Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982

Discovering Fate of Townspeople

So, but when she came--their daughter--we were going to school together. She said she wants to go back and find out, find out what happened, where they lying. She knew already they were killed. She said she wants to go. I know they're buried there and they're probably still warm. When we got into the city--see we had a store--everybody knew us. You know, having a store you were popular among the, the goys, the non-Jews. The ones they said--you know, our next door neighbor had a, a drugstore. I got in there to this drugstore. He said, "You know what, you shouldn't be here." But he gave us food. And she asked about the parents, he said they just died. He di...he didn't say they were killed, but we knew already before they were killed, because his brother was already in an orphanage. Her brother was an o...he was a young kid. He survived in the bunker and he was taken away to an orphanage. Uh, they just died. She said, "Where are they?" I said, "I would want to go to the cemetery." He said, "You can go, but I suggest you shouldn't go--it's dangerous for you." But we didn't care, we both went ???. I thought that if her parents live, I'm going to have a second home, but they were killed. And then we went and this neighbor gave us shelter overnight, and he said, "I suggest you should leave. It's very dangerous to be left back." There's no Jews there--no, no Jews and no one there. We went back to Sosnowiec, a larger city. And from there we, you know, even there it was dangerous to be in Sosnowiec. There were incidents here and there. We heard of uh, being killed after the survivors. That's why we headed towards the, you know, American occupation. You know, this, and that's how we got into the camps--into the DP camps.


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