Tag #122004 - Interview #100403 (Stanislaw Wierzba)

A bit later, right before the war, people began talking – papers were also writing about it, though almost without commentary – about what was going over there, in the Reich, what Hitler was doing with the Jews. But we never mentioned the possibility that it could be a danger to us here – nobody was thinking of that. As if we believed it would just stay in Germany. Sure, people felt sorry for those Jews over there, what it had come to, and all, but the Jews thought of it one way and the Poles another way. The word ‘fascist’ or ‘hitlerist’ – these words were not used, not even by us. But of course the Jews were talking among themselves. My father and my uncle would talk about these matters. As for me, I did not ask too many questions, but I was old enough to understand more or less what it was all about. The war was coming, and we were all... I for instance, was quite an optimist as a boy, repeating slogans like ‘Leader, take us to Latvia!’ [actually: ‘Leader, take us to Kovno!’ – slogan of Jozef Pilsudski’s Polish Legions]. Or thinking of Zaolzie [the Zaolzie region was temporarily occupied by Poland in October 1938]. These were real successes at the time, it filled us with pride, we were boys after all.