Marianna Adameczek, born in 1930

Only the heart was crying

Great pain remains with us after the loss of a loved one. And what may one say of the feelings of a nine-year-old child when her closest family of eight persons perishes in front of her eyes? This tragedy took place in the Serokomski Forest during a hunt for Jews hiding there. During the shooting, I saw my wounded father holding one of my sisters in his arms. My sister was dead, and my severely wounded father was begging to be finished off. I couldn’t help them! I saw a German running in my direction, and I took flight. The German fired a shot and wounded me in the arm, but I became aware of it only after I had run some six kilometers in great fright.

I knew that earlier, my father had arranged for a hiding place at the home of a Polish man, Stanisław Adameczek, in the settlement of Charlejów, and that is precisely where I was running. After a successful escape, wounded, I found myself with a family whom we knew who then took care of me. They dressed my terrible wound (my arm was ripped open to the bone) and hid me in a specially prepared hole dug in the barn. After some time, we discovered that one of my brothers had also escaped with his life. What a joy when I saw him!

Hiding in this shelter was another Jewish girl, Dorka, who had also managed to escape. My brother supplied us with food from time to time. However, the joy of not being alone did not last long, because soon, my brother perished at the hands of Polish bandits, as I found out later. My heart is wracked with pain when I recall how much I suffered at being left alone and from the festering wound, full of pus, on which lice were crawling. The pain was terrible. There was a lack of proper medication. In addition, it was obligatory to be very quiet so that no one would be able to hear us. Only my heart was crying!

For two years, I lived in this hole in the ground under the care of people who risked the lives of their entire family. Time passed very slowly. From time to time, the family sheltering us would take us inside their house where we played with their youngest child. We had a hiding place prepared in case someone appeared.

Finally, the longed for day arrived. I heard a voice outside, “Girls, come on out, we are free!” A moment like this one cannot forget. It was a beautiful sunny day. The sun dazzled my eyes. How beautiful the world seemed to me.

Together with Dorka and a few other surviving Jews, I went by horse-drawn carriage to the Serokomski settlement in the province of Siedlce. There, we encountered another group of Jews. I could see outbursts of joy from those who found somebody close to them who had survived. I stood all alone. There was nobody for me to approach and nobody who had any interest in me. The thought that occurred to me then was, “Why do I need this freedom?”

Others departed slowly in small groups. I remained behind with Dorka. “We have no choice,” I thought, and I proposed to my friend that we return to familiar parts. Along the way, we stopped at wealthy farmers’, asking whether they needed someone to work. Two neighboring farmers agreed to hire us to take their cows to pasture. A rich farmer required me to toil from sunrise to sunset, but I had no choice. This period of hard work, too difficult for a small frail girl, took an additional toll on my health. I longed for my family, and I found it extremely difficult to live. I had no one in whom to confide my problems which were beyond my age. Necessity forced me to marry. I gave birth to and brought up six children. Today, they all have their own families, and I am again alone because my husband is no longer alive.

In my life, I also had some happy moments, but they were disproportionately few in number compared to the sad ones, and thus, I find it ever harder to smile. The stay in the hole in the ground, hard work, the experiences of a child left to her own devices––all of this has affected my health. I have undergone two serious operations and very trying cancer therapy. I suffer also from a gastrointestinal disorder. I am now on a disability pension. Why was fate so cruel to me?

Krzówka, December 1992