Rene Lichtman - August 13, 1998
Influence of Holocaust
Do you think that this, your experiences as a, as a Holocaust survivor influenced you in, in those years that...
Oh, yeah.
You consciously thought...
Oh, yeah. I knew, I knew that um, yeah, that my people got screwed over for no reason and, and uh, nobody get, should get screwed over. So um, oh, yeah. And I, I always consider that a Jewish value. I always consider that a Jewish value. And, and, and to go back just to, I mean, this is a little bit, but, you know, from my understanding of, of the guys who went and fought during the Spanish Civil War, to go back just before out and out fascism in terms of Germany, the fascism with, with, Mus...with Franco there was a higher percentage, according to the scholars who've just been looking, a higher percentage of Jews in the International Brigades than others. And I think my dad came out of that tradition. He, he, he was, I mean, Franco's Spain was what, in the mid '30s, right, when the Germans first started dropping--bombing Guernica, et cetera? And he got to Paris in '33.
Your father.
My father. And I'm sure Paris was full of these guys who had been, well, they put them in concentration camps, the, the, the, you know, the left-wing International Brigades, but I'm sure he was exposed to, to their idea. They were antifascist. So I see a kind of a link to that. And so to me uh, that was always part of Jewish value is like fighting for, you know, right things. So I think my Holocaust, but I don't, you know, that's a, that me. I mean I, I've met so many other hidden children who look at me like, what? How do you make those leaps. So...
Well, yeah, they're not so big.
No.
Huh-uh. This is a good place to stop, maybe.
Okay.
Thank you.
One does go off on tangents, huh?
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