Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Mala Weintraub Dorfman - September 15, 2005

Łódź

But in Częst... Częstochowa, how did you know where to go?

I don't know, we went, a few women and we saw an empty, an empty place and we walked in. So, we assumed there were Germans were there before. So, we walked in and we stayed there. We were about eight or nine of us. And, and on the floor we were sleeping because there was not enough space on a bed to sleep.

Were they all Łódź-ers?

Hm?

All Łódź-ers?

No, no, they were more from Kozienice, they were from Kozienice.

But you were determined to go back to Łódź.

I wanted to go back and find my sisters. I was so... Because I knew they were in, in the ghetto. I didn't know they were evacuated in the ghetto, so I was going, went back to Ko... to Łódź. But uh, I was walking in Łódź on the street and a woman saw me, said, Franka? I said, no. I said, how do you know Franka? She said, I know she had two sisters. And she told me they are alive, they're in Bergen-Belsen. So, I found out that they are alive, but when I went to the Jewish community ca... uh, uh, there, their names were listed. So, I knew they were alive.

Did you go back to your house?

I went back to my house, but there was nothing there. Oh no, excuse me, I got a picture from my mother, with, my mother made it. ??? It's like a Jewish uh, like when uh, God asked Abraham to give his son uh, to, to kill his son.

The Akeida.

Yeah, and then he stopped him, the angel came and stopped him, didn't want to kill, he just wanted to try it. That's the picture my mother made and I have it in my house. And I found a couple pictures, my brother's and uh, my father's uh, Arbeits uh, uh, what do you call it?

Arbeitskarte.

Yeah. My mother's. And that's all I found in the house.

Was anybody living there?

No, no. In the ghetto, the Łódź ghetto, no. No one was living there.

So, this was in a house in the ghetto...

In the ghetto. To the other house I didn't go, no.

You didn't go to your...

No, no. To the original, no. I went, when I went back to Poland I went up there, but nothing was there. Not to the apartment, I just went to the building.

Still there?

Yeah, sure. It's a big apartment building.


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