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BILL BENSON:
Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. My name is Bill Benson, and I am the host of the Museum’s public program, First Person. Thank you for joining us. This is our eleventh year of the First Person program. Our first person today is Mrs. Josiane Traum. We shall meet Mrs. Traum shortly.
This 2010 season of First Person is made possible through the generosity of the Louis and Dora Smith Foundation, to whom we are grateful for again sponsoring First Person.
First Person is a series of weekly conversations with survivors of the Holocaust who share with us their firsthand accounts of their experience during the Holocaust. Each First Person guest presently serves as a volunteer here at the Museum.
With few exceptions, we will have a First Person program each Wednesday through August 25th. We will also have First Person programs on Tuesdays from April through July. The Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org, provides information about upcoming First Person guests. Excerpts from First Person programs are available as podcasts on the Museum’s website. They are also available through iTunes. Josy’s podcast from today’s program will be available in the very near future.
Josy Traum will share with us her first person account of her experience during the Holocaust and as a survivor and for about 40 minutes. If time allows, we will follow that with an opportunity for you to ask Josy a few questions. We ask that you stay in your seats throughout our one-hour program. That way we minimize any disruptions for Josy as she speaks. For those of you have passes to the Permanent Exhibition today, we want you to know that they are good for the time on your ticket and any time for the rest of the day.
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and it’s collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims; six million were murdered. Roma and Sinti, or Gypsies, people with mental and physical disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany.
The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades. What you are about to hear from Josy is one individual’s account of the Holocaust. We have prepared a brief slide presentation to help with her introduction. We begin with this portrait of Josiane Aizenberg walking on a street in Brussels. Josy was born on March 21, 1939 in Brussels, Belgium to Jacques and Fanny Aizenberg. The arrow on this map of Belgium points to Brussels.
The German Army conquered Belgium in May of 1940. Shortly before the occupation, Josy’s father left Belgium to join the British Army. In this photo we see Josy with her parents in Brussels. In 1942, Josy’s mother Fanny was able secure a hiding place for Josy in a convent in Brugge, Belgium. Shortly after Fanny who worked with the Belgian Underground, or the resistance, was denounced and she was deported to Auschwitz. After a year of hiding in the convent and growing Nazi suspicion, the Belgian Underground relocated Josy to hide with a Christian family in Brussels. Here we see Josy and Fanny shortly before Josy went into hiding.
Allied forces liberated Belgium in September 1944. Soon after, Josy was found by one of her aunts, Fanny’s sister. After being liberated, Fanny returned to Belgium in May of 1945. Eventually, Josy’s father, Jacques reunited with the family. They moved to the United States in 1949. Here we see Josy, Jacques, and Fanny after they were reunited. Josy would eventually marry Freddie Traum, also a Holocaust survivor, and we close with this wedding portrait of Josy and Freddie.
After moving to the United States with her parents in 1949 and then completing her schooling in Patterson, New Jersey, Josy went to Israel to study for a year. On the return trip on a ship, she met Freddie Traum, the ship’s Chief Radio Officer. Upon her return to the U.S., Josy attended Mont Claire State Teacher’s College for one year. Josy and Freddie were married on his ship a year after she met him and of course, you can see him in his ship’s officer’s uniform here on board the ship. They moved to Israel where they lived for five years. While in Israel, the Traum’s son Michael and daughter Yael were born. Upon the advice of medical experts in Israel, the Traums relocated to the United States in 1963 to obtain medical care for their disabled son Michael. Their third child Jonathan, who is also disabled, was born in the United States.
Eventually Freddie’s work brought them to Vienna, Virginia. Josy returned to school and graduated from the Catholic University of America’s School of Social Work and began her career in child welfare. She retired in 2008 from her work as a clinical social worker for abused children in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Today Josy and Freddie live in Silver Spring, Maryland. Josy’s volunteer work here at this Museum includes leading tours of law enforcement, taking them on tours of the Permanent Exhibition—not only police officers but agents from the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. She also volunteers with Visitor Services on Tuesdays. Josy has recently started speaking publicly about her experiences, a Holocaust survivor, including at local synagogues and at Montgomery County—excuse me—Montgomery College. This is Josy’s first time with us on the First Person program, joining both her husband Freddie and her mother Fanny on our program. I’d like to also let you know that Josy and Freddie’s daughter Yael and their granddaughter Sophie are with us today. If you wouldn’t mind just a little wave so people know you’re here? And with that I’d like to ask you to join me in welcoming our first person, Mrs. Josiane Traum.
[Applause]
Welcome Josy and thank you for your willingness to join us for First Person and your first First Person, and I know that you’ve had a cold and worried about a little bit of laryngitis, but I think we’re gonna be just fine today.
JOSY TRAUM:
Thank you.
BILL BENSON:
We have good microphones and they’ll do the trick for us. We have so much to cover, so I think we should probably begin. Your parents Fanny and Jacques Aizenberg were married in early 1938 and you would be born the following spring in March of 1939, just months before Germany and Russia attacked Poland launching World War II. Let’s start with you telling us a little bit about your parents and their life and your very early life in the years before the war.
JOSY TRAUM:
Okay. Well as you mentioned, please excuse my throat. As you mentioned my parents were born in 1938—excuse me—were married in 1938 and I was born in 1939. So they were actually really newly weds when war broke out. Prior to being married my mother had gone to vocational school to become a designer, dress designer and pattern maker, and she actually was working for the Royal family in Belgium, something she was very proud of.
BILL BENSON:
That was quite an honor wasn’t it?
JOSY TRAUM:
It was a tremendous honor, and my dad was a violinist. And he actually was a violinist before he became a tailor. While in Belgium before, way, way before your time, in general they used to have movies that were silent. I don’t know if you can imagine that. They were not talkies. They were silent movies, and during the silent movies what they had was people, musicians playing along and during intermission and while the movie was playing they actually had music playing.
However when the talkies came into being, my father lost his job, because he was a violinist but he couldn’t work in the movie houses anymore. So, he went to school and was trained as a tailor, and so my mother and father both really were in the dressmaking and suit making industry. In those days, you didn’t go to store and just buy a suit off the rack. My dad had a tailor shop, and he would measure people and make custom made suits. People would pick out their material and then he would measure them and he would, people would come and pick up their suit when it was finished. That’s what they were really doing for a living. They lived in an apartment house. They owned an apartment building that had four or five stories, and the store was at the ground level and we lived behind the store. So that was my, this is really prior to my being born.
BILL BENSON:
Josy, your mother told me that, cause I asked her how she picked the name Josiane for you and she told me it was because there was this wonderful singer in France named Josiane so that’s how you got your name. So, I thought that was very interesting.
Josy, your, course you parents were married in 1938. The Nazi threat became even more ominous with Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" in late 1938, and then of course, you’d be born just months before they invaded Poland. Do you know from what you learned later that by giving birth to you at that time, a very fearful time—do you know to what extent your parents were fearful about not only their own futures, but yours as a new born child?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well I’m sure they must have been—please excuse me. I’m sure they must have been very fearful, and in fact, it was thought of in Belgium that when the Germans would invade, which they eventually did in May 1940. It was really thought that the Germans would leave the women and children alone and just deport or arrest the men. So my parents were very fearful. I think it was very unknown what the future would bring for them and for me for that matter.
BILL BENSON:
As, as the threat of the German expanding their, their dominion over Europe as they prepared to move into the Low Countries I believe; Belgium, France, Netherlands, there’s a call put out for volunteers to join the British Army, and your father heeded that call. Tell us about that.
JOSY TRAUM:
He did. My father and his brother wanted to join the British Army so they actually took one of the last ships to leave Belgium to go cross the British, the English Channel and my father and his brother, who were both tailors, got to London and as I said, wanted to volunteer for the British Army. When they got to London, really the British government and the Army used their best skills possible. They were both tailors and they placed them in a factory and they were actually in a place in the factory making British uniforms for the British Army which I think was the best place that my dad and his brother could be. At least they were safe.
BILL BENSON:
Josy, of course when he left and headed for the coast and to take a ship, and I think the ship left from Dunkirk.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Which of course, for those of you who know, was a terrible debacle for the British. Of three ships that set sail from there filled; only the one that your father was on made it. But, what did your mother know about that?
JOSY TRAUM:
My mother had no idea. There was no correspondence and even when my father got to London, to England there was really no way of knowing if he, if he had made it or not.
BILL BENSON:
So from that point forward until the war was over, that was the end of your knowledge about your father.
JOSY TRAUM:
Exactly.
BILL BENSON:
You and your mother, after that, of course, the Germans invaded Belgium. They occupied Belgium beginning in May of 1940, and you and your mother would remain together in Brussels under Nazi occupation…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…until 1942, and that’s when your mother made the profound decision to give you up and put you into hiding.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us what you can, knowing that you were just an infant, what you can about the events that led to your mother’s decision to do that and what it was like for both of you—for her and for you as best you know—for her to do that.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes. Well, actually prior to my going into hiding, there was an incident. I think I mentioned it to you Bill, on the bus. You know once the, once the Nazi occupation was in Belgium, everyone had to have an identification card, an identity card, and on it was printed in very large letters if you were a Jew. It was written in French, “Juif.” So, you had to go everywhere with this card and a German officer, a Nazi could stop you on the street and ask for your identity card, and of course, they saw inside whether you were a Jew or not, and if you were, they would arrest you and usually deport you.
On one particular day, I remember and you know, I was only three years old, and I don’t have many memories, but I have pictures. I remember seeing pictures in my mind and one of them was—excuse me—one of them was, I remember riding a bus a tram with my mother. We were going somewhere in town, and we were sitting in the last aisle in the bus, right at the end. And while we were riding on the tram, a Nazi officer came on the tram and started going row by row, asking for persons’ identification card or identification, a passport, and each person was giving them, giving the Nazi the identification card. I was sitting next to my mother in the last row, and all I remember she was; I could tell she was so scared.
You know a three year old doesn’t quite understand why a person is afraid or scared. All I remember is that my mother was shaking, and I didn’t know why. The Nazi officer went from row to row to row and when he got to the last row, he turned around and he did not ask for our identification cards. I remember my mother, you know, must have breathed such a sigh of relief, and I really didn’t realize why she was so scared, but I think that was kind of an impetus, maybe for what was to follow.
My mother was active in the underground, in the resistance movement, and at that time she realized that Belgium was hiding, the Christian population was hiding many of its Jewish children. In Belgium at the time, the population was about 8 million people, and of those 8 million, 66,000 were Jews. As soon as the Germans came in, 25,000 Jews were hidden by the Christian population. It was amazing. There was a whole network of Jews and Christians working together to hide as many Jewish children as they could.
My mother made inquiries with the Underground since she was already part of the resistance movement, and on one particular day—I think in August 1942—two strange ladies came to my mother’s apartment to pick me up. And indeed they picked me up. I had no idea where I was going. My mother couldn’t know where I was going. It was known, it was told that when the Germans, when the Nazis would come and arrest a Jewish person, they would try and find out where the rest, where the rest of the family was. Where are your children? Where is your husband? Where is, where are your relatives? And if you didn’t know where they were, you really couldn’t tell them even though the Nazis would torture you.
Well anyhow, these two strange ladies came to pick me up one day. My mother was not allowed to know where I was going, because they knew that if she knew perhaps if she was tortured she would eventually say where I was. She couldn’t because she didn’t know where I was going.
All I remember is being picked up by these two strange ladies. I wasn’t allowed to carry a toy with me. You know in those days, kids didn’t have a lot of toys like they have today. You know, nowadays, kids have rooms full of toys. In those days you had one toy, and I remember I had one little bunny, a pink bunny which I used to carry around all the time with me. I wasn’t allowed to take it, because the Germans apparently, if they saw you carrying a toy, it was very suspicious, because kids usually had one toy, and they wouldn’t carry it around with them. They would keep it at home.
BILL BENSON:
It was such a prized possession.
JOSY TRAUM:
It was a prized possession. You weren’t allowed to carry it around with you, because people were suspicious. So, I was carried off by these two ladies. My mother tells me now, because I don’t remember, I was crying really very, very hard, and they brought me to Brugge at this convent, which was with nuns. They were all Catholic nuns, and they placed me there.
BILL BENSON:
Josy, I’m gonna stop for a moment.
JOSY TRAUM:
Sure.
BILL BENSON:
And just go back a little bit before we continue on with once you were placed in the convent. During that almost two years, I think, that you were in Brussels with your mother before she put you in hiding, as you mentioned she worked for the Underground, for the resistance. How, do you know how she was able to make ends meet? Your father was gone. How was she able, the circum—tell us a little about what she has told you about the circumstances under which she lived with you?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well, all I do know, and I really don’t know how she was able to support herself, I do know that there were ration cards where people would get certain amounts of food. Every day food was rationed, and you had very meager portions depending on how many people in your family. My grandmother was also working in the Jewish community, and she would sometimes get food from that. I know my mother would be supported by her parents. And I think, you know I really don’t know how financially she was able to subsist. I know that they were able to live. We lived in the attic apartment of our apartment building, and we lived in the apartment in the attic until I was put in hiding.
BILL BENSON:
What do you know what your mother did for the resistance?
JOSY TRAUM:
As far as I know she was, she was like a messenger. She would deliver messages and newsletters of meetings and things that were going on, and the resistance movement was very strong in Belgium, and it consisted of Jews and Christians working together. And you know, I know they had meetings. They would get together and she was responsible for getting messages.
BILL BENSON:
And the risk for that was profound.
JOSY TRAUM:
The risk was usually death.
BILL BENSON:
Usually death, yea.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea. I know that in Belgium sometimes you would hear shots. People would be shot on the street if they were found to hide a Jew or to be doing something, which was considered subversive to the Nazi regime.
BILL BENSON:
And of course, in 1942 or when the deportations really began, and so at that point your mother was able to arrange as you describe for you to go to this convent. You describe the convent as really in many ways more like an orphanage.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about it.
JOSY TRAUM:
In fact, it is called an orphanage, and it’s run by nuns. It’s in Brugge, which is a beautiful little city in Belgium. It was run by nuns and the reason I’m calling it orphanage, apparently in Europe in those days, many people who couldn’t take care of their children would often put them in an orphanage until perhaps a few years when they were able to support them and bring, take them out.
Unbeknownst to me, and I found this out after the war. You know as I mentioned before as a three year old, there weren’t very many facts that I knew and understood and even realized. I was told a lot after the war. I found out that they were hiding three other Jewish children in this orphanage, and the nuns and the sisters were pretty strict.
BILL BENSON:
In fact you told me that they looked like the nuns in The Sound of Music, but they weren’t at all like the nuns in The Sound of Music.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes. No, they didn’t sing.
BILL BENSON:
No, and they were very strict.
JOSY TRAUM:
They were extremely strict. Not because I was a Jew, however. You know I came from a very nurturing home. I had a grandmother and mother who hugged me and loved me, and it was hard going to a convent where you know, I don’t think they knew how to nurture a child, how to hug a child. I was just crying and I was a very finicky eater. Whatever rations there were. I was a very fussy eater, and probably had a hard time eating, and they were just very strict.
They had these very stiff habits, you know those black habits with the wide accordion collars, and I remember we, we used to sleep dorm style with the nuns in the room, in the dormitory with us. I remember that the biggest shock I had was the first night, I think, when I was sleeping there and the nuns took off their headgear and they were bald, and I had the shock of my life. I didn’t expect that, but I realize these headgears must have been so hot. They were so tight. You know they probably shaved their heads, but I remember that really stayed in my memory, stayed in my mind. They were very, very strict, but as I said, not because I was a Jew. They were strict to all the kids. You know they didn’t know about hugging and holding and kissing and so…
BILL BENSON:
You had to change your name, didn’t you?
JOSY TRAUM:
I did.
BILL BENSON:
What was your name?
JOSY TRAUM:
My first name remained the same, but my last name Aizenberg was changed to Van Bergh which is a real kind of Flemish, Dutch name, and but of course, at that age, I probably didn’t know the difference.
BILL BENSON:
Right, right, right. And because you were too young really for formal education, they still began teaching you, I think you said that you used the rosary, and—
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes. I said my rosaries, but in French. And, yes I did say my rosaries. You know as a child you learn very much what’s around you and you learn very quickly to be in step with whatever is around you.
BILL BENSON:
Right, right.
JOSY TRAUM:
So I learned to say my rosaries, and the nuns, you know, however strict they were, they saved my life. So I’ve always been very grateful for that.
BILL BENSON:
You were saying a few minutes ago about what they didn’t know was how to hug and nurture and that you had come from an actually very nurturing environment for your first three years, and so I’d asked Josy what she thought was the most significant impact in the convent and you’d said it was the lack of the nurturing.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
And something that you know, you thought about a lot over the years.
JOSY TRAUM:
I have. I really have, and I feel and I think I mentioned this to you, we were talking about—I personally feel it is so crucial for a child for the first three years of life to have a strong bond with a caretaker. Not necessarily the mother or the father, but a caretaker who cares about the child, who nurtures, who will hugs, who is there for the child. And I think those first three years when a bond forms is so crucial, and you know I kind of feel that that was so important in my first three years.
BILL BENSON:
Cause you got that.
JOSY TRAUM:
Because I got that, and I think that’s what helped me…
BILL BENSON:
Right.
JOSY TRAUM:
…in the years after that.
BILL BENSON:
At some point, um, after I think about a year in the, in the, in the orphanage or the convent, the decision was made to get you out of there, and you, you know a little bit about why they…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…got you. Tell us about why you had to be moved.
JOSY TRAUM:
My understanding is and this again is after the war, the nuns were told that the Germans, the Nazis were gonna come. I found out later there were three other Jewish children there. So together we were four childr—four Jewish kids, and it was found out that the Germans, the Nazis were gonna come and pick up and arrest or deport the Jewish children.
The nuns that evening that night, smuggled me out. During the night they smuggled me, I don’t know how they did it. How did they find out that the Nazis were coming the next day? There were no telephones. In those days, there were no taxis. I really don’t know how they did it. They got me out to Brussels along with the other children and they placed me with a Christian Catholic family in Brussels, and I was placed there. There was a mother, a father, and a little girl my age, and I actually stayed there for the remainder of the war in hiding.
BILL BENSON:
And this was the Debrackelaer family?
JOSY TRAUM:
The Debrackelaers.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about them.
JOSY TRAUM:
Well the Debrackelaers first of all, they did this out of the goodness of their heart. They took such a risk by having me. You know I mentioned before, everybody in Belgium—food was rationed, and you received food rations according to how many people in your household. They were registered as three people. The Debrackelaers, the mother, the father and the little girl. Of course, I wasn’t registered. I was a non-entity in that household. I wasn’t supposed to be there, so they received food for three people and of course, shared it with me. Again, they took such a risk. You know, if you were found hiding a Jew, you would and if the Germans would find you, they would just shoot you. And people were shot on the street. Mr. Debrackelaer, the father, I know was sometimes taken out and interrogated, because he would come back bruised. So I knew he was interrogated, but he never said that I was in that household. So, I am so, so grateful to them. I mean, I’m here today because of them.
JOSY TRAUM:
He was. Yes. I found out later that he was part of the resistance movement. He was in the underground, and the reason they were taking him out to question him every time is really because of his activities in the uderground movement, but he was not arrested, and luckily he stayed alive.
BILL BENSON:
And, and you as you said, you would remain living in their home until liberation in the…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
… fall of 1944. What can you tell us again knowing how young you were what life was like for you in that home apart from the fact that obviously food rations were limited…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…for the reasons you said. What was it like for you?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well, the little girl who was part of their biological family was like my little sister, and we pretty much played all the time. It was a very close family, the three of them, and you know I, I really, I remember this. I remember them huddling and cuddling and I remember watching and I just was not part of that unit. I mean I know they saved me and I was lucky to be there, but I didn’t feel like I was part of the family unit.
BILL BENSON:
So, almost as though you remained an outsider.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
And despite the fact that they had you there with them.
JOSY TRAUM:
They did. In fact I remember that memories are the three of them huddled and me watching.
BILL BENSON:
It lasts forever doesn’t it?
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea.
BILL BENSON:
Memories, wow. When the war ended in Belgium in 1944, one of your mother’s sisters…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…your aunt Theresa, I believe, was able to find you.
JOSY TRAUM:
She was. She, during the war, she had been hidden through the uderground also. She had three sons and her husband who actually was very active in the uderground. My aunt, my mother’s sister Tess and her three sons were hidden in a church during the entire duration of the war, and because of the network—
BILL BENSON:
Together?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know, I believe they were together.
BILL BENSON:
Really? Okay.
JOSY TRAUM:
During the entire duration because they were so active in the uderground and my uncle was very active in the uderground. In fact, he got an award at the end of the war, which shocked all of us, because he was such a gentle passive man. He had killed six Germans in trying to protect other people and it was so unlike him in character. We couldn’t believe it, but he did receive a special award. But because they were very active in the uderground, my aunt, my mother’s sister through the uderground network was able to find me, and she found me at the Debrackelaers and took me home with her. And I stayed there for the rest of the war, 'til my mother returned from Auschwitz.
BILL BENSON:
Which of course would not be for another seven or eight months…
JOSY TRAUM:
Exactly.
BILL BENSON:
…or there abouts. What was it like to, to be, you were now six years old I think.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
What was it like as best you know to now be back with family? Did, do you think you realized quickly that these were family that, that now we’re taking you in?
JOSY TRAUM:
I, you know, I did. I felt totally like I belonged. First of all, the three brothers, my three cousins, they were all older than me, but they treated me like their little mascot. They would play with me. They would rough me. They would play jokes on me. I mean they were like my three big brothers protecting me and playing with me all the time, and it was really good being there and it was good being with my aunt who really hugged me, protected me and loved me.
BILL BENSON:
Do you think their assumption was without knowing their assumption was that you probably would never see your mother and father again?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know something I’m not sure what they assumed, but we certainly didn’t know what had happened to my mom.
BILL BENSON:
So at minimum, they were prepared for that probably to be the case.
JOSY TRAUM:
I imagine so.
BILL BENSON:
Right, right.
JOSY TRAUM:
I imagine so. In fact it was quite a shock, my mother, when she did come back. She came knocking on the door, and…
BILL BENSON:
That was a shock.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea.
BILL BENSON:
And, and they, of course, they didn’t know, again they didn’t know where your mother was and they didn’t know where your father, that he was alive either.
JOSY TRAUM:
No, nor did they know about the grandparents, because my mother had been deported with her mother who was killed very soon after getting to Auschwitz. She was murdered and my grandfather exactly, actually died on one of the cattle cars on his way to Auschwitz. So the family really didn’t know what had happened to any of the family members.
BILL BENSON:
And your mother had another sister, Rose, I believe.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes, Rose.
BILL BENSON:
What about Rose?
JOSY TRAUM:
She was also hidden. She was five years younger than my mother, and she was also hidden by through an orphanage, convent. She was there, working there, and she remained there for the entire duration of the war.
BILL BENSON:
I’m, one of the things that I find amazing and I know you do too is that in the chaos of war, and all that transpired that the, the Underground some how was able to keep track of where people were…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…that they put into hiding so that your aunt could find you afterwards…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
That you were somehow, people knew this. I, it’s just, I think, I think all of us would agree that that’s just amazing.
JOSY TRAUM:
It really, truly is amazing. There was a whole network and people who were hidden through the Underground knew how to find another person who was hidden, who was doing the hiding, and the people would network. I mean, it’s quite amazing. It’s amazing to me. I mean out of a population of 66,000 Jews in Belgium, about 29,000 were actually murdered, and so many, many were hidden. Many were saved, but many were not.
BILL BENSON:
A very different story from most other countries.
JOSY TRAUM:
Absolutely.
BILL BENSON:
Josy, D-day was in June of 1944. Belgium was liberated not that much long after that, and in September 1944. Of course, the war was raging elsewhere in Europe…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…fiercely. Do you have any sense whether or not Belgians in general, and certainly your aunts and your family were fearful that the tide could turn again and that the Germans would come roaring back?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know, I’m not sure they thought of that, because you know, Belgium was liberated. The Americans were filling the streets, and you know I do remember Hershey bars. The Americans coming and handing out candy bars to the kids and to the population and the Americans were very welcome. I don’t know if there was a fear then of the Germans coming back. I think the Belgians were very joyful of seeing the Allies, seeing the Americans come in.
BILL BENSON:
It sounds like you, as a child, you could also feel that…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…that joy about that.
JOSY TRAUM:
I did.
BILL BENSON:
How, do you know how given a war has just concluded for Belgium, at least…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…how your family members, your aunt and her husband and your other aunt, how they were able to get their lives back together at that point?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well, luckily the aunt where I was living with her three sons, they had had a store of leather goods, and they were actually able to go back to their place, to their apartment, and to start working in their store again. So, for them life began to resume as it had—excuse me—as it had been before.
My uncle, my uncle came back—excuse me—my uncle came back also, and that family immediately resumed being together, putting their life together; the boys going back to school and my aunt and uncle working in the store. My younger aunt, my mother’s younger sister actually was sharing an apartment with a Christian girlfriend once she came out of the orphanage or convent. She was sharing an apartment with her good friend, Julia, and stayed there for many, many years ‘til she came to the United States.
BILL BENSON:
The war ends in April 1945 in Europe. Your mother is liberated and…
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
…as you said, she literally shows up on the doorstep in what must have seemed like a miracle of miracles.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Do you remember that day?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know, I can’t say that I do. I know my mother came in and I remember her being there. I don’t remember the sight of her at the door, but I remember the screams.
BILL BENSON:
The screams.
JOSY TRAUM:
When, you know she did come knocking on the door, and she actually came and lived with her sister. We were together for a little while ‘til we went back to her, to the apartment where my parents used to live.
BILL BENSON:
Your mother had been through an, there’s no words almost to describe an extraordinarily horrible experience.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Would you tell us just a little bit about what your mother went through? And picking up maybe with the fact that she was denounced for her uderground work and sent to Auschwitz with her mother.
JOSY TRAUM:
You know, as I mentioned before, Belgium had wonderful people who really hid many, many Jews. By the same token, there were many people who collaborated wth the Nazis and my mother was denounced. We don’t know by whom. We think it was a neighbor. We’re not really sure, but so there were many people who did wonderful things, who saved many Jews, but there were many Jew—many non-Jews who actually collaborated with the Nazis. Many people would get money for turning in Jews and collaborating. So, you know, my mother knows that she was denounced.
When my mother did get to Auschwitz, she did survive Auschwitz. She was placed in one of the sub-camps in Auschwitz where they had a factory and she was strong enough and young enough to be able to work. She was putting bombs and grenades together. Eventually she was sent on a death march. You know when the Germans realized that the Allies were coming they took the prisoners out on death marches, and my mother was taken on a death march in January of ’45, and until about March, March or April, they walked into the Soviet Union.
Actually into the army where the Soviet Union and the Germans had their last battle, and she was actually liberated by the Soviet Union. And they actually took her in a hospital took care of her. My mother weighed 65 lbs when she was liberated, so you can imagine what she must have looked like. She had typhus and meningitis. She was a pretty sick woman, and eventually the Red Cross brought her back to Belgium. So, she made her way back. You know, and she came back to—the Red Cross took many of the prisoners back to the country of their origin.
BILL BENSON:
And, and her still had to be a pretty frail condition.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
What was it like to your knowledge then, to move back home with your mother after you left your aunt’s house and your mother is obviously still recovering. What, what happened with you at that time? How did she make ends meet for herself at that point?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well, my mother, I think, started working as a dressmaker to start making a little bit of money, but what I didn’t tell you before, and uh, you know I don’t remember my mom walking in, but I remember her being there. And I remember her being very frightened that she would again leave, and you know you don’t understand as a six year old, why she came and how she might not be there the next day. My mother tells me this, because I don’t remember this, but she tells me that for weeks I would tie my nightgown to hers, because I was so scared that she would leave. So, you know, I was so happy to have her again. So that was very, very important.
BILL BENSON:
I remember when your mother first told me that in First Person, and how, how profoundly emotional that is for her to this day.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea, it’s emotional as you can tell, for me to tell it.
BILL BENSON:
Absolutely. And then, of course, another surprise would unfold later in 1946 when your father shows up.
JOSY TRAUM:
My father showed up. What had happened is, my father didn’t come back ‘til a year after the war. While he was living in London, the house he was living in was bombed, and he was injured pretty badly and was in a hospital for about two years. So, he didn’t come back ‘til 1946, and in 1946 my mom and I went to Oostende which is the port city of Belgium where his boat came in, and we came to meet my father coming off the boat. And I remember this strange man coming off the boat and my mom pointing and saying, “There is your father.” And, of course, I didn’t know him. I was 13 months old when he had left, and of course, I had no recollection whatsoever. And, you know, it was hard. All of a sudden having a father again. My father all of a sudden having a child, a seven year old, and not being used to that. So, I think it took a lot of adjustment for the three of us to get used to each other and start living some kind of semblance of normal life.
BILL BENSON:
Part of returning to a “normal life” of course is education.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
So, so, did, is that when you started to go to school?
JOSY TRAUM:
I did. I started going to school, yes, in Belgium, in Brussels. I used to walk to school and walk back. Yes.
BILL BENSON:
And starting from scratch.
JOSY TRAUM:
From scratch.
BILL BENSON:
Right.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes. Which is, you know a six year old, probably first grade. I wasn’t too far behind.
BILL BENSON:
Right. Right.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
And your mother continued to try to earn a living as a dressmaker? Is that right?
JOSY TRAUM:
She did and my father opened the tailoring shop.
BILL BENSON:
He did, ok.
JOSY TRAUM:
And they both worked at tailoring, at dressmaking and my father would, you know, make suits for people and custom made suits and that’s how they, they lived.
BILL BENSON:
And you would continue rebuilding their, your lives.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
For the next three years until 1949 when you came to the United States.
JOSY TRAUM:
Exactly.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us why, why the United States?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well, I think my parents after what they had gone through were just, I think, very happy to leave Europe. They had gone through so much, both of them. My father, my mother especially, losing her parents and some other members of her family, and my father losing his brother, another brother, not the one who went to England with him, but there was another brother in Belgium who was deported and murdered with his family. And my parents were very anxious to come to the United States, start a new life, and really start a fresh.
So, they actually applied and it took three years for us to get a visa and to come to the United States. And we lived, we went to settle in North New Jersey in Patterson, New Jersey, because my mother had an aunt who lived there, and we went to live with them for a few months when we first came ‘til my parents were able to find jobs and settle and get an apartment. Which is what we did.
BILL BENSON:
Had the aunt been in the United States for a while?
JOSY TRAUM:
Oh, she had been here since the ‘20s.
BILL BENSON:
Since the 20’s.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea.
BILL BENSON:
Three years to get the visa to get here. Wow.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
So, here you are now, of course, you probably didn’t speak English.
JOSY TRAUM:
No, I did not.
BILL BENSON:
And you’re here starting again.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yes.
BILL BENSON:
Tell us about school for you. You’re now how old?
JOSY TRAUM:
I was ten years old.
BILL BENSON:
Ten years old, mhmm.
JOSY TRAUM:
I came when I was ten years old, and interestingly enough, when I first came here, because you don’t speak the language, you think you really don’t know anything, so they put me in the first grade. And…
BILL BENSON:
Back to square one.
JOSY TRAUM:
Back to square one, and you know, little by little I learned the language. I learned English, and every few weeks, they would skip me a grade. So, I started with the first grade, second grade, and I very soon was in the fifth grade. So, I don‘t ever remember not speaking English. We were very anxious to speak English. I went home and spoke English immediately, and in fact, maybe that’s why I lost a lot of my French, because I would come home and speak English. My parents would only want to speak English. When they came to this country, they right away started going to school to learn English to learn history. They wanted to become Americans as soon as possible.
I had a hard time adjusting in school. My first week of school, I was beaten up by a bunch of girls who were waiting for me at the corner. I don’t know why they beat me up. My mother went to school the next day to ask, you know to tell, to speak to the principal to ask what happened or to tell them what had happened, and the principal explained it by saying, “Well they must have thought she was German.” Which doesn’t make much sense to me, but…
BILL BENSON:
That became the explanation for why.
JOSY TRAUM:
That became the explanation, because I don’t think those kids knew the difference between a German kid and a non-German kid.
BILL BENSON:
You were from Europe and spoke a different language.
JOSY TRAUM:
I was…exactly. But…
BILL BENSON:
But after you said that, you told me that incident, but after that though, you felt you settled in…
JOSY TRAUM:
I did.
BILL BENSON:
…fairly well.
JOSY TRAUM:
I did. I made friends, and after that first incident, maybe it was like an initiation, I don’t know.
BILL BENSON:
A tough one.
JOSY TRAUM:
A tough one.
BILL BENSON:
What about your aunts? What did they end up doing?
JOSY TRAUM:
My, my aunts, my mom’s older sister with her three sons eventually emigrated to Israel and lived there. My mother’s younger sister eventually came to the United States and lived in New York.
BILL BENSON:
Mhmm. Mhmm. And have you stayed close with the family members?
JOSY TRAUM:
Well, I’ve stayed close with the three brothers. My two aunts have since died, not war related. The three brothers close to one of them lives in Israel still. The other one lives in Canada, and one was killed in the 1973 war, ’71 excuse me.
BILL BENSON:
In Israel?
JOSY TRAUM:
In Israel.
BILL BENSON:
Josy, I’m gonna stop with my questions there because I think we have some time to turn to our audience to see if they have some questions that they’d like to ask you. So we have a little bit of time for you to do that if you wish. Yes ma'am?
AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I know you said that your mother worked for the Royal Family making dresses. Do you know if she, once the Germans came in, did she go to them to see if they could help her? Do you know if that happened at all?
BILL BENSON:
Josy, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna repeat the question just to make sure everybody in the room heard it. Question was that your mother had worked for the Royal Family as a dressmaker and when the Germans came in, did she, was she able to make any kind of appeal to the Royal House for, for protection, for help.
JOSY TRAUM:
That’s very interesting. Actually my mom stopped working for the Royal Family once she got married. So, I know she had no contact there, so you know, whether she ever went there or not, I don’t know. Also during the war, the Belgian Royal Family was in exile. They were in England. So, you know, I don’t know if that would have done any good.
BILL BENSON:
Ok. Yes?
[Inaudible]
BILL BENSON:
The question is when your, you were able to return to your original home with your mother as your aunt did too; during the interim what happened to their homes?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know, I don’t know what happened to my aunt’s home, because I know they went back right into the apartment. Maybe it was empty. I’m not really sure. As far as our apartment is concerned, I know somebody was living there and they moved out and then we moved in. All I know is that our silverware and dishes and all our—the things that my mom treasured were no longer there. So, I don’t know if neighbors took them and the Germans took them. I really don’t know.
BILL BENSON:
I would imagine the Germans occupied an awful lot of the houses.
JOSY TRAUM:
They did, and they took a lot of property. They really did.
BILL BENSON:
Right. It’s still being accounted for to this day.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea.
BILL BENSON:
Okay. Kathleen?
AUDIENCE MEMBER:
This sounds like that the lynch pin of your survival was your family’s involvement with the resistance movement and if you hadn’t had that connection, you may not be here now. How did your mother and primarily your mother, how did she get involved in that resistance movement? How did she overcome her fear? How did it begin for her? Do you know?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know…
BILL BENSON:
The que—let me just repeat the question.
JOSY TRAUM:
I’m sorry. I forgot.
BILL BENSON:
The question is that, it sounds that the lynch pin for your survival was really your family’s connection to the resistance, and without that you might not be here today. So the question is, do you know how your mother really got hooked into the resistance movement?
JOSY TRAUM:
You know, I really don’t know, but I know her brother-in-law was in the resistance movement. You know, I think everybody around her; all the Jews who could were part of the resistance movement. If they could, they would. So, you know, how she actually got involved, I don’t know. It’s a good question to ask my mom. You know she’s living today. She’s 93. [I] need to ask her that. Yes.
BILL BENSON:
I think that of all of our First Person guests, I think Fanny is our oldest by, by just a hair, but she is our oldest survivor. Yes?
[Inaudible]
JOSY TRAUM:
Thank you, Eleanor.
[Inaudible]
BILL BENSON:
The question is whether or not you had contact with the family, the Debrackelaers who hid you and whether or not, if you know whether they were recognized for, for what they did.
JOSY TRAUM:
As far as I know, in fact I asked my mom about this last night, and she apparently while we still lived in Belgium for after the war, for three years, she was in contact with the Debrackelaers. When we came to the United States we had no more contact with them. My husband and I did go back to Belgium in 1989, and we made inquiries through another family, a Christian family who was friendly with them and who had seen me during the war, and they told me that the Debrackelaers had died, and the daughter apparently was also very sickly. I don’t know what was wrong with her, but it seems like the entire family really passed away. Whether they ever were honored or not, I don’t know. They certainly should’ve been.
BILL BENSON:
Okay. Do we, do we have a question more? Yes? In the middle.
[Inaudible]
BILL BENSON:
The, the question was once you went in the convent, how much longer was it before your mother was denounced and sent to Auschwitz, and then the second part of it is, given what your mother went through, do you think it helps her to talk about that, and what impact does that have on her? Am I capturing that? Okay.
JOSY TRAUM:
That’s a very interesting question, because my mother was actually arrested and deported a few months after I was taken into hiding. So just imagine how lucky I am, and also…Second?
BILL BENSON:
The impact on your mother of speaking out about it?
JOSY TRAUM:
Oh you’re right. I’m sorry. Senior moment. Interestingly enough, my mother has only started to speak within the last three years. She was not able to before. When we first came to this country, my mom wanted to speak. I think she tried to speak to relatives, and they really didn’t want to listen to her. They would say, “That’s in the past. We don’t want to hear about it.”
You know, forget about that things are good now. Start life from fresh. So, she really couldn’t speak and she has begun speaking the last three years, which I think for her has been wonderful. In fact, last Shabbat, last Saturday, the Saturday before she spoke at our synagogue for the first time, and in commemoration of the Holocaust Day. So, you know she’s really in some ways, she come out of her shell, and she’s been able to talk about it.
BILL BENSON:
In fact, she’s just very powerful when she speaks about it. I might also mention that of course, Josy’s husband Freddie who’s right here in the front row with us who is also a survivor will be on the First Person program in a few weeks, I believe. Do you know when Freddie?
[Inaudible]
In June, in June. So, yet another, another member of the family with a very unique and powerful story. Well I think on that note, we’re gonna close in just a couple of moments. I’d like to first thank all of you for being with us today. Thank you so much. Josy, of course, can’t begin to thank you enough.
I wish we had much more time to dig even deeper into both what you experienced and you’re so insightful about its experience and its impact on you. You can’t help but think and given what you said about those early years and nurturing that you chose a career in child welfare and working with abused children, that’s just, um, that’s pretty powerful.
JOSY TRAUM:
Yea.
BILL BENSON:
I’d like to invite you to come back to another First Person Program again. We will have them every Wednesday until the end of August and each Tuesday from April through July. So, we have another program tomorrow, April 28th when our first person will be Mr. Michele Margosis who like Josy is also from Brussels, Belgium. Four days after the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940, Michel’s family fled for the South of France where they tried to find refuge. After escaping from a detention camp, they hid on a friend’s farm. When it became too dangerous for them to stay there, they escaped to Marseille, where they stayed for a while before then making their way across the Pyrenees into Spain and in 1943, Michele would make his way to the United States.
Please remember that you can hear First Person podcasts on the Museum’s web site as well as through iTunes, so if you can’t make it to one of our programs, please listen. And then finally, it’s our tradition here at First Person that our first person has the last word. And so with that, I’d like to turn back to Josy to close today’s program. And I might just mention before I do that, that after the program, Josy would you mind talking with folks if anybody wants to come and say hi or chat with you…
JOSY TRAUM:
Sure.
BILL BENSON:
… when she steps down from the stage.
JOSY TRAUM:
I would like to very much.
BILL BENSON:
Okay.
JOSY TRAUM:
First of all, I want to thank everyone for coming in and listening to me. My voice is not usually like this, so please forgive my voice. Having the opportunity to have the last word here….You know I do tours here, and there’s one very powerful quote which is on one of the walls on the second floor, and it moves me every time I read it, and I would like to read it to you, because it impacts on me so much, and it’s so true to what this Museum is about.
It’s by Martin Neimöller who was a Lutheran minister in Germany who was very, very pro-Hitler when Hitler came into power, because he really felt Hitler would change Germany, would give a lot of things and a lot of hope to the German people. So, here’s what he said. By the way at the end, he became very anti-Hitler, and he was deported to a concentration camp, but let me read what he wrote. “First the came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists. I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews. I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me.” And that says it all.
BILL BENSON:
Thank you.
[Applause]
JOSY TRAUM:
Thank you. Thank you.
[Applause]
