Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Magda Beer - July 5, 1983

Obtaining False Papers

So--but in the meantime, the Germans had be com...came through your basement while you were there and just leaving. They didn't even pay attention to you?

No, no.

And they just wanted to get out?

That's right. They escaped. And I'm in the next room nobody really ??? in this basement.

Woman: They heard that the Russians--they were liberated by the Russians.

Mm-hm. How did you get the Swiss papers that you had?

I had my brother-in-law--my first husband's brother and he made it. This wasn't true.

Woman: That was false papers.

Uh-huh.

False papers, yeah.

Did any...

I had two and I gave one to a little girl. I don't know what happened with her--I met in the in the brick store with her and she was crying so badly. She was about eighteen years old and alone and one paper I give it to her. I don't know what happened.

Woman: In the beginning everything--a lot of things worked you know. But not later on like in just Czechoslovakia. After '44 nothing helped. Only hiding if you were lucky enough that you could hold out. Even how many were killed, shot in the, in the heels.

Did you know about Wallenberg?

Oh yes, the, the Swede?

Mm-hm.

Sure, this was, this paper was from uh, him but not from him. It was a false stamp and everything. You know, a copy.

A copy of the kind of papers he was giving?

Right, right, right.


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