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Barbara Makuch
- The University Press of Kentucky
- Chapter
- Additional Information
110 Out of the Inferno some of her letters, in which she praised my mother for her bravery and for helping her and Piotrus. In 1958 Teodozja emigrated with her husband and her daughter, Ania, to Israel. I have not heard from her since then. After the war, my mother managed to trace Piotrus's family in America and Israel. Eventually he went to Israel, where he fought for his country. Four months ago, he telephoned my sister in Warsaw and promised to contact us, but so far I have not heard from him. In March 1988, Lesisz and Piotrus Teicher were reunited in Israel, where she was honored by Yad Vashem for her bravery. Since the end of the war, Lesisz has lived in England; she is married to Oxford-educated Tadeusz Lesisz, who served with the Royal Navy. Lesisz's mother, Leonia Gutowska, died in 1956. BARBARA MAKUCH In June 1939 I graduated from high school and enrolled in summer courses to prepare myself for university studies in September. I was a happy eighteen-year-old blond girl, looking forward to a happy future. I never returned to school. Instead, the war broke out in September , and we experienced the miseries of the German invasion. The entire country was cruelly destroyed by the German bombing and artillery. The Polish government had to evacuate abroad, and Poland ceased to exist as a free country. Germany annexed the western part of Poland and converted the central and eastern part into the General Government, with the notorious Hans Frank as governor. The German regime started in a very barbaric way, killing thousands of people in mass executions, confining thousands in prisons and concentration camps, seizing thousands as hostages, and forcing hundreds of thousands of young people to work in Germany. The whole country was a labor camp in which the Germans exploited the Poles. A monthly salary was equivalent to a kilo of sugar or meat. Huge requisitions of food and industrial goods caused catastrophic shortages. The Germans closed educational institutions except for some elementary schools. They deported teach~ 111 Barbara Makuch ers and intellectuals; some never returned. The German army, military police, and Gestapo made their presence known in every town. Curfews , manhunts, expropriations, and expulsions characterized life in Poland during German rule. As soon as the hostilities finished, I rushed to Sandomierz, where my mother and sister were spending their vacation. We could not return to our former home in Krzemieniec, where our family was well known for our anti-German attitude, so we decided to stay where we were. The place was pretty quiet. I found a job as an instructor in the local agricultural school. We decided to make our life there, waiting for the end of the war, which we believed would come soon. Three and a half million Jews lived in Poland before the war. They led a decent, quiet, life-working, maintaining their own businesses, practicing their religion, and going to their own schools. During the course of centuries, some of them had integrated into Polish society and had become rich and educated. There were Jewish doctors, teachers , artists, and poets. There were also many Polish-Jewish marriages. During the first weeks of the German occupation, the Polish people were horrified by the cruel treatment of Jews, despite the fact that the Poles were also being terrorized by the Germans. The Germans expropriated and humiliated the Jews. They forced them to wear the Star of David. Prominent Jewish people were forced to do humiliating labor, such as cleaning streets and hauling garbage. Slowly, Jews disappeared from the streets. The Germans put them in ghettos, separated from the Polish population by walls and barbed wire. They suffered incredible famine and shortages. Very shortly, Jews began to starve to death, especially children. The Germans refused the Poles entry into the ghettos, and Jews could leave only under the penalty of death. Germans chased the miserable escapees with dogs and with the help of the local Volksdeutsch. After one or two years, the Germans started the systematic liquidation of all ghettos. The Germans sent the Jews to concentration camps such a Majdanek, Treblinka, and Auschwitz, where they gassed and cremated them. Some Jews were taken to deserted places where the Germans shot them, burying them in mass graves. Everything was kept secret; people were told they were going to a labor camp. Some believed this, but soon the sinister truth started to become clear. Yet it was...