I was trying to save my sister as much as I could. I kept giving her raw
swede, but nothing helped. She swelled up and died.
Nice experiences. The show in the common room in Łowicz, we got [. . .]
cakes with coffee, I ate my full.
(thinks) I can’t find words to speak of my experiences. Oh! You were
starving all day long, and in the evening, you were happy to have a piece
of swede. I wouldn’t beg, even if it meant starving to death. I also saw a lot of
bad people, when I was already an orphan. People would rob me at the Point.
They even stole my father’s photograph.
What is war? Bad, they resettled us, we were separated, we saw what it’s
like, some people are better off than before the war. I know everything inside,
but I can’t express it.
[11] Hejnoch Jarzębski, aged 10, parents Jankiel and Perla Sztajnwasser,
born and lived in Pustelnik. Father – a shoemaker, employed two workers,
worked at home, died in 1937. Mother was a washerwoman after father died.
Siblings – two brothers and two sisters – supported by their eldest married
brother.
At the beginning of the war, we were doing fine, we traded bread, brothers
baked, we sold it. Later I would also go from village to village and collect
bread and groats from the peasants; they gave me that for free. I didn’t know
anything about hunger.
In April 1942 we were expelled from Pustelnik.⁷⁶ One day at 5 a.m.,
when we were not expecting anything, the gendarmes and policemen came,
surrounded our ghetto, ordered us to take our belongings to the courtyard,
and then poured kerosene over it and set all our belongings on fire.
Before that, the gendarmes came to the houses with revolvers and
ordered everyone to get dressed and leave within five minutes. Whoever didn’t
do that, they killed them. That’s how they killed our rabbi and his son, who
were sleepy.
76 Pustelnik (Warsaw County). Before WWII, together with neighbouring Marki, about 850 Jews lived there. They were resettled to the Warsaw ghetto in March 1942. See Brustin-Berenstein, “Deportacje i zagłada skupisk żydowskich w dystrykcie warszawskim”, tab. IIa, p. 106.
