Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Meeting Wife
What made you come to Detroit?
I--my, my sister we are the from the same city, you see, my wife is from Zduńska Wola too.
Oh, is she?
Yeah, I, and uh, she has--they survived five sisters because their age difference is, is six, seven year between, and a brother. They have six.
They all survived.
They all, they all here, you know. No, you see, they started--some of them started to emigrate to the United States, you know. And we stayed there the last two years by ourselves, not because we didn't want to come to the U...
Oh, so in other words they were in Sweden too.
They all, all--we all were, the whole family were in Sweden.
Were they all liberated in Bergen-Belsen?
No, no, in different places...
Oh.
...in different places. I uh, when I went--when I started to work in Sweden I had a friend and I was--I had a job in a little town. There was practically no Jews there. And, and I had a friend and he met a girl and he was preparing himself to get married and he was in a larger city. A city from about forty, fifty thousand people, in a beautiful city. So he told me, "Why should you stay over there? Come, when I get, when I get ready to get married." Because rumor it was very difficult to get at that time, but they didn't build no houses during the war.
Uh-huh.
"You, you will be able to move into my room," he said, "so come over here." So I just packed up what I--whatever I had, you know, and I went. And I went to him. It was on a Saturday I arrived. So I--he took me over to his girlfriend and we ate dinner. And around eleven o'clock I was walking back and I took over his room. I didn't know nobody exactly. All of a sudden I heard a group of people were standing and talking Yiddish, you know. They, they, they were hiding themselves under a big drape from the rain and I was walking. And I walked by in the dark, all of a sudden somebody calls my name. Yeah. I turned around it's my--now my sister-in-law ???.
Your sister-in-law?
Yeah, we were good--we were friends. You know what young people belong to the same organization thanks to the war...
Mm-hm.
...and she recognized me from behind just by walking. She recognized me in the dark. "What are you doing?" I knew they were in Sweden, but I didn't, didn't know where they was. So I met them--when I met them I already had a lot, a whole bunch of friends. Their older sisters were there, some of 'em got boyfriends, and they already took me in. Even made the next day a party, you know. And, and then the next year I got married to my wife, in 1947.
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