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Picture above of the crowd in Warsaw ghetto, bellow left is a birds eye view map of Warsaw ghetto and below right is Janina a survivor of Warsaw ghetto.
The Story of janina dawidOwicz
Janina Dawidowizc was only nine years old when Germany invaded Poland, her and her family were driven to Warsaw ghetto. She remains one of the few survivors. One morning 22nd July 1942, the first group of 6000 Jews were marched to the train station (Umschlagplatz) and put them on trains to be taken to the Treblinka gas facility. Janina remembers the signs going up to order some Jews to report to the station, they were promised sugar and a loaf of bread and were told they were being sent to a camp to avoid the misery, the Jews had no idea they were being transported to a gas chamber.
The first to go were the weak and under 12th. Janina remembers an old lady named Rachel who went, she was in Janians apartment, then she remembers her landlord and landlady going.
They were joined by tens of thousands of Jews from other parts of Poland, Hungary and other german occupied countries; Janina claims to have been able to hear every language just on the street.
Janina and her parents lived in this tiny damp room, Janina says "It was so damp you could do sums on the wall".
Their life was really horrible there, they cooked with sawdust ove two bricks and their food was a mixture of bread with sawdust and potatoes; they were rationed to 108 calories a day!
Janina's older cousin lived in the ghetto as well, she had to kids a boy and a very little girl, they both starved to death.
Desperate for a wage her dad got a job as a Jewish policeman in the ghetto. The service was often reviled as a tool of Nazi policy, along with the Jewish administration. But at the time it seemed like the best way to keep the family alive until the end of the war. Marek (the father) escorted cartloads of rubble out of the ghetto and smuggled in small amounts of food to feed the family. They had to tell themselves the war would end soon and they just had to hold on for a bit longer to give themselves hope but it didn't last long when the Nazis failed to march victoriously through the Soviet Uninon, the Nazi policy moved from mass shootings of European Jews to comprehensive extermination.
Throughout July 6,000 Jews were being transported to Treblinka each day, as a policemans daughter she was one of the last children alive. By the end of the summer more than a quarter of a million were gone, they were all dead within hours of arrival.
Janina's flat was now empty her grandparents were taken and her neighbour killed himself by jumping out of the window when he came back and couldn't find his kids. The last weeks of the ghetto 1942 Janina's parents managed to smuggle her out to Christian Warsaw, as her dad was a policeman he had papers so he was allowed to escort lorries out of the ghetto and one day Janina slipped out with him. She was kept hidden by catholic nuns chaging her name and concealing her identity. Her parents stayed behind she thinks her dad was killed in Majdanek extermination camp but she does not know how her mother died.
She found her uncle at the end of the war and she moved back to Kalisz where she used to live, hoping for someone else to appear she gave up. She became home sick of Europe so she moved to London and is now a writer.
The first to go were the weak and under 12th. Janina remembers an old lady named Rachel who went, she was in Janians apartment, then she remembers her landlord and landlady going.
They were joined by tens of thousands of Jews from other parts of Poland, Hungary and other german occupied countries; Janina claims to have been able to hear every language just on the street.
Janina and her parents lived in this tiny damp room, Janina says "It was so damp you could do sums on the wall".
Their life was really horrible there, they cooked with sawdust ove two bricks and their food was a mixture of bread with sawdust and potatoes; they were rationed to 108 calories a day!
Janina's older cousin lived in the ghetto as well, she had to kids a boy and a very little girl, they both starved to death.
Desperate for a wage her dad got a job as a Jewish policeman in the ghetto. The service was often reviled as a tool of Nazi policy, along with the Jewish administration. But at the time it seemed like the best way to keep the family alive until the end of the war. Marek (the father) escorted cartloads of rubble out of the ghetto and smuggled in small amounts of food to feed the family. They had to tell themselves the war would end soon and they just had to hold on for a bit longer to give themselves hope but it didn't last long when the Nazis failed to march victoriously through the Soviet Uninon, the Nazi policy moved from mass shootings of European Jews to comprehensive extermination.
Throughout July 6,000 Jews were being transported to Treblinka each day, as a policemans daughter she was one of the last children alive. By the end of the summer more than a quarter of a million were gone, they were all dead within hours of arrival.
Janina's flat was now empty her grandparents were taken and her neighbour killed himself by jumping out of the window when he came back and couldn't find his kids. The last weeks of the ghetto 1942 Janina's parents managed to smuggle her out to Christian Warsaw, as her dad was a policeman he had papers so he was allowed to escort lorries out of the ghetto and one day Janina slipped out with him. She was kept hidden by catholic nuns chaging her name and concealing her identity. Her parents stayed behind she thinks her dad was killed in Majdanek extermination camp but she does not know how her mother died.
She found her uncle at the end of the war and she moved back to Kalisz where she used to live, hoping for someone else to appear she gave up. She became home sick of Europe so she moved to London and is now a writer.