[Polish]
Tape number 4. An interview with Mrs. Noemi Makower.
Joanna Wróblewska is the host.
Lejcin became the head of the Jewish police.
He was an indispensable man.
He loved his wife very much, who was pregnant.
He would do anything for her.
On the first day, the Germans told him to evacuate 10,000 people.
The first day and the second were very easy.
He took all the people from the points where they were located.
But then, after those two days, when he was supposed to evacuate 10,000 people again,
it was more difficult.
And he managed to do it in the amount of 6,000 people.
At the same time, he also hired community workers,
who did it very skillfully, fearing for their own skin.
But the Germans immediately realized that this was not a good method.
As I said, it was a team that evacuated the Germans,
who carried out the evacuation in Lviv.
They already had experience of how to behave.
During the entire evacuation period, not a single drop of German blood was used.
12 or 13 gendarmes carried out the evacuation.
As I said, Befelsztel was located on Żelaznie 103.
And that's where all the orders came from.
Now, what did it look like from the point of view of the Jewish police?
At the beginning, Lekin was the executioner of the police in the ghetto.
Szeryński was the general head of the evacuation.
And at Umschlag, there was someone else.
Szmerling was the head of Umschlag.
And he decided who was to go to the wagons,
and who could take a break for a while.
The cooperation of these three people gave very good results.
So good that there were a lot of people there.
And then the number of those people decreased a lot and reached 15,000 at the end of the evacuation.
There were different stages of the evacuation, and this is very important.
Namely, at the beginning, in November 1942,
there was a so-called "small action" and 1,000 people were evacuated.
Then, at night, which was very important,
from September 5 to September 6, 1942, there was a so-called "Kocio".
What was this "Kocio"?
At that time, we slept on the ground floor, because the place where we lived was constantly changing.
We put our beds in the middle of the room, not knowing that splashes were coming from the ceiling.
So it was terrible.
At night, we heard the voice of Czapnicki, the head of the Jewish uniformed militia,
that there was a new order.
Namely, all Jews had to move to a very small area
bordered by Zamenhof Street, Stawki Street, Parysowska Square.
And the time of travel was one day.
People were to have food for two days.
And in the course of that day, at the beginning, people with luggage,
because they thought it would last longer, were pulled to the boiler room.
We were assigned to the boiler room on Miła Street.
Miła Street wasn't nice at all, but there were a lot of various thieves' holes, various lockers,
because it was the area of thieves.
There were eight of us, women, who were assigned to the boiler room.
We got to the apartment. All the apartments looked like that.
It was full of papers, various garbage, dung, leeches on the floor, dirt, shit.
And the gentlemen, our husbands, pretended, I mean, they wanted to do something.
It was the day of the armament suspension. They were running around the mine.
They were doing things for their loved ones.
And there were eight of us, women, and we started cleaning the whole mess.
We worked for a very long time, but the boards and what we found there
were like messages for that one night. And what was cooked there.
And at that time, after that time, there were executions without any covers.
I mean, first, people were placed in a row,
and those who had some important passports, from the point of view of the Germans,
or from the bigger shops, where they made uniforms for the Germans, and so on.
Excuse me, did you also have a passport?
I only had a passport as my husband's wife.
And he was a doctor?
He was a coordinator of the Internal Affairs Department.
Now I have to go back and ask, when did you become Mr. Makarew's wife?
I'll tell you later, because it's very interesting. But I wanted to say something about it.
One moment.
You were talking about how you were cleaning as women.
Yes, yes, I remember, I remember.
There was a review of people who had passports.
On that street, right there.
During the execution.
On that street, there was a review.
And not only was a passport needed, but it had to be given to the Germans.
And it had to be old enough, and it had to have no small children.
Because the others were shot.
The whole street and the whole area was one sea of blood.
Excuse me, who was shooting?
Germans.
Only Germans?
Only Germans. The police had no role at all.
But only Germans were shooting.
And the commune, which had 10,000 workers,
received so-called "red cards" for thousands of workers.
Thanks to the fact that my husband had a very serious medical position there,
he got a "red card" for himself and for me.
We were supposed to go through the review of the gendarmes,
to see if there were sometimes more people,
and to see if there were people who had some inappropriate cards.
A woman with a large backpack was standing in front of me.
I asked her, "What do you have in that backpack?"
She said, "A child."
Because the children didn't get a life card, because the commune didn't have one.
So she decided that the parents would somehow save the children.
Her husband was somewhere in the back, because he was nervous,
and he would have betrayed her.
And the child got morphine and went to sleep.
So that's just one picture.
The Germans were very meticulous in reviewing all those cards.
The red cards were for the commune.
As I said, for 3,000, 1,000 for the rest of our lives.
And then we moved, looking for...
The transportation was a disaster.
The ghetto was constantly being reduced.
We got a flat on Zamenhof Street, opposite the commune.
The commune also had a new room.
Before that, it was somewhere else.
And there was one room there, a dormitory, a kitchen.
The room was divided into two parts, very precisely.
And there lived a lawyer, Lubliner, with his wife.
What was his name, I'm sorry?
Lubliner, with his wife.
In one room, and we lived in the other room.
The division was...
I'm sorry, were you living with your husband and mother at the time?
No, no, only with my husband.
You couldn't let anyone in there other than your closest family.
I mean, the child and his wife.
And where was your mother at the time?
My mother was hidden by my husband in the hospital.
She didn't feel well there, because she was a favored person.
She didn't feel well there.
But she looked pretty, because she changed her hair and dyed it.
She was in the hospital for a while.
Then, in turn, my husband's sister, Lonia, a German teacher, and her husband
got a nice apartment and my mother moved in with them.
She couldn't live in our apartment, because Szeryński, the police chief,
said that anyone other than the closest family, i.e. the wife and child, should be shot.
So it was...
And the police blocks were relatively safe at first,
because the police was needed.
And now...
I'm going back to the cat.
It was the Red Sea.
Later.
The ones who didn't show up for verification were the best.
They were hiding in various hiding places,
because, as I said, there were various thieves there.
There were two such cases.
One doctor was hiding in such a hiding place.
The gendarmes pushed the door open.
"Get out!"
A number of people came out.
He stayed there and saved himself.
For a while, of course.
The second case of a miraculous survival.
A family, a husband and a wife, were hiding in Tapczany.
In the room where...
It's still in Kotle.
There was an evacuation.
They didn't open Tapczany.
And they survived the siege happily.
So there were a lot of cases.
And besides, maybe the best were those who didn't show up at all.
Just like the ones I'm talking about.
And besides, those who had some hiding places.
There were a lot of accidents underground.
I remember one lawyer told us
that when they didn't hear each other, when the Germans were coming,
he could barely suffocate his child, who was screaming.
There were twenty-odd adults and children there.
But of course, those were occasional accidents.
You can't decide to suffocate your own child.
The situation was tragic.
Finally, a big evacuation operation,
including the German gendarmes.
Excuse me, what did you know about the fate of those who were evacuated?
I'll tell you about it in a moment.
If you want, I can tell you now.
Of course, people began to appear.
The escapees from Treblinka.
I know about ten such people.
Behind our apartment, where we lived,
behind the wall, there was one
who talked and sang at night.
He was just crazy.
I know about ten such people, but there were more.
In any case, we were certain
that those trains were going to death, not to work.
We were sure of that.
One day, late at night, we were reading books by the candle.
I was reading Maria Stuart, and my husband was reading a different book.
We fell asleep late, around 2 a.m.
and we were awakened by a loud knocking at the door.
In one word, action.
It was in the district where the police lived.
We had a cellar prepared for Lubliners and me.
Lubliner didn't, because he was also in the police.
We went downstairs to the cellar.
There were several dozen people there.
There was a small window, 4 by 3 centimeters, which could be opened.
If it was possible.
The cellar was connected to an exit outside.
It wasn't a big exit, but the steam was coming from the vents.
The action lasted for four days.
I was in the cellar for three days.
The fourth day, somewhere else.
My husband saw the steam.
We heard it in the cellar.
There were crowds of people, caught by the Germans.
The gendarmes were right above us.
They didn't review this house.
After these three days, my husband noticed the steam.
In a few cases, it caused the cellar to be exposed.
With the help of his friends, he took me to Faders's shop.
There, on the fourth floor, I experienced a German visit.
In fact, it wasn't on the fourth floor, but on the first and second floor.
There were these workshops of the gendarmes.
Thanks to the arrival of Faders, who didn't trust the Germans with his compatriots,
the revisions only concerned workshops.
There were a lot of people there.
We experienced the revisions on the fourth floor.
How many people were there?
A young lady was sitting next to me, and I was talking to her.
They were all friends and relatives of the shop's workers.
And the fireman, who was the district official, worked in my hospital.
So he knew me, and miraculously, he agreed to let me stay there.
After four days, my husband came.
He came every day, but on the fourth day he said that the action was over,
and that I could go back to my apartment.
I came back to my apartment, and then the Lubliners moved to a shop,
and we decided to run away from the ghetto.
We knew that it was the end.
When was it?
I won't tell you exactly.
We decided to run away in January.
We ran away on the 23rd of January,
and it was the first unsuccessful escape.
There was a clever boy, not a smart one,
who decided to give us a car and take us to Lublin.
There were a lot of our things.
He said that the Germans had taken them away.
But he left a bag and some other things.
On the night of the 23rd,
it was a very cold night.
We didn't have any means of transport.
The things were heavy.
It was far away.
It was a shed.
It was near a shed.
We had to go to the Aryan side,
and we were supposed to be there at 10 p.m.
We didn't have any means of transport.
The Germans helped us to get to Lublin.
They helped us to get to Pinkert's car.
It was a well-known car there.
He was transporting corpses.
I was sitting next to the carriage.
My husband was sitting inside the carriage.
They took us to a long street,
where we were supposed to cross the ghetto border.
Were they Germans who had been bought?
For sure.
11 or 12 people.
It was dark.
I couldn't even see them well.
A late truck arrived.
It had a big trailer on the outside.
The driver was Polish.
We were supposed to go as an empty car.
If someone's head was sticking out, he would hit it.
The truck left.
We thought we were in the open air.
We thought it was different.
At some point, we heard a terrible clang.
It was terrible.
Three shots.
Probably not only the tire broke.
There were too many things.
The driver ran away.
Can I say it?
The driver ran away,
and our car, covered with a hood,
was surrounded by 12 gendarmes.
At first we thought they were Polish insurgents.
But we found out later that they were Jews.
They started beating everyone one by one.
The women, judging by me, were not so strong.
My husband was very beaten up.
He and another man, tall men, were beaten the most.
They took my bag,
which contained all my documents, photographs and personal belongings.
They took all our luggage, of course.
Then they took us to a place.
We didn't know where.
To a small hiding place.
A small room that was closed.
They did a personal inspection.
They took everything that was on the roof.
In the dark.
And they told the men to bring their luggage.
My husband, who was one of the tallest men,
and some other men were carrying huge packages.
Not only ours, but some more.
They beat him terribly.
They beat him in the eyes, in the face.
I didn't see him, because it was dark.
When he came back, I could feel him.
He said, "Don't worry, Emma, I'm fine.
I feel warm in my head.
Nothing happened to me.
Don't worry about me."
After a while, they started to lead us through various streets,
as well as through Umschlag.
We were walking the road that 300,000 Jews walked on to Umschlag.
I mean to Treblinka, I can say.
We were walking in the first pair.
I have to go back for a moment.
And a gendarme who was walking next to us
was talking to my husband in German.
My husband spoke German very well.
He said that he didn't know anything about the actions in the ghetto.
It's true that he didn't know.
He was Czech.
And he was so overwhelmed
that I didn't listen to what they said.
My husband told me, "Listen, he said that he would save us.
And if I told you to run away, you should run after me."
But now I want to go back, because it's very important,
to the Shupo police station
where they led us through Kryjówka Ciemna.
In this Shupo police station, all the lights were on.
It was an amazing achievement. So many Jews and a car.
A German officer was sitting behind a desk
with a portrait of Hitler.
And he kept asking himself, "Why should I run away?"
Nobody spoke to him.
At some point, my husband made up his mind.
He spoke German very well.
He told him that before we left,
on the previous day,
on the 23rd...
on the 23rd of January,
there was a genocide.
I'd like to pause here, and then we'll start with the next tape.
Good.
The End
Thank you for your support on Patronite. Please support me on Patronite.pl/en. I'm waiting for your comments. Thank you!