The War
Rescued
infection and, gradually, my feet began to heal. After a while, I began to feel as if I were living like a normal human being. I stayed in the house for a few weeks, perhaps a month. One day, a farmer came running in and informed us that the Germans were in the village. Since this house was about a half mile from the village, we only had a few minutes left in which to escape. In desperation, my uncle grabbed my aunt and the weapons, and ran into the woods. I was left in the house with the Polish watchman’s wife. Before I knew what was happening, I heard a German officer in the kitchen talking to her. She was a very attractive young woman. When the German officer walked into the house and saw her, he suddenly had things on his mind other than what he had come for. He befriended her, so to speak. German policy at the time was that if they went into a house and found someone who was sick, they killed the sick person and burned the house down, because they were always afraid of typhus and other contagious diseases. The officer came in and looked me over. He asked her, “Who is this?” She told him that I was her sick little brother. Then he spoke to her in German and a little Polish. I heard a commotion in the kitchen when he did as he wished with her. Later, I heard him inviting her to come visit him where he was stationed nearby in a small town on the Russian border. He left in good spirits, on good terms with her, and he neither killed me nor burned down the house. A few hours later the Germans left the village. The woman was hysterical, crying and screaming for hours, when my aunt and un- cle returned. She said she would commit suicide if they did not remove me from the house. My uncle did not know what to do with me at this point. He knew, however, that they had to take me out of the house. There was a bunker in the woods nearby where Jewish people had hidden several months before. The Germans had already raided the bunker and shot it full of bullet holes — the people had either
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