RESISTERS
HANDOUT 7A
GIZELLA “JOINS” THE RESISTANCE

One day my uncle sent for me, asking me to bring a special instrument to the home of a Czech farmer he was treating. I walked out with my yellow star patches. Suddenly I heard someone say, “Where are you going, little one?” I was walking with my head bowed. They were German soldiers calling me. “Now look at her,” they said, “how pretty. She looks like my ____. Look at the blonde hair. Look at those eyes. Do you want a piece of chocolate?”

I remember walking on. I didn’t turn around then. I came to the farm and I must have looked a bit strange. Uncle said to me, “What’s the matter with you? You look positively yellow. And where are your patches?” He turned to the wife of the farmer he was treating and said, “Do me a favor, put the patches on her.”

But the farmer’s wife shook her head. She looked at me and said, “No I won’t. She doesn’t need any patches.”

[Gizella’s looks eventually helped her to escape from the ghetto. Her uncle arranged for her to hide in the home of one of his patients. She slipped out of the ghetto and went to meet people who would take her to her new hiding place.]

The meeting was a meadow on the edge of town. I went there. I heard trucks coming and hid. When they arrived, they were full of people. The Germans yelled at them to get down and I saw a shower of yellow stars as they got off. I heard shooting and then screaming. Then it got quiet. Those voices have haunted me every day of my life.

The Germans left and I crept out of my hiding place. Two men came up behind me. “What do you want?” I said. Then somebody grabbed me and I was placed under straw in a wagon. They seemed to know quite a lot about me. They said they knew where my Aunt Lucy and my two cousins were hiding. If this remark was meant to scare me, I don’t know. But after they said that, I never said another word. I was afraid, and I had a feeling that I had no choice but to obey their orders. And anyway, where else was I to go? My life in the Resistance had begun.

I was taken to a hut in the forest. They listened to me speak German, Russian, and Polish. I spoke these languages without any difficulties. I was given the birth certificate of a young woman named Veronika. The birth certificate was authentic, but the only problem was Veronika was much older than I. At that time I was twelve years old. So in the next picture that was taken of me I had to put my hair up so that I looked a little bit older. To make sure I learned my new identity, a member of the Resistance would coach me. In the middle of the night he would shine a light on my face to wake me up. He would say,

• “What’s your name?”
• “Gizella.”
• “What’s your name?” Slap.
• “Veronika?”
• “WHAT’S YOUR NAME?”
• “Veronika!” That was how I learned my new name.

[After getting her identification papers, she began her work with the Resistance.]

At my first job I was told I would know only one person among the people working for the Resistance. The person that I knew was called Makar. I doubt that was his real name. Throughout my stay my only contact was this one man. He was my “chain man.” His was my only link in this human chain of underground Nazi fighters.

Click on the picture to see a larger version

Gizella’s ID, now in the collections of the N.C. Museum of History

I was supposed to be the granddaughter of a couple living in a house where the German commander of that city lived. My job was to polish his boots, bring his meals, and empty the wastebasket.

Anything I found in the wastepaper basket, I was told to bring to Makar. My job was to live in this house. Never ask any questions. And tell Makar about the comings and goings of the German officers and the types of insignias they were wearing. Makar told me to pretend I could not understand German so that I could listen to their conversations.

My next job was my most important one. I had a completely different identity. I was the cleaning person in the German commandant’s headquarters in a large city in Poland. My job was to get as many copies of the identification forms issued at this headquarters as I could. People could survive with those papers. People who had identification papers could get work papers. They could prove that they were legal residents of the city and they could obtain ration cards for food. Even non-Jews without such papers might be sent to forced labor camps. I took the papers, but I never knew whom they gave them to. That’s what I wonder about today. I would like to know that I saved someone’s life.

Early in 1944, I was captured. I think somebody denounced me. I don’t know for sure. At that time, I was working with a German supply unit, doing kitchen work. A Gestapo officer came. He asked many questions. Even though the Germans could not prove my identity was false, I was arrested and taken to a concentration camp.

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/