Saul Raimi - July 7, 1982
Smuggling
We came back at, at ghetto what all in existence already. That ghetto--and uh, we--I, I could--the ghetto was home within Judenrat and uh, Jewish police, local, local boys. And I became--how to say--a smuggler. I would--how to say--I uh, my looks at that time and also the uh, I knew Polish well. I smuggled from Mława ghetto...
Mm-hm.
...going up uh, from the ghetto on the Aryan side, on the non-Jewish side, going to the train with false, fake papers as a non-Jew and riding on the train to Warsaw. Actually, the train didn't go because we--halfway between our town and Warsaw was a border.
Okay.
It was--this town was annexed by the Germans to the Third Reich. Then it was Poland under the German occupation, which was only a name it actually there. That party had to go smuggle at night and going through woods and forest and, and fields 'til we came on the other side, on the Polish side.
Mm-hm.
On the Polish side, there had to be more careful because the Poles, they knew by looking at you who was a Jew. The minute they found out, they would deliver you to the Germans too.
Mm-hm. They would just send you back.
Right.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn