Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982
Getting Help in Sosnowiec
What was the name of the town which your...
Zawiercie, Zawiercie. Will you ever remember this? No. It's very hard. Want me to--oh you got it.
Can you spell it?
Oh sure. Zawiercie. I couldn't spell it, I have to write it down.
Husband: Z-e-w...
Just like you read it--just like you say it. I'll write it down. Z-a-w-i-e-r, uh, c-i-e. Zawiercie. It's really crazy spelling, but that's how in Polish you pronounce it--that's how you write it.
You said it was a German town though, right?
No, this was not German town, this was also Polish. But they...
I see.
...they took in, you know, they separate the Po...
But they changed the borders you say.
But they changed the borders.
Okay.
Right, from the Third Reich. So that was very dangerous, because from the nearby cities the Polacks helped them a great deal, telling that uh, they had uh, relatives. The Polacks were very bad. So she said, "The best bet is to go a little further through Sos...through Sosnowiec." So she called a cousin--he had there some influence by kind of being like this Fogel in our city. She said, "My sisters are coming there." And I think he's--and, and see what you can do to, to, to make room for them. Because we had no place. Because we were not even supposed to be in a concentration camp. We were supposed to be dead. We were supposed to be there where the graves were waiting for us. You see, the ones that they want to the camps, they made a raid, they took 'em, but for us, we were supposed to be in the graves. So she discussed it with this one cousin. He was--he had a little influence there at that time, like the Fogel in our city--he was also in the Jewish...
Judenrat?
Judenrat, yes.
Do you remember his name in there?
???. He is a, a distant--a second cousin of us. So from there, we got there and he said, "The best bet is to go to the Dulag." Dulag is like a, um, a pre-camp uh, Durchgangslager, Durchgangslager. You don't speak German at all, no?
No.
No. Uh, pre-transfer.
Husband: Transfer, transfer.
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