Recolections Of Ww2

At the age of about nine, in the year 1939, Alexandra Grochowska (my grandmother) experienced the terrors of World War 2. She lived in a town called Lodz with her parents and two sisters, one, two years older and one, two years younger. On the 1st of September (the day that war broke out) it was warm and sunny Alexandra and her sisters, knowing the war was coming, went for a swim in the nearby dam.As they swam they saw a group of german plains flying overhead, heading for Warszawa (Polands capital city), this meant the war was starting. However many things happened that day, to signal the start of the war, being so young, reality did not hit home. At the end of that day, Alexandra and her sisters arrived back at home, nothing happened for the next few days, the last days of her happy childhood.

In the next few days the German Army invaded Lodz, closed down all the Polish schools and introduced curfew hours between 9:00pm and 6:00am. Jews were told to sew 6 pointed stars onto their clothes and some of her best friends were Jews. Alexandra\'s parents and all polish people were told to purchase black paper to cover their windows with at night time when their lights were on so that the city could not be spotted by plains flying overhead. In trams, Alexandra, like all other polish people, was not allowed in the first cart which was always reserved for Germans. Her city\'s name was changed to a german one (Lizmanstad), as well as all the city street names. Food tickets were brought in for bread, milk,meat etc. All of a sudden the life she had known had completely changed, she had to growup quickly to adjust to the situation.

All Polish schools had been shut down, so in a daring move teachers put their lives on the line to organise secret lessons. Alexandra went to these lessons and one in particular stuck out in her mind. They were sitting in the makeshift classroom learning when, suddenly, the son of the teacher,who was standing on lookout, burst in the door saying that the German patrol is coming,in all the panic and comotion of re-arranging the room one boy panicked and jumped out of the first floor window. In jumping out of the window his ring finger (which had a ring on it) got caught on a nail which was protruding out of the sill. As a consequence his finger stayed on the nail while he fell to the ground and passed out. Luckily the patrol did not notice him and moved on.

Another prominent

memory was that fo the \"round-ups\" in the streets, in which the Germans would block off a full street and sweep every apartment in the street and \"rounded-up\" men and people with higher education who were not working, and sent them off to concentration camps and working camps. Luckily,at that time, Alexandra\'s father worked in a German owned factory(all factories at that time belonged to germans) so, he was not taken.

From the age of 14 all polish children had to work for the Germans. Alexandra worked in a factory which