Narrative

Zosia Wajdemajer

“I am the Child of Luck”

She sat in silence. My name is “Barbara Góra, and it is nice to know that my experiences will be remembered”, she said. Irena Hochberg, now called by the name Barbara Góra, was born in Warsaw on August 20, 1932, several years before everything began. She lived along with her parents and her sister, in a multiple family apartment on Żurawia street. The house was separated into parts, where one lived depended only on the amount of money they possessed. The richer people lived in the apartments and houses. The medium class lived in the smaller cottages and homes. Thus, the poorest people lived in the basements, where she and her family lived.

Her family, fully Jewish and aware of it, did not practice the Jewish customs. Her whole family spoke perfect polish, “Mówiliśmy jak polacy” she said, “We spoke like the Polish”. On occasion, her parents would speak Yiddish when they wanted to tell each other something in secret. Barbara always hated when they did this, because she didn’t understand anything they said. Although her parents had the very characteristic Jewish look, black sad eyes, black hair, and dark skin, she and her sister did not. They had dark blond hair and bright blue eyes. “What gave the Jews away was the constant fear in their eyes,” recalled Barbara. One afternoon, in the yard, Barbara at the age of seven, decided to prove to one of her friends, Liliana, that Germans were not to be feared. “Wyjdę na ulicę, stanę na chodniku i zobaczymy” she said, “I’ll go onto the street, stand on the sidewalk and we will see”. Spotting a tall German man dressed in his uniform walking towards her, she turned around and pretended not to see him. Neither did he see her, because he soon tripped over Barbara and apologized for it. This was shocking to both of the girls as it proved that not all Germans were what they were thought to be.

Raised in a Polish speaking family, Barbara was sent to a newly built school. She was the youngest, as well as the only non-Christian child in the school. At the age of six, she was given the choice of attending a class of religious education. The first class covered the topic of Adam and Eve and their life in the Garden of Eden. She later denied attending another class saying that she did not believe in stories. Very often, her classmates would trip her, point fingers at her and scream “Jew!”, when she passed them in the hallway. One day, while Barbara was standing by the wall, scared to leave, thinking she would be pushed or tripped, a Polish boy named Adam Wiśniewski came up to her and asked her why she wasn’t playing on the playground. Her response was simply that she wasn’t able to because of the other children. That was when he promised her to walk with her every day and take care of her. For the rest of the year, they would walk around the playground holding hands.

Barbara was seven when Hitler and his army stepped onto Polish soil. Soon after, they began transporting Jews into the ghetto, and because of this, many houses were left empty. A volksdeutsche family moved into one of them. Shortly after, their daughter, a girl roughly the same age as Barbara, decided to line all the kids up and ask them who they are. None of them could answer before one of the boys that was also standing in line, Gabryś, began to protest. “Why do you care?” he screamed. The girl, totally startled, ran into her house and never bothered them again.

On November 15, 1940, the Warsaw ghetto was officially closed. Barbara’s father, knowing something like this would happen, organized a switch with a Polish family who had to move out of their house and out of the ghetto in which they swapped houses. When the parents left to an unknown location, she stayed at her uncle’s house. That was the first time she saw the scarves and relicts used by the Jewish when praying. This, however, didn’t last too long because in the summer of 1942, the liquidation of the ghetto began. Jews were dragged from their homes, very often they were either shot on the spot, or sent in trucks to the nearest concentration camp. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case for any of Barbara’s closest relatives. Many homes and businesses were abandoned, and this meant that there were a lot of good places to hide. One of them, located in the washhouse, was the working place of her father and sister. It was an empty room, with no windows and one door. After barricading the door with an old closet, the room was a hiding place for children, including Barbara.

One hot afternoon, while standing in the kitchen with her mother, Barbara heard a woman scream, “Germans!”. It was the creaking main gate that gave them away, and the scream then signaled that the Jewish neighbors needed to go into hiding. The first thing that came to mind was running up the stairs and hiding in the attic, and that is exactly what they did. The tons of fur coats, taken from the Jewish people and kept by the Germans in the attic, used to produce warm clothing for the German soldiers that were sent to cold environments, were now used by Barbara, her mother, and many other Jewish men and women as a camouflage and hiding place. Everyone waited in silence. Suddenly they could hear one of the German soldiers making his way up the stairs and into the attic. “Are there any Jews there?”, he asked. No one answered. At that moment, it appeared to Barbara that all that was necessary to get them all killed was a single cry of an infant. Luckily, nothing like that happened and the soldier left. Yet, no one dared move in fear of getting caught. They heard people scream and cry in fear, while proceeding to line up in the courtyard. It was at that moment that she heard her fathers name called from outside, followed by two gun shots. It later turned out that her father, thinking it was better not to be there using perfect German, told the soldiers that if he did not proceed to the basement the boiler would explode and all of them would die. He was let go and it turned out to be the thing that saved him. The two gun shots targeted two sick neighbours, both laying in their beds, unable to move. Meanwhile, in the yard, every tenth person was taken and loaded onto the trucks.

Some time after that incident, her father asked her if she wanted to leave the ghetto. Without a second thought, she said “Yes”, and in August 12, 1942, three days before her birthday, she escaped the ghetto, thanks to a Pole living outside of the ghetto who had a pass that allowed him to enter and exit the ghetto as he liked. They bribed the guard standing by the gate, and holding her hand, The Polish man led her out of the ghetto. Until the year of 1944, she walked around the street freely and rode the train. This was a privilege not many were given at the time. Due to her fair looking skin, dirty blonde hair, and blue eyes, she was one of the few kids that were allowed to do so.

After escaping, Barbara’s father was out helping other Jews get the help they needed. Meanwhile, her mother was still inclosed in the ghetto. With both of her parents absent, Barbara was destined to live in many different homes with many different people. One of the first families she lived with consisted of a German woman and her Jewish husband; her name was Pani Cukier, Mrs. Sugar. Later, her father found a permanent housing arrangement for her with an awful man, his wife, and their three sons, in which he paid the family to take her in. These were also the people from which she got her new last name, Góra, changing her name from Irena Hochberg to Barbara Góra. “This was the sort of man that should not be given a child to look after”, Barbara said. Fired from the police force and the laundry, this man was incapable of looking after himself, much less an eleven year old girl. The three sons were a perfect example of how alcohol affects children. The wife smuggled different goods around the city, and this was the family’s primary, as well as only source of income. It wasn’t until later that Barbara was allowed to smuggle alone. The woman, the wife, decided it would be better and much more effective for her to go alone and during the night because it would be less of a risk of her getting caught. One night, when Barbara was on the floor of a train cart unable to lean against the wall, due to the fact that the space by the wall was occupied with German goods, such as, wheat, she saw a German man with two women around him sitting across from her. She could tell that one was attempting to teach him Polish and the other French. She kept her head down and listened to the sound of the roaring train, until she saw movement. It was at that moment that she looked up and saw the German officer pointing at her to take his seat while he was gone. To make this traveling possible, Barbara needed a set of papers making her a non-Jew, therefore authorising her movements inside of the city. It was very hard to find them because they needed to have the same date of birth. Luckily, Barbara did receive series of documents with the name of, Barbara Englisz. She did not know that this name would later save her from troubles and possibly death.

Throughout the war, Barbara didn’t have time to think too much about her family. It wasn’t until halfway through the war that she saw any of the other members. “The first time I saw them, they were introduced to me as Mr. Hochberg and his fiancée”, recalled Barbara. She later explained that they did this to not raise any suspicion. Thinking this one has found herself a rich and older husband, the other women were jealous of the sister. Thankfully, no one ever questioned the authenticity of their “engagement”. Besides meeting with other members of the family, her father also helped other Jews around the city. Although, he could not afford much  himself, he managed to bring them food, medical help, money, etc, and because of this he always got something in return, making it possible for him to pay for his and this families expenses.

After the war, the family was reunited once more. Before the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising, Barbara’s father decided that the Vistula river was a barricade separating them and the armies and that they should all move to the other side of the river. Soon after, in 1944, Praga, a part of town on the South of the river, was freed and they decided it was their chance at a better life, so they relocated. They lived through the uprising and soon they were ready to live a normal life once more. All Barbara had left was a single dress.

Now, Barbara Góra goes to different schools and places around the world telling her story. She is still friends with the son of the man who led her out of the ghetto. Also, she helped good people receive awards for the sacrifices they had done. One of them was the Righteous Among the Nations award, given to citizens who helped the Jewish community during the Second World War. Recently, in Israel, the people there have been giving the Polish a hard time, saying that they did nothing to help the Jews during the war. This, however, was not true because after counting the amount of people that helped her and contributed to her survival, Barbara, came up with names of 26 men and women who helped her and risked their own lives to save her. At the very end, sitting in the classroom she said, “It all starts with one person pointing a finger, and ends with millions killed. We educate so that no one will ever have to go through it again.”