Larry Wayne - 2005
Ghetto memories
So what, did anything stand out in your mind for the first two years of the ghetto, 1942, say?
Well when look now uh, you know, back you, you think they were happy years because you, you were still with the family together. You know, you did...you didn't go yet to the camps, you didn't have all the starvation, etc. Especially in my own house. Uh, up 'til we got to the ghetto, you know, which was, what was it '40 did you say? I, I don't remember the dates. We lived in our own apartment still. We--everything had like, like uh, it was before the war. And we had a bakery, therefore it wasn't too bad. And then even, even after we got into the ghetto, we still had a, a, a better than normal life than anybody else because we still owned a baker...a bakery. But that little by little, you know, they uh, things start getting worse and worse and worse. And when the ghetto took over the bakeries themself, you know, it became a different story. And then, and then that, that starting, and after that, you know, the German Kommandos used to come in every so often to the ghetto and clean it out, you know, taking all the people that looked sick or so, you know, take 'em out and uh, get rid of them.
When they would come in, what would you do?
Well, let me tell you a, a story what, what happened at one time. Like I say, we lived in a one-room apartment. So down the hall there were other apartments. You know, one, like one-room apartment. It might have been at one time belonged to one people, but that time they changed it. Everybody had one apartment. Uh, next door from us there was a, a, a girl that was paralyzed from the waist down. And here the Kommandos are com...my mother and my little brother were hiding. They were hiding in, in the baker--in an oven, you know. Didn't find 'em. And we were kinda, we were kinda cocky, we didn't, you know, we looked good still. So German doctor with two or three SS men come in, and they looked at you and if they didn't like the way you looked, they took you with them. So now healthy people were staying in the corridor watching what's going on, you know, because... And now we know they going into this apartment where the girl's half, you know, paralyzed from the waist down. So we staying in the door and the door is open. And, and this doctor looks over these people, you know, and walking out and then all of a sudden he turns around and he says to the girl, "Maidchen, come on, come over here maidchen, come over here girl." And what do you do, the girl was paralyzed from the waist down. She got up and she walked over.
Oh.
A miracle. It was a miracle. She did and she survived the war, had children, lived in, in New York area. Really, yeah. Obviously whatever her paralysis was, had to be a, a...
Psychosomatic.
Or something, you know, but, but for years, for years she was paralyzed from the waist down.
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