DARK CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON

When Sima came home in 1939 for summer vacation, we did not know that it would be the last summer of peace and happiness. Now Hitler threatened Poland, and everybody was worried about what would happen. It was a tumultuous summer. Our life at home had not changed, but dark clouds hung above our heads. Hitler demanded the Danzig corridor, but Poland refused. We sang patriotic songs in school like:

"Nobody can scare us, nobody can hurt us when Marshall Smigly Rydz is with us.”

The harcers(boy scouts) sang even bolder songs:

"Isn't it exciting when the bombs exploded

And the earth trembled ....

And if somebody doesn't like it

Let him go to hell!"

Very soon, when the bombs really did explode, they came to their senses, and it was not exciting.

My eldest sister turned into a beautiful lady, with huge black eyes, charming and shy. The rumours that Lazar's daughter is piekna (in Polish "beautiful") drew some attention and visits to take a look, but she would often jump out the window to the garden to avoid curiosity. She was shy.

Our house was located on the main road to Warsaw. The traffic was dense and people with money began to leave Warsaw for the country; some emigrated.

1939 - WAR

Friday, September 1, 1939. Germany attacked Poland. Suddenly, planes were above us dropping bombs. We ran out of the house and dispersed in all directions. For some reason I found myself under a bush in our orchard, and a bomb exploded nearly scaring me to death. People ran, covered their faces and shouted, "Gas, gas!" But, it was not gas; it was the road, where crowds of civilians and armies marched to the east, being bombed.

The senseless bombing of the civilian population showed from the beginning who the invaders were - simply trained murderers.

The road was packed with people walking on foot, pulling any kind of transportation and the destination - unknown. They stopped for a drink of water and soon our well went dry. No more water.

A terrible confusion prevailed. People were afraid of a gas attack from the Germans and many carried gas masks. We didn't have them, but prepared white gauze masks to cover the mouth and nose.

It was a hot day, September 1, 1939, and the dust from the marching crowds stayed in the air which some people took for gas after the planes left. One can imagine the panic when people were running and screaming, "Gas! Gas!"

Fearing another air attack, we wanted to get away from the main road. It was very frightening, the bombing, and especially the shooting down of any moving object - even animals.

This first bombing scared us so much (like the others, too) and this gave us the first taste of the war and Germans.

We gathered together, after the planes left, all alive and scared. The crowds of refugees made our well dry, there was no more water. Father decided to leave the house to go to a farmer friend who lived about a mile off the road. His name was Kukus.

We found refuge in his barn, and uncle Mordechai's family joined us. The bombing went on for about a week. It was hard to endure the constant air attacks; the bombs left deep craters around us; the noise was deafening; the fear great.

There, in the barn, we had a few relatives who stayed with us for a while. One was the husband of mother's sister Mindle, Benjamin,from Warsaw. He was so panicky and tearful when the bombing went on that the children were surprised at how a grown up man behaved so hysterically and cried like a baby. Soon he left, to look for safety.

The other relative was father's nephew Henrik, the son of uncle Isaak, who a few years before emigrated to Palestine with his family. Nobody missed aunt Pearl.

Henrik was tall, blond with blue eyes, and a spoiled brat to the core. When they came to Bojmie to say goodbye, he was around twelve years old and did a horrible thing to our little kittens that our cat had. With a stick he poked out their eyes and killed them. Later, at the age of seventeen, he visited Warsaw and without his parents' blessing married a twenty-seven year old woman named Stela. He wanted to take her to Palestine. When the war began he and his new wife ran from Warsaw. Where did they go? To Bojmie. They found us in this barn and joined our family. He was born a jerk, and nobody liked him, especially Sima - she despised him. But, he was not stupid. After a few weeks he left us and smuggled himself and Stefa to Romania. I do not know how, but they reached Palestine in 1940! A miracle.

Our cousin Henrik was a jerk and his life was very colourful afterward. He divorced Stela and was the entrepreneur of a dancing team of girls from the Middle East. The star of the band was a beautiful girl, Aftina, who was his lover. Then she left him and after a few failures, he ended up in France in Lille (or Marseille), married a French woman, the owner of a hotel/restaurant and they had two sons. He converted and the family is French. That was aunt Pearl's beloved son and our first cousin Henrik.

Anyway, after a week of bombing, the Germans came. We heard them pass nearby; they stopped at the next farm where a few Poles hid in a ditch. They asked them one word, "Jude?" The Poles knew perfectly well what they meant, and they pushed out the only Jew, Jankiel, a thirty year old mechanic with golden hands who had been born with them and had gone to school with them in Bojmie.

The Nazi's shot him on the spot.

THE OCCUPATION

That was the beginning of the end.

Afraid to stay longer in the barn, we decided to walk to a remote village - Galki, where distant relatives lived. We did not carry anything with us, and only I clutched a prayer book. I still believed that God would protect us. My family was amazed at my sudden religious fervour but thought that maybe God would listen to a child's prayer and protect us from the devil - who knew?

In Galki, we lived with the Rotbarts, a family of five: parents, two young men and a girl Sima's age named Belcia. They lived like all the farmers around them, in a simple life style and they welcomed us warmly. The Germans hadn't reached this remote place yet, but the village overflowed with city folks who had the same idea as us, to stay away from the occupants. But, sooner or later, we had to return home. A week later, with trepidation, we went back to Bojmie.

It was the middle of September and time to continue school. The next day, Eva and I went to school. Here we had another surprise. The school principal, Pan Ziemba, told us to go back home. We were not allowed to attend school because we were Jewish. Period.

This was a hard blow to us because we wanted to study and we liked school. I think this was the first German measure against the Jews: Jewish children. After that, there were so many orders, restrictions, not a day passed without some bad news. We could not have a store. Father could not make a living anymore as a cattle dealer, we had to wear the arm bands with the star of David, and we also had to hang outside the front of the house a big Mogen David so we were not mistaken as gentiles. There was no end of the rules and restrictions against us.

Father was home now, and mother was the provider with her sewing (also illegal) and baked bread for the black market and the smugglers who came from Warsaw to buy and sell there. Everything you did was punishable, but we had to eat.

Sima learned to knit sweaters and helped mother. Suddenly, life was changing. Germans came to search our house and harassed us so often that the dogs stopped barking at them. They looked for guns, radios, valuables and food.

Unfortunately, father's gun was registered and he had to surrender it to the police in the first days of the war. A couple of years later we dreamed of owning that gun, but we did not have it.

The rumours around were always bad, and never good. The killing, beating,and robbing of the Jews was an everyday event.

The winter of 1939-1940 was a cold winter, especially when we could not buy coal for heat. We spent time in the kitchen where the wood stove burned, and gave us the warmth we needed. All the other rooms were unheated so not habitable.

People were still moving to the East, running from the Germans to the Russians. Our house was like a transit station, where they would warm up, have a meal, or spend the night.

Only our door was open to these people. All the other neighbours didn't respond to pleas to let them in.

All the families with little children were moving to the East and how could you not let them in to warm up? They were all going in the direction of the Bug River where it was still possible to cross to the Russian side.

This Exodus, the flight from the Germans to the Russians, was very unsettling to Jews left behind. Nobody knew who was right. Maybe, we reasoned, the war will end soon. Why run from your nest to the unknown?

My father was not a person who liked risk. The only thing he could do was to help people who were on the run - uprooted. This was a mitzvah.

But who could predict that things would turn so deadly that we would be marked for extermination?

My sister Sima tried to do my schooling, but it did not go well. With a real teacher, I never dreamed of arguing, but with my sister, I voiced my own opinion and she got tired of such a rebellious student and our lessons ended.

My passion for reading makes me do things to get books that I normally would not do. I went to my former teacher, Pani Mernicka and begged her to lend me some books from the school library. She succumbed to my pleas, and I was able to read such contraband as Lucy Maude Montgomery’s "Anne of Green Gables." I was absolutely charmed with the characters and Canadian ways of life. I also loved the "Secret Garden" and many Polish classics such as Sienkievitz: Trilogy, Reymonts, Peasants Zeromski, Orzeshkova Eliza, and many others.

The other source of books was the estate of the landowner Pan Miodynsky. This family was the gentry of the area and owned a big estate, forests, etc. They didn't refuse to lend books to us Jews from Bojmie as long as I went with my sister Sima. In this way, in 1940, I read a few books of A. Cronin, "Castle Broudi," "The Stars Look Down," and many American Hollywood thrillers. My books helped me to forget the present and they gave me an escape from reality.

It was a very cold winter in 1940. The entire family was home around the kitchen stove. mother sewed, Sima knitted and I learned how to knit. So did my sister Eva. Father was home, unable to earn a living with the German restrictions against the Jews, so he was doing many chores around the house, mostly keeping us warm.

Everybody around hoped that this war madness soon would come to an end and the Nazis would disappear into thin air like a bad dream.

But the Germans think otherwise. They are around all the time and it seemed that their only occupation was to torment the Jews.

Unfortunately, our village was located by the main track from Warsaw to Lublin or even farther from Berlin to Moscow and the whole traffic was going by. Our Mogen David, hanging on the outside (like they ordered) attracted attention and there was not a day without unwanted visitors.

They always were searching for gold, guns, food (Jews were not supposed to eat decent food) and confiscating whatever they liked.

So many Poles, neighbours, turned out to be collaborators, informers, boot lickers of the Germans, that you couldn't trust anybody.

It was our first war winter, but not the last. Sure, nobody could guess what a terrible fate was in the future for us, but the hope for the end of the war was very slim. How?

Life went on, some people even married. At the end of 1939, Marysia married her fiancé Mietek Zimler in Warsaw. He was a professional, a very intelligent man with a big nose.

We could not attend the wedding. I drew a picture for them, where there was a table with guests sitting around it. At the head of the table were the bride and groom and I placed myself next to Marysia, the bride.

When the ghetto in Warsaw was established in 1940, Marysia moved there with her husband Mietek.

One of our neighbours, the daughter of glazier Golda, married a guy from Kolushin. We were invited to go. Among the guests was a pretty young woman from Kolushin named Nela and she noticed my sister Sima.

Home in Kolushin, she told her younger brother, nineteen-year-old Mojshe Luxemburg, about this pretty girl she met at the wedding. The guy was curious and was not lazy to take a trip to Bojmie to check her out. He was tall and handsome, an heir of a prominent family in the city. He could sing beautifully. I remember one song from his repertoire:

"They take everything from me

Now poor and lonely in my youth

Wandering days and nights

Starving and hunted

Do I not have a heart like others?

Do I have not a right to live?

Why should my fate be so miserable?"

When he sang, people gathered under the window to listen.

The attitude of the Poles toward Jews, with the occupation by the Germans, got worse from day to day. They gloated at our misfortune, fully approved the treatment of the Jews by the Germans and helped them vigorously.

Because anti-Semitism was so widespread before the war, they didn't need much propaganda to abuse the Jews, except that, like the Nazis, they looked for a profit, to rob, steal, from the Jews.

Because of the scarcity of food in the cities, a whole industry of smugglers rose in their midst.

They came by train like locusts and bought food from the farmers to sell to the city dwellers, mostly Jews (who were prohibited from travelling) for exorbitant prices.

But most Jews were poor and now forbidden to work in their professions. They didn't have money to pay.

So began the hunger and death. Sure, there were rich Jews, who could buy, but the majority were not rich. My sister's boyfriend Mojshe's family was the elite of the city and he was not hungry. This is why romance was on his mind. Youth is youth and it has its own rules.

My sister was not yet sixteen years old, but their friendship blossomed. He became a regular visitor to Bojmie, and when he came to our house, he always kissed Sima's and mother's hands which was the Polish fashion. I was ten years old and under the influence of many romantic books. I enjoyed watching the young couple, but there was nothing to see, they were so innocent, they only talked and looked at each other.

We, the youngsters still kept together and, like always, gathered at our place to play or to exchange rumours, which were wild. Tojve was our political commentator at twelve years; he even made adults listen to him.

Hana and Abram who were my maternal grandparents, settled permanently in our house. They occupied the front room where the store was previously. Now we were a family of seven. My aunties, mother's sisters Marjanka. and Luba, also ran from Warsaw and settled nearby and made a meagre living by serving the farmers, and spent most of the time in our house. Luba and her niece, Sima, are best friends because they are only a few years apart.

At the end of 1940, a German garrison settled in our former school, and even though they are the Wehrmacht, they do not miss a chance to harass the few Jews in Bojmie. They ordered us to wear arm bands, a Mogen David had to hang on the front wall of every Jewish house. Jews were not permitted to walk on the sidewalks so they had to walk in the middle of the streets and take off their hat if they saw a German.

The Gestapo often raided the Jewish homes, and looked for items that were forbidden to Jews. They did these raids mostly on Jewish holidays or Shabbat. Sure, not all the soldiers were Nazis, but they were silent, even if they do not approve of the Gestapo methods.

One of them even fell in love with my pretty aunt Marjanka. It was strictly platonic, but the Gestapo put their foot down. I do not know what they did to Kurt, but I know that they burst into Marjanka's flat and scared her to death while threatening to put her in a concentration camp. After that, she was afraid to even look in their direction.

That winter, out of sheer boredom, I began to write poetry. I usually wrote for a special occasion such as somebody's birthday. I loved to be praised as a poet in the family. Sometimes I even put in political meaning like:

"The dust and rumbling on the road

Our enemies moving east

Hate and destruction on the way

How to escape from them?"

I wanted desperately to study and my mother made a deal with a refuge teacher to give me lessons illegally in her home. Her husband hated Jews and I was only able to visit her when she was alone.

Once she told me to write an essay about autumn. I took the task seriously even though it seemed like an innocent subject. I let my imagination loose and wrote what was in my heart. Doom, fear of the future, premonitions without hope ...

I think most Jews felt this way, only as a child, I expressed myself in a very mature way and the teacher was stunned. It was my last lesson as the teacher refused to deal with Jews.

Except that the Germans forbade the Poles to deal with Jews at any level. Why should she risk it? Her husband was an open pro-Nazi, worked for a magistrate, and simply hated Jews.

So my schooling was short-lived. I compensated by reading and invention. Yes, I decided to invent for myself summer shoes - sandals.

I didn't have leather so I used an old sheet and thread with some cardboard for the soles.

It took me a whole day cutting and sewing. My fingers were bleeding but in the evening, I was able to produce a pair of white sandals. Unfortunately, it was the same as with Mojshe's plane. When I put them on in front of my family, after one step they fell apart.

Living in the country made it possible to get around without shoes - barefoot. Very economical.

Only in winter it was a problem. And with the German occupation, Jews had no right to produce, nor to sell or buy. We were outlawed.

In many cities, ghettos were established, first of all in Warsaw. My parents sent a few food parcels to Marysia, but soon it was forbidden.

One day, Father fell ill and without a doctor we knew he had typhoid. We had to hide him in the back room so nobody except the family knew about it.

We were isolated, only mother attended to him and without medication he struggled with the deadly disease for a month, and then finally recovered.

The Germans often used a cure for a sick Jew. They shot him. From their point of view this was a very radical action.

Because our house was located on the road Brest-Litowsk-Warsaw, and it was the way to the Soviets, crowds of refugee Jews were moving to the east, trying to escape from the Germans to Russia. They always stopped at our place for a meal or shelter on their way.

They moved day and night and nobody was turned away or refused a meal. Uncle Mordechai lived across the street and never opened the door of his house. He sent them to us.

Our home was always hospitable, but what we endured that year, before the outbreak of the Russian-German war was a nightmare, day and night.

My mother cooked soup all day to feed the hundreds and hundreds of people. Entire families with dirty children, exhausted, spread out on our floor, all strangers and the smell of unwashed bodies was overwhelming.

Why didn't my parents go this route? The refugee Jews thought maybe they would be safe in Russia and would be spared. Father, however, was afraid to move to the unknown, to leave his home simply to risk. The main reason was he believed that the war would end and he had hope for the future.

Jews ran from the Germans to the Russian side, but not everybody succeeded. Many perished, were killed by the Germans or by the Russians or by the Polish bands and "quids" that robbed the defenseless victims.

One of them was my seventeen-year-old cousin David from Kolushin, a very talented boy. The border was closing and many young Jews did not want to turn back so they jumped in the Bug River and tried to swim across to the Russians. Both sides were shooting these helpless targets; David drowned.

In 1941, the roads swarmed with the German military, tanks, trucks; all kinds of military staff and their troops. Day and night we could hear the rumbling and choked in the thick dust. Our house shook and we tried to keep inside because our Mogen David on the front irritated them to the point they shook their fists, pointed guns and screamed obscenities to us children if we were outside.

So, we kept to our backyard so that we would not be exposed, but everybody guessed right, the Germans were going against the Russians; a new calamity.

Some troops stopped for rest and took over our yard with field kitchens, soldiers and guns. To our surprise, the ferocious dog Bujan behaved like a lamb with the soldiers. We couldn't believe he would let them pat him and he never barked. What a traitor! Or, maybe it was the dog's intuition - better to obey the occupants. Anyway, our intuition told us to keep inside the house, not to venture out.

Once, looking out of the kitchen window we saw a German officer talking to our neighbour, the butcher Charniecki. They didn't understand each other and the German was very frustrated.

Then Charniecki remembers us, the Jews, who could be translators and came running for help. Like always, Sima, the sixteen year old, was the bravest. Although she spoke. Yiddish, in college they studied German.

Anyway, the officer asked the butcher for a "leber of a schwein" (pork liver) and Charniecki heard only "leiber", which to him was the Jew Leiba (the tailor's son) and got ready to bring him.

The officer was happy and politely thanked Sima for helping. We watched the whole scene with trepidation.

Once my beautiful blue eyed aunt Marjanka went to the store which was full of Germans. They immediately spotted a good looking girl and surrounded her with friendly talk. Then the store owner, a Pole, said "Jude" - this one word they learned first. And I was with my aunt and saw how the Germans slowly, almost unwillingly stepped aside, leaving us in an empty space, like lepers. Jude...

Now they were moving to the East. We didn't expect anything good for us.

The traffic was so intense on the road that we had to wait hours to cross the street. One day my sister Eva was coming home from the pasture across the street with our cow and she was stuck on the other side, unable to come home.

When we heard the sounds of heavy guns rumbling in the east on June 21, 1941, we knew what was going on. We only hoped that the Russians would move to the west, but that was not the case.

After a few days we didn't hear the sounds of the battle any more. The Germans were victorious! The Jews were very disappointed. After two years of the German occupation, the Jews didn't have any illusions about them, but even they couldn't foresee the scale of the extermination, the whole destruction of a nation that would soon be gone. So, we were not in a festive mood, the future looked grim for us.

But, we still lived in our home and the family was intact. Even with my father not working, mother and Sima put food on our table with their skills and craft. mother sewed, Sima knitted and our garden supplied us with vegetables. We still had a cow, goat and chickens.

Speaking of the goat. This was a devil of a goat with an odd personality and as cunning as a mobster. First of all it was a thief. Usually, bread that was taken from the oven was put in the storage room to cool off. Sure, the great smells of fresh bread lured the goat to quietly steal into the storage room (how he opened the hatch we'll never know) and gobbled everything in sight. The goat acted so fast that if somebody wanted to save the bread, it was impossible to catch him.

He also robbed our vegetable garden, even though the gate was locked. After his rampage, he only left a mess.

It was not that we didn't feed this devil. We took turns every day taking it to the pasture attached to a long chain. Not to be bored, we usually read a book while the goat was wandering around nibbling. He would circle around you with the iron chain and then suddenly pull, and you would jump up in the air screaming from the pain in your bare legs.

Like we didn't have enough of our own curses. Moyshe-Maryan the fiddler was always in the picture. He came and went, often staying for long periods. We all despised him but nothing could deter this parasite. He never had any scruples or shame about anything. He never even mentioned his four starving children in the ghetto at Siedlce.

But, one of the wives found out that he was boarding at Bojmie and sent to us his nine year old daughter Lisele and frankly wrote to my parents that if they could feed the good for nothing father why not feed his starving child? Sure, my parents took in the child and she lived with us until the deportation.

Our Zaida, the great handyman, tried to contribute something for their upkeep, but it turned against him. A Polish customer came to him with his horse, begging him to fix its horse shoes. Zaida did it but the farmer didn't want to pay the Jew and ran to the Gendarmes to complain.

He brought us this old fat German and my old Zaida was whipped mercilessly right before our terrified eyes. When Bube tries to shield Zaida, she got a vicious kick and fell on her back. After, she was bedridden for a few weeks.

It was such a terrible sight: an old man in uniform beating another old man because he was Jewish and dared to ask payment for his hard work.

For some reason, the Gendarme explained his actions to Sima. He told her he knew how to deal with Jewish swindlers. The Pole enjoyed himself, then left with the horse. Free service.

Zaida didn't work anymore after that, but his and Bube's praying increased. They were so pious.

The Jews hoped that the Germans would be so busy with the new war in Russia that maybe they would leave the Jews alone. But, the victors had enough time to solve the Jewish problem ... the final solution.

Many rural Jews, who lived for centuries in their villages, were suddenly deported to the big city ghettos, destitute.

The situation in the ghettos worsened with this influx of destitute Jews from the vicinity. Hunger, typhoid, no place to go or stay, overcrowding conditions, without any sanitary rules decimated the ghettos.

We considered ourselves still free although we lived in constant fear of deportation; the word "resettlement" was always on our minds. Only a miracle could spare us from the fate of other Jews. Still, we did not suspect the final "solution" the annihilation of people.

One day, a couple of Jewish boys in dirty rags came to our place for food. After they ate, they told us a horrible story about a concentration camp from which they escaped, the conditions and the killings. We looked at them in disbelief. Was it possible to condemn a whole people only because of their race?

They left us in gloom and silence. It was the fall of 1941 and, like every year, we bought potatoes for the winter, wood for heating, and other produce to survive the winter. Unfortunately, this winter was destined to be different from other winters. We hoped that a miracle would save us from the killing, murderous Nazis - like the Allies, the second front, the Russians will push them back....

DEPORTATION

Our turn came in November 1941. The Poles around knew of our imminent deportation, but they kept it secret from us so that we had no time to prepare, to hide our possessions, our livestock.

Early in the morning, SS surrounded our house and we were given half an hour with strict orders of what we could take and what we had to leave behind. A horse and wagon waited outside with a Polish driver.

The shock and panic was overwhelming. How can you choose in half an hour what is most important of all you have accumulated over your life when everything is important?

The SS followed our every step, and forbade us to take what we wanted and needed. For example, Sima wanted to take her fiddle, they told her she couldn't, but our "good" neighbours were free to drag anything they wanted from our yard, stable and house. The looting began right away, they were all ready to grab, right before our eyes.

Our destination was the ghetto in Wengrow, thirty kilometers away. It was a cold and rainy November day when our procession (Uncle Mordechai's family, too) moved away from Bojmie for the last time, with the Germans escorting us. We passed villages we knew too well and saw how peaceful the Polish farmers lived on their farms. We couldn't believe that yesterday we were in our home, and today we were homeless.

It was like a funeral procession, our caravan of deported Jews under the escort of the Germans, people who in one day were stripped of their belongings, homes and dignity.

As if the weather was also against us, it was drizzling all day, the woods around looked wet and sad, the road endless and the people around living their everyday lives, doing their chores and not even looking at who was passing by. Nobody cared. Why should they? They are not Jews.

I was 11 years old and very well understood our hopeless situation and uncertain future. And I was so envious of the farmers we passed. They were so lucky to have their homes and lives.

We were soaked to the bones, the horse too, dragging the wagon slowly with difficulty. The Germans wore their raincoats and watched us like hawks.

But, where could we have run? We didn't know what was going on in the world. We didn't have radios (they were confiscated in 1939) no newspapers. We only knew that the Russians were pushed back and the Germans were winning.

From our wagon we looked at the chimneys with smoke rising to the sky and we knew they were cooking their evening meals. mothers called their children inside, dogs barked, the cattle came from the pastures to their stables and dusk had fallen. We moved in the darkness and our moods were dark, too.

The young SS noticed Sima, who covered herself with a rug against the drizzle and they joked "Schöne Augen" ("beautiful eyes"). She didn't respond.

GHETTO WENGROV

Late that night we arrived in the ghetto of Wengrov and were unloaded at the Synagogue, which was full of deportees. We settled on the stone floor for the night, but nobody could sleep. The children were crying, the buzz of voices never stopped. Everybody was worried and frightened.

The next day, a member of the city's Judenrat came to tell us that some housing would be found and everybody would be settled. Right in the evening we were "settled" with another family in a cold, tiny attic room where we slept on the floor huddled together.

It was a devastating feeling to be robbed of your home, your possessions, and your dignity. To go from making your own choices to be pushed into a place which was not habitable until now, with strangers.

Zaida came with us, but Bube was left with Marjanka and Luba. Since they did not have their own house, they were ordered to move to a village, not far away, in the area of Galki where Jews were still permitted to live. There were a few other remote villages whose turn came a few months later.

Wengrov (30 km. from Bojmie) was mostly a Jewish city. A least half of the population was Jewish. Before the war, there was a vibrant Jewish life here, with synagogues, schools, and different organizations.

Now, part of the City is a ghetto. Jews from smaller communities were deported here and the conditions are poor. When typhoid broke out, people died from lack of medication, lack of food, and dirty, unsanitary conditions.

For us village Jews, who until now were not starving and living more or less in more comfortable conditions, this was a shock.

On the other hand, living all of our lives among the Poles, now we were among Jews which was the one and only comfort.

Otherwise, we were sleeping on the floor of a cold attic, and not having enough food.

It is interesting how, when you know that bread is limited, you can't stop thinking about your hunger, and your desire to have it more. In other times, it was okay to skip meals, but now it is painful. You have to do it!

The family of uncle Mordechai was also brought to the ghetto and a few days later, he had a stroke and died. My father was the only one at his funeral. It was bitterly cold and hard to dig a grave.

Food and medications were scarce in the ghetto and the overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions were the cause of the epidemic of typhoid or "spotted typhus." People were dying around us like flies. Almost every family had sickness in their midst, and many were in mourning.

The first to fall sick was our Zaida, but his strong constitution overcame the illness and after a few weeks, he recovered.

Next was my sister, Eva. She had chills and a high fever, and red spots over her body. We made a bunk in the corner of the attic where all the sick lay. At night we took turns to check if they were still alive. After Eva got better, it was my turn.

I got the chills, high fever, and the red spots. No medication was available. I was delirious, burning in the corner of the attic and my family checked at night to make sure I was still alive. After a week of high fever came the crisis and at night, when sister Eva checked on me, I recognized her and even complained that she scared me. I asked her to get me some galareta (jelly), which was not obtainable in the hungry ghetto. While we recovered, we were so ravenous for food it became a big problem.

Some Poles still had access to the closed ghetto. It was in this way Sima was able to get a few clients and knit them sweaters, and in return, they paid with food and produce.

Even as busy as what she was, she made some friends with the young Jewish intelligentsia, and was welcomed when they gathered to discuss politics, literature and the Jewish situation. She always took her knitting with her, and life went on. Even in these conditions, youth fell in love, and she had a few marriage propositions. She was seventeen years old.

One serious candidate, a doctor from Lodz came officially to my parents to ask for the hand of their daughter. My father was so confused because it was not the time to marry, not the right time for such a thing that he refused, mumbling something to the effect that Sima didn't even own a decent coat. After, we laughed at his refusal, but my mother liked the candidate for a son-in-law.

Meanwhile, Eva and I made friends of our own. Downstairs, the children of the owners of the house befriended us and we spent time in their place, which was much better than ours. In some ways, to be only with Jews had some advantages because at least nobody called us names or beat us because we were Jews.

When the Germans arrived in the ghetto, there was fear, abuse, corruption,and what we heard going on in other cities didn't give us much hope for the future.

The ghetto, with all its problems, lived like the song said:

"Life is not fair, instead up, I fall down

Yesterday exiled, today suffering.

I can't think what tomorrow will bring,

So what's the use to worry about tomorrow?

To lose my present, whatever it is?

What’s the use to cry about the past?

The past will never come back ...

Lets enjoy the little we have today

Because yesterday is already gone.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow .... nobody knows ....”

Young people tried to enjoy life even in these conditions. They gathered secretly to socialize with other youth.

I remember it was Hanukkah and Sima was invited to a potato latkes party. What she told us afterward, was that when everybody was sitting at the table ready to eat the latkes, the door banged open and a few Gestapo men burst in, screaming to everybody to get up and show documents.

What documents did they need? Everybody was Jewish. But their intention was to scare, to spoil any enjoyment (it was in 1941 - before the start of extermination) Jews were not permitted to gather.

But still, people were trying. Children were learning in underground schools. I even remember a children's concert. They were performing in Yiddish and Hebrew and I was enjoying it so much! (only I was sorry that I neglected Hebrew before the war and didn't understand it)

Jews were trying to live even in the face of death. I think this was a sign of resistance without guns. They resisted to keep their dignity. They hoped to outlive this enemy, this calamity. Very few succeeded.

At the end of December, it was Sima's seventeenth birthday. I wrote a poem for her, the only gift she got. I wrote:

"Today you are seventeen

I wish you will celebrate one hundred and seventeen!

We lost our childhood home,

We lost our family nest,

Only memories are left

Let's hope for the best!"

My sister took my poem to show to her friends and they had another subject to discuss - "Children of the Ghetto".

This was a very intelligent group of young people and I wondered how easily my sister was accepted; she fit in at once.

After the typhoid, our hair fell out and our appetite increased. We were ravenous, always hungry.

ESCAPE FROM THE GHETTO

My parents were looking for a way to escape from the ghetto. We were informed that Jews were still allowed to live in the village of Galki, and our distant relatives lived there. Father decided to go there and investigate to find out if it was true. One night he escaped from the ghetto and went to Galki. Soon, we got a message from him that he was sending a horse and wagon for us.

One winter night he arrived with a sleigh. We loaded what we could fast and luckily stole out from the ghetto.

Even in the evening, we could not take the main road, so we went along the frozen river and arrived in the village late at night.

Escape from the ghetto was punishable by death, but we chose a cold, frosty and moonless night and safely arrived in Galki.

Galki was a remote village with one street and like most villages, the houses were in front on both sides, behind were barns and stables, and behind that were open air lavatories.

The river Kostryn was encircling one side of the village and on the other side was the estate of the landowner, with a huge private park.

In summer it was very nice to spend time at the river in the meadows. The estate was selling vegetables and we often went there to buy some.

Interesting, when the final solution soon began, we had very little information about what was going on, but the Poles knew.

Once when we came to make our purchases, the housekeeper told us Jewish children: "The Germans are destroying your nation, but maybe you will be the lucky one to survive."

We were baffled and couldn't figure out what she meant.

Soon, we found out. Meanwhile, Galki was our last legal refuge and we were happy escaping the hunger of the ghetto.

Father waited for us in a rented little room at a gentile widow's house. The widow had two daughters and a retarded son. I made friends with the younger Janka, and lacking in books for reading, I tried to work with her in the fields in the summer, or to help with her household duties.

GALKI

Mother was sewing for the neighbours and they paid her with produce, which we appreciated very much after the hungry ghetto. We could finally satisfy our ravenous appetites. Sima was knitting, father tried to illegally deal in his business. He had a partner, a thirty-year-old bachelor named Nathan. This trade is punishable by death if caught, but they did it anyway and we even ate meat sometimes.

I compensated my yearning for fruit with carrots. My mother was paid with a sack of carrots, so I sat all day with a knife; scrubbing and crunching like a rabbit.

I fully recovered from typhus, but the only thing that bothered me was my new hair. For my entire twelve years, I was the only blonde in the family with straight hair. Now, my new hair growing in was black and curly! Who needed such Jewish hair? Everybody wanted to look like a gentile, such misfortune, really bad luck. Sure, it was good to look Polish, but one needed also a good language skill with no accent.

We felt much better in the country; after living in the ghetto, our little room is cosy. I decorated our table with flowers that I collected near the river, which ran along the village (the same Kostryn). I often went to the river and spent time in the tall grass, looking up at the blue sky, dreaming ....

I had one dream. After the war, I wanted to return to school and study hard to be somebody. It worried me, that I was wasting time and years not doing anything.

I was in a constant hunt for books to read, but not many books were there. In the next village, Stuchotin, my aunties Maryanka and Luba lived with Bube (Zaida was with us) and they visited us often, (not Bube - she was bedridden, sick) or mother and Sima visited them. Once they were walking along the river in the direction of Stuchotin and they met a young forester from the estate. The young Pole looked at Sima and voiced his admiration. "You are the most beautiful Jewess I have ever met."

Another time, they were attacked by young shepherds who whipped them and they had to run for their lives.

This was the summer of 1942 when the extermination of the Jews was in full swing. Ghettos were emptied and cattle cars rolled to Treblinka, Maidanek. We heard rumors but can't believe them. It can't be true. There were a few Jewish families in the village, mostly craftsmen; a tailor, a shoemaker, even a shojchet, but Jews don't feel safe anymore. Rumours were wild. It was in the village that we heard about Treblinka, which wasn't far, for the first time and about the extermination.

An escapee from Treblinka came to us and told the whole story, but it was hard to believe. The only hope was that maybe the liberation by the Russians would come sooner, before the Germans finished us all.

When the Germans visited the village, we went to the woods for the day. It was July, hot with a lot of mosquitoes so we did not enjoy our stay in the woods. In the evening, after the Germans were gone, we returned home.

Sima's boyfriend from Kalushin, Mojshe Luxemburge, worked in a labour camp nearby on an estate. On Sunday he came to us to spend the day. He told us about their foreman, a nephew of the estate owner, an eighteen-year-old Polish fascist by the name of Janishek and how he tormented the Jews.

The young couple sometimes walked in the back lane and visited another Jewish family. Once, the village hooligans poured a bucket of water on Mojshe. Were they envious? Sure, they noticed the beautiful girl, but how did having a boyfriend harm them? We were so isolated from them, no connection, so it had to be envy.

Sometimes, Mojshe sang Yiddish songs in his strong voice like:

"It's late at night and the city slept

And only I am pushed away

From the locked doors ....

Nobody missed me ....

Nobody wants me .... etc.

Moyshe was a very handsome, nice boy and he came voluntarily to this labour camp in the estate (or, like all young Jews, he would be taken forcefully to another camp) to be closer to Sima and because they gave them Sunday off; he spent the day with us.

I remember, mother gave Sima a task to take the washed laundry to the river and rinse it there. It was easier than carrying buckets of water. Moyshe carried the basket with the laundry and I was sent as a chaperone - a very nosy chaperone ... very curious.

After they rinsed the laundry and put it back in the basket, they sat side by side on the high shore, dangling their legs and he sang for her love songs. I was the only audience and my little romantic heart felt how beautiful this moment was - two lovers above the running river and songs .... songs about eternal love, about the future, about life .... in this ocean of death.

Everything around was crumbling. There was no way out for Jews. We were in a death trap, but still humans are humans and love still existed, flourished.

It was love on the brink of an abyss. Jews were condemned; they didn't have the right to allow themselves such frivolous feelings.

I had a Jewish girl friend there, the shojchet’s daughter, Malka. She was twelve years old, too, but had physically and mentally developed very early. Her knowledge of some intimate subjects was a surprise to me. I, the bookworm, was so much more naive and shy. The best times we had were at the river shore, where the burdens of the adult's life didn't exist and nature was around us. We could be children, which we really were, and forget about the danger.

I often went to work in the fields with Janka, my neighbour. Physical work helped to keep my mind off the harsh reality.

My aunties and Bube now live in Stuchotin, the next village. Luba came often to visit us, or we went to them. They made a very poor living, but they did not starve and were lucky to stay in the country.

Everybody felt that this respite would soon end. The rumours of what was happening in the ghettos were very disturbing. Many ghettos were already emptied and people were deported to Majdanek or Treblinka, never to be seen again.

Poles looted Jewish property and profited from the Jewish tragedy. As usual, the Polish police informed them about the coming "action" and the peasants waited around with their horse wagons, ready to pounce and grab ... to loot.

A story about an old farmer's wife complaining was not a joke. "What greedy, horrible people the peasants are! They looted the Jewish homes completely. They didn't leave a scrap for an old woman like me!"

The looting was going on from the beginning of the war 1939. The villagers had a ball robbing trains full of goods, selling produce to the starving city people for such prices that it was plain robbery. And especially to the Jews in the ghettos. They didn't take money. They bartered for gold, diamonds, dollars.

When we were still living in Bojmie they made clothes, sweaters from stolen wool. Once a farmer sold my father a music box. To whom it belonged before, who knows? And who would get it after we were deported?

Sure, Polish intelligentsia were often, as well, the victims of the Nazis. Many of them ended in concentration camps and were killed. Occupation was not a picnic for them.

But the peasants? Most profited greatly and got rich at the expense of the Jewish tragedy.

The hostility and killing of the remaining Jews after the war explained a lot about their attitude.

No way they were giving back the stolen property. Better to let go or they would finish you now, which they did in many cases. That was the Christian thing to do: "don't kill, don't steal" - true Catholics.

We knew perfectly well that our time would be soon, if some help did not come from the outside, but from where?

The Germans planned their "actions" against the Jews, usually on Jewish holidays or on Shabbat.

Our sentence came on the evening of Rosh-Hashana, 1942. What were they proving? That the “chosen people" were not chosen? God would not protect them, they were condemned and nothing and nobody could help them? They were breaking us spiritually and physically.

Before we left, father made a last effort to save my older sisters with false passports. He contacted the Polish shoemaker, Stanisbov Michalowski, and paid money for two kenkartes. I was under age, but nobody knew when or how they would come. Meanwhile, we went to the collecting point - Kolushin ghetto. Everybody knew what this meant.

Again, we dragged ourselves on a wagon through villages where many knew us. They cheered when we passed by, and showed with a cut throat gesture what was going to happen to us. In the outskirts of the suburb of Kalushin, a woman shouted from her window, "You dirty Jews, it serves you right for killing our Jesus!"

GHETTO KALUSHIN

We stayed with my mother's older brother, Shepsl and his family in Kalushin. He had four grown children. Henrick, the eldest, disappeared in Russia. Dora had a fiancé and planned to go with him if he went to Treblinka. Seventeen-year-old David was killed in 1940 trying to cross the Bug. Sixteen year old Eva was a beautiful blond girl with blue eyes and a short nose, looking not so Jewish. But her Polish was not good as she had lived her life in a Shtetl and spoke Yiddish.

The rumours persisted, that Wengrov was already finished and the Sondercommandos were coming to Kalushin.

People ran in the streets in a panic, building bunkers, looking for a way out. It was there I heard a heartbreaking song:

"Where should I go?

I asked day and night.

Where should I go?

To stay alive.

Where should I go?

They pushed me back,

They pushed me back

Because I am a Jew... .”

It was Erev-Yom Kippur, 1942. The Synagogue was full of people praying, begging God for help. I was outside with the others, and listened to the Kol Nidre sung by a cantor with such a voice that not a dry eye was left.

The last news to reach us was that the Nazis and Polish police had encircled the city. "Let's go!" said my father and we went to the outskirts of the city in the dusk. Nobody stopped us.