Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Abraham Asner - October 10, 1982

You talked a little bit about some of your family not wanting to bother you, not wanting to ask you.

Why, yes.

But did other members of your family want to know what happened to you? Were you able to talk about it with them?

From my family?

Yeah, from family over here.

Oh. Depends on what uh, about who. Like uh, uh, Ed's uh, brothers?

Sure, any of your relatives that you would want to talk about.

The older brother--uh, the oldest, Ed's brother Ben--used to be a big businessman. Used to have the biggest business uh, building supply in Kansas. And was, I think he had like seventy trucks or something like that. And big business. All of a sudden something, he got drunk and it went broke. And uh, now he's in record business. He's selling records. And he's making pretty good, uh... According to that business what he had before, he's... Not comparison, you know, because he have managers and everything. I don't know exactly what happened. He went broke and lost everything. And the younger brother Lev, which you saw in the picture, he's in junk business because his father was in junk business, had a junkyard. And when I come the first time in Kansas City... My father used to live in Kansas City too. And he used to be partners with my uncle, with uh, Ed's father. And then he give me some... Then he, he met some people what they used to know my father and then he introduced me to the people. And they said to the, to the people uh, if they accepted me... If I would see 'em I would say that's like uh, I look like my father. Because I'm mostly the same size and my looks uh, the same size uh, the same thing like my father. And they gave me some things, old things, what left from my father. I say, "I didn't need 'em, what I'm going to do with them, so." Like some kind of copper screen uh, some, some kind of strainer copper they used to do something, uh... Said, they can have it for some kind of, for memories or something, he said. And then he showed me where my, where my father had the junkyard too, lots of things. And then uh, Ed by that time was a little actor when I come the first time Kansas City and uh, I met him the first time--I met everybody the first time--at that time Ed and he's supposed to go in the army. And then he come with a little suitcase and his mother uh, find a, a little book, some addresses. Said, "What is this?" Your big book that, that you can have that big book... [interruption in interview]