Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Henry Dorfman - August 11 & 25, 1989

When you first came to Detroit, did um, did you make any contact with the organized Jewish community here?

Very...

Resettlement Service Federation, anything like that? They didn't contact you?

Not much, not much.

So you were all on your own.

I really did not do nothing. I didn't--I lived here five years, I didn't even know that they exist. I'm not kidding. Because I came here and I went to work. And I was start doing well. What did, what did I needed from them. They didn't even contact me. I mean it. I--they did not have me for a few years on the list! And I couldn't understand it. I says, "How come you didn't put me on the list?" "You, you didn't register." And I think I did. I don't know if I went there or not. Because I, I really, when I heard--because why--I was fed up from Topeka, Kansas. With the, with the federations and all that baloney so. So when I came uh, and I, and I start making a few hundred dollars a week, I mean, I says, "What do I need them for? What do I want to go there for, cry on their shoulders? I don't need to cry on their shoulders. I don't need that! I don't need anything from them."

Did you, did you um, um, meet other survivors here that you got to know?

Yes. Oh yeah.

Did you join She'erit Ha-Peletah?

I joined She'erit Ha-Peletah and we built--we opened up the, the uh, the Einstein Lodge. Oh we went, I mean, the ???. Oh, we were all together over the years.

And you talked about your life during the war.

Oh always. Always, always. Like I told you, even today. Wherever, wherever we get together there's, there's always talk about the Holocaust. There's nothing else.