Miriam Monczyk-Laczkowska Ferber - December 7, 1999
Suspects Background
in Poland. Oh, ok. So you must be, what, fourteen now?
See now I'm fourteen. I'm starting first, eh, first uh, you know, lyceum class in, yes, in eighth grade. Um, okay and right now my, my tsuris begins. Why my tsuris begin? Not from the classmates. Now I begin to suspect things. And I keep asking my mother and she still does not--is it still recording?
Yeah, go ahead.
And she doesn't know, she's not willing, she's not willing to [laughs] tell me the truth.
What made you suspect?
I am suspecting...
What?
because I'm being...
"Cause you're...
called Jew...
I see.
all the time. And now by my classmate, by the little, you know. At the age of fourteen you already have a little boyfriends, you don't go on a, on a date, you know, with them, but you go in groups and you start looking at the boys and the boys at--and I, at that point I already recite the, the poet Adam Miskevitch which pretty soon there will be a movie here, Pan Tadeusz, that he wrote this, this fabulous um, oh, that, that his, eh, his, eh, big thing, you know, that he wrote.
Um...
He lived in nineteenth century. Adam Miskevitch.
Was he...
He wrote Pan Tadeusz about...
Yeah, Pan Tadeusz...
Yeah, it's, it's a um, very powerful piece that, that he, he wrote. And, eh, I recite part of it and I, I go from one, um. I, I'm being sent to different cities, eh, for competition and I keep winning and first place and, and second place. And at first I go in my own city, then I go to a larger city and to a larger city. At one--at one point Roman Polansky is in the, eh, as a, as a judge, you know, they judge us and all kinds of, you know. I'm beginning to become a star. So, that was what I had going for me that I. And I learned how to play guitar and I sing and I. Now I am gonna become--I'm studying to be a, an artist. A, you know, I'll go to a theater school, I think in terms of going to a theater school. So what's happening now, uh. I go to my mother again. But in my, in my guts I, I feel it. I feel it in my guts that something is not right. I know that, that uh, you know, I'm questioning her. And I question even more the church. I don't want to go to, to, eh, confession, I don't want to go to the Masses. I don't want to hear the stupid priests telling us all the time about sins and yet, they um, they make passes at, at beautiful girls. And they um, during the confession they ask questions that they shouldn't ask, because they get pleasure from asking those questions. You know, like they would say--I would say, "Well I kissed a boy." And he would say, "And what else?" There was nothing else. Our generation didn't do anything else.
[laughs]
But he, by asking all these questions, he was kind of, you know, helping himself in whatever...
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