Erna Blitzer Gorman - July 12, 1989
Family Before the War
Could you tell me your name, please and where you were born?
Okay, my name is Erna Blitzer Gorman, I was born in Metz, Moselle France.
And how large was your family, your immediate family?
How large? My father, my mother, my sister, and I.
As for your extended family, how many people were lost in the war do you estimate?
(Sigh) Anywhere between fifty or eighty people I would say because my mother had a very, very large family many brothers and sisters there were two younger sisters but they were all married. I see grandparents and many cousins and my father had seven brothers and several sisters and many children out of which only one, only three children survived.
Three of his...
Three of his nephews and nieces.
And how did they survive?
Well, that particular family lived in Germany and those three of the four children were sent to different orphanages to Belgium, and this is how they survived.
Of your immediate family, who survived?
Well, it depends how you look at it, um, three of my father's, my sister and I survived, but my mother died, at the end or the beginning, I don't know how to put it, she died... survived until 1944 1/2, I think, and then she died.
Just after you were liberated after the Russian troops came?
Well, yea uh, huh.
You were just a child when the war began, do you remember anything about your life in Metz?
No. Nothing at all.
Your parents were originally from Metz?
No, my father was from Poland and my mother was Ukrainian and they met in Metz and married.
Your sister was older or younger?
Six years older.
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