Our lives were ordinary. That was, until the war. I played with Polish kids and felt like a Polish patriot. I knew I was Jewish, and after school I went to the cheder, which I was a little bitter about, but I had no choice…[Dad tells me, “In the Cheder we studied the Chumash and translated from loshen koidesh (Hebrew) into Yiddish. I did not know Hebrew or Yiddish, so for me it was like translating Chinese into French. I didn’t understand a word. One day I came home and told my father proudly, ‘doszedłem do shlishi! — I reached the third!’ I had no idea what ‘shlishi’ was, but I usually reached only sheini—the second.”] I was not in a youth movement myself, I was too young, but Father used to take me sometimes to a Zionist youth movement. I can’t remember which one, but since Father was a socialist and a Zionist, it must have been a Zionist socialist youth movement.
In 1939 the war broke out. About a week later the Germans entered Bochnia. We saw the German might and had not believed that such a thing existed. We lived on the main street, and we saw the Germans coming in with tanks and artillery and infantry riding on armored vehicles. Before the Germans came, there was a battle with a small Polish force, which was destroyed by air strikes in the morning. The Germans had no difficulty getting in. The bombardments were not in the center of town, so we did not suffer from them.
When the Germans arrived, at first they paid no attention to the Jews. After a while, the first prohibition was that Jews were not allowed to walk down the main street. When they did anyway, they were beaten. Then they set up a sort of Jewish police, the Ordnungsdienst, or OD. They posted guards at the entries and exits of the street so Jews would not pass through. After a while, we were instructed to put a sort of band on our sleeves. Not a yellow patch, but white with light blue. It was obligatory from age thirteen, but I also started to wear one at some point. The summer break came to an end and we went back to school. After about a week the teacher called us to the front. There were five of us Jewish children in the class, and he said to us, “Goodbye and not farewell.” He simply kicked us out. We left.
The Judenrat had already been established by then, and they set up a Jewish school. There were no advanced studies, it was mainly to keep the children busy. My father’s shop was not confiscated — on the contrary, he was instructed to open the shop and make it available to the German army. At first they paid well. The soldiers knew he was Jewish, and that was fine. Father kept running the shop, but after a while the Germans went elsewhere. That was until ’41. Of course, during that period there were all sorts of Kontributionen—levies. You had to give so many pounds of copper, lead, all sorts of materials. You would buy the material and hand it over. They would publish a notice that everyone had to bring a certain amount, and no one dared not to.
We kept on living in our apartment. In the same building, they set up a residence for German soldiers. I don’t know if they knew we were Jews, but in any case they treated us fine. Some of them were anti-semites who spoke about Jews, and others took no notice. In fact our landlord, who was a Polish anti-Semite and wanted to inform on us, was treated badly by them because they had been taught that wealthy landlords were Jews. We actually developed good relationships with some of the soldiers. They would hang around when they were on duty, and once in a while they came to visit. Father spoke excellent German, and it was nice for them to have someone to talk to far from home. Once, I remember, it was a Jewish holiday, and we had a festive meal at home. Suddenly we heard their vehicle stop outside. They had come to visit. Father quickly gathered everything up from the table, with the tablecloth, and threw it all into the next room. The soldiers came in and saw us sitting at an empty table. They asked why. Father said times were hard, and we just couldn’t afford anything. They were moved and wanted to help, so they drove off and brought us back lots of food and other things.
That was how it was with those soldiers. They were just people. During that time there was some activity going on, they say there were Polish Partisans or some sort of underground. There was shooting at night, and they killed two or three Germans. The Germans hanged the two men who had done it. Then they took everyone who was in prison, and “just to be sure,” they added in a few Jews. They led them all the way through town, we watched it, and executed them in a spot near the woods, and that was in fact the first execution in Bochnia.
In 1941 we received an order to move to the ghetto. We left our home and found an apartment in the ghetto. Father was given a permit to transfer his business to the ghetto. Poles were taken out of the ghetto area. There was still a school then, to keep the children occupied. At that time we didn’t think much about escaping. There were no thoughts of extermination. There was no talk about extermination. People knew there would be trouble, they knew the Germans did not like Jews, but they thought it would be like in Germany, where Jews were restricted and their freedom of movement was curtailed, but there was no talk of extermination. Even when they talked about transports to the East, they knew the Jews were being sent to work. No one knew it was to be killed. Everyone thought they would somehow get through. Jews were always optimistic. Germans reached as far as Moscow and still people said, “These are extraordinary circumstances.” Perhaps that was what kept them going, because otherwise people might not have survived.
My father had a barbershop, and at some point there came orders that everyone had to work. The luxury of school came to an end and I was allowed to work with Father in the barbershop. I studied hairdressing, learned how to shave, lather, that sort of thing. I worked there for quite a long time. It was a kind of village life, where people traded with each other. There were some people who did business, made money, and there were still some connections outside the ghetto, but the economic situation really began to deteriorate. That was until the first Aktion in the summer of ’42.
In the summer of 1942 all the Jews of Bochnia were ordered to appear at the military base, except those who were given stamps in their work cards permitting them to stay. Anyone who wanted to stay tried to find a respectable workplace, because they thought if they sent people away, it would be those who did not have work. In that Aktion, virtually all the Jews who were originally from Bochnia went to Belzec. Well, we didn’t know that Belzec was a death camp. We thought they were being sent to work in the East. My sister did not get a stamp, and she was already prepared with a bag and everything to go east. But at the last minute she was able to get a stamp. I remember we were standing next to our home in the ghetto when the Gestapo head, Schomburg, walked by with my Uncle Yanek, who was in the Judenrat. Yanek pointed out my sister to Schomburg, and that was all she needed. After that she got a stamp. Yanek himself was not helped by his ‘status’; he was sent with his wife and his son Sigmund, three years old, to Belzec, stamps and all.
There was a hospital in the ghetto, and the head of the hospital was my uncle, Anatol Gutfreund. Since they said patients would not be sent east but would stay in Bochnia, my uncle hospitalized his mother. People found ways. But the Germans, as usual, did not keep their word, and they took all the hospital patients to the Baczkow forest and shot them, all of them, including my grandmother. That was apparently not enough for the Germans, because afterwards all the people who had been given permits to stay in Bochnia were ordered to come to the Judenrat courtyard, and they took us to the military base and had another Selektion. They asked each person what he or she did. My father said he was a barber. They said, “Good, we need a barber.” They let him go. Then my sister came up. She had two jobs, at the bakery and in the street sanitation department. Then my mother said she worked with Father, so somehow they let her go. My mother took me by the hand so we could pass through together, but the man stopped me with his Peitsche, his horsewhip, putting it between my hand and Mother’s. I was a twelve-year-old boy. At that moment a commotion broke out over by the main transport, I don’t know what it was about. He looked over to see what was going on, and Mother quickly pulled me away and I went over to the other side and joined the group of people permitted to stay. That was my first Selektion and, as in dozens of cases, it was a matter of a split second this way or that.