Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Ruth Federman - February 13, 2008

Arriving in Israel

If my uncle was the head of, of, uh, the pharmacy in the Hadassah Hospital, he said, "Of course." When my aunt saw me she got a shock. She said later, years later, she said, "You know, I, I, I, I, I started to regret that I took a sick child here." But after two months I was like a flower. I gained weight, I, I, I became a different person because the climate was good for me.

Camels.

Camels. But not a cigarette. You remember the cigarettes?

So, you were met at the port by your aunt.

Not by port, by Beit Strauss. It's a big building, it still exists. We, we children from the Kindertransport--the, the, the relatives didn't have money. So we get, got--say I have to have, got to go to a dentist. So I got a little paper and there in Beit Strauss was a dentist who took care of my teeth. But our shoes were--had holes. We got little--also little paper, little paper, we went to a ???, was called. ??? and there were girls sitting, uh, repairing shoes. It was really, it was--there are stories which nobody knows, which should be told, really. How we grew up here. And all the people, you know, most of the people didn't have anything.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn