Anna Greenberger - August 24, 1982
Fate of Sisters
And your sisters are still in...
My sister in Toronto, Edith, she has one daughter, happily married, beautiful granddaughter. She's a year older. I have two sisters in Czechoslovakia. Judith is one year younger like I am, Irene is two years younger like I am. Irene got--became a widow--she was forty-two years old. Her--my brother-in-law died, he had stomach cancer. He was forty-eight years old. He was partisan, he was in the army, left alone from the whole family. And she has a son. And she's very sick, she has Crohn's sickness, if you know what Crohn's sickness is. It's uncurable disease.
Like a nerve disease?
No uh, it's uh, she was born with a intestine--see, colitis you can operate, but Crohn's...Crohn's sickness you can't.
Oh.
That the thick intestines are getting narrow.
I think I've heard of that.
And they can't cut it out. And she's sick all the time. Constantly--never, always Dr. ??? asks about her because I, I told him...
Mm-hm.
...we used to send medication from here in my sister, now I don't send nothing. My sister from Toronto every month she sends for both sisters--I do a little too. But she--every month she sends money for them and she goes almost every year to visit them. So she broke her leg a couple months ago. I imagine she was going uh, her daughter's house from upstairs with a baby on her arm and she hooked her heel in the steps and she fell down and the baby fell out from her arm. Thank God nothing happened to the baby, but she broke very badly her leg from uh, here. From here up--the bone. It was two months in a cast up to here. And when they took off the cast, she had the visa already to Czechoslovakia. You can't get the visa now. My brother-in-law didn't get it from Toronto. She paid--cost her almost four hundred dollars and they wanted from my brother-in-law eight hundred dollars from the vi...for the visa in Toronto. So he didn't want to give. So she went uh, with a cane with Swiss Air. They made her so comfortable. They give her the first row, with a chair. When she arrived to Prague--she called last week--they took off the suitcases from the plane--the stewards. They give for my brother-in-law the bags, the suitcases, they exchanged her dollar--you have to exchange otherwise they don't let you through.
Yeah.
They exchanged. She shouldn't have to stay in line because she went with the cane. And she goes almost--thank God she can afford it, she goes almost every year.
She's there now?
Yeah, she is there now, yeah. And I would like to go next year. I would like to see them.
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