page 12 of 12

Play Movie

Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.

6-After Liberation

Was your trip after your liberation, back, a lot easier than your trip there?

My trip back to (Sighet)? It is funny but at that time lots of people did not go to (Sighet), from (Sighet). Because they say there is no reason to go. My parents were with us and they died. So very few people went back to (Sighet), it took me almost a month to get back. We had to sleep in railroad stations, we went to (Budaphest) and I was liberated on May and I arrived home on June .

In comparison to your trip to...

No no no, there was a lot of help. If you met soldiers they always helped with food and (medicines). Then you arrived to (sentance) already had all kinds of helpers to help refugees with food and clothing.

Can you talk about some triggers today, when you experience different smells today that trigger memories from what happened?

It is funny that we corresond with some friends, very few left, and there are things that I misinturpret and that she misinturprets and you know that the memories are not so accurate and (his students) dont like to write history on memories because they say that they are not exact. There is a collective memory. I remember one aspects and she remembers another aspect of the same event. We talk sometimes about where were you, how did you do it, how did you escape, I have to tell you this; because I left Auschwitz in December I escpaed the death march. I escaped because two to three weeks later the camp was liberated and the Nazi's took all of the able bodied prisoners and walked them in the freezing cold from one camp to another. Half of them were shot because they could not walk or they would freeze to death. I escaped in a big event I was in a warm factory working, I already had my own bed, I had alredy a dish to eat a little bit more humane, but it still was confinement, you still didn't know whether you would live or get out of it.

Missing Transcript: 1:44:15 - 1:46:10 What do you think kept you alive. "God didn't save me..."

Transcribed by: Daniel S (2010)
Proofed by: Matt G (2010)

Are there smells or sounds today that remind you of what happened?

I was there, I went back to Auschwitz twice. Once I went for the fifty year pilgrimage—with my husband. This is when I took the picture in front of my bunk bed, and I remember I saw the crematorium, which was destroyed, but you could still see some of the parts of it. You could still the steps downstairs and it had an affect on me to see the crematorium, and I went and I gathered a little jar of rubble and debris and they are in there from the crematorium. In the whole? that may be a speck of my no idea of the ashes.

The very interesting part is that when the World Trade center was bombed. Families are very anxious to get something of the remnants Mayor Guiliani told them at the meeting, "when everthing is cleared, every family will get a jar of rubble and debris." I even wrote an article in relation to the rubble of debris, the World Trade Center and the remnants of the crematorium. Those reminded me right. Going to stay in front of that bunkbed, and to tell the students we slept here, "look how narrow it is." I realized in deed how low the ceiling is, how you couldn't even sit comfortably, how you couldn't stretch completely.

It was winter when I was in Auschwitz two years ago — it was march — all the visitors dressed in parkas and hats and mittens, and I said, " How could we survive? We didn't have parkas and hats and gloves and scarfs. How could we survive?" I was even wondering it myself at this endurance.

Do you have certain strategies for remembering family members?

No I don't have strategies, but there are times when the year come of my own yamhashua? which is may 17, when I try to do something, I go to the cemetary, I went once to the public library, I wanted to know what they wrote on that very day, about did they know about it? I always do something for them. I don't think I can explain more.

Do you still remain in contact with some of the Holocaust survivors?

I have been in contact with the five girls from my hometown that were with me in the second camp. One is in New York, and one is in Los Angeles we keep [in contact] once a year when we are liberated always. Now that others are dying out, I'm looking up others who are still alive, also wrote a book. By now I'm interested whether I give all the details accurately, and if I give enough details. It turns out others have written more details, because I did not write a book about the Holocaust. I wrote a family story before, during, and after the war. I wrote letters, I didn't want to have a book. I saw that if I gather them together, my family will want it, family was not so interested, students wanted it.

What do you think the importance is in telling your story to people of all generations?

You said something about the letters I get from students right. I get hundreds of letters. I thought that one day I find the student that wants to make an essay to summarize what the students get from my because they get lots of things, variable things. First of all the students learn a bit of history, the students open up to what happened in the past. The students feel with you, and appreciate their own life by now to say, "Oh, I've had such a good life, I can't believe it, I didn't suffer." The students will be very alert for any sign now of intolerance, of hatred. Some will even write to me, rest assured my children will know what I heard from you, something like this not to happen. I cannot tell you everything.

I speak in many places with specific slent?. I can at phychology departement. The topic is called "Survival Under Extreme Circumstances." I spoke once at a law school — Davis — I talked to them about record keeping. I spoke at anthropology course. They wanted to know about vanished cultures. I told them the culture I lived in, I treid to explain to them that even the camp had a culture. After a few years you had certain traditions and slang. So this is vansihed cultures. You speak to children, make them sensitive that something wrong can happen, and did happen. Even a child of seven or eight is good to know that there were tradgedies. Hopefully you never live through them. I can speak to children, but you have to know what to tell them. I do think that the students appreciate, learn, feel, react, I can see them. I'm sure that when they grow up they will act on that. They grow up and they will do the policy, and they will not let something like this happen. I do not think that another Holocaust can happen. Genocides do happen, among primitive people more so, if you know what happens in sudan, and congo. But among civilized people, as Europeans were, I don't think that it can happen. Maybe I do a little contribution.

Thank you Dora.

Let's just look at pictures

This is a picture of Sighet. For us it was a very beautiful little statel?. Actually it was not a statel? forty percent were Jewish. This is my high school, it was select school. Very few girls went to high school. This is the row of stores, and this makes me nostalgic, because here is the summer store of my boyfriend's family. We'd talk sometimes about the streets and who lived where.

This is me on graduation. When I graduated high school we had ... where ten girls graduated high school. I have a story about high school.

Do you have a favorite picture?

This is my maternal grandparents. I know more about them than from the other side, they didn't live. This is my grandfather, and this is my grandmother, right between the story of supenza?. This is my mother, this is my aunt, this one went to America before the war — to her older sister who was already in America. This is aunt ceely I write about her when I came back and she lived in that part of Transylvania which was not occupied. Aunt ceely she was just like a mother to me.

This is my older brother, me and my little brother. I think was a passport picture since Sighet was a frontier city, and three miles away was Czechoslovakia, everybody had a passport to go to Czechoslovakia. I think it was because I retrieved it from the photographer. My oldest brother Alter, he lived in New York lately. This is my father to see how modern he was, this was his Kippa, his little beard, very nicely dressed. This was Yancu, unfortunately I do not have any other picture of Yancu. This is my uniform. This was the elegant uniform with a pullover.

This was yossie, the same yossie, in the story yossie he was seventeen years old when he ran away from home to Russia, to Communism. Before the Hungarians occupied us, we didn't know that he's alive or not. It turned out that the Communists caught the whole group of youngsters that came to the Communist paradise to Siberia for six years. That's where he grew up.

These are my three other brothers. This is Moishi. This is Micki? who lived in Italy who became a doctor, and this is him in ... This is Moishi. This is my boyfriend's nephew, and his sister Dori. I have a little story about Yortzo who we taught to say, "give me a little water" in the train.

This is the movie house where I worked, here in in the back.

Is there one of these pictures that is your favorite? That brings back the most memories?

Let me tell you this. How come I have these pictures? My boyfriend when he was arrested, had a little pocket album with about ten, twelve pictures of me. I have some more in my album. He carried them, he was not deported so he could carry his pocket album, and this is how I retrieved the first picture he did of me, at that resort station, with the ... pool. This is his sister Szusi?, who was like my little sister.

These are all my friends. A row of high school students. We are in the same uniform, there was a special hat. This one and this one was with me in Weiswasser.

This is my boyfriend. Eighteen years old. When I came home, I put on a lot of weight, because while we were in Czechoslovakia, the Czech people gave us food and we ate and ate and ate, so I was quite fat. This is after we met.

Then we lived, after I finsihed medical school, we went to and industrial city called Hunidrawa? I had three children. They have curly Jewish hair.

This is when we arrived to Italy, and I met my Italian brother with his family. I haven't seen this brother for twenty-seven years. I was fourteen when he came to visit his parents. I remember I was very angry with my mother, told him to tell me to wear a bra — at fourteen. This is my remembrance, my mother told him, and then he went away and studied medicine. Then there was war, that was communism, there were so many things, by the time I saw him again twenty-seven years have passed, it was very sad right.

This is in Brazil, I have a story, there is a little boy, my nephew who lived with us. This is when arrived to New York. I have them in color? if you want. I have them in my album.

Finally as I move to American and my brothers came to visit. Two came from Brazil, two were in New York, and ... came from Italy, so I even have pictures where all five brother's came with their wives.

This is my extended family, friends while we lived in New York.

How many of your brother's are alive today?

Only one. He's in Brazil.

Which one is that?

His name is Abe?. He had another story, which I don't give it to you.

This is when I came to Berkeley to see my grandchildren, and this is when we are seventy years old, and I wrote on the back of this picture, "still alive, still together, and still gazent? It's a Yiddish expression, and I wrote to everyone whom I sent this picture, it's a color picture, very beautiful, I was very young, and very pretty.

This is, we went on a cruise on, our fiftieth anniversary, I broke my leg so I went in a wheelchair. Which is okay, I sat here in a wheelchair.

This is when we moved here to California. I even put in my son's girlfriend, hoping she would be the wife, and she is— the second wife.

That's dangerous

I know, I put her there. My son has six children, he's not a Hassid. Three are Catholic and three are 100 percent Jewish.''

Are these buildings still there today?

They have now another center with high rises.

This is the original book that my father wrote. He was an insurance agent, but in his free time he was telling little stories, they appreciated them very much— he was a story teller. Finally in 1939, just before the war started for us, he was able to publish this, because my two brothers worked there in the print shop. He went from village to village to sell his book, and he sold a few hundred books, but then the war started for us in 1940 when the Hungarian occupied us and it was the end of it. When I came home from the war, somebody found a book from the attic and gave it to me, this is the only thing I have. I told you what happened with the manuscripts right? Did I dictate it? My father continued writing even in the ghetto, what happened to the manuscrpits you heard. My father is mentioned in the Encycolpedia Judiaca. I am very proud, if you check for the town of Sighet, for important people from Sighet and they start my father comes first and then comes ... This is about the ... as they went every year on a pilgrimage to their Rabbi's. Actually he writes about the importance of a Rabbi and the life of the poor people. If a poor jew had a problem he went for advice from the Rabbi. If he had to marry his daughter, he went to tell the Rabbi. If he didn't know what to do because someone is sick, he went to the Rabbi. Meanwhile, he wrote about all those poor people and their stories. Finally at the time at the of the big holidays, how they went and pilgramage. I told you that some called him here in the states, ... of Maramourish?. Thank You.