Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Zofia Szostak - 1985

Do, do you um, do you think about it a lot?

I try not to think, but I dream about this a lot, you know and uh, then for a day or two I...you know, it just is back on my mind, you know. You can't keep on thinking, you know, and uh, willingly about this, just to sit down, "Okay, this is what's happened." Sometimes if we meet friends we talk, you know, and uh, in fact, I try to push, push all of this in the back of my mind. At the end of, when the war, war ended there was another nightmare waiting for us, and another, another completely reality, you know, and first of all, I had to, you know.... just when the Russian front was moving, I had a typhoid fever, I was in a, in a hospital. And uh, so when I came out, you know, out of the hospital, were Russians already over there, and the whole, whole, whole community looked much, much different, you know, and, and everything, and there were some changes. I had to, I had to get, get adjusted, you know. We really hoped somehow that we're going to, to have that free Poland, you know, or something, and of, and of course, you know, with Russians were moving farther, there was not much, not much of a freedom. Then for a little while I went to school. I had uh, you know, during, during the war I finished only those, those two, two classes at commercial school. I had some gymnasium. But then during Underground schooling, you know, they, they gave us this, this, some education if you wanted to study. So this was a time to make good, good, something good out of this and maybe officially pass through some tests. And then they open school for teachers, because so many of our teachers were, were killed. And those teachers who survived and they knew some, some students who were uh, you know, who were maybe a little, a little better than, than maybe, than the most, you know uh, they asked them if they would be willing to, to go and finish, finish some quick course so, you know, for the elementary schooling. And then of course for about two years we would have to study, you know some more. And at the end of two years we would, we would get our full, full qualifications. So, I sign up for, for this course and uh, I, I finish this. And then, this was funny, because I still did not have my, my papers from gymnasium, you know, you, you had to go to this uh, to this school, you know, to attend this course, only if you finish gymnasium. If you did not finish gymnasium you couldn't, you couldn't be teacher, you know, of course, you know. But since I finished gymnasium, but I did not have those papers, I was waiting to uh, what they call this ??? examination, you know, a special panel of teachers would come from Kraków and uh, you know, then they, they set up exam day, and we had to, we had to go and pass those exams. And the funny part, this is, I still have those papers and it shows how funny it was and strange. I passed through my exams from, from the teaching course one day, and only week later or something uh, I passed through the exam of gymnasium. So, you know, uh, and when they...