Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Bella Camhi - November 18, 1999

How large do you think your family was?

Oh God uh, my dad had nine brothers and one sister. And each one had--we were the smallest family--the smallest because the kids didn't live. My mother had three--ten pregnancies, three sets of twins. [pause] And here I never heard somebody having two sets. So we were the smaller ones. Uh, we were ov...uh, they were a, over a, a, a hundred people.

Over a hundred people in your family.

And us, we were over seventy, on my mother's side. They were also a big family.

So your family was close to two hundred people.

Right. And we turn only three people. Everyone is gone.

I was going to ask you how many survived the, the war.

Three.

Three in your whole family.

Two girls and one boy. I mean, of my family? Only me.

No...of the, of the extended family?

Right. It, it's uh, three brothers. They was on, on my dad's side. On my mother's side, nobody survived.

So your sister and brothers were killed.

Oh yeah.

And your parents.

They were young. I mean, she was eleven years old. And the boy was seven and the bo...other was five.

So you were the oldest child.

I was eighteen. Is a trauma that nobody, nobody want to be in it.