Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Clara Dan - July 1, 1982

The tunnel?

The tunnel. You have to see how a tunnel looks. And somebody told me, oh we have to take you down to see the Fox Theater because it's so beautiful. But never in your life just in America can you see this. So we went and saw the Fox Theater and by that time, you know, we used to travel in our day. And we told this people, "Now listen, the Fox Theater is really beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But you have to go and see in Germany Salzburg. Then you will see, even though that they are German, but that you have to give them credit, because what they can show you, the beauty. Fox Theater is a beautiful, but go and see that." You will find out, you will find a theater over there too. Maybe in your time they didn't have anything like that, but golly, America didn't have at that time either what they have. So it was very hard the beginning to make a new life. Oh God, we wanted to go back so many times. And it was really, really very, very hard. But a few people tell us that we are more Americanized than some of them. Really I'm not more Americanized if you understand or if know what I mean by it. We just knew that this is our new life. This is where we have to get used to it, and we have to assimilate ourselves and get used to the way American life is. [pause] And uh, really, that's when Shirley said, "Oh you will move to Florida." It's really not so easy to, to make again--like my family wanted us to go to Israel. Or when my sister got out of Israel it was so natural. We wrote them and asked them for the date we should an affidavit. And my sister wrote us--they have an only child--wrote us that this is our home and nobody is going to call my daughter a dirty Jew. You are not home. That is not your land. And the day will come when you will be called a dirty Jew again. And we cope. We will cope with the Arabs either--easier and better than you will cope with the black problem--than America will cope with the Black problem. So I don't know. Maybe, maybe Israel would have been the place, who knows?

You make your choices at the time when you have to decide at the time.

Absolutely. Absolutely.