Helen Aronson was taken to the Łódź Ghetto in 1941 aged 14:

"We were taken to a disused prison. People were crying & hungry, not knowing anything. In the morning, Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Jewish Council of Elders of Łódź Ghetto, came to see us. He said: I will try & find accommodation for you but the main thing is to get a ration card & work, work, work. I'll do my best.

So the parents of the children started to cry. They said, Mr Rumkowski, what has happened to our children? He said: don't worry about your children because my very good friend, Mordechai Chmura, who I worked with before the war in various orphanages, he volunteered & went with all the children from Pabianice & I know he will look after them.

So when my mother heard that, she came to him & said, I’m Mordechai's wife. These are my two children. He said: I'll try & help you as much as I can. I must admit that he did because his power was like the Queen of England. Whatever he instructed you got. The whole thing was to be able to get a little bit more food.

So my brother got a job in offices, liaisons between the ghetto & the Germans. Everything made in the ghetto went through these offices & things that came to the ghetto. He spoke fluent German. My mother worked in a canteen which was giving rations every week to people. I was sent to a orphanage in Marysin, near Łódź, a area which is a little bit green & wooden houses, summery things. There I was to look after orphanage children. They were not much older than I was & they all had to work. We made straw mattresses. I used to tell them stories, these kids, about Hansel & Gretel, that when they arrived at the orphanage, it would be made of bread [laughs].

But at that time I was not well, I suffered with various cysts on my body through the change of everything. I was in hospital having something opened when the Germans decided to close the orphanage & evacuate all the children. [Gets upset] I know that when they were loaded on those vans, they were calling my name, something I can’t forget. Also they decided to send old people, so my mother went.

My brother had a document saying that his family are not to be sent. But it didn't mean anything. But my mother went from one street to another, to another, escaping them.

Then I was delivering lunch to my brother where he worked in the centre of the ghetto. Suddenly out of the blue, lorries arrive, taking anyone at random. I'm in the middle. People started running, I started running, I didn't know where. I ran into a big building. So much screaming & dogs. So I run into this building, I don't know where it was, & run upstairs into an empty room & hide inside the bed with the cover over me. I’m hearing screaming. I hear them enter this room. They're standing near this bed I'm hiding in. And they go. Then I lie in this bed for I don't know how long. Then I looked out very timidly & see it’s dark. I thought: I'd better go home.

Meanwhile my brother realised that I’m in great danger. He decided to look for me. He goes to Radogoszcz, the station they collect people, he can’t find me anywhere. He goes home, says: Helen’s been taken. Well, you can imagine my mother, the neighbours, the crying. Then I arrived [laughs]. I don't know, I don't know. It just happened that way, like people say.

I gave a talk once at the Barbican. A woman stood up & said, oh, aren't you—what did she say—sorry, or something, or: don't you feel guilty that you are alive & so many people died? For a moment I didn't know what to say. Then I said: maybe I am alive for a purpose because if I wouldn't be here to tell you all this, you wouldn't know. But that’s what I mean. Every hour it was something: the fight of being alive & food [laughs]. My brother had typhoid, I looked after him, he was in hospital. Then they decided to confiscate the whole hospital & he was there. Every day, every minute: a struggle to live but then the [sighs]—how can I say. It’s something within you that you just want to see from one day to another. To survive. The struggle of daily life, staying alive."

Telling The Story

Memories

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