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We were, of course, survivors of a period in which every able
bodied person, age 14 and up, had to work 10 hours a day, 6 days
a week. Otherwise, we would be shipped to Germany to forced labor
camps or to work in factories of the German war machine. We were
given rations of food so, um, most of us went often hungry. We
were decimated by disease. Typhus, typhoid fever, was prevalent.
My mother survived typhoid fever. Us kids did not get sick.
Uh...we were...uh...terrorized by continuous...uh.. dragnets,
"lapanki," [roundups] we called it in Polish. You walk on a
street from your house to your aunt's house, and suddenly the
street is closed by the gendarmes on both sides. And all the
people are surrounded and asked to show their papers. "Are you
working somewhere? Who are you? What's your occupation? What are
you doing now?" And whoever appeared not employed in a meaningful
way that involves supporting the German war effort was being
singled out, put in a truck, and shipped to the railroad station
and put on a train and shipped to Germany. There were hardly any
families that did not feel the...the tragedy of war.
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