Rachmiel frydlant biography channels

September 1, was a beautiful day in Warsaw, Poland. I was walking along Nowolipki Street, heading toward the Jewish business district, when the big rooftop sirens began to wail.

A halfblock farther on, I heard the drone of airplane engines and then the heart-stopping roar of exploding bombs. Warsaw was under attack by German bombers. World War II had begun.

I quickly took shelter in a nearby house, but not for long.

Where could Polish citizens, especially those who were Jewish, find protection from the advancing Nazi juggernaut? Little did I realize then that behind the swiftly advancing phalanxes of the German military machines were the Nazi weapons of slave labor, starvation, torture and murder for the so-called "inferior races."

European Jews have seldom enjoyed complete freedom, but there was no hint of the approaching holocaust while I was growing up in a tiny forest village near Chelm, Poland.