Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982
Being Forced to Move out of Home
Tell me about the day they--your family had to move out of its house.
There's never been like a day. Like, like I said, September '42, and that was Judenrein, everyone has--the first was they, they crowd us in the, the lousiest street. We all had to go there to this lousiest--you know, they want to have us concentrated. And then we would--last time we're seeing this place.
How did they--did they have--did they come to the door and tell that you had to leave?
Announce...announced uh, uh, on loudspeakers uh, uh, riding around the streets on loudspeakers. And then from the Jewish Committee--like which the Mr. Fogel was the head of it--going around and make sure with the Germans that everyone is out. We have to leave al...everything behind us. I also remember one incident. I should tell you this. We did not have stoves like this back home. We had it made out house cut glass, like tile--of tile, but made of coal and we were burning with coal. Where we are from--it's very close to the coal mines. If you hear now ??? they siphoned coal mines around this area where we were living. So coal for us it was considerably cheap. So there in one--since it was the summer, my sister went and pull off one uh, tile from the top, where it's--even, even birds would never get there and took out the jewelry from my mother, you know, and put it there. You know, we always thought there's going to be a come back. No one ever believed that this is going to be forever. We thought "It's war." Of course, we didn't believe uh, the war against civilians, this was a strange. But we knew a war is not forever. If the war will end whoever survive will know, will have something to start off again. But when we got--when they crowded us in this one lousiest, lousiest street, and everybody--with, with the sanitary conditions beyond human uh, dignity. So then when my mother said "Run," she knew something's going to happen. They--becau...you see, I wasn't even supposed to be in a concentration camp. I was supposed to be there where my mother was, taken with the uh, from this street, taken with--on the trucks. Have you seen The Holocaust, the picture--taken there where the graves were waiting. This is the--from other city--others had something else. There where my mother got--I don't know how my mother knew. She pushed us away, as I told you, she throw--she threw me this--so we got to this city Żarki. And then after they tried to Żarki, we came back. It was a handful of people. This Mr. Fogel with this--with the committee were still--with the committee members were still there. We said a few survivors on here--and how do we know where they got there?
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