Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lanka Ilkow - October 12, 1991

Did he beat your mother?

Yeah.

Attacked her that way.

Yeah. So he was crazy something, you know. And uh, so uh, my mother said always watch yourself when he's around you. Don't be alone near him. She--we had a hard time during the whole war. And you see and I used to travel to the city and come home in the night. It never happened to me, nothing. You're sleepy?

No.

Yeah. Never happened, I didn't met, met nobody. One day I carrying stuff, but not too much and I heard voices. And I come to our place. If I jump this side, I will fall in the water. Deep--there was deep water. So I jumped under a bush on the hill. And uh, they come and they start, stand there and they say, oh, something was moving here. I was dead there. I wasn't moving, I was...And I was on the other side. It was very dark. And he says, so I knew ???. This uh, a, a animal he mentioned. "Don't worry, just come." But if he would have stuck his bayonet he would have stuck in me. So uh, they went away and they was already maybe home and I couldn't move. I was so scared that I couldn't move even. So I come home. I already didn't go with the straight home. I went over opposite fields, come around. And I used to meet a lot of wild animals. My heart jumped all the time. No wonder I have heart trouble now. And I come home and I knocked on the window and my mother opened the door--it was two o'clock in the night and she yelled at me and she says, "What do you want from your life. Why are you going and you..." I always made so much money so uh, I was bringing home uh, uh material. Because it was, the materials the Goyim bought and, and washed it was from paper. It falled apart. So I brought real cotton and so and I sold it for them and.