Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Natalie Zamczyk - January 30, 1984

False Papers

And a customer come to our hou...to our store and I was this time at store, I ca...I went out, you had to have special permission. And I went out, I think this time my boy wasn't home, was at her house after evacuation. And he, this man said to him, I don't understand, why don't you try to make false paper and you get away. I am not sure that you are going to be able to live, true, but you take a chance. Here you know that you are going to perish, but there maybe you will have chance. You, Mr. Zamczyk, you look so good. Never, I would never say that you are Jewish. And you, the same thing. Why don't you try? And this was the man that gave me idea and brought me, when I got the, already the false paper, I told him that, he gave me the prayer book with me. And he said, this prayer book should help you. So we had lots of friends, they were all thinking about the false paper. Some of them they were, have good looks and so forth. They called the good looks, you know...

Yeah, yeah...

...this time. Because Polish people, they were living with Jews and they knew for all the years and they knew so well Jewish people, they could say the walk, how you walk is a Jewish walk. How you move with your...

Yeah, yeah,

...this was something unbelievable. That they look at your eyes, you have Jewish eyes, there's something, a sadness in those eyes. That's what I heard later, you know. That's what it, they recognize how you talk, how you act, you know. That's why it was very hard, you know.

Yeah.

So we were thinking about it, you know. And my husband had connection, he had friends. Because my husband was mostly with uh, Gentile people, in connection, you know. Even socially, you know. So his mother always was thinking that he never will marry a Jewish girl, you know, but he married a Jewish girl.


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