Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Clara Dan - July 1, 1982

So your lifestyle wasn't...

Entirely--no, no. Absolutely. That's why, when we were already in the concentration camp, we were such cowards. So afraid that I learned over there that I just can't speak my mind, because I'm a Jew. This is when it started after the Hungarians came into my hometown. I can't. Because if I speak I will be taken to the police station, interrogated, beaten up. My uncle, my two uncles who were really the liaison, as a mentioned to you, when we got in the ghetto they were beaten because they didn't believe them that they told them the truth.

What were, what were their names, your two uncles who the leaders?

Weiss and Abraham. His son and his daughter are out in Israel, my two cousins. And uh, you know, it was an entirely different mood for me. That's why after the concentration camp, after the liberation, I thought that the world is mine, the world is ours because we went through hell. Who is going to, who is going to make an issue about my religion? What difference does it make? The first sign what we saw that it stuck to our mind, I was married to my husband, okay, and, and we went back to Romania.

This was after.

After, because I had an aunt who came back from the concentration... This Mrs. Weiss, the old lady came back from the concentration camp.

Her, the husband of the, of the leader.

Of the husband, the husband's wife.

Mm-hm.

Came back the husband's wife and two children, came back from the concentration camp and we found out about this and uh, well that type is a rather long story and uh, we went back. We got married. I wanted my aunt she be it, give me away. And we went back and we went on our honeymoon to Bucharest. And my husband had a car. And going up in the mountains, which is a beautiful, beautiful place, some Russian soldiers stopped us. And my husband from Romania, "Now why do they stop us? They are Russians, non-Jews." Whatever difference does it make? And uh, they stopped us and my husband had a watch and I had a watch and had a ring. And they told him in Russian to "Give me, give me your watch, yours and your wife and whatever you have." So my husband that we are in Romania, "What do you want? I'm a Jew, I just got out from the labor camp. My wife just got out from the concentration camp. What do you want from us?" And then he said, "Well you give me your jewelry or I kill you, you goddamned Jew!" Okay? That was the first sign that oh my God, come on. There it goes again? So, and they kept telling that freedom of speech and so on and so forth, okay? But then left something in our minds. But still not enough. So we shouldn't go live there, okay? But then my husband having uh, two brothers here, we wanted to come to America. And for that we had to go to Germany, back to Germany. We went back to Germany and we signed up for the Romanian quota, which was very, very small. And uh, we lived there for four years.

In a, a camp?

No, no...

Or just in a private facility?

it's private, it's private, it's private.