Erna Blitzer Gorman - April 26, 1984
Hiding in the Barn
Tell me more about your story, after.
After this?
Was there anything that led up to that? At some point did you remember suddenly these soldiers were all around you?
No, there were only two or three, it wasn't, uh...
I mean in, in, living in the town at that point.
No, I don't remember anything more than that. After was my last thing that I remember. But um, after that, to continue with the progression of things um, we um, my father found some sort of a, a farmer that would hide us. And uh, in my tape, I, I don't know how he arranged it or where he got this fellow. Uh, what he gave him, what he, or what he promised him I, I don't know. Um, but uh, the next uh, sequence would be is that we were, it was in the middle of the night and we were um, rushed out. This, this, this farmer, he, he was very old and he had a young wife. Uh, they were pushing us into that barn and um, that barn um, I don't know where it, where it was. I... To, to tell you which town, what the name of the farm is, I, I can't, I don't know anything about that.
Was the whole family there? Or just...
Yes, the four of us.
The four of you.
Yeah.
The five.
Yeah, it never, whatever happened to them, I know they're all dead now. Um, so um, that's what I remember next, and, um...
Hiding in the barn.
Yeah, the moment we came in and in my tape I describe the whole barn and...
Describe it again.
Describe it again. Well, when you come in um--it, it was not very large--when you come in on both sides he was uh, the farmer had these things hanging, they were, they were like uh, maybe uh, some sort of leaves, but he used this as tobacco uh, that he was drying on each side of the walls. And there was a huge bales of hay in front of us and it was like a loft. And uh, on the left hand side was the um, the ladder that we would, that we uh, climbed up to the loft and in back of... There was all... It was all hay, as you looked at it, it was all hay. They made a cavity in back of the hay and um, um, and this is where we stayed for two and a half years.
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