Tosia: Chapter 7

Portrait of a Jewish woman in her own words written by her daughter, Felicia Graber.
Updated December 11, 2024.
Part 7 of 10

On August 1, 1944, the Polish Underground staged an uprising against the German occupiers. The Poles did not have a chance of success. They received no help from the Russians who were already on the east bank of the Vistula River. A request to the Western Allies to fly in reinforcement to the rebels was refused.

We were bombed every night. I did not want to go to the shelter in the basement. I did not want to leave Shlomo alone as he could not go down. Officially, he was not supposed to live there. Luckily, one nice neighbor suggested one day, “You poor soul. You are so frightened and alone with your child. Why don’t you ask Pan (Mr.) Andrzej (as Shlomo was called) to come and keep you company? He would be a great help.” I thanked her profusely for her suggestion, and from then on, Shlomo was officially my guardian helper. We could now go down to the shelter together.

The revolt was crushed October 2. Then the Germans started taking revenge, since the citizens of Warsaw had the audacity to fight back. Hitler ordered the destruction of the city. Soldiers went from house to house warning people to get out. Then the houses were blown up. Everyone was ordered to take whatever they could carry. Shlomo was able to quickly bury a few things in the basement, and we joined the thousands of Poles walking West. We went under German guards to Pruszków. I do not remember how long it took, but we were all exhausted.

In Pruszków, the Germans had established a transit camp. When we arrived, they separated the men from the women. It was a terrible night. We lay in the mud, and the child slept on the small suitcase on the cement floor. Somehow, Shlomo managed to join us sometime during the night. He had his hand in a sling to convince the Germans that he was injured and was of no use to go to Germany to work.

The next morning it was announced that women with children two years old and younger were allowed to leave the camp. They were freed. All others, men, women, and the older children were going to be taken somewhere to work. As Felucja was not tall and looked almost like a two-year-old, I managed to get out with her—to freedom. I walked out the gate together with her and another woman who had a little boy. We walked aimlessly in the countryside and spent the night in a stable because we had no place to stay. 

One day we saw an electric train standing because electricity had been cut off. This was the local train going from village to village. We got on the train, but imagine my total unbelievable surprise, when my husband walked onto that same train. Naturally, we were overwhelmed with happiness. Felucja still did not know that he was her father. I had always told her that he was a friend, an uncle. My official story was still that I was a wife of a Polish officer, and that I did not know his whereabouts.

When the train arrived at the end of the line, the three of us started walking again. Unbelievably, we met a man from Tarnów, who told us that we could find shelter in Chyliczki, a nearby village.

We found shelter earlier with one peasant, but it did not work out. The wife was a very mean person. In Chyliczki, we found the Sieroczinskis, a friendly farmer family. The husband invited us to stay in their a two-room wooden house. The expectation was that we help with the farm chores. The family was very nice, especially to the child. They gave her the best they had, be it an egg or fresh milk from their only cow. Occasionally, they killed a chicken, and always gave some to Felucja. Of course, they did not know that we were Jews.

Once a week, I went to the marketplace in Grodzisk, a small town nearby. Of course, I walked there alone. One time, while I was there, the Germans staged a raid of children and women to take to Germany to work. I and a few other women hid on a roof of a house. Instead of coming home at noon, as usual, I got home at five in the afternoon. You can imagine how scared I was and how I felt about my child who had stayed on the farm. How would Shlomo manage? She was not even supposed to be his child. Felucja was in despair, crying, “Where is my mother?”

On January 18, 1945, we were liberated. The Russians took Warsaw on the 17th, and they showed up in Chyliczki on the 18th. It is hard to describe today, but somehow, we survived the war. We learned much later that compared to the majority of the Jews who had been in the camps, our lives had been a breeze.

At the end of January, Shlomo walked back to Warsaw to try to find some of our belongings, but he returned empty handed. Everything we hid had either disappeared or was ruined. Soon afterwards, the new Polish government devalued the old Polish Złoty. You could use only the new currency. As our Złotys had been obtained on the black market, they could not be exchanged for the new ones. We lost a big part of our “fortune.” Amazingly, Shlomo still had one $100 bill left.

Food became extremely scarce. The Russian soldiers took everything they could lay their hands on as they passed through. We were starving. Food shortages were even worse than during the German occupation. The Sieroczinskis no longer had enough food to share with us, and the other peasants would not sell us even one potato. Luckily, I had a friend, a Polish woman—I can’t think of her name right now. She lived in Grodzisk, and I went to her. Her Jewish husband had been murdered. She had a son, and whatever her child ate, she shared it with my child.   

After Shlomo came back from Warsaw empty-handed, we took off on an open freight train. We went to Łódź. There, we were supposedly free, but we were still called Bialecki. I changed my name from Ślusarczyk to Bialecki, the same as Shlomo’s. We remained on Aryan papers because there was still a lot of anti-Semitism among the Poles.

In Łódź, we lived in a sixth-floor walkup. Felucja became very ill, first with severe inner ear infection and then with typhus. The doctor insisted that she be hospitalized, but I refused. “I did not go through the whole war with my child to be separated from her now. God only knows what they will do to her in the hospital.” The only way that I could avoid having Felucja taken was to isolate myself with her and have no contact with the outside world for six weeks. I opened the door only to receive food and water. Thank God, Felucja recovered, and I did not get sick.

It was around that time that my husband managed to get to Sopot (a resort town on the North Sea.) We had to look for some means to make a living. When he went to Sopot, I was alone for a few months or perhaps only a few weeks; I do not remember. Finally, I decided not to wait any longer. He sent me an address where he found an apartment, so I decided to go there. Another woman and I traveled together by train to Sopot. Travel was still very difficult. It seemed that the whole world was going somewhere. Trains were mobbed; we had to fight our way inside to get a place to stand. As it turned out, Shlomo was traveling to get us at the same time, and we crossed going in the opposite direction. But finally, he did return, and we were reunited again.

To be continued.
Read Chapter 8.

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Read more by Felicia Graber.