Tag #157506 - Interview #100414 (Michal Warzager)

Right after the war Legnica was almost a Jewish town. [After World War II many Jews who had sought refuge in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union during the war were repatriated to Legnica and other towns in Lower Silesia.] I looked around the marketplace, or walking down the streets – Jews everywhere. I knew a lot of people who were traders then. They kept telling me to stop working and become a trader, but I didn’t have a knack for it. They did business with the Russians – they’d buy watches or gold, and then sell the stuff for a profit. But I didn’t like hanging around and haggling with them. The police could run you in for that in those days, and I’d got my honorable discharge from the army and didn’t want to ruin my reputation. Everything then seemed so temporary – we couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t have to take off, or that the Germans wouldn’t come back to Legnica. We’d have our dinners at the Repatriation Bureau – there was a cafeteria there. We didn’t save money. We lived for the moment.