Marvin Kozlowski - August 28, 2002
Knowledge of Hitler
Did your parents or you ever talk about what was happening in Germany? About Hitler and Kristallnacht and any of that?
Kristallnacht?
Yeah.
We knew everything.
Wife: That was in '38.
We knew everything because I were reading, my father would read the Jewish paper everyday and I read the Polish paper, which ??? I think was the name of it. And we knew what was going on there. But we did not believe...
Wife: It can't happen here.
especially a tragedy like this in our life. At that time, they--when the Kristallnacht--a lot of them went out, out to different countries, they had lots of possibilities. In Kristallnacht they lost the business. They shook him up and so on. And slowly they saw where they were. Some of them were imprisoned and concentration camp. But, uh...
Wife: Not in '38.
What? What?
Did any German Jews...
German Jews I don't know.
Wife: What about the Polish Jews.
Kristallnacht. German Jews, yeah.
Did any of them come to Radom that you remember?
Wife: No. German Jews would come to Radom?
No, I tell you what. If you--excuse me--a few German Jews that settled in Germany or ended up in Germany, I don't know if they were uh, sent out to Poland. Or there were, there were some people in Łódź, there were some people--not big amounts, maybe a few hundred people altogether. But just, just very few of them.
So you knew what was going on in Germany but you didn't think anything was going to happen in Poland.
Yeah. Right.
Do you remember what was his name?
Going back to that thing. Why would a German Jew come to Poland, unless he had connections. He would go to United States, to England and they were quite a number who...
Wife: China
went away.
Well, a, a number of um, Polish Jews who lived in Germany were driven out in 1938...
Wife: Oh yes, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
which is what started the Kristallnacht. Um, what about, was it Kosciusko?
Wife: Kosciusko?
Oh Kosciusko? Yeah.
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