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59 Wanda Draczynska It was the most terrible day of my life. Seeing the hell ofthe ghetto, my own fear was so great that there were moments when I did not know whether I would have the strength or the courage to go back there. I came out full of admiration for Father Godlewski, who voluntarily remained in the ghetto. Hungry as I was, it was a long time before I could eat anything. The courthouse on Leszno Street was a meeting place for Poles and Jews. A Polish couple had arranged to help a Jewish family, but only the little boy stayed with the Polish couple; his parents decided to go back to the ghetto to nurse a sick grandmother. I supplied the Polish couple with money to look after the boy from the Council for Aid to Jews, since the husband earned very little as an artist. The boy was a beautiful child but very suspicious; he refused to come anywhere near me. On another occasion I brought him a toy, but I got the same reaction. I was very shaken when the woman told me that the child had refused to have anything to do with me because he had been forced to show a German that he had been circumcised. Eventually, the Polish couple went to the country for safety, though I still met them from time to time to give them money. The wife later worried about which religion to raise the boy in. She knew nothing about the Jewish religion; besides, it was dangerous to teach Judaism. I told her not to worry, advising her to do the best she could in the circumstances because, after all, it was the same God. After the Warsaw Uprising, Domanska was imprisoned in Zeitheim and later Molsdorf. She then joined the Polish Second Corps in Italy. She later went to England, where she taught school and then worked for a jewelry manufacturer . She was prominently featured in the recent television series "The Struggles for Poland." WANDA DRACZYNSKA During the German occupation, there never was a moment when we did not feel threatened. Every time we left home, we never knew whether we would ever see it again. In Warsaw, most people had some affiliation with an under- 60 Out of the Inferno ground organization, even if they did not formally take an oath. I always seemed to be running errands for the Home Army without formally being a member. In the end, I got rather annoyed with this state of affairs and decided to do something about it. I told a friend whom I suspected of being involved in the Home Army that I wanted to join. She told me where to go. When I arrived at the appointed place, I found that they knew all about me, and I was allowed to take the oath. I was assigned to the decoding department and received instructions by telephone to go to a certain apartment at 6:00 p.m. On the way I felt very conspicuous. I thought that everyone was looking at me and everyone knew where I was going. When I got to the apartment , my contact told me we would have to leave immediately, so we left, taking her suitcases with us, and went to a safe apartment that belonged to a lieutenant in the Home Army. I was disappointed that while everyone around me seemed to be in danger from the Nazis, I alone seemed to have no exciting experiences. In 1939 my brother had been wounded during the defense of Lw6w. A dum-dum bullet had shattered his hand, and though the wound had subsequently healed, he had lost the use of it. His early attempts to leave Poland failed, and he returned to Warsaw, where he joined the underground. Our apartment became a safe house for various illegal papers and documents and sometimes weapons. I lived in constant fear of arrest. One day my brother's friend arrived at our apartment with his wife and child because their apartment had been compromised. At about 7:00 a.m. we received a telephone call from this man's place of work to report that he was being pursued by the Gestapo. We all left the apartment immediately. I took the child in its carriage; the others went to a relative of mine. Eventually, my brother's friend and his wife went to the country to hide, and the child was taken to...

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