Stephen Shooster
Polish Cavary was no match for the mechanized Germans
One day I went to bed in Poland, and the next day I woke up in Germany. I knew Poland, was an area that had often seen its rulers change by the fortunes of war, but I thought the people just kept doing what they normally did, work. War was for big people, generals, and politicians, not people like us. In 1939, it was only a little more than 20 years since Poland gained independence from the Austria-Hungarian Empire, Russia, and Germany. Now, suddenly, most of it belonged to Germany and the rest to Russia. Since I was in the German zone, I thought I would become a German citizen. However, I had no clue at the time that the German laws declared that all Jews had lost their citizenship. It would not be long before I understood we were in a country that did not want us. When we left Grybow, before the war, we were not alone. Among the others who left were many of the town’s leaders. One of the first that I knew was our family doctor, Dr. Henryk Kohn. He went east, to Russia, with his brother, Emil, leaving his large home near the park abandoned. His house became the office of the local Judenrat (Jew- ish committee). It was their tortured job to abide by the dreaded Gestapo. We, on the other hand instead of leaving for good, returned to our home ahead of the new regime and expected things would return to normal soon enough. Things became so normal, that before I knew it, I was back in school, bored, miser- able, and staring out the window dreaming. And again, once in a while, the teacher
82
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator