Eva Boros - February 11, 1983
Encounter with Germans
Gestapo.
Right.
And they didn't know anything. And they were so young, all of them. They might have been nineteen, eighteen, nineteen. Unbelievable. He was an officer. So anyway, he was sorry for us and he gave us bread. He gave us candle. [laughs] You know, it is comical today. Instead of killing us on the spot, he was sorry for us. The condition we were in was unbelievable. [laughs] So when these people left uh, we decided that this is no way to live. And we uh, these Jews were in the next house to us. They, they rented a house and uh, from another peasant and they were living there. The lady was highly pregnant and she delivered the baby there. [laughs] A boy, of course, it must have been a boy not to be able to have it circumcised. [laughs] And then they, they said that my brother should come and be with them and they will say that it's a cousin of them. And so my--at least the two of us were separate. And uh, there were, I think we had a dress, a silk dress and I don't know what, from my mother. And uh, the, Mr. Fux arranged for us to be taken in by a peasant and one of the more wealthy peasants. He had four cows, can you imagine. [laughs] The wealthy peasant. All these people, as I said, their sons were already deserters from the army, so they had to hide, or... And these people knew. When we came there we were like family members. There was no other, they didn't let us sleep in the barn or in the wherever, because they knew... Were just normal human beings. So we slept in their bed and uh, the old gentleman peasant told me, he gave me the catechism. I studied too. He made me study by heart the prayers, the evangel prayer. He said if somebody comes and asks you, what will you say? We told them that we are bombed out, that our parents died in a bombing attack and that we escaped, only the two of us. And that was it. The guy knew, because the moment the Russians entered they said right you are Jewish kids—patrol. And we denied it, we said no, it's not true. We told you the truth. So they didn't care. They couldn't care a less who, they treated us unbelievably good. And uh, so that was--we must have been there a few weeks, four or five weeks living with them. And we had the most wonderful insight of peasant life, I must say. It was awful interesting. They ate from one bowl, the family. That, you know, they sit and they have a big bowl and they put mostly beans and uh, bread. And they--if you will ever be able to eat real peasant bread, I think you will never want to eat anything else. That's the best you can imagine. Unbelievably good. So they--that's what they eat. They--bread and beans. Very sad on meat, only on Sundays. And they introduced us to all kinds of things on theirs. And they don't wash. Only for Sundays or for special events. Uh, it was terribly interesting. But this is beside the point.
???
What?
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn