Peri Berki - December 9, 1983
Survival of Family
So, I was. Other things may, if other things occur to you later that have nothing to do with what I'm asking you, please feel free to talk about it. But I wanted to ask you what happened to the rest of your family. I know your sister survived. She was...
Oh, my brother was deported.
He was deported to where?
I don't know.
You never found out.
No. He had ??? papers, ??? papers, protective papers. And to the last transport he was transport to the very last transport. They emptied the whole house which was under paper protection and he was taken away and never came back.
So you didn't.
One of my sisters was in America.
Had already come to America before.
In '41.
She was able to get out.
Yeah.
And the other sister with her false papers survived with you.
Yeah, you know that, that to me that part is sad, when, when they uh, marched into Vienna. Budapest had one million population, Budapest population was one million. I cannot relate it when I arrived and I don't like ??? but I just have to repeat and correct myself. Out of the 25 person, 250,000 Jews lived in Budapest that's a large amount. And we said it's impossible that they deported Jews. What would be with the city without the Jews? They're very, in all the sciences, in movies they were very active like here too. In musical period, in theater, in newspapers. We said here, it cannot hap... happen to us. That's why. And somebody came from Vienna where it happened already, he said it will happen to you too. Because we, we didn't believe. It cannot exist. There is a famous book by a German writer, Bettauer is the name, you wouldn't know it, and it said the Stadt ohne Juden a city without Jews.
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