Maria Kraft, born in 1932

They were already coming for us

I was born in Lwów into a well-to-do Jewish family. My father, Ignacy, had received a higher education and was employed by a bank. My mother, Lea, née Schmidt, was a housewife. The standard of living of my family was good, which provided me with the prospect of having a normal development. I was seven years old when the Second World War broke out. The Russians entered Lwów. We could, with certain restrictions, live fairly peacefully.

After Lwów was taken over by the Nazi occupiers, we, along with the entire Jewish population, were subjected to persecution.  Twice, they levied impoverishing contributions. We became crowded in our apartment because of the addition of other people assigned to our quarters. Later, we were completely deprived of our apartment and property. Hunger began to stare us in the face. Father was dismissed from the bank and sent for forced physical labor at the Lwów airport. We then lived seven persons to one room. As a child, I was forced to put on an armband which distinguished me from other children. I was called names, made fun of, and pushed around on the street.

In Lwów, a quarter of the city was sectioned off as a ghetto, and they began to move the Jewish population there. During  roundups, both my grandmothers were dragged out of the house. They perished, probably deported to the camp in Bełżec. During one of the roundups, when I was hidden with my mother and younger brother in a wardrobe at a neighbor’s on Kordecki Street in Lwów, my father was shot to death. It was August 1942. He was thirty-seven years old. Father’s body was carried into our apartment, and the apartment was sealed.

We remained without a place to live, clothes, or a means of livelihood. There was no place to run. For several hours, we stayed in the stairwell, right next to the apartment where my father’s body was lying. Our Polish neighbors trembled for their life, because at that time, we should already have been in the ghetto.

Someone pointed out to the Germans where we were. They were coming for us. The toilet saved us. It was located on a fire escape walkway of the house, and not everybody knew about it. The Germans did not look there. Thus, we spent the night just before the closing of the ghetto, lightly clothed, on the ground, next to the house from which we had been chased out and which was the property of my grandmother.

In the morning, on the day the ghetto in Lwów was closed off, my mother, my younger brother, and I walked out of the city. In the suburbs, there were Germans, and Ukrainians who were in their service, stationed everywhere. We headed for Skniłów, and later, through Gródek Jagielloński, to Jarosław.

We were helped in leaving Lwów by the caretaker of our house, who gave my mother her own passport, issued by the Russian authorities. My mother pasted her own photo into it. This document permitted us to hide on Aryan papers and move about among the Polish population.

I spent the entire war in Jarosław, from August 1942 until April 1945. We lived in a crowded, cold place, with fungi on the walls and floor. We had no clothes or means of livelihood. School was out of the question. We lived in constant fear that somebody might recognize us. There was a time when I ate potato skins made into patties, and pigweed, turnips, and rotten apples gathered under a fence. In order not to have people notice that we were different, I had to attend church with my contemporaries.

The period of occupation left its mark on me, both on my psyche as well as on my physical development. After liberation, I came to Katowice, where I live to this day. Deprived of my father and our property, I lived in very modest circumstances. The war, the murders committed on members of my family, and the plunder of everything we owned have lowered my standard of living and the opportunities that would have been open to me if not for the war.

I finished elementary school in 1948, high school in 1951, and, in 1955, the Higher School of Economics. In 1960, I married. Since 1990, I have been retired.

Katowice, May 7, 1992