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Jeffrey Wolin
Ida Paluch, born 1939, Sosnowiec, Poland
[Written In Memory: Portraits of the Holocaust]
1992-1994
Gelatin silver print
Provided by the artist - Jeffrey Wolin
LL/96436
Ida Paluch, born 1939, Sosnowiec, Poland
"My first memories really come to me when I was three and a half year old in 1942 when all the Jews from Sosnowiec were herded into the ghetto... At that moment when my mother was separated from us children she got very upset and panicky and she ran to the first building that she could approach and we ran after her and as she ran upstairs we tried to catch up with her and she ran to the third floor and she jumped from the window…
My aunt took me into hiding. She had a friend, a Christian man, his name was William Maj, who came to visit her; he was like a business associate before the war. He took a walk to the ghetto and as he came there just by chance I was walking with my aunt, holding on to her skirt and as he saw us behind the barbed wire fence we came to talk
to him. He said, 'who is this little girl?' So she explained that her sister committed suicide and I'm an orphan, an extra mouth to feed. He offered to take me with him, but
there was a condition: He said that he'll never give me back. And she handed me over the barbed wires and that was the last time I saw my family.
The next memory I have is when he took me to the city of Czestochowa. So when he came with me to his wife, he had me in a coat and he brought me on a train and he opened the coat, it was Christmas time, and he said to his wife, 'This is your Christmas
gift.' ...
And from then on everything would be wonderful but my Polish father, to earn a living he took a horse and buggy and went to neighboring villages and he usually took with him in the buggy tobacco, sugar, merchandise in the village to sell and that was forbidden, because most of the merchandise like that was supposed to be given to the German Army and that was against the law what he did. So the last trip he took was with his 2 cousins. He went to the village of Oduz; when he came there the Gestapo was there, somebody turned them in and they were shot on the spot all 3 of them... From then on we had a very bad life…
On the streets of Czestochowa I learned to hate Jews and to be afraid of them. I heard from other children and from neighbors that the Jews catch Polish children. They kill them and they use the blood for matzo for Passover... There was a lot of talk about Jews and mainly about the Jews killed Jesus. I went to church every Sunday every holiday and I kneeled there...
So when the war was over and my Polish mother decided to take me to the Jewish school, when I went there I recognized that I am not in my environment...I figured out those must be those terrible Jews. And I was so afraid, I was so petrified that I decided first chance I have I have to run away from here... I started to scream and yell, 'Help,help! Jews are taking me for matzo, Jews are gonna kill me.' And almost I caused a pogrom. And people came with sticks…
Later my own father, my natural father came... and I was taken forcefully to the city of Sosnowiec...All I wanted to do was run, jump from the window—I was afraid of those
Jews."
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