see the priest and told him
    that my name was Martha Batkiewicz.
    Martha was about my age.
    She lived in the village with her family.
    This is the church that I went to to ask the priest to give me
    this birth certificate.
    And it's also in a small village, not far,
    about half an hour from Bokówka, where Rozalia used to live.
    The kind priest didn't say a word.
    He did not ask me anything and gave me
    Martha's birth certificate.
    All these years, I had and have been wondering
    why he didn't ask me anything.
    Perhaps, he knew.
    Because a child wouldn't go to the priest
    and ask for a birth certificate.
    I found out later that Martha's father
    was in charge of the village.
    He was the village manager.
    And he knew Martha's father and Martha's family very well.
    It was this false identification paper
    that I miraculously survived.
    Having this paper in my possession,
    I left Rozalia and started walking, not
    knowing where to go.
    I walked and walked.
    It was near a highway.
    I remember then knocking at a door on a house, on a village.
    And there was a woman living alone.
    As I recall, she had a friend, a male friend.
    And I don't know how, but he knew that I was a Jewish girl.
    And some time later, maybe a couple of hours later,
    after I came to that house, I hear his voice
    in the distance outside, drunk and yelling,
    where is that Jewish girl?
    And I hear his voice closer and closer,
    as he's coming towards the house.
    And I was alone in this house.
    I don't know where that woman was.
    The first entrance was to the kitchen.
    And in the kitchen, there was a stove.
    And I remember running towards the stove,
    and getting on the floor, and hiding behind that stove.
    And a second later, he enters this kitchen
    and yelling, where is the Jewish girl?
    And I-- he comes into the kitchen, he doesn't see me.
    So he proceeds straight to the next room.
    And as he walked into the other room,
    I quickly ran out from behind that stove,
    and ran outdoors, and hid in a huge pile of hay.
    From there, I continued my walking and walked.
    It started getting dark.
    And I looked to the left.
    I saw woods and decided to walk, to turn left, and go
    into these woods, and spend the night, which I did.
    Next morning, I returned to the road and continued walking.
    From the distance, on the right side,
    I began to see rooftops of small houses.
    I turn to the right and proceed toward these houses.
    When I came to the very first house on the left,
    I knocked on the door, and a man opened the door.
    I said to him that I come from a very poor family
    and I'm looking for work.
    And I'm willing to do any kind of work.
    He said, he doesn't need anybody.
    But he does need a widow down the road.
    And he took me by my hand.
    And we came to this widow.
    She took-- he told her who I am.
    And she took my certificate from me.
    I always felt, then and now, that if it wasn't that this man
    brought me to this woman, she would not have taken me.
    The fact that someone brought me there that she knew,
    she felt more comfortable and accepted me.
    I worked there in the house as well as in the fields.
    One day, her married daughter and her husband,
    they had a very young child, and they
    decided that I go to live with them in the next village
    and to help them with their young child.
    They owned a mill and they were comfortable.
    I had food and stayed with them until the war
    ended in the spring of 1945.
    Here is the house we just saw, where the people live
    who own the mill.
    And to the right of the house was a huge body of water.
    And I recall a big wheel that was turning.
    This is the surrounding area.
    And I recognize the house because it had two doors.
    And that I vividly do remember.
    After the liberation, I returned to Rozalia.
    And from there, I traveled to Lódz to search for my family.
    I went to the apartment where we lived at the time
    when the war broke out and I found no one.
    In Lódz, I lived with a well-known Jewish family
    named Poznanski, who survived the war in Lódz.
    They lived in a beautiful large house on Sielecka number 1.
    They gave me food and clothes.
    They also insisted that I must go to school
    because I have missed schooling during my formative years.
    From Lódz, I went to the United States.
    I lost everyone in my family.
    After starting a new life in America,
    I wanted to forget the past.
    I never spoke about my traumatic experiences.
    I began to realize that I cannot forget.
    And I started sharing my past with some of my friends.
    And I had a great desire to find the family Lojszczyks.
    Through various contacts, the family was found.
    I was overjoyed to be reunited with my rescuers
    and their children.
    It's for the first time in 45 years
    that I was able to feel that I also have a past
    and that I also had a family.
    Rozalia Lojszczyk died in October 8th, 1991.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Helena Tygier-Bialek
    Date
    interview:  1994 July 04

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Tygier-Bialek, Helena.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Helena Tygier-Bialek donated the oral testimony to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in November 1993.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:13:28
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn520361

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