Nathan Weiselman - January 1, 1985
Returning to Poland
Because if I ordered from the warehouse material, the certain authority from the teachers, the, the representative has to sign that she checked out with me and I need from, for so many dresses, I need so many hundreds of yards of, of goods and so forth. Of course I did not. I was in fear, you know, because uh, and I refuse because you never can tell because over there the, the civil...population, they could, you know, work together with, uh, something from the government and undercover, and I didn't want to take any chance. But I, because I really didn't, didn't need, I, in the time when I was, I, they provided us in this cafeteria plenty of food. Of course the food was not any way special, you couldn't have a variety. This was a country in tropical climate. It mostly was over there oranges and grapefruit and grapes, and tropical things, but you couldn't see, you know, like potatoes or meat or some other. The transportation was very poor. And they, that's the trouble with the Soviet Union, in one part of the country, in one state, they have too many of fruits and vegetable, another country has too, too much uh, too many potato or some other thing.
When, when, when did you get out of Russia?
When I got out, 1946.
How did you, uh, but...
Yeah, I started to say, when, when they call Polish citizens to go to register, so I register and they say all the Polish citizen have right to repatriate to Poland. So I, I uh, register myself to repatriate to Poland. And then I went back to Poland. And I went back to Poland on the train. I aimed, I was very anxious to know not just my country, if they told me that probably nobody's alive, but I couldn't just believe it. I was hoping for a miracle. But when I come to, when I went through the Russian border and I stopped again and, and ??? places where I was in a certain camp, and I went down to, you know, the market and then we went direct to my hometown city of Radom, and I went down the train and then some people from my street for some reason were waiting for another train. And when they stopped I stood down the train, the first word was ???. "You, you still are alive? From where did you come?" They were so bitter; dis...disappointed.
Were these Jews or?
No, Poles.
Poles.
They were very bitter on their faces and disappointed to see, that I saved some, saved my, myself alive, you know, that I came back.
Mm-hm.
I was really, really, really, really happy to see the first step down from the train.
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