A symbolic gravestone of the Lifsches family in Bielsko

This is a symbolic gravestone of my family, in the Jewish cemetery in Bielsko. The photo was taken in 1950.

In March 1938 I was arrested and sentenced to 18 months. I still have the original indictment. I did my time together with other communists in a prison in Cieszyn [town 50 km west of Cracow]. During that time, my father died of tuberculosis. I wanted to attend his funeral, but the police said that had to be under escort, and I didn’t agree to that. So I didn’t attend his funeral, but my father is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Bielsko.

My mother didn't want to go with us to Lwow, she went to her sister in Chrzanow instead. And there she died, and my sister Hanka also went to Chrzanow during the Lwow period, to be with our mother, and they both died in Kety, near Chrzanow, in a kind of ghetto sub-camp. I lost touch with my mother and sister when I was still in Lwow. At the end of 1941 I learned they were both dead, acquaintances wrote us from there, non-Jews with whom we indirectly kept in touch. Me and Iziek fought in the battle of Lenino, and my brother was killed virtually a couple of steps away from me.