barely 3 months; from there he was brought for an interrogation and stayed in Pawiak. The fellow wormed his way into the confidence [4] of all the inmates with his softly-spoken manner and smooth tongue, talking to the Jews with a greasy snout as if he only wanted to be a friend of the Jews. What turned out? He found out everything that the Jews talked about and then passed it on to the Germans. He was the only one to organise things so that only the Jews went to work, and at work he helped to incite the Polish inmates to beat the Jews on the orders of the gendarmes, as savagely as possible.
The reproaches and curses of noble-minded gentiles like Duboi681 who swore at the Poles who beat Jews didn’t help. Pruszyński was always agitating.
Eventually the Jews agreed among themselves and sent coded messages home to raise money in the region of 20,000 zlotys and to try to have Pruszyński released. This is what indeed happened: Pruszyński was released and the Jews breathed a sigh of relief.
Later, however, an even better thing occurred:
[5] One evening, the Polish inmates were working in the yard and as it turned out, as a result of a prearranged agreement with the key-holders a large group of Polish prisoners escaped.
After that, the positions of corridor supervisors and interpreters were filled by Jews. I myself became an interpreter in my group. From then on things improved. Not only did I have enough to eat, but I had enough to gorge myself. Do you see how I look? That is still from Pawiak. If only I can manage to stay another summer and winter in the boarding house—in Pawiak—rather than in the ghetto in Czerniaków’s keep.
ARG I 443 (Ring. I/1051).
Description: duplicate, handwritten, Yiddish, 145x183 mm, minor damage and missing fragments, 3 sheets, 5 pages.
