Benjamin Fisk - November 8, 1982
Sharing Story
Did you talk about your war experiences with any people here?
Hmm?
Did you talk to any people here about your war experiences?
Oh, yeah. We talk on the job--sure we talk about it. People are curious in America, you know. I get along, I got no problems.
Did you mind talking about it?
Well, even if you don't want to we talk about it because people ask, you know, the numbers--see the concentra...numbers from the concentration camp, you know, then everybody's asking questions, you know. They ask me, you know, "What you got here?" you know, so you talk about it--even if you don't want to, you have to because they want to know what--how it was, you know.
How did you respond?
Well, I don't know. People--you tell that you're okay, you know, they say--you tell them and they turn around and walk away. You know, even other Jewish people don't care, you know, it's something that you have to live, you know, if you don't get beat, you don't know, you don't know that someone else got beat. If you got beat up, you know how it feels. Then you know what it--what the other guy went through, see? Otherwise you don't know. The people that lived in Detroit, we used to get together. The American Jews said, "Okay, we had it so bad over here we had to eat chicken we couldn't buy no beef," you know. Here people were dying by the millions, you know. Here she's complaining she couldn't buy-- couldn't get any meat but, you know, but what the heck.
Did you tell your children?
Oh, yes, yes we talk about it. The children know what we went though.
You have one son who was born overseas and, and, uh...
Yeah, the oldest was born in Germany.
And then the other two children were born here.
The other children born in Detroit, yeah. One was born in 12th Street in Philadelphia between 5 and 14th.
Wife: My son is twenty-one and my daughter is twenty-five.
Martin. He is 6'8 and he weighs 185 pounds--about 185 pounds. Good looking boy too, and you see the picture of my daughter Julia, twenty-four now.
Wife: Twenty-five.
Twenty-five already? Time flies. She was just twenty-four, yeah.
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