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I traveled with strangers. The smugglers took us to a German checkpoint, because they had a deal with the Germans they’d rob us first and then we could go. First of all they asked who had a pass, it turned out only I had it.
And because it said they also had to assist me with my luggage, they said to me, ‘Take your things and step aside.’ Someone put his suitcase next to mine, he was delivering clothes for his wife, so that they didn’t take it. On the next day they took us across the Bug. And left there.
We walked around in circles for the whole night. And as I have good visual memory, I kept telling them: ‘Listen, we’re walking in circles, returning to the Bug all the time. We must go straight ahead.’ But who will listen to a teenage girl!
I was 18, so who was I, those were grown-up people, after all! Eventually, in the morning, we arrived at some village and spent the whole day there.
And in the evening I went to Brzesc [presently Belarus, city on Polish border, 200 km east of Warsaw] by train. I get off at the station and meet the man my father went with! He says, ‘Your father is here!’
My father told me later, ‘Yes, I felt on that rainy night that someone was going towards me.’ Because I found my father, it was like that: it didn’t make sense to return to the Germans. And it was impossible to bring my mother to that side.
My mother was born in Lublin, they wouldn’t let her pass. If she had been born, say, in Brzesc… She could also pass if she married someone fictitiously. But those days a thing like a fictitious marriage was out of the question.
And because it said they also had to assist me with my luggage, they said to me, ‘Take your things and step aside.’ Someone put his suitcase next to mine, he was delivering clothes for his wife, so that they didn’t take it. On the next day they took us across the Bug. And left there.
We walked around in circles for the whole night. And as I have good visual memory, I kept telling them: ‘Listen, we’re walking in circles, returning to the Bug all the time. We must go straight ahead.’ But who will listen to a teenage girl!
I was 18, so who was I, those were grown-up people, after all! Eventually, in the morning, we arrived at some village and spent the whole day there.
And in the evening I went to Brzesc [presently Belarus, city on Polish border, 200 km east of Warsaw] by train. I get off at the station and meet the man my father went with! He says, ‘Your father is here!’
My father told me later, ‘Yes, I felt on that rainy night that someone was going towards me.’ Because I found my father, it was like that: it didn’t make sense to return to the Germans. And it was impossible to bring my mother to that side.
My mother was born in Lublin, they wouldn’t let her pass. If she had been born, say, in Brzesc… She could also pass if she married someone fictitiously. But those days a thing like a fictitious marriage was out of the question.
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Interview
Anna Mass
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