Survival in Occupied Poland

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“You know I first left the ghetto in 1942, and I worked and disguised myself as Aryan, a Pole. It was so much secrecy, I was constantly frightened and never could trust anyone. I met and smuggled with all these Polish boys who were gangs as I recall, bad people. They let me stay with them as long as I smuggle, I recall.” 

“We hid in this hole in the kitchen my father had made of bricks; when the Nazis came searching, we were in this hole for 8 days from April 19th till the 27th of 1943. This was you know during the time of the final solution. We came out of hiding and the entire ghetto was burned to the ground. Only our building, which was the laundry facility made of brick, had stayed up. Any other building and we would have been burned alive when the Nazis destroyed the ghetto.” 

“You can never trust anyone; not Poles or even other Jews. You never tell anyone you’re Jewish, as your life depended on it.” 

“Something a lot of Americans don’t know is how every Jew was circumcised when no one else was, and this allowed for such easy identification that Poles would pull down the pants of any Jewish boy or man to see if he was Jewish. And the Poles collaborated with the Nazis and would turn in these men or boys to the Gestapo and in reward would get a bottle of vodka and a pound of sugar. The Poles hated the Jews and wanted rid of them just like the Nazis, and the reward was only a bonus.”