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"With bloody fingernails we dug a dank cellar 'grave.'" | |||
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Lonia Goldman Fishman Born 1922 Wegrow, Poland 
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Lonia had three sisters and one brother. Her parents owned a cotton factory in the town of Wegrow. The Goldmans were a religious family, strictly observing the Sabbath, the Jewish holidays and the dietary laws.
1933-39: After studying all day at public school, I attended a religious school for girls called Beis Yakov where I studied Hebrew, the Bible and Jewish history. Later, when I was in high school, a private tutor came to the house to teach me Hebrew. My favorite hobby was knitting. After finishing high school I learned the quiltmaking trade. We moved to Warsaw in the mid-1930s when my father opened a down feather factory there. 1940-44: We were trapped in the Warsaw ghetto when it was sealed off in November 1940. There in the ghetto, at age 18, I married Sevek, a tailor. In 1942 Sevek and I escaped to Wegrow, and then to a village near the town. A peasant couple, Jan and Maria, agreed to hide us. With bloody fingernails we dug a dank cellar "grave," lined it with straw, and lay motionless in the hole, concealed from danger for 18 months. Jan and Maria risked their lives by bringing us food and emptying our chamberpot every day. Once a week they sponged us down. Lonia and Sevek were liberated by the Soviets in 1945. They had to relearn how to walk after their many months of confinement. In 1948 the Fishmans emigrated to America. |
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Lisa Dawidowicz Born 1925 Ostrog, Poland 
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Lisa was born to a Jewish family in the small city of Ostrog in southeastern Poland. Her parents operated a grocery out of their residence; the front half of the house was a store and the rear half was their home. Ostrog was an important center of Jewish religious learning in Poland, and by 1933 Jews made up almost two-thirds of the city's total population.
1933-39: My family was religious and we regularly attended services. I studied at a Polish school until the Soviets arrived in September 1939, at which time I briefly attended a Soviet school. But Soviet rule didn't alter our lives much. 1940-44: Suddenly everything changed. The Germans invaded Soviet-controlled Poland in June 1941 and reached Ostrog in July. They quickly set up a ghetto and organized the local Jews into work brigades. We realized by late 1942 that many of these groups were not returning from their work sites. We searched for a hiding place. A poor farm woman agreed to hide our family of five in an underground potato cellar--there was no room to stand and we could breathe only through a hole covered by pumpkins. We remained there for 16 months. Lisa was liberated when the Soviet army freed eastern Poland in 1944. After living in displaced persons camps in Germany, Lisa emigrated to the United States in 1949. |
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Erzsebeth Buchsbaum Born 1920 Stebnik, Poland 
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Erzsebeth was raised in Budapest, where her Polish-born Jewish parents had lived since before World War I. Her father, a brush salesman, fought for the Austro-Hungarian forces in that war. The Buchsbaums' apartment was in the same building as a movie house. There was a small alcove in the apartment, and Erzsebeth's brother, Herman, made a hole in the wall so that they could watch the films.
1933-39: Every summer Mother, Herman, and I took a special trip to Stebnik, Poland, to visit Grandma. Father stayed back to work. I loved Grandma's village. We'd walk near the train station and smell the flowers. I'd play with Grandma's dog, Reyfus, and sometimes we'd travel by horse and buggy to the nearby spa, where a band played and people sat and sipped drinks. In 1938 when Germany annexed Austria [the Anschluss], Herman emigrated to America. 1940-44: Since we were Polish-born, we had to leave Hungary in 1941 when all "foreigners" were forced out. We went to Kolomyja [Kolomyia], Poland, where a ghetto was imposed in 1942. Thousands were killed, and by summer I decided to escape back to Hungary. A smuggler took our small group through the woods. We slept by day and walked all night. On the 12th day, we heard a German shout: "Get up!" After I crawled into a hollow tree trunk, I heard shooting and voices crying "No!" Then it was silent. The smuggler had been wounded. The others were dead. Erzsebeth escaped Hungarian work camps and many brushes with death before liberation in 1945. She moved to the United States in 1951. |
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Sarah (Sheila) Peretz Etons Born 1936 Chelm, Poland 
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I was in that shack hiding for over two years. Never went outside. Uh, in the winter it was very cold; in the summer it was hot. And, um, he used to bring us, uh, usually, uh, a loaf of bread for both of us every day and a bottle of water. Once in a blue moon for a special occasion he would bring a little soup. And, uh, sometimes he had, if he had to go away on business where they send him to another town for a day, or some other, he would, his wife or his daughter will never give us anything so we starved for a day or two until he came back. And my mother and I been in that, uh, uh, shack for--at night sometimes, my mother used to sneak out to clean up the [chamber] pot, and, uh, I never went out. Uh, she wouldn't let me out, and I was afraid to. She was, uh, I, we didn't have anything to do. I didn't have anything to play. I was at that time six years old, and I didn't know...I used to play with the chickens and play with the straws on the, there was a lot of straw on the floor and he used to, he put up, uh, a kind of a mattress or something where we slept in a corner with blankets, and that was where we stayed. | ||
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