Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Goldman - June 6, 2003

So you decided to stay at the bakery.

Well, we couldn't. We, we, they finally let us in, but we--well, we worked then af...but after we worked in the bakery until we got caught. And then I started going out to, to the farms.

And this was what, 1941?

Forty...'41, end of '4...in '42, part of '42. Well, mostly '41 started going out to the, to the farm already and begging for, for food, you know. Bringing home potatoes, some flour. The farmers used to give us, until... And we sold some potatoes and flour and then we got some different items like bread and tobacco, you know, and then we used to go out and trade. But that didn't last long either. 'Cause it was getting rough in the ghetto, you know. I'm not in the ghetto yet, but it was getting pretty rough.

So you were going to Polish farmers?

Yeah, Polish farmers.

What did they tell you when you asked them for food?

Nothing, some of 'em gave us soup, left over mashed potatoes, or whatever, and there were raw potatoes to take home.

Did they know you were Jews?

No, no. So we were just going begging, really. And until it started getting real bad. We couldn't stay in, in, in her place. So we decided, my older brother and I, we decided that... He was, he was already going out to a farm and he was working, they knew he was Jewish. But then myself, I took off and I went out on a farm and I took an assumed name working at the--well, I took an assume name, that, that fellow in Łódź that helped us sometimes by going to, to school. His name was Mayan Kowalksy. And I took that assumed name and I went out looking for a job on, on, on a farm.

Did all of you have blue eyes?

Yes.

The whole family had blue eyes?

Blue eyes, blonde hair and fine...They didn't, nobody, nobody recognized me as long as I took my pants off. But uh, I went out there and I landed a job working as a, helping out on a farm with the cattle, with horses and whatever I had to do in the field. And I worked there on that farm.

You lived on the farm.

And I lived on the farm under an assumed name.

Your older brother had already gone out to do the same thing.

Yeah, he was, he was, he was out there, he's doing the same thing, but he-- they knew that he was Jewish on the farm that he was, he was on a different, different farm.

And what about your younger brother?

I don't know what happened to him, because he was left behind there with the, with, with my father.

I see.

So I don't know what happened to him. We went out to the farm. I was out to the farm, my older brother, the older one than I, he was on a farm, they knew he was Jewish. So after the Germans really tightened up the noose around '42, he was--they were afraid if they catch them with my brother, they'll shoot them. So they told him, just go, which it was very nice of them, they, at least they didn't turn him in. So he came out on the farm where I was, he knew where I was. And he stayed there for a while when things were getting bad. Because his Polish was good, but he couldn't pronounce the r, you know, like the r, like--the Jewish pronounce in Polish is really "rrr," you know. And the, the, the Poles knew right away that...

That he was Jewish.

...that he, that he would--that anybody speaking like that would be Jewish.