Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Industry in Zduńska Wola
Uh, how many Jews would you say were in your town?
Oh, about thirteen thousand. The town consisted of three--Germans and Polacks and Jewish almost equally divided.
Almost equally divided.
Yeah, there was a very large German population, not, not Germans who came in to occupy Poland, but native, natives, you know, native Germans who were living there for generations.
Mm-hm.
Very, very, a very large German population. There were villages around town where there was not a single Polack. The whole villages consisted only of Germans.
Uh-huh.
They had the...
What drew them there, the textile manufacturing?
Yeah, you see, the textile manufacturing when the Polacks probably the problems they have today are the same as they were anytime when the Polish--in Poland, you know, they--that--they have those factories, you know, either they were working in the factories, they were owned mostly by Jews, you know, and operated all the mechanical things, you know, were operated by Germans. They brought the industry from Germany to Poland.
So the textile factories...
The textile industry....
...were owned by the Germans.
They were not owned--they were owned by Jews, but all those...
By Jews?
...supervisors, you know, all the supervisors and all the technical supervision and all the technical running of those factories were run by Germans, you know, because they knew it. They knew how to build the machines and know the machines probably no one better than the German, and that was, that was the situation.
I see. And that brought the Germans there.
And that brought us together. We lived until that uh, Hitler story comes up, we had very friendly relations...
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