European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Hiding a Jewish-Polish couple; financial situation

After the Zambrowicz family, the next people came.

The lady was Jewish, she was a friend of my uncles wife.

but all people from Orwidów knew she was a person of Jewish origin.

She used to come every summer to visit her friend, I mean my uncle`s wife.

He was Aryan.

They wanted to find out, what happened to my aunt.

She thought that maybe my aunt was there, she did not know she was deported.

When finally she found out about it they decided to come back to Warsaw.

I wanted them to stay but I knew that I was exposing others.

In this situation I invited all workers to the porch and said: Listen,

I would like this family to stay but I do not want to make a decision alone because our life is in danger.

So if nobody says a word it will be good for this family and for us.

If somebody reveals them living here, he is a bastard,

maybe it will be a credit for the Germans but we will all have to suffer.

If somebody reports about it, betrays, then we – all citizens of Orwidów, will be responsible for that.

So they stayed.

There were some incidents, moments where we got some signals and they had to leave Orwidów for a few days, that there was some danger.

We shared everything, ate together, all that we managed to collect, all money was shared.

During the German times, I used to go to the villages and sell.