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157 13 Life as a Displaced Person Now that I am finally free, where am I to go? Back to Izbica? A sweet thought when I remember life before the war, but there is no going back, nothing to go back to. The living nightmare I had experienced in Izbica has left a traumatic impression on me. I know the town of my birth will always be a place of mourning to me. The Nazi war machine has been stopped, but not before it had changed Izbica—and the rest of Poland— into something I can barely recognize anymore. Nearly every Jew from Izbica has perished. Who knows how many Jews in all of Poland have survived the war?1 Of the survivors whom I know, many are alone in the world. Despite all the suffering I have endured, I tell myself, I am relatively fortunate to still have my two brothers. We understand that it will take a long time for life to return to a sense of normalcy. But we can begin taking small steps toward rebuilding our lives and maybe even leaving Poland to pursue our dream of a better future in Palestine. Jakub and Ada decide to go to ¡ód§ because Ada had worked there for her uncle before the war and has many acquaintances whom she can rely on for help. Symcha and Lola marry each other in a small ceremony . They hear that in the city of Wa¬brzych it will be possible to move into one of the apartments of the ethnic Germans, who have either fled or been deported to Germany. The Polish municipalities are assigning the apartments. Supposedly almost anyone can receive one. So Symcha and Lola decide to try their luck. I go along with them for the trip and pack some goods from Lublin that I plan to sell or trade in Wa¬brzych. All goes well in Wa¬brzych until my return trip to Lublin. Upon buying my train ticket at the station in Wa¬brzych, I find that the train is full. However, the conductor tells me to come with him, promising that he’ll find me a place. He puts me in an equipment room beneath the train. Though it’s uncomfortable, I know that I can manage until the end of the trip. Then the conductor locks the door from the outside. This alarms me, but once again I tell myself that I will manage. When we arrive in Lublin, however, the conductor doesn’t return to unlock the door. I figure that either he wants to leave me to die there, or he will come later to rob me of my belongings when no one is near the train. I start yelling and banging. Fortunately some workers come and release me. I head straight for Mojsze’s house, wondering if my life has just been saved again. By summertime we hear that the Allies have created displaced persons (DP) camps where relief is being provided to war victims who have lost their homes. The closest such camps are in occupied Germany. Conditions inside the camps are reportedly not perfect—some of them are even located on the sites of the Nazis’ former concentration camps at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen—but apparently they are at least free of the violence that we are witnessing in Poland. Smugglers from whom I buy food tell me that the Polish–German border is guarded only lightly. It seems as if the Soviets want Jews in Poland to flee to the care of the Americans and the British in occupied Germany. After discussing it with Symcha and Jakub, I resolve to sneak across Poland’s western border to live in one of the DP camps in occupied Germany. My destination will be Berlin, where, I have heard, a large camp has been created at Schlactensee. After confirming that conditions are livable, I will return to bring Symcha, Jakub, and their wives back with me. But before I leave Poland perhaps forever, Symcha and I decide to attempt to recover the jewels that we had left behind in Sobibór. We also plan to visit Siedliszcze, the hometown of our father’s two brothers and their families prior to the war, to see if anyone else from our family remains . First we reach the woods just a few miles from Sobibór. But in the distance we hear the sounds of a battle raging. Perhaps there are antiCommunist partisan...

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