Salvatore and Lili Katan - August 18, 1981
Deciding Where to Live After the War
LK: But the lost both that brother-in-law ??? had jumped down not gone down with him, you know? So that's how we saved that. But I tell you something, that was two whole weeks and us it was bad. But that's something because the two weeks ago and every moment you are...
SK: One moment they going to drop me down and you never know it.
LK: At least ??? that we slowed him down and that wasn't in a station, in the field, okay?
SK: They're going to leave me...
LK: You know, I had a very frightened feeling there. We slowed him down and he was lost completely, he got no language ???...
SK: But I had my brother-in-law...
LK: My, my brother-in-law...
SK: And ??? Budapest and they told me, "You follow me." And they talked to them--my wife and the sister walked from ??? and then we went to the college and from the window of the college we jumped out and we went to the other side and then we made it and they were looking for me.
So, you got married shortly after that.
SK: After...
LK: Maybe.
Did you consider going back to Salonika? No, not at all?
SK: No.
LK: I would like to go there.
SK: I mean, I consider to go and visit and look but...
But not to live.
SK: ...not to live.
Were you going to live in Budapest?
SK: Even there.
LK: No way.
So when did you decide to come to the United States?
SK: In 19...
LK: Well, that's a long story.
SK: I mean, soon after the concentration camp, we want to go to Israel.
LK: After...
SK: We lived in Italy, in Italy...
LK: ??? in Budapest we went--we want to go to Israel.
SK: We want to go to Israel but we no went to Israel.
LK: That's what I say.
SK: So, we live in Italy.
LK: So we lived in Budapest.
How did you get to Italy?
LK: ??? We get married in Budapest, okay, after three weeks and were here for maybe two months but I couldn't sleep, I mean, because it's too much--the memories were underneath--hiding underneath. And my husband wanted to go to Israel ??? so if I know that ??? Hungarian and if I know ??? so we came to Italia...
SK: First we stopped ???
LK: At first I thought ??? and ??? they wanted to go through Greece to Israel but in Italy you ???...
SK: ???
LK: ...can't go through, okay? So they catch us and make us go six weeks in ??? with the hope that maybe they could go through. In fact, they asked one day my husband--they offered my husband a huge--big sum of money if he would take them undercover--if he would take us through Greece since he was the only one Greek in the group and he could talk the language and he's lucky. So they gave him ??? and he decided that he go ???...
SK: ??? the Greek.
LK: ...you never know and never did anything...
SK: ???
LK: ...??? so anyway ??? go back to Budapest but he didn't want to go back so he didn't want to back so the tour group came through Italy, to Milan.
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