Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Joseph Gringlas - January 14 & 22, March 18, 1993

Sure, sure.

When the war broke out and I told you we lived in a--Gentiles what owned the buil...the building, the apartment we lived in Gentiles owned. They were very anti-Semitic. And one of the guys, the son of the landlord. My, my brother went to the--was called in back into the army, before the war broke out and he was called, the son of the landlord. He got drunk one--before he went away and he wanted to, he said, "I'm going to take care of the Jews before I leave." So he wanted to k...and he--I was with my brothers, my father and mother in the, in the room. We hear the noise of that. He went and he took a big knife, he wanted to kill us. We had that fear already, if he comes in. And that happened just the war broke out, he's going to army. He was still--on his mind he didn't want to go away until he finished the Jews. And he, he lived in that house. He was the landlord's son. So he was kept, not going in, there was two sisters holding him by the arms, not allowing him to get into my--but we hear the noise, "I'm going, I'm going to kill the Jew." He knew where, if he comes in we wouldn't, we wouldn't have let us kill ourselves, we would have fought, fought him back. And after the war--that's one incident, I'm just tell you about it--after war, we came back. That son of the landlord was alive and walking on the street. And I talked to my brother, I said, "Look at that, he's alive." My brother, we don't know where going, he went to army. He, that son of a gun, he wanted to kill Jews, he's alive and he came back to Poland and he's walking on the street. And brother said, "You know what he wanted to do to us, we should have done to him. We should have killed him now." I said to myself--to my brother, "What are you talking? You want to get out of Poland? You'll never--if you do that, what would you accomplish? You would never, you would, you would have to be in, put in jail." So we leave--left him alone. We didn't say nothing to him. But we saw him in the back working on the street, he was working.

You didn't go back to the house?

Yeah, we went to one of the landlords, landlord. We went and talked to her. But we stayed awhile because we felt very insecure.

Were, were there people already living in your house?

There was no eh, we--I didn't want to go to my house.

You didn't go.

I went to the landlord in the front, but I didn't want to go in. And we stayed awhile and was going--it was terrible that the Jews, the survivors in Poland to be killed on the street from the--called AK, Armiakrajowa

Krajowa.

So I went...

Home army, right?

Yeah, there was uh, very anti-Semitic army, what's, after the Polish--the Poland, eh.

In Ostrowiec, they were killing?

All over in Poland in Ostrowiec too. There was a pogrom in Kielce.

In Kielce. Did you hear about it?

I heard about it. And they were killed, about forty people were killed and I hear the Russian tanks came, otherwise there would have more people killed.

Forty-six.

Yeah. In Kielce and in some other places too, in the big cities. So I went to Warsaw. I went to Warsaw on the kibbutz. We organized a kibbutz. In the train I was going to Warsaw, I was lucky because when I, when I hid when somebody, AK stop in the station to go in with the guns and they see some Jewish people, they would have taken them out and killed them right there. Can you imagine? You're coming home to your own country where you were born and you'd be afraid and people were killing you because you are Jew. Nobody can imagine this. [pause] And I arrived...