Stephen Shooster
Russian Gulag
kill seven people. You must leave.” My father spoke in this manner to help me break the emotional bonds to my fam- ily. Then he confirmed what I was told. Tomorrow we would be leaving our home for good. That is when he also mentioned a worrisome thing, “Leon, what they are doing with us I can’t be sure. But I don’t trust them. Yesterday I met with the Mol boys, Lud- wik and Jasiek. (The same ones who helped me when I was chased by the Gestapo for stealing coal.) They told me about was some strange digging near their home. Because of the timing of the deportation, they are afraid it’s going to be the site of a mass kill- ing. There was no other reason they could figure why a ditch would be dug near their home, in this remote location. Our conversation was interrupted by a knock upon the door. At first, we were fright- ened. Did someone see me coming home? Did someone report the noise my father was making? My father opened the door cautiously, as I got out of sight. It was our next-door neighbor Tadeusz Skrabski. His hand was still bandaged in a homemade sling. “I heard Leon is home, so I came right over,” he said. I stepped out of the shadow feeling safe. I was practically raised at his house. All the memories flooded back to me when I saw him; picking vegetables when I was very young, playing with his kids, dinners at his house. Tadeusz, like my
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