Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Natalie Zamczyk - January 30, 1984

So I went there, you know, and uh, stop, you know, there and the child was making cookies with the mother--the mother, you know. And uh, she said, I haven't got time, something, the mother. I say, I will call, I will tell you. But I said, no, I have to go because I have no, Morris was sick this morning, my son, her temperature, I have to go back home and I left there. And I was going throughout the bridge to go to, to take the bus and go to... And there was no any more buses going because the uprising, Polish uprising. Polish uprising started. The Polish uprising supposed to start at 8:00 in the evening when everybody is home, but it started at 5:00 in afternoon when I was on the street, you know. And uh, because there some trouble. And I saw, I didn't know what is going on. And that was worse, you know, and I couldn't get anymore to the bridge, and I never went home for half a year. I didn't know what happened to my son for half a year. And I was in the, and I was whole month, you know. In ???, the worst place, that's what I was. ??? old, old place, you know. They called that in Warsaw. For a whole month I was there in the basement, you know, with the coal, you know. So, you know, for a whole month to be in the basement, I was dirty. From the beginning I was washing, but later, we didn't have food later. The priest was there in the, in the last week of the staying there, because from every part of the cou..., of the city, you know, there were people, you know, from the beginning for two, for two weeks during the daytime I was walking on the street where the, for one week was that uh, was everything free because we took, the Germans run away from that. They were bombarding us. And later I was terrified, because I was worried about my son. I didn't, I worry about my child, that's what I want, to save my child, not myself, you know. And I couldn't get uh, I couldn't get in touch with nobody because there was, by night they bombard us and by daytime you couldn't cross no place. Only that place ???. And I was so upset terrible that I met the coal workers and they saw that I was upset and one of them introduce me to some underground, you know. And I was, and they took me there in that place and I was typing for them. And different thing I was doing for them from time to time. But I was there after, and some of them promised me that he's going to give a, a, a word to my girlfriend what I was stopped before, that I am, that I caught, that I didn't go home because I was caught in a uprising. So after a month, we had to capitulate because the German come to our place.