Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Abraham Holcman - September 14, 1983

Okay. When you were in jail, were there other Jews in jail with you?

Yeah, well just Jews. I was in a jail with uh, about twenty kids...

Did any...

same age as me.

How were you treated in the jail?

Very good. I had lots of food. Lot of kids there. Somehow they uh, they have a lot of food. Where they got it from, I don't know. Uh, we were about twenty, twenty-five kids in, in uh, in jail. And about twenty kids were outside the window delivering food to us. Where, where those kids come from and how they got it, I don't know.

Were those kids all Jewish too or...

All Jewish.

So, that you had more food in jail...

Than out.

than out.

Out yeah. But that, that's some kind of a gang, and I don't, I didn't see those kids never.

Okay. When did they, they, they come to pick you up? You said that you got on the list.

They didn't pick me up.

What, what happened?

I went to jail myself

Okay, but...

They got scared uh, because they uh, uh...You get jail, then they take your bread rations away.

Right.

So then uh, so then I went to jail and then I got my bread rations back when I got out.

And then what happened after you got out?

Oh we worked uh, we worked in the factory, went back to the factory and worked a long time.

Okay.

About three more years, I think.

So that from 1941 to '44 you were working in the factory?

Working yeah uh, and whatever selection there was, we were hiding different places. We had a lot of uh, transports out of the, out of the ghetto, but we were hiding on the roofs, in the factory, all over the place.

Who was hiding? You and...

Yeah uh, me and a lot of people, a lot of people around me. I was on the roof by the chimney. The house next to ours was larger. So, the Germans went up there to... Not the Germans, the Jewish police they went up, they could have seen me on the roof of my house. I was hiding behind the chimney and all kind of stuff.

You were hiding because they were coming to get their quota of Jews?

Right.