Helen Jutkevicz - November 10, 1982
Start of the War
Where were you when the war began?
In Poland.
In Łódź...
Yeah, we was----til '39 we was the last people--how is to say--the last people what we--the first time they took--the Nazis--the Germans took I would say--I not can so explain--to go every day to go in the ghettoes, you know. They march with you in the ghetto. You can take so much, so much what belongs to you and you march in the ghetto. And we was the last transport, you understand what this is say?
Mm-hm.
We was the last transport and was we march in the ghetto, you know? Then we start to go in, into shot, into murder, you know? And they were run before they was in the ghetto and they closed in April 1940, they closed the ghetto.
Um, when the war began--when it actually began...
Yeah...
...do you remember your thoughts or how you heard about it? Did you hear from your mother, from your father...
No, we hear from the radios. We have a radios, we hear from the radios.
Did you have any other options? Could you do anything else at that time? Was your family thinking about doing anything else except going into the ghetto?
No. I will tell you we children sometimes we talked to our father, we say we will go to Russia because there was a time when the--and my father say, "Children, we will all over. We will be all over. They will catch us or they'll murder us," and he say, "Why will we go?" So, we all together.
So you went as a family then from the home that you lived in...
From the home where we lived we went to the ghetto, all together. Not ???--one brother not but he was in the war. He was twenty-one, he had to go. He went in March '39 to--he not was home.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn