When I arrived in Poland, I travelled to Otwock, walked on streets so familiar to me, walked to the end of Karczewska Street to the place where I attended public school; now the home of a school board. Then I made a photograph of the building, as a reminder. I hired a taxi and went to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town of Karczew, where my mother was buried. On the sandy dune were overturned grave stones. No one has looked after the cemetery, which has started to shrink. The town of Karczew is quickly developing, and new homes are being built there. One of the houses sits right on the edge of the cemetery. The head stones are turned over and scattered. Looking at the cemetery I reflected on Otwock Jewish life which has ceased to exist. Like the Jewish life in Otwock before it, the cemetery is broken and scattered.

I went back to Warsaw and through the town of Siedlce to the village where I had lived from mid October 1942 to November 1943. After 50 years, I suddenly found myself in the place, where I was at risk every day. As I remembered those times, my head was full of vivid impressions. There I was, in the midst of the village, walking on the road, on which I led the cows to the pasture, day after day. At that time, it was a sandy road, but now it was a hard surface with tall and leafy trees on both sides.

During the occupation in October 1942, I began my service here at the rail worker’s, therefore, I began my visit with him. On the farm I found the son of the rail worker who had inherited from his father the same farm and his trade - he also works on the train, but as a driver. At that time, when I was working for his parents he was five years old, and they called him Jasio, (Johnny). Unfortunately his parents, whom I owe so much for their help, are no longer alive. His sister Genia, who was the same age as I, lived not far from that village, and I went to visit her also. She told me that her other brother, Adam, who in his childhood had loved to play the harmonica, chose to become a musician and is quite successful in his field.

Next, I went to visit the farm of "Jan Siedlecki", where I had stayed in the summer of 1943, and where my life and fate had hung on a thread. Thanks to the fact that Jan did not check me out as he had intended, I remain alive and able to write about these events.

I came closer to the farm, whose buildings were so familiar to me. But now they look shabby, the wooden fence and gate broken and nearly falling apart. When I entered the yard I found the doors to the house open. An old woman appeared in the entrance, my employer’s wife. She remembered me, that I had been employed at her farm. As before, she was very talkative. She told me that her husband Jan died a long time ago, from the effects of alcohol. I was not surprised at hearing this because I remembered Jan’s love for vodka in those years. The old lady told me that her daughter Tereska lived in the same village. I went to see her. She was several years younger than I and remembered me. From her I learned the true reason of her father’s death: he was arrested by the Polish Security Services on suspicion of having a gun in his possession, and in 1953 the family received an official notice that he had died in prison and was buried there. Upon hearing this from Tereska, a line from one of the books by the writer Sienkiewicz came to my mind: "The fates of people cannot be foretold".

I was eager to continue these visits to other places. Upon returning to Warsaw I travelled six hours by train and bus to the little town of Dubeczno, near Wlodawa, were I lived for a short time in 1942 with my uncle and his family. The section where he had lived, which was called "Argentina", did not exist any more but the town had grown larger. There were many apartments several stories high, and smaller brick houses. Where the "Argentina" section had been, two small wooden houses remained, but I was afraid to go near them lest my emotions overcame me. While in Dubeczno, I went to the Municipal office, where I learned that they did not have any documents about the local Jewish population. The "Argentina" section of Dubeczno did not exist any more, due to the annihilation of her Jewish inhabitants. By strange coincidence the village of Kozaki, only 8 kilometres away from Dubeczno where I began my career as a herdsman, for some reason did not exist any more either. There too, only a few little houses remained. Although I tried I could not reach them. Once a straight road from Dubeczno led through bushes and shrubbery, but now it was no longer there. I tried to reach the village Kozaki by a circular way, but with no success.

I also went to see Albin Robak in the village of Ossowa. Due to his age and ailing memory he had no recollection of my working for him and mistook me for someone else.

After this last attempt to retrace my wanderings throughout Poland, I returned to Warsaw to complete my tour as a holiday. Thus my "pilgrimage" to the places I had lived in during the occupation ended.