Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Bernard Hirsch - June 29, 1982

How long did you stay in the town that you were in--that you were born in?

After...

After the war.

Three months, four months maybe. Maybe less. It's hard--I don't know, I cannot te...say. I was staying not too far from my town. There were two boys living in a house, ???, and when I didn't feel like to go home at night, I was staying with them--with the, with the boys. They didn't hide in the same place, or they were--they came from the--they were in the concentration too. They live in Toron...in Montreal, both of them. Their name is Gold, so I was staying with them.

After you, um, you stayed, you stayed in the area three months?

About three months.

What did you do then?

Nothing.

Where did you go, after, after three months?

After three months...

Mm-hm.

Yeah, I was staying with these guys, that's right, with this guys in Hanuŝovce. And after when I met this teacher--it was a year later, or a year and a half--he said I should come to Koŝice. So I came to Ko...to Koŝice from there my wife--there where I met my wife. She was a cousin to a--to two, to--what they introduced uh, they were living uh, living with me in the woods, one.

Oh.

Yeah.

Did you ever go in a displaced person's camp?

Dis...

Displaced person's camp?

What means?

Um, a lot of people who lost their homes and their families went into a camp that was set up...

Yeah.

...by the Allies.

Yeah, that was by the Jewish, by the, by the Jewish, yeah. They were called ???. I was there in the wintertime for four weeks.

But, oh, the one from the Jewish JOINT?

From Je...JOINT, yeah, the JOINT. They paid for everything, to stay there to eat, everything was paid.

For the year and a half between the time of the liberation and the time you opened your business in Kor...Kosh...

Koŝice.

...Kosh...Koŝice, what did you do in that time period?

Nothing. Nothing. The boys they were surprised. They were saying, "How can you live like this? From where you have money?" I say, "I don't need money, I don't care for nothing. I waiting for somebody should come back."

And you waited and nobody came back.

And nobody came back. The, some guys they made millions. I didn't do nothing. There were cigarettes--there were such a business with cigarettes. Never touched.