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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: alice lok cahana |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0051 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0051_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504445 |
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gender: f |
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birth_date: 1929-02-07 |
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birth_year: 1929.0 |
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place_of_birth: sárvár |
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country: hungary |
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experience_group: survivor |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: sarvar |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: auschwitz |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: 1990.478.1 |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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--- |
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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: alice lok cahana |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0051 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0051_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504445 |
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gender: f |
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birth_date: 1929-02-07 |
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birth_year: 1929.0 |
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place_of_birth: sárvár |
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country: hungary |
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experience_group: survivor |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: sarvar |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: auschwitz |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: 1990.478.1 |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1">Q: We're on?</sentence><sentence id="2">Ok.</sentence><sentence id="3">Will you tell me your full name please?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="7">A: I'm Alice Lok Cahana.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="9">Q: And where and when were you born?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="11">A: I was born in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span>, <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="12">And we lived in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sarvar</span>.</sentence><sentence id="13">That's not far from the <span class="DLF">Austrian border</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="17">Q: What year were you born?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="19">A: 1929, February 7th.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="21">Q: Would you tell me about your family and your very early childhood in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sarvar</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="23">A: It was a very community-oriented family.</sentence><sentence id="24">My grandfather was a very interesting, self-made industrialist; and he...the community really loved him, and he was elected every year to be the community leader.</sentence><sentence id="25">And it was a very caring family.</sentence><sentence id="26">The rabbi used to come in, lunch time, and...and discuss with him the public affairs; and Grandfather was always available.</sentence><sentence id="27">He was, for me, a very, very beautiful man.</sentence><sentence id="28">He used to tell me stories, and ask me to write stories.</sentence><sentence id="29">So I had...I just really, really loved him.</sentence><sentence id="30">And when Grandmother died in 1939, I felt such a special compassion.</sentence><sentence id="31">I must take somehow care of Grandfather.</sentence><sentence id="32">And always asked him, "Let me do something for you for Shabbat.</sentence><sentence id="33">Let me do....".</sentence><sentence id="34">And he says, "I'm all</sentence><sentence id="36">dressed."</sentence><sentence id="37">When I looked down and I said, "But I think your shoe needs some shining."</sentence><sentence id="38">And he said, "No, you are too big for that.</sentence><sentence id="39">I, I couldn't permit you."</sentence><sentence id="40">And I said, "Please, Grandfather!</sentence><sentence id="41">I just...let me do just something for you."</sentence><sentence id="42">Grandfather was so very special for me.</sentence><sentence id="43">And a very compassionate, wonderful man who took care of the community.</sentence><sentence id="44">Who took care of the orphans of our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>.</sentence><sentence id="45">Anybody who would get married and didn't had family, Grandfather was taking care of them.</sentence><sentence id="46">So it was an open <span class="BUILDING">house</span> for the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">community,</span> in a way.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="73">Q: What about your parents?</sentence><sentence id="74">What were they like?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="77">A: Father was a very elegant, very kind, wonderful man.</sentence><sentence id="78">Mother had a great big responsibility to take care of the four children, because Father was travelling a lot to business.</sentence><sentence id="79">Actually every week, went up to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span>.</sentence><sentence id="80">He had an <span class="BUILDING">office</span> there.</sentence><sentence id="81">And so Mother had a hard responsibility to raising the children; and she was, | think, very stern, very demanding.</sentence><sentence id="82">We had to know always who we are, and there were a lot of restrictions.</sentence><sentence id="83">And, you know, when you're young and...and separate so tragically as we separated, you really don't have a good picture at all.</sentence><sentence id="84">You don't...you have a very distorted picture, of your mother particularly.</sentence><sentence id="85">Uh, you didn't came to terms about how you was accepted, or...or...so that it's very hard for me to give any kind of picture of Mother.</sentence><sentence id="86">I just remember one of my rebellious natures about her.</sentence><sentence id="87">On Mother's Day, the <span class="BUILDING">school</span> was asked always to...children were in the <span class="BUILDING">school</span> asked to perform; and I remember the last Mother's Day, I got a poem about a very soft, gentle, loving mother.</sentence><sentence id="88">And I felt, "It's a mockery.</sentence><sentence id="89">This is not my mother, and I will not read this poem!"</sentence><sentence id="90">And I chose a poem about the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span> that are cut so suddenly down, and it's a very beautiful poem.</sentence><sentence id="91">Until today I remember, because I didn't told my teacher.</sentence><sentence id="92">I didn't told anybody that I</sentence><sentence id="94">will change the script, and I will just say this poem about the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span> that are cut down so terribly harshly, and what is their sin.</sentence><sentence id="95">Almost like I would speak about our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">community</span> that was taken away so suddenly.</sentence><sentence id="96">So the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span> almost replaced this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">community</span>.</sentence><sentence id="97">But, of course, we did not know anything nearer to it before, what will happen to our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">community</span>.</sentence><sentence id="98">But the poem was so interestingly prophetic about this <span class="ENV_FEATURES">forest</span> that it will be erad...eradicated; and the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">trees</span> will all gone and the...and the birds will not sing anymore, and what is the sin of this <span class="ENV_FEATURES">forest</span>?</sentence><sentence id="99">So you can imagine the surprise of my mother, the surprise of my teacher, when I'm coming and talking about the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">forest</span>.</sentence><sentence id="100">So you... you see, I wasn't clear, really, about the mother.</sentence><sentence id="101">If I could fashion her that time, probably I would made her extremely tender, extremely soft; but later I knew how important it was that she was firm and stern, because <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span> was so horrible.</sentence><sentence id="102">And it was almost her sternness, her demands were almost an education in survival, in a way.</sentence><sentence id="103">I don't know how to tell you that.</sentence><sentence id="104">But in very early stage of...of the tragic upheaval in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>, a drunk man came into our <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and says, "You know, you will all be taken out, and you will be all...all be burning up, and so....".</sentence><sentence id="105">He said some horrible words.</sentence><sentence id="106">And I got so frightened, I pretended that I faint.</sentence><sentence id="107">I just was...it was...just fell down.</sentence><sentence id="108">And Mother--instead of taking care of this man, taking him out from <span class="BUILDING">household</span>--she came over first and slapped my face, and said, "In our <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, we don't faint."</sentence><sentence id="109">Well, that was good education in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>, because in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span> we didn't fainted either.</sentence><sentence id="110">And so maybe in that respect, if I...[ should apologize to my wonderful mother who really gave me a little survival instincts.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="153">Q: Tell me about your.... Here's a kleenex.</sentence><sentence id="154">Tell me about your brothers and sister.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="157">A: I had an older sister, who was two and a half year older than I was.</sentence><sentence id="158">Her name was (clearing throat) Edith.</sentence><sentence id="159">Edith was brilliant.</sentence><sentence id="160">She was very, very intelligent.</sentence><sentence id="161">Edith wrote poetry, and Edith helped already in the <span class="BUILDING">office</span>; and she was very self-sufficient.</sentence><sentence id="162">I was meek and shy and afraid.</sentence><sentence id="163">Edith was brave and not afraid.</sentence><sentence id="164">And she was always my shield, my strength.</sentence><sentence id="165">And Edith already earned a salary in the <span class="BUILDING">office</span>, and her first purchase was a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span>.</sentence><sentence id="166">And she was so proud of her purchase; and the first thing that the Germans, when they came in, took away were the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycles</span> and the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">radios</span>.</sentence><sentence id="167">And it was very, very hurting.</sentence><sentence id="168">It was so tangible; because we...we just were not prepared for anything so brutal.</sentence><sentence id="169">That somebody comes into your <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and takes out items, and says, "That you cannot have.</sentence><sentence id="170">That's not yours anymore, no matter how precious that is for you."</sentence><sentence id="171">And in the beginning it was really just items, but later it was life, [you know? (</sentence><sentence id="172">ph)] We didn't knew it in the beginning.</sentence><sentence id="173">So for the whole tragedy, there wasn't much preparation in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="174">If there was any voices from the <span class="NPIP">outside</span>, our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> was pretty much shielded.</sentence><sentence id="175">Our family was even more protected.</sentence><sentence id="176">Our children...we did not know that anything horrible can happen to us.</sentence><sentence id="177">For me, it felt that our family lived in this <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> forever.</sentence><sentence id="178">Everybody knew us.</sentence><sentence id="179">Everybody knew who we are.</sentence><sentence id="180">We knew where our <span class="NPIP">place</span> was.</sentence><sentence id="181">So there was an order that I never felt could be broken.</sentence><sentence id="182">Summers we would go to summer vacations, to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Balaton</span> [a <span class="REGION">resort area</span> and <span class="ENV_FEATURES">lake</span> in <span class="REGION">western Hungary</span>, 55 miles southwest of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span>]; and in...it was an industrious family.</sentence><sentence id="183">It was a productive family.</sentence><sentence id="184">Even if we were wealthy, it wasn't...that was not important.</sentence><sentence id="185">Everybody kind of had to do a task or that task, and be helpful in the <span class="BUILDING">household</span> or whatever.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="221">Q: Your brother, too?</sentence><sentence id="222">You had a brother...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="225">A: And we had two...I had two little brothers.</sentence><sentence id="226">So, because Mother had this task, I have decided I will be the the mother of my little brother; the younger one.</sentence><sentence id="227">The older one was too close to me, and | didn't have any jurisdiction.</sentence><sentence id="228">But the little one, I could be the mother; and I adored that little boy.</sentence><sentence id="229">His name...my older brother's name is Ocsi, and the younger was Imi.</sentence><sentence id="230">And Imi was three and a half year old when we went to the (cough)...to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>, and he was so adorable.</sentence><sentence id="231">I used to pretend that I'd play <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, and...and he's really my...my baby.</sentence><sentence id="232">And I will shield him, and I will play mother all the time; and be that mother that I wanted my mother really should be: very tender, very loving, very caring. (</sentence><sentence id="233">Clearing throat) All four of us one day found ourself in a calamity we could not imagine.</sentence><sentence id="234">I was reading a book--Stefan Zweig's book, The...The Restless Heart-- and I thought, "Oh, they say that they will take us to ajourney.</sentence><sentence id="235">I will save this book.</sentence><sentence id="236">It's a wonderful romance.</sentence><sentence id="237">I will read it on the journey."</sentence><sentence id="238">Because when you travel, you take a book and you read.</sentence><sentence id="239">Not knowing where they take us, how they take us; and that uh they really will reduce us, slowly, to animals.</sentence><sentence id="240">And everything came in degrees; steps, you know.</sentence><sentence id="241">And you always said, "No.</sentence><sentence id="242">Really, it's not happening.</sentence><sentence id="243">It can't happen in the 20th century."</sentence><sentence id="244">First telling you that you have to leave your <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="245">What does it mean?</sentence><sentence id="246">You are going, and they say the word, a very strange word.</sentence><sentence id="247">It was nothing in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="248">They're taking you to a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="273">Q: Uh let's go back just a little bit, alright?</sentence><sentence id="274">Uh, because I want to know really how it happened.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="277">When did things...before the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span>, when did things begin to change?</sentence><sentence id="278">What was it like</sentence></p><p></p><p><sentence id="282">when the war broke out?</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="283">A: Right.</sentence><sentence id="284">But it came gradually.</sentence><sentence id="285"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Degrees</span>, you see.</sentence><sentence id="286">And to a smaller <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> it came slower than to a bigger <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>, where you had radios all the time.</sentence><sentence id="287">And...and we knew the war.</sentence><sentence id="288">We knew that there were refugees.</sentence><sentence id="289">Uh, poor people always came.</sentence><sentence id="290">Almost every day we had some visitor who sat at our <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">table</span> and told stories what's happening.</sentence><sentence id="291">Sometimes we didn't believe them.</sentence><sentence id="292">Sometimes we felt they're just telling us story to get, maybe, the meal or something else.</sentence><sentence id="293">Then...and now we couldn't have help any more in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="294">And we...we got a Jewish girl, who was a refugee from <span class="COUNTRY">Czechoslovakia</span>; and she used to tell me stories that she had to go flee in the middle of the night, and she couldn't find her boots.</sentence><sentence id="295">And she just found one boot and she went with one boot, crossing the <span class="DLF">border</span> over into <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="296">I couldn't imagine such a horrible thing; that somebody in the winter who... who walking in one boots to cross the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>.</sentence><sentence id="297">But we always felt so very protected; and Grandfather would say, "Look, maybe it happens in <span class="COUNTRY">Poland</span>, in <span class="COUNTRY">Czechoslovakia</span>.</sentence><sentence id="298">But <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> is civilized.</sentence><sentence id="299">We are very good taxpayers.</sentence><sentence id="300">They need us here.</sentence><sentence id="301">It will not happen."</sentence><sentence id="302">And then one day, they say that you pack up twenty-five kilo.</sentence><sentence id="303">What is twenty-five kilo?</sentence><sentence id="304">What do you take?</sentence><sentence id="305">Your <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">pots and pans</span>?</sentence><sentence id="306">Your photographs?</sentence><sentence id="307">Your...food?</sentence><sentence id="308">I remember that day, that Mother send me to somebody, to a neighbor, to get a recipe about uh certain--like toll house cookies, that you just spoke about a few minutes ago--because for the trip that would keep longer.</sentence><sentence id="309">And I thought to myself, "Gee, I don't even like it.</sentence><sentence id="310">Why would we take...?</sentence><sentence id="311">I would never eat that.</sentence><sentence id="312">I mean, it's just so dry."</sentence><sentence id="313">So I went and got the recipe; and so Mother and the help and all, they're baking up these toll house cookies or whatever, they.... It was some some kind of a bread kind of thing (cough) for the journey.</sentence><sentence id="316">Prior to that, there was talks about rumors that maybe they're taking us to <span class="COUNTRY">Madagascar</span>.</sentence><sentence id="317">And so quickly Mother enrolled to a <span class="BUILDING">class</span>, <span class="BUILDING">baking class</span>.</sentence><sentence id="318">I don't know from where they...some of the women got the information that they ...that they need to be bakers, or maybe they.... I don't know what was the logic.</sentence><sentence id="319">Anyhow, somebody gave a class on baking...a <span class="BUILDING">baking class</span>.</sentence><sentence id="320">And the class was held at the <span class="BUILDING">rabbi's house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="321">And I used to transcribe the recipes for Mother, for all this fancy, wonderful bakers...bake...baking goods.</sentence><sentence id="322">So those are the recollections that I have, that we knew that something will happen.</sentence><sentence id="323">But really nobody, nobody had imagination; and then (clearing throat) to...to really believe the extent.</sentence><sentence id="324">Nobody.</sentence><sentence id="325">And then because of Grandfather position, they arranged a special <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span> for a couple of people...uh, where the <span class="BUILDING">school</span> was, opposite the <span class="BUILDING">synagogue</span>.</sentence><sentence id="326">And I had a picture of the <span class="BUILDING">synagogue</span>.</sentence><sentence id="327">I will show it a little later.</sentence><sentence id="328">And...and so it was the <span class="BUILDING">school-house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="329">So we were in the <span class="BUILDING">schoolhouse</span>.</sentence><sentence id="330">Some people in that <span class="REGION">area</span>...the way they divided the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span>, they build a <span class="DLF">wooden wall</span> one end of the <span class="DLF">street</span> and the other end of the <span class="DLF">street</span>. (</sentence><sentence id="331">Clearing throat) And it was a (cough) kind of a natrow passage with the <span class="BUILDING">synagogue</span>, the <span class="BUILDING">rabbi's house</span>, the <span class="BUILDING">school</span> and uh two more <span class="BUILDING">Jewish homes</span>.</sentence><sentence id="332">And um...the Jewish butcher who...who lived behind the...the <span class="BUILDING">synagogue</span>.</sentence><sentence id="333">So this was one <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span>.</sentence><sentence id="334">The other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span> that they divised was in the <span class="BUILDING">brick factory</span>, that the rest of the community went.</sentence><sentence id="335">And we had some permissions to go out twice a week to the <span class="BUILDING">market--</span> that was probably ten minutes away--to buy some food in the <span class="BUILDING">market</span>.</sentence><sentence id="336">But it wasn't any warm water; so when we were there for about a week, I had an idea--I always loved children very much--to gather all the children.</sentence><sentence id="337">There were about ten...ten, twelve children--and take them to the <span class="INT_SPACE">ritual bath</span>; because it wasn't any warm water to wash them for</sentence><sentence id="339">"Shabbat."</sentence><sentence id="340">But I didn't dare to ask my mother, because she wouldn't let me and we couldn't go out from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span> only with permission and she wouldn't let me to speak.</sentence><sentence id="341">I mean, it was not in my position to go and speak to anybody.</sentence><sentence id="342">But the soldier who was watching us was a little bit bored; and I went over to him and said, "Look at the children.</sentence><sentence id="343">Look how dirty they are.</sentence><sentence id="344">What do you think, I will take them out; and I promise you, I promise you I'll bring them back in half an hour.</sentence><sentence id="345">Just wash them in the <span class="INT_SPACE">ritual bath</span>."</sentence><sentence id="346">And to my great amazement, he permitted that.</sentence><sentence id="347">And so, without Mother's knowledge, I assembled the children and took them out; and sure enough, we came back.</sentence><sentence id="348">And Mother didn't found out, so I felt very, very lucky; because you can imagine the risk.</sentence><sentence id="349">And then I had another idea.</sentence><sentence id="350">Why don't I take the children into the <span class="DLF">garden</span> of the <span class="BUILDING">synagogue</span>--that was just secluded--and I and Edith will be the kindergarten teacher, and we'll teach them songs and play with them.</sentence><sentence id="351">And we did that.</sentence><sentence id="352">So Edith was wonderful, because she right away felt this is a very good idea; and also said, "Let us not say it to Mother, because she will not let us.</sentence><sentence id="353">She will not let us do it, because she will say, "It's too much work;," or, "Something may happen to the children or to you."</sentence><sentence id="354">She will not agree.</sentence><sentence id="355">It's...it's our...." So in a way, we started to be very independent and kind of rebellious, and continued to do that even in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span>.</sentence><sentence id="356">And...and sure enough, we had the children there.</sentence><sentence id="357">And one day the <span class="DLF">door</span> opens as we are singing and the children are in a circle, and Mother comes in with a bowl of cherries.</sentence><sentence id="358">She went to the <span class="BUILDING">market</span>.</sentence><sentence id="359">They let her out, and she brought the bowl of cherries to us.</sentence><sentence id="360">So she knew all the time what we are doing; and those were the most wonderful cherries I ever had.</sentence><sentence id="361">I never, never had anything so wonderful since then.</sentence><sentence id="362">And so, Mother knew Edith and I were the kindergarten teachers of these children; and it was now official that we took care of the children.</sentence><sentence id="365">So one day they say that (cough)...now, that special ...special permission is not granted anymore.</sentence><sentence id="366">We also going over to the <span class="BUILDING">brick factory</span>.</sentence><sentence id="367">And we went over, and...for one night, and we slept on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>; and the next morning they took us to the <span class="BUILDING">railroad station</span>.</sentence><sentence id="368">Marching through our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> was like a scene out of the Bible.</sentence><sentence id="369">From ancient time.</sentence><sentence id="370">I could not tell you the humiliation I felt; carrying our baggage, passing our <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, looking into our <span class="DLF">window</span>, seeing the people who occupied our <span class="BUILDING">house</span> looking at us, and nobody stopping.</sentence><sentence id="371">They marched us to the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">railroad</span>.</sentence><sentence id="372">Nobody says, "Come on.</sentence><sentence id="373">You cannot do it."</sentence><sentence id="374">On a June day, 1944, 20th century men cannot be just taken from their <span class="BUILDING">homes</span>, from their <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>, from their <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, from their belonging, marched into a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>, seventy people. (</sentence><sentence id="375">Cough) Before they marched us all in, they took the men to a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">labor camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="376">So when Father found out that they're taking the men to a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">labor camp</span>, one morning he got up and said hastily goodbye to us; and said, "Just don't forget who you are," and, "Escape."</sentence><sentence id="377">Those are the two words I remember.</sentence><sentence id="378">And he went up to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span>; and somehow, because he was so sure and so very elegant, nobody stopped him.</sentence><sentence id="379">And he went, like always he would go to his <span class="BUILDING">office</span>; and here he got in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span> the Raoul Wallenberg papers.</sentence><sentence id="380">And my father did not go to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>; but we, the family, (clearing throat) were in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span> in the hottest day with one sanitary bucket for seventy people--seventy to seventy-five people.</sentence><sentence id="381">Our bundled (cough) <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">luggage</span> piled on top of each other; realizing that we have not even <span class="INT_SPACE">standing room</span>, or very little.</sentence><sentence id="382">I tried to be close to the <span class="DLF">window</span>, and I remember I was standing all the time; because it was almost just maybe room for squatting down where you were standing.</sentence><sentence id="383">But really no sitting</sentence><sentence id="385">0 <span class="NPIP">place</span>; and Edith next to me.</sentence><sentence id="386">At the <span class="DLF">border</span> from <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> to <span class="COUNTRY">Czechoslovakia</span>, they opened the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="387">And I asked the soldier if he would let us go to the <span class="INT_SPACE">bathroom</span>.</sentence><sentence id="388">He said, "There's no <span class="INT_SPACE">bathroom</span> here, but you can go behind the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="389">I remember that it was (clearing throat) very funny feeling to be moment free, and look at the <span class="DLF">sky</span>; but we still did not know where are we going.</sentence><sentence id="390">And Edith keep telling me, "Maybe we just...they will just take us to work.</sentence><sentence id="391">And maybe very soon that we will come back, and...you know.</sentence><sentence id="392">I mean, it will not be so bad."</sentence><sentence id="393">They took us day and night.</sentence><sentence id="394">And at one <span class="NPIP">place</span>, the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> suddenly stopped; at Vecses (ph)], and we suddenly understood.</sentence><sentence id="395">And I could see through the blinds that some people--three people--jumped down from the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="396">And, of course, the SS right away after them; and I think they caught two of them with the...and shot them right away.</sentence><sentence id="397">So even if the rest of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> could not see--the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span> <span class="NPIP">inside</span>--I saw all what happened, because I was so...you couldn't move away from your <span class="NPIP">position</span>.</sentence><sentence id="398">Wherever you was positioned, you was like plastered; and it was a little plank there open, and I could see through and also a little bit through the <span class="DLF">window</span>.</sentence><sentence id="399">And I saw how they dragged this man that they caught with their dog.</sentence><sentence id="400">So I witnessed first time that savage brutality that really was the lead in to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="401">And when the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> stopped again, we arrived.</sentence><sentence id="402">This horrible <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="403">Everybody in strange uniforms.</sentence><sentence id="404">I told Edith, "It looks that they took us to the wrong <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="405">Somehow, somebody will come and apologize.</sentence><sentence id="406">Somebody will say it's totally wrong.</sentence><sentence id="407">You don't belong here.</sentence><sentence id="408">This looks like an <span class="BUILDING">insane asylum</span>.</sentence><sentence id="409">People are shaved heads and striped clothes."</sentence><sentence id="410">So since we couldn't comb our hair and Mother was so very "Pedant" [German word meaning a person who is meticulous or precise], Mother said, "Put a handkerchief over your head, you know, and come down from the...from the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>."</sentence><sentence id="413">1 And I had my little brother, who couldn't find his shoe.</sentence><sentence id="414">And I was trying to tell him that he has to be more orderly.</sentence><sentence id="415">A three and a half year old must find his shoe.</sentence><sentence id="416">There was no time to look for anything.</sentence><sentence id="417">Just had to go down, <span class="DLF">line</span> up in five.</sentence><sentence id="418">And fast, and rapid.</sentence><sentence id="419">And anybody who couldn't go was just hit by the stick.</sentence><sentence id="420">It was like madness.</sentence><sentence id="421">I (cough) lined up; and a tall German soldier came to me and started to, you know, look a minute and then just looked at me and said, "Haben Sie Kinder?" "</sentence><sentence id="422">Do you have children?"</sentence><sentence id="423">I said, "No, I'm barely fifteen!"</sentence><sentence id="424">And smiling and kind of stretching out and being very, um..."I look so grown-up now.</sentence><sentence id="425">Now I really can do what I want to do."</sentence><sentence id="426">Feeling...you know, that feeling of self confidence.</sentence><sentence id="427">And with that motion, with that absolute movement, pointed one <span class="NPIP">direction</span>.</sentence><sentence id="428">And Mother and my little brother to the other direction.</sentence><sentence id="429">And then they asked again: "Children step aside.</sentence><sentence id="430">Children under fifteen step aside."</sentence><sentence id="431">So Edith said, "Step aside.</sentence><sentence id="432">Step aside.</sentence><sentence id="433">They will give you better food.</sentence><sentence id="434">I will work, and you don't have to work.</sentence><sentence id="435">Just step aside."</sentence><sentence id="436">I said, "No, I want to be with you.</sentence><sentence id="437">Let's just stay together."</sentence><sentence id="438">Edith said, "No, just step aside."</sentence><sentence id="439">And I stepped aside. (</sentence><sentence id="440">Cough) Seconds...everything, seconds.</sentence><sentence id="441">It was like...like in a mirage because first your eye was not even used to the light after this darkness in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>; and then this sunlight...this strong sunlight and the shouting.</sentence><sentence id="442">So you wasn't really pulled together, and you couldn't concentrate and you couldn't understand the order.</sentence><sentence id="443">And I stepped aside, realizing in a few minutes that I don't see Mother.</sentence><sentence id="444">I don't see my brothers.</sentence><sentence id="445">I don't see Edith.</sentence><sentence id="446">I'm totally alone.</sentence><sentence id="447">And I am marching, marching, marching with the people.</sentence><sentence id="448">And they took me to C Lager and put me in a <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span> after they took away my clothes, shaved my hair and had a <span class="INT_SPACE">shower</span> and gave me some kind of other clothes that came from another <span class="NPIP">place</span> at another time.</sentence><sentence id="451">2 (Cough) And I was in the C Lager in <span class="BUILDING">Block 12</span>.</sentence><sentence id="452">Realizing that I'm totally alone.</sentence><sentence id="453">I try to ask the Kapo--the one who was in charge of us-- "Where's my mother, and where's my sister?"</sentence><sentence id="454">And she slapped me, and said, "Those words are not used here.</sentence><sentence id="455">Don't dare to ever mention!"</sentence><sentence id="456">Introduction to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="457">But the first day, I tried to orient myself.</sentence><sentence id="458">I knew I must find Edith.</sentence><sentence id="459">I must find Edith, no matter what.</sentence><sentence id="460">I tried to ask people, and they say to me, "We don't know.</sentence><sentence id="461">You cannot go close to the <span class="DLF">electric fence</span>, because you will be sucked in and you will be electrocuted.</sentence><sentence id="462">You cannot go out from the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>; only when they tell you.</sentence><sentence id="463">The orders are very strict.</sentence><sentence id="464">They beat you, if you don't comply.</sentence><sentence id="465">So forget about it.</sentence><sentence id="466">You cannot go nowhere.</sentence><sentence id="467">We are in."</sentence><sentence id="468">I found myself in a <span class="DLF">block</span> with a thousand people, talking all kind of languages.</sentence><sentence id="469">We were given a <span class="NPIP">place</span>--six people slept on a plank of wood, on top of us an other <span class="NPIP">layer</span>.</sentence><sentence id="470">And if one of us had to turn, all the others had to turn; because it was so narrow.</sentence><sentence id="471">One cover, no <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">pillow</span>, no <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">mattress</span>.</sentence><sentence id="472">And they gave us a piece of bread.</sentence><sentence id="473">And I, right away...I...1 was very bad with food.</sentence><sentence id="474">Also, I think this was one of my quarrels with Mother, because she always worried that I'm too skinny, too...too tall, too skinny--that I don't eat well.</sentence><sentence id="475">So I always refused eating.</sentence><sentence id="476">And I...I said, "I will not eat this terrible food here.</sentence><sentence id="477">I just will not."</sentence><sentence id="478">They gave me a piece of margarine, and I gave it away. "</sentence><sentence id="479">I'm not eating this food, and I'm not hungry anyhow."</sentence><sentence id="480">So, I didn't ate the first day.</sentence><sentence id="481">But the most important thing was for me to find out where is Edith; to find out what is...what's the system here.</sentence><sentence id="482">How... who would know?</sentence><sentence id="483">So I went all around, and tried to know what could I find out.</sentence><sentence id="484">Some girl told me that she knows that another group of people were brought the same time into the B Lager--was exactly opposite the C Lager, divided by a <span class="DLF">gate</span>.</sentence><sentence id="485">Two <span class="DLF">gates</span>, actually; the <span class="DLF">gate</span> of the C Lager, and the <span class="DLF">gate</span> of the B Lager.</sentence><sentence id="486">And she knows that some</sentence><sentence id="488">3 Hungarian girls were brought that day when I arrived to the <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="489">It took me a couple of days to orient; and I gave away my...my bread and my...my margarine again (cough) for somebody to give me a piece of paper, and a pencil to write.</sentence><sentence id="490">And I got a tiny piece of paper; and I saw what happens early, early in the morning before the whistle.</sentence><sentence id="491">That whistle was sounded for us to get out to be counted. (</sentence><sentence id="492">Cough) They took the food over to the B Lager.</sentence><sentence id="493">A couple of girls were chosen out--a couple of people from other <span class="DLF">blocks</span>--to go and help the...the cans to be taken over to the other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="494">So I knew if I wake up early in the morning, I may have a chance to talk to one of these people who are selected who go over there; and maybe I can send a message over to the other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="495">Well, only...we were young-- fourteen year could think, or fifteen year old could think so simplistically that a piece of paper will reach my sister.</sentence><sentence id="496">And it was such a tiny paper rolled up.</sentence><sentence id="497">The only thing was on it: "T'm in C Lager, <span class="BUILDING">Block 12</span>.</sentence><sentence id="498">Come."</sentence><sentence id="499">And wrote on her name, on the other <span class="NPIP">side</span>: "Edith Lok."</sentence><sentence id="500">So one morning, a sympathetic woman was taking over the can of food.</sentence><sentence id="501">Sympathetic woman was, because there wasn't too much kindness in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="502">The rules were so strict.</sentence><sentence id="503">People were so harassed.</sentence><sentence id="504">Nobody smiled.</sentence><sentence id="505">Nobody made...did favors, so nobody could do...jeopardize their own life for somebody else's very easily.</sentence><sentence id="506">But some...somebody I asked, "Would you take over this for my sister, this piece of paper?"</sentence><sentence id="507">And that somebody said, "Yes."</sentence><sentence id="508">And that piece of paper went over to the B Lager.</sentence><sentence id="509">After that I would skim the <span class="DLF">walls</span>.</sentence><sentence id="510">And I had to be very careful to come out from the <span class="DLF">block</span> before the whistle blew, because there were guards in two ends of the <span class="DLF">block</span>.</sentence><sentence id="511">You couldn't go out from the <span class="DLF">blocks</span> whenever you wanted, not even to the <span class="INT_SPACE">bathroom</span>.</sentence><sentence id="512">So you had to...because I was so skinny, I just could go close to the <span class="DLF">wall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="513">And, of course, it was not permitted to wander around the...the yards of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="514">Nobody could go out.</sentence><sentence id="515">The searchlight was on.</sentence><sentence id="516">You just couldn't do these things, except very special privileged people, maybe.</sentence><sentence id="517">But I was...I figured out how to go by the <span class="DLF">wall</span> where the light would not shine.</sentence><sentence id="518">And so I went to the people who took the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">can</span> over</sentence><sentence id="520">4 to the <span class="RIVER">B Lager</span>.</sentence><sentence id="521">And one day...I did it for three days, and one day a piece of paper came back tome.</sentence><sentence id="522">And written on it: "Iam coming.</sentence><sentence id="523">Edith."</sentence><sentence id="524">So miracle happened even in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>; because three days later, Edith was one of those who brought the food over.</sentence><sentence id="525">What happened that that woman who took over found a relative there.</sentence><sentence id="526">She wanted to stay in the B Lager, and came (cough) and exchanged with Edith the <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="527">And had to be so swiftly done, so risky; and Edith came and brought over the can of food, or brought back the empty can of food--the empty can (cough) that went over before with the food.</sentence><sentence id="528">And so Edith and I were reunited in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="529">It was such a miracle.</sentence><sentence id="530">I just knew that I never want to be without her ever, ever.</sentence><sentence id="531">And we cling to each other; but it was very risky because it was started to be selections.</sentence><sentence id="532">And the man who selected me into life, I found out later, was Mengele; because he came often to select.</sentence><sentence id="533">Sometimes he looked at people with small hands.</sentence><sentence id="534">Sometimes he looked for blue-eyed.</sentence><sentence id="535">Sometimes he looked children who were tall.</sentence><sentence id="536">Sometimes children who were short.</sentence><sentence id="537">It was always an upheaval when Mengele came.</sentence><sentence id="538">He was so elegant, and he looked so good; and he would...he would just somehow with his sight terrorize the people and put fear in them.</sentence><sentence id="539">And we had to run naked in front of him, and he would and he would select ..."life"..."death"... (snapping fingers)..."life"..."death."</sentence><sentence id="540">He just with his hand motioned.</sentence><sentence id="541">One day Edith said, "You know, I don't feel good anymore.</sentence><sentence id="542">I don't feel good."</sentence><sentence id="543">And our little friend, Ibi got very delirious from the same bad <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">plank bed</span>; was the plank board that we shared.</sentence><sentence id="544">And Ibi started to talk words I couldn't understand, and was...she had terrible high fever.</sentence><sentence id="545">And anybody who was sick or had any kind of rash or something was selected in the morning out.</sentence><sentence id="546">Sometimes they took them to the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="547">Sometimes they took them somewhere else.</sentence><sentence id="548">This morning they took <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Ibi</span>.</sentence><sentence id="551">5 And then the next morning, Edith says, "I...I feel sick.</sentence><sentence id="552">You must let me go.</sentence><sentence id="553">I must go into the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span>."</sentence><sentence id="554">And I begged her, "Edith, you can't!</sentence><sentence id="555">They will take you!"</sentence><sentence id="556">But somehow they saw her, that she was sick.</sentence><sentence id="557">She couldn't stand up for the counting.</sentence><sentence id="558">And they took her to the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span>; but by now I was veteran.</sentence><sentence id="559">I knew when is the best time to go away from group, when I can go in and see her.</sentence><sentence id="560">So every morning I would go in to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Edith</span> and see her there.</sentence><sentence id="561">See Ibi, my friend, totally in delirium; and see Edith getting higher and higher fever every...every day. (</sentence><sentence id="562">Sniffling) I went to the woman at the <span class="DLF">gate</span>, and begged her to let me in; and if I would give away my bread she let me in.</sentence><sentence id="563">And she asked me some favors to do.</sentence><sentence id="564">Not so kindly, of course.</sentence><sentence id="565">At least, they were favors.</sentence><sentence id="566">She said, "First take all the dead out.</sentence><sentence id="567">Carry the dead out.</sentence><sentence id="568">Then you can go in."</sentence><sentence id="569">I never saw a dead person before, and now I had to carry the dead people out first in order to see Edith.</sentence><sentence id="570">And I told her...I said, "I'm not afraid.</sentence><sentence id="571">They were just like me yesterday.</sentence><sentence id="572">I'm not afraid."</sentence><sentence id="573">So I carried them.</sentence><sentence id="574">Sometimes I had to carry out the... the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bedpans</span>, the...the--they were not bedpans that...they were buckets (cough), filled buckets that spilled over as you walked (cough)--in order to go in to Edith.</sentence><sentence id="575">But there were so few who could get into the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span> that when they saw me coming, people from all the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span> pulled at me. "</sentence><sentence id="576">What's happening <span class="NPIP">outside</span>?</sentence><sentence id="577">Tell what's happening!"</sentence><sentence id="578">And I knew that I must tell them stories.</sentence><sentence id="579">I must tell them that the war is almost over, that they just should hold out, that I just heard gun shot...shootings in the middle of the night.</sentence><sentence id="580">Nothing will happen, and they just...just be brave ...hold out, because the war will be soon over.</sentence><sentence id="581">We are going <span class="BUILDING">home</span> soon.</sentence><sentence id="582">So those were my stories every morning, before I could see Edith.</sentence><sentence id="583">And one</sentence><sentence id="585">6 morning when she wasn't any more in that high fever, I said, "Now when I'm taking the dead, you crawl with me.</sentence><sentence id="586">You come after me, because they're taking away.</sentence><sentence id="587">Ibi is already not here.</sentence><sentence id="588">You must come with me out of here."</sentence><sentence id="589">And that's what happened.</sentence><sentence id="590">Edith came out.</sentence><sentence id="591">And here we...we were (cough) together again.</sentence><sentence id="592">Somehow Edith got better, but very weak.</sentence><sentence id="593">And then there were selections again and again and again.</sentence><sentence id="594">One day they said to us, "You will get winter clothes.</sentence><sentence id="595">Go.</sentence><sentence id="596">March up."</sentence><sentence id="597">They selected a bunch of children.</sentence><sentence id="598">This time, the Blockaltester selected the children.</sentence><sentence id="599">And she kind of told us stories; because, of course, the SS wouldn't tell where you are going.</sentence><sentence id="600">But she said, "You will get warm clothes.</sentence><sentence id="601">Don't be afraid.</sentence><sentence id="602">Just go.</sentence><sentence id="603">Just go.</sentence><sentence id="604">Warm clothes."</sentence><sentence id="605">And I said to Edith, "Don't worry.</sentence><sentence id="606">I will come back and bring you some warm clothes.</sentence><sentence id="607">I will just snatch another one extra for you." (</sentence><sentence id="608">Cough) They took us to a <span class="INT_SPACE">shower</span>. (</sentence><sentence id="609">Cough) They said it will be a disinfection (cough) first; but instead of a shower or disinfection, it was a different <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="610">There was a <span class="DLF">window</span>, and was written <span class="NPIP">outside</span>: "<span class="BUILDING">Bathhouse</span>."</sentence><sentence id="611">They took away our clothes.</sentence><sentence id="612">They asked us to put our shoes together, tie our shoe laces together, and put our clothes down; and we will get it back after that they disinfected.</sentence><sentence id="613">But it turned out that the <span class="INT_SPACE">shower</span> did not work, that it was really the gas.</sentence><sentence id="614">And the tragic...(pause)...the realization came only after; when we came back, and this Blockaltester couldn't believe that we are alive.</sentence><sentence id="615">And she looked at us and she started to scream, "How could it happen?</sentence><sentence id="616">Why are you back?</sentence><sentence id="617">You're not supposed to be back."</sentence><sentence id="618">I think that was the only time in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span> that the gas did not work.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="972">Q: Can you tell us what it was like inside the <span class="INT_SPACE">gas chamber</span>?</sentence><sentence id="973">Can you describe what you were in, and</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p></p><p><sentence id="979">7 a little bit about what you felt?</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="980">A: Of course we didn't know, you see; because they told us that it's a shower, that we go for disinfection, that we'll get warm clothes.</sentence><sentence id="981">I checked out this story very carefully later.</sentence><sentence id="982">In <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>, I met two of my friends who survived from the same <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">hometown</span>; and I told them my story about the <span class="INT_SPACE">gas chamber</span>.</sentence><sentence id="983">And one of them told, "I was there, too!"</sentence><sentence id="984">So, I know only that it was dark, that the Germans were terribly nervous, that when we came out they were very angry.</sentence><sentence id="985">They throwed some clothes, not our own clothes, back to us.</sentence><sentence id="986">Nothing was, of course, disinfected or warm or anything.</sentence><sentence id="987">We were...we couldn't understand the chaos, their anger, their bewilderness, their shouting--"That never happened before!"--and marching us angrily back to the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>.</sentence><sentence id="988">But very soon after, we knew where we were.</sentence><sentence id="989">The fabric of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span> started to slowly break down.</sentence><sentence id="990">The order.</sentence><sentence id="991">The closer the Allies got, more chaos came about.</sentence><sentence id="992">The food was not distributed anymore in time.</sentence><sentence id="993">The...the nervousness of the...the SS was just very felt.</sentence><sentence id="994">I remember Irma Grese.</sentence><sentence id="995">Irma Grese was the SS--the supervisor, the most beautiful woman, like a statue--who would come and count us.</sentence><sentence id="996">She was a pair with Mengele.</sentence><sentence id="997">When the two of them appeared, it was terror and fear.</sentence><sentence id="998">It was... always meant death.</sentence><sentence id="999">And Irma Grese would...her blond hair, beautifully coiffeured, and her beautiful shirt--blue shirt, starched and clean and crisp--and her...and the way she walked, made us even more feel that we are less than animals.</sentence><sentence id="1000">We are not human beings anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1001">We don't have individuality.</sentence><sentence id="1002">We don't have...we don't have nothing left.</sentence><sentence id="1003">And the chaos was bigger and bigger.</sentence><sentence id="1004">Mengele didn't came anymore, and Irma Grese didn't came, and...came anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1005">And they say that</sentence><sentence id="1007">8 selections...and the selections went on and on, and fast.</sentence><sentence id="1008">And one night, (sniffle... cough) we were selected.</sentence><sentence id="1009">It...I told Edith, "Wherever you will be selected, I will go.</sentence><sentence id="1010">I will go."</sentence><sentence id="1011">I am...I was younger, and I can't...I could..."I somehow will go after, don't worry."</sentence><sentence id="1012">And we found somewhere...somebody gave us a little red bead, tiny red bead.</sentence><sentence id="1013">We used to put on our cheeks to look a little healthier; and the red bead went around in that...you know, in that circle, so everybody used it a little bit.</sentence><sentence id="1014">I don't know how much it helped.</sentence><sentence id="1015">We didn't have a mirror.</sentence><sentence id="1016">We didn't hardly look.</sentence><sentence id="1017">But anyhow, the selection was very swift and very fast.</sentence><sentence id="1018">It was an SS woman selecting.</sentence><sentence id="1019">And I saw that Edith was selected to one <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1020">And we were so emaciated, so skinny by then.</sentence><sentence id="1021">And I had an idea.</sentence><sentence id="1022">I said to the German woman, I came in front of her, "It's my birthday today."</sentence><sentence id="1023">And she put her hand one way, and then shifted to the other <span class="NPIP">direction</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1024">And it was like (snapping fingers)... like a moment; and I was motioned toward Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1025">And that selection was a very good selection, because they took us to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.9506102" long="14.722064">Guben</span> [a subcamp of Gro Rosen, located in <span class="COUNTRY">Prussia</span> (<span class="REGION">Brandenburg Province</span>)].</sentence><sentence id="1026">We traveled through the night, and arrived to in [Darseose (ph); Gros Gastrose?]</sentence><sentence id="1027"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.9506102" long="14.722064">Guben</span>, where we would work in a <span class="BUILDING">munition factory</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1078">Q: Let us pause here.</sentence><sentence id="1079">This is a good <span class="NPIP">place</span> to change tapes.</sentence><sentence id="1080">Let's do it.</sentence><sentence id="1081">OK.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1088">9 TAPE #2</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1092">Q: OK.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1094">A: Several months.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1096">Q: You're in...you're in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.9506102" long="14.722064">Guben</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1098">A: In <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.9506102" long="14.722064">Guben</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1100">Q: Tell us about <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.9506102" long="14.722064">Guben</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1101">What was it like?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1104">A: It was a smaller <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1105">It was a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">work camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1106">We had to go early in the morning to work in an <span class="BUILDING">ammunition factory</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1107">We worked until late at night.</sentence><sentence id="1108">We came back.</sentence><sentence id="1109">We got some food, and could go to...to the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1110">Uh...I was again with children.</sentence><sentence id="1111">We were again together with children; and the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span> were much smaller.</sentence><sentence id="1112">It was a...it was a better <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1113">Anything...you can compare nothing to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1114">It looked to me that it's a safer <span class="NPIP">place</span>, even if we had to work very hard.</sentence><sentence id="1115">And it was very difficult with the big <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">machines</span>, but it wasn't so harsh.</sentence><sentence id="1116">Except the weather that you had to march to that <span class="BUILDING">factory</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1117">But one day close to Christmas times, the SS came in and told us that we have to decorate the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span> for Christmas.</sentence><sentence id="1118">And anyone who will decorate it the best, any <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span> who...who will look the best, will get a prize.</sentence><sentence id="1119">So we were children and we wanted the prize so much; but we looked around.</sentence><sentence id="1120">There was no paper, no pencil.</sentence><sentence id="1121">Nothing to decorate with.</sentence><sentence id="1122">I told Edith, "I have a</sentence></p><p></p><p><sentence id="1126">0 great idea.</sentence><sentence id="1127">I know how we decorate the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1128">We will choreograph ourselves as candelabra; and when the SS comes in to...to count us, or to see the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>, we will be the candelabra and we will be the art."</sentence><sentence id="1129">So Edith said, "Well, it's not the best idea.</sentence><sentence id="1130">But I think....</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1131">We...we will talk to others also."</sentence><sentence id="1132">So we talked to all the others.</sentence><sentence id="1133">And we had one broom to clean out that <span class="NPIP">place</span>; and I took the broom and I gave everybody a piece of the broom to hold up.</sentence><sentence id="1134">And we choreographed ourselves as a living candelabra.</sentence><sentence id="1135">We were the recipient of the award for the decorated <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="51.9506102" long="14.722064">Guben</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1136">And guess what was the reward: a tiny little can of snails.</sentence><sentence id="1137">But Edith was so intelligent and so smart; and she said, "You know, this is so wonderful; because only the most enlightened people eat this kind of very elegant food.</sentence><sentence id="1138">I mean, you wouldn't know what this is, of course, but this is just a delicacy.</sentence><sentence id="1139">I tell you what.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1140">We will not eat it now, but we will eat it on your birthday.</sentence><sentence id="1141">When you have in February your birthday, we will open the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">can</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1142">The magic can."</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1143">In February, we were already on the death march.</sentence><sentence id="1144">The death march was going from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span> to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span> in the middle of the winter in <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>, without underwear, without socks, without coat; just a blanket what we had to wrap around us.</sentence><sentence id="1145">Somebody maybe had a coat, but a very few.</sentence><sentence id="1146">And this is how they...we had to march from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span> to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1147">At night, whenever the cattles....the cattles were taken out from the...from the <span class="BUILDING">barn</span>, we were housed there.</sentence><sentence id="1148">And next morning and we would have to march.</sentence><sentence id="1149">Once we arrived to a <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1150">It was not covered with snow.</sentence><sentence id="1151">It was a <span class="DLF">field</span>, and I remember they let us for a minute sit down.</sentence><sentence id="1152">And the grass were eaten up in a matter of seconds.</sentence><sentence id="1153">We were that hungry, that the ...that little <span class="ENV_FEATURES">grass</span> that was</sentence></p><p><sentence id="1154">: Probably February 1945.</sentence></p><p></p><p><sentence id="1158">1 under the snow were taken up and eaten up by all of us.</sentence><sentence id="1159">This is how we marched the <span class="REGION">countryside</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1160">Those who couldn't march were simply shot.</sentence><sentence id="1161">And because now I became already the strongest from the two of us, I had always stories to tell for Edith, to...to give her courage going; but she was really very emaciated.</sentence><sentence id="1162">And one morning she said, "Look, my feet are frozen.</sentence><sentence id="1163">I can't walk anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1164">I just cannot walk anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1165">I can't bear it."</sentence><sentence id="1166">So I told her, "Well, we will just run away."</sentence><sentence id="1167">And so she was laughing with the talking. "</sentence><sentence id="1168">Don't you see the dogs?</sentence><sentence id="1169">Don't you see the...the guns?</sentence><sentence id="1170">Don't you see what happens to those people who just don't walk?</sentence><sentence id="1171">We run away!</sentence><sentence id="1172">Where do you want to run?"</sentence><sentence id="1173">I said, "You will see.</sentence><sentence id="1174">We run away.</sentence><sentence id="1175">Just come, just let's go...until tonight."</sentence><sentence id="1176">And that night we were housed in a <span class="BUILDING">barn</span>, into a hay.... How do you call it where they keep the hay for the winter?</sentence><sentence id="1177">And I had an ide</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1178">A: "This is the <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1179">This is where we have to run away.</sentence><sentence id="1180">This is where we will..." So I went over to an other friend, and asked if she would want to run away with us.</sentence><sentence id="1181">I didn't talk loud because it was very dangerous.</sentence><sentence id="1182">If I would...if anybody would find out that we planned something, it would give us out; because easily the group could be punished if something...somebody just tried to do anything out of the ordinary.</sentence><sentence id="1183">Every morning that was told us.</sentence><sentence id="1184">If we try anything that it's not permitted, a person will be shot.</sentence><sentence id="1185">So it was very risky to do anything.</sentence><sentence id="1186">But the friend agreed, and I told Edith, "Now let's dig a <span class="DLF">hole</span>, and let's go down to the bottom of the hay."</sentence><sentence id="1187">It was about three meters.</sentence><sentence id="1188">It was a very high hay. "</sentence><sentence id="1189">And we just tell in the morning that we feel asleep...we fell into this <span class="DLF">hole</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1190">If they find us, we'll say we didn't heard anything.</sentence><sentence id="1191">We just down into the hay."</sentence><sentence id="1192">It had to be done very secretly.</sentence><sentence id="1193">And we just parted the hay as fast as we could all together.</sentence><sentence id="1194">First we dig that <span class="DLF">hole</span> into the hay, the bottom of the hay; and three meters above us were the rest of them were</sentence><sentence id="1196">2 sleeping.</sentence><sentence id="1197">And we went close to the plank, and the planks were giving some <span class="DLF">air</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1198">They were not totally sealed.</sentence><sentence id="1199">You could see also through.</sentence><sentence id="1200">They couldn't see in, but you could see out; and it was tiny little um <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> between...between the wooden planks, you know, that you could get some <span class="DLF">air</span> in and also look out.</sentence><sentence id="1201">And we had a little bread.</sentence><sentence id="1202">I had a little bread in my... in my clothes, and Edith had a bread and Ibi had some bread, that we somehow managed to save.</sentence><sentence id="1203">And we said, "We...we will just pretend that we fell asleep."</sentence><sentence id="1204">In the morning...of course, we didn't slept all night.</sentence><sentence id="1205">In the morning, we hear them whistling, and whistling, and whistling again. "</sentence><sentence id="1206">There are three missing!"</sentence><sentence id="1207">And we see that they come back, send the dogs back, you know, to sniff; but of course the dogs had no idea what they are sniffing.</sentence><sentence id="1208">We all smell the same.</sentence><sentence id="1209">We all were the same.</sentence><sentence id="1210">We had no identity anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1211">We had no.... And after probably an hour and a half delay and search and whistle and counting, the group went away.</sentence><sentence id="1212">They marched away.</sentence><sentence id="1213">There is no way to explain what it is--freedom-- at that moment, that you don't hear the voices anymore, that you know that they went away, and now you are somehow...your plot worked!</sentence><sentence id="1214">You are free.</sentence><sentence id="1215">So Edith says, "Now we will tell Bible stories.</sentence><sentence id="1216">We will tell all the stories that we remember from the Bible where miracles happened.</sentence><sentence id="1217">Don't you remember the Red Sea parting?</sentence><sentence id="1218">It happened to the Jews, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1219">Could it happen to three children?</sentence><sentence id="1220">It was a miracle."</sentence><sentence id="1221">Slowly, slowly we said the "Shabbat" songs, and the shma... everything that came to our mind to make the time pass; and we knew we need time here.</sentence><sentence id="1222">We need time to stay there.</sentence><sentence id="1223">Suddenly, we hear the <span class="DLF">door</span> opening and a German comes in and raking the hay.</sentence><sentence id="1224">But we were so quiet and so under that hay, that even if I could feel the boots on...on my head, he couldn't feel us.</sentence><sentence id="1225">See, now we were not breathing even.</sentence><sentence id="1226">And after a while, went away and closed that <span class="BUILDING">barn</span> to the</sentence><sentence id="1228">3 natrowest--I mean only just for <span class="DLF">air</span> to come.</sentence><sentence id="1229">I can't tell you how narrow it was.</sentence><sentence id="1230">I mean, I'm trying to ...to show it now with my hand, probably.</sentence><sentence id="1231">And so night comes, and we are singing our songs for ourselves; and we...now that another day passed, and...and the group is further away, and maybe we are...we are safe.</sentence><sentence id="1232">And then we decide--it was Thursday--"Let's wait until Shabbat; Shabbat...after the three stars, we will come out."</sentence><sentence id="1233">By then the group is far away; and then we will just try our luck.</sentence><sentence id="1234">So now this little bread had to...had to somehow be enough.</sentence><sentence id="1235">And so we doled out morsels, and we told stories for ourself: what was the "Shabbat" dinner like at <span class="BUILDING">home</span>?</sentence><sentence id="1236">What are we eating now?</sentence><sentence id="1237">Is now a wonderful soup, and now this wonderful chicken dinner Mother would cook; and I would remind Edith how terrible a child I was, that I didn't wanted to eat.</sentence><sentence id="1238">I never liked the food.</sentence><sentence id="1239">How I will apologize to Mother when I come <span class="BUILDING">home</span>!</sentence><sentence id="1240">And we will not tell her how we suffered.</sentence><sentence id="1241">We will never let her know what happened in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>, never let her know what happened on this <span class="DLF">road</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1242">She will never know it.</sentence><sentence id="1243">Just one more time together.</sentence><sentence id="1244">So Saturday night, we waited "til the stars came out and we said the Shma three times.</sentence><sentence id="1245">And we went to the <span class="DLF">door</span>, but the <span class="DLF">door</span> was so narrow that barely we could fit through.</sentence><sentence id="1246">We couldn't go front.</sentence><sentence id="1247">We could only go sideways to come out from this <span class="DLF">door</span>, from this little <span class="DLF">opening</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1248">It was already dark <span class="NPIP">outside</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1249">We saw from the distance um...a <span class="BUILDING">hut</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1250">And there was light in the <span class="BUILDING">hut</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1251">And we knocked on the <span class="DLF">door</span>; and it was a German heavy-set, tall man sitting in front of a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">desk</span>, with his pipe on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">table</span> and a dog next to him.</sentence><sentence id="1252">And Edith, who spoke very beautiful German, said to him, "Please, don't send us away.</sentence><sentence id="1253">We don't need food.</sentence><sentence id="1254">We already know how to live without food, so you don't have to worry about our food.</sentence><sentence id="1255">Just give us any work.</sentence><sentence id="1256">Let us do anything.</sentence><sentence id="1257">The only thing we want is to meet our parents again.</sentence><sentence id="1258">We are</sentence><sentence id="1260">4 three children.</sentence><sentence id="1261">We didn't do anything wrong.</sentence><sentence id="1262">We fell asleep.</sentence><sentence id="1263">We didn't hear the group going.</sentence><sentence id="1264">Let us stay here."</sentence><sentence id="1265">The man looked at us, and at her; then he looked at his dog, and said to the dog, "Get those damn Jews.</sentence><sentence id="1266">Get those Verfluchtener Juden."</sentence><sentence id="1267">We turned around, with our head down, marching out through this open <span class="DLF">yard</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1268">Where are we going?</sentence><sentence id="1269">What are we doing now? (</sentence><sentence id="1270">sniffling) Edith says, "I see a hand in the dark.</sentence><sentence id="1271">Do you see a hand in the dark?</sentence><sentence id="1272">Somebody motioning from the...from the <span class="BUILDING">barn</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1273">We didn't know it is a <span class="BUILDING">barn</span>, but on the other end of the <span class="DLF">yard</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1274">It was quite dark, so we couldn't see really; just a silhouette and a hand.</sentence><sentence id="1275">And I said, "Yes, I'm seeing it.</sentence><sentence id="1276">Let's hurry, and let us go there."</sentence><sentence id="1277">And we...it was a <span class="BUILDING">barn</span>, and soon we understood that there are some Italian soldiers there who are war refugees.</sentence><sentence id="1278">And they spoke broken German, and we spoke broken German; and we told them that we fell asleep.</sentence><sentence id="1279">We didn't know that the group left, and please help us.</sentence><sentence id="1280">All we want is to meet our parents.</sentence><sentence id="1281">And they said just to stay here, just... next to the cows.</sentence><sentence id="1282">Boy how we envied the cows!</sentence><sentence id="1283">How wonderful existence they had, compared to ours.</sentence><sentence id="1284">So suddenly some warm water arrives, bring us some drink, and then wash our hand and face.</sentence><sentence id="1285">And then we realized that from the hay, as we were digging, we were totally covered with black um dust that accumulated in that hay.</sentence><sentence id="1286">And that we are not recognizable, even as we looked.</sentence><sentence id="1287">Normally we were not recognizable, so even now more.</sentence><sentence id="1288">And somehow one of them spoke a little better German, and say to us that in a little while somebody will come and take us to their <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>, and they will have food for us.</sentence><sentence id="1289">In little while, somebody came and took us.</sentence><sentence id="1290">And you cannot imagine- -no way I will have the language, I will not have the ability to paint it or say it in any other way--what it feels when you look up at the <span class="DLF">sky</span> and you're free, you see the stars shining and</sentence><sentence id="1292">5 you are...you feel free.</sentence><sentence id="1293">I keep looking back if the SS is not following me.</sentence><sentence id="1294">Nobody followed us.</sentence><sentence id="1295">This Italian worker went in the front, and we just went after him until we reached his...the little <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1296">It turned out there were 13 Italians.</sentence><sentence id="1297">And the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">table</span> was set...three, three bowls, three <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">spoons</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1298">Somebody took out the guitar and started to play music, and we were stunned.</sentence><sentence id="1299">We couldn't believe that this kind of magic can ever happen, not to three children.</sentence><sentence id="1300">I watched their faces if they are not disgusted, the way we looked; because we had sores on our legs.</sentence><sentence id="1301">We had no coverage.</sentence><sentence id="1302">We had no stocking, and the the frost and the sore and the dust and the filth.</sentence><sentence id="1303">But they are singing.</sentence><sentence id="1304">They play the guitar.</sentence><sentence id="1305">They told us to eat, warm food, and they talked very rapidly in Italian.</sentence><sentence id="1306">We didn't understood.</sentence><sentence id="1307">But later, the one who spoke a little German said, "Don't worry.</sentence><sentence id="1308">Tomorrow morning when we go to work, we will do a <span class="NPIP">place</span> for you in the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">forest</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1309">We'll take you there and hide you.</sentence><sentence id="1310">So after you eat, just go back to the...to the <span class="BUILDING">barn</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1311">And tomorrow morning you come here again for food, and then just wait here "til we'll pick you up for the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">forest</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1312">You can imagine that we didn't slept all night.(Sigh) The miracle could happen for three children.</sentence><sentence id="1313">And the morning came, and they took us back to their <span class="NPIP">place</span> and they hastily said goodbye, and said, "Don't worry.</sentence><sentence id="1314">We'll come.</sentence><sentence id="1315">We will have the <span class="NPIP">place</span> for you ready by noon.</sentence><sentence id="1316">Just stay here."</sentence><sentence id="1317">And sat there quietly.</sentence><sentence id="1318">Then the <span class="DLF">door</span> opens, and an old SS man comes in and says, "Follow me. (</sentence><sentence id="1319">Clearing throat.)</sentence><sentence id="1320">Follow me, you Verfluchtener Juden.</sentence><sentence id="1321">You damned Jews."</sentence><sentence id="1322">And the three children and the SS--who looked like somebody's grandfather--walked the <span class="DLF">road</span>, trying to catch up with the group.</sentence><sentence id="1323">Before we...(sniffling) before we reached the other <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span>, somehow our silence or something penetrated to him; because he didn't go with us to the end of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1324">He said,</sentence><sentence id="1326">6 "I go this far.</sentence><sentence id="1327">Now you go by yourself.</sentence><sentence id="1328">You know, there are dogs on the <span class="DLF">road</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1329">You can't escape because you're marked.</sentence><sentence id="1330">You have a red <span class="DLF">line</span> on your backs of your clothes, so everybody knows who you are.</sentence><sentence id="1331">You're shaved.</sentence><sentence id="1332">You don't have food.</sentence><sentence id="1333">So don't try anything.</sentence><sentence id="1334">Just go to the <span class="BUILDING">police station</span>, what is the fifth <span class="BUILDING">house</span> after this <span class="DLF">street</span> or something.</sentence><sentence id="1335">And just report.</sentence><sentence id="1336">They're waiting for you."</sentence><sentence id="1337">So Edith says, "Let's try one more time," when he left.</sentence><sentence id="1338">We went into an open <span class="DLF">yard</span>. (</sentence><sentence id="1339">Clearing throat) And there is...there is a woman coming out, and we said...asked her, "Could we have a little water?</sentence><sentence id="1340">We are three children, fall asleep and didn't saw the group."</sentence><sentence id="1341">And she started to scream at us at the top of her lung, "You Verfluchtener Juden!</sentence><sentence id="1342">Get out from here!</sentence><sentence id="1343">I don't want....".</sentence><sentence id="1344">You know, and said all kind of obscenities. "</sentence><sentence id="1345"><span class="BUILDING">Schwein</span>!" "</sentence><sentence id="1346">Scheiss!"</sentence><sentence id="1347">Anything that came to her mind.</sentence><sentence id="1348">And next to her was a little boy.</sentence><sentence id="1349">The little boy bent down.</sentence><sentence id="1350">There was a dish for the cat with some milk in it.</sentence><sentence id="1351">And the little boy reached down, and wanted to give us the dish of the cat.</sentence><sentence id="1352">And all three of us looked at him; and we turned our head, somehow motioning, "No.</sentence><sentence id="1353">We are still not animals.</sentence><sentence id="1354">We don't take that."</sentence><sentence id="1355">And we turned away, and we went to the <span class="BUILDING">police station</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1356">They put us into a <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1357">It was...in the <span class="BUILDING">police station</span> was where the police slept, and there was the <span class="BUILDING">jail</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1358">Says, "Tomorrow morning, early in the morning, I get my horse and <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">buggy</span> and we are taking you after the group.</sentence><sentence id="1359">And they will kill you there, (sniffling) because you tried to escape."</sentence><sentence id="1360">And we begged him, "No.</sentence><sentence id="1361">We just fall asleep, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1362">And we are just three children."</sentence><sentence id="1363">But nothing helped.</sentence><sentence id="1364">In the morning, he got his horse and <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">buggy</span> (clearing throat) and he took us to the <span class="BUILDING">railroad station</span> of another <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">village</span>, where the group was.</sentence><sentence id="1365">I should enter <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1366">I mean, there was a big commotion.</sentence><sentence id="1367">The SS tried very harshly to (clearing throat) push everybody into a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1370">7 And the SS woman stopped us, and this SS man reported that they found us in this <span class="DLF">yard</span> and that we say that we fell asleep.</sentence><sentence id="1371">And so Edith went to her and apologized that we fell asleep and we didn't know that the group left; and we didn't heared any commotion, and we were so tired, and we didn't meant anything, and please let us just be alive.</sentence><sentence id="1372">And she says, "No.</sentence><sentence id="1373">I will finish you up in front of all of them.</sentence><sentence id="1374">Let us everybody go up on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>, and we'll finish...finish with you."</sentence><sentence id="1375">And Edith was so brave and such courage; and she said, "But let us just say goodbye to our cousins who didn't know what happened to us.</sentence><sentence id="1376">Could we just please go up in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span> and say goodbye?</sentence><sentence id="1377">We come back in a minute."</sentence><sentence id="1378">And the woman permitted, like last...last request.</sentence><sentence id="1379">And so we went up on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1380">And, you see, immediately we went to the end of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cattle train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1381">The people were on top of each other al...almost.</sentence><sentence id="1382">And somehow, nobody noticed us and didn't know who we are.</sentence><sentence id="1383">We were not recognizable.</sentence><sentence id="1384">And, of course, we didn't had our cousin there.</sentence><sentence id="1385">We didn't know anybody.(Sniffling) And we kind of squatted down in a <span class="NPIP">corner</span>; and we hear the SS whis...whistling, and coming up and looking.</sentence><sentence id="1386">But, you know, she couldn't find us; because we didn't have identity anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1387">We looked like bewildered animal, all of us.</sentence><sentence id="1388">And she...we saw that, and the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> pulled out.</sentence><sentence id="1389">And (clearing throat) several days later we arrived to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.763369" long="9.895119">Bergen-Belsen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1390">And <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.763369" long="9.895119">Bergen-Belsen</span> was <span class="NPIP">hell on earth</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1391">Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.763369" long="9.895119">Bergen-Belsen</span> was.</sentence><sentence id="1392">When we arrived, the dead were not carried away anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1393">You stepped over them.</sentence><sentence id="1394">You fell over them, if you couldn't walk.</sentence><sentence id="1395">There were agonizing people, begging for water.</sentence><sentence id="1396">They were felling...falling into planks that they were not pulled together in the <span class="BUILDING">barracks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1397">They were crying.</sentence><sentence id="1398">They were begging.</sentence><sentence id="1399">It was...it was <span class="NPIP">hell</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1400">It was <span class="NPIP">hell</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1401">Day and night.</sentence><sentence id="1402">You couldn't</sentence><sentence id="1404">8 escape the crying.</sentence><sentence id="1405">You couldn't had escaped the praying.</sentence><sentence id="1406">You couldn't escape the mercy, that...it was a chant.</sentence><sentence id="1407">The chant of the dead.</sentence><sentence id="1408">It was <span class="NPIP">hell</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1409">At night, we had a Kapo who...who was insane.</sentence><sentence id="1410">Who was a beautiful woman who looked like a sculpture, a goddess.</sentence><sentence id="1411">Her blond hair was very short but kind of curly.</sentence><sentence id="1412">Her blue eyes.</sentence><sentence id="1413">And she would come out in the middle of the night and [help this (ph)].</sentence><sentence id="1414">And she would step on the people, because she couldn't sleep from the chanting.</sentence><sentence id="1415">And the chant...she went insane.</sentence><sentence id="1416">She went totally insane, and she would just hit whomever she could hit to silence the people.</sentence><sentence id="1417">And that repeated every night.</sentence><sentence id="1418">And one night she was stepping on my hand; and I couldn't move because if she would hear a sound, I would be the target.</sentence><sentence id="1419">So she was insane.</sentence><sentence id="1420">So there's no way to re-enact <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1421">Nobody should ever.... But there's no way to tell anything about <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.763369" long="9.895119">Bergen-Belsen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1422">So when liberation came, we were already dazed.</sentence><sentence id="1423">We were...1 say to Edith, "What is it means: liberation?</sentence><sentence id="1424">I don't understand that word.</sentence><sentence id="1425">What's liberation?</sentence><sentence id="1426">What does it mean?"</sentence><sentence id="1427">She said, "Free.</sentence><sentence id="1428">Repeat it: "free."</sentence><sentence id="1429">We are free."</sentence><sentence id="1430">So I told her, "But then I have to go and find us clean clothes.</sentence><sentence id="1431">We are full with lice.</sentence><sentence id="1432">We are full with with this vermin all around our bodies.</sentence><sentence id="1433">I will go and find you clothes.</sentence><sentence id="1434">Stay here.</sentence><sentence id="1435">I will bring you something."</sentence><sentence id="1436">And I wandered out from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span>; and I wandered, and I could barely walk.</sentence><sentence id="1437">It was...I...I just had to sit down, and had...we were so emaciated and there was incredible chaos.</sentence><sentence id="1438">And they gave us some food.</sentence><sentence id="1439">The...the...the...the Allies.</sentence><sentence id="1440">They gave us some canned hash.</sentence><sentence id="1441">And I told Edith, "Eat my portion.</sentence><sentence id="1442">You need the strength."</sentence><sentence id="1443">And Edith ate.</sentence><sentence id="1444">I don't know how much.</sentence><sentence id="1445">She couldn't eat much too either.</sentence><sentence id="1446">But she became violently, violently ill.</sentence><sentence id="1447">So my attempt to find a <span class="NPIP">place</span>...to find clothes (sniffling) was not so very successful.</sentence><sentence id="1448">But I found a <span class="INT_SPACE">storage place</span> where the German uniforms were; and I...I found a lot of boots.</sentence><sentence id="1449">So I tried to put a pair of</sentence><sentence id="1451">9 boots on my feet.</sentence><sentence id="1452">And I couldn't walk.</sentence><sentence id="1453">It just was too heavy.</sentence><sentence id="1454">And then I tried to carry a pair of boots, and I couldn't do both.</sentence><sentence id="1455">I couldn't balance.</sentence><sentence id="1456">So I took off my boots, went back to these wooden shoes that I had; and I tried to carry the boots for Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1457">And immediately somebody snatched away the boots.</sentence><sentence id="1458">So they never...1 could never take it to Edith.(Sniffling) But Edith got violently ill, and she begged me to take her to a <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1459">And I said, "I can't.</sentence><sentence id="1460">I can't.</sentence><sentence id="1461">We will be again apart.</sentence><sentence id="1462">We will be again divided.</sentence><sentence id="1463">I can't.</sentence><sentence id="1464">I don't dare to.</sentence><sentence id="1465">I don't."</sentence><sentence id="1466">And I begged her maybe, maybe tomorrow.</sentence><sentence id="1467">Maybe some help will come."</sentence><sentence id="1468">But she...she really insisted.</sentence><sentence id="1469">So I dragged her.</sentence><sentence id="1470">And before there, I tried to find some potato; because somebody told me if I cook her some potato, the potato peel will stop her diarrhea.</sentence><sentence id="1471">So I tried to do that, but of course nothing helped.</sentence><sentence id="1472">And then I dragged her to an <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span>, and I tried to pretend that I am sick, too; and tried to help there to take away the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span> pans.</sentence><sentence id="1473">And very soon an English soldier came and says, "You must leave the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1474">It's only for the very ill.</sentence><sentence id="1475">You can't be here."</sentence><sentence id="1476">I tried...I didn't know English, so I tried somehow in German to tell her, tell him, "Please let me stay with my sister.</sentence><sentence id="1477">Please don't take me away."</sentence><sentence id="1478">He asked me what <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span> I am; and I told the number of the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1479">And he put me on a...on a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">jeep</span>, took...took me away.</sentence><sentence id="1480">So next morning I came back.</sentence><sentence id="1481">And you must understand that we couldn't walk anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1482">I mean, to going back was like you...you're climbed the biggest <span class="ENV_FEATURES">mountain</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1483">I mean, I went back and just then Edith was put into an <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ambulance</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1484">And I said to her, "I'm going with you wherever they take you.</sentence><sentence id="1485">I don't leave you now."</sentence><sentence id="1486">And we spoke a few words; and English soldier recognized me, the same one who took me back, says, "Here you are again!"</sentence><sentence id="1487">Took me down, and I pretended that I faint that he should take me with Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1488">I fell down on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>; and he went in and he got me a little</sentence><sentence id="1490">0 something to drink, some kind of liquid.</sentence><sentence id="1491">And...and revived me so to speak, and put me back on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">jeep</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1492">And took me back again to the <span class="BUILDING">barrack</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1493">And I never saw Edith again.</sentence><sentence id="1494">Three days later, they evacuated all <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.763369" long="9.895119">Bergen-Belsen</span>; and I went to <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1495">And I could by then barely walk; and I remember that I crawled up the <span class="INT_SPACE">second floor</span>, because they said, "There is an <span class="BUILDING">office</span> there where they have the dead and the...and the live list."</sentence><sentence id="1496">And person there sitting said, "She's not on the Dead List, and she's not on the Live List."</sentence><sentence id="1497">All I remember that, that I collapsed after that.</sentence><sentence id="1498">And they took me to a <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>, and I didn't wanted to eat or drink anything.</sentence><sentence id="1499">And one girl from the other <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> came and said, "You must, because otherwise you will never find your sister.</sentence><sentence id="1500">You must drink.</sentence><sentence id="1501">You must eat."</sentence><sentence id="1502">And a Belgian doctor came the next day, and in front of my <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1503">And he said, "She's still young."</sentence><sentence id="1504">And they selected me to go to <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>; and I was among the children they transferred who went to <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1505">When I hear that they want to take me away, | didn't wanted to go; because I wanted to find Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1506">But this wonderful girl who tried to feed me said, "You will find her, because probably they took her to <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>, too.</sentence><sentence id="1507">You will find her in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1508">Just go."</sentence><sentence id="1509">And, of course, when I arrived to <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>--wherever I went for years after, for thirty years after it, I still looked for Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1510">I never found Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1511">Never found Edith.</sentence><sentence id="1512">So this is my story of...of the two of us. (</sentence><sentence id="1513">Sigh) I made the painting...that is a photograph of a woman who had a tee shirt, on one of the reunions, that said, "Have you seen my sister?"</sentence><sentence id="1514">And I got that photograph, and l incorporated into that painting, and.... Just like she, (sigh) I'm still looking. (</sentence><sentence id="1515">Pause - Sigh)</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1874">Q: I'm sorry.</sentence><sentence id="1875">Take your time.</sentence><sentence id="1876">That's OK.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p></p><p></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1884">A: I don't think I can do it anymore.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1886">Q: Can you tell us about living in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>?</sentence><sentence id="1887">No?</sentence><sentence id="1888">Do you need to stop for a little while?</sentence><sentence id="1889">OK.</sentence><sentence id="1890">Let's stop tape.</sentence><sentence id="1891">We'll just breathe for a minute.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1898">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1900">Q: OK.</sentence><sentence id="1901">You're in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1902">Do you want to tell us what happened there?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1906">A: I was in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1907">And (cough) one day the chief doctor came to my <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span>, and said, "If I will bring you the best news of your life, will you promise me you will be alright?"</sentence><sentence id="1908">I was so weak, he didn't wanted to tell me any kind of news.</sentence><sentence id="1909">And I promised him.</sentence><sentence id="1910">And says, "I have a telegram from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Tangier</span>, where your relatives lived, that your father is alive in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1911">I was so weak that he was..he came by himself; because he was so worried that the good news may just finish me up.</sentence><sentence id="1912">But it was such an incredible news, because, you know, that it had to be shared with all the girls in the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1913">With...with everyone, because so few of...of us had anybody who came back who was alive.</sentence><sentence id="1914">So in a minute the whole <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span> knew that my father is alive; and I ran around, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1915">I got up from the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span>, and I was...I felt like I'm healthy.</sentence><sentence id="1916">I...1 can walk.</sentence><sentence id="1917">And the doctor said, "Just take it easy.</sentence><sentence id="1918">Don't...don't...don't dance.</sentence><sentence id="1921">2 Don't run around.</sentence><sentence id="1922">Don't..." It...it was just unbelievable that somebody from the family is alive.</sentence><sentence id="1923">It was such an incredible mixed feeling, because actually the death--you didn't accept it totally.</sentence><sentence id="1924">You always hoped that Mother is alive.</sentence><sentence id="1925">You always hoped that (cough) you will find your sister.</sentence><sentence id="1926">You always hoped that...that somehow something about your brother.</sentence><sentence id="1927">I mean, forever played games with your brain.</sentence><sentence id="1928">But when something so concrete as a telegram came... So I started to get first a letter from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Tangier</span>...from the relative, Mrs. [Renee] Reichman.</sentence><sentence id="1929">And...and then later, from my father.</sentence><sentence id="1930">And so Father wrote that he would like I should come back to <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> as soon as the doctor lets me go.</sentence><sentence id="1931">And I could barely wait to...to...for that moment.</sentence><sentence id="1932">The Swedish people were incredible.</sentence><sentence id="1933">They were so gentle and good to us.</sentence><sentence id="1934">I felt like I... woke up in...in <span class="NPIP">heaven</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1935">After this brutality, after...after this horror, after this inhumanity, to come to a civilized <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>, that three hundred years didn't have any war.</sentence><sentence id="1936">Who...who.... Volunteers come into the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1937">They bring us a magazine, and we should show them from the magazine-- because we couldn't speak Swedish--what food we want to eat.</sentence><sentence id="1938">I mean, after <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="52.763369" long="9.895119">Bergen-Belsen</span>, after <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Auschwitz</span>, what incredible people!</sentence><sentence id="1939">It was like angels gliding.</sentence><sentence id="1940">They would organize concerts.</sentence><sentence id="1941">I would hear music.</sentence><sentence id="1942">They didn't know how to make our lives whole again.</sentence><sentence id="1943">Such magical, wonderful people.</sentence><sentence id="1944">This family connected--the family that sent the telegram connected also us to a family in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">London</span>, who had a representative in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span> who wasn't Jewish.</sentence><sentence id="1945">And this representative got a telegram that there is a, that there is a...this little girl here in one of the <span class="BUILDING">hospitals</span>; and please look him up, it's part of the family.</sentence><sentence id="1946">And this wonderful Swede, instead of sending his secretary or sending a letter, he got in his <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> and he went to the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1947">But you know, we were so sick that...that we were taken from one <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span></sentence><sentence id="1949">3 to the other.</sentence><sentence id="1950">They couldn't figure out; we had every illness there was.</sentence><sentence id="1951">So they always sorted out us--children with tuberculosis, people with tuberculosis went to one <span class="NPIP">place</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1952">So when he arrived to this <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>, I was already in another <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>; and he kind of repeated two, three times.</sentence><sentence id="1953">When he catched up with me, he said, "You know, ..." Um, the nurse came in and said that there's somebody from my family here.</sentence><sentence id="1954">I said, "I don't have family.</sentence><sentence id="1955">I have nobody."</sentence><sentence id="1956">She said, "No, you have to come out.</sentence><sentence id="1957">You...you.... Somebody is waiting for you <span class="NPIP">outside</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1958">And I was so...still so frightened; to be taken out from the group meant total insecurity, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1959">You are sick...only if you are in a group, if you are nobody.... And so anyhow, the nurse coaxed me out; and she said, "This is this gentleman, and he says he's related to you."</sentence><sentence id="1960">And he explained that that he's not related, but he's the representative of my relatives from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">London</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1961">I guess that nurse and that...that the uncle in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">London</span> asked this gentleman to look after me.</sentence><sentence id="1962">And this gentleman--who was so humane, so incredible, magnificent, wasn't a Jewish man--instead of sending letters or trying through the telephone, he went and and he...he found me.</sentence><sentence id="1963">And he said, "Look, I have a daughter just like you, your age.</sentence><sentence id="1964">You come to my <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and get to know her."</sentence><sentence id="1965">And I said, "No, I'm still sick.</sentence><sentence id="1966">The doctor won't let me go."</sentence><sentence id="1967">And he says, "Just come in then for a weekend.</sentence><sentence id="1968">Get to know Mary.</sentence><sentence id="1969">She's a very good girl."</sentence><sentence id="1970">And I thanked him very much; but I didn't wanted to go.</sentence><sentence id="1971">And it took me a little while, after that he left, to see what a gentle, wonderful man this was, who came and with such gentleness tried to coax me back to life.</sentence><sentence id="1972">And... and then when the doctor permitted, and when I was a certain weight and...and I could really go, the doctor permitted and I visited them.</sentence><sentence id="1973">And I met Mary.</sentence><sentence id="1974">And it was so magical this summer, because I was in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">London</span> and I met Mary again and we recalled this unbelievable time.</sentence><sentence id="1975">How his [her] father brought me back and reconnected me with everything that was humane in the most gentle, most wonderful fashion.</sentence><sentence id="1976">And I told Mary the story of the hat...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2057">Q: Look at me if you can.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2059">A: I met...I was several times in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Stockholm</span> after that, and this wonderful Mr. [Gustaf] Haggberg-- Haggberg was his name--would take me to the opera, would take me to the most beautiful <span class="BUILDING">restaurant</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2060">Would show me the word "freedom," how civilized man behaved, show me how to be without prejudiced.</sentence><sentence id="2061">And I made a vow: "If I ever grow up, I will be like Mr. Haggberg.</sentence><sentence id="2062">I will not hate.</sentence><sentence id="2063">I will not be prejudiced.</sentence><sentence id="2064">I will learn to love the world again, and all people."</sentence><sentence id="2065">And one day after a correspondence with my father, we decided that I should come back to <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2066">And I came to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Stockholm</span> to say goodbye to Mr. Haggberg.</sentence><sentence id="2067">And Mr. Haggberg looks at me and says, "Alice, do you have a hat?"</sentence><sentence id="2068">You know, I don't have a <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2069">I don't have a name.</sentence><sentence id="2070">I am nobody.</sentence><sentence id="2071">I...my hair barely grows up.</sentence><sentence id="2072">I have one dress. "</sentence><sentence id="2073">A hat?</sentence><sentence id="2074">No, I don't have a hat."</sentence><sentence id="2075">He said, "Alice, you cannot travel through Europe without a hat!</sentence><sentence id="2076">You have to have a hat.</sentence><sentence id="2077">You are a young lady now."</sentence><sentence id="2078">And he rings the bell and rings Vera, the secretary; comes in and says, "Vera, you must go right now and buy a hat for Alice.</sentence><sentence id="2079">She cannot travel through Europe without a hat!"</sentence><sentence id="2080">And so we went into a <span class="NPIP">place</span>, the first <span class="NPIP">place</span>, the first little "chapeau" that came--a brown little "chapeau" that came to my hand--I put it on and...and bashfully said, "That's perfect.</sentence><sentence id="2081">Thank you."</sentence><sentence id="2082">And that little hat was my dignity.</sentence><sentence id="2083">He gave back my dignity.</sentence><sentence id="2084">And I went back to <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span> and I met my father.</sentence><sentence id="2085">And was an incredible reunion on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2086">And very soon he told me that he really is getting married the next week.</sentence><sentence id="2087">And it was for me a very</sentence><sentence id="2089">5 difficult...difficult moment, to realize that Mother is really not coming back, that Father's life must go on the way he wants it to, to go on.</sentence><sentence id="2090">And that perhaps I shouldn't come back.</sentence><sentence id="2091">It was hard.</sentence><sentence id="2092">And I decided very soon after that I should really not live in <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>, that I really should go to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2093">It was no "aliyah."</sentence><sentence id="2094">It was no possibility.</sentence><sentence id="2095">And I went up to one of the the group.</sentence><sentence id="2096">It was <span class="BUILDING">B'nai Akiva</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2097">And I told them that I must go, illegal or what; and anyway, I must go.</sentence><sentence id="2098">I must go.</sentence><sentence id="2099">I must go away from here, to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2100">And they say that there is a Brichah, there is a group of people that will go in a certain time; but I have to have a lot of documents.</sentence><sentence id="2101">I have to have a lot of...because they are totally illegal, and they go from <span class="COUNTRY">Yugoslavia</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2102">And that they are...that this group in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE" lat="47.497778" long="19.039722">Budapest</span> is not responsible if we will arrive to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> or no.</sentence><sentence id="2103">But that's my only chance.</sentence><sentence id="2104">So I had to find all the documents; and they were very difficult, because Father.... I didn't want that Father should know yet that I am going to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>, because he wouldn't hear of it.</sentence><sentence id="2105">He just wouldn't hear of it. (</sentence><sentence id="2106">Cough) And I know that I have no future, that I must go away; that if...if there is anything left for me in life, then it's not...not there anymore.</sentence><sentence id="2107">I must find my way. (</sentence><sentence id="2108">Cough) And I went up to this group of people; and I told them very strongly that if they don't help me to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>, then I don't want to live.</sentence><sentence id="2109">I just don't want to live.</sentence><sentence id="2110">And the young man who sat at the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">desk</span> was very sweet and very smart.</sentence><sentence id="2111">He says, "Don't do anything drastic things here.</sentence><sentence id="2112">At least not here."</sentence><sentence id="2113">So he was smiling, and he says, "I will help you.</sentence><sentence id="2114">I will help you.</sentence><sentence id="2115">But it will be very difficult for you, because your father has to sign.</sentence><sentence id="2116">You are a minor yet, and he has to sign for you.</sentence><sentence id="2117">And we have to make you a false passport.</sentence><sentence id="2118">So you have to get all the papers."</sentence><sentence id="2119">So I have to...had to go to all the <span class="BUILDING">offices</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2120">And one day two men came up and told my father to sign; and Father was still under the spell of the Germans, in fear.</sentence><sentence id="2121">He signed before he read what he's signing; and he was signing that I can go on "aliyah" illegally.</sentence><sentence id="2122">And, of course, when he realized he was very, very sad; and said, "Look, you can't leave me.</sentence><sentence id="2123">You are my only child."</sentence><sentence id="2124">And I told him that he had to start his life the way he started, and I must now chart my life</sentence><sentence id="2126">6 the way I have to.</sentence><sentence id="2127">And my future is in <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2128">And he must...he must let me go.</sentence><sentence id="2129">And so very tearfully we went in to the notary; and he was crying, and I was crying, and he signed it.</sentence><sentence id="2130">And I got a telegram in the middle of the night that eight o'clock in the morning I should be at the <span class="BUILDING">railroad station</span> and just find so and so.</sentence><sentence id="2131">And I got on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>; and a mother was running after me and says, "Please take care of my child."</sentence><sentence id="2132">You know, I was always tall and always looked older than what I was.</sentence><sentence id="2133">And so I said, "Your child?</sentence><sentence id="2134">Where is your child?"</sentence><sentence id="2135">And here was a girl. "</sentence><sentence id="2136">My gosh, she's older than I am!</sentence><sentence id="2137">She's eighteen years old.</sentence><sentence id="2138">I'm not eighteen.</sentence><sentence id="2139">She should take care of me, maybe."</sentence><sentence id="2140">And the mother said, "No, no.</sentence><sentence id="2141">You just take care of her."</sentence><sentence id="2142">I said, "OK, I do."</sentence><sentence id="2143">And so we got up on that on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>, and was a lot of commotion.</sentence><sentence id="2144">You know, it was a lot of people who went with; they're supposed to be together, but they were not together.</sentence><sentence id="2145">And we got to <span class="COUNTRY">Yugoslavia</span>, where one of...a tiny baby died on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2146">So we had to bury the baby under the wheels of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2147">And her death already was such a tragic mood that all of us who were there...we just...we just couldn't talk.</sentence><sentence id="2148">In the middle of the night we boarded The Exodus; and we got on the the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Bakar</span> [a small <span class="DLF">port</span> five miles east of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Rijeka</span>].</sentence><sentence id="2149">And it was terribly scary because it...several kilometers we had to walk "til the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, in the dark of the night.</sentence><sentence id="2150">Just a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">lamp</span> pointed the direction, a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">hand lamp</span>, because we were illegal.</sentence><sentence id="2151">It was still under...<span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> was not...<span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> was still not <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> that time.</sentence><sentence id="2152">And we got on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, and we were right away selected out to...to...to guard the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2153">And, you know, selection was always scary; but this time I really wanted it...to guard the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2154">I had no idea what to do.</sentence><sentence id="2155">And they gave me a gun, and I said, "Did you ever had a gun before?</sentence><sentence id="2156">I don't even know what to do with this!"</sentence><sentence id="2157">I says, "Never before.</sentence><sentence id="2158">And we are guarding the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, you and I?"</sentence><sentence id="2159">I couldn't believe.</sentence><sentence id="2160">But <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Exodus</span> was a tiny little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, and still</sentence><sentence id="2162">7 in terrible danger of being attacked.</sentence><sentence id="2163">You know, The Exodus went several times back and forth to <span class="COUNTRY">Yugoslavia</span>. (</sentence><sentence id="2164">Cough) And so the second day on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, somebody tells me, "There is a girl who went crazy on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, and cries that she will be thrown into the, the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span>."</sentence><sentence id="2165">So I went to see the girl; and this is the girl whose mother told me to take care of her.</sentence><sentence id="2166">So you can imagine what I felt.</sentence><sentence id="2167">So I said, "There must be a doctor on this <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>."</sentence><sentence id="2168">I went up to the doctor; and again, in German, trying to explain to him that there's a girl whom I'm in charge of who has to be taken care because...because she's sick.</sentence><sentence id="2169">And um doctor said, "You don't understand.</sentence><sentence id="2170">This is a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> that will be attacked very soon on the open <span class="ENV_FEATURES">sea</span>, and we have no <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> for anybody who is insane."</sentence><sentence id="2171">And shortly...the, the...the <span class="BUILDING">infirmary</span> was a little <span class="INT_SPACE">cubicle</span>, you know; maybe for four or five people.</sentence><sentence id="2172">Says, "There's no <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> here for anybody."</sentence><sentence id="2173">So I have to keep this...and I said, "No, I give the promise for this mother, and I will do.... I will not leave until you promise me to take care of this girl."</sentence><sentence id="2174">He says, "Well, if you bring her up...." After, you know, it was negotiating back and forth.</sentence><sentence id="2175">After a while, he said, "If you bring her up, I will take care of her.</sentence><sentence id="2176">Let's see what I can do."</sentence><sentence id="2177">And I pulled that poor girl screaming, screaming and hollering--she was sure I will throw her into the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ocean</span>, you know--she didn't wanted to go.</sentence><sentence id="2178">And we went up; and I told the doctor that I'd stay with her until until we arrived to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Haifa</span>. "</sentence><sentence id="2179">I will be her private nurse.</sentence><sentence id="2180">You don't have to go worry.</sentence><sentence id="2181">Give me the medicine, and I will stay."</sentence><sentence id="2182">And that's what I did.</sentence><sentence id="2183">And then after a while, the captain of The Exodus came; and he looked at me.</sentence><sentence id="2184">He says, "I hear that you are giving orders on my <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>."</sentence><sentence id="2185">I said, "No, I'm not giving orders.</sentence><sentence id="2186">But this was a mother...I, I made a vow to this mother that I would take care of her child.</sentence><sentence id="2187">And here it is, and I'm staying with her until we arrive.</sentence><sentence id="2188">So nobody has to worry.</sentence><sentence id="2189">I'm taking care of her.</sentence><sentence id="2192">8 I'm here from morning to evening.</sentence><sentence id="2193">I just go down to sleep.</sentence><sentence id="2194">I'm with her all the time, so you don't worry."</sentence><sentence id="2195">So the captain went away, and he was very nice.</sentence><sentence id="2196">Every day he came back, and every day he told me a little story about The Exodus.</sentence><sentence id="2197">So I found out that this was the youngest captain ever.</sentence><sentence id="2198">And that...that the...the run before us, the English came up to look for him, for the captain; and he was so young and he was so very good humored.</sentence><sentence id="2199">And he put on the captain's uh hat, and he said, "Do you think maybe I am the captain?</sentence><sentence id="2200">I don't know...we don't know where the captain is.</sentence><sentence id="2201">We didn't saw the captain.</sentence><sentence id="2202">Maybe I am the captain."</sentence><sentence id="2203">You know?</sentence><sentence id="2204">So the English kind of dismissed him, and never thought that he could be the captain of this <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2205">And they never found him; and he told me this story.</sentence><sentence id="2206">And so....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2361">Q: Time is...time is a little short.</sentence><sentence id="2362">The tape is.... Tell us about arrival.</sentence><sentence id="2363">Yeah.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2367">A: OK.</sentence><sentence id="2368">So anyhow, we arrived to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2369">And you can imagine to arrive into the promised land, and how are the feelings; but here I have this girl, and what will happen to her now?</sentence><sentence id="2370">And the captain said to me, "Now leave your <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">luggage</span> here.</sentence><sentence id="2371">You go down.</sentence><sentence id="2372">We have an <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ambulance</span> waiting.</sentence><sentence id="2373">You and the girl go.</sentence><sentence id="2374">And she's going to a <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>, and you take her to a <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span> there."</sentence><sentence id="2375">And I'm arriving to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Haifa</span> and that...with the shrieking <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ambulance</span> up on the top of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Mt. Carmel</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2376">And this doctor asked me, "What's her name?"</sentence><sentence id="2377">And I have no name.</sentence><sentence id="2378">I don't know her name.</sentence><sentence id="2379">I don't know who she is.</sentence><sentence id="2380">And I thought this will be one of those stories like my sister, who got lost...no name.</sentence><sentence id="2381">And I just broke down and I cried; and I had no idea what I will do, because I couldn't give any information about the girl.</sentence><sentence id="2382">But then a couple of weeks</sentence><sentence id="2384">9 later in front of a <span class="BUILDING">movie house</span>, I met the girl reunited with her family.</sentence><sentence id="2385">And this is probably the most beautiful story I can tell how we took care of our refugees.</sentence><sentence id="2386">Because a girl who didn't had any name, who didn't belonged, here was in <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> to be reunited--found family and united with her family.</sentence><sentence id="2387">So <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> gave her, everyone an incredible hope, an incredible future; and because of <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> there never will be another Holocaust.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2411">Q: We can just stop and change tapes.</sentence><sentence id="2412">We're almost done.</sentence><sentence id="2413">I just want to ask about the art.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="2419">0 TAPE #3</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2423">Q: OK.</sentence><sentence id="2424">Now.</sentence><sentence id="2425">Alice, how long roughly were you in <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> before you came to the <span class="COUNTRY">States</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2429">A: I was about two...two years.</sentence><sentence id="2430">Actually, what I wanted to do very much, when I met my wonderful husband--wonderful, wonderful man--who understood totally what was, and who encouraged me and gave me really the freedom to live again.</sentence><sentence id="2431">And I told him I must share one experience with him, and that's <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>; that we have to go back to <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>, that he must know what my ideal is in life.</sentence><sentence id="2432">What kind of person I want to be, how I want my children should be.</sentence><sentence id="2433">The tolerance, the goodness of the Swedish people--what I experienced as a child.</sentence><sentence id="2434">And he was wonderful, and he accepted a position in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>; and he kept telling me on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">airplane</span>, "But don't be disappointed, because you were a child there.</sentence><sentence id="2435">You now are a grown person.</sentence><sentence id="2436">And people are people.</sentence><sentence id="2437">They're not angels."</sentence><sentence id="2438">But, you know, we arrived in <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span> and I right away called this wonderful gentleman, this Mr. Haggberg's <span class="BUILDING">office</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2439">And Vera, the secretary, answered; and she said, "You know, Mr. Haggberg is not here.</sentence><sentence id="2440">He lives already in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">London</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2441">But he's exactly here for the dentist, and I phone him right now to the dentist".</sentence><sentence id="2442">And do you know that in ten minutes, Mr. Haggberg was in the <span class="BUILDING">hotel</span> where we were, embracing us and meeting my husband.</sentence><sentence id="2443">And so I knew that I am back with this wonderful <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2444">It was not a <span class="NPIP">dream</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2445">It was a reality.</sentence><sentence id="2446">And we will...we were instrumental helping the settlement of the refugees who came like I came into <span class="COUNTRY">Sweden</span>, who remained there.</sentence><sentence id="2447">And...and uh my husband opened <span class="BUILDING">Hebrew schools</span> in ...in small <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">cities</span>; and it was hard work because we were newly-wed, and he would travel every day to another <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2448">And I would open <span class="BUILDING">Sunday schools</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2449">And...but then our...the miracle happened that I had a son.</sentence><sentence id="2450">And can you imagine, where I got life several years before, I gave life now to this</sentence><sentence id="2452">1 wonderful little boy.</sentence><sentence id="2453">I mean, there was nobody like this...first-born, and in this total ...in this beautiful <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>, where the people are really angels.</sentence><sentence id="2454">And...and when Ronnie was three years old, we decided that...or we go back to <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>, or we'll come for a year to <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2455">And we decided to come for a year to <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2456">We had enough money just to stay a year, for Moshe to make his doctorate here.</sentence><sentence id="2457">And ...and for me to...for us just to see <span class="COUNTRY">America</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2458">And we were so enchanted by what American Jewry did, and how...my husband said, "This is like the other wing of the eagle.</sentence><sentence id="2459"><span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span> and <span class="COUNTRY">America</span> together balance the Jewish world."</sentence><sentence id="2460">The Jewish world that was so terribly, terribly maimed...the European Jewry; now the American Jewry and the Israeli Jewry together balance it...and restore it.</sentence><sentence id="2461">And we were more and more...became involved in the creativity part of the Jewish life.</sentence><sentence id="2462">And Rabbi [Wolf] Kellman, blessed memory, insisted that Moshe should get a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">pulpit</span> as soon as we learned the language.</sentence><sentence id="2463">He said to me, "You know, there are only ten people here in my rabbinat who is...who are like your husband, and we need him here."</sentence><sentence id="2464">And so this is how we entered this wonderful <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2465">And since that time, I don't think we've stopped with our creative lives.</sentence><sentence id="2466">We have now two sons, who are rabbis.</sentence><sentence id="2467">I have a little girl, Rina.</sentence><sentence id="2468">And Rina for me...when Rina was bor, Ronnie was ten year old.</sentence><sentence id="2469">And Ronnie said, "My mother has a sister," accidentally.</sentence><sentence id="2470">Instead of saying, "My mother has a daughter," Ronnie said, "My mother has a sister."</sentence><sentence id="2471">And Rina came to me as a gift.</sentence><sentence id="2472">As a gift that was very difficult, because Rina is special.</sentence><sentence id="2473">Rina is Downs Syndrome child.</sentence><sentence id="2474">And I thought that I cannot bear that pain; but Rina today is twenty-seven year old.</sentence><sentence id="2475">She's so beautiful.</sentence><sentence id="2476">Her soul is like anybody's soul--pure, clean and gorgeous.</sentence><sentence id="2477">Rina is a gift from God.</sentence><sentence id="2478">And in a way, she is Edith.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2538">Q: Alice, what do you carry with you the most, do you think, from the Holocaust?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2540">A: That I didn't found Edith. (</sentence><sentence id="2541">Sigh; pause) Not my personal suffering, and not my own...what....And no hatred.</sentence><sentence id="2542">But the spirit of those who didn't survived.</sentence><sentence id="2543">And I always ask what incredible people we are...instead of cursing God and man, we create a new <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2544">We give birth to children, and we raise them Jewish and we affirm them to life, to faith.</sentence><sentence id="2545">What incredible people we are.</sentence><sentence id="2546">And how incredible our teachings are.</sentence><sentence id="2547">And I became an artist, and my art is about this period of life; because in the "70's I went back to <span class="COUNTRY">Hungary</span>, and I saw that nobody mourned us.</sentence><sentence id="2548">Nobody missed us.</sentence><sentence id="2549">Nobody cared that we disappeared.</sentence><sentence id="2550">And the pain of that realization.</sentence><sentence id="2551">That there was no monument in our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2552">That the children disappeared in...in the daylight in a June day, and never came back.</sentence><sentence id="2553">Nobody remembered them.</sentence><sentence id="2554">And I felt that my art has to be dedicated to those who did not come...came back. (</sentence><sentence id="2555">Sniffling) And to an incredible man, Raoul Wallenburg, who saved a hundred thousand Jews--including my father--and shows to all of us what one man can do.</sentence><sentence id="2556">From one <span class="NPIP">side</span>, look at this incredible devastation that Hitler brought to the world.</sentence><sentence id="2557">Forty years later, and we still have the scars, the pains; and we are maimed forever.</sentence><sentence id="2558">And on the other hand, a Raoul Wallenburg--a man who is not Jewish, who is a Swede, who was an aristocrat, who didn't have to be in Hungary-- but he was a man, a total human being; developed his soul, not only his mind.</sentence><sentence id="2559">And he knew how to stand up; and he stood up, just with a piece of paper, with a certificate...with a...with a absolutely not valid certificate, against the German machinery of death.</sentence><sentence id="2560">Against the evil.</sentence><sentence id="2561">And look what a message for the next generation.</sentence><sentence id="2562">Everybody can choose what they want to do in life with themselves, go right or go left.</sentence><sentence id="2563">And the Torah says, "Choose life."</sentence><sentence id="2564">But the important thing is what <span class="NPIP">life</span> you're choosing.</sentence><sentence id="2565">Not only the self-gratification, not only the self.</sentence><sentence id="2568">3 But choose life.</sentence><sentence id="2569">Look at the life of the others, and help and stand up where...where unrighteousness and evil is done.</sentence><sentence id="2570">And stand up and be counted.</sentence><sentence id="2571">We all have the ability, just like Raoul Wallenburg.</sentence><sentence id="2572">This tape is for my grandchildren; but for all the grandchildren, for all the children whom I will not meet.</sentence><sentence id="2573">If they're looking for heroes, they have to look into their souls and found the hero in themselves.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2610">Q: Thank you.</sentence><sentence id="2611">There is no more to be said.</sentence><sentence id="2612">Thank you.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="2618">4 PHOTOGRAPHS (1)Sarvar synogogue, circa 1940.</sentence><sentence id="2619">This was an <span class="BUILDING">orthodox synogogue</span>, and the pride of the community.</sentence><sentence id="2620">It was still standing in 1976, but had been converted to a <span class="BUILDING">wood working shop</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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