Jack Gun - August 12, 1999
Brother's Wedding
Was she...
...and so on and so forth.
...your sister-in-law yet?
Uh, she got--they got married in uh, '46 in, in the DP camp, had a rabbi. They got married in uh, '46 in Linz.
Do you remember the wedding?
Yes, I do remember.
Was there a chuppa?
Yes, there was a chuppa and there were a few friends, maybe twenty--twenty-five people.
How did it feel to be at your brother's wedding after
Uh, I don't know. I probably had mixed emotions, I'm sure. Even though, I told you, I liked Manya very much. She was a nice person and I. But as I told you, I probably never uh, I uh, I always felt that if he gets married there'll be something away from me. So I probably had mixed feelings.
Do you think you thought about your parents and your sister, do you remember?
I've always thought about them. And, uh...
When we last talked you said you started to wake up and coming out of a sleep when you were describing the DP camp.
Oh. Yeah, sure. I mean, we started to live a little bit more, I guess, normal. I mean, as far as for me anyway. You know, going to school. And then I had uh, uh, also started to learn from a rabbi, I remember, was a very nice man. He used to teach me on the side how to uh, read Hebrew, how to pray the prayers and all that, which I didn't know. And as we started sort of a abnormal--a li...you know, try to become as normal as could be expected in uh, those surroundings.
While you were doing all this, since the Beriha had taken you out of Poland, were you planning to go to Palestine?
My sister-in-law was very, very much--she was a Zionist all her life and was very much--and wanted very much to go to Israel, to Palestine--there was no Israel. And uh, my brother uh, wasn't too much in favor of this, because he, he heard that that the hard--was very--life was very hard in Palestine. And also knew about, you know, you couldn't even go legally, they had to smuggle you in again. We were smuggled enough already. And, you know, after what we went through, he was more materialist than idealistic. He was, you know, he felt that after what we went through he would like to have a little easier life. Even though it wasn't that easy to begin with in the United States either. But, you know, they were talking the United States money grows on trees.
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