Józef Lipman, born in 1931
I Envied Birds Their Freedom
This is how it started: on September 1, 1939, the war broke out. I had just turned eight in July and had been promoted to the second grade of primary school. We had been preparing for the war for several weeks. We had painted all the walls in the house and we bought groceries: two bags of flour and a bag of groats. And most importantly—we built an air-raid shelter in the yard. It was covered with logs and a 40-inch-thick layer of soil. We heard on the radio that the Germans wouldn’t take as much as a uniform button from us; military songs were broadcast; we learned how to make a homemade gas mask and we were ready for war!
The Germans entered Borysław at the end of September from the side of Slovakia, where no one expected them. The German army marched along the street near our house only once. The soldiers were well-dressed, and healthy-looking horses pulled large cannons. We had two officers and an orderly stay with us. They were polite and probably knew we were Jews. They disappeared for the day and returned in the evening in a small military car. My father said that they must be making lists of paraffin mines, oil refineries, etc. After about ten days they left quietly one evening. The next morning, Soviet tankettes were already parked on our street. The soldiers wore strange uniforms, their clothes seemed to have been made of quilts. They had burlap belts and high boots, which, to our surprise, weren’t made of leather. And on the pointy caps, they had two red stars, one on top of the other; the larger was made of canvas, and the other was small, metal with a hammer and sickle.
My father, a construction engineer, owned a construction company and a sawmill. The company was immediately nationalized and we were in danger of being transported to “Sybir”, as they said back then. But that’s another story. The hassle with the Soviet authorities lasted until June 1941. The outbreak of the German-Soviet War took place on June 21, 1941. This war fell on the Russians occupying our territory like a bolt from the blue. The Russian population was leaving the town in a hurry. In the end, the army scampered away, destroying the power plant, the railroad station, and part of the oil industry. For several days, Borysław was a no man’s land. In the last days of June, the town was taken over by the Germans. There wasn’t much army, but it was swarming with all types of police (Schutzpolizei, Reiterzugpolizei, Kripo, Gestapo, SS-troops). Our territory was called Ostgalizien (East Galicia) and was incorporated into the General Government.
Schutzpolizei, Reiterzugpolizei, Kripo, Gestapo, SS-troops—that is: the security police, mounted police, criminal police, state police and SS troops (the Protection Squads of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—recognized as a criminal organization in the Nuremberg trial).
Only a week later, the German authorities allowed the Ukrainians to conduct the first pogrom against Jews. About two hundred and forty men and several women were killed. The German authorities began to apply increasingly stringent restrictions on the Jewish population. They conducted frequent searches combined with the looting of valuables, gold, silver, rugs and carpets, expensive furs, paintings, and furniture. Radios and cameras, bicycles, motorbikes and other vehicles, horses and farm animals were ordered to be handed over immediately. An order was issued that Jews could only walk on the road, and that, after first removing their caps, they were to address the Germans as “gnädiger Herr” (gracious sir). An order to wear an armband with the Star of David was issued, and a curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. had been introduced a little earlier. It was very dangerous because running just a few minutes past the time could result in a large fine or even death. Mounted policemen excelled in this practice. At that time, the Judenrat (a Jewish council, a kind of self- government) and the “Ordnungsdienst” (order service) were also created. In July the Germans carried out two actions: the second and third pogroms, in which about one thousand five hundred children, women, and elderly people were killed. They were shot on the outskirts of the city next to the slaughterhouse. At that time, a new police unit, Ukrainische Hilfspolizei (Ukrainian auxiliary police), was formed—it was marked by exceptional and ruthless brutality.
From two small and poor districts of Borysław called Debry and Nowy Świat a “Jewish district” was quickly created. This quarter of the town was surrounded by heaps from paraffin mines and a huge pool of mine sludge. The houses located there had no sanitation, electricity, or gas for heating, they were ordinary hovels. It was possible to walk almost freely between the Jewish quarter and the Aryan districts, but you could neither enter Aryan shops nor other places with the sign “für Juden Eintritt verboten” (for Jews entrance forbidden). Leaving the Jewish quarter was a real joy because you could buy or exchange something for a piece of bread, a few potatoes, a piece of lard or saccharin. Molasses, sugar production waste, was popular. You didn’t buy anything by weight, but per piece or by the quart. Grain, wheat or rye, were particularly in demand. The grain was ground into flour in a coffee grinder, then boiled until thick, and poured on the plate with molasses or sprinkled with fried bits—yummy! Even this “bliss” didn’t last long. One morning, around five o’clock, we heard screams, cries, yelling, calling… Commands and shouts in German: “los, schnell, verflüchter Jude, du schweine Jude” (quick, damned Jew, you Jewish pig)! Just in case, we went into the hiding place made right after we moved to the district. My father was a builder, he could quickly find a suitable place. The action (the fourth pogrom) lasted a week. We were without water or food all that time. The thirst was the worst, I chewed on a handkerchief and then sucked on it and that was a substitute for water. And we didn’t feel any hunger at all, there was no need for food. After about seven days, there was absolute quiet in the street and all around. And that encouraged us to leave the hiding place. A person here and there was walking down the street, not like before. In the distance, there was a barrier on the street and a booth to the side, surrounded by a few Germans along with Ukrainian policemen. Our house was the second next to the barrier. Soon, we found out that a ghetto had been established. We were now cut off, contacts with the Aryan side or the Aryans were not allowed. It was possible to leave the ghetto only in a compact column headed out for work, or individually with a special pass. Those who worked on the Aryan side, including my father, supplied the ghetto. We lived in two rooms with a kitchen that made the whole apartment fill with horrible smoke. It turned out that the previous tenant had poured several buckets of dirt with rubble into the chimney. The apartment was also a home to my father’s brother—a dentist—his wife, and a six-year-old son. He ran a dentist’s office. As long as Aryan patients could come, he was doing well, because they usually paid in kind, with groceries. It ended when the ghetto was established.
Life in the ghetto was becoming an ordeal. As fall and winter came, rains and frosts (around 5 to –5°F) were causing havoc. There was almost no food or fuel of any kind because everything that could have been burned and eaten had already been burned and eaten.
People suffered from tuberculosis and spotted typhus and died from starvation. There was a red warning poster “Feckenfieber” on the buildings where people had come down with typhus. Looking at such a house from the outside, it seemed that the house itself was also sick: dark windows, closed doors, silence all around, and a terrible emptiness. Such a house breathed death. Hand-drawn wagons pulled by gravediggers circulated through our street several times a day. They carried dead bodies, sometimes entire families. And the most terrible were the begging children who were barely alive. They called out softly in Yiddish: “Frau, gibts epys esen, ich bejtach” (Miss, give me something to eat, please). I will not forget these pleas until I die. Disease, hunger, and death were the order of the day, followed by round-ups from streets and houses, “actions” and deportations of several hundred people at a time. The Jews who were caught were put in the former movie theater until the appropriate number was gathered, then the whole group was transported to Bełżec or to the Branicki forests for extermination. My family was also getting smaller. Almost all of my mother’s family and a large part of my father’s family were murdered.
Immediately after the Germans entered, my father was called to work in the sawmill which he had owned before the war. The sawmill was nationalized and operated in three shifts. A lot of timber was shipped to Germany. The director of the sawmill was a certain Felzmann, a German from Gdańsk, and my father as a foreman was, in fact, in charge of the entire production. The Jews weren’t paid, but were rewarded in kind with bread, oil, groats, etc. My father ran the sawmill in such a way that part of the income went into the director’s pocket. The director gave my father a lot of freedom, also in the selection of employees, so my father hired many Jews, including me. It was a real godsend for me, because I didn’t have to sit in the ghetto and wait for death. I didn’t return at night to the ghetto, where children, women, and elderly people were constantly hunted down. I slept on a bed made of sawdust and shavings poured into a large box. The director himself gave permission for me to stay overnight in the sawmill. Father repaid the director with expensive paintings from his collection, which he stored with a Ukrainian family whom he had befriended.
This happiness lasted for over a year. Felzmann was recalled from the sawmill and drafted into the army. It was said that he employed too many Jews, because the Gestapo kept asking for Jewish workers and Felzmann replied that they were all necessary specialists.
The next director was a real Bavarian, he also needed my father’s help. He handed over some of the Jewish workers to the Gestapo and his conscience was clear. He raved all day with a shotgun and a whip, hunted workers who smoked cigarettes and whipped them, or shot crows and rooks because these birds soiled the planks and beams. An older Jew and I were working on clearing and tidying up the square of the finished products and we had to remove these birds, and my companion had doubts as to whether we were doing the right thing burying these birds instead of boiling and eating them. This director quickly left and was succeeded by a professional officer with the rank of Hauptmann (captain). He was an invalid and had no arm below his elbow. Just in case, I left the sawmill and stayed in the ghetto. I spent more and more time in hiding with my mother. Whenever someone knocked at the door, we immediately hid. Finally, my father’s brother-in-law, a dentist who worked exclusively for the Germans, offered to let us hide in his basement. It was a rather safe place, because German patients were constantly there. One morning a terrible action began, after which the ghetto was deserted. Uncle must have known something about it beforehand. We were hidden in a small, dark, closed-off cellar with a covered window. There were thirteen of us there. The candle went out after a while because there was too much carbon dioxide in the air. Several people suffered a manic episode. I will remember coming home after this action for the rest of my life.
We had to walk through the entire ghetto; it was late fall, a dark, strong wind; we didn’t meet a single soul, and all around, we could hear the banging of open doors and windows as well as the shattering of panes that fell out of them. This emptiness and clatter exuded a sense of a literal abyss. Not only were we tired of this action, but also the Germans, because afterwards, there was a short period of calm in the ghetto. But it was the calm before the final storm. Men working in the oil industry, wood industry, and other so-called professionals were put in barracks. My father was also put into a barracks and this thing was called “Arbeitslager für Juden” (labor camp for Jews). My father came to the ghetto once or twice a week. He brought a few portions of saved bread, some potatoes, margarine, or flax oil. I was very happy then, there was real joy at home. I don’t remember any other joyful moments, I don’t remember if the sun shone at least once—probably never!
Around that time, my mother and I went out on the street, near the house, and after a while, people started running and scampering, shouting, “The Germans are rounding people up!” We ran to our yard and the front door, but it was locked from the inside, which had never happened before. Who locked it and why? Fortunately, the apartment keys included the key to the coal cellar. I quickly opened the door to the cellar and pushed my mother inside, locking the door behind her with a padlock. I dashed to the back of the property, and then through familiar nooks and crannies. I found myself on the edge of the Aryan quarter. And there, a Reiterzugspolizei (a mounted policeman) appeared in front of me out of nowhere—like a huge monument. He pushed me with his horse’s front legs towards the ghetto. I was so scared by the policeman’s yelling that I shouted back: “I’m not Jude, not Jude!” At that point, some Ukrainian boys who were grazing cows nearby, came to my rescue and shouted in Ukrainian “on ni Jude, on ni Jude, chody do nas [He’s not a Jew, not a Jew, come to us].” After their calling me, the German slowly backed off. God himself sent me those boys! After a while, I ran to my father’s sawmill without any problems. What happened to my mother? The next evening, when it calmed down, my father snuck into the ghetto. He saw that our cellar was intact while all the others had their locks broken and the doors were ajar. He released my mom immediately and three other people who slipped in when I had opened the cellar door. Under stress, I didn’t notice it at all, I didn’t remember it. Mom was alive and unharmed. She told Father how lucky she was. The Germans were opening cellars, one by one. When a German came to ours, another soldier called from one of the previous cellars, “Franz, wo hast du die Lampe?” [Franz, do you have the flashlight?] And the one who was by our cellar left. He came back a moment later, just tapped on our padlock and started to open the next, the last cellar. Wasn’t it God’s doing or just pure luck?
After that incident with the policeman, I stayed with my father in the camp. My mother stayed alone at home in the ghetto. One evening, two shupos came and wanted to take her to the assembly point. My mother asked them to release her, for which she’d give them the valuables hidden outside, but first, she’d make them tea. She went into the kitchen, began to bustle around, opened the barred window, and somehow slipped through the bars and jumped out of the window. It was a real miracle. Mom immediately fled to the Aryan side; she knew secret passages to leave the ghetto. She found shelter at our pre-war neighbors’. It was a Ukrainian family, people who had offered us help during the first pogrom and on whom we could always count.
shupos—colloquially, from Schupo, the Schutzpolizei—the protection police.
In June 1943 the ghetto was finally liquidated. Now the Germans were constantly prowling the camp in search of the families of officially working Jews that were in hiding. My father secretly led me to my mother’s hiding place. It was behind a hay mow in the loft of the stables. There was also a second hiding place in that stable, in the corridor where the straw chopper was. There was a little beet cellar there. You lifted the flap in the floor to enter it. Someone had to let us into this cellar and close the hatch behind us. The cellar was so shallow and tight that to enter it, you had to crawl on your stomach or wriggle on your back and stay in this position until five in the morning (from five to five), because the housewife would come to milk the cow at this time. Then she let us out of the crawl space and gave us something to eat; we could wash our faces and hands and go back to the cellar, sometimes on the stomach, other times on the back. We stayed in the cellar in the winter, because it was warmer, and in the loft in the summer. The roof of the stables was covered with sheet metal and on sunny days the temperature was very high, like in the Sahara Desert.
On such days, we soaked a sheet in a bucket of water and wrapped it around ourselves after wringing it out. Staying in the loft was so much better. I watched the birds that flew to the loft and took off at the slightest movement. I wanted to be a bird and I dreamed that I could fly around outside, too. I also had another game. I watched spiders make webs, catch flies, suck them up, and throw away the dry fly shells. I also caught flies and threw them on the webs. Spiders were interested in these flies and consumed them. But sometimes, a fly bounced off the web and got away. I prevented them from escaping by tearing off their wings and sometimes the legs. Then I watched the birth of mice and their infancy.
Seven months went by. During this time, my father visited us several times. Because some Jews had been caught not far from our hiding place, “our Ukrainians” moved us to a haystack in the field. This ensured their safety, because they could argue that we’d found shelter there without their knowing.
When it was relatively calm in the camp, my father took me there for a “rest”. The worst thing to do was hanging around the camp idly, and if you were a child your life was in danger. There was a shovel-production plant in the camp. The manager of this factory was my father’s friend and he gave me a job sharpening shovel blades. I slept on the upper bunk with my father. There was a bathhouse and a delousing room in the camp, which I used passionately. There was a plague of bedbugs and lice. My father devised a method of getting rid of some of the lice by putting a freshly washed handkerchief on the neck, under the shirt. After about twenty minutes, the handkerchief was full of lice, and now you had to take it and shake it out, preferably over a flame. I also had my own method of removing bedbugs from the bunk. I held a burning candle at all the joints of the bunk, and the burnt bedbugs poured out like tap water. Once, before I went to bed, I was caught doing this work by the entire entourage of the Gestapo making a night round; I didn’t notice them come in. My father was petrified. They watched for a while, and then said: “Good job, keep it up.” (Du machst gut, mach weiter). After work, we were served rutabaga and cabbage soup, and a one-eighth hunk of a 4.4-pound loaf of bread, that is, around nine ounces.
Fall came, a few Ukrainian gendarmes showed up in the workshop and selected a few boys, including me. After about an hour of waiting, when various thoughts came to my mind, it turned out that we were assigned to potato clamps. The pits had already been dug out, about twenty yards long, ten feet wide and about three feet deep, and we used straw to line the bottom of the ditches and their sides. As the ditch was filled with potatoes, they were covered with straw and the soil that had been dug up earlier. There was no end to this work, horse carts kept coming. The work lasted until dusk, and it went on for a few weeks. In the meantime, we started to “pinch” potatoes and put them in our pants, tied with string at the bottom.
We let them in through perforated pockets. Each pant leg could hold eight to ten potatoes. After work, the Ukrainian Wachman (guard) ordered us to run to the guardhouse and it was almost impossible. We had to lower our pants, take out the potatoes and, with our pants down, go to the guardhouse, where we had to lie on the bench and were given twenty-five lashes, one by one. I didn’t cry, I think I got fewer, my friend screamed to high heaven, he got more of a beating. His screams clearly pleased the Wachmans.
Potatoes were of great value to us, both in the ghetto and in the camp. In the ghetto, my mother cooked a single potato for me or baked it on the range under a pot. In the camp, people used grated potatoes to bake a pancake, which was baked in large molds, was half an inch thick, and was called “gerybenyk”. It was a substitute for bread.
The camp was located in the former military barracks and there were about 400 people in it. Most of the people worked outside the camp, they left it at five in the morning and came back around five in the afternoon. All the houses, rooms, and stables were occupied. We lived in a huge stable, with forty double bunks, and a huge wood-fueled range with a large top surface. In the evening it was in constant use: for cooking, baking, drying underwear, clothes, shoes, etc. There were always crowds by the stove.
I also earned money in the camp. I made armbands with the Star of David. Father brought me a drawing board and tracing paper; my mother’s cousin, who was an X-ray doctor, gave me used film, and the shoemakers working in the camp gave me pierced bottle caps and laces. I used a template to cut out the Star of David from card stock. Underneath, I put blue tracing paper and a flexible piece of cardboard or card stock, and on top—a transparent celluloid plate from which the emulsion had been washed off with water. I fastened it all with two caps and the band was ready. I sold them in the evening, walking around all possible rooms. I used the earnings to buy myself a sweet bun or a glass of warm milk, which I drank right away.
Three weeks went by, maybe a little longer. Now I felt older, but I hadn’t grown much, because all my clothes, shirt, and coat still fit me. Only the sweater had shrunk a bit because it got burnt in the delousing room. I only had a problem with shoes, because on the first day after moving into the Jewish quarter, we were robbed at night. And then I lost my only shoes that had been bought, as they say, with an eye towards the future. While working in the sawmill, I was assigned wooden clogs (Holzschuhe). Unfortunately, they were way too big, but the carpenters stuffed them with shavings, lined them with newspapers, and only then I got some relief. These shoes had two advantages, my feet were really warm in them and they played another very important role: I was taller. I wore them for a few weeks after the liberation.
In the summer of ’43, my father overheard a conversation between the director of the sawmill (a Wehrmacht captain) and the Gestapo. The director of the sawmill said that he was willing to hand over all the Jews working for him to the Gestapo. Without thinking much, my father ran out of the office and the sawmill through the back door. He hid at his brother-in-law’s, the dentist. For about a week, he remained in hiding to see if they were looking for him. Uncle arranged for him to work in the Karpaten Erdöl Gesellschaft (Carpathian Oil Company), the director of which was Berthold Beitz, who helped the Jewish workers a lot. From August 1943 my father worked again.
In the late fall, my mother appeared in the camp. She was exhausted from hiding in the stable and after several days of rest, delousing, and a few baths in the bathhouse, she got back on her feet. She started working in the camp’s kitchen. We were together again, real happiness. In that period, there was hardly any unharmed family left. In the camp children and women were almost invisible.
At the beginning of 1944, the Gestapo and SS men began to visit the camp frequently. The prisoners were gripped by fear. Now even minor offenses were punished with flogging, sometimes done in public, withholding the food ration, etc. It was getting more and more dangerous in the camp, as workers were systematically liquidated. They didn’t return to the camp after work, they disappeared without a trace.
My father sold the last valuable thing we had left—my mother’s several-carat diamond ring, for about one hundred forty thousand zlotys. It was a considerable sum at that time.
In March 1944, we escaped from the camp with a column of Jews led to work on the Aryan side. Late at night we entered the house of a Ukrainian family who agreed to give us shelter in exchange for money. After a few days spent in the apartment, my father made a false wall in the shed, next to which he placed rabbit hutches from the floor to the ceiling. The hiding place was entered through a hinged door attached to one of the hutches. A perfect hiding place, well disguised, it was comfortable inside, there were two mattresses on the floor and bedding, and there was still about ten feet of free space, about three feet wide, where you could take “real” walks. It was dim in this closet, but the kerosene lamp was lit for several hours of the day, and I was able to study a bit. The house was exceptionally well stocked with school textbooks and reading books. Most of them were the pre-war publications for five grosze each. My father would leave the hiding place from time to time, “to get the money”. We were afraid to admit that we had the money on us because some people in hiding had been robbed and denounced to the Germans, or thrown out on the street, in the best-case scenario.
Sometime in mid-July, in broad daylight, the housewife ran into the shed and shouted, “Utikajty nimci idut”, which means, “Run away, the Germans are coming”. Without a second’s thought, we ran outside, but we were completely blinded by the brightness of the day and the sunshine. After five months of sitting in the virtual dark, we couldn’t see anything. After a moment, I was the first to see a field of grain in the distance and I dragged my parents in that direction. We hid there until night. Only later did we notice that we were almost naked; I didn’t even have time to put my clogs on. We returned at night near the house where we had been hiding and we watched the area for a while. My mother snuck up to the house and tapped on the window. The housewife came out holding a sack with our things in her hand. Our staying there any longer was out of the question. With the money she’d received for our safekeeping, the woman bought a field and two cows and gave her son a wedding at the bride’s house. She didn’t need any more money; she wasn’t greedy, she had made her dream come true. At the same time, she saved our lives, praise her for that. The most important thing was that we were alive, wasn’t it a wonder? That’s what my dad used to say…
Later that night, we almost ran to our district of Górny Potok. Here we felt somehow at home. We were sitting in thick bushes that grew in a deep ravine between two hills, about two miles from the nearest buildings. The next night, my mother went to our neighbor where we had been hiding before. She wasn’t sure whether to take us in, she didn’t say yes or no. Mom came back that same night, brought us some food and a pot. We had plenty of water because a stream ran at the bottom of the ravine. Two or three weeks went by this way. We felt good there, birds were singing, the brook was babbling, it was warm during the day and at night. After some time, we heard some strange rumbling in the distance, and strange flashes appeared on the horizon at night.
Dad said it looked like artillery, the front might be getting closer. Like a bad penny, three German soldiers appeared. They were walking on the top of the ravine, across from us, some three hundred yards away. Rifles hung around their necks and they walked up the hill slowly, keeping their eyes on their feet rather than looking around. We were sitting in dense bushes, but the devil doesn’t sleep… After a short time, we heard a shot fired, as if at the top of the ravine, right above our heads.
Fortunately, this rarely happened. In the afternoon, another German walked by, carrying a metal backpack. This went on for two days, then everything went quiet. We lay silently, without food or drink, almost motionless, not knowing what was going on around us and whether these German soldiers were still nearby. After two days of quiet, we decided to sneak near the buildings at dusk. We found that here, as usual, it was calm and dark, and from time to time, a light appeared in the opening door and a person came out. Finally, my mother dared to go to the neighbor’s house and after a while, she came back, calling out loud, “Come on, the Soviets are here, they’ve been here for two days!”
The same evening we returned to our home. It turned out that the ground floor was inhabited by two families of tenants, and the first floor was vacant and empty—just bare walls and floors. We were back together in our house, alive and unharmed. We made bedding of our personal belongings on the floor, but none of us could sleep. We were filled with joy but hardly dared to believe that we had survived the worst, that we were finally free!
We still couldn’t believe it was true. Each time I had to convince myself that it really was true! Only in the morning, after a sleepless night and going out to the yard, I started to believe in this miracle. The nightmare lasted three years and two months, it was an eternity for us.
Out of the eighteen thousand Jews who lived in Borysław before the war, about one hundred fifty people survived. During the German occupation, thirty-eight of our immediate family died, or about seventy, if you count distant relatives.
Soviet troops liberated us on August 17, 1944. In March 1946, we left Borysław and reached Lower Silesia, Frydland. As my father used to say, Moses led us out of the house of slavery a second time. At the end, I present an incomplete list of German criminals who operated in Borysław whom I’ve remembered all my life; let them be condemned and cursed for all time:
The Germans: Hildebrand from the Gestapo Mitas, Gulden and Pell from the Schutzpolizei
The Ukrainian: Perec from the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei.
