Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993
Moving to Warsaw
The following is part two of an interview with Maury Chandler at his home in Southfield, Michigan, on the evening of October 6th, 1993. The interviewer is still Sidney Bolkosky.
What I'm going to do is go back and ask you how you got to Warsaw--you and your family got to Warsaw...
Yeah...
...after the war had begun.
I arrived--I brought my brother back from the Russian side.
Right, I don't remember if you told me this or not. You and your parents and both brothers, did you all go to Warsaw together?
No. We left earlier, you know. My older brother and I left our home in Nasielsk...
Right, and went into the Małkinia side.
...on the Russian side and then we came back. By the time we came back, Nasielsk has been evacuated and my parents found themselves, you know, dropped off in a town in Eastern Eur...uh, Poland. From there, they made their way to Warsaw.
They made their way on their own.
Yeah.
Okay let me start--tell me again. You and your brother, Avrum, wound up in Małkinia and then went back to Nasielsk.
No, not to Nasielsk. We wound up in Białystok, on the Russian side.
Right.
And then after several months, you know, we couldn't--we had a hard time adapting. I took him back to Warsaw with the idea of dropping him off and me returning back to the Russian side.
You didn't go back to Nasielsk first and found ??? and found it empty?
No, no. Nasielsk was evacuated. I heard that it was evacuated and there were no more Jews there. So, we--when I--we came back to Warsaw and we had some relatives that I knew where they lived. And I went to their house and asked where my parents are. And they told us that they got them an apartment on--in a certain street.
What street was it?
In Kopieska 8.
Was that in the ghetto?
Yeah, eventually, it found itself as part of the ghetto and...
When you made your way back from Białystok was it difficult getting past Russian forces?
Well, I, well I mentioned that we crossed the Bug River--the frozen river at night. Remember, I mentioned that we were arrested by the NKVD. Q:??? back in the town.
They couldn't believe the Jews wanted to go back to the German side. And we convinced them that we were Jews but there was no sinister motive. We just wanted to go back home. And they couldn't understand it--why we would uh, do that.
But from there to Warsaw, once you were onto the German side...
We got on a train, yeah. On a train, my brother was slapped by a Nazi, you know. The moment the train took off, he came in and he slapped his face, "Why--what's a Jew doing on a train?" And so that was the first welcome on the German side again.
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