The War
The Mass Murders and Our Escape into the Forest
little knife, so he cut twigs and we had a fire burning all the time. We sat next to the fire most of the day and night. We built a little shelter from branches, just big enough to protect us from the dew in the morning. Mostly Ukrainians lived in that area, and we used to go around begging the farmers for food. We could tell which farmers were Ukrainian and which were Polish by the language they spoke. There were also some visual clues. The Polish horses were general- ly in better shape; they were better groomed and better fed than the Ukrainian horses. The Polish farmers were dressed a little better, too. They were more affluent because the Polish government had given them the best land and had encouraged and subsidized them. In terms of their physical appearance, the Polish and Ukrainian women and some of the men were blond and nice looking. You could not tell whether they were Polish or Ukrainian just by look- ing at them. We also knew which village we were in, and from its name we knew whether it was Polish or Ukrainian. The Ukrainian villages could not be avoided, because the Ukrainians were the majority, but the Polish people were more sympathetic. This was not because they loved the Jews, but be- cause they were a minority themselves and were constantly feud- ing with the Ukrainians for political reasons going back hundreds of years, so they had similar problems. The Ukrainians had been trying throughout history to gain independence from the Poles, and Jews were always victimized in the process. Many times, the farmers sent their dogs to chase us off their property. Occasionally, people were nice and would give us some potatoes and bread. We were able to bake the potatoes in the coals of our fire to stay alive. We had no warm clothes. We were all very dirty and covered with lice. There was nowhere to wash, let alone bathe. There were no sanitary facilities of any kind. Drinking wa- ter was not the problem — there were streams, although it was too cold to wash in them. We lived from day to day and did not know what to do with ourselves.
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