Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Luba Elbaum - January 20, 1982

In Contact with Poles

Now how did you hear about this?

I was in contact with them because I was still--this--I was still this time in Poland and I was still not a young girl. I mean, going everyday and searching for my parents. I would go from house to house in the night, searching if they saw run away my parents. This was still not in '41, still. And then that what I find out they saw my father run away and this--my mother go to Treblinka. And I have my own one brother, but he run away. He was thirteen years old, he run away. And then he came with me, he was staying with me in this, this farm--big farm. And then was in a little ghetto in Bełżyce, it was a little ghetto. They tooked a little, little people, but not too much. It was maybe left uh, maybe about five hundred people to clean out this mess. And this time I was in the farm and they need more people, like I mean, the sewing, and I mean, it was five more--came three more girls to me. We were five girls working in the farm. We were doing like, I mean uh, everything. We were working the farm 'cause was already over there German--was German already were there. Sometimes they leave there they tell us to go and clean like for them shoes or their--clean their rooms for them. Everything we have to do. And sometimes we just go out and uh, you know, we have something to do, all this work. And then they bring more out. The German bring more out. One a shoemaker they bring out. They need a shoemaker and they need a, they need a--to sew, how do you call a...

Seamstress?

Seamstress. And then they used to--they need very much like to make for the horses the things.

Hm.

And we were twenty-one, then we were the twenty-one. We were five girls and there were probably four couples.

All living...

All we living in one--they give us a place we can stay. And they give us food that we can cook ourselves, I mean, cook ourselves.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn