Larry Wayne - 2005
Order to move into the ghetto
When you moved into the ghetto, who told you to go? Who said, leave your house?
Well you gotta go some, some way, you gotta find a place and we found a place with my cousins.
But did the Germans tell you, you had to...
In the morning you gotta leave, we'll give you "x" number of days to get out, a few plates.
Was it a Jewish Council that told you that?
Well, then the Jewish Council came into being.
Rumkowski.
Rumkowski.
Did you ever see him?
Oh sure. Chaim Rumkowski.
What did people think of him?
Well, some people think he was a savior, some other people think he was like a German, carrying out the German orders, which was true in both ways. He probably thought of himself that he's saving uh, whatever he can save, uh, sacrifice some of them to save more. Didn't work out that way, you know.
Didn't work out.
But that's--I'm, I'm, I'm not on the inside or whatever. But it seems like that's--he thought he was a savior and some people thought he was a savior, so. And naturally whoever was around him had it, had it pretty good, I mean. I, myself, didn't have it that bad because in the beginning of the bak...I worked in a bak...with a bakery. So we, in the, in the ghetto we were--had, had a bakery. They made us go into partnership with other people, you know, in the ghetto.
Non-Jews.
No, Jews.
Jews, okay.
They were all, all--there were no non-Jews. As a matter of fact, two of these people survived, two brothers and they live in Chicago that we were in partnership in the bakery in the ghetto, you know.
So your business wasn't Aryanized and they didn't force, uh, they didn't...
No, no, we didn't Aryanized. Either we were Jewish or, uh, with another Jew or something in the ghetto, otherwise you weren't in it.
Well, so they--you get the word, you have to move and you make arrangements to go into the ghetto.
Right. I mean, as far as all these memories it's a number of years back. But that's what...
Did anybody work in textile factories, or?
In the ghetto, that's what, that's how they arranged it, you know. Either you worked or you just couldn't do any--so they j... Everybody had to work. There was a big, a big raid in the ghetto. Everybody, everybody was working. Excuse me. Even my little sister Ruth!
[interruption in interview] So...
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