Sura Spalaniec, Czyzewo, Poland

ROOM 3: INVASION AND OCCUPATION
 

     << NEXT   |   BACK >>   |    ROOM 4: FACES OF THE GHETTO

First-Hand Account

 



The Spalaniec Family
Czyzewo, Poland
cir 1926-7

"When the Germans came into Czyzewo, they made an announcement that everybody should report to the marketplace. So my father had gotten word from somebody that we shouldn’t do that. So in our house we had a double wall. We had a double wall with supplies maybe for a couple of weeks, a month. And we stayed in there, and my grandmother went to the marketplace and of course was—she never came out of there. And we stayed there until we were told that we had to get out of there because the Germans might start looking for us. So then we went into the woods--my father, my mother, my sister, my brother and I. And my uncle Harry, and his wife and his daughters were there with us, and they went somewhere else. And they got captured and they—we don’t know what happened to them. But we were in the woods and we had some people—a Polish woman whose name was Maria Grutzca (sp). And she helped us out where she’d give us a piece of bread here and there, and we were in the woods until—oh, for a long time—until I think it was maybe a year of less before the war ended..."

Sura talks more about this day, how her father and siblings were killed by a Polish neighbor, and about how she and her mother survived the war. Listen to it.

--photo:  The Spalaniecs at Motel Szczupakiewicz's Lumber Yard, cir 1936-7. Schleime Spalaniec (Sura's father), and Pearl (Sura's mother), with Sura's siblings Chana and Yosel.

 

 

 

 






 





 


 

Home       |       Site Map       |      Exhibitions      |      About the Museum       |       Education      |      Contact Us       |       Links

 

 

 


 

 

Copyright © 2008-9 Museum of Family History.  All rights reserved.  Image Use Policy.