Henoch Rafael Lisak, born in 1930

I still lived in fear

I was born in Kalisz as the son of Icek and Frajdla, née Dessauer. At the beginning of World War II, my family, i.e., my mother, my father, my brother, and I, were relocated from Kalisz to Warsaw. In Warsaw, we moved in with friends or relatives (I don’t remember exactly) at 22 Ludwik Zamenhof Street. After our arrival in Warsaw, my father engaged in trading. Our whole family was helping him with this.

Kalisz was incorporated into Germany, and its inhabitants were forced to move out.

After a short stay in Warsaw, my father went to the town of Włodawa where a large part of our extended family from Kalisz was staying. The purpose of my father’s trip was to explore the possibility of getting through to the Russian side. In a short time, my father was supposed to return to Warsaw, and we were supposed to leave in the direction of the eastern border so that we might cross over. However, in the meantime the ghetto in Warsaw was closed.

…“getting through to the Russian side” – on September 28, 1939, Germany and Russia divide Poland between them. Many Jews flee to Russian-occupied areas to escape Nazis.

We found ourselves in a very difficult situation. My father was outside the ghetto, and my mother and the children were closed up in the ghetto without housing or means of support. Under those circumstances, my brother and I continued trading bread and other food produce which we transported into the ghetto from the Polish side. To this end, we used to slip out under the wall (through the gutter) to the so-called Aryan side. We made purchases, and then we would return by the same route.

During one of the repeated crossings of the wall, we were caught with bread on the Polish side by a German plainclothesman. He led us to a guard standing a little further from the wall. We were thoroughly beaten, our bag with bread was taken away from us, and we were told to slide under the wall into the ghetto. The Germans photographed this event.

The creation of the Warsaw Ghetto canceled our family plans. We were forced to leave our living quarters on Zamenhof Street (I do not recall for what reason). We moved in with the next set of acquaintances at 9 Pawia Street (opposite Pawiak Prison). At the beginning, when the ghetto was first closed, we did not yet realize what hell it would become. Trade still flourished, stores welcomed passersby, people went to work, and the dead were buried with due ceremony. On the Sabbath holiday, there was still a festive mood.

All of this changed very quickly. Diseases (typhus) began to spread. Food products disappeared from store windows, because they would be broken into by hungry crowds, and the food would be taken. Next to dead bodies was a stream of people lying on the pavements, pretending to be sick or faint in order to arouse pity among passersby and receive some food. I, too, took advantage of such a possibility of getting food.

On one occasion when I was lying on the pavement, I was taken away by a stranger. He led me to accommodations in the basement of a bombed-out house. I do not remember what street it was on, but it was an orphanage that was under the care of Mr. Korczak. There were many children there my age, as well as some younger and some older. We received meals. We were looked after in the daytime, and at night, we would return home, although this was not always possible. The police curfew hour, announced by sirens, was very strictly observed in the ghetto. Their sound signified that everyone who happened to be on the street at that moment had to disappear. In this situation, the Jewish police directed people to community shelters, to entryways, to stairwells, and other accommodations where it was possible to find shelter for the duration of the curfew. To reach one’s family or place of residence was out of the question. For this reason, very often, my brother and I were forced to spend the night in such places as I have mentioned. In the morning, we would return to the children’s shelter or to Mama’s.

I did not stay long in this orphanage. During one of my usual trips outside the orphanage, I walked through the cellars of a burned-out house and, unexpectedly, found myself on the Polish side. When I saw “normal” life, I decided not to return to the ghetto. I wanted absolutely to get to Włodawa, where my father was staying, in order to tell him what had happened in Warsaw. I walked along some side streets of Warsaw in the direction of Otwock. In Otwock, there was no ghetto as yet. I reached friends of my parents who took me under their wings. However, I did not stay with them for long. I walked from village to village, from town to town, spending nights on rural farms. It happened that farmers would propose to me that I stay and undertake the job of taking cows to pasture, which I often did. I told them that my parents had perished during the bombardment of Warsaw and that I was looking for shelter.

After several weeks of wandering, I reached Włodawa. In that little town, life still went on “normally.” Our family lived in poverty, suffering from cold and hunger. They lived in the hope of getting across to the Russian side. My relatives informed me that my father had been there but had returned to Warsaw because he had received the news that my mother had died of hunger in the Warsaw Ghetto. I remember that I reacted to this news with hysterical crying, and for several hours, they were unable to calm me down. To this day, I do not know who could have imparted or written such news to my father.

The outbreak of the German-Russian War, which found me in Włodawa, eliminated my and my relatives’ hopes of crossing the border to the Russians. In Włodawa, at age eleven, I became ill with typhus. I had to be treated at home because the sick who were of Jewish origin were not admitted to the hospital. At that time, a postcard from my brother reached the relatives in Włodawa. It appeared that my brother was trying to reach Włodawa, but the card was written from somewhere near Lublin. I did not wait until my brother arrived. Having had experience in wandering following my escape from the ghetto, I took to the road again as soon as I recovered.

German-Russian War erupted on June 22, 1941. Germany attacks without warning.

I reached a town called Sławatycze on the River Bug. There, the Jewish community was also still living “normally.” They received me as a hero when I told them what a Gehenna reigned in the Warsaw Ghetto. I was surrounded with care, received nourishment and temporary shelter. After a few days, I sensed that I was a burden and that there was not enough food for everybody. I decided to set out into the countryside to the farmers for the purpose of securing food.

Gehenna – hell, place of extreme torment or suffering (biblical reference).

Farmers proposed that I stay with them to take the cows to pasture. I remained with them until the end of the summer. The small village, whose name I do not remember, was about ten kilometers from Sławatycze and about fifteen kilometers from the village of Wisznia. I remember that on free Sundays, I visited Jewish families in Sławatycze. The farmers needed me from spring to fall to take cows to pasture. The other months of the year, I was dispensable.

During the fall and  winter  of  1941–42,  I  returned  to  Włodawa in order to find out about the fate of my brother. My family lived on the  brink  of  exhaustion,  and  my  brother  never  reached  Włodawa. I returned to Sławatycze. The journeys I mentioned (from fifteen to thirty kilometers), I would make on foot, sometimes getting rides in horse-drawn carts.

In the spring of 1942, I found myself in a small village bordering Sławatycze. I took cows to pasture for one of the farmers in the village and did other farm chores. The farmer made and repaired wheels and also owned a mill or wind mill. They had one married daughter who was a Volksdeutsche. They must have suspected that I was a Jew, because on one occasion, I overheard a conversation between the mother and the daughter in which it appeared that the daughter wanted to report me to the Gestapo, but the mother was objecting. The conversation took place in 1942 when the Germans had deported all the Jews from Sławatycze, Włodawa, and other towns. People said that they were transported to nearby woods and murdered there.

After hearing this, I left the cows in the pasture and ran a dozen villages further away. There, I was again taken in by some farmers (I do not remember the names) to mind the cows. In the fall of 1942, when I was no longer needed, the same farmer with whom I had spent the summer months transported me, at night by horse and cart, some thirty kilometers further to a town called Piszczac (now in the Biała Podlaska province) and left me as a farmhand to tend cows for a wealthy farmer.

It was a thirty hectare (approximately seventy-four acres) agricultural-industrial farm with its own brickyard and village slaughter house. They had had one son who had been a pilot and perished in an air battle. They had several helpers, a maid (who was to inherit their estate), and a farm hand who came from Żywiec, as well as another young boy my age and me. Along with the other helpers mentioned, I carried out various farm chores. I worked for them until 1945. We were liberated in July 1944. I witnessed the flight of the Germans and the entry of Russian troops. After liberation, I began to feel more secure, more valuable, and needed. I started changing employers and sought work to earn money. In Piszczac, I made friends with my age- mates. I was illiterate. After liberation, I started attending elementary evening school in Piszczac.

In 1946, I traveled to Kalisz to see my hometown. I saw the old courtyard where I used to play—a courtyard of tragedy—and no one familiar. I returned to Piszczac, although the people in the municipal office in Kalisz advised me, when I tried to find out if anyone of my family had shown up, that I should get in touch with “my own.” It did not cross my mind that there might still be any Jews alive after such hell.

With the passage of time, I was growing up and was beginning to feel youthful needs—clothes, independence, and education. At that time, it was in vogue to travel to the Recovered Territories for jobs. Going with the flow, my friends were departing. I felt a great void. In 1948, I made a decision to leave. To this end, I went to the employment office in Warsaw and received a ticket for a trip to Wrocław.

Western or Recovered Territories were lands that belonged to Germany before the war and were given to Poland in compensation for lands taken by the USSR. See Territories in Glossary. Wrocław was formerly Breslau, Germany. It is now a major city in western Poland.

I was hired by a construction company in Wrocław. After liberation, it did not enter my head to conduct some analysis of events from the point of view of what had happened? What had happened to me? And who am I? I did not understand that it was possible to begin a search for my closest family. I lived constantly in fear of revealing that I was a Jew.

One day, walking the streets of Wrocław, I overheard a small group of people speaking Yiddish. I approached them and inquired whether there were any Jews here in Wrocław. Instead of an answer, I received a question as to why I was asking. Therefore, I introduced myself, telling them who I was. Then, they began looking after me. It turned out that I had chanced on people from Kalisz who had known my parents. Shortly thereafter, in Wałbrzych, we found my uncle, Abram Patt, and in Belgium, my aunt, my father’s sister, Regina Salomonowicz. It should be noted that during my first stay in Kalisz, in 1946, my aunt was still in Kalisz, but I did not know about it.

I  started  a  new  life.  I  was  placed  in  a  Jewish  home  for  boys. I was accepted into a school organized in Wrocław under the aegis of the Committee of the Jewish Society for Promoting Professional Work, known under the abbreviation ORT (Organization for Development of Productivity). There were others in that home like me. At age eighteen, I began a natural and normal life, only with a great tragedy experienced in my past.

ORT – in the U.S. it is known as the Organization for Rehabilitation and Training.

In 1950, I finished the ORT Vocational School. That same year, just before the final examinations, I began efforts to leave for Israel. On account of this, I was removed from the Jewish Boys’ Home. I again found myself in a difficult situation, without means of support or a roof over my head, and I really cared a lot about getting the certificate of completion from the ORT school. Having had such rich life experiences from the period of the Holocaust, coping with new life problems did not present great difficulties for me.

“I was removed from the Jewish Boys’ Home”. – communist authorities considered a desire to emigrate an act of disloyalty deserving sanctions.

Wrocław, 1992