Lily Fenster - November 8 & 10, 1994
Speaking about Experiences
Um, let me ask a, A different kind of question. Did you ever tell anybody about all this?
Bits and pieces. Not, no--I didn't. I wasn't involved with nobody. I supposed. A lady supposed to come because she cancelled out on me. You KNOW what made me call you? Washington and Steffa.
Your children. You didn't tell your children?
Little. To tell you the truth, my daughter, in the beginning, she really didn't want to know. Don't forget, she was the first born. There's problems a little bit with the first born when they went through that. Even when I was pregnant with her, maybe she felt the bombing, not the bombing, the shouting, the running. She was in my stomach. Maybe she was scared the way I was scared and the way I brought her up in Germany. Was that the place to bring up a child? You know, eight families. You know what she did once? It was very ??? Germans called. Snow. A lot of snow in the winter and I went to the bathroom and the bathroom, God forbid, was not in the same room, but you had to go to the hall, which it was a luxury, better than a hot house, I mean in Poland there, you know. I go back to the room. Sonja's not in the room. I said, "My dear God, where is my daughter?" A neighbor called from downstairs, said "Pani Luba"--that's what they used to call me--"your little girl is playing in the snow with no shoes." She didn't feel that it was cold. I run there said, "??? Sonja why did you do it?" And she said she wanted to play with the little, with the little basket, not a basket, with a little um, bucket and a little thing in the snow. So I said, "??? you have a cold foot." She said "No, no." She didn't know that she had cold feet, so it was a circumstance which you couldn't you know, in that camp. It was no place for a child. You had to watch it constantly, but we loved that girl whole camp adored her. The men and women. She was like a gypsy. So maybe her growing up was a little harder than my boys here in a stable community. You know what I mean? She used to go to a kindergarten in Germany...
[interruption in interview]
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