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RG-50.030.0001

How did you or anybody else know where these trains were going?

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RG-50.030.0001

Where I'm going?

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RG-50.030.0001

No, how did you know where these trains were heading?

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RG-50.030.0001

I told you the first time I found out the truth the baker, he told me that in this direction, goes down there to a place called and from there it goes down to and they knew. The local population knew. They were witnessing it. I don't think they were happy the Polish people regardless of their feeling. They still knew that human beings are being burned alive. I saw in the eyes of my baker, catholic, I saw he was very angry. He said one day they are going to pay for that crime. I couldn't say I was Jewish, but my heart and everything in me was whirling. I really didn't believe it. But slowly after the trains, and also there were runaways. Jews were hiding. Those who jumped out of the trains. I can't go into in this interview all of the particulars, but there were incidents -- there were incidents where I saw Russian escapes. I gave them bread, anything we had because somehow they were begging for food because they escaped and most of them were caught anyhow. But the Russians were really, really treated bad by that time, the Russian POWs. They used tell me some of them. I worked in the fields and they would somehow run through those fields and ask me if I could bring in a piece of bread.

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RG-50.030.0001

Was there any effort by the Polish people to sabotage this?

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RG-50.030.0001

From what I knew, do you mean sabotage the Jewish problem or sabotage against the Germans?

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RG-50.030.0001

Against the Germans?

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RG-50.030.0001

There was quite a bit, I want you to know. From what I know and from what I observed the Polish people were very patriotic, and they hated the Germans regardless and let me tell you the Germans, the SS, they did not treat the Poles nicely, not even nicely. They were killing them off quite a bit. They were killing them off. And they had their underground, which was run through London and some of them, most of them in the village by us were hiding and we were hiding all kinds of guns and ammunition and I used to be chased out sometimes in the village to find out what time the train goes to Russia to the front, because sometimes this underground would jump on one of the trains, but on the edge of the train and steal whatever they could, food, ammunition. So, the Poles, they were putting up a hell of a resistance.

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RG-50.030.0001

Were you aware of any specific incidents?

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RG-50.030.0001

Where they put on a resistance. Not a specific but I knew and I saw because the people I worked for, they were really engaged in that underground activity. I wasn't on a specific did anything specifically because I was young.

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RG-50.030.0001

How long did you go from village to village hiding out as a catholic boy?

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RG-50.030.0001

You want to know how much time. I was even late before, I was after that I worked in a gun powder factory, and also they had a lot of Jewish people down there working for those good chemists. They got together all those people who they didn't liquidate if they asked look what did you do, if he was a good chemist of physicist they needed for armaments so these people worked in a big factory down there, and I happened to go in to them, to the Jewish people. Then I stayed with them a few months and then I escaped back to the villages, but to answer you how many -- what did you ask me again?

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RG-50.030.0001

Were you in hiding essentially for the rest of the war of how long?

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RG-50.030.0001

Hiding through the rest of the war 1s the answer. I was never free. I either was inside, jail was inside or I was hiding outside. I was not hiding because I had to hide, I was hiding because I was scared. Just about I would say a year before the end of the year, the Polish resistance was very great, and I was scared at that time they grabbed all youth I was scared they were going to recognize me, so I escaped from there. I went back to where the factory was, not far, and I was hiding personally because there was another problem. Amy boy whether they were Jewish or not Jewish, any boy was either arrested to kill because the Poles had an uprising in Warsaw and the people they I would say the Polish army was gathering to go help the people in Warsaw. I was afraid that they were going to -- I was with them really, it was called at that time ,a Polish Army, but I didn't want to go to Warsaw and I was afraid they were really mobiling young kids to go to Warsaw. However, I escaped. I was more afraid that they were going to recognize me that I'm not Jewish, because being in the village somehow I knew the people, but strangers, groups, underground there were all kinds of people and some of them were they were very good and recognizing Jews, I want you to know. So, I escaped the forest and then I was hiding wherever I could. But his was the real way I was saved. I was hiding in the haystack and all of a sudden I see two guys. I was with another fellow. Not to be killed the Germans were after him. Germans SS, Gestapo, they had all kinds of you know, people who were looking to kill us. So, I was hiding and all of a sudden I seen two guys whom I recognized they worked in the gun powder factory and they escaped from there. One guy knew the area very well. He's the one who practically saved me. He's in Toronto now. I was just with him in . His name is Silverman He knew the area and we tried to get across the lines, the lines meaning the Russians were advancing. We were on the other side. The artillery was just unbearable from the Russian side. We tried to get through the to go to the Russian side, but it was impossible. There were virtually hordes of German army which they retreated to this other side of the water so we couldn't. They had another line which they were preparing in case they had to retreat. So, we were between the first line and the second line of the German defense. It was horrible. It was bad. I used to inside I did not look Jewish, I used to go out and somehow organize bread and water and we made bunkers, deep bunkers, winter, deep bunkers and we begged, we got some food. We were hungry all the time and that's how until the Army came across. It's a little harder for me, but it didn't take long. It was very hard because the German army with their dogs and all that they were retreating and they at that point they didn't especially care who they killed. If we were in their way between both lines and that's how eventually I survived. I think it's enough for me now. I'm getting tired.

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RG-50.030.0001

Can I just ask you a couple general questions.

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RG-50.030.0001

There's still a lot more for me to say, but it's very hard for me to go on.

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RG-50.030.0001

Did you go back to Warsaw then?

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RG-50.030.0001

Why certainly.

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RG-50.030.0001

I wanted to ask you if you saw the city, the Ghetto burning?

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RG-50.030.0001

The Jewish Ghetto, no, but I saw Warsaw. I was aware of the burning and I was aware that there was a Jewish uprising because it was full. Everybody was talking about it in the villages and the cities. I came back down to Warsaw and Warsaw was completely destroyed because after the Jewish uprising, after the Jewish uprising, then there was a Polish uprising before the Soviet Army came in, and they killed quite a bit of Poles, a couple of hundred thousands. They guarded themselves pretty good, but the Germans were overwhelming with tanks and everything. When I came back, Warsaw was burned to the ground.

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RG-50.030.0001

You were liberated by the Russian army, when was that?

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RG-50.030.0001

I didn't see the Russians, but that was about the time somewhere in 1945.

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RG-50.030.0001

Did you in the time you were hiding, did you feel terribly isolated that you knew you had to be safe that you had to be a catholic boy, but you knew that you're people were somewhere else. Was that a strange feeling?

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RG-50.030.0001

Well, number one it was I wasn't too smart to think about those things. I was trying to save myself. I knew that I'd never see my brothers and sisters. That I knew, yet the will to live and to one day survive and like now to tell people, it was a certain thought of it and I was lucky.

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RG-50.030.0001

How did you feel about being Jewish at the time?

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RG-50.030.0001

Well, let me tell you, I went to church for quite a while, but whenever I could avoid, could avoid. I never heard because the church never teaches anything harsh against Jews. I just felt strange amongst it because I was brought up in a Jewish religion, so I let it go by what the priests say with a grain. Let it go, okay, some of it I absorbed and some of it I forgot and that's it. But I felt Jewish --not that I felt Jewish, I felt very scared every time I went from village to village and maybe they could recognize me. I felt Jewish, all right.

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RG-50.030.0001

You didn't resent being Jewish?

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RG-50.030.0001

I was resenting a lot of times. There were times when they took kids, in the villages, they took them to Germany and I was very scared because I was circumcised and I thought that whenever they had something like that surround and take the kids to Germany from the villages, I was hiding and very fast because they used to say they take them a certain place and because the Germans wanted only healthy people, so somewhere near they would take them to quarantine and checked whether they don't have any t.b. They wanted healthy people. So I was afraid if I was going to undress before doctors, they'll recognize that I was Jewish. So, I was very sure, at the risk of my life to escape those situations where they couldn't catch me to Germany. Funny thing, sometimes I figured I could have gone because one of my neighbor boy was caught then he escaped from Germany he told me didn't have anything like that. They took us straight in there. It would have been easier for me if I would have gone. I was aware that I was circumcised. Every moment of the day, it hit me.

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RG-50.030.0001

After the war, were you eager to be Jewish again?

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RG-50.030.0001

Let me tell you, during the war, I really thought that God as a German. I thought they'll never be defeated, the kind of cruelties, the way they were. I would say the SS and all the Gestapo and all the apparatus. I will tell you, you would never they were barbarians. They were not human beings, these people who were running Poland at that time. The SS, the Gestapo, and all kinds of other names they had. I knew how strong they were. To say that I was glad to be Jewish, I want to tell you something, and this is the truth, I was just mad a my God, first of all mad at my father that he made me a Jew, and mad at my God that we had to suffer so much, what for. That was my first feeling. A lot of time I talked to God. When you get desperate you start talking to something. You've got nothing. I would just put my eyes up and I asked why, why wasn't I born a dog, a bird who could jump over the Ghetto walls or a catholic. Why was I Jewish. And there were times when I was really thinking that it's not good for me to be a Jew, if I ever live and if I have children, I said to myself, I would never let them be circumcised because this is just showing the enemy that you're not the same.

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RG-50.030.0001

After the war?

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RG-50.030.0001

Well, when I went to America, of course, in American I found out that I would not circumcise my kids if it wouldn't be that they said in America they are circumcising everybody. I was Jewish. I got married and my in-laws they were Jewish too, and I let them circumcise my two sons. If I were to live in Poland, in Europe, I would never let my kids by circumcise, in fact I would even try to be a non-Jew, because what for?

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RG-50.030.0001

I guess did it take you a while to readjust to being a Jew again after the war?

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RG-50.030.0001

Believe me, I knew I was Jewish, because there was some persecution in Poland too, after the war. And some of them came back from Russia or those who survived never made it even amongst the Polish people. There were some Poles who were not happy yet with Jews surviving. I wouldn't say some, majority were just people.

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RG-50.030.0001

You're tired aren't you. Do you want to stop?

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RG-50.030.0001

Yes.

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RG-50.030.0001

After you were liberated, where did you go?

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RG-50.030.0001

Eventually a year later I escaped from Poland and made my way to Germany.

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RG-50.030.0001

Right afterward did you go back to your village to see if you knew anybody?

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RG-50.030.0001

Definitely I went back. I was looking. I was trying to find out if anybody's 1s alive. I know they're not, but maybe, of course, I was trying. I went from village to village and I even put my name in on certain areas because I was afraid I was taken into the ARmy. I was afraid that somehow my sister by the writing on the wall knew that I'm alive. She came back from Siberia, from Russia.

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RG-50.030.0001

You're sister is the only surviving?

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RG-50.030.0001

Yes.

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RG-50.030.0001

Is there anything else you think should be recorded about this whole experience.

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RG-50.030.0001

To record I could just tell you one thing. The worst for me was the Ghetto Warsaw. It was worse than hell. You couldn't imagine -- hell was worse. I can't imagine that the people could be surrounded, not fed, children my age and worse was smaller children, were just laying in the street begging for food, dying and no body even paid attention. They just picked them up in groups, on lorries and they you know when I look I wonder right now, always my heart goes out for them. Because what I saw over there, I saw the real stuff, I can relate that to what's happening. But the worst was the older people, the epidemic of typhus. I want you to know I had typhus at certain time, we skipped. I had typhus too, but it was hell on earth. The worst was Ghetto, was hell on earth. To give you an example, I want to say something. After the war I always looked in the eyes of German women. Why. You'll ask me because I saw one girl, one woman, I'm going to relate it to an incident. I know already hungry kids, we knew which are good Germans, w which are bad Germans, who's going photograph us and they used to come into the Ghetto, like tourist, show how Jewish people are dirty, how they live in poverty, how they just are a heap of people who wouldn't be so bad to kill. That was their real idea. One day like a little truck opened in small little like a pickup and I looked at it from far. Everytime a German pickup like this came into the Ghetto, everybody ran because you never know when they're going to catch up, but I was a little from far I could recognize these were airmen. They were airmen so I figured I'll wait and I'll beg for bread. I wait up there and they stopped and they want to make pictures. I thought very good come a little close. So, I said they can't photograph me unless they throw me a piece of bread. So one girl came a little close and she grabbed me and hit me right between the eyes. A girl, must have been a husband or boyfriend, a German soldier, says "Now tell me why did you do that. He's just a little boy," to that woman, and I'll never forget her. After the war I was looking in the eyes of every German girl and I couldn't understand why a German woman, maybe she was 18, 19 you know something like this, why she would do it to me and I didn't get any bread and I wouldn't take any bread because to me shame was worse than hunger. Then they went on, but she really gave it tome. What got into those people. What kind of people were they? Either they were barbarians or they were just got out of the caves and to go ahead and hate, make us miserable, and on the contrary they tried to I would say prosper on our misery. They brought in people to show our people are dirty people, loused, not really prepared I would say prepare the stage where they could kill us because we are not worthy living and they are the ones who really brought this up because slowly they weakened everybody in the Ghetto. No food, dirty water, no hygienic anything which we could be clean nothing but sickness, people dying on the street, they weakened us and they made us like no humans and it's very hard for the majority of people to even resist however a lot of older people remember the Germans where they were good people from the first World War or they lived with them in Poland and they couldn't understand, they would not believe that they could do it to us. They didn't believe that the German would eventually kill all of them. They couldn't imagine, however, by slowly depriving the people of everything taking away all their privileges, taking away their education, making them look like raggedy people they prepared, they were preparing they figured that these people are unworthy to life, and it was their fault, because scientifically I'm sure they did it all scientifically to get rid of the Jewish people.

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RG-50.030.0001

Thank you.

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RG-50.030.0001

You're welcome. Conclusion of Interview

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RG-50.030.0002

I need you to start off by telling me your name, where you were born, what year you were born in, and your name as it was then?

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RG-50.030.0002

All right. My name is Rita Kerner Hilton. I was born in Warsaw in 1926, July 22, 1926. I lived in Warsaw until I was six years old, seven years old, and then we moved to my mother's hometown Pomortsy. This is near Lodz, exiled city. My grandfather was a practicing dentist there and since my mother was a dentist, they decided to practice together. That's where I lived until the war broke out and the Ghettos and so on.

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RG-50.030.0002

Tell me a little bit about your life growing up?

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RG-50.030.0002

When I was a small girl, my parents were doing very well financially. My father was a entrepreneur. My mother wasn't working at that time, and we always had a maid. I had a nanny when I was small. When we moved into Pomortsy, my grandmother was running the house, but she always had sleep-in help. Since my mother worked in the office, it was in the same apartment, I had a babysitter, or whoever it was, a part-time governess who'd come in after school hours and do homework with me and read with me, take me out to the park. So, I had kind of a pampered existence. I went to sleep-away camp. I had a bicycle which was, you know, they were expensive. So, I did have a very loving, a very pampered existence at that time.

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RG-50.030.0002

Were you particularly religious?

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RG-50.030.0002

No. My grandfather strongly believed in reformed Judaism, which did not exist in Poland as such. They never kept a kosher home. We did observe holidays. We observed Passover, and he used to go to the synagogue on high holidays, sometimes would take me, but it was different. He strongly felt that if there would be a reformed Judaism then he could probably follow it. He could not follow the orthodox, the rabbis teachings, and argue with some of them about it.

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RG-50.030.0002

How integrated were you in the larger community? Were most of your friends Jewish? Did you go to a public school?

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RG-50.030.0002

Well, I went to a public school, which was hard to get in, but this was the best -- I'm talking about primary school. We lived in a so-called new section of town, not the Jewish section, a new section of town. There were maybe about few Jewish kids there, mostly from the prominent families, doctors, lawyers and stuff like this, dentists. And when I first came, I remember one of those days a kid called me a dirty Jew. I was a big girl, I was in first grade, and I gave a smack to the right and a smack to the left, and I never had any problem in that school. When the time came to go to high school, there were three high schools in town. A girls' school, a boys' school and a German school. This town was very much German. There were a lot settled by the Germans. They were German textile markets. This was a textile factory town. And they were having every year there were less Jewish kids accepted there. You had to pass an exam, and you had to be the top of the top of the top to get into that school. If you couldn't get in, you had to commute to Lodz, which was a 45 minute ride by street car. You had to go to private school then which was costly. Well, I got into that school. And again the first few days someone said something about being a Jew, but the principal of the school, she was very anti-semitic, but she was very fair, and she did not stand for any discrimination. And again, I had no problem. I had a bunch of friends, but little by little, I mean, there was one girl, later on, she was in camp with me, Alena, and we used to fight like cats and dogs, but at the same time we were the only Jewish kids in the same level, Jewish girls on that level. The year before they accepted I think three or four or five. Our year they accepted three, the following year they accepted two. The boys had a harder time in school. There were a couple boys who were sons of prominent doctor and they took his penis and dipped it in ink, and also there was a doctor upstairs, a friend of my parents, they had a younger kid. He started going to the same school that I did, but they taunted him and he started losing clumps of hair from nervousness, and they had to place him in Jewish schools. The Jewish schools were state schools, but the principals, the teachers, the kids were Jewish, and there were two schools. One was the better one, and the other one wasn't so good. But still, in order to get to the high school, if you came from the Polish school, your chances of getting into the high school were much better than if you came from the Jewish school. You know, separated, but equal. And I had, as I said, had not too much problems.

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RG-50.030.0002

Were there social and cultural activities?

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RG-50.030.0002

At one time I know my mother used to go to all those fancy charity balls, a lot of them. And I think closer to the war, there were a couple Jewish charity balls. I think she still used to go to the Red Cross ball and so on. But there were less social contact. My mother had a friend, a school friend, who was of a German decent, a very, very prominent family. They owned big factories, and she married a Polish boy. They were patients for years and years and years. They used to socialize, and then closer to the war, that dried out. We didn't have those contacts as such.

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RG-50.030.0002

So, let's talk a little bit about how things started to change. Were you aware of what was going on in Germany?

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RG-50.030.0002

Oh, yes. My aunt lived in Germany. They came to the States before the war. They knew it was coming on. Also, there was a group of Polish people who lived in Germany, never had their German passports. They were never citizens, and in 1937, they all sent them out and we used to collect money for them. We used to give them meals and so on, because they were thrown out from Germany without anything. So, we were aware very much of what was going on. But no one believed it was going to happen, what happened, because during the first World War, the Germans were the better friends than the Russians. People did not like Russians in this part of Poland. So, we were aware, but we never thought they would destroy us all.

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RG-50.030.0002

What happened when the Germans occupied your town?

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RG-50.030.0002

One of the first actions they put a bunch of restrictions. We couldn't use the street cars. We couldn't use the cafe downstairs where everybody used to sit. No Jews were allowed there. We couldn't go to the park. Schools were closed. I don't know when they told us to wear the -- before the stars, I think we had to wear the yellow armbands. There were scenes downstairs, I see through the window that they would grab a Jew witha —_—_ and cut the and cut the beard. And usually it was young kids doing it. The Hitler Youth were like a bunch of little puppies jumping on. This was the beginning. Then they started -- see we knew we would not be able to stay in the apartment. This was a fancy section of town, and it was a very large apartment. What has happened was a crazy situation and part of the apartment someone sublet it, it was a subleased to people who owned the cafe downstairs. They were German Nationals. And they requested that section. So, we managed to get some furniture out because we were evacuated not by the Germans, but by this owner of the restaurant, the cafe. So, my mother got out some of her extra, one extra chair and a foot drill and some equipment and we got some furniture from that part of the apartment out, and we have hidden it. Some Pole took it for us. And we did manage to get some valuables out, which eventually we left with the Poles. We never saw it again. But at that time we -- and we kind of waited, when they are going to kick us out. And sure enough, the order came in 24 hours we had to leave beddings for 12 beds, all the china, all the furniture, all the equipment in the office. Everything had to be left. We were allowed only to take our personal clothing. That's when we moved. That Pole he promised us it would be out of town, a little suburban area, very quiet. Nothing will happen to us, and then he -- the Jews were not allowed to have money, "X" amount of German marks, no gold, no silver, no diamonds, and when they started talking about forming the Ghetto in he persuaded my grandfather that he's going to save for safekeeping, he'll take all his valuables. And Grandfather had all his money in a gold money belt. His total life savings were in those gold coins. American dollars, British sterling pounds, everything in gold. So, he left it with the Pole, and after the Ghetto was formed, we couldn't get out, but we sent someone to pick it up, and he denied that he had ever had it. We never saw that stuff again.

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RG-50.030.0002

Did that surprise you?

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RG-50.030.0002

At that time, yes. At that time, he was so -- seemed like my father knew him and we knew him. We stayed with him. We paid rent, but we stayed with him for a couple of months. There was also a situation where we wanted to go to Warsaw. My mother decided to smuggle herself, smugglers and go to Warsaw. She had some fabrics she felt she'll take it to Warsaw and sell it maybe live on it for a while. Our relatives in Warsaw wanted ut to move there. They felt that this was not German, this was the protector at this part of Poland at that time. So, she went. She had a fur coat, and covered in fabric and went and was stopped somewhere and all the smuggled goods were taken away. We didn't know what happened, but they let them out. This was a put up. They just wanted to get the goods. So, a few days later she came home, luckily for us.

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RG-50.030.0002

Now, I'd like to get a sense of the mood when the Germans came in. Were people fearful? Were people being abused?

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RG-50.030.0002

No. The fear was when we were all running to Lodz before the Germans came. I don't think people were so fearful. It's hard to say how they felt. We all didn't know what would happen. By 11th of November, this is a Polish holiday, and just before they arrested all the prominent people in town, not only Jews, they arrested Poles, they arrested anyone, teachers, lawyers, bankers, whoever had any prominence so they couldn't start any uprising. They wouldn't stir the population against the Germans. And we never saw them again. Some of the Poles were let out. Some Poles were let out, but --

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RG-50.030.0002

You don't know what happened?

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RG-50.030.0002

No. And then, as I said, it was winter, I think it was March, maybe February, when the Ghetto was formed, the Ghetto.

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RG-50.030.0002

1940?

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RG-50.030.0002

Yes. And we didn't have a place to go. There was my grandmother's sister. She had a three or four bedroom apartment. By that time, there were two other families living in part of that apartment and we wound up in a little room. Some other relatives were there. It was just bedlam. Finally, we found out that there was a little house that belonged to a pharmacist, a Polish pharmacist, and they told he has to get out of his apartment. So, we shared that apartment with a few other families, and that's where Mom opened up the office, reopened her office. This was an open Ghetto. There were no wires, no barbed wires, just check points. Jewish police were watching it. The Poles and the Germans would come into the Ghetto. If they didn't know you, you could get out. I had a friend who would go out, but no one knew him in town. But I couldn't get out because they knew me, and I could never step my foot out, outside. The Ghetto was on two sides of that little section. There was a main street going through with the street cars, so we had certain hours we could walk through, walk across the main street. You could walk across in the morning. You could cross 1n the afternoon. Once you went on the one side, you couldn't go back until the hour came that you could do it. They formed a factory. They started having German army coats made, and money was coming in. There were various people who were in charge of the Ghetto, and there was one so-called revolution after another one. One group would kick them out and get other ones, with the help of the Germans. Personally, our family, my mother was having a lot of patients. There were no Polish dentists in town, so her patients would come in.

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RG-50.030.0002

Polish people?

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RG-50.030.0002

Polish people. We had access to food. We had access to a lot of things. She was making money, and she was helping the whole family. She had aunts and uncles and she was supporting everybody at that time. I worked with my grandfather in an outpatient clinic.

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RG-50.030.0002

This was a dental clinic?

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RG-50.030.0002

No. Grandfather before he became a dentist, he was something you called a feltcher (ph). It's almost like a medic. My grandfather was doing it. My grandfather was doing it. So, he was very well educated in medicine basically. Never became a doctor. And there was a need for an outpatient clinic, so this was free of charge. He opened it up under the hospital of the Jewish government, and I worked with him. The afternoons I had tutors, and my mother was very anxious for me to finish my -- somehow not to lose my years of education, so in the afternoon I had a tutor and was doing the high school program as much as we could, but at least I had somewhat. I wasn't left completely wild.

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RG-50.030.0002

Tell me about the organization of the Ghetto. Who was preventing you from coming and going?

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RG-50.030.0002

There was a so-called Jewish , originally there was one lawyer in charge of it. There was a bunch of people who took over, and there were all kinds of unsavory things. Unsavory in terms of there were rations coming in, the food was coming in, and I think they were selling it in the Black Market. There was another group denounced them. Eventually they were arrested and some of them were hanged later in Lodz Ghetto. There was a Jewish police, but they were strictly order police. I don't think they wore hats. They just wore arm bands. They were watching all the end streets of the Ghetto and the crossing streets. We had a whole little government which was running with the understanding of the Germans and they were dealing with the Germans. The food and everything else was going through that group.

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RG-50.030.0002

This group was corrupt?

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RG-50.030.0002

The first one, yes. I mean, I wouldn't say the first one. That one lawyer was not, but the group which took over, they were corrupt, very corrupt.

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RG-50.030.0002

How did people get chosen for these duties?

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RG-50.030.0002

I don't know. I think they just got a group of people together and went to the Germans and what they did, I don't know. This third group they were a couple of brothers and someone else, and they denounced the second group as corrupt, because I guess they got wind of what was going on.

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RG-50.030.0002

Were there any women in positions of responsibility?

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RG-50.030.0002

I don't think so. Not at that time, no.

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RG-50.030.0002

Do you remember how you all felt about these Jewish police taking orders from the German.

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RG-50.030.0002

Well, they were not really taking orders from the Germans. They had to do a job and there were friends among them. I mean, they were not in any way abusing people or killing people, or hitting people. They were just standing there and wouldn't let you go. The Germans and the Poles could come into Ghetto, and they told you not to go. This is the border, this is the line, you can't cross the line, period.

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RG-50.030.0002

Did they have any other responsibilities like organizational schools?

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RG-50.030.0002

No, in Ghetto, there was absolutely nothing, no schools. The only thing we had organized, they organized a hospital. It was an old factory, and we organized it as a hospital. We had a bunch of fundraisers, which were like reviews, and people volunteered to entertain and perform and we would all go to the shows and that would raise money for the hospital. But that was the extent of this cultural events.

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RG-50.030.0002

Now, you said your mother worked and she had outside patients. Did you have enough to eat?

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RG-50.030.0002

Oh yes. My family, at that time, we had too much to eat, because we had access to everything at much lower prices than the real Black Market. Those items were on the Black Market, but we were going directly from the Poles to us as I guess going to some middle man in the Ghetto. So, we did have enough to eat. Grandma again, had a little girl who helped run this place, and as a result my mother was supporting that family, and the tutor's family, and she had two aunts and one uncle. She was supporting them, giving them money so they could buy their food.

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RG-50.030.0002

Were times hard for other people in the Ghetto, or was this Ghetto not too severe?

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RG-50.030.0002

No, it wasn't too severed. But it was, like those two women who were teaching me, there were two sisters that lived with their mother, and they had absolutely no way of getting any money. They were tutoring me and they were tutoring my other friends, so that was their main way of making money. My mother gave orders that when they came in the afternoon, we served a little snack. I didn't need a snack, but by serving some little sandwiches or something the tutor could eat and she didn't have to eat home. So, there were ways of helping people.

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RG-50.030.0002

Was your sense for other people, was there food rationing?

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RG-50.030.0002

There was rationing. There was a Black Market. There was rationing, but again it was not so bad like in Lodz. I mean, people survived. No one starved to death. The Jewish administration, I think they had some kind of a welfare department because Mom was taking in any patient who couldn't pay, Jewish patient, would get a slip from the department and they would come in and she treated them free. She'd never take any money. I mean people had money, but that was something else. But if they didn't, they were all treated for free.

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RG-50.030.0002

Were most people in the Ghetto working, older people or not?

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RG-50.030.0002

I don't think so. I don't think so. That Ghetto lasted about two years. People still had things. People were selling things. They were selling linens. They were selling, if they had any jewelry, they were selling, so I don't think at that time, and look, I was a young girl, and I was concerned with working and meeting boys later and so on, and doing some school work, so maybe I did not delve into that too deeply.

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RG-50.030.0002

So, you were still doing all of those things?

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RG-50.030.0002

I was still doing all of those things until the Ghetto was closed.

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RG-50.030.0002

Now, how at this point you had really lost touch with all of your non-Jewish friends?

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RG-50.030.0002

All right, there was an interesting encounter I had. In high school, we had one girl who was of German decent, and as before they would taunt Jewish girls, the year before the war, they started taunting her. We would not go to the -- they had catholic classes in school. The priest would come in and teach them catholic, you know, the religion. So, we were excused for the hour and the three of us, there was another girl and we used to sit in the cafeteria and just sit and kill an hour. They used to send once a week a Jewish teacher to teach all of the Jewish girls, the Jewish religion. So, the kids would taunt her, and I was one of the few people who were friendly with her. And I met her one day in the Ghetto, she worked in the Ghetto, and I was shocked because she hugged me and kissed me on the street. Her family declared themselves Tolstoy, you know, the German Nationalist. And she gave me a big greeting, and I was very much surprised. But you see, I took her part and defended her against the Polish girls before the war. But that was the only contact I had with her. I mentioned that woman who was my mother's friend, she married a Pole. When the war broke out they were in the textile business like everybody else in town, and Mom decided to invest some money in some wool clothes. Because we figured that during the war the factories will be closed, then that will be worth more money, but she left the fabric -- I mean I don't know how many bolts of fabric she bought, she left if with that family, with him and his family. When it came the time that she wanted to sell it, he was the only one who came with the money. She sent him a message and within a few days, and this was a nice profit, because naturally that thing increased in value and we got it. We got the money. So, he was one of the few. He was good and he was honest and he didn't look to take the stuff and not to deliver.

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RG-50.030.0002

So, it sounds like in the Ghetto you were able to carry on somewhat of a normal existence?

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RG-50.030.0002

Basically.

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RG-50.030.0002

It didn't change things, but you were still able to eat?

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RG-50.030.0002

In my family.

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