Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Pauline Kleinberg - October 28, 1982

Finding a Friend from Camp

Had she--you, you know her from before, this woman?

From the camp.

Oh.

Surprisingly.

How did you meet, how you meet your friend from the camp?

Yeah, what happened here when I came...

Mm-hm.

... when I came in 1950 when I start to go by bus--I had a little--a, a child, two and a half years old--I didn't know what to ask the bus driver where to stop. I didn't know my bus stop. I asked him--I remember a park--I asked him to, to let me off, which it was a few blocks from the park because I remember the park. So I said, "I couldn't go on crippled--this is crippled." They set up afternoon classes in the summer for English in the neighborhood on 12th Street, some on Woodrow Wilson. So I was going. And one time there was a school inmate I heard "???" and I remembered her, but it wasn't her, it was a cousin. I said, "Are you ??? from Auschwitz?" They are born in Auschwitz.

Mm.

So far very few people know there were Jews living in Auschwitz. But I do know, and she happens to be from Auschwitz. She ha...has not been to crematorium, she's not in concentration camp in Auschwitz. She lived there before the war.

How big of a town was Auschwitz?

Not too big. I wouldn't have the exact uh, count of uh, censorship, but uh, not too big. But it, I heard about it. I was quite away from this, but I heard of Auschwitz. So when she said, "Uh, you mean, probably ??? not uh, ???, that was her maiden name." I said, "Yes," I said "what about, did she survive?" I didn't know if she survived. She said, "??? has survived and she's married and she lives here in Detroit." When I heard this I couldn't sleep for nights. And when she went home and called her and said that uh, uh, Paula you--I was called Paula, not Pauline Pariser--she didn't know me as a Kleinberg, told me she's living--she's here. She said, when she came by the time we got to ???, she said for the few nights she couldn't sleep. She didn't believe it. And I didn't believe it. And when she thought of me--I had been with a sister--which she did not make it--she thought of my sister right away too. My ??? sister made it, but my sister didn't make it. So from then on, we are the two.


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