Eva Boros - February 11, 1983
Thinking of Father
[interruption in interview]
...that I hoped it was a, a hope wish, wish hope that I will uh, meet my father. I knew about my mother beca...that she died in concentration camp immediately in Auschwitz when she--when they sent her there. But my father uh, actually was alive after the liberation, only he was very sick. Somebody that we knew came back to Bratislava and told us. And he was hospitalized because he had some uh, leg trouble. He was operated on his feet and uh, my sister and brother went back to look for him, but he was--by the time they arrived in Ebensee, Austria, he was dead. Uh, so uh, I had this hope that it might not be true that he died, but he, he went somewhere and he will one day appear. And I have a terrible thing happening to me. In, in Tel Aviv I was going on the street one day and that must have been I don't know exactly when, '48, or '47, '48, I don't remember when. And I saw a gentleman going in front of me that... For a minute or for, for uh, five minutes I must have followed him. He looked so much like my father that it was unbelievable and I did not have the guts to stop him and say, hey, wait a minute, who are you. I looked at him then I came very close and I said no this cannot be. I looked at him and he looked at me and I said if he didn't recognize me that--it must have been some delirium. I don't know. But it, it happened, it happened to me. But the fact that I did not dare go up... I imagine you know, it's, it's absurd. It is absurd because today we do know where my father lies buried. He's in a, in a, in a mass grave in Ebensee. I, I was there. So, it's absurd. But these dreams kept uh, continuously returning to me and it was, it wasn't good. I mean, it was bad, mentally. But... So then I uh, was in, I was in ??? and I left uh, then I went with the whole group to ???. Then I left and I went to Haifa. And I worked as a maid in a small pension. I, I cleaned and I did--that's what I knew how to do. What else? And uh, these people also were awfully nice and uh, they were good to me. And then my time came to go to the army. And instead of uh, declaring myself uh, religious, I just decided that that's it, I go. It was a way out or an escape or whatever. And then I went to the army. I did not enjoy it because of the change that occurred during those years of my being in the Haganah, being enthusiastic. Everybody wanting to be good and to, to succeed in whatever our goal was. Here everybody that could uh, was uh, miserable. They were cheating, they did everything in order not to succeed. So then uh, there I had a very interesting thing that uh, I was in, in Jerusalem in the ??? became not used anymore for training uh... I and uh, in the army.
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