Bernard Hirsch - June 29, 1982
Life After Liberation
Let me ask you some questions back on the hiding...
Yeah. You let me talk. You didn't ask me. You should have asked me right away on the spot.
No, that's fine. You did just what we wanted. You gave me the stories that you remember.
No, the 19th of January 'til everything got quiet I was more dangerous like in the woods. Can you imagine?
Because the Germans were still there?
No. We were free. When I came down from the woods, I had a house in my town. The town was burned. My house was a, a brick house. My father's house was a brick house. He built it in '32. The rest they were from wood. So the wooden houses they burned down there...
Who burned them?
The Germans, because they--in '44 there was this uh, against the partisan, like in the army in'44 there when they burned all the, the houses in our town. So there was six families living in our house. Now I became free. Where I should go? Where I should go? I was waiting what's somebody is going to show up from my family.
Mm-hm.
Nobody, nobody--no nephew--nobody, nobody came back. And no...who you were asking from town why they came back, they, they don't know. They never saw. They disappeared like right from the beginning. So there was in my house one man from another town he was living. He had one room. What was the man? The man, the man opened in a grocery store in our, in our house from one room, he opened a grocery store. When I came down from the woods, I said, "Listen. I cannot throw out this man because his house is burned. I have to go to who is--who didn't live in this town before. You were not living here, you took my house, now is my house back, you have to move." Anyway, he moved out. Or I was threatened that I didn't even--I left in two weeks. I left my house because I was threatened. And happened a lot of people when they came down--when they were went through all this five years hiding, and they came down and they were claiming their property, they died. So I didn't want that this should happen to me. So I picked up myself and I walked out from the town...
Who threatened you?
...and I let go. The guy what he was living this--from another town in my house.
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