Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

Was this some sort of infection that you had contracted, do you think?

I--until this day I don't know whether it was an infection of the kidney, or whether it was a kidney stone, because I've had kidney stones since and also my mother had kidney stones. It could have been just a, a kidney stone acting up. But it was never uh, removed as far as I know. It may have come out wh...maybe it was a small stone that uh, I passed without noticing it. But he, I, I definitely was at that time considered in pretty serious uh, condition.

While you were there all this time um, or, or before, were you wondering about the rest of your family?

All the time.

Did you have any idea what had happened to them? What did you think?

Um, I probably... Okay, I assumed that they were sent to Poland. I only hoped that they would be--would survive. Uh, every Friday evening um, I would cry myself to sleep by saying myself Good Shabbos, which was a traditional Friday evening greeting, of course. Plus everyday praying for them. Uh, I couldn't swear to it, but I believe that I even took my tefillin with me and I was laying that tefillin there everyday, which was extremely dangerous. Um, I know you're going to ask me about this kind of thing, so I might as well tell it now. Uh, one day I was alone with the farmer's wife and I was mending stockings, which I learned to do, in the kitchen. And I heard at the back entrance, which was the far end of the farm. I heard the farmer's wife talk to someone. And I paid attention to it and they were German. So I went right away to the second floor. Uh, after probably first seeing to it that no tell-tale signals would be left. I stayed on the second floor, I heard them walk and talk, coming in uh, to the kitchen and going on to the living room, into the bedroom. And then they came back. And I waited a little distance from the door where I had arrived at on the second floor, because I didn't know what, where they were going from there on. Maybe he would leave, maybe he would come up. The moment that I heard them come through the first steps on the stairs, I went to the far end of the second floor, which was like--I think it was, you couldn't stand there except in the middle. And there was a window at the far end, and I jumped out of that window. Later on I found out that this German had come there to um, discuss whether there would be any chance of uh, uh, locating there, of having German soldiers live there, which was done with other people. Fortunately they didn't need that or didn't want it.