Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982

He must uh, I suppose that he must think that that's my uh, that's why I'm reacting the way I am reacting because I was humiliated and stripped of my uh, rights and uh, whatever a human being is uh, the dog uh, will get more respect than uh, but that's not, that didn't do a bit of damage. I just took--that's--I have never mentioned that and I never bring it up and it doesn't bother me. I uh, just for the--for--our conversation I brought it up, but it doesn't bother me at all. I don't see myself, I don't--I separated from that uh, part of my life, in that respect for those feelings. It's the damages being done--was being done by leaving me and killing off the rest of the family and I sort of uh, I have believed, I--there's a holiday. I don't have a holiday. I don't feel like. I was never able to even with the four of us, I was never to able to create that atmosphere that a holiday should have because I always pictured the holiday was when the family got together and there was just the four of us. It was always uh, when the kids came home when they were first, second grade and my bigger son, Bobby, said uh, "How come the other kids have that many more people for Thanksgiving than we do?" or because that's what, you know, they were talking it over in show and tell or whatever they were talking over. And uh, the answer was uh, I don't know, I just wrapped it up in some kind of uh, a fancy wrapping paper to uh, because at that point, I couldn't explain. It was--you can't explain that. You can't tell. You can't tell uh, little guy that uh, your family was killed, our family was killed. I mean that's un....it's un....it was, it's unreal. It's not real. It's real but it's unreal.