On Thursday morning at 1 a.m. an order [19] was given that all Jews should
leave the town.³⁰ A lot of people went to Błońsk³¹ and a lot to Koźminek.³² But
most of them went to Warsaw. We went there, too. The inhabitants of Warsaw
received us with hostility. For three nights we were wandering around the
streets, until we were ordered to go to Dzielna Street, where there was a rallying
point for refugees. My father and mother worked, so we were not doing
too badly. Our brother sent us ten-kilogram packages from Russia.³³ My father
got another job, and he earned his living in glass-making. Mummy did cleaning
and laundry for people. My father had no more strength left to work, so we
sold a lot of our things. Mummy was overworked and got sick, and nobody in
the family made any money. We wanted to save our dear mother, so we sold
our last belongings and were left without clothes or shoes. One time my eldest
sister came up to bed and wanted to give mummy some food and mother
couldn’t swallow anymore. Seeing this, we, the children and mother’s sisters,
started screaming and crying. But that didn’t help. We were orphaned, I and my
sister. At Nowolipki Street 76, we were in mourning for four weeks. We didn’t
want to do anything anymore and we started to neglect everything. Seeing
that, my aunts tried to get us to live together with them at Elektoralna Street 5.
After moving from Nowolipki Street 76 to Elektoralna Street 5, we were fine
because we got free meals and a piece of bread. After that misfortune they tried
to put me in the day-care, where I get meals four times a day. But our sorrow
will never be forgotten.
2 September [19]41
Minia Mądra
30 The Jews from Lipno were ordered to leave the town by 21 December 1939. Fearing robbery and persecutions associated with forced resettlement, most of them left before that date. See Ringelblum Archive. Accounts from the Territories Incorporated into the Third Reich, eds. M. Polit, M. Siek (forthcoming).
31 Most likely a reference to the county town of Płońsk.
32 Koźminek (Kalisz Regierungsbezirk). Probably a mistake in the town’s name.
33 At the turn of 1939 and 1940 many Jews, especially young ones, fled to the areas occupied by the Red Army. Food parcels were sent from there to family and friends in the Warsaw ghetto. The “Russian parcels”, which became the basis of the existence for many families, were still arriving several months after the German invasion of the USSR
