Tag #107478 - Interview #78781 (Gustawa Birencwajg)

During the war [WWI] my mother was smuggling and it was best to go with a child [as a child created an alibi for the smuggling woman]. I was maybe eight years old by then. She went from Lodz to Ozorkow [approx. 20 km north of Lodz] or to Leczyca [approx. 35 km north of Lodz]. Very far. I was really afraid of the telephone posts, because they made a strange humming noise and you couldn't shout. I was so frightened I bit my fingernails. You'd walk on foot. At night. Very dark night. Usually those were white pieces of cloth, 17 meters, you'd use 'arshins' then [arshin - an old unit of measure, a Russian arshin was approx. 0.7 meters, a Polish arshin was 0.8 meters]. They'd be wrapped [around the body] and that's how you'd go, they'd buy it there. It was a safe place. And my mother and I, we lived from that smuggling for a long time.