A CARD FROM THE CALENDAR - MARIANA MACIAG
“Despite the continuous racket made by the hellish symphony of death, automatic fire, and grenade explosions, you could hear the screams, moans, and cries of the running Jews and those that drove them” – thus Estera Rubinstein recalls her escape from the slaughter of the Poniatowa Jews on 4 November 1943. Miraculously spared, she lay naked for a day under a pile of dead bodies. For eight days, she’d hide in the woods, naked, cold, hungry, and scared, crossing the fields and forests in the direction of Warsaw. Near Kazimierz, she encountered Marianna Maciąg, who lived in a nearby village. Marianna took the semi-conscious Estera home. She fed her, gave her something to drink, washed her wounds, let her rest, and then bought train tickets and took her to Warsaw. She established contact with an organisation that hid Jews. Estera survived until the liberation and gave the world some of the most heartbreaking and tragic wartime recollections.
