"In 1937 or 1938, I was enrolled... in a private Jewish school." "It was a private school for educating... potential geniuses." "Every Jewish mother considered her child... to be a potential genius." "Sometimes my father would take me out for some fruit liqueur." "He liked sweets." "He'd buy the liqueur for me... but tell me not to say anything to my mother." "I remember my father." "He was a kind-hearted man." "There was this game that we would play." "We would walk on stilts... or play jump rope." "You know, things you do when you're a kid." "When I look back on it now... it seems like it was a very fun time." "I remember I was spending summer with my mother." "The window facing the park was open, and my mother was downstairs... and someone else was there, possibly my sister." "Stefa heard something on the radio... and she yelled through the window that there would be no war." "And I remember my mother dancing in the park." "WORK MAKES YOU FREE" "(I REMEMBER)" "The war broke out." "I stood in the window of our beautiful, light-filled apartment." "I remember... that I saw a vast number of soldiers in an impressive army." "I was looking down on them from above." "It was the advance... of the German infantry." "An order was issued to go to the ghetto:" "the Jewish district." "There is this house... with a hallway full of people." "We are sitting." "It was considered lucky to get a seat on the stairs." "I remember... the young people, the kids... wanted to make contact with each other." "I fell in love with a girl... who lived close by." "I remember that her name was Anka." "We sat on the balconies... before the ghetto was completely closed off." "There were kisses, you know, like kids do." "Ghetto or no ghetto." "Jew or non-Jew." "Love, feelings, desire, it's all the same." "They hanged everybody on Lokietko Street." "She was hanged, too." "They hanged my girlfriend." "Really." "A so-called Aktion began." "Everything was set up." "We escaped from the ghetto." "My aunt Marylka welcomed us as family." "That wasn't easy... because it was the time of the ghetto... the time of the so-called Aryan side... the time of danger, the time of armbands... when being a Jew or not being a Jew... meant life or death." "Marylka said, "Listen, we'll hide you under the bed.' '" "So I stayed under the bed." "I had a little hiding place there... living on the floor." "After a few days I realized... there was something going on in this room." "There were people there... who spoke German." "I saw uniforms..." "I saw machine guns and weapons." "Above my bed, above my head... something was going on... some rhythmic movements." "I was terrified." "For me, the German language was a death sentence." "And here, suddenly, it meant laughter, joy... vodka and other things." "I didn't know what was going on." "I didn't know what was going on." "I was in hiding for many months." "I was in hiding in my so-called aunt's house... which was the safest place in the world." "There was no better place than under the bed of a whore... for the Germans." "One day some officials came... and told her to go to some kind of a German sanitary institution... and it turned out that... someone reported that she had a venereal disease." "So we had to leave." "I was, you understand... a kind of Jewish monster." "Red hair, pale, skinny... with frightened eyes and a long nose." "This group of thugs... appeared around us." "They called out, "Jew boy!"" "You know what that means." "They brought a German soldier from somewhere... and said, "These are Jews." "These are Jews."" "A crowd in the afternoon." "Around us, this mob of spectators... aggressive spectators." "Spectators, you know." "Escape wasn't possible." ""Jews!" "We caught the Jews!" "We are giving you the Jews."" "So these officers said to take us to the camp." "It was a long journey." "People were dying." "Our group was getting smaller." "There was one soldier left... and us, and darkness." "My mother gave him her wedding band... and he said, "Run."" "We had nowhere to go." "We were walking through the streets." "There were no people." "Nobody." "And we got to the Korczak cemetery." "It was huge, magnificent." "We decided... that this was a good hiding place." "We found a few graves... where you could move the stone... and go inside." "I've never felt... as calm and safe as I did inside somebody else's grave." "Every day... was a victory of survival." "I remember we were taken to the Umschlagplatz... in wide rows, I think." "Maybe eight... or even 12 people in one row." "It took a very long time... because they would stop us in front of every building." "They would select some people from that building... they would line them up in rows... and then they would walk another 25 paces to the next gate... so they could do it all over again." "I remember some people crying and others being beaten." "Somebody was killed inside because he was sick and couldn't walk." "Jedrek was a small child, and my mother was carrying him." "All of it... was creating a terrifying tension." "At some point... somebody walked by, a Jewish policeman." "It turned out that he was a friend of my mother's." "He took us to a building that they didn't take people from." "We found this out later." "This house was like out of a movie." "There were lots and lots of people there." "An unusually large number of people." "We were stepping all over them." "You couldn't get through otherwise." "Then, I remember, my mother's brother found us." "He had already been to the Umschlagplatz looking for us." "He didn't know we had managed to escape." "He found us and took us back." "By then it was considered safe again." "The Aktion was over." "They wouldn't do a second Aktion there." "My mother didn't believe it." "She decided to escape from the ghetto." "We passed through Waha Street." "There was a German officer posted there... who had already been bribed." "As we walked down the street, two blackmailers approached us." "We must have looked terrible." "These blackmailers were actually very decent people." "I think my mother gave them 20 zlotys... not a large amount." "They offered to take us to a tram stop... but my mother refused." "Once you were in the ghetto... all you thought about was escaping." "You thought that you could live outside... but that wasn't the case." "The Aryan side was very dangerous." "Danger lurked everywhere... even more so than in the ghetto, as a matter of fact." "Of course, I'm not talking about during an Aktion... when they would take people out and kill them." "But the worst killers in the ghetto were hunger and disease." "On the Aryan side, it wasn't hunger or disease... but the people themselves." "Then, Stefa Szereszowska escaped from the ghetto with her family." "She didn't know what to do with her kids." "My mother took care of little Peter." "The fact that he had red hair made him stand out." "So he was taken from one place to the other on the Aryan side." "He moved from one hiding place to another." "By tram." "To keep him from being discovered... they put a "Hitler Youth" uniform on him... and he pretended to be a German." "Because Germans also had red hair." "Mrs. Klosowska didn't know that we were Jewish... so we stayed with her." "I constantly had to be careful because I liked to hum." "I had to be careful... because I caught myself humming "bad" songs." "I was humming Jewish songs, the ones from the ghetto." "Songs that kids would sing for a piece of bread." "People started saying, "There are Jews here."" "Mrs. Klosowska came upstairs to see my mother... and they started talking." "She told my mother what people had been saying... and my mother told her that we were Jews." "She was a very decent woman." "Nevertheless, she was scared." "So we had to leave." "I don't even quite remember where we moved." "It was a very chaotic time." "At that time, an uprising broke out in the ghetto." "I remember I saw... clouds of smoke." "It was Easter." "I had this kind of desire, as I see it today... to separate myself from Jewish people." "I remember..." "I repeated things I had heard." "I heard comments that the Jews were being burned... and that it was a good thing." "There was a woman there... and I repeated to her... that it was good the Jews were burning." "Her reaction... was not one of approval." "She scolded me." "They were in this... underground organization." "One day this organization intercepted some denunciations... written by two women... who lived across from us." "One was a fortune-teller, the other a seamstress." "They had written that Jews were living there, meaning us." "They intercepted denunciations about other people, too." "My mother didn't hesitate a moment." "We escaped immediately." "This organization then killed... the fortune-teller and the seamstress." "But we were already gone." "I was taken to the Biernacki family, where my brother was staying." "He wasn't circumcised." "He was born when the ghetto was being formed." "While I was staying with the Biernacki family... two men came one day... and said they'd heard that Jewish kids were hiding there." "Mr. Biernacki took my brother, who was younger than me... and pulled his pants down to prove that we were not Jewish." "That was good enough... for about two days." "In the meantime, in Warsaw... my mother was arrested." "One day the Kripo came... which means the criminal police, and took my mother." "When this family in the Praga district... found out about the arrest... they were scared that they would beat her... and that she would tell where I was." "So they told me to leave the house... and walk around... which I did." "I experienced what all Jews were experiencing at that time." "I didn't know what to do with myself." "Suddenly, I found myself in front of a basilica." "I went inside, and some priests came in." "They were praying, yet they noticed me." "They were probably thrilled to see such a religious kid." "I sat there, I don't remember how long... but I sat there for a few hours, not knowing what to do... whether I should go or stay or go back home... or where I should go." "And I decided to go back to that family... because I had nowhere else to go." "And they took me... out of town." "I should stop here... because while I stayed with that family... nobody told me that my mother had been arrested." "But I knew that something was wrong." "I felt this tremendous weight... literally, a weight on my heart." "It was a time of intense religious feeling for me." "I was praying a lot back then... to God, to Jesus." "One day while I was praying... that weight was lifted off me." "Later I found out my mother was released from prison that same day." "I still carry these old issues around with me." "I can't seem to get rid of them." "Because what stayed with me after the war... was that element of hiding." "I am hiding all the time." "Even when I'm not really hiding, I'm still hiding somehow." "And sometimes, in totally unexpected situations... like in America, for example... when somebody asks me if I'm a Jew, I say no." "I had a special coat made for me with... what do you call it?" "With a custom-made lining... so you could put onions and potatoes and so on in there... and when I managed, when they didn't catch me..." "I would walk the streets like a barrel." "I had 20 extra pounds on me." "They would catch me, beat me, and throw the food away." "This was in the beginning." "They would throw whatever food I had into the street... the potatoes or the onions." "Sometimes I would come back home bleeding." "You can imagine what my mother would have felt seeing that." "But I enjoyed it." "I had a good time." "Yes, I had a good time." "I wasn't scared of anything." "At the Rozycki bazaar, I met a lot of Poles... and I took one guy as a partner... and we were smuggling food into the ghetto together." "He was 19 then and was already in the underground army." "Stasiek, yes." "And that's how I started to make good money." "I was somewhat of a hero to myself." "My family could live off me." "I was a hero to my family, I was going to the theatre..." "I ate chocolate and I had everything." "But on my way to the theatre..." "I saw tens or even thousands of people... lying in the streets." "I liked the theatre a lot." "I saw those tragedies, those dramas." "Excellent artists." "But..." "I don't remember." "But I went often." "I walked to the theatre over dead bodies." "Over dead bodies." "They were piled into those wagons." "It was terrible." "Everybody was so skinny." "And their eyes!" "Everybody was just staring." "But I got used to it." "No problem." "Not a problem." "A human being just wants to live." "Breathe and live." "For me, personally, nothing else was more important." "The day arrived when they came to our house." "Terrible." "It was terrible." "First thing in the morning." "My sister, my father, and I were still sleeping." "Suddenly we heard yelling and shooting." ""Everybody out!" "Everybody downstairs!"" "And they were shooting." "You couldn't even think straight." "My sister and I left the room we were in." "I wanted to get to the stairs." "We were on the third floor." "My mother grabbed my sister and me... and pulled us back into the room." "We had a credenza in the room... and she forced us inside... me and my sister." "This credenza had two shelves." "My sister was on top and I was below." "She locked the credenza with a key and left." "I never saw my mother again." "I was lying there quietly with my sister." "The Germans came and started kicking with their boots... but they didn't open the credenza." "They didn't open the credenza and after a while..." "Mostly, I remember the silence after the shooting." "There was this terrible silence and I heard the whistle of a train... from the Umschlagplatz on Stawki Street nearby." "I heard that and it was so terrible." "We couldn't stand up." "On Stawki Street there was this wall... and Lithuanians or Ukrainians... were shooting at the windows... just for fun." "I was afraid to stand up... so we just lay there... helpless, in fact, not knowing what to do with ourselves." "Silence." "After the terrible noise and shooting." "Suddenly I heard somebody... running down the stairs." "He was crying." "Crying terribly." "He cried so much that..." "If I can say it now, how I understand it now..." "I don't know how I took it back then... but I remember thinking that there was nothing to be scared of... because a German doesn't cry." "Only a Jew cries." "So if he cries, I don't have to be afraid:" "It's a Jew." "So I didn't hide... and my sister and I were just lying on the floor." "That man came into the room, and it was my father." "After a few days, once more..." "I am so stubborn and selfish..." "I told my father, " I have to escape." "I don't want to stay with you." ""I don't have a chance here." "I have to escape."" ""You are going to leave us?" "Yes, I want to escape."" "The next morning, while it was still dark... my father took me to Leszno Street, near Chlodna Street." "As I remember, my father gave me... a few Russian gold coins." "They were like little pigs, he said." ""You might need them."" "He gave me three of these "little pigs"... and I ran away." "And I think I told him, "Listen, I can't say goodbye..." ""because I'll cry and it will make my eyes red"... and that wasn't allowed." "So I ran away." "That was the last time I saw my father." "Through this whole time... all the time I was smuggling, I had this scout's hat with me." "Always." "In my coat pocket." "You know the kind." "I always had it in my pocket." "I kept it with me as an emblem or something like that." "When I put it on, I was a Pole." "That's how I got through the gate and out of the ghetto." "I knew that my first problem was blackmailers." "I had to watch out for blackmailers." "When they caught a Jew... they either took everything from him and left him alone... or they turned him over to the German police." "The Germans were giving awards for every little Jew... whether it was a girl or a boy." "A Jew had nowhere to go." "Polish people... most of them... were apathetic." "I mean, it wasn't their problem... this terrible risk of hiding a Jewish boy." "There was a small segment of Poles who were good... and a small segment of Poles who were bad and who said:" ""Thank God Hitler is cleansing Poland of the Jews."" "So the Jews had to run." "But I had a friend named Stasiek." "I had Stasiek." "I jumped on the tram and that was it." "And I'm going." "Where am I going?" "To the Praga district." "I don't know if Stasiek will welcome me." "Will he throw me out of his house?" "Back then it meant death for the whole Polish family... if they were caught hiding a Jewish boy." "I remember the moment I got there." "It was on the first floor." "It was so dark." "I knocked on the door, so scared, and not sure what would happen." "Would they take me in or not?" "Because of the terrible situation and the risk involved." "Stasiek saw me." "He was happy to see me." ""Jedrek, come inside."" "I walked in so scared." "His sister Niusia was there, and his mother." "They undressed me." "I had lice." "They cleaned me up and fed me." "Somehow..." "I managed to go to sleep." "And then, a tragedy." "I started to scream in the middle of the night." "And not in Polish... but in my family's tongue, my mother's tongue:" "Yiddish." "I had no control over it at all... and they got scared." "And Niusia, who was a beautiful Polish woman... around 20 years old, something like that... her friends were coming over to visit and have some vodka... and God forbid they should hear any Yiddish." "That was just unthinkable." "They had, I don't know what you call it... an empty space, a little niche... and they tried to put me in there and close the little door... and put rugs over it so they wouldn't hear my screams." "But that didn't help." "So Stasiek decided he would take me to his father." "His father was a janitor somewhere on Ogrodowa Street." "He told me his father was hiding Jews in the basement there." "Six Jews and a little girl." "So he was taking me there, and I could scream down there... among the other Jews." "He took me there on his bike." "He was risking his life, because I'm circumcised." "I could shout a thousand times that I was a Pole... but it wouldn't do any good." "He took me there to that basement... but I didn't like it there." "People were fighting with each other." "There was no air." "His father was a janitor there and he was providing food." "After a while, I don't know how long..." "I must have decided that I didn't want to stay there." "I asked the father to bring Stasiek over... that I wanted to talk to him." "So Stasiek came." "I must have said..." ""If you can't take me to your house..." ""I'm going back to the ghetto." ""I'm fed up with this living in fear every minute of the day."" "This German law says that a Jew doesn't have a right to live." "It was terrible living in hiding on the Aryan side... with Aryan papers." "It was terrible." "So Stasiek took me back home." "And then the tragedy happened." "A few days later... some Poles killed a German in the neighborhood." "The Germans started searching houses, and they found those Jews." "They found them and must have beaten them up... and must have asked them who had been hiding them... because they pointed to Stasiek's father." "So they killed him along with the Jews." "Stasiek came home crying... that his father had been killed." "It was horrible." "I understood that under such circumstances..." "I could not stay at his house, but he didn't throw me out." "Despite all of this." "When he saw what was happening... he remembered that he had some family in Biala Rawska... so I told Stasiek to take me there after the mourning period." "It didn't take long." "Three, four, maybe five days... in the morning... the Germans came." "All Jews were to gather within one hour... at a certain bazaar." "At some point this Polish guy approached me... and said, "Hey, you Jew."" "He must have recognized me from the fear in my eyes and such." "After he said that..." "It was summer, and there was this field of rye there on the left... and I started to run right across this field." "I managed to escape." "This was in the morning." "I came to the train station... and it turned out that there was a train scheduled to go to Rogowo... but not until 2:00 p.m." "And that meant death for me." "What was I supposed to do now?" "I remember, I bought myself two apples... and then something terrible happened in the park." "I was entering the park." "There was this little river there, some water... and I saw two girls sitting on a bench." "I knew right away that they were Jewish... but I didn't speak to them." "I didn't want to have anything to do with Jews." "Nothing at all." "I wanted to be alone." "And I walked away... maybe 100 meters or so." "I don't remember." "And then something horrible happened." "You probably can't even comprehend it." "Some undercover guy approached them." "They started talking." "I heard yelling." "He shot them both on the spot." "And I'm sitting there, seeing all this." "Now, imagine." "Maybe it's not true, maybe it is... but I'm alive." "The undercover guy..." "There was a path where I was sitting... and he was coming toward me." "Later I tried to understand what I had done." "I had two options: either run away... or go toward this guy." "I bit into my apple." "I had my hat on... and I walked toward that guy on the path... and he did not stop me." "When I passed him, I sank into total depression." ""I don't want to live anymore!" "I simply don't want to!"" "I went to the bathroom in my pants." "I had shit all over myself." ""This is the end." "I don't want to live anymore." "I can't take it."" "I got out of that park." "I saw a little house." "I knocked on the door of this house... and some lady opened it." "I said, "Listen, I am a Jew."" "Normally I wouldn't have said it." ""But please let me come in and stay here..." ""until 2:00 p.m." ""Then I'll leave, and I'll go to the train station..." ""and I'll go to Rogowo."" "And this woman says, "Come in, boy."" "She took those dirty clothes off me, because I had shit all over." "She took it all off and cleaned me up." "She gave me some milk and put me..." "I remember this vividly." "She put me to bed... and the sheets were white and clean for me." "For me, this was like something from another world." "I lay down and fell asleep." "Later this poor woman woke me up crying." "She said, " You know where I'm supposed to take you." ""But, unfortunately, you can't stay here." ""My husband and children will be home soon." "You have to..."" "She was crying. "You have to leave."" "So I left." "I went to Warsaw... and I went back to Stasiek's in the morning." "I had nowhere else to go." "There was still an Aktion going on, uninterrupted, every day... for 8,000 Jews:" "adults, kids, old people." "I went to Stasiek's." "They welcomed me... but there was no way I could stay there." "With my screaming, you know, and everything else... it wasn't possible." "I decided I would go back to the ghetto." "Because of that constant fear, every minute, you know." "I knew I could live there another week or so... with the other Jews." "I would be free." "It wasn't long." "It's hard to believe." "I just can't believe it." "They caught me." "They caught me and took me to the Umschlagplatz... and put me in the transport car." "I am on my way to Treblinka." "Kids, old people." "It was horrifying." "At some point, I start to look for a way out." "Escape." "What happens?" "A chance." "It's very rare that something like that happens." "But it does happen." "I found a piece of wood... in the floor which was rotting... and we managed to make a hole... to the point where I could slip through it." "Unbelievable." "Sometimes I can't believe it myself." "I got... some kind of an adrenaline rush... and slipped my body halfway through it." "It was so terrible down there... the wind and the wheels... the steel, everything all together." "It scared me so much." "Part of my body was outside the car... so I pulled myself back in." "I have no courage to escape." "I am scared." "I am scared and I know that I am going to Treblinka." "Next to me there is this young lady, this young girl." "She wants to jump." ""How do I jump?"" "Nobody knows how." "You do it instinctively, in a second." "How do you jump from a train?" "The train is going 35 miles an hour, more or less." "I don't know exactly." "She says, " I want to jump." "I don't want to go." "I want to jump."" "She slipped through the floor... supporting herself with her hands... and two of us were holding her legs." "When the train slowed down on a curve... we shoved her legs forward, you know... with force like that... and she fell underneath the car." "She fell the wrong way." "She fell under the wheels." "We heard the scream, and that was it." "So I'm going to Treblinka and I can't make up my mind." "After a while I made a decision." "I wouldn't jump like her." "I'd jump the other way around." "On my back." "How do you jump on your back?" "You stick your legs out first, through the floor... you support yourself... on your elbows... and you keep your head up." "Two people are holding your head." "They wrap some rags around it." "And like we did with that girl's legs... they pushed my head through forcefully, very quickly." "I let my elbows through and fell... not on the rails themselves... but between the rails." "Nothing happened to me." "But I fainted." "I woke up between the rails." "I was lucky that another train wasn't coming." "I woke up, got up quickly and went into the woods." "I walked a few miles through the woods... and got to the train station... and went back to Warsaw." "And I returned to Stasiek's." "They put me to work... for the so-called Sonderkommando." "This was a special commando... where, after the gas, they burnt the bodies." "It was a tragedy when I saw it." "A real hell." "Like you used to tell your kids... that they will burn in hell when they do something bad." "It was a terrible shock for me... because I didn't know what to do." "I didn't know how to drag a corpse by the hands." "When the transport came... there were people in the cars... from France, from Holland... from all over Europe." "They could barely walk." "When they were on their way to the crematorium... there was a fence made out of tree branches... all the way from the gate where the forest started... to the crematorium building... so they wouldn't be able to see it right away, the smoke and fire..." "because we had transports at night sometimes." "When the transports came... they had to go on foot from the transport cars." "From the ramp... it was about half a mile... to the gas chambers." "A Red Cross ambulance was dispatched... upon the arrival of each transport... and they were carrying this gas, Zyklon." "It was called Zyklon." "Once the people got to the building... there was a big room for undressing... with benches and hangers." "People were undressing... believing that they were going to take a shower." "There were two chambers there." "Each was divided into two." "There was a sign there that said, "Entrance."" "And there were shower stalls." "At first glance, when they got there... they couldn't tell that it was, in fact, a gas chamber... because they saw shower stalls and things like that." "But when the chamber started to get crowded... these SS officers started to beat them with sticks... and blood was flowing." "They would hermetically seal the doors... like the ones they have in deep freezers... lined with felt in three places, and they would shut them tight." "Then, from the ambulance, they would..." "There was an opening on the left... one, two openings... so they would take a can of gas from the ambulance, open it... and throw it inside through that opening." "It took maybe 20 minutes... maybe up to half an hour." "Then the chambers were opened up... and you could see... that these people died standing up... because they were holding on to each other." "There were families there." "They were holding hands." "And then we had to take the bodies out." "Before the next transport came... the chambers had to be cleaned up, ventilated and set up again." "It was hard for these people to realize what was going on." "They were so tired and so mistreated." "These poor creatures could hardly walk." "Their legs could barely carry them." "I couldn't help them... couldn't give them any advice... that would help them escape from this hell." "There was no way." "We've discussed this already." "If I tell them, what will change?" "They'll gas them anyway." "The commando leaders, once in a while... would take those so-called old workers... and put them on the transport." "Then they would take on new workers... like me, for example." "And people rebelled." "The crematorium was set on fire... by four men." "They didn't know what to do with us... so they laid us down in a row, facedown, hands behind our backs... and shot every third one." "Quite a few friends were killed... and the rest were taken back." "So that was going on all the time... day and night, constantly." "Three shifts." "But those ovens were not up to the task... when the transports came from Europe... and there were lots and lots of people." "So they built two new crematoria... modern ones, modern crematoria... each with ten ovens... two chambers each." "The ovens were fed by a current of air... so the corpses would burn faster." "Modern chambers and undressing rooms were underground... and the gas was thrown in from above... and settled downward." "After people were gassed, there was an elevator... where they would put the dead bodies... and the elevator was brought up... and we would take the bodies from there." "We had metal gurneys which we would set down." "Every oven had a roller... with two guide poles... fitting the gurneys." "We would put the gurneys on the poles... two at the back... and two in the middle... and one had a kind of a fork... made out of reinforced steel." "It was spread out like this... and it was pushing it." "Well thought out." "A factory of death." "Unimaginable." "Unimaginable." "Never in my life did I think..." "I would ever survive something like that." "The thing was that you had to." "You had to." "I was only looking how to get myself out of that hell." "Barbed wire all over." "All you could see was the sky." "If you didn't see it, you can only imagine." "Like people burning in hell." "You just can't imagine it." "One cannot convey it at all."