Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Louis Kaye - May 9, 1983

Does the past ever interfere with your life today?

Pardon me?

Does it ever interfere with your, with your life today?

I mean—the past?

Yeah.

Well, like I say, you got to fight your own battle. You got to make up your mind what you do. Whether you want to kill yourself, or hang yourself or do something, or fight your own battle and live through it a few years. Some time you're getting different ideas. Then how can I do this? I got kids here. Or I do this. Be selfish, I got a wife here. You're fighting your own battle, you're going back and forth. You want it and you don't want it. Let's put it this way, plenty of time I have different ideas, no. But not, maybe I would not be married and I would not have kids. Maybe I... Nobody know what coming in mind. You cannot fight, sometimes you're going in somebody's mind is out of control. Plenty of time, I figure, why even bother. If, if, if you could not make a living, your mind was not... It was, my, for the past two not so much, after you make a nice living, why I'm better than them? I make a nice living, I worked hard in Europe, I could not make a living, work hard for a living. At least you got your family around you. Now you got my family too, but still. I don't have brothers, I don't have sisters, I don't have an uncle, I don't have father. I don't have a cousin. I'm lucky my wife got a big family and everything. So come to a party, I invite a hundred people myself, or two and she invited a hundred people family. Not I'm against it, no. You can see, where's my family? That's really my... Every party it was hard for me, because you turn around, you get cousin, second cousin, first cousin, uncles, everything. I was waiting, my friends, if they're making a party, sometimes they have money to make a party, but they don't have friends. So what's, how you going to make a party. Family, they don't have it. For a long time ??? child of survivor, everybody know each other. We make a party everybody invites each other. Now for my party I could not invite so many people because, I'm lucky my wife have a big family, so you can eliminate certain people and not invite them. It was better this way or the ??? if they know they're friends each other, I don't care how much money they got in the bank, you cannot make a party. How can you make a party without people? You got good things, you got bad things. I, I, I make parties, three hundred people. Bar mitzvahs. Big parties.