Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991

How did it happen that you moved from Łódź to...

Uh, this was uh, happened my parents uh, when I was still a baby. You know, they moved the to... Because as I say, the town was so close--it's just like a suburb here. Ten or fifteen miles. From here to Oak Park is about twenty-five miles. So it was very close actually. There used, there used to be um, a uh, streetcar, a, a, a lot of commuter from this town. It's a lot advantageous to live in a small town than there is a big city.

How many Jews were in that town?

Oh I uh, seven thousand, I would say probably about uh, about seven, eight thousand.

And how large was the town total?

I uh, I didn't have any numbers on it, but it was a uh, it was also a textile town. Uh, probably it was about, maybe, about seventy, eighty thousand people.

So it's a large city then.

Well, it was a, this a uh, you know, this is a small town.

It wasn't as big as Łódź.

Yeah. Uh, Łó... uh, Łódź you had a hundred thousand Jews, in Łódź.

But the rest of your family still stayed in, you had family still in...

They still in Łódź, yeah.