Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Simon Kalmas - May 25, 1982

Sharing Story

Do you talk about your experiences--like you did tonight--do you talk about these very often?

Uh, once in awhile, my son is uh, asked me questions. And the same thing he asked, "Dad why don't you write it down? Why don't you write it down? You could have a book, you know, thousands and thousands of pages." I don't have the skill. It's not just you write or--you have to have a skill of putting down an essay, how to bring things together. I, I was telling the story here, its jump from one place to the other, from one place to the other. There's a billion items between from 1939 to 1940, from 1940 to1941, from '41 to '42. And every day has a story by itself. Every day is a story by itself. How can you write it when we talk about it? You know, we have uh, on the lighter side, you know. A, a Jew always have, uh, Sholem Aleichem used to say a "Guelechter ???"--there's no translation for it. I don't know how to explain it to you what, what it means. But you laugh and you cry. Okay, you laugh on the outside, you cry on the inside. So we had uh, let's see you laugh, you know.


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