Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Szymon Binke - June 16, 1997

And your father, did he work in the same place?

Uh, my father, no. My father worked in uh, he, he was in with uh, from before the war he knew vegetables and this, so he worked in the, in the main place where they brought in the vegetables, which was probably, oh God, let's see, Pieprzowa, Młynarska, right, probably someplace around here there was a market. They called it Jonas Pilzer Platz. I don't know how they called it in Polish. Nobody, I tried to find out but nobody knew.

That's German.

Yeah, no. It was a Jew. It must have been uh, named after a Jew, Jonas, Jonah. And Pilzer could have been a, a nickname too. My uncle tells me he was the first one to, to put a stand with the fruits and vegetables there, so they named it after him. But I don't know.

So your father had a different job in a different part of the ghetto.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And your uncles?

Uh, let's see. Two of 'em worked in a saddle factory, you know with leather they were making, Sol and Larry, they worked in the leather uh, factory. Harry worked, he worked something with the, with the, with the streetcars. And my aunt, well, wait a minute. Then, then Sol and Larry went to the, to the straw factory. They made, in the straw factories they made shoes out of straw. They used to uh, uh, I guess for they, they needed it in Russia for the cold uh, weather in the front. And uh, what did my aunt do? She worked in a, in a, in a factory that they made clothes, tailoring.

And your mother?

My mother I don't think, I don't remember her going to work. Well, we had, she had to take care of the baby and try to keep hidden.

So she stayed out of sight.

Right.