Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982

Describe--tell me who, your brothers and your sisters--their names.

I tell you.

Okay.

Uh, my father was fifty-two years old, my mother was forty-seven. My older sister was twenty-one, she got married between '38 and '39, two months before the war broke out.

Okay, what's her name?

Her name?

Yes.

Sela.

Sela?

Sela. She got married to a nearby city and her married name was Jelonka. Very well to do people--a wholesale of uh, paint. Very well to know around the area. Much better off than we were, and we were above average. Uh, uh my younger sister married, well, she had been coming two years or three years after--you see, we only had uh, grade school. But in Poland grade school is seven years. And I think it--when I see what my children learn here in high school, I--it was very comparable with a good part of high, high school, the lower grades like, like uh, junior high. But it was--we started at the age of seven and we through about fourteen. It was very hard to get in a higher, a higher education. My oldest--the second oldest, after she finished school she helped out in the store. I barely finished high uh, ele...uh, you know, grade school. My brother finished grade school and also he a helping hand in the store. Because we--instead hiring uh, other help, so we had to--we, we were uh, working in the store--the family. And my youngest sister, I don't know if she finished school, I think she as in sixth, she had another year to go. And we were in a very nice family.

Aunts and uncles?

Aunts and uncles galore, galore. You will--see here, the--you know, who's our aunts and uncles? The Sharit Haplaytah is our aunts and uncles here.