Irena (Agata) Bołdok (2), born in 1932

They woke me up at night

[We are publishing two memoirs by Irena Bołdok. The second one can be read by selecting “Irena Bołdok (1)” in the “memory” tab]

Conversation with Katarzyna Meloch

IRENA (AGATA) BOŁDOK: My name is Irena Bołdok, née Likierman. I am a member of the Association of Children of the Holocaust in Poland. During the war, after my mother and I escaped from the Warsaw ghetto through a hole in the wall onto the Aryan side, we went to Międzyrzec Podlaski, to my father’s sister. My mother left me at my aunt’s and went back to Warsaw to save my father. My mother was caught, taken away and she vanished without a trace. Later, I learned that she was sent to forced labor in Germany. When she returned after the war, she was very sick and died soon after.

KATARZYNA MELOCH: You talked about it years ago. Could you say a few words about how the nuns took you in, when and where… And how did you feel at the convent?

For the second time, I survived the ghetto in Międzyrzec Podlaski with the family of Sabina Kozes. I survived the transport to Treblinka with them. A Polish railwayman helped me out of a crowded car, barely alive… Later, after these experiences (the chronology is blurry to me), I was at Mrs. Cydzikowa’s. I believe Mrs. Cydzikowa was my mother’s friend. We found shelter at her place (at that point, my mother was still with me). First, we hid in a barn, but a peasant chased us out of it with a pitchfork, and later we hid at her house. And this is where my mother left me, at Mrs. Cydzikowa’s, when she went to Warsaw to get my father.

I stayed there for a few days, but she decided that she couldn’t jeopardize herself and her two sons, and she took me to the Sisters of Divine Providence (69 Lubelska Street in Międzyrzecze). I stayed at the Sisters’ for some time. I was gaunt and had jaundice after we had been chased out of the barn. I was as yellow as a lemon and extremely thin. I drew attention to myself, for sure. But I did spend some time at the nuns’ until a commission made up of a German and a few other people came by. And they said that all the Jewish children had to be moved one way or another so that there were none at Lubelska Street. After this, the Mother Superior decided that I had to leave that orphanage. She didn’t specify where to. The nuns simply put me in a coat and told me to leave. So I went back to Mrs. Cydzikowa. When she saw me, she was dumbfounded and told me to go back to the nuns because she couldn’t take care of me. This went on for a few days, I went back and forth, and I slept on the church steps. Later, the guards found me and asked, “Where is your mommy, little girl?” I said that my mommy had gone to the store. I’d repeat it again and again. But after the tenth time, they took me to the station.

Later, I was with other nuns (from the same convent) in an old people’s home. I lived under the bed until a woman came and threatened to report me. At that point, the Volksdeutsch mayor transferred me back to the previous nuns. But how this happened, I don’t know exactly. They took me back to the orphanage. Back then, I didn’t question anything: things happened to me the way they did and I didn’t have control over it.

I wasn’t even 10 years old. Looking back, though, I don’t think that it was right to put such a little girl out the door. Although times were hard and the Sisters and the convent would have faced consequences for hiding a Jewish child, it was still not entirely fair to simply tell me to leave. Today you hear a lot about how the nuns rescued children, and it’s all true. Some convents and nuns put a lot of work and effort into saving Jewish children. They deserve acknowledgement. However, there were also those who weren’t so magnanimous.

Also… when I was at the nuns’, there were some that didn’t hesitate to wake me up in the middle of the night and speak to me in Yiddish to elicit some undeniable proof from me that I was indeed Jewish. The truth was that I didn’t speak Yiddish. I made something up, that my mama was Jewish but my father wasn’t, or the other way around. Out of fear, a child will always try to say something that she thinks will make her safe. So, they could be like that, too.

I don’t know what their goal was or what they wanted to get out of me… They had probably been raised in the country or small towns. They knew Jews and tried to force these confessions out of me at night. Later, years later, after the war, I also spent time with different nuns. Again, it was a kind of orphanage. When I was obedient everything was fine, but the moment I wasn’t, they immediately called me a “lousy Jew.” They’d say that my “Jewish blood” was to blame. The convent wasn’t impervious to danger. Being a nun or a priest by itself was no protection. But I don’t remember nuns being executed or punished.

They saved Jewish children. Once, they hid Lea Balint in Brwinów in a large egg basket. She was tiny. Some German wanted to take these eggs and the nun was petrified, but she somehow talked him out of taking that basket. The Servant Sisters in Turkowice protected us—the Jewish children—in all kinds of ways. How was it in Międzyrzecze?

One of the worst things was washing the clothes of murdered, executed, Jewish children in a stream. The clothes had a hole in the chest. The older children washed these clothes in the stream and out of naiveté, I asked them why all these clothes had holes in the same spot. And these clothes… Someone had the diabolical idea of donating them to an orphanage.

In Turkowice, we got hand-me-down clothes from Majdanek. Sister Irena (Antonia Manaszczuk) brought them from Lublin… I had a dress sewn from two pairs of pants from Majdanek.

…In the spot where the bullet had hit, you needed to sew on patches. This is how I learned to sew – by sewing these patches on. Tell me, after all this, how can you not be an egoist? Or having survived such things, how can you not approach life thinking that this or that is meaningless…

After the war I was unable to have feelings. I just wanted to be left alone.

When everyone around me was dying, I remember feeling that people come and people go.

…and you don’t even know where to or how. Their disappearance didn’t even hurt me, not until years later… But if we had hurt, we wouldn’t have survived. It would have been too big of a burden. We had to focus on survival, and this was hard work.

Later, as a young woman, I’d run from… the potential to start a family, from someone with whom I could make a real home, some haven. I ran away from that. I’ve run away all my life.