Anna Greenberger - August 24, 1982
Starting New Life in Sobrance
And uh, we didn't have where to live, so that ??? uh, Irene's cousin uh, he had a house and uh, he was home already, so he said, "Ansi, I'll give you one room, everything." They bombed Sobrance and Uzhgorod--the Russians--and there was big fight between Germans and Russian. Uh, the Germans were backing and the Russians were, you know, going ahead and they were bombings so it wasn't windows and ???, but we didn't care. We were young uh, and uh, we were so happy to be home, who cared? So uh, he gave us one room and it was just for me and Alex. And my mother didn't have where to stay and my three sisters--that was before they left. So I said uh, uh, "Leopold," I said, "give me another room, it's empty anyhow." And he said, "Ansi, it's broken." I said, "I don't care." So he gave me another room. And then I said, "If you gave me the room already, give me the kitchen so I will have at least the whole family together." So all my three sisters and my mother and uh, Alex and I, we were together--I mean they were with us. The family who occupied our house, they didn't want to go out. They said that they--we, that uh, they took the home and they don't want to go out. So we took our attorney, Dr. ???--see there all the attorney's there have PhDs, Dr. ???--and he was with Alex in uh, labor camp. So he took the case and would you believe it, the case had to go to the high court in Košice that they should put him out. They put him out--the family--but he went up, he took a knife out of my mother when my mother went in the house and uh, so finally, they went out from the house and we moved in. We re...it was, you know, broken up and everything so the government gave like war--for the war, like the GIs come home, they uh, remodeled the home, everything. So uh, my mother was with me for seventeen years 'til uh, we come, came here.
You stayed there seventeen years?
No uh, that's another uh, we stayed there 'til 19...we came home in 1945, I got married and the business was blooming, really. You know, everything came to life and the business was very good and uh, we made salami and all kinds of stuff and uh, the Czech--Slovaks have more food, Czechs, they didn't. So they came--it was going on black market like anything. But we sold uh, they did the black market, we sold it in the store. And uh, we had so much money, but uh, we, didn't, didn't--no, we didn't save. We were going here and there. I was young, Alex was young and we had always company because not too many mothers came home and everybody--I had all this company, young uh, people, young men, and girls and uh, it was like open house always.
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