Henry Dorfman - August 11 & 25, 1989
Reflections of Holocaust
Why, why wouldn't you do it before now?
I wasn't. Because, I'll tell you the truth. Time is number one. And number two, I figured that maybe the concentration camp people--what they come from the concentration camps, I think there was enough books written, enough datas going. I says, what is it gonna do me to tell. I read some books and I read in the same thing that I'm telling you, the same story, you understand. You were here and you were there. I did not think that it's gonna be--I knew it's going to be valuable who's alive to tell the story, okay. But I didn't know how much curricula and how much teaching is going to be in the schools, you understand, to bring this thing up. Yes I was striving, one thing I want to tell you, you can read books and you can, but you have, you have to have scenes. I was striving to build, as long as I lived and I said, to tell, to tell the world I wanted to put up-- to be a part and everything else of the Holocaust Memorial Center because this is it. This is going to be there. Yes, again, if it's in Bloomfield, I don't know in fifty years from now if Bloomfield is going to be where it is, who knows? Let's be honest. Uh, you take the monument in Washington, I'll tell you, I--any, anything that was--I am not the kind of a person say because I have helped to do what happened here in, in, in, in Bloom...in Bloomfield with our Holocaust that I don't want to support the Holocaust in, in Washington. But the Washington Holocaust Memorial Center is part, I mean, one thing. That it's going to be not just Jews alone, you understand. Like Reagan went, went--I mean to see the Nazis. The Nazis, what do you call uh, uh, uh, I mean cemetery...
Bitburg.
Bitburg. I mean, this bothered the hell out of me. And I told them in Washington, I says, "If you would build a monument, the Jews should do it. Because we suffered, we paid, nobody else did!" Because the other prisoners to me over, over there were political, you understand, or they were cle...I mean, whoever they were, they did not take Polish or Hungarian or Ukrainian kids, babies and burn them and gas them. They did not do that. They did not take women and do that. They done it to us. So that's why I don't want no part of it, you do whatever you want. I done my share over here and I'm going to support it. Eh, to say, let me tell you something uh, I know ??? to say that our rabbi...
You want me to turn this off?
[interruption in interview]
Last thing um, is there anything that you want to add to this? Something you forgot or some comment you want to make about why you're doing this?
Listen, I am doing that as long--like I say, I am a survivor. I have seen monstrosities in my lifetime. But what happened to my brother Jews, to my kind. I'm doing it as long as I'm alive. That the world should know because I pray to God and I was on the fields or on the underground or any place I was, is to live one day after Hitler and the Nazis and the Gestapos and all those are going to be prosecuted for the things they done and thanks God I accomplished it, to see the prosecutions and things, which it was not even close what they did and what they paid. I just want the people to know, all over America, and all over the world, as long, as long as I'm alive, to tell the story that this should never be forgotten.
Okay. Thank you.
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