Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Miriam Monczyk-Laczkowska Ferber - December 7, 1999

You know what would have happened had you stayed with your mother.

Of course I know.

You know.

I, I know.

There would be no question about it.

Of course I know. But I also know what the Polish family did for me. How they jeopardized their life. And I don't know whether I, you heard me, eh, talk about it at one of the mee...the hidden children meeting, that now, because I am a mother and a grandmother, I don't know that, whether I would have the guts to, to--I probably would, would do it because, you know, if somebody would give me a child, I would not uh, go, go and denounce him.

I remember when you talked about that.

You know, you remember what I said. But it's a, it's a fantastic uh, deed. It's something that, uh. But you know, when they came to this country, I had them come for my son's bar mitzvah, my mother and my brother and my--they were honored by Sheirit Haplai-ta, my brother said he would do it all over again. If the situation would, eh, repeat itself, which God forbid should never repeat itself. He says, you know, that, they didn't talk. It was a humanitarian, you know, act and, and, and he didn't think it was a big deal.

He didn't.

No.

Did you ever ask them why they did it?

They didn't know what they were doing. I'm telling you.

Hm.

When, when somebody comes up to you and says, "Why don't you hold my child for a few months?" you know, or--she didn't know whether it was going to be six weeks or, or two months or three months, you know. It's been--it was nineteen years.

Were you now thinking about what all this might mean, to be Jewish and to have had Jewish parents?

Well, you have to understand that I am very Jewish. Maybe I am not observant, but because I went through so much with the Catholic religion, with, with the baptizing and the and the, you know, the communion and everything else. When I started to learn Jewish religion and, and studied a little bit of, of Talmud, I appreciated the religion very much.