Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Jack Gun - August 12, 1999

Lack of Feelings

And any, and your feelings?

No feelings.

No feelings. Tell me a little about that. Not feeling anything. You'd lost your parents and your sister.

Mm-hm. Lost my parents, my sister. And here I was with a brother, uh...

And you had nothing to do but think about things like that during the day.

Right. Nothing to occupy your mind with.

And there's nothing that comes back?

And it's, it's uh, it's amazing that uh, uh, to get through, through all that and be half normal.

Yeah, as one person said here--sat here and said, "It's not normal that we're so normal."

Every one of us has got uh, uh, some have more, some have less, but every one, I believe is--every Holocaust survivor has uh, a certain damage done to them, morally.

Morally. What do you mean, morally?

That we're not, we cannot be considered normal people. That we have some, some effect. Something affected us, some more, some less. I think I'm fortunate, I think. Maybe, you know what crazy people never think they're nuts, so. But I feel I'm very fortunate that I wasn't affected that much.

When, when you are, are in a car, driving um, along a highway and you go by a stand of trees or a forest.

First thing comes into my mind.

And if you walk into a dark place.

It's very bad.

A movie theater?

Movie theater, n...not so bad. But terrible if I have to be in an enclosed in an enclosed place, something that has no window. Uh, a lot of times I go into a bathroom that doesn't have a window and I, I literally keep the door a little open. I don't care if, that's how fear I am of enclosure. Or if I go into an elevator uh, I always wait to see maybe somebody else to go in with me, up until today, uh...

How about nightmares?

Nightmares I had. And--occasionally now, but not too much now. I think I had more uh, when I first arrived here. Dreaming about running and uh, and the bunker.

We'll come back to this if you don't mind. Let me go back for a second. Who was Primas?

Primas?

Yeah.

Well, I think we should uh, Primas was a man that I stayed a cou...about a winter and a half with.

After the bunker.

After the bunker.

So, what...

Let's continue maybe with the bunker.


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