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139 11 New Dangers In the evening we gather some sugar beets from the fields to eat, and then take off through the woods. After about three hours of walking, we encounter a group of ten ragtag Polish partisans, two of whom are women. The group is armed with guns and ammunition. Right away we know this can be a very delicate situation. They can help us live, but they can also kill us because of whatever money and valuables they surely suspect we are hiding. And if they are independence fighters who are against both German and Soviet occupation of Poland, then they will have even more motivation to kill us because they might hold the misperception that all Jews are Communists. We decide to act as friendly as possible toward the partisans. To prove our credentials, we tell them that we have killed the Germans at Sobibór and want “to continue to fight the German swine until Poland is once again free.” They confer among themselves before inviting us to join them. Who knows what they are really thinking? Maybe they just need more time to decide how best to rob and kill us cleanly, without the gunfire that can call attention to their location. But we don’t have anywhere to run. We must live in the forest until we can find a better alternative, and these partisans offer us our best chance of surviving this harsh and alien environment. For food we can depend on the partisan women to cook whatever we can procure from nearby farmers. We sleep in wood-covered pits, where we are able to make concealed fires to keep us warm. The partisans teach us to shoot guns and lay mines. Soon we are partisans ourselves, venturing out on our first mission to place mines on railroad tracks. Despite the danger of the work, it is quite satisfying to know that we are helping to defeat the Germans. But it becomes clearer every day that our presence irritates some of the partisans. Several of them refuse to work with us entirely, standing to the side and never helping us at all. Their resentment becomes most evident when, one night, we overhear them talking with one another: “They are Jews. They don’t belong with us.” Despite the fact that we are not welcome, several weeks go by without any problems. We even venture into a small town and have photographs taken of each of us. I treasure my photo because, as far as I know, all the other photos taken of me previously may have been destroyed by now. I still do not know if I will live until the end of the war. But if I am to die, this photo will tell the world that I existed. People will see what my face looked like. And they will know that despite being sent to Sobibór, I have survived until this day. One day the partisans ask us to bring them to our home cities to recover valuables. We lie, claiming that we have not left anything hidden in these places. They ask if we have any relatives who have hid valuables in other towns. We tell them that all our relatives are very poor and have probably died already. The partisans finally relent, but we can sense that they are increasingly unhappy with us. What use are we really to them? That night they send us out on a mission to place mines on a railroad track. We think about making a run for it whenever we reach a safe distance from them. But they make the decision for us: as we walk toward the tracks, the partisans begin firing their guns directly at our backs. We run for our lives. Despite the darkness and the thick forest, we do our best to flee as far away as we can. By morning we have made it to the home of Aaron’s business acquaintance in the village of Oszczyce, only a few miles from Izbica. Aaron approaches the home while we hide in the nearby woods. An hour later he returns to say that he has struck a deal. Aaron has agreed to pay the man on a weekly basis, in return for food and shelter. We all chip in some of the gold and silver that we have, being careful to retain enough to get us by over the next few uncertain months. Aaron leads us...

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