Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Cymerint - June 8, 1982

Uh, what, what kind of education did you get? How far in school did you go and...

I uh, I went, actually here they would call uh, finished high school. Polish...

Secular high, secular education.

Yeah.

What would you have become?

Well, and then was college, but I couldn't reach that--that's was too, you know, they took me away. Wha...the college, then you made up your mind. You could have become a, a, a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, you know, same thing like this country.

Would you have gone ahead into college, do you think?

Yeah.

Your family would have...

Yes, my family could, uh, that's what their, their basis were to give me a, an education, see, to send me to college.

And what about the, the Zionist group that you belonged to? Would you have gone to Israel at some point?

Well, this was just a group to belong as a, a, a chalutz, maybe you know what chalutz is?

Well, explain what a chalutz is.

A chalutz is--in Europe, a lot of Polish boys went to Israel. A chalutz, that means you, you stay uh, for two years you work, you chop wood, you carry water in pails to people and you make a few dollar and you learn how to work hard. Because that time it was pioneers, you know, like forty years ago. Pioneers went and they didn't have nothing. They had to start out in the fields, digging, and, you know, and all that later. And this was the preparation, they showed films. I saw films before the war when I was a kid. I saw films from Israel. At that time was no Israel.

Palestine.

Palestine. But they showed the, the, the Sinai. They showed all the mountains, all--everything so clear, you know. And I had in my mind to go to Israel. I wanted to go to Israel. But was no possibility, you know.