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Testimony of Ann Wigoda née Mendelsohn, born in 1932 in Berlin, about her experiences as a girl in Berlin, her escape to Brussels, and her survival in orphanages and convents in Belgium under a false identity
Testimony
מוסרת העדות: ויגודה (מנדלסון), אן (חנה לורה)
מראיינת: תמי כץ
תאריך הריאיון: 27 בפברואר 2011
מתמללת: אביבית קדרון
Berlin
Bruxelles
Laeken
Chimay, School of the Sisters of Notre Dame
Obourg
Antwerpen
Toronto
CD Number 1
היום יום ראשון כ"ג באדר א' תשע"א 27 בפברואר 2011. אני תמי כץ מראיינת מטעם יד ושם את הגברת אן ויגודה לבית מנדלסון ילידת Berlin גרמניה 1932. גברת ויגודה תספר לנו על עזיבתה את Berlin ב-1938, על חייה ב-Bruxelles בלגיה. על הכיבוש הגרמני ב-1940 ועל חייה בזהות בדויה במקומות שונים בבלגיה עד לשחרור ב-1944, על עלייתה ארצה ב-1949 ועל חייה
ב-Toronto קנדה החל מ-1959 ועד היום.
Q: Good Morning, Ann
A: Good Morning, Tammy.
Q: Can you tell us please where and when you were born.
A: O.K. I was born on 23rd August, 1932 in Berlin Germany.
Q: What is your first memory?
A: My first memory – it's hard to say.
Q: Do you remember Berlin?
A: I remember my neighborhood. I remember there was a church nearby and sometimes I saw brides coming by with the carriage and horses and we liked to watch this out. So I remember the ice wagons, people jumped on the ice wagon. And I remember on the street corner there was like a dispenser of candies because when my father went to work, I walked with him to the corner of the street and he used to put some money in the dispenser and I took a candy.
Q: Do you remember where you lived in Berlin?
A: Yes, I know the address.
Q: But you remember the house, the apartment?
A: Yes, I went back with my husband, with my son, with my daughter to show them.
Q: Did you remember it?
A: Not. I remember the court-yard because the buildings were all around. I remember the attic because that's where we hanged the laundry and we washed and we hanged the laundry.
Q: It was an apartment, yes?
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: That your parents owned or rented?
A: No, we rented.
Q: It was a big apartment?
A: There was a bed room, a living room and a dining room at the same time. We had a kitchen and we had a toilet. It was a nice apartment.
Q: Which area in Berlin?
A: Alexanderplatz.
Q: Near Alexanderplatz.
A: Yes.
Q: So you have bits of memories of that.
A: I do. I have some very unpleasant memories.
Q: O.K. We will get to that.
Who was your father? What was his name?
A: My father's name was Max Mendelsohn.
Q: And where was he born, also in Berlin? A: He was born in Breslau.
Q: In Breslau.
A: On 11 November. 1902.
Q: And his parents, his family – did you know his parents, your grandparents?
A: Yes.
Q: What were their names?
A: His mother's name was Rosa. His father's name was Yaakov.
Q: From Breslau?
A: They lived in Danzig.
Q: So they were like always between Poland and Germany, Breslau and Danzig
A: Yes. But now it's Poland.
Q: But it used to be Germany.
A: Yes, it used to be Germany and Danzig, I think, is still Germany no?
Q: It’s Poland. .
A: Also Poland?
Q: Yes, today it's Gdansk. But it switched, you know, from Poland to Germany. It went to Poland. These are the areas during the Austro-Hungarian Empire that changed rulers.
So do you know something about your father's family background, your grand-parents, were they Orthodox Jews, were they secular? What could you tell us about them? What kind of education did you father get?
A: My father…I know he worked as a coat-clerk and also he was an accountant.
Q: In Berlin?
A: In Berlin and also he was unemployed and also he was a house-painter.
Q: He did several jobs.
A: Yes.
Q: But he came from a religious-Orthodox family?
A: I'm not sure. I have a cousin in Australia who is raised religious and she told me it's mainly because of her mother, like her father is my father's brother. Although According to my father, I don't recollect my father being particularly religious. Yet when he was in the South of France in the camps the first thing he asked, according to the correspondence about his Tallit and his Tefillin and he always knew about the holidays.
Q: Do you remember your grandparents?
A: I only remember visiting them once.
Q: In Breslau?
A: In Danzig.
Q: In Danzig.
A: And I don't know if I remember or because I was told that my grandmother came to visit us in Berlin.
Q: Do you know what your grandfather did for a living?
A: No.
Q: You don't know.
A: I remember my maternal grandparents better.
Q: So you used to visit them. And your father got secular education or Jewish education? Do you know? Did he go to a Chedder or to a Yeshiva He went to a secular school.? A: I don't think so. I don't think so.
Q: He also learnt also a profession? You said he was an accountant.
A: Yes.
Q: So he went to ….
A: I mean when I remember my father, he was already like I was ….when I was born, my father was 32. So he already.
Q: Yes. But he worked as an accountant?
A: Yes.
Q: So he must have studied that.
A: Yes and he also worked as a court-clerk. He was very handy.
Q: He went to University also in….?
A: I don't know.
Q: What about your mother? Who was your mother?
A: My mother was born in Inowrocław
Q: Which is where?
A: Also close to the Polish border.
Q: What was her name?
A: Her name was Betty Barnass. And she was born on 3rd February 1902 also.
I remember my grandparents because every summer we used to go and visit my grandparents so I would remember them.
Q: What were their names?
A: Her name was Deborah and his name was Hermann.
Q: What were they making a living of, do you know?
A: They lived in a small village. They were retired when I knew them.
Q: But you don't know what was their occupation.
A: They may have had a store because I remember when I was very little, I went to this store because I remember when I was very little and there were candies and I used to lick the candies and put them back. It's quite possible that they had a store.
Q: Were they religious?
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: Really religious-Orthodox or traditional?
A: I know my mother kept Kosher and she lit the candles, but she didn’t go to Schul every Shabbat – only for the holidays.
Q: So it must be from her background.
A: Yes.
Q: Did your mother have a profession?
A: My mother worked in an office before she was married.
Q: She was a clerk?
A: A clerk, yes, no particular ….
Q: Your parents themselves were too young, I mean, your father was too young to take part in the First World War.
A: Of course.
Q: Maybe the grandparents, you don't know.
A: I know that relatives of my mother's were there. I have photos of them in a uniform.
Q: Do you know how your parents met?
A: Yes, I know how they met. My father was boarding with the family because he came from Danzig. They were at my mother's family.
Q: In Berlin?
A: In Berlin. He went to visit and he was speaking to the key hole. And it was love at first site.
Q: And you were an only child.
A: I am an only child.
Q: They spoke German at home?
A: Yes.
Q: Other languages?
A: No.
Q: Did they know Yiddish?
A: No.
Q: Just German – that was your mother tongue.
A: Yes.
Q: That's what they spoke with you.
A: Yes. That was their language.
Q: So they lived in Berlin.
A: Yes.
Q: Your mother left home and came to live in Berlin.
A: Yes, also you go to the big city with all the opportunities.
Q: And after she got married she continued working or she was a housewife?
A: No, she was a housewife. I know she went to high school because she knew French.
Q: Did she have help at home?
A: Help – no. She did everything.
Q: Was there someone who took care of you like a Nanny or a Fraulein?
A: No.
Q: She took care of you.
A: She took care of me and of the house and she cooked and everything.
Q: So you say they weren't religious, but traditional. She kept Kosher.
A: Yes.
Q: And they went to….She lit candles on Shabbat.
A: Yes.
Q: Your father had a Kiddush also, you remember?
A: Yes. Yes. I have a photo like that. They weren't really very religious because he took a photo, right.
Q: But it was traditional.
A: Yes. He made Kiddush and all that.
Q: They used to have guests for Shabbat or you don't remember?
A: I know we had guests. I don't know if it was for Shabbat because I have photos, lots of photos.
Q: And you said they used to go to Schul, to the Synagogue on holidays.
A: On holidays.
Q: Which Synagogue, do you know? Did they belong to a certain congregation in Berlin? Were they a part of a certain congregation?
A: I don't know, not that I know.
Q: Do you have any recollections of the Synagogue in Berlin? As a child they must have taken you.
A: No. Only of the one in Bruxelles.
Q: Only in Bruxelles.
So they used to go on the holidays.
Do you have any recollections of celebrating the holidays in Berlin, Pessach?
A: No, only Shabbat.
Q: But Pessach, Yom Kippur in Berlin – you don't remember.
A: I don't remember.
Q: Their milieu, their friends were Jewish or also non-Jewish in Berlin? A: They were Jewish, only Jewish.
Q: They had also non-Jewish.
A: Not that I know.
Q: But the neighbors were also German, right?
A: The neighbors were German.
Q: You were a little kid. But did they ever talk about the neighbours, atmosphere?
A: I remember some neighbors.
Q: O.K. So you will tell us in a minute what.
Did they speak about their life in Berlin before you were born, before the Nazis came to power, did they ever speak about it?
A: I was very little. They didn't….
I was born on the days when children were to be seen but not heard.
Q: Yes. So they didn’t share this with you.
A: They didn't share this.
Q: Their cultural milieu, were they deep into German culture? They read German books, literature, music?
A: Yes.
Q: Berlin is the centre of cultural life.
A: Yes, we had a radio. And I listened a lot to classical music.
Q: They used to go to the theatre to the opera, do you know?
A: I don't know. I don't know.
Q: What were, you would say, their economic situation in the early thirties? We will talk about when the Nazis came to power.
A: I would say, I guess they were petit bourgeois , but during the depression which I didn't know it was a depression, my father was unemployed.
Q: During the depression, 1929 – 1930?
A: I don't know when, but I know my mother told me that he was also unemployed for a while.
Q: And when he worked as an accountant, he worked for a firm, for a German firm?
A: For a firm.
Q: For a German firm?
A: Yes. My mother got used to pay. You know, in those days they had pension. I mean, They were quite advanced in those things. So she kept the karnees. And after the war she was able to get some money for the time that he worked.
Q: So it was a German company that he worked with.
A: I guess. I'm not aware….but I guess so.
Q: So economically they were O.K. except for the depression.
A: Not rich, but O.K.
Q: You don't know of any connection to the Jewish community or anything of that.
Was your father involved in any kind of political activity?
A: I don't know.
Q: Were they Zionist in those days? Were they related to any youth movement or Zionist movement? Because in Berlin, of course. you know, they were always….
A: Were they Zionist? – Not that I know. Not that I know.
Q: You don't know in Berlin if they were?
A: No. I don't know although I have two aunts who came here before the War.
Q: O.K. So who were the aunts who came to Palestine?
A: My father's two sisters came, I think, in 1938 or 1939 to Israel.
Q: Before the war?
A: Before the war.
Q: To Palestine.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you remember – you as a kid – did you know about Palestine. About Eretz Israel?
A: I didn't.
Q: No.
Do you remember seeing the Blue Box of Keren Kayemet?
A: I don't remember that.
Q: Did your parents know Hebrew? Your father must have known from Leshon Koddesh.
A: From the prayers. Yes, they knew how to pray, but I don't think they knew the language.
Q: They didn't know the language.
A: I don't think so.
Q: So there were two aunts who immigrated, but this was really before the war.
A: Right before the war.
Q: Were there any family members who immigrated?
A: My mother had cousins. They were actually the founders of Ramot Hashavim and Kiryat Bialik. They came in 1933.
Q: In 1933 when the Nazis came to power.
A: Right. Right. Right away. They were more well-to-do.
Q: Do you think that your parents at that point considered immigrating?
A: If they were thinking? Not that I know of.
Q: Did you have family anywhere else in the world besides in Palestine I mean in America, in South America, other places in Europe?
A: After the war.
Q: No, I'm asking before the war.
A: I know before the War my mother had a cousin who went to Chile. She also had cousins who went to Brazil. And I know we had some relatives in the States, but I don't know anything about them. I don't know when they went or what….
Q: And your parents themselves – did they go on vacations like out of Berlin, out of Germany before the war?
A: They went to Danzig.
Q: To your grandparents.
A: Not necessarily but there is a beach there.
Q: To a resort.
A: Yes.
And also we went to visit my grandparents, my maternal grandparents every summer.
Q: You spent the summer.
A: But I remember going to Danzig.
Q: When you were in Berlin, did you still go to a kindergarten or not?
A: I wanted to go.
Q: But it was impossible.
A: But it was already….When I left, I was 5. I remember my mother taking me to a kindergarten and I liked it because of all the toys and….
Q: Was it German or Jewish?
A: I have no idea. It could have been German.
Q: Because if you were 5, this is already 1937, if I think of that.
A: It's already 1938.
Q: So these are already rough times, you know.
A: Yes. I knew very well who I was.
Q: So we are coming to speak about that.
So you were born actually a year before Hitler and the Nazis came to power. So you probably have no recollections of things before that.
A: No, I don't….
Q: But you said that as a little girl very quickly you were aware of things that were going on.
A: Yes.
Q: What do you remember of those times?
First of all – the name Hitler as a child, you knew?
A: No, but I knew about the Gestapo. I knew about the police. I don't know if I knew the name Hitler, I have no idea.
Q: And as a little girl in Berlin did you understand that you are Jewish and what it meant to be Jewish?
A: I knew it was a curse.
Q: It was a curse. That's the way you felt as a….
A: Absolutely.
Q: But did you understand what it meant?
A: No.
Q: Did you know? Did you have German neighbors or friends so you could see that they are different?
A: Yes, but I used to be like everybody else and then all of a sudden I was….
Q: Out cast.
A: Ostracized.
Q: By neighbors like children?
A: O.K. ostracized by neighbors who used to love me who used to welcome me and all of a sudden they shut the door to me. So that I remember. But the children – they started making fun of me.
Q: You were the only Jewish child there in the building?
A: I don't think it was a Jewish neighborhood.
Q: So there were….
A: There were a little walk, but no in my street, no.
Q: So you felt it immediately with the children.
A: I felt it, yes. I knew I was different. They used to tell me: "We have sweet blood and your blood is sour". Then I remember going up crying and asking my mother why was I Jewish.
Q: And what did she say, do you remember?
A: I don't remember.
Q: Did she try to explain to you as a child what was going on?
A: I don't think so.
Q: So you couldn’t understand.
A: I didn't understand.
Q: You just felt that all of a sudden something changed in your life.
A: Yes.
Q: And you felt threatened.
A: Yes. I mean, they used to fight with me.
Q: The children were violent.
A: Yes.
Let's say, my mother sent me to buy milk. Then they used to take the milk and spill it or if she sent me to buy a candy or whatever, they used to take it from me. Once I got a doll – I don't know from where – someone brought with eyes that close, a green doll and they took the doll and put the doll in a puddle. And they wouldn't let me retrieve the doll until I sank it to the head. So things like that I remember.
Q: It was very humiliating.
A: Mean! Mean! Very mean.
Q: Mean and humiliating.
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: So you were scared going out.
A:Yes, very scared, very scared.
I don't know who told me I should put my hands in my pockets so when I run – which is wrong, right.
I remember once I fell in the entrance of an apartment building and I hurt myself and I cried and there were two women there talking. They didn't pay any attention to me. I remember things like that.
I remember being afraid to go on the same side where the police station was. I remember soldiers marching.
Q: In a uniform.
A: I was afraid, very afraid.
Q: And you were very young.
A: I was very young.
Q: And you remember the Swastika and things like that? You have memories of that?
A: No. I remember only the soldiers marching.
Q: What happens at home once the Nazis come to power? You say on the street as a child with the neighbors immediately you felt it.
A: Not immediately.
Q: But gradually.
A: Yes.
Q: What happens at home? Your father is out of work.
A: My father left first.
Q: Which year are you talking about?
A: The beginning of 1938.
Q: O.K. but before 1938. In 1935 you are 3 years old – we have the Nuremberg Laws, racial laws.
A: Yes. That's probably when it started.
Q: Right. Do you remember or do you know because you were very young how that affected your parents? What were the limitations? Because you actually didn't know that before. You actually didn't know any life before that. You come into this actually.
A: No, life at home was….
Q: Normal?
A: No different. I didn't feel anything different at home.
Q: Your parents were not more tense, nervous?
A: I don't know.
Q: Or to you – they wanted you to be protected, to feel comfortable, safe, so perhaps they didn't show so much of what was going on or they didn't realize themselves, you think, what was going on?
A: I didn't feel any difference at home, but I don’t know exactly when my father left.
Q: Do you remember the Olympic Games or you have no memory of that?
A: No.
Q: O.K. So you have no recollections of things deteriorating, just your own feeling of insecurity with the children.
A: Yes, and being frightened.
Q: So we get to 1938. From what you know before your father left, was he still working? What happened with him?
A: My father, I guess, was working because I don't remember him being home during the day.
Q: He was working as an accountant?
A: I don't know. You know, when you are young, you don't think about asking your parents too many questions, like my mother, right?
Q: But knowing now at your age. .
A: I don't know what he was working.
Q: Do you know if….At that point we know that many German Jews as a result of what is happening – of the rules and the pressure leave, try to immigrate. There were suicides, there were a lot of very difficult things.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know if your parents at this point considered leaving Germany?
A: In 1938 – yes. My father left first.
Q: This was before the Kristallnacht?
A: Yes. We left before.
I do have the dates at home because I got a lot of papers from the archives in Bruxelles, but I don't know by heart. But I imagine that he left at the very beginning of 1938. And he arranged for us to have like a smuggler, you know, somebody to smuggle us out because he was smuggled out.
Q: He was smuggled out to Belgium?
A: Yes.
Q: You were young, so I don't know, but do you know about the Kindertransport?
A: I don't know anything about it.
Q: I was wondering if they considered it. It was a little bit later. It was in 1939, but they sent….
A: I know about it now.
Q: Yes, but you don't know if your parents were aware of that.
A: No, I don't know.
Q: They were considering sending you off….
A: I don't know.
Actually all those episodes I'm telling you about the children happened after my father was gone.
Q: So he was smuggled to Belgium.
A: Yes.
Q: He probably had to pay money.
A: Yes, money, right.
Q: And what had happened to your grandparents? They remained during those….?
A: My maternal grandparents died before the war. My paternal grandparents were deported to ghettoes and they disappeared.
Q: They didn't leave Germany or….?
A: No.
Q: And you had relatives in Berlin?
A: Yes. Yes. We had a lot of relatives.
Q: In Berlin?
A: Yes.
Q: So father was smuggled to Bruxelles, in Belgium?
A: Yes.
Q: And how long did you stay with your mother in Berlin until you joined him?
A: I remember that the Gestapo or whatever uniformed people came to the apartment.
Q: To look for him?
A: I don't know the reason, but I remember that they were kind. They were not threatening. They were polite.
Q: They were dressed as…
A: They had uniforms.
And anyway my father arranged for us to be smuggled out of Berlin. And that was the time when my maternal grandmother passed away. I remember my mother went to the police to get the permission to travel.
Q: That was the excuse?
A: Yes.
And I remember I stayed with cousins of hers and I was very afraid.
Q: That she will not return.
A: And I was looking out of the window that she should come back. So I knew it was dangerous. But anyway she came back. So we were able to travel part of the way by train.
Q: To the border?
A: No. No, but part of the way. And then we arrived in the evening and there were other people that were to be smuggled out of Germany. And we were divided in two groups. And for some reason they didn't put me in my mother's group.
Q: Did she explain to you something, what's going on that you are going to leave home?
A: My mother did not explain to me anything.
Q: So you didn't know what was going on actually.
A: Well, I don't know. I don't remember her explaining to me anything. I don’t have any memories of that.
Q: Do you remember leaving your apartment in Berlin? Do you have any memories?
A: No, not specifically.
Q: Do you remember what you took?
A: No.
Q: What she took with her, anything from home, just clothes?
A: Well, I know that we ended up having a lift that came to Bruxelles.
Q: So they sent a lift. Even though they smuggled the border, they sent a lift.
A: Yes. We had a lot of things that we had….
Q: And you got the lift?
A: Yes. Yes. A lot of things. I don’t know if it was a lift – whatever – cases, I don't know, but I know that we ended up selling most of it.
Q: So they made two groups. And you found yourself not with your mother.
A: Right.
Q: And at this point you are 6 years old.
A: 5
Q: 5 – 6 years old, right.
A: Yes, 5 and half, over 5, 5 and a half.
So they took us to woods. And we arrived at the clearing. And I arrived first and I was very upset and I cried because my mother wasn't there. So they calmed me down and they told me not to worry that she will also arrive. And she did.
Q: Were there other relatives that you knew?
A: No. No. Just my mother and I. The others were strangers.
Q: Very scary for a little girl.
A: Very scary, yes.
And then they took us to a farm and….
Q: This was still in Germany or already in Belgium?
A: It was still Germany. And there were more children. And they wanted to put us in beds and the adults had to go in the barns on the straw.
I wouldn't leave my mother. I didn't want to sleep in the bed. So my mother slept on the straw and I slept on top of her. So the straw shouldn't pickle me.
And on the next day they gave us breakfast and they gave us white bread. And I wouldn't eat the bread because in Berlin I ate black bread. I didn’t want to eat the white bread. And then some taxies came, I mean cars.
Q: Do you have any idea how many people were in this group? (just to give us an idea).
A: I know there were other children so there were other families. And there was more than one car that came.
Q: So it was 10 – 20 people?
A: Maybe. I guess maybe 20 because we were two groups.
And they took us in the cars and they took us to Koeln. And I know we went to a hotel. They put us in a hotel. And then from there we took a train to Bruxelles.
Q: Straight.
A: Straight.
And at the train station my father was waiting for us.
Q: You had false papers? You had permission? How did it….? You don't know.
A: Illegal. It was illegal.
Q: Illegal.
A: I know it's illegal because I have the papers from Belgium.
Q: But on the train no one stopped you? No one checked?
A: No. No.
Q: So maybe you had false papers or something.
A: I don’t know.
Q: So you haven't seen your father for how long?
A: For months.
Q: For months.
A: Yes.
Q: He left before.
A: Sure, for months.
Q: So that was exciting to see him.
A: Very exciting.
And then he took us to where he lived.
Q: In Bruxelles.
A: In Bruxelles.
And it was a room under the attic.
Q: He rented an attic?
A: Just a room.
Q: But he rented it.
A: Yes, of course.
Q: Was it a Jewish family?
A: It was not a family. It was a room. You could rent rooms.
Q: But in the building who was living?
A: We spent one night there.
Q: So he didn't rent the place for you to live.
A: No. No. No. That was where he dwelled.
And there was a bed and they put me against the wall and I was squeezed against the wall. When I went there, I said: "Pappa, Du lebst noch in einer Waschstube"
"You are living in a laundry room" because in Berlin the rooms under the attic….
Q: Were in the attic. For you it was a laundry room.
A: Yes.
So on the next day we rented an apartment, the next morning.
Q: Do you know why he chose Bruxelles?
A: No.
Q: I know that many Jews came to…..
A: We did not intend to stay there.
Q: What was his intention?
A: We wanted to immigrate.
Q: To?
A: To wherever we could.
Q: To get a visa?
A: To get a visa.
I know actually we were going to go to Bolivia. I
Q: In South America.
A: In South America. I already had my vaccinations. I remember that. I mean, I was very aware – over there I was already aware of a lot of tension between my parents. And also once we arrived in Bruxelles after we brought over all the cousins from Berlin and people slept over on the floor and people were crying and….
Q: Your father helped people to come out.
A: Yes.
Q: So he was involved in getting the family from Berlin.
A: Yes, cousins.
Q: Did he manage to take money as well, savings, things like that?
A: I don't know. I don't know. I didn't know about finances.
Q: Was he working in Bruxelles?
A: Yes.
Q: I was asking this because I know many immigrated at that point to Antwerpen among the refugees. .
A: But they were Orthodox people.
Q: More Orthodox.
A: Yes.
Q: From East Europe and also from Germany.
A: Yes, I know but many were very Orthodox.
Q: O.K. So in Bruxelles was he on his own or the Jewish community helped him?
A: The Jewish community helped us. If not for the Jewish community we would not be able to stay in Bruxelles because, you know, according to the archives, they did not accept us as political refugees and they wanted to send us back to Germany. But because of the intervention of the Jewish Committee, they sent him to a school as an apprentice.
Q: They found a job for him so he could stay legally.
A: That's right. But we had to report to the police every week.
Q: So your status was as refugees, political refugees?
A: No. No.
Q: Just refugees.
A: Refugees.
Q: So they got him a job and it was really a job or it was just a cover that he is working in a school?
A: I don't know. It says in the papers that he was an apprentice teacher, but I remember that my father worked in some kind of a factory. He had a small booth with all the tools and the workers came to him. And he gave them the tools and he had to sign that he got the tools. And in the evening they had to bring him back the tools.
Q: And you don't know anything about who owned this factory or this place.
A: No.
Q: You just have memories of that.
A: Because I went with him sometime.
Q: So he rented a small apartment?
A: No. It was a quite nice apartment.
Q: In the centre?
A: Yes.
Q: Of Bruxelles.
A: Yes, in Etterbeek. We had Jewish neighbors on both sides, but just before the War, I guess maybe we couldn't afford it anymore, we moved somewhere else in a smaller place.
Q: What was your mother doing?
A: My mother was a housewife. She is the only one who knew some French.
Q: And what about you, it’s a shock? It's a culture shock as a little girl all of a sudden moving or you were surrounded by German Jews, German language or you are exposed now to the French immediately?
A: I had a hard time because I didn't speak any French. So it was very hard for me.
Q: But on the other hand children pick languages much quicker than adults.
A: Maybe because they advised me to repeat a year because I had difficulties with the language.
Q: So it's the first time you go to school there or to a Kindergarten?
A: School.
Q: School. It's public or Jewish?
A: Public.
Q: Public?
A: Yes.
Q: Speaking French?
A: French.
Q: Or also Flemish or Walloon?
A: No, only French.
Q: And the apartment itself was comfortable.
A: It was very nice.
Q: It was nice, yes.
And you go to school. It's close to your home?
A: I had to walk.
Q: Are you the only refugee in the class or there are other Jewish refugees? Are there Jewish children there?
A: I don't know. I know that they called us by the last name. So the teacher always called me Mendelsohn. And she had the habit of asking me: "How you say this in German?" So I was….how should I say, different, outstanding, right?
I think she must have been anti-German or something.
Q: Anti-German or anti-Semitic?
A: Maybe both.
Q: But you don't remember other Jewish children?
A: No.
Q: You were the only one in your class?
A: I think so. It was not also a very Jewish neighborhood I guess. .
Q: And how did the other children treat you?
A: The children – no problem.
Q: They didn't mock you, they didn't look down at you as a ….
A: No. No.
Only the teacher .
Q: Only the teacher.
A: Only the teacher. She made me different. So everybody knew I was German.
Q: And you felt uncomfortable with that. It's not only German, it's being Jewish German.
A: You wouldn't like to be. You want to belong as a child. You don't want to be outstanding.
Q: But you said the children accepted you.
A: The children were fine.
Q: You had friends? You made friends?
A: Yes. I had some friends, but you know, in Belgium people are not very warm. They don't take you into their house although I had one girl that lived down the street and she used to smuggle me into her house until her parents found out. But maybe it was already the war. It was already the war.
Q: So you felt lonely?
A: I was lonely. I was lonely all my childhood.
Q: As a child.
A: Yes.
Q: To be this all of a sudden in a refugee condition.
A: In Berlin I wanted to have siblings. I used to put sugar on the window seals so the stork should come and bring me a baby.
Q: A baby brother or sister.
A: Yes.
Q: And what was the curriculum like in school? You go to the first grade, yes?
A: I went to the first grade.
Q: You study in French to read and write.
A: Everything in French.
Q: This time you spoke the language fluently already?
A: I guess by the end of the year I did.
Q: It was a public school?
A: It was a public school.
Q: But didn't they have a religion hour or classes?
A: O.K. They had religion.
Q: Catholic, yes?
A: Religious classes, Catholic, but it was not mandatory. Whoever didn't want to attend the Catholic classes, had moral classes. So I wasn't the only one. Maybe there were Jews, I don't know. But I was in a group and we had moral classes.
Q: Now, your parents in Bruxelles. This is 1938 and 1939 they thought… did they say to you: "O.K. These are difficult times. It will pass. We will go back to Germany, we will go home"? Or was there feeling that you left Germany, you left home and you are not going to go back. What I'm asking actually if you know….
A: I knew….
Q: Did they treat Hitler as just something extreme that will pass or they thought: "This is serious"?
A: I don't know what they thought. They didn't confine it to me.
Q: No.
A: No. I was a child, whatever.
Q: But they didn't say lke: "In a little while we are going to go home".
A: I knew we weren't going back.
Q: You were not going back.
A: I just knew that. How I knew it – I don't know.
Q: And you accepted things as a child?
A: Yes. I knew, I knew. I just knew that was the new life and I knew we are trying to go, to immigrate somewhere else.
Q: And how do you remember your parents at that point? How were they in Bruxelles – Immigrating, not knowing about the future, trying to get to immigrate somewhere else? They did have relatives in Palestine or not yet.
A: Not yet.
Q: Not yet, maybe.
A: Yes. They did – my father's sister. My mother had, I know.So we did have….
Q: Do you remember how they were? They were tense? It was difficult at home? Or it was just….?
A: I don't know. I just remember that they brought over people and cousins of my mother actually. And the men didn't come. So the women were crying. There were no children, just women.
Q: You were the only child in the family?
A: Yes. My mother had cousins, lots of cousins in Berlin, but no children came. Her best friend had two sons, but she stayed in Germany. And when they came to visit, I felt very safe in Germany because they were bigger boys. But I know they stayed in Germany because my father used to write to them from the camp.
Q: But as an only child, you were more spoiled, you think?
A: My father spoiled me.
Q: He spoiled you. In what way?
A: Well, he used to buy me things and he used to play with me, but my mother was busy, right.
Q: So you are adjusting to Bruxelles, to your new life, to school.
A: Yes. I had two friends – the neighbors.
Q: Catholic?
A: No. Jewish, Polish.
Q: Polish Jews.
A: Yes. And even after we moved, I remained friends.
Q: And you communicated in French with them?
A: I don’t know, I guess.
Q: At home you continued speaking German?
A: German.
Q: That was your mother tongue.
A: Yes.
Q: But outside you are speaking?
A: French.
Q: French.
The Belgians, was their anti-Semitism, do you remember? You felt it very strongly in Berlin.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you feel it also in Bruxelles at that time?
A: Before the War?
Q: Yes.
A: No.
Q: No?
A: I didn't feel anything.
Q: Not at school, not on the street?
A: No.
And actually my neighbor, the friend– he went to the same school I did. And we probably were in the same class. No….She may have gone to school when I had to double the year because I remember telling my father. My father wanted me to have the best marks. And I tried so much to please him, but I could never get the 5, the highest mark in conduct. 4.5.
Q: Education was very important for them.
A: Yes, very-very important.
Q: They put a lot of stress on you.
A: A lot of stress.
Q: And you were an only child. So everything they wanted….
A: Yes, very important.
In all his letters from the camps he asked if I study well, if I do this…if I pass. He was….
Q: What other values were emphasized besides knowledge and education? What other values do you remember your parents putting an emphasis ?
A: I don't remember, but I remember the moral classes where we had to help all the people . We were (….) to do that – to be honest and ….
Q: And at home was there….because you are an only child, you were very close or there was also disciple.
A: A lot of discipline.
Q: You had to speak like third person?
A: I used to make a ….
Q: A bow?
A: A reverence…..
Q: To your father?
A: Not to my parents, but to strangers.
Q: I'm asking in terms of family relations, were they close?
A: Family – no, no.
Q: Were they formal
A: Not formal, but strict.
Q: Strict?
A: Yes, strict.
Q: What does it mean 'strict'? What did you as a child have to do?
A: I had to obey.
Q: Everything.
A: I had to obey, yes, but even in school they used to show me because I was so polite, they used to show me to the other kids – how polite I was.
Q: You knew your place?
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: You weren't rebellious.
A: No. No.
Q: You learnt well.
A: I was very obedient.
Q: You were very obedient.
So would you say in those years in the beginning it was rough. You left home as things were unstable. Yet there was some kind of stability for you.
A: In the home.
Q: In the home for you.
A: Always. I always felt stability in the home.
Q: You said that the Jewish Community actually saved you and helped you.
A: Yes.
Q: So in Bruxelles were you connected to the Jewish Community? Did your father go to Schul there? Was he more involved or just you got support from them or there was more than that, do you know? Do you remember going to? You said that you remember the Synagogue in Bruxelles.
A: I remember that.
Q: But from after the war or before?
A: No, maybe before and during, before they started deporting, we went to the big Synagogue.
Q: Do you remember if they kept Kosher also in Bruxelles or it was difficult?
A: I don't think that my mother kept Kosher, I'm not aware of it, definitely not during the war.
Q: Yes, we will get to that.
But do you remember whether they still celebrated during that year the holidays in 1938 and 1939?
A: I don't remember. I don't remember. I remember not liking Matzoth.
Q: So you did celebrate it. .
A: Actually, yes.
Q: If you remember not eating Matzoth, you must have been celebrating, at least eating the Matzot. .
A: Yes. They were dry, not like today – they are nice and crispy. I didn't like them. I remember actually in Germany that we ate Matzoth now that you are talking about them and I didn't like them.
Q: But you don't remember anything specifically of the Jewish Community in Bruxelles.
A: No. Not by and large, only the neighbors.
Q: So their main aid was that they got you to stay, that you weren't deported at that point when you came, that they got your father a job. That was their help. That was the main help.
A: Yes. I know that from the archives.
Q: You left Germany. Things were really deteriorating in Germany.
A: Yes.
Q: You don't know, you were a child – the Kristaklnacht it was after you left.
A: After.
Q: Do you remember hearing about it?
A: No.
Q: Your parents must have known about it.
A: For sure. For sure. I mean they brought over lots of relatives.
Q: They didn't share or you didn't know anything.
A: Nothing. Nothing.
Q: You didn't know anything of what you left of what was going on in Germany, you as a child?
A: No, only my feelings, but they didn't talk to me about it.
Q: You had a radio also in Bruxelles?
A: Yes, but ended up selling the radio.
Q: Do you as a child remember hearing Hitler speaking? Speeches?His radio speeches? Do you have recollections of that?
A: No.
Q: No.
A: I guess we didn't listen to it.
I only remember listening to classical music and feeling sad.
Q: Sad?
And did they have some kind of a cultural life in Bruxelles or it wasn't possible? Did you go to the movies, theatre?
A: My father took me to the movie, the first movie in Berlin.
Q: In Berlin, that you remember.
A: Yes.
And also in Belgium he took me to see a Walt Disney movie 'Snow White', I remember that.
Q: But theatre, concert, something of that sort?
A: I don't remember.
Q: You don't remember.
So you weren't aware also you were a little girl of the political situation, the Anschluss?
A: No, nothing like that.
Q: The annexation of Austria and all this.
A: No.
Q: You were not aware of these.
A: I was not aware of it. .
Q: And the War broke out on September 1st 1939.
A: No. In Belgium the War broke out….
Q: I know. We will get to that. That was in May 1940 in Belgium.
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: But I'm talking about of the invasion of Poland and all of that. Do you…?
A: No. I mean no – I was not involved in politics at all.
Q: Also in school they didn't talk about it?
A: I don't know.
Q: You don't recall…
A: Anything.
Q: At home, your parents thinking to themselves: "What's going to happen now?"
A: I don't remember. Maybe they talked about it, but not to me.
Q: But they didn't manage to get a visa out of Belgium?
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: They did.
A: Absolutely.
Q: To Bolivia?
A: To Bolivia.
Q: So what happened?
A: They closed the borders. I don't know who closed the borders if Belgium closed the borders or Bolivia.
Q: Before the war or after the war? A: Before the war, in 1939.
Q: So it must have been maybe when the war broke out in Poland or something like that.
A: It could be.
Q: It could be. They closed the borders.
A: That the borders were closed – we couldn't go. We only had all the ….It was one week before departure, we had the vaccinations – I remember that.
Q: So you were all about to leave and couldn't leave the country.
A: We couldn't leave.
Q: But you have no recollections of listening in the radio that there if a war going on or anything.
A: No.
Q: So until the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 do you remember anything else during that period?
A: No.
Q: Did you go to a youth movement?
A: No.
Q: Just to school.
A: Just to school.
Q: The other kids – did they go? Was there a local youth movement?
A: No, not that I recall, no.
Q: And Nazi propaganda – do you remember in Bruxelles? Did you hear or see? Because in Berlin you could feel some of it.
A: No. No.
Q: But nothing in Bruxelles.
A: Nothing at all.
Q: So you are quite safe?
A: Yes, I felt safe.
Q: And you are quite adjusted.
A: Yes, I'm adjusted.
Q: You saw yourself as Belgian or not really?
A: No. It never came into question.
Q: But did you still feel? Did you have this feeling of a refugee "I am a refugee"?
A: No. I knew I was different because the teacher made me feel different.
Q: All that time?
A: Yes.
Also I was tall, I was the tallest.
Q: You were the tallest.
A: Yes. So I never really belonged.
Q: You were always like an outsider?
A: Always.
Q: But with the children you did get along?
A: Yes.
Q: It was boys and girls together or separate?
A: No, girls only girls.
Q: Only girls.
And you had a uniform?
A: Yes, we had a uniform, like tablier – only something on top of the clothes.
Q: Like an apron.
A: But I also felt different with the children because my clothes were different like I would wear long stockings because in Berlin it's colder.
Q: Different culture, different mentality.
A: Yes. I felt different definitely, but they didn't ostracize me. Maybe they could make fun of me because my clothes were different.
Q: So the next thing is the German invasion of Belgium, as we said, in May.
A: May 10th.
Q: May 10th. Do you remember that?
A: Absolutely, very well.
Q: So please tell us about it.
A: My mother happened to be in the hospital at that time.
Q: What happened?
A: I don't know. So I was with my father.
Q: And he was working at that place that you said?
A: Yes.
And he took me to school. And on the way the church bells started ringing. And he met somebody that he knew and he told him that a war was declared. So no school – right.
So he took me to his workplace. And over there there already calling out names. A lot of Jewish people must have worked there because the Belgian police was there calling out names, taking people.
Q: Already, the day….?
A: Already, the very first day of the war.
Q: The German?
A: The Belgian police.
And actually at that time they arrested any German – Jewish, non-Jewish because they were enemies, right. So my father saw that so he escaped with me.
Q: Where to?
A: To my Polish friends. I mean, he managed to get out without being seen.
Q: Was he on the list?
A: Of course. He knew. He knew. And he didn't tell me. I knew. I knew. That's why he ran out. And he took me to my Polish girl friend. And we stayed there. And then he wanted to go and visit my mother in the hospital. And he asked me if I want to go with him. And I for some reason said: "No".
So he went by himself.
Q: He wasn't afraid to move around the streets?
A: No. I guess. Every day he went to visit my mother.
Q: Now, the day the Germans invade – do you remember seeing Germans?
A: Motorcycles.
Q: Were you scared or it was your countrymen where you were born. Did you have good feelings?
A: No good feelings about it.
Q: You had no….
A: Of course.
Q: Were you scared?
A: I knew it was bad, I knew.
Q: You didn't know what it meant, but you knew it was bad.
A: I knew. There my father took me to his workplace and then he….
Q: "Something is going on".
A: I knew. I knew. And it was dangerous. I knew. I knew.
Q: So he went to visit your mother, and you were at home.
A: No, I was at my friend's.
Q: The Jewish Polish.
A: The Jewish Polish. And he never came back.
Q: Your father never came back?
A: That was the last time I saw my father.
Q: When he went to the hospital?
A: He went to the hospital.
Q: It was the same day?
A: The same day.
Q: The day that the Germans walked in.
A: The day that the war started.
Q: So when he went to the hospital, he never returned.
A: He never returned.
Q: You never parted. You never had the chance to say anything because he didn't know.
A: We never parted. What happened there was an alarm and everybody had to go to the cellar. And somehow there was Police there also. Maybe they were looking for people, I don't know, but with my mother he spoke German. They asked for his papers and they took him.
Q: He was with your mother?
A: Yes.
Q: He was going to bring her home from the hospital?
A: No, she was still sick.
Q: This happened in the hospital.
A: In the hospital.
Q: Now were they bombing?
A: Yes, they were bombing and they had to go to the shelter.
Q: Yes, and they took him.
A: Yes. They heard them speak German and they asked for his papers, and they took him the police, the Belgian police.
Q: It wasn't Gestapo or anyone, the Germans.
A: Gestapo – it just the day of the invasion.
Q: It was the Belgian police.
A: Belgian police, yes. I mean actually there were camps already before the war where German Jews were interned.
Q: Right, like in Holland also like they had in Westerbork they built it for the German Jews who came. The Dutch Government made it.
A: Yes, the Belgian also. The government was anti-Semitic.
Q: Right.
So what were the names of these camps Mechelen or something like that?
A: I don't know. I have a book about it, but anyway they put him – I don't know where in a camp somewhere.
Q: That day you said they were bombing.
A: Yes.
Q: And what did you do when there was a bombing.
A: I don't remember the bombing myself.
Q: You don't remember that.
A: No.
Q: Because that could be very frightening as well.
A: They were bombing in other parts of town because I don't remember going to the shelter or anything like that.
Q: So your mother is in the hospital; you were with friends and your father does not return.
A: My father didn't come back, and it was already evening and dark and 2 policemen came. They spoke to her parents. Her name was Renee – her parents. And then they said they are going to take me somewhere.
And to these days I'm just wondering why they didn't keep me, you know.
Q: Why they let the Germans?
A: Not the Germans.
Q: I mean the Belgians.
A: The Police – why they didn't keep me. My mother was alive. She would have come back, right.
Anyway, they took me….
Q: It is something that still puzzles you.
A: Yes.
Q: It troubles you.
A: Yes, but they never came back so I never could ask them.
Q: They didn't survive.
A: No.
Q: So perhaps you were lucky.
A: Well, no, they would have kept me just a few days until my mother came out of the hospital, right. But anyway I'm wondering. But anyway they talked to him and they decided to take me with them.
And I was crying for my father. So they told me not to worry. My father would come back. And they stopped somewhere and they bought me a chocolate. They were nice to me. They took me to an orphanage.
CD Number 2
Q: So the Belgian police take you to an orphanage.
A: Yes.
Q: In Bruxelles.
A: In Bruxelles.
Q: What happens?
A: Well, I stayed in that orphanage until my mother came to retrieve me.
Q: How long – a few days, weeks?
A: Not weeks, maybe days or a week, not more.
Q: Dramatic for you.
A: Very dramatic.
Q: And traumatic also.
Do you have any memories of that place? Who takes care of you or what…?
A: I didn't like it.
Q: Did you feel lost?
A: I know I was unhappy, very unhappy.
Q: Scared that she might not show up or they….? A: I don't know.
Q: It was overwhelming.
A: I mean it is almost blocked out, you know.
Q: Yes, it was so shocking.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you recall any adult more warm, caring towards you?
A: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Q: Do you remember the children there?
A: Nothing. It's very-very vague. And I know I was there again, I know after the War for a short time.
Q: O.K. So your mother comes….
A: To take me back.
Q: Do you remember seeing her?
A: No, but I remember that she took me back. I remember that she must have been desperate, I mean, we probably didn't have money. I guess….
Q: Did she know where they had taken your father to?
A: No.
Q: No idea.
A: No idea.
Q: What did she tell you – that your father what? That they took him? She told you that?
A: Well, I know my father was gone. I don't know what she told me, but we were left, the two of us.
Q: In the apartment?
A: In the ….it was not any more.
Q: It was a room in the attic.
A: Well, we rented again one of those.
Q: And she was desperate.
A: She was desperate. She had no support. She had a cousin that we brought over.
Q: Living with you?
A: No. No. She lived somewhere else. I remember she had two boys who visited her.
Q: Do you go back to school?
A: I went back to school. I doubled a year. I went back to grade one. And then by that stage everybody knew I was German. And it was the war, so….
Q: All of a sudden.
A: All of a sudden I was not liked.
Q: Because you were associated with Germans.
A: The enemy.
Q: Even though you are Jewish and you fled from Germany….
A: It didn't mean anything to them. In those days Jews were not discussed. Jews ….German.
Q: German.
What does she make a living of?
A: What she did for a living? She used to take laundry. She washed laundry. She ironed laundry.
Q: For Jews or not necessarily?
A: I think for Jews, yes.
Q: And was the Jewish Community supportive or….?
A: I know she went there. She went there.
Q: Did they help her?
A: I guess they did. I don't know, but anyway they must have. But I remember, I know that she went there. And I remember that she used to iron laundry for an old man. And I went with her to deliver the laundry. And she knocked at the door, and nobody answered. And the door was ajar. And when she pushed the door opened, and the man lay dead there.
So anyway that's what she did. And then after a while she started to do the Black Market.
Q: To sell things?
A: She went to the country to the farmers to buy eggs and flour and beans and staff like that and butter. She had sown herself something into her skirt to smuggle the merchandise.
Q: Could she travel?
There were no restrictions yet?
A: In the beginning.
Q: In the beginning.
A: And she used to sell it to well-to-do Jews.
Then, after a while they started to bring laws against Jews.
Q: They started anti-Jewish laws and restrictions.
A: Yes.
Q: So what were the restrictions?
A: All of a sudden I wasn't German any more, I was Jewish. So I was not allowed to go to school, but the directrice, the principal of the school – she allowed me to stay in the school to finish the year.
Q: As an exception.
A: Yes. She took this beyond responsibility.
But already I was know as Jewish, you know.
Q: This is already…
A: 1941.
Q: This is in 1941.
A: Then we had to wear the Jewish Star.
Q: The Jewish Star I think was already in 1942.
A: I have everything at home, but….
Q: What did you feel with the Jewish Star?
A: Terrible. I was hiding it, you know, you are branded. I don't even know why I wore it, but we wore it. Then we had restrictions on food, everybody did.
Q: While you weren't keeping Kosher, but they didn't allow the slaughter-Kosher .
A: We ate what we could get.
Q: You were hungry at that point? There was shortage of food.
A: No, I was not hungry. I was hungry in one place, not with my mother because she always made sure I had bread and she put butter on the bread. And I stripped the butter off the bread and put it on a very small piece of bread so I could feel the butter.
I was never hungry with my mother, but then also we had curfews. Jews had curfews. So it became dangerous for her to travel.
Q: To go out.
A: Not to go out, but she had to be home at eight at night and maybe not out in the morning until a certain hour. So it became dangerous for her. But she went, she had no choice.
And also once she was caught with the merchandise by the Belgian police that took everything away. So she had no money and no merchandise.
Q: And they just took it away or they also sentenced her?
A: No, they didn't arrest her.
Q: They didn't arrest her.
A: No, they just took the merchandise away.
Q: And when she went away, you were alone?
A: O.K. Then after that I was alone. I wasn't able to go to school any more.
Q: So you were at home.
A: So I was at home in the streets.
Q: You weren't scared roaming the streets?
A: No.
Q: It wasn't as scary to walk in the streets?
A: I just avoided the Germans.
Q: You saw them. There were soldiers or….?
A: Soldiers.
Q: S.S. Gestapo or just soldiers?
A: Anything in a uniform also the "Black Shirts" that was the Belgians.
Q: You avoided them.
A: I avoided them.
Other than that even there were some Germans very nice and friendly. They wanted to give me….I remember in the beginning – you know I was a pretty little girl – they wanted to give me an apple. And I was with my friend and I told her not to take it it could be poison. So I knew very well.
Q: You as well.
A: Also once I was in the supermarket with my mother and they called me. They wanted to give me chocolate.
Q: No.
A: Nothing.
Q: Could you still visit and see friends?
A: Yes, other than that I was free to….
Q: But these are Jewish friends?
A: Jewish friends.
Q: Or did you have also Belgian friends?
A: No, except for that one girl that lived on my street.
Q: And once the Germans are there, you said that before the war you didn't feel anti-Semitism from the Belgians….
A: No.
Q: After the war starts?
A: I didn't feel any during the War either.
Q: No?
A: When I was in Bruxelles, no. I didn't feel any.
Q: There were no remarks even when you wore the Jewish Star.
A: No.
Q: No remarks….
A: Only after the war.
Q: After the war, but before the war no remarks.
A: No.
Q: During the war?
A: During the war I didn't feel any. People who dealt with us could not have been anti-Semitic.
Q: Right. Right, but on the street, neighbors things like that I mean?
A: No. No. No.
Q: By that time it was not possible for your mother to escape to immigrate already once the Germans were there.
A: No. But her cousin – the one who had the two boys – her husband escaped to London to England…
Q: Yes, of course – people escaping to England (…) the war.
A: People were still (…)
Q: To Switzerland, to Spain, to France.
A: My mother asked her cousin if she runs away, we want to go with her. So one day we went to visit her and she wasn't there.
Q: She didn't say anything.
A: I never forgave her, I was….You know I was….
Q: You felt betrayed.
A: I felt betrayed. Even my mother had a relationship with her after the war and I even visited her once, but I never forgave her.
Q: Deep inside it was a feeling.
A: I never forgave her. But I understand her now, I understand. She had two children of her own – to take another woman with a child….she must think of herself.
Q: She was fighting her own survival war.
A: Exactly.
Q: People ran away also to the South of France.
A: Yes. My mother did not want to run away. She had a little suit case wherever she went with clothing for me.
Q: She didn't want to run away….
A: To the South of France.
Q: Because she was afraid? She didn't believe in it? Because of your father? What was the reason, do you think?
A: I don't know why but she was very calm. She didn't think it was a good idea, it wasn't. A lot of people got killed.
Q: And a lot of people came back afterwards.
A: Eventually they came back and sometimes they didn't find anything or whatever. For some reason she didn't do it. And I must tell you that was during the first day of the war.
Q: Right, the first days.
A: The first three days maybe.
Q: Right.
You were roaming on the streets doing what? Let's just see, this is 1941, 1942?
A: 1942.
Q: You are 10 years old, 9 years old.
A: 9 years old.
Q: What do you do?
A: O.K. one of the teachers. I had my teacher – her name was Mademoiselle Michot. She came to visit me and she brought me some books, grammar books to study and chocolate.
Q: So someone is more caring., notice, more compassionate.
A: Some people.
I never felt any anti-Semitism or rejection from the Belgians during the war, like I said – after the war.
Q: You will tell us about it.
You were reading books and things like that?
A: O.K. So somebody, a shoe-maker that we knew offered to hide us. And we hid in his attic for two months.
Q: This was when the deportations began?
A: They already started.
Q: They were gathering …starting to gather…
A: In 1942, that's when they were already starting with….
Q: He was Belgian.
A: He was Belgian, yes, a gentile.
Q: A gentile.
A: He offered to hide us.
Q: Did you pay him?
A: No, we didn't have money – in his attic.
Q: So your mother is thinking of a way of starting to hide yourselves.
A: To hide. To hide.
Q: O.K.
Before you continue, at this point your father was taken away. Did she know where he was? Was there contact?
A: Eventually we started to get correspondence from my father.
Q: Where was he? Where did they take him?
A: First they took him by a cattle train to the South of France – the Belgian police. First he was in San Ciprian (?) and then he was in Gurs and then he was in Savinie (?) in Haute Savoie, but that was a work camp. In the end he was there.
Q: It was a forced labour camp.
A: Forced labour yes.
Q: So during that time he wrote to you the whole time. .
A: During the whole time until the day he was sent to Drancy, the whole time. He escaped three times. He wanted to come back and they caught him.
Q: So he wrote letters.
A: Yes.
Q: In German.
A: Yes.
Q: Was she able to send to him also letters?
A: Yes. They corresponded.
Q: So you knew where he was and he knew about you.
A: Yes.
Q: Did your mother read to you those letters?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you remember what he wrote about?
A: Yes. I remember when I read them.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the letters.
A: Do you want to know about the letters?
Q: Yes, please.
A: Well, like I said in the first letter he asked for his Tallit and Teffilin and his Chumash, he asked for those things.
Q: And did she send them?
A: I guess she did and also clothing, underwear….you know, warm clothing. I guess she must have sent him.
And then also parcels of things from Germany, like this friend of my mother's was able to send him parcels.
Q: And also from the Red Cross?
A: Not parcels from the Red Cross but a lot of correspondence went with the Red Cross.
And I don't know he writes a lot about Lisbon, Portugal.
Q: Yes, because people escaped to there.
A: Yes. But I don't know who they are. He was always waiting for papers to go to the States, Portugal, I don't know, but anyway nothing came.
Q: Came out of it.
A: Once he escaped he went back voluntarily because my father's French was very poor, his accent was very bad, he didn't know friends. And he had a smuggler who betrayed him. He took the money and left. So he went back. But I always knew that my father wanted to come back and he will come back for my birthday and he did. He did escape before my birthday, I knew, I felt it.
Q: He escaped and he was caught?
A: He was caught. Twice he was caught and once he went back by himself.
Q: He wanted to come to surprise you for your birthday.
A: Yes.
Q: So you were constantly waiting for Daddy to come back.
A: Yes, always, always, always.
Q: Was your mother optimistic?
A: Yes. My mother missed him and I missed him.
Q: I said she was also optimistic?
A: We waited for him to come back.
Q: And she always hoped that he would come.
A: I never had the feeling that she didn't.
She had opportunities to have affairs with other men and she didn't. So she wanted to be approachful so when my father will come back…And he also asked in the letters: "Stay faithful to me and I am to you", you know.
Q: So she was strong. She had to make a living, she had to take care of a child.
A: Yes.
Q: No relatives, no one, no husband.
A: No support.
Q: She has no support and she was (…).
A: She was depressed.
Q: She was depressed. Could you feel it as a child?
A: Yes. She asked me if I allow her to put on the gas. It still gives me the shivers.
Q: Did you understand what she was saying?
A: She asked me.
Q: And you understood what the meaning of that was?
A: Yes I did because I cried and I refused.
Q: And yet?
A: So she continued. And I remember we went somewhere and she was crying. It was very hard for her.
Q: Yes and for you as a child.
A: And for me.
Q: Everything is always shaken in your life as a little girl.
A: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Q: So many turnovers and uncertainty and ….
A: Yes. Right. Very hard.
Q: So this shoemaker hid you.
A: He hid us.
Q: He was with a family?
A: He had a wife. His wife was from Luxemburg.
Q: Now this is 1942, deportation begins.
A: Yes.
Q: How did you know about the deportations, do you remember?
A: I knew.
Q: You knew.
A: I knew I had to hide. But I was a child. She had a little garden sometimes. We were supposed to stay in the attic all the time, but my mother went out to do the black market.
Q: She still went out.
A: She still did it.
Q: And in that attic you had a bathroom?
A: Yes, we had some furniture that somebody helped us take. And I think I played sometimes in that garden with the dog, they had a dog.
Anyway, the wife got fed up. She felt that it endangers them or whatever. She gave my mother an ultimatum – three days to find a place.
Q: In Bruxelles.
A: In Bruxelles. I remember that. And I remember that she gave the dog better food then she gave me.
My mother all day long she went… People didn't want to rent to Jews because if you rent it to Jews, it was forbidden. If they caught you, they closed your apartment and you had no income for the rest of the war.
So finally she found an attic, very-very small. There was a bed and a chair and that was it. So we left.
I never forgave that woman either.
Q: Do you remember her name?
A: No, I don't but after the war she came back to my mother – she should testify that she helped Jews. So I guess she was probably a German sympathizer. Her husband was already dead.
And my mother did. And I knocked. I had my own room. I knocked on the wall. She slept and I was so furious that my mother would do that for her.
Q: Perhaps she felt that….
A: I mean my feelings are my feelings, but maybe she understood that she helped her, I don't know. But I remember my mother frantically looking for a place where to stay.
So we had that little room, that little bed with a chair. And we had to eat downstairs in the basement with the land lady. And at that time, I remember, I ate bread and jam – that was it.
Q: Now, this is 1942.
A: 1942.
Q: Did you have any idea of what was going on in the war?
A: Well, I knew that my life….
Q: I mean not in Belgium. Did you know what was going on in other places: In Poland, in Russia. In 1941 the war broke out between Russia and Germany.
A: No.
Q: Did you hear of what's happening to Jews in Europe?
A: No.
Q: Did you hear about the camps? By that time there were already camps.
A: Yes. I was 9 going on 10.
Q: Did you know about Auschwitz, about anything?
A: No. No.
Q: The ghettoes?
A: No.
Q: Nothing.
A: I didn't. Maybe my mother knew about ghettoes possibly because my father….he never referred to ghettoes, but he knew that his parents were not anymore at home.
Q: Perhaps he referred to camps, to labour camps, to concentration camps.
A: They were sent to ghettoes. I asked the lady at Yad Vashem. Apparently there is no record of where the Jews from Danzig were sent. They were sent to various camps.
Q: To various places.
A: But the Red Cross wrote to me because I made enquiries that they disappeared in Lublin. Lublin is Majdanek.
Q: Majdanek is next to Lublin. It could be. It could be.
A: And my father somehow, I don't know, he knew when his father died, when he has Jahrzeit because he asked my mother to light candles. So I don't know how he knew of that. So he must have known more of what was going on.
And my mother maybe knew also, but she never told me.
Q: Now one more thing that I want to ask you if you were aware of it, but perhaps you were a child, so you don't. You are speaking about the police.
A: Yes.
Q: I want to say about the king.
A: The king?
Q: The king and there was a….he stayed. The king didn't escape – King Leopold. But there was an exile government in London that was split. Were you aware of this?
A: No. But I don't know when I became aware that the king had a reputation of being a German sympathizer.
Q: Right, collaborating with….
A: Yes.
Q: This was after the war or before?
A: I don't know.
Q: But at that point you weren't aware of what was going on.
A: Of politics – no.
Q: Did you know about the government in exile?
A: No.
Q: You didn't know about that.
A: No.
Q: Did you have a radio or at that point no radio.
A: Already we sold the radio very early on.
Q: You didn't know about the BBC or anything of that kind.
A: No. Nothing
I forgot to tell you that when my mother was away all day selling in the black market before we hid, she arranged through the Jewish Committee for me to have lunch, every day a good lunch which in Jewish families' home every day…. When I was still going to school actually it started every day in a different home. I mean it was not very pleasant, but one of the families – they were so wonderful – I'm still in touch with them.
Q: What is their name?
A: Well, at that time there were called Bertyils but their name is Shonazki. And the mother is 98 years old and she is still alive and her daughter. When I go to Bruxelles, I'm in touch with them.
They were very warm people and I felt at home there.
Q: It was perhaps the only place you could feel at home.
A: Yes. Yes. Yes. Even after the war I looked them up and she was like my second mother.
And also we had to move from that little room. She eventually found a bigger room that had a (…) a room, a bigger room.
Q: So at that point you are hiding. You are not on the street.
A: Me?
Q: Yes. Do you go out or you stay at home all day?
A: No. No. No. I didn't stay at home. I used to go out and play.
Q: Even though there are deportations?
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: She wasn't afraid that someone would pick you up from the street?
A: No. I used to go out and play.
Q: You looked like a Belgian girl.
A: Yes. Q: No one would notice that you are Jewish.
A: No I didn't look like….
Q: She wasn't afraid that someone will turn you in?
A: I don't know. After we were hidden by those people, we found a place to live and I think there I didn't go out.
Actually on the first floor lived a family with a boy (…) a little boy.
Q: A gentile, yes?
A: A gentile. And I used to take him to the park and play with him. But mainly I was at home and also I must have been depressed because I didn't do anything.
And we had a neighbor, an old lady. And she was Catholic. And the priest used to come and visit her. And she sent the priest to me. And the priest told me that I should make my bed and clean up and help my mother. And he invited me to come to the monastery and he lent me books because I used to read always. So I remember going to the monastery and taking books there.
Q: So there were a few good people.
A: There were. I only have good memories of people during the war.
Q: You don't have….
A: No one ever called me a dirty Jew a whatever.
Q: Or turning you in to the Gestapo or to the Belgian police, you know.
A: But even the policemen were kind to me.
Q: Yes as a child.
A: Yes.
Q: And your mother in 1942 is still doing the black market to survive.
A: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Q: But she wasn't afraid that….
A: She was, but she had to make a living.
And then she started to hide me. And the first place after that where I was by myself was a teachers' college. It was already in the summer of 1942. I turned 10. But there were other Jewish girls there.
Q: Hiding.
A: Hiding.
I already had a false name.
Q: O.K. So tell us about that. She picked a false name for you?
A: No. I don't know who picked it.
Q: And what was your name?
A: Anna Munier.
Q: And was there a real Anna Munier or it is just a false name?
A: It's a false name.
Q: There were no false papers with it or did you have them? A: My mother had false papers. I don't remember.
Q: For herself or for you? A: I know because I have the identity card.
Q: For herself?
A: Yes. I don't know when she got it and I don't know if I had papers. O.K. maybe when I was in the teachers' college, I didn't have any false papers yet, maybe. But I don't know, I must have had a …I mean they wouldn't have called me…I don't know.
Anyway, but one day my mother came.
Q: So can you describe where was this? This was in Bruxelles?
A: It was in Bruxelles.
Q: The teachers' college was in Bruxelles? Was there a dorm that you stayed in?
A: I was also in Laeken which is where the king lived, in Laeken. So I don't know when, you know ….
Q: It's mixed up.
A: I was in so many places that I don't know exactly where. But I remember a couple coming picking up their child. They were deported and they went to pick up their child. That's what people did. You know, you think the child is safest with you.
You don't want to leave your child.
Q: They didn't know where they were going, obviously.
A: Of course not.
Q: Describe a little bit the conditions there, in the teachers' college. Was it a dorm? What were the conditions that you stayed in? Was it a room with other girls?
A: There were a lot of girls.
Q: How many in a room, many?
A: No. No. We all had an enclave because it was a teachers' college. There was no ceiling. It was just partitions.
Q: And did you have a teacher taking care of you, an adult? Each one to himself? How did it work now? You went to school there?
A: No. It was summer. The teachers were on holidays. It was like a Colonie de Vacances.
I remember if we were punished, we had to go on our knees with our arms like that.
Q: Punished for what?
A: I don't remember, but I remember that.
Q: And they gave you food?
A: Yes. They gave us food.
Q: You felt safe there?
A: I didn't feel unsafe. Some girls had lice. I remember they used to check us for lice.
Q: How many girls? All Jewish?
A: No. No, girls. It was a Colonie de Vacances. There were Jewish girls and other girls.
Q: And the other girls knew that you were Jewish?
A: No. Nobody was supposed to know.
Q: Because maybe you had the false identity.
A: But nobody was supposed to know except the Abbes. …
Q: The head.
A: Yes, people who were in charge of us.
Q: But do you remember the….? A: I knew that I was hiding myself.
Q: Can you describe a little bit that feeling of….It must have been very terrifying to know that you have to hide and have to hide your identity, being scared that you might say something wrong, that will expose you – Do you remember that tension of having to keep?
A:: I knew, I mean I was so conditioned. And I knew very well that I was Jewish. I remember before, you know, when girls had pictures of Jesus and all of that and they used to collect it and my girlfriend once almost tore it up: "Because I'm Jewish".
Q: There?
A: No. No in Bruxelles, not in that place particularly.
Q: So you were aware of being Jewish but now that you have to hide this.
A: I guess I accepted it.
Q: You accepted it or it created a lot of unease?
A: No. No. I knew I had to hide it.
Q: You have to survive.
A: That's the way it was. I had to hide it. I already knew it's a shameful thing to be Jewish.
Q: When you stayed there, did you go to church? .
A: No, no, it was a summer camp, no church. It was not Catholic
Q: Yes, but since they know that you are not Jewish, did you have to pretend?
A: No, not there, nothing.
Q: Did you see your mother?
A: That's the thing. My mother came to visit me once and she forgot to take off the Star. So they told her that I have to leave.
Q: Because it exposed you.
A: It exposed everybody else.
And I made my mother promise that if she ever was arrested, so I knew that she would come and take me. She promised me and I knew she lied. It's a terrible feeling.
Q: And you felt that she is lying.
A: I mean I know she did the right thing. Now I can …But at that time I knew and I resented it. I knew she wasn't going to do it.
Q: So it created some kind of disbelief, distrust.
A: Yes.
Also I got once a very bad stomach ache. And she took me to the hospital. And they kept me there.
Q: In Bruxelles?
A: In Bruxelles.
Q: She took you as a…they knew that you are Jewish?
A: During the war. I don't know, it has nothing to do.
And they thought I have appendicitis. And they were talking about operating on me. And I made my mother promise that she wouldn't sign the paper. And she promised me.
And then they put iodine.. And I knew that she lied. And I was so upset. I cried all night and I had a high fever. They couldn't operate on me. They made an X-Ray and I didn't have appendicitis. But I was so mad at my mother. It took me years-years.
Q: To understand it?
A: To forgive her. To forgive her. I had this anger in me because she betrayed me. She always did the right thing, but she never explained anything to me.
Q: It's a very difficult position.
She herself is struggling to survive, to save you and what to say and what not to say.
A: Yes. Actually. she never said anything.
Q: And you are only 10 years old and you have to go through things that …
A: Yes, and nobody to talk to. We had to keep everything inside.
Q: Really like within a day you are mature.
A: Yes.
Q: You can't be a child.
A: You are not a child, no. You are not a child.
So anyway after that I was hidden in a convent. I don't know exactly the chronology. I was also hidden in a Jewish orphanage that the Germans tolerated.
Q: A Jewish orphanage?
A: A Jewish orphanage tolerated by the Germans outside of Bruxelles. And that's the place where I was the most unhappy.
Q: Why?
A: I was hungry there.
Q: There was no food.
A: Well, they gave us porridge. And porridge I didn't like and I didn't eat.
Q: How do you explain that the Germans allowed a Jewish orphanage? A: They allowed it in France also.
Q: What is the explanation for that?
A: Well, I guess that they knew whenever they want they can pick us up, right.
Q: So you felt really bad there.
How old were you there, do you remember?
A: I told my mother …that was at the time when she was hiding with the shoemaker. She already put me….I wasn't there very long. I threatened my mother if she is not picking me up, I will run away from there.
Q: So she took you away.
A: She took me home.
And then I was hidden ….
Q: In a monastery, you said.
A: No, it was a convent by the French border. And that's when I know that they gave me that name specifically because it's a French sounding name – Anna Munier.
Q: That's when you meet your false identity.
A: My false identity.
Q: O.K. Where was the convent exactly?
A: In Chimay, right by the French border.
Q: What's the name of the place?
A: Chimay – the name of the town – Chimay.
Q: Chimay?
A: Yes.
And that was a very-very big convent and they had novices.
Q: How did they take you there? Who took you there, your mother, do you remember?
A: No, I don't remember.
Q: And how did she arrange this?
A: It was always with the help of the Jewish Committee, everything.
Q: They were involved also.
A: Of course, officially. They had official functions even in the ghettoes.
Q: And there was also something like a Judenrat.
A: Yes.
Q: And there was also underground in Belgium that helped hiding children and arranging.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you think she was in touch with the underground?
A: I don't know.
Q: You don't know.
A: But I know it was a very big convent and there were novices, and I was not happy there. Things happened to me there that I blocked out for so long that I only have very vague memories.
Q: What kind of things?
First of all if you could a little bit describe how it was.
A: Nobody knew that I was Jewish except the head nun -the Mother.
Q: Right. And you were with a false identity. What were you told that you can say about yourself? Where are you from? A: Nothing. I had to pretend to pray.
Q: No, but you arrive and if someone asks you: "Where are you from?" "Who are you?" What is the false background that they told you? A: French.
Q: That you are French?
A: French.
Q: And why are you here? The family sent you?
A: Well, there were lots of children there.
Q: Also Jews?
A: Also Jews.
Q: Did you know who was Jewish or you had no idea?
A: I knew about one, but you are not supposed to talk about it.
Q: And did they teach you about Christianity, about what to do because you didn't come…?
A: No, they didn't teach me anything. I was thrown into it.
Q: So how do you fake this thing? A: Well, you look at others and you copy.
Q: What you see you imitate?
A: That's it.
Q: And no one had doubts?
A: No one taught me anything.
Q: But no one had doubts that you didn't…You didn't exactly grow up as a Christian girl.
A: I think one of the nuns had doubts. She must have had doubts.
Q: So they teach you the prayers? They teach you everything?
A: Nothing. They didn't teach us anything.
Q: No, I mean but you have to pray.
A: I had to pray and everything, like all that.
Q: So for you it was as if you are acting.
A: I was acting.
Q: Did it create more of an inner conflict or ….
A: At that time I was acting. I knew I was acting. I did what I had to do.
Q: Did you like it?
A: No. At that point I didn't like it.
Q: Because we do know of people who are attracted to it, who found comfort in the religion
A: Yes, later, but not there. Yes, I did. I did, but not then.
Q: Not then.
A: Not then.
I was expelled from there.
Q: Why? Because you weren't behaving the way you were supposed to?
A: It's a very complicated story and I only remember some riots there. I know that a Jewish girl was hiding her jewelry there. We had….And I asked my mother also to give me her rings.
And one day I opened the cupboard and the rings were gone. And I suspected a certain nun.
Q: A certain nun that stole it.
A: That she took it. That she stole it.
Q: And you told on her?
A: And I think I must have told. And anyway, they found a pretext to expel me.
Q: How long did you stay there?
A: Months, not long.
Q: Half a year or…? A: Less.
Q: Less, a few months.
A: Yes. I remember my mother when I came back to Bruxelles at the station the first thing I got was a smack because I was expelled.
And then I told her, you know, at that time I remember it , but anyway….But now I don't, just I don't. But I remember that after the war I was wanting to go there and do something so the nuns….
Q: You would like to revenge.
A: To revenge. .
Q: It left a scar.
A: It left a scar, for sure.
I know the Catholiques aide les enfants. The Catholics helped children – together with whatever – the underground, Jewish Committee – I don't know. They helped to place me in another convent.
Q: Where was this convent?
A: In a small village in another province.
Q: How is it called?
A: The convent is "Pensionat de Seurs the ….Saint Paul".(?)
Q: And the place.
A: Obourg.
Q: Obourg?
A: Yes, a very small place, a very small village.
At that time they didn't tell the parents where they sent their children because of that problem that parents picked up the children.
And also my mother didn't take me. I remember that the social worker took me.
Q: Under the same false identity?
A: Under the same false identity.
Q: The same name?
A: The same name all through the war.
And I arrived there and I liked it.
Q: What was it like? What did you like there? And what was it like?
A: The nuns were young. There were only six nuns and two laypeople. And they were young and they were friendly, not like the other convent where there were French aristocrats. So I liked it there.
Q: How many girls were there with you?
A: How many girls?
Q: Yes.
A: I would think that altogether maybe a hundred.
Q: And there were other Jewish girls?
A: Yes.
Q: And you knew that.
A: Yes.
Q: You could notice?
A: You could feel it.
Q: You could feel who was Jewish?
A: Yes.
And we always hang out together.
Q: Some kind of solidarity?
A: And we were all from Bruxelles. So they called us 'Les Bruxellois'.
Q: And no one suspected anything?
A: All the nuns knew.
Q: They knew that you were Jewish.
A: They all knew. It was a completely different atmosphere. It was a pensionat. You see in the other one they were very high class people and they used to have very aristocratic children that came (...).
Q: It was more exclusive.
A: And the Germans closed it. So they were forced to take children on like colonies, like camps, not anybody. They were not nice.
Q: Snobs.
A: They were snobs. But there it was a different atmosphere.
Q: It was a smaller...
A: Smaller, more intimate.
Q: The Germans didn't come there?
A: There were no Germans in that village.
Q: No Germans in that village.
A: No Germans. I haven't seen a German since then, through the war.
Q: Do you go to school there too?
A: I went to school there.
Q: This is 1942 or 1943 already?
A: Already 1943.
Q: 1943.
A: I went to school there with all the other children. There were classrooms and we went to school.
Q: Were there also religion studies? A: At that time I knew already everything I had to do. And of course I started to believe and I wanted to become a Christian and I wanted to be baptized. But my mother was alive. If you didn't have your parents and you wanted to be baptized, they baptized you. But if you had a parent, they asked the permission. And my mother wouldn't give the permission.
Q: Where was she during that time?
A: O.K. So she was still doing the black market.
Q: Avoiding deportation all the time.
A: Avoiding moving from place to place.
Q: Hiding in terms of where she lived.
A: Yes. But once she was very afraid of bed-bugs. . So she moved all the time. But whenever she moved, she first asked permission to spend the night to see if they had bed-bugs.
And once during the night where she was trying out a new place, they came to where she actually lived and they deported all the Jews. So she got very-very scared.
My mother didn't know where I was, but she befriended a social worker that took me there. And eventually she told her.
So after eight months being there my mother came. They called me to the parlor.
Q: She came to stay there or to visit you? A: To visit me. They told me I have a visitor. And that was my mother. It was very emotional.
Q: Yes, I can imagine.
And she had to pretend that she is Christian as well.
A: No.
Q: No?
A: Well, outside but not in the convent.
Q: Not in the convent.
A: Not in the convent. They knew.
Q: She couldn't hide there as well?
A: She had no money, I guess.
Q: I mean she couldn't hide in the convent with you?
A: O.K. I'm coming to that.
After that incident she got very scared. She came to visit me and she asked the nuns if they could help her. So they found another convent – 4 kilometers away to hide.
Q: To hide her? A: To hide herself. And over there she worked in the kitchen and they gave her pocket money. And there were also other Jews hiding there who paid. So she cleaned there, you know, she was like a maid.
And they gave her pocket money. So she came to visit me. She befriended some peasants and bought butter and eggs to supplement my diet.
Q: How often would she come to see you?
A: Even though visiting days were always every second Sunday, they allowed her to come every Sunday.
Q: So every week she used to come.
A: She would come. Actually she went to the back roads and she walked.
Q: So that must have been helpful for you also, knowing that your mother is close and that she is safe and....
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: And at that time you were still in touch with your father or by that time no contact?
A: No. In August 1942....
Q: That was the end of it.
A: That's it.
Q: So he didn't know actually where you were also.
A: No, at that time.
Q: And he was taken to Drancy.
A: To Drancy.
Q: In 1942?
A: In August of 1942 before the Germans invaded the South of France. The French did it.
Q: Yes. And how long was he there, in Drancy? A: Three days.
Q: And then deported to Auschwitz.
A: To Auschwitz.
Q: But you didn't know that by then.
A: No. I had no idea.
Q: And your mother either?
A: Well....
Q: She knew?
A: Yes, we knew because his last Red Cross letter says: "Unterwegs".
Q: Which means?
A: "On the way".
Q: This letter was from Drancy or from where?
A: No, in the railway station....
Q: Taking him to Drancy.
A: Yes. "God help you".
Q: Did he know the meaning?
A: For sure. Or maybe it was already in Paris because he says: "I'm at the Gare de Lyon. So I don't know if it is the city of Lyon....
Q: But do you think he knew of what was going on in Auschwitz?
A: Of course he knew.
Q: You don't know.
A: I don't know exactly what he knew, but he knew that....He said: "God help you". "God help you".
Q: That's his last letter.
A: That's his last letter.
Q: Can you tell us something else more about your father as you remember him, his personality?
A: My father was very tall. And I played with him a lot. I remember him punishing me and putting me in the corner.
We played with plasticine. We made things and we had a store. And I was the sales lady and he came to buy from me. And I was playing with him a lot.
In the letter that he wrote, he wrote to me too: "When I come back, I will play with you again", you know because he always thought of me also.
Q: So coming back to the convent – you said you were quite happy.
A: I mean I was happy and I was unhappy. I was happy because I felt good, but I was very lonely.
Q: Even though there were other girls?
A: Yes.
Q: And even though your mother used to come, you always an outsider?
A: Always.
Q: Because you never knew how perhaps this kind of childhood was always on the move.
A: I was always a very lonely child. And I remember what I liked in the evening I could go to bed. That I remember.
Q: And you said you started believing in the Christian...you had faith.
A: Yes, I prayed.
Q: And it was comfort for you? It gave you comfort?
A: Yes. Yes.
Q: And your mother knew that it's attracting you?
A: Of course she knew. She knew. She didn't say anything, but she didn't allow me to be baptized.
And I used to pray that the war should end and my father should come back and my mother should allow me to be baptized.
Q: That was your fantasy.
A: That's what I prayed for.
Q: And when you fantasized of the war ending, you thought..
A: My father would come back.
Q: Would come back?
A: Always.
Q: And your idea of home was what – Bruxelles? That was your picture of a home?
A: No, my parents.
Q: Your parents, not a certain place.
A: Not a place, not a place, just my parent, to be reunited.
Q: With your parents.
So you are there in the convent until the end of the war?
A: Until the end of the war.
After the liberation ...
Q: The liberation was in September 1944, I believe, something like that.
A: That was the liberation.
Then my mother left the convent where she was and she went back.
Q: So you were there from 1943 to 1944.
A: 1945, until the end of the war.
Q: Until the end not only until the liberation.
A: No, until the end of the war.
Q: So you were there like two year almost?
A: Yes, two years. I was there two years for sure.
Q: And why did you stay there after the liberation?
A: Because my mother went back to Bruxelles.
Q: After the liberation?
A: After the liberation. She had to find a place. She had to find work.
Q: To arrange life for you.
A: That's it. And than she came.
Q: And then she came to you.
A: Yes.
Q: So in 1945 you are something like 12 – 13?
A: Yes.
Q: Quite a sensitive age also for a young girl. .
A: Yes.
And she befriended those peasants. And they used to come and visit me after the liberation. They suspected that we are Jewish.
Q: Were those the peasants around the convent what you say?
A: It was a small village with one main street.
So after the liberation they came to visit me.
Q: Do you remember the day of liberation? You heard about it?
A: Yes. I was in Mons, in the big city because they suspected I have scarlatine. So I was in the hospital during the liberation. I heard the bombing. I have very bad memories.
Q: Frightening.
A: Of soldiers that they brought in. We saw it from far away, but (…) bloody German….
Q: German soldiers.
A: Yes, of course German.
Q: And do you remember a moment of relief, happiness, the idea that you are liberated, that this is (…).
A: Yes. I guess, but I remember when I went back to the convent, they took us for a walk once. And from far away I saw uniforms.
Q: These were the Allies?
A: And I started to run away. I thought that the Germans came back. But it was Canadian soldiers. They had very similar colour uniform.
Q: There were parts in Belgium that the Germans did return. It took a while.
A: Possibly.
Q: Not in my area.
A: Not in my area, but I thought. I was still insecure.
Q: But there was also some kind of happiness or no feeling of…? A: I was in the hospital.
Q: So you couldn't ….
A: I saw various things.
Q: Yes. So ….September, the war ended in May. So it took about eight months or something like that.
A: Eight months, yes.
Q: You were still in the convent.
A: I was still in the convent. I don't know really. I know that after the war my mother had nervous bread downs.
Q: She went back to Bruxelles. Did she get a job? How did she arrange your life afterwards? How did she manage?
A: I went back to school, to the same school.
Q: She rented an apartment?
A: She went in the same street we lived during the war, across the street. She had hidden in the cloister photo albums. I have lots of photos because of that.
Q: And she found a job? Or what was she making a living of?
A: She worked for a Jewish family as a nanny.
Q: And at what point did you realize that your father will not be coming back?
A: We used to go every day to the Jewish Committee to read the list. I think when I accepted that my father wasn't going to come back, I was already married.
Q: But the knowledge – I mean, accepting is one thing, but the knowledge that he is not. …
A: I used to fantasize that maybe he had Amnesia; maybe he was prisoner in Russia.
Q: Maybe he escaped somewhere.
A: He is somewhere in another country and he doesn't….
Q: You are a young girl after the war. You come back, you live in Bruxelles. When do you realize or when do you learn about what had really happened during this war? What happened to the Jews, millions of Jews, about Auschwitz, when did you realize this?
A: It was very gradual.
Q: In school or at home?
A: It was very gradual and I don't think I really knew about the extent of it until I came to Israel because, you know, again sheltered.
Q: So you go back to school.
A: I went back to school.
Q: You are 12 years old.
A: I'm 13 years old.
Q: So you are something like in the 6th or 7th grade.
A: 6th grade.
Q: And how do they treat you, the girl who came back?
A: The school was fine except that I was way behind especially in Flemish because I was hidden in a Wallonie, no Flemish. So I was way behind.
Q: You had gaps.
A: In the general curriculum. But where we rented the place the husband of the land lady used to run after me. You know, I used to be frightened. We used to live on the third floor. I didn't have a key to the house. It was a pub. I used to have to go to the pub. And those men were drinking and they were swearing at me.
Q: Because you were….
A: Jewish.
Q: Because you were Jewish.
A: Because I was Jewish. "Dirty Jew" they would call me. Sometimes he pursued me on the stairs and pick me. I mean I was frightened, very frightened.
Q: This is after the war.
A: After the war.
Q: So now you encounter anti-Semitism of Belgian people
A: Yes. After the war.
Q: Your mother as well?
A: I don't know, but …
Q: Did they also try to harass you, like sexually or anything touch you or?
A: No, they just kicked me.
Q: They kicked you.
A: Kicking me, kicking me. Kicking me.
So finally the landlady, I guess my mother asked her for keys for the main entrance. So I wouldn't have to go through the pub.
Q: That's tough.
A: Yes, isn't it?!
Q: It's very sad to hear.
A: And even after I finish this….
Q: It shook your belief in human beings all this what you had to go through since you were a little girl?
A: Well, it was very shocking, very shocking.
Q: But it made you suspicious?
A: It was very shocking that after the war, later I went to a middle school, they told me: "You look different". And I would say: "I'm German" not that I'm Jewish.
Q: You had to hide the fact that you are Jewish.
A: I still hide it.
Q: The fact that you are Jewish.
A: I still had to hide it after the war.
Q: In school?
A: In school. That was terrible. Can you imagine I could say that I'm German?!
Q: It made you very suspicious of people, mistrusting?
A: I was so ashamed to be Jewish – you have no idea.
Q: You were ashamed to be Jewish.
A: Yes.
Q: You didn't want to.
A: I accept that it was something shameful.
CD Number 3
Q: You are describing your life after the war. in Bruxelles
A: Right.
Q: The anti-Semitism.
A: Yes.
Q: Did you yourself encounter people who came back from the camps returning to Bruxelles, meeting their children? A: Not at that time.
Like my mother, I told you, she had several nervous break downs.
Q: What happens with that?
A: I didn't know at the time. She didn't tell me. I was told she needed an operation, I don't know, I was not told anything. I found out all that later.
Q: Who helped, the Jewish Community helped you out?
A: Yes.
Q: Or were there any relatives who came back. who survived??
A: Nobody. Nobody came back.
Q: Either those who left the country, who managed to immigrate.?
A: Those who came to Belgium were all deported.
Q: They were all deported.
A: But the one that left for England – she….
Q: So do you have now contact with your family in England, in Palestine, in America.
A: Yes I have contacts in England, Palestine, ,my mother Australia.
Q: And right after the war your mother did not consider immediately immigrating, leaving Europe? A lot of Jews just left.
A: Right away after the war?
Q: Yes, a lot of them came to Palestine or to other places or were the DP camps in Germany. .
A: Like my husband.
Q: Right. She didn't think immediately of leaving or she wasn't able to do it?
A: I don't know.
Q: Because the were the Joint and the Brigada, the soldiers from the Brigada.
A: Yes, I know about it.
Q: You will tell us about it.
A: My son has it. He framed it. I have a symbol from the Brigada that a soldier gave me.
Q: The Jewish Brigade.
A: The Jewish Brigade, yes.
Q: So you don't know if she didn't consider leaving at that point?
A: I had a chance, her cousin who survived in Brazil….She had the chance to have me immigrate. Relatives wanted to take me but not her. I wouldn't leave my mother, no way.
Q: But why didn't she consider coming to Palestine right after the war, do you know? A: I don't know.
Q: It wasn't an option.
A: I know that my mother was a broken woman.
Q: A broken woman after the war.
A: After the war.
She did everything she had to do and then she collapsed.
Q: And they tried to hide that from you. They hid it from you.
A: Yes.
Q: Did you realize that?
A: No.
Q: When did you realize? You didn't know until you were older that that is what had happened?
A: The first time I realized that there is something wrong with her, I was 16, I don't know, maybe …No, I was younger, maybe 14 – 15, she started to tell me because she became paranoid that she has enemies, they follow her. This one is her enemy. This one is an enemy.
I was very frightened of my mother after.
Q: It was very difficult.
A: Yes, because either I had to believe her and become sick myself or I had to distance myself from her.
Q: A very difficult situation.
A: Very difficult.
Q: And you have to keep your own sanity.
A: Yes. That is something which as a child I resented. And she resented it.
Q: And you had your own traumas – loosing your father, what you went through.
A: Yes.
Q: Now, coming back from the convent to Bruxelles, you said you didn't really want to be a Jew in a way.
A: No, but …O.K. so one of the neighbors, the Jewish family – she was also my friend, but my best friend was deported – she took me there to talk to me about the Virgin Mary, it's not possible….All those they talk to me, they talk to me. So…
Q: It went away.
A: I understood.
Q: That you are not going to get it.
A: No, but in the beginning.
Q: You couldn't see that.
A: I really wanted to be Christian. It went away.
Q: After the war in Bruxelles did you have more contact with the Jewish Community that started…Did you go to Schul? Did you celebrate the Holidays? Did you have some kind of a Jewish life after the war?
A: Yes, because the Jewish family that I used to have lunch with – I looked them up. They survived. So I looked them up and they were my home away from home. And they introduced me to the rest of the families. So I had a group.
Q: What was their name?
A: Their real name is Shronatzky.
Q: That's the same family.
A: Yes.
So I was there all the time.
Q: And they celebrated the Holidays and they kept a Jewish...?
A: Yes. I remember celebrating, but I was not a believer.
Q: Your faith was undermined?
A: My faith was undermined.
Q: Because of the Holocaust?
A: Yes. Well, I decided that religion is a bad thing, that's it's a bad thing. But after I went to Tiefenbronne (?).
Q: O.K. So when do you go there?
A: It may have been still 1945 or early in 1946.
Q: Also this is right after the war.
A: When my mother was in the hospital.
Q: Who decides about this, do you know who decides that you are going to go there?
A: I guess it is all connected with the Jewish Committee.
Q: And what is it? You said it's a Jewish orphanage in Antwerpen?
A: No, in Marianburg (?), in a small…
Q: Town?
A: Like you have here Poleg
Q: What exactly?
A: Poleg here you have Poleg, Netanya. …
Q: Poleg.
A: Yes.
Q: It's a suburb.
A: A suburb, that's it, it’s a village.
Q: A village.
A: It's a village near Antwerpen. It was a villa. So there were not to many children, maybe 20.
Q: All from Belgium?
A: Children who survived some from camps, some from convents, you know.
Q: And all orphans.
A: Orphans or half orphans.
Q: And tell us about the man who was in charge.
A: He was very religious.
Q: Could you say his name again?
A: Jona Tiefenbronn.
Q: Tiefenbronn..
A: Tiefenbornn.
Q: Was he religious?
A: Agudist.
Q: 'Aguda'.
A: 'Agudat Yisroel'. From one extreme to the other.
Q: So the orphanage was 'Aguda'.
A: Yes, I guess so because he was from that organization.
So there was Catholic, non-believer, thrown in a Jewish home.
Q: Orthodox.
A: Orthodox, very Orthodox.
Q: How do you make this transfer?
A: Well, I wanted to be Jewish.
Q: At this point you wanted.
A: Yes. I tried.
Q: What made the transformation?
A: I guess him.
Q: Him.
What was so unique about him? Can you tell us a little bit about his personality?
A: He was like a father to all of us.
Q: He was warm.
A: Everyone of us felt special to him.
Q: He was an educator in his background?
A: Yes, he was an educator.
Q: A teacher?
A: Yes.
Q: You say very loving and warm.
A: Yes.
Q: What about his own family? He had a family? A: He had a wife.
Q: Were they living there?
A: Yes, and at the time he had one daughter. And we didn't like his wife. I mean, I didn't like his wife, of course.
So I was happy there. I was happy.
Q: And you went to school there?
A: I went to school.
Q: In French or in what language?
A: I went to school in Antwerpen, a Jewish school and it was in French.
Q: It was a Jewish school?
A: A Jewish school.
Q: So basically you lived in the orphanage, but you went to school….
A: Because I was old enough.
Q: You were in high school already or junior high, junior high.
A: I now get to the 6th grade because I only did a little bit of grade 6 in Bruxelles.
Q: You had gaps that you had to overcome.
A: Yes.
Q: And you liked it there.
A: Yes.
Q: There was a Jewish life. You had friends, Jewish girlfriends.
A: Yes.
Q: You became religious?
A: At that time I was religious because they started to come from the Jewish Brigade. My cousin in Australia, her uncle was in the Jewish Brigade. And my uncle here, in Israel – his brother was in the Jewish Brigade. And they came to visit me on Shabbat. And they wanted to take pictures of me. And I wouldn't let them take pictures because it was Shabbat.
Q: Because you were religious.
A: So they went to Mr. Tiefenbronn and Mr. Tiefenbronn talked to me and he said these are exceptional circumstances and I should allow them to take pictures. And then they took the picture and their camera was stolen. God punished them.
Q: So did they tell you a little bit, those from the Jewish Brigade about Palestine?
A: Yes, they used to come all the time.
Q: Because Aguda wasn't exactly Zionist. Was it Zionist oriented.
A: I don't know, but…
Q: Did those soldiers make a Zionist of you? A: Yes, they used to come all the time take this in the trucks. And they used to sing songs.
Q: Now, in the orphanage did you study Jewish studies as well? A: Yes.
Q: And Hebrew?
A: Yes. Well, we had to read the Bible like: "Anni" - I, "Atta". It's not something…
Q: But you liked it. You felt at home.
A: Yes, I liked it there, not in Antwerpen. After we moved to Antwerpen, to the big school, I didn't want to stay anymore.
Q: So you went back? How long did you stay in the villa?
A: One year.
Q: One year.
A: But in the villa it was intimate.
Q: Until 1946?
A: Yes.
Q: And then you came back home?
A: Yes, I returned.
Q: And your mother was back.
A: My mother was back.
And then I went to high school.
Q: Regular high school.
A: Well, first I went to WIZO. She sent me to WIZO and I didn't like it there because there was a lot of hanky panky and I wanted to study. So I said to my mother I want to go to a regular school, but I had to pay.
Q: No public schools in high school?
A: No, in high school you have to pay. So they gave us a special price.
Q: A scholarship or something like that.
A: Yes, something like that.
Q: In Belgium?
A: In Bruxelles.
Q: You know, after the war there was a big question of course. You didn't have any property before the war.
A: No. No. No.
Q: Because you were refugees.
A: Right.
Q: But there was a big question about the Jewish property and there was a big question about the Jewish kids who were hidden both in France and Holland and Belgium trying to get those kids out of monasteries, those who were orphans. And there were big issues there even a trial in Holland sometimes.
A: Yes, absolutely. In France there was a big trial.
Q: Right, in Holland and France.
A: Yes.
Q: Do you recall that also in Belgium?
A: No.
Q: Did you follow this?
A: No.
Q: Is it something you knew about?
A: No, because …
Q: You had a mother who took you out. So there was no problem there.
A: Yes.
Q: But were you aware of other?
A: No because in that convent there was no problem. Like I said, they were more liberal. These nuns are not fanatic. They always go and help the poor and do this…You know they wear those blue?
Q: Yes.
O.K. So you go to a high school.
A: I went to a vocational school, like a middle school. Like in the morning we had academic studies and in the afternoon sowing. I decided I have to learn a profession.
Q: So what profession? A: Dress making.
Q: Dress making. You wanted to be a seamstress.
A: Well, I had to be practical. I wanted to be a writer.
Q: You liked writing?
A: Yes.
Q: You were good at writing.
A: Yes, I liked writing. I can write well. So I used to write letters. I used to collect stamps. I used to write letters for the girls and they used to give me stamps.
Q: So you decide you need a profession.
A: Yes. When I arrived in the convent, they asked me what I want to be. And I said that I want to be a writer. And they said I will never make a living. And I was also very artistic. I had a paper doll, I made clothes. So I decided to become a dress maker. I wanted to be a designer actually.
Q: A fashion designer?
A: Yes.
Q: So you finish high school?
A: I went to the 1st grade and 2nd grade. And then I realized how hard my mother is working and I decided to quit although they offered me to stay for free. But I said: "No, I want to work".
So the directrice gave me a letter of recommendation.
Q: And you went to work?
A: And I went to work in a salon – 'L'haute Couture'.
Q: In Bruxelles.
A: In Bruxelles.
And then, this is very seasonable. So when it was off season, they sent me home. So I went back to the directrice. And she gave me a letter of recommendation to a factory. And this was confection….
Q: Confectia, right.
A: And I went there and I said: "No. I want haute couture". I went back to her. She gave me another letter. I went to work.
Q: So in 1949 you make Aliya.
A: Yes.
Q: How was that.
A: Somehow I became very Zionist.
Q: Were you involved in a youth movement?
A: Well, in WIZO I became aware.
Q: WIZO – The Zionist women organization.
A: Yes, and I went to school there for 2 – 3 months. There I became very aware of Palestine and all that.
Q: You had relatives here also.
A: Yes, but I….
Q: You didn't remember them. You had no contact.
A: My mother corresponded with them, but I had nothing to do with them.
Q: So in 1949 you decide.
A: So I already wanted to come and to fight. I was 16.
Q: Yes, because this is after the establishment of the State of Israel.
A: When there was a war.
Q: The war was after the declaration of the State.
A: My mother of course wouldn't let me.
Q: The Independence War.
A: Yes.
But I guess at that time she decided to immigrate to Israel. So we came to Israel in 1949, maybe in June, July 1949. And that was the liberation for me!
Q: Yes, you felt that way when you came here?
A: Wonderful.
Q: You remember the day.
A: I was liberated.
Q: Where did you live?
A: In the Beit Olimm, in Pardes Hanna.
Q: In Pardes Hanna in the beginning.
A: Yes.
Q: And then, afterwards?
A: Afterwards we got a Shikkun in Kiryat Yam.
Q: Haifa area.
A: Haifa area.
Q: And you lived there.
A: And I lived there. I met my husband and I married.
Q: You didn't go in the army?
A: No. Q: Who was your husband, can you tell us please?
A: My husband?
Q: What was his name?
A: My husband's name is Moshe Wigoda.
Q: And what year did you get married? A: In 1951, October 23rd 1951.
Q: And you lived in Kiryat Yam.
What were you doing?
A: My husband had a furniture store.
Q: Was he also a Holocaust survivor.
A: In Russia. He survived in Russia.
Q: And you worked as well or you were a housewife?
A: Before we got married, I worked in the Mifratz in Palceramic Painting and (…) And I don't know if those factories still exist.
Q: And when were your children born and can you tell us their names?
A: My first child was a girl. She was born on December 25th 1955.
Q: And her name?
A: Her name is Dorit, but she calls herself Michelle Wigoda.
And my son was born on January 3rd, 1958 and his name is Chaim. And he lives now in Israel, I think, for 9 years already.
Q: So you lived in Israel with your husband until 1959?
A: Until 1959.
Q: For about 10 years.
A: For 10 years. And he had a brother who also came to fight for Israel for the liberation, but you know the times were very difficult. And he lived with us. He didn't have a place. They wouldn't give him a place because he was single and he decided to leave.
He left illegally. He was in jail in Germany. And then anyway somebody sent him papers to Canada, to Toronto. So he wanted my husband to come too. I loved it here.
Q: O.K. Before you tell us about your moving to Toronto. When you came in 1949 it was already 4 years after the war, right?
A: Yes.
Q: First of all – how was your encounter with the Sabras, with the natives here?
A: With the Sabras, the Vatikim?
Q: Right, how did they accept you?
A: There was a difference.
Q: There was a difference, you felt it.
A: Yes, and a big difference between the Ashkenazim and the Sepharadim, the way they received them. I was very upset about the discrimination.
Q: What was the difference?
A: Discrimination against the Sepharadim.
Q: Those who came from…. Here you felt it.
A: Yes, because I speak French so I befriended with them. It upset me. I always say I'm Marokait.
Q: Did the Sabras understand you as a Holocaust survivor? Did you tell them what had happened? What had happened to you during the war or you didn't talk about it?
A: Well, I was in the Beit Olim.
Q: After, during the ten years that you lived here. Do you have Sabra friends.
A: O.K. I only had to do with my mother's relatives who came in 1933. I visited them. And there I had communication with Sabras. So they knew it. It would have been in Germany. We listened to music.
Q: But otherwise there wasn't a stigma of…?
A: No.
I know that when I worked in the padres, there were vatikim and they liked me because they were also German in Pardes Hanna .
Q: But did you tell people what had happened to you during the war?
A: No. Nobody asked.
Q: And you didn't want to tell?
A: No, nobody asked.
Q: What about your children? When they were small, did you talk about what had happened? Did you tell them?
A: Well, when my children were small, I only talked about Israel. That's why my son came back.
Q: But you didn't talk about the Holocaust.
A: Like I told you, I felt nothing happened to me. My husband talked a lot, he talked a lot.
Q: Well, you lost, you did.
A: I know, but I felt that I…
Q: You lost your father. You lost family. You went through things yourself. You were a refugee. ….
A: Not when they were little, no.
Q: You didn't talk about it.
A: But my husband always talked about Russia. He always told stories.
Q: When did you go back to Germany for the first time?
A: I went back to Germany for the first time. I looked at everybody.
Q: When was this, after you moved to Canada?
A: In 1969.
Q: So this is already after…You were living already …
A: In Canada.
Q: In Toronto.
A: We left Israel. My mother went back to Berlin.
Q: She went back to live in Berlin.
A: Yes.
Q: And you went to Toronto.
A: And we went. She had been back because of Pizuyim, you know.
Q: I want to ask you – when you came to Israel, you left a year before Eichmann was caught and the Eichmann trial. When you were there, in Toronto.
A: One year before? Q: Yes. Because you left in 1959 and Eichmann was caught in 1960 and was brought to trial. Did you follow that?
A: Yes, I had it taped.
Q: You took interest in that.
A: Yes.
Q: What did it do to you?
A: He wasn't even sorry. He was not sorry. But I think he said something in his speech that was good. But I was very happy.
Q: Earlier on you mentioned something about the Nuremberg Trials.
A: I saw the movie, but I was in Nuremberg with my daughter maybe 3 years ago and I stood on the podium.
Q: And you felt…
A: I was there!
Q: And the first time you went to Berlin was in 1969.
A: In 1969.
Q: How did you feel going there?
A: I couldn't believe how nice the people were, how polite and how helpful. And if they were at a certain age, I didn't want anything to do….Until today if I see a German at a certain age, I feel: "What did you do during the war?"
Q: And the language.
A: And I don't like to speak German. I speak German.
Q: Even though it's your mother tongue.
A: Yes, I speak German. I know it very well.
Q: And towards Belgium and the Belgian people you feel differently.
A: Yes.
Q: You go to Bruxelles, you feel….Or do you have things also? A: I have no problems, no.
Q: You mentioned the compensation money, the Pizuyim.
A: Yes, I mentioned the Pizuyim.
Q: Do you remember, I don't know if you were here also, but I think you were already in Toronto – there was a big debate in the Israeli society about this issue. Do you remember that?
A: No, but I didn't want Pizzuyim. My mother insisted. .
Q: You were against it.
A: I was against it. But my mother did it. She was practical. So she did it. I didn't want to have anything from them.
Q: What did you do in Toronto all the years?
A: In Toronto- I worked as a dress maker.
Q: So you worked in the fashion. .
A: Yes. I was a dress-maker. But I don't work anymore, just for myself.
Q: And you have friends who are also Holocaust survivors in Toronto?
A: Yes.
Q: And today you talk about it or it's something left behind?
A: We talk about it.
Q: You do talk about it.
A: Yes.
Q: Today do you have dreams about that period of the war?
A: Nightmares?
Q: Nightmares and dreams – does it come back to you?
A: No. No. Only consciously, but not in my sleep.
Q: Do you think about it a lot?
A: Yes, I do especially about my father because my father survived until February 22nd, 1945.
Q: In Auschwitz?
A: No.
Q: No?
A: From Auschwitz he went to Gross-Rosen. And from Gross-Rosen he made a Death March to Buchenwald. And he died of frostbite.
Q: In Buchenwald?
A: In Buchenwald.
Q: You know this.
A: Blood poisoning.
I know the date. I know the time. That upset me the most.
Q: He missed the end of the war in two months. He survived and two months….
A: Yes.
Q: Very sad.
A: And my mother was also….Her life was destroyed.
Q: Destroyed – she never recovered.
A: Never.
Q: But the fact that you survived, ultimately you did survive - how do you see it today? Do you see it as a miracle, as God's will?
A: I'm not religious.
Q: So what, Is it a matter of fate?
A: It's a vengeance. It's a vengeance and it's a miracle also. You know, I mean, we were supposed to be destroyed and we built families and we multiplied. They didn’t get us. In the end we won.
Q: During the years were you reading about the Holocaust? You dealt with it? You took interest in it?
A: Yes.
Q: Or you wanted to put that aside.
A: I don't want to go to the camps.
I went to Poland with my husband and my son to see where he lived, but I don't want to go to the camps. But yes, I read a lot about the Holocaust. In the beginning I didn't. I don't like to see pictures, but I read stories.
Q: When you think about yourself today from the perspective of today when you think about the period beginning with leaving Germany as a little girl, not only a young girl, what do you think was the hardest thing for you during all that time? If you think about it today, what was the most difficult thing or difficult moment? What is the most traumatic thing for you? A: The most traumatic – I went through a lot, but the most traumatic thing for me is that I lost my father.
Q: The minute that he left that you didn't see him anymore.
A: I have never saw him again. I never saw him again. And I always hoped he will come back.
Q: That was the biggest trauma.
When you think about that period, what do you think enabled you to survive during that time?
A: It's unbelievable.
Q: You had to adjust to so many changes – such a young girl.
A: It made me stronger.
Q: It did?
A: It did make me stronger. It made me strong.
Q: It made you strong.
A: Yes.
Q: Strong and mature.
A: I think you have to be strong. Either you go crazy or you have to be strong.
Q: Now we spoke about the Belgian people and you mentioned good people, people who helped….
A: Yes, a lot of people helped.
Q: Very important.
And we know of people who didn't, who like you said – turned in….
A: Yes.
Q: Who gave your mother three days to leave and so on. When you think about it, what makes in the same place a certain person risk his life willing to help and the other one willing to turn you in? Is it a matter of education, you think? A matter of personality? What makes one good and one evil? How do you think about that?
A: It's a question of morality, of principle that a person will be good and do good or a person will be bad.
Q: So it's a matter of education, how he was educated or not necessarily his own conscience?
A: I think it has a lot to do with education and what you see at home and how you are brought up.
Q: O.K. So maybe for the last question I want to ask you - thinking of little Ann and what she went through….
A: My name was Hanne Lore.
Q: O.K. Thinking of Hanne Lore and thinking of Ann today, in what way what you had gone through, do you think, affected who you are today?
A: Of course.
Q: In what way? Maybe the way you view the world, the way you educated your children – did it have an affect on your personality?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you see that the connection between those years to your identity today?
A: Yes, I mean I would have had a completely different life; I would have been a different person; I would not have met my husband; I would have stayed in Germany; I would have then high education because that was important for my father. So of course, I mean my whole being.
Q: And personality? In terms of what do you see that left marks on your personality – those years?
A: I think I survived remarkably well. Maybe I can take more. If people today would have to go through what I went through, I don't know how they would cope. So it made me stronger.
Q: Harder, stronger.
A: Stronger.
Q: And more tolerant as well?
A: Yes, I'm very tolerant. I'm liberal.
There are things that I want to discuss, but….I don't like injustice.
Q: It’s important for you.
A: Yes, for everybody, for the Arabs too.
Q: O.K. So ending this interview would you like to take the opportunity and perhaps say something to your children, grandchildren who might watch this?
A: Yes, I'm very proud of my children. I think they did a wonderful job raising their children. And I'm very proud of the fact that my son came back to his roots because he was born here. And he is raising his family here. He is Orthodox.
Q: Is he Orthodox?
A: Yes, modern Orthodox.
Q: Your daughter is living in Israel as well?
A: No, my daughter lives in Toronto.
And all my grandchildren are wonderful and I love them dearly, all of them. They are wonderful.
Q: And what would you wish for them and for yourself?
A: Well, I wish they should never know about war. That's the main thing.
Q: So Ann I want to thank you very much on behalf of myself and on behalf of Yad Vashem. And I wish you all the best with health and enjoy your family.
A: Thank you.
Q: Thank you very much.
A: You are very welcome.
.
Childhood in Berlin as the Nazis rise to power; escapes with parents to Brussels in 1938 (illegally); life under German occupation in 1940; father arrested and deported to a camp in 1941; mother falls ill and is taken to the Jewish Weisenbeek hospital near Brussels in 1941; witness placed in a residence at a teachers' college in Laeken in 1942 under a false identity; transferred to a convent in Chimay, spends several months there and is evicted in 1942; placed in the Pensiona des Soeurs de St. Vincent de Paul convent in Obourg, Mons Département; lives in the convcent under a false identity until liberation; returns to mother in Brussels; mother collapses and witness is placed in Jonas Tiefenbruner's orphanage in Antwerp in 1946; immigration to Israel in 1949; emigration to Toronto in 1959.
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Ann
Annelore
Wigoda
Mendelsohn
23/08/1932
Berlin, Germany
Testimony
13517
English
O.3 - Testimonies Department of the Yad Vashem Archives
27/02/2011
27/02/2011
ויגודה אן
YES
98
ISRAEL
Video
Moshal Repository, Yad Vashem Archival Collection