Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Freda Magnus - July 22, 1982

Now you're talking about which ghetto? The ghetto in...

Łódź ghetto.

Now, th...they made that into a ghetto?

Oh yeah, later.

Okay.

This I tell you before--this what I'm telling you happened before the ghetto.

All right.

See, when...

So, when you came back and while you're living there they made it into a ghetto.

They start talking about making into a ghetto.

I see.

That nobody will be able to go out and come in...

Or come in, I see...

...so I was afraid I would be separate from my parents, you know. And like I told you before we had been very close. I couldn't, I couldn't imagine even living without my parents. It's not like today their kids move away from the house. I couldn't even imagine living with...without my parents so I picked myself up and went back to Krakow--again smuggling myself. And I smuggled back my father. My father came back also the same way as smuggling because we couldn't travel on the, on the train because whenever the train conductor came up "Jude, raus! Jude, raus!" you know. Couldn't travel on the train so we again traveled back with a, with a, a little wagon--a horse and wagon. And then we came back--I came back with my father and my father start also again--he opened a factory and start making, you know, you know, salami--those all kind of kielbasa they called, you know. And this time we couldn't already get kosher meats, you know, so we start producing from, from horse meat, horse meat, you know. It's just to get something to make to eat. And my father start again start a business a little, you know, to make a living. And then I went again back and picked my mother and my brother back and they all came back with me. So and after that they closed up the ghetto. So what was they closing up the ghetto, they again they kill people--happen after that. Where we live was almost the end--the beginning of the ghetto, you know, and our place was still in the ghetto so uh, when they brought all the people coming into the ghetto, you know, then start to be a little prosperity for us because people didn't cook and they never--everybody bought delicatessen, you know?

Mm-hm.

So we again start making--having been a little prosperity and then when they came into the ghetto they took away the factories, they took out the machines, everything, you know? Canc...eh, not cancelled. How they say? Cancelled.

Yeah so they stopped everything.

Stopped everything.

The Germans took away the factories and everything...

The factory, everything.

Uh, when was this?

In 1939.

This was still 1939?

Or, 1940. Yeah, 1940 it started.