Paul Calvert spoke with Ester Manheim

There was a wall and I needed permission to go to the house where I live, but I was young and as youth we would meet together and sing songs of hope and love. We really wanted another world. We hoped as after every winter comes May, but for us the May didn't come.

In the ghetto they were awful times. They were very hard times, but we were together, Mother, Father, Grandmother, Grandfather, my sister and me. Then the Germans came and took my father to prison. Why? Because he gave a donation to an orphan house. The Germans ask where did you get money? You should not have money. So they took him to prison.

Ester Manheim

After that came the first evacuation. We should have a stamp on our ID card. My Mother got it for her and for my sister and when I come they look and they put it down. My school friend was sitting there, I told her they took my ID card, she said to be quiet and took my card and gave it to me and so she saved my life. A few days later there was an evacuation and people who had the stamp were sent to Belgitz.

We saw through the window of our house how the Germans took our neighbours. The small children with their small baggage. They looked around and they didn't know that that was the last time they would be here. They were leaving for good.

They came to my house but because my family were in prison they left.

Again there was a new action. They came and took my cousin. She was like my sister being four months older than me. She was living with us at the time. They took her to Belgitz. I saw her leaving alone. We were brought up like twins.

Three days before my Grandmother died, on that night my Grandfather died. My mother came to me and said that we are like a mouse that has eaten poison; the poison is in and we are running from place to place but there is nowhere to escape.

I went to work and I waited for my mother to come and pick me up but she didn't come. I began to cry. They asked me why did you cry? I replied I'm anxious about my mother. They said what, you have a father and a sister, you're only anxious about your mother? I thought, I don't know why, I kept thinking what has happened to my mother? When I came back from work my sister ran to me and told me "they have taken mummy". We both cried. The whole street cried. We were sitting when my father came from work and we ran to him. They took mammy we said. He is a strong man. He sat on the floor and said "no, no, it's impossible". He ran to bring her back but the train had gone away. It was too late. I never said goodbye to my mother and I never saw her again. You know it's a wound that you feel in your body even till today.

She was alone on her last way. A mother and wife and such a good person. There was no-one to support her.

The whole time I thought, how did she die? How did she feel on her last way alone?

I was in Belgitz a few years ago with my friend and I took from there a little bit of earth and I put it on the grave of my father to bring them together after so many years.

In another few months we were hungry, but in a room with a little canary bird that we took with us the whole time. On 13th of March it was the liquidation of the ghetto. The day before my aunt with her two daughters wanted to escape from the ghetto but a Polish soldier found them, so a few days later they sent them to Auschwitz. My cousin survived, her mother and sister didn't.

In the room where there was 12 now there was only four. I opened the door for the bird and said to him, "you will be free but what will become of me"? I didn't know.

We left Krakow. On the gates of the ghetto was Mr Gets. What I have seen there and what's been done there only his book can describe.