Narrative

    Born 1932 in Warsaw, Irena Hochberg was a Jewish girl facing survival during World War II. She was frequently bullied in school because she was Jewish, although her family was assimilated and not religious. On her mother's side her relatives were Orthodox Jewish while her father's side was Jewish. However, she didn't look Jewish and therefore passed for a Pole or even an Aryan. Irena was a short blonde-haired girl with green eyes which, according to the Germans, equalled the "good look". Barbara Góra was one of the lucky survivors of World War II and lived to tell her tale. Now in present time her name is Barbara Góra, originally the name of a dead person and her father's surname during the war. With this story we individualize Ms. Goras life and prove how many people lost their families during this immense tragedy.

    Before Hitler's invasion and when Irena was 6 years old, she started first grade. The school was located on the Third of May Avenue and was a new beautiful Polish school with helpful teachers. However, the school was destroyed in the war and is now unknown to many people. Irena was the only Jewish girl in the entire school while the other students were Polish and Catholic. This all happened a year before the war started.

    Irena was bullied frequently in school due to anti-Semitism. She recalls crying to her mother every day after school. Her mother was the only one who would comfort her at first and therefore her mother once complained to the teachers regarding the disrespectful behaviour from the other students. Unfortunately the teacher couldn't do anything, but also tried comforting Irena. The teacher was a Protestant which was and still is a minority in Poland. However, Ms. Góra still remembers one day when an 11-year-old Catholic boy came up to her and asked why she wasn't playing with the other children to which she answered that they bullied her. From that day on he promised to walk with her everywhere, to class and even on the playground. When the war finally broke out in 1939, Irena was delighted because she didn't have to go to school any longer.

    Her father was one of the men who defended the frontline on the very first day. Soon after her father left to fight, he was captured by Nazis though he was able to escape in October, 1939. Her father finally came back to Warsaw to reunite with his family the day before her mother's birthday, 19th October. He brought a special birthday present for her mother, real butter, it was special since no one in their family had eaten butter since the war started.

    In 1940, the construction of the Warsaw Ghetto was started but first Germans made rules. The Jews weren't allowed to go to cafes, own stores, walk on sidewalks or sit on park benches. These rules were only established to discriminate against them. Later on all the Jewish families had to move to the Ghetto, including Ms. Gora's family. There weren't a lot of average flats in the ghetto so her family decided to quickly swap flats with a Polish family. Before the flat was ready for them, Barbara Gora had to live with her uncle for a while. He was the first Orthodox Jew she ever met. As her family wasn't extremely religious she was surprised that her uncle was very religious. Ms. Góra's aunt was exceedingly sick so Ms. Gora had to help around the house often. The flat Ms. Gora's family finally moved into was right across from the ghetto prison. If anyone was caught looking out of a window they'd be shot immediately. Ms. Góra's family had to nail the windows shut with wooden boards. The reason the Nazis forbade residents to look outside was that the soldiers were executing people without anybody knowing. In the ghetto, when Barbara went outside, she would see inhumane things. There were dead corpses on streets from people who had starved to death. These corpses were covered with a few newspapers and left to rot.

 One day during work, the guard in front of the factory screamed, “Niemcy, Niemcy” (“Germans, Germans.”). Then without hesitation everybody in the factory ran to the building next door and straight to the attic which happened to be a storage room filled with fur coats. Everybody jumped under the coats including mothers, fathers, boys, girls and even babies. “Tam były malutkie dzieci, takie małe” (“There were little babies, so little.”). They had to lay there for a couple of minutes when she heard her father’s name called. “Hochberg, potem usłyszeliśmy dwa sztrzały” (“Hochberg, then we heard two shots.”). She told us that most people ask her what she felt like when she heard her father's name being yelled, followed by two shots. Ms. Góra always replies with, “Nothing. I felt nothing.” They had hidden in the attic for hours when suddenly people came up and barged right through the door. “Sind da Juden?” she recalls them saying. Barbara could not recognize the speaker, if the person was a German or a Slovakian. Ms. Góra remembers that there were babies surrounding her, and if one were to cry they would all be dead. Luckily none of the babies cried. As soon as the officers left the Jews came out from their hiding spots only to find two dead bodies on the street. Unfortunately for the families, it was two already injured workers who got shot and not her father.

             A couple weeks after this incident Barbara learned some splendid news. Her father had made a friend outside of the ghetto and he was Polish. He could help smuggle little Barbara out of the ghetto and guarantee safety but only for a while. Ms. Góra’s father asked if she would like to be smuggled out. Without any hesitation she said “yes” straight away. This was three days before her birthday. To get her out of the ghetto, her family bribed the German officer at the gate to turn around and pretend not to see anything.

     When Ms. Gora was a little child she used to smuggle food on a train from the Warsaw Ghetto to Lublin though she didn't live in the ghetto anymore. At first she had the help of adults but later on she smuggled alone. One of her memories was when she was so short that she only reached the train's bottom and two boys who were also smuggling food pulled her up. Whenever she was on the train and a guard passed, she would hide in the luggage compartment. Until the age of 11 she was risking her life smuggling food to her contemporary families. Because Ms. Góra was living in Warsaw illegally, she had to change her name often as people grew suspicious. Her name was changed by taking the documents of dead people and replacing the birth date with hers. Her name was changed so frequently that she doesn't even remember all of them anymore. The final name she was given was Barbara Englisch, but when the war ended she changed her surname to Góra.

    At the end of the war when the Russians liberated Warsaw, Irena's family was separated. Her father and sister were living on one side of the Wísla river while she and her mother lived on the other side. Later on they found each other. During the war their identities were changed so much that her father was her mother's brother, her sister was not related to their family, and neither was Barbara. After a while the whole family changed their name to Góra which was her father's surname at the end of World War II. 

   Barbara Góra survived the war and is now seventy-eight years old. We had the honour to listen to Ms. Góra's fascinating story and to learn the horrors she has faced during her life. As she said "Most people experience as much as I do in their whole life. I experienced it all in 6 years." Mrs. Góra believes that it is important for the younger generation to know what happened during World War II so history won't repeat itself. It was an interesting interview and we were extremely pleased to have such an entertaining and gracious interviewee during Living History Day 2010.