European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Mrs. Helena was a surgeon, the daughter of a doctor from Vilnius, a Jew.

What happened? Well, her story was this.

She escaped from Warsaw with her husband, he also was a doctor.

They were in Vilnius, living at her parents place.

At first there was no ghetto, but then the Germans took her husband to the ghetto, I do not remember the maiden name of Helena,

her father-doctor and her husband Abraham Wajnryb, but in general he was called Stanisław.

Staś and her father were taken to Estonia to work in a quarry.

There, mica was extracted, it was hard work. Plenty of people were deported there to work and extract that mica.

Helena stayed at home alone with her mother who was ill, it was cancer.

When the Germans reached her house,

Helena gave her an injection,

anaesthetized her as she knew that when Germans came they would kill her in bed,

those were their ways of dealing with people.

Finally she was taken to the train.

And in the last moment she tore out the wooden board from the floor

and lowered herself onto the railway track, she did it, she was lucky they did not shoot her

as at the end of the train always a German was who was supposed to shoot if somebody left the train.

Helena did it, she rolled onto the railway embankment,

went through some fields and reached Vilnius, where the priest Kretowicz gave her papers.

Well, everybody knew that she worked as a maid with the Kretowicz family in upper Orwidów,