Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993

So, I said, to Mrs. Wyszkowski, "I'd like to go visit the Tomczynskis. She says, "Well, I wouldn't advise it, you know, people belong to the uh, Polish uh, party," you know, they call them the Endekes, which was a Nationalist party...

Nationalists--anti-Communists.

Yeah. She says, "I wouldn't." I said, "No," I says, "don't worry about it. I know he's a nice man and he liked my grandfather, I'll go and visit him." so, this and this. So, she says, "Fine." So the next day, the next day--I don't remember where I slept because sleeping was never--I mean I could sleep anyplace--a field, because it didn't register in my mind where I slept, you know.

She didn't ask you to sleep there?

No, no, she wanted me to leave. I mean, like here, we go Waldorf Astoria, the Parker Meridian--there were never in those days. You have to sleep, you lie down in the ditch, you go to sleep. Anyway, the next day, I go in and I visit the Tomczynskis. "Ah, Mr. So...oh, your grandfather..." this and that, and they're inviting me to sit down for uh, Easter dinner. I sit down to dinner and who do you think comes in? His daughter comes in with a German soldier--is her boyfriend. I mean, I mean the dumb things that I did.

Well, did they introduce you?

They introduced me as a cousin. I thought this was it. They introduced me as a cousin.

Very smart of them.

Can you believe it? Nineteen forty-three, liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, all Jews are officially dead.

April?

April of '43. It was the Passover--it was Easter.

???

Right, and I am sitting there, walks in--I walked in voluntarily to this goy and he's sitting there, and his daughter is bringing in a German soldier as a boyfriend. Anyway, I finished the meal and I got the hell out of there. From there, I think I went back to Warsaw, because see, now I had the Kennkarte with me. I felt a lot safer. I went back to Warsaw and rode around in the streetcar. I remember seeing in one side where the streetcar was circling the ghetto. I remember seeing a Jewish policeman still at a gate with a German on the inside. They were on the inside of the ghetto at a gate--a Jewish policeman and a German and I was in a streetcar in the outside riding around.

There was no fighting going on?

No, no, no. I didn't see--I don't see--it's either it was over, or it was in the early days.

Maybe just before?

So, maybe just before.