Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Tola Gilbert - July 25, 1983

Sure, sure. If you--was there ever any resistance the JFO, was there ever any that you can remember?

Well, I tell you. At the, at the end, before the war, people start rebel a little. There were, see, we had a problem with Hasidim. They never, and I remember playing with a sled outside and uh, Christian boys used to make snowballs with stones inside and throw any religious man they saw--especially religious, with payes, you know, with beards--they would throw those snowballs at them and they never raised their voice or never said anything, just walked by very fast with a hole in their heads or anything. The young generation, like my organization, we would not allow them to do anything they want to us. We were fighting back. We certainly did. I, myself, I remember even when, before I belonged to the organization, I remember my brother used to go to a cheder to learn Hebrew and he came once and says that every time he takes a shortcut through a garden, two boys come and hit him. And he was younger than I was. And I said, "You know what, I will go with you. Sit down on that sled and we're going to go," and I went with him. And I remember that these two boys, they were much taller than I--I am very short, as you see uh, they might have been my age and even younger, but they were tall. And I remember that when we came back they started with, with us and I threw them into the snow and washed their faces with snow. And since we were smaller than them, I said to my brother, "And now you run." He ran one way and I ran another way, but I gave them back. So it means that I did fight back. And I know that my friends in the organization, especially the boys, definitely, definitely fought back. We used to go like uh, summertime into the fields and play there and sing and somebody would come uh, and start something uh, some slogans or something anti-Semitic and they would uh, right away get up and fight them, no matter what happened to them. Many times they went home and the parents were wondering uh, why their clothes is torn up.