Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Peri Berki - December 9, 1983

Um, well, we'll go on and if you remember any other incidents, please feel free. After the war, what happened? How did you go back to life? Your husband came back?

Yeah, my husband came back. We, for a while we didn't stay. We lived there for maybe two weeks after it was over and we didn't tell them we were, we were Jews. Somehow we were maybe, basically we were not a hundred percent sure how they will react. So we found it safer just to move away and not telling them that we were Jews. And then we moved into, with my, to my sister's apartment and we were not many, maybe six, eight people. This was our building where we lived it was occupied by, by A... by American. The American came and they took some, natural, they had to make some quarter—headquarters?—quarters.

Yes.

And we lived with my sister and we didn't have windows and we didn't have heat and we didn't have water. So we had to...

It had been bombed?

In the whole city there was no water. Most probably it was, the water, something was iced in, it was very, very cold.

And you had no windows?

No windows. And you know, and we had to, and we tried to make our bread at home. We got somehow flour from the country and we wanted to make... And you have to, when you put yeast in your bread you have to put it in a warm place. You know what we did, we went to sleep and we put the bread in, in our...

In your bed?

under our cover, yeah, to, to added heat. And then, very interesting.

This was after the war.

After, after, also I said it. After, you, after the war naturally nothing was wrong. Everything was beautiful. Everything. We didn't have to be afraid any more of the German because... In the beginning I told you my son was... It was a few weeks, it was very bad. First, then when we lived with the Gentile people I feeled more safe than after the war when they said that the Germans are coming back, because we were fed up, it was enough.

Yes.

And you start over again. It was frightening.

And then, but gradually, so when did your husband come back and what happened to you?

Then we went, my husband was in the same, it was already, he was already in the same city. I don't remember how he went away from... When they were, most of I think, when the Russians were closing, they, this ??? they gave up. How do you call that?

The...

The camp. The...

This unit?

Yeah. Building the airfield.