Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Erna Blitzer Gorman - July 12, 1989

Playing

What? You once told me you were playing in the street. Do you want to tell me about that?

Ah, you know I haven't been talking about this at all in my speeches at all but I will. I - I don't remember playing at all except this particular time and that must have been a different ghetto again, um, I remember a low house and I remember um, I was never definite if it was a boy or a girl, but it was a boy, and ah we were outside once and we were playing and uh, I thought we were playing, anyhow, there was this man and this women and they were running by us and shortly after there were these soldiers that came, that ran after them, and they were asking what direction they went and we pointed.

Were these German soldiers?

Well they were uniformed.

They could have been Ukrainian police?

And we pointed and I um, you see the next, I knew, to this day I feel very um, strange about it because I'm not responsible for their lives, for them dying but I do have a sense of being responsible but in effect I'm not, um, at any rate, I know that the next day I heard some talk that this couple died. Whether it was this couple or not, I don't know but in a child's mind when you feel guilty for doing something like this in the first place um, (pause).

Did you tell your parents?

No.

Grandfather?

No.

You didn't have your grandfather?

No at that time they had all disappeared already. (pause) I'm sorry. This is a very difficult, I've analyzed this and I don't blame myself, but yet I do -- at any rate.


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