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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yes.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yeah, so you were, your goal was just to do the service and then get out. Is that right?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yeah. When the time came to go out, I got a phone from Krakow that one doctor who was by himself a Colonel in the Polish Army, doctor, dentist. He had private office. He was ready to retire and he had a private office. But he got a heart attack and they took him to hospital. And they phone to me, they knew that I would go liberated, if I will be able to replace him, to fill out that position. So the last day in the Polish Army... and even the greatest anti-Semite in my unit, came to me, they make me a party, my departure, that was ad hoc make a party for me. He came to me, he said, “You know I am twenty years in the Polish Army. I am professional officer, high officer. I’m a major there.” He said, “You are the first Jew I know had such a good time in the Army like you have. Like you had.” And I said to them good bye, and I left. And immediately the next day I came to Krakow and I start to work because I had to fulfill this, this... later on he was released from the hospital. He survived and he came to the office, but I still was working with him. He couldn’t work anymore. So I was working with him about a year and a half, something like this. And then I opened my own office.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

But you said you didn’t have such a good time in the... did you have a good time socially? Is that what he meant? That you got along with other officers? 7

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Oh yeah. I had a good time, well I got along. They were all, needed me because I was there practicing dentistry. After the first, first recruiting, six months, then later on I organize a clinic and I receive patients. So they had their families and they were coming to me and I had really a good time. I came from the Army with some saved money, which the families of these officers paid to me for services. That was very, very, very little payments, but still I came with quite nice saved money.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

You mentioned in your other interview that you were involved with the underground army. The Armia Krajowa. How did you get involved with the army and when?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

In 1942, when we fled, went with the, on the Aryan papers, so-called. We came to a strange village there. And there the lady, which was the owner of the farm which we were given the address from the priest to go. That was his sister-in-law. Where I was there on this farm, there the Armia Krajowa started to organize herself. And we came there, and I went there as a refuge, refugee from the occupied territory, German-occupied territory which occupied Poland from Poznan. I said I am from Poznan, and I am hiding away because I was a Polish officer and I am hiding from the German Army. So when they became knowledge, they turned to me and maybe I will join them. And I said, “Well I cannot be a fighter to go and, with your fighting.” I went with them sometimes. But I organized a sanitary station, when some of them were wounded they brought them to me and I gave them some bandages or some treatments, which I had a sanitary station. And I also took care on the weapons which they had, and the magazine. They had some magazine in hiding in the shelter. And they had some weapons there, which they organize somehow. And I was taking, cleaning and taking care of it. And that was my function, I was going there and there, I was going close to every night I am going there and taking care of it. There were some actions which I am participating, but I was never going in the first line to go to fight with the Germans. Never, ever.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Were you afraid at all or nervous that they would find, that they would check up on your story about having been an officer in Poznan and find out about your identity?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

First of all, there was a case when somebody, the German has, in every village, in every town they had... will you lay down? Lay down...

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RG-50.549.05.0011

I have to...

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RG-50.549.05.0011

I will approach to you a little bit. They had their spies which are spying what happens to the Polish people there. What they are talking about and what they are doing. And some of them denounced that there is some activity, that they have some activity. And they choose Easter, 1943, yeah? 1943 they choose to go to make an action and to arrest these Polish people who are in the underground. They knew from this people which they send in this Volksdeutsche and they took there ten people. Between them was the commandant of this base. His name was Bilig (ph), Bilig (ph). He was a student of law, of the third year, second or third year. He was the commandant of this unit there in this region. And there was other, there was a teacher and there was several people. And one was liberated by the Germans. That was suspected that he was collaborating with the Germans. They released him. The other nine were taken to Auschwitz. This commandant was so beaten up that he couldn’t survive. Because one of these people who 8 was release, he saw him. That they took him from one room to other after hearings. They took him. He was all blooding. He didn’t survive. No one of them survived. So the commandant of this part was the brother of this woman where we were working on this farm. His name was Kostetski (ph). Max Kostetski (ph). And this lady, which we were there on this farm, she was a very fine, noble person. She knew that we are Jewish. She knew because when we arrived there, the brother of the priest was there, just there. And he was very angry. He said to the priest, “What did you bring these Jews here? Why did you do it?” And he run away very angry. And she knew, but she was a very, very [phone rings] fine, noble person. And she tried to influence her brother. I am an officer and so forth. And she was helping us a lot with bread, with food, everywhere. Even when we later on, after the denunciation, we had to live in other place. She used to come to bring us bread and all kinds of things. She did help us. I think maybe fifty percent of surviving we had to thank her. She was very, very, very kind.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

What was her name?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Pardon?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

What was her name?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Oscietska (ph), Stanislawa Oscietska (ph). Her father was anti-Semite. Her husband was a terrible anti-Semite. And the priest was also an anti-Semite and still that was the priest who helped us and gave us the paper.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

What was anti-Semitic about him? Why do you say that?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

He was anti-Semite, but he was, in my opinion he was economic anti-Semite. However, he didn’t have a business. But in the church he was preaching the Polish people to support Polish people, to buy at Polish people, but most of the businesses were Jewish. And therefore Jews were calling all of this kind of expression, they were calling anti-Semite. That was economical anti-Semitism. They want to support their own people. I don’t find it wrong. I don’t find it wrong. I think he as a priest has an obligation to his people. How we didn’t like it, how we didn’t want it, but still 1t did hurt us economically. But he, as a human being and as a priest, he told us, “I want to help you because it comes a bad time to you.” So I cannot say he is a racist or he is a political anti-Semite. He was economical anti-Semite. He was anti-Semite. We are very sensitive. We Jews are very sensitive, but we have the reason why to be sensitive after thousands of years of discrimination. But still, 1f you have a little bit brain and you want to understand human nature, you can find some objective reasons why some people are behaving so, and not like you would like they will behave. We would like to be taken care on us as the Chosen People. But we are not the chosen, to take care on us. We are chosen because we have obligations. We choose to have the obligations. This is the chosen. We took the Ten Commandments, we took the Torah, we took everything, but we have to perform it. And if there is, you have to love your neighbor as yourself. You can never love like yourself, it is allegoric. But you don’t have to harm your neighbor. You have to behave. And that, which in many cases we are missing. Even in the holy books we sometimes mention, “We are the Chosen People. You can do to other people this and this and this. You can take interest by non-Jews. You can do this, you can do this, but not to your brothers.” And that was a segregation which was in the 9 Torah. There is segregation which we choose to make the segregation. This is the Chosen People, not only in the positive sense, a lot of things is negative. And therefore a lot of people who are open-minded, they are taking the teachings of our fathers, not strictly verbally. You make some selection. You have some humanitarian obligations as a human being, not blind to follow scriptures, but you have to find a way how to live with people, how to respect other people. Which is very, very important. How do you respect others, so others will respect you? And this is my conviction which I came after so many years of life and so many readings and studying of all, all this which is written in the Jewish and in the non-Jewish books and teachings. Well it’s not a... if you know , introduction, but I mean you have to know to whom you are speaking. I think maybe sometimes I am going out of the framework which this has in mind, but I still am open-minded of everything what happens around.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yeah, I think it’s valuable for the listeners to know who, who you are, what your beliefs are and where you’re coming from and how you developed those beliefs. So, but also I wanted to find out, just make little bit clearer the chronology and the geography of what happened from the years 1940 through 1944 or so. You were, you were, you told the story in the first interview about how you went away to the Russian front. You tried to join the Army, you kind of got caught underneath the Russian occupation and then you made your way back to your home village of Brzeznica? Is that right? And then I’m a little bit confused. You mentioned that you were working in an S, were you working in an SS camp? Was it a concentration camp for Jews that you were working in? Okay, what was the name of the camp?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Pustkow.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Pustkow. And you were interned there as a prisoner?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

No, never. That was one of the miracles of this war maybe. There were no many Jews who are allowed to go in the camp and to leave the camp. And that was, by some miracle, maybe the reason was the German discipline, which they followed the orders of the Commandants, of the Fuhrers. When I came to this camp, I volunteered. That was a working camp and therefore I was put into this camp as a dentist. There was no big dentistry and there was no big medicine, but still there was three medical doctors and there was rooms with beds, which in the beginning, which people when they got sick, even beaten when they were, they could come to the doctor. And they get care, they get care. In the beginning, even some times they were released from this to go to the town, to the little shtetl close to Debica there. There was other assignment to other works. But that was already not in their competence. In the beginning, how strange it would be, there was a Colonel, SS, who was the head of this health services there, Obersturmbanfuhrer (ph) Schumacher was his name. And then, but he was maybe for two or three weeks and started only, that was only in ‘40. That was not yet nothing. That was the first beginning. And therefore the Jews were slowly getting in circulating. They took him so easy, they took him so by easy. They were voluntary, then later by force and later on by annihilation. They were going by themselves. That was the system. And then after two or three weeks, he left. But that was an order officer. A lieutenant officer. End of Tape 1, Side B 10 Tape 2, Side A

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Tape two, side A. I’m sorry, will you repeat what you just said?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

The Jewish doctors, they were the first. But if there were some people unable to work, they couldn’t release them. It has to sign, the SS doctor has to sign. And that what he was doing another four weeks. But later on, they left it to the Jews, but the situation became worse. There was no releasing. Treating and to work, treating and to work, no release anymore. In this time I came to... when I organized this little dental clinic there, so called clinic, everything was provisional.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

When was it that you organized that clinic?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

In 1940 already. The end of 1940 I organized it there. And what could I do? If somebody has toothache, I could help, or to make an extraction, to pull out a tooth. And that was the things. There was no other things, no fillings. I had to make fillings only when an SS man didn’t want to go to the SS. They were not allowed to go to a Jewish dentist, not to a Polish even, nor to a German. They had to go to an SS. But they knew that they will have a special treatment at the Jewish dentist, so some of them came. And that was a very difficult task, because I didn’t have, I didn’t have this equipment, which the German have. The German has the most modern and the most equipment. The SS had the most modern. And there was a lot of cases, which I couldn’t treat them at all, and I send them to go there. But they were insisting, they were insisting. And so in beginning, that was about a year. I had an ID, SS ID, that I could come to the camp and I left. The bus was standing, I show only the ID and I left. In the beginning the doctors were also leaving, living in Debica. And coming only to work there.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

The Jewish doctors?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

The Jewish doctors, yeah. And even some of the workers were allowed to go Saturday and Sunday for a day home, but they have to come back. If they didn’t come back, they brought them by force and that was a terrible thing then. So, after a year approximately, there was an order to take the ID’s, SS ID’s from all the Jews. But I think, I am not sure, because I was there a volunteer, there was an order of the Commandant of this camp, of the head, Gillar (ph) SS Oberfiihrer, who gave, day order, which he gives to the soldiers every day orders. He said, “The Jewish dentist can come to the camp whenever he wants. And every time when he comes to the post they will give him a post who bring him in the camp and when he is finished, he will come to pick him up and take him out from the camp.” That was unbelievable. That was unbelievable.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Did that happen because he had a special fondness for you?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Because it was in the order. I don’t know. I don’t know. I cannot comprehend it until today. I cannot understand it why.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Did you know him personally? 11

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RG-50.549.05.0011

No. No. I knew the Commandant, the head of the... Ill tell you, I mentioned before, the Germans were strict in their orders. I was a volunteer, and I was assigned by the working office, the special working office, which gave the contingent for the camp, for the people. Bring them and give them to different works. And because of they gave me this job, I didn’t belong to the SS, I belong all the time to the working office. And the head of this working office was a German, he became German. He was a German from origin. But he was Polish all the time. Only when the Germans came in, he became a German. And he was an officer in the Polish Army with a German name. Eilmiss (ph) was his name, Jule Eilmiss (ph). And he was very good to me. I was very good to him. I gave him from time to time, I gave him all kind of bribes. And maybe they respect because I was affiliated to this, maybe this was the reason that I didn’t belong to the SS, I belong to the working. And that was the reason. And when I came to this post and I said, “I am the Jewish dentist. I need to go to the camp, please give me company.” And they give me an SS man, who brought me to the camp. By the entrance to the camp there was another SS man, but he respected this SS man, he gave me over to him. He opened the gate and let me in. And when I was ready, I went to the office and I said, “I want to go out.” They call to the camp, to the post, and the postman came and take me out from there. So, this is, everything is miraculous. Well, it is miracle that I am alive and that Iam here. But that was something which was really extraordinary. I didn’t hear for a similar case in all my experience of camps and Jewish labor.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Were you treating Jewish patients only or were there other prisoners there, who were non- Jewish? I mean political prisoners or something, who you were treating?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

My treating was only Jews. There was close to it a Polish camp for political Polish prisoners, but I didn’t go in there and they couldn’t come here. They brought in, once they brought in two Polish prisoners, too, which I had to give them some treatment. But the SS Commandant sit down and took my treatment and the second Schaffner (ph) of the camp took my treatment. And other SS people came in my private practice home. Because I make in the house where I live like this Polish peasants, I make also a little clinic that what gives me my income. A barter business, people brought me food and I treated them. And so some of these SS people came in and they brought me also some tea, some coffee, because it was not on the market, even black market was not to get it. But the SS had everything. And they came in there, most of these SS people which were, plus they knew me, because I was going into the camp, out and in, and out and in, so I was really tolerated in this place like persona grata.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Okay, so you were doing that until 1942, when the area was evacuated and the Jews were ordered to the ghetto?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

The Jews were evacuated earlier. The only Jewish family was my family which allowed, which the Kreishofman (ph) allowed them to stay there. They allowed only me, but because the Polish officer didn’t understand German, so I take this opportunity and I left all my family there in this village. But there came the Final Solution and they want, nobody could, no Jew could be free. So I would have to go to the camp. My wife, Fryda, had to go with all the family together to the ghetto. From there they went to annihilation, as you know. Some of them went to the camp, to other camps, the brothers, my brothers. My three brothers came to other camps. 12

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RG-50.549.05.0011

So your, at that point your family, did they all go to the ghetto in Ropcezyce?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Ropezyce and from Ropczyce they send them immediately to Senczyczow (ph), which was the next little town. And from there, about two weeks, they send them all to annihilation. I don’t know exactly until now. I think to Treblinka. I guess they went to Treblinka, all of them. Except my brothers which went to the other camp, to Rzeszow, from Rzeszow to Mielec. From Mielec there was the factory of airplanes, Hermann Goring Werke. And they were there. And there my oldest brother was killed there by the Germans. And these two brothers survived. And they were taken from there to Germany and they make all the marches and all the way through. And they survived in Germany.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

And your Polish, was your Polish good enough that you could pass well without worrying about language problems as a Pole?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

My Polish was better than all the Polish Polish. Our Polish was exceptional, very good. Otherwise the priests wouldn’t give us papers. That was the basic things, appearance and language, that was the things which was the most important. And there was no, any blemish in my language and so till today the Polish people who come here and we are friends, Polish people. They say our Polish is immaculate.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Did you have any, Fryda was talking in the interview that we did with her a little earlier today, she was talking about some of the challenges of being in church and having to adopt this persona, where you had to, everything had to be just right. Do you remember any trouble that you had with that?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Not at all. First of all, I adopted it very easy because living in a village, you are involved in the peasant’s life. You want, you don’t want, you don’t have the time even, but still. And so I knew about the habits and about everything how the Poles live. And we were living, even being Orthodox, my father was a very, very, very accepted in the community, in the peasant community. They respected him very well and they came and they lived together. And my father being an Orthodox Jew with you have seen. And he spoke immaculate Polish very well and so did all my family. And interesting enough, the children all were speaking Polish home, only when father wasn’t there. When father was in field, because we had a farm, so my father was usually, in the summer time always in the field. As you know ina village there is always work, never endless, endless work. When my father came, approaching the house, Yiddish, immediately Yiddish we have to speak at home, only Yiddish.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

But your family was unusual then. I mean, I think 1t was common for Polish Jewish families to be pretty segregated and to just associate with other Jews. But your family was much more integrated it sounds like.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Well the question of integration was more common in the shtetl, where there were around Jews. We didn’t have, our closest Jew was living a mile from us. A mile in Poland is like hundred miles here. Distances are different. And the other Jews were coming to us to study religious things by the teacher which we have in our house. And they were really poor Jews, poor Jews. It is difficult to describe. Well, in the last years, the situation improve. But I remember as a 13 child I came in the house of one of the oldest citizens in this village that has Haskila Ascheim (ph). And he had two sons... three sons, one went to the Austrian Army and later on to the Polish Army, because it was just a change from Polish liberalization. It was a widow with five children. Of course, the sons came to learn in our house. Not too much, not too much, but the basic prayers, the basic prayers they learned. The other son had also five children and they were very, very talented children, very talented children, but they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school, only to the community school, I mean to the elementary school. But they were , they studied by themselves. And this two sons became even writers and the lawyer in the village there. And one of the sons became a dentist. And the daughter married. Not that this is the point. The point is that this three sons with their families, in the beginning there was here two children, here one child, the other one also two children. They were living in one house, where there was only three rooms. Of course no bathroom, nothing like this. In addition, in the big hall, this old Jew had a pub. He was selling alcohol to the Polish people were coming, drinking there. Everything in this one house. Later on they move on, they somehow organize them, their living. And they have their own houses. No one survived, as far as I know, of all these families. No one. Of all these villagers, no one survived. Only one son and a son- in-law went to America. But I’m sure he’s not more alive and I don’t know if he had family. I don’t know. One grandson came also to America with a very tricky way. His father, who was already in America, sent him a girl from the United States, which he married there, so he could travel to America. But he’s not alive. He died. He was a sick boy. Lyman (ph) was his name. No one of all this family is around that I know, who survived.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

You went from, okay, so in 1942 you went to the Priest’s sister. I’m forgetting the name of the town.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Jurkow (ph). Jurkow, by Szczow (ph).

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RG-50.549.05.0011

And that was near the time when you got involved with the AK?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yes.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Did you, we didn’t get to just talk a little bit more about your experiences in the AK. Did you have any, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Well, Pll tell you. Thanks to this, my involvement in the AK, I could find a place after I had to escape because of the Gestapo which came. And thanks....the right place...

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yeah, it’s going to, so I'll... you don’t have to hold it.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Oh, and your hand. I have to support your hand.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

I guess... sometimes I have to lift up my hand.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Therefore I wanted to take from you. I understand it. I give you support.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Tell me when you get tired. 14

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Yeah, you'll feel it. [Laughing. ]

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Go ahead.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Thanks to my involvement in the AK, I could find a place when I had to escape when the Gestapo came to pick us up. That was the positive thing what I have of it. Well, I didn’t experience too many fights except one when it was already 1944, when our unit was affiliated to a other unit and together we make an attack on a police station, German-Polish police station and the dam of Roznow (ph). Roznow (ph), that was a big dam which they built on the Danube River, not Danube, but Dunajec river. That was a big dam. There was a little one later of in Szczow where in the beginning the Jews built it. But that was only in 1941, ‘42. But later on they took away all the Jews in other camps. I don’t know what they did to them. I don’t know. And there was then a fight, which was quite a real fight with this police, but the Polish police hand over herself and the Germans, some escaped, some were killed. And that was the source where the AK gets more weapons there, from there. No, Iam not. You can hold it. I have here support. That was really when I, by my walking in the nights to the base where we have the weapons there, I met some of the AK men, which usually no AK men knew more than other two. That was a conspiracy. And interesting enough, the main active AK man in our unit, which was really an active guy, he was doing by himself a lot of things, he was a released criminal prisoner from Polish prison. And from him I got also for myself a gun, which I had one, but I didn’t have enough ammunition for it. And he was the one who give me another gun and then I have some more ammunition, some more for security. [Phone rings.] I didn’t use it because I didn’t need it, but I was ready in case I will need it. I had a grenade and I had a weapon, I wouldn’t go into prison voluntarily. I will kill some Germans and myself, that was my preparation to do. Otherwise I didn’t have anything special.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Did you have any, I know that it was a challenge, the AK has a reputation for being very anti- Semitic. Did you have any trouble or close calls with that? With anybody finding out you were Jewish?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

The only thing which I know, which came through me in the place where I was living, in the neighboring village was another unit of AK and there was a commandant, and all the orders who came from the main office were passing from one unit to the other. And through me was passing from this unit, through me to my unit. And that was already in 1944, by the end of 1944. I usually tried to know what happens because I didn’t have a radio. I was relying on the news which I got from the acquaintance, what they get to me. But from this, from this orders who came, I found some orders what happens at the front. There was always messages what is to do and so forth. And the last message which I got, I opened it too. Then I close it and I send it farther. There was a message, the Russians are approaching, not to hand over, not to give them over our units. And before they come in to clean up all the rest of the units of the people which are, which you will find in the forests, whether it is Russian partisans or other kind. It didn’t mention exactly Jews, but who was there in the forest? That was the only thing which I have personally met. From person to person, I didn’t met, only I say the other two AK men and they didn’t know that Iam Jewish. They didn’t know. And they, we never spoke about it. 15

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Were you afraid at all during that time?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Well that is difficult to say, afraid. But you are always watching what you are saying, what you are doing, not to be different. You have to drink alcohol, the moonshine like they are and to do everything like they are doing when they come together. Even if you don’t know them, but you have to go on the way like this. And if they are cursing, you have to curse, if 1t is damn, or another. You have to be always, not try to be different, not try to be different, that’s the main point what you have to do. Scared? Of course, you are always scared. You know, when I was watching and going walking in the night from one village to the other, if I heard a frog jumping, my ears were so sensitive, I heared it. Because I want to know what happens around me, to be always prepared and always the hand on the gun. And I didn’t continue to go until I found out what is this noise, if it is not people. I find the frog and then I continue to go. That’s it.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

How did you meet Frantiszek Muschau, who you talked about in your other interview?

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He was working on this farm... End of Tape 2, Side A 16 Tape 2, Side B

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RG-50.549.05.0011

So you were working together, and you got him involved eventually in the AK?

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RG-50.549.05.0011

I recommended to my commandant, I recommended my commandant to accept him. I also accepted the other one, who became the priest, the anti-Semite, which was. And this Muschau was a very nice man, very nice man. And he was not like the common peasant. He was already more civilized because he was working in France as a miner, several years. And he came up from France. He brought some furniture from France. And he was already more progressive. And we exchanged different opinions about the situation, the political situation. About the Germans, about the Russians, so forth. We were politicizing. He was inviting me in his home. We are drinking and eating there. And he invite the neighbor. He has a neighbor there, one Kilbasa (ph), who came also and they want to hear what happens in the world. And I have also some news from my fellow man. So they accepted all the news from me as an intelligent Polish officer and Polish patriot, of course. And that was always, with the alcohol, with moonshine. I drank moonshine in my life, maybe I could make a bath in it and swim.

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RG-50.549.05.0011

Was that hard to get used to? Drinking that much without slipping when you were drunk? I mean, letting something slip?

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I never allowed to be drunk. I always want to have my clear mind, because that was the most dangerous thing, to lose your mind. To be drunk. So when I felt, I run it out somewhere, I make like I am drinking another one, another one, but I didn’t drink it. But still it was quite a bit. I am happy that I could tolerate it as much as I could.

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What happened towards the end of the war? Did you have, you had information about what was happening through your involvement with the AK that you knew where the Russian front was and whether they were advancing and so forth?

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Well you could hear. First of all, there was a situation about four months, more than four months. The Russians stopped on the river, they didn’t cross the river Vistula to help the Polish resistance, the Uprising in Poland for political reasons. They want the Poles to be annihilated by the Germans and then will go and kill the Germans. That was a very courageous thing to make from the Russian side. But that was a very, very bad thing instead to help to fight the Germans. The Germans killed a lot of Polish people. And of course, a lot between them the Jewish, which were fighting with the Poles, from the rest which remained there between the Poles. And we have all the news about the uprisings. There was, in the bunker where the commandant, ours, was sitting, they had a radio, which they are listening to Radio London, from London, BBC, they have all the news and the movements of the Russian Army. And I knew in one day they brought to me, two English pilots, who escaped from the camp, from the German camp, and I had to transport them to the Russians, because the United States had air bases in Russia. Because the United States were already allies with the Russians. And I was already, I said already good bye to Fryda and I was already on the way to go. But in the meantime when they came to the next base they told me not to go farther because the field are mined everywhere. I will not be able to cross. So I left them at this Polish unit there AK where I brought them there and I came back to Fryda there. And we are waiting the other four months and then you didn’t need the knowledge, 17 you heared the bombardment with the Russians started on the river there, from a distance to bombard artillery. And then they started to move. And that was it. And so we became so-called liberated.

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One second before we go on, I just want to make sure I understand your... So, you were involved with the AK, but you were also working on a farm? Is that right? So how did you? When did you?

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In the night.

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Oh, at night time you worked with the AK?

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The AK didn’t work in the day. They were always working 1n the nights.

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Were you, you weren’t, were you getting any sleep?

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Oh well I came, it wasn’t until late at night. It was till twelve, one o’clock. And then in the day I was sleeping there. Where we had a shelter with Fryda there, over the pigs there. We had a shelter there and there we were sleeping. We had enough sleeping there. Enough sleeping.

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Did the people who were sheltering you know that you were working...?

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Oh no. They knew that Iam AK, and that I am officer, but no, they are not suspicious that I am Jewish. No, no, no. Because the son, which is studying for priest. He was by himself, he said, if I will catch a Jew, I will cut in pieces and they should salt on it. As I said, he was a very, very bad anti-Semite. His parents were not anti-Semites. They were very simple peasants. They didn’t understand and think about it. Well, they boarded Jews and they went to the shtetl, they had their acquaintance with Jews. But of course they preferred, they loved the Polish and the Catholic. It 1s normal, it is normal. But they didn’t hate especially the Jews. But the son, which was already studying priesthood and they knew already, they told him already, at this time they were still teaching that the Jews killed Jesus and so forth. So, this young priest, no wonder that he hated Jews. That was indoctrinated.

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So you mentioned the “so-called” liberation. Did you feel in any way as if you were free?

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It was a very, very, very mixed feeling. On one side you felt the Russians are coming, you will not be more in danger as a Pole, but as a Jew, you continue to be in danger. And then came the reality. You find out what happened. Because until now, you heared only, they killed here, they killed here, they killed here. But the disaster so big, you realized only slowly when you were liberated. When you came to the big city, Krakow, which has before the war, in the war even, in the beginning, ninety thousand Jews and you barely find five or six people which are Jews. That was a trauma which you couldn’t, you couldn’t hand it. You were, and you were asking by yourself, why me? Why didn’t Anna do what I did? You start to analyze and to understand and those are things that you cannot understand until today. Because there were wiser people than me, speaking Polish better than me or the same like me, having connection with people. Why didn’t they survive? Why didn’t they choose our way? Was it right we did? And what is the 18 role we have to play by being alive? Try to organize a Jewish life, or forget about it? No Jews, no Jewish life. You are Polish. Go on, be a Pole. And that’s what many Jews do it, did it. And there are until today Jews which are living as Poles. They said, “Forget about it.” But we couldn’t do it. Our roots are too strong. I don’t know. We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to do. We were poor like mices. We had to look, to find something to eat, not to speak about finding a way to organize your life, to start to be a human being. You are out of it, you are no human anymore. You start to realize you live surrounded in animosity. And you look for some Jews. And I found some. I remember the first night we didn’t have where to go. No home. But somehow we met somebody. I don’t remember. I think I knew these people or recognize them as Jews. And I did ask him, “Who else is here?’”’ He said, “Come with me.” And I went with him, or with her better. And we came in a dark room and there were already several Jewish people, survivors from all kinds of surviving. And we sit there in this room, in this dark room and started to sing Jewish songs, Yiddish songs, very nostalgical Jewish songs. All the Yiddish songs were sad, all were sad. But in this moment, they were healing. They were like Balsam on a wound. Remembrance for a moment, your heritage. And we passed this night, I don’t remember, on songs and somehow sleeping sitting on a broken couch. All together there were maybe six, seven people. And each one with his song, not with story. We didn’t talk yet about story. We, somehow, I don’t know how to explain it. Is it shame or 1s it... I don’t know. But we are here. We left everything behind and we are sitting here. Nostalgia, remembering Yiddish songs. Don’t think even what to do, where to go farther. But we woke up in the morning, woke up. We didn’t take our work clothes. We were in the clothes which we had, these poor clothes. We find out from one of them that one of my friends survived. Where is he? Who 1s it? He was before the war, he was a lady beautician parlor. Father was a barber, and he had a nice sister. And I used to come to their house before the war. And he survived on papers. But he was already in the Russian intelligence. Polish uniform, the Russian intelligence. And somehow I met him. I don’t remember exactly how. And I asked him, “What is to do. Where to go? I don’t have a house. I don’t know where to go.” He said, “I got back my apartment.” There are two bedrooms, a kitchen on the third floor in the Jewish section. But he says, “You can go there. And somehow we will find there some way to sleep.” But there were already some people in, which survived Auschwitz. That was a girl, a boy, and another girl. And then came other people. I don’t know who this were. We all were there, but we didn’t have a bed to sleep. We slept on the floor. And I decided, we decided to look around, and we went to my village. To this older woman, who took us on. And she fed us, she gave us to eat. And we left in their house some of our clothes, some of our furnishes. And she was already, she, not her son, who lived nearby... because my mother, my grandmother, my brother’s sister lived in her house and I lived in the son’s house. There I make a little clinic there in his house. And we went there to sleep in the night in his house. In the night, somebody was knocking at the door and the window. And there’s, in Russian, “Kroy (ph)! Open! You have here Jews!” He said, “I don’t have Jews. They are Polish people like you, like we.” They came in. He opened, because this was soldiers which were in the camp, where there was once a camp. There was a field hospital for wounded Russian soldiers. And this were wounded soldiers which were there in this, but they were strong enough to go in between the Poles and to make connections with them. And I understand, I am not sure, I am ninety-nine percent sure. They went to the rich Poles where we left a lot of things and he told them to go there, the Jews came here. You have to kill them, very simple. And for them to kill a Jew is like kill a German. They like a soldier, especially a wounded soldier, a front soldier. And they came in and said, “Are you Jewish?” 19 And I understand Ukrainian, too, because in the Polish Army where I served there were mostly Ukrainians there. I said, “There’s no Jews here.” “Who are you?” We had the papers. Said, “We are here, only sleeping here. We are Polish.” Well, okay, they left. They went to the house of the mother, the mother’s house and they the same. “Where are the Jews here?” “There are no Jews.” They gave some shots in the air and they left. In the morning we said to the son of our, we told him to help us to move. We want to move back to Krakow. But there was no communication, there was no train. And I want to take some of this furniture to have something to sleep. So, he took the horse of his mother and the other horse from a neighbor and a wagon and we started to move to Krakow. That is about sixty miles from, hundred kilometers, hundred ten kilometers, something like this.

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What had happened to your house in Brzeznica?

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Our house was burned.

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When did that happen?

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It was burned. It happens when we were there still. After we left, close to the house there was a railway and a spark of this coal fire fell on the house there and it burned. So, there were not house. And these Polish people, who used to live in the house, took over our house. He was living in the barn which was close to it. There was a horse barn and coal barn and he was living there. So for us he wasn’t moving out and I didn’t want him and I didn’t want to be there. So we Started the way to go. And we didn’t want to go with the main road because there still the Russian Army was moving. And they were taking the horses from the Polish people for their use.

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About when was this? Do you know the approximate date?

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It was 22™) no 25" of January, 1945, after the Russians came in. We start there the way to Krakow. It is not describable the conditions. We had to take food for the horses first because you couldn’t buy this. Nobody would sell it. The money didn’t have any value anymore. And the horses, if you don’t feed them, they will not go. And you have to have the food on the way back, too. So the most of the wagon was food. And we took also some of the furniture which we left there and some of clothings we left there, also. They took it out from the ground, they dig it out. And they give us back everything, everything. They were very honest people. On the way my wife was more dead than alive. She was fainting and I had to do, to work on her. And by the way we were going around way, it was a longer way but more secure. ; where the army wasn’t going. I knew the Polish geography very well. I know how I will get to Krakow by longer, around ways. We came to an ort (ph), which was called Zakroczym. First of all we passed a place which is called Tochow (ph). At Tochow there used to live a sister of my mother, with her family. Her husband, her daughter with her husband. I don’t know how many children she had in the meantime. And the sons all run away to Russia, and they survived in Russia. The husband too, the old husband, too. But he died in Siberia, in Russia. They all were sent to Siberia to Infada (ph), to Sever (ph), to Jakutz (ph), or Jakutzia (ph). That was where they banished all the criminals in the older country revolutions there. With all the history there, there were trees which ten people have to surround it. Such a tree, such forest. And they 20 brought them there and they said to them, “Here you have to live.” No houses. Their houses were from snow, and their windows were from ice. And they had to work there, but all right that’s about them. That’s another story. But I came to this Tochow. And I did ask the Polish people there because no Jew was there, “What happens?” They said, “All were killed and some remained they were sent to the ghetto at Tarnow.” That was the end. No one Jew was there. No one Jew. So I continued to the next shtetl which was Zakroczym. And of course we have to feed the horses. And we want to come down to move a little bit like I say to you, to try if we can go. We were sitting on the wagon all the time. And this poor Polish guy, this Soltys Stanislaw was with us, he was the foreman. And while we wanted to come down, Fryda fell down on the ground, fainted again. I save her. I put her on the ground laying down, make some exercises with her. Put her on the wagon back, she faint again several times. And when we fed the horses, we went to continue to go. But the night approach and in the night you couldn’t, you are not allowed because it is curfew. The Russians didn’t joke. Whom they found on the street they killed. So, I went to the first Polish house there where there was a little bit space... End of Tape 2, Side B 21 Tape 3, Side A

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Our third tape, so this 1s tape number three, side A. So there came, a woman came out of the house?

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And she asked me what do I want? Said, “We have to go to sleep, to take in.” And I took Fryda from the wagon and I tried to put her in and the woman said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well we have to warm her up a little bit, because she is sick.” And she looked at her and said, “Well what do you think? She is dead already. Better one to put in the grave, like she is looking.” But I took, outside I found a brick, an old brick. I put it, make a fire and warm up the brick and I warm up a little bit. And so at this house, on the floor, we slept through until the morning. In the morning we start to go, and we went and we came to Krakow. We went to this house of our friend there and we put what we have, these little furnishes on the dirt floor. This guy helped us, Stanislaw Soltys helped us. And he went back with the horses, back to his home, he had to give back the horse to the neighbor. That was sacrificing. I don’t know how he did it or why he did it. It was not human, that was angel work. In this time to go back, to endanger the horses, which is all what the people have, a horse, a cart, but he did it. And she gave us a little products, half a bread, which was the big peasant breads, and some beans, some barley, and we’ Il have something to cook and to eat. That was our food at the beginning. And so we are being there with all this people around us, other people living there. And Fryda went to the house, which was their house before the war, their apartment. And there was the janitor of the house, which was the janitor before the war. He was a carpenter working in their furniture store. A dirty, drunk man. And she said to him, “Maybe there will come some post here on this address. We are here living...” and she gave the address where we are living. And he, “And what will be if I bring you a post from your father?” And she says, “Well, you will get a hug and a kiss.” He said, “All right.” A few days later he came with a card, post card from Auschwitz. And he said, “Pana Fryda (ph), Miss Fryda, I get a kiss.” And she give him a kiss and a hug. “I got post card from your father.” And we have this post card. You saw it I guess. And he is sick and he asks to come to pick him up. In the meantime, I met another acquaintance of me. He had a dental office, quite a primitive office, but a dental office in an apartment which wasn’t his. It did belong to a Jewish woman before the war. She was even the owner of the house. And she and her daughter survived. But in this moment, she wasn’t there yet. She was in a camp somewhere. And I met him and I said to him, “What are you doing?” And he said, “Well I have here a dental office. But I’m leaving this office. I want to sell it because I am leaving to the once German territory. There I will organize a modern dental office, an apartment and I will be living there.” He married, he survived as a partisan. He married a Polish, Gentile woman. And he lived together with her. I guess he had some children with her already. But he was, he was a partisan in the Socialistic, not in the AK, in the AL, that was Armia Ludowa. That was the Volks party. And they were more lenient to the Jews. And he was a good fighter. He was a strong guy and he was really fighting there, in this army. And he said, “My party will help me to organize there.” I said to him, “Sell me your office here, for a begin, it will be good for me.” He said, “I will not sell you. I will rent it to you because maybe I don’t find nothing there. I will come back.” Said, Okay. I can’t give you nothing. I don’t have nothing. But for the first money what I will make as a dentist I will send it to you somehow.” And I start to organize a practice. And I had first of all, aroom to sleep, a nice room to sleep with a bed, with a couch, quite a nice room and a nice kitchen. And that was for the moment a wonderful solution. But I started to think, “If he did it, 22 maybe I can do the same. I will go to the German occupied, German-Polish occupied territories, Poland occupies German territories. And there were a lot of dentists and dentist equipment and I will organize my clinic there. And to live there.” And I went there, but I didn’t find nothing which I would like. So I left Fryda there. We met there another guy, a survivor who was already working for the Polish security, in the Polish security. He wrote a book about it. He lives here in the United States. He became a very rich guy here. And he became an officer. He survived in his village there. However they were trying to kill him from the AK, too. But he survived somehow. And he was in this part which became occupied by the Russians first, the first month there. And the Polish units there sent him to an officer’s school and he became an officer 1n the Polish security. And then when the Russians moved, he moved with them. He came to Krakow. And he make a lot of, find a lot of Polish people whom, whom he gave over to, handed over to the Polish security. But while the Russians occupied the German part, they sent him to Wroclaw as an officer there of their security. And then they send him to Lidnice, Lidnitz, where we were. And where I was looking for some dental equipment, he was working 1n his job to look for Germans. And we met. And we make a recognition as a Jew and he as a Jew. We didn’t talk too much about it. He said, “What can I do for you?” I said, “You can help me to find some...” He said, he’ Il try.

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How did you, let me just interrupt briefly. How did you make that recognition? Was there some special way?

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Well, I recognize him as a Jew. His name was Polish, Zalewski (ph). And when I met him, I said, “Zaleski, but what is your real name?” And he was from Kolbuszowa, which was not far from my village, about twelve kilometer. That’s about eight miles. It was quite close. And I knew people from Kolbuszowa. And he told me, “My name is Zalschitz (ph), Nafthali Zalschitz.” And he was called Tadek Zalewski, Tadeusz Zalewski (ph). But I left Fryda with him, and I went back to Krakow to see how to organize life in Krakow. I found some instrument which I can use there. And when I came to Krakow, I found this, I have to go, well I mix up because I don’t go chronological. Before we left I went to Auschwitz to take Father, her father from Auschwitz.

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You went actually to the camp?

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It was no more camp there. [Phone rings.] It was liberated by the Russians. That was a card we have that he was there.

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Right.

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So I went there with the Russian trucks, I went there with taking ammunition to the front. There was still war, but Auschwitz was already liberated. And he was the one who remained in the hospital there because he couldn’t go farther. And he said better, they ask to leave, but he said he preferred to stay here to be burned and not to go. And they shoot all the other people who went there.

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Did you, before you, so this is around February 1945, right? 23

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It’s January, still January.

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Okay, did you know, did you know what had happened at Auschwitz at that point?

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Well, I knew from Polish accounting, but when I came there I found everything. I found everything. And when I saw him, I had all the history. That was a man who was taller than me and he was fifty-six pounds, I guess. I took in a blanket a heap of bones. And I was waiting for a truck to take him to Krakow. But that was before we left to the occupied territories there. And Fryda took care of him, and he came to his quite normal. But that was already February when we left for... even more later, maybe March already. It is difficult now to remember the dates exactly. So we left Father in this apartment where we lived. We left to him. And we went to look for, find some existence there with the idea maybe we’ll take him over there to us.

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Can we go back? I know you already did go forward, but go back to the Auschwitz experience and what you... you mentioned you really discovered what had gone on when you were there. What did you experience?

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Not too much. All what Father-in-law told us. I didn’t have the time and the courage to go to look what happens around. But he had enough to recount his stories of what happens during the time. But on the way back from this occupied territory to Krakow, I have a car accident. And I have broken my leg, my hand here, and I was taken to the hospital instead to go home. Somehow I could let know Fryda that I am in the hospital. That was everything through people, which are communicating, commuting there and back. So, she came back. She decided to come back. She didn’t have money, not even for to pay the Russians to give the vodka for commuting with them. But while she was at this friend’s house, he became our good friend, this officer, this Tadek Zalewski. His wife, she was Jewish too, she survived also on Christian papers. She said, “T can’t give you anything money.” She want to give her some jewelry, but Fryda didn’t want to take it. But while she was sleeping, she put in her bag a golden bracelet. And Fryda when she got up, she said, “What is this yet? I didn’t have a bracelet.” She said, “Take it, you’Il need it. Take it, youll need it. I don’t need it now. Someday you’ll pay me back.” I don’t remember if she took it. I guess she took it and she came back to me, to the hospital. And she had to take care of this poor father and of this poor husband. In the meantime, we got connection by mail with a brother of her father, an uncle, Uncle Solomon in the United States. And when he heard that his brother survived, that we survived, he open... in Krakow, an open account. “How much you need, you can have and take.” And there was the connection who gave us the possibility to survive further. But that was already a few months later, because mail didn’t function so easy.

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At that time were you really thinking that you wanted to stay in Poland permanently?

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