Tag #122007 - Interview #100403 (Stanislaw Wierzba)

We lived in the outskirts of the city. The noise, the screams, going down to the basements, gas scares and so on. The news was going around that the Germans were on their way, so my mother prepared these bundles, and my father, all six of us – we all escaped, heading eastwards. We did not get very far, because we were moving on foot. The Germans caught up with us and we had to go back. We must have walked a dozen kilometers, and we collapsed in a barn. I remember it was September and there was a huge orchard there, really beautiful, the apples were ripe, and so we survived by eating these apples for a few days, but then we returned home. Our house was untouched, everything was in perfect order. We were not the only ones that had run away – a number of other families went off with us as well. And then for about half a year we went on living in our house, right until they created the closed ghetto. Because our house was not in the ghetto, it was outside.