Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991
Family Reunion
When you were liberated finally...
Yeah.
uh, did you want to get back home?
Poland?
You knew your parents were killed.
Yeah. I, I...
Did you know about...
Fact is I uh, went to Europe uh, several years ago and my wife asked me, do you want to go to Poland. I said, "No, that's the one place I don't want to go."
Did you wonder what happened to your brothers and sisters?
Uh, just three sisters. My, one of my sisters, I know for a fact uh, that um, she had a little boy and the other one had two little girls. And uh, they were, they were healthy people, you know, my sisters. They wanted to take the kids away from them uh, put 'em in, in the oven. And they, my sisters said I will not let them go by themselves. And they gave their life just to be with their children when that happens.
But you didn't know about that in 1945.
I found out afterwards about it.
Did you think that any of them had survived? I mean when you, when you were first free.
No, after the war I didn't know who survived. But I did, I wrote to my sister. I had a sister in Israel. And I uh, wrote to her, I wrote to my sister that I'm alive and I wanted to find... And I assume if anyone else is alive they will uh, also let her know. And from there I found out that my brother was alive and that he was in um, uh, in a certain part in Germany over there. Uh, and I went to see him. Uh, he was uh, he, he was in Bergen-Belsen. And I went uh, this is near--what is the name of the city there--anyway, I went there to see him. And I walked in there, I, and I was actually stationed in Stuttgart after the war. I was in a camp, in Degerloch, there was a camp, a DP camp in Stuttgart. And I went from there to see uh, my brother and uh, 'cause I found out from my sister that he's alive, you know. And uh, when I went there I found a lot of other people, some relations and some other people over there.
He knew you were alive.
Huh?
Your brother knew that you...
He did not know. I walked in...
That must have been quite a reunion.
I, I just, yeah, I just walked in there, you know. And I met on the outside, when they were in this um, place over there, that camp. On the outside I met one of the fellows I was in another camp with, you know. And he told me that your brother's in there, he says. He walked there with me, you know. And I met some uh, cousins, some other people that were in there, you know. Well, he didn't know that I was alive, no. It was uh, what was that city over there. It was a northern German, um...
Well, Bergen-Belsen's there.
Huh?
Bergen. Bergen-Belsen's near Bergen. That's the name of the town.
No. No, no, there's a big German city nearby there. I just... escapes me now. My memory is fading, you know.
It's...
Huh?
It seems pretty good to me.
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