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"I put him in the suitcase and I told him that 'you may not cry...'" | |||
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Sarah (Sheila) Peretz Etons Born 1936 Chelm, Poland 
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I was in that shack hiding for over two years. Never went outside. Uh, in the winter it was very cold; in the summer it was hot. And, um, he used to bring us, uh, usually, uh, a loaf of bread for both of us every day and a bottle of water. Once in a blue moon for a special occasion he would bring a little soup. And, uh, sometimes he had, if he had to go away on business where they send him to another town for a day, or some other, he would, his wife or his daughter will never give us anything so we starved for a day or two until he came back. And my mother and I been in that, uh, uh, shack for--at night sometimes, my mother used to sneak out to clean up the [chamber] pot, and, uh, I never went out. Uh, she wouldn't let me out, and I was afraid to. She was, uh, I, we didn't have anything to do. I didn't have anything to play. I was at that time six years old, and I didn't know...I used to play with the chickens and play with the straws on the, there was a lot of straw on the floor and he used to, he put up, uh, a kind of a mattress or something where we slept in a corner with blankets, and that was where we stayed. | ||
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Hans Rudelsheim Born 1922 Kampen, Netherlands 
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Hans was born to a Jewish family in the small Dutch town of Kampen. His father worked as a tailor, and he taught Hans about the tailoring trade.
1933-39: Hans was a skilled tailor, and an accomplished pianist as well. Inquisitive about all subjects, Hans loved to read and to keep abreast of current events. 1940-43: When the Jews in the Dutch provinces were ordered to relocate to Amsterdam in January 1942, the Rudelsheims complied. In early 1943, while in hiding with a Christian family near Leiden, Hans sneaked out to visit his friend Ina. Suddenly, a German came to Ina's door. Hans hid behind some clothes in a bathroom closet. The German searched the house and when they reached the bathroom, Ina opened the dark closet, saying as casually as she could, "... and this is the closet." Satisfied no one else was in the house, the German left. In March 1943 Hans was betrayed. He was deported, and perished in a concentration camp. |
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Lonia Goldman Fishman Born 1922 Wegrow, Poland 
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Lonia had three sisters and one brother. Her parents owned a cotton factory in the town of Wegrow. The Goldmans were a religious family, strictly observing the Sabbath, the Jewish holidays and the dietary laws.
1933-39: After studying all day at public school, I attended a religious school for girls called Beis Yakov where I studied Hebrew, the Bible and Jewish history. Later, when I was in high school, a private tutor came to the house to teach me Hebrew. My favorite hobby was knitting. After finishing high school I learned the quiltmaking trade. We moved to Warsaw in the mid-1930s when my father opened a down feather factory there. 1940-44: We were trapped in the Warsaw ghetto when it was sealed off in November 1940. There in the ghetto, at age 18, I married Sevek, a tailor. In 1942 Sevek and I escaped to Wegrow, and then to a village near the town. A peasant couple, Jan and Maria, agreed to hide us. With bloody fingernails we dug a dank cellar "grave," lined it with straw, and lay motionless in the hole, concealed from danger for 18 months. Jan and Maria risked their lives by bringing us food and emptying our chamberpot every day. Once a week they sponged us down. Lonia and Sevek were liberated by the Soviets in 1945. They had to relearn how to walk after their many months of confinement. In 1948 the Fishmans emigrated to America. |
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Lisa Dawidowicz Born 1925 Ostrog, Poland 
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Lisa was born to a Jewish
family in the small city of Ostrog in southeastern Poland. Her parents operated
a grocery out of their residence; the front half of the house was a store
and the rear half was their home. Ostrog was an important center of Jewish
religious learning in Poland, and by 1933 Jews made up almost two-thirds
of the city's total population.
1933-39: My family was religious and we regularly attended services. I studied at a Polish school until the Soviets arrived in September 1939, at which time I briefly attended a Soviet school. But Soviet rule didn't alter our lives much. 1940-44: Suddenly everything changed. The Germans invaded Soviet-controlled Poland in June 1941 and reached Ostrog in July. They quickly set up a ghetto and organized the local Jews into work brigades. We realized by late 1942 that many of these groups were not returning from their work sites. We searched for a hiding place. A poor farm woman agreed to hide our family of five in an underground potato cellar--there was no room to stand and we could breathe only through a hole covered by pumpkins. We remained there for 16 months. Lisa was liberated when the Soviet army freed eastern Poland in 1944. After living in displaced persons camps in Germany, Lisa emigrated to the United States in 1949. |
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Shulamit Perlmutter (Charlene Schiff) Born 1929 Horochow, Poland 
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Shulamit, known as Musia,
was the youngest of two daughters born to a Jewish family in the town of
Horochow, 50 miles northeast of Lvov. Her father was a philosophy professor
who taught at the university in Lvov, and both of her parents were civic
leaders in Horochow. Shulamit began her education with private tutors at
the age of 4.
1933-39: In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and three weeks later the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland, where our town was located. Hordes of refugees fleeing the Germans streamed through our town. Soviet rule didn't change our lives very much. We remained in our home and Father continued to teach in Lvov. The most important change for me was at school; we were now taught in Russian. 1940-45: In 1941 the Germans invaded the USSR and set up a ghetto in Horochow. In 1942, with rumors that the ghetto was about to be destroyed, Mother and I fled. We had just hidden in the underbrush at the river's edge when we heard shots. We hid, submerged in the water, all night as machine guns blazed in the ghetto. By morning others were hiding in the brush and I heard a Ukrainian guard scream, "I see you there Jews; come out!" Most obeyed, but we hid in the water for several more days as the gunfire continued. Sometimes we would doze; once I woke to find Mother had vanished. Shulamit never saw her mother again and never found out what happened to her. Shulamit spent the rest of the war living in the forests near Horochow. She is the only survivor of her family. |
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David Levine Born 1929 Kovno, Lithuania 
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All of a sudden I, I heard a commotion and I heard noise outside the window. Our window faced the gate of the ghetto. When I looked out the window, there were buses lined up in front of the gate and I could see that the Ukrainians and Germans were taking the children into the buses. They were taking babies, children aged...all aged 10 or 11. And, uh, I had a child. I had my little nephew. He was only two and half years old and I knew that they were going to come, uh, and I could see that. And, uh, so what I did very quickly, I, I pulled a suitcase out from under my bed and I put him in the suitcase and I told him that "You may not cry, you may not speak, and you may not say anything or shout because if you do," I said, "The Germans will take you and you will die." He understood that even though he was only two and a half. He knew exactly what, what was happening. They, he...he had a feeling and I put the suitcase back under the bed and I jumped on top of the bed a couple of times to, to cause the dust to settle on it, so it would look like the suitcase had not been opened recently and and and I went back to the window to see what happened. Uh, the, uh...within, within a minute there was a Ukrainian soldier came through the door of the apartment, and he asked were there any children here. And I said, "No there aren't any." And he said, "I going to look and if I find any," he said, "Not only will I take the child, but you will come." Of course, in the beginning, he examined my papers to see I was only 14. I was strong enough to be able to work, but he looked at my papers and said that since I worked, he let me alone. But he said that, if he finds a child, I will go with him. And I said, "Well there aren't any." And he looked and looked. Of course, he didn't find. The little boy didn't say anything. | ||
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