in March 1942, my brother died in April 1941, my sister in February 1942, my
second brother in March 1942. Now I don’t have anybody. They all starved
to death.
Until mid-1941 it was still quite good, I was travelling and slipped onto
the train to Piaseczno, where I got potatoes, beets, money. All the goyim knew
me there so they gave me all that. Everyone there was good to me, even the
policemen. When they “started” shooting and threatened the death penalty,
⁶⁰ I stopped going. And anyway, I didn’t have anything to wear during
the winter.
Unpleasant experience? When a gendarme or a junak⁶¹ caught me, they
sent me back on 6 August,⁶² and from there to the ghetto. Once a gendarme
wanted to take my supplies, he asked me what I preferred: 30 lashes or the
smuggled stuff. I said 30 lashes – he let me go.
I was my mother’s guardian; if it hadn’t been for me, she would have died
even earlier. And at the beginning of the war – we fled with daddy towards
Lublin. We were captured by the Germans, starved for three days and then
let go. And that hunger in Warsaw, and the passage to the other side, constant
shots, junacy, Germans, there was a lot of fear. Once a Polish policeman
caught me, took me to a tavern and got me drunk. I snored all night.
The nicest experience. When I was bringing “clean” goods from the other
side. Before the war it was pleasant to go with our host to the forest. The rides
with daddy to Warsaw were also very pleasant.
What is war? That is the worst, it “wrecks” the whole nation. Some profit
during the war and others die. If Grandpa (Piłs[udski]) had lived, there would
60 By the power of a decree of governor general Hans Frank of 15 October 1941, Jews were subject to the death penalty for leaving the ghetto. On 17 November 1941, based on the sentence of the German Sondergericht (special court), the first 8 Jews caught without a pass outside the ghetto were shot.
61 Junak, pl. junacy – a colloquial name of the employees of the Building Service (Baudienst), a paramilitary organisation established by Hans Frank’s order of December 1939, consisting mostly of young men of Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Latvian nationality and the Volksdeutsche. They took an active part in German police operations, e.g. during the deportations to Treblinka.
62 6 Sierpnia Street 34 (now Nowowiejska Street, the building was demolished after the war), was the address of a blue police station for the Warsaw district. See M. Getter, Policja granatowa w Warszawie 1939–1944 [in:] Warszawa lat wojny i okupacji, 1972, issue 2, p. 214.
