Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Esfir Lupyan - December 17, 2007

Did you... Did you and your mother pray at all?

No.

No religion.

No, no. Uh, my mom, I never saw that she pray. I never, never. Uh, maybe inside, I don't know. Uh, and I didn't know anything about that.

So, there was no religious...

No, it was uh, fortune. How you call?

Observance.

By fortune?

Luck. Fortune.

Fortune. This was fortune. I, I don't know. People may explain why something, why that... I know that people like ??? You know ???

Mm-hm.

They... It does not help them.

No.

They... And uh, truck, what I say, when we go on truck, it was gas camera... gas. They killed by gas...

Gas chamber.

...right away.

In the truck.

In the truck. And truck comes, they charge, they charge and come again.

Did you know that that was happening?

We know that this is end and that terrible end. That what we know and my mom said to me, to get out on railroad. Only because she, she intuitive know that nothing to stay in line. People need--that my con... conclusion in my life--people need, need, need be active, not to be like, like uh, like small animals, like kitten. They should go smart... Be smart and think about what, what is going on and do something. Not go to, to die. Many people they could survive. They could survive. I know, I know a girl ??? they take people to row or to--I don't know how to say this--deep, DP ??? outside of...

The ditch.

The ditch?

Yeah.

And they killed them. And she was thirteen years old. She, she, she get out from this, uh--brave, you know, terrible brave--get out. She has thirteen, thirteen bullets in her body. She was very young. Thirteen. And she, she grow, grows, grows...

Grow.

Grow?

Grow.

Yeah, she grow, you know, and she survive. She is living now somewhere because we met her on, on uh, on north in ??? She came to her father--her father was like my father, dissident--and they find each other. And she, and she was good, good woman uh, you know, young woman. So people could survive, many, but many people don't want to survive.