Hall of Testimonies

Teresa Glazer

They had a house In Kowru also, so we moved there. And Father, when Warsaw fell, he ended up as a POW. But at that time there were no camps yet, with barbed wire, and so forth. So he managed to escape, and he found some civilian clothes, and he joined up with us. No one there knew who we were, because if they had they would have taken him, like they did with soldiers and policemen – they took them and they ended up in Katyn. In that third deportation, they gathered all those who were not from these parts. They would come at night between 2 and 4 a.m. This was already well known. The trains were all standing at the ready, and this was the third wave of deportations. So the inhabitants recognized all the signs that this was about to happen. So they warned Father, because they thought they were coming for him. But as it turns out they came for us. The person who came for us said, in an ironic tone, so you wanted Warsaw, did you ? And mother knew that we would be heading in an opposite direction from Warsaw. So when they were taking us away, Father came to join us (he had been hiding somewhere, but came when he realized we were being taken). So we were the exception in that we were all together. Because the majority of families were separated from the husband/father. We were put in a cattle car. There were a great number of Jews there, who, at the beginning of the war were escaping from Hitler, so they went to Russia of their own free will. But when they saw the conditions there, they came back. But the Russians rounded them all up and put them on this third transport. The cargo train we were in never stopped while it was still within the territory of Poland. They did not want to give some young people a chance to escape. But once in the USSR, the train would stop in the middle of nowhere, and there was no where to escape to. (Interviewer asks if they had baggage with them?) We had left Warsaw with only a small suitcase. The friends we had stayed with packed us some food. We later received parcels from them in the USSR – some bread or lard, when they had some – they would send it. But there had only been 30 minutes to get ready, and we were not leaving from our own home, so we did not have much.

Polish