Jerzy Pikielny on holiday with family and friends

This picture was taken about 1938 in Orlow, when I was on holiday with my mother, Czeslawa Tikitin (nee Drutowska), Bronka, my nanny, and the son of a friend of my mother?s. I knew we were Jews. I felt it was a strange thing to be. During a stay at the Rabka sanatorium I shared a room with a boy and I told him I was Jewish. I don't recall having any trouble because of that. I didn't speak of it the next time I was there, though. During another stay, I don't remember what year it was, I met a boy, older than me. His father was an officer of some kind, or maybe even the deputy mayor of Warsaw. The boy told me the Germans would do us, Poles, no harm, and if war broke out, we would win it of course, and we would drop Jewish heads on Berlin from airplanes. Such were the moods at the time. In 1937 I went to Sopot for the summer vacation, with a friend of a friend of my mother's to take care of me. I don't remember her name. There were lots of people at the beach who had flags with 'Hakenkreuze' [Ger.: swastikas]. They also organized a ?Blumenkorso? [Ger.: a sort of parade]. I remember a very pretty young woman riding a horse at the head of the procession. She had a 'Hakenkreuz' armband. I met that woman in Lodz after the holidays. There were no major anti-Jewish incidents at that time, just these demonstrations. In 1938 we went to Orlow. We went to Sopot to see the people we had stayed with a year earlier. They already had very few guests. Jews were only allowed to use the part of the beach right next to the toilets. It was an area the size of an average room. There were 'Juden verboten' [Ger.: Jews forbidden] signs everywhere.