Adele Jarzebski - Holocaust Survivor Testimony

i am adelia zemski i was born in the wolf which belongs now to the ukraine but it used to belong to poland i was born in poland in 1990 my father had a photographic studio he was rather assimilated they spoke polish at home sometimes german because this part of poland used to be part of the so-called austrian empire till the end of world war one so they were both in austrian schools when there were you know pogroms against the jews in the late 1930s my mother didn't send me to school because i look jewish and i could be beaten up we were living in a polish district where there was the home of the polish students and i would say that the majority of them were very anti-semitic but my first day of at the university it was just a cold day without the jews from time to time especially in october at the beginning of the university year the students like to organize such days which means they didn't let the jews in i somehow went in they let me but i heard one student shouting after me she's jewish and one student took me by the caller i remember i got a new coat with a big fur collar and he took me by the caller and threw me from this tears unfortunately nothing happened i have to say that some polls still were friendly with the jews but many were simply intimidated they used to come to my home but when some of them saw me at the university they used to turn their head and explain to me later well you know we could be beaten up for being friendly with you which is true my mother was was taken in the action in march 1942 she was already taken to belgius the extermination camp close to wolf you see i was in hiding at this time i was hidden by a ukrainian woman in her flat you see you can't say that all ukrainians were bad all germans were but there were some decent people in you see among all nations so a ukrainian woman took me to her flat and she could be you know punished for it there was a death sentence for hiding jews when the germans took my mother i saw her walking with a jewish and the german policemen through the you know courtyard from the window this was the last time i saw her when i think about holocaust it always bring her picture back i was taken to the yanovsky camp with thousands of other jews and i was there for a few days i can't tell you exactly how long and we didn't get anything to drink or eat you know but i don't remember even being hungry i was so depressed that i forgot about everything the germans when they eventually organized the trains to take us supposed to belgius because it was the closest to wolf camp they were you know organizing us in groups i was standing with young girls there were boys separately women or elderly people separately and i happened just to stand in a long row of a young girl on the corner you know opposite a soldier who was digging something which looked like a trench maybe against the airplanes he wasn't an ss man he was in an ordinary uniform and as i said he gave me a sign to walk to the gate at this gate there were few jewish people who were permitted to go back to their work because they had good working certificates but i had not such a document and i was thinking that the soldier was just joking he would tell me to walk to the gate and i will be beaten up but he repeated this gesture so i started to walk and i remember ukrainian guard i think it was a ukrainian guard stop me and he said you're not going to escape and the german soldier shouted this fry she's free and you see it was a very heroic act so i approached the gate which was opened without questions asked i took off my armband with the star of david and i went back to the ghetto and my aunt decided that there was no future for us and she found a polish woman who was ready to accept us and hide us in her house for money of course because she was poor she was 70 couldn't work and she said to us look my husband and my son died of tuberculosis which was still you know decimating people in europe i have nothing to lose i'm old and instead of starving i will take the risk to hide you and i will have you know the satisfaction if i will succeed she was very nice to us we were there for two years nearly sitting in a cellar the husband of my cousin built such a wall from timber people were using it for heating and for cooking so we were sitting behind this timber bowl he just left an opening which of course was hidden during the day but we could crawl out from time to time once in two weeks three weeks to have a wash and we were of course all dirty and we had lives we didn't even think about it and the polish lady was cooking potato in pills and i remember i was walking the stairs to the entrance to the cellar to take it and we were eating it our diet was potato we had some bread some as it's tea which means not reality you couldn't get it during the war only on the black market we were not exactly starving but we were very hungry and what is the more more even important we were living in a permanent terror of being discovered next door like here on both sides there were polish neighbors and you know this is the reason why we couldn't use any light and we couldn't talk in whispers only i remember also that once i was very ill in the cell i was dying i don't know what it was but my whole face was so swollen that when i wanted to open the ice they were swollen i have to leave my you know lit to see something and i had a very high temperature i don't even know how high because no one has a thermometer my cousin's husband was a doctor but he got no instruments nothing to cure me he had just a syringe and he gave me remember an injection from milk he said well this would bring up your temperature and one of the two will happen or you will survive or you will die and they were terribly upset that i will die not you know people were so selfish i would say in this time each was concerned with himself or herself and you can't blame them this was you know the situation my aunt who really loved me he she took me with her to save me she was mostly concerned what to do with my body if i will die because there was a concrete floor it was impossible you know to bury me there and they wouldn't be able to take me outside so i would really cause the death of the whole group fortunately i survived my cousin's sister-in-law was with us it was my aunt my cousin myself my cousin's husband and his sister and his sister in luke jewish at all and this was the reason that my aunt was always sending her to help the old lady because even if the neighbors would see her sometimes outside they wouldn't think that she was jewish you know she was blonde tall blue-eyed with a striped nose no one recognized her as jewish anyway she went upstairs to help the old lady with washing and it just happened that a german soldier came in with a ukrainian guard and they did know that the jews were hiding in the cellar they just came i think to reserve a room for a german officer and you know if this my relative would remain calm and do the washing it would be all right but she lost you know her composure he she panicked and the germans started to be suspicious he approached her started to ask questions and found out that she was jewish he took her together with the polish lady to the gestapo and we were sitting alone in the cellar not knowing what to do and each of us had a poison it was a sign no cyanide it was possible to get it during the war and i remember that it was in my hand and in case we would hear the germans coming we would swallow it and my cousin said well let's take the poison i am frightened and her husband said wait wait maybe a miracle will happen and it happened my relative told the gestapo that she just came in the morning she wanted to save her brother and the polish lady who was necessary for our survivor so he told she told the gestapo that she came to us in the morning she said i was just going from place to place walking begging doing different jobs and i came in the morning and i asked the polish lady if she had some work for me because i needed money and she said do with the washing she had no idea that i was jewish and the gestapo believed her because she really looked very unjewish in the morning the polish lady came back she wanted us to leave she was frightened she said look i can't have you longer i'm frightened you see they might come and search it was true but we refused to leave but to live means to go out and be caught immediately so we stayed against her will but eventually she become reconciled with it it was a low standard of living it still is in poland but we we felt safe and we were frightened of migration but in 1957 you know anti-semitism anti-semitism was more obvious and i was thinking what will happen when my son will go to school for example my friend had a little girl and a line of polish children was walking behind her shouting drew dress go to palestine when i came here australia was still so far from the european wars and you know european problems that we believe that this will be a safe place when i came here firstly i was working as a cleaner in essendon heatherwick street there was a boarding house there and in the evening i enrolled myself to melbourne university and i was doing modern european history i myself and my family didn't want to where the family which remained alive didn't want even to think about it when someone started to talk while the other person said oh look don't remind me it is it was you know like a fresh wound you wanted to forget about it it doesn't mean that i forget my parents or all my uncles and aunts who were killed in the holocaust but i didn't want to think about it and this was the attitude of many people the you know the longer was the distance the more you know we were ready to talk about it our function is not to forget the debt to spread our gospel i would say our message of tolerance of you know multiculturalism we want also to say that we are not against the present germans they are not responsible for what their ancestors did i don't think that we convince everyone there are certainly many who on whom it doesn't make much impression but even if we will manage to convince 10 15 of them this is already an achievement you

Channel: Melbourne Holocaust Museum

Views: 46,858

Keywords: Jewish Holocaust Centre, Melbourne, Australia, Survivor Testimony, the Holocaust, Eyewitness interview

Id: eotcW2TMWk8

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2011