JOHN DAMSKI TELLS HIS STORY (Continued)
Christine:
JOHN DAMSKI: In Zamosc my brother and I rented the front room of an apartment in a two family house. In the back were three rooms with a separate entrance. A family named Rozen lived there. I had met their daughter Helen before we became neighbors; she was a young girl, I was a young fellow. Although she had once introduced me to her mother and father, there was nothing special between us--just friendship. Then in October 1941, the other daughter came from Lvov to be with her parents. The walls were very thin; I could hear her speaking to her mother. I liked the way they spoke to each other. From the first moment I heard her voice, I fell in love.
But Christine had come from Lvov illegally, and a few days later, October 4th, the Gestapo came to the house looking for her. Whenever the Gestapo came everybody was scared; you never knew what they would do. They could take you with them, and that would be that. Since my apartment was in the front, they banged on my door first, barged in, and asked me where the Rozens lived.
"Not here. They're in the next apartment," I told them. They went around to the back. I was anxious to find out what was happening, so I went outside and sat on the bench under the Rozens' window. Suddenly, Christine jumped out of the window, into my lap! That's how we first met.
Hide! That was the first thing that came to my mind. She had the same idea. We went across the back yard, through some fields, to the Jewish cemetery--it was not far--and waited there until about ten o'clock at night. She stayed that night with her family's friends, the Garfinkles. A few days later she moved to another place. For the next several weeks I was the only person who knew her whereabouts, acting as the contact between her and her family, bringing her food and money. Then she left for Lublin, to try to help her brother who was arrested and in jail there.
When the Germans told the Jews that they had to wear the armband with the star of David, I knew that they were not going to fool around. I had no doubts in my mind about it, no illusions. I saw how the Germans were shooting people when I was in prison. I knew what they were capable of; they were already killing Poles; they would kill Jews the same way, or worse.
Knowing the danger they were in, I arranged to meet Christine and her mother, Helen Rozen, in Warsaw to help them get Aryan identification papers. I had some connections in the Warsaw underground, and was able to get them genuine birth certificates of people who had died, whose deaths had not been recorded by the priests.
Her mother, who was very Jewish looking, became Zophia Olszewska, while Sara--her real name--who didn't look at all Jewish, was now Christine Paderewska. Zophia became my "aunt," and Christine, my "wife." We even had a false marriage certificate. While they were in Warsaw waiting for their papers, Christine and her mother stayed with a woman I knew who probably never suspected they were Jews. This woman was making some very nasty remarks to me about the Jews being killed in the ghetto. She said the Germans were stamping them out like bedbugs. Perhaps she said that intentionally, to warn me; I don't know.
Most of the Jews in Zamosc lived in their own district. One day the Germans rounded up a big group from the Jewish Quarter and marched them to the railroad station a mile away. In that short stretch they shot about fifty people: because they couldn't walk, or were too slow, or maybe just because they didn't like them. At the railroad station they made them walk up a ramp, where they were loaded into little box cars. They shot another fifty people right there, for no reason at all. The few who were left had to throw the bodies into the box car. Then the Germans made them climb on top of the corpses, and they locked them up. It was the most horrible thing that I have ever seen.
Quite a few people saw this, and it really shook them up. Who could comprehend it? People in that town had not taken much notice of what the Germans were doing to the Jews up until then, but now they all knew exactly what was happening. Today, the Jews and the Gypsies, but next will be us. People who knew the Germans believed that. I believed that. So did my brother.
After they took away those first Jews from Zamosc, those who were left became panicky. It seemed as if they had all been told the same thing: "If you need help, go see Damski." Someone was always coming to me needing papers, like Ringard, for instance, a very nice fellow who worked for me. I went to Warsaw, and helped him. Even Israelowicz, the athlete, came to Zamosc. Blond hair, blue eyes--he looked like ten Germans put together----but he was Jewish.
"What are you doing here?" I asked him. Here was a guy with whom I had participated in sports, but what could I do? I had so many problems already: Christine, her mother--I had a hundred problems. He didn't ask me to help him, but I told him what I would do if I were him: move to Tomaszow, a smaller town about twenty miles from Zamosc. Like my brother and I moving to Zamosc, I thought that in a smaller town he might be able to survive, but I don't know what he did. I never saw him after that.