The Horse Adjutant Kastura’s mood changed as he directed me to take him to the nightclub. Most of my trips did not result in murder. Being a driver, I took many trips all over the town of Tarnow, inside and outside of the ghetto. When I was outside, I noticed life went on as before. I saw people laughing and going to church. Even the SS was going to church. Knowing all too well the wretched condition of my people, I found this incongruous. What could the preacher be saying to the good townspeople while my people were being subjected to abject misery? I also noticed the town was rife with black market activity making it easy for me, or anybody, to buy whatever I wanted. One day, I found myself driving Mr. Volkman and Mr. Lerhaupt, both the leaders of the Judenrat and Kommandant Blache, all three together. I was taking Blache to his home, and the others were along for the ride. As the driver, I was only able to under- stand a little bit of what they were talking about. What I heard was the committeemen trying to make a deal by pleading with Blache. They were emphatically asking to allow more Jews to work. In response, I heard Blache say, “The Gestapo want numbers.” (deadly quota), that is what the random truck deportations were all about. The ride was about half an hour long. When I finished dropping Blache off, I brought Volkman and Lerhaupt back to the ghetto. On the drive back the two men were commiserating, “We can not do anything with them. The Germans are very stubborn.” Followed by, “But we can not give up. We must figure a way to put more people to work.” One of the places Jews worked was Madricz. It made uniforms for soldiers. And since a German-owned it, and it also happened to be located in the Jewish ghetto, they were allowed to operate using Jewish labor at little or no cost. The Jews were begging to work. I understood this implicitly. I don’t know how anyone could survive without work. Both my cousins worked there. I remember that to get to work they had to cross from ghetto A to ghetto B. My own wife to be, Betty (Bronislawa), also worked for a divi- sion of this same company in Krakow. She worked at this factory until she was selected along with her sisters to join Oscar Schindler’s famous list In the movie, Schindler’s List you can see vignettes of her sister, Helen, being mistreated while working for Kom- mandant Goth. Helen was also featured in an award-winning documentary called, Inheritance, in which she meets the sheltered daughter of Kommandant Goth, well after the war, they walk the grounds of Auschwitz as Helen explains to Goth’s daughter what happened. Madricz was not the only business Jews could work. There were others as well. For instance, Gross Schneideraj made coats for ladies. In this way, I lived from August 1942 to August 1943, until the liquidation of the
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