Zofia Szostak - 1985
Children
And the end of the story, the woman who was hiding the Jewish child?
So she was uh, hiding a Jewish girl, I believe, not a boy, only a girl...
So the child was not with the parents?
Yes. And somebody, somebody, denounced her, you know, and the Germans came, and they says, "Are you hiding a Jewish child," and she says, "No, they are my all own, own children, and one is the...one is my, my sister's child," you know. "And my sister is sick, so I am, I am watching her while the mother is sick." So okay, say a prayer and they ask, they ask children, and they knew how to, how to say a prayer, and poor Jewish child didn't know how to say. So they, they just laugh and says, "Alright, if you, if you want, if you love Jewish child so much, then you can keep it," and they shot it right in front of the mother. Those other children, you know, the woman got mad, you know, went mad. But this, this was one, one thing, you know, that I, I heard about this, because people were talking about it.
This was in Bochnia?
No, this was in Kraków.
In Kraków. Um, let me ask you a question about um, after the war. Do you um, have you talked to your children about this? You, you have a daughter that...
Oh, yeah. Now my oldest daughter was born in England, and uh, three were born over here, in America. I try to talk to them, but you know, uh, it's just like about lots of uh, lots of Polish uh, Polish affairs, where the...those things were discussed, as a matter of fact, during our, you know, daily, daily life. My husband was sometimes remembering something in the evening, or I was saying, our friends were coming, so we were always talking about. If children were present, they had...but you know, they never paid attention to it. Never. And then when one day I started saying something, and my, my husband said, "Do you know, they too young; and let them be happy. Let them be happy for a little while, and believe that the world is so good. Later on, when they will be able to deal with those things, we will tell them," you know. And uh, when we wanted to tell them, when, you know, we decided this is the time, they, they really were not interested, you know, "Ah, this is, this is all what things you always keep on saying." And in fact, we came out as old, how to say, "fogeys," you know? Who really don't uh, don't, you know, all live in past, have nothing to say, you know, or understand life over here, only just, just living with uh, whatever was Polish or whatever was happening over there. And I doubt that they really believed in, in this. Now too uh, when they started going to high school, and I'm not saying about my oldest daughter, now she plainly refused to listen to this, but my other, other daughters, you know, they learned a little bit during uh, history classes, you know, in school. And uh, lately, just like last--when was this--two years ago, when two, three years ago when my, when Mary was going to, to St. Florian and they had, they had a school about the, they had a class about the Holocaust over there, and their teacher, you know, wanted, wanted to talk to me.
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