Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Erna Blitzer Gorman - April 26, 1984

And did you tell anyone anything about your past?

No, but no, I never... I, as I told you before, I always felt that my, my story was really not, my... So many people went through such a horrible thing. These were just feelings and um, I never liked to display my feelings anyhow. Uh, so uh, I never told anybody. Everybody was ??? I married uh, an American, so I embraced his friends rather. But I, I did keep uh, some... They used to sit around and talk about their experiences. I would just freeze and um, and block it out and not hear and not listen and not... I just, I would never indicate. Everybody knew that I, I was uh, during the war somewheres, but where they don't know.

Does your husband know?

I just told him now with my kids.

Just now.

Just with the tape. He knew that I was um, in Poland and uh, and that I was hidden, that's how I survived. But he didn't know ninety percent of the thing. He cares enough for me that he didn't... It didn't matter. But now I, I just had to because my, my, my, my children, they're... Very often they would... Because, you know, it's become the fashion now to talk about this. Years ago people didn't... They just wanted to subdue the pain and that's it. Now uh, if you don't talk, people say, why don't you, why don't you, it's terrible, how could you, why didn't you... You know, all these things the children reproach you, how could you just bear this, why didn't you go out and fight, why didn't you... Nobody knows how painful this was.