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My husband, because he was a Cracovian, chose Cracow. I didn’t want to go to Lwow because it’s very hard to go back to your home town knowing that no door will open for you. That I have no one to go to. The only door that will open for me will be a hotel door. I really couldn’t understand my husband. For him it was unimportant. For me, it was everything. That our families were dead, that there had been an extermination of the Jews we learned only in Turkestan [in 1939, some 110,000 Jews lived in Lwow, 33% of the population; several thousand returned after the war from the Soviet Union]. I had never imagined anything of the sort.
From Kazakhstan to Poland we went by train. A cargo train. The train stopped only where it was allowed to, i.e. at large stations, sometimes waiting for a free track at some junction. The conditions? The conditions were such that when I came to Cracow and saw a streetcar, I touched it. For me, that tram was a symbol of civilization. The journey lasted from 17th or 18th April to 5th May. We arrived in Cracow-Plaszow on 5th May [1946].
From Kazakhstan to Poland we went by train. A cargo train. The train stopped only where it was allowed to, i.e. at large stations, sometimes waiting for a free track at some junction. The conditions? The conditions were such that when I came to Cracow and saw a streetcar, I touched it. For me, that tram was a symbol of civilization. The journey lasted from 17th or 18th April to 5th May. We arrived in Cracow-Plaszow on 5th May [1946].
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Interview
Janina Wiener
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