Ruth Federman - February 13, 2008
Childhood II
What did your mother do, did she work?
Look, we had--we were really not were on financial problems, yes? Because my father was architect, and was a little Bohemian, you know. Wasn't--my mother used to manage his, uh, his, uh, office. But when I grew older and went to school, she didn't go to the office anymore. Maybe there were also other reasons, which I don't want to talk about. And then everything went down. And when my father died, there were only debts, and she started to do all kinds--she was--before she married, you can call her a career woman. It was at that time, yes, it was during the first war. Uh, but she was more educated in German than in Czech so she could--and she was 42, it was then old, so she couldn't really do many things. But she was selling materials and all kind of things like this--the children clothes.
Did you speak German at home?
She spoke German. I, Czech.
And the school was a Czech school?
Czech. Completely Czech. And when I came here I even didn't know very well, uh, German. But I started--I met three children who were also at the summer camp and we decided that we will go--make the same movement here. And we started together children who spoke German and Czech--Austrian, German, and Czech children. At the end we were more than hundred. So two years I was really with, uh, children from there, yes? I had the, uh, girlfriends, Sabras, you know what the Sabra is, yes? They were live in the, in the same building and so I started--I, I went half a year to school in Jaffa, which were two classes of girls who came like me with the what we called ???, Kindertransport. But most of these girls couldn't stay with the, with the relatives because the relatives also came only to Palestine, and couldn't keep the children. So they went all to kibbutzim, or to farms. To farms--to mostly German farmers, where they were like slaves. I call it slaves. So I really was lucky.
You didn't go to either of these--to kibbutzim or a farm?
No.
Where did you go?
I stayed here in Tel Aviv.
With?
With the, with the relatives.
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