Sara Silow - August 8, 1993
Father's Death in Ghetto
Tell me a little more about the ghetto--what it was like?
Everybody was hungry. Five o'clock we had to stay inside and to make dark--to put on the window a dark something because not to show that somebody is living in this house. In summertime, in wintertime, 5 o'clock in the house. Not to go out. Not even in the yard. Only inside. Five o'clock. It was just terrible. It was just terrible.
Was there a black market going on?
Black market?
Yes.
But who got money?
Do you think your neighbor was involved in the black market? The pharmacy person?
I don't know. Nobody got money to buy but Rumkowski's people, they got lot of everything, everything they got. yeah. But we got nothing. We were starving from hunger all the years. My husband--my father was a, a tall man. He was used to eat the best and all of a sudden, hungry and hungry--always hungry so he's, he's--he died from hunger.
Tell me about that day. You said...
It starts out one week before Pesach 1942. Yeah.
What happened?
What happened? He, he was dead.
Did you find him?
He was in the house.
You said he went to bed.
Yeah and in the morning he was dead.
He was dead.
Yeah.
Did, did--were you the one who discovered that he was dead?
I was with my mother. We discovered that he was dead, yeah. And the pajamas was turned up on him. He was maybe in pain or something. We don't know nothing. We don't know.
So then what happened then?
What do you mean?
Did you bury him?
My sister's husband went to bury him so they take him out. We went to the cemetery and they said they don't have wood. Here, here is our, our bask...our, our, our...
A casket?
A casket and over there in Poland was different wood--they don't have wood--to come tomorrow. He came tomorrow, he was buried already. We was never able any more to go over there because this was near the where we supposed not to go they can kill us, yeah. And that's all. He was 52-years-old.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn