Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Rose Wagner - August 14, 2002

How long were you there?

We stayed there, I would say about a week. And after a week my sister and I, we decided to leave and go back to Łódź So we took a train. I don't have to tell you the trains, how the trains were. You had to sit with thousands of people. You know, everybody wants to leave. It took us, I would say--I think, as, as I remember, it took us about three or four days...

To get...

with a train, yeah, to go into Łódź.

What did you find?

Well we went, we went to our house and we--she said to, she wouldn't let us in.

It was a Pole.

The Poles wouldn't let us in.

Did they know you?

No.

Did they know who you were?

The manager knew to us.

And he wouldn't let you in either.

I ask him, we ask him if he could let us in. He said, no, people live there. They wouldn't let us in. So we stayed on a attic in a building because you couldn't get an apartment. So you--when, when we got there, we didn't know too much, we were just you know, we didn't have anything. So then my brother-in-law, he was in Russia. So he came back in 1944. You know, Łódź was liberated in 1944.

Your sister's husband?

Right.

When did she get married?

She got married in 1945. Beginning '46, no, not '45, 1946.

So he wasn't yet your brother-in-law.

No...

Okay. ...and this was maybe the ??? cousin. So he was in Russia. So when he came back he took his own apartment.

I see.

So he lived in the apartment and he was working already. He was working, they had a, before the war they had a

[telephone rings] on purses and luggage...

[interruption in interview] So a guy came to us and he said, I been to somebody's house and this guy he's, he's already working, he's making money and he's got a nice place. And we asked who was it and he said Jacob Glass. And my sister is older naturally so she remembered ??? was elated. So we went there and he wouldn't let us out anymore. So we stayed with him for a few months and then they sent me away first, to Germany and then they came later.