“There were no Jews in our area,” - he tells us.
Uniszowice, where he lived with his parents and two brothers, is a small village in the Lublin region. His father worked for the local administrator.
“And even now, we don’t brag about our medals for hiding Jews. Otherwise, they may say that we received money for it.”
They arrived at night in October 1940 because in Konopnica it had become very dangerous. Mother knew them a little. She brought shoes for repair to them before the war.
There were five of them. The Rotsztajns with a small child, his brother and their friend Mosze Lederman. They were with them for almost four years.
It was decided that they would be safer at grandmother’s. Grandma had a small house and worked in Motycz in a manor house. They slept in her room until the Germans announced the death penalty for helping Jews.
“So it started, she wasn’t going to send them away, the kid was 2.5 years old.”
They built a shelter, with an entrance from the apartment. During the day they sat quietly in grandmother’s room. When she returned, they could hammer away – they didn’t fix shoes with glue, but with nails. At night they hid in the secret shelter.
“They also hid from the partisans.”
The young ones often disappeared. They took the shoes somewhere, they organized leather, flour, butter, cheese. They earned money.
“Every day I went there to play with the little one. Poor guy.”
Sometimes he heard Sonia, who was young and beautiful, say that she would rather go to the woods than hide in the dugout.
“She had had enough of it. But they made it.”
