Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986
Deportation of Parents
...is it on or not? I went from there the following morning to my house. They had in the meantime uh, placed with ??? a red pencil over my whole id card. One of the first things that I did was go into the attic of my house where we had some coal dust from the times that we had a coal bin in there.
Your parents were still there?
No.
Your parents had already been deported.
This was probably in June of '43. S:. Okay.
Um, I first tried to erase the red pencil as best as I could and obviously it was very visible. So I thought, I might as well make it completely dirty. So I raked it over the coal dust. I made it really black so the, the erasure would not be that obvious. It was still obvious enough. And I stayed there living at home. Only I did not have my job anymore. I did place on the--okay, when people were deported, it was only a matter of time before the contents of the houses would be Puls'ed. It's a word made out of a name. P-u-l-s. Uh, that was the name of the moving firm who was doing the emptying of the houses for the Germans. In order to prevent that, I placed on the outside of the entrance door to our house a sign which said my name, is working in the Dutch Jewish Hospital. That way hoping that they would not inadvertently think that the house was already de...the people had been deported.
This moving company was under contract to the Germans then.
Right, it, it could have been um, I...The first name was Abraham Puls, out of all the first names, but uh, I doubt whether it was a Jewish firm.
And they would just follow the...
They would do it.
deportation.
Sometimes it took a long time sometimes. They had so much work. It would take them months. They had a waiting list. And, and I was, by the way, later, later on during the war, it was my luck because uh, when my money, my money ran out paying the monthly amount to the farmer where I was hidden um, there was a man, who was taking care of another lady was hidden together with me and he was an anarchist. And I told him I'm--my money ran out, he said uh, "What do you have there?" And he said it was a piano. In broad daylight, from the third floor, over a balcony, he took an upright piano out and sold it for me and gave me every penny. Enabled me to pay the farmer for another nine month.
This is a non-Jew.
Yes, definitely a non-Jew. He was an anarchist.
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