Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Dorfman - August 11 & 25, 1989

Polish Police

After they shot her...

The Polish Police...

After they'd shot her. She'd been shot?

No.

This was before.

No, this, the other girl would come to tell us.

She was shot. Okay.

That, that girl that that ha...that had a friend and the little girl, the mother and the little girl, she was from Warsaw where things--that she, that she knows where we are. So she come running to us to tell us to escape.

I see.

It was luck that the police or the gendarmerie did not come in to look for us. I don't know. They shot her. Another one would say, here are Jews, you understand. Don't kill me. But she, they shot her and she said she doesn't--she just wanted--she just ran to escape. She didn't know where she's running. To make the story short, that lady and, and that kid escaped from what they were saying that the police let her go because she was talking too much. She escaped in the forest, a couple days later at night she came to us and uh, somebody's knocking at the, at the barn door. I had a--we all had--I had weapons, I had a gun with me, hand grenades because I wouldn't be taken alive, I didn't want to be taken alive. Because we heard already in that particular time what they do and they cutting you pieces--why should I be, I'm going to be dead anyway. So I blew myself up and if, if I hope I can blew a, a couple, a couple with me, I mean with me, you understand. That happened quite, quite often. Our boys when we were already involved with the partisans and being hidden, that we were all suicidal. We were not thinking about eh, about being alive. And she came in and I, and when I saw her I just kept my gun and I says, "How did you get here?" Because why? A couple days my uh, the people who, who were hidden were crying and making noise. She says, "If we catch that woman with that little girl we're going to cut her in pieces." In the whole area, goyim were looking for, all the Gentiles were looking for her. Because why? She really blabbled and gave out a lot of people that they were holding Jews, making a mess out of the whole area. She hold this against me after the war that I didn't help her or anything. So my father grabbed me, my father didn't let me do it, I says, "Dad we're all going to be dead because the gendarmerie is going to be here any time because they probably tracked her where she is." But we were lucky. She was hidden by us six months, and the people where we lived had, were not knowing that she is there.

In, in the album from your trip...

Yes.

Um, there are some Poles that you're standing with.

Right.


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