Film Collection
Excerpts from an interview with Stefan Mikołajczyk
Transkrypcja
Father made a very risky and bold decision to do everything he could to rescue these Jews, to get them out of the Augustinians’ Church where they were closed and, certainly, rescue them from the worst. (...) We managed to organise an escape for these two people. And, obviously, we had to hide them, maintain them, give them food. The person who was the least conspicuous was the youngest son, Stefan, that is me. I was thirteen. We lived in Łagiewniki and they, these two people, they stayed in the fields, in different hiding places. It was summer, the corn was high. And buckwheat grew there, too. So they hid in different hiding places for a couple of weeks, and I was the only person who would bring them food. At different times of day, day and night, I brought food to various places that we had set beforehand. (...) My father knew that there was a possibility to make them into Poles. As Poles they could be sent to forced work in Germany. There were transports of Poles going to Germany to forced labour. But the Jews names and nationality had to be changed. And some Poles, who worked in Czarnożyły municipality, helped and gave them documents with Polish names. Jakub Jabłoński was changed to Józef Kuźnik in these documents and Adela Berkowicz’s name was now Helena Koberow. Both Józef Kuźnik and Helena Koberow were people who had died, but clever clerks didn’t cross them out of the records and that’s how Adela and Józef were rescued. They were Poles now and they learned their Polish names. (...)A couple of days later the gendarmerie came. And our Józef and Adela hid in the attic. (...) When the gendarmes were in the hall of our house, they looked around and wanted to search the attic. They asked us if there was anyone else in the flat, if we had said yes we would have been shot. My mom couldn’t say anything, but I said: “There’s nobody here.” One of the gendarmes stayed downstairs and the other one wanted to climb up to the attic. And he climbed up at waist-height, he looked around, the attic was completely empty, no boxes whatsoever. (...) Apparently, something must have told that gendarme that there was no one there. But the truth was there were two Jews hiding behind the chimney. The gendarme slowly climbed down the ladder, they said something in German and left.