Marysia was my "niece," but I thought to myself, how will I explain what kind of a niece she is when the Germans start searching for Jews in hiding? What would I do? They would ask, who is she? Why is she staying with you? Where are her other relatives? Where is she from? In fact, after she had been with us for a few months the neighbors were already asking each other these questions. I became frightened about what might happen to us if we remained in Tarnobrzeg.

My mother and I decided it would be best for me to take Marysia to a bigger city where nobody would know us. I would give up my job and we would go to Lvov to live with my sister Halina. My mother, who was not so adventurous, would go back to Sandomierz to live with my youngest sister and my aunt. So, late in September Marysia and I left. Of course, the school director, Dr. Polowicz, knew why.

Our journey was extremely dangerous. The train was in poor condition, short of coal, and it was always stopping, making long delays for supplies or because of damaged bridges. Lvov is not so far from Tarnobrzeg; normally the train took only eight hours, but this time it was two days. All through the trip I was very, very frightened, even though I thought I was probably not the only one with a Jewish child. I prayed. What else could I do? In the night Germans marched through the train with their dogs, looking at the children and the other people. Once, while we waited for another train to pass, I saw them take people--families with children--off the train, taking them behind a building, and then I heard shots. It was very frightening. At any moment it could happen to me, or Marysia--at any moment.

Marysia was small. She curled up in my arms and tried to sleep. I didn't sleep at all. I had brought food for the journey, but neither of us was hungry. The child understood so very well what was happening. It was as if she became an adult all at once, growing as much in one night as another does in a lifetime. She knew that a particular uniform meant danger and that she couldn't talk or walk anywhere without me. Each hour was dangerous. God must have helped me; they didn't look at us.

We arrived in Lvov and made our way to my sister's apartment only to discover that this too was a dangerous place. Unknown to me, Halina and my future brother-in-law, Stawek, belonged to an underground resistance group. It was a committee that organized the Lvov branch of Zegota, a Warsaw group that was bringing money to Polish Jews in hiding. I soon joined them, so from that point on I was helping not just one or two, but a great many others.

This was not a good place for Marysia, so a few days later we found a safer place for her nearby in the Felician convent, where there were already thirty-five Jewish children in hiding. The Germans allowed convents to look after orphans--not Jews, but orphans. The nuns took in every orphan that needed help, which happened, of course, to be mostly Jewish children, and so Marysia survived the war in their care. When the war ended she found her mother, who survived Auschwitz. Her father died in Bergen-Belsen.

I became a Zegota courier, traveling often to Warsaw to bring back money from the Polish government-in-exile in London. The Warsaw group had an underground press for printing counterfeit documents and false identity papers for Jews, and I brought these back to Lvov, too. Another job we had was contact with Janowicka, the big work camp for Jews in Lvov. On one visit we would deliver false papers to certain people, and then on the next, help them prepare to escape from the camp. If we learned that someone needed special medicine, we delivered it right to that person, not to the Germans. Sometimes we delivered money either to someone in the camp or perhaps to someone in hiding. Many people were hiding and they had to have money to give the person buying food for them. I did all these things.

At that time, each day in my country was dangerous. Each day. But Lvov was even more dangerous than other places because so many Ukrainians were living there who understood Polish very well. They might easily say, "Look at those two people walking over there. One of them is a Jew." You didn't have to wait long, either. They'd take you from the street, and that was that. Finished. You cannot imagine what it was like.

The Nazi intent was to destroy the Polish nation completely. They treated Poles as badly as Jews, although often the Jews don't recognize that: they say Jews were treated far worse. But to help just one Jew, you had to have the help of many other Poles. To get one loaf of bread one person must send another into the street, and already three people know about a Jew who needs to eat. If the Germans found out about this Jew, they'd kill not only him, but the three other people as well. There were many Poles who hid Jewish people and went with them to the grave. It's another side of the story.

ARREST: Every few days I went to visit Marysia, but one day I did not arrive. I had been making frequent trips to Warsaw for Zegota, because I knew the city so well. This time on the return trip, approximately half way back to Lvov, Germans came into the compartment and made a search, looking at baggage, papers, everything. They found all the Zegota papers in my bag on the overhead rack. There was no way to hide them. Not knowing whose bag it was, they arrested all twelve people in the compartment, and took us to the Lublin jail.

At first I didn't tell them the bag was mine. One by one, they searched and interrogated each person, and of course, nobody knew anything about these papers or the organization. The others in the compartment were people carrying a little meat or fruit; none of them had papers. I was the only person without a good reason for coming from Warsaw to Lvov, so they concluded that it had to be me, and I had a very bad time.

I was kept in the Lublin jail one month. Every few days I was tortured. They put me in a chair and struck me with a belt. While one beat me, the other asked questions about the organization and who was working for it--a thousand questions like that. We had spoken many times in the underground about what to do if caught. I knew that I must talk, otherwise they would probably kill me. So I started telling them I knew some men, but I didn't know their names, only their first names.

"Where do they live?"

"In a store by a restaurant."

"What kind of restaurant?"

I told them about a restaurant where I'd never been. I built up a completely phoney story. They asked me about this story every time they interrogated me and I repeated it over and over. The Germans made telephone calls to Lvov to confirm this story I had made up, but it was very hard in those days to telephone from one city to another--not like today when you dial and you're connected--so they weren't sure.

I was in very poor shape, completely black and blue. I was in a cell by myself sleeping in my coat on the floor. There was no mattress. Nothing. At that point I gave up hope for my life. I knew that in the next day or two they would shoot me. I had carried documents for an illegal organization. They had to shoot me. There was no alternative. I even wrote a letter saying goodby to my family.

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