Wright State University CORE Scholar Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection of Oral History Memoirs of the Holocaust (MS-215) Special Collections and Archives 10-5-1978 Rachael Frydman interview for the Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection Rachel Frydman Willis Stoesz Follow this and additional works at: https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_ms215 Part of the History Commons Repository Citation Frydman, R., & Stoesz, W. (1978). Rachael Frydman interview for the Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection. https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_ms215/15 This Oral History is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections and Archives at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection of Oral History Memoirs of the Holocaust (MS-215) by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact library- [email protected]. Interviewer: Dr. Willis Stoesz (WS) Interviewee: Mrs. Rachel Frydman (RF) This interview is in connection with the Wright State University Oral History Project. WS This is Oct 5, 1978. Now, Mrs. Frydman can you tell me where you were born? RF Yes, I was born in Kurzeniez, Poland. WS Can you spell that for me? RF Yes, KURZENIEZ. It is a small town. WS It is not the name that it has anymore, is it? RF No, it is the same name, even now. WS Did it always have that name? RF Yes, it always has had and always will have, I guess. WS Ok, and when were you born? RF In 1927. WS It must be in a district or region. RF Yes, it is near Wilaika, which is a bigger town. WS All right because there might be a number of places with that name. It was a small town then? RF Yes, a small town. WS Do you have a very clear memory of it? RF Yes, I remember this small town! I don't know how many people lived in it but there were about 100 Jewish families. WS About 100 Jewish families and how many others? RF Probably the same. About half and half. WS You lived there until 1939 or 1940? RF We lived there really until 1942. In 1939, the war started in Poland. Half of Poland was taken over by the Germans and the Russians took over the other half of the country. So we had Communists for almost 2 years. WS So this is east of Warsaw, some distance? RF Oh, it is far to the east. It is really White Russia. Close to our neighborhood, it is already Lithuania but we were White Russians. WS So the other people living in that town were Russians not Poles? RF Yes, they were White Russians. That is, the Gentiles were White Russians. There were Protestants, as they are here, and then there were Catholics and then the Jews. They all lived in the same place, in the same area, in the same neighborhood. WS Did you travel much? Did you and your family travel to other places very much? RF No. When I was a child I don't remember any travelling at all. WS So you mostly stayed just there? RF Yes, we stayed in the same place. Well, when my father was younger, he travelled. He travelled a lot to Poland and to the border with Germany because he dealt with them. He dealt with cattle at that time. He supplied cattle for the German army because he spoke German. He dealt with that. He was in a partnership. WS Was that a business which he had? RF It was a business which he started when he got married. He started it after WWI in 1918. However, from what I remember from when I was a child, my father had a butchershop in our own hometown. For example, we lived in part of the same house to the rear and to the front of the house there was a butchershop. This was my father's business. WS Did you have any brothers and sisters? RF I have one brother and one sister who are alive, Thank "G-d.. It is my only brother who came to visit me now from Israel and my sister lives in Israel. We all went through the war in different places. WS Did you know about each other at the time? RF No! No, we did not. We found each other after the war. My sister ran away from the front in 1941. The Russians went and she went with them just to get away from the Germans. We knew in 1941 that the Germans were coming, so she went with the Russian people. The Russian people went. The real Russians who came over from Russia and stayed, they were working there. The Russian government had sent them to all the parts of the country from 1939 to 1941. At that time she went with the Russians she went with some friends of ours. A lot of people from our hometown went. We couldn't go. We started out and we heard that the German army was already ahead of us. WS So you just went back home? RF We went back home and we settled and waited for what ever would happen to happen; I, my mother, and my brother. My father died just exactly the day the war started on Sep 01, 1939 and he knew that Hitler was already on his way to part of the country of Poland. WS So he died and was buried. RF He was buried the right way. Everything might be considered normal with the funeral, so to say. Then we were in Sept. 1941, no Oct. the Russians had taken over until June 22, 1941. That is when the war started, when the Germans started the war with Russia. It took maybe 10 days until the Germans were there. When we saw the first German military units, that is when the army units and the officers came into our small town. It was all mixed up. People didn't know where to go, what it was all about. We knew that Hitler was bad for us, especially for the Jews, but we waited until time gave us some indications. The local people, really they started to loot like during all the wars, but especially our houses. They got whatever they could. WS Even while you were there? RF Yes. We were there, we had a family coming from another small town, visiting. They were not just friends, they were relatives really. When they came, they had a lot of luggage. They brought luggage with them. They came by horse and buggy. So we had the whole house full with packages and the people started to loot. People came into the house from all around the little small towns, even smaller villages (then the one we lived in) farmers even some who didn't live in villages, they came to the small towns to loot. My mother recognized one person whom she had known and she talked to him by his name. She said: 'why, this is mine, take mine but don't take from these people, they just left home. They tried to run, they didn't know where to go.' People just ran; they didn't know where to go. He got so mad that he broke my mother's arm. It was already hard to get a doctor. On the second day my mother thought that it was broken and she felt that she couldn't move it. It was also swollen. So she went to a doctor and the doctor put her in a cast. She had that cast for 6 weeks. When the German army came, they made up the “Kommandatur” (military command place). They organized the local police that means local people to maintain order. At that time, they didn't tell them what to do with the Jews. Everybody continued to live in their own room and house. What they asked from this local police committee was all the best of all the belongings such as gold or diamonds or pearls. You know, we had skins to make furs, like skins from sheep, we had to give it up. So much money had to be collected. Especially from the Jews, not from the Gentile people, just from the Jews, as a contribution for the German army. It had to be paid otherwise they would take a few Jews and they would kill them. What could we do? We gave. We brought it to one point which they had designated as the place where we had to bring it. We brought it and it was collected. Then the real problems started. They put out a call. All of the Jewish men and boys had to assemble at one certain place, it was in the market place of the small town. The market place was the center of the town. There were stores and places where most Jews lived all around this market place. That was so, because the Jews had the stores and the businesses. In that center of the small town, they gathered them all together for a whole day. They told them what they had to do in a day and they had to work and if they didn't obey, they were going to be killed. If someone turned their head, there was a soldier right there and he just shot him. So they had to obey (the Germans). Then they left it all up to the local police. The local police did whatever they wanted to do, even if it was wrong and they really did a lot.