Abraham Asner - October 10, 1982
Daughters
Do you remember um, a few weeks ago you and your wife were telling me about your children, your daughters...
Mm-hm.
...the difference between them. Could you tell me some more about that, just about how they view what happened to you, just how they reacted to it?
Uh, I think my wife told you uh, one time uh, when that Holocaust was, mine uh, really the younger daughter in the beginning she wasn't interested in, mostly. And I wasn't telling them. That's... I feel they're too young and there's uh, to explain it to them and everything. My older daughter... And she, she didn't want to go to, to like, to Jewish schools. She didn't want to go, uh... And my older daughter was uh, very good in Jewish school. She was a teacher, like, in Jewish school, in ??? for the younger classes. And she was uh, very interested in them. And anytime she was having some kind of play or a, a poem to sing, they used to give it to her and she was very good, very excellent and to express. And I think she was saying with some kind of feelings. She uh, they like to what in the past what we went through uh, me and my wife, you know. I, I told her one time from mine uh, younger daughter with the cousins. And she's very involved in uh, in shul with uh, all the, any kind of activities, she's president I think from, I don't know, something, she's involved from, in uh, in Jewish education. She's involved. What else you want to know?
But there was a turning point at, in one of their lives, it must have been the younger daughter didn't want to have anything to do with it, and then she, she saw the Holocaust...
Yeah.
...and called your wife up?
Yeah. That was, that made her a turning point because uh, lots of times uh, we wanted--mostly my wife, not, not me--she want to tell her, ah, said, I don't want to know, it's too much at ??? Now she said, and she apologized, this, all kind of. She don't talk to me, she talked to, to my wife and she was crying.
I know that you felt that they were too young to hear it and to understand it. Was there a time when you felt that they were old enough to tell them, and that's when you did?
Well, it's... Yes, the time's old enough to tell them. Or still, you got to have the time, the right time to tell them. Because come... I got to tell that story, it's got to be the right time to, to, to tell, and sometime you're not in the mood to tell any kind of disturbance, you know. You got to have the right time to tell.
Yeah, it's hard.
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