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Sally Einser – Hiding from the Ukrainian Police My name is Sally Einser, but I was born Sally Barran in Poland to a happy family of a loving mother and father, and eventually a younger brother. My father was an accountant, and my mother helped him. We lived a pretty routinely happy life until it was torn to shreds as the Nazi Party took power. Once the Nazis invaded Poland, hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were forced into ghettos, labor camps, and concentration camps. When my family was taken from out home, we were first moved to a ghetto and then to a smaller labor camp. We worked long, hard days from six in the morning until sunset, and we had very little food or nourishment of any kind. In July of 1943, while at the same labor camp, I was working in the fields when I heard so much loud noise that I thought the world was coming to an end. There were gun shots and thunder and lightening that seemed to be coming from all around. The Nazis surrounded the camp and ordered everyone to dig a massive hole that would eventually become their grave. Once they were finished every person was ordered to strip naked and line up as they were shot and killed one by one, each forced to watch their friends face a terrible fate. My parents were among those murdered that day. When the shooting stopped and the Nazis departed, my thirteen year old brother got to his feet and returned from the fields to the see what had happened, and once he got there he had wished he never left the field because what he saw was too horrible to comprehend. I was too terrified to move, so I lay in the field until darkness fell upon me. Only then did I slowly and quietly get to my feet and return to camp to see the mass grave and the pools of blood of those who’s lives the Nazis had stolen alongside my parents. I couldn’t stand there any longer, so I went out in search of my brother and found him the next day in a swampy area in some woods near by. By December of 1943 my brother and I had managed to begin living in hiding with a Gentile family. He would work in the stable and the yard, while I would do housework. One day in mid-December while he was out chopping wood in the yard, I glanced out the window and saw three men on horses racing towards the house. Adrenaline pumping, I ran out and pulled my brother into the house. Word obviously had gotten out that we were hiding at that house. We scrambled under the bed and pushed ourselves to the far back corner among the boots and shoes and other belongings that were stored under the bed. I could feel my heart beating a million times a minute. We were still as statues, holding on to each other for dear life, and we tried not to breathe. We heard a bang as the Ukrainian police busted through the door and into the house. We could hear them rummaging and then we saw the bayonets that were being thrust under the bed at us. They would pull out boots and shoes, and I felt it touch my skin once, but I refused to move or make a sound. I was too afraid. After a while they eventually gave up and left the house angry and frustrated. We stayed hidden for a while long, and once we came out and the family returned we were forced to leave. We eventually wound up at a labor camp until it was liberated in 1944. I’m proud to have survived, but I’ll never forget my frightful experiences from World War II.