Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Receiving German Pension
So in other words there's no retribution possible.
No, no, no. We get our pension from Germany, you know. It makes our, our life very comfortable. I don't deny it, you know. It's very--I, I appreciate it because, you know...
But no money could ever pay you back...
No, no...
...what happened to you and what you lost.
...no. We--it makes our life very comfortable, I wouldn't, I wouldn't deny. All those years we lived we get about four hundred dollars a month, you know.
You mean, you and your wife together.
Me and my wife together.
But you lived through a great deal.
Yeah.
No four hundred dollars a month....
No, no, no, I don't--I, I, I say, I say that, first of all, this is not made for us. The Germans they passed a law for, for, for, for the people who worked in the concentration camps, you know. The Germans--the second group after Jews who get those, those compensations are Germans themselves.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
You understand what I mean?
Yes.
Because they had the pressures as much from the Germans themselves who suffered, because they suffered. But a very small percentage of them, you see. We suffered the whole people. For them a very small percentage those who wanted to suffer, who wanted to, to, to award themselves to be against Hitler Germany--against the Nazis they suffered, you know, the political leaders. And they, and they put the pressure to get...
All the political prisoners suffered...
Yeah, suffered.
...the French and the Polish...
And the Polish, yeah.
...and the Resistance...
Yeah.
...any group.
Any group. But I don't, I don't, I don't accept it as a pay-off for what they did. I can accept it as a pay-off for my own suffering, for my own work without pay without food. And, and, you know, and nobody ??? no one, not now, no possibility.
No one could comprehend exactly what you went through...
No, nobody ever will...
...only those who lived through it.
...only those who lived through it.
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