Wisconsin Survivors of the Holocaust
The massacre of Jews in Maniewicze, Poland
Cyla Stundel and her family had been incarcerated in the town's ghetto when Nazi troops liquidated it in 1942
Listen to audio
"And my nephew didn't see, he was seven years old — that his father [was] killed, they all rushed back to the ghetto, you know. And he didn't see and he thought his father is alive.
Now, his older sister knew. She was eleven years old, and she didn't want to hide herself. She said she'll go where everybody's going.
And then a neighbor run in and she took them, her three boys and my nephew, and she put them in, this wasn't a basement, that was like you see in the movies, in the house, in the kitchen, there is an opening and there's a little cellar, like where you put potatoes in, you keep for wintertime.
And then she put the kids there in and she put the potatoes on top in the kitchen. Nobody should knew.
And they was running [German soldiers] and they was sitting there and they was running in every house and took every Jew out from the house. They took them up. Their faces was so swollen, red. They knew they going to kill them.
And what was the thing? They yelled, 'Shema Israel.' They took them down. They shot them all, this Friday night. And it was two weeks before Rosh Hashanah."
Stundel Interview, Tape 2, Side 1
Transcript page 33 (PDF, 450 KB)