The interview was recorded by the PILECKI INSTITUTE as part of the WITNESSES TO THE AGE project.
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Our today’s interviewee:
Olek Netzer (born 1937), originally Aleksander Lipstadt, son of a famous Jewish physician from Warsaw. His parents made great efforts to shelter him from the horrors of the Holocaust - he never went outside of their apartment. Right before the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto started, in July 1942, he was saved as part of Irena Sendler’s operation aiding Jewish children. During his last conversation with his father at the time, Olek Netzer was taught how to make the Catholic sign of the cross. He left the ghetto accompanied by a woman who later taught him the Lord’s Prayer on the Aryan side. Olek made his way through Otwock to Gawrolin, where he was taken care of by Zofia Paśniczek. Zoofia and her husband Franciszek saved about a dozen of people from the Holocaust. In Garwolin, Olek Netzer adopted the identity of Andrzej Paśnik. The surnames Paśnik and Paśniczek sounded pretty much the same to a German ear, so he was considered Zofia’s son. The explanation given to Poles was that his real parents had been killed during a bombing and that the Paśniczek couple had taken him in. He loved aunt Zofia like his own mother and for the next years he tried his best to prove himself “worthy” of being saved. He survived the war but the trauma resulted in several years of bedwetting. Olek Netzer left for Israel, where he learned that his father had most likely committed suicide in the ghetto to avoid being murdered by the Germans. When Olek Netzer visited Garwolin in 1963, every older inhabitant of the area recalled the his father, Doctor Lipstadt, very fondly.
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