Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Maximilian Kowler - April 26, 1984

Help from Gentiles II

Did you ever speak to her? Were, were there ever political discussions with this woman or...

Not that I remember. I never stayed there. I knew her, naturally. We were friends--my parents were friends with them. Uh, no, I never saw her, I never saw her again since then, because I don't even know what happened to her, to tell you the truth, because uh, I didn't go back there. No, no idea, no idea what happened to her. Uh, I know she survived the war--whether she was uh, caught after the liberation and treated as a collaborator, I don't know, I don't know. I never tried to find out. Uh, there are other instances of, like, family who took my wife in. My wife lived in Grenoble at that time, and so after the war a family had taken her in, and uh, protected her all the way through. She was taken in sort of as a bond--as a uh, household, household--working in a household, you know? And she survived the war fully, you know? And I have many friends who, who survived the war too, just by the goodness or kindness or uh, decency of French people.

Were they endangering themselves by helping, you think?

Yes, definitely, definitely. I know cases where people received mail for other people, and uh, transmitted mail for other people, and they were definitely in danger.


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