Esther Feldman Icikson - October 23 & 29, November 5 & 12, 2001
Brother-in-Law
Do you dream about it?
No. No. But I don't have to dream. I remember it. Um, it was, it was just so terrible And we were all so shook up. Here this--they were so happy and they were telling everyone how lucky they were to survive and um. The daughter--I don't know whether he came, I'm not sure whether he came before the daughter left or after the daughter left, but all I know is that he chopped off their heads, boom. They were sitting and talking. And so we decided at that point, my parents decided they, we can't stay there very long. Meanwhile my sister got involved with a man there that--he was an Auschwitz survivor, a young man. And we were talking about going away, so she got married--which was the biggest mistake in her life that's besides the point.
So the marriage didn't last.
No. She got divorced.
Why?
She was too young. She was only nineteen. Very innocent, very naïve. He had gone through hell. Um, he survived in Auschwitz. Uh, he ran away from Auschwitz, very few people ran away from Auschwitz.
He escaped Auschwitz?
Escaped yeah, which--he's still alive. He's uh, in Denver in a nursing home. Um, he was not a understanding man. He couldn't understand. He didn't have the background to understand. I think he was too hurt to understand another human being. And her life was very difficult. She has two sons still from him, beautiful kids. So she got divorced. Um, but um, after she got married and my, my parents decided we have to leave, we hooked up with a kibbutz. There was um, a shaliach uh, uh, from Israel. Shaliach is somebody that came to organize Jews. And at that point we knew about Palestine. That's, that's when we started to think about Israel.
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