Freda Magnus - July 22, 1982
Life in Swedish DP Camp
Well, let's, let's go back to the DP camp, you said you were in a DP camp in Sweden...
In Sweden, yeah.
You went directly from Bergen...
Bergen...
...Bergen-Belsen to Sweden.
Right.
How long were you at the DP camp?
In Sw...I was in the camp for over a year because I had--on my lungs I had tuberculosis from the hosp...from the Germany and uh, so I was in a hospital. It's like a convalescent home, you know, and then I went out from there and we start looking for a normal life. I met my husband, I got married there...
At the camp?
Yeah, there in Sweden. And then we looked for a home, we start working and lived there. I lived in Sweden ten years.
Your husband also a survivor from the camps?
Yeah, from Łódź also, yeah, mm-hm.
You didn't know him from before?
No.
How did you decide where to uh, where to go after the camps-- I mean, after the DP camps?
After Sweden?
Yeah.
Like I told you, we had it not bad in Sweden. Sweden they treated, they treated us very nice. Especially right after the concentration camp, you know, they gave us to eat, they gave us, you know, nice clothing, clean, wealthy. Yeah, they treated us very good. And life was there very good in Sweden but it was a very goyish life, you know, very goyish life and I had two children--two girls. You know it's funny, mostly the thing why I came to the United States is because I didn't want them to marry a goy because my daughter start school there so she was the only Jewish girl there in the school. And I lived in an apartment where I had been the only Jewish tenant, tenant there. So, we really did wanted to go to Israel but like, you know, in Israel was again war and this and we didn't have the strength for it anymore to go to Israel. And when we got, you know, to go United States as a DP, we picked United States.
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