Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991

The Wehrmacht

Well, what were your thoughts about what would happen next? Were you um, concerned?

We knew, we were very much concerned. We knew what's going to happen, but not to the extent that did happen.

You feared for your lives?

When they came in, you know, and then after, a... after a few days I went back to Łódź, you know. I didn't stay and I was totally alone. I um, I, I went back to Łódź. They uh, as you walk down the street and they grab you and they put you on a truck and take you somewhere to work, you know.

Did that happen to you?

Oh it happened to me too.

What was the first change that you remembered taking place?

They start, get me off the streets.

That was the first thing.

Yeah.

And what happened when...

And, and fact is it happened many a times. When they did come in, I uh, I remember one area. It was the commercial area, especially the Jewish commercial area.

Bałuty? Was it Bałuty?

Huh?

Was it the Bałuty district?

No, no, no, not Bałuty. It was in Nowe Miasto. That was the center of the uh, of the uh, commercial, you know, business area. One day we find out that they, at night... You see over there was the uh, the store uh, uh, first floor and the second, third, fourth floor people used to live in apartments. And they, they attacked all the, whole blocks, several blocks and cleared out all the people, all these Jewish people. Whole families. Father, mother, children, babies uh, whatever. Never saw them again.

This was the Wehrmacht.

Yeah. Never saw 'em again. They uh, took 'em away and that was end of it.


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