Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982
Deportation to Bełżyce Ghetto
And then when they came--after a year we were working, they came. It's uh, it was like already--the Sukkot was already, like I say. Rosh Hasha...Yom, Yom Kippur what we still were home. Before Yom--before the holidays '41 we were still home. It was Yom Kippur in the night. And then my mother and my father didn't let us out to pray or nothing. We just stay home, you know. Like my mother was baking something--making holidays. We were all kids still home, and I saw already what's going on the war. Because sometimes I went to sell something like to Lublin. Sometimes I went because I have a--like from the Polish people I went. And I saw what's going on. And my mother was so crying, my father. We still were home. So in the night I was dreaming. The German came, they took all away. I still, I'm still alive. I only one was alive. If in this day on took 'til after Sukkot. After Sukkot they tooked everything away from us. We think that it's going to be a ghetto in Bełżyce, that they said "It's going to be a ghetto." So my mother prepares some bread, we make some from my bread--we make challas bread. We have like something bake--something to do. So the Polish people came--the neighbors in the night--when came just go away to Lu...to Bełżyce. They took everything away from us. And in the morning they give us. Like here they have a car. When Poland was like I mean, like a, a taxi was--I mean like here car--I mean a horses and buggy. I forgot how it was forty three years back, and we put everything on this. A little bit of what we--not everything. A lot, just us take it, like I say clothing a little bit. And I was the oldest one in the house. And in the morning I went with the, with, you know, to the ghetto. When I went and come in the morning to the ghetto, I saw it's no place for the people who to stay. They bring in from seven small town in one town.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn