Holocaust Testimony: Renee Salt

I was born Rywka Ruchla Berkowitz in Zdunska-Vola, Poland, in 1929 and lived with my parents and younger sister. My father was an accountant and my mother a housewife. We had a very comfortable lifestyle. Ours was a very large, well-known family, as my father was one of eight children and my mother one of four, so I had lots of aunts and uncles, many cousins, two sets of grandparents and a large extended family. My parents were elegant, cultured people, much respected by a wide circle of family and friends. We, the children, went to a Jewish school and generally we did the same things as children all over the world. After school we did our homework, played with friends, went to parties, the pictures; weekends were spent visiting families. When the weather was good, we visited a beautiful park with a lake where we had picnics and boat rides, and we thought that this was how it was always going to be.

Our grandparents lived in different towns from us, and holidays and Jewish festivals were spent with either one set or the other. We spent the summer vacation before the war with my mother’s parents and everyone was talking about a war breaking out. Everyone was nervous, and of course it rubbed off on us children. We returned from holiday at the end of August 1939 and immediately my mother started buying in lots of groceries and coal, so that we would have enough for as long as the war might last. We had no idea, or course, that it would last for six years. Also, the same night we came home from holiday, a large lorry arrived with materials, because my grandfather had a factory and did not want to keep all the stock in one place. So he sent out lorries to different members of the family, which were unloaded during the night, so that no one should see. We could hardly get into our flat.

On 1 September war was declared and the German army marched into Poland. It only took them about two weeks to overrun the whole country. When they came to our town, the officers liked our flat, so we were thrown out and left standing in the street with just what we had on. They soon brought machines, installed them in the quadrangle of our block of flats, brought in Poles and from all the material available in our flat they worked for three days making blankets for the German army. We were told that all our clothes and valuables from the flat had been put on lorries and sent to Germany. Since we had nowhere to live, our family had to split up, with each member going to a different aunt or uncle. I was ten years old then, and was sent to my mother’s parents in Kalisz. While I was away, my mother found a room and scrounged a few bits and pieces from family and friends, because at that time it was impossible to buy anything even if you had the money, and she set up a little home.

As soon as the Germans entered Poland, they began to persecute the Jews. Jews were not permitted to practise their professions, they were not allowed to keep their shops open or walk on the pavement. They soon made us wear a yellow Star of David, pinned on the front and back of our clothes; without it you were not allowed to go out. Jews were beaten up all the time. The queues for bread were miles long and when it came to your turn, they were usually sold out, so you had to queue again the next day. Right from the beginning, there was a great shortage of food.

• Renee Salt (PDF document)