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"I was the only child there with a number, so I also felt that there was something wrong with me." | |||
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Irene Hizme Born 1937 Teplice Sanov, Czechoslovakia 
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I got shipped, um, got shipped to France and finally wound up in a, in an orphanage in Fublaines. It, which is just on the outskirts of Paris. And I was one of the youngest children there, and I didn't speak to anybody except Miriam [a friend of Irene's], who was about, I guess about seven years older. She seemed like almost a mother figure in a sense to me, because she would, I had these long curls and she would fuss with them and she just was very compassionate, and I, um, the other children--I was the only child there with a number, so I also felt that there was something wrong with me. I felt that I had done something horrible, that I had gotten the number and nobody else did. Most of these children had escaped somehow by hiding, or their parents had temporarily given them over and some were subsequently reunited with parents, and some just had family members and they were just waiting to be shipped to, and you know, things like that. | ||
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Rene Slotkin Born 1937 Teplice Sanov, Czechoslovakia 
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I started to go to school in Kosice, and he left me with his, uh, sister, Edith Mann, and her husband, Joseph Mann. And they had a boy, Otto, and a girl, Bibi? Bibi. And we lived very close to the school, and, uh, I knew I was Jewish then because first of all, they were Jewish and, uh, I was called a Jew in the school. Every day when I, when, when school got out--there was one other Jew in the entire school. His name was Sobel. I'll never forget the name, Sobel. I don't know his first name, but, uh, the boys are waiting for us to beat us and to stone us, every single day. It was a hassle to get out of school. I don't know why it wasn't a problem going to school, but leaving school every day was, was a horror show. | ||
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Ruth Webber Born 1935 Ostrowiec, Poland 
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I was very bitter after the war, towards everybody. How they allowed me to, to be, to go through such misery for so long. And then on top of it I didn't even know for a few months that my mother survived, or my father, which he didn't. And I was terribly angry at everything and everybody. Because nobody even cared after I survived, that I survived. I had to be protected even after that. When we were in the orphanage in Krakow we were not allowed to go out because some people felt that we should not have survived. And it was not safe to go out from our house, from the house we were kept in, and the garden. That was the only place that we were allowed to go. And the war wasn't even over then. It was the spring of '45. So after surviving all this--and my God, the thoughts, the hate that I had, the things that I was going to do to the Germans for doing these things to us. It's awesome for a child to even think about these--you know, I, I'm even afraid to think about them now myself. I was going to be a butcher. The things that I was going to do to revenge. And then, actually, with the help of mother, to try to forget the past, I realized that living a normal life and continue being to be able to, to feel and enjoy, that I was not destroyed. | ||
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Charlene Schiff Born 1929 Horochow, Poland 
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I was, and I'm speaking from a personal point of view, and I know I'm not the only one, there I was, an orphan, a survivor of unspeakable pain and atrocities of the war, and nobody extended a helping hand during the war. Now, after the war, wouldn't you think we would have priority to go out or to get out of Germany? But no, I had to wait three long years. There were quotas. There were always quotas. There were quotas to get into the United States. My...when I finally did get a hold of my family in the United States--because I remembered my grandmother's address--I still, I mean, they guaranteed that I would not be a burden to the government, and yet I had to wait three long years before I was allowed to come to the United States. Meanwhile, I, I tried on my own to get a student's visa, and I attended the University of Heidelberg for almost--well, over a year, but, uh, that would have given me a student visa. I must say that the people at the University of Heidelberg bent backwards to accommodate me. There were such a gaps in my education, formal education. It was nonexistent, and yet I took some tests and they helped me and I was accepted as a full-time student. And, uh, I will never forget that. I'm grateful for that. But I still had to wait three years to come to the United States, and I don't think that was right, to treat us in such a way. | ||
| Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. | ||||
