Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Rose Green - May 21, 2008

Czechoslovakian Politics II

Well, it's a cosmopolitan family.

Very cosmopolitan, yeah. No, we weren't actually cosmopolitan. We just uh, we just uh, spoke more languages, you know. And we, we were always readers, all of us. My parents, my grandparents, always readers. There were always--whatever it was in the house, but books, there was always books in the house. My uncles, my aunt--we all, all read a lot. My father would sit with us and we had to read the papers everyday and he would sit and talk. And later I found out that my father wanted to know if we read the newspapers, you know, why he was asking so many questions.

So you all were pretty well informed?

Yeah, very well informed I would say.

So do you remember when the, the, the Nazi party took control of Germany, 1933?

Well I tell you, you know, I was a young girl. And we were doing--we knew--we heard things but we didn't believe it. Nobody believed it, you know. We didn't believe any of that junk. We thought it just will blow over, you know. It didn't.

Do you remember ever talking at home about what was going on in Germany in the 30s?

No. We heard, heard stuff going on. Later when they occupied uh, Austria, then we worried, you know, because people came over from Austria. They run through the, through the borders.

To the refugee's camp.

Refugees came and they were telling stories. So some of them were, were not believable, some of them exaggerated. Somebody tell the truth and we, we couldn't believe it. Nobody could believe it, you know. Who could believe it?


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