Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Freda Magnus - July 22, 1982

Does uh, do your memories of the past ever interfere with your life today? Does it get in the way at all?

Not really because uh, I thank God everyday for what I have now and I appreciate it and then that's all. Why it's good for me, you know, to think back and, and cut my arm by myself everyday, I try to, you know, think about good things but still, you know, the memories are there especially when you make a party you want nobody from you are here, you alone--still alone. So, you have to do the best but I say one thing: people don't repeat nothing to people what they done to us. Not only to those people the, the thing is--the worst thing is they still anti-Semitics. Anti-Semitism is still big, for why? That's what I ask. Why is anti-Semitism still big? Anti-Semitism is here in Germany, it's in United States, it's in Sweden, it's in Poland--wherever you go you have anti-Semitism. Why? This question should be answered. Even if you hear the news on the, on the--you can feel anti-Semitism in every word but they play that they are liberal. You say, you say if we did something, what can we do? Now, can we do something? If you fight back it's not good, if you don't fight back it's not good either. So, so the only thing what we have to do is for good for us not to look on nobody what somebody say. Because if we will, we will look on somebody and somebody say--it will not be good, yeah. They, they say, they say they don't like Begin what can they say about Begin when he is the only person from--he knows what we went through and he knows what, what we suffered and what he suffered and what we would suffer if we wouldn't have Israel. Even with Israel we suffer. So I think it's no other person like Begin because he's another person and he works for, he works for our people--he doesn't work for himself like they work here, the politicians. He work for the people, he work for the Jews, not for Begin, for himself.