EVA G

Heather Setliff EVA G.

Eva G. was born in 1924 in Oleszyce [oh-la-shitz-a], Poland. She was the
oldest of eight children and is the only survivor of her family.

The following interview was conducted by the Institute's Holocaust
Education Specialist, Plater Robinson.

I was born in Poland in 1924. My name is Eva G.

And you were born in what town in Poland?

Oleszyce.

Your husband has showed me where on the map Oleszyce is, and when I go to Poland I will go there, and it's very important for me to understand the way of life that existed before the war in Oleszyce, and so if I can begin by asking you simply to imagine if the two of us left your house early one morning, and walked down the street, what would our eyes see before us?

It is very difficult to talk about it because it left so many bad and good memories. Good that we lived together with the family, and bad because I have to leave under those circumstances. Well, the life wasn't so exciting. It was a little town, and you could imagine when I left my city it was 1942, and at that time that little city didn't even have running water, or electricity.

And the streets were not paved.

No paved streets. They were wooden sidewalks, and the water we had to carry from pumps. People had like wells in the backyard in pumps. Some people still had those draw wells that they draw with buckets the water from the wells. The light was lamps, they called, from kerosene lamps, that's what we used. But the life was quiet. Nobody knew anything better so we were happy. We lived like in the country. But it was not a modern country like they have now. Probably in Poland it changed too. Because that was many years ago. We went out like every Polish city had a plan that every city small big where you came it was built with a square. It was in the middle a square and a big house and around the square was stores, and every week, by us it was a Wednesday. It was day of like market. So all farmers from around came with vegetables and fruits and they were standing in the markets with their carriages and sold and people went to go and they were vendors who came in with different articles. It was fun for us children, Wednesday, to go in the market and to look whatever the people they came. Magicians, and to show tricks. Everything happened on Wednesday. It was a nice day. But if it was raining it was bad. Because the whole city was mud.

But if it was not raining. It was a very colorful sight.

EG

Yeah, it was colorful. We enjoyed that. Everybody looked forward to Wednesday. And that city, we had one public school that everyone went to that school. It was eight grades, because the whole city where we lived had about ten thousand people. It wasn't big. So one school was enough, and that was a time compulsory to go eight years to the school. Now, if somebody wanted to continue to high school or gymnasium, like they taught by us, we had to go to a different, a larger city. Some people commuted, and some people lived with friends or relatives in a bigger city to continue the schooling.

And what was the percentage of Jewish people who lived in Oleszyce?

It was about thirty or forty percent Jewish people in that town.

And in your grammar school, obviously you attended school with Poles as well.

Poles and Ukrainian. We lived, many Ukrainians lived. It's a big percentage of Ukrainians. It was probably about a third Jews, a third Ukrainians, and a third Poles, and we went all together but the discrimination was big. You knew right away who was Jewish and Jewish people weren't too good accepted.

Did the Jews and the Ukrainians and the Poles mix at all or were there very obvious lines drawn?

They were separated. We weren't separated by the line. But socially everybody stuck to their own. The Ukrainians stuck to their own, the Poles to their own, Jews to their own. Jews weren't accepted. We were in the school, we were fiends. But outside the school nobody associated.

How is that?

I don't know why. It was always the anti-Semitism and the Jews felt inferior. We were always inferior and we were ery lucky and happy that somebody wanted to associate in the school. It was like this. I don't know, we accepted it. I ad very good friends in the school, and in the school I used to help them or we used to...somehow, somehow, the Jewish students were always the brighter. I don't know why. And we helped friends and everything and they were happy in school, but outside the school they didn't mix with us.

And did the Poles dislike the Ukrainians as much as the Poles disliked the Jews?

They disliked Ukrainians but not as much as the Jews.

And the relationship between the Ukrainians and the Jews also was bad?

Bad. Bad. Ukrainians didn't like us either.

In your family, what business were they in?

My father had a religious, the Jewish religious paraphernalia.

And Oleszyce was renown for its Jewish paraphernalia.

It was like the manufacturing. Everybody did it in that city. My father exported this in Poland to big cities where they didn't have that, and to all Europe. And all the countries. Mainly he traded with Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary. It was the biggest market for it because they had a lot of Jewish people.

And what precisely do we mean when we say "Jewish paraphernalia?"

Used for prayers. The Torah that is used for the services in the synagogues. The Jewish prayer shawls. The Jewish, what they called the mezuza. Everything they used in the prayer services.

And I assume that you spoke Polish as well as Yiddish.

Yes. We spoke Yiddish in the house, and we spoke Polish in the school and with our friends. And everything you have to use the Polish language. We spoke a little Ukrainian too because a big percentage of the Ukrainians like from the fourth grade on was like a second language.

And did Jewish people have a strong presence in the businesses in your town?

They had mainly businesses, but small businesses. They had small businesses and trades. Because the Jews weren't permitted, I never knew a Jew that should be in some position like in city hall or some-place or even a teacher. I never had in the school a Jewish teacher because the Jews weren't permitted to advance socially. That's why they stuck mostly to trades and small business. Somehow it is a myth that the Jews were rich. I didn't know any rich Jewish people. They made a living. That meant they were rich. They had, everybody had a small business, they were in trades like tailoring, shoe making, those kinds of trades, and they were very, very poor.

And those that did not have trades, there was a large percentage of Jews particularly in eastern Poland who were completely impoverished, and who traveled from town to town begging.

Yes. There were a lot of beggars. In carriages they came from town to town, to beg for money. They couldn't find jobs mainly because you were small, you had small tradesmen, they didn't, there weren't factories, but small tradesmen, they employed two, three people and that was the limit. People couldn't, and if they went in a small business they sold something, they hardly made a living. Especially, I don't know how Poles, it was sad because my father traveled to the other countries. We never went abroad. We were so close to the other countries. But my father in his business he was taken to those other countries. And he said in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, in Germany, that the Jews lived much better than in Poland.

I assume that there was a synagogue in Oleszyce, perhaps there was more than one?

Three synagogues. We had three synagogues. In that time, everybody was Orthodox, and everybody attended the services. The synagogues were never empty. That was the only place to socialize. In such a small city we didn't have a movie. We had a traveling movie that came once a week to the city, and showed the movie, and then they left. So everybody went to that movie once, but everything was around the synagogue. So everybody, all the news, everything that somebody wanted to hear they went to the synagogue.

So Friday night was a festive occasion in Olesyzce.

Yes, everybody observed the holiday and it was very much observed. The people were friendly. Everybody

associated with everybody. It was a holiday, and the same thing Saturday after people came from the synagogue. They

went Saturday morning to the synagogue. They had their lunch and they associated. Went to visit friends and relatives because everybody lived together. And all the young people got together and talked and were singing. I remember singing songs and we told stories and read books, then we went for a walk. There were many orchards, many woods around, which was nice. We went for a walk. We weren't afraid, one thing like here, to go out. We occasionally we were, some Polish boy or some Ukrainian boy threw a stone at us, but besides that, they were not incidents of murder or rape or something else. So the young people were free. That was the only thing, the only enjoyment, to go out for a walk, to go swimming. We had a little river. It wasn't any ocean, but we had a little river, swimming. We got together a youth organization, just to get together in one room, by one family, and we had a little library, their own, and people took books. People read a lot. I think people, young people even in those times were. It was maybe, we had the only radio in the city maybe, and no television, and nothing to know, just the newspaper. People were more educated and they knew more than the young people now. They had such a broad education, and they participated. They traveled. We read more. Everybody read a lot.

It was one of the few pleasures open to you.

Right. Right. Everybody read a lot. Even those people who didn't continue the higher education just went those eight years, they knew a lot. Read, they were self-educated, and read very good books, not trash. We didn't have trash at that time. We read classics, we read literature, when we met, people discussed those books like reviews. That was how we lived.

That was the Old World.

Yes.

Was there a bathhouse in Oleszyce?

Yes. There was a bathhouse because people didn't have running water. They washed themselves, you know you have to warm water at home in big pots and everybody had like a tin bathtub where you took the bath. But most people went to the bathhouse.

You mentioned earlier that sometimes you would be walking about and a Polish boy or a Ukrainian boy would throw a rock at you. You leave me with the impression that anti-Semitism didn't express itself except for occasionally.

It expressed itself but not in a violent way. It was, they could scream after us, "Jews to Palestine! Jews to

Palestine!" In a different way. It wasn't expressed yet in violence, and violence it started to express right before the war when the Germans, when Hitler was already in power.

After the death of Pilsudski?

That was the time when there started the Hitlerism in Germany. It started, they called Edekism in Poland.

National Democrats.

Right. It started in Poland, that's when it really started.

You would view the Endeks as the Polish equivalent of the Nazis.

Right. Right. They opened Polish stores and boycotted the Jewish business. They didn't come to buy. Occasionally they beat up the Jewish students in the university. You had the university had a percentage. They had only, I don't remember exactly, one or two percent of Jews. Jews could, but if any Jew who was very, very smart, was accepted to the university, not one, he was beaten up very often. Jewish students. By the Polish students.

And of course there were the "ghetto benches" in the universities as well.

Well, we had in school as well Jewish students were sitting on one side and the non-Jews on the other side. We were sitting, we knew where was Jewish side to sit down right away in school.

Your grammar school?

Yes.

So when you walked into the classroom...

Yes. I sat automatically on the side where the Jews were sitting. We couldn't participate in any school plays. We never participated in a school play. We were so envious. We went to the plays, they had always on every holiday school plays. On every national holiday school plays. Not one Jewish student participated in those.

And do you remember in the latter part of the thirties when the Warsaw government attempted to decree that cows could not be slaughtered...

Yes, I remember. It was a time that they couldn't kill according to Jewish religious law. They made believe that it is the cruelty of animals.

Did that ever become law?

I don't remember. I was very young at that time. I don't remember. I remember the decree how people were

worried. Because everybody ate kosher, but I don't think, I don't remember that it should be a shortage in, if people were able to afford wasn't a shortage in kosher meat.

As a little girl before the war, did you ever witness a parade by the Edeks in your town?

No. Not in my city. We had during the German occupation but not...

No, no. I'm talking about a parade of Endeks.

No, no.

Was there the presence of the Endek party in Oleszyce?

It was, but they weren't...you see, they weren't so much organized. In the bigger cities, they were organized. In the small cities, you didn't feel it so much.

I don't want to ask any uncomfortable questions, so stop me if I do. But do you remember the first of September, 1939?

Very, very, very much so. We remember. I remember it very good. First of all, before the first of September, we had an influx of Jewish people that Hitler expelled. Polish citizens that Hitler expelled from Germany, and we had a lot of those refugees who lived, you see, they came by trains and by wagons and dispersed through the whole Poland, and mainly they stopped in the small cities they had more place to come. But then September the first, started to fly the German airplanes and threw bombs. We were running out of the houses because the bombs were coming. It didn't take a few days. The Germans came in. First came the motorcycles, and they were starting to shoot without discrimination. Poles, Jews, or not Jews, who was on the street. Right, left, right, left, to shot. And many people were killed right away, the first day when they came.

They came in shooting to establish the presence of terror.

I assume like this, otherwise why would they shot right away when they came in? (drinks water)

Back to the first of September, which was a Friday. Was it early in the morning that those planes came over?

The planes came over in the morning, and in the evening the whole day. They were a few days, because the whole war was a blitzkrieg. In a few days, it didn't take three or four days they were there already. Somehow we believed, because the Poles claimed that they were prepared and they were singing songs: "We swear that we won't give not one inch of our soil to the Germans." Somehow, we trusted the Polish government. We didn't believe that the Germans will be in right away. We were a little farther from the German border, so it took a few days, but they were in Poland already on the second day of the war. Somehow the Polish soldiers even they claimed they were prepared and it didn't work out.

The Polish government was arrogant, and the German government was arrogant and powerful.

That's probably what happened.

You know what I find extraordinary, Mrs. G., is that your town, which was a small town off the beaten track, was still bombed by the Germans as if it were of military importance.

They bombed every inch of Poland. They bombed every inch. Wherever. They had so many airplanes that they were able to go wherever. In front, before they came in, they bombed every inch.

In Warsaw, which was besieged for three weeks, Poles and Jews fought together at the barricades. There are some wonderful photographs of rabbis helping to build the line of defense. I wonder, was there any sense of common ground between Poles and Jews in September of 1939.

No, no, no. It worsened, because the Germans came in and the real anti-Semitism began. The Ukrainians

collaborated with the Germans, the Poles didn't stick too much up for us, they were I guess afraid for their own lives because right away there decrees in Poland who will help the Jews they will kill their families. I mean, the Gentile families, the Polish families. So they didn't too much stick up for us and the gap even widened between the Poles and the Jews.

(more)

To continue reading this interview go to: http://www.tulane.edu/~so-inst/eva.html

Back to Main Page