Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Anne Eisenberg - May 11, 1982

Family

When you say your family was a large family, did you have your aunts and uncles in for Shabbos?

Well, most of the time we always had company from the village families, cousins, relations. That always some kind of relation coming over. Sometimes we used to have a relation and I used to say to my mother, "What kind of relation is she?" My mother didn't even know what kind of a relation she was. But they came in from, from villages and they was just there until it, it was, it just seemed they'll never leave. It was always, like I say, always people coming and going in our house.

Do you know what the size of your extended family was?

Awful large. From my mother's side, from my father's side people he had a sister and five children like I say, which none of them came back. They lived in the same house. But uh, they lived in a village. They used to come quite often to our house. And my mother's side was very large because my mother had uh, nine sisters and brothers. Five of them were in the United States already. My one aunt and uncle came with the last ship in 1937. But I could still see them as a youngster. And they used to come all the time because our grandparents all of them in our house. Because my mother's side of the family was extremely large.

How many on your mother's side survived that were in the country at the time?

Two cousins that I know of.

Did you attend services on Sabbath?

Home?

No, in the synagogue.

Here in this country?

No, in, back...

I was a child.

Oh, that's right. Um, what were your... You, or more so your family because you were so young, their political affiliations or ideas at the, before the war?

They had none.

Can you describe your...

They felt being hated all the time you had no time for anything else. Because I remember even when it was Romania there was a certain pogrom taking place and we had one room that the window was very high.

??? I think.

And we were hiding in that room because uh, there's a lot of stuff going on that they're going to be killing a lot of Jews. And, like I say, it was always the fear of being killed, of being harmed even while we lived in Romania that there was no room for any other political thing.

This is before the Russian, the--before the Hungarians?

Yes.

Was that an answer to my question of your education?

No.


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