Tag #106725 - Interview #88491 (Emanuel Elbinger)

Again it’s sad to say, but one day the children’s home in Rabka was attacked. They don’t know who – some band. After the war there were armed gangs [19], scores of them, like ‘Ogien’s’ band [pseudonym meaning ‘fire’, real name Jozef Kuras (1915-1947), commandant of an anti-communist partisan band in the highland Podhale region of southern Poland; after WWII, his division, ‘Blyskawica’ [lightning] did not disarm]. And a battle broke out. They didn’t take the house, but the battle went on for several hours through the night. There was this Russky officer, a Polish Jew, only he’d been in the Soviet Army in the war, and he led that whole defense. Some of the children were familiar with guns because they’d been with the partisans in the war or whatever, so they passed up the ammunition. Straight away, the next day or the day after, they abandoned the house in Rabka and moved all the children to us in Zakopane. And it was the children who told me about it. After the war all children’s homes were under guard. They were all armed. Jews who’d been in the Polish army – the Russian one [the Polish army formed in the USSR in 1943, 1st Infantry Division] – or in the Russian army, were redeployed. Wherever there were Jews living there was a guard.