Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Rose Green - May 21, 2008

Work of Siblings

You went to school in Munkacs?

Munkacs. The Hebrew gymnasium. My father was a big Zionist, I told you. He believes in Israel and he believes in Zionism.

But the Munkac...Munkacse rabbi was anti-Zionist.

He was. He said once that uh, they should die--all the "isms," the Zionism and communism and whatever. I don't remember what he said, but very nasty, very nasty. He was a very educated man, the Munkacse rabbi, but he was a very nasty. He was terribly anti-Zionist.

His family is in Israel now.

Pardon?

His family is in Israel now.

And are they Zionists?

Well, I would guess.

But they are probably the religious ones.

Yeah.

Or they do so much trouble...

Yeah.

...too much trouble.

This is very impressive; it's a very long entry for him.

Yeah, he was one of the, one of the big guys there.

And he died in 2006.

Two--yeah, 2006, 2005 or '06, I don't even remember anymore. And this is his wife. These girls, you know what these girls did? After the--after they were liberated--after girls were liberated they went into the orphanages. First of all they, they uh, made false papers--they didn't make 'em, there were guys who made those false papers--but they were carrying them around and everything. My brother was traveling constantly to, to Romania and he went there and picking up children, you know, and, and bringing 'em--I don't even know. You know, I can't tell you. It would take me all day to tell you what I heard about it. You know, I, I wasn't there, just heard about it. But these girls--my sisters and that--his uh, his wife after they went into the orphanages--they had orphanages, usually religious and these children were laying in dirt, hungry. All kinds of--they were broken out.

So they smuggled the children to, to Palestine.

And these girls went there and cleaned them up and my sister--the other one who lives here in, in America--she could sew. So the boys went to the stores and stole uh, fabrics and the girls sewed little shirts and whatever they needed, little pajamas, and they sat and sewed and cleaned up these little children and fed them. They stole food and--unbelievable what, what they were telling me about that.

And these were Hungarian orphanages.

Hungarian. But they were children from, from Poland--they were children from Slovakia, you know.


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