Film Collection
Zuzanna Ostaszewska née Włoczewska
Excerpts from the interview with Zuzanna Ostaszewska
Transkrypcja
Nighttime, curtains drawn, we hear a cry outside the window. Sleet is falling. I go out - a woman from Warsaw is standing outside, a smuggler. We knew her – she was called Miss Władzia, but I don’t remember her surname. I notice a pregnant woman standing next to her and sobbing. “Why are you crying?” She answers: “You know, she’s brought me here, and I don’t know what to do now.” The smuggler says: “I told you that I can only lead you across the border, and I don’t have any family here.” And it was true. I tell her: “Stop crying. Come with me to my house.” And you know, when she came, me and my mother, we knew at once that she was a Jew. It showed – in her mannersims, in her voice. My father was a very fearful man: he was so afraid that he was ready to run away from home, to flee and leave us. He used to say: “The Germans will kill you, but, as for me, I want to live!” (...) She stayed with me for half a year, or maybe less – three or four months. And when the time of her delivery came, we moved her to the Rykaszewski family... We took that pigsty of an apartment and turned it into dwelling... She gave birth to a child, his name was Wiktorek, but...That baby died. He was eleven months old. The winter had just begun.