After that, we went to a house that belonged to another friend
of my grandmother, owner of a Turkish bath, on the very well known street -
Nowy Swiat. It was a five-story building and I did not like the idea of
being buried underneath it. I had already seen many houses in ruins with people
buried in the cellars. However, there was no other alternative.
Basements were hell; filled with terror, women screaming! bombs
falling all around us.
From time to time, somebody had to abandon the relative safety
of the basement and go upstairs, as quickly as possible, to fetch some food from
the apartment. To supplement this we received a piece of horsemeat from some
soldiers.
At last, the ceasefire arrived. We decided to return to my
grandmother's house, which was about three kilometres away, and it was not
necessary to cross the bridge. Near the house, we asked permission from the
Polish soldiers to cross to the no-man's land. The German frontline was about
100 hundred meters further away.
We started to run. At one point, my mother disappeared. She
fell inside a deep hole made by an unexploded bomb. We could not find her for
quiet a time. When at last we did find her, she was trapped inside the hole, and
the bomb was still intact and very big. We lifted my mother from the hole,
incredibly, the bomb did not explode! Really, this commentary is unnecessary; if
it had exploded, I would not be writing my memories.
