There Has To Be A Way Out…
“But my friend – she is a very pretty girl, she has big blue eyes and had dark hair – she claimed she is not going to take a chance on pretending to be a Pole, everybody will recognize her. And she said no, she is not going to do that. But her family had some friend in another town not far and she put it in her head – I don’t think it worked out, it was a Polish family friend, these were good friends of her parents–and if she would be able to get to those people, they would try to do something for her and her sister. But of course, one was not allowed under punishment of death to travel by train. So she asked him. She wanted some sort of a permit to take the train legally as a Jewish girl, from this town in Miedzyrzec where we were. So he said fine. And she paid him something. And she was supposed to come back in two or three days to pick it up. And, of course, the way we looked… He said, ‘You try to get some clothes, look presentable and just walk in and pretend this is nothing. And then he said, ‘I will try to be there and not ask you too many questions and maybe you succeed. What do you have to lose?’
“So I came back, and I told this Mr. Kravchek. And here is another thing – when you think of those things. After the deportation, I think I said it before, the Poles vandalized our apartment, what was left, then the Germans came in and took out everything. And they had those huge warehouses that the Jews, who were still in the ghetto, had to work: to segregate the shoes to shoes, the glasses to glasses, blouses to blouses, coats to coats. And some of those bundles – when people went to this marketplace at the beginning – some people still thought they were going somewhere, and they will need something. They had a bundle of something. Sometimes people were sitting there in this marketplace and the Germans would walk around and every few minutes they would just, you know, fire into the crowd. So then there was a dead body. They would take it away and some of the clothes were bloody, and this all went into this big warehouse and the Jews were working there.
“When I came back and I said I am going to try to do that or this, and I don’t know, maybe he was still in the Judenrat, I don’t remember anymore. Anyway, he says, ‘I will talk to somebody there who is working, and we will go there tomorrow, and you will select some clothes which fit you – a pair of shoes, a skirt, a blouse, a coat and the other thing.’ So we did.
“We came there. And I can still see the German women… Some of them were so sadistic. They just walked around and just hit everybody right and left. Right in front of me a boy bent down – he was working, and he bent down for something, and she put a bullet through his head. And I said to myself, ‘look what a thin line between life and death.’ When a Jewish boy, working there… Actually, she didn’t like the way he bent down. This was the German guards in their uniforms with the SS right here. Anyway, they didn’t touch me.
“This man spoke some German apparently. I really don’t remember whom he knew or how he got all this. But actually, it was through him that I got into this warehouse and selected some things. Of course, they needed to be cleaned out and washed and the coat… The coat I had in Germany all the time. It even had somebody’s monogram inside.
“It took me another day or two to get it all cleaned up, and so it was maybe on the third day after we talked to this Pole. You know, they all wished me good luck. You do all those things that… Maybe you come back, maybe you won’t. And about nine o’clock in the morning or so, I walked out of the ghetto – heart beating – all dressed up, and I go this employment office.
“I come in and I look around quickly and I see that this man isn’t there. Another man stood up from his desk and comes over and he says, ‘What can I do for you?’ And I said, ‘I’d like to volunteer to go to Germany.’ When I said that, straight ahead was this… And I’m thinking now that maybe this German knew a little bit, I don’t know. Anyway, straight ahead was this office of the German who was the head of that employment office. And when he heard ‘a volunteer,’ he jumped out from the desk, and he came and invited me into his office. He says, ‘Fraulein, I have a fantastic job for you. But why do you want to go, why do you volunteer?’ So again, you planned already those stories. Well, I was smuggling – which was happening to many Poles. You know on those trains there were constantly roundups and if you were smuggling a ham, or eggs, or I mean, they took away everything, butter, or what have you. And I said, ‘In the last few times I was smuggling between Miedzyrzec and Warsaw, I had bad luck, and they took away all my things. Now I don’t have much money to smuggle anymore so I decided…’ And you make yourself up those stories, you know, ‘I was raised by an uncle, I never had any parents, my mother died at childbirth…’ And another thing was that during the war not only the Jews were so homeless, there were so many Poles that were just wandering around from all kinds of places. G-d knows who they were. Some had homes, some didn’t have homes. Maybe some parents went left and right and east and west. It really, it was after all, it was a war.
“So, I told him, ‘…then I decided I can’t support myself anymore, they took away everything. Now I will be working in Germany, and I will…’ Oh, he has a fantastic place for me. I will work in a restaurant. I will have lots of food and… And he called somebody, and said, ‘Fill out the papers for this young lady.’
“I sit down, the man asks me questions and I tell him. I tell him everything I have in this, my little paper, which not one of the things is true: my mother’s name, my father’s name, and whatever there is. He fills out the papers and he hands them to me and he says, ‘And we have also here a train ticket. Your train is leaving tomorrow at six o’clock in the morning, and you are going to Lublin.’ Lublin was this transit camp where the Poles were sent in order to go through a medical exam and where they process your papers. ‘But’ he says, ‘you already have it.’ Most of the people they rounded up they sent to this camp and then they were sent to Germany, and from Germany an employment office distributed them either to a factory or a working camp or what have you. He says, ‘You won’t have to wait for any of those transports because you already have a place to work. It might take about two or three days for you to get through that process in Lublin, and then they will probably let you go. You have a ticket, you have everything.’ So I take those papers and walk out.
I come back and, of course, I have those papers. Esthe was very happy for me, and this was a day she was supposed to go back and pick up here papers. She says, ‘Do you want to go with me?’ ‘Well,” I said, ‘I will go and tell this,’ whatever his name is, ‘that I have done it.’ Again, we take the same policeman, and we go to him.
“We come in and he says, ‘I thought that you changed your mind, but I heard you were there today.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ He wishes me good luck and he says, ‘You know, first I told you that I would be there, but then I changed my mind. But I alerted one of my friends.’ So this man who did my papers must have known who I was.
“Anyway, so I came back, and he wishes me good luck and is glad that everything worked out, and that I should be very careful, and I should do this and that and the other thing. And I should prepare for myself a story and tell the same story to everybody because I will be working in Germany with Poles, and I have to be very careful. Then he says – and this is really, I’ll never know because the man is not alive anymore – I’ll never know what really motivated him. He says to me, ‘Look, you will be in Germany. You will be working with Poles. You will be living with Poles. Everybody will be getting mail from home. It may be suspicious that you don’t. If you want, write to me at the address of the employment office,’ and he gave me the address of the employment office, ‘and I will try to answer you. Even my wife doesn’t have to know about it.’ I have several letters from him. Anyway, so this is not quite the end of the story.
“The next morning I was supposed to be at the train. The train was leaving at six o’clock in the morning. I come back to the ghetto, and everybody congratulates me and everybody this and this, and I am preparing a little satchel, whatever, and – I don’t really remember exactly what I came to Germany with. And we all, everybody is trying to… ‘What is the best time to get out of the ghetto if you have to be already six o’clock in the morning at the train station. If you go out at six o’clock in the morning, the streets are empty.’ So with all these advices, the best thing you will go out around midnight. Just go straight to the station, sit down, and wait for the train.
“You know, and what I am going to tell you now – it’s almost unreal, but it actually happened. I don’t have any particular imagination, and I think if I didn’t live it, I would not believe it.”
(To be continued)
