“I was 18 and then they closed up the ghetto—no more can’t get out. Soon after I had a baby, little baby boy and he was lost. Would you like to see his picture? We stayed in Warsaw for a while but we knew in Warsaw very few are going to survive. My husband came from a small town, Radomsko, near Czestochowa, that’s where they seen the Virgin Mary, so we went to his place for a while with the baby and we kept running; when they were closing the ghetto I took the baby and ran from one ghetto to another.

His sister lived in another town, Staszow, and her husband was a policeman so being a policeman he had a right to live, a Jewish policeman. My husband had papers that he’s a useful Jew because every morning they took him at 6 in the morning to do all kind of digging. I was not a useful Jew because I had no job except taking care of the baby… A lot of girls had kids at that time because nobody knew if they were pregnant, because when the bombs are falling we got so scared we didn’t get our monthly periods for years….I had the baby and I had it until he was about a year and a half old and he was the cutest little boy. His name was Jurek Trajman…

I took my baby and I ran away to Staszow, that’s where my sister-in-law was and her husband the policeman. ‘You leave the baby here with me,’ she said, ‘and you have to get out of here, because they came already taking away everybody here…I’ll say it’s my baby.’ So I said, ‘Okay. The minute it’s clear, I’ll come back and pick up the baby.’

I looked out the window and I saw all those cows. It was a pasture and people are leading a normal life, Polish people, and that cow has a calf and I say ‘Oh my God, why couldn’t I be a cow. I wouldn’t have to run away now and leave my baby. Nobody would be after us. Why didn’t God make me a cow?’…

I at that time went to Wasaw to get a job as a maid and I had a paper that I am not Jewish. I went back to get the baby after 2 days. Nothing. No baby, no town, no Jews. It was just hopeless. They said that they took the baby on a wagon with hundreds of people to Sandomierz to the train station and they took him to Treblinka. That’s what they said. I don’t believe it because in my heart I know that he’s around somewhere. And I still keep looking. If I see somebody that’s- he’d probably be in his 40’s, maybe more- and he has the the most beautiful navy blue eyes and I say maybe this is my baby, maybe this is my son. And I said, ‘I wish I would have seen him being taken away; I would not look for him anymore. Then I know this is it; that’s the end.’ But this way you go with a burden all through your life thinking what happened to him. Maybe he’s grown; maybe he lives next door.”