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The Jews of Poland received the news that World War II had begun with mingled hope and fear. They hoped it would bring a solution to the Jewish problem, yet they feared the consequences in case of a German victory.

On Thursday, 7^th September, 1939, a week after German troops crossed the Polish border, the tragedy of the Rzeszow Jews began. On that day, many left their homes and joined the stream of refugees who were flowing eastwards. Hundreds of Jewish families were split and never came to united again.

On Friday, 8^th September, the town was bombed from the air and set on fire. It was occupied by the German troops the next day and we were at their mercy from then on.

Our first meeting with the Germans took us by surprise. The soldiers politely greeted people in the streets and offered them cigarettes and sweets. This behaviour on their part calmed our minds, and the poison of optimism began to corrupt us: that optimism which marked the credulous Jews and afterwards proved to be one of the chief factors enabling the Germans to carry out their plans.

At first, life seemed to become normal and everything returned to its own place. Shops were reopened while trade and commerce flourished. But then the Germans began their administration.

They issued orders imposing restrictions on Jews. They took men and women off the streets or from their homes and compelled them to engage in all kinds of humiliating tasks. On Rosh Hashana, the New Year, a number of Jews were detained while returning from the synagogue and were forced to carry logs and planks of wood across the River Wislok with their festival clothes on. After having worked at this for several hours, they were ordered to replace the wood where it had been. They were made to sweep the streets, to pick up filth and refuse with their bare hands and to clear the snow away. While at work they were very often beaten and kicked, compelled to lie in the mud and do various exercises. Nor were the Jewish women spared. They were taken to hospitals, given bloody rags and linen to wash, or else given flour sacks to clean with ice-cold water in barrels that stank of herring.

They set up a “Judenrat” or Jewish Council of 30 members, with Dr. Kleinman as Chairman. The Judenrat was made responsible for carrying out German orders and proved to be a very convenient tool in their hands.

The law requiring the wearing of the armband came into force in December, 1939. Every Jew had to wear a white armband with a blue Magen David on his left arm. Anyone who did not wear this in public was liable to be sent to prison or executed. Soon afterwards, the Jews were forbidden to travel on trains.

Jewish shops and property were placed under the management of the so-called “Volksdeutsche” (persons of German parentage born outside Germany or Austria) or Ukrainians. They kept the keys and collected all money which was deposited in Blocked Accounts at the banks. These managers very often took advantage of their positions to enrich themselves.

The Germans issued a Compulsory Labour order for Jews between the ages of 15 and 45. In due course, this provided a basis for deportation to concentration camps. The first big camp was set up at Pustkow near Dembica, and the cruel practices perpetrated there by the Gestapo soon made it notorious.

They then had a high wooden fence erected around a number of streets for the purpose of containing Jews and Jewish converts to Christianity. Thousands of Jewish families were driven into this Ghetto, at the gates of which there were always two German gendarmes on guard, by day and night. The part of the Ghetto lying between Targowica and Lwowska Streets was marked out in such a way that only the houses were in the quarter but the streets themselves were outside it. In order to pass from one house to another, people had to make holes in walls, cross over balconies or go through passages and gangways that were specially improvised for the purpose.

At first, Jews were allowed to leave the Ghetto with special passes in order to go to their stores or workshops. But on 10^th January, 1942, the

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Ghetto was closed off. Without any sources of income, cut off from the outer world, people began to starve. Beggars in swarms went knocking at doors of those who were not yet so badly off, begging for a potato or some soup. Many of them grew swollen with hunger and collapsed in the streets. A public kitchen was opened in the stairway of the Wachspress House on Kaziemierza Street, but could not provide enough soup for all those who were in need. Deportees were brought from Kalisz and Lodz and were also forced into the Ghetto, which was overcrowded beyond all imagination. Every inch of ground was used for living purposes. Four or five families were crowded into one flat. People slept on staircases, in garrets and passages. They had no privacy. They could not wash themselves – they became filthy. Such infectious diseases as typhoid and dysentery began to spread.

There was only one hospital in the Ghetto. It did not have even the most elementary medical supplies and could do nothing to help the sick who filled every square foot of the building.

The Germans now began their reign of terror. They would dash into Jewish houses killing all they found. One night, for instance, they stormed into the Lev House in Garncarska Street and murdered all that lived there. They did the same at the home of Kanarek on Galenzowska Street. They took all the men down into the cellar where a treasure was reported to be hidden. They made them dig and dig for hours, and then they shot them all. They prepared lists in advance and then engaged in an “Aktion” against Communists. They dragged them out of their houses and killed them in the courtyards. Later on, the corpses were piled on the ladder waggons, leaving a trail of blood all the way to the cemetery.

The Jews were compelled to work for 14 hours a day. The girls in particular were incessantly persecuted and terrorised by Dr. Ehaus, who was the District Officer of Rzeszow and a cruel perverted sadist. Dr. Ehaus used to strip them to their underwear and then beat them with his rubber truncheon. At the Fire Brigade building, the girls were murderously beaten by the Fire brigade men, regularly, after they had spent a day sweeping the streets.

When the authorities required the Ghetto Jews to pay one million zloty, the Judenrat imposed a share on each person according to his financial position, and the “contribution” was paid to the Germans on the specified day. Before long, they demanded another large sum of money and arrested 15 members of the Judenrat as hostages. At about this time, it was rumoured that Jews elsewhere were being deported to concentration camps near Lublin from which they were supposed to be sent to labour camps.

Early in July, 1942, the Ghetto was sealed off and nobody was allowed to leave for any purpose. It was divided into four parts and four transports were sent by train to unknown destinations. The old Jewish cemetery had been cleared of its gravestones at an earlier date and it now served as a gathering point for the transportees. On each occasion, the Germans selected old people and invalids and ordered them to dance until they fell. Then the Germans shot and killed them. At this assembly point, the Gestapo stripped all the Jews of any savings and valuables which they had brought with them.

This was known as the “Major Aktion”, and the only Jews left were those who had succeeded in having a special stamp on their identity cards. These were placed in a “small Ghetto” consisting only of Baldachowka Street and Spitalna Street. All the survivors did everything they could to obtain the stamp.

In the Glogow Forests

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Old women dyed their hair and all kinds of other tricks were tried. Yet nothing helped. The Gestapo took all those whom it suspected of being older than 45 or having obtained the stamps illegally and included them in the transports. Three months later, in October, 1942, the Germans swept up women and children entirely and unexpectedly, promising to send them to some easier work. When the men came home to the Ghetto at night, they found that their homes had been emptied. Their laments were beyond all belief.

The exiles believed that they were being sent away to work, but all of them were transported to Belzec and promptly exterminated.

The following story can serve to show how unwilling people were to admit the truth to their own selves:

One day, a Volksdeutsch named Ilgner came to us where we were working and informed us that he was employed at Belzec. When the deportees arrived there, he told us that they were promptly put to death by poison gas and that their corpses were burnt, except for a few men who were kept to bury the dead. The girls refused to believe him and ironically referred to him as “Luegner”, which means liar, instead of calling him by his name Ilgner.

There were some Jews, mostly from intellectual circles, who tried to obtain train passes in order to leave the Ghetto. But a list containing their names fell into the hands of the Gestapo and they were tall taken and shot in the forests of Glogow. Prisoners and patients from the hospital were also put to death there, together with the medical staff.

By the end of 1942, the Ghetto was transformed into a labour camp. Those who could not work were marked for death. The sick were ordered to go to the Hospital. Fearing that they would be transported from there, they went on working even with high temperatures and swollen and blistered hands and feet.

The only way to obtain food or anything else, was to barter for foodstuffs. There were many who unscrupulously cheated the Jews, profiteering on their miserable state. In those days, all that was evil seemed to be awakened and many people were transformed into beasts. There were some who cooperated with the authorities, informing against their fellow sufferers. Thus, the young men and women of the Hashomer Hatzair movement wished to set up a resistance organisation. They were denounced to the Gestapo and all were killed.

On September 15^th, 1942, the Germans and Polish police closed off the Ghetto once again and gathered all the survivors in the Square near Baldachowska Street. There the Gestapo separated people whose work was considered of importance, and transported the remainder to Belsec by freight trains. The Ghetto was then divided into West and East by a wire fence. The West Ghetto contained the people who seemed unfit for further work, together with those deported from Krosno and the vicinity. Infectious diseases and hunger continued to ravage the miserable survivors. Human skeletons could be seen waiting listlessly for hours at the wire fence until some soup was brought to them from the kitchen in the East Ghetto.

The East Ghetto inhabitants either worked on the railway line outside the Ghetto or else they were employed within it in workshops, producing various articles for the German army.

Some time later, the Germans assigned the mark “W” (Wichtig – important) to a small group of workers in the East Ghetto whom they considered were still of use. A desperate struggle then began to obtain this “W”. Bacher who was then camp Commandant, was a sadist who terrorised people and sometimes shot at them as though they were wild beasts. One day, he sent all the Jews in the East Ghetto to bathe and meanwhile, he had their rooms emptied of their belongings. He also separated the men from the women, placing them in two different buildings. His successor behaved less savagely and things were relatively quiet until September , 1943.

On 3^rd September, the Rzeszow Ghetto was finally liquidated by a Gestapo unit sent from Cracow for that purpose. The Jews in the West Ghetto were sent to Szebnia near Jaslo and were shot in the forest. A very small number were sent to Auschwitz where a few wrecks survived the War.

During the final hours of the Ghetto, a handful who had succeeded in hiding in underground bunkers, were discovered and sent to die with the others. So ended the Jews of Rzeszow, may God rest their souls.

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It is very hard indeed to return to yesterday, to describe the period of the war years, the atmosphere of dread, the degradation, the way human stature was lowered to the level of the most degraded creatures possible.

The Jewish towns and villages have vanished. There is no sign of the active life of the Jewish streets, or the vital clubs of the Jewish Youth Organisations.

The first German advance units entered Rzeszow on 8^th September, 1939. A few days later, the first Orders against the Jews were published and people were kidnapped for forced labour. It was a sad scene. Old men and women, fathers of honoured families, stood with brooms in their hands, cleaning the streets and the drains, singing and dancing while the German hooligans laughed.

They trampled the human self-respect within us underfoot. But this was only the beginning.

New orders restricted liberty of movement in the streets. Certain quarters were closed to Jews. There were others where we might only walk in the roadway. The Jews had to take their hats off to every German soldier they met on the road.

Apartments and furniture were confiscated. The congestion in the remaining dwellings was horrifying for there were several families in each single room. Nobody was really willing to part from his belongings which had mostly been saved up and guarded for long generations. These ties to belongings which had accumulated for generations, cost the owners their lives more than once. Order followed Order. We were robbed of our gold, our silver, our radios and everything we had.

The Decree that we must wear a band on the right arm completed the restriction of our personal freedom. The purpose of the armband was to serve as a symbol of shame. Any ruffian was entitled hence-forward to beat us up, push s off the pavements and sidewalks and mock at Jewish self-respect. Slowly but surely, with German precision, they deprived us of our honour, of our humanity and the right to live. I am convinced that if this process of trampling our human personality underfoot had not been gradual, and had not been done little by little, our reaction as healthy human beings would have been different. We would have shown our opposition even if it was the opposition of despair. This temp of drop-by-drop broke us slowly but surely. It strangled the power of resistance within us.

We lived in the illusion that if we carried out this or that order, they would allow us to live. And the will to live was overwhelming. Unhappily our reckoning was false while that of the Germans was accurate to the last detail.

They set up a Jewish Quarter. They built bridges and stairways in order to hand certain buildings over to “Aryans”. They forced us to go out to work. The Fire Brigade Square became a place of nightmares. On one occasion, they levelled the hill beside the Court in the middle of the town. Doctor Ehaus looked out of the window of the Court at the workers and chose his victims for sadistic floggings. These were chiefly pretty young girls. The work was very hard indeed. We worked with spades and hoes all day long, in bitter frost. The work was particularly hard for the older women. Exemption, even for a single day, was given only on a medical certificate. One day, in spite of the exemptions, given by Dr. Zinnemann, a whole group of women were summoned to the German Command where each one received twenty strokes of the whip. Mrs. Frankel Fenichel, a friend of my mother, returned black and blue with the blow she had received. All night long we were bandaging her, but the next day she was compelled to go to work again, in spite of the inhuman pain.

For the slightest transgression, according to their opinion, the Germans punished with blows or imprisonment or death by shooting. In this way, young Hayyimel Muenzberg paid with his life for purchasing potatoes.

At the beginning of 1942, they surrounded the Jewish Quarter with a high fence and closed it in. Entry and exit were permitted only by a permit and that was granted only to and from work or on exceedingly important affairs.

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Jews were brought to Rzeszow from the town and villages nearby. Refugees reached us from Lodz, Kalish and Cracow. The Germans wanted as large a concentration of Jews as possible, so that they could be easily caught.

When the Russian-German war began, the process of extermination of the Jews was speeded up. The first detachments were sent in June, 1942. They were referred to as “transfers”. These consignments were sent every two or three weeks towards the East. The Polish railway workers told us that the trains reached a certain point at which they were taken over by German engine drivers. The destination was not known for a long time. Now we know that it was Belzec. Nobody came back from there. This was the place for mass extermination.

The right to remain in Rzeszow depended on the “stamp” which was given by the Gestapo. This stamp was priceless. Though Esterke Mintz had the “desired stamp”, when she heard about the transfers, far from Rzeszow, and returned home in order to steal away from her working place so as not to share in the fate of her parents.

While I was engaged in earth-work on the railway lines, I saw many consignments. One of them affected me deeply. This was a consignment of children who passed by the place where I was working. The train stopped for a moment. We heard the cries and shrieks of children. The Polish foremen allowed us to approach the closed goods waggons. The children pushed their hands out through the cracks and begged for food. We did not see the children themselves. We collected our breakfasts and I ran up to the waggon and handed over an apple. At that moment, the train moved off. The child, or more correctly the child's hands, held the apple but could not draw it in through the crack. For a long time, I was pursued by the thought of the hungry child's suffering, holding the apple in his hand but unable to eat it.

My brother with his wife and child were among the “happy ones” who obtained the “stamp”, while my mother and I prepared for “transfer”. We filled two bags with the permitted amount of goods and the next day we had to report to the “Sammel-Platz” (concentration point) which was in the old Jewish graveyard next to the Mikoszka River. On the night before the transfer, I woke up with a resolve which must have ripened unconsciously within me while I was asleep. I woke my mother up and said to her: “No, we shan't go to any transfer, we'll hide ourselves in the Smaller Quarter. Pinek will help us. Without a stamp, we don't have the legal right to live”.

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The next day, we quietly slipped away to the Quarter which had been made smaller after the transfers and we began to live like people “who do not exist”. A few days later, we learnt that there many more like us. The hunt for the stamp went on, and so did the transfers. Various Polish firms and private German firms tried to obtain working hands and our work was very cheap indeed. One day, I stood among people who were waiting for the miracle of a stamp that would give them life. To my great astonishment, my name was called. It was by pure chance. If I had not been present there, and my presence there was nothing but chance, I would have lost the right to legal life.

The hunt for those hiding began. When they were found, they were added to the transports or else they were shot dead on the spot. Life in hiding up in an attic for a long time when constant searches were being made, was unbearable. And now an opportunity came. All those whose temporary papers had a stamp on them were called to report to the labour office in order that the proper document should be stamped afresh. At that time, my nerves were still quite strong, and I stated that I had lost my certificate. This was very risky. Accompanied by the savage yells of the Gestapo men who worked in the office, I went out holding a new certificate. So now I had two papers with stamps. All that was necessary was just a little “operation”: changing the date of birth. It was impossible to erase or change names. So now there were two Charlottas (my name on the birth certificate) and my mother obtained the temporary right to live.

A new Order appeared, or more correctly, a list of names of women and children who were not working, who had to report at Headquarters. The trickery of the Germans was not yet sufficiently familiar to us, so they all reported. All those who reported were transferred to Belzec. We came back from work in the evening and the men never found their wives and children. That bitter outcry still echoes in my ears today.

We began to think of saving ourselves, finding a hiding place away from Rzeszów. But we were forbidden to leave the town without transfer permits by railway. Messengers arrived from Bochnia which, in the course of time, had become a centre for forging papers and a transfer point for escape to Hungary. There were two women from Rzeszow who lived in Bochnia during the War. Their names were: Halbergstamm and Hausman, but I do not remember their first names. They engaged in the transfer and sale of forged documents. During one of her many journeys, Mrs. Hausman was detained at the Gateway

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by a Gestapo man. Mass arrests began according to the list of names that were found in her possession and the false documents which she brought.

The Germans chose a special day. I believe that it was a Jewish festival or maybe the date of a defeat on the Russian front. Among the prisoners were the Hospital staff: Dr. Bayer, Esterke Rebhun who was a nurse at the hospital, the pharmacist Frankel who had formerly lived in Rzeszow, his daughter and son-in-law Dr. Hescheles (of Lwow, I believe) and ever so many more. They took them to the Glogow forests where they were cruelly murdered. Poles of the Labour Units which dug the pits, brought the information about their last moments. After they stripped Esterke Rebhun of her clothes, she told the murderers all the truth to their faces and died like a heroine. We, her friends, tried to smuggle her little son Maniusz with the Aryan face over to the Aryan side, but unhappily we did not succeed.

All this was a heavy additional nightmare in our lives, which were hard and bitter enough without that. It lowered our self-respect but not the will to live.

The Jewish Quarter was transformed into a Labour camp and cut into two. The two parts were divided and separated by a barbed wire fence in the middle, a kind of no-man's land between East and West. On the East side were the workers and on the West were the non-workers. The East side, again, was divided into a Women's camp and a Men's camp. The large final transfer was carried out on 15^th November, 1942. By that time, we no longer had any illusions, and could already feel in the air that the end was approaching. Many people did not return to camp from their working places. Nobody was prepared to submit of his own free will.

The victims of this transfer were the old people and the children who were still to be found legally in the camp, save a few who were hidden. This time, the murderers exploited the fact that we believed in them afresh, every time! Using the story that they were taking the children to kindergartens and schools; they collected them all and took them away on lorries. Not a single child or elderly person remained alive. There are no words to describe the situation after that.

The first tragic gap now came about in our family as well. Eight-year-old Djunia, my brother Pinek's daughter, was taken in that transport. Literally by a miracle, I remained alive at the time, for I was not included in the list of names of those who were to remain. But mother, whom we hid, was included in the list and at the very last moment, when they read mother's name for the third time, I answered for her. (As I have already told, we were now registered with the same first names and of course the same family name; and only the date of birth was different). The Germans paused for a moment over this, but somehow disregarded it.

Bacher, the sadistic camp Commandant, conducted searches without interruption and beat and shot. We suffered in particular when we went to work or came back. One day, when we came back from work, we found that our rooms had been looted and nothing was left. We suffered very much after that because of the shortage of warm clothes, all of which they had stolen from us.

Things became a little easier when he was replaced by Schupke. Following the liquidation of the Zaslaw Camp near Sanok (we learnt about this after the War), he had become a little more “human”. Our fear grew a little less, the beatings stopped and the living conditions became slightly more normal.

Two camps employed workers, and one of them was a working-place within the camp. There they had workshops for tailoring, shoe-making and various stores which were managed by Mr. Eintracht of Rzeszow. The second place was called the “Ostbahn”. This consisted of a number of Polish and German firms which engaged in all kinds of digging and drainage work near the railway. The Ostbahn was headed by Commandant Bremmer, a German who willingly accepted presents and introduced better working conditions in one place or another. Naturally, we benefitted from this because we used to move on to the places where conditions were better, and Bremmer received his cut for it. This was not missed by the Gestapo. They did nothing to Bremmer, to be sure, but 22 Jews paid with their lives.

I shall never forget 22^nd March, 1943, when we returned in our ranks from working at the Ostbahn. Our group was led by Dr. Schmelkes of Cracow. We were stopped. For a moment we were sure that they were searching for smuggled food, which we used to receive in exchange for the goods and clothes we took out of the camp. We were lined up next to the Administration Building (The House of Zucker, the Jewellery dealer) in the Garncaska Street, and they began to read the names of certain people out of a list. The first was Dr.

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Schmelkes. They gave him the list to go on reading out the names. One after another, twenty powerful men lined up, together with two girls. These were the two Tannenbaum sisters from Germany who were the cousins of Sonia Tannenbaum. Among them was also my own beloved brother Pinek. After reading the names, Dr. Schmelkes handed his private bag over to his cousin Bella Horowitz and stationed himself in the rank. We returned to our dwellings shocked and greatly concerned for the fate of this group. Then the loud echoes of shots told us everything. There was nothing we could do. The whole 22 were murdered. Next morning we went to work past the stains of their blood which had spurted out over the pavements. Today it is hard to grasp how we, who were closes, mother, wife and sister, could go to work and go on living. Something had happened to us. We were so broken that it was impossible for us to express our feelings. The pain was too sudden, too strong. We were stupefied. No normal reaction was possible. All our feelings had been blunted, for how can it possibly be understood otherwise?

Yet, life went on. The German infernal machine saw to that. Soon afterwards, all the working places in the Ostbahn were liquidated and we went back to work in the camp.

Forced Labour: Building on airfield

Now we found out what a labour camp really was. Until then, we had managed, somehow, in Rzeszow. A barter trade had continued and that gave us the strength to withstand everything. We had not yet starved for a piece of bread.

On 3^rd September, 1943, I woke up to hear a heavy sound of hobnailed boots. We were surrounded. The Rzeszow camp was to undergo expulsion and final liquidation. Today it is hard to grasp the meaning of that single word, at that time, and what it involved – wondering and uncertainty. Would we see the next day's dawn?

There was a piercing whistle – a savage roar and within a moment, we were removed from all we had and that was mighty little: a bed for two or three people, a room in which 3 or 4 families lived. But we were already accustomed to this and hoped that under these conditions we would yet reach a better future. We believed in this all the time; we believed in the defeat of the Germans. All that was left in Rzeszow was a small group of 80-100, who were called “Raümungs Gruppe”(Evacuation group) and whose job was to clear everything else away. All the West Ghetto together with part of the East Ghetto were taken for a transportation from which no one came back alive. This I learnt only after the War. The consignment, in spite of the fact that it contained so many healthy young people, was sent direct and without classification to the death furnaces.

A group of about 400, chiefly young women when my mother succeeded in joining by a miracle, were placed between the barbed wires. All night long we sat on the roadway surrounded by a guard of Germans, trembling and dead afraid of the coming day. There was a rumour that we were being taken to Szebnia Camp near Jaslo where large tailoring workshops were to be established, and we would work there for the Reich. But by now, we had already stopped believing the Germans.

Early in the morning after careful examination and after they shot and killed the girl Wiesenfeld from Cracow, we left the Rseszow Camp marching in ranks. We passed through the streets of the city we knew so well, the city of our childhood and youth. Would we really be taken to Szebnia? We were

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pushed into the railway station at Staroniwa, into goods waggons. The congestion was indescribable. I sat on the floor beside my mother and sister-in-law. It was choking, hard to breathe. So, these were the waggons at which I had gazed so often from the distance. Now I was inside one.

I shivered in my bones when the train started – in which direction? To Jaslo or to Auschwitz? By that time, we knew the name Auschwitz very well and we had no illusions. But for once, the Germans had not lied. We were going in the direction of Jaslo. We breathed more easily. But what was waiting for us there? We were new and had not yet been fitted into the setting of the camps – the camps of suffering or of death with suffering? We did our best to calm ourselves and others at the top of our voices, saying that after all, Szebnia was standing on a lofty sandhill and all around there were workshops, were that it would not be so bad. Above all, that we must not lose hope. The war could not go on for ever and the important thing was to hold out.

All of a sudden, the train stopped. The doors were swiftly flung open and the Germans yelled: “get out!” and beating us with rifle butts. The train was standing on a lofty sandhill and all around were Germans on horseback taking photographs. After all, we were a rare phenomenon – animals in human form. There were German yells and shrieks. We were lined up and made to run several kilometres to the Szebnia Camp. I helped mother as best I could. She did not have the strength to run. I flung away the things they had allowed us to take after inspection, because they made it harder to run. We reached our destination – the Camp. A large, open space. In the middle on a high mast was the black flag with the white symbol of the S.S. in the form of a flash of lightning. I stood shaking. This flag was the symbol of death. There was an end to all the hopes which those around me and I myself had tried so hard to keep alive within me. Why hadn't they taught us to love death instead of life? Why were we so frightened? Why was I trembling so much at the sight of this flag? Why did it shake my feelings so strongly?

All the length of the Square stood tables at which Jewish women prisoners were recording the new consignment that had arrived. There we found Jewesses from Rzeszow who had reached the Camp in June. They could not help us in anything. They were not permitted even to speak to us. One sister could not help another. After arranging the formal matters, we entered the camp itself straight to the Bath House. I was dead afraid. Was there an exit from the bath house too? This time, there was. We went out to the “residential block”.

This was a long wooden building without windows that was like a stable. On either side were benches in three tiers with a straw mattress. I was growing hungry. We were not yet part of the normal life of the camp. The soup cauldrons were emptied largely on the ground which was the floor where we lived, because of the struggle for a little soup.

I was not yet prepared to eat grass roots. In the course of time, we began to get organised. Paula Zweigenbaum was the one who distributed what little foodstuff there was. The second trouble was the shortage of water. We could only wash ourselves in the morning. At dawn, we ran to the well where we lined up for a drop of water to wash our eyes and rinse our mouths. We were not always successful. Quite often, when our turn came, the whistle to the line-up was heard and we had to rush up to the Square. From every corner came figures wrapped up in coats and often in blankets; more than once, two women sharing one blanket. And so, we would stand for hours, freezing in rain or snow, waiting for the rulers of the world! They would count us, threaten us and hurry us off to work which was just an illusion. We dragged cupboards, boards and beds from one place to another in order to take them back later to the place where they were to begin with. Apart from the lack of purpose of this work in the camp, it was dangerous too. You might meet one of the Commandants, Grzymek with his “mandolin”, an automatic sub-machine gun hanging from his should like a mandolin. He would shoot at a target; and that target was us. For the slightest fault, he would punish us with the “post”: This meant that the victim was hung by his hands without the feet touching the ground. The pain of the dislocated joints was unbearable. Those that hung like that would beg to be killed, but the ruler, Grzymek would take their lives, which he had not given them, only when he felt like it. (He was sentenced to death by the Warsaw District Court on 18th February 1950).

Grzymek also new how to amuse himself. He set up an orchestra, dressed them in uniform and took them to parties in the Palace at night. Malvina Kleiner

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of Cracow helped them enjoy themselves with her singing. Poor Malvina was afraid. Gypsy women served at tables.

They amused themselves in the Palace while we were closed away and cut off from the world. We were exterminated physically and spiritually. When a Jewish driver escaped, every tenth person had to pay. The lot fell among others on Mrs. Schildkraut, the wife of a Rzeszow lawyer. She went to her death with a feeling of honour and her head held high. A bullet ended her life and the mud and blood splashed the faces of the murderers for ever. Her little daughter begged to die and did not stay alive very long after her mother. She was murdered on 22^nd September, 1943 together with several hundred other old people and children.

And so, Rzeszow was gradually exterminated. They fell one after the other. I can still see them today going in a long procession on their last journey. I see them all; Minka Borer and her mother, Krisia Bott and little Platzer who stood on a stone in order to appear big. And I also see my dear mother who refused to let me share her fate, in order that at least one of the family should be left. The Tarnovitz forest near Jaslo can tell a great deal about their last moments, their thoughts and their confusion.

After this action, we were all miserable and depressed. Almost everybody had lost somebody who was dear to him. We went about as though turned to stone and waited for our own turn. But life was even stronger than before. We rose to roll-calls and to work that was becoming harder and harder.

As we stood in line on 3^rd November, 1943, as usual, we were suddenly surrounded by Ukrainian sentries with heavy machine guns. We gave the impression of major criminals. We were several thousand ragged and broken Jews. There was a new list – a new transfer. Where too and why? I was not on the list – that had been my fate from the beginning – I was not needed but I wanted to live. Those whose names were read out, passed over to the other side of the parade ground. I exploited the moment when the Germans were paying no attention, and passed with an assured stride to the side of those who were remaining. Three thousand Jews, mostly young and strong, were put into the railway trucks at the Moderowka railway station. Among them was a large group of young Rzeszow people, - the best in the town. Next day we found heaps of clothes, boots and pots on the Parade ground. These were the only belongings that a camp prisoner had.

We recognised the possessions of our closet companions who had been expelled the night before. We were sure that they had all been killed. A long time later, we learnt that they had been taken out in nothing but their shirts so that they should be unable to escape. Their destination was Auschwitz where a handful of them were left. The others were laid low by typhoid which competed successfully with the furnaces. One of the victims of the typhoid was the wife of my only brother, Mania, the sister of Minna, Shula and Peppa Rosenbaum who had been destroyed in earlier expulsions. After she had lost her daughter, Djunia, and then her husband, Mania did not wish to live. According to later rumours, she tried to fling herself against the electrified barbed wire fence at Auschwitz. It seems that they saved her life then and she later died of typhoid.

In Szebnia, there remained a group of Jews numbering 500. Our fate was sealed. That we could sense even physically. They no longer drove us to work. Each one did what he liked. Nobody was interested in us. Our barracks were filthy. We understood that things were coming to an end and our turn would soon come. And sure enough, when we got up one morning, a week later, we felt that something was happening – that the final liquidation of the Camp was approaching. They called a Parade at an unusual hour.

I must live, I must live! – and once again the same powerful instinct and will to live appeared which was to show itself a number of times later as well. I was looking for Monica Haiblum who had once suggested that we should escape together. I could not see her. She must have hidden herself already. I decided to look for a hiding place together with Rika Pinter. We entered our hut and at that very moment, Rika left me saying that she would be back at once – she wanted to find herself a better hiding place. I hid myself in a pit dug out under a shelf with three levels, all vaulted. I had to crawl into it. It was hard to move a hand or foot. I lay there pressing against the ledge and oppressed by my thought that now I was entirely on my own. So far, I had always been in a group and we had a common fate. Now, I was all alone. And just then, a group of Ukrainians entered the building. They shouted at the top of their voices and searched very

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Expulsion Order

Toward evening, I feel asleep. When I woke up, I wanted to get out but it was dark all around. I could not find the opening and cried out in fear. Then I suddenly realised just what the situation was. With difficulty, I crawled out, went to the door and through a crack, I saw how they were taking the patients from the Hospital, accompanied by the whole medical team. The Parade had not yet finished, it seemed. They were short of the patients and doctors. Among the patients was Benek Schwarzbart.

I went back to my place under the shelves and only late at night, when I was half petrified for lack of movement and lying so uncomfortably, freezing with cold and hungry, I climbed onto the upper ledge. There I found bits of week-old bread which had been left when the girls had been taken away.

Polish prisoners entered the block after midnight. They had a double purpose in making this visit so late. They came to “organise”, which in camp language meant to steal whatever might be left! I was afraid that they might find me by chance. I did not know whether to pretend that I had been placed there on the watch or to lie quietly and wait. So, I chose the second alternative. In the morning, the Poles left the Block and I also decided to leave under cover of dark and see whether a group of Jews was still left there.

As a rule, the Germans used to leave a small number of Jews behind to liquidate everything. I wrapped a kerchief around my head, which I found, took a jug in hand and tried to look like one of the Polish women going to obtain water for washing. I approached the Jewish kitchen where there was a Polish one as well and moved the door. When I saw Germans there, I felt dead afraid and dashed back to my hiding place. I could have paid with my life for going out like that. Then once again I lay in my hiding place all day long, and once again the Ukrainians came hunting for those who were hiding. My tension mounted more and more. If no Jews were left in the Camp, who would help me? I could not lie under

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a bench forever. How could I get out? Should I show myself and ask the Poles to help me?

I lay hidden like that for three days and three nights, trembling, alone and hopeless. On the evening of the fourth day, when I approached the door of the hut as usual, I heard people speaking Yiddish and afterwards, I saw two men. My heart began to beat and throb. They were Jews. I went over to them and want to speak but could not. My voice choked in my throat. At last, a few words burst from my mouth. In what lock were they and was anybody from Rzeszow left? They themselves were very much alarmed for, according to Camp regulations, they were forbidden to talk to me and it was their duty to hand me over to the Headquarters at once. At last, they told me that skilled workers had been left. (In Szebnia there were workshops for sewing and carpentry). The remaining skilled workers were Mrs. Kalb, Benek Zucker and the Kolpan Brothers. These Kolpans found me a hiding place in their Block, where I felt better. I was not alone. They were doing their best to make sure that my hiding place should not be found. In the hut, there were plenty who would have been ready to give me away.

I told them my plans. I wanted a ladder in order to escape. Kolpan said that he would try to get permission for me to remain, but I no longer believed in any German promises. If I have to die from a bullet, I said, then better when I am escaping.

On 13^th November, 1943, at 6 o'clock in the morning, I left the hut while it was still dark and, in the place, where I looked, I found a long ladder. In my hand was a wallet containing a towel to wrap up my worn boots. On my head was a kerchief. I climbed up onto the last rung of the latter. First, I threw over the wallet, then I jumped from a height of several metres. I had forgotten to take the barbed wire fence into account. Luckily, only the wallet fell into the barbed wire while I dropped beside it. I could not get the wallet out but I was afraid to remain there for a single moment, for I was in full view of two watch towers whereby a sheer miracle, there were no guards at that time. I swiftly crossed the path and made for the fields. My foot began to bother me. A bone must have been hurt when I jumped. The high boots made it a little easier to move. The first light of dawn began to show.

I rested for a while in the neighbouring wood. First, I destroyed all the papers in my possession, then I went on along an unknown path. I found that the headcloth I had discovered on the abandoned shelves and which I had wrapped around my head, was a prayer shawl that had been dyed blue. I was on a hill and the railway lines passed down in the valley. I went down and met a railway worker and asked him the way to the railway station. He inspected me from top to bottom, then pointed to the distant railway station of Tarnowice. The booking office was still closed. Several people were standing in line to buy tickets and I joined them. Listening attentively to their talk, I found that the next train would be going to Krosno, which was in the opposite direction. I wanted to go back to Rzeszow and find a hiding place there.

I did not want to stay at the station for a single unnecessary moment, in case I was being looked for. The wallet that I had left in the barbed wire might show at any moment that somebody had run away. I bought a ticket to Krosno. On the train, nobody paid any attention to me. At the Krosno Station, I went to the ticket office at once to buy to ticket to Rzeszow. The train was due to leave only two hours later. I entered the waiting room which was full of Germans and Gestapo. At last, after the long wait, the train to Rzeszow arrived. In the carriage there were several children who sang and collected charity and went from one carriage to the next. They left the carriage and a long time later, they then came back saying they had lost an identity card. They asked me whether I had found it by chance. I felt dead afraid that they might suspect I had taken it and would call the police.

At last, I was left to myself. We reached Jaslo Station. I remembered from journeys I had formerly made in this district, that at Jaslo, it was necessary to change from one train to another. I left the train, entered the waiting room and sat down next to a Polish woman. The important thing was not to be alone and not to attract attention. Jaslo was known to be a centre of German and Ukrainian gendarmerie. I struck up a conversation with the woman and learnt that the train to Rzeszow was standing in the station and I did not need to leave it at all. I ran back limping and wanted to show my ticket at the carriage door, but I had lost it. To run back to the booking office and buy another ticket was to risk my life.

While I was in the camps, I was cut off from the

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new realities and had even forgotten the value of money. The slightest mistake might harm me. My Jewish face might give me away and even the good Polish I spoke was different from that of the local Poles. At the last moment, I caught at the train as it began moving. The carriages were crowded. Most of the passengers were women, smuggling dairy products into the town. They started to become even more nervous before we reached the Staroniwa Station. They said that there would be an inspection and the station was surrounded. I had no smuggled goods, but I myself was forbidden wares. I was a Jewess and what was more, I had run away from camp. Two good reasons for the death penalty.

We reached the Station. In the crowds, the Poles began to jump over the fences in order to avoid inspection. I could not jump. My leg was as heavy as lead. Luckily for me, it was a false alarm. There was no check. I stole out of the Station. Where could I go? It was broad day, twelve noon, in the place where I was born and had spent my youth, a place where every infant knew me. The closest house was that of Busz, my employer at the Ostbahn when I had been working there. I wanted to wait there until darkness fell at least in order to look for shelter during the night with one of the Poles who had worked at our Printing Press in those days. Actually, I had no precise address and was not sure if he would admit me. When I ran away from Szebnia, I had thought only of saving myself. In wartime, we did not make details or long-range plans. If the first steps succeeded, we thought of the next.

Unhappily enough, UI did not find anybody at the home of Busz. A sand cart was moving along the street. I asked the driver to give me a lift for my leg was giving me more and more pain. She said that she was only going to the next turning. Be it so, the important thing was to move on. I went to the Farny Church, to the carriage station, and asked if there was a free carriage. But when the driver looked at me more closely, he must have recognised who I was and refused to take me.

After walking a few paces, I suddenly heard somebody asking me: “Lotka, and what are you doing here?” I trembled. This was the son of the former supervisor of the printing press when it had still been in the Mateiko Street. We had played together as children and had not seen one another for years. I was at a loss, for I did not know his intentions. But he behaved properly and accompanied me to the former Jewish Camp, for where could I wander around all day when I had been recognised at my first step?

In front of the Camp, where there was now only a liquidation group of about 80 men, I met members of the Jewish Militia who took me into the Jewish Bakery which was then outside the Camp fence. There, I received my first warm meal for a long time. And within a few moments, I was surrounded by people I knew. Each of them wanted to know what had happened at Szebnia and how I had succeeded in escaping.

I asked them to get me back to the Camp in absolute secret when it became dark. I wanted to rest, to see what the state of my leg was and to look for refuge on the Aryan side. And now a change came about in my plants entirely without my initiative. A messenger appeared from Gorelijk, the Jewish Commander, who had informed Schupke with the best of intentions, that I had “left” Szebnia. So, there was no sense in waiting for the dark.

I went back to the Camp accompanied by the whole group. Schupke was waiting for me at the Gate. Eye witnesses declared that there were tears in his eyes. I did not see them. I was too busy with all that had happened to me. Schupke took me into the walking patients department where Dr. Heller and Dr. Tunis found my leg was sprained. Schupke questioned me in detail about what had happened to me in Szebnia and the people who were left there. He was particularly interested in the fate of those from Rzeszow.

Human emotions flow through strange channels. Schupke, the man who had liquidated the Jewish Camp at Zaslaw near Sanok, now treated me like a father. When I entered the Camp Gate, the daughter of Karp, Tunka Grajower, stood at the window and shouted in the distance: “Hurrah, the female sex has not shamed itself”. I never saw her again. A few moments later she fled. I inherited her place and her bed in the room. That day, several other people ran away. In the evening, I heard shots and found I had fallen from the frying pan into the fire.

There was a state of depression and uncertainty in the Camp and the constant escapes increased the confusion. The Germans discovered the Bunker in which the Fudim family were hiding. They found other bunkers and shot all the people they found in them. I lay for whole days unable to move my

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leg while the tension increased. I felt that I must escape but I had nowhere to escape to, while even walking was hard. At the time, the whole camp was concentrated in the house of Lev, the dairyman, in the Wiezinka Street. With difficulty, I got out of my bed and limped out into the open. I wanted to see for myself how and where I could escape to, but it was not easy without contacts or money.

A few days later, a letter reached me in some unknown fashion. It was signed by Siudek (Merel). While I was still in Szebnia, I was told by Yanek Oestreicher that they had built a large bunker and had not gone there purely by accident, and that he had been murderously beaten because he did not wish to tell the Germans where it was. Now Siudek was inviting me to that bunker. This was a miracle from heaven, yet, how could I leaver the camp which was so carefully guarded?

The next day, I had to be by a certain time at a certain place (Mikoszka) in the Aryan Quarter of the city; so near yet so far. I prepared a plan and told it to the barber, Lampel, who helped me carry it out. Next to a house in the Wiezinka Street, there was a large wooden warehouse containing furniture which was sold to the Poles, and the money went into the pockets of the Germans. This hut was on the border between the Jewish and the Aryan sides. Together with the purchasers, I entered the hut, hid myself in a cupboard and afterwards cut the wire netting over a window and went out into the Aryan side.

My escape was discovered at once and Ukrainians were sent to search for me. They caught me not far from the rendezvous. Alas and alack! I went back to Camp together with them. My wealth consisted of two gold rings and a little money. I entreated them to let me go and I would give them all I had. They entered a gateway, took counsel together and sad that it was not enough. Unfortunately, it was all I had. At last, they agreed that they would take me to the Camp, but in such a way that neither Schupke nor the Gestapo would know anything about my flight.

I returned. They kept their word. I returned by a side alley and went back to my bed, broken, unable to reach the bunker. That evening when our room was crowded with people as usual, Avrumek Landau advised me to ask the Sexton, Oiserovitch, to take me out in the special cart for removing corpses. After many entreaties, Oiserovitch agreed to take me out in the cart. (I did not know then that he was the link between me and Siudek). The next day, I entered the stable. Oiserovitch had prepared a small wicker work basket which I entered with difficulty. This basket was covered with a blanket and had to serve as a seat. Artek Harr, the helper of Oiserovitch, helped him take the basket out. Oiserovitch sat on it and in that way, I left the camp.

We reached a large courtyard next to Mikoszka Street, the other side of which was next to the houses in Mateiko Street. There, in the dwelling of Stasiak, I met the first representatives of the Bunker: Gisa Wind, the wife of Siudek and her brother Wind, whose name I do not remember. We waited till it grew dark then entered the Bunker. It stretched between the house of Schipper and the Kapnar shop. These were old underground cellars which passed through a large part of the city, but had been closed in part when drains had been dug. The first entrance from the side of Schipper's house had been sealed off entirely for security reasons, so the entrance was from Mikoszka Street under the Kapnar shop. In the bunker, I met about 15 Rzeszow people and only there did I learn that it was Engineer Sziko Springer of Jaroslaw who, formerly had been a member of the Hanoar Organisation, that had found the bunker. During the next few weeks, we were joined by more than 10 people and finally there were 36 of us. The Germans knew that the bunker existed and searched for it. But it was camouflaged very well indeed. In the bunker there were underground tunnels and all the time, we kept on digging new tunnels so that we could escape if they were to find our hiding place. Our lives were based on discipline. Each one of us had his own duty. Watch was kept by day and night, and everyone had his turn, so that we should not be surprised by the Germans. Siudek's younger brother fixed up alarm lights instead of bells and he was also responsible for keeping watch. Mrs. Kleinmintz ran the kitchen. We had a stock of commodities and Oiserovitch supplied us with fresh foodstuffs until he cam to the Bunker together with his family. On one occasion, informers saw him and as a result, the Germans came to search bringing with them dogs. But, luckily for us, they did not find anything. The authority in our Bunker society was in the hands of Merel Siudek and Shiko Springer of Jaroslaw.

Several months passed like this, until one day, while we were digging a fresh tunnel, it seemed

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to us, that we had been discovered. In the evening, we left the bunker and then they really did discover us. We had nowhere to go. We were worse off than homeless dogs. Some of us decided to stay with Stasiak. Before morning, we already knew that they had caught somebody from the bunker, so that Stasiak's place spelt immediate danger. Together with Avrumek Landau, we left Stasiak's house at once, hoping that Busz, from whom we had worked earlier, would receive us for at least a single day. One day was a day of life. We entreated him on our bended knees, but he refused. So, in broad daylight, Avrumek, a typical Jew and I, went through the Third of May Street, Podzamcze and Zamkowa Streets until we reached the home of a Polish woman with whom Manek Landau had hidden meanwhile. A long time afterwards, I learnt that immediately after we left Stasiak, Szymek Ungar had gone away from there and met a Polish policeman in the street who shot him on the spot. On the way to Manek's hiding place, we met a group of Polish children who recognised that we were Jews and began shouting aloud: “Jews”, Jews walking about!”. At the advice of the Polish woman, we contacted a Pole name Prenduta. He was known to have built a bunker beside the stable in Wola Rzendzinska near Tarnow where people from Rzeszow were hiding. After many entreaties, he agreed to take us there that same evening. In order to avoid the Rzeszow railway station, we went on foot to Rudna Wielka where this Prenduta had a brother-in-law who was the station master, which made things much easier. Prenduta gave me a kerchief to cover my head in order, as he put it, to hide my Jewish hair. In daylight, this kerchief looked like a dyed prayer shawl – green this time.

And so, a prayer shawl accompanied me twice on my flight. At the bunker in Wola Rzendzinska, I met 8 people from Rzeszow. They were: Henek Weinbach with his daughter Halinka; Zeizel; Hermann Knopf; Josek Knopf; Manek Schleim who had come to Rzeszow during the war, Masha Feit-Klinger; Benek Kleinmintz and now we three joined them: Avrumek Landau, Manek Landau and I. The place was small and low, surrounded by straw and it was only possible to sit or lie in it. Entrance was from the stable next to the feeding stall where a board was lifted out of the floor. For a little while before the Russian attack came, there were German soldiers billeted in the stable and nearby. We were in great danger for the straw on which we lay would rustle at the lightest touch. On one occasion, a board fell from the floor and it was only thanks to a miracle that they did not discover us. Yet, in spite of everything, conditions in the bunker were far better than they had been in the Rzeszow bunker.

There we had been in constant darkness and things were terribly damp. When we washed our underwear, we used to dry it by the warmth of our bodies. Fetching water from the neighbouring cellar, literally involved risking our lives, so that the daily water ration was one glass which had to provide for drinking, bathing and laundry. In this bunker, the light entered through the cracks and so did the sunshine. It was even possible to speak about spring. (This was February, 1944. But not for us … Newspapers arrived here and reading them between the lines, we knew that the end of the war was approaching – but would we also live to see that great day?

Then one day, we heard artillery fire. The German army withdrew. The Gestapo left Tarnow and our joy was boundless. All of a sudden, the Russian attack halted. The new frontier was not far from us. Rzeszow was already liberated but for us, the hardest period now began.

Late one evening, at the suggestion of the Mistress of the house, we went out behind the cabin in order to breathe a little clean air and straighten our legs. This was the first time since entering the bunker that they bombed Tarnow. One bomb fell on the village and fragments reached our courtyard. Some tiny fragments were enough to kill Josek Knopf, a youngster aged 17 with blue eyes. His brother Hermann was also seriously wounded and the family of our housekeeper was also injured.

We buried Josek late at night in the filed of the house-holder. The Poles who had hidden themselves in shelters during the air-raid observed this strange burial and began to whisper and ask: “Whom are they burying at night?” To make matters worse, the wounded Hermann could not go back to the bunker and remained in the cabin. By chance, a nun saw him, thought he was dying and called the priest. Hermann did not wish to confess to the priest. The inquisitive villagers began to ask questions as to who this was who did not wish to confess. We had to run away to the forests. Movement was very hard indeed after having been lying and crawling for almost a year, for our muscles had wasted away. We went back to Prenduta, this time to his house. (Previously, we had been with his sister).

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Soon after the Frontier Police discovered us by pure change. (During the War chance played a very big part in everything). By order of the Gendarmes, some of us jumped out of the hiding place. Zeizel, Avrumek Landau and I thought that we might succeed in hiding under the straw. Suddenly, the Germans began throwing fire grenades and when the straw began to burn, we jumped from the attic. The last to jump was Zeisel. He was so confused that he began to run away and was shot on the spot. Benek Kleinmintz and Masha Veit succeeded in escaping, but Henek Weinbach and Halinka had hidden somewhere else after they left the forest.

They ordered us to stretch out on the ground with our arms held out as well. We were sure that they would shoot us now. I felt that these were the last moments before dying and what were my thoughts then? That in a moment, I would share the fate of my mother, my brother and little Djunia. I sensed the moment of parting from life. But I controlled myself and handed the watch to Avrumek to whom it belonged. Why did I do that? Was it important at the moment of death that the watch should not be in my hands? I did it in order to keep myself busy and say something, to drive the last moment of my life out of my thoughts.

They did not shoot us. They led us to the main road. At that moment, Manek Schleim darted off and began to run towards the forest. The first bullet hit him and killed him. We covered the distance to Tarnow on foot. After the halt at the Front, the Gestapo had returned to their former places and the frontier guards brought us to them as spoils of war. It was cold in the open. I was barefoot and wore nothing but a skirt and a blouse. The Gestapo cells were dark and cold in the month of September. Together with us, they arrested a Polish peasant woman whom they accused of baking bread for the partisans. (We were near the frontier). For the first few moments, they suspected that we were partisans as well. I lay together with the woman on a single bench and moved under her skirt in order to warm myself a little. I was afraid of questioning because I knew too much about our house-owners who had fled for life when we were arrested.

I was dead afraid that if they tortured me, I would give away their hiding place. But it seems that the Gestapo men had softened up a little bit. They did not wish to load too much on their consciences. The investigation passed quietly. They loaded us on a lorry, quietly and transferred us to Plaszow. Why should they make their hands dirty? Let others do the job. Manek Landau, who was young and fair-haired and had often been told by German guards that he did not look like a Jew at all, now claimed to be a “Mischling” (half-Jew). Unhappily, that was what finished him off. They put him on a lorry together with the Polish partisans from the Gestapo prison cells and he was taken off and shot together with them.

We found a surprise waiting for us at Plaszow. When I entered the camp, I met with Jews. After having been cut off from the outside world for more than a year, I had imagined, like so many others who hid in the bunkers, that we were the last Jews left in Poland. And now there were Jews here and Jews from Rzeszow among them. So, we were very happy. In the office building, I met Eule. (During the War he lived in Rzeszow and now he was the husband of Fela Zucker). He promptly called Schupke who was then either the Commandant or one of the Commandants at Plaszow. They promptly withdrew the death sentence which they had been about to carry out on the “hill”, where the executions took place; and we were taken to the Clothes Stores. There I met Sonia Feuer and other girls from Rzeszow. Schupke ordered that I was to be properly dressed so that I should be able to escape again, as he jokingly said. I received a coat and boots and a place on a shelf.

So once again, I was in a camp. I was so exhausted and wrung-out with all my flights that I surrendered to my fate. Let the fate of all the others be mine as well. The roll calls were held in the camp that evening after the work. I went off to the first roll call marked with a number like all the other detainees. In the camp, we lost our individualities and became numbers. The report that we had arrived from the Tarnow Gestapo and had been saved from the “hill” spread like wild-fire. All of a sudden, an unknown man came to me and said: “This number of yours is life – you'll remain alive”. I stared at him in astonishment. “The figures in your number add up to eighteen, and that's Hai (the Hebrew word for alive, which has a numerical value of eighteen)”.

This took place towards the end of September, 1944, and I remained in Plaszow until the 14^th January, 1945; that is until the absolute liquidation

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of the Camp. Together, with me, were a group of Rzeszow people and there we established a close family group. We were linked by a common fate and a common origin. During that period, the conditions of Plaszow improved. People were no longer executed and we did not starve. My work in the laundry had its own advantages. First and foremost, I could wash my clothes and the food was better as well.

On 14^th January, 1945, The Russian war machine advanced after several months. The camp was liquidated and we were sent off on foot to an unknown destination. We passed through Cracow late at night and there were many opportunities of getting away from the transport. Many did this, but I did not have the strength. Nor did I have either money or acquaintances to whom I could go. Nobody imagined that the German front would collapse so quickly and that the Russians would enter Cracow within a few days.

By foot through Chrzanow, where my father was born, we reached Auschwitz. A week later, after the absolute liquidation of the camp, we set out again on foot. It was a hard march where everybody who stumbled or fell was shot and killed. They were swiftly liquidating the camps everywhere and hurrying the people off. All the roads were covered with corpses.

At Leslau Station, they loaded us into filthy coal trucks covered with coal dust. Freezing with cold, we wandered from camp-to-camp in Germany. Nobody wished to accept this herd of frozen people. It was only the Bergen Belsen camp that “took pity” on us. There we passed through a very hard period. They did not make us work; to be sure, they did not shoot us but filth and starvation reigned supreme there. We, daughters of Rzeszow, decided to register for a “transport” to anywhere at all. The important thing was to get away from Belsen.

At the time, I worked in the kitchen with Gina Sturmlaufer. It was impossible to inform us about the transport which went off all of a sudden. When we came back from work, the only one of the Rzeszow group left was Mina Wider, who did not wish to part from us. The others left with the transport while we three remained together with Hilda Kuckuk of Dembitz. Standing firm together, we passed through the period of typhoid and starvation more easily. When the warm spring breeze began to blow, an epidemic of dysentery broke out. The shortage of water and impossible sanitary conditions led to an epidemic of typhoid. Dead bodies lay in scores and hundreds on the rubbish heaps and the paths.

In Bergen Belsen, we were given fresh numbers. I inspected mine. It was 21186 which added up to which summed up to 18 - “life”! I will stay alive.

On 15^th April, 1945, which was my birthday, I was given life for the second time. The British army entered the camp. I could not even rejoice; I was so weak after a severe attach of typhoid. But I was free. I had been given the right to live.

Like many other Rzeszow Jews, I fled from the Germans to the East. On Thursday, 7-9-39, I left home with a rucksack on my back, to all intents as though off for a two-day excursion. On the way, I met my two brothers-in-law. The main escape route was towards Przemysl. Occasionally, we had to take cover because of German aeroplanes. I turned off towards Ticzin and from there made for the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. On the way, I met a group of youngsters who recalled that I used to be a leader of a Hashomer troop, and agreed to accept me in their group. After 4-5 days of walking, we reached Sambor where we disbanded. There, I met a few acquaintances from Rzeszow with whom I went on to Zbaraz, which we reached on 15-9-39, the day the Russians entered the town. For two years, I lived in Eastern Little Poland, which was in the hands of the Soviets.

We stayed there until the outbreak of the Soviet-German War (21-6-41). At the time of the German occupation, I was in Borislaw where I stayed during the Ukrainian pogroms, and for some 8 months of German occupation. I was miraculously saved from death but that is not part of the Rzeszow story.

Thanks to the efforts of my family, I received a permit at the end of April 1942, to join a Jewish

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camp returning westwards to their home towns. I, therefore, went to Sanok in a train travelling at the foot of the Carpathians, with my permit in my hands and a band on my arm. This was the route to the west used by speculators where were the dregs of the Poles and Ukrainians, so as to obtain food, etc. They helped me and hid me on the way. All the same, I underwent two hours of terrible dread in the stations for there was a cruel army train guard, supposedly Viennese, who specialised in catching Jews escaping to Hungary. It was said that among other, he was responsible for the death of blond Yezik, the son of Henech Weinbach who looked “Aryan”. After midnight, I stood with a large group of people waiting for the train on the tracks leading from Sanok to Jaslo. Luckily, the guard saw neither me nor my band.

We reached Rzeszow at about 6 a.m. in the morning. I got off at the main station holding two suitcases, without knowing the way to the Ghetto. Finally, I found the entrance to the Ghetto in the vicinity of the “Museum” Cinema, paid the porter and knocked at the gate. A small grill opened and I saw a Jewish policeman from the “Ordnungs Polizei” for the first time. I don't know who this policeman was. He was certainly not a native of Rzeszow and he did not know me. I asked him to let me come in temporarily so as not to remain on the “Aryan” side. I explained who I was and that I was a Rzeszow native, but he did not comply. Finally, he contacted one of my family who obtained an entry permit for me.

It is difficult to describe the bleak impression the Ghetto made on me as I went to my parents' flat at “Rynek” 24. The house was divided into two sections: Aryan and Ghetto Jewish. The latter had an entrance through Kupernika (Mikoszka) Street. There were beggars wandering around outside and they looked like skeletons. My family told me what had happened since the day I left Rzeszow. They told me that my father was one of the hostages the Germans took immediately upon entering the town. My brothers-in-law had not yet returned. (Yitzhak Greenspan, the older of the two, was no longer alive at the time, but we knew nothing of it. In Bolechow where he had been working in his brother-in-law's tannery, he was accused of sabotage and shot without trial). I told them I could have fled to the east with the Russians but felt I must not save myself along when my entire family remained in Rzeszow. I said that I had finished my studies in Vienna, knew German fluently and might, therefore, be able to help them. One Jew answered as follows: “You won't help them, and you too will perish”. At the time I didn't believe him but I was soon to learn he was right.

It is hard to describe the impression the people I left behind in Rzeszow in September, 1939, made on me. Our house on the “Rynek” side, together with the staircase, was on the Aryan side of the house and town. The back of the house, facing Mikuszka, had a new wooden staircase built on. The hallways and windows of the staircase were open, so it was possible to peep out on to the Aryan side. In this way, I could often catch the hate-filled looks of the “Volksdeutsche” or Polish anti-Semites who collaborated with the Nazi, and even, occasional looks of pity. A most singular sight was the passage from Galenzowski Street to the backs of the houses on Lwowska Street and the other side of Targowiza. It was necessary to climb up and down a maze of attics backyards as though across suspension bridges, I shall never forget it.

The old synagogue near the two pumps (“Dwie pompy”) had been completely demolished, while the synagogue in the “New Town” still had a semblance of walls. Many small houses were destroyed. The Old Cemetery near Koretz had been cleared away, and together with Koretz's plot, made up a large area which was later on turned into the “Sammelplatz”. Life in the Ghetto was a pretence; trade was not real trade for there were no commodities. The only activity of the Jews was the sale of their belongings and chattels for the purchase of food.

The removal of goods from the Ghetto and bringing them in, were equally dangerous. Anyone who still had anything for sale and who desired food in return, loitered in the few streets like a shadow. Men bloated with hunger could be seen sitting or lying in the street. Jews from Lodz, Kalisch, etc., had been driven to Rzeszow and were allowed to bring with them only a fraction of their belongings in suitcases. The “Judenrat” kept going only because they carried out all the German demands, among other things, any number of “workers” requested. As a matter of fact, half the people supplied to the Germans were incapable of work but the Germans had no complaints as they had been bribed and only tried to be formally correct in

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carrying out the orders issued from above, if they could make money this way.

The Jews looked for employment for in the beginning, they were convinced that this issue of work was serious and might save them. The Jews of the “Arbeitsamt” and their task-masters, profited from this. Nahum Sternheim, the poet, died of hunger, plain and simple, even before I arrived that the Ghetto. I saw Gritchman the tailor who could barely drag his legs with hunger. Those Jews known as “Yordim” (since they were going down) who hid their poverty even before 1939, were in an even more miserable state. They just died without a sigh. It was directed by Weinert, a German from Berlin. But even those of the poor who knew how to raise their voices, also died.

After a few days in the Ghetto, I realised that the Russian who had advised me not to return, was right. I arrived home on April 28^th or 29^th, 1942, and on 1^st May, we already had our “Night of the Long Knives”. The front of our house faced the “Aryan” side and was, therefore, well protected, while the back entrance had oak doors reinforced with heavy iron; and the windows at the bakery, which were on the ground level, were fitted with a dense grill.

That night, a small group of drunken Gestapo men roamed the Ghetto looking for communists. This was a “planned” game, as they had lists of Jews who had once been accused of communism and punished by the Court. At their demand, a number of additional names were added on by the “Judenrat”. They sought Tuchman, who was over fifty, dragged him out of bed and shot him on the staircase or in the backyard. They then broke into other flats and murdered whoever they found there. They attacked the house of the milkman, Eliezer Low who was at Baldachowka, badly wounding young Mrs. Trink(Salla Hupert who used to work in the Popular Library), claiming her husband was in Russia since 1939. They dragged Eliezer Low himself from his flat to a corridor, wounded him badly and later on killed him. There were several repetitions of this kind of right.

The responsibility of this state of affairs lay with the District Officer (Stadthauptmann) by the name of Pavlo who was a German from Czechoslovakia, and the District Manager (Kreishauptmann) Dr. Eihaus from Vienna, a man who held two doctorates: Law and Philosophy. This was a monster in human shape. This Eihaus was seen stamping on pregnant women at the time of an “Action”. He was a sadist who had the habit of watching while girls were beaten until they bled or fainted. If the girls would not utter a sound, he would grab the whip from the person inflicting the beating and beat them personally. My wife underwent such treatment under his hands, and I am well acquainted with this fact.

I had to find some sort of employment for otherwise I would have been finished. In this respect I was lucky. There was a German Air Force (“Bauleitung”) plant at Rzeszow which employed Jews who had been a soldier in World War I and had received the Iron Cross. As I spoke and wrote German fluently, I was recommended to Weinert by the Water Plant working for the “Bauleitung” Engineer, Schultz, who headed this firm situated in the nail factory of Licht é Lesser at Rzeszow, agreed to take me on for a trial and obtained a permit from the Labour Office (Arbeitsampt) for me.

This firm worked for the Army on the Eastern Front and had a branch at Rostow on the Don. They were allowed to release Jewish specialists for this work, for a long time. Owing to my fluent German and experience in office work, I became the chief assistant of the manager, after a while. I became friendly with Schultz, the engineer. I got to know many foremen and senior officials in the “Todt” organisation, some of whom knew I was Jewish. Engineer Schultz instructed me on his own responsibility not to wear the band on my arm; a thing which was mortally dangerous. One of the Germans who knew I was Jewish told me once when he was drunk, that he had much respect for me but if he were to receive an order to shoot me, he would do so.

I worked for this firm and had an individual pass. Later on, I worked with a group which was brought to work and back by one of the German craftsmen. Finally, we were given accommodation in the huts of the “Bauleitung der Luftwaffe” at Staroniwa and when there were no more Jews left at the Bauleitung, we were returned to the Ghetto. In the meantime, the first deportations of July 1942, had started, and my entire family was included in the deportation. I was one of those exempted by the employing firm. In those days there was already an inkling of what was happening at Belzec. A number of Jews had the courage to commit suicide by drinking poison.

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Among them were Dr. Yezover, the dentist with her sister, Mrs. Hirshhorn, Mrs. Berl, the mother of Dr. Blanca Hirshhorn, and my uncle, Yehoshua (Isias Schneeweiss), together with his wife.

After the first deportations, the Ghetto was cut down to a number of houses in Baldachowka-Kreczmera. Then they deported the women and the children. To this very day, I can still hear the terrible shrieking of the men when they returned home in the evening and found the bare walls. Every few weeks, a fresh “selection” was carried out to diminish the number of Jews. This went on until 1-9-43, when the western Ghetto was completely liquidated and only 150 people were left in the Eastern Ghetto. I was one of the remaining few (probably owing to the intervention of Engineer Schultz).

Once, a rumour spread that the remaining camp was to be immediately wiped out. I managed to leave camp and escaped to engineer Schultz, who had once told me: “Scheeweiss, if things should be really critical, come to me”. I lived at his place alongside his German workers for two to three weeks, at the old nail factory. In the meantime, however, the rumour was denied, and I contacted Mr. Eisenberg who enabled me to return to the camp which was run by the “Ordnungsdienst” (the Ghetto Police). I believe that Szupke, the Ghetto Commander, knew nothing at all about the whole incident. I did not guess then that a few weeks later, I was to jump camp, literally.

As mentioned before, 150 of us were left in the Ghetto to keep things in order. Almost every day, someone disappeared miraculously, for we were guarded so carefully, that only a bird could escape through the fence. A large number of these escapees were killed by the Poles who were supposed to help them cross the border into Hungary. Some of them returned, naked, in the morning to Szupke. I had made arrangements with a group to escape together. Engineer Schultz kept an Identity Card and some cash for me. One morning, I discovered that the group had taken off without me. I was desperate (later, I discovered that they were killed by Poles), and complained to young Geshwind who was a member of the “Ordnungsdienst”. I was amazed as to how they had managed to get away.

Geshwind explained the mystery to me. The offices of the “Ordnungsdienst” were located in the house of Zucker, the goldsmith, in Kreczmer Street. The back wall of the house faced the Aryan side. There was a cell behind the office similar to a solitary cell, with a small grill. The bars had been sawed through on all sides and then replaced in position. This was the escape route that the Jewish guards had prepared for themselves, should the worst come to the worst. They only allowed the most trusted persons to escape, and that too, for plenty of money.

Szupke went wild with rage, increased the patrols, and when the number of people in the Ghetto went down to 114 instead of 150, he threatened to take hostages and shoot them if the getaways continued. A few days later, several more people escaped. In the morning, one of them returned to camp with only his shirt on his back and told the whole story to Szupke, who then really lost his temper. At noon, during the parade, he ordered a group of 14 men to go to the railway station the following day and unload a car of coal for the Gestapo. I was included in this group together with Herman Goldstein who used to work at the “Bar Kochba” Sports Club. As Goldstein was older than me and rather sickly, I asked Szupke to allow another fellow to go in his place. At the evening parade on 22-11-43 we found ourselves surrounded by many S.S. men, policemen and Ukrainians. After a while, an officer and two Gestapo men turned up. I believe they were Flaschke and Puttenbaum. We realised that something was going to happen. Szupke then informed us that the workers ordered to unload the coal were hostages and were to be killed for the escaped me. He called out the names of the workers, and those called were assembled in the guard-room of the Jewish Police. I was relatively calm, but the young man who had volunteered instead of Goldstein, gripped me in a terrible convulsion. I tried to get rid of my watch and wallet, thinking to myself that it would be better if they were taken by one of our men instead of the Germans “before” or “after” … But it was only with difficulty that I found someone to take them (later on they were returned). There were two Jewish policemen among the list of hostages. Haar and someone else and they were the first to be summoned. I was third of four on the list, and as I went inside the cell, I remembered what I had heard from Geschwind. In the meantime, the two policemen called before me, hurriedly removed the grill and jumped through the window into the Aryan

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section. I jumped out too and started running ahead aimlessly. I ran through Galenzowski Street in the direction of the “New Town”. Perhaps I tried to get to Schulz subconsciously, but the way to the railway station was dangerous. In the “New Town”, I was caught by a Ukrainian persecutor and a most despicable character by the name of Ganek. He stopped me and another two, but did not dare to take us back on his own and, therefore, looked around for someone to assist him.

In those days, there was a company of “Vlassow's men” stationed at Rzeszow. These were Soviet prisoners of war who had volunteered to fight against the Soviets. The Ukrainian saw two Vlassow men and asked them in broken German to help him take us to the camp. In broken Russian, I tried to explain to them that we were Jews from the camp, sentenced to death for no reason. I hoped to arouse their pity, but they did not answer me; took out their bayonets and joined Ganek. As for him, he walked behind us with a pointed rifle, the two Vlassow men with bayonets in their hands on either side of us. We made the journey back to camp, fully convinced that this time we were going to die.

When we reached the “Beggar's Park”, Ganek suddenly saw one of the two camp doctors, Dr. Tunis and he called him to join us. Dr. Tunis explained to him that he was on the list, but it was no use and he made him join us. The four of us walked on. Finally, we reached Galenzowski Street near the “Beggar's Park” (or the Fish Place). From there to the camp entrance near the two pumps, there were only a few hundred steps. Suddenly, an idea flashed through my mind. In a moment we should reach Drucker's Arcade. If I were to stop for a second, the Vlassow soldier with the bayonet would be one step ahead of me and then, behind his back, I could make a dash for the Arcade. People went through there all the time which would make it difficult for Ganek to shoot me.

And so, it was. Ganek was taken by surprise and did not shoot me, and I went on running. Behind the Arcade was a row of two-storeyed houses which I did not know. I ran into one of them and headed for the cellar to hide behind a heap of potatoes, coal or garbage. One step was missing in the staircase and I stumbled and hurt my knee. I had neither torch nor matches, so I floundered on in the dark until I reached the end of the passage which was blocked by a wall. I fell down on damp soil.

I remember praying at that moment … to my mother (who perished in Belzec). Mother! Help me, for this is my last moment! A moment later, I heard the sound of running hobnailed boots belonging to pursuers who must have been directed by Polish passers-by. I was sure they were heading for the cellar, but instead, they went upstairs. A though flashed through my mind. If they were not going to find me upstairs, they would come down to the cellar. I stood up to try to escape but felt a sharp pain in my knee. Back I went to the end of the passage, sat down and once again called on my mother. Some time went by and they did not enter the cellar. I calmed down and tried to get out. When I reached the entrance gate, I leaned against the gateway. My eyes fell on a group of Poles looking in another direction. Suddenly, one of them shouted to his friend: “Look! He's still moving, he's still alive!” Someone jumped around the corner and was hit by a bullet. I later discovered it was Dr. Tunis. I realised that I could not stay there. I went off very slowly, walking through roundabout ways and back alleys until I reached the nail factory at Jagielonske Street. I managed to contact Schultz with whom I stayed for 24hrs before I moved on.

After the liberation, I was told that Szupke went berserk at our escape and personally shot some of the Ghetto inhabitants, including his barber, Berkowitz and the policeman, Loall who went on defending himself even after he had been shot and wounded.

I rested in Schultz's cellar for two days and then managed to get in touch with a small group of Jewish women who had been hiding in a cellar belonging to elderly Polish women at Staszec Street. My wife, Gisa, nee Speiser of the Wignaniec Quarter, was one of them. We stayed there until the end of the German Occupation, i.e. 31.7.1944., the day the Red Army troops entered Rzeszow. Before evacuating the town, the Germans had left one unit behind to hold up the Soviet advance. The unit chose to entrench itself at Wignaniec from which they shelled the “Lisa-Gora” in the direction of the Soviet advance. The Soviets returned fire. We, in Staszec Street were in the line of fire on both sides. The small one-storeyed house in which we were hiding, was hit by a hand grenade which burst in one of

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the rooms and the oven, killing a number of inhabitants, some of them old people or refugees who refused to go down to the cellar because of the choking atmosphere there.

A few days after the Soviets entered the town, we left our hiding place and settled down in one of the flats of our empty house. A number of Soviet officers stayed in a house on Staszec Street. One of them, a Jew, must have felt what we had undergone by looking at our pale faces. (We had neither seen daylight nor breathed fresh air for over a year). He started holding a long discussion with us as to why we had tried to save ourselves in this fashion instead of going to the woods to join the Partisans. All of our attempts to explain our plight and give examples of other nations, and particularly the hostile attitude of the Polish Underground towards us, did not convince him.

We lost no time in organising a Jewish Committee which included Dr. Taler, Dr. Mahler (no in Australia) and Magister Moshe Reich, at present living in Haifa. Despite the fact that we ourselves were in rags and all our belongings lost to those persons who were supposed to “look after them”, it was imperative to assist those who started leaving the camps after February 1945, or who left their hiding places and occasionally returned from the woods. Under the auspices of the Soviet Government, a Polish Government had organised, in Lublin, and they assisted us, somewhat. They gave us a little money and a few second-hand articles left in the vacated camps; for the Germans had taken everything with them or else sent goods on to the bombed German towns. (Thus, they transported the furniture of Jews to Germany). Later on, the assistance was given to us by the Polish District authorities (Wojewodstwo). Their office was located in two Jewish houses on Zamkowa Street. We had good contacts with this office, owing to Moshe Reich who, as a lawyer, had formerly defended Polish Communists in the Polish courts; and some of those Communists were now high officials. On the other hand, the Polish population with very few exceptions, regarded us with hatred, since “we” had brought the Soviets to Poland. Secondly, we demanded that they would return articles which they considered as their belongings by right of “possession”.

With regard to the unsympathetic and occasionally even hostile attitude of the Polish population, the following incident must be told: At the beginning of June, 1945, the reactionary section of the National Military Forces tried to organise a pogrom against the Jews by throwing the body of a young Christian woman into Trink's cellar on Tennenbaum Street, which was inhabited by Jews. A rumour was spread that the girl had been murdered for the preparation of Matzot on Passover. Of course, they were using the Blood Libel as a tried method for provoking the masses. Later on, it was proved that, in fact, the girl had been raped and murdered as was also verified by a pathological examination. But the reaction does not despise any means to achieve its aim.

The following morning, riots broke out. A mob numbering thousands of people who had undergone Hitlerite training, prepared to quench their thirst with Jewish blood. The Civilian Militia started rounding up all the Jews and concentrated them at the Europe Café, in the 3^rd May Street. The police sergeant who came to our house at N°4 Rinek Street in order to imprison me, said to my wife, who asked him to me take a coat: “Please, madam, but he will no longer need a coat”. Luckily for us, one of our friends, Mr. Sprung, dashed off in a carriage to the Staromiezcze, the N.K.V.D. Headquarters, and they immediately intervened. Later on, the Militia men claimed that they had concentrated the Jews in one place for their own advantage and safety. Good luck to those who believe it!

I had two acquaintances, engineers who had converted to Christianity, but whose Jewish hearts throbbed and woke up during the Hitler period.

They were then working at the Wojewoda offices in Rzeszow and were particularly hurt to find that 90% of the girls working there, all girls with secondary education, believed in the Blood Libel that Jews used Christian blood for baking Matzot for Passover!

After this, about 90% of the Jews who were in Rzeszow, left the town, going westwards. Most of them were not natives of Rzeszow. They left for the west by train, going to Cracow or Wroclaw. Those of us who were members of the Committee, transferred our Archives to Przemysl and left Rzeszow too. Rojka Nathanson-Weinbach, with her husband and son, Leah Teitelbaum, my wife and I with our six-week-old son, went by Soviet car to Kosica in Slovakia where our ways parted. My family and I arrived in Israel in the summer of 1949.

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On January 9^th, 1944, the miserable remnants of the “Gross Deutschland” armoured division came to Rzeszow and with them, many Ukrainians and other traitors. “German Cossacks” walked about the town wearing German uniforms and Cossack fur hats. These were German citizens who had fled from the east. The Ghetto area was once again reduced. Many Poles were ordered, at a few hours' notice, to leave their flats and move into ruinous houses.

Once again, the poisonous German propaganda against the handful of unfortunate and despairing Jews who remained in the Ghetto, began to flare up.

The responsibility for the German defeat was laid upon them. The last of those who were concealing themselves were sought out with brutal lust, and those who were found were murdered together with those who had hidden them.

At the beginning of February, 1944, the Germans held a stupid and vulgar anti-Jewish exhibition which went by the name of : “The Jewish Plague in the World”, in the old City Square.

They invested a great deal of money, materials and effort in this exhibition, which was opened with a bombastic ceremony. Thousands of Poles were brought there and all of them repeated the peasant saying: “the fly stings hardest when he is dying”. The Jews realised the gravity of the situation and the danger facing them, and fled in groups. Sometimes, one would be caught, but the majority seemed to vanish into thin air.

In the early morning of February 13, the Jewish Ghetto was wiped out completely. The German task-master, Dr. Hans Heinz, a senior officer in the State Security Service, placed a plate above the Hitler eagle displayed over the fortress turret, with the inscription “Rzeszow Judenrein”. The handful of surviving wives, sisters and daughters were brutally separated from the men. The women were sent to Plaszow, the men to Stalowa Wola. The weak were shot on the way, and only a handful reached the camps.

After the liquidation of the Ghetto, the German authorities gave instructions for the speedy rehabilitation of the abandoned houses of the Jews, as there was a great shortage of housing.

On February 24, sudden rumours spread through the town that a hideout had been found containing many Jews. The rumours were nerve racking, and the tragic course of events can be reconstructed. It was known that the old cellars in Rzeszow were built in the shape of tunnels. These tunnels continued past the foundations of the houses, particularly in the town square. Pits dug to varying depths, one on top of the other, were only a few metres below the surface. The pressure of the large numbers of heavy vehicles passing through the town centre during the war, caused the ground to collapse, and this led to the collapse of a number of houses.

A few years later, before World War II when water-pipes were laid, a deep trench had been dug during drainage works in the northern part of the Old City, which had cut off and closed the row of pits underneath the town square and the openings of the pits near the houses, a brick wall was built to block off the cut-off cellars, and the approach to them was eliminated. The Gestapo and the German policemen searched Jewish cellars carefully, but did no know that a complete network of tunnels existed behind these walls. But the Jews, owners and residents of the houses, were aware of the fact. After the shock and stupefaction which passed over the Jews after the sudden “Actions” and mass deportations of 1942 and early 1943, those who were permitted to move about the Ghetto thought of using those catacombs as a hiding place.

A suitable entrance to the tunnels was found in the cellar of a pharmacy at the corner of the square and Mickiewicz Street. Preparatory work for the hideaway was carried out at night with the greatest care. The pits were linked by small passages and an entire cellar network was created. Water was

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stored in barrels together with large quantities of food, petrol and oil for cooking, utensils, etc. An exit was also dug in case of emergency. It lay outside the Ghetto, underneath a demolished house at the southern end of the Square.

The hiding folk kept in touch with the outside world with the aid of one of the inspectors of the Square, Michael Stasiuk, who supplied them with food and kept them informed of world events.

Here is the story of one of the builders who engaged in the restoration of the buildings: “We worked in the cellar underneath the pharmacy. Out of one of the holes came the smell of carbide, which made us giddy. We decided to make a search as we hoped to find a store of carbide, which was a fuel very much in demand. Suddenly, we saw a wall which had been put up only a short while ago, because the mortar was still moist. As we had heard a great deal about hidden Jewish treasures, some of the workers started breaking the wall down. Upon removal of the row of bricks, a layer of yellow mortar was uncovered. One of the workers struck this layer with an iron bar and it penetrated easily. At that moment we heard, as though from under the earth, an indistinct murmur of voices. The iron bar rose as though someone had pushed it back. When the worker stuck the bar down again, someone pushed it up again.

“We were dead afraid … A moment later, we all fled as though by command. A rumour spread among the workers that “there was someone” in the cellar” …

Tormented and terrified, the Jews who lived in these catacombs could not hold out. Their nerve broke down completely. On the evening of the same day, the guards at the railway station arrested a Jewish woman who was about to buy a ticket. After cruel and terrible tortures, the woman informed her torturers of the location of the hiding place, and that some of the people in hiding had left the place and fled. 35 Jews were still found there!

A Ukrainian Fascist policeman recognised a man walking near the cemetery as being a well-known Jew from Rzeszow. The policeman wanted to arrest him, he was shot from a pistol and the shooter got away. One of the Jews who fled was shot to death in the Kupernik Street area. That night there was a manhunt in the neighbourhood of the town, and 8 men were arrested. Only the next morning did the Germans “attack” the opening of the outlet from the catacomb. The miserable people still left in the hiding place were forced to leave through the exist leading to the square, where they fell into the hands of the murderers.

On the morning of February 25, a member of the Blue Police (Polish police in the service of the Gestapo) came to Stasiuk's house, where 15 Jews were in hiding. They pleaded and entreated him to leave them there and not hand them over to the Gestapo, but all their pleas were useless. The policeman ordered them to fall into two files and to go with him. But the Jews, knowing they had nothing to lose, ran away in all directions. Some of them were caught and a few were saved.

Since the Germans did not succeed in catching all the Jews who had escaped from the bunker, they assumed that some of them must be hiding in shafts and bunkers at lower levels. However, fearing that the Jews might have weapons in their hiding place, these “heroes” decided to murder the helpless people and not to enter these deep hiding places. They blocked all the entrances and filled the catacombs with quantities of dense smoke. They then checked the cellars surrounding the “catacombs” to make sure that the smoke did not escape through cracks and openings. Once reassured, they filled the catacombs with gas. However, according to Mrs. Victoria Stasiuk, widow of Michael Stasiuk who was shot to death by the Gestapo for assistance to Jews, there was not a single Jew in the place.

All the Jews had fled. Those who were caught were murdered. The survivors who hid in various places, did not forget the widow, and notified her in every way they could of their welfare. And so, a large part of the catacomb dwellers, particularly the young and strong, were saved.

Original Footnote:

1. This article is based on a diary kept in the days of the German occupation and the Secret Service after the Occupation. It was published in “Novini Juvaiskaya” on January 24, 1961. back

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Rabbi Halpern was born in Rzeszow, 78 years ago, the son of Reb Chaim-Yone and Lea Halpern. In 1913, he was called to Beitch to assume the post held before him by his father-in-law, Rav Aaron Horowitz. He lost his wife, Dvorah, while in the concentration camp. His son, Aaron Chaim, aged 14, was shot in Beitch; another son, Nuchem Rubin was killed in Cracow together with 500 other orphans. Two sons, Mendel 17 and Naphtali, 19 years old, were shot in Buchenwald two days before the liberation, Rav Halpern was freed by the U.S. armies on May 6^th, 1945. He was kept in a hospital for five weeks to regain his health and was then sent to Italy, where he was appointed Rabbi of the Ashkenazi Shul at Via Balbo 33, in Rome. While in Rome, he was received in private audience by His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, whom he thanked on behalf of all Jews for the aid he gave to save the Jews of Italy from extermination. His Holiness replied that he did his sacred duty as a servant of God, whose children we all are.

In January, 1940, the Nazi Germans had completed their local plans of destroying the Jewish communities of Rzeszow, Jaslo, Beitch and neighbouring towns. We were living in constant terror; men did not dare spend the nights in their homes for fear of being taken by the Germans for mass extermination, and for months, we slept in dugouts in the forests.^[a]

One day, the last week in January, 1940, a member of the Jaslo Kreisjudenamt came by taxi in Beitch in search of me with a request by the Rosh Hakehilla, Mr. Goldstein, that I come immediately to Jaslo. There I was told by the leaders of the Jewish community that the German commander had ordered 30 selected Jewish young men to destroy the beautiful Shul, the Torahs and other objects of religious devotion and, that, if they refused to carry out his command, he would exterminate all the Jews in town. The 30 young men, in one voice, refused to carry out the order. I was asked to plead with them to carry out this ghastly command. I told them that since it was the plan of the Nazi Germans to exterminate all Jews, any attempt, perchance, by some intervention of Providence to save Jewish lives, was an extenuating fact in their complying with the command of the Germans. Proudly, all 30 boys rejected my plea and with determined voices, they said: “even if we all perish, we shall not desecrate the heritage of more than a thousand generations”.

The Befehl was issued by the Germans to destroy the boys. A long ditch was dug and each one of the boys had one leg tied to the leg of the other, all along the line so that all were tied together; they were then shot at in the legs to prevent them from moving away from the edge of the ditch into which all of them were thrown and buried alive, all crying: “Shema Yisroel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echod”.

Memorial Gathering From left to right: Baruch Shlissel, Dr. Salomon Tocker, Joshua Rosner, Dr. Moshe Yaari-Wald, Rabbi Moshe Kamelhar, Isaac Estreicher, Rabbi Jacob Fink, Moshe Wechsler

1. So Rabbi Halpern tells back

[Page 120]

It was on the morning of April 25, 1945, that I started out on what later promised to be one of the most exciting days of my life. Three other soldiers and myself left the Command Post of the 1^st Battalion, 273^rd Infantry Regiment, on what was supposed to be a routine patrol. As we drove our jeep toward the Elbe River, we had a premonition that something was going to happen. The closer we got to the river, the more Germans we could see running in the opposite direction. We stopped a few of these Germans and after questioning them, we discovered that the Russians were closing in on them and that they were afraid of what might happen to them if they were caught.

After realizing that the Russians were so close, we decided to take a white sheet from one of the Germans and use it as a flag. Before long, we entered the town of Torgau on the Elbe River. As we came to the centre of the town, we decided to carry the flag, because we thought the Russians had entered from the other end of the town. Before long, German snipers started shooting at us, and it was then that we realized that the Russians were still on the other bank of the river.

Somone spotted a drug store and suggested we paint our white flag into an American flag. Everyone agreed to this idea, and we broke into the drug store, found some water colour and painted our flag. Later, this same flag was waved from a tower overlooking the Russian lines, and the contact between the Americans and the Russian Army was made.

That night, from Washington, London and Moscow, President Truman, Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Marshal Stalin, proclaimed simultaneously the news to the world. The meeting was history.

Two weeks later, World War II in Europe was ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany.

Corporal Paul Staub is third from the left[a]

1. Paul Staub is the son of Martin Staub from Raishe, presently at 1245 Stratford Avenue, New York 59, N.Y. His grandfather was Moshe Aaron Staub, a Hebrew scholar and a merchant on Plac Mickiewicza, Rzeszow. back

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