Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?
Knowledge of Other Ghettos
Um, did you hear anything about the Warsaw ghetto? Did you know of any other ghettoes?
Uh, I only heard about Warsaw ghetto after the war and when I came back from uh, Sudetenland. And uh, I registered in Prague, which is uh, like uh, outside Warsaw. That was the Jewish community. And then uh, we traveled to our hometown to look if anybody survived. And uh, nobody survived. And there was me and my cousin, which lives in New York. And uh, we stayed there for a few weeks. Uh, we lived under uh, welfare. Uh...
And at that time you heard about the Warsaw ghetto?
Well, not exactly. Because when we came back to Warsaw we didn't stay there too long. And uh, then uh, we stayed in uh, Płońsk for awhile, a few people from my hometown. And uh, uh, then I walked in one day to a neighbor of ours, which was a Polish bakery. And she crossed herself, you know uh, with the prayers of Catholics. "Oh my God, Hannah's daughter is alive." And uh, she didn't let me go out of the house and uh, she says I could clean her house for the keeps. You know, I could stay with her, but she will not pay me anything for her--for that. And she gave me a big loaf of bread. And I went to the other people from the concentration camp. Of course, my head was shaved. I looked like, you know, a melon upside down. [laughs] And uh, uh, I went back uh, uh, and I said, No way, I'm not going to work for no Polacks." And uh, I stayed with the rest of the girls and uh, we waited. And finally uh, a messenger from Israel came, a man, and he organized us and he took us back to Warsaw. And then we start working in Warsaw ghetto. That's how I found out about Warsaw ghetto. We were cleaning up um, the wrecked buildings. And that was in compensation for uh, getting paid from the city. Like being on welfare. If you work, you get paid. And uh, in Warsaw ghetto we were from uh, May 1945 until uh, approximately November or December. And uh, then uh, we had our passports made. Of course uh, the underground Israeli organization really worked hard. Uh, which one it was, I can't tell you. Uh, but uh, I was in Kibbutz Dror and we had uh, messengers uh, bringing us all kind of information, when we will start traveling across the borders to uh, Czechoslovakia and to Germany...
Uh-huh.
on the way to Israel.
Did you ever hear anything on any uh, Jewish resistance in the woods during the time that you were in the ghetto in Płońk ...Płońsk?
No, no. No, I only remember uh, some people had run away from our hometown to Russia. But as far as resistant, no. I only met some people in Warsaw in kibbutz, some young kids who lived outside in the streets all through the war. And uh, they told us about the partisans, you know. So as far as any knowledge what went on in the war, I was not aware because I was all this time in Auschwitz.
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