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After the war I started working at the Voivodship [District] Militia Headquarters. I had to survive somehow! Lola’s brother, the one I was staying with, was the head of the personnel department there and he accepted me. At first he didn’t want to, because he was afraid people would say he employs his Jewish friends. But his wife talked him into it: ‘Listen, you won’t have anything to be ashamed of.’ She knew me, we talked often. So that’s how I started working there and I made it for some twenty-something years, until I got my disability pension. At first I was a typist, then a secretary, later the director of a department. When you work a lot and work well, then you get promoted. I wrote all the reports about how the militia was functioning for the commanders. They really valued them, because these reports were top class, I can brag about it. Well, I always had all 5s [As] in Polish, I was the best in the class. It didn’t hurt me in any way that I was Jewish. When they accepted me for this job it was even in fashion to accept Jews. As a form of compensation. Only later it became not so comfortable. But I received my disability pension really early, in 1967, because I had thyroid problems. I went to hospital twice, each time for a month, later some medical committee examined me and they declared that I couldn’t work any longer. So I was 44 years old when I went on my disability pension.
Period
Interview
Helena Najberg