extracts
Exile
JANINA WALBACH (WARZECHA)
Osada Narutowicze, District Krzemieniec

From that moment really difficult times began. My parents and Marian, then 15 years old, were felling trees from early morning to late at night. My job was to stand in the bread queue and keep an eye on the younger children. How very often did those tasks end in disappointment, disillusion and bitternerss! Once the bread was brought in, one had to elbow one's way to get near the counter. More often then not, the queue became a shambles and the strong ones broke through to the front. Many a time I got so close to the goal... close enough to take in the aroma of fresh bread. I would dream that I was already concealing it under my jacket, so as to lose neither its smell nor its warmth, when suddenly they ran out of it... short of bread. Thus at the end of hope came about black reality, my despair at my helplessness.