Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Stefa (Sarah) Sprecher Kupfer - July 24, 1987

Fate of Family

Let me take you back a little bit. Your aunt and her daughter who had gotten past the Aktion in Krosno, do you know what happened to them?

Yes. It was my aunt, my uncle and two daughters. They got past the Aktion and they worked in a factory...it was a rubber factory in Krosno. And then one day, they were going to be shipped somewhere else. To a camp. And my younger cousin came and she came to pick up some things that they still had by Mrs. Orlewska, and I remember Momma begging her, she said, Doccia, please stay with us. It's no use going", it's like my mother saying the same words that my aunt said to me before...stay with us, whatever will happen with us will happen with you. Somehow we will share the bread and the hiding you will stay with us maybe we will survive. She said, "I know what is going to happen to us. For sure we are not going to live through the war. But I could not live the way you live." And she chose to go back. And sure enough they were sent to a vernichtung camp, and they perished.

Do you think your aunt knew?

I don't know if she knew, but at one point, she said to my mother, you'll see, because Momma was complaining that you know, it would be so much easier if we were out even in a camp or in a ghetto, but out with other people, not just by yourself like this, and my aunt said, you'll see, you will live and we will not.


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