Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993

Leaving Warsaw

How do we--what do we do? How do we cross the, the bridge? Do we go on foot--it's uh, or take the streetcar? On the Aryan side, there's an Aryan streetcar that goes from the outside, goes on the bridge and we decided we're gonna take the streetcar. Now, we're--let's stick around the goyishe side, let's act like goyim because only Jews would, would walk this long of a bridge, you know.

Whose idea was it to take the...

It was my idea. I said, "If we're gonna play goyim, now we're goyim. Let's start realizing that, that we're not on the inside and let's start looking like, you know, tough and so on." So, anyway, we took the streetcar. We got across on the other side and we got off and we started walking. I remember we, we, we didn't know where we were going, but we knew that we had to go in the straight direction away. If Warsaw was here, we had to go here. That's all. So, I remember late, late in the afternoon, probably early part of the evening, we came to a, a farmhouse. I remember we stopped and the woman we begged her to give us some...something to eat and she had just baked black bread, you know, those big giant loaves. I don't know if you've ever seen them...

Sure.

...where you rip off pieces and it's hot. And she gave us that with cold milk to drink and we thought we were in piggy heaven. And no sooner did we finish eating and it all went through us. Everybody got sick, you know. Our stomachs were not used to that. Anyway, I don't remember where we slept that night, but we went on.


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