Lily Fenster - November 8 & 10, 1994
1943
???
I--you know what, when I was in Poland, I think maybe that was already '43. I walked you know, it's a small town. I was working in a store already, because the lady that uh, didn't need me anymore, but she was gracious enough that she came to the window to tell me--how could you lie to me. You know, they would kill my family, which it's true, you know. So, I walked into that store. So she find me a job, because she had connections because her father-in-law was a commissioner to the police. That guy that stripped him because he couldn't kill a Jewish woman. He couldn't--some boys couldn't--and they stripped him in front of the thing and grabbed his buttons uh, uh, whatever badges and, but that particular woman was pregnant and she was a very wealthy woman from the that little shtetl in Łuków and then the minute they came, they were looking for the rich ones and the famous ones and the educated ones, as you know, the rabbis and doctors and--because, they figure, with the darkness they could cope. With the intellect, they af...they were afraid for rebellions, because you know, smart people usually--a farmer, he tells you do this, he's going to do this, especially in Poland. I mean you know, they were so easily brainwashed. You don't have no idea. Two times you could tell them the Jews are filthy. Right. Want to kill...let's go kill them. That's the--I lived with them, I know what they did, especially they had the little liquor. So they want and she was pregnant, a brunette she was. Also, it's not far from where I used to wait. We went out, who knows. I don't know if I went to the store or when something--I didn't see it, but the people were buzzing and talking about it and he said, ??? was his name. He said he couldn't do it. He didn't like Jews, but he couldn't kill. So that, I don't know, it was a gendarme, or it was an idiot that he wants to make himself big, because sometime they did a lot of thing on their own, too. They had a free hand to do. When you are a Jew, they can do anything with you. And, and the Goyim what they seen, they say, it's a disgrace. How low can people stoop? And she was already in the high month pregnant, poor thing and she fell and she started bleeding and, he couldn't do it, so the Nazi did it and stripped him and I don't know what they did with him. I think they killed him, because when I was working for his sister-in-law, I knew his wife. I don't remember her name. She was a tall brunette, a very attractive woman and she hated the Nazis as much as we did, because they killed her husband you know, and then I went a little further. And you went, you run around in this little city. You see, uh, they all said it was Eichmann with two big dogs and when he walked on that side--I seen a German walking with two dogs and they said cheka, Halina, cheka run away, run away. They said it was Eichmann. I didn't see him. I just seen a Nazi with two big beautiful dogs. They had gorgeous tails you know, like a healthy--the dog--would say, "Hund, eat the Jew!" Like they say to the Jew was the dog and the, the, the dog was the Mensch. "Mensch, ißt dem Hund!" but they reversed us, that we were the dogs and the dogs were menschen, you know what I mean? As you know, probably--that expression, because a lot of people know that terrible saying. And the minute some Nazis came, everybody was staying home. Nobody went out. When they went out coincidentally, they used to walk on the sidewalk and Poles used to walk in the you know, in the streets.
In the streets.
Stories that I have seen, stories, stories, stories. One hundred and one stories. There was another incident, there was a guy, I don't know if I told you that, he was cleaning chimneys. They called him the ??? I mean, a chimney cleaner and he was the most, what he robbed Jews. If they made Judenrein you went to every house and robbed them when the Jews left, because when they came, they say "Raus, raus!" Nothing you could take it. That uh, Jewish partisan, what I told you, that he was, wanted to hurt me, he came in during the late and he knew what he did to his family, to those people from Łuków. He went there and he shot them ten times and even the Poles agreed with him and it was a big tummel in the city that the Jews came for themselves, because they came to get revenge to that guy and he was a mean person, what I mean, I mean--so he killed, he robbed them, everything what he had in his house, but he says every shot that he did, he said that is for my mother and that is for my father and that is for my old Jewish sister and I think he cut them to shreds, so everybody says he did good, because the Poles even hated them. It was the little bitty things. You know what? That particular man if he wouldn't be so--he wasn't afraid for nothing, he didn't care. He would live and you could be the biggest leader in Israel. He was young. He was maybe nineteen or twenty years old, red hair, curly hair and tall and he walked into that place where I worked. He had a bunch of bullets around him and like that ???.
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