We didn't know what to do. From the distance we saw asmall building. The door was open and we sort ofwandered in. There was a small pile of straw and welaid down on that straw. I held on tightly to mybrother, the last part of my close family that I hadleft. He was only 13 years old. He was still a small child by his mother. Now he has to be an adult.From pure exhaustion I fell asleep. I dreamt that myfather came to me in my dream and said to me that Ishould not worry. I should go to a gentile, who had aplace prepared for me and that I should go there wherehe will take care of me and then he disappeared. Then I suddenly awoke and told my brother about mydream. We didn't have any other choice about where togo. We stood up and shook of the straw from our bodiesand we went . We had to walk across a small stream ofwater. If we did not go thru the water we would havehad to go thru the city streets where it was full ofGestapo. We picked the route to go thru the stream.
The stream was very slightly frozen. We stepped intothe stream of water, although I was wearing boots thewater was too high and water got into my boots anywayand the same thing happened to my brother.
We crossed the stream , then we crossed a field into aforest as it started to turn to daylight. We arrivedat that place that my father had told me about in mydream. He was a friend teacher of my fathers. Before myfather was executed, he had made arrangements with thisman for us to hide out at this place. He took us in andwas very cordial. He also had our money and some of thethings that our father gave him for us. He veryquickly showed us where everything was . He had a small hiding place below his barn. It was so small thatthere was hardly enough room for us to stretch out tosleep. He brought us food twice daily and we werehiding out there for a while.
When it became a little dark we stepped out into thefresh air. We hid out there for about two weeks. Wecould not remain there because he himself had two smallchildren and his children found out about us beingthere. They found out that they're father was carryingfood for jews. His children told him that they wouldtell all the children in the area that he is hiding outjews. So we could not remain longer than several weeksin one place.
We were driven from one place to another. We couldn'thave one day of peace because of fear for death. Anyminute, any time we could be shot. Because of this wehad no idea what the next day would bring. This becamevery terrible for me and we had to go and search foranother place. I knew that not to far from the forestlived a very poor family and that they would needmoney. We decided to go there. They took us in forquite a large amount of money for one day. There was avery small old room with a leaky roof and full ofchildren. The room was dirty and the children did nothave a place to sleep for themselves. We found a goodspot on top of the oven where they used to bake bread.It was a very large oven that we put straw on top. Theymade a curtain in case someone would walk in, so theycould not see us. When that lady was baking bread wecould have fried ourselves from the heat, otherwise youcould freeze. She cooked potatoes and water for us andvery little bread that we could not eat. Everything wasso filthy, it was nauseating to eat the meal. This wasalready good because we were not hiding out undergroundin the earth.
At night we could crawl down from the oven and sit downon the ground because there were no chairs to sit on.When they went to sleep they also used the only chairthat they had in the house. I said to my brother manytimes why do we have to suffer so much? I don't knowthe answer to that he used to say to me. But when youlive, you want to live. Perhaps we will survive thistoo.
There by this gentile they had us there for a wholemonth. Then he became frightened. They were shootinggentiles who were hiding out jews in the area. Althoughhe was very poor and needed our money, he still wantedto live. Because of two jewish children he did not wantto lose his life. One evening he came and told us thatthere would no longer be any room for us there. He saidwe should go and look for a new place where to hide.
Every day I paid him more money, but this did not helpany more. Now we finally had to leave this place also.Where do we go now?
How often have we asked ourselves that question? Everytime it became worse. Before we left the gentile mantold us that they are finding jews in the smallvillages and they are killing them.
Gentiles were turning in jews for three pounds of sugar.Entire Jewish families were turned in. What to do?Before we left one jewish friend came to visit that Iused to work with. He told us that they had a hidingplace in the forest. But they did not have any money tobuy food. They wanted me to support them with money sothat they could buy food. In return, they will take usin to hide out. I was very happy because I did have alittle money. Because my father had given both me andmy brother some money separately before he was shot. Hehad enough foresight to give everyone money separately so that in case of separation we eachhad some to purchase stuff for saving our lives.
We left with our friend to the forest . This was also ahiding place under the ground. It was currentlymidwinter and it was very cold. During the day we werenot allowed to exit the hiding place. At night we wentto the village to buy some food to eat. A poor womancooked for us for money. Twice a week I had to goenter the village during the day and every place I wentthere was Gestapo. When I left the hiding place, I always said good-bye to me brother because I did not know if I would ever return. More than once did I avoid the killers. I walked straight,unafraid so that they would not suspect. But in myheart I was frightened. God gave me the strength sothat I could return to see my brother. I always had togo because the money was running out little by little.But I still had some money that my father was hidingwith some gentiles.
I went to them, many of them did return the money tome. Others said maybe tomorrow. When I returned back tothe forest at night. I had to go alone thru to the deepforest. To this day I don't know how I did that, I hadno fear of anything. When I was home I was scaredto go outside alone, and now that I returned from sucha trip, my brother was waiting for me withanticipation. I never let him go because I wasfrightened for him to go alone.
Staying there for two months I became verydisillusioned with the place. The dirty hideout, and always the fear of being caught and killed. Itbecame so bad that I could no longer take it. I heardthat in the town they created a ghetto. We didn't carewhat was going to happen. One thing I knew was that we had to leave that place. I told my brother thatI want to leave this place and go because the place wewere in was worse than dying.
They all called me a child, but I didn't want tolisten to anyone. I was fed up with that place. Mybrother and I , not wanting to stay there by himselfwent with me. We left this place on a Sunday morningand we went to the Jewish ghetto. The ghetto was about10 kilometers away from the town. On the road therewere many Gestapo. The Gestapo was patrollingeverywhere in case they would spot a jew somewhere.
As we were walking, we counted the miles. We walked forat least one kilometer or two until we arrived in the town. From the distance we saw the ghetto. The ghettowas surrounded with barbed wire and jews were insideit. We could not go thru the gates because there theywould arrest us immediately. From the distance I saw aman that I knew inside the ghetto. He also recognizedme. He called to us and spread the barbed wire so thatwe could get in. This is how we finally got in to theghetto.
Inside the ghetto I also had an aunt and a cousin. Wewent to her where she took us in and took very goodcare of us. She gave us soap and water to get cleanedup and put us to bed in a clean bed. A clean bed issomething that we had not had for a very long time.The people inside the ghetto were able to survivesomehow even though they were under constant threat ofdeath.
The next day I went to look around inside the ghetto.The ghetto consisted of several streets surrounded withbarbed wire. The gates had two entrances thru which wecould go outside to go to work. Many of the people that were in the ghetto worked outside in factories. The work consisted of making ammunition. Inside theghetto they had very small stores that you could buysome of the things to sustain life. Everything was veryexpensive.
On these few streets there were many small childrenrunning around. They carried hard rolls and halleagh.Towards evening time we saw many of the people go for awalk. The ghetto was full of people. In the eveningtime the people went out to get some fresh air becausein one room you could find seven to eight people livingtogether. One bed was situated right next to another.Because of the overcrowding , some people started toget sick with typhoid and other diseases. I went insidethe ghetto with my aunt and we arrived at theMiedzyrzec temple. Into that temple they placedthousands of people that they were supposed totransport out of the ghetto. There was no food or waterin the temple. In that place my mother was also there.I don't know how she could survive there. My aunt wastelling me there were constant screams and people dyinginside that temple. They were dying of thirst andhunger. The screams went to the heavens. I could notstay there very long because before me eyes I could seemy mother there suffering. My mother and all my familywere inside there. My mother was not a very strongperson. How she could take it there I don't understand.
After leaving a few steps away from the temple I met afriend of mine that I used to work with. She told methat she was transported on the same train with mymother. While she was on the train she did not worryabout herself, she was always concerned about what wasgoing to happen to her children. They were left aloneand there father was also shot .
My beloved mother went to the place where no one everreturns and she was still worried about me and mybrother. My friend told me about all of that. She rodewith my moth Æô0or a few stations and escaped from thetrain to return back to the ghetto.
Listening to all these stories that I was being told and returning back from my walk with my aunt , I felldown on the bed and started to cry very hard. Why werewe left here, why didn't we go together with my family.My brother came over to me and comforted me even thoughin his heart he felt the same way. My brother and Istayed in the ghetto for four months. It was quiet,from time to time someone was being shot that theycaught leaving the ghetto illegally. Most of the peoplethat went outside the ghetto were small children. Theywent to get bread from the gentiles for their poorparents and family. Many of those children neverreturned. The Gestapo caught them and they were shot.Their parents were waiting for them but they neverreturned. I spoke to one small little girl about theage of eight. She told me that she goes every dayoutside the ghetto to the gentiles in the village tobring some food for her small brother because she nolonger had any parents. This is the way it was in theghetto.
Small children became self-sufficient people. Mybrother also wanted to start to go to work. I would notlet him do that. As long as I had some money left. Ididn't want him to be in danger every minute at work.We did not live a very nice life but we were nothungry. We had to live very sparingly and budget ourlittle money. The money we had from my father wealready lived almost a half a year on.
It cost me quite a bit in the village and for all those hiding places. In the ghetto we heard rumors that they were preparing to get a transporttogether for evacuation . Because it was quiet for a long time. This was on a Saturday, I was going withmy girlfriend for a walk. It was becoming evening, weheard people talking that tonight something was goingto happen. We could not sleep that night. We remained in our clothes as we laid in our beds we expectedthat any time something was going to happen. We laid onthe beds snoozing until around 2:00 in the morning we heard gunfire and realized what that meant. Theevacuation had started. We opened the door to thehiding place down in the cellar. The hiding placeentrance was under a bed. We moved the bed and therewas a small entrance. We lowered ourselves by ladderdown to the cellar and moved back the bed to where itwas and we remained in the hiding place. In that cellar there were at least 150 people. It was a verylarge cellar.
We were squashed like herrings in a barrel. Therewere a lot of small children there. We were all afraidthat the children should not start to cry, because weheard shooting up in the street. The shooting consistedof machine gun fire and hand grenades. We heard screams and rolling of wagons, we sat in the hiding placein the dark. All at once we heard the Gestapo walking around inside our house. The gestapo hadheard that there is a hiding place somewhere. But theydidn't know where to look. They were pounding with axesin the walls, all at once we heard someone cry from a small child that was only several months old. All thepeople inside the cellar forced the mother to keep thechild quiet even though she might choke her. The mother of the baby did not want to do that.But the people insisted on her doing so. She could notrisk the lives of 150 people because of her babycrying. She thought about it for several minutes andthen decided to comply with the wishes of most of thepeople. The woman sat next to me, I could not look butshe had to do it. She had to suffocate the baby. TheGestapo heard a noise. They thought it came from thecellar. But they still could not find the entrance tothe cellar. They started throwing hand grenades and one of them exploded in the wall next to me where Iwas sitting. The wall shattered a bit from the force ofthe grenade but they still could not find where itwas. Not being able to find the hiding place they left.
We remained in the cellar a full day and night. Weheard the constant shooting and the screams of thepeople who were being captured. It is now Mondaymorning the first of May 1943. We hear that the Gestapois closing in on our hiding place. They opened thesmall entrance and we heard the screams Òget out you dam jews. We looked for you for a very long time andcould not find youÓ. I held on to my brothers hand andmy cousin by the other. We leave the hiding place oneafter the other. They took us out to an assembly placewhere several jews were already there.
I know that these are our last minutes, either theywill shoot us, or they will burn us in the ovens in Treblinka. They assembled us in five rows, and made us sit on our legs. I looked around and I saw that there were bringing out more captured people.The people looked horrible and they were bleeding fromtheir heads, and wearing dirty clothes. There were manyof them who did not look like human beings. The SS soldiers , they pushed the people and kept hitting them with the buts of their guns. The place gets more people all the time. There already isseveral thousand people assembled there. Every whereyou look you can see damaged buildings from handgrenades that have been thrown by the soldiers. As youlook you can see hands and feet sticking out from thewindows of doorways from the people who had beenhiding inside. You see wagons being driven, full ofdead people that the jewish police from the ghetto aretransporting to the cemeteries. The wagons lookedhorrifying to the degree that I can not describe them.We heard gunfire and more Gestapo kept arriving. Alongwith all the extra soldiers we can see someone who mustbe the chief of the Gestapo.
They called this man the "Beater" or the "Killer",that was his nickname that the jews gave him. When hewalked the streets with his dog no-one was allowed tobe on the streets. If anyone was there on the street,he would send his dog after them to attack the person.After the attack, he would come and shoot theperson to death. When he arrived, they brought him achair and he sat down in the center of the ghetto.Every few minutes he calls out the name of a differentperson that he liked to kill. He tells them to run andthen he shoots them right on the spot. With me in thesecond row there was an older jewish man. The olderman's name was Cagot. The killer had called one of hissoldiers to bring this older man to him. One of theGestapo soldiers came to the older jew . The old greyman stood up and grabbed the gun from the soldier andhit the Gestapo soldier. The soldier was not expectingthis to happen to him. He stopped dead in his tracks and pulled his revolver and shot the oldman. That made a very big impression on the rest ofthe Gestapo soldiers that they started to watch us much closer. The old man fell, he was dead. He didnot want to go to the ovens. After this had happenedthey started shooting even more.
The big shot Gestapo man was also referred to asthe"king". He walked around and shot whomever walksinto his sight. We remained in that place until thatevening while being watched by the Gestapo. Then, inrows of five they marched us to the trains. On the waythere, many of the jews escaped. They were shooting atthem but they did not care and they kept running. Many of them fell and died and we kept going to thetrains. Along side the roads, many dead were laying. Wearrived at the trains. They loaded us up into thewagons 150 people to a car. They closed the windows anddoors. It didn't take more than an hour before some ofthe people started to choke. The was no water and foodfor several days. The heat was very uncomfortable, itwas now the month of May. It was very hot and hard toabsorb the heat and the stench from the peoplethat had died.
The train remained at the station until the nextevening. Many of the people had already died fromchoking. My cousin who had been a healthy boyalways kept fainting. I didn't have anything that Icould help him with. We prayed that the train wouldmove out. Around 10:00 at night the train started to move. It became somewhat better because when thetrain was moving we caught some air coming in to thecars. The men with small pocket knives tried to dig away at the door so that they could perhaps openit. They succeeded and they opened up the door. Theystarted to jump from the train while it was inmotion. Every time someone had jumped from the train,we could here gun shots because the guards weresitting on the roofs of the cars and were shootingtheir guns at everyone who jumped. The jumping off thetrains became very dangerous. They stopped the trainand the Gestapo entered our car. They started to shoot,without looking where. Three people were shot andthey said that if any more of this was going tohappen they would shoot all of us. Then the trainstarted to proceed again. The people did not scare soeasily this time. The people still continued to jump from the train. My cousin pleaded with me that I should jump with him. But I was too frightened to do so. I didn't have any reason to try to save myself. Ialready went thru to much before this to again go intothe forest to hide out. I did not have any specifichideouts to go to or the strength to go thru this. Mybrother told me to jump but I didn't want to do it. Ibegged my brother to jump with my cousin but he didn'twant to leave me alone. My cousin stayed with us for a few more hours and every now and then he would pass out. I didn't have any water to revive him. When Ifinally did get a few drops of water from someone thatI knew, (You could get water at some of the stationsfrom the polish for a large some of money) the rest ofthe people took the water away from me so that I woundup with nothing.
My cousin could no longer stand it there and whenthe train was moving he jumped. I was left alone withmy brother. It became very late in the night and I fellasleep. When I woke up I was laying on top of deadbodies. We all knew that they were taking us toTreblinka. We remained on the trains for three dayswithout food and water but we did not feel any hunger.The worst part was the thirst for water. People weretaking raindrops from the roofs to satisfy their thirsts. On Thursday we arrived at the stationwhere they told us we would embark at this station. But we were not at Treblinka. This was Lublin and they told us that the healthy ones would be taken to work.They took us all off the trains. From the 150 peoplethat were in our car, only 50 were left. The rest ofthem had jumped and a lot of them were dead frombeing shot. They took us off the trains in Lublin,which is past Maidanek where we had been scheduled togo. That was about three kilometers away. They weremarching us under guard until we arrived at that place.There they took us all to one place. There theyseparated us, Men were separated from the women. Thatis where I got separated from my brother. I don't know,but they took him away from me and I was left alone.They placed me with all the other women. A short timelater a lager commandant arrived because Maidanek was aconcentration camp. The strongest people that were ableto go to work came here. Children and older womenthey took away. Me and some of the younger peoplethey took into the camps
What kind of a camp was Maidanek? This was a camp that contained thousands of people for slave labor. Thecamp contained five large fields. The five fields weredivided with barbed wire and had soldiers with riflesin between the fields. Trying to move around from onecamp to another meant instant death. Thousands ofpeople perished there in those crematoriums. All thetime they brought in new prisoners. Before we enteredthe camp, we had to turn everything over to them. Theytook us to go to the showers where there was always adoctor. Whomever the doctor didn't like or that hethought did not look good to him, he placed them to oneside. We took the showers, they then provided us withtorn clothes. On the clothes was inscribed thelettering "L" meaning concentration lager. After thisthey were moving us to the fifth field. This was a campfor just women.