Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Lola Greenspan - April 25, 1983

Visiting a Polish Neighbor

And I said to my sis...my sister she went together with me...

Mm-hm.

...and I said, "Paula you know, we have to go see the Mrs. ???" She the name ???...

Mm-hm.

Mrs. ???, we want to show Mrs. ???. And all the talk--she our neighbor, she live together. And I came to the house and she said, "Mine Go..." in Polish, "Mine God, you been alive? I don't can believe. Laika!" She now call me Laika in Poland, Laika Laosha. "Laika, you li...you, you been not, not dead?" I said, "No, I been not dead." "You see, you know what happened with your family, with your father?" I said, "I don't know what happen with my father." "Your father was killed by the house. He got a bread. Polish men, some girls, a boy, he said to the German, "Oh, this is a Jude, a Jude, a Schwein Jude." He right away take, he say, "???"" My father were afraid to stay, he jumped far. He, he killed him. He fall down, dead. My mother, she said the mother she send in the ghetto in Auschwitz. And say the rest kids, the rest kids the same. The smaller kids, something place--she don't know where, nor she wan...she tooked from the houses the all things. Furnitures and other things were tooked the, the, the lady--the neighbor. And I, I saw lot of things by the neighbor--I don't wanna take. She were a good girl--she a good woman, yeah good woman, a Polish. And she says, "Leah, you remember I talk to your mother--going to be a big war. The mother she don't wanna listen, she don't wanna give up the children, she say she wanna keep the children. Why she do this?" I said, "I don't know, we not can believe this." She said, "Leah, ???," she said to me, "you know go away, don't stay here." I said, "Why?" "Go away, go on back. Don't stay. I tell you we have a lot of ???" ??? like bandits. "Killed you when you finded a Jewish, killed, killed." And I said--and my sister she said--she's afraid, she said, "Come on, come we going back to Sosnowiec in the Jewish center." And were three girls together and I said, "Yenta," she the name Yenta, said, "Come on Yenta, we going back." Said, "No. I like to be here, I gonna stay here, I gonna see my--I gonna finded someone." I said, "You crazy? You not finded nobody." She were killed. She went in the house by somebody girlfriend and coming the ??? in the roof, he shot down and he were killed three girls. And now we're lucky with my sister I left the same time away to Będzin--to Sosnowiec.

Yeah.


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