Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Vera Gissing - April 22, 2006

Conclusion

And at that moment I saw my cousins in those pictures, I saw myself in those pictures and I--for the first time it hit me that would have been all that remained of, you know, if it hadn't been--I didn't know about Nicholas Winton--but for my parents' courage. And I remember sort of just leaving my husband who was looking at it from a different perspective, because of co...perspective because he wasn't so connected obviously from that angle. And I ran up the rest of the staircase with just uh, "Entry forbidden," but--and there at the top stood Ula, this friend from my class from the Czech school. And the tears were running down his eyes. It--I could tell he felt just like me, and we just held each other and cried together like two children who were so lost themselves. But it was there in that little Jewish Museum that I found my identity. I realized I was proud to be Jewish, but I was Jewish by race, Czech by birth, and English by choice, a mixture of all three.

That may be a good place to stop.

Thank you.


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