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135 Fabriola Paulinska They offered to take us along with them but my grandmother, mother, and I decided to stay in Lwow. We survived the Holocaust and the horrors of the war. Above all, we wanted to return to our home in Pinsk but it was not to be. These are my personal experiences relating to a few Germans who remained human despite the orders they had to carry out. This does not mean that the Germans as a whole did not behave badly, as they did elsewhere in Poland. All around me there were reprisals for acts of sabotage. The Germans hanged hostages from balconies. Theyexecuted people in the street and sent them to concentration camps. It was just my good fortune that none of these things happened to me. Ostrowska left Poland in 1956. After obtaining political asylum in Germany, she worked for the American Seventh Army near Stuttgart. In 1957, she went to England, where she married and for many years worked for Fregata Ltd. She is now retired. FABRIOLA PAULINSKA The year was 1943 when a Jew made himself known to me. He had been an officer in the Polish Thirtieth Cavalry Regiment. He asked if he could spend a few days with me at my home in Warsaw. During the day he could rest because I was gone most of the time, either taking care of people in the ghetto or working in the underground. He stayed with me for several weeks, until my residence was threatened by a police check. Then I had to bid farewell to my Jewish visitor. I visited the Warsaw ghetto. I noticed that wealthier Jews did not help the poorer ones. Picture this: There were plenty of bread and rolls on display, while outside, under the shop window, Jews died of hunger. With my own eyes, I witnessed Jews being loaded on buses and transported away. There was a gardener who had a home near Narutowicz Square. He hid several Jewish families. What betrayed him was the amount of milk supplied to the home. To be sure, he and the Jews he sheltered were shot by the Germans. 136 Out of the Inferno Paulinska, a former officer in the Polish Army, emigrated to England in 1947. She married a pharmacist and is the mother of three children. Now a widow, the 77-year-old is active in Polish affairs in England. STEFAN PETRI When the war broke out, I lived with my wife, our sons, and my wife's family on Halicki Street, now called Barburki Street, in Warsaw. During the first months of Hitler's occupation, I built in my home a small hiding place in the cellar. Access was through a cabinet in the laundry room. Being an engineer by education, I executed this in a comparatively short time. This secret place was to serve me and my family in case of a threat to our lives. In 1942, when the Germans began the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, I decided to hide in this secret place a Jewish family by the name of Szapiro-Kaufman and Ela Szapiro, together with their sons, Jerzy and Marek. I had known the family of Dr. Szapiro before the war. I decided to hasten to their assistance because this was my obligation . In the spring of 1942, the four of them escaped from the ghetto and with the help of a mutual friend, Irena Wroblewski, hid themselves in a tollgate in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw. Late at night I escorted them along side streets to my home on Halicki Street. From that time they had to spend the day in the secret hiding place, but at night they could be in the apartment. One day someone reported to the Gestapo that I was hiding fugitives from the Jewish ghetto. The Germans appeared at my home. They conducted two detailed examinations, attempting by beatings to compel me to reveal the place where the Jews were concealed. During the searches they used dogs, but even the dogs were unable to uncover anything because in the apartment and in the cellar I had placed a preparation of nicotine, which blunted their sense of smell. After the intrusion of the Gestapo, I realized the high probability that the hiding place would be uncovered during subsequent searches; many people knew about it, too. During the absence of other ...

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