Pnina (Pepka) Gross (deceased) about live in Sucha and Wadowice before war, during war in Wadowice, Sucha, Freiburg, Rarsdorf and Krasau camps, stay in Poland after war, way to Israel and live there
An English resume of an interview in Hebrew that took place in Israel as a part of the Polish Roots in Israel Project. Interviewee name: Pnina Gross
Siblings: Rozia, Jacob
Husband: Moshe (Meitek) Reindorf
Children: Nitza, Hagar, Orit
I was born in 1927 in the village of Stryszawa, and we lived in Sucha, near Wadowice, in the vicinity of Cracow. There were three children in our family, two girls, Rozia and myself and my younger brother, Jacob.
I was the middle child. In 1939, my father died from a sudden illness; there was not even enough time to take him to the hospital.
We had a grocery store and my grandfather owned a slaughter- house. I had an uncle, my mother's brother, who lived nearby. My father was born in Austria. My relatives in Israel told me later that he had been an officer in a transport unit. My mother was a housewife. Until 1939, I attended a Polish elementary school with several other Jewish children. We spoke Polish at home. At first I went to school in Sucha, and it was only later that we moved to Wadowice. Our home was a traditional Jewish home, and we even kept a kosher kitchen. We also celebrated all the Jewish Holidays in the traditional way. On Passover, my grandfather conducted the Seder, and I still remember with great nostalgia holidays such as Hanukkah, Purim and the others, just as we used to celebrate them at home. There were not many other Jewish families in our neighborhood.
My grandfather died four months before the outbreak of the war.
In 1940, two Jewish sisters who had come as refugees from the German border were brought to our home. Shortly therefore, the government confiscated our entire house except for the kitchen, into which they crowded our family, which by then consisted of my mother, my brother and myself. My sister Rozia was living with relatives in Cracow. They turned our house over to a family of Volksdeutsche (Polish people of German descent, to whom the Germans gave special privileges). That family was very anti-Semitic, and we had virtually no contact with them, except for the fact that we had to buy our groceries from the store – our store, which the Nazis had taken from us and given to them.
In 1940, my sister returned from Cracow, where she had been studying to become a seamstress, and we started cleaning German offices. A middle-aged-Jew, a family man, was in charge of the work. He organized everything there. I was housekeeper for two nurses who were doing charitable work. They treated me well. My mother was not working.
In the summer of 1941, the Jews were told to gather in the main town square. All night long we packed our belongings, valuables and rugs, and divided them among several Gentiles for safekeeping. We buried our jewelry and other valuables in the backyard.
The next day they gathered all of us at the assigned location. The people who worked in the Judenrat must have known what was going to happen, because we found out later that they had taken their families into hiding. The Germans checked us family by family and confiscated all the gold jewelry they found – they even pulled the earrings off my ears. The "selection' proceeded according to the familiar techniques. They used a whip to tell each one of us which side to go to: right or left. My sister Rozia and I were ordered to stand on the "good" side, while my mother and my brother were sent to another line. At that time, we did not know which side was good and which was bad. We thought that the older ones would be left in town while the younger ones would be sent away to work.
The selection lasted a whole day, until the evening. They took us to Sucha, near Wadowice, and concentrated us in a former brewery. The place had been equipped with rows of tiered bunks, to accommodate people. Every morning we left for work, which consisted of preparing a site for fishponds. The work was very hard. We worked there for about six months. Only then did we find out that the Judenrat people, who had hidden their families during the Aktion, had joined our groups later on. The older women worked in the kitchen. One of the young men, Walter, who had broken his arm, would wake us up every morning to go to work. One day he woke us up with an unusual voice. Suddenly we noticed through the yard, something we had never seen them do before. We were very scared and expected the worst. They chased us out of the building, including those who were trying to hide. One of the teenagers who tried to flee was caught. They threw him on the ground and shot him in front of us. That was the only time I saw a man being shot.
The Administrator has made all possible efforts to present the content accuratly and up-to-date in a way that does not infringe upon the rights of third parties, including copyrights, but cannot guarantee it. Therefore erroneous information on the website may not be the basis for claims. If you have any questions, please contact us at the following e-mail address: sztetl@jewishmuseum.org.pl
