Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983

So, it's now it sometime, when I'm driving car I'm reading the names of my brothers. It's human nature. If you want to be selfish you don't do it. And you ??? you don't need nothing. You don't need a monument, you don't need pictures, you don't need nothing. Like I say, you don't... If you want to be selfish, you want to be selfish you gotta live with that. Same thing with the monuments. You should see the monument I got. People, like I say, people talk I'm crazy, why you doing, they will never come back. What are you doing? And I did though, they just built a monument like me. ??? Society or the German organization. Everybody was surprised a private person like me, working hard and take out four thousand dollar for a monument. It cost me that, about four thousand dollars. I, I feel like a four thousand dollars I might not ever... Because I did the best thing, I did it. I'm not sorry up to now why I did it. Every year my kids going with me over there. Sometimes they going by themselves. A hundred years from now, when their kids' kids can come here getting farther from the concentration camp. That's the monument. The way I feel. The same thing with Holocaust memorial building. A good idea. It's better later than never. But why did you wait so long. Right? Everybody was busy with themselves.

How often do you go out there to see it?

Well, I was out there once, once a year.

Wife: ??? LF: Yeah, you can see my name on the wall there.

Wife: No, no, no he's talking about the monument.

Where, my monument?

Yeah.

I used to go more often. I used to go about three or four times a year. Lately, I'm not going, maybe twice. I used to go quite often, I used to go quite often. And we're going every year Yom Kippur with the kids, make a ??? and everything. Really there's nothing there, so we'll make a ??? and Ka... I say Kaddish there and everything. It's already... I used to go there ??? section eighteen, next to the ??? among the pictures and everything. Marked down K. Kreps.

Do you talk about your experiences in the camps?

A lot. Yeah, I talk a lot. At home I'm trying not to talk nothing. Outside I talk a lot. Like I say, but years ago I used to have in my office, like a—how you call—a memorial service. And I took it apart. Why it was, when I don't know, you cannot fight always city hall. My kids say, you can't do this, don't do this, take apart. One thing I stood up to now, how old they are and how everything, how they understand. They cannot say, hey, take this off. Maybe this help me a lot. You come in for the five minute, look in the few pictures, look in the monument, look everything. Like he say, you're living always for the memorial service. I say, just the way that they left. My family left two hundred people. One should have the memorial service for that. I think that's it. A different life. I got my pictures here too. I was active in Jewish national ??? I'm over here on this side. A mistake, they marked down south of south park.