Peri Berki - December 9, 1983
Farmland Confiscated
It's all right.
Not because I'm upset. I, after all I had enough time to, to overcome this situation, which I fully did. Just when I talk about it I think I... Um, we had to leave the farm. Just, they took it away, we go... They took away all the uh, land and we got reimbursed for the livestock—livestock? You know like...
Yes, sure.
husbandry?
Yes. Livestock.
Livestock and granary and we had to leave the, the... Can you explain this is ten minutes? How you just...?
You can take your time, we have as much time as you want. It... That must have been very, very difficult to see what you've worked for go away.
Yeah, it's been, even before that I remember that, and it was interesting just to see how people, how we reacted even before that period when already it was very opened and the Jews were persecuted not only in Germany but in Hungary. Our neighbors were all Gentile people. One of them asked me, “How do you feel Mrs. Berki that you who were always so respected and your husband, how do you feel now that you are persecuted and you are a Jew?” And I said, “I, my feeling is that I never changed. I'm the same Mrs. Berki I was before. You changed, I didn't.”
She said this in hostility?
Yes.
Really?
Not hostility but malicious uh, uh, feeling. Because the Gentiles were... So anyhow, this is what I answered. And I didn't feel embarrassed, I didn't feel ashamed. I was the same person I was before. Only the circumstances changed. So after the land was taken away, we moved to Budapest. Then we moved into an apartment. My husband found an apartment and whatever he could take along, some furniture he took, the rest of the furniture was left behind. And then one day my sister called me some, some time around March and this was in '43 March, she called. She was thought the German ar... German army's working on the ???. Said this was, and I said it's impossible, but I, there was nothing there. I said, I see that period of the army's working in there and didn't encounter any... resistance. So, from then on it was very short. Every... Everything happening in very short order. There were placards in saying that the Jewish people are not supposed to do this, not supposed to do that. And one week, the Jews, we had to put on the star, the six, Star of David...
Yes.
in yellow, in yellow material and have to affix to their, to their clothes. It was winter, we had it on. Could we stop for a... ?
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