Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

And the second thing also had to do with a letter. You said that um, you had gotten some correspondence from your parents when they were in Westerbork.

Uh, yes. There were requests for uh, food and for those uh, protective glasses against the sand storms.

Did they say anything else about what it was like in Westerbork?

I don't recall that they said anything. I, I--there is something that I re...recall regarding my younger sister who was with them at that time. Uh, I don't re...remember what the source was, but I was somehow informed that she was working outside in the fields, in fact uh, working in a potato field. And uh, I may have mentioned it last night, but I was already uh, hidden. I asked the underground to contact her and to advise her or to convey my suggestion and advice to her to somehow to uh, run away.

Did, did...

And at that time I may already have known that she was working in the potato fields. Because I thought at least she's outside of the most uh, populated part of Westerbork. It might be easier. But, uh...

Did she run? She didn't.

I think that the time my message reached her, if at all, she had gone. She had, she had already been deported from Auschwitz. And uh, based upon the information from the Red Cross uh, she was sent to Auschwitz. By the way, about information from Red Cross.

Yeah, that was the other thing.

Did I tell you last time that I talked to a sister of the present cantor of Amsterdam by the name of Moskowitz, Moskowitz. Uh, and this sister of him had personally talked to my father in Auschwitz when my father was singing on a roof in Yiddish or cantorial songs. And uh, he was working on the roof and there were Jews, women or whatever uh, were coming to listen to him and the Germans found out and they told him to quit it. Uh, this happened, when she talked to him in person, was after the date that I was given after the war by the Red Cross as the day that he was uh, killed. So I, I have some doubts about the validity and the reliability even of dates of the records of Red Cross.

But you got those dates from them after the war, not--they didn't send...

I got the dates from the Red Cross after the war. But after that I met this...

This woman.

eye-witness who talked to him in person, which was several months later.

Do you remember approximately when that was?

Uh, probably it was 1944.

When she had met him.

Towards the second part of '44, I believe.

Did things that you wanted to cover again, loose ends um, as you said that would be...

Actually to add to it. What I, what I left here as marked that I had not mentioned. Uh, just a little uh, vignette. Uh, the day after the Germans conquered Holland, after four days uh, my younger sister Sarah and I walked to the main post office where our postal savings account was to withdraw our monies. On the way there we saw the Germans coming in, marching into Amsterdam. Right away we, we felt that uh, it might be safer if we at least take our savings out.