Tag #107686 - Interview #101918 (Hanna We)

After the second big campaign [15] in February 1943, we escaped to the Aryan side, over a ladder, over the [ghetto] wall. You bought a crossing from smugglers. Unlike what some people think, it wasn’t terribly expensive. You had to pay a group of smugglers, a Polish policeman, and a German. You got over to the other side and waited in a sentry box until dawn. Once you got out onto the Aryan side you had to sew a scrap of fur on quickly, so that it wouldn’t be obvious that you were from the ghetto [the prevailing fashion outside the ghetto was fur collars; in the ghetto there was no way of obtaining such luxuries because of the Germans]. From there we went straight to Zoliborz, to the wife and daughters of a friend of my father’s from university, who was murdered at Katyn [16]. I applied to Yad Vashem [17] to have that family awarded a medal [Wladyslawa Sienenska and her daughters, Zosia and Janina]. They helped us the most. The most important was the first person you went to from the ghetto. After that our friends and family who had also gotten out of the ghetto helped us. We passed on from one family to another. Lucyna was with us in spirit; we couldn’t live with her because she didn’t have her own apartment.