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Oral history interview with Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2021.33.1 | RG Number: RG-90.163.0001

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    Oral history interview with Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman
    Transcript
    We're in Montreal, Canada.
    It's the 6th of June, 1989.
    We're at the studio of McGill University.
    May I ask you to say your name?
    My name is Renata Zajdman Skotnicka.
    I was born in Warsaw in October, 1926.
    I live presently in Montreal.
    I just want to say that during the interview,
    you don't have to look at the camera.
    Look at Yehudi or I. It's all set up fine for that,
    just to feel more comfortable.
    I would like to start in the war period,
    spend a good deal of time on the work period itself,
    and, if possible, also include something
    about you're coming to the shores of the New World,
    in this case, Canada.
    Mhm.
    And so if we go back in our minds to the 1930s,
    the periods after Hitler had taken power in Germany in 1933
    and you're growing up, what we have
    is history seen through the eyes of a 11, a 12,
    a 13-year-old girl basically.
    How old were you when the war broke out in 1939?
    13.
    You were 13, right.
    So I would think that it's very significant
    to dwell a little bit on these pre-war years
    and ask you some of the things that you remember,
    starting with the atmosphere at your parental home, some
    of the things that concern your immediate siblings,
    your parents, the profession also of your father,
    and the kind of family life that you had,
    a little bit about what was your social background.
    And maybe that's where we could start.
    And then after that, talk a little bit
    about the atmosphere in Poland during that period,
    as you remember it, especially concentrating
    on the relationship between Jews and non-Jews also.
    And tell us what your parents' names were
    and your brothers and sisters.
    My father's name was Lucian.
    He was a lawyer.
    My mother's name was Natalia.
    I came from a rather privileged background.
    All the Skotnickas were professionals, which
    was a rare thing in Poland.
    My grandfather was a GP in a small town
    in Warsaw, Sochaczew.
    I had two homes.
    My parents were separated.
    So I spent my summers with my grandparents in Sochaczew.
    And school I was in Warsaw or vise versa.
    There was just--
    I would just change homes.
    I guess my family considered themselves proud Jews.
    The name, you might as well give the name
    of your mother also and of your siblings while we're at it.
    Oh, my mother's name was Natalia Mlynek.
    Right.
    She came from a rather wealthy background
    in Warsaw, merchants.
    All the Skotnickas were professionals.
    And Mlynek family was a very privileged, rich family
    in Warsaw.
    I had a half-brother, Alexander, and a half-sister, Anna.
    How were they half-sisters?
    My mother was--
    --or brothers--
    --a widow with two children.
    And she married my father.
    And then I was born.
    So I was actually an only child of my father.
    I--
    Their names?
    Did I hear them right?
    Alexander and Anna.
    And Anna.
    Yeah.
    Alexander and Anna.
    I didn't feel anything.
    I didn't feel the pressure that Hitler was next door.
    Before we go into a little bit of--
    What it was like--
    Background, Jewish, how Jewish, how Polish.
    What your home life was like with your parents
    and your friends.
    And did you go to a Hebrew school?
    No.
    No, I never spoke--
    What kind of Yiddishkeit was there?
    Nothing at all.
    It was very unusual.
    Nothing at all.
    Since I was mostly with my father,
    and my father was very assimilated, I would say.
    And I was getting conflicting signals
    because my mother was a traditional Jew.
    She would respect the Passover and Rosh Hashanah.
    So when I was with my mother, I knew about Jewish holidays.
    But when I went to my grandparents' home
    or to my father's home--
    In Sochaczew.
    In Sochaczew.
    There was absolutely different atmosphere, very Polish.
    Interesting.
    Very Polish.
    So I really wasn't exposed to Jewish religion at all.
    I didn't know I was a Jew.
    All my friends were Polish.
    We spoke Polish.
    My father was very free.
    He let me play with Polish children.
    And I would accompany them to church,
    which eventually saved my life because I knew
    very well Catholic religion.
    It was rather a very happy childhood, regardless
    that my parents were separated.
    But I did not feel any pressure of any sort.
    My grandfather died 1935.
    And I still remember his funeral procession.
    Do you remember what time of year that was?
    Passover.
    It happened exactly on Passover.
    As I mentioned before, he was a GP.
    And somebody called him from home.
    We were having breakfast.
    He should go and see somebody who was sick.
    And he went over there knock at the door
    and collapsed and died right there.
    So that was a very traumatic experience for everybody,
    holding it down.
    As I mentioned before, my grandpa was a GP.
    My father was a lawyer.
    My uncle was a dentist there.
    And my--
    Now this was your grandfather on whose side?
    My father's side.
    On your father's side.
    The Skotnickis.
    So this was in Sochaczew?
    In Sochaczew, yeah.
    And my aunt was a midwife.
    So they were running the whole town.
    Were you in Sochaczew during Passover in 1935?
    I was-- during Passover when my grandfather died.
    I was right there.
    I saw him a minute before.
    He just got up from the breakfast table.
    He called me Miss Muffin.
    Bye bye, see you later.
    And that was that.
    And when Grandfather died practically whole little town
    closed the doors, businesses and everybody.
    And everyone was following in the funeral procession.
    Why was he--
    He was well known.
    He was very good.
    And everybody liked him.
    He was not a rich man.
    But he was taking care of Jews and Gentiles.
    And he was respected by both?
    Very much so.
    Very much so.
    He was also a counselor in the city hall.
    Yeah.
    Did he have a Jewish funeral?
    Or--
    Oh, absolutely.
    Yeah, absolutely.
    Because you said you didn't know you were really Jewish,
    so I'm wondering--
    Well, I didn't feel anything, any difference between being
    Jewish and not Jewish.
    But my grandfather's name was, original name was, Moshe,
    Morris obviously.
    But there was never any big thing about it.
    They didn't hide it.
    It just-- that was not an issue as far
    as my grandparents were concerned.
    And when grandfather died, he was
    buried at a Jewish cemetery, outskirts of Sochaczew.
    And I remember there was a brass band following
    the coffin with medals, which my grandfather probably
    had in the first war.
    I don't know.
    With his medals?
    Medals, yeah.
    Medals, with his medals.
    There was no music.
    Grandmother said, no music.
    And everybody respected the funeral procession.
    And--
    Did I hear you say brass?
    The brass band.
    But the brass band didn't play?
    No.
    No.
    Grandmother said, no.
    Just there, just be there.
    But they were there with their instruments,
    but without playing them?
    That's right.
    In their uniforms.
    I think they were fire department or something, maybe
    some veterans.
    I don't recall the type of uniform.
    And somebody was carrying the medals?
    That's right.
    Right.
    Now, my grandfather my father died.
    That's right, we asked you about--
    before you get to that--
    Yes.
    Can I ask you, around that time, 1935, of course,
    you were quite young and strapping at that time--
    I was nine years old.
    Right.
    But do you remember anything about antisemitism?
    No.
    Because you move so freely between these two--
    Nothing--
    --in between these two worlds.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Nothing at all.
    Absolutely nothing.
    Was there a time that changed in those like later '30s?
    Slightly.
    Yeah, it started slowly.
    That you were aware of?
    That I was aware of it?
    In school they used to call kids dirty Jew.
    But I didn't connect this with me.
    I mean, that had been the case.
    That--
    Yes, there were calling other kids dirty Jews.
    But since I didn't know what really a Jew mean.
    So I thought to me a Jew was somebody
    who were different way of dressing,
    going to synagogue every day, you know,
    what we know as Hasidim.
    To me that was a Jew.
    It wasn't you.
    It was not me.
    So I personally did not feel any difference.
    And there were some Jewish kids which were probably
    tormented by Polish kids because their Polish was very poor.
    They did not speak Polish.
    And your Polish was--
    They were called there their names--
    Well, that's--
    --totally fluent--
    Was that the only language I knew.
    Yeah.
    So was there a particular moment that you first
    came into contact with--
    Yes--
    --with your Jewish identity?
    Yes.
    Yes, very much so.
    I suppose my father felt the change in atmosphere.
    But I was protected.
    And I just didn't absorb the differences.
    I heard some discussions at table.
    But I was preoccupied with myself, with my school,
    with books, with kids.
    And I was still quite young.
    What kind of a man was your father?
    What did he do?
    And what kind of man was he?
    Well, my father, I remember, his one--
    always used to tell me that he's not
    running a popularity contest.
    So he was very free.
    Whatever he wanted, he said.
    He did not-- he was not a diplomat at all.
    No, not at all.
    And I remember his office was always full
    of Jews asking for help.
    And he would write a letter to the authorities and so on.
    He was a lawyer, right?
    Yes, was a lawyer.
    My father studied in Switzerland.
    And in 1937, on a technicality, he
    lost the right to practice law, which
    I understood later apparently he didn't
    pass some exams in Poland.
    And they threw him out from the bar association.
    But he had been practicing until then?
    Yes, that's right.
    He didn't give up.
    He hired a young fellow from Warsaw, a lawyer, and business
    as usual.
    Open to new laws.
    Except that he was going to court under the different name,
    representing the other fellow.
    Apparently, the Minister of Justice in '38
    closed the list of new lawyers because there were
    too many Jews which graduated.
    So they closed the list for seven years.
    So on a technicality, my father was not a lawyer any longer.
    But he had a legal office.
    There are different petitions and so on.
    There were always people around there.
    And somehow he got in trouble, political trouble,
    with his former friends, which were in the city.
    It's hard to go into details.
    But my father had a heart condition.
    He was quite a young man, 50 years old.
    Had angina.
    And it cost him his life.
    Apparently, it was a closed hearing.
    And he was sentenced to go to a first concentration
    camp, which was in Poland was called Bereza Kartuska.
    And the same night, my father died.
    Why was he sentenced to go to concentration camp?
    He insulted the mayor of the city.
    Oh, and that was a very serious offense--
    Well, he insulted--
    I think they wanted him to force--
    they wanted to force him to put some money
    into the national party or whatever.
    And my father said, no.
    And the fellow called him, told him
    that he's not a good Patriot.
    And he told him I'm a better Patriot than your SOB mayor.
    And probably that was an insult of the--
    very serious insult. And--
    He called him an ass basically.
    He called the mayor an ass.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    That's what I said.
    He was not a diplomat, yeah.
    So they sent--
    And my-- yeah, it was a closed hearing.
    I mean I didn't know about those things.
    Later I found out from bits and pieces.
    And my father died the same night.
    And that's really all you knew at that time
    that that your father--
    I was alone with my father when he died, heart attack.
    You were alone with him?
    I was alone.
    As I said, my mother was in Warsaw.
    I was alone with my father when he died.
    And I called Warsaw.
    My mother came, and my brother.
    And the next day was my father's funeral.
    And while we were bringing my father to the cemetery,
    young hoodlums were throwing stones at the coffin,
    at the funeral procession.
    So that was my introduction to antisemitism.
    Was it clear that they were throwing those--
    Oh, yes, of course--
    --stones because this was a Jewish--
    Yes, of course.
    Of course.
    Calling us dirty names and throwing stones.
    I recognized some of my friends, neighbors, and so on,
    like through a fog.
    I was only 13.
    But that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
    This was what?
    1937?
    No, 1939, April 27.
    My father died April 27, 1939.
    I was very stubborn I refused to go back to Warsaw.
    I decided to finish my school there, stayed alone.
    But, of course, I just became complete hermit.
    I didn't want to have anything to do with my friends.
    Didn't you have family other than--
    My mother-- my father's sister was living next door.
    And I rejected her too.
    I was just too traumatized to be with anyone.
    So you were living by yourself in your father's house?
    In our home, yeah, that's right.
    And every day I would go--
    the high school I went to was next to the Jewish cemetery.
    And straight from school I would just go to the cemetery
    and stay there and do my homework.
    Right next to your father's gravestone?
    Right.
    That's right.
    And I just didn't want to know anybody.
    Finally, when the vacation time came, my brother came.
    He said, it's about time you're coming home to us--
    To Warsaw?
    Together.
    And--
    This is your brother, Alexander.
    My brother, Alexander.
    He locked the apartment.
    And he said, that's enough, you know, and you're coming.
    And I went to Warsaw.
    My mother was living there with her daughter
    and her son, my family.
    The atmosphere in my mother's home was very bad.
    My mother was crying all the time.
    When I felt--
    Why was she crying?
    Well, I felt that she missed my father.
    But basically, what I understood later
    that my mother realized that what's
    going on next door in Germany.
    And she felt we are next.
    That war is coming, and there's nothing we can do about it.
    We are trapped.
    I remember there were German refugees coming
    for dinner quite often.
    My mother spoke German pretty well.
    That's right.
    After 1938, there was a flow of German refugees--
    Yes, it was--
    Who were sort of kicked out of Germany
    and had to repatriate themselves.
    That's right.
    Even though--
    Those which did not have German citizenship.
    Even though they had been in Germany for a whole generation.
    Oh, absolutely.
    Yeah, but they were returned to the border.
    And--
    And so refugees would come to your house and tell stories.
    Tell stories, that's right.
    So it was a very gloomy atmosphere.
    Though you did not associate that atmosphere especially
    with--
    Oh, yes I did already.
    --the war?
    Oh, yes, I did.
    I mean, it was--
    of course, being a child, I was still hoping that, well, maybe
    my mother is just worried.
    Maybe she worries for nothing.
    It just won't happen.
    And my brother was mobilized in middle of August '39.
    So he was old enough to go into the army?
    Oh, that was a reserve.
    My brother was 13 years older than me.
    He was 26.
    So that was after his army service that was.
    He was already in the reserves.
    There were very few Jews which were in Polish air force.
    My brother was one of them.
    He was a very good looking, handsome man.
    I guess he was a token Jew because there were very, very
    few.
    He was in the Polish balloons, reconnaissance balloons.
    They really didn't have planes, but--
    They had balloons to do--
    Balloons, that's right, yeah.
    That's right.
    And he was mobilized in August.
    So my mother was really--
    Upset because of that also.
    She was desperate she felt that beginning of the end.
    I remember her using that expression
    is the beginning of the end.
    September the 1st was Friday.
    You remember that day?
    Yes, it was-- my mother was born on that day.
    She turned 46.
    My brother was already in the army and the air force,
    stationed not too far from Warsaw, outskirts.
    So we even went there to see him.
    Where was he stationed?
    Jablonna, Legionowo, it was a small town where they had the--
    where they were stationed.
    So here we are, 1st of September.
    September the 1st was Friday morning.
    We thought we'd cheer up my mother.
    And my sister brought some flowers and a little brooch.
    And we came to her bedroom.
    My mother's bed was, luckily, not close to the window.
    And while we're sitting and talking to Mother and laughing,
    we heard horrible noise.
    I didn't know what bombs--
    that there was a bomb site.
    It was just a storm.
    And all the windows shattered.
    So the bedroom was covered with glass.
    But it didn't reach--
    I mean, nothing happened to me or my sister or my mother
    because we were far away from the window.
    And that was the beginning of the war, September 1.
    September the 3rd, on Sunday, I was with my mother
    and with my sister in front of the British embassy.
    We were singing Polish National hymn.
    We're so happy because France and--
    England.
    England declared war against Germany.
    So we felt we're saved.
    There was so much hope in the air.
    Jews and Poles were brothers all of sudden
    because I remember that people were singing "Hatikvah"
    and nobody said anything.
    It was a real brotherhood--
    There was also brotherhood a week before the war
    because we were--
    voluntarily we're all going to dig
    trenches, anti-graft trenches, around Warsaw and barricades.
    To help stop the advance of the German army.
    That's right, yes.
    And there were no incidents of any sort.
    And then I was trapped in Warsaw for four weeks of the siege.
    Warsaw was surrounded a week later.
    We didn't know where my brother was.
    My brother was engaged.
    He was supposed to be married in December the same year.
    And his fiancee and her family were
    living in a Jewish district.
    What was his fiance's name?
    Maricia, Mary.
    And--
    Jewish girl?
    Yes, Silberstein.
    And I don't remember if it was Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah.
    But it was the last one and the most powerful bombing,
    bombardment of Warsaw.
    And it was personally led by Hermann Goering.
    It was strictly zeroed on the Jewish district.
    Mary and her family-- there were 20 people there--
    died in the bombardment.
    So that was the first victim in September.
    One of my cousins, a few years older than me, knew about it.
    He came running, and he told me in secret that Mary's dead
    and I should tell Mother.
    I went over there.
    And we took her out.
    She was already practically decomposed, lying under ruins.
    And we buried her in the city--
    on a square in front of some building
    so we'd know where she was buried.
    But that was a very common thing.
    People couldn't go to cemeteries burying their dead.
    They were just--
    Because cemeteries were outside and--
    Outside--
    And the city was surrounded.
    That's right.
    And we were just burying them in courtyards and so on.
    My mother decided she would not stay home
    because it was safer with everybody together.
    So we went to my grandmother's house, my aunt's house.
    They were living in a very big house.
    It was like a fortress.
    But even there, we were not safe there.
    So we're running from one place to the other.
    I remember through that month we were probably escaping five,
    six different apartments.
    And September 28, Warsaw was surrounded.
    There was no electricity.
    There was no water.
    I still remember those-- that horses.
    It was horrifying.
    There were dead horses.
    And people were just lashing at those carcasses
    with knives trying to get food.
    There were--
    Food was a problem?
    --no food for refuges.
    The food was a problem already.
    Yes, it was a problem.
    We weren't prepared for the war.
    My mother had a basement full of food, staples.
    But since we left the home--
    I mean, there was-- became a big problem.
    And they were just hacking away at those horses and flies.
    And it was a horrifying thing.
    There were more to come.
    But--
    So then Warsaw surrendered and you--
    Warsaw surrendered.
    --saw the first Germans coming in--
    Yes.
    Probably fairly soon after.
    Like right away you saw Germans?
    Ah, no, it was quiet for a day or two.
    It was quiet for a day or two.
    And then they marched in.
    Do you remember that?
    Oh, yes, I remember that because they said Hitler is coming.
    I didn't see him.
    But I saw Germans marching in.
    We're living in a very fashionable part of Warsaw,
    called Królewska, right downtown.
    Is this sort of a Jewish quarter?
    Not at all.
    No.
    Close to the-- mixed district, but they were mixed.
    But it was rather a wealthy part of Warsaw.
    Królewska, I would compare it to Sherbrooke West, something
    like that.
    So obviously, we were the first victims to be expelled--
    Evicted?
    From our-- evicted from our home because the Germans
    took it for themselves for the ethnic Germans
    and for themselves, for the officers.
    So we left within two hours.
    And did you still have your house
    that you had left earlier on?
    No.
    No.
    No, no.
    That was gone?
    That was gone.
    Later, I realized we had a housekeeper, little Janka.
    She was not with us during the siege.
    But apparently, she was able to get some stuff out,
    some valuables, which later saved our life
    because she was supporting--
    Because later on--
    --us.
    She was selling--
    You could trade the valuables left behind in you
    earlier house.
    That's right.
    And she put in safekeeping with some friends.
    For you?
    Yes.
    Or--
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    So we were left with nothing already.
    So this all happened so fast that you couldn't--
    Within four weeks.
    Everything changed?
    Everything turned.
    Like your whole life was--
    Oh, yes.
    Turned upside Down?
    Yes, that's right.
    And I don't know if you're--
    well, I'm sure you know that September the 17th was
    when the Russians made a pact with Germans.
    That was the Ribbentrop--
    Divided--
    Molotov Pact.
    And they divided Poland.
    And they only went up to River But.
    That was the Eastern border of the German occupied--
    Yes--
    Zone of Poland.
    That's right.
    Now, my mother spoke Russian very well
    because she was educated in Russian schools
    and universities.
    So she decided to work in class too long.
    We have to get out of here, and we'll go to the Russian zone.
    We didn't know where my brother was.
    Right.
    We're waiting for my brother.
    And about a week after Germans took Warsaw,
    he sneaked in at night.
    He found us.
    We were staying with my aunt.
    He already knew that Mary was dead.
    And he had a very daring escape because he did not
    report to the Germans.
    He stole a horse and a peasant's suit and a gun--
    and a gun.
    And he came to Warsaw on a horse.
    Not your Jewish stereotype at all.
    No, not at all.
    Not at all.
    On a horse, looking like a real peasant.
    So it was probably two sizes small.
    My brother was very big, about 6' 6", 6' 2".
    And I still remember.
    He had a bottle of water and a loaf of bread
    because they told him there's no water in Warsaw.
    So he brought with him.
    He came.
    He was a mess because he was riding the whole night
    without a saddle.
    So his whole behind was sore.
    And then when he found out Mary was dead,
    he absolutely went crazy.
    And my mother said, we have to get him out of here.
    We have to get him to the Russian zone
    because he'll just want ride no matter what happens.
    He was so full of feelings of outrage and protest
    and everything.
    He was not a coward.
    No.
    He was not a coward.
    And my mother got in touch with some smugglers.
    I mean they were not professional smugglers.
    It happened that people, peasants,
    which used to have their farms and live around
    where the artificial border was became
    smugglers because there was money in it.
    And your mom was sort of smart enough--
    And somehow--
    --knowing enough--
    There were more people like my mother.
    A lot of people--
    There was a connection.
    There was a route to get to.
    A route to get to the other side and especially not for us,
    mostly she meant my brother.
    She felt that nothing will happen maybe to us.
    But Alexander has to get out.
    I mean, we have to get him out.
    And she made a deal with one of those fellows,
    those professional smugglers, which we called them,
    that she will paid him a certain amount,
    and if my brother will be safe on the other side,
    you get the rest.
    And then we'll go.
    Within a few days, we got news that my brother is there
    in Bialystok--
    On the Russian side.
    On the Russian side.
    There were two big cities on the Russian side, Bialystok
    and Lvov.
    That my brother crossed the border safely
    and he's in Bialystok.
    And my mother said, now, you are next, you and your sister.
    I said, what about you?
    Oh, I still have to liquidate certain things.
    I'll come later.
    And we went the same route.
    And succeeded?
    Yes.
    Obviously.
    And found your brother?
    Yes, we found our brother.
    My sister was very restless.
    After a few days, she said, I'm going back to get mom.
    My brother said, don't do it.
    I mean, Mother will find her way.
    No, I'm going back to get Mother.
    And she did.
    And they crossed each other's path.
    My mother went to Bialystok.
    My sister went to Warsaw.
    They never saw each other again.
    When she came back to Warsaw, our housekeeper Janka
    was there.
    And she said Mother went to Bialystok.
    Then my sister again went crossing the borders the way
    some people cross the street.
    I mean there were barbed wire.
    But the border was not a sealed as later within a few months.
    And my mother could not get through the border,
    the same route.
    So she went around.
    She went to Lvov and took her a while to get to Bialystok.
    She came sick.
    And my mother died within three weeks.
    She had typhus.
    There was no medication.
    She died in a Russian hospital, no treatment, nothing,
    January the 1st, 1940.
    I was with my brother.
    And my sister couldn't get through.
    Apparently, she was arrested by the Russian, thrown back.
    She didn't know the route.
    Your mother had organized it all before.
    No, it's just that didn't work that time.
    I mean there were different sentries.
    I guess maybe they couldn't bribe them that day.
    And she was arrested, thrown back into little shack,
    then went back.
    Back to Warsaw.
    And she couldn't get through.
    By the time she wanted to come in January,
    it was completely sealed.
    The borders were sealed.
    There was no more traffic.
    It was too late.
    And she was stuck in Warsaw.
    My brother decided that we have to go back to Warsaw.
    We have to be with Anna, with my sister.
    And I said, no.
    I was terrified of the Germans.
    And I said, I'm not going back.
    It was a very tough scene because my brother practically
    beat me up.
    And I said, I'm not going.
    I run away.
    I was so terrified.
    I said, I'm not going.
    Just, I'm not going back.
    And I ran away.
    And I knew some people which were
    living in Bialystok with the friends of our neighbors
    and so on.
    And my brother couldn't do anything about it
    because he was going back with a group of people.
    And you couldn't say, well, I'm not coming today,
    I'll go tomorrow.
    I mean, that's it.
    He had to be at a certain place, a certain time.
    It was fate.
    He felt it was his duty to go back--
    To be back in Warsaw with our sister.
    And I was a kid.
    And I didn't realize that I should have done.
    And my fear was bigger than my--
    than my heart.
    And I stayed in Bialystok.
    And I lost touch with them.
    There was no communication at all.
    I didn't know where they were.
    And they didn't know where I was.
    And I was staying with those people.
    And they had a very bright idea.
    They decided that the best way for me is to go to school.
    It was very easy for me to go to Russian school
    because I spoke Russian before I spoke Polish.
    My nanny was Russian.
    And my parents spoke Russian.
    So I just picked it up.
    And I was very big for my age.
    And I told them I'm 17.
    And they believed me.
    And I went to a boarding school.
    There were a lot of refugees there.
    And there was also a lot of peasants, people,
    which became newly baked communists,
    you know, opportunities and so on.
    It was Weiss Russia, Byelorussia.
    So there were a lot of peasants which were very--
    well, they welcomed the Russians.
    The key was to be in a boarding school.
    I should have a place where to be, where to stay.
    Get fed.
    Get fed, yes.
    And have a roof over my head and learn--
    That's right.
    And learn at the same time.
    And learn at the same time.
    And that's what happened?
    Yeah.
    It wasn't too hard, because the level was very--
    rather low.
    How long did you stay there?
    Until the Germans bombed Bialystok.
    Came in.
    No, I ran away.
    We had exams.
    That was June 21 or 22, 1941, Bialystok.
    Right.
    It was Sunday morning, Saturday to Sunday, where
    I stayed with a friend of mine.
    Her name was Irena Podbielska.
    She's very instrumental into my survival.
    That's why I mentioned her name.
    And-- a Polish girl.
    I still had some exams.
    So there were not too many of us in that boarding school.
    The rest of them went home already.
    Did anybody know you were Jewish?
    Of course.
    There was no problem at that time.
    So--
    I was actually a fugitive in Bialystok
    because there was a time that there was a chance for refugees
    from Warsaw to go back.
    And I felt very guilty.
    So I decided to go back and join my family.
    So I registered to go back.
    The first group went back.
    There was no problem.
    The second group went to Siberia.
    There was a choice--
    or to go back or to take a passport.
    And since I was officially 17 years old and already
    was forced to get a passport.
    And to get a passport it was like a second class
    citizen with a paragraph 11, was a special restriction.
    That means that you cannot stay in closer than 100 kilometers
    from the border.
    And the border was--
    Bialystok was not 100 kilometers.
    It was much less.
    So I wouldn't be able to stay in Bialystok anyway.
    So it was no use for you to get that.
    I was trapped.
    I was trapped.
    But since I was in that school and I
    was registered with those people, when they
    came to get me, I wasn't there.
    And I just-- had no computers.
    So they couldn't trace me.
    And if they had gotten you, you would have ended up in Siberia?
    Siberia, yeah.
    I would, in Siberia, yes.
    That whole group went there?
    Yeah.
    I would be in Siberia.
    And I just stayed in that school and hoped for the best
    that they won't find me.
    There were some occasional roundups.
    By the Russians?
    By the Russians.
    Yes.
    Of people who shouldn't be--
    Right, they should not be-- they felt a threat
    to their security.
    I mean what kind of a threat was I?
    But still--
    Nobody turned you in though?
    Oh, no, nobody knew about it except Irena.
    There was no problem.
    And Irena was your close friend?
    Oh, she was my best friend I ever had.
    Yes.
    In school?
    You were schoolmates?
    Same class?
    Yes.
    Did you sit next to each other?
    Next to each other.
    We slept next to each other.
    And she was getting parcels from her grandmother from the farm.
    And she would share everything what she had with me.
    Otherwise, I would probably starve to death.
    That's right, because--
    We're getting 60 rubles--
    --you didn't have an income.
    We were getting 60 rubles.
    I mean I escaped in one pair of underwear.
    I would wash it at night and put them
    on the next morning, was still wet.
    You had 60 rubles a month to look after everything?
    Not enough to live, not enough to die.
    But that's what we're getting.
    From the government.
    From the government.
    Yeah, but other people are getting supplements.
    So--
    That's all I had.
    So I had to find a way of supplement my income.
    So I was selling blood.
    I would go to Russian hospital.
    And they paid me 5 rubles.
    And they would feed me.
    I did it too often.
    I was doing it every few weeks.
    So finally, somebody, a nurse recognized me, threw me out.
    So that was finished.
    She probably saved my life.
    [LAUGHTER]
    And Irena was helping.
    We were together.
    The worst time was I was in real danger
    when the school was closed, 1940, vacations, and everybody
    went home.
    Summer vacation, right?
    Yeah, I could not--
    I did not go with Irena to her farm
    because she was also in danger.
    Her stepmother, her family, they were rich landowners.
    So they were also deported later.
    Only her grandmother stayed on the farm.
    Under the Russians.
    And her father was an officer with a Polish border patrol.
    So now we're close to the summer vacation of 1941,
    really, in our story?
    Well, in 1940, I decided to get out of Bialystok
    because I couldn't stay in the boarding school.
    Those people, which I was with before,
    were deported to Siberia.
    So actually, I didn't know anybody.
    So I found out that there is summer camp for Russian kids 10
    kilometers from the border, which
    was even bigger crime because instead of going away,
    I went even closer.
    And I worked there as a cleaning lady.
    I had a quota.
    I had to wash floors and toilets, outdoor toilets.
    I had a quota of, I think, 18 floors, 2 verandas,
    and 2 toilets, which I made.
    I did it.
    And when the camp closed, I went back to Bialystok.
    I got a lift from a Russian soldier.
    He was slightly drunk.
    And he-- on a motorcycle-- fell into a ditch.
    I did too.
    And I hurt my knee, had water in my knee,
    which saved me again because I went to the hospital.
    And my cousin's friend was a nurse there,
    and she took me upstairs.
    I stayed with her.
    At the same time they were rounding up again people,
    taking them to Siberia.
    So again, I was in--
    Close scare.
    Yeah.
    And then when the school started, I went back to school.
    And I felt Irena was coaching me, be a nice little communist.
    So keep a low profile.
    Be popular.
    So you have good reputation and so on.
    And if something happened, maybe--
    So when did you--
    --be lenient with you.
    So when did you get out finally?
    19-- when the Germans--
    that's the Operation Barbarossa, right?
    June, right?
    June 22, I think it was June 22.
    '41.
    '41.
    Right.
    It was Sunday.
    I was asleep.
    And I heard again same noise.
    And I knew it from September '39.
    And I started to yell.
    I said, Irka, get up.
    They're bombing.
    She said, oh, come on.
    She was very stoic, very quiet.
    And I said, they're bombs.
    They're bombs.
    And I jumped under her blanket.
    And she said, well, stop it.
    That's silly.
    I said, they're bombing.
    I got hysterical, absolutely hysterical.
    And I grabbed a bundle, just threw a pillow case.
    And I said, if you're not going, I'm going.
    And I ran out.
    And I never saw her since.
    We were a few--
    a few kids there in that school.
    Maybe a group of 20 would say there.
    It was a big school.
    But since everybody already went home.
    And the German Messerschmitt were diving and strafing us.
    So within half an hour, there were only three of us left.
    Died?
    Yeah.
    The rest wounded and dead around there.
    And when I climbed out of that ditch, I turned back
    and the school was on fire.
    So I felt Irena was dead.
    So there was a lot of guilt I had to carry for 35 years
    until I found it, 1974.
    In 1974, you found--
    I found--
    --Irena.
    In Warsaw.
    It was a miracle I did find her.
    Yeah.
    She had survived somehow.
    Yeah.
    And you were not--
    Well, apparently, what she told me, the school wasn't on fire.
    It was just my imagination, my fear.
    Next door, the building was on fire next door.
    And she just got up and went to the farm.
    And--
    Went back to--
    That's it.
    She wasn't in such danger.
    She was not Jewish.
    And you ran east-- westward now?
    I don't know.
    I just ran where everybody else did-- away from the Germans.
    Obviously, it had to be toward the Russian border.
    Eastwards.
    Northeast or just east.
    And those two people from my school,
    they were a boy and a girl.
    The girl said she is from a small town called
    Bielsk Podlaski.
    Come with us.
    My parents are there.
    So we're running together.
    I don't know how long, a few days.
    And then I lost them.
    So I was on my own.
    And then I was caught close to Russian border,
    to the real Russian border, the pre-war border.
    By that time, I knew that I have to pass.
    I'm not Jewish anymore if I want to survive.
    I had no documents anyway.
    And my mannerism, my behavior was rather Polish
    since I grew up with Poles.
    So I felt since nobody knows me, nobody can betray me.
    I just really--
    You're going to be a non-Jew from that moment onwards.
    Oh, absolutely, yeah.
    Because you knew the Germans were catching up with you.
    You could not make it to the border at that point.
    Oh, yes, sure.
    And since nobody knew me, nobody could betray me.
    I mean they just didn't know who I was.
    Right.
    I--
    Did you look--
    Well, I wasn't what you call a very Polish beauty.
    I wasn't blonde.
    But--
    You could pass.
    I could pass.
    Later I couldn't because I had that despair and fear
    in my eyes.
    So that would betray, that would betray me later.
    But at that point by that point, no, I still could manage.
    And there was a German field lazarette, field kitchen.
    So I went over there.
    I'm just a peasant.
    And I want some bread.
    So they said, well, why don't you peel some potatoes.
    I said, fine.
    So I worked there for a few days.
    I was pealing potatoes.
    For the Germans?
    Yes.
    And then I realized I better go home to Warsaw.
    So I mean, there are Germans here and Germans there.
    That's it.
    Now, I have to make my way back home.
    So I knew what direction I have to go.
    I have to go back west.
    And I remember that my friend was from Bielsk Podlaski.
    So I asked, where is Bielsk?
    And they told me direction.
    I walked a few days.
    By yourself?
    It was summer-- yes.
    There are a lot of people on the road, the refugees going
    back and forth.
    People were running and going back.
    It was a lot of traffic.
    And--
    By foot, everybody by foot?
    Food?
    Well, food you steal.
    No, by foot, how are you--
    By foot obviously.
    Yeah, yeah.
    And it was summer.
    So you slept in a barn or in the field, just was not a problem.
    And--
    You weren't afraid?
    You were alone.
    You weren't afraid?
    That's what I wanted to ask you.
    All along I'm listening to you tell the story,
    and I'm trying to imagine what is going on
    inside you in your mind?
    And what are you what are the thoughts that you're having
    while you're running and--
    I guess I had a one track mind.
    I want to go home to be with my brother and my sister.
    And I did not see the atrocities yet.
    That's it.
    It's war, and I'll make it.
    I wasn't that petrified little child
    I became later, completely helpless and desperate.
    You're 14 and 1/2 now, am I right?
    Yeah.
    That's so young to be doing that and not be afraid to just--
    Well, you don't know if you have inner strength until you're
    faced with the situation.
    I was thrown into a situation.
    I just had to do it.
    So you didn't think.
    You weren't thinking--
    No.
    --I'm afraid.
    I hope nothing happens to me.
    Oh, no.
    I want to get home.
    Oh, no.
    I'm getting home.
    That's all.
    Did you have a good pair of shoes?
    No shoes.
    No shoes.
    No shoes.
    No, no, no.
    I had no shoes.
    Barefoot?
    Barefoot.
    That's fine.
    All the other peasants were barefoot.
    No problem.
    [LAUGHTER]
    So you made it to Bialystok?
    No, I made to Bielsk.
    Because you didn't see Jews on the road,
    so I didn't see atrocities.
    I saw only peasants.
    Nobody bothered you or tried to-- you were a kid then.
    Nobody tried to--
    No, no, no, no, I was just a peasant.
    Whenever I saw another peasant, I would greet--
    What would you say?
    Greet the same way, you know.
    What would you say?
    [POLISH]
    It means praise be Lord.
    And I would cross myself and that was it.
    What did you say?
    Say that again.
    In Polish?
    Yeah, Polish.
    [POLISH]
    praise the Lord.
    And that was it--
    Cross yourself?
    Of course.
    And move on?
    And move on, yeah.
    And then I got to Bielsk.
    That's when I saw the atrocities.
    There was a small shtetl, a small town.
    And I knew my friend's name.
    Her name was Chaya Kessler.
    I went to her home.
    And her brothers were already shot by the Germans.
    She already told me what happened there,
    that there took young people and they killed them.
    That was the first time you really--
    Yes.
    And there was no bread there.
    I said nobody knows me.
    She told me that they were throwing out Jews
    from the bread lines.
    I said nobody knows me.
    And I'll go.
    And I did get some bread.
    They didn't know who I was.
    And I brought them bread.
    And then I said, well, I'll say goodbye to you.
    And I'll go to Bialystok.
    From Bialystok, I'll make my way to Warsaw.
    My target was get to Warsaw to my family.
    [FRENCH] as they say in French.
    No matter what.
    No matter what.
    So that's the driving force is what I'm hearing
    is to get to your family.
    Yeah.
    And so I left Bielsk.
    And I made my way to Bialystok.
    It took me two days probably.
    It was about 50 kilometers or so.
    When I came to Bialystok, my cousins were there.
    I knew that I had some cousins.
    My father's Cousins were there.
    Also refugees, but they were there.
    I hope they were still there.
    When I came I already saw barbed wire.
    There were few streets in the slums of Bialystok,
    which became a ghetto.
    I went there close to the barbed wire.
    And I asked a sentry if I can go in.
    And he said, get lost, because I didn't look Jewish.
    I looked like a peasant.
    And it's just for the Jews.
    And then I saw them wearing yellow patches, Jude.
    Through the barbed wire?
    Oh, yes, I mean I saw them around the wire.
    Jews were wearing yellow patches there because Bialystok became
    part of the German Reich.
    Was this all shocking for you to see the first time?
    What was your response when you saw that?
    How did--
    What can I say?
    I still was hoping that I'll make it.
    I still was hoping that I'll make it.
    And at this point, you're trying to get into the ghetto?
    Yes.
    Which is usually the opposite way from--
    [LAUGHTER]
    Well, you try to be with people you know regardless where they
    are, regardless where they are.
    You just want to be with your close ones.
    That's all.
    You feel that if you're together, if not alone,
    things will get better because you're not alone.
    So I walked around.
    And I found-- that was before the curfew and I got in,
    I went into Bialystok to ghetto.
    And I found my cousin and his wife.
    By the time I looked at mess.
    And when I came there, my cousin would not let me into the house
    because she was afraid I was full of lice and--
    You're probably were--
    I was.
    I really--
    --full of insects.
    Yes, that's right, I mean.
    And she was afraid.
    Where'd you go?
    Well, her husband was a very relaxed man.
    And he said, no, just we'll do something about it.
    And there was like a little doorway outside the apartment.
    So he gave me a blanket.
    He said, you can sleep there and be with us.
    So I was able to be with them.
    And of course, she never let me into the house.
    He gave me--
    So you couldn't stay there?
    No, no, but I mean I became part of their household.
    But you were like--
    It's like real rejection after finally getting there and--
    I understood.
    I forgave her later because she was so traumatized
    when I found out what happened while I was away.
    The war started on Sunday.
    On Wednesday already, the Germans were there.
    Friday night they took in 1,000 people into the synagogue,
    and they burned them alive.
    And a day later, they went from door to door.
    And they pulled out other young people, men.
    And they just shot them.
    So I understood that she was terrified
    of everything, disease.
    And she just probably wasn't there.
    And they were hungry.
    And she felt how can she share with me?
    Her husband gave me his shoes.
    He threw away whatever rags I wore.
    He gave me her nightgown and a rope, put it around my waist,
    like a dress.
    And he said, there was already a Judenrat, the Jewish Council,
    where people lined up every day.
    And if you're sturdy, if you're strong, if you're a woman,
    you might have a chance to go to work.
    And then you get some food, if you're lucky.
    So I went there.
    And he knew somebody who was in charge of putting people
    into those groups--
    Groups that went to work outside--
    To work outside the ghetto, yeah.
    Right.
    And--
    So that's what you did?
    I did.
    I found a job.
    But that was not your immediate purpose.
    Your purpose was to get back to Warsaw.
    I know.
    But they said don't go anywhere because there is a steel border
    and you won't make it.
    You're safer here.
    Just stay here with us for a while.
    Because there was a real border there,
    like they were like part of the RAF, and the other part--
    Except that the Germans were on both sides.
    And the border was near Malkinia.
    And Malkinia later, which I realized,
    was very close to Treblinka.
    That was around the same part of Poland.
    So I went to work.
    And they took me to work to repair potholes, roads.
    But we were getting some food every day.
    We were getting a jar of buckwheat or some barley.
    So I became a sole supporter of my cousins, of my family--
    Because there was a lot of hunger already--
    Oh, yes.
    --in the ghetto.
    There was no way to get food there, yeah.
    So you became--
    So I started to support them.
    And I was with them.
    It last a few weeks.
    And while I was coming--
    I was wearing that yellow patch just like everybody else.
    Very proud that I can help them.
    And then one night when we were coming back in groups to--
    I heard screaming outside.
    And there were always a lot of Poles
    and peasants jeering at us or asking, why don't you
    give up some gold?
    And they're trying to get money from us or everything
    and buy our rags.
    Even in you condition--
    For food.
    --they just thought you still had the money.
    Well, of course.
    Of course.
    There were always a group of Poles.
    And--
    So somebody started yelling.
    Somebody started to yell, Reniusia.
    That my pet name.
    And I turned around.
    That was our housekeeper, Janka.
    Who had been looking for you?
    Who was commissioned by my brother and sister
    to go to Bialystok and find me.
    They didn't know about everything
    else what happened to me.
    They decided now we have to bring the child home.
    They just assumed that you were in Bialystok.
    And somehow through a very indirect route
    you actually were in Bialystok.
    So there was no problem to get her into ghetto.
    You want me to stop?
    We need to just change a tape at this point.
    Sure.
    And then we'll carry on.
    Can I take a--
    yeah?
    Can I have some water?
    Yeah.
    Janka found you?
    Oh, wait a minute.
    Are we no?
    Yes.
    And Janka, your housekeeper from Warsaw,
    took you back into Warsaw?
    Yes.
    She came equipped with false documents from her relative.
    She put a little medallion on my neck.
    What did the medallions say?
    Virgin Mary.
    The Virgin Mary?
    Of course.
    And told me everything up to date,
    what happened to my family.
    I knew exactly where they were, in ghetto.
    I didn't even know there was a ghetto in Warsaw.
    I had absolutely no contact, so I didn't know anything at all.
    But while we were going to Warsaw, she told me everything.
    She briefed me on everything what happened with my brother
    and sister.
    We had to cross another border.
    Germans were on both sides, near Malkinia,
    like I said, near Treblinka.
    And once we cross that border, she said, we'll get on a train,
    we'll go to Warsaw, which we did, no incidents.
    There was no problem.
    Of course, I felt so secure.
    I was with her.
    It was different.
    I felt she's taking care of me.
    Had you grown up with her since you were--
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yeah, she was with us since I was born.
    She had cradled you in her arms and all--
    Well, she was too small to cradle me, but--
    How small was she?
    Very tiny.
    We used to call her Little Lilliput, Little word,
    but she was very tiny.
    Little Lilliput.
    Yeah.
    Were you passing as her daughter at this point or--
    No, cousin.
    Cousin.
    No, no, a cousin.
    And how did you get back into the Warsaw Ghetto
    once you got there, once you got back to Warsaw?
    She told me-- yeah, she told me that there is a very unique way
    of getting to ghetto.
    The ghetto was in--
    the ghetto--
    This is kind of an unusual situation--
    Yes, I was--
    --because usually people, as I had said before,
    tried to get out of ghettos, and your task
    was to get into the ghetto.
    Yeah, but I knew that my brother and sister were in ghetto.
    I. Had to get to ghetto.
    I have to be with my brother and sister.
    Where else should I go?
    Did you ever think for one moment
    that you would try to go somewhere else
    just to save your own life--
    No.
    --if you were not with your--
    No such thing.
    Why?
    Like to Russia, for instance, right.
    I don't know.
    No, no.
    Later, I felt too guilty that I was not with them.
    I just wanted to be together, and I just
    didn't know that there would be a Final Solution.
    No idea at that point?
    No.
    Not even after all the stories--
    I saw atrocities, everything.
    --in Bialystok?
    I don't know.
    Somehow I felt that some of us will survive,
    that it won't be a systematic extermination.
    It's just what came later and I realized--
    and I knew that I cannot fall in their hands because I
    won't have another chance once they get hold of me.
    But at that time, I felt, well, there are other people.
    They can't kill everybody.
    And Janka-- there was a very unique way--
    since Warsaw Ghetto was in the middle of Warsaw,
    there were streetcars, and there was
    a streetcar going from one--
    because Warsaw Ghetto already had a wall.
    It was about 6 or 7 feet.
    I don't remember.
    But there were broken glass cemented on the top
    so you could not--
    --climb over.
    --climb over.
    So you had to find a way, loose bricks or bribe the sentries.
    There were three sentries, Germans, Polish police,
    and Jewish police.
    And I knew--
    Janka briefed me on everything, but she said-- the best way,
    she said, my way-- because she was-- by that time,
    she became a steady visitor to the ghetto
    because she was bringing food.
    She was a smuggler, basically.
    She became a professional smuggler,
    and all the money what she made she supported my family.
    That was her-- whatever she did, she smuggled,
    she was buying things from other Jews, selling at profit,
    and buying food for us.
    And later--
    And getting it somehow back into the ghetto again.
    Well, she was bringing-- there were a lot of Polish smugglers,
    so she became a smuggler.
    She never came empty-handed.
    She would sell-- some of it sell, and some would bring us.
    And always go out of the ghetto, come back in again.
    Yeah, she had her own already ways of-- she
    knew who to bribe.
    She became such a steady fixture in ghetto.
    Everybody knew her.
    All through '41 and '42, which is what we're talking about?
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    Why do you think she did this?
    Oh, she loved my mother.
    She was very devoted to us.
    My mother was very good to her.
    There was a very big tragedy.
    She was raped by her own brother-in-law, who
    was a real animal, and my mother took care of her
    during the pregnancy and later.
    She was with us like a child.
    She was part of the family as long as I remember.
    She was my mother's confidant.
    She was part of the family.
    When your mother had-- after your mother died,
    she transferred her--
    She took over.
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    --her love and her attention--
    She knew that she--
    --from your mother to you.
    --had to care of us.
    We were her family.
    We were her family.
    So she got you into the ghetto?
    No.
    She went with me.
    She said, let's-- we'll get on the streetcar,
    and when we turn the corner, we'll just jump.
    They usually slow down, and we jump.
    Of course, there are usually police there or--
    Is this this famous tramway that--
    That's the famous tramway.
    But usually there were informers on the platforms, so--
    somehow she spotted them.
    She said, don't jump now.
    And she already had prepared a band for me.
    She said-- she put it in my pocket on the streetcar,
    and that was my downfall because I had in the pocket a band.
    A Jewish band.
    Jewish band.
    Arm band.
    And I had no documents.
    I had-- actually, she kept the documents.
    We had a little basket, and she kept my documents,
    a certificate of some relative.
    We couldn't jump, so we went to gain from the ghetto.
    We stepped outside, wait for another opportunity.
    And the same informer-- it was probably
    a plainclothes policeman-- arrested me.
    He said, you were trying to get out of the ghetto.
    I said no.
    He slapped me around.
    He said you were trying to get out of the ghetto?
    Yeah.
    He saw me on the streetcar, and he couldn't believe me
    because it was crazy story, that I'm trying to get in.
    Apparently, kids were trying to get out.
    I mean, there was a big traffic going on.
    I didn't know about those things.
    And they were catching kids every day trying to get out.
    So he couldn't believe my story that I was trying to get in,
    so he arrested me.
    He was a Pole?
    Yes.
    Polish police?
    Informer?
    Informer, yeah, plainclothes.
    In cahoots or--
    Well, they all were.
    Plainclothes.
    Yeah, yeah.
    And he saw the band in my pocket,
    so it was obvious that I was lying.
    So they--
    So he--
    Janka followed us, and they took me to a police station,
    threw me in the cell, and it was a very cruel three days there.
    I was crying and screaming that I wanted to go home,
    that I want to get into ghetto.
    And of course I was thrown into a cell with prostitutes,
    and they were very, very cruel.
    I guess I wore that little medallion,
    and that's what triggered their hysteria
    because they started to beat me up, fucking Jew,
    you Jewish scum.
    Who wears the medallion--
    Yeah, how dirty, and so on.
    --of the Virgin Mary around her neck, yes.
    And they were just--
    they were like beasts.
    They were like animals.
    They spit in my soup.
    They cleaned their noses in my food.
    They would not let me use the pail, so I made in my pants,
    so I got even more.
    And then after a few days, a policemen came.
    He said, I'm taking you out.
    And they were jeering.
    You're going to Gestapo.
    I didn't know where I was going.
    But then I pleaded with him, where are you taking me?
    He said, well, to your own people.
    That's where you want to be.
    Saw he was working with me.
    He said he's taking me to ghetto.
    I was glad.
    It's a very funny story.
    He just decided that he has to relieve himself, and he--
    near the ghetto, there were some--
    probably ruins or whatever, and he decided to--
    and he was kneeling with his pants down, and I ran.
    And I ran into the ghetto through a hole,
    and right on the other side I was
    caught by a Jewish policeman who beat me up again,
    troublemaker, trying to get out, you're rats.
    By the time I looked like a mess.
    I didn't look human after those few days in that cell.
    And he grabbed me by the neck and took me to--
    it was a detention center next to the Judenrat
    to a quarantine.
    From there, I would go to quarantine and from there
    to a--
    Back to ghetto?
    No, no, to the prison, Jewish prison.
    But of course I don't think many people got out of there.
    The Jewish prison was not a good place to be stuck in.
    No, of course not.
    Because?
    It's just-- the people which landed
    there-- they were already half-human anyways
    and just starved.
    They died there?
    Well, some of them died later.
    They were shot for smuggling, kids mostly, mostly kids.
    And they took me there, and I was screaming and yelling,
    I want to go home.
    My brother and sister are here.
    And I was yelling absolutely--
    I would not give in.
    And of course I didn't look like anything.
    I looked like a mess.
    And all of a sudden, the door opened,
    and somebody started to yell, why don't you shut up?
    I can't work.
    And I recognized that was my cousin, Ignatz,
    who worked at the post office.
    There was a post office that was in the Judenrat.
    It was there in that detention center
    before they took me to quarantine,
    and I started to scream "Ignatz."
    For a minute, he just--
    and then he recognized me.
    And the policeman beat me up again for screaming.
    And when I started to scream "Ignatz," and he
    said, oh my God.
    We're all going crazy.
    Apparently, Janka went to ghetto and finally told him,
    I found her, and I lost her.
    And they were all--
    You mean they're all going crazy because--
    --going crazy--
    --they'd find you and then lost you?
    --trying to find all kinds of ways how to get me out.
    And he said to the policeman, this is Alek's sister,
    and the policeman just--
    completely pale.
    My brother knew him socially.
    He knew him.
    But he didn't know what an animal he was.
    And if I would not be Alek's sister, I would always say.
    And Alek was a person--
    Yeah, Alek was my brother.
    No, but I mean, he was a person of importance in the ghetto?
    Not importance.
    He just-- they knew each other.
    Yeah, he knew each--
    my brother-- he was quite--
    yeah, he became a journalist after the war.
    And they knew each other.
    And so they called my brother.
    Somebody sent for my brother.
    On principle, my brother never took rickshaw.
    I don't know if you know that the rickshaw is the Warsaw
    Ghetto.
    It's the carts with the person in front of it.
    Yes, that was the means of--
    --transportation.
    --transportation in ghetto, and he grabbed the rickshaw
    and took me out of there, brought me home.
    And my sister, of course, right away
    stripped me, smeared with naphtha.
    For three days and nights, she was scraping me and--
    until I start to look like a human being.
    That's how I got into ghetto.
    How did you survive in the ghetto?
    Was there food?
    Janka was supporting us.
    She had some valuables.
    My mother-- she was selling.
    And we survived thanks to Janka.
    How often would she come in and out?
    Oh, sometimes every day.
    Really?
    Oh, yeah.
    Leave the ghetto, come back.
    That was her profession, smuggling.
    Every two days--
    What would she bring?
    Well, she would go to the countryside,
    buy from peasants things or bring them
    some rags, or some dresses, or something
    she would buy in ghetto with profit,
    and there was like a barter.
    And we had a little room which my brother's relatives--
    because he was my half-brother.
    He's part of the family.
    An uncle gave him a room.
    That was his former office.
    And we had a little room together,
    so we stayed together.
    Good quality?
    You had like a WC or something like that?
    [CROSS TALK]
    Compared to like everybody else, we had luxury.
    We had running water.
    We had a toilet.
    Because that uncle was not taken out from his apartment.
    We stayed in the same apartment, which
    was in a very nice building.
    So they really-- they were rather lucky.
    They were able to save their apartment
    and helped himself by selling everything.
    My second question was, how did you stay off the list?
    How did you stay out of the hands of--
    There was no list.
    How did you stay--
    They were in ghetto like everybody else.
    It was a waiting room for death, which
    we didn't know at that time.
    That was--
    Well, that's right.
    We're still early.
    Beginning of October '41.
    We're still early.
    That's right.
    We're still early.
    What would you do--
    what did you do every day with your time?
    I became a walking library, and I also studied.
    Where?
    All the very little groups.
    There were a lot of professors and teachers.
    They were hungry, and for a piece of bread
    they would teach you.
    It was a very intensive way of learning because you
    didn't have to pass exams.
    And I-- libraries were illegal, but people had a lot of books.
    We liked to read.
    So you would have sort of like a little library,
    and you would hire kids like me.
    And I would walk around, and I would
    have a list of people where I would go to
    and a list of books.
    And they would give me an order what kind of book
    to bring, first choice, second choice.
    And I would bring the book, and I would get
    some bread or something for it.
    And also I study a lot, and I read a lot.
    Books were like a weapon against despair.
    So I had quite an education there.
    Of course, winter was very bad because I had no shoes,
    so I had to share it with my sister whenever she went out.
    I had to stay home.
    And then people couldn't get new stockings, or socks,
    or anything, so I learned how to mend stockings and socks.
    And I got money for it, or bread, or basically just
    to survive, not to starve.
    And Janka was helping.
    And then the terror started in--
    winter was very bad because we had
    to surrender all our fur coats and everything, and a fur coat
    or anything with a fur--
    it was not luxury.
    It kept you warm.
    It was a blanket.
    It was--
    We're now in winter of '41, '42--
    --everything.
    --right?
    Yes.
    We had no coat.
    The glass would freeze in--
    the water would freeze in a glass.
    That's how cold It was.
    So we stayed in bed just to keep warm and not to be so hungry.
    Did you have girl friends, or did you
    have a social life at all?
    Or tell me--
    I don't know what you call social life.
    My brother wanted I should be with people my own age,
    and I had a friend.
    Her name was Danuda.
    She was my role model, older than me, a few years older.
    She was the most beautiful human being.
    And she sort of took me under her wing,
    and I was very close with her.
    Her brother, Richard, was my boyfriend, my first boyfriend.
    He was a medical student.
    And I spend a lot of time with her.
    She gave me books.
    Whenever I could have some sort of a social life,
    that was with Danka and her crowd.
    So I sort of became part--
    Danka is Danuda?
    Danuda, yes.
    So I became sort of like a part of a grown-up crowd.
    I was so much more mature than normal kids my age.
    How old were you at that point?
    In 1941 I was 15 already.
    Was Richard the medical student?
    Yeah, Richard was the medical student.
    And then in April, around April '42,
    they started to come at random, pick people up, and just kill
    them.
    We didn't know who.
    Later, they told us that some people
    were involved in distribution of illegal papers or whatever.
    Different people, bakers and intellectuals, and they
    were just coming up at night, and taking them out,
    and shooting them.
    Who are they?
    Germans?
    Germans, yeah.
    Randomly?
    Randomly.
    So the horror-- the terror was because my brother
    could have been there.
    They had lists, and they were just coming with a list
    and taking out people.
    And typhus was rampant.
    That was another horror.
    Typhus?
    Typhus, yeah, typhus because there was a typhus epidemic
    and especially where we lived on that street.
    It was more like a passage.
    It's a very-- like in an old city, Karmelicka Street.
    It was more like a passage.
    And people had no place where to go,
    so there were like people from wall to wall.
    You just saw somebody, and you got that his lice.
    And that's it.
    They were disease carriers, so the epidemic.
    And then--
    How do you avoid--
    how do you avoid that?
    Well, we didn't.
    In that house where I was, my aunt died of typhus.
    My cousin survived.
    I survived.
    My other cousin died.
    But the worst part was that there was no medication,
    and you just, if you were strong or survived.
    Or you did or you didn't.
    That's all it was.
    And later, seeing naked corpses was just a common sight
    in ghetto because people wanted to get-- we were
    getting about 200 calories.
    I don't know how many.
    Calories didn't mean anything to me.
    At that time, I didn't know what means "calories."
    I know that we got a little bit something, some bread which was
    mixed with sawdust or whatever.
    But still, there was something.
    So if somebody died of typhus, people just stripped them
    and put them on the street.
    So the burial society would pick them up,
    and he would be still on the list
    that he could get some food.
    So they were getting rid of the corpses
    so there should be more--
    So the rations would keep on coming in?
    Yes, that's right.
    That's right.
    Do you remember how--
    your body goes through a lot of changes when you start--
    when you're starving.
    Do you--
    I lost my period.
    I was fainting all the time.
    I was blacking out.
    Did you lose a lot of weight?
    I was skinny, but I had a big, bloated stomach.
    I was probably-- but of course I wasn't
    as starving as other people.
    Janka was still bringing us some food.
    You once mentioned these [NON-ENGLISH]..
    Can you say anything--
    [NON-ENGLISH],, these two young boys?
    Yes.
    Because happiness was if you could go and buy
    100 grams of bread.
    That was such achievement for me to go and buy some bread
    and bring it home.
    And the ghetto had these half-insane,
    half-starved young people which--
    they were just standing and watching
    in front of the bakery.
    If somebody came out with bread, they
    would just grab it and eat it.
    And it happened to-- once happened to me.
    I was walking around with a book, so he grabbed the book.
    And he saw it wasn't bread, so he hit me with it.
    And once I was coming out, and he grabbed my bread.
    And I was fighting with him, and he ate it.
    And I ate the rest.
    I just couldn't bring it home.
    I was like fighting for my life or that piece of bread.
    And there were corpses on the street covered
    with some paper and brick.
    People just-- if they die on the street,
    people just stripped them to get some rags, or shoes,
    or whatever they had to keep warm.
    Because in December '41, we had to give up our furs and--
    I don't think--
    I don't think blankets but anything which--
    and again, so we were cold.
    So you were starving, and you were cold.
    And we were breaking up the furniture--
    --to make fire.
    --to make fire, to make some soup once a day.
    At least that was our meal.
    And--
    What would you make the soup from?
    Oh, I had some rotten potatoes, half-frozen, and turnips.
    And Janka would bring us some grain,
    so I would just throw it in in a pot,
    and we had something, something warm, some gruel.
    And June '42, Czerniaków committed suicide, and that
    was a sign of expulsion from ghetto.
    They had to fill a quota between 6,000 and 10,000 people a day.
    So to fill the quota, they were taking people
    straight from the streets, from hospitals.
    Every day?
    Yes.
    6,000 to 10,000?
    No from 6,000 to 10,000 people a day.
    A day?
    Yes.
    Had to be delivered by--
    --delivered to Auschwitz.
    Sorry, delivered to Umschlagplatz.
    By the Jewish authorities?
    Yes.
    And so who was picking whom up?
    Jewish police.
    Jewish police were picking up--
    Yeah.
    --Jews--
    Yeah.
    --to fill the quota?
    Yeah.
    But mostly they were cleaning up people which were already
    in the quarantine or hospitals.
    Or in that cell that you escaped from or whatever.
    Oh, yes, yes.
    Those were the first to go, I assume, yes.
    And--
    So when you first heard that--
    Oh, I had instructions from my brother--
    see, I started to--
    since I knew that we have to--
    we're going to be sent to the East to work--
    and I came from the East.
    I wasn't afraid.
    I was dumb.
    And I said, we'll work, and we'll manage.
    And my uncle, who was a good friend of Adam
    Czerniaków, the chairman of the Judenrat--
    when he heard that Czerniaków committed suicide,
    took a cyanide, cyankali, he made a remark,
    which escaped me at that time.
    He said, but he had enough for the whole Judenrat.
    I saw the drawer full of--
    he had two dozen, and there were about 24,
    25 members of the Judenrat.
    And he's the only one who committed suicide.
    As far as my uncle was concerned and my brother,
    they realized that it was a warning.
    I guess it wasn't a warning enough because the mind just
    doesn't absorb anything like that.
    Because Czerniaków, in your view,
    could not take the responsibility for delivering
    those Jews up or what?
    Obviously, obviously.
    Umschlagplatz-- did you see that yourself?
    Oh, no, no, no, no.
    Oh, you never got close?
    No.
    If I would be, I wouldn't be here.
    That would mean that was the end.
    No, that would be the end.
    Was the Umschlagplatz in the ghetto?
    Yes.
    But you never got near?
    No, no, no.
    It was an old Jewish hospital, which was cleaned, cleaned up.
    People were taken out, and that became the transit.
    From there.
    From there, they went directly--
    Trains?
    --to the trains to Treblinka.
    The trains were on the Umschlagplatz?
    Yes.
    They pull the railroad--
    Yes, that's right.
    --through all the way there, and--
    At the beginning, people still bribed their way out.
    There were some people still escaping from Umschlagplatz.
    The Jewish police was still--
    they could still bribe their way.
    Members of the police--
    their families were exempt.
    They were still safe.
    People still have some documents.
    If you have a sewing machine, you
    could become part of a shop and work.
    And there were different exemptions,
    but later the papers were nothing.
    It wasn't worth it.
    It was just a sham.
    And I remember I took a knapsack,
    and I started to put my name on it.
    And my brother saw it, and he became completely violent.
    He just threw that knapsack together with me
    against the wall.
    He said, you're not going anywhere.
    You were ready to go to--
    Yes, I prepared myself, that my time comes,
    I'll just go with the knapsack because you
    were allowed to take, I think, 15 pounds with you, whatever.
    So you knew where you were-- you knew what was going to happen
    and you prepared yourself?
    No, I didn't know what was going to happen.
    I thought that we're going to be sent to the East
    and we'd be walking.
    I didn't know, not at all.
    But your brother did?
    Your brother--
    I guess he did because he said, you
    promise me-- he gave me instructions where to hide.
    And you promise me that you won't let them catch you?
    You'll just run, and run, and hide, run and hide.
    Whatever happens, run and hide.
    He felt that bullet would be easier than the gas chambers.
    By that time, people started--
    there were a few escapes from Treblinka,
    but my brother never told me.
    There were escapees that you heard much about that?
    I forgot to mention that my sister escaped
    from ghetto before, and she was on the other side
    already in April.
    Her fiance was killed, and she just decided--
    the next day, she just escaped from the ghetto.
    And lived incognito.
    Incognito, yeah, and became a smuggler together with Janka,
    and was smuggling, became a smuggler.
    What did she smuggle?
    Food, the same day, barter, buying, and selling,
    and they're going to the countryside
    and became a smuggler together with Janka.
    And I was there with my brother.
    My sister had no problems.
    She was able to blend in.
    She never had any problem at all.
    She was 10 years older than me with more courage than I did.
    And--
    So your brother said to you, no way
    you are going to Umschlagplatz, no way?
    No.
    He didn't say "Umschlagplatz."
    Don't let them catch you.
    Because--
    You have to run and hide, run and hide.
    You started to say some people had come back from Treblinka.
    You mean had made it--
    Escaped from the trains.
    --escaped from the trains, knew what was happening--
    Apparently, yes.
    --and came back to Warsaw?
    Well, I realized what happened when they took away
    Korczak and the children.
    Because I heard when they said that they tried to get Korczak
    out and he refused to go, he would not leave the children.
    And in my stupidity I said, well,
    why would he-- why did they try to save him?
    Save from what?
    After all, he is--
    he takes care of the children.
    Why would he not go with the children?
    And there was no answer.
    Then I realize.
    And then I had no papers.
    So my brother still had some papers,
    so he could legally be still in the ghetto.
    He was not-- he was still able to maneuver somehow
    because there was no food.
    Janka could not get into ghetto, so we're cut off from Janka,
    from my sister.
    And then the Germans came with Ukrainians,
    and with the Lithuanians, and with dogs,
    and usually started at 10:00 in the morning and finish
    at 4:00 or 5:00.
    Every day?
    Every day.
    Oh, yes, every day, yeah.
    Where are we now in time?
    July.
    Still '42?
    '42, yeah, mass deportations.
    I was still in ghetto.
    I had-- I wasn't legal anymore.
    I had no documents.
    And my brother couldn't take care of me,
    so Richard found a hiding place.
    He camouflaged in the attic, like a hiding place
    where I was there with his mother, and with his mother
    and with his sister.
    And I used to stay with them.
    I felt that it's safer with them.
    Danka?
    Danka and her mother.
    And we were close--
    and Richard would close from the outside some old junk,
    furniture, and everything so it looked completely hidden.
    Of course we it could have been our tomb.
    We could have been entombed because he stayed outside.
    So he was the one who locked us in and was
    able to open the whole thing.
    And in one of those--
    in one of those raids we heard shooting,
    and apparently, what we did know,
    somebody else had the same bright idea.
    It was-- the other side of the courtyard was the same--
    similar hiding place.
    And the Ukrainians came with dogs,
    and they smelled them out.
    Because when they came to the, courtyard
    the police would yell, everybody has to come down.
    Whoever doesn't come down will be shot.
    And a lot of people came down, and they were taken away.
    And those-- and then they would go and check the apartments.
    And if they would find somebody, they would just shoot them.
    These were not Germans?
    Well, Germans together with the Lithuanians and Ukrainians.
    But they had dogs at that time already, so they could smell.
    And apparently they found that hiding place,
    and they shot the people.
    But of course, there was such carnage there,
    so they left us alone.
    They didn't look any further.
    I guess the dogs were happy with all that blood and everything.
    So you were just lucky.
    I was lucky.
    Yes, of course, everything was luck.
    I had no blueprint for survival.
    Everything was luck.
    Everything was luck.
    Instincts, luck?
    I don't know what to call it.
    Is it luck?
    I don't know.
    And a few days later, Richard was shot.
    And he told-- he told me that he won't-- they won't take him
    alive.
    He had a knife on him, but I don't think he used it.
    I don't know how he died.
    I know that he was hiding in a lumberyard near ghetto,
    and he was found by a Ukrainian with a dog.
    And he was shot.
    Who told you?
    Well, there were other people who had survived.
    There were always--
    Always got reports back.
    Reports coming back.
    They found-- yeah.
    And then-- and his sister, Danka, and her mother
    were sort of lucky, more lucky than I was because they had
    some papers working in a shop.
    So again I was on my own.
    I was on my own, but a few days later, they came to that shop.
    They liquidated that shop.
    They felt that it's not necessary,
    and they took them away.
    Everything was a sham.
    They would-- just give them false security.
    They took them away.
    Danka and her mother.
    They took them away, even though they had papers.
    And where were you at this point?
    Well, I was hiding in empty apartments, scavenging,
    because--
    You're all on your own.
    I was on my own, and at night, I would come back
    where my brother was because my brother was working in a shop.
    But during the day, I just had to hide.
    So I became like a little--
    they used to call it us the wild--
    the wild ones, which means we had no right to be there.
    We were-- we had no right to be in ghetto.
    In Polish?
    Dziki.
    Dziki?
    Dziki.
    That means a wild one, yeah.
    Were there a whole group of--
    No, no, no, you were on your own because--
    Did you meet any other kids that--
    Well, of course.
    You knew-- you knew--
    We were like wolf packs.
    Whatever-- it was no-- there was nothing systematic.
    There were no-- we had no plans or anything.
    But you had kids to talk to about what was going on
    and what was happening.
    No, no, no, no, no.
    I just had my brother.
    No, no.
    There were kids.
    Kids went first.
    I escaped because I looked big.
    So you were one of the few kids.
    Yes, because they took away my cousin's children.
    Tolek was 14.
    They took him away.
    Risha was 11.
    They took her away.
    The kids were taken off.
    They wouldn't let the parents go with the children.
    So the kids were taken away.
    There was no such thing that a kid had a right to be there.
    How long did you continue like this?
    My brother told me that I have to try to stay alive
    and I will not survive here.
    I have to get out.
    And I said, no.
    He said, well, you will get out.
    I promise you.
    Janka and my sister--
    Anna.
    --Anna are there, and they'll find you a safe place.
    And I was terrified.
    I didn't want to go.
    I said, I want you--
    I said, if we die, we die together.
    And my brother said, look, I can't.
    I'm circumcised.
    I look Jewish.
    I won't survive there in one day.
    You didn't want to leave him.
    I didn't want to leave him.
    And my brother said, I can't save you.
    I won't be able to.
    And please, there is a chance.
    And my brother had a friend who was a policeman,
    Polish policeman.
    As a matter of fact, that man survived the war,
    and my brother helped to rehabilitate him.
    He was a witness at a Stroop's process.
    Stroop was the commandant of the--
    against the ghetto uprising in Warsaw, was hanged in 1962.
    He saved a lot of people, Pawel Golombek, not for money, no.
    My brother knew him--
    there was some connection through some other friends.
    I won't go into it.
    I It was-- and became a safehouse.
    He took me out.
    The point was to get me out of ghetto
    with a group of people, which are going to work which--
    Like the old escape route in Bialystok?
    A similar escape.
    That's right.
    And then Pawel Golombek came with some fancy-looking papers
    that he--
    to that place where I was working near the airport.
    It was somewhere Okecie, near the airport.
    I remember some greenhouses there.
    And he said, I came to pick her up,
    with my name and everything, and everybody said,
    that poor child.
    That's the end of her.
    It was a ruse, and he took me, brought me to his house.
    And then Janka, and she had money.
    And she said, I want to get you false documents.
    There's another family attorney, Czerniakowskis,
    which were our friends, my mother's friends.
    And we'll get papers for you.
    You're outside of the ghetto now?
    I was already outside.
    At the Golombek's?
    That's outside--
    In that policeman's house, yeah.
    There were more people.
    There were like-- like a train station they're coming in,
    a bus station.
    What did you call it?
    A transit house you called it?
    Yeah.
    No, safehouse.
    Safehouse.
    But it was like a train station.
    Everybody was--
    Jews coming and going.
    There were so many Jews going in and out.
    All through--
    They were not afraid.
    All through Mr. Golombek's--
    That's right.
    --services.
    His whole family was involved in helping Jews.
    His wife-- her brother was the most incredible human being.
    He looked like a hoodlum, vicious-looking on the street.
    He helped me because he did look like a hoodlum,
    so whenever I had to go from one place to the other,
    he was walking with me, and they felt
    that he was sort of like a informer who
    was taking me somewhere.
    Oh, yeah.
    He died in the uprising, not in ghetto uprising, the Warsaw
    Uprising.
    And another brother was very involved, the whole family.
    It was the most amazing family, not for money.
    Why did they do it?
    Do you know?
    People did it for many reasons.
    Some were real Christians, so they were helping.
    The other ones felt that--
    called us the Christ-killers, so they were killing us.
    Some people were doing it for love.
    Like my brother was saved by the woman whom he married
    later, Catholic woman.
    She was in the underground.
    Some people did it for money, greed,
    a very powerful motivator, greed, money.
    So they were taking money.
    And some of them came through, saving them
    even when the money ran out, and some of them denounced them.
    There was not one reason, different races, just as
    many people.
    And Czerniakowskis were also a very funny family because they
    were Polish nobility.
    That man was a typical anti-Semite
    before the war, Polish officer.
    And yet-- he was with the AK, which was very anti-Semitic.
    That's the Polish army, Armia Krajowa, which
    were-- they were killing Jews.
    And yet he was an administrator in the apartment building,
    and that was very important because he
    was able to register me as one of the tenants.
    So my documents-- I became sort of--
    it was--
    Non-Jewish?
    No, no, non-Jewish of course.
    And Janka came, and she said, well,
    we have to get you a document now.
    We got, ein Blanko, a birth certificate from a priest,
    just plain, and Mr. Czerniakowski
    said we should get some names, somebody.
    Let's make up some story, some legend, somebody maybe close
    to the Russian border that they can't trace,
    nobody from Warsaw and so on.
    You should make it--
    it should make some sense.
    And I remember my friend, Irena, who I though
    died in that fire--
    and in that year and a half we were together,
    we became best friends.
    I knew everything about her.
    She knew everything about me.
    And I became her.
    And I was able to make up a story,
    everything, her parents' names, everything, was her persona.
    You used her name?
    Oh, yes.
    I used her name and everything.
    And that's-- since she was born near the Russian border, Lomza.
    So if they wouldn't trace to-- if they wouldn't
    look too closely, I was OK.
    If they would go to the church where she was baptized
    and check the papers, then I would be in trouble.
    But everything else made sense.
    I was registered in that building.
    Czerniakowskis where my cousins.
    Then I had to go and get a Kennkarte, like a--
    --ID.
    --ID with my own picture.
    So that was a very traumatic experience
    because if I'll go to a photographer,
    and he'll denounce me, right?
    So Leshka went with me.
    We played sort of like we're two students, cousins, and so on.
    And I didn't know that woman photographer was
    in the underground, so I was safe there.
    But she did not tell me--
    I didn't know many things, that they
    were in the underground Leshka and her father,
    the whole family.
    The less--
    Who was Leshka?
    Leshka was Czerniakowski's daughter.
    She was 19 years old.
    She was helping out.
    And later, she became my contact when I was in Germany.
    I was sending letters to her and building up my legend,
    completely different history, my fake life, became who I was.
    So I got my pictures.
    We went to the German manpower.
    I got my Kennkarte, my pass, buiro, and everything.
    So I had the documents, so fine.
    Everything was fine.
    My hair was bleached.
    My brother bleached my hair before I escaped.
    But unfortunately, many people have the same ideas,
    and it was a very cruel joke going around Warsaw.
    How do you recognize a Jew?
    Oh, they bleach their hair, and their papers--
    and their documents are perfect.
    I think-- and I had to pass as an Aryan,
    and that was a very tough thing to do.
    I knew religion very well.
    I wasn't circumcised.
    I knew the mentality and the customs of an average Pole.
    You probably knew how to swear in Polish by then.
    Not then yet, and I learned very fast.
    But that saved me.
    But my fear-- since--
    and yet they had an uncanny way of finding people.
    It became like a national sport to track down a Jew.
    A German would not recognize me.
    A Pole would, and they did.
    And they had those packs of hooligans and real scum,
    which were--
    their profession became denouncing Jews, bleeding them,
    taking everything away from them,
    and then giving them away for a bottle of vodka with some--
    I think the going rate was 100 zlotys.
    I'm not sure, to the authorities.
    So there were-- there were-- they had-- there were offers--
    Oh, yeah.
    That was very common.
    Were you aware of all this before you
    took on this identity?
    Of course I was.
    Of course I was.
    But my brother felt that I have a chance.
    In ghetto, I will not have a chance.
    The next round-up, and I'm finished.
    So at least try.
    And I was--
    You were just about outside of the law
    starting around July 1942 and were now--
    I escaped in August.
    And you escaped in August?
    In August.
    Out of the ghetto?
    Yeah.
    Golombek took me out in August.
    And--
    And now you've--
    Very-- my sister gave me a gold bracelet,
    she said, in case they'll follow you or something,
    just give it to them as a bribe.
    That was stupid because you have to brazen your way out,
    and I was so terrified.
    And I couldn't.
    So when they approached me-- they sort of surrounded me,
    called me a cat--
    they used to call Jews cats.
    In Polish?
    Stray cats, you know.
    In Polish?
    In Polish, kot, kocico.
    That was their nickname for escaped Jews.
    I threw the bracelet at them, which
    was really smart because there were three of them,
    so there were so busy grabbing that bracelet that I escaped.
    But I only had two safe homes, that Czerniakowskis,
    which was across the river, and Golombek was not far
    from the ghetto.
    And just to go from one place to the other--
    it was like a trip to the moon.
    So you couldn't stay there, really.
    No.
    I couldn't-- they would never turn me away.
    When I had really no place where to go, I would show up,
    and they would take me in.
    And they would let me--
    give me some food, or some money,
    or give me some hot meal, let me wash.
    And again, but I just couldn't--
    I couldn't put them all on jeopardy.
    And your sister?
    My sister, yes, at some times I was
    saying with-- she was living with a woman in a very--
    in a slum area.
    She became a smuggler.
    And she was living with a woman who was doing
    the laundry, an old woman.
    She blend in.
    And then once I was in the safehouse,
    somebody denounced me, and police came.
    A Polish policeman came and took me to the police station.
    I had my documents, but I got a severe beating.
    So I forgot when I was born, and I really told them
    that I was born October 23.
    And on my documents I was born in July.
    It didn't take them long to get it out of me.
    Now, Janka followed me at that time.
    She was there when they arrested me, so she ran to my sister.
    And my sister wasn't too far, or she was leaving that.
    She went to the police station.
    She talked to the police, and she bribed them.
    She said, yes, she's Jewish, but I know the family.
    I used to clean their homes there.
    I used to work for them, and they were good people.
    They helped me, and so on, made a whole story.
    And she made a deal with him, 15,000 zloty.
    It was a lot of money.
    And she only had 8,000 or 9,000 on her.
    She gave him that money and promised
    that if they will let me out, she'll give him back the rest
    tomorrow.
    And she did, and they let me out.
    Of course I couldn't go back there.
    But she told him that one day we'll
    finish you, the underground will finish you, which they did.
    Eventually, he was killed, but not
    because of me, because that was a racket going there.
    They never wanted to take me to Gestapo.
    They just wanted to get money, as much as they could.
    Maybe if they wouldn't they would, probably.
    But as long as there was a chance
    that somebody would pay them off,
    I was safe in the police station.
    Germans were not involved yet.
    And then sometimes-- and Janka became my--
    and since I was so traumatized, I just wanted to go back.
    But Janka said-- you want me to stop now?
    Mm-mm.
    And Janka-- it was like-- became a full-time occupation
    for your Janka just to take care of me,
    go to friends and relatives and pay them
    just they should keep me for a few days, and beg them,
    please keep her for a day or two.
    And if they-- she couldn't find any place,
    so I was crisscrossing Warsaw.
    And when she couldn't find a place,
    she would just take me to a station,
    and we would sleep there, waiting for the train sort of.
    Or we would sleep in fields or in doorways.
    I could not stay with her sister and her brother-in-law.
    Her brother-in-law was an absolute beast.
    He was Always drunk, and he was always
    threatening to kill me if she wouldn't get that bloody Jewess
    out of there.
    So we would pay him with vodka.
    And he was a bricklayer and also some janitor in that--
    she was living in the slums of Warsaw.
    And there was like a tool shed in the back of their house.
    So he would go away, and they would lock me
    up in that shed, close me from outside.
    So they had the keys, so he didn't know I was there.
    How long would you be locked up for?
    Nobody should know that they--
    [CROSS TALK]
    For a whole day or at night, whatever.
    And when the coast was clear, they would let me out.
    How were you feeling through this crisscrossing,
    going back and forth, not having a place?
    Did you feel at any point like, I'd rather die, I can't--
    I don't want to do this--
    That, yes.
    What was going on inside you?
    Yes, yes.
    When I felt that I won't survive and my sister will
    be killed because of me--
    and then I said, I'm going back to ghetto.
    But they said, no, you have to try.
    You have to try.
    Janka said, no, you try.
    We'll make it.
    Because if you die, Alek will die, and Hanka.
    It's sort of like--
    I don't know why I had the idea that if one of us dies,
    we all will go, sort of like we were like together,
    like symbiosis.
    I don't know.
    Just that feeling that if I'll give in, they all go.
    And I have to--
    but of course, by that time, I was completely--
    I had no other feelings except fear
    and will to survive, just to--
    another day, and another day.
    It was a question of--
    you lived from hour to hour, never mind from day.
    Was that cycle broken at some point?
    Did you get out of there?
    From where?
    From Warsaw?
    Janka decided that maybe I'll be safer in the country.
    I was afraid to go to the country
    because at least when you're in a big city you can run,
    you can hide.
    I was terrified.
    But they felt that I'll never survive,
    and money was running out.
    And Janka went with me, and we were
    sort of going from farm to farm, looking
    for a job and everything.
    And there was a little hamlet between Radzymin
    and [NON-ENGLISH],, also on the way--
    everything was on the way to Treblinka, that direction.
    And I looked, I guess, strong.
    By the time, I spoke like a slum kid.
    every second word was like a swear word.
    I became so completely--
    well, a streetwise kid.
    Being with Janka all the time and with all those animals,
    with that slum, I learned fast.
    And Janka trained me.
    She said, if you be delicate, you'll never survive.
    You have to be a tough kid, and swear like the rest of us,
    and that's it.
    Did you get into it for real?
    Oh, yes, very well, very much so, very much so, very much so,
    yeah.
    And they gave me a job.
    I was working on that farm.
    That peasant was the most brutal, ignorant man,
    very religious, who had to pray before meals after meals
    before I went to bed but then I had to go to church on Sunday
    because they were going.
    Well, the first week, I said, I didn't
    feed the pigs yet, or this and that,
    but then I knew that if I won't go there'll be trouble.
    And I went to church with them, and maybe somebody spotted me.
    Were you afraid that if you went to church--
    there's too many people together.
    Too many people.
    You might be recognized.
    Who are you?
    And I pretend that my parents were killed in the war,
    and I'm just an orphan from Warsaw,
    and I don't want the Germans should take me
    to forced labor to Germany because by that time,
    there were rounding up Gentiles, taking them to work,
    forced labor.
    So I made up a story.
    And, well, I prayed with the rest of them,
    and I went to confession.
    Were you harassed during confession at all?
    Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
    I just made up a story, and it was fine.
    The priest was OK.
    He never asked you, where did you come from, or--
    I told him, from Warsaw.
    I didn't tell him the real thing.
    I made up a story.
    My father was a prisoner of war.
    He was a-- maybe he's killed.
    And I had to step mother, real sob story.
    And already I sounded like a real tough kid from Warsaw.
    So he bought it.
    I don't think he would denounce me anyway.
    I don't think you would.
    I didn't realize that there were already partisan bands
    around that time, around that--
    --area.
    --place.
    And I-- there were people coming in sometimes
    with those peasants, especially--
    there was one young man from Warsaw, I think.
    He was always hanging around that farm,
    and I was afraid of him.
    And I slept in the barn, and I don't
    know if somebody denounced me or if he just smelled a Jew.
    He raped me.
    It happened many times.
    I had no place where to run.
    And maybe a week or two later, a forester came.
    He was a volksdeutsche, an ethnic German,
    and he said, well, I came to take-- my name
    by the time was Krystyna.
    I went by my middle name.
    Irena Krystyna were my documents,
    but by the name Krystyna, Krysia.
    I came to take her because somebody
    said that she's Jewish.
    And my peasant-- and that farmer said, no way.
    I would kill her myself with a pitchfork.
    We've been praying together.
    She's going to confession.
    She's not a Jew.
    I would-- And he said, well, I don't think she is,
    but I have to pick up some other Jews.
    We got some other Jews around here,
    and I have to bring her to the station.
    And that young hoodlum, he said, I'm going, too.
    And we were in the forest, going toward the station, police
    station, and there were a few other Jews.
    I'm sure they were Jews.
    And apparently, he was also involved with the partisans,
    and that guy was a good friend of his, that forester.
    And became sort of like-- all of a sudden--
    I still don't remember how it happened
    because it happened so fast--
    there was a struggle.
    And he said to me, just beat it.
    You're on your own.
    Scram.
    He saved my life.
    And I didn't feel at that time.
    I felt wet.
    And of course he knifed me, that forester.
    I still have that big scar here.
    Who said "beat it"?
    The young man?
    The young man.
    Get out of here?
    Yeah, just on your own, scram.
    Beat it.
    We have to change tapes.
    What?
    And--
    I'd like to change the tape.
    Want me to stop?
    Maybe I should--
    We just have to change the tape.
    Sure.
    We were-- you were staying at the farm
    under the name of Christina, Aryan papers, so to speak.
    Yes.
    Polish, non-Jewish ID.
    Yes.
    You're taken out by the forester.
    Yeah.
    Your hoodlum friends comes with you.
    Yeah.
    There were a lot of Jews on the same cart.
    The peasant which brought us there--
    we were sitting on a cart.
    And it's on that cart that all of you are being transported.
    Yeah, to the police station in Radzymin or Wolomin,
    between one or--
    Which would be what, a few kilometers away?
    it was like two stations.
    Radzymin was closer to Warsaw.
    Wolomin was a bit further, but it was between one station.
    The other was a difference about 10 kilometers.
    So you had to go a number of kilometers,
    and in the middle of that, you're in a forest now?
    Yeah.
    You're passing on the cart through a forest on your way
    to the police station.
    Yes.
    That was already--
    And there's a struggle, you said?
    Yeah.
    Even at that point, you thought, this is it,
    it's finished, right?
    Oh, yes.
    I mean like definitely.
    We're resigned already.
    Why does the forester attack you with the knife?
    He didn't.
    There was a-- there was a--
    A struggle.
    --a struggle because the other was-- probably they
    were trying to maybe overpower him
    because he was the only one.
    There were so full of themself.
    They thought that Jews don't fight.
    They just won't resist.
    I don't know where the other Jews were from.
    Maybe they were hiding, and maybe they
    were just as desperate and decided, that-- finished.
    So who attacked the forester?
    The other people which were also the Jews which were with me.
    They attacked the forester?
    Yeah.
    And he just pulled out a knife, and that's what happened.
    And your friends said to you, run for it.
    Run for it, yeah.
    I didn't even feel that he jabbed me in the neck.
    Was it a serious wound or--
    Yes.
    Well, another inch-- it was a very ugly scar for many years.
    I have a whole wardrobe of scarves and a necklace,
    but I guess now it's so many years.
    But I still have on my passport a scar on the neck.
    It was--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    And it wouldn't be, but there was no penicillin or anything.
    And I just-- it was winter, and I had my coat and a shawl.
    So later, I realized it was blood.
    I was running through the forest,
    and I just pulled tightly a scarf around my neck.
    Which was probably your-- saved you because it's--
    Yeah, but I mean, it infected.
    But the wound became infected.
    At least you didn't bleed from--
    And I knew that I cannot go to the station because they'll be
    alerted, so I walked away from the station in a different
    direction, I figure out.
    They'll probably think I'm running to Warsaw, a big city.
    And I got there in the morning, and the first train came in.
    And it was winter, and I just put my coat around.
    And I got into Warsaw.
    And everybody was half-frozen, and I got into Warsaw.
    You took a train into Warsaw?
    Yeah, took a train.
    Did you have money on you?
    No, no.
    No, just took the train.
    No, I just decided, if something--
    I'll jump off or whatever.
    I just-- I didn't think at that time what will happen.
    I just--
    You got into Warsaw's main station.
    Yeah, got into Warsaw, and I made my way
    to my sister's house, where I knew she was.
    And so when I found out that Janka was already dead--
    you see, Janka went with my sister
    to a place called Ludzsk.
    No, not Ludzsk, Lukow, Sorry, Lukow, to a ghetto to save--
    where I had some cousins there and they had a child.
    Because my sister became a courier to the ghetto.
    She was taking out kids, her and Janka.
    She wasn't just smuggling food?
    Oh, no.
    She later became a courier, became a courier.
    I didn't know about it.
    And they kept it from me in case they would torture me
    or something.
    The less I know, the safer it's for all of them.
    So I didn't know those things.
    But she later told me that she went with Janka to Lukow.
    She was outside the ghetto, and Janka came to get the child.
    And she was shot together with the child,
    so she died there in the ghetto.
    So we lost Janka.
    And I said, I'm going back.
    To the ghetto?
    I'm going back to ghetto.
    And we're now--
    And I went back to ghetto.
    We're now about--
    I said, I just want to die there, and that's it.
    What about your sister?
    I gave up.
    What's that?
    Your sister?
    No, my sister stayed there.
    She said, I have to support Alek and support you.
    I'll stay out and maybe somehow--
    and I went back.
    Went back in.
    It was easy to go back because you joined a group of people
    which were going back.
    They didn't count how many came back.
    They were just--
    I went back.
    And you said you figured, if you're going to die,
    you want to die in the ghetto?
    Is that--
    That's right.
    I have no place where to go, and I just--
    I had no place where to go.
    You were tired of running and hiding.
    I couldn't run anymore.
    And now we're like, what, December, January?
    The stress was too much.
    December.
    It was December.
    '42 still?
    Yeah.
    I went to ghetto.
    I found my brother.
    My brother was already--
    there were no private homes.
    They were sort of like in a group--
    in a apartment.
    They were working.
    My brother was working.
    It was a shop.
    It was [NON-ENGLISH] shop.
    They were making uniforms for the Germans, knapsacks,
    I believe, and uniforms.
    I still remember that address, Nowolipki 74.
    I still remember.
    And they were sort of like in--
    like special quarters for those people which had right.
    They were just getting their food.
    They had-- they were just slaves, slaves,
    and they had no private homes or anything.
    But of course, there were so many empty apartments
    in the ghetto.
    People were taken out, taken away.
    So I became another one of the--
    Slave laborers.
    No, no, no, no.
    No, the wild kids which are roaming the ghetto which--
    Again.
    --had-- hiding in ruins and scavenging.
    Again.
    Yeah.
    And my brother knew where I was, mostly in empty apartments
    where they already cleaned them out and everything.
    And he would bring me some food.
    There were more kids like me, young people like me, hiding.
    By that time, they already had bunkers.
    They were building bunkers preparing for the resistance.
    And I was there.
    In January, my wound healed.
    On January the 18th, that was the first skirmish
    in the ghetto and first resistance.
    I didn't know that my brother was in the underground.
    He never opened his mouth.
    But he only said, you're getting out again.
    Now you're healed.
    You're going out.
    I said, no, no.
    And he said, you are like a stone around my neck.
    I'll die because of you, practically brutally threw me
    out.
    And he said, somebody is coming to get you.
    And I said--
    I was struggling with him.
    I said, I'm not going.
    And he practically pushed me.
    And there were a group of people going through sewers, and he--
    so I went to the sewers.
    Did you think you would see him again?
    No, not at all, no, no.
    So I went through the sewers.
    It was horrible, just horrible.
    Can you describe it at all?
    Well, I had some money.
    I remember he cut from a tablecloth somewhere--
    at that time, there were so many people
    taken away, so they were easy to find money, some--
    at that time, money was no problem already.
    He gave me a lot of money.
    And he, from a tablecloth-- it's like a oilcloth.
    They had no plastic at that time,
    so that oilcloth on my neck.
    They made like a pouch for me because in the sewer everything
    would be wet, money.
    And so I had my documents.
    And so it was slimy.
    The water was practically to my chest.
    It was dark.
    There were rats.
    There were floating bodies.
    How many people in the group were going?
    Oh I don't remember.
    There were maybe 10, 12.
    And there was a man who--
    he looked very Aryan.
    He must have been Jewish.
    I don't know.
    But he looked like somebody who goes back and forth.
    He was the leader.
    He was taking us out.
    And then at one point we had to wait, and they took us out.
    They practically-- it was very hard to stay--
    keep your balance because everything--
    the walls and everything was full of slime, and feces,
    and everything.
    And then there is sort of like a iron ladder going up,
    and somebody open up the cover from that manhole.
    And that was Mr. Golombek's brother-in-law, Janek.
    I mean, apparently it was already
    arranged that I'll get out through that place.
    I remember that I got into Muranowski Square,
    and I don't remember where I got out.
    By that time, I just--
    When you came up above the ground,
    you didn't know where you were.
    I was half-dead in slime and everything.
    And they took me to their house, and they washed me up.
    How long did that take, that whole--
    We must've been there the whole night.
    We got out in the--
    it was dark.
    It was like dawn when we got out.
    It was dawn, you know.
    It was dawn.
    You came up somewhere in the middle
    of a street, or sidewalk, or--
    Yeah, but it was a very long road because it was not
    in the middle of Warsaw.
    It was a little bit further.
    It was close to some factories or airport.
    I don't know.
    But it was not downtown Warsaw, no, no.
    They probably took some labyrinth route
    where they felt it would be secure.
    But I know that there were people waiting there,
    and I got out.
    And I went again to Golombek's house.
    And again Leshka came, took me for a few days.
    And then my sister took care of me.
    I stayed with her.
    She said, whatever happens, we'll be together.
    So she told that woman, that old woman,
    that I have a cousin from the country
    and I'm hiding because they were taking kids
    to work, Polish kids to work.
    But at the time, I was tough.
    I spoke like a real sewer kid, like from a sewer.
    Every second word "fuck," and "shit," and everything else.
    So that was not suspicious that I didn't go out
    because she felt like, a young kid,
    and they'll take her to work.
    So she's staying indoor.
    By then, I was helping her doing the laundry,
    so I earned my keep.
    And then April uprising, April 19.
    It was Passover.
    I was there.
    Did you hear about it?
    Everybody knew about it.
    It was like-- people were coming like to a circus,
    looking when the Jews were burning.
    It was like entertainment.
    We're entertainment for the Poles.
    You mean when they set fire to the Warsaw Ghetto?
    Well, no, it started April 19.
    Hitler's birthday was April the 20th.
    I guess maybe they wanted to give him a Judenrein Warsaw.
    And that was--
    I just-- my sister said, Alek will die there.
    I mean, he's involved.
    I never thought I would see him alive.
    So at that point, you found out more about your brother.
    Yes.
    She told me later that he was involved.
    She said, if by some miracle he survived, he knows where to go.
    We have a contact in underground,
    and if he survived, he knows where to go.
    But I wouldn't even think about it.
    And I was drawn to it.
    I was going there like everybody else.
    It was Easter Sunday.
    People were coming from church and standing there, watching.
    People burned alive.
    And we were not completely near the ghetto.
    I wasn't anything special.
    I was standing there because everybody else was there
    around, kids and adults.
    And some people were praying, and some were jeering.
    I was just numb.
    Do you remember any of the things
    people were saying around you?
    Of course I remember.
    Of course I remember.
    One man said that they're stinking up
    the city, polluting, because he got smoke in his eyes.
    And for a minute I saw some humanity.
    I saw tears, and I thought he was--
    that he was crying.
    But I realized--
    He wasn't crying--
    No, he wasn't crying.
    --for the Jews.
    No.
    There were-- there was an old woman crying.
    Yes, she was crying and praying, crossing herself, crying
    desperately on her knees.
    She didn't care what anybody-- and she said,
    today, then tomorrow ask.
    Were there are many more like that?
    I didn't see it.
    I saw one.
    I zeroed on her.
    I just looked at her.
    Others were taken--
    Well--
    Was there compassion for the Jews
    is what I'm asking since you were in a very--
    Admiration.
    Hey, wow, they are fighting back.
    But nobody lift a finger to help.
    Maybe a few people did.
    Sure, wow, look at them.
    Wow, wow.
    That's-- I'm sure there were some Poles involved,
    but of course, the manhunt became even more intense
    because more people were trying to escape.
    So it was absolutely impossible to be in Warsaw.
    And beginning of May, while I was standing
    there every day-- and each time I saw somebody burning,
    and they were shooting just at them.
    The Germans were.
    And the Poles were counting.
    So they weren't all that sympathetic to the Jews.
    Well, people helped me to survive.
    I remember Czerniakowski's family.
    I remember Golombeks.
    I remember Janka.
    So there's nothing much you can say about that.
    No.
    That's right.
    And all of a sudden, I heard--
    and I had an address, Leshka's address.
    I knew if something happens-- my sister said,
    whatever something--
    get in touch with Leshka, whatever.
    Golombek's daughter?
    No.
    Czerniakowski's daughter.
    Czerniakowski's daughter.
    Yeah.
    And while I was standing there watching, all of a sudden,
    I heard somebody say, run away.
    They rounding up people.
    They catching people to work.
    And I made a split-second decision.
    I said, where are they?
    He said, run that way because they're here.
    And so I run there, they should catch me.
    I realize that now I have a chance to get out of Warsaw.
    If they'll catch me as a Pole, I have a chance to survive.
    So I let them catch me to work.
    And they put me on a truck like a Pole to work to Germany,
    and I don't know what happened to me.
    I just decided, maybe for my brother's sake,
    I just have to survive and tell what happened.
    And I got a will to live that time.
    That was the first time I decided, I'm going to survive.
    I have to.
    I just have to survive.
    And I have to free my sister because otherwise we both die.
    And my sister was talking about committing suicide
    if Alek-- if she'll find out that Alek is dead.
    And they took us to a transit place on Skaryszewska Street,
    where they were taking out the Poles.
    We were there a few days, and even there they
    caught some Jews and denounced them.
    And one slut zeroed on me.
    She said, I think she's a Jew, she's a Jewess--
    she said that-- Jewish.
    And at that time--
    I don't know.
    Just all my hate and everything what I went through,
    I just started to call her every filthy name in the book,
    and I beat the shit out of her.
    Don't you call me a fucking Jew.
    You're probably a Jew yourself.
    Oh, yes.
    I said, if--
    I turned the tables on her.
    I said, if I'll go, at least one of them will go with me.
    And I started yell.
    She's a bloody Jew, that one.
    I turned the tables.
    Now she had to--
    yeah.
    Oh, don't forget.
    I had a good training, being in those slums
    with all those animals, and I knew how to behave already,
    how to become one of them.
    And I became even more vicious than--
    I learned from them.
    And she had a tough time to defend herself and prove
    that she wasn't, and my reputation
    followed me to Germany.
    They said, don't start up with that bitch.
    She's a tough slut from Warsaw.
    That was me.
    That reputation followed me, which
    was good because there were 2,000 Poles together with me.
    We went to Mannheim.
    We went to Mannheim.
    It was a long train ride.
    Into the lion's den in a way.
    Yes.
    I remember my father used to say that the safest
    place in the lion's den.
    I don't.
    Just something triggered in me.
    Because, you see, I realized that the Germans would never
    recognize me.
    So I said, if I get out of there,
    maybe I'll work somewhere on a farm.
    They would be not--
    I knew through all that misery I was never
    recognized by a German.
    To them, a Jew was only somebody who was obviously
    a Jew by a mannerism, by anything,
    or somebody who they would point out to you as a Jew.
    But to Poles, I was a Jew no matter what my mannerism was.
    And the worst thing was, when I was passing,
    not to react when they were talking about atrocities which
    they witnessed, or they were happy about it, just
    telling like stories.
    That was the worst thing.
    What kind of things would you hear?
    Horrible things.
    In Mannheim?
    No, no.
    I'm talking Warsaw, when I was pretending
    I was a Pole, horrible things.
    I just can't even repeat it.
    The worst, I think--
    the closest I came to break down--
    to breaking down was--
    I never told that story to anyone.
    And there were women, professional smugglers,
    sitting on a train, and they were experts
    in catching Jews because that would turn away
    the attention from them, that they were smuggling.
    So they were pointing out, there's a Jew there hiding.
    So they could smuggle easier.
    And there were those witches sitting there, and one of them
    said, oh, shit, a fucking Jew screw me.
    And the other one said, how did he do it?
    Well, I bought a corpse, and there was nothing on it,
    not even a gold tooth, absolutely nothing.
    Apparently, they were scavenging and buying corpses,
    hoping that they'll find some hidden jewelry
    or something on them.
    It was nothing, just lice.
    And the other witch said--
    started to laugh, said, well, why don't you
    get a young woman?
    You know where they hide their gold.
    I didn't react.
    Just didn't react.
    I guess that was the closest I think I ever came.
    So when I went to Germany, my reputation
    as a tough cookie from Warsaw followed me,
    and there were 2,000 Poles there.
    And they took us to Mannheim, Daimler-Benz.
    Mercedes-Benz was the owner.
    There was a big--
    that's why maybe I never will get into Mercedes even now.
    And we're working there, but as soon as we got off the train--
    don't forget.
    I was a Pole.
    I was Polish at that time.
    Some people came, and they were picking certain workers.
    I don't know.
    They bribed the manpower people and so on.
    And they picked me.
    It was a fat, big butcher, a real typical German, heavy-set,
    a real--
    was a butcher in the outskirts of Mannheim,
    and he took me to work.
    I don't know.
    He probably gave me some salamis or something.
    And so I wasn't working in that factory.
    It was beautiful because they took me--
    he took me to his house.
    I didn't know where they're taking me,
    but it was outskirts of Mannheim,
    beautiful little home.
    He had his meat shop there, and in the back,
    he had a Schlachthaus, a slaughterhouse.
    And I was a cleaning lady there.
    They gave me food.
    Treat you respectfully?
    Well, what do you call respectfully?
    I wasn't eating together with them.
    They would ration their food, but it was enough.
    They wanted I should be strong and healthy,
    so they gave me enough food to eat.
    And I was cleaning there and working, cleaning the house
    and then helping in the slaughterhouse when
    they were killing the pigs.
    You had to mix the blood and so on,
    help them to make the salamis.
    And I worked there for maybe two months.
    But I became friendly with some kids from Warsaw,
    and there was one boy who had tuberculosis.
    They caught him there.
    So some of my friends said, look, you have so much food,
    why don't you bring some to us?
    So I risked my neck because I was stealing food,
    but I had to--
    I had to establish myself with a group of my peers.
    And they caught me.
    But I just had a slice of bread with some salami in my bag
    when I had my day off.
    And they took me back to manpower, to Mannheim.
    They fired you, as it were.
    Well, sort of, yeah.
    Yeah.
    But my reputation was already established,
    so I'm one of them.
    And they took me to work, and I already
    was able to write a letter to my-- to Leshka
    where I am, that I'm alive.
    And I got a letter that my brother is alive,
    that he escaped from ghetto and he's in hiding.
    My sister wouldn't tell me where, but he's safe.
    Alek escaped.
    I found out in Germany that Alek was alive.
    And I went to work to a factory where
    they were making cleansing powder, like Ajax or Comet.
    It was a very tough job, but the conditions were good.
    The women which were running the factory-- it
    used to be a German Jewish factory before.
    The owners went to England, and those two women
    which were managing before became sort of like a--
    sort of in charge, in trust.
    They became trustees of that factory, very decent,
    beautiful German women, absolutely the best, especially
    one of them, Paula Duplesse.
    And they were treating us like human beings.
    I don't know what they would do with me if they knew
    I was Jewish, probably nothing.
    They were very decent.
    We were living in barracks.
    There were about seven or eight of us,
    all tough women from Warsaw.
    And I worked very hard.
    It was a very tough job.
    I had to unload sacks of soda and lime, whatever
    they use for mix, those chemical compounds
    to mix to make those--
    --cleansing power.
    Yeah, cleansing powder.
    We were right on the River Rhine in the industrial part,
    right on the-- and there were like--
    the boats were coming, from Holland some of them,
    and we were unloading from the train.
    They were like a--
    The flat boats.
    Flat boats, and they we were unloading--
    I think it's called a piggy bank, or something, the back--
    straight to the factory.
    We're unloading sacks with soda.
    It's very hard.
    I don't know, maybe 50 pounds or something.
    So I had to-- we had to unload from the train,
    bring it to the factory on a little cart.
    And then I was mixing--
    it was like a big stove, huge, probably
    the size of the platform with steps,
    and I had to go up the steps, put this soda in, mix it
    with some liquid soap, and with some ammoniac--
    and then put a coal--
    not coal, put the wood in it and mix it.
    That whole thing had to cook.
    And meanwhile-- yeah.
    And after it cooled off, we had to--
    I had to unload it and bring it barrels
    to another part of the factory, and there we--
    we were making-- sort of closing them
    in those little containers.
    My eyebrows, my eyelashes-- everything was gone
    because there was so much--
    Ammonia.
    --ammonia and everything there.
    So they were giving me, as a matter of fact, a glass of milk
    a day just to keep me going, and I was wearing sort of
    like a jumpsuit.
    It was all burnt from the ammoniac and everything,
    and I was wearing a little mask.
    And they were giving us food.
    And you were not afraid of being found out a Jew anymore?
    Oh, by that time, I was the toughest one of them all.
    They were afraid of me.
    But of course I could never relax.
    And then I had to-- but of course--
    I mean I wasn't afraid-- of course I was afraid.
    I never could relax for a second because they would betray me.
    There was no question about it.
    And then I got a letter from my sister
    that she's trying to make her way into Mannheim.
    Now, what she did-- she volunteered to work,
    and if you volunteered in war that you
    have some friends, so they would let you go to the city
    you wanted.
    And she said, I want to go to Mannheim.
    She came to Mannheim, and she was
    working in a restaurant as a dishwasher,
    was washing the dishes.
    So we sort of became friends there like I met her,
    and nobody knew we even knew each other.
    We had different names because--
    in case one of us, at least, should survive.
    And she was working there.
    She was giving me some leftovers, food,
    and everything.
    And then Mannheim became one of the most
    destroyed cities in Germany because we had another danger.
    The Americans were bombing during the day,
    they English at night, or vise versa.
    We're now after Normandy.
    We're like after-- we're into '44 already?
    No, no, no.
    That was in '43, '43.
    Oh, yeah.
    '43, there were bombing.
    Mannheim started to--
    I think they destroyed about 85% of Mannheim.
    It started around the time I came.
    A few weeks later, they started to bomb.
    We're still in '43.
    '43.
    And my sister came, and in one of those bombings
    the place where she was collapsed,
    and she was buried alive.
    After they-- when there was all cleared, I ran there,
    and we knew that the whole downtown--
    I was in the industrial park.
    She was downtown in that restaurant.
    And we got her alive, a few other people.
    You got her out.
    We got her out.
    They were buried alive, but in a bunker.
    There was-- nothing happened to her.
    It's just that they were under all that ruins.
    So I went to my boss that thinks,
    and I said, I have a good friend.
    She works in a restaurant.
    She lost her job.
    She said, sure, we need people to work.
    So as a matter of fact, she went herself to that manpower
    and gave them some soap, or whatever to get some workers.
    And she had the name, and I got my sister.
    And she was with me together.
    We stayed--
    How long did she stay there?
    Until the end.
    At that same factory?
    Yeah.
    That same--
    Oh, yeah, next-- we slept next to each other,
    and again she saved my life.
    Nobody knew-- we sort of became friends there, not too close,
    not too close.
    How did she save your life?
    I was a very tough kid during the day,
    but nights were very bad, and apparently--
    she told me that I'm mumbling and talking at night,
    and that could have been a giveaway.
    So she sort of started to yell at me,
    pretend, what's the matter with you?
    Shut your mouth.
    You're mumbling and talking at night.
    You don't let people sleep.
    Why don't you just put some--
    over your mouth or something, let us sleep, which I did.
    Or she kept herself awake, and she would just kick me,
    wake me up.
    And I developed insomnia since then because of that--
    it was like a defense mechanism, I suppose.
    You couldn't allow yourself to relax enough to--
    To relax and sleep because that was a giveaway.
    So she watched me all the time sort of like--
    so sometimes I would just fall asleep in the factory.
    She would cover for me so I could--
    And you worked in that factory all the way until liberation?
    Until the liberation together with my sister.
    Yeah.
    And I relaxed only--
    Oh, yes, and of course, I had to build some relationship that I
    have some family in Poland.
    You couldn't just be--
    people were getting letters and everything.
    So I wrote a letter to Leshka.
    She understood.
    She was very bright.
    And I said, look--
    and we had a name for my brother, Marion.
    Sort of it was like a code name.
    Well, Marion doesn't love me anymore.
    He doesn't write to me.
    He forgot me.
    And I made up a story that I have a fiancee.
    Once you have a fiancee, then they would leave you alone.
    You know what I mean.
    Everybody else was fooling around, but they were--
    Poles were very romantic.
    I could have been a tough bitch, but since I had a fiancee,
    they would respect my behavior because I
    drank with the best of them and everything.
    And so my brother would write me love letters, just
    beautiful love letters.
    And it actually-- so the family was reunited--
    In a way, yes.
    --that way.
    And the postal system worked perfectly also during the war?
    Yes.
    He was-- my sister was in touch with a woman who
    was in the underground who also worked
    for a German, Arbeitsamt.
    He spoke German.
    And when my brother escaped from ghetto, he killed a German.
    He escaped one of the--
    I think six weeks after the ghetto uprising collapsed--
    I wasn't there.
    I wasn't--
    He was hiding in a pile excrement,
    and the German didn't want to dirty his boots.
    In a pile of what?
    Feces and shit.
    And when he ran out, he was covered with the whole thing.
    And people would just run away from him.
    And he got into that safe house, and that lady said--
    my sister paid her before, and she agreed
    to keep him for a few days.
    She wasn't doing it for money.
    But she was very poor, and she was helping her own family
    with that money.
    So it wasn't like she was doing it for money, really.
    And she fell in love with my brother,
    and she decided to keep him.
    And my brother stayed with her.
    He married her.
    That's my sister-in-law.
    She's dead now.
    And in Poland, they had-- in apartments,
    they had sort of like big coal stoves.
    So my brother made like an empty--
    sort of made a big hole, and he would climb through the top.
    There was like a metal plate.
    So in case-- she would go to work,
    and he couldn't even move during the day.
    That's really--
    In case something-- but nothing happened.
    But then she got pregnant, so they
    had to establish another relationship, that she married
    and her husband is somewhere, works somewhere else
    and comes home for the weekend.
    And during the day, while she was away,
    he was like hiding in--
    Hiding, and in the evening and only for the weekend
    he would come home, for the weekend.
    And you stayed till the very end of the war in Mannheim?
    I had a close call in '44.
    I think we're-- what we're going to do,
    since we have to have a break now,
    is we're going to leave it there,
    and we'll pick that up the next time with the close call
    in Mannheim, and then up to the end of the war,
    and take it from there on till your eventual--
    to the liberation.
    Today?
    No, not today.
    No, no.
    The next time, until the liberation,
    and then from the liberation, about how you--
    by what year you got finally to Canada?
    December '48.
    December '48.
    So we'll leave it here for now.
    Is there anything you want to say?
    OK.
    Good.
    Thank you very much.
    Thank you very much.
    Is that right?
    --30.
    So can you tell me about the close call
    that happened to you in 1944?
    Yeah.
    I lost contact with my brother.
    That was after the Polish uprising in Warsaw,
    the general uprising.
    I didn't know he was alive, what happened to him.
    But I knew-- the news of German military disasters were coming
    through, so I knew that the city where I was supposed to be
    born--
    I mean on my false documents-- were already in Russian hands.
    So I felt more relaxed, that whatever happens--
    they won't be able to trace my documents.
    And one day, someone came from the Gestapo,
    and they called Krystyna Podbielska, you come with me.
    And they brought an interpreter.
    But they were very polite to me, so I didn't panic.
    I said, well, maybe just coincidence, maybe something
    wrong.
    But nobody said the word "Jude" like Jew,
    so I just said, I have to keep calm and find out what happens.
    I came to their office, and they were very polite to me.
    There were a few people there.
    And they started to ask me everything
    about my background, my father's name, my mother's
    name, my grandparents, everything
    in a very nice, fatherly way.
    So I sort of--
    I said, through the interpreter--
    I pretended I understand more than I did.
    And all of a sudden, one of them came with a measuring tape
    and started to measure my profile,
    went from here to here, from here to here.
    I mean, fiction cannot compete with life.
    It's still insane, the whole situation.
    And I heard them saying that, yeah, she
    has a very intelligent look about her, and so on.
    Never the word "Jew" came.
    And then one of them asked me, are you Polish?
    I said, yes, I'm very Polish, very, very Polish.
    And they said, you sure you don't have German blood?
    I said, no.
    Well, how can you be so sure?
    And I came up with a--
    I don't know what happened.
    I said, because my grandmother's name was Szmit,
    and she was Polish.
    And one of them said, oh, [SPEAKING GERMAN],,
    and [SPEAKING GERMAN] means sort of like,
    in a loose translation, that's it, that's exactly.
    See?
    Now we found the reason.
    And since it was my mother's favorite saying,
    I knew what it meant.
    And they let me go.
    I could never figure out what happened.
    Then, about 35 years later, when I
    found my friend, Irena Podbielska,
    the real Podbielska--
    and I told her that story, and she said, as a matter of fact,
    in Berlin, there is a metro station called [NON-ENGLISH],,
    and there is a square called [NON-ENGLISH]..
    And it could have been that--
    and so they wanted to know who that Podbielska was.
    Apparently, he was a minister in Bismarck government,
    so it had to be some German nobility.
    And apparently, one of those people in the Gestapo
    probably came across her name Krystyna Podbielska.
    He ran up Krystyna Podbielska.
    Maybe he-- maybe he was related, or maybe he
    used to live in Berlin or in that neighborhood.
    And they decided to find out if maybe I'm one of the lost ones
    from [NON-ENGLISH] family.
    That's the only explanation.
    I still don't have any--
    but the funny thing was when they
    were measuring my forehead and my profile
    and trying to figure out that I'm
    too intelligent-looking for a Pole,
    that I have to have some German blood.
    Of course, again my reputation was spoiled
    because when I came back--
    so they said, she's not Polish.
    She has German blood.
    Rumors got around.
    So I felt even more secure because as long
    as they could not prove where I was born--
    Russians were there.
    I knew that I-- by that time, I knew every nuance
    about religion, about Polish mentality,
    and unless they would torture me,
    they would not be able to find out who I really was.
    And of course my worries were about my brother,
    what happened.
    Did he survive the Warsaw Uprising?
    We knew that there was a wholesale slaughtering
    in Warsaw.
    Warsaw did not exist.
    And he could have been caught with his wife and the child.
    And then, all of a sudden, I got a letter
    from a German male nurse from the field lazarette,
    Fraulein Krystyna, telling me that my relatives are well.
    They survived Warsaw, and they are
    in a transit camp near Warsaw.
    It was a human being.
    And so I knew that my brother survived Warsaw.
    How were you able to get mail then?
    Was it opened or--
    Well, I was not Jewish.
    I was Polish, and we had some contacts.
    I mean, we were not marked for the final solution,
    so there were certain freedom.
    We were treated like--
    they call us lumpenvolk, which is riffraff,
    but we're allowed to live and have certain privileges.
    So there was certain freedom.
    And I was not in a--
    I was in a labor--
    I was working in a factory, but I was not behind barbed wire
    or in a labor camp.
    It was a completely different situation.
    But I still could not relax because there
    were so many Polish people with me,
    and there always was a moment that I could--
    I could not lose guard or anything.
    I could not relax even with my friends, which--
    I developed some friendships with--
    As a matter of fact, one of the girls
    I worked with-- she was very nice, Polish girl
    from a very tough neighborhood in Warsaw.
    Well, she was a product of her environment,
    and we were very good friends, very good friends.
    But of course I would never tell her who I was.
    I would not jeopardize my sister's life
    because nobody knew that we even--
    that we are related or we knew each other before.
    My sister, Anna, was with me.
    But there was a genuine friendship--
    As far as that could go.
    --yes, with Stasha.
    And she was from a very tough neighborhood.
    Her father was a petty crook in Warsaw and so on.
    And after the war, of course, I decided
    to pass until I really felt that it was safe to come out
    of the closet, which--
    why?
    And I told her who I was, and she got hysterical.
    She practically killed me.
    She called me every dirty word in the dictionary,
    every obscenity.
    How could you betray me?
    Why did you cheat me?
    And I said, nothing changed.
    It just my name changed.
    I'm the same person.
    But she just could not understand it.
    Did she reject you?
    Oh, yes.
    Totally?
    Absolutely, yeah.
    She called me everything there was
    under the sun, that I betrayed her,
    that I betrayed the friendship.
    Well, she was too dense to understand
    that nothing changed.
    As I said, nothing changed, just my name.
    She could not understand it.
    Well, it was her loss.
    That was the end of the friendship.
    And she wasn't a bad person, but that was that mental block.
    They could not understand that we are just
    as human as they are.
    And she just threw away the friendship,
    and we were pretty good friends.
    She covered for me when we were working.
    I covered for her.
    We're working next to each other.
    It was over.
    Now she found out that I was Jewish.
    She couldn't cope.
    So how much longer were you there?
    In 1945, in March, the Americans were very close to Mannheim.
    We knew the end was close, and the situation was very chaotic.
    There were all kinds of rumors that they're
    going to take us all in a concentration camp,
    and blow it up together with us, and so on.
    But I knew that I have a chance to survive.
    I felt that there was--
    But of course, my moods fluctuated
    between despair and hope because I
    was hoping that I would survive, but I was desperate
    because the bombs were falling day and night.
    And so many people who were killed at the end.
    They were caught in the crossfire.
    They were caught in bombing.
    And it was a very desperate situation.
    And March 25, actually, Americans came to Mannheim.
    It was a very hard situation because a few times
    Americans were near Strasbourg.
    Then they went back.
    And it could have happened that if I would expose myself,
    who I was-- and then the Germans would take away Mannheim again.
    They would recapture the city.
    And so that was dangerous.
    We could not relax to the last minute.
    So the last few days we knew that it was close.
    The Americans were across the River Rhine.
    We were just across from Ludwigshafen, which is--
    when I was working in the industrial park in Mannheim,
    it was just across from IG Farben industry,
    that famous Farben industry where
    they were making the Zyklon B. So they were bombing non-stop.
    And the last few weeks--
    well, the company where I worked was bombed completely.
    The barracks were burned.
    So we had no place where to go.
    What did you do?
    Well, nothing.
    I was like everybody else.
    People were refugees, and Germans became refugees.
    There were-- the roads were full of--
    it was like a feeling of deja vu,
    saw the same thing before, except that those refugees
    and people on the road were Germans with their families
    running from bombing and being homeless.
    So nobody paid attention.
    I just took off my P because I had a badge P, and that's it.
    And nobody even checked my documents, or nobody
    worried about me anymore.
    And I-- my sister, myself, and a few more people
    decided to wait for the Americans,
    not to run, but wait for the Americans.
    Because a lot of people ran to Heidelberg--
    it was about 20 kilometers from Mannheim--
    wait in the mountains there.
    We decided to wait it out there.
    It was closer.
    And we'd been hiding just on the river.
    It was like a huge--
    I don't know how to describe it.
    It's like a huge pipe, cement pipe, sort of like a sewer
    system, right on the river, right on the river bank,
    going to the river.
    And 10, 15 people could be there.
    We could not stand up, but we could sit or lay down.
    And we're right on the embankment.
    So we're there for a few days, and it was quiet, very quiet.
    And then one day, one morning, we just heard some
    approaching tanks.
    You could hear the--
    in that stillness tanks.
    And we heard some voices, and there were no Germans.
    Some of them-- they said they're Americans or English.
    We still were afraid to get out, wait another few hours.
    And then we got out with some--
    a rag, with a white rag.
    With a white rag?
    With a white flag.
    Flag.
    But they were made up of some rag.
    We had some--
    Just to wave.
    Just the wave that we are surrendering.
    Did you panic towards the end?
    Were you thinking--
    No, because when we saw the tanks, we looked out,
    we saw five-pointed stars on the tanks.
    We knew they were Americans.
    We heard the BBC before, and we just knew that it was finished.
    Germany was collapsing.
    It was end of March.
    Do you remember that moment very clearly?
    Yeah, but it was an anticlimax because we could not
    tell them who we are.
    And they were still going-- the four of us--
    the war was not finished.
    So they were still going further.
    But--
    So what did you do at that point?
    The first few days, it was free-for-all.
    Where did you go with--
    Oh, we just-- we didn't go anywhere.
    We're just roaming the streets, trying to find something to eat
    or where to stay.
    It was March.
    Mannheim wasn't too cold.
    It was Southern Germany.
    And there were no fighting.
    It was peace and quiet, so we were--
    and so of course Germans became very nice to us.
    It was an insurance policy to be nice to us.
    So the last few months we sort of
    were pampered by certain people which we worked with.
    Did people take you into their homes?
    Oh, they had no homes.
    They had no homes?
    Mannheim was really bombed, so they were in the same boat.
    A lot of people were homeless and were
    sitting in shelters, in shelters where they--
    and there were a lot of Russians with us together, not officers,
    not soldiers, but Russian civilians
    which were taken prisoner.
    They were working at the industrial park.
    And they organized themself very quickly.
    They started to loot, and to kill, and to rape.
    And the Americans just looked away first few days.
    Why?
    Because they saw the concentration camps.
    They were traumatized.
    They saw what was happening, and they just--
    that's what it was.
    First few days, they just looked away,
    and they let us do whatever we want.
    And then came that breaking point with me.
    During the war, that's what kept me going.
    I dreamed of revenge.
    I dreamed-- I had such fantasies,
    what I would do with them, put them in cages.
    Just name it, all kinds of cruelties I could do to them.
    And there was a very rather brutal luftshutz.
    Luftshutz is a man who was taking
    care of shelters during the bombing, like a watchman.
    He was very brutal.
    He always-- he never let us go into a bunker
    when they were bombing, and a lot of people got killed.
    I just got a little piece of shrapnel
    in my leg, which I removed in Montreal.
    But one of my friend's, Polish friends,
    lost her arm because they could not hide.
    They were bombings.
    And the Russian promised revenge, and they just did.
    They grabbed that man, and they invited everybody.
    And they hanged him up upside down.
    That whole thing was atrocious.
    And I witnessed as many atrocities.
    Some of them were so blood-curdling.
    I can never forget when a soldier in Warsaw
    kicked a little child into a sewer
    because why should he wastes a bullet on that child?
    And I never reacted.
    And there I was standing and looking
    at that horrifying scene, that man hanging there,
    and I started to throw up.
    I got physically sick.
    And my friend, Stasha, turned to me.
    She said, stop acting like a fucking Jew.
    So I guess that was the end of my dream of revenge.
    I decided I'm not a killer.
    I just couldn't.
    I was empty.
    I started to feel emotional pain.
    I just wanted to find my brother,
    and that's all, just wanted to get away.
    What was your relationship like at that point with your sister?
    Oh, we were very close.
    Mind you, my sister always worried.
    She said, what will happen to you?
    You talk like a kid from a gutter,
    and you won't be able to function
    in normal circumstances.
    You won't be able to eat at the table.
    Every second word you swear you.
    It's horrifying.
    And yet I changed.
    I didn't swear.
    Something happened to me.
    I just snapped.
    I snapped first time when I--
    I think I mentioned before, when.
    I beat-- when I beat up that girl which
    tried to denounce me in the transit camp
    in Warsaw, that became the turning point.
    I promised my brother I'd survive, and I just--
    I don't know if it was my last chance.
    I felt it was the last card I played
    by turning the table on her and called her Jewish scum,
    and they took her away.
    I don't know what they did to her
    and if she got-- how she got out of it.
    And I really don't care.
    If she did, she would probably never denounce
    anyone in her life.
    And that was my turning point.
    I didn't feel fear.
    I just felt hate and anger.
    And in '45, I just--
    there was no more reason to be the same vulgar, arrogant,
    brazen girl I was, and I just started,
    slowly, slowly, to change.
    Mind you, I was still passing.
    I was afraid.
    And there were no Jews.
    I thought maybe I'll be the last in the world.
    But then when the Americans came--
    and I heard some of them speaking German,
    and I recognized that it wasn't a German.
    They were Jewish.
    They were trying to speak German.
    So I went over to one of them, and I said, Jude, Jude?
    And he looked at me like, who are you?
    And I said, me, too.
    Me Jude.
    And he just looked at me, and he brought me
    and my sister to an American base in Mannheim.
    There was an American chaplain, Jewish chaplain there,
    a clergyman, which--
    and they brought us to Friday services.
    So that was-- since then, we told them who we were,
    and they asked many questions and so on.
    We told them everything what happened.
    By that time, there were a lot of people which--
    they already liberated the concentration camp,
    so they knew that there are some people who survived,
    and we got in touch--
    What was that like for you just to have
    that first exposure with an American that was Jewish?
    I felt safe.
    They pampered me.
    They were all wonderful people, not only
    the American Jews, the Blacks, the Puerto Ricans, everyone.
    They were just the most beautiful human beings.
    They treated us like sisters.
    There were never any violence, any hint
    of anything else except care.
    They were giving us everything, food.
    I mean happiness was food.
    They shot--
    And I would start to hoard food under my--
    well, actually, what they did-- after a while,
    they decided to take care of us, and they
    requested, in brackets, "requested,"
    a German apartment.
    Somebody told him-- the Germans were very friendly at that time
    and very submissive.
    And they gave us an apartment after some concentration camp
    guard who escaped, so his apartment was free.
    And we got the apartment and everything.
    It was quite an experience to sleep
    in a bed with a bed sheet.
    And then we hired a German lady.
    We knew him from the neighborhood.
    She was rather decent, and she had no place where to go.
    She was-- and she was cooking for us, so she could eat also.
    And what were you doing during that time?
    Oh, we were getting--
    we were getting food, everything, from the Americans.
    They were really coming, and bringing us
    oranges, and everything, things which we never have seen
    for six years, and blankets.
    And then they started to--
    UNRRA and Joint started to compile a list of refugees.
    And they were sending it around the world,
    and it became like a network.
    And then when I realized that there were camps, survivor
    camps, I said, I have to find my-- whoever I can find.
    So we sort of joined--
    we started to travel in packs.
    So you left.
    You left.
    Well, no, no.
    My base was Mannheim.
    My base was Mannheim.
    My sister was there.
    My base was Mannheim, but I decided to travel
    all across the state--
    not states, Germany, and see whom I can find because--
    Where did you go first?
    Oh, I went across-- from Mannheim,
    I went as far as Munich, wherever
    I knew there were some Jewish communities, some survivors,
    or some camps.
    But actually, I asked one of my Russian friends
    he should get me a bicycle, so he did.
    I couldn't travel too far with a bike.
    So I had a carton of American cigarettes and my bike,
    and I traded the German for a motorcycle.
    So they couldn't get fuel, so they
    were happy to give it to me.
    So I'd travel on my motorcycle.
    Sometimes I would travel on a Jeep or army trucks.
    I felt very safe.
    Nothing happened to me.
    How long did you do that for?
    First, I went-- almost a year.
    But before that, I went to Poland
    to find my brother in '45, end of May.
    When there was-- the war was--
    when the German--
    May the 8th, when Germany capitulated,
    I decided that I have to go back to Poland and find my brother.
    It was-- it's not like you go.
    You just-- it was quite a trip.
    So I got a letter from a
    [LAUGHS]
    So from May until October--
    Yes, I got advice from the authorities,
    American authorities, that I'm free to travel.
    They should give me assistance.
    But I mean, by that time, people were--
    the roads were full of refugees, people
    from concentration camps, DPs, and refugees from the East.
    So it was like traffic going every direction.
    So from Mannheim, I went--
    I knew that I have to get from Munich, and from Munich
    to Czechoslovakia, and from Czechoslovakia to Poland.
    It was the way to go.
    So I traveled-- I mean we traveled bags.
    Sometimes we would stay two or three people together,
    then would join up with other people,
    people which already knew how to go around and so on.
    It was just very disorganized, but--
    You got around.
    Oh, yeah, I mean it was no problem because the Americans
    were there.
    So whatever something happened, I
    would just go over to the Americans.
    And they would give me food, or they would give me a place
    to sleep, or take care of me.
    It was no problem.
    So at that point in time, everybody
    was doing what you were doing--
    Oh, yeah, a lot of people are doing the same thing--
    They're all looking to try to reunite with their family.
    That's right.
    The search started for the family for survivors.
    And I knew that I have to go to Poland.
    My sister refused to go.
    She said, Alexander knows where we are.
    He has to come here.
    And I said, you're crazy.
    He won't.
    I'm going.
    I don't care what you're doing.
    So you left your sister.
    And I left my sister.
    We had an argument.
    And I said, I'm going.
    And--
    How long did it--
    I was able to get-- well, I left end of May.
    It took me a few weeks, maybe not that long, maybe two weeks.
    Slowly, I made my way to Munich.
    From Munich, I went through Furth.
    It's on the Czech border.
    From the Furth, I went to Pilsen.
    From Pilsen I went to Prague.
    From Prague, I went to Szczecin, which is on the--
    it's a frontier town between Poland and Czechoslovakia.
    I mean I hope my geography is still good,
    but I mean I'm trying to retrace the trip.
    And from there I went to a little town on the Polish--
    frontier town on the border, called
    Dziedzice, where people were coming from Germany,
    from Austria, refugees coming back to Poland.
    And they had there--
    I mean it was sort of like a transit camp.
    And we had to wait until we be processed
    to get through the border from Czechoslovakia to Poland.
    How did they process you?
    Well, they set up a table.
    And they were asking your name or where
    you're going and so on.
    And of course, they asked for volunteers
    because there were so many people, they couldn't manage.
    So I volunteered since I couldn't find a train.
    And I figured out this way maybe I'll meet somebody,
    somebody would come in I might just recognize someone.
    So I was sitting there for a few days
    and taking the names, their history, and so on.
    And every refugee was coming back
    to Poland was getting a free pass, sort of like a pink slip,
    saying his name and destination, wherever he wants to go.
    That means I would fill in the destination put a stamp,
    that he can travel free.
    People had no money.
    So they can get on a train and travel wherever he wants to go.
    If he was going to Warsaw or Gdansk, whatever.
    When I was there, of course, I did not say who I was.
    I did not feel safe, especially I heard so many ugly remarks
    about the Jews.
    Look how many are left.
    Look at that scum.
    Hitler didn't kill them all.
    Where did you hear that?
    Oh.
    In the cities.
    No, no, in that transit camp when the Jews were coming back.
    Right there?
    Yes.
    And so--
    Who said that?
    Poles when they saw Jews coming back, whatever, a few of them.
    And they just couldn't cope.
    They said, they still coming back know.
    We didn't get rid--
    Hitler didn't get rid of all of them.
    So I left in disgust.
    I stole a whole pad with the stamps and everything
    so I knew in case I have to go around Poland,
    I should have enough to fill in my name
    and go wherever I have to go, whatever city.
    So you just took--
    I was a street smart kid.
    That's for sure.
    Yeah, I was 19.
    Nothing scared me anymore.
    I felt I survived now.
    I'm not afraid anymore.
    So I had a whole bunch of those passes.
    And I put in my name, Irena Krystyna Podbielska,
    going to Warsaw.
    I got to Warsaw.
    And I only knew the address where
    my sister-in-law used to live, where my brother was in hiding.
    But Warsaw was, of course, a ruin.
    That was horrible.
    And it was a miracle.
    That was the only house on that street which was not destroyed,
    [POLISH] 6.
    I still remember.
    It was an absolutely, it was like a miracle--
    the only house.
    And I walked in there.
    And I knew the apartment number.
    I started to bang on the door.
    I felt my brother would be there.
    And a woman came out said, who are you?
    I said, I'm looking for the family here.
    And she just crossed himself.
    She said, who are you?
    I said, well, my sister-in-law.
    She said, which one are you, Anna or Krystyna.
    I said, I'm Krystyna.
    She said, Jesus Lord, your brother is alive.
    Your sister-in-law is alive.
    The baby is alive.
    And they are all in Gdansk.
    And they left that house for you in case one of you comes,
    you should have a place where to stay.
    And she gave me the key.
    And I slept there in their apartment.
    Now, how do I make my way to Gdansk.
    It was hard.
    First I crossed the bridge to Praga,
    which is the southern-- the east part of Warsaw, like the South
    Shore here.
    How did you do all that?
    By--
    Across the street?
    Across the bridge?
    Yeah.
    Well, there were not really bridges.
    There was a sort of--
    the army put those pontoons, I think they call them,
    sort of like a--
    and I went to Praga.
    And I found Czerniakowski.
    I wanted to find those people which helped me.
    I found Mr. Czerniakowski.
    He was terrified of Russian because he
    was a Polish officer.
    So I went with him to the Jewish committee in Praga.
    Told me there was a Jewish committee.
    And I made a statement about his behavior
    and what he did for me and everything.
    His wife and daughter were somewhere
    near the German border.
    They were both--
    I mean, Leshka finished medicine by that time.
    And Mrs. Czerniakowska was a medical doctor.
    And they were working in a hospital.
    But I never met them.
    I could not find them.
    So Mr. Czerniakowski had a statement.
    And I also left a note that I survived, that in case somebody
    comes--
    because that's how our people were doing.
    We're leaving notes wherever there was a chance
    that somebody might come.
    Where would they leave notes?
    With the--
    With the committee.
    There was a committee of people which survived
    in Warsaw, Jewish people.
    They have a committee.
    And they were just taking down the details that this one,
    they survived.
    And they were hanging up list every day.
    Some people did find each other there in those committees.
    So you could walk into--
    Oh, yes.
    --this place and just see names and then--
    That's right.
    --spot a relative that way.
    That's right.
    Leave my name and say where I'm going and so on.
    But I knew my brother was alive, and I even knew where he was.
    Where was he?
    In Gdansk.
    And I had the address.
    You had the address.
    I had the address because that woman said my brother was here
    not long ago.
    And he was asking in case I'll come or one of my sister
    will come, please.
    So he kept the apartment for us.
    And he knew that one day we will show up.
    He believed that we survive.
    So it took me three or four days to get
    to Gdansk through different cattle trains, and so on.
    I got into Gdansk.
    And I went to that apartment.
    And I knocked at the door.
    Nobody was there.
    And there were kids playing on the street.
    And I said, do you know where those people are?
    Oh, Christopher went with his parents for a walk.
    That's little baby, that's my nephew, Christopher.
    His mommy and daddy took him for a walk.
    He was already almost a year old.
    Yeah, over a year old.
    And I said, how can I get to the apartment?
    They said, well, why don't you climb the window.
    That's all it took.
    So I went to the garden.
    I climbed-- it was like on a mezzanine.
    I got into the apartment.
    And I went to the kitchen.
    The kettle was too warm.
    So that means they just left.
    I was just so desperate when I realized that I just missed
    them by a few minutes probably.
    I mean you could see--
    I could feel that--
    I touched the kettle and it was still warm on the stove.
    And I was so tired.
    And I just lay down on the sofa.
    And I fell asleep.
    And a couple of hours later, I heard screaming.
    My brother came in, and they found me on the sofa asleep.
    [LAUGHTER] That's how I found him.
    And then he told me you survived.
    My aunt survived, my two cousins,
    and who did not survive.
    We were talking a few days, a few nights.
    And he begged me to stay and that I could study.
    And I said, no, it's just one big cemetery
    and I will not stay.
    I came to take you out of here.
    And he said, no, we can't.
    Irene is pregnant with a second baby.
    And we'll go to Sweden.
    And he was dreaming that he will build another Poland,
    socialist Poland, and he can stay
    with the family and a new life.
    And I said, no, I'm not staying.
    The same-- I was stubborn as usual.
    So it was clear to you that you had to leave?
    I could not-- I just couldn't sleep.
    I had nightmares.
    I hated everybody.
    And I just couldn't stay.
    Did you know where you wanted to go at that point?
    No, I just wanted to leave Europe.
    I knew that being in Germany somehow
    I'll be able to get out somehow.
    Leave Europe, that's all I wanted, the farther,
    the better, not to stay in Europe, and definitely
    not in Poland.
    And my brother couldn't understand it.
    He was very hurt.
    But--
    So he had other plans for you?
    He had other plans.
    I should study and start to live normally and study and have
    a profession, or whatever.
    Did he want your sister to be in on those plans as well?
    Well, my sister married a fellow from Belgium.
    And she decided she's not coming back.
    At what point did that happen?
    She met him during the war.
    And she stayed with him.
    So she was not going at all.
    She was not going back.
    She said, we have to leave that country.
    I will not go back.
    She never did.
    But I found my brother.
    And I didn't listen to him.
    I was there for six weeks in Poland.
    And then I had to find a way out.
    And I went again, illegally, through that green border,
    through Bricha, by the time that--
    there was a Jewish underground organization
    which was taking people out.
    So it was still Palestine at that time.
    And I joined a group through Krakow, Katowice,
    again through Prague.
    And I got stuck in Prague because I couldn't get out.
    The Russians arrested us.
    They took us off the train.
    And they sent us back.
    So we went back.
    I mean it was going back and forth.
    Were you headed for Palestine at the time?
    Yes, that was my first feeling that that's
    where I wanted to go.
    But, of course--
    What had you heard about it?
    Or what had you at that point--
    did you know what was going on?
    Or--
    No, I just--
    You just wanted leave--
    Remember-- no, no, because my mother told me
    that if I survived the war, we have family there.
    And that address was carved in my memory.
    That we have relatives there, remember if you survive.
    And she gave me that address.
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    And I just knew that that's where I should go.
    So that was something I felt I have to do for my mother.
    Because she was a Zionist, she was very--
    she was Hashomer Hatzair.
    That was her dream.
    So I felt-- no, I didn't have any special feelings.
    I just wanted to go there because my mother felt
    that this is home.
    So what happened?
    You and--
    And I got out with Bricha.
    I got stuck in Prague.
    And later, we went--
    by the time I was with another group and we decided,
    there were some German people, Germans, which are coming back,
    which were running away from Poland and Czechoslovakia
    back to Germany.
    So we joined them and we pretend that we are deaf and dumb,
    and we couldn't talk, just to get through the border, which
    we did.
    And the train was going to--
    no, the train was going to Austria, I believe.
    It was going to Austria.
    And so near Munich, when they slow down,
    we just jump, jump off the train.
    We're in Germany.
    And from there I made my way back from Munich, Mannheim,
    to Mannheim, to my sister.
    And--
    You told your sister that--
    Oh, everything.
    Everything?
    Yes, of course.
    Yes.
    And then I started to travel again.
    We already had more addresses and more contacts
    where Jewish camps are.
    Why did you continue to travel at that point?
    I still wanted to find-- maybe I'll find somebody.
    Who are you looking for?
    For my Cousins.
    Was it sort of a desperate feeling?
    Like you have to keep on--
    Oh, yeah--
    --going on and on--
    I'm still going on.
    I didn't stop till today.
    Sometimes it pays off.
    Wherever I travel, I open a telephone book
    and check names and follow up every clue there is.
    And in rare occasions, it pays off.
    I just want to know where my--
    just I can't stop.
    It's like a compulsion.
    I can't even now, after this day.
    I found some relatives only two years ago.
    I had a reunion in Paris.
    So it never stopped.
    The pain is still there.
    Life goes on.
    So it's not as sharp.
    But the pain of losing people and not
    knowing what happened to them, it's with me.
    So I just can't help myself.
    So I--
    You parted it from your sister then at that--
    No, I was with my sister until they opened a DP camp not too
    far from Mannheim.
    I decided--
    Where exactly was that?
    Bensheim.
    That's between Darmstadt and Heidelberg on the Burgstrasse,
    yeah.
    Can you describe that DP camp at all?
    Do you remember what it was like the first time you went there?
    Well, it was a large camp.
    There were a few thousand people.
    Most of them were refugees from Russia,
    which came back because Russia declared amnesty.
    And Jews were able to leave Russia in '46.
    So all those people didn't--
    they had no place where to stay in Poland.
    I mean they were killing them after the war.
    There were a lot of pogroms and killings after the war.
    And they just wanted to get out.
    So there were some little kids, which
    were born in Russia, families.
    And the only thing was UNRRA and Joint organized DP camps,
    displaced person camps.
    So they were there, mostly old schools, German schools or--
    mostly barracks, soldier barracks or schools.
    And--
    How many people were there?
    In that camp where I was?
    A few thousand.
    There were a few blocks.
    And--
    Did you have enough food?
    Or--
    Oh, yes.
    We had enough food.
    We had our offices.
    I mean it was run by the UNRRA.
    But-- we had concerts.
    We had schools.
    We had nurse service.
    We had hospital.
    And then I went and I became a nurse.
    There?
    Yes, I am a nurse by profession.
    That's where you studied?
    Yeah, I studied in Hanau near Frankfurt in a German hospital
    where they sent a few girls from my camp.
    I decided to get a profession.
    And--
    So you decided while you were in camp--
    Yes, yes.
    --to become a nurse.
    That's right.
    I worked in a nursery at the beginning.
    I loved kids.
    And then I decided to get a profession,
    and I felt nursing was for me.
    So I went-- there were a few of us, had classes.
    And I became a nurse.
    Had you thought about that at all before, during the--
    while you--
    I didn't think of anything.
    I just acted.
    I wanted to survive.
    I mean think of what?
    I mean, nowadays you think when people plan their careers
    and think about it ahead of time--
    Oh, no, no, no, my career was planned for me before the war.
    My father wanted I should take over his practice.
    So he wanted me to be a lawyer.
    So I don't think I had much to say.
    That probably what would happen.
    No, so I--
    But I don't know, it just became such normal thing
    that I should be a nurse.
    And I worked in camp as a nurse later.
    How long were you in the camp?
    Till December '48 when I emigrated to Canada as a nurse.
    Can you tell--
    But I didn't work as a nurse.
    I couldn't find a job.
    So like every other immigrant, I was domestic
    and work in a factory.
    It's an old story.
    Every immigrant went through the same thing.
    And I met my husband in '53.
    And we got married.
    Can you talk a little bit about what
    it was like as you were leaving the camp
    and how you made a decision where to go
    and just a little about that?
    I just wanted to get out of Europe.
    So I applied to the States, to Canada,
    to Australia, whatever comes first.
    And Canada came first.
    I was able to as--
    I was single.
    And they were taking single people.
    End of '48 before that I mean Canada was closed
    to Jewish immigration at all.
    It was a very--
    So that was the first place that accepted you--
    Yes.
    So you decided--
    Oh, yeah.
    And when-- did you come to Montreal?
    Yeah, I came to Montreal.
    What was that like leaving and coming,
    just that whole journey?
    And what were you thinking and feeling?
    I mean, after going through all these experiences.
    A new start.
    A new start.
    But of course, you can't--
    Your hopes and dreams, what were you imagining back then?
    Do you remember at all?
    My dreams were to get my family out of Europe.
    I was able to bring my sister here two years later.
    My brother only defected in '59.
    My brother was a journalist after the war.
    And the government sent him to cover the Olympic games,
    to Melbourne in Australia in '56.
    While he was, there he came here to see me.
    That's the first time I saw my brother after the war,
    since '45, in '56, when he came from Melbourne.
    And we planned his escape that time.
    And I cannot talk about details because too many people are
    involved.
    But he defected in '59 with his family.
    His youngest child was a year old, went to Australia.
    So somehow we got out of there.
    I mean, my sister died in '81.
    My brother died in '81.
    But he's survived by children, grandchildren.
    And I'm very close with him.
    And they are Australians.
    And I visit them a few times.
    And so I somehow I feel that it's a new lifetime.
    It's a different lifetime completely.
    It's behind me.
    Could you talk-- I just want to go back just for a moment
    to what it was like when you first
    came to Canada, what the conditions were like for you.
    Very bad.
    Very bad.
    Can you talk--
    There were no-- there were no--
    I mean--
    Who helped you?
    No one did.
    No one did.
    I was a domestic.
    You got here and you had to--
    I got from the Red Cross.
    I got $5 and a slap on my back, you'll be OK.
    And that's all.
    That was it.
    That was that.
    And you said you went to work in a factory.
    I worked as a domestic, as a maid, for about six months.
    And then I went to work in a factory.
    And slowly I built myself up.
    I couldn't work as a nurse.
    They wouldn't take me.
    I didn't have-- I didn't speak English or French.
    And I wasn't a union member.
    How was life in Canada then?
    How did you find it?
    I did work as a nurse for a few months as a nurse's aide,
    only in the beginning.
    But then they said, well, it's just--
    it was very hard.
    It was hard.
    It was very hard.
    I was too proud to--
    I would never go on welfare no matter what.
    I would starve.
    There were days that I only ate peanut butter or a doughnut
    and a coffee because I was saving money
    to bring my family over or send them money.
    But I would just never go for any help.
    That just never happened and never would.
    What were some of the more difficult aspects
    of adjusting to life here?
    And what were some of the easier--
    Well, I don't forget, I was 22 years old when I came here.
    I was a young girl.
    I was not an immigrant.
    I was a refugee.
    I was grateful.
    I still cry when I hear a Canadian hymn.
    Really?
    Oh, yes.
    Very sentimental.
    And when I go to the parliament, I just--
    my kids are making fun because I just--
    I get tears in my eyes.
    Did you immediately feel like this is your new country
    and this is yours?
    And how long did it take to adjust and really feel
    like you're Canadian?
    First time I went back to Poland in 1974.
    That was very therapeutic.
    Because before that, Europe was my country--
    I mean, Europe and Poland, even though I wouldn't live there.
    But I would say back home, OK.
    And when I went in '74 for the first time and I just--
    no, '73, excuse me, '73.
    And I heard myself saying, when I was in Poland or in Hungary
    or whatever I was traveling through Europe with my husband,
    I would say back home.
    And I realized Montreal was home.
    This is my home.
    It hit your for the first time?
    My children-- first time.
    My children are Canadian born.
    They were born in freedom.
    They are Canadians.
    And this is home.
    That's all.
    Are most of your friends that you have today Holocaust
    survivors?
    Yes.
    Yes, they are.
    Do you talk to them about the past?
    We try not to.
    But no matter we talk about fashion, we talk about movies,
    we talk about everything else, and it comes back
    to the same thing--
    the war and the atrocities.
    I don't know how it comes around.
    So you talk freely about it all?
    We try not to compare experiences.
    We try not to talk--
    how did you survive?
    What did you do?
    We try not to.
    And yet it comes--
    somehow it just comes back.
    I feel better with them.
    I feel more secure.
    I think they understand me better.
    And I have more compassion to-- no matter how they behave,
    how they come across to other people,
    somehow I always forgive them.
    Did other people ask you, knowing that you're a survivor,
    do they ask you--
    The hardest time--
    --about your experiences--
    Because I never spoke about it until I'm
    talking to you and to Yehudi.
    I--
    So you would only talk--
    Try forget--
    --to your friends that were survivors.
    No.
    You never ever talked to anyone--
    No, no.
    We just didn't talk about it.
    We tried to-- it was sort of like a conspiracy of silence.
    We didn't talk about what happened.
    We didn't want the children should know,
    they should suffer.
    But we couldn't.
    They were getting mixed signals.
    I don't think that my children really
    know my real story until today, until they will see the tape,
    and they really have the whole picture.
    Because they probably were getting
    little pieces of the puzzle.
    That's all.
    You felt like you wanted to protect them from it.
    Protect them.
    And I don't think I did a good job because I had night
    when I started to yell and scream and dream and have
    the nightmares.
    They hear what happens.
    And they-- so they realize when they got older.
    At the beginning, I'm sure they were
    very scared and confused when I would cry at night
    and my husband would bring me back
    and show children are here.
    Nothing happened to them.
    See, they're here.
    They're here.
    And it must have been very tough on them.
    And I tried to forget.
    I did.
    My husband was also a survivor.
    But his way of coping was to deny everything,
    like nothing happened.
    He survived in Russia.
    But he lost his mother and his sister and his brother.
    I don't think he really knows how they
    died, how they were killed.
    He didn't want to know.
    I guess he just wanted to keep their memories
    in a different form.
    I know because I just--
    I do know.
    I spoke to some of his relatives.
    So I could never talk to him about it.
    But he was very supportive when I would cry at night.
    And he was able to calm me down.
    He was my best friend.
    It must have been very difficult for you
    all this time not really--
    Yeah.
    So I could never can talk to him about it,
    only if something happened.
    Or once I remember, it was in a department store.
    I mean, I never, never knew what could trigger
    my attack of hysteria or hallucination.
    I would call it I would hallucinate.
    Smell didn't think would trigger it.
    I remember once I was in a department store.
    And I don't know, it was some mobile Christmas decorations.
    And I looked up and I was suddenly
    I felt I was swimming in a sea of swastikas.
    And I just freaked out, and I fainted.
    I couldn't tell anybody.
    I covered my eye--
    they took me there.
    You know, I said, I don't feel well.
    I didn't tell them.
    I couldn't tell I thought I was going crazy.
    I called my husband, and he took me home.
    And at night later in the evening, he went back with me.
    Of course, I told him what happened.
    And he said, yes, I understand that you could
    visualize something like that.
    They were turning around and turning to swastikas.
    But I couldn't tell anybody.
    You know, I felt I was going crazy.
    And the worse times where when my daughter
    was born because all the nightmares or the nightmares
    that whatever happened to me was happening to her.
    And that was the toughest thing.
    Having children helped me heal somehow.
    But yet--
    And when I see an old German on the street my age or older,
    automatically I visualize him.
    And I try to guess what type of military unit he was in.
    I see a uniform--
    Triggers that.
    Triggers.
    And of course, the most traumatic thing
    was the Eichmann trial.
    And then the Zundel trial.
    So I just can't escape.
    I try, but I can't.
    I just have to learn to live with the pain.
    Are there any other thoughts or anything
    that you would like to express or add about this?
    What are your feelings?
    Or just where you're at right now?
    I don't know.
    I don't know.
    I just-- I never thought I'd be able to sit here and talk
    about those things.
    Never thought about it.
    I never had the courage to do it.
    And then I saw other people coming out and saying.
    And then a few times I heard when
    people say about people like me, you actually
    are endangered species.
    Because after you are gone, there'll nobody else.
    There will be no one left really to tell the real story.
    And my children really wanted to do it.
    Ma, you have to You just have to do it.
    And maybe because it's 50 years now, '39, '89.
    I feel like everything is coming full circle,
    that I have to do it.
    That maybe my time is running out.
    That's why I decided to talk because I
    kept that inside like a guilty secret for all the years.
    I would never talk to Gentiles about it
    because I would feel that maybe that it's just
    morbid curiosity, and they won't believe me.
    I just didn't feel good about it.
    And Canadian Jews couldn't cope.
    So they just didn't want to hear it.
    Even at the beginning when you--
    At the beginning, the hardest time.
    You couldn't tell anybody--
    No, because they didn't want to hear it.
    Maybe they felt guilty that they were--
    I mean, I do feel guilty myself.
    And I'm trying to justify my life by finding
    some meaning in it, you know.
    But I guess that's what my daughter calls the--
    I have a hopeless survivor syndrome.
    But it's true.
    Make me I suppose--
    when I look at the 50 years, it's
    like a potpourri of horror and success, success
    that I retain my humanity, that I'm a human being, that I
    have children, which are very human, have compassion.
    And maybe they will understand what happened.
    Maybe they will remember my sister, my brother, Janka,
    and the people, which touched my life.
    So that's basically what it is.
    Go ahead.
    I'm here.
    I'm-- ask me.
    I'm with you.
    You can ask me.
    I just really want to thank you because for myself, it's really
    made a difference in my life sitting with you
    and following your story.
    And I don't have parents that experienced the Holocaust.
    And I really appreciated that you were able to--
    I was just--
    I was just caught in a history.
    I mean I realize now that I should not feel guilty--
    excuse me, could I have a napkin or something.
    I shouldn't-- but I just feel that there are so many
    beautiful people which never had a chance to live.
    And so I had to make something out of my life.
    Just had to.
    I must have been doing something right.
    My kids are very human, very compassionate.
    It's not what they do in life.
    It's how they do it.
    And that's important to me.
    So I guess I got a chance in life.
    And I-- and maybe I'm here to--
    because when I think of Janka, she
    comes lately so much to my mind, that little Janka,
    when I look at all those brutal people, that narrow minded.
    And then I think of that little Janka, and the policeman,
    and a few other people, which--
    And I can't stand when people try to tell me
    how many Jews they saved.
    I get so angry inside.
    I just feel that the real heroes are dead or they are silent.
    They don't brag about.
    And I just turn away.
    I just don't even answer.
    But I was able to find my friend, Irena Podbielska.
    I think I told you I found it after 35 years,
    thanks to my daughter.
    Maybe you could just tell--
    The story, hear the story of our friendship.
    And it was published in a Viewpoint in Montreal.
    My real name, Renata Skotnicka.
    And a lady in Toronto read it.
    She wrote a letter to the editor asking
    to get in touch with the author, with my daughter.
    And she wrote a beautiful letter, giving me
    certain clues about the Skotnicka family, a lady who is
    82 years old, brought up in--
    born in England.
    And I realized those are my relatives.
    And she gave me so many clues and gave me courage
    to activate my search for my family.
    And it paid off, one clue after another.
    And I was able to find one cousin in Paris.
    And when I found her--
    I mean our grandfathers were brothers,
    which is pretty close.
    And when I found her, I found another five members
    of the family which survived because they study abroad.
    One was in Milano during the war.
    And they were all--
    and they all survived.
    One is now in Denmark.
    One is in Bremen, got out of Russia,
    Riga, only nine years ago.
    One is in Paris.
    One is in Italy.
    And one is in Tel Aviv.
    And we had a reunion two years ago.
    So they keeping in touch now, sort of like.
    You have family then--
    Yes, well, I have family.
    I have my children.
    But my children will have family too.
    Of course, they never knew their grandparents.
    I had a large family.
    I had a big, big, big family.
    Once I was in Australia with my brother,
    and we started to count how many people we lost.
    We stop at 50.
    My brother just broke down.
    He couldn't do it anymore.
    But now my son and myself and my cousin Barbara from Paris,
    we're working on a family tree.
    And we're tracing up to six generations already.
    It will be a real project.
    I'm just wondering if you have any other afterthoughts
    before--
    I don't know--
    We end.
    I don't know.
    I don't know what to say.
    And--
    How do you feel after doing this--
    I feel relieved that I said it.
    It's the first time that, as I said,
    my children when they watch the tape, maybe
    they'll know me better.
    They will-- they'll think of their family, which they never
    met.
    Maybe they come to life to them the way they--
    in front of my eyes.
    And I know it's important for the Congress,
    as an oral history, as a document.
    It has to be done.
    So I'm doing it
    Thank you very, very much.
    I really appreciate you're being.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman
    Interviewer
    Yehudi Lindeman
    Sarah L. Grafstein
    Date
    interview:  1989 June 06
    Geography
    creation: Montreal (Canada)
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Sharon Zajdman

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    4 digital files : MPEG-4.

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. Restrictions may exist. Contact the Museum for further information: reference@ushmm.org

    Copyright Holder
    Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Sharon Zajdman donated the oral history interview with her mother Renata Skotnicka-Zajdman to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in January 2021. The interview was produced by McGill University's Living Testimonies project and is part of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre's collection through a transfer agreement with McGill University.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 10:09:16
    This page:
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