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It is the 21^st day of the month of Av, 5702 (August 14, 1941), 5,000 Jews were evacuated from Lancut and from the neighboring towns and the Velcan woods, to their destruction.

The 21^st day of Av was established by the survivors of Lancut in Israel and in the Diaspora community (outside of Israel) as a memorial day of mourning for the Lancut community.

Who can express or recount the pain and confusion of those who were martyred in their final moments?

Who can count their tears? Is there a human expression for death as a human torch? Which words can express the horror of murdered children in the eyes of the parents?

There is not enough blood in my body, Tears salted with fire, The sorrow and shame, From your old body, your old age, In the Belzec crematorium, He trampled on you like a bear, Like upon a sack of rags he trampled, He goaded you with dogs to be gassed, Your mute and old scream, The stillness was heard. Then to be your ownerless grave for your little ashes. No! There isn't enough blood in my body, To sob over your pain, old mother. There is also no punishment in this world, There isn't, and will not be even in Hell, For your crime – German-Nazi. Even when all the crimes in the world, And from the beginning of time to the end Will be with forgiving-water wiped out It will be the darkest world spot, Even when there was never a crime been committed, In any territory, in any time, And will forever remain the last, Even if the earth will become, And will again enter the rays of all stars, And will never be brighter. There is no punishment for your crime, All of the four kinds of capital punishments Which can turn into tears, To be able to sob all the way to the bottom, Yes, the human shame and disgrace, What the Nazi-German did to you Old mother of mine. With heavy boots, with nails on his soles, When you were already trampled upon enough, Was heard only by the deaf old mother earth, But what more could she have done for you, To turn it into tears, Not in heaven, nor on earth, That will fit and be befitting From East to west of the globe, From one end of empty space to the other, It will remain hanging in world vacuums. Your crime-Nazi Your crime was the first, Because it cannot be darker, Again universal ashes, Your crime will remain, It is on the other side of mankind, and the other side of punishment, If used them together, Stones, and led, and chairs and swords Would laugh if they could understand, To punish for your crime, There isn't an iron hot enough to burn the eyes out, There isn't a rock to crash the bones, His booth trampled you, Good among the good ones Trampled upon you. Upon you, And upon millions of your sisters, You have been so good, mother That all men are brothers That courteous mankind should be, They trampled you Like mum lime kneaded your life body, And later goaded with dogs, Escorted by bodyless wind only, He found you at the threshold Wanted to give you for the last time a caress, But your hair, by the Nazi, Mattresses to stuff, When drunk he would be from Jewish blood. So the wind caressed, And approached with you to the threshold, And whispered fast in your ear, Good, my old child! From fear, And sisters' sisters, There is not enough blood in my body, Tears salted with fire, The pain that the Nazi-German did to you, Old mother of mine. There is no such an iron the eyes from the Nazi to burn out, Neither is there a chain with which Nor a rock his bone to crash, There isn't a creature, Heated by fire, That they suppose to be the instrument, Nor is there a chain to chock his breath out, There isn't a sword such a head to decapitate Mother mine, The best among the best, And sisters', and brothers' brothers, You taught me from Frederick Shiller's book, Also from Johan Wolfgang Goethe's songs, To be good, ready, and helpful With boots, like on a pile of rags, With poles, To be gassed. Your only escort, Of the pyre fire, Your old, long, snow-white hair, Were plucked and shaved, To have a good snore, Your naked scalp, Of the gas chamber, A easy dying. And the wind also escaped But you, mother with all your sisters Went away to your Jewish destiny To turn into tears To be able to cry them out to the bottom, In the Belzec crematorium, From his throat his breath to stop, Or such a sword his head to decapitate, Which will from my memory, Even after two bitter decades, Old suffocated mother, Together with pieces oof my heart, In the Belzec crematory. Gentle will be the man, And all the people will become brothers, Into the abyss of forgetfulness, Drop of poisoned Nazi blood. And, until that hour, No, no. Remembering you with pain every day Be able from my heart to press you out, The image of your last moments, Good, ever ready to help, But first disappear must from this world, The last, last, last, There is no forgetting.

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Let It Be Remembered The Lancut Jews, their children, and their children's children. The thousands of Jews from their community who were murdered innocently…

Let Them Remember this day of mourning in memory of their holy community that was erased from the earth, also their spiritual and material goods that were destroyed, ruined, and robbed…

Let Them Remember the community grave in Velkinye where men and women lie hidden, old gray child and chains – pure and holy, that died from all sorts of terrible deaths, and their ashes are spread over the entire Poland…

Let Them Remember the souls of the neighbor's dust that has been hidden in the Lancut cemeteries for generations and generations, whose holy rest the Nazi murderers disturbed …

Let Them Remember the Lancut youth that fell on all fronts in their struggle against anti-Semitism.

Let Them Remember the Lancut youth that sacrificed their lives in the War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel.

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Many tens – for sure. And maybe even many some hundreds of societies (landsmanschaften) exist today in the State of Israel. Amongst these many tens, maybe hundreds of societies, exists the Lancut Association. And Lancut is a town, half way between my town of Radom (Radzymin) and Reisha (Rzeszow). There is a theory that the dark fate of the 21^st of the month of Av in the year 1942, chased together the population of Lancut and Radom into an area by the name of Velkinye, and there they were sacrificed in a common grave down below, and then went right up – up to the sky of Jewish courage through holiness.

A Lancut landsman (countryman), Mikhel Walzer, remembered me and my fated blood and ash connection to my town, and invited me to the memorial in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, the ninth of August. They even asked me to speak. And since I believe in the idea of the “eternal soul” (together with the philosopher Borukh Ber Michoel de Espinoza), I spoke about the martyrs, how their souls have been winged together with the wings of Elijah the Prophet, and how with this winged power they can reach the four corners of the earth, and as much as they have to do in the heavens, they are here with us now at this memorial. We remember them and miss them. Certainly. But they remember and miss us too. This is not the first time that I speak at memorials, but the others took place in all parts of the world, in all areas of the Diaspora. This memorial is happening in the land of reincarnation (גלגול מחילות ,תחיית המתים ). And if I was speaking about the visiting souls here – at this memorial – see, it suddenly becomes very quiet inside me and inside the hall; such a silence I've never heard before… Really, did my mother touch me, my aunts, my uncles, cousins from our complete family? Maybe, yes. Interpret it as you wish.

There once was, and is no more. Cut down by German murderers, along with the multi-branched tree – Polish Jewry. But their memory will never let the hearts of the Holocaust survivors rest, for a few hundred Lancut Jews that remained alive, spread all over the world, with the majority of them living here in our country, the Land of Israel.

Where is that piece of earth that soaked up the blood of the Lancut Jews and hides in its own holy ashes? Where is their tombstone with the inscriptions? Or will it, according to our history, only increase the number of our decimated, holy communities, as is the martyrs' history of our Jewish nation?

Or will the memory of this Jewish town live and disappear with the last one from Lancut, whose wagon was just standing there and has now gone somewhere from this world?

Let these few words be the foundation of the tombstone that was put up on this memorial book in memory of the Lancut martyrs.

I see there the two squares of houses so close together, tall and bent over, surrounded by two things: the market and a few streets and alleys that branch out on the sides – that's the whole town, that during the past hundred years grew from a small settlement into its middle years, to rest at the foot of the palace of a mighty lord.

A Jewish settlement, one of many, that rooted itself in the southern part of Lower Poland, surrounded by villages and peasants, thirsty for Jewish blood and property.

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In the last few decades, before the Destruction and devastation, the Jewish community of Lancut reached the pinnacle of its nationalist and socialist awakening. In the light and darkness of what was there, in the positive and negative that embodied the struggle of Jewish life in the Diaspora, in foreign lands.

This Jewish town, appearing outwardly dreamy and calm, was like a watchtower in the large body of Polish Jewry, in which all the life splendors of the pre-destruction nations preened (reflected) themselves.

And so, the Jubilee of years passed. Until the destruction of Eastern European Jewry, as one era pushed another era and wove together until they blended in one concentrated historical era of the Jewish path, in a spiritual and cultural manner, and in a nationalist and socialist lifestyle, and whose roots have now been planted over the hundred-year Jewish history of Poland.

And here is the wondrous figure of a Jew: a Kabbalist, whose likeness was around only a hundred years ago in the center of the Jewish community in Spain or in Safed. And here is this ardently pious man, who with his lifestyle and dreams, is the prototype of the khasid (pious man) of the Baal Shem Tov's times. And the sharp Misnaged (opponent of the khassid), the genius in Talmud and Commentaries, is a replica of the Vilna Gaon's era.

And the smooth young man, the Hebraist and enlightened one, with his discussions on the Lancut streets, as one hundred years ago in the times of Peretz Smolenskin and Yehuda Leib Gordon, as if separated from the colorful community. He goes around, this half or quarter assimilated Jew, exactly as it was with our ancestors and their ancestors before in the Western European assimilated centers about two hundred years ago.

In the last few decades, the Lancut Jewish population went through upheavals in all areas where upheavals are possible, struggling with the wide river of the open Jewish life in Poland. Here, the mighty struggles of nationalist, socialist, and political movements were brought in to Lancut in small storms in every facet, starting with the religious fanatics and ending with the political-cultural assimilationists.

In front of our eyes, there goes a row of types and figures in the small, multi-colored community: workers (wage earners), community workers, rabbis and dayanim (those who work with rabbis determining judgments about daily laws and behaviors), Zionists (Khovevei Tzion), Zionists of all colors, Talmud students on one side and students of the Polish gymnazia on the other side. The melamed (religious teacher) in his cheder (religious school) and the Hebrew teacher in his modernized Hebrew school, and students of new Hebrew in circles of many different youth organizations. Also the socialist and the communist – the ones that will save the world – and for us, a very foreign world, were also there. That's how the town churned with pioneers and Zionists who yearn for their freedom in the Home Land – Israel.

And as the Lancut figures, there were also these types of institutions: the gray poorhouse, the bathhouse, the small synagogue, the rabbi's place, the House of Study (Bais Medrash) and the beautiful, old shul, charity groups, charity non-profit funds, new congregations, Zionist organizations and all her branches, large and small committees, youth groups working through their ideas, nationalists and socialists with new undertakings, culture societies, art and sports, and more.

Here is the wondrous, multi-colored gallery of figures and institutions, coming from all parts of the community – poor folks, workers, shopkeepers, merchants, businessmen, and other occupations.

That's how the town's life was – broiling and searching for human and nationalist redemption.

May this memorial book be a tombstone of elevated pages in which are chiseled the life and struggles of the holy community of Lancut – for Lancut people (landsleit) to remember, for their children and their children's children.

Friday, September 8, 1939, in the evening, I saw through the window of my home, the first German patrols in Lancut. A huge military tank stopped by the district office building. It was dark and still. A heavy door is opened and German is heard. With lightning speed, the flap of the tan and is closed and a command is heard: “Fire!” There was an explosion of a Polish patrol. The jeep with the Polish soldiers was burned. The next day the priests collected the burned bodies into a sack. The tank gave off rocket signals.

Monday morning, September 11, 1939, the German troops entered our town. They came from the Rzeszow direction, after having rebuilt the Rzeszow bridge that was bombed by German airplanes.

Erev Sukot (the eve of the holiday of Sukot), eight o'clock in the morning, the Germans assembled the Jews in the courtyard of the police precinct, and gave out an order that by four o'clock in the afternoon all the Jews would have to leave Lancut. At the exit of a small door, there were SS men standing on either side with sticks and steel rods, murderously beating the Jews. Right near me there were a bloodied Dr. Markel, longtime president of the JNF (Keren Kayemet Le'Israel – Jewish National Fund) and Professor Avner Fabian.

Terror befell the Jews. The majority of the townspeople ran to the Russian border across the rivers San and Bug, and some remained in the neighboring villages. En route, some of the refugees died. They were shot at by low flying airplanes. The Lancut magistrate, at a special meeting, issued the decree of the deportation. Only Councilman Count Alfred Potocki did not agree to this. A delegation of Jewish women approached Potocki and asked for help. He promised to help, but his intervention made no difference. Only old, sick women and children remained in Lancut. On the third day after the deportation decree, those people that remained had to register, by the order of the Gestapo. Of the 3,000 Jewish that lived in Lancut before the war, only 300 were registered. Of those who ran away, some remained in the surrounding villages such as Konskie, Lizhensk, Zhylin, and so on.

Those who wandered around the town and hid in the neighboring villages, spread out in all directions, afraid to distance themselves too much from their homes. After that, slowly they began to sneak back into Lancut, so that the number of Jews rose to about 1,000 souls. That's how the first six weeks of the war went. The Gestapo left the city and was replaced by a German police force (gendarmerie). Most of the Jews in the city owned their homes through inheritances from generation to generation, and in their cellars they found secret hiding places where they hid their few belongings, materials, and other possessions. From these hidden things they were able to maintain their survival during the later hard times. They sold some of the hidden materials even though this kind of transaction was forbidden.

In the first days, when the Germans marched into Lancut, they burned down the old synagogue. The fire was set on the northern side in the women's section that had been added on.

“Yidden! Jews! The shul is burning!” This fact spread like lightning among the Jews that were hiding. With great sacrifice, the synagogue was saved. The burnt section they immediately rebuilt after a collection of money and building materials. Just opposite Hershel Krzheminic's house, where the cantor Reb Yehoshua'le lived, there was an old ruin, and from there they took bricks and other building materials. The main building of the synagogue was not seriously damaged.

After that, a Judenrat (Jewish Council set up by the Nazis to handle the management of the ghettos) was established.

These were the members of the first Judenrat: Dr. Pohorila, Shlomo Grinboim, Eliezer Morder, Yitzkhak Weinbach, Leizer Fass, Shmuel Keshtekher, Rosenblum, Leizer Papyol, Israel Gersten. Other than the fact that the Judenrat saved work for the Germans, they also got furniture for the Gestapo and anything else they needed. For this they collected money from the Jews. In the cellars of the Jews that had run away, the city council did searches, and found hidden things – the best and most expensive things – jewelry, and other inheritances from generations. The security police stole all this for their private possessions. That which remained, the magistrate sold, ostensibly making accounts, calculations, receipts, and keeping an account by writing things down in books. The money made from these sales was used to buy gifts that the Germans wanted for themselves.

Jewish refugees from Lodz and Kalish – 600 souls – came to Lancut. Mostly poor, broken, frightened, exhausted and confused. The Judenrat created an assistance campaign. One forgot one's own problems and collected money for those in need. From the Polish people, former neighbors of the Jews, only Count Potocki participated in the aid campaign ….

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… that distributed potatoes and wood. He also joined up with Count Okon, who sent 1,000 zlotys on behalf of the Red Cross overseas for the Jewish refugees.

This is how they started a communal kitchen in the Dzikower small synagogue. The refugees as well as the poor people from Lancut received warm food there three times a day. Aside from that, wood and coal were distributed. The needy Lancut Jews who did not come to the community kitchen had products delivered to them. Since it was forbidden to buy anything from non-Jews, the Judenrat opened a bakery in Yehoshua Flashen's house. Leizer Fass ran the bakery. Other than that there was a general store run by Yakov Derfler. The Judenrat itself sold the occasional cigarettes. The Jews were forbidden to come to the post office, so the Judenrat opened their own branch.

The first Judenrat in Lancut, in its devotion and character, remained true to the tradition of committed community workers. In order to do its job, the Judenrat collected taxes. There was not even a thought given to the possibility of cultural activities. The Judenrat received a permit to allow people to conduct prayers in the synagogue. But they did not make use of this permission because in the neighboring cities of Dynow and Mielec, the SS shot the Jews in the synagogue and in the bathhouse with the excuse that these were meeting places.

In the first period of the war, the Germans brought Polish soldiers that were prisoners to Lancut and “registered” them in the municipal school of Count Potocki. Among those prisoners were several Jews. While these Jewish soldiers were being helped or hidden, or being given clothing to get out of their uniforms, the youth of the Zionist organizations proved themselves exemplary in their true sacrifice for this.

With the outbreak of the Russian German war, the situation of the Jews became worse. We lived in constant fear, one decree chased the other. For any small thing, you were shot.

The Gestapo of the town acquired for themselves gold, silver, clothing, and expensive items. In every search, while looking for “gifts,” the Germans left murdered victims. Of the first were: Yakov Derfler,Wolf Yosem (the tinsmith), Aharon Kroit (the tailor). They were taken to an unknown destination. After them, they caught Leizer Itzik Gutman and his cousin Wolf Gutman. They were shot in courthouse. On those days when the Yeroslaver Gestapo would come for a “visit” to the town, an indescribable terror reigned over the Jews. Wherever one could, he went to hide. The murderers toyed with Moshe, son of Rav Yosef Rokakh. He was asked to sing, crawl on all fours and dance, and when they were satiated with this sadism, they shot him. That's how they murdered tens of Jews, among whom were Leibish Kern, Lozer Keshtekher, Eliyahu Reich, Shimon Walzer, Israel Anmut, Yakov and Leibish Bot, and a family from Krakow that were relatives of Lezer Kresh. On the threshold of her home, they murdered the woman Estlein Meyer, and the woman student Stempel from Zhylin. The murderers posed some sarcastic questions to the victims, told them they could leave, then shot them. The first mass murder took place against the returnees from the occupied Russian territories. They were gathered in the courthouse of the town. From there, at one o'clock at night, they were taken to the cemetery and shot. Among them was a family of nine people: Avraham Pechter, a brother-in-law of Feier from the village of Wisheluvka, Malke Wasser's son-in-law and daughter from Pshevorsk, Baruch Weinbach, Meyer Rosmarin, Shmuel Papyol and his wife, Perec Wasser, Yehoshua Frei and tens of others.

One of the victims, Wasser's son-in-law, was hit in the ear by a bullet. From fright, he fell as if dead. The wife of Pechter was wounded in her hand. They lay all night among the dead in a pool of blood. Late at night, they returned to the town. Dr. Yadlinski gave first aid to Mrs. Pechter. The mayor, a German national named Bunk, gave her a permit, and that was how they were able to take her to the Rzeszow hospital. When the security police of Yaroslav found out about this incident, they caught the Lancut Jews Zelig Kerner of the brick-yard, Alter Weiss and Moshe Goldoles' son-in-law, a tailor. They dug up the burial pit, counted the victims and then went to the Rzeszow hospital, dragged out the wounded, and shot them.

Wengers wife, a cripple, with crooked hands and feet, lay for a long time half shot, in the cemetery, moaning and groaning, cursing the Germans. A terror seized the non-Jewish passersby, and they gave her over to the German police who ended her tortured life.

The Judenrat's first arrests in the beginning of July 1942, following orders from the Yaroslav SS, marked the beginning of the quick end of the Lancut Jewry. Shlomo Grinboim, Lozer Marder, Yitzkhak Weinbach, Shmuel Keshtekher, a shoemaker (the bather's son) and Chaim Ertel they took to Yaroslav and “played” with them, torturing them in many ways, until they were shot on July 16, the second day of Av, 1942…

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… in the fields by the old church near the barracks. Before that, we were in touch through correspondence. For payment, a Polish woman – Bleier's daughter – brought them food, until they were forced to dig their own grave, and then they were all killed.

The mayor contacted Dr. Pohorila and told hom not to come to the meeting. Thanks to this advice, the following were able to save themselves: Leizer Fass, Rosenblum, Israel Gersten, Dr. Pohorila, Leizer Papyol, Zalpin, Kern Yosel, Kornbloi.

In the second Judenrat, the additional members were Reuven Nudel, chairman, Perlmuter Yoel, Moshe Ziegel, Fass, Israel Milrod. Before the last akzias (roundups), an order was given that all the Jews that would not be taken away had to pay all the outstanding taxes for those who had run away and even for those who were murdered. To get a piece of bread was life threatening. They arrested Nachman Walzer on the day of the deportation for buying milk for a two-year-old, and for that “sin,” they shot him. Several days before the deportation to Felkienje for the mass slaughter, when everybody prepared themselves for their approaching death, some help came in a moving way.

The order was given to all the remaining Lancut Jews to move to the village of Felkienje. In a deathlike mood the Jews quickly gathered their last bits of poverty on August 3, 1942, 21^st of Av, and left the city. On this last journey, the Lancut Jews went as a stampeded herd, without rest, exhausted, in a cloud of dust. When they arrived in Welkienje, they met other exiled Jews from the surrounding towns of Radzim, Przevorsk, Zhylin, Dinow, and more. At the sounds of gramophone music and German laughter, the Jews said vidui (confession before death) and kadish in front of the huge, prepared, open grave.

According to a list from Lancut, 50 young people were taken out of the rows and sent back to Lancut. The elderly, women and children – 5,000 Jews – were shot during the night. Only one woman survived, and she crawled out of the grave late at night. During the roundup, about 100 Jews ran away and hid in the surrounding villages.

The 50 Jews that returned received papers and they were placed in a newly established smaller ghetto in the houses of Kornbloi, Feier and Zelner.

A large number of those who ran away eventually returned to Lancut. When the German animals found out about this, they, along with the Polish policemen and shkotzim (non-Jewish youths), among them Shliwinski, conducted systematic raids in the ghetto, and herded together groups of captured Jews. In the garden of Reif and Zelner, they were murderously beaten, then shot. Loud cries of Shema Israel, from the men and women, elderly and children, filled the air.

The day of the 17^th of October, 1942, when the last 50 remaining Jews in the Sienjawa ghetto were removed, was the end of the Lancut Jewish community. That ended the journey of pain, and the eternal sacrifice for our town of Lancut.

Sitting from right: Ruzhka Mechlowicz, Leizer Fass, Manya Sternheim, Standing from right: Shimon Wolkenfeld, Sara Weinbach, Ruzhka Lifshitz, Chana Helsinger

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In his memoirs, which Count Potocki published in London in 1959 (title: Master of Lancut), he, as the last son of the famous aristocratic dynasty, tells how Lancut was occupied by Hitler, as well as about the cruel attitude of the Germans towards the Jews and their expulsion from Lancut, and so on. It is of interest to mention several excerpts from this book – excerpts that touch on the destruction of Lancut and the annihilation of the Jews, because these excepts are written by noble people who were helpful to these tragic and tortured people in those terrible times.

They marched in at five in the morning. With the dawn's glow, I noticed straight rows of German soldiers passing by the palace going in the eastern direction. Most units were motorized. I was perplexed to see that the appearance of the soldiers was much better than was our Polish military. All day, they passed in rows, in an endless flow. It was Sunday, and my mother and I went to church. We prayed for ourselves and for the city of Lancut, and our prayers on that day were more intense than usual. Soon after the services, my mother, the nuns, and Dr. Yedlinski opened a hospital for the wounded.

In the afternoon I was notified that German officers had come to see me in the palace. I saw immediately that these were SA Nazis (Sturm Abteilung – Stormtroopers). They came escorted by two doctors, and they informed me that they would use the palace for soldiers' quarters.

The need and pain of the Jewish population of Lancut was heartbreaking. On the morning of September 26, 1939, the Germans ordered that all Jews were to leave Lancut within six hours and cross the river San. The cruelty of the order made a horrific impact on the councilmen, and they pleaded with the Germans to revoke this decree. But – without success. Entire families, among them many that were rooted residents of Lancut for generations were chased from their houses like animals. Some of them managed to hide and then later came to the palace to ask for help. I did everything possible to help relieve them from their pain.

As soon as one German general left the palace, a second came in his place. We continually quartered new units of soldiers. The Germans spread over the land like locusts, confiscated food from the farmers, and the situation for the village people became worse and worse every day.

In order to help them, I set up an “Aid Committee” that distributed more than 400 meals per day.^[1] My mother gave much help to the poor families, who were afraid of the Germans. That was a dark and terrible time for us all, yet, amidst the general uncertainty I still found a way to help others, because I felt it was my duty.

The “Aid Committee” distributed more than 400 meals a day. My mother worked eight hours a day in the hospital and would come home totally drained. I asked her not to strain herself so much, but she didn't listen.

On November 2, 1941, I discovered that the forest guard and his two sons had disappeared. I asked the Germans what had happened and they told me that they had been arrested. Coming back to the palace, I saw German guards outside and in the palace itself. I demanded an explanation. The Germans responded cold bloodedly: “The palace is surrounded.” A few hours after that, I sent away my mother to Lubomirski's court but he had been arrested and sent to an unknown destination, and the possessions of Count Tchartoriski were confiscated by the Germans. Being afraid that soon the Germans would do the same to me, I sent away my mother to Lubomirski's court in Pshevorsk to prevent her from suffering.

Masses of Jews in a tragic situation that were expelled from Germany and Western Poland, began to …

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… appear in Lancut before the new year. Their hardships are impossible to describe, and it is not for the human mind to be able to understand the degradation of their pain. Their inhuman treatment surpasses any fantasy and is simply unbelievable – except those who saw with their own eyes the agony of these innocent people, men, women, and children.

That horrible winter of 1942, the suffering of the Polish people themselves increased. People suffered from hunger and a cold winter that stretched into spring. Summertime, the Germans strengthened their akzias against the Jews. In the month of August, when the Germans reached the Volga, north of Stalingrad, the annihilation of the Lancut Jews began.

Some Jewish men and women, those that had more energy, ran and hid in the forests, and there they received help from the farmers and from the partisans who were active in the Lancut neighborhood and lived in the villages. I informed my underground agents that they should help the Jews mentioned and should try to upset the German akzias.

My attitude towards the refugees of Nazi terror and the partisans was well known, and many would come at night to the palace asking for sustenance, despite the danger of doing so. Not all were patriots or hunted by the Nazis, but we gave them food and help nevertheless. I increased the number of workers in the palace from 60 to 100, ostensibly there to clean more often for the soldiers in the palace. In that fashion, I managed to give help to many refugees^[2] who otherwise would have fallen into German hands and then be sent to concentration camps.

Footnotes:

1. This is how the Jewish communal kitchens in Lancut obtained the best potatoes – then a real treasure (Dr. Michael Weichert, Yiddisher Aleinhilf (Jewish self-help). Return
2. Dr. Michel Weichert, in his book Yiddishe Aleinhilf 1939-1945 (Jewish Self Help 1939-1945), p. 292, writes: “In Lancut, Count Potocki's estate management refused to take Jews, in compliance with the ban of the labor office” Return

[Pages 367-369]

It was September, 1942, when the Germans had finally expelled the Lancut Jews. A group of fifty Lancut Jews were sent to the Sieniawa ghetto. They were healthy people, which earlier, were sent back from the Pelkinia concentration place (call if Annihilation Centre) to Lancut. I obstinately tried to survive. I knew that it would be a hard struggle. I didn't have any money, without means for sustenance and most importantly, without documents! However, my intuition told me that the strongest weapon with which I would be able to defend myself was boldness. I took a risky step and smuggled myself into the city of Krakow, into a labour camp of Poles, which was a gathering centre for Poles who volunteered to be sent for work to Germany. In that place, I pretended to be a gentile girl, (Shikse) and with a transport which the Germans had sent the Poles to Germany, I was also send and arrived in Berlin.

That is how I lived for two and a half years as a gentile girl, in a Polish camp until the liberation.

It is easy to say “survived!” but the truth was that two and a half years among the “lovely” Poles, was an eternity of fear and torture. Every day was for me a struggle between life and death. I couldn't forget for one second my masquerade. Every step I made I had to remember who I was and what role I had to play. I had a Polish name which I adopted for the surrounding in which I suffered. I suffered very much spiritually, but chocked it up inside me. Whenever some approached me to converse with me, I always trembled, thinking, here we go – “Now I am going to be told who I am”.

There was no way to retreat. However, whatever happened to me, seemed like a nightmare. I, personally, did not believe that it was real that I had come here on my own volition and boldness. And, what was it really? Was it fear or was it a source of bravery, which did not allow me to give satisfaction to the enemy? I was not afraid to die but I did not want to die by the hands of the German murderers. When I was alone with my own thoughts, my heart saddened when I thought to myself: “Why should I be alive and not the rest of the people? Why did I tear myself away like a beast in the field and ran away from them?” And then I recalled the words of an intelligent Pole that pierced my heart like a sharp sword: “You are supposed to go with them because this is the destiny of the Jews and you cannot fight destiny”? I remembered these words and often times I thought that the doctor was right. I regretted the play that I understood to play and thought: “How nice it would have been if I had gone together with all of them?” But these were only thoughts that came to me in the dark and sleepless nights when I did soul searching on my hard bed. Soon daylight came and I had to accept the quotation: “By force you live” and to keep pretending that I was a Polish shiksa. Immersed in my thoughts, I always imagined a sweet hope: “How good will I feel when I will be able, here among the Poles, to yell out aloud: “I am Jewish!” After looking in every direction I began to tremble again: “Has anybody heard my thoughts?” I clearly understood that such an announcement at this time would mean the end of me.”

All of a sudden, the nightmare faded and instead the liberation had arrived.

Only now, I felt lonesome and weak. Seeing the German defeat, I was still doubtful. Did I survive? I did not enjoy the happiness. My heart ached when I understood that all my beloved had perished, and who am I? Where was my home? Berlin was still a big battlefield. There were in the city, thousands of slave labourers that the Germans had taken from the occupied countries and brought them to Germany as slave workers. The Red Arm had issued an order that the people had to leave the city and return to their homes. We walked by foot from Berlin, but this time without fear. On the road, I met another Jewish girl and told her about my experience.

One quiet day before the liberation, two Gestapo men suddenly appeared in our camp and asked for me after which, they took me with them. I thought that this was the end. They put me in a detention centre where rounded-up Jews from around Berlin were held and from there, the Jews were sent to the annihilation camps. Later, I was taken for interrogation. The Gestapo men told me right away that a Pole had reported that I was Jewish and didn't belong in their camp. The interrogation was long and hard. The Gestapo asked me criss-crossing questions and constantly looked into my eyes. It was apparent they had observed every movement I made. Evidently, my heart froze and my face was expressionless. I coldly and carelessly responded to all the questions as if my person was not at stake. That is how they tortured me for two days and in the end, they finally sent me back to the camp of the Poles. When I returned to the camp, the Poles could not believe their eyes: “How could this happen to come back from the Gestapo?” This case made me gain respect after they were convinced that I was not “Jewish”. However, the two days in the hands of the Gestapo caused me to become seriously ill.

However, this was not the only incident when I was suspected of being Jewish. Sometime later, a few Poles from the Lancut area recognized me and began yelling at me “Jewess!” I barely escaped with my life.

During the heavy bombardment, I resided in Berlin. Not one house remained intact. The Americans bombarded the city in the daytime and the English at night. The English bombardier squadrons arrived punctually at 22hr in the evening, so punctual that you could adjust your clock for perfect timing. Buildings collapsed and people fell likes flies. Twice I was caught under the ruins of a bombarded house. At the end of the battles, the Russians were from one side and the Germans on the other and we were in the middle. There was fire from every side. As soon as the battles calmed down, we had to leave the city. May 15^th, 1945, I began to walk on foot from the west until I reached Poznan and from there, I shlepped myself all the way to Lancut.

Emaciated, with a grosz in my pocket, without a home, I remained standing in the middle of the market place and looked around at the Jewish houses – waited – maybe a door would open and a Jewish face would appear. However, not one familiar face appeared. I did not see a Jew. My heart was in pain. I felt short of breath and I was thinking: “maybe the entire air was poisoned?” Maybe I felt the gassed air of the perished Jews of Lancut? I imagined that I was walking on the ashes of the burned martyrs and that I was the only survivor? Hence, the burned were my own? Wasn't there a little bit of gas left for my lungs? How could it be that I and my soul came out dry? Will I be able to forget everything?

I looked for a human being. I ran in the streets of Lancut looking for a friend, to hear a good human word. Many Poles recognized me and with open mouths and tensed ears, were interested to hear how I had survived! However, instead of showing empathy and hospitality, they rather advised me not to stay overnight in Lancut. “It is dangerous to stay here overnight”. “The boys, (they meant the nationalist bands of hooligans) are cleaning out the Jews who show up from their hiding places”. And, when wondering I asked: “What?” The Poles are doing the same thing that the Germans did? They laughed in my face and cynically responded: “What kind of Jewess are you that you did not join the rest of the Jews?” They looked at me like an unneeded human being, without the right to be alive! I realized that they were no joking. The same day I left for Rzeszow.

In Rzeszow, I met a few Jews who had survived. Everyone survives in a different way. But I couldn't remain too long in Rzeszow. On June 16^th, 1945, The Poles made a pogrom on the Jews. It was an organized pogrom with all their traditional tricks. Putting a death Christian child in the area where the Jews lived and immediately raising an alarm, shouted that the child had been murdered by the Jews. Bands of Poles went to the Jewish homes and began attacking the Jews. The Police were barely able to stop and calm down the enraged mob. Nevertheless, the Poles had achieved their goal. The Jewish people were afraid to remain in Rzeszow and continue to wander. I left Rzeszow and spent a short period in Katowice and from there to Berlin. December 31^st, 1947, I arrived in the U.S.A.

The colourful kaleidoscopes of American life, the liberty of human comprehension, were not able to make me forget about the things that had happened to my beloved, to my birthplace shtetl and to the European Jewry. To this day, I am still hearing the supplications of the mothers with small babies in their arms as they walked the last road to Pelkinia. In front of them was the abyss and there was no way to retreat when they were surrounded by the bloodthirsty beasts. That is how the Lancut Jews and the Jews from everywhere perished.

Only naive people may wonder why there wasn't a resistance? At the beginning of 1942, there wasn't even one family from which a person was torn away from them. The mood was gloomy and everyone wanted to share the destiny with those who had gone. There was no energy to resist knowing that the Poles would not help the Jews. On the contrary, they used the opportunity to enrich themselves from Jewish possessions.

There were refugees from Lodz in Lancut and together with the people from Lancut, they crossed the San River, however, their misfortune was that many had come back to Lancut.

The so-called “Juden Rat” suffered more than the Jews because they carried responsibility for everybody in the community. The last members of the Lancut community leaders, the “Juden Rat” were taken to Jaroslaw by the Germans where they were imprisoned. They were tortured by starvation for six months and on July 20^th, 1942, executed. I remember exactly the date because my brother, Shmuel Kezstecher was among those arrested. I also remember that Shlomo Greenbaum, Luzer Marder and Tulek Reich's brother-in-law were among the executed. (I sent them food packages when they were starving).

After the Juden Rat members were killed, there was no more community leadership in Lancut. Not many Jews were left in Lancut anyway, and those that had remained, looked only like shadows of human beings.

The gendarmes and the Gestapo in Lancut were often replaced by others. Every time new murder specialists came into the city. One special murderer, I still visualize before my eyes. He was a red-haired and red-faced German with red shot eyes of a drunk. He walked around with a big wolf-hound that helped him in his wild bloody murders. As soon as he saw a Jew, he let the dog loose and the dog befell the victim, biting off pieces of flesh from the victim. The owner of the beast stood by enjoying the sight. After the victim was half-dead, the gendarme pulled out his gun and finished off the victim's life with a bullet in his head. I still remember the people that the red-haired German murdered. Elijah Riech, Yaacov Bot (the translator's cousin), my cousin Eliezer Kezstecher, Lipa Korblum's wife and others. At that time, Shimon Walzer, the brother of Michael, was shot. Michael Walzer's sister, Chaytche tried to save herself. Dressed like a nun, she went to her uncle in another city. But the cruel destiny did not miss her there and she perished with the local Jews in that city.

One more sadist roamed around Lancut. His infamous name was Joseph Kokot (that he how he was called). At least he was captured after the liberation and he received his well-deserved sentence.

It is true that on rare occasions, Poles helped Jewish people to hide, but there were more Poles who helped the Germans find the hidden Jews.

At the end of this article, I want to commemorate many Lancut Jewish families who refused to go to Pelkinia and tried to escape to nearby villages to hide, without success.

[Pages 370-377]

The mother (Ada Fenick) with the child (Shlomo Bot)

Before the war, I attended the commercial school where I studied until the outbreak of the war. After the war and my liberation, I returned to Poland and in 1951, my family and I came to Israel.

Before the war, the population in Lancut was 8000 people. The majority of the Jews were merchants and storekeepers. The youths were organized in Zionist organizations of which the strongest was the general Zionist Organization. Many Jews were brokers and suppliers at the Count Potocki estates that owned the local brick factory, brewery and liqueur factory. I was a member in the “Akiva” Organization. Lancut also had Jewish sport clubs, a library and orchestra.

When the Germans came to Lancut in September, 1939, terror overtook the Jewish population. There was some mistaken self-consolation by thinking that, after all, the Germans were a nation of culture, and being loyal to them, nothing tragic would happen.

In fact, the first days of the occupation passed without excesses. It so happened that my sister-in-law passed away during the arrival of the Germans and the funeral went peacefully and without violence.

Soon after, the Germans began taking Jews to dig trenches in the marketplace and when told to cover the trenches, they forced the Jews to dance and made them do many denigrating works, during which they mocked and tortured them. Next, they ordered the hand-over of keys to all Jewish stores, imposed contributions and ordered the wearing of the star of David.

In the fall of 1939, an order was issued in which the entire Jewish population had to leave the city and cross the San River into Russia. By the intervention of Count Potoki, a few Jewish families were allowed to remain in Lancut, and my family was among them. My father was a shoe repair man. My mother and six sisters were also permitted to stay. The Jews were allowed to take with them their possessions on carriages but the gentiles who owned horses and carriages demanded exorbitant prices for which not many people could afford to pay.

Some Jews went into hiding and later merged with those who were allowed to stay. Some time later, the Germans brought to Lancut several hundred Jewish refugees from Lodz and Kalisz. Some refugees brought with them some of their possessions but the majority were poor. The abandoned homes that they were assigned to were already empty. They were looted by the Hitlerite and local Poles. Starvation had begun. In 1940, the Jewish people were still living in their homes, but they themselves drew closer to each other, afraid to live in isolated places throughout the city. Going into the street was deadly dangerous. The Germans began grabbing Jews to forced labour and it was better to stay at home and not fall in to the Hitlerite hands. There was no reason to the leave the house anyway because the Jews were forbidden to do any trading.

After a short time, a group of Jews who had crossed the San River, returned. The Hitlerite took them immediately to the cemetery and executed them. From among the 48 victims, one woman (Ferter) and a man (Waser) who were wounded and the Gestapo thought they were dead, crawled out during the night from the pile of corpses and escaped. The woman was wounded in her hand. A Polish doctor (Dr. Jedlinski) bandaged her and sent her to the Rzeszow hospital. But someone reported her to the Gestapo in Lancut and she was shot.

Near the San River, in the bushes, a group of eleven Jews were hiding. Poles saw them and reported them. They were all executed. This was done by the Gestapo man, Kokot. After the shooting, he checked their pulses to make sure that the victims were no longer alive. This henchman was the horror of the Jewish people in Lancut. When he walked in the street, everyone hid. He had to shoot somebody every day.

In 1942, news had spread that Kokot, with two other Gestapo men, were walking in the street. My aunt, with her daughter left the house. When they were in the street, they noticed that my aunt had forgot to put the armband with the Star of David on her sleeve. The daughters locked their mother in their arms so that the Gestapo would not see that she wasn't wearing the Start of David armband. But Kokot did notice. He ran after them and shot their mother in the hands of her daughters.

I, once, also escaped Kokot by hiding in a pharmacy. Through the window I saw Kokot had taken out from a nearby house, Mr. Trompeter and his wife and shot them both on the spot. I remember that there was a pear tree on that place and Kokot, with the same hands that he had just shot two people, picked up a pear from the tree and appetizingly ate it. Kokot also killed Poles.

The Hitlerite gendarmerie commandant was also such a scoundrel. I don't remember his name but he was a yellowish-blond and the Jews called him the “Yellow” man. Killing Jews was a sport for him. He murdered while wearing white gloves. He never went out for his bloody hunt without his gloves. He boasted about himself that he was a criminal and now had the occasion to practice it legally.

One of the first victims of the Gestapo was my husband, Yaacov Bot and his brother Leon. Before the war, we were a prosperous people. We owned a lumber mill and a flour mill and lived in Podwierzyniec, three kilometres from Lancut. When the Germans occupied our area, the brothers handed over the mills to a “Trustee”, Jan De Lang, a Folks Deutsche. There was a lot of property in the mills, building materials and a lot of grain. My husband was employed there. De Lang sold the merchandize and for the money, he bought for himself a lot of gold. My husband and brother-in-law knew about this and, therefore, De Lang was afraid that they might report him.

The Sabbath before Passover in 1942, the Gestapo, Kokot, Schmidke and Kritzinger came to De Lang and drank all day. The same evening, my husband and I visited my brother-in-law. The Gestapo came and asked if they were the Bot brothers. They murderously took my husband and my brother-in-law. At a certain moment, my husband jumped out through the window and I heard a shot. My brother-in-law jumped after his brother. Soon after, I heard another shot. I escaped to my parents. At home, my brothers and I went looking for my husband and brother-in-law, and after an all-night search, we could not find even a trace of them. Resignedly, I went to the German commandant to ask about them and he told me: “Look for a fresh grave near the mill”.

We found the fresh graves. We dug out their dead bodies and brought them to the cemetery. We had to use someone's intervention to be able to bury the bodies. The gentiles who lived in the area told me later that the Gestapo men caught my husband alive. They forced him to dig a grave for his brother. He refused and attacked the murderers. They put him on top of his brother's dead body and shot him.

In 1941, the conditions of the Jews had worsened but in 1942, the real slaughter had begun. Jews were expelled from small towns and villages and killed in the forests of Pelkinia.

I remember a young man from Mielec, a Rabbi who lived in the marketplace when the “expulsion” began, dressed in his “kittel” (white gown), he went around all night, knocking on doors and windows telling people:

“Brethren, Pray! Jewish Brethren, recite the confession!”

In the morning, when the murderers entered his home, he removed his hat and started attacking the S.S. man. He threw him to the floor and said: “Now you can kill me”.

During one expulsion, the Jews were ordered to assemble in the courtyard of the gymnasium. They were told to bring their belongings with them. Later, they were loaded onto trucks and transported to Pelkinia where they were later shot in the forest. Fifty young people were allowed to return to Lancut. Whoever could afford to hire a carriage was allowed to do so and go to Pelkinia on their own. They didn't know that they were travelling to meet their death. The wounded Mrs. Monshein, lay under a pile of corpses and the Hitlerite left, she crawled out and survived!

After the last two “expulsions”, the Germans declared Lancut as “Judenrein”. No more Jews in Lancut.

The remaining Jews from Lancut, Kanczuga, Lezhaisk, Przeworsk and Jaroslaw were concentrated in Sieniawa. The ghetto was surrounded with a fence and guarded by Polish policemen. The Germans issued a proclamation that in Sieniawa a ghetto was established and all the people who were hiding could come out from their hiding places and settle in the ghetto. The Jewish people believed the proclamation and came to Sieniawa. After a few days, the Hitlerite came into the ghetto and shot the members of the Juden Rat. The last president of the Juden Rat was Magister Nadel. The young people were transferred to Jaroslaw where they had to clean horse stables and do other work. They were shot afterwards.

During the liquidation of the Sieniawa ghetto, my sister escaped to Germany and me with a three-year old child, to Krakow. My father paid a guardian who was supposed to escort me to Krakow. During the trip, my escort got drunk and threatened to report me. I had a lot of trouble with him.

Travelling from Sieniawa to Krakow, I passed by Sandomierz. On a side-line, there was a train with the wagons tightly shut and from which I heard moaning and wailing in Yiddish. The people inside screamed: “Water! We are chocking!” The Poles stood outside and laughed. “The Jews are on their way to Palestine”.

In the meantime, I heard that all the Jews from Sieniawa were liquidated.

I could not stand the threats and chicanery of my escort any longer and at one of the stations, I escaped. Somehow, I had reached Krakow. I had the address of an artist named Miarki, which was given to me in Lancut by Dr. Zis. I went there but he told me that in the same house, a Folks-Deutsche was living and that the place was not safe. And if this was not enough, my child became ill. I was helped by a woman named Irene who offered me to stay with her until the child would recover. Mrs. Irene was the wife (or lover) of the painter-artist, Zygmund Krol. He was very hospitable and wanted to paint my picture: (“Mother and Child”). However, as soon as he found out that I was Jewish, he became frightened and ran away together with his sister.

Mrs. Irene told me that she would not throw me out into the street with a child. She brought a doctor who cured the child. Later, she found a woman with whom I travelled to Warsaw, to her friend. Her friend was a commandant in the police who lived on Pelcow Street. I hid there for a week. Later, I had to leave his apartment and went back to the Miarkis in Krakow.

Ruzha Miarkowa took me to Wiatrowiec (Nowy Sacz District) where her mother lived. In the village, nobody knew, not even Ruzha's mother, that I was Jewish. I pretended to be an officer's wife and the reason I had come to the village was because of my child's health. I spent a month in Wiatrowiec and was called the “Lady” from the city. Since it wasn't befitting than an officer's wife, whose husband was a war prisoner, should have money, I made ropes. Ruzha came and took them to Krakow and sold them there, and for the money, she bought me food products. I attended church, went to mass and to the Holy Communion, which caused me a lot of trouble. Many times, I did not know how to behave. Once, the priest came over and gave me a plate and I took it. When I was leaving, my landlady asked me, wondering: “You took the holy plate? Did you confess first? I did not see you confessing”. I told her that I had confessed in Krakow. Once, we had to make a pilgrimage to the monastery in Tropie. I could not leave the child because he might have been recognized as a Jew. I took him with me, to the wonderment of everyone.

There was a terrible poverty in Wiatrowiec. Even though I was very careful not to let the gentiles know that I had money, I still felt that I was under observation. One time I gave a bigger than usual donation to the church. Another time, it became suspicious when I bought half a quart of milk, daily, for my child. In the village, it was considered a luxury. The general opinion in the village was that only Jews liked good food. Mrs. Miarkowa was so poor that she asked me to give her a towel which she used as a shawl.

One time I was asked by the village council to report to the office about my documents. At that time, I had a document with the name of Maria Nowak. My son was Andrew. I wrote immediately to Ruzha Miarko that she should come. She stayed with the child and I went to report to the council. They took my identification card and sent it to Nowy Sacz, to the Gestapo for verification. Ruzha advised me to return to Krakow. I scattered around in various places, in the Kleparski marketplace, at the Szidlowskis and then on the Kalwarijska. I could not remain more than a few days in one place. On the Kalwarijska, I was put up with a barber and paid five thousand zlotys a month. That was the going price for hiding a Jew. Three thousand for a grown up and two for a child. The barber, Stephen Citka, demanded to be paid for a month in advance. After a few days, he told me that he was in danger of being sent to work in Germany, but if he had more money and could buy some kind of a class lottery, he could avoid being sent to Germany. For that reason, he wanted to be paid for three months in advance. I told him that I was not entirely illegal and that I was a descendant of Jews but that my husband was a Pole, an officer in the Polish army and that I had relatives in Rzeszow who were sending me money for sustenance. In order to win some time, I told him that Zielinski (in reality, it was a Jewish man, Faust) who brought me the money from Rzeszow, he would settle with him. Zielinski's advice was to give Citka only for one month. “Fine”, Citka said, after I gave him the money for one month. “If you cannot pay me, I will get it from another Jew”.

I had no other choice. I was forced to pay him as much as he demanded. Ten days later, the wife of the barber came in. I looked at her and saw how she was trying to make a sad face, but she couldn't. She almost laughed. What happened? I asked her. “My husband was arrested”, she told me, “And you have to leave because they will soon search this place”. “What about the money?” I yelled. “Where is the money?” “The money is gone. My husband had it with him”. “In that case, I am not leaving. I have nothing left. You have to give me back a part of the money”. Her mother came in and turned to me: “If you are not leaving, you will be dragged out from here. I know where I can report you”. There was no way out. I took my child and left.

I went back to the Szidlowskis and told her: “I was left without money. Until I will get money from my relatives, please let me stay with you?”

This woman wheeled and dealt with Jews who used to leave the ghetto walls to work. Her advice was: Nothing can be done but to give the child to someone for upbringing and you should try to leave for Germany to work.

On the Tarnowska Street in Krakow, I found a lonely woman, a retired teacher, very pious and patriotic. She agreed for a fee to keep the child. The child was supposed to be with the teacher for only two months and then my sister Frida, who was working in Germany, was supposed to come and pick him up. We were corresponding and she wrote to me that she was able to find me a place and the local employment office would send me a request but that I needed to have a steady address where to send the request. I had to be somewhere registered as a resident. At that time, I already had a new identification card which I had obtained after escaping from the barber, Citka. My new name was Maria Lorenc.

Zielinski, who did not look Jewish, was able to move around freely, advised me to register in Krakow on the Bosacki Street, with the building super intendant, Mrs. Bieniaszowa. And that is exactly what I did. I paid the super intendant and waited for the request to work in Frankfurt on the Oder River. The next day, I was supposed to report to the employment office for a medical check-up. It seemed that everything was going smoothly. I then took a careless and wrong step which could have ended fatally. Feeling happy with the hope that I would soon leave and my suffering would end, I went back to Bieniaszowa and told her that I was leaving for Germany and paid, in advance, 500 zlotys and thanked her for everything. I asked him to remove me from the registration.

The medical check-up went all right and when it was finished, I was told: In the evening, I brought my luggage and the clerk escorted by a policeman came over and called out: “Maria Lorenc”. My heartbeat stopped. I immediately understood that something was wrong. The policeman took me with him. I defended myself and claimed there was a misunderstanding.

“You will not succeed”, the policeman responded: “you are Jewish and you want to go to Germany”. “I swear that I am not Jewish!” “Mrs. Bienaszowa was here and said that you were registered by her and you are Jewish”. I began to plead: “You are a Pole, look. I have a child. Please let me go”. “I am not a Pole”, he responded. “I am Ukrainian and where the child is concerned”, he added with a cruel smile, “we will also take care of the child”.

He took my arm and led me onto a tramway. If I tried to escape, he warned me, he would shoot. In order not to arouse suspicion about my sister, I decided to get rid of every trace. While riding on the tramway, I swallowed the request that I had received about the job in Germany. The policeman took me to Grodska Street, to the employment office. “Where is your request”, I was asked. “I don't have it”. “Fine. You will answer in another place”. I was taken to the military police station where I was asked to present me identification card. The policeman checked it and said it was correct.

To my misfortune, two Gestapo men showed up who already knew about me and began yelling – “what is this Jewish woman doing here?” They picked me up from the station and brought me to Montelupe Street.

S.S. men began to interrogate me. They put a gun to my head: “Do you know what is awaiting you?” next, they locked me up in an “isolated single cell” with standing room only and that is how I spent the night. The walls were full with different inscriptions, among others: “I am facing death”, and many names. Up high under the ceiling there was a small window. The time seemed to me like eternity. I wasn't even able to cry. In the morning they took me out from the cell.

On the third floor of the building, I was stopped at a door. On the door was a little sign with the name Rottenberg. This was a higher officer of the Gestapo. He calmly put together a protocol. He told me to hand over my valuables. I removed my wedding ring from my finger, the earring from my ears and from my purse, a ring with a diamond. “Is this real?” he asked, looking at the three carats diamond, after which he put it in his pocket. He began to ask me about my family. When I remembered my child, I began to cry. On his desktop there was a picture of his wife and two daughters. I pointed to the photograph and pleaded with him: “Remember your daughters. I am young and in good health. Save me. I want to work”. I don't know from where I found those words and so much daring, but I was determined to fight for my life.

“I will do what is possible”, he responded. We went down where he made me stand facing the wall and told to wait. Like silent shadows, Jews walked around cleaning the premises. I quietly asked one of them: “are they shooting people here?” He did not respond. A short while later, Rottenberg returned and told me to go outside. He took out the car keys and we both got into the car. “Do not try to escape”, he said “because I will shoot you. I will do what is possible”.

This happened at the beginning of June 1943. The Gestapo man took me to the Krakow ghetto where the “cleaning crew” was still working. Rottenberg left me with a guard and left. I began spasmodically t cry. The militia man, Dr. Armer consoled me. “You will live”. And my response was: “You better recite with me the confession and tell me when will I die?”

I was later taken to a prison where they kept detained Jews that were pulled out from hiding, prostitution and female Polish thieves. In the cell there were bunks to sleep on. I met the family Freilich from Krakow, the mother, her daughter-in-law and a three-year old boy. When the boy was asked: “what is your name?” He seriously responded: “Jan Kazimierz Mletchko”. That is what he was taught to say, being on the Aryan side. I wanted to talk to the Freilich family and tell them what I went through, but I was warned: The cell was full of snitches. Ania, who sat next to me, betrays all her friends.

The Gestapo people tortured the arrested. They told us to stand facing the wall and locked their guns the, laughing, they sent us back to the cell. One time, one of the Gestapo men looked at the little Freilich: “This child has really Aryan features”, he declared. The child was later transferred to the Plaszow camp and killed.

I was in prison for fourteen days when they transferred a transport of people to Plaszow. They co-opted me for the transport. We were forty people. We marched on foot all the way to the Plaszow camp.

Soon after our arrival in Plaszow, a selection took place. Next to me stood a bagel baker from Krakow. He continuously recited the confession. When they came over and asked him what his profession was, he said a baker and a bookbinder. They took him to the side. They came over to me and asked: “What are you?” “A seamstress” I said. They put me next to the baker. Across from us there was another group standing. It was not known which groups were going to die and which would live. The bagel baker thought that since he was an older man he would probably be destined to die. Run to the other side, he advised me. I did what he said but the Gestapo man noticed and bellowed: “Back!”.

And here is what happened to the other group which consisted of many young and healthy people.. They were taken to Neugelande and shot and we were taken to the bathhouse for “entlausing”, (getting rid of the louse). I worked in the camp doing “bindfadenflechterey” (tread weaving and tying) and later in a sewing workshop. We repaired military underwear. People brought from Montelupe yellow patches carried on their breasts and on their back. They were taken first to die when they were short of the quota. Yom Kippur – one hundred people were shot!

We had to witness the executions and to watch how they hung people. During my stay in the camp, they hanged engineer Krautwrith and Kuba Habensztok from Krakow. Engineer Krautwirth slashed his veins and they brought him half-dead to the hanging. Kuba was hanged because he was heard whistling the Marseillaise during work. The rope tore twice during the hanging of Kuba. He cried and pleaded to let him live. There is even an international law that if a rope tears, the person should be given clemency, but it did not help. The hangman was the orderly Salg. On the third attempt, a Gestapo shot him.

One time, the commandant Hilewich of the Jewish militia came in and yelled: “All prostitutes from Montelupe Street, stand up!” No one moved. He picked them out himself. My orderly knew that I cam from Montelupe and he told me to go with them.

They took us to a storage room where they kept the laundry. As soon as the militia men left, I dug myself deep into a pile of dirty laundry and hid there. However, the orderly Finkestein, found me and pulled me out. We were transferred from this camp to Skarzysko-Kamienne.

There was an ammunition factory in the forest near Skarzysko-Kamienne. The factory belonged to the “Hugo-Schneider Company. I was employed in section “Z”. People worked under the hardest conditions. They were terribly famished. Their skin was yellow, even the white of their eyes were yellow. They wrapped themselves in sacks and lived in barracks. Diseases kept multiplying.

Section “Z” was a punishing place of work and it was very hard labour. Later, I was transferred to the 12^th hall where I packed grenades into boxes.

Food in Skarzysko was very bad. The soup was made from rotten horse heads and other such things. People became infected with typhus. During the night, if you had to go to the latrines, you stepped over dead bodies. Prisoners kept falling all over the place. The brain typhus had spread, which was known as the “crazy typhus”. There was also a “Hosogowka”, some kind of a high temperature illness that lasted 10-11 days. There was no doctor and the conditions were inhuman.

I was a witness when they led the sick people dressed in silk overcoats to be shot. (I don't know where the administration got those overcoats). The people looked terrible. The sick that were unable to walk were wheeled in wheel barrels. All the sick were shot, and that was their treatment.

The inmates in the camp were Jews and watched over by Germans and Poles. Their relationship with the prisoners varied. There were some that showed mercy toward us and others that were capable of beating a Jew to death. It was a slow expiration of the victims.

When I was working in the kitchen, I remember that once they brought sick people and among them was a man. His name was Wiener (a bookkeeper from Krakow) who scrubbed out the remnants of food from the bottom of the kettle that stood in the kitchen with terrible avidity. The people turned into animals because of hunger and want.

After a selection in the camp, a big part was sent to a camp in Germany.

In Lipsk, we were put into a big building. We were ordered to leave all of our belongings there, and naked, they took us to take a bath. Afterwards, we were given underwear and assigned bunks. The buildings were clean. This was a “Hasag” camp for slave labourers. I was put to work at a drilling machine. The prisoners worked ten hours a day and the nourishment were lugubrious. We worked in two shifts, day and night. It was an international camp for women only. There were even German Communist inmates. The French were at their best behaviour. The Russian girls who were taken prisoners while fighting, refused to work in the ammunition factories. That is why they were put to work in the kitchen.

We were guarded by S.S. Women. In the management, there were two Polish women, Johanna and Zina. Johanna was very nasty. She beat the prisoners. Zina was much better. There were talks that she was Jewish. The relationship of the Polish women from the block toward the Jews was varied. In spite of the cleanliness of the camp, we were not given towels. From the materials that was given to us for work, we tore off pieces and used those as towels.

After the war, the Germans claimed that they did not know anything about the concentration camps or slave labourers arrested and brought to the camps from different countries. But we were led by a squadron of S.S. men with dogs through the city centre and everybody could have seen us or even heard us because our wooden clogs were very loud on the highway.

One time, we passed a potato field where potatoes were being dug from the ground. One of the girls asked the S.S. man if she could go there. The S.S. man gave her permission. The girl approached the people who were digging the potatoes and they filled her apron with potatoes. Seeing what had happened, the other girls also went there with spread-out aprons. The S.S. man took out his gun and shot eight girls. We are stunned! He looked at us with a surprised face, lifting his eyes toward heaven and asked: “What was this? Were they attacked by flies?” We were silent, but until the end of my life, I will remember the scene, seeing a girl trying to rise with her last energy. She screamed terribly and then fell back on to the ground. As I mentioned before, there were different overseers. One of them, a short German hunchback, particularly hated me. One time, I forgot my soup card. She asked for a chair, climbed up and slapped my face. In general, the German women did not know why the Jewish girls were brought to the camp. They though that they were imprisoned for prostitution and thievery. One overseer, who sympathized with a Jewish woman, asked her discreetly: “tell me, what made you go in such a bad way? Why are you here?”

The camp in Lipsk was liquidated in April, 1944. We were herded fourteen days by foot in the direction of Labi in order to be further away from the front line. We marched through cities and villages. The S.S. guardsmen kept changing but, we continued to march. Every one in a while, someone fell and as a result, the highway was strewn with bodies. It was a real “Death March”, the way we had named it. Men were less resilient than women, therefore, there were more dead men than women. For the road, we were given a can of conserved meat for four people, for three days we did not get anything. After three days, everybody received a handful of rice and two potatoes. During the night, there was screaming because the gypsies stole blankets.

We finally reached Labi. The S.S. women dispersed because the enemy military was close. We were liberated in May, 1945. We were allowed to enter German homes and take whatever we wanted because the Germans had run away.

A few words about the gentle lady Gaiserowa. Earlier in my story, I already mentioned the retired teacher that had agreed to hide my son. When I returned from Germany and began to inquire about my son, everybody was convinced that I no longer had a son. They were wrong. With a heavy heart pounding, I rang the door bell at Lady Gaiserowa's appartement and my five-year old son, opened the door.

My child! I yelled out loud and covered him with tears and kisses. Auntie! The child called Mrs. Gaiserowa. “Some lady came and kissed me….” From what Mrs. Gaiserowa had told me, and also from her neighbours, I found out that she had to run away and hide several times. She was with him in Spitkowiec where had had him baptized and raised him in a pious Catholic spirit, thinking that I had perished and that the child would remain with her. Later, she was urged not to give me back my child.

But her response was: “It would be for me a crime not to return to a mother her child”. She suffered materially, but she devoutly raised my child. I will never forget her noble deed. She has earned my eternal gratitude.

Translator's footnote:

1. Ada was married to the translator's cousin, Yaacov Bot Return

[Pages 377-382]

My father represented the sweet production of Piasecki and Pishinger. The material situation of my parents was good. I lived in the Downik section in the city of Krakow, on Madolinski Street, N°8. We had comfortable living quarters, two big rooms and a kitchen. One room was used as a storage facility, or enterprise. I remember that, for a period of time, my mother dealt with sweet products. We always had a servant which my mother brought with her from a village near Lancut. Even though my father was religious and wore a beard, at home we spoke Polish, nonetheless, even though we had a kosher home, but all my brother attended a gymnasium.

At the outbreak of the war, I was at home with my parents. My father, with the rest of the grown-up men, ran away from home. After a few days, they came back. A few weeks later, we all ran away. I remember that we travelled by train and the grownups wore armbands. We travelled to Lancut and stayed at my mother's sister, Chana Shleifstein, who had a big house and a farm.

In the beginning, we attended the synagogue. My father did not work and we lived from what we had brought with us.

A year later, my older brother was arrested and sent to a camp in Przemysl. We never heard from him. We knew that it had been done by the Gestapo man, Joseph Kokot, who especially prosecuted our family. He particularly hated my grandfather, Zelig Langsam. He always threatened that he would shoot the old Jew. Until, one day, he broke into the house and began chasing him around, but my grandfather ran into the yard. Kokot grabbed a candlestick and hit him over the head and shot him afterward. We buried my grandfather in the Lancut cemetery. This happened in the spring of 1941. Soon after my grandfather was murdered, my brother Nachumke was arrested and taken away.

In the meantime, the situation worsened. Jews were kept on being expelled. I remember, being the little girl in the family, that I was the only contact with the outer world. My task was to get food. Not far from us there was a school requisitioned by the Germans. I went there in the kitchen. They liked me there and always gave me some potatoes or bread.

We lived in Lancut at the Podwierzynec and do not remember what took place in the centre of the city. There were only a few Jews in the area and for a long time it was quiet until they suddenly killed the owners of the mill in Podwierzyniec. Two brothers, Leibish and Yacov Bot. Some time later, I met my cousin who lived in the centre of Lancut, and she told me that she was going into hiding. That made us feel that the danger was near and that it was time to leave the house. But, we had nowhere to go. We simply wandered in the fields and bushes. My mother tried to put us up with gentiles. My aunt did the same with her children. My mother managed, after a long search, to temporarily give away the smaller children. Understandably, for a big pay. For that purpose, we had to shed ourselves from the most needed and valuable things. However, the set-up did not last for long. After they were paid, the gentiles threw us out and the family was forced again to hide in shrubberies. When the nights became cold, we stealthily entered gentile barns or stables.

I remember that once, my brother and I had to escape from such barns because the peasants were looking for us. My brother dug himself into the hay, but I jumped outside and fainted. When I came to, the peasant stood over me with a pitchfork in his hand. My horrified instinct tore me away and I managed to escape and somehow reached my mother, where she was lying in a pit.

I remember, during the same autumn when we were without a roof over our heads and without any means to sustain ourselves. It was my steady task to supply food for the family. I went “hunting” in the village together with my brother Joseph. Normally, I was always escorted by one of my brothers. They waited for me in a hiding place in order to later help me carry whatever I had. I gained great “experience” on how to get into peasants' basements and also o how to “develop all kinds of relationships” with the peasants.

In one incident, Joseph remained in the high cornfield. It was before the harvest and I went in the nearest hut. In the yard, I encountered a group of peasants that immediately guessed who I was, and before I attempted to escape, they began chasing me until I was caught. They surrounded me and threatened that they would lock me up in a cellar and hand me over to the Nazi. Like a captured animal, I searched my brains for a solution. I told them that I had to go on nature's call. They laughed at me and mocked my bashfulness, but at the end, they allowed me to go a little further away. Again, with the instinct of a hunted animal and with nimbleness, which to this day I cannot comprehend, I managed to escape. I reached my parents again that were waiting for me in the bushes. My brother was also safe.

We scattered around until the winter arrived. We then decided to hide in the barn of our aunt. The barn was located in the yard behind the house. We selected, from among our possessions, the most necessary items. Our aunt did the same. She locked up the house and gave the keys to one of her most trustful neighbours. This Pole, whose name was Kunish, too all of aunt's things as well as our things which we could not take with us for safekeeping. I remember that it was winter time when we went into hiding in the barn. We were eight people. We settled in the attic of the barn. We slept on hay and straw. For provisions, we went out only at night, mostly the children, Joseph and me. In the beginning, we were allowed in the homes where we bartered away clothing and other things for food products. Later, the Poles were afraid for the Jews like for a ghost and shut the doors on us. We were forced to steal from cellars and pantries, or from fields and pits, mainly for carrots, cabbage and potatoes which we brought to our hiding place. No one thought about cooking but everything had to be eaten raw.

Going out in search of food, even at night, was dangerous. The ground was covered in snow and our tracks were easily detected. We invented a system: The grown ups threw us out of the window which was on the other side of the barn. From there we went through the shrubberies on to the road. That way, our tracks could not be discovered. From the road, I would start the journey. I was mostly escorted by one of my brothers on my dangerous way to the peasants' households in search of something to eat.

After a few weeks, one morning, Kunish came. He opened the barn and told my parents that the Gestapo would soon be here. There was no doubt that he had betrayed us. There was panic. We broke out a few boards from the barn and ran very far until we came close to Potocki's estate. We were looking for bushes where we could hide. During the escape, the family dispersed because not everyone was able to run at the same tempo. I saw one of my brothers hiding in a ditch. I ran with my brother Yoske and we finally reached the bushes near the creek of the estate. That is where I hid my brother deep in the bushes and I went to look for the rest of the family.

I crawled on my stomach and noticed a movement among the Poles. Even though it was early in the morning, they were all up and ran in different directions. I hid in an outhouse and after a few minutes, I saw that two gentiles were leading my younger brother Ephraim. He was six years old! One peasant had him on a horse and was followed by a second peasant. I heard Ephraim speak to one of them. “Please, Mister, let me go. Will it hurt you that I live?” After a few minutes, I saw that Yoske was also escorted by a few peasants and soon after, I heard shots.

Semi-conscious, I left the outhouse and tearing the hair from my head. The owner of the outhouse, a familiar woman peasant, forcefully took me to the stable even though I was screaming that I wanted to go with my brothers. She held onto me until nightfall. In the evening, she told me to go and find something. I went into another hut, to her sister, a fanatical pious gentile woman. She told me that she would keep me and baptize me. She also told me that my parents and brothers were caught and executed.

However, the same evening, two of my brothers, Heshek and Tulek, who were alive, came into my hiding place. They told me that the Poles, with the help of the Gestapo, had captures our parents and three brothers. The Poles had locked them up somewhere in a little storage room and had brought the Gestapo to murder them. The brothers that came were hiding in a ditch. When it had quietend down, they crawled out and from the peasants, they had found out that I was alive and where I was.

The brothers found out from Mrs. Dowielowa, that was the name of the peasant woman where I was, and that should would like to keep me hidden. They decided to leave me there and not take me with them. They went by themselves to find something. After our short conversation, I never heard or saw them again … I don't know when and under what circumstances they perished.

The Dowielowa hid me from most of the people in the village. But there were also trustful people who saw me. She began preparations for my baptism and when I knew the entire catechism, she baptized me with water. She treated me well, fed me and I worked in the household like the others in the house.

One day, holding a lantern, I entered the cowshed and found, in a hiding place, my cousin from the family where we were previously hiding together in the barn, waiting for me. At the time when we were discovered, they ran in a different direction than we did. I found out from him that they were all alive and were hiding in a stable of another peasant in the same village. Stealthily, I visited them. It is unknown to me under what circumstances they perished.

After a few weeks, I was visited at Mrs. Dowielowa, by my mother's distant cousin, Chana Celerkraut. She lived somewhere in the area as a Pole. She looked gentile, “unrecognizable” and, therefore, it was easier for her to live.

In the meantime, Mrs. Dowielowa began preparing me for martyrdom. She told me that the Gestapo would soon find out about me and when this would happen, I would fall into their hands, not resist, because as a Christian, I would with my death, not only save my soul but would also save my family's purified souls. Her talk did not convince me. Therefore, I asked the above-mentioned cousin if she would steal me away. I began “organizing” money and had two zlotys. (In the translator's opinion, it is probably a printing mistake because two zlotys meant nothing at that time). I stole from the Dowielowa's sister the documents of her deceased “Wichowanke” (someone she brought up). Equipped with the above, I met in a designated place, my cousin. I took nothing with me because I slipped away stealthily from the house, not wanting to arouse any suspicion.

My cousin had with her a thirteen-year-old son, Mechel, and a tiny baby boy that she was still breast-feeding. Together we went somewhere to a small railroad station and left into the world. That is how we reached a Ukrainian village, Koszice, near the San River. Chana arranged for me a place to work as a servant in a Polish family. We told them that I was Polish and my name was Helena Bronislawa; that my father was a drunk and had left for work in Germany; that my mother was dead and that my two brothers were serving in the “Junaka” (?). Chana went to another village where she settled temporarily with her baby on a job and the boy she handed over as a servant. Later, the baby died and she herself buried it after which she found a permanent job as a servant.

I couldn't stay long in my first place because I wasn't able to keep up with the workload that was piled upon me. Chana assured them that I was able to do every kind of work on the farm and according to my Aryan papers, I was two years older than I really was. (At that time, I wasn't even twelve years old).

Besides, it was harder for me to pretend to be Polish among Poles than among Ukrainians. I could have easily betrayed myself, whether with the language or the habits. That is why I was looking for a job among the Ukrainians. I also told them that I could do everything on a farm. It was hard for me in the beginning, like for instance milking the cows or harnessing a horse. Thanks to my strong will and stubbornness, I learned in a short time everything, and toiled like a grownup peasant, even though, in reality, I was still a little girl who was afraid of ghosts and horses.

I remember one time when “Shiwek” (grey horse) ran out from the stable and the owners told me to go and catch the horse. After I ran after the horse, I realized that he running toward the river where, in everybody's opinion in the village, there were ghosts scattering around. In spite of the fact that I was scared, I obeyed the order of my boss, otherwise they would have deprived me of food. I was chronically always hungry. I caught the horse in that fearsome place, and for the first time in my life, I galloped on the back of “Shiwek” home. The food was more important to me than the fright. For the smallest infraction, I was punished by my employers with deprivation of the evening meal, which meant bread and milk which I only received once a day. I walked around barefooted summer and winter. Besides a long dress, I wore nothing else on my body. I slept on top of the oven.

My employers and the others in the village did not believe that I was Aryan. They normally called me Sara, Rivka and Chaya. They pestered me whenever they could.

Once, a uniformed policeman visited my employer. As soon as the policeman entered the village at the other end of the village, runners came to our hut to notify my boss, and immediately it was concluded that I had caused the appearance of the policeman. The lady of the house, in that tragic moment, though only about the piece of ham that I was holding in my hands and she told me to leave it. But I grabbed the ham and ran into the corn.

After a while, I heard my boss' wife calling: Helenka! Helenka! I crawled out from the corn and came back into the yard. The policeman stood there and with a sharp voice, began interrogating me. What was my name? Did I have documents? Who are my parents and where were they?

I told him my story, showed him my documents and was very careful not to betray myself. The entire village, old and young, looked at the spectacle. In the end, the policeman put his gun back in his holster and told me to follow him.

On the way he told me that he didn't believe what I had told him and that he was sure that I was Jewish. But he didn't want to kill me – he pitied me. He even told me that he wanted to take me away from the imbeciles that were oppressing me. I could live with him, help his wife in the lighter household and watch his baby. I energetically opposed and assured him that I was happy with my employers and that I had friends in the village. I did not trust his propositions and was afraid to enter into the Lion's den. At the end of the conversation, he waved his hands and allowed to go back. I was afraid to turn around lest he would shoot me in the back. I walked backwards and waved my hand for goodbye, pretending to be grateful until I reached some shrubberies and hid there for a while. Later, I ran as fast as I could “home”.

Interestingly, however, since that day in the village, the people stopped pestering me and calling me “Chaya”, convinced in my Arianism or though that I had some extraordinary connections. My situation improved. I even got a pair of two left-foot wooden clogs from my lady and a long dress. However, my workload did not decrease. Besides the regular work, which was very tiresome, I had to go dig trenches at the San River which the Germans had forced the peasants to do, instead of my boss.

In the meantime, terrible things had taken place in the village between the Poles and the Ukrainians. There were arguments and skirmishes. The Poles had burnt down the Orthodox church, which cause the enragement of the Ukrainians, and they began to ill and murder each other.

Once, I found out that in some attic, Jews were discovered. All the above things were terribly upsetting. Soon the Germans evacuated a part of the Ukrainian population from the village, which included my employers. I was forced to seek a new place somewhere else. I found a job at the neighbours, who were a mixed couple. He was a Pole and she a Ukrainian. The working conditions, however, had not changed. My fear had grown. I had to be very careful with my new Polish boss that he should not detect my Jewishness.

When the Soviets arrived in the summer of 1944, my condition did not change much. I had no one to go to besides, I was afraid to leave the place. Chana Celerkraut, with her son, had left. I continued to hide my identity and remained working for the peasants.

Eight months after the liberation, a young man came and introduced himself as my brother from Janok. He said he came to invite me for the holiday. I immediately understood that Chana had sent for me. The boss's wife gave me permission to go out with him. In the beginning, we walked slowly pretending to be immersed in a conversation, but when we reached the woods, we began to run like crazy, afraid that my boss, who always carried a weapon, would catch us. We reached a small railroad station where my cousin Lola Langzam was waiting. Having been informed by Chana where I was, she organized this rescue expedition. She persuaded Tulek Faust that he should travel to my place and steal me away from there. The situation for Jews was still fraught with danger, especially in the small towns and villages. Therefore, people were not rushing to identify themselves.

Lola Langzam brought me to Rzeszow where she lived with her parents. The family looked at me like some kind of a monster with my long dress, wooden shoes and coarse language. It seemed as though I came from another world.

Shortly after my arrival in Rzeszow, there was a pogrom against the Jews. I was so shocked from my travails and being used to escaping on my own nimbleness, during the turmoil I did not care about relatives but escaped to Krakow. I already know that I had cousins in Krakow with whom I could stay. After a few days, the relatives from Rzeszow came and I went back to live with them.

I went to the Dluga Street in Krakow to the Jewish committee and enrolled in the folks' school in the fourth grade. I did not feel comfortable with my relatives, therefore, without thinking too long, I left to go to other relatives in Wroclaw and from there I went to Jelenia Gora where I continued in the folks' school and graduated in 1946. In Jelenia Gora, I continued being a Christian and went to church. In school, no one knew that I was a Jewish child. I was older than my classmates and studying was easy for me. Therefore, I skipped classes.

After graduation, I returned to Krakow. My relatives wanted to send me to England but I decided to emigrate to Israel. An uncle, a very religious man, handed me over to an “Agudat Israel” group and together with 35 other children, I travelled to Czechoslovakia and then on to Germany where, for a long time, I was an orphanage in the city of Ulm.

One night, we were smuggled out on trucks through to the border to Marseille. Next, we were loaded on the ship: “Theodore Herzl” and reached the shores of Haifa. In Haifa, we were detained by the British. A fight broke out in which we fought with bottles and with whatever came into our hands. The British fought back with gas bombs. There were some fatalities and injuries and we were forced to surrender. In Haifa, the British transferred us to an English ship and took us to Cypress where we stayed for eight months. In December, 1947, after the war of independence, I arrived in Israel. I adapted myself in Israel and fell in love with my Homeland.

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