צופיה חנה זלדה שולמן

Name of Interviewee: Zophia Shulman

Name of Interviewer: Ronit Wilder

Cassette Number: VT-5168

Date: December 27, 2004

Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi

Names:

Warszawa

Grodzisk Mazowiecki

Kock

Berlin

Q: The 7th of December, 2004. This is an interview with Miss Zophia Shulman. You were born in 1930 in Poland, Grodzisk Mazowiecki, but you were born officially in Warszawa. Please tell me a little bit about your family, your background.

A: I was the second child of my parents…I'm going to start crying already. I have an older brother who is also a survivor, Lou Shulman. I was the second child of Avraham and Hinde Shulman. My memories go way back to probably when I was three years old. We live in a small - one room and a kitchen - apartment in the front. My father had his workshop and business adjacent, of shoes and boots. He was a master shoemaker. My mother was a housewife. My childhood - I had a Polish mentor who used to rock my cradle and talk to me in Polish and sing. He worked for my father. He was like a houseboy for us. I loved him. Roman Dunai was his name. I loved him deeply because he liked me too. I was a sort of odd kid, skinny. In my present life I always think I was born too soon after my brother and that seemed to be a problem, I think, for my mother because….I felt awkward. My brother was the star obviously, the first-born boy.

Q: Were you a tomboy?

A: Not really. Not really, but I was an interested child. I loved to…Immediately I took to reading when I was four and a half. We spoke Yiddish at home, so I learned how to read Yiddish and Polish. Since I can remember. And my parents subscribed for us to different children's journals. My mother was quite ambitious for us. My father made money in his work, enough to feed us. We were not a wealthy family because my mother came from a bakery family, and my dad was an orphan at age fourteen. In his history, that both his parents died almost in one day, in twenty-four hours, of cholera at the time, which was raging in Poland, in a small village in Serekomla, in the Lublin area.

Q: What's the name of the village?

A: Serekomla. You'll find in the Valley of the Communities in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. He also lost a sister at the same time. He was an orphan, but he managed to get himself up in his life. He worked. He was an apprentice shoemaker and then he became his own man. He served in the Polish army and he played professional soccer. Married my mom, I think, at twenty-one or twenty-three and they were a beautiful loving couple. That was so obvious for us children. My mother, seven years after me she gave birth to twins, so we managed to move up a little - when I say "up" - into a larger dwelling. By no means like everyone…we all practically slept together. But as for myself, I was very popular as a child because I could read and sing and write. I didn't go into first grade, I went into second grade when I was six because first grade was too low for me, so I had a tutor, a lady named Flint, Chaya Flint. I remember her. She tutored me to go into second grade in a…it was a public school built by the Jewish community for Jewish children. It was a very modern school, with a gym, with all the facilities for learning, in Grodzisk. I attended that school, which was walking to the school at age six. My mother and father were very active in the school community to enable most Jewish children to attend the school. My mother was also giving out, active in the kitchen to make one meal for children who didn't have enough to eat at home. So I was very upset because I was embarrassed to see my mother being so….everywhere! I was embarrassed by that, too. At my school I was appearing in shows and Polish patriots as we had to make what - I understand now - a demonstration of our patriotism to the Polish government and nation. So we had Independence Day and I would appear…

Q: Trzeciego Maja, May 3, or Jedenasty Listopada or something like that.

A: ?, which was the Independence Day and we would sing "Whaj maj trzecimas". And Independence Day I would be on stage saying, "Jedenastego Listopada". I would always be pushing. The Shulmans. Our principal, who had a beautiful villa in the front of the school, on the premises - his name was Kampelmacher, and that name should be known to many people because he was a brilliant man. Dr. Kamelmacher. The Jewish community provided him with that beautiful villa, which had a rose garden. For us it was beautiful to just pass by. But Dr. Kampelmacher came into a lot of conflict with my father. When I say "conflict", it was verbal exchanges about who should be…how the children should be treated. My father, being a very generous man, not wealthy, but generous with his time, was very socially conscious of what was needed for us, for the children, for the Jewish children. There was a lot of poverty, as you probably understand, in the community, where people were living in hovels and had nothing to eat. And my family, my parents…we had a lot of relatives that were very poor, never mind others, that my family somehow, my parents gave assistance to. I know it all because I witnessed it.

Q: All your relatives were from your mother's side.

A: No, in Grodzisk we had my father's two sisters and they all were with husbands and children, and two brothers, with many relatives, cousins. I'll get to it because our family was no longer after the war except for my father, my brother and I who survived and we later found another cousin, my father's niece.

Q: As a child you knew your grandparents?

A: Oh, I knew all of our family.

Q: Your grandparents were still alive?

A: No, I only had one grandmother. My mother's mother was alive and she died during the war. So my childhood, I would say, was like anyone's. It was a wonderful childhood. There was so much family gatherings, for the holidays especially. These are the important events that for Passover and for Rosh Hashanah we would be outfitted with new clothing. For Passover we would get spring dresses with all kinds of adornments, made by dressmakers. And for the girl cousins of the same age, everyone had the same dress, whether they could afford it or not, but there was somehow…they were pooling there money to make the girls all look alike, with Mary Jane shoes and socks. And we all had the same silk, like georgette, dresses. Pink. For the High Holidays we would be dressed in velvet dresses. It was things that I can remember. These things about family are mostly in my memory. How we would all parade. Myself, in that georgette dress, I climbed on one of the roofs and had tar all over me, which was me. Others knew better.

Q: Were you an obedient child?

A: No, no, no. I rebelled any way I could, especially to my mother. I was very disobedient because I always felt second and I wasn't getting enough attention from her. That's why I loved Roman Dunai, because he gave me an awful lot of attention. She did what she had to, and because I retaliated in forms of bellyaches, that I had to be rushed to the doctor in Warsaw and then she would take me for what is now called a frankfurter, or a salami sandwich, to a restaurant even, to make me feel better. Other than that, she had scorn, she had a lot of scorn for me because I was very independent. On the one hand I was independent, on the other hand I was needy and I didn't think - I'm giving you a psychological profile.

Q: Who taught you reading and writing?

A: Myself. I mean, there were newspapers in the house. There were always newspapers in Yiddish and in Polish and I picked it up.

Q: So you had to ask "What is that?" and "What is that?"?

A: No. I don't know. Chances are that I may have been asking somebody, but it seems to me like it came natural.

Q: Yiddish was your mother tongue?

A: Yes. We spoke Yiddish at home, but I picked up Polish from outside, from inside. My parents knew Polish - my mother more, My mother went to school, officially. She finished public school, which was an achievement. My father went to "cheder". Let me tell you that my father was a self-educated, bright, beautiful man. He read all kinds of things and he could recite the prayers, be a "ba'al koreh" even though he was considered a free-thinker in Poland.

Q: Were you a religious family?

A: No, but we had a kosher home. My father played ball and playing ball was on Saturday. But we had a super-kosher home.

Q: But you said that outside you ate a salami sandwich.

A: No, kosher salami. There was a kosher deli like in New York, in Warsaw, and even in Grodzisk there was one deli shop, that you could buy kosher salami, which was the height of my dreams, to have a frankfurter or a salami sandwich, you know, on bread. I'll get to it, about the kosher issue. In my father's life, because that was a conflict with my mother, that rumour had it that he was eating pork outside the house.

Q: There was a big scandal at home?

A: Yes. It caused quite a bit of dissent. On the other hand, my brother was fed ham because he had problems with his eyes, vision, and my mother was told that if he ate pork, fat pork, like ham, it would cure his eyes. And against her…it wasn't only religion. It was something in her - and in me, too, by the way - to eat pork during the war, when we had to, was one of the next worst things that could happen.

Q: But as a child, if your brother had to eat ham or something like that…

A: We weren't supposed to know about it.

Q: Didn't your mother put it on a pergament paper or something?

A: No, on a piece of paper. Right.

Q: Not on a plate.

A: Never on a plate. Mind you, we had no running water in the house and yet we had separate dishes. When I think about it now, it's like a nightmare. We had separate dishes. We had dishes in the attic for the holidays, for Passover. Beautiful dishes. And we had dish towels that were separate, for dairy, for meat. And we had holidays. Shabbat my mother used to cook outrageously. All kinds of goose and chicken, depending on the season. And we observed that.

Q: Not cholent?

A: Cholent for shabbat and gefilte fish, of course. And soups. Cholent was every Saturday.

Q: You cooked it at home or you took it to the bakery?

A: No, we went to the baker.

Q: And it was your grandmother's bakery?

A: My grandmother's brother owned the whole establishment there. We also went with the fish to the ice mountain to keep cool and we had like a little shed that was cool for the sour milk and for the schav and for the different cold soups during the Nine Days, the holidays. It's blurred, as far as I can tell. Many of the dishes were phenomenal, for all I know. I don’t know how she did it. I can't imagine having this kind of…the conditions that we lived in - very tight and crowded. The board that she would roll out, the cakes or the noodles, and cut the noodles. I have these visions of her cutting the noodles, standing there and cutting the noodles.

Q: Your mother was a housewife?

A: A wonderful housewife and a marvelous cook and a generous baker. She baked challot for Friday, early in the morning in the bakery across the street, in my uncle's bakery. She baked, I can't imagine how many because she would then, before noon, before we got back from school, go around to distribute the challot to needy.

Q: And you didn't have help at home? A Polish woman?

A: We had some help. We had a Polish woman, yes - that's a story in itself. That also was very keen on me, used to take me with her to church. We had some help for that, but mostly my mother used to do all this. We had an aunt that lived with us because she was…at first she lived with us while she was single. She worked making socks. They had sock machines. My mother used to do that, too, on occasion, when there was extra money needed. But this aunt helped out. Then she got married and moved with her husband to an apartment and she had a beautiful child who was also named Hannah Zelda, my cousin. I have a picture of them.

Q: You were born Hannah Zelda after your grandmother?

A: Yes, my father's mother. We had five Hannah Zelda's. So this aunt who lived with us and that Kraut. Her husband went to France for work and then she came back to live with us, waiting to be taken to France, but he never made it and she died with my mother and her Hannah Zelda with my sister. My mother had twins, as I said, seven years after me. One twin was weak and he died as a baby, six weeks old. But Liebele, my sister, lived with us till she was murdered. And I say "murdered" because I don’t used "perished".

Q: For you, as a seven-year-old child with attention problems before, but wasn't it a big shock also?

A: No, no. I think the twins, when they came…I remember my mom had a hard pregnancy, very difficult pregnancy. In the end she had toxemia. I think she had toxemia because she looked it. She was all blown up and she had rashes of pregnancy. You know, some women, during difficult pregnancies, which I'm familiar with, working with them, have eruptions on the skin. She was full of blotches and it was tough to look at her because she was a beautiful woman. A small, beautiful woman. And I remember her sitting on a low stool in the backyard where we lived and she was so big. It was a relief after she gave birth and it was wonderful because the whole town rejoiced for us. We were very concerned with her health. Everyone knew that she had a difficult pregnancy, but she gave birth in Warsaw, in the same hospital. All three of us were born on "Twarde 3". That was a Jewish hospital. You must have heard about that.

Q: You knew that there were going to be twins?

A: I don't remember. I don't remember. I personally don’t remember whether I knew or not. Maybe my parents knew. No. Because when my dad came back from Warsaw…in Grodzisk there was a train. There was also a streetcar that was going to Warsaw, but he came by train and we lived on the main street. And he came down the main street from the train station like on a parade. Everyone greeted him and he was showing like this, that there were two. He was a tremendous showman, my dad. He had it in him. They played theatre, my mother and father, in amateur theatre. "Inca Dinka" something. I'm not sure I remember the whole title of the play. So he was a showman. He went through town, showing the "V", telling people "we have two".

Q: Was there any connection to Zionism at home when you were a child?

A: Absolutely, absolutely. My brother - we had a picture of him in his little blouse, with his thing here, belt across. He was going to the Beitar. I was more leaning to the other side. He too, by the way, but we didn't know. And we sang songs…."Shtei gadot l'Yarden". And Jabotinsky. And we made little ditties about Jabotinsky (?). "He is a big hero, Jabotinsky. He takes a rifle into his hand and he shoots a fly on the wall." Because there was this conflict of left and right. From childhood I can remember myself, I wasn't terribly keen on Beitar. But I also went to Beit Ya'acov after school, so it was where I learned to "daven" and I "davened" beautifully and I was "shockling" to my "davening". I knew all the prayers by heart, into the whole service I could pray by heart. I was always conflicted about it because I wanted to do things that you're not allowed to do on Shabbat until one day my mother sent me to the Beit Ya'acov teacher in the morning with a plate of goodies. And I saw the teacher combing her hair, so I threw the stuff away, into her, and ran home, "Gevalt!", to my mother. She said, "What's wrong?" I said, "She was combing her hair." With a comb yet.

Q: Do you remember any antisemitic event as a child?

A: Yes. Very much so. We were called names. There were songs. (?) It meant, "You little Jew-girl. Come to pick lilac." And the Jew-girl answers, "I can't come because it's Shabbas. My mother would beat me up because I wasn't home for Shabbat." So there were these little songs. (?) It was all derogatory ditties.

Q: But it's not so insulting.

A: It was insulting because…we sang along. I thought it was cute. No, I didn't feel insulted. I should have, but I wasn't aware of that, so I sang those songs as well. But there were antisemitic outbreaks in '38, when I was eight years old. This was all like up to the war. By the time I was eight years old they were breaking windows and because my father…we had a show window with boots and shoes, like a vitrine. Because of my father knowing many of those "endeckes", they, like, almost shielded him, shielded our store. But it was breaking windows. There were physical attacks on bearded Jews. You couldn't miss it. It was in the air and if you had a little brain you knew it, that you had to be vigilant not to get either beaten up or taken advantage of by snatching your little "kniple" or something like that. And yet, till 194….not really, because we went to Warsaw when the war broke out. I don't know if we are there yet. Yes, we were aware, to answer your question, of anti-Jewish….

Q: Did you have non-Jewish friends?

A: Not really. There was interaction like, I would be invited to the "superke", the one that cleaned the yard, for Christmas and given some candy from the tree. The trees were always beautifully decorated. We would be given a little cookie and I knew I wasn't supposed to, because the cookies were baked with lard, with pork fat, but they tasted heavenly. You couldn't really imitate those things. Our cookies were wonderful, but nothing like that. That was melting in your mouth and you immediately think, say to G-d, "I sinned". But my father had quite a few wonderful…and we had one family that we were close with, really refined. He was a customer of my dad and they were wonderful people, wonderful people. I saw them, some of them - most of them are dead - when I was in Poland in 19…was it five years ago I saw a grandson, Madjek, of that family. That family was wonderful, during the war and after the war.

Q: Do you remember the 1st of September, 1939?

A: Absolutely, absolutely. I remember it as if it happened today. It was Friday afternoon. My mother was cutting noodles for the soup. I was with her, and an uncle was in our house - Uncle Itzel. We were supposed to start school that day - maybe we did, because it was the 1st of September. I was supposed to go into fourth grade. And she was standing, cutting the noodles in the front room. Everything was getting cooked in the back and she was going like, when you cut noodles, you cut it and then you fluff it. And uptown we started to hear the bombs. We already had like a shelter in the yard that was dug to go in, but we never made it. The bombs flew down, came down in the market area, like in the middle, between the main street, where we lived, in the middle of Main Street, 11 November = Jedenastego Listopada it was called, but it was the main thoroughfare, where the streetcar went. On the one side you went to the main railroad station. Uptown was the market. And the bombs flew right there, near the market.

Q: You father wasn't in the reserve army at that time.

A: No, no. He was not in any form, but he was not home. He was in Warsaw, on jobs, because he had somebody who made our upper of the shoes, a Polish man. And he was in Warsaw on business, so to speak. Today we use such fancy terms. There were these horrible bombs coming. You know, the noise was incredible and the bombs killed a lot of people, including some of our distant relatives who were immediate casualties. And I remember my father came back from Warsaw and he ran where the victims were and he helped bury them immediately. It was just before Shabbat. I don’t have any memories of right after that. I can't recall what happened, how our lives changed immediately after that. We were loaded up - I don't remember whether we went by train or by streetcar - my father said we should go to Warsaw because Warsaw would be defended. We were like an outskirt of…actually, we were twenty-eight kilometers outside, west of Warsaw. There was a main railroad station, which made the town quite important. So we came to Warsaw where my dad had relatives. Twarde. Was a huge…between Twarde - I'm trying to remember. There were three yards in the building and we stayed there for four weeks under heavy bombardment. That's the biggest thing I remember. We were in the basement and we started to feel hunger. There was no food, there was no water. And I remember an episode - somebody brought some tins, big tins of herring and pickles that they obtained and my poor mother, being so hungry, she went for that herring. I remember my father yelling at her, "Please don't eat those herrings! You're going to die of thirst." But she couldn't control it and I was so upset because he yelled at her. I loved her. I mean, conflict or not conflict, but I loved my mother. I was so feeling for her. I, on the other hand, felt - this was another thing. I always had bellyaches. I stopped having bellyaches and I remember eating some raw - it wasn't flour, it was like oats or something that we had - and I put my hand and I just swallowed it. Then I got sick. But that episode, with those herrings in the basement where we were trying to keep out of the bombs, sticks in my mind because my father was a wonderful patriarch. He was very loving to everybody. We were there with a lot of relatives and especially for my mother he was very concerned and he yelled at her not to eat those herrings because it will kill her from the salt content. Well, we survived. The war ended.

Q: Was it a public shelter where you were?

A: No, it was in the building. They were underground, basement. It wasn't a shelter even. It was just what you see now in buildings that had basements.

Q: That was a building that you had relatives in?

A: A tall structure. We had relatives living in those buildings and we went to them because for some reason everybody felt that Warsaw would be defended. It was. It lasted four weeks.

Q: Less than four weeks.

A: You think less? Two weeks? To me it looked like four weeks. I would like you to check that out because historically it is listed as four weeks.

Q: Three weeks. Compromise.

A: We'll compromise because it looked like four. In the fourth week we came out from these so-called places where the bombs weren't supposed to reach. Mind you, people just died in those basements. We were fortunate. My father hired a carriage with a horse. We started to walk, actually, to get back to Grodzisk and we came home. Our place was intact. I'm sure we were very traumatized by that bombardment. We saw Germans everywhere, the German army. My father started to recoup - by that I mean he worked whatever possible work he could do, repairs and stuff. People were resuming a form of life. Sadly, within…I think it was in November. This was still October, maybe November, December. I'm not sure. It was in 1939. He was arrested by the Germans and sent to Radogoszcz in Lodz, which became a concentration camp. It had a German name immediately, because Lodz became Litzmanstadt, and that camp was a former army camp. He was arrested because before the war my father ran for election to the local city council and he was elected. That is a wonderful story in itself because it is connected to the pork eating. He ran on a ticket, like a union of workers and owners of little business. At the same time, an uncle of mine, my mother's brother-in-law - Melich Herrink - ran on a religious ticket. And there was a big argument about who was going to win, but both of them ran as representatives of the Jewish community. I remember this family, my mother's sister, Faige, and her four girls and this uncle, Melich, were living uptown. They were wealthier than we were, considerably wealthier. But on my way from school I used to drop in and I would get a treat from my aunt. And I overheard that they were going to call my father a "hazir fresser", an eater of pork. I was so indignant that I dropped that piece of bread with whatever was on top of it. I think it was chicken fat, which was a big treat. And I dropped it and I ran home. I was running, out of breath, to my mother and I said, "Guess what? They said that my father was a pork-eater." And she slapped me. She said, "You shouldn't tell stories that you hear. This is a 'plotke." And I said, "But I heard it." She was adamant that it was wrong on my side to hear it. Lo and behold, my father won that election just before the war and there was a huge celebration. In the front we had like a counter where my father had his cash and made out bills for the sell. It was like five or six in the morning - we were up until the counted the ballots. I was put on that counter and I was asked to sing. I don't remember what. And from across the street someone went and brought beautiful fresh rolls and there was drink and a celebration that my father won that election. Therefore, he was listed in the city hall and when the Germans came, they arrested the mayor, the Polish mayor, the priest, the head of the school - all the "dignitaries" of the town, and my father was amongst them, and a few other prominent Jews of the town. As they entered our…two Germans with a Polish policeman, the German was yelling at my father, (?). He was red, my dad had red hair, and this was his pseudonym on the soccer field. They called him "Rude", for red. They interpreted it as a communist. My dad was never a communist. My mother was more into party things. She was marching on the 1st of May, with a red flag and the demonstrations. But my father was not a communist. We hid communists in our apartment. We had a neighbour - Pshitik. I know you must know that name because his wife wrote one of her books about Auschwitz. The best book, I was told. I read it and I wasn't in Auschwitz, but I'm told that this was…She wrote it in Hebrew actually. She was living here. But we hid this communist in our house, so I knew all about communists because they were sent to Kartuska Bereza (sp?) and I didn't like that. I knew all about it. As a child I was so into politics and it stayed with me till today, to be into politics. Even as a seven-, eight-year-old I was very involved in politics because I remember when Pilsudski died in 1935 I came, again, running into the store yelling "Pilsudski is dead!" I read it in the headlines on the newspaper and one of the attractions of that was that my father was invited, because he was such a prominent figure in our town, that little guy, was invited to the funeral and I was screaming, "I want to go to the funeral!" We were all in mourning for Pilsudski, our hero. So at five years old I remember Pilsudski's death so vividly because we had quite a bit of…It was a trauma for the Jews, and not just for the Jews. I didn't identify that much as being Jewish. I was part of the Poles.

Q: So after your father's arrest?

A: The arrest was awful. The place was terrible. Somebody from the town went to…first he was in the local jail, in Grodzisk and then he and this whole group was sent to that camp. The conditions were abhorrent already there. He was discharged with another group and sent to Krakow. We heard about it. I think the Jewish community of Lodz must have paid a heavy price to have those people, the Jewish people, extracted. They literally extracted them out of that camp. And he was sent to Krakow, where he always told us after the war, even as recently before he died - he died only a year and a half ago. He was ninety-nine. He was always reminiscing of how, when they arrived to Cracow, the Jewish community greeted them with food and warm clothing. And he came back to us in Grodzisk. He worked a little bit. In 1941 - I think it was '41. There is a dispute over that. Some people know better. I think it was 1941 when the order came that we all have to go to Warsaw. First we had a small ghetto in Grodzisk, where the synagogue was, where the mikve was, where the beit midrash was. So we moved from our place into that small area, into another apartment with somebody. After that came the transfer to the Warsaw ghetto.

Q: You think that your father came back home, was it 1940 or '41?

A: No, it must have been the end of '39. He was there for six weeks, he was away. It must have been '39 because…could have been the end of '39 or the beginning of '40. About a year we still lived in our house, with our belongings, and my father worked and sold shoes and boots. He became even more famous to the Germans because they loved his boots. When he made boots - he worked before the war, he used to make these beautiful riding boots. And when I talk boots, I'm talking about high boots made of beautiful leather with different decoration. He did it for the "Ulani". I don't know if you've heard that expression. "Ulani" was a branch of the Polish army with feathers, and he made these boots for them and he became quite famous.

Q: The Germans paid for the boots?

A: They paid, oh yes. They paid, they paid. We were able to make a living on, not just on the Germans, but shoes were still going. It's blurry. When we moved into that other part, section of Grodzisk he worked, he still was able to work, but he became more active in assisting people to adapt, to adjust, because we didn't understand what was happening. What we now know was that they kept on gathering us up under horrible circumstances. People started to drop dead, literally, from hunger. Hunger was omnipresent, all the time. We didn't hunger, but we were uprooted all the time between our place into that smaller area in Grodzisk. Finally - I don't recall exactly how it came about - but we were ordered to go to Warsaw, so we moved. The ghetto was starting to be walled in and we moved. We were able to obtain, on Zelazna 69 - I don't know if that means anything to you because the gate was right there in the corner of Grzybowska, where the beer company was, with Haberbush and Chile, a German beer company. We stayed there for a considerable time until they started to shrink the ghetto. As a child in the ghetto - I was already by then eleven. I was very independent. I went to the park, I went to the concerts. Myself. I kind of moved around. What I saw, I don't know whether it affected me or not, but I saw the starving people on the street. And my father got a job outside the ghetto, worked for the Germans, for the SS, in fact, making shoes and boots. That's where I think we met Mr. Kolniezik. I didn't meet him. My father met him. He worked also outside the ghetto as a carpenter.

What can I tell you? Ghetto was horrific because some of our…By the way, I didn't mention that from Grodzisk they started already to, in 1940, to put people in concentration camps in Belzec. One of them was my cousin Chemia, and a neighbour's son. The whole family, he and his sister, Benjamin, and Abba (?) - he escaped to Russia. And the two children. They had father, mother and several siblings in America and they couldn't get there. The parents took one by one out to America and the two younger children were left. We fed them all the time, but they took our cousin and Benjamin to Belzec and my father bought them back. He bought them out. That was not the first, but a good glimpse into what was ahead of us because in Belzec was a nightmare. They came back swollen, loused, full of lice. Benjamin we couldn't get into the house because he was so swollen in his rags. He was in the yard and we used to - we, me and some other children - and beat him with a stick so that the lice would come out. Him and my cousin my father brought back by, I don't know how. But when he was lying on the ground in the yard, we didn't understand what was…Everyone was going over and poking me. The reason we did it, I understood, he was itching awfully from the lice and we were trying to get the lice out and help him scratch with the sticks. I grieve for him terribly. The cousin came back to his parents from Belzec, but this poor boy - I think of him. I remember that scene over and over.

Q: He was your first relative that…?

A: No, he was our neighbour. And a cousin was the first relative that was…after my father, who was interned in Radogoszcz. He died on the ground from being bitten by lice and typhoid and we buried…I don't know whom. My parents, probably.

Q: So he was the first acquaintance of yours that died?

A: I saw dying? Probably. Except when I was a child - my brother and his friends killed my cat and they made a Polish funeral with a cross. And my Polish friend died before that. Before the war. He was stabbed.

Q: Dunai?

A: Yes. Roman Dunai. And after he was stabbed I went to his funeral in the town, with the procession, and I cried for him. "Why did you do that do me?" I was like a real drama…I used to visit his grave in the Polish cemetery. He was buried in the corner. But the horror of the German war against us came home with Benjamin. No, the rest of the relatives…this same boy, he recovered because he was treated and nurtured, but him, it was too late. He was a pal of mine, he was a friend of mine. I know that for a fact. He was a friend of mine.

Q: And at that time you lived with your grandmother?

A: With my parents.

Q: Your grandmother wasn't with you?

A: She died in about 1940.

Q: Before you went to Warsaw Ghetto.

A: Yes. (end of side)

Q: When you came to the ghetto, of course you didn’t go to school and nothing like that.

A: I did, a little bit. There were some ghetto teachers and I attended – I don't recall where it was – I think our teacher, Neucha Zuvna (sp?), Neuhouse, may have been there and may have been teaching us. I am not sure how long it lasted. It didn’t last very long. I became kind of a ghetto child. I was running in the streets.

Q: And doing what?

A: Just looking. Running, looking, listening. Having fun. Making some kind of make-believe childhood. I loved to go to the…there was a park in the ghetto. I loved that park because there was music playing and I loved music. I always loved music. I sang. I loved to sing songs.

Q: That was the first time for you, as an independent child, that can do as much as she wants?

A: I assume so. Yes, I assume, because my father was leaving early to go through to the gate. I don't remember what my brother did.

Q: How old was he?

A: My brother was born in '27, so he is about two and a half years older. He was just seventy-seven. I don't remember whether he went to school. He, too, became a ghetto child. Occasionally, I think – he may correct me or he doesn't remember. Too bad my father is not around because he may have been taking my brother out to work, too, because ultimately my brother wound up with him in that…there was an outfit called – and I think it should, for the record, it was called (sp?)…de Waffen SS. On Filtrova, on the Aryan side. That's where my father found employment as a shoemaker and bootmaker. And I think he may have taken my brother along. I can't be sure of that. But my little sister, Liebele, was the star of the family, who brought everyone joy. And one episode, I always remember here playing, making a doll out of a towel and she would cradle it…No, that was still before the ghetto. She was about three and half, four years old. She would make herself a game and imitate grownups, how they attempted to cross the border to Russia and she spoke in Yiddish, thinking she speaks German. (?) With her doll she imitated how people talked about trying to cross the border and that was her game. She would cradle the towel, the doll, and say, "(?)", meaning to the Russians. All kinds of things. That is another vivid memory of mine, where she was a beautiful blonde child, to get through….she knew the dangers. She absolutely knew what was going on, especially in the ghetto. She knew that we were in peril to a point. When I get to it.

Q: And your mother didn't go to work and she stayed at home with your sister?

A: No. She stayed home with my sister. My aunt went…We had our aunt with us all the time – Sura Faige. She was like an extension of the family. We didn't know any other.

Q: That's the one…

A: Who had a husband in France and she had another Hanna Zelde. So she was Hanna Zelde. My mother absolutely refused to separate from her. She was one of us.

Q: And she was your father's sister.

A: My father's younger sister. She always was with him. My father also had a sister who was adopted. She was in Lodz. She was an infant. But Sura Faige was the next to the little ones, so she always stayed with him. He wouldn't let her go into any kind of orphanages or…Families stayed together. So she was with us in the ghetto. Then the ghetto shrank, as you know. We moved to Mila 20, where my uncle Mailach…

Q: Mila 20 is very close to…

A: Not Mila 18.

Q: To Mila 18, yes.

A: Yes, but we were…There was a man named…my father remember his name. He was a relative of my Uncle Mailach who was running against my father in his elections. So families were making deals, dealings and wheelings, to move here, move there, when there was a spot available. That's how we got to Mila 20. It's significant because in that same apartment we had the whole gang there – Antek Zuckerman, Mordechai Anilewich. On Mila 20. They were with us. We, the children, were sort of herded into another room and they were training in one of the big rooms - it was a huge house – in that apartment. And I remember giving orders – "Dom! Smol! Yemin!" like an army. This sticks in my mind. The tragedy of the Ghetto Warsaw was so profound that it's not even possible to recreate. I mean, all the things that you've seen in movies and people telling you – you walk out into the street and my cousin is lying all swollen up, starving from hunger. One of the cousins of my mother's – we don't even know where the parents were, whether they were dead already, from starvation. To me, though, you know, ten, eleven, the drama wasn't as, the tragedy wasn't imprinted yet. I didn't get it. It seemed to me, as a child, that it wasn't as profound. Today, of course, it's different when I think about it, but I was invincible, I was me. I needed me.

Q: Did you have enough food in the ghetto?

A: My father brought in some soup. He was allowed to carry a big bucket. Two buckets he used to bring, give it out, almost most of it…bread, army bread. And he would collect the leftovers and come back to the ghetto at night with buckets of food. Soup.

Q: But they used to check.

A: Yes, but he managed to convince them that it was official and legitimate. And he brought home what was left, forcing my poor mother to eat the pieces of pork that were in that soup. I remember that so vividly. He said, "You'll die, you'll die." She said, "I will die, I will die." She couldn't swallow it. We, too, we'd like shove it aside. But there and then it was decided that myself and Sura Faige and Hanna Zelde, my brother, that we would make an attempt to leave the ghetto.

Q: Wait. We're talking about your aunt and two of your cousins.

A: No, just one cousin.

Q: One cousin, you and your brother.

A: We will, by Mila 20, about a few houses, was a wall, a narrow wall, that was blocking off to the Aryan side. Whichever way possible, and I don't know how, but we were able to get over the wall, the four of us, that we would get to Serakomla. The aim was to be in a smaller place. It was a village with no nothing, just structures, low structures. My father grew up there in one of those, with thatched roofs. The idea, I think, that went through their heads, the adults, that Germans will not get there. Why would they go to such a "fashlugen" distant place? So we would be safe there. We had some money. Some of my relatives were there. My father's older brother was there with his wife and his four children. And there we would be able to finish the war. We got over the wall, got there. Lo and behold, we became ill with you name it – typhoid, lice, scabies. All the social diseases that were possible. My brother almost died. There was no medication, there were no doctors there. There was a medic, like a "felcher". I had scabies that was…who knew what else could afflict you? I had it. Amongst other things, the Poles started to get restless. Initially we rented one of those structures.

Q: The conditions were worse than in the ghetto? That you had all those diseases?

A: Not really, but there was also homesickness. I missed my parents. I was devastated. I said, "Are they going to come?" They were supposed to come with us. They never came, but they managed to get out of the ghetto and went to Hrubieszow. No, I think my brother went back to the ghetto. We had to leave Serakomla. They went to Hrubieszow, (?) as it was called. Part of my mother's family also got there. We left Serakomla and somehow got to Kock, where I had another aunt. And we lived in that hovel of a place. We lived, we existed there, in another hope that we will not be caught there, that nothing will happen in Kock. What happened in Hrubieszow, there was a terrible slaughter. You know, in Hrubieszow, all that area, people were not taken yet to the camps, like Treblinka or Majdanek or Chelmno or you name it. They were killed into the ditches. And my father and mother and my brother came to Kock. They escaped to where we were. Amongst other things, to Kock, Mrs. Anjeskovska, our Polish friend, came and she found out where we were. We communicated with her all the time. She offered to take my sister. She begged my mother. She said, in Polish, "Mrs. Shulman, she is going to be safe with me. Please, I'll take her. I'll save her." My mother refused to give up the baby. Baby. She was five years…she was born in '37. This was already '42. For some reason…in Kock was awful. I was one of the…I don't know if you heard that part of a story, one episode, where they killed a German and the Jewish police was…there were a few of them in Kock, too. They were asked to round up eight hundred people to be retaliated against. Jewish. Gelile, one of the grandmothers who was with us was taken out, yelling and screaming, "I don't want to go! I don’t want to go!" I had a cousin there, Esther Leah's children. She was a cripple and there was danger that the Jewish police would take her, too. I think she had polio, so she was crippled. She was screaming, I remember, like an animal. She didn't want to go and my aunt hid her in a barn behind, so she wasn't taken. Being me, I ran out into the street. I wanted to see what was going on. And since the police couldn't, wasn't fast enough to round up eight hundred – they counted – I was caught and put against the wall with the rest of them. And we were all machine-gunned.

Q: How is it that at the age of twelve, such an experience?

A: Yes, how is it? Like the rest of my experiences then and there.

Q: You know, people usually say that they see their whole life passing in front of them.

A: I didn't see it. I was just there. I heard the machine guns, I fell down and I got up after the "Chevre Kadisha" came to pick up the pieces. There was still a "Chevra Kadisha". Q: You understood what was going on?

A: Yes. Oh, I knew everything.

Q: You weren't paralysed of fear?

A: I wasn't paralysed. I got up like this.

Q: No, I mean before, when you heard the machine guns?

A: I think that I was immortal. I felt…

Q: What you mean – that's the power of youth?

A: I wasn't dying. I was alive, and what there was around me was part of facts of life. This was life. This was then a kind of…At that time I was afraid of the Germans, but I didn't hate them. I didn't understand the perpetrators. I didn't hate them. I was yet sort of immortal – I'll get up and continue. Except that when I was already a little cleaned up there, I was walking in Kock and I see my mother screaming in Yiddish, "Gevalt! (?)". And I'm right in front of her. I think she was never the same.

Q: And for you it sounds like it was natural, that you were shot, but…

A: I would get up.

Q: No injury?

A: No injuries then. I was injured in the war, later on.

Q: But not at that time. Someone fell on you and…

A: A lot fell on me and it took awhile until I got up because they picked them one by one, if I remember correctly.

Q: You had trouble breathing at that time?

A: I had no trouble. I don't remember that. I just, when the time came, I probably wasn't the only one that got up from that. I don't know if my father wasn't there anymore. He had made every effort to get back to Warsaw because he knew he would get a job and his attempt was, once he gets there he will send for us, one by one.

Q: Because you understood that inside the ghetto is better than outside in Kock.

A: Well, this is part of the story. Yes. In Kock the devastation, the hunger…My father went back. Not me. My father started to…he walked actually because…not only that, they were looking for him in Kock. They heard he was there and the Gestapo…there was also a Gestapo to deal with. He was a suspect all along, so my aunt, Sura Faige, took him out to a field where he went through different places. He also described he hid here, he hid there, and finally he reached Warsaw by hook and by crook and he went back to the ghetto. I don't know if he even went back to the ghetto. He went to a Pole and he went back to that outfit that I mentioned and they employed him. They already had…once they employed him they gave him lodging. It was a huge establishment. They took over street after street after street. Filtrova and its environs. There was a huge park, because I was there later on. And he sent for my brother.

Q: He worked there also as a shoemaker?

A: He worked as a shoemaker, right.

Q: As a Jew?

A: As a Jew. He found favour with the head of the "Hauptsturmfuhrer" and there was already another couple there, a Jewish couple, a tailor, by the name of Markovich. She was of German origin, he was a Berliner of Polish extraction. He made, worked, made beautiful suits and other, whatever they could steal, they employed him to sew for them. My father made the boots. He even used the same Polish men to make the tops, so it was a mutual kind of thing. About myself – my brother was already there, too. My brother became a shepherd. They had livestock and he tended to the geese and the goats and they had a cow. He milked the cow. He also did all kinds of dirty work for the individual soldiers. They'd vomit,, he'd clean up. They beat him up, but my father had no control over that and the head of the department, the "Hauptsturmfuhrer", had no control of his…he was a very humane individual, which is probably something new to you. He was our Schindler – Hauptsturmfuhrer Heymmans. He became my mentor too, in the end. Walter Heymmans. I visited him after, in 1984.

Q: He was still alive?

A: He was still alive. It's a long story. I don't think we'll have enough time.

Q: What was his rank?

A: Haptsturmfuhrer. Waffen SS. Kock was eventually, if I use "evacuated" for lack of better words, because we were actually driven out, through Parczow on the way to one of the extermination camps. I don't know why they didn't kill us on the premises. They had a plan, as you know, to…they had a plan and some people got killed into the ditches, some had to go through the gassing and the killing and burning. The plan was to get us either to Majdanek...I think it must have been Majdanek because it was the closest. We went the route of (?) and we reached Parczow in that caravan of horse and buggy. And I took over. I said to my mother, "You know what? We can't go on." I didn't know about the extermination camps. We heard and my mother was in total disbelief. She said in her Yiddish, "These people are liars. They want money." People who escaped Treblinka or Majdanek or any other of those horror places, my mother said…

Q: They were crazy?

A: They were crazy. She herself was already nuts, with fear and despair.

Q: Your mother was still functioning at that time?

A: Almost not. I became the caretaker and we had some money, we had some jewellery.

Q: In '42 you still had money and jewellery?

A: We still had money and jewellery. The jewellery was all sewn in. And I found a location…We escaped from that transport and I found a location in Parczow. It was like a "krechme" – I don't know how to…An inn, if you will. And the man, I said, "We would like to stay here and we will pay you a little bit." He wasn't nasty. He said, "It's okay."

Q: You were walking at the time when you ran away.

A: Yes, but we walked to the nearest location and he said, "You can hide in the potato cave." And that's where we stayed, the four of us, and I would come out and get some milk and get some bread, buy it.

Q: Just a minute. Why were you four? Your mother, you, your younger sister?

A: No. We were five, actually. My aunt and Hanna Zelde and the three of us, so we were five. I became the runner. I bought some milk, I bought some bread. And one day my mother said to me in Yiddish, "I think you should leave us here. We can't live here much longer. Take the ring." – it sounds like a "chareyad" (?) – "Take the ring and we'll find a woman, find somebody" – she didn't say specifically who – "Go to your father."

Q: But tell me something about the life there. You were hidden in…

A: In a cave. For a few days, maybe a week. I don't remember how long it lasted.

Q: You had to pay the Polish man?

A: We didn't pay. He just took money for the food that he bought for us. I don't think we paid him. I'm not sure. Actually this is very, I must confess, vague in my memory. How I managed this transaction I'm not sure either, but I did. I was resistant. I said, "I can’t leave you here." She said, "We have to go out of here. We cannot stay much longer. It's impossible to survive here." It was horrible conditions. We had nothing to sleep on. We were just crouching. And she said, "They will catch up with us." She didn't even know where we were being taken, but we knew we were in danger. And she said, "They will catch up with us and they will kill us here. You have a chance." I don't know what terms she used. I'm not sure how she conveyed it to me and she convinced me. Good or bad. She managed to convince me. We located a lady. I don't know how, whether she did that or I did it myself. We located a Polish woman who was a smuggler. She agreed to take the ring. She wasn't sure she wanted it. We sort of appealed to her, that I needed to get back to Warsaw. We had all agreed, before my father went back, that whenever we got to Warsaw, there was a Polish man who would be our contact. He knew my father. There was no money involved or anything. He knew my father, he was working for my father. He was, before the war, in the transfer business of shoes, leather, you name it. And he worked in the same location as my father for the SS. He had a house and I don't remember exactly where, but I was supposed to, when I got to Warsaw, to reach him. This woman, by train, with here food that she smuggled to Warsaw, brought me safely to Warsaw. She hid me under her wide skirt and that's how I crouched all the way from Parczow.

Q: How did you look like as a child?

A: I can't remember. I was skinny, I had hair.

Q: Did you look Jewish?

A: I think I did, I think I did, except that I was fluent in Polish and I knew street language. I taught myself the prayers.

Q: At that time what happened with the nanny that took you to the church, now it was a help.

A: It's not just that. Somehow, without trying to impress you about it, somehow these things came to me, whether it was I the air or…It's hard to explain. I managed to get with her to Warsaw. She took me to her house. They had a basement apartment. Maybe he was the superintendent of the building, but as I got nearer to the apartment I could smell frying bacon and I got sick from that. As we walked in he knew that I was Jewish and he said, "Get her out of here." To his wife. The husband.

Q: He was her husband.

A: Yes. And she said, "No, I have to feed her first." And they made "pizzy". "Pizzy" is a dumpling, a potato dumpling filled inside, like kubbe. It's filled with bacon or fried bacon or whatever. I said to myself, "G-d, forgive me." I didn't know how to…You know what I said? I said to myself "Shma Yisrael". I didn't know what else to…

Q: In '42, after all you had been through, it was still…?

A: All the bad soups that I ate in the ghetto, that my father brought in, in the ghetto, I still could not…Don't ask me why. I mean, I ask myself, as an adult, what was in it. I mean, what was with me?

Q: Did you feel that it would bring a disaster? Maybe the sky will fall over you or something, if you will eat pork?

A: It's a something that is...Again, I think it's metaphysical. It has nothing to do with religion. It's probably a genetic thing with us at the time.

Q: But you thought that something very bad was going to happen?

A: No, but eventually yes, because I was sinning. I would be punished one way or another, and I was, plenty of times. Inasmuch as he said, "Take her out," I ate and then she took me to the house where this Polish man and his wife lived. Well, she dropped me by the house and left. I went upstairs and I rang the bell – it was on a floor – and I rang the bell and nobody answered. And this was the end of my life, right there. That's where reality set in because I was on the Aryan side, by myself, without anything, hardly…whatever I had on me. I had…

Q: And of course no document.

A: No document. A little money, maybe a few zlotys. I remember they were building something, a structure, and there were bricks, layers upon layers of bricks, and I slid into those behind, because right away I got taunted by kids. (?) I knew that's when the reality set in. I got into those bricks and I crouched or stood there all day until dark. I don't know whether I went to the bathroom or I didn't go to the bathroom. There must have been something going on. I had no water, no food, nothing. Just stood there. At dark I walked over to the building again and I rang the bell and the door opened.

Q: But when you stood there and the children saw you…?

A: They may have not seen me. People probably did see me, but chose not to react. I rang the bell and she answered, his wife answered. By the way, his name was also Roman. And she got so frightened that she banged the door. She knew I was coming and I don't remember how she knew that because it was agreed upon with him and my father, that whoever shows up will come. And I didn't know what to do, so I rang the bell again and she said, "You can't come in." I said, "But I have to." I said, "I'm not staying here. Where is your husband?" I demanded from her that she let me in. And she said, "He's not home yet." So she let me in. I don't know if she let me go to the bathroom or fed me. Nothing. It's blank. He came home. "Ah," he said. "Sochu. So good to see you. Don't be afraid. I'm going to take you to your father." And he did. Took me on the streetcar and brought me back to my father. Frankly, my father greeted me nicely and brought me where they slept - they had like two army cots – and put me in between. I got something to eat. And he went next morning – I was not legally there – he went to the Hauptsturmfuhrer and bowed and begged and started to tell him that, "My child came." I don't know remember whether he asked what happened to my mother, to my sister, to the rest of the others, but he went to the Hauptsturmfuhrer and said, "I have my child here." And he said, "I cannot keep her. You have to take her to the ghetto." And my dad said, "Ghetto? I have no one to take her to." He said, "She cannot stay here." So what my father said to him at the time, the same mantra, "Then I have to go with her. I cannot desert her." He said, "No, you don't have to go with her. She has to go." The next day I was marched into the ghetto, escorted by an SS man and my father. We had some people there that he deposited me. Those were refugees from (?), from the Reich. We helped them when they were expelled. We took them in, in Grodzisk and my father employed him, so they agreed. It was on Novolipke or Novolipye, I'm not sure. And there I stayed with them. I also went to work a little bit for Schultz. What happened, so one of those, until they started "akcja" after "akcja".

Q: Before you left the ghetto, the first time, there wasn't a big "aktia"? Only after you came back?

A: No. While I was away there were big "akcjas". You know, they already had the "Umshlackplatz". While I was away, in Kock, in Serakomla, in Parczow.

Q: When you were in Kock, in Parczow, was it summer already?

A: Summer of '42, you mean? It must have been the fall. Must have been the fall because when I got back into the ghetto it was still warm probably, so it must have been late summer or early fall. I think. When I got into that ghetto I stayed with that family, but I was miserable because there was a boy there in the family who used to feel me up. He thought I was sleeping. He abused me. He didn't rape me, but he was…I was twelve years old, mind you, but he was feeling me up. He was constantly imposing himself.

Is this on camera?

Q: You didn't say his name.

A: Well, he's not here. I forgive him. But I was petrified more of him than of anything else. There was also a lot of, what I think today, activity going on that was very unsavoury. People were just living for one day, so excuse me. They were copulating wherever they had a chance. I witnessed that and I was frightened of that. It was very scary to me to see that going on. In the bunkers. We were hiding in bunkers. I was petrified. Some people were getting married. Yes. There were "akcjas" all the time while I was there, and some people were getting married, some people were copulating. They lost a wife and a child, she was taken away. The next minute I see, there were some people…And I didn't understand what they were doing, mind you. I was twelve, but I was very naïve and I didn't understand what they were doing. But when he started to go for me, I was horrified. On the one hand I was afraid that he will put me….His father and an older brother were going out to work and he remained. He was eighteen, I was twelve. So I was afraid that he would put me out into the street and that was horrible. I would die. At that time I became more and more aware of imminent danger. Not so much death, but danger. So my father was able to come in on Sunday, escorted by an SS man, to visit me. And I would cry my eyes out. I said, "Abbale, Tatashe, take me out of here. Tatashe, I'm going to go out into the street." And I wasn't able to tell him why and he kept saying, "Tatashe, I cannot take you. I'm not able to. Would you like me to come back here and stay with you? I'll leave Loze (sp?) in the outside," which was not possible either because they would kill him. "I cannot take you. I have no permission to take you." I said, "Then I cannot stay here." "Why?" he said, and I cried and I said, "Because they feed me horsemeat. They force me to eat the horsemeat." So he said, "That's not so bad." I couldn't bring myself to say what…I'm going to say his name. His name was "Heinach". I couldn't bring myself to say what he was doing. He didn't do much. He actually went to feel me up and forcing himself, rubbing himself against me. But I thought this was worse than death. This was worse, to me, than dying. And if I ever attend groups now of child survivors - I remember asking our leadership to have a group to talk and I found out it wasn't unique to me, that many such priests or nuns or whoever were abusing the children they were hiding. I said, "Well, I got off much better than that."

Eventually what happened was the uprising was near.

Q: Before that, the "akcjas"?

A: I was not caught. I was able to escape. Yes, I was involved in it. I heard, I ran.

Q: Ran where?

A: Ran into the bunkers that were available. Incidentally, where I was in the hiding, we also had a group of the fighting people that were getting ready and they called everybody to start resisting.

Q: And at the age of twelve, thirteen at that time, when you were alone, independent, didn’t you want to take part?

A: Part in the fighting? Absolutely, absolutely. I knew about it. It was wonderful. The feeling was of resurgence, of camaraderie.

Q: Of course, at the age of thirteen you don't think about the risk.

A: No, but it wasn't only that. It was this elation of…we were not going to be taken except…what I think now is that we all resisted by one way or another, by surviving. This is another topic. But I wanted to be reunited with my father and brother, which was…He came in, he went to the Haupsturmfuhrer and said, "The ghetto is burning. I want my child out." He threatened him. He said, "If you don't let her come now, we're going in there to die together." And he agreed to take me. That's part of the survival. I was there, in that compound, with my father and my brother.

Q: But before, in the ghetto, when the uprising began, you were still with the family? With that family of acquaintances?

A: No, they were caught. They were one, another…I didn't see them anymore. Where the location was, my father came one morning. It was just before it started to burn. They saw the fire, I think. I don't remember the sequence of events, whether it was just when it started or…The idea when I got there was to employ me because I couldn't be hidden there, and I worked. I scrubbed floors, I washed bottles. They had a veterinary pharmacy and I worked in that pharmacy, washing huge bottles. The ghetto was liquidated. That's a terrible term. Take that back. Liquidated. The ghetto was destroyed. Erase that. I don't want to use that term. That's their term. I'm sorry.

Q: That's okay. That's the official word.

A: No. the ghetto was destroyed. Their term was to liquidate us. We don't liquidate.

Q: But when you were in the ghetto you said that you began to work in the ghetto?

A: I worked periodically. They used to take me with them, the father of the family. The patriarch of these two boys. The rest of their family was also destroyed already. Taken away, but he used to take me with him to the shop, to Schultz or Tebbens. I don't remember which one. Both maybe, but very short, because they had to hide me under the machines because there were "akcjas" in those workshops. So they used to hide me under the burlap that they worked with, where I couldn't breathe. I was always being choked there when they were hiding. They were strangers, but I was a child. There weren't many children left, don't forget. Even thirteen-year-olds. There weren't many left already by then. They were either starved or taken away to die. People wanted to save me. Strangers.

Q: So when you went to your father, that was the first time that you had to work?

A: Yes. I worked very hard there. In one of that, what happened, I was washing one of the big gallons and I dropped it. And that's when I was injured and I sustained a major injury. The blood was just gushing up, like an oil well. And suddenly, you know, somebody saw that. They closed it up. I don't know if it was a soldier or something, and the Hauptsturmfuhrer sent me to a "lazarette", to a local, and they sewed, put stitches into it. Unfortunately I had injured major nerve endings where I became crippled for life. It's called an ulnar injury, which that was the casualty that I carry all my life. We stayed there until 1944, when the Polish uprising took place.

Q: It was like a camp?

A: It was not like a camp. It was blocks upon blocks of buildings next to a park. We were living in one of the buildings that was occupied. And the rooms, it turned into a "caserna" and upstairs there was like an attic where we lived, where they allowed us to have beds and they gave us food.

Q: So it was like a military base.

A: Yes, yes, but it had a purpose. It was serving the horses on the front with supplies. They were supplying veterinarian goods, especially horseshoes and medicine for horses. Because in the war horses were still being used for transport by the Germans. If you will, I was beaten up there to a pulp. I once stole some soap. In that veterinary part there was green soap and we weren't getting anything to, personal. The Hauptsturmfuhrer, although he was a wonderful man, that turned out to be a wonderful man - incidentally there was one episode there, that we had. When the ghetto was burned and Warsaw was declared "Judenrein", the Hauptsturmfuhrer went to Jurgen Stroop – is that name familiar to you? Jurgen Stroop – he was the one that declared Warsaw "Judenrein". He went to him and said, "What would you say if I told you that I have six Jews in my compound?" He said, "I would tell you that you have to deliver them to me." And he came back. We didn't know that he had done that.

Q: Why do you think he went to tell him that?

A: I don't know. He wanted official approval to keep us. He was afraid. And he came back and he told us that. He told us that he will not hand us over, but that we may be picked up. And he gave – not me or my brother – he gave the adults – there were the Markovich's and Mr. Schidlow. He was a painter. He was working there as a housepainter. He talked it over with them. He said, "You have a choice not to be going. I will help you die here. You won't know when."

Q: I'll help you die here."?

A: Yes. Poison us.

Q: As a favour.

A: As a favour. And we all agreed.

Q: Before that, did you see the ghetto burning from there? Did you smell it?

A: From the windows. Yes, we saw the whole ghetto being burned up. For days the flames were going. For days. We didn't have access to radio, but my brother was able to smuggle some newspaper – the Volkishe Beobachter. And it was described in German about the awful dogs, the Jews, who were trying to murder and it served them right. It was completely demolished and the victory over the dogs, the "hunden", the dogs, the awful…All the speeches…

Q: I heard that after the burning of the ghetto people who were on the Aryan side saw for days the feathers from the pillows and from the blankets.

A: No, we were somewhat remote from that. Geographically we were remote from that, but we saw the flames. We definitely saw the flames. You can imagine how we felt, but there we were, confronted with this end, with the option to die. So it is very much in my memory, that he locked us up in one of the buildings, where they worked. In the places where the workshops were, the tailor shop and the shoe shop, because my father made their repairs. The Hauptsturmfuhrer loved those boots and whenever possible he invited someone to get a pair of boots made by my father. It was a privilege. When he did lock us up and every time we heard footsteps, he delivered food to us on a tray, whatever possible, we were just sitting there and not eating it.

Q: Because you thought it was poisoned.

A: Poisoned. And we didn't know what to do, eat or nor eat, but we didn't eat it. At some point they let us out. We resumed our activities that we had to.

Q: "Us" is your father, you and your brother and…?

A: The three other Jews.

Q: Markovich.

A: Markovich and Schidlow. We went back to our quarters. He was jubilant, almost jubilant. He was like dancing in the air, that Dr. Heymanns, that we overcame that difficulty. That he overcame. He was afraid himself. I know now that he was scared for his life, not only from the upper, but from the lower, the ones that he commanded, because they were horrible to us. One beat me – I was black and blue for days, for that soap. I carried it under my apron and he called me over and he said, "What have you got there?" And I was afraid and I finally told him. That big. He kicked me for hours until I could no longer move. The Unterscharfuhrer – we knew him – Miller. Petrifying, tall, handsome Nazi, who had an artificial eye. He was wounded on the "Ost Front" and he had a glass hip at that time. We knew because he couldn't walk. He was limping. But he was so fierce in his hatred to us. He beat me almost to death. He called my father over and he told him to take me away. But before that…and I didn't utter a sound. Am I sorry? And he kept asking me if…"Versteist? Versteist?" I said, "Jah, Versteist." "Sag Jah." I said, "Jah." I could barely even talk. Especially my head was…I came away like I was a watermelon, full of black and blue bruises. My father, he kept knocking, said, "Why don't you hit me instead of her?" He begged on his knees. "I am the one. You should hit me. She is a child. She doesn't know any better. I deserve the punishment. I wanted some soap for me." "She stole," he said. "We feed her and she stole. She is a dog. She doesn't deserve to live. The Hauptsturmfuhrer is watching over you." (end of side)

Q: Do you remember when what is? It was the beginning of '44 or the summer of '44?

A: The particular episode I just described? It could have been the spring of '44, because there were subsequent events taking place where the Russians were already advancing.

Q: That's why I am asking if the Germans already knew at that time that they were going to lose.

A: it seems to me, because they were crazier than ever. Even the ones that were virulently angry at the Haupsturmfuhrer and couldn't do anything, they were maybe afraid. I doubt it, that they were fearing him because they had something on him. A rumour had it that he had a Jewish mistress to whom he gave a gun to protect herself. I found out after the war that his father died in Mauthausen for unknown reasons. He would have told me if he knew, but he said they didn't know. One day in Berlin he was arrested and after a while they got a package of his clothing, saying he died of a heart attack. I kept saying, "Why? What was the reason?" He said, "Mother didn't know, I didn't know." After the war, when I met him in '84. Eventually I'll tell you that when I saw him in '84…At one point when I was in the States already, back in the States, we got mail from a court. His former underlings, so to speak, the soldiers accused him of murdering the two of us, my brother and me, because we were taken out to be executed in reality, which he didn't…he was already back in Germany, in Kotpus at the time. So he sent us papers to confirm that he was the right guy. He was three years in prison camp, a prisoner-of-war, so that was enough. But I testified on paper that he was not instrumental in that end of us, where we were taken out to be executed.

Q: But you say that his ex-soldiers sued him?

A: Yes, yes. They carried a grudge against him for trying to rescue us and maybe some other private…maybe they didn't get promotions, maybe he didn't let them rob as much as they wanted, you know. When they were retreating they had chances. They robbed the ghetto, they robbed the Poles.

Q: But we are talking not even immediately after the war, but the end of the '40s, the beginning of the '50s maybe.

A: No, this was already in the middle of the '60s.

Q: In the '60s?!

A: Yes. They had a grudge against him and sought some kind of retribution. And I have those papers addressed to the courts in Germany, that were forwarded here, to look us up, and on paper allow us to testify. It was I the early '60s probably.

Q: You didn't go to Germany to testify.

A: No, I didn't have to. No. So he was exonerated eventually.

Q: You were in contact with him before that?

A: No. I was, like with all people, like with my Polish rescuers, I didn't seek them out either and I'm sorry about that.

Q: But he knew that you were in the States.

A: He knew through Markowitz. Markowitz, that loyal German.

Q: He stayed in Germany after the war?

A: No, no. He came to America, but his wife, in particular, I'll tell you one episode in that compound. They used to look down on us. We were the "Ostjuden", we were "shmutzik". And I was present at that, when she said to one of the most awful "Untersharfuhrers". I wouldn't even compare him to a human being. He was an anti-Semite, an anti-human, a filthy son-of-a-bitch. She said to him, "(German)". She was trying to really…

Q: Suck him.

A: Suck up. And he stood and he slapped her face. "(German)" "How dare you take that word into your mouth, you filthy Jewess." And I don't think that they learned the lesson. She was a German-born in Mannheim, and she took pride in that, that she was different from us. We were all in the same, almost grave, but she took pride. More than that, my father, when he heard that we were, my brother and I were shot, he thought that with glee they heard that news, about this Jewish couple, that my brother and I finally found our end. I can't understand it. Maybe that was his own version.

Q: That the Markowitz are gloating?

A: That they were gloating at the fact that we were, the two of us….because we were acting up against them. We were constantly….as teenagers we were doing things to annoy them in that place. We were, like, spitting into the wash bowl.

Q: You didn’t really like them.

A: No, because we knew what they were thinking about us. We were not eating right, we had no manners, we were Polish Jews. We were, like, next to the bad. But that was all child things.

Q: After you were injured in your hand you didn’t work anymore in that place?

A: For a while I didn’t. I had a bandage, a big bandage, and maybe even a splint they put on me. This was another inconsistency. They took care of me, they did what they had to. They didn’t ask questions that I was Jewish. Maybe they weren’t told that I was Jewish in that “lazare”. A doctor was very nice to me and I was walking with a splint. No, I went to work. I did polish the floors with my feet. There was no free meal. There were no meals period. He couldn’t look for our physical welfare. He only could go so far. The rest, they were in charge of us. If they didn’t kill us I was happy. After the beating I went through one of the hallways to go to work and he got a hold of me. He was walking with his Nazi wife, his real wife. She was always walking with a whip, with the dogs. They had dogs. They loved their dogs. And he looked at me. He called me “Rebecca”. You know, we weren’t allowed to be called any other name. Mrs. Markowitz was called “Sara”. Her name was Trudy. “But Rebecca! (German)” And then he asked my father what happened. He knew I was beaten up. He didn’t even doubt, even when I said that, because you couldn’t see my eyes, you couldn’t see my nose, you couldn’t see anything. I was just swollen black and blue the next few days.

Q: At that time you were the only Jews in that big base?

A: Compound? That’s right. Later we found out that Mr. Komiorzyk and three or four other Jews were in another one, in Warsaw, on the Aryan side. One was Mr. Carton, a tailor, Mr. Komiorzyk was the carpenter, Piernik – he lived in Israel. Wonderful guy, wonderful guy. He lived in Israel on some moshav. I visited with him once. I don’t remember what his function was, but he did something for them. And Mr. Granas, one more, another tailor. They were master people, you know, who could make these gorgeous sleek uniforms for them, that you see in those movies and pictures, where they looked so gorgeous, in my father’s boots and their tailoring.

Q: And do you know why did he keep you all this time?

A: Dr. Heimanns? He never explained. That’s what I asked him in 1984. I said, “I have a lot of regard for you and it boggles my mind, I always wonder, all of us have been wondering why you chose this act of mercy.” And he said, “Because I am a human being.” He didn’t talk about the grownups. He talked about me. He said, “Your father came to me in desperation and I wasn’t about to refuse him.” This was all he managed to say. I couldn’t get anything out of him because she was sitting next to him.

Q: “She”?

A: His wife. He was an “alte Nazi”, an old “kaempfer”. He had this band here. He told me that. When he joined, he joined it out of idealism, but not out of racism. This was not in the plan to…It was save “Gross Deutschland”, but not to be a racist. He said it wasn’t in his…And then he said the communists were threatening, so he understood it was his mission. But when it came to the inhumanity, he wasn’t buying into that. He couldn’t take that. And he said he wished at the time he could do more, but that was an act of humanitarian aid.

Q: Wasn’t it maybe an insurance because they already began to feel that they were going to lose?

A: Oh no, because in 1943 he took in my father. Stalingrad, I think, was already lost. The Allies…I think maybe at the time when America entered the war….I think he was that calculating. I can’t speak for him, but he never showed…

Q: Your father had a theory, why it happened?

A: No, no. He never showed any inhumanity. Obviously, when I told you about what he thought, that we shouldn’t die a terrible death, be executed or be taken to any…he knew what was going on. He chose to let us die with dignity.

Q: Was that food poisoned really?

A: We don’t know. We often wondered about that. Lou and I don’t talk about it. My brother. Occasionally we raise that issue because there is a lot more to it, to the end of this life, to the end of this story because he took my father with him when they were retreating to Germany and he let it be known to my father that he could not…He told my father that we would follow in another transport. He could not arrive with two Jewish children into Germany. With the grownups he managed. He said he would not tell that they were Jews. And the uprising was imminent.

Q: In Warsaw.

A: In Warsaw.

Q: The Polish uprising.

A: The Polish uprising. My father was taken away from us. We were left behind with some strange outfit of the SS. They locked us up in a bathroom with water up to here. They were going to drown us.

Q: That was before the Polish uprising?

A: That was on the 28th of July, over the 29th of July. We were going to be drowned.

Q: After your father was going with Mr. Heimanns?

A: After my father was taken, evacuated with that transport to Kotpus (sp?). We didn’t drown. We climbed up on the pipes and we hung there. A whole night. That was the night of the 28th of July, 1944. The next day they took us out into another room with mattresses. A Polish man who also worked there – he was the stoker, he was the superintendent who put coal into…always black from the…He came in with some bread into that room and gave us two slices of bread and started to cry. Immediately my brother and I started to yell out to this Polish man, Pana Zawierucha - that was his name - “What’s happening? What’s happening?” So he started to cry. He knew us from seeing us there all the time. He lived in an adjacent house. He started to cry and couldn’t control it, but he didn’t tell us all - we found out later – that he was made to dig a grave for us and we were being taken out of the building. And my brother grabbed a machine gun from an SS man and threw it down and he said to me, “Run!” And he ran. I didn’t run too far. I ran into another building. We knew the compound. They didn’t. And I ran up to the highest floor where there were rows upon rows of horseshoes, stacks of horseshoes. You know what horseshoes are? And we knew all that territory there very well because we worked, we had to deliver, we had to haul. I hid in that stack. Oh no. Pardon me. As we were running we ran into the house of Pana Zawierucha. And his wife saw us there and she was screaming, “Run, run, run! Get out of here! Get out of here!” It turned out they executed him. They suspected that he told us, that we were going to be shot and buried there, and they had already shot him. We didn’t know that. We found out later, after the war. No. We found out, because my brother went to one of the Polish women that had worked there in the kitchen – Vatcha was her name – who loved him very much. She was a mistress of an SS man, but she loved my brother to death, as a boy. So he ran to her. He knew where she lived. I, on the other hand, got stuck and they were looking for me and I heard them right up near my feet, with the dog and the bayonet. He was going with the…But he was scared. I could tell he was scared. I could feel he was scared. He was right by my feet there. I was crouching in…there was like an indentation where some of the horseshoes were removed – I crouched there and he (?). And with the dog he didn’t find me, so go know. I sat there, I don’t know for how long. Probably a day. It was already the 31st of July. All the next day the "powstanie", the uprising took…But before that I got out and I ran to the next yard, to the superintendent of the building adjacent, a Polish-occupied building, of Poles. She saw me, she recognized me, and I said, “Please don’t get frightened. I don’t want anything. Just let me hide here.” “No, you can’t!” I said, “I won’t hurt you.” I begged for me life, literally. I said, “I have to run away from them.” She thought we were dead. Everybody knew that they killed the two Jewish children. They knew we were there. That time that was the end of me. That time I really came to the realization. I said, “I’m not going to hurt you. They won’t know. Please let me hide.” And she did, she hid me. First she let me stay in her apartment. Then, when the bombs started, you know, they bombarded Warsaw around the clock. She took pity on me and took me down to the basement and they started to yell, “What are you doing?” And she said, “Why the screaming? We’re all in the same boat. She’s not hurting anybody.” She was defending me to…You know, when people now scream about Polish anti-Semites – this was a simple person who just took pity on me. She was mad at me, she was crazy mad at me. I understand it now, what position I put her in. Not only the German, but her neighbours were afraid and they were afraid. It wasn’t malice or anything. They just didn’t want any part of me. However, I managed to stay there until we all were driven out to the Jelinek (?) which is in Provensky (?) in Warsaw. It was a famous green market, where there were wagons there where they used to deliver the greens, the vegetables and fruit. The Ukrainians were in charge at that time – back to the Ukrainians like in the ghetto. Ukrainians, Lithuanians, but in the Polish uprising the Ukrainians were the biggest killers at the time of the Poles and me amongst them.

Q: You didn’t know what happened with your brother at that time?

A: No, I had no idea. I didn’t know until the end of the war what happened, until we found each other after the war. And that’s very interesting because I had no clothes. When I escaped from that, running away from under the bullets…they were shooting after us. Everyone was shooting. We were running and we heard shots. They were killing us and we were running. My brother went to Vatcha and he hid there until the same thing. Her father was there and AKA (?), the Pole, came around looking for volunteers to join and her father hid him and said, “Don’t volunteer.” My brother wanted to volunteer, gung ho. He was already sixteen or seventeen. He wanted to go and fight the Germans. So the man said, “Don’t do that because they’ll find out you’re a Jew and they’ll kill you.” The AKA, you know. You see, I’m trying to bring out that there were bright lights in that darkness. There were some totally…Suddenly they became humane. There was humanity in the worst situations.

Q: This Polish woman that you stayed with her – did you know here before?

A: Only from seeing her.

Q: You never talked to her.

A: I never talked to her, but she knew me. Maybe I did wave to her or something.

Q: And she had a family there?

A: She had a family. We were all driven out.

Q: So when she hid you, the risk was not only that she could get hurt, but her family also.

A: The whole building. Because they all knew I was Jewish. They could deny till tomorrow, but the whole building would go.

Q: She was a young woman?

A: I don’t remember. Maybe in her thirties or something. We were all driven out at that time and I went with the transport.

Q: It was the end of the summer?

A: No, it was the end of August. So I stayed with them until the end of August in that building. It was horrible. It was 1939 all over because the bombs were just…when I was upstairs, before she allowed me to come down to the basement, I was convinced I won’t get through. Even though I always repeated, I didn’t think I would ever die. It was just not credible to me. Die? And if I die? Probably never die. I will be back alive. If I die I will be coming back. The thing that time, what was worse for me, that I had no clothes. We were in that bathroom for over twenty-four hours and I only had a little, what looked like a dress, that I had since I left my mother. By the way, there was a telegram from my mother to my father. Not a telegram. A postcard that she must have left behind and somebody dropped it to my father. “This is the last time you will hear from us.” So we knew that was it. And I don’t know where that postcard went. We don’t have it. We have some other things from my father. What was significant to me, in 1940, I had nothing on me. I had no underwear. I had a pair of boots, you know, like yours, so I tied them on my shoulder and I was barefooted and naked. And this is how I was there. In that location, that large depot, the Ukrainians were massacring Polish people. They were cutting off their fingers for the jewellery, they were raping the women, dead or alive, and here I am, all by myself because at that time there was a sea of Polish people. I didn’t know anybody. And people looked, if they looked at me they right away recognized me, that I was a “Zyduweczka”. And I was trying to hide into myself, not to be seen. I wanted not to be seen and I couldn’t hide. And I couldn’t wait for being lined up into the transport. Something had to give, I thought to myself. If I could, I would have run to Mrs. Aniczkowska – we weren’t far away – but I couldn’t. I was afraid, being naked underneath and nothing on me. I had no money. I had nothing. So we were taken by transport to Pruszkow and from there to Germany. Halleluyah! That was my…I arrived and I think we arrived in Wilhelmshayen, then to Ravensbrueck and from there I volunteered to go to another camp. I volunteered that I could speak German and that was another switch, 360 degrees. “How do you know German?” “My father was a ‘Volkesdeutsch’. He went to the Russian front.” “Where is your mother?” “My mother disappeared in Warsaw.” “How did you get here?” I said, “I’m a Polish child of German extraction.” Blah, blah, blah. You name it, I had all the answers. And I got a document. I don’t have that document. I lost it in Grodzisk after the war, with a picture of me, with a name. My brother got to Sachsenhausen. He gave the same name. we didn’t agree on that, but this is how it came out. He gave the name “Jans Zajaczkowsky” and I was “Zophia Zajaczkowsky”.

Q: What was the name?

A: Zajaczkowsky. In that camp I stayed in Berlin Bestoff (sp?) till the end of the war and worked for “Igay” with the Poles. With the Polish women. We were fifty-two or fifty-five Polish women and one other child like myself, thirteen, fourteen going on fifteen. Many denunciations against me. I managed to wiggle out. Anybody accused me of being Jewish, I would counter-denounce them. When they accused me to the Gestapo I was called in the factory. I worked for “Igay” (?) in Berlin. One day I was called in to the Gestapo. Mind you, I’m fourteen, I’m fifteen. I’m called in to the Gestapo and there are three men and they start grilling me. “We were told you are Jewish.” I said, “If you one more time tell me that, I will go to the higher authority. You know who my father was? He’s on the Russian front. And my mother was Polish, half-Polish, and I can prove it to you because look, my aunt from Poland sends me letters.” She did. She sent me sugar, she sent me a pair of underwear from Grodzisk.

Q: Who?

A: Panias Zajaczkowsky.

Q: Who was she?

A: She was our friend. She was actually a woman…her husband was my father’s friend. He was a forest engineer, a (?), and she was a Russian, a Christian Orthodox, but not religious. She loved us and for Christmas and Easter my mother used to bake special things. She would send us a chocolate egg for Easter and little things for Christmas, cookies and stuff, which…take it or leave it. Anyway, this went on until liberation.

Q: But at that time Berlin was bombarded.

A: Leveled. Thank G-d, on the 25th of February and March there were two big bombardments. The factory was demolished, that we worked for, on the 25th of February. So we were taken to clean the “grusit”, so we cleaned. And then on the 6th of March was another one like this, the big one. At night there was all the time. The British were coming – we knew that because they announced it, that they were over Hanover, Braunschweig.

Q: Wasn’t it like mixed feelings?

A: Absolutely.

Q: Because on the one hand they were coming to rescue, to get revenge on the Germans, but you could be hurt.

A: We were huddled and saying rosaries. We would say rosaries, thanking the Madonna for coming down Droga Maria – that was the whole spiel. Coming to…and I was officially…they used to do numbers on me. They would say, “It’s your turn to say the rosaries. Whatever. Sometimes I was stuttering because I would forget something. I was steadfast. I know, I had an infection in my tooth in camp there, in Germany, and I was going to die. I had two episodes. I had diphtheria, where I was almost semi-conscious. And I had one Polish woman from the camp – she was sitting next to me literally shutting my mouth, I shouldn’t say something in my fever, because she was afraid that I would give myself away.

Q: So she knew that you were Jewish?

A: She suspected. She never told me that. She was afraid that I would become anxious and defensive. But the other time I was denounced to the “kapo” that guarded us and she came at me with a whip and she said, “The rawhide, the rawhide.” She was from Yugoslavia, one of those Muslims that joined the Germans. I pretended it wasn’t me. I jumped every time she cracked the whip. And then she stood on top of the stairs there – I remember this physically – and she said to me, “Du kleine Yidden.” I pretended it wasn’t addressed to me and it stopped. The second time I was taken to a dental clinic because I had an abscess and they were trying to anesthetise me and I was screaming, “Jesus, Maria! Jesus, Maria! Jesus, Maria!” I was in pain on top of everything, but I wasn’t going to fall asleep. So there was a German medic there who was assisting the anesthesiologist apparently – now I understand. He kept on saying, “(?)”, meaning….because they say “Jesus, Maria and Joseph”. Like “go to sleep. Stop it already.” And I never went under. I may have felt less pain and they cut that abscess from me. In camp. From the camp they took me there. As a Pole I was more privileged than a Jew. Actually, that was to the end, until the Russians came. We heard the katyushas. We were able to absorb some of the news that was coming through with the Germans, that the end was near, that the Russians were coming. In fact, they came with a vengeance. The Mongolians came, and that was awful. The liberation was altogether a nightmare. However that was it. I went back to Poland by hook and by crook - by foot, by truck, finally by wagon train. I landed in Grodzisk. When I landed in Grodzisk I headed straight to the Zajaczkowskys and they took me in. They took me in. It wasn’t the best of conditions. I didn’t get a room - they didn’t have any – so I slept in the kitchen. They treated me with whatever they could. I wasn’t their child. They had two others. He was great, Mr. Zajaczkowsky. She was a little less eager to keep me, but she didn’t throw me out until my brother came back from Sachsenhausen. When I got back, the truth is, I was happy to be by myself, that I survived. The original idea was that I would go and look for my relatives. I didn’t know where else to go. There was no one to turn to. There was some Jewish-Russian officer that told me, because everybody was being raped. Inmates and Germans, everybody was being raped by these Mongolians. I still didn’t understand the whole concept of being raped. At age fifteen this was not on my agenda. My agenda was to survive and get by and eat. We didn’t have food, you know, in that camp. Not too much to speak of, although they rationed some food in. My brother came and he was sort of drifting. We had no home. Our home was taken over. We went to some Poles that we had hidden stuff. They said there was nothing there for us. They claimed that my father took it away, which wasn’t true. So we had no money. She wanted to send me to school. I wasn’t sure. I kept saying to her, “Maybe somebody…” And my brother did come, but he couldn’t help me much. We weren’t too close anymore. I was different. I wanted to remain there incognito. I’d remain Zophia Zajaczkowsky. At age fifteen I decided this was it. I was enamoured of this whole….not the Church. I didn’t go to church - she didn’t ask me to go to church – but I didn’t want to be Jewish anymore. I didn’t want to go back to my original name, to be Shulman. But when my brother came back it was like a wake-up call, number one. I think about a couple of months later my father was on his way…my father was liberated in Fischeln, in Salanse (sp?), where there were another eight Jews, including Mr. Kol…(sp?). That’s how I got to know him. My father was told already in Kotpus that we were shot and he described how he reacted. He raged, he ran to the “Haupsturmfuhrer”, cried and raged, “You deceived me! You killed my children!” “It didn’t matter,” he said to me, “anymore what I was saying. ‘You promised to bring my children, but you didn't keep your promise and you should die like me, because I'm going to kill myself. I have nothing to live for. This was the only thing left for me." Nobody knew yet what happened. We didn't know Auschwitz. And the Haupsturmfuhrer begged him, begged him for forgiveness. He said, "I didn't know. I had no idea," he said, "what was going on." Who told him about it? One of the soldiers who hated the Haupsturmfuhrer told my father that we were shot. He was told that this was it. He was with many other Jews. He got an apartment in Salzburg, but he decided to go and look for our grave and bury us the proper way. He wanted to give us…In the train, through G-d knows how – Austria, Czechoslovakia, it took him forever – he met a man who was also a "Grodziske" and he said, "Oh, Shulman. You're going to…?" He said, "I'm going to find my children's grave." He said, "What are you talking about, your children are in Grodzisk." My father, in total disbelief, fainted. He was forty-one, forty-two years old. He said, "That's not possible." He said, "I saw them. I'm going to Warsaw. On the way I'll stop over in Grodzisk with you." He was a friend of my father's, who also survived. And so it came to be, that he came to Grodzisk and found us alive. Walked up the street, the main street, proud to be back, and ran into some of his former buddies and they said, "Rudy? You're back? You're alive? Take your children and get out of here. We know your children are here and we didn't touch them." This was the period of Jews coming back and my father got the message quickly, gathered us up the next day – he had money on him – and we left to go back to Salzburg through Czechoslovakia. We had to be smuggled out, smuggle ourselves out. In the train there was a lot to tell, a lot to…I was particularly very rebellious and bitter at my father, that he chose to stay alive, knowing that we were dead because in our interactions in Warsaw we talked what would be after the war, where we would go, what we would eat. We didn't comprehend the destruction, the extent of the destruction that took place. My father had a mantra. He said, "G-d forbid something happens to you, to the two of you, I have nothing to live for. You are my last hope." He was wonderfully loving. And of all things I caught a cigarette case inscribed by a woman to him, who was in that camp with him in Austria. They were as Poles. My father was as Leon Sokolowski. "With love, Blanca." This got me so agitated. I didn't say that I saw it because I stole a cigarette from him. I learned how to smoke in Berlin, albeit little butts. So I stole a cigarette, I opened his…and I'm looking and it just triggered off all kinds of emotions. I said, "You know, you remember how you said you would kill yourself if you didn't find us alive, if we didn’t survive together?" And he said, "What are you talking about? Yes, but I was hopeful and I knew you would survive." I mean, he was denying his whatever, that he wasn't going to kill himself after all. For me it was a big insult that he had a girlfriend. It stayed that way for many years. I didn't let any woman come near him. I managed to, good or bad, I managed to keep them away from him, which wasn't so nice, but that's how the situation was. And we went back to Salzburg with him.

Q: Before the war ended, you already understood that your mother is not alive anymore?

A: No, no, no. I wasn't sure. I still am not sure what kind of emotional turmoil I went through. I can't really sum it up in such terms. Was I aware? No, I wasn't. I wasn't aware what happened to us, what was done to us. I wasn't aware of my own existence. I existed, but I wasn't sure this is…I'm somebody. I wasn't anybody. I was just going through the motions of being alive. I ate, I was breathing, I may have taken an interest in music and dancing and what was in 1945 in Poland. I think I aspired to be a normal teenager, but it was just going through the motions. I don't think I was a normal teenager ever. Late in life, even. I did some things as a teenager, but they were just very disjointed. Living in Salzburg I acquired some friends. I joined ORT and I sang in a choir. We were not in a DP camp. We were in a private apartment, but I hung out in Riedenburg in Salzburg and Beit Bialik there, the camps that were because a lot of young people were there with us. So maybe I'm underestimating my activity. I had conflicts – I wanted to, I didn't want to. I started school, I didn't start school. I dropped out. There was an Austrian school. In ORT I found a certain niche. I was learning a trade, to know how to sew dresses, skirts, but I wasn't very good at that. My interests were more into the arts. I wanted to sing, so I took some private singing lessons. I couldn't play the piano because I was crippled, crippled for life, but I was singing. I was interested right away in the arts that Salzburg had to offer – the opera, the music, the "Festspieler", the theatre. I was fluent in German. I could read and write even "Hochdeutsch", which is Gothic German. I was fluent in Polish. Life took on…mostly what I wanted was to get to know boys and the arts. We waited for two things - for either a certificate to come to Palestine or a visa to America. We got the visa to America. I had to abandon all this wonderful life for me. It wasn't wonderful at all because my father expected me to be the housewife. By then we knew Mother wasn't coming back and in Salzburg I was running a refugee camp with room and board, if you will. I was cooking, I was washing. I was cooking potfuls of soup and meat. I was a making a wedding for a woman, baking and cooking all the gefilte fish you could eat, following my mother's…what I thought her recipe – chopping, chopping. That lasted for…1946 at least through 1947, where we took in every refugee that come through Salzburg. My father managed to bring overnight and to eat, and I became the main…and I was resentful of that for a long time. Until we came to America and I became even more resentful because I suggested I may want to go to school and there was no money. We came to the United States almost without anything because we were robbed by our fellow refugees in Salzburg. We were all packed to go and everything we had was taken out one night from our apartment. We were just left with what we had, so the Jewish community in Salzburg managed to help us out a little bit. So we came to America through the "HIAS". I am talking personally now. You can imagine my despair when I was faced with a new world, no education other than my mouth, well-read, well-spoken, nothing to look to, but to go to work in some f…cking factory.

Q: And not a word of English at that time?

A: Well, yes. I picked up immediately from Salzburg, you know, from reading. I read "Gone With the Wind", I read other such well-known books. I read German and Jewish and I read the newspapers. I immediately read the "Stars and Stripes that were available to us. Language was not my first priority, but the kind of English I spoke wasn't going to open doors for me to a better life. I spoke a language from reading or from the soldiers. I immediately began to rebel against my father. I said, "I will not stay here. I will go to" what was then Palestine or Israel. "I don't want to be here. This is not for me. I was part of "HaShomer HaTzair" in Salzburg. I want to go where my friends are, to a kibbutz." I had no idea what I was talking about, mind you. He reneged after a big struggle. He gave me the money and I came to Israel, which wasn't very nice, good for me either at the time. I was all alone.

Q: It was '50 at that time?

A: No, it was '49. And so I stayed on for a number of years, moved in with a friend. I took her out of her horrible family. She was an Auschwitz survivor. I knew her from Salzburg. We already rescued her from that family in Salzburg, but she chose to leave our family and go to Israel with those awful cousins, those abusers. It's a long story. I don’t want to tell her story. She has her own version of that story. But I picked her out from that family and we lived in Jerusalem and I insisted that she go to school and I started to work to help support the two of us, but then I decided for myself that I needed to learn something. I went to Emuna, where I was accepted. I had no formal education to speak of. I finished in eighteen months and I went to work. I wasn't fit for the army because of the hand injury. I finished and I got some additional courses and I went to work in Emek Beit Shean, in the "paravanot".

Q: As a nurse.

A: As a nurse. I did very well and it occurred to me, at age twenty-six, twenty-eight…Well, '56. I started in '23 and I worked till '56. Three years I was down there and I was offered a better position in town, in Afula. This was in Safed and the "Misrad HaBriut" said I could to better…I was entitled to…I did my share of volunteer…I volunteered to go when I looked for a job. The only offer they had was here or someplace in the Negev. I said, "I'll go gladly there," and I did. I loved it. It was the highlight of my existence. There were some marriage proposals that didn't work out, for my reasons, for some other reasons. I was very involved with a few fellows that really, either way, liked me or I liked them. And I chose to…at that time I said, "I need….I have some other…: I had other aspirations. I wanted to go to school and there was no way of me to advance here into some…at the time, to become an R.N., a registered nurse, like everybody else. I didn’t want that lower grade to carry on myself wherever I went and I said, "I can do better." To myself. And I asked my father whether he would support me and he said yes. He didn't understand what I was talking about. We corresponded in Yiddish and I guess there was no terminology in Yiddish to explain what I was up to. And so, after much difficulty I obtained a visa because they didn’t want to let me in. For some reason, I was in their eyes as a Leftist. I had a reputation of going on demonstrations against the "pitzuim" in the beginning. I was very adamant we shouldn't…I was boiling all the time inside of me. All kinds of causes that I thought I should be part of. But I think it was a tough period for me in Israel. I was trying to become integrated into the so-called "Sabari" Community and I managed to pass. It wasn't difficult. I acquired the personality, (?) and the whole ambiance of my friends, the "Sabariot". And with my language I could pass tell. Sometimes somebody would detect something, but woe was me if I said who I really was. I was la "galut", the symbol of "galut".

Q: So people here thought that you were born in Israel?

A: At times, yes.

Q: And your name at that time was Zophia?

A: I didn't say 'no'. I didn't say yes, I didn't say no, so I could pass. This deception was following me as I went on in life here and….I didn’t' like that. I was afraid to say who I really was. Was I….."Don't talk about it. This is the past. Look what's….We have a beautiful land." It's true, all this is true, and I loved the land.

Q: You were told that it was hard here also?

A: Oh, was it ever. "Look what we went through. We fought the Arabs. We were dying for this land. And furthermore, what did you do in the war? We don't want to hear these stories. (end of side)

Q: So the end of the '50s you decided that you wanted to go back to the States?

A: Yes, I did. Right. And I went first on a trip through Europe with a friend of mine, with Ruthi, who worked also. She was a nurse, she was a registered nurse who worked also in a new development called…(?) Also a new immigrant family. I was very sad to leave. We traveled first through Europe and I left her in London and went to my father. Finally he obtained a visa through different congressmen and so on. But they also didn't want to let me in because I had left. Why did I leave after such a short period? But it worked out. Sooner or later I got that visa and I arrived to America. I was totally devastated. My guilt was overwhelming, that I left Israel. Maybe I was depressed. I can't remember it, but it was a disaster in the beginning. First of all, the conflict with my dad was even bigger. We were of two different worlds. I was so different. He wanted to help me, but he didn’t know how. He couldn't understand what I wanted, and I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted to register to school, but I had to go to work and I did get, luckily for me I did get a job as a nurses' aide, but I did all the things. In an institution. A Jewish institution for disturbed children, which I couldn't understand what disturbed children were. I was a child. I lived in Israel. Disturbed children. We couldn't afford that kind of notion yet at the time. It didn't make sense to me, but I worked in the infirmary for five years. While there I had a mentor with whom I had an affair and he said to me, "You're very smart. If you stay much longer, you'll get used to it and you'll become an old lady." Because it was a live-in facility. He was a social worked in the institution. "There are better things out there for you. Start learning something." I said to him, "Dave, you don't know what you are talking about. Where should I start?" He said, "You go back to school. Elementary school. They'll understand." I didn't do that. I went to Columbia University and I took an exam and I was accepted. And I started to go to school, until I was confronted with the reality that I didn't have a high school diploma. I was confronted with the reality that whatever I learned here – there was nothing. They didn't want to see it. Translations of courses. They were legitimate courses of liberal arts, but meaningless to them. It got clear to me that I had to start from scratch, whether I liked it or not. It was the war all over. It was the war of me against them, whoever they were. Difficult situation in my life, to go back to start learning. Well, English I knew, so I took some advanced courses. But it was to go and learn math and algebra and logarithms and all the other…chemistry, and go in secret to register for a high school diploma, because I was too ashamed to let anybody know. And I went and took and exam and lo and behold, on the first try. I got myself a car. I started to drive. I reentered nursing school. Not at Columbia, because Columbia had a Bachelor's program and I wasn't ready for that. I got the high school diploma, went to a community college, finished the first three years, went to get my license, which is another big milestone. I worked throughout my school, going to school. I supported myself and got my license, got my first job as a registered nurse at Jacoby Hospital in the Bronx, in psychiatry and did very well and started to get promotions and changed hospitals. Became very well known in the profession. And then, in order to get a higher thing, you had to go for your Bachelor's in nursing. I said, "I can't do this anymore. I'm thirty-…." "Then you will be stuck in that particular function." People that I came in contact with thought I was super-duper bright. Right or wrong, I started to believe in that. Went through a bachelor's degree, got a promotion, went on to graduate school, which, regrettably, I didn't complete because I was forty-seven years old by then. I knew Chaim and I wanted desperately for our relationship to grow. I met him in 1961. We didn't get married, but we are still together. Sort of separate, but together. We live in separate apartments. I worked in psychiatry for the rest of my career. I worked for the state at the end, which offered me a lot of incentives. I retired and got a very nice pension from them after twenty-one years. I was also accredited in my education, my advanced education in nursing, and worked after retirement for a private school. I wish my health was better. It isn't good.

Mr. Kolniewic, a sideline, I met in Salzburg. He was liberated with my father. He wound up in the place where Hermann Goering was caught in (?). There were, as I said in the beginning, there were five or six other Jews there. They came from Warsaw with an outfit. They were made false papers by the "brother-in-law" of Hitler, General Faygeleine. Ever heard of that in peoples' testimony? There was such a man. His name was Faygeleine... General of the Waffen SS, Faygeleine …who was married to Eva Braun's sister. Amongst them was Mr. Kolniewic.

Q: But if you can tell a little bit about Mr. Kolniewic. What was the connotation to the Warsaw Ghetto?

A: He was in the Warsaw Ghetto, but he was also in the same situation after the ghetto was burned. He had a permit. The reason I know about him now is that we were through a dinner in Yad Vashem in New York and they gave out books with their achievements, with their….the (?) family, the Skura family. Are those names familiar to you? They are the big donators of pillars in Jerusalem. You see their names all over Jerusalem, in Yad Vashem. And annually there is a dinner and a fund-raiser for Yad Vashem and we attended that dinner. And they have books with different families – in honour of this one, in honour…And in there, there was a page and a document with his picture on it and I looked, because it was such a coincidence. My brother and I talked about him for one reason or another and we said we had never heard from him again because he was in Memphis, Tennessee. He moved to Memphis from Austria. I'm going back to the ghetto.

Q: The document.

A: The document is an "ausweiss" with the German stamp on it, with his picture of then, to allow him to come in and leave the ghetto. I didn't know him personally then because he was in another outfit, but on the Aryan side with that group.

Q: Your father knew him at that time.

A: My father knew him, may have run into him on the Aryan side by some other…in a march. My father knew him maybe in the ghetto. Considering the fact that he lived, came from the "Crochmalna" (sp?) in Warsaw, which was a notorious street for gangsters and bandits.

Q: Before the war.

A: Before the war, and in the ghetto. I was afraid of him. When I met him in Salzburg I was afraid of him because he had a crooked nose, not like a Jewish nose, but it was also crooked as he was punched in his nose, and it scared me. Anyway, I know he was in the ghetto and going in and out, but when the ghetto ended, he remained with the other people – Mr. Granos, Mr. Karten and Piernik. When the war ended he was in the same camp with my father, in Austria, in Fischeln, near Salanse. And I subsequently, when I came to Austria with my father from Poland, he was like a constant guest in our place because he loved my father. But he also like the children, me and my brother, because he lost his family and he was clinging to us and every time he wanted to come near me, I would cringe and move back. I was literally….somehow, I don't know whether I was afraid or repulsed by him. He also spoke a Warsaw Yiddish that was very alien to me. It was a rough language and it turned me off, so I kept him away from me, but I knew him. I got to know him and I realized that he was a very sad man, that was not well accepted amongst us because he was…today I'm going to say. He was of a lower class, even lower than a shoemaker. I don't know how else to explain it, which is so ridiculous. He was craving for family and he got involved with an Austrian woman - that much I knew - and he married her. I don’t know if she converted to Judaism. And they came to America and I saw him in New York. He used to visit with my father and stay with him. I kept away. When it came to Mr. Kolniewic, I only knew about. And my dad corresponded with him. If I go through the papers of my father, that I will eventually forward to you. To Naomi I promised I will. Maybe I'll find something more about him there. He moved to Memphis and had children and I think one of his sons, or maybe two, went to medical school. And he corresponded with my father throughout his life. I assume he's gone. I don’t know.

Q: But what I want to emphasize is that the document that you saw – it was the "ausweiss", but there was something written that was found between the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto, that he said something like….

A: In the document? No.

Q: No, but what makes it unusual is the fact that something that he wrote was found in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto, says that he writes to anyone who will find this….

A: Yes, but nobody followed him through to know that he was alive. He was well and alive for many years, until he probably died of old age in Memphis. Memphis or Nashville.

Q: Because with that "ausweiss" was found a letter that he attached…

A: Asking people to…

Q: I don't know what was written in it, but it was found in the ruins of the ghetto and no one knew that he was alive.

A: I didn't know that. It may have been. For all I know, he may not have known about it.

Q: So he wrote something and put it together with the "ausweiss".

A: I don't have it, but my brother is in the process of translating my father's biography, that he wrote in Yiddish, in beautiful Yiddish, and in that biography there may be some material about Kolniewic … because he goes into all kinds of details. I will ask my brother when I come back. Because they didn't get very far. My sister-in-law reads Yiddish, my brother doesn't, and she reads it to him and he writes it in English. He may even have mentioned to me that he includes brick and stone, my dad. He was a fantastic storyteller. Oh, and he changed his name in America. He was called Kolny (or Kolnie or something), and he was known as Kolny. And so I can verify the fact that I saw him in Salzburg. I may have even seen him once in New York, but I don't remember it. Because he frequently came in to see my dad. He loved my father, he loved my father.

Q: Did your father remarry in the States?

A: No, no. My dad continued to live up to his promise that he lives for his children, and that's what he did.

Q: Till the age of ninety-nine.

A: Till the age of ninety-nine. He had some relationships, which I managed immediately to hear. When I got back to America he had a very beautiful woman who liked him very much, was very American, and I thought she was abusing him. Not physically, but he was apparently quite engrossed and in love with her, but she pulled him along, like when she had off, when she had enough free time. And he got sick, he had a heart attack. He was supposed to go away with her. He lived it up. He went to concerts and musicals with her. She did the American "shtick" on him and I realized that he was going to pieces, so I said to her, "Stay away from him. If you have no real intention for him," meaning to maintain a steady relationship. "Why make him crazy." It's none of my business. He was upset with me, but she said it wasn't my… I said, "It is my business because I see him falling apart over you." Well, it really wasn't my business, the more I think about it. He could manage. He managed his own… The last few years he was not managing well and it was on me. The onus was the single daughter, of whom he had a lot of…we had a stormy relationship, but I took care of him to the end. I made his "leviyah". Nobody else did. When he was in a coma, I took care of…I was in the hospital every day. In the beginning I drove a hundred and fifty miles back and forth to see him every day. Then I had to, they demanded, that he be transferred to the New York area. He fell in my brother's house and hit his head. My poor brother never recovered that because he feels so rotten over that, that he didn't put him downstairs. Anyway. On the day he died he would have been ninety-nine. He was a marvelously colourful… People wrote about him. He's on the cover of a book, giving a speech. I hope to send the cover of the book to Naomi. I promised I will. It's useless for me. After I die all these mementoes will be tossed into the trash, so whatever I can I'll gather up and maybe she can make some sense of it, if she wants to, and put it where it belongs. I think he was a great guy. As a father, caring, breathing the life of his children. He had grandchildren, he had great-grandchildren, albeit "goyim", but they are who they are. By definition they are not Jewish, but he didn't care. That wasn't in his… It didn't penetrate, didn't bother him at all. He was very open-minded to some things and very close-minded to other things. But I took care of him. He knew enough to tell me, "Where would I be without you, Zophiale? I would have been dead a long time ago." I always rescued him, really, from pneumonia, from all kinds of conditions that old age comes with, or it comes with old age, and I kept him alive. I was pulling him constantly. I kept him alive and going, because his mind was fairly functional. He would read two, three newspapers a day. In fact, I wrote a little piece about him in a memory book, with his pictures. He looks like a true guy, with his hands in his pockets. And also I included his soccer team from before the war. And I wrote a wonderful piece because Judaism was very important to him. Not religion, but the fact that he was a Jew. He loved the State of Israel. He was a Zionist. He was a great parent, and loved his family above my comprehension. How a man had so much heart in him. Imagine him – he lost his child, he lost his whole family. We had one cousin in Poland that was married to a Pole. We brought her over to the States. Her husband immediately changed her name, after she got her visa and everything else. She changed her name from Shulman to whatever, to her maiden name, Shumanska, and her married name, Volnevich. I don't know her deep secrets, whether she practiced Catholicism or not, but after she died of a heart attack, my brother was there in New Jersey. We brought them over from Poland. Her husband put a rosary into her hand so that she would go off to Heaven with the rosary. We later took care of the husband, the goy, because he also had cancer, but my father perjured himself to bring her over as his daughter. I mean, she didn't bother us, but we weren't very happy with that maintaining her Catholicism, but I'm finding out that many of my friends maintained their Catholicism, and so it's okay. Later I knew better, that this is part of us. So he was wonderful. He was a sad man, and many times I used to say, "Abba, enough already about the Shoah, about 'ma sh'kara', what happened." He said, "No, Zophiale! No, it's never enough. Until they close my eyes I will always talk about it. I will never forget and I hope you don't. We can't say enough." And he wrote poetry about it. He wrote and wrote and wrote. Names. So I'm going to close now. I don't know how much you learned about me, but I had a….

Q: Okay. Is there anything else you want to add?

A: Well, I landed last week. I had a purpose when I went to Yad Vashem. I'm very upset with the fact that no many names and documents are being retrieved from Poland. I found a book in Kock when I went back, where my aunt and her children are listed there. I don't think they're listed in Yad Vashem. I didn't bother to list them. In '89 I only listed my mother and my sister. And I wish they would go into those communities and try to…Naomi explained that it is very expensive and there is so much money sitting in the claims conference and other monies that belonged to people who died, and that should be used for that purpose. I can't understand that people don't take issue with that, where it's possible. In Poland it's possible. They showed it to me. I took pictures of it, but I can't really see very well on the pictures. My brother took pictures. Actually not. We didn't, but the guide that was with us filmed it, but it didn't come out. I only have this once thing in my…I won’t be around too long and I want these things to be registered. It will be out of sight, out of memory, out of everything. And if we don't obey by that commandment of "zichor", what else can we say?

Q: Okay, thank you very much.

A: Thank you. You were very patient with me.