Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Abraham Asner - October 10, 1982

Meeting His Wife

Now I'll come, I'll say the way I met my wife. When we was in the Natsher Pustshe in the, in the group, we was going to get some food or to get some kind of information from people, was a little village Mijantsi. And one time I was with my younger brother. And that time we was in the group thirty-three people. And I met my wife down there. She was hiding by one man on a fa... uh, on a farm. And, and she always... They hear lots about us because they used to call us, the uh, the population ??? Do you know what ??? means? My father was ??? And there were six brothers and they used to call us, not by the name or by the father's name ??? is the, the boys. Somebody what they know, they don't know us exactly, they call us ??? Or if not, if somebody know us better, they called by the name. And this was very popular the ??? all over. If somebody do some kind of work, we never, we don't even been there, there was going all everything on our name. Uh, and uh, I met my wife down there. She was that time single. And she start to beg us to take us together in the woods. And I said, we couldn't take you to me, to my brother. Said, we are shortage of food, and we, we don't have any food. Every little thing we got to carry on our back. And uh, who knows. And my brother said to me, if thirty-three people are going to starve, it'll be thirty-four. And uh, and my, and I was like a, more su... uh, superior than my brother. He was younger than me and uh, I think, uh... And he starts talking to me, let's take her. He said uh, "If everybody gonna starve, then she going to starve too. If everybody will have enough to eat, she want to have it to eat too." I think, I think to myself, you're right. I said, "Okay, let's go." We come to the, we took her, and we come back to our place down there in that little hole what we uh, digged out in, in, in the ground. We come over down there and then one girl down there by uh, by the name, she was ??? She got two sisters too by that time. She come to me, she said, "Listen, you brought a person and she had to eat." I said, "Are you carrying the food on your back? You're just sitting and eat. That's what we bring in--mostly me and my brothers used to bring the food--and you're just sitting and eating." And says, "You got nothing to say about them." Well, she just turned around. She got nothing to say. And then comes any kind of moments you get split and they went separate and then we went separate. Then we joined that group for that Third Reich, she went with us. Yeah, after uh, she went with us, after that incident what we brought the two men, what they said before. We was uh, have an argument. Then we went and we brought the two girls, my cousins. And we brought 'em to our place too and they was living with us.


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