Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

This other couple, the husband, wife and their um, little girl, is it?

She was uh, thirteen--fourteen-year-old teenager when she came.

How did that come about? The same way that you had arrived at the farm?

The farmer was uh, the farmer was a young farmer. He had gotten married not too long ago. When I arrived their baby was maybe six weeks old. Um, his parents had a farm with several cows. They were much better off than this farmer, than the son. So he was interested in uh, additional income. So when uh, he was offered to--this lady with her anarchist helper and she left after a few months uh, and when this Jewish family came, he gladly accepted. It would mean so much more money for him.

D...do you think that he was aware that he himself and his family were in danger by hiding Jews?

I am sure that he knew. Um, however the fact that I was more safe in the hiding place, the secret hiding place was safer for him too. However, his need for money was quite high because later on, his wife's brother-in-law brought several times cows to that farmhouse to be slaughtered there. And at one occasion I remember that the--okay, I must explain first about the village. The village was on both sides of a long road. One farm here, another there, and so on. It was very long, maybe five or seven miles long. It was reported to us that at the very end, which was closer to the, let's say the center of Holland, because we were the last farmhouse next to the dike of that inner uh, Z...sea of Holland. We were really at the, at the end of civilization there. It were, the rumor was mentioned by one farmer to the other. They had their grapevine, literally. And they said it was some German there that was questionable or could not be trusted. While they were in the middle of slaughtering the cow, two or three men with bloody rubber boots climbed, not using as we usually did a ladder to go in the hiding place but the walls to climb up there on the pipe from the Niagara uh, which was there. Do you know what Niagara? The, the flushing...

Flushing.

Flushing. Uh, and uh, and in order to get up there. They would have--we'd, we'd have been given away by that, right away. So it was a mixture of one hand yes, and he deserved I would say immeasurable credit. On the other hand uh, he stretched his, his and our luck at times. Fortunately it didn't go wrong. If it had gone wrong, wow. It would have been terrible of course. Both for him and us.

And he got you food. The woman brought you food?

We were--I was a member of the family there. I beca...I, I became a member of the family. When I was alone they even let me uh, go outside and walk outside in the garden, the land around it, in quotes, because you don't look Jewish. When the other lady, the first lady came, she looked Jewish. Equality. She was kept inside, I was kept inside too. When the Jewish family with the daughter came, same thing. We were not permitted to go outside.