Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Miriam Biegun - August 10, 1983

Sharing Experiences with Children

Have you told your children about...

Yes.

Your experience of the war?

Not all of it, but they know a lots, quite a lot.

How do they--how did they react, and how do they talk about it now with you?

Sometimes we talk, and sometimes we don't talk because they get very emotional, so they know enough, so, you know, we start not talking too much about it.

Did, did your memories of, of surviving in the woods or in the ghetto um, do you think that they affected the way you raised your daughters?

Maybe, maybe, yes.

How, do you think?

Because, you know, a mother always protects them, you know, they should have this, they should have that, do for them things, you know. Maybe we should let them do, to learn the mistakes on their own, instead we should do a lots for them.

Do you remember any kind of specific incidents that would make...

Mm, you mean with the children?

Yeah, with your children.

No. The younger one is okay. She gets better now. She takes classes, you know. Now, the younger one, she is going to be 22, she wants to know about it, so she takes special classes for the Holocaust and stuff like that. The older one knows a lots. She went to Israel. And I don't know what happened. She changed her mind. She came back to, she made that Ali... you know, to move there to live, but she came back. Now she's married and...

Recently?

Yeah, recently got married, yeah. But, I think no, no matter how, what, I don't wish nobody to go through again what we went through, or what I went through. If you're Jewish or not Jewish, color or race doesn't matter. I don't wish on nobody that.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn