Fred Ferber - September 11 & 25, 2001
Wife's Background
Yes, your wife.
Yes, yes, that's a ve...very, good point.
Who's divided about how she feels about Poles, I think.
You see what happens, in the Yad Vashem in Israel, they, they have a, a place over there where there's tremendous amount of tablets and information about uh, gentiles uh,, uh...
Righteous Gentiles.
Righteous Gentiles eh, from Poland and from other parts of the, of, of, of Europe. Righteous Gentiles that did help Jewish people to hide them or to feed them. So let's say there were definitely were some Righteous Gentiles. My wife, she was born in 1942, her family was in Sosnowiec ghetto, and these Polish people--Laczkowska was the name-- they took her out of, out of the ghetto, and she was just few month old. They took her as a, as a, as a--and they claimed that eh, the, the new child in their home is an illegitimate eh, child of, of, of her daughter. She had another daughter and she claimed that the daughter eh, had an illegitimate child and, and they kept my wife eh, eh, through, 'til she was, eh. She did not know she was Jewish, my wife, until she was sixteen. And Mr. Laczkowska died in Mauthausen concentration camp. They had a very hard time after the war, after the war eh, very, extremely poor. However my, my wife was treated as one of the children and eh, grew up among, among the Christians and we of course forever grateful. And she's one example of many, eh. So, so there were some Righteous Gentiles, no question about it. The, the problem was that there were thirty some million people, Gentiles uh, in Poland and, and there were so very, very few that were righteous. We honor the righteous so, so much, we value them, what they have done. However the percentages are so microscopic. And, and, and that, there, that's, that's where the problem lies, eh.
Why was he sent to Mauthausen?
He was sent to Mauthausen for two reasons. There might have been something to do with the daughter, because they were all taken to eh, to eh, to jail and they were questioned over and over and over again for a week or longer regarding of where eh, eh, my eh, my eh, Miriam, my wife, my current wife, their new child comes from. There was also a possible question that he eh, had eh, a radio at home. And someone uh, expressed it. Someone actually told the authorities that there's a new child in that home that may be a Jewish child, eh. Once again eh, no one could resist. They, they would just, they try to smell out something. Even, even eh, nobody would ever know it eh, the Germans would never realize it. But someone in that home couldn't eh, eh, couldn't stand that possibly a Jewish child eh, eh, might survive.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn