Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Hannah Fisk - January 24, 1983

Um, what were your plans for your own future before the war? Did you have any idea what you wanted to be?

Eh, to be honest with you, I never thought about it. I never thought about it because first of all I wanted to finish school. And then I wanted to go to gymnasium. Gymnasium is like college here, you know. And uh, like I say, I was a young girl and I didn't even have the thought. You know, just thought it's this way we raised, this way we brought up, and this way we were.

Mm-hm. Was there any theater--any Yiddish theater?

Yeah, oh yeah. I used to sing in it 'til--I happen to sing in it. There was a lady called ???, and she came from Warsaw and she fell in love with me--she wanted to take me. But my father was too Orthodox and he says to me, "What? I'm praying for the people and I'm going to have a movie star uh, daughter?" And he hit me. That, that one time, I remember when he hit me. But I happen to have--I still sing nice now, but not like--because when I was working in that factory--the cotton--my voice became--my vocal chord from the, from the dirt--from the dust. Yeah. But I used to sing beautiful and she fall in love. I remember like today, I was only about maybe nine or ten years old. And then when the Polish Piłsudski died, that was in 19...oh my God, I don't remember. I was singing for five hundred people. We were singing a song in Polish that he's gone, you know?

Yeah.

And my, my voice--my soprano was so beautiful that I had--all I had is a little violin, and I sing the same thing--five hundred people. I was singing in the ??? theater. That one of the beau...nicest theaters in Częstochowa. Yeah. But my father wouldn't let me. He says, "I'm praying for the people and you're going to be a movie star? No way." And she's alive, she's alive. She's in Israel. I hear about it. I never saw her, but she's alive. She's old now, naturally, you know.