Eva Boros - February 11, 1983
Conclusion
Do you have any final thoughts you would like to add to the tape before we stop?
I have many final thoughts but [laughs] I don't know if this is the, really the way I would like, uh... It is terribly difficult really for me. I, I tried to make it a round story so there is something that one can hold on to. Of course, it is a huge amount of uh, horrors that I left out that have to be filled in. But I, I think this is, uh... The only thing I am trying to do to catch anybody's attention in telling them that I am a survivor, yes there was a uh, Hitler that did kill six million Jews. And uh, I try also to hope that we, never again. This is all I can say. That I don't believe that if ever such a thing will happen--I don't say it cannot happen, it can happen. I absolutely believe in it. There is always a possibility that it can occur again. I hate not to be part of the Israeli scene today because I did dream of bringing up my children there. And the reason we are here is that there was no more space for the--us. We were unable to get a job. My husband was unable to get a job, a decent job in his profession in Israel. Which also is a little bit of a--how do you call that--rancor that I have, that I keep. It's rancor. It's not good. But what can you do? So you try to do the best. I try to--I do have depressions. I did suffer after my second delivery of uh, postpartum depression, which nobody can tell if it's from the uh, from the uh, hormone change or it's the background. You know, it somehow sounds like the Passover song, the ???, it's only, if only ??? So, ???, I do have bouts of pretty bad depression. Uh, when I was in, in the Mikveh Israel Youth I had bouts of actual suicidal feelings, which uh, I never revealed to anybody. Of course, that would have been you know, the end of the world. You don't do that. I did try to keep myself sane and since I do have children and a family uh, it never came to be that bad. But I uh, it sometimes can come to very bad feelings, which uh, can be just as normal as anybody that didn't go through it. I don't know. I still do think that I--also I believe that I did have some brain damage from the, the shock of my parents not coming back. I am convinced of it. And I mean actual brain damage in the sense that uh, I have problems expressing myself. I find myself not finding the right expressions which I do have in my vocabulary. I don't believe it's from being able to speak five languages that I would suffer from it. It's just, I, I'm convinced that it's a blockade, a mental. It's abandonment, I'm sure about it. I never, it's wasn't, I mean, I didn't go and uh, check it. But uh, I am, it's an intelligent guess. [pause] What do you have to say about this?
[interruption in interview]
I try not to project my uh, feelings of being lost, of being uh, abandoned on my children. I am not, I don't feel that it is fair of any of us to burden them with this. What I do try is to make sure that I say it loud and clear enough that they should not intermarry. And I'm scared, very much scared of what, that it might occur to me. And uh, I did send them to Hebrew school. I tried to show them some kind of a religious frame. I'm not religious at all. But I do try to show them that the, the Jewish identity is one of the strongest things I can show. It might have been the reason that I had the strength and the sanity to, to be what I am.
That's enough...
Oh fine. I just, the, the part of the burdening of the children is very close to my heart because...
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