Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Olga Adler - July 26, 1982

And what about in your daily routine? How did your daily routine change?

Why, well my daily routine changed a lot, why, because I got up in the morning and I went to school and I came home and in the afternoon I went ice skating and I went to play tennis and I went to take German lessons and I was busy. And then all of a sudden, no school. So, no school, hanging around at home. Everybody is a little bit nervous. Everybo... don't go here, don't go there, you couldn't go there, you have to be there by, back by five o'clock. My mother standing in the window waiting. If you didn't come back uh, five, five minutes later, you know, if you came back.

Sure.

This constant worry. And uh, it is, there was con... this constant worry that something happened. Normally Jewish parents are very much...

Sure.

afraid of, for, for their children, especially when things are not right and in a small co... small town, all the foreigners, all the, the, the, the army, the things coming and going. But the younger can't sit at home constantly. No, but these things settled. After awhile, it settled a little bit. It wasn't that chaotic all the time, you know. And then it just settled down and then when the routine started. Again, going to the, to the, out to the beach, going bicycle riding. And what every young girl does.

Yeah.

We went home, naturally we didn't have the nice white bread and all the good things to eat. We had bread like, not here the Russian rye that you think is delicious and you want to buy because it's brea... black. But I remember my mother's teasing with her eyes, in her eyes, giving us this black bread and we told her that it is fine, there's nothing wrong with it, it's good. You're a young girl, you have to lie, who cares.

Sure.

But my mother thought that it's a terrible thing to eat this black bread and not as much as you want from it because there was just certain amount you can get and you have problems already buying things.

Could the Gentiles get all the bread they wanted? It was just the Jews?

Gentiles could do anything they wanted.

And did you have to, you didn't have to wear yellow stars or anything?

Not yet, we are not with the Germans yet.

Uh-huh.

We are with the Hungarians yet.

So, how did they know you were Jews if you didn't have an identification somehow?

Uh, not because I looked, I looked Jewish or anything, but if you, if somebody wants to harm you, couldn't they find out if you are a Jewish girl or not? If somebody would come on the street and asked me, I would have had the chutzpah to say I am a Jew. I would never deny it that I am a Jew. It never even occurred to me that I shouldn't. It was so natural to me at being a Jew as, as the sun comes up. I couldn't imagine myself... I wouldn't go... As I said, I wasn't a rel... brought up in a religious atmosphere, I would never walk with a, with a Gentile boy on the street. Never, it would be degrading. I wouldn't. I mean, we were just raised that way.

Yeah.

Not being a Zionist. Nobody was a Zionist or anything. But this, this was a natural. I couldn't imagine myself being anything else but a Jew, just a natural thing.