Bernard Hirsch - June 29, 1982
Life Hiding in the Woods
Oh he's the one who threatened you?
Yeah. And I didn't want to take chances. Now you can ask me questions. I didn't tell you not even ten percent what we went through. Or who, who can uh, sometimes was, was okay, sometimes was--sometimes we were dancing. But sometimes we were crying. They are a boy, he's a lawyer here what he was hiding with us in the woods too. He's already--he became--he came here and he became a lawyer.
[interruption in interview]
His name is ???. I know his--I was on a wedding last week and I met his mother what she was hiding with me. Her husband passed away already, otherwise uh, so she...
She was in the wo...in the woods also?
With me together she was. We were twenty-eight people.
Oh, all right. I thought you meant twenty-eight boys. Then there were women
No.
...there also?
There were husband and wife uh, a girlfriend with a, with a boy what they married after when they came down from the woods. They married. They live in New York, they have two children. And the rest they were single. Everybody--the rest were single.
Most of them made it through the war?
Most, the, except the two...
Except for two.
...the two guys. Uh, from this that we were together, twenty-eight, they--everyone made it except the two guys, the 10th of Dec...November they were shot.
What had you heard that would make you think about hiding? Just the--just what the--you had said to me that the Gentile in the service had said he had heard things that you should go back to your own town--going back to the beginning.
Yeah.
When you were in the army...
Yeah.
...you said that there was an officer or somebody...
Officers.
...who gave you...
The paper...
...a uniform and the papers. And that he said something was going to happen to those who were Jews in the army.
He said that they're going to take us to Auschwitz.
Oh. Is that what made...
Is this what made me decide to...
...made you decide to go into hiding?
...made me decide to run, yeah. Because I knew it that my parents they are goners. We heard that they are.
How did you hear?
[interruption in interview]
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