Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982

Uh, he was in the ghetto and when I came home--it was an interesting thing in the concentration camp where I was. We used to sit around and everybody used to uh, cry about their parents because they had--this one said uh, "I know my father or my mother would not survive uh, this experience," because they had arthritis or whatever they had and I was just sitting there, always like an outsider and listening to what these people had to say. These kids and uh, in my mind, somehow nothing could happen to my parents and I was so positively sure that they were somewhere safe uh, that's why it hit me doubly hard when I found out that neither one of my parents survived. My father--I, I, I went home and there wasn't any--because there was--it--that part of the apartment was missing where we lived. We lived in an apartment and I spoke to the caretaker and she said that my mom was--my--they took my mom when they took the rest of the people and she had some things that she uh, she had a silver fox--uh, uh, a silver fox that you wore on your coat. She left it with them. I always, I thought that they, I didn't know whether they were anti-Semitic or not and they probably were, but they must have felt sorry for me when I came home. They gave it to me and at that point when I was in the house and nothing was in the apartment, I didn't know. Oh, she said yeah, that they took my mom. I knew that my mom was gone because that was uh, the month of--sometime August, I suppose or September of 1945. We were liberated May, first of May. The war was over at the fifth?

May 5th.

May 5th?

Yes.

First of May, they were liberated and uh, I just had no way to come home, but by the time I came home, if you didn't come home by then, you didn't come home. So from there I went to my father's uh, apartment and I, I met his, I uh, met his--I met up with his second wife and she--and when she saw me she started to sob and uh and I was so sure and I said, "Where is my father?" I was so sure that he is, that he is just around and she said uh, she started to cry uh, and she said that uh, "Look," she said, "you have hope for your mother but you have no hope for your father," and then what happened was that uh, Budapest was liberated on the 15th of January, I believe. We had...