Jerzy Aleksandrowicz, born in 1936

Odyssey on the “Aryan side”

The day before the last great deportation from the Kraków Ghetto, a chimney sweep whom we knew built a tiled stove with hollow insides in our home at 25 Krakus Street. He removed all the internal parts of the stove so that someone could hide in it. But only I and one other person, on whose knees I had to sit, could fit inside. One entered through the top part of the stove with the help of a ladder, because it was a very high stove. It was midnight when I entered into the stove with Mama, just as a trial. I was calm because I was unaware of anything. I think they kept from me the fact that a deportation was imminent. Perhaps they themselves did not know. I am not sure.

At approximately six o’clock in the morning, my grandmother woke me up to get dressed because I was lying in bed sick with the flu. Grandma told me I could get up now because my illness had passed. I got up, and Mama came over from the other part of the apartment where Papa saw his patients. We were supposed to go to the Ordnungsdienst. It was like an island. Whoever managed to get there was saved. But along the way, many people got arrested. Our landlord’s place was undergoing a search. Some German colonel or general was conducting the search and surrounded the house with soldiers so that we could not escape to the Ordnungsdienst. But this colonel treated us well. He gave me a piece of chocolate and left us alone, only carrying out a thorough inspection.

The Ordnungdienst was the Jewish security police within the confines of the ghetto.

It was then that Papa, passing close to me, told me that a deportation was supposed to take place. I did not get frightened at all simply because I did not comprehend what was awaiting us. Already a considerable time before then, Papa had built in the kitchen a hiding place which could hold five people, but they had to be lying down. Our family consisted of eight people. However, besides that, there were two additional persons, a mother and her daughter, who were also supposed to fit into this hiding place. Thus, from the beginning, the plan was for two persons to hide in the basement and one in the attic. During the search, they leveled the tile stove, and we lost the possibility of hiding there.

Aunt Minka and Grandma Zosia were already hiding in the cellar. When the colonel conducting the search went down to the cellar, Mama passed me the keys, and I dropped them to the caretaker who opened the door for Grandma Zosia and Aunt Minka and took them out to the street. When the colonel entered the cellar, he found no one there.

After the search was over, Mama and I went to the Ordnungsdienst because all our hiding places had failed. We were allowed there only because of the kindness of an Ordnungsdienst man whom we knew, a friend of Papa from childhood. Then Papa arrived. Only then, did he remember that he had not taken the ladder away from the stove, which he had repaired immediately after the search and in which he had hidden Grandpa Józef, and that he had left an open bottle of volatile potassium cyanide in the attic where he had hidden Aunt Minka and Grandma Zosia with my great-grandparents. Thus, it was possible that they might all get poisoned

Therefore, Papa wanted to rush back there, but Mama would not let him and kept him at the Ordnungsdienst. However, Grandma Zosia managed to cork the bottle, although a little late, because Great-grandfather and Aunt Minka were in the early stages of getting poisoned.

Meanwhile, the deportation action ended. When we returned home, Papa began to examine everybody who had been in the attic. It turned out that, although weakened, they were all in good health.

I don’t remember much from then on until the total liquidation of the ghetto. On that day, not knowing what we should do with ourselves, Mama, Papa, and I went outside, and we saw how people were escaping into the sewers. We then also jumped into the sewer. We walked along a main corridor on narrow walkways. Papa, who had a small flashlight, guided the group.

“escaping into the sewers” — These events were described by the father of the author, Dr. Julian Aleksandrowicz, in the book, Kartki z dziennika doktora Twardego (Pages From the Diary of Dr. Twardy), 2nd edition (Kraków-Wrocław 1983), 49–53. (Author’s note)

We were walking in the direction of the flow of sewage towards the Vistula River. Gradually, various people left us through different exits so that we and one other man were left by ourselves. We exited at the last moment because German police were shooting close behind us.

The Vistula is the largest river in Poland and runs through Kraków, Warsaw, and Toruń to the Baltic Sea.

We cleaned up in the small house of a factory caretaker in Prokocim. Apparently, we had walked for three hours, but I did not realize it at all. For the time being, since we had no place to hide, we took a walk through the village. Two Germans stopped us along the way. Since they were not on duty, they didn’t do anything to us, although they must have guessed who we were. Papa recalled a patient, a Pole, who was a friend of Grandpa. We went to his house. Along the way, we paid a hundred złoty to a vagrant so that he would lead us there, but he got drunk and denounced us to the Gestapo.

“a Pole, who was a friend of Grandpa” — he was the master bricklayer Józef Suder.

Our host woke us up when he learned that the Germans knew about us. We went to spend the night in the fields. There, we ran into a band of drunken vagabonds who let us spend the night with them for a thousand złoty. From there, we set out for Podgórze to a place where Grandma Rysia and Great-grandmother were. This was at the home of a Polish man who promised Papa already much earlier that he would hide us. However, he turned out to be a Gestapo informer and sent men from the Gestapo after us.

The moment they entered, Papa took poison because he did not want to be taken alive. Mama also took poison and wanted to give it to me, but a Gestapo man grabbed her hand, and they had some conversation in German which I did not understand. As I recall, after the Gestapo men took a bribe from Mama and left, I passed Papa bottles of medicine which were standing on a credenza. Amongst them, I found there a small bottle of peroxide. Papa, with his hand already stiffening, had pointed at that bottle. He drank its contents, and this weakened the effect of the poison.

We then went by ambulance to St. Lazarus Hospital. There, Papa registered under the name of Adamski. A few nuns recognized him, because Papa had worked for a few years at that hospital before the war, but nobody betrayed him. After his stomach was pumped out, Papa recovered. After a brief rest at the home of Professor Adam Sokołowski, we wandered over to a colleague of Papa, Dr. H., who initially promised to hide us but, at the last moment, let us down and refused further help.

We found ourselves without a roof over our heads, and Dr. H. gave us a deadline of a few hours to leave his apartment. When Papa went to town to search for shelter for us, he dropped in on the family of his patient, the famous painter, Mr. W[odzinowski], .;whose daughter, Mrs. Wicula.;, began to look after us with great care. She found us an apartment for a few days, and since we could not go out, she brought us food, and pastries for me. We could not stay there very long because our apartment was located across the street from the Gestapo, so we went on our way [to Karmelicka Street].

The next day, we went by streetcar to a Polish family called Armatyz (55 Starowiślna Street), who had hidden Jews even before us, and we stayed there for a certain period of time. We were comfortable there, and they treated us very cordially. They were our caretakers who looked after us the entire time. But next to them lived a Volksdeutsche, and we could not continue to live there. We had to have another place to live but were able to return there from time to time. We could live at most for a few days at 30 Jana Street at the Adamskis’, Papa’s old friends.

For this reason, members of the clandestine Organization to Assist Jews secured for us an apartment at 30 Sebastian Street. However, this was the apartment of a policeman named Pitera, and Mama was afraid to stay there. Then, it turned out that this Polish policeman was one of the most decent men Mama encountered during the war. Indeed, he probably belonged to OPŻ. He knew all about us but did not betray us.

Organization to Assist Jew — The OPŻ, Organizacja Pomocy Żydom (also know as Żegota), was organized by the Polish underground.

We were spied on all this time by a certain Jew, Ignacy Taubman, who was a Gestapo informer and wanted to denounce us. Policeman Pitera relocated us to Józefińska Street, because Germans used to drop in on him, and this was dangerous for us. There, we saw Taubman again snooping under our windows.

Ignacy Taubman — see testimony of Julian Aleksandrowicz in this matter, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny — ŻIH), item number 3202. (Author’s note)

Papa’s colleague, Dr. Ż. [Ludwik Żurowski?], managed to find us a place in Wieliczka. We lived there for a few months, but the parents of the woman in whose apartment we stayed, who lived in the same house, were fearful that we might be discovered. They told Papa, and then the rest of us, to leave. I remember it was in November, and in the fields, the weather was dreadfully foul. We could not use the trains. Therefore, we traveled in a peasant’s horse-drawn cart and we also walked some on foot. We were very fearful of searches along our route.

When things eased up for the Armatyz; family, we moved back in with them. When it again became dangerous, we traveled to Bogucice near Wieliczka. There, we lived in the little family home of the Strengers.

Strengers — According to Dr. J. Aleksandrowicz, it was under the care of Kazimierz and Halina Stefaniak in the villa of their in-laws, the Erbans, in Bogucice; see Pages from the Diary of Dr. Twardy, 63. (Author’s note)

After a few months (six), Papa left to join the partisans, and we were going to lose our living quarters. Then, members of the secret organization, with whom Papa was in touch, interceded on our behalf and would not allow us to be thrown out.

After the Warsaw Uprising, Papa returned from the partisans, and we were together. When the Russians entered Kraków, we were staying in a shelter. The heaviest artillery fire was directed at our place because a German battery was located next to it. Homes nearby were collapsing.

Warsaw Uprising — The Warsaw Uprising occurred in August 1944 and should not be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which began in April 1943.

At times, my heart was in my mouth. When bombs hit a few meters from the house, the whole building would shake. I managed to stay relatively calm most of the time, but sometimes, I was fearful that a bomb would hit our house.

After the fighting, I wandered around Wieliczka, but the Germans had run away and were no longer there. However, they were all caught because Wieliczka was the focal point of a trap set by the Russians. The Russian captain who conducted interrogations of German prisoners was quartered precisely in the same house in Bogucice where we were living. Behind the shed, we found a whole storehouse of old German guns and ammunition. After the Russians entered (i.e., on the eighteenth of February, 1945), we returned to Kraków as free people.

This text is based on the manuscript at the Żydowski Instytut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute), item No. 301/2060 (record of testimony deposited with the Regional Historic Commission in Kraków, December 18, 1946. Deposition taken by Maria Holender). Additions in brackets are taken from the recollections of Dr. J. Aleksandrowicz cited in note 2. The account by Jerzy Aleksandrowicz was first published, with some omissions, in 1947. At that time, the names of people who had furnished assistance had been replaced with initials. See Children Accuse (Dzieci Oskarżają), Maria Hochberg-Mariańska and Noe Grüss (Kraków-Łódź-Warsaw, 1947), 177–82.