Excerpts from Rosner Blay, A. (1998) Sister, Sister, Sydney, Hale & Iremonger pp 99 - 103

Janka: There were frequent searches, confiscations and deportations. We lived in constant dread of the sound of heavy footsteps, the knock at the door. Lists continued to be drawn up by the Gestapo, but for what reason? They took people with or without Kennkarten, they took children without parents, and parents without children. People often disappeared without a trace. When there were rumours of another transport being organised, people would sleep at each other’s houses, trying to avoid being caught. We heard shouts and cries from the floor above. I tried to sleep. Later I heard they’d taken a mother but left the rest of the family.

Hela: Early in June 1942 there was an Aussiedlung, a deportation of Jews out of the ghetto. It was a hot and stifling day. We were told we had to go inside and stay in our homes until given the signal. We were not to go near the windows, on pain of death. Soldiers guarded every corner and laneway, so that not even a mouse could escape. We could hear snarling Dobermann dogs and shootings, as the SS began systematically taking all the people over 55 years of age and all the young children.

Sisters Hela & Janka Weiss (Haubenstock)

With their heavy boots they burst through the door, threatening us with their guns. Amidst the savagery and noise they called out our father’s name and grabbed him roughly. I began to scream and tried to hold on to him, but it was all over in a few seconds. He was gone.

Father had turned 55 the previous October. He was still a relatively young man, full of energy and quite fit. He called out to me as they took him away, “Don’t worry, I’m going to fight!” Then he was marched out through the gates of the ghetto with all the rest of the older Jews. Always the soldier, he never believed he was going to die. We knew nothing then about Auschwitz or gas ovens. I persuaded myself he was going somewhere to work, or to join the army. He had always been so patriotic towards Poland, and was convinced he was going to fight for his country.

The “Actions” continued. Again and again we were assembled in the town square, Plac Zgody (“Place of Agreement”), and they read out lists of names of the people who were to be taken away. We stood for hours and hours, called up day or night, while the shouting of names went on. By June they had already taken all the elderly people. Sometimes they took anyone who looked a bit unhealthy or feeble. Sometimes it was sheer chance; I'd be standing in a line and they would decide they had enough people, so they halted just before my turn. It didn’t seem to depend on anything, only luck. We never knew what would happen, what was the right thing to do in order to survive, and could take no precautions. This uncertainty tormented us.

Janka: During this period, there were many rumours of resettlement and work camps in the Ukraine. We never knew whether what we heard was truth or lies, desperate dreams or falsehoods calculated to keep us in a state of fear. We tried to convince ourselves that the Jews were being sent to the East to work in labour camps. Indeed some people, sent away with the transport, even managed to send back postcards. Who could have guessed that these were dictated to the victims an hour before their death in the gas chambers?

We were waiting in lines as names were being read out. There was a young dark-haired woman in front of me who had a knapsack on her back. A German soldier was walking slowly along the line of people; casually glancing at us every now and then. He paused near us. He came closer to the young woman and peered at her. Suddenly, detecting some slight movement in her knapsack, he began to hit her with his truncheon. She screamed and pleaded with him, trying to avoid his blows and begging him not to kill her baby. Again and again, I heard the sickening thud of his truncheon amid her shrieks. But all her pleas were useless. I will never forget the gloating look of satisfaction on his face as he killed that child. His grinning face has haunted me all my life.

One hot day in summer, they rounded up all the children that were still left in the ghetto. Heavy transport trucks pulled up outside the kindergarten, and little children, some clutching rag dolls, were led into the trucks. With their large eyes and serious faces, they were taken away. The mothers howled and pleaded but were brutally driven back. Every child that was not hidden that day was taken away and murdered.

(The sisters of the book’s title, Hela and Janka, survived the war and immigrated to Australia in December 1949.)