Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991

Let me ask you a few other questions just about...

Yeah.

Um, have you told people about this, about your story?

I did never talk much about it, never did, no.

Your children?

I. No. Very little. Very, very, very little. I never... Fact is I uh, did uh, lock it out in my mind. I asked my wife to never talk about it.

Why?

Uh, e... every time we talk about it, it brings memories back, you know. And I see no purpose to it.

So this is a conscious decision on your part not to tell your children and not to talk about it.

I uh, never see any, and uh, reason for it. If they would ask me something, I would tell 'em. But I never uh, never made a point to dwell on it.

But they knew that you were a survivor.

Yeah.

What did you think they thought about that?

Well, they can't understand that. It's impossible for a person on the outside. You can write about it, you can read about it. You can do a... You can never feel about it the way you felt when you went through it. It's impossible. What you do is uh, you uh, you uh, hear about it and say, "Ay, yes, it's so terrible." That's about it. You don't think about it. You can't feel what it was in the reality that you saw death in the front of your eyes, every day, every minute of, of the day or night. You go uh, you, you go to sleep, you don't know whether, whether you're going to live in the morning. It's just something that uh, you, you live with, with death in front of you. I never, fact is for years I never mentioned it even at home. Not even my wife.