Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Irving Altus - June 2, 1982

And who was--you say you have a brother--who else was in your...

I have two brothers and two sisters. And my father had three bro...uh, three uh, three brothers, my mother had two sisters. In all the family, the only one is left me and one cousin, which he went to Russia and he's alive and he is in Israel, in Haifa.

Where were you...

Haifa.

I'm sorry--where were you in the family? You were--you have two brothers and two sisters.

In home--in Czekanów.

I mean where, were you the oldest, the youngest?

I was uh, from the brothers I was the youngest and then two sisters.

So you were in the middle.

Younger than me. Yeah.

In the middle, it sounds.

I don't know, just by luck, they came in when they took me away and this is what--I never saw my family again since 1940.

Who did you have then that, you mentioned on your father there were...

My father had three brothers.

And they were all living in your hometown?

All living in the hometown. My mother's two sisters. I had grandparents from both parents living in the same town. And they all...

What was your father's occupation?

Father just did a little working here and there, you know. And one brother was a barber, one was a tailor, I went to work as a tailor.

Um, did any of your brothers go um, to gymnasium?

No. I don't think, uh...

Wife: It was a gymnasium.

It was yeah. We had sister. It was--no, no, no. Nobody--just finished the, the, the, if you want to call it--I don't even know--it's not a high school. Because here, you, you going to school you know, when you're eighteen. By thirteen you are finished. It was seven classes. You started when you were six--seven and seven years and that's it. And out.