takes the risk and embarks on the journey. If one were to look at the trembling women and female traders lining the streets in rows, continually doing favours and murmuring under their breath, whispering, “One cannot pass here, go back, they have just ‘caught’, take off your cap” and etc., then one would not walk in the street at all.
However, one must forget everything. Whoever heard of restraining oneself from going? Apart from one's own family, the door at home doesn't rest. People nevertheless come to find out if there is anything at the Joint for the festival. America is sending, so I didn't stop myself and went. I didn't simply go, one has to be alert. To take off the cap at every check. After calculating that there don't appear to be any more checks then one proceeds a bit more calmly.
Suddenly I feel a strong hand grab me and a furious voice chills the blood in my veins. I shudder and I hear a ringing in my ears, like bells. “Come, come, you dammed . . .” The street that is full of people empties around me. I spot a surly gendarme with a whip in hand who leads me towards a vehicle with bricks. Only now do I realise that I have been grabbed for work; I am shoved into the vehicle. I fall upon three Jews, already captured.[2] In the same blink of an eye, I recall my 12-year-old son with whom I had been walking. Through a crack in the vehicle, I see him standing and crying; he asks the gendarme about me but he is pushed aside, the vehicle moves: still crying he tries to run after the car but he soon stops, and he remains alone in the abyss of the Warsaw streets.
We ride, several more Jews are caught, especially those with beards, and we are driven further. Two of us leap off the vehicle as it moves. After that, the gendarme makes me responsible for those remaining. We are taken out of the city to a work detail where 200 workers work for the community, which pays them. We the 5 captured Jews were not at all necessary for this work. Only for sadistic purposes and to provide entertainment.
We were apparently being asked to work alongside the hired workers who worked in shelters. At lunchtime all the workers went off to eat, except for the 5 of us who had been captured. We were lined up facing the wall and told that we were to be shot and our names and ages were accurately recorded. After a short while, several gendarmes came over to us. At that moment the real sadistic work began. From all sides we were besieged by officers with photo cameras. It is impossible to describe what they started to do with us. We completed all kinds of exercises and each phase lasted a few minutes and
