THE HOLOCAUST
TEACHING LESSON 4
HANDOUT 4A
GIZELLA IN THE GHETTO

My family was very unusual because they owned land, and not many Jews owned land. My memories are of the house and of the soil, and how of the house smelled on Shabbat [the Jewish Sabbath]. It was scrubbed clean and I remember the smell of the Sabbath dinner. The candles were on the table.   Later when times were bad and I felt lonely, so alone and hungry, I always thought of the candles and of the family. And I always hoped that I would be able to experience this feeling once again.  

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Gizella’s mother feeding the ducks and chickens in front of their house in Poland in the 1930s

In 1939, war broke out. My family was forced to leave their farm for an apartment in a nearby city. We lived in one room. Soon Jewish children were separated from other youngsters and sent to an all Jewish school. Then little by little, my schoolmates and their families began to disappear. One day, my friends came to school, the next day they didn’t. I don’t remember how many friends disappeared. I kept asking, “What happened to them?”

I was sent to stay with an aunt and uncle in Lutsk, Poland. Then all of us were herded into a ghetto. Our property—including jewelry, most clothing and house-hold furniture—were taken. The Nazis created a ghetto at the edge of town and moved all the Jews into shacks. All of us had to wear yellow patches on our chests and backs. On public streets we could not walk beside Christians. In the ghetto there was only one water pump, and it was locked except for one hour a day. There was no food, no sanitation. There was typhoid and starvation everywhere.  

Sometimes children in the ghetto risked their lives, sneaking beyond the ghetto’s wall and then trying to sell a piece of clothing or other valuables smuggled in earlier. Whatever they could sell or trade went for food.  

Each day trucks came and took people away, and every day the line at the water pump was smaller and smaller. You could hear the sound of screaming and moaning every night. The Germans said they were relocating people to safety where they could work with honor. A Jewish committee was forced to select who was to go. They forced the deported people to write postcards back to the ghetto so the people would not panic.  

Published in cooperation with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
Copyright © 2002 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Updated 2005.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/