• Contents
• Map
• Audio

Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997

What, what did your father do?

My father had a uh, uh, feed store, you know uh, uh, animal feed, food and uh, grain. He, we lived on the outskirts of town and uh, the farmers used to stop before going into the city, so he'd buy off the grains from 'em and send it to an elevator and so, you know and uh, have it uh, ground up. Sell the flour to the uh, bakeries and uh, there is some, like the hulls of the uh, of the grain, you feed this to cattle and horses and sell it in our store.

So he must have had dealings with Polish non-Jewish...

Polish and Germans, yes. Mostly, yes, most of the dealings were with, except for the bakers. You know, the bakers that he sold the flour to, a lot of 'em were Jewish because that was in city, but the farmers were all uh, either, mostly Germans. A lot of Germans.

Volksdeutsche.

Volksdeutsche, yes.

And what were the relations like between...

Very good. Very good. They grew up together. My father used to go there when he was four or five years old. You know, that's, uh, that's why we got stuck in, in, in Poland, because uh, my father used to do business during the First World War and it was also the Germans that invaded uh, came into Poland. And he said, "Well, heh-heh, survived the First World War." Soldiers got killed, but he wasn't a soldier. He said, "It's the same Germans, they're not gonna bother anybody."

So he must have had several Polish or, or German friends.

Oh yes, a lot of them, yes.

And do you remember any, any incidents of anti-Semitism?

Just that one time I remember where uh, they had this party, there was uh, like a field and they used to have dances and parties and this one group had a party at night and I think we must have expected problems, because we never used to close the uh, shutters, you know, there used to be heavy wooden shutters on uh, on the windows, on the outside on hinges. And that night we, we did close the shutters and they were throwing rocks at 'em and I think they broke a window from I guess the vibration, no stones came through into the house.

Do you remember when that was?

Whew! God, it must have been '38 if I could remember. Otherwise I wouldn't have remembered it. Around '38 probably.

And who, who was celebrating? Who was...

This uh, they were a rea...real right-wing organization. They called themself Narodowcy.

Which means what?

Narod is uh, is, is, is, is uh, like Volkswagen, you know, v, volk? That would be Narod in Polish.

So like the people.

People's Party or something, yeah.

Um, tell me something about your, what you remember about your childhood. Did you have lots of friends? Did you play soccer? Did you...

Yes, yes, yes. I had it all mostly Polish friends until I started to go school, but then in school they were all Jewish. Like I told you, it was a parochial Jewish school, but I only had the uh, they were friends, school friends. When I came home they weren't around. Unless I went to see my grandfather on a weekend or something, I'd uh, I might meet some of them.

Now was this a function of the neighborhood you lived in? Were there lots of Jews around where you lived?

No, not where we lived. We didn't have any Jews. We were the only...

Can you show me where on a map?

Uh, I have to go, let's see, where's Brzezinska, Brzezinska, this map doesn't go far enough. This is the ghetto map, right?

Right.

Okay. Here is the, I had it when I spoke to you the last time. It must be around here, oh yeah. See, this is, right here, right where the ci...where the city ends, right past the Catholic cemetery. There is a Jewish cemetery on this side, in fact, our Shul was right over here and uh, then there is a Catholic cemetery. We lived past the Catholic cemetery right on a, on a border. Our house was uh, uh, Brzezinska one hundred and sev...number 171 and Szosa Brezinska number 1. In other words, ours was the, the, the, the last house of the city and the first house of...Sikava probably would be the next uh, but we still had, we still were in Łódź.

And where was the, was there a Jewish neighborhood in Łódź?

Well yeah. The Jewish neighborhood is this, the Baluty.

Baluty.

Yeah.

Can we see another, on the other map?

On this one? Well, go back to Brzezinska, right around here probably. Oh here, right here, Balut, yeah, right here. They have it. Well, this is the ghetto, but this was the Jewish area, yeah, Baluty.

So that's, was that a significant walk to get to the Jewish neighborhood?

From our house?

Yeah.

We took uh, uh, the uh, streetcar. In fact, the streetcar only went up to here, to the uh, Catholic cemetery. I still had to walk about a kilometer or something. What does it say, show here? A thousand meter, yeah. Well, no, probably half a kilometer.

So you had all these non-Jewish friends...

Yes...

Um, and...

but I was young. I was only, when the war broke out I was only seven years old.

And you don't remember any, any anti-Semitic incidents with...

Against me? No, not, not from the kids, no.

Did you like school?

Yes.

Um, both parts of it?

[laugh] It was a little too long, but [laugh] we, we had no choice. There was no uh, you knew you had to go and that was it.

So would you characterize your life before the war as uh, what, middle class?

Very, yeah, probably upper-middle class, yeah. Because uh, going to that school cost quite a bit of money in those days, so I'd have to be in the upper class. Usually you'd go to a public school in the morning and go to cheder in the afternoon three, four hours. But to have to go to one school and get both educations was quite costly.

Do you remember the name of the school?

Litvin. The, the, the, the person that owned it had uh, he was the Rabbi and had two sons. They taught you the uh, uh, they were educated in, in, in both Hebrew and Polish, you know, they and then I think they had a lady that was a teacher. But apparently it was uh, uh, uh, with, you know, it was uh, it was accepted by the city because uh, you could finish school there and go on to a high education.

I, I think, I may have asked you. It wasn't a Katzenelson school, was it? Katzenelson?

No.

It was also a parochial school in Łódź. So it was the Litvin school.

Litvin, yeah. It was uh, right on Brzezinska and Koscielna. It's right probably around here. Here, it was, it was I think number 3 Brzezinska, number 5 Brzezinska someth...number 3, I believe and it starts, number 1 starts at, at, at the, at this here and goes on in higher numbers. Ours was 171. Now see in Łódź the numbers don't jump like they do here. They jump just two. You have the odd side and the even side. But like you'll have 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 on one side and you have 1, 3, 5, 7 on the other side.

Would you take a streetcar every morning?

Sure. Oh yeah.

By yourself?

Yeah.

At age six.

Mm-hmm.

It was safe.

Oh yeah. Nobody even thought about, uh...