Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Bernard Hirsch - June 29, 1982

Reactions to the War

Do you know what your parents reactions were when the uh, war started? You wouldn't--were you at home? You weren't at home.

The war started--the whole thing started in '38. This was going on.

Mm-hm.

Uh, one thing I have to tell you. The religious people, they were saying they going against Meshiach, you know...

Mm-hm.

...when--you understand what it mean, Meshiach?

Mm-hm.

My father--against the war, the war what my parents--they said they couldn't say nothing because they didn't go in the war. Or this concentration what they start to take the Jews, they thought--the--like my parents that they going for a few weeks and they going to come back. This was their idea.

I hear that so much.

This was their idea that this is--that they are not going to take 'em a gas chamber or they going to starve for uh, hunger or what. They thought that they going to take 'em for a while because before, who was in Czecho...in Slovakia and he was a, a Hungarian uh, citizen. They just picked him up at night and they took him on the border there of Hungarian and they left him. In a few weeks, he came back. So this is what they thought that this is what's going to happen. That they take the people and they going to--or later on they knew, they knew but it was too late already.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn