Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

Helping Farmer

You chaffed it. So you helped him to farm.

I, I helped whenever I could. I, I was the ???, which I didn't know before, to help to take care of the vegetables. When I was alone he let me do it.

Did you ever have any discussion about anything?

Probably. But, uh...

Nothing you remember.

I remember that he had a uh, radio hidden uh, which we listened from time to time to the BBC, especially the Dutch ???. Uh, in 1944, on one occasion, I myself found roughly 900 Allied ???. They were going eastward. This was like the sound of music to me. Uh, that farmer also agreed to hide some property that the gypsies had brought to him. Probably ??? And one of the things was a harmonica, a ??? harmonica. I knew how to play ??? uh, they had uh, this little regular piano keys, they had one buttons. Uh, if you didn't want to figure out the system, and he permitted me to play on this. So I played on the harmonica there at times. In October 1944, after the unsuccessful Allied action where they tried to break through into Arnhem, it became much easier to create false I.D. papers. So the mayor of the city ??? where I was hidden, he uh, wrote false paper testifying that I was evacuated from Arnhem and that I arrived on such and such a date and it was registered. So I became at least from that part on legal and my address and work place was on there.


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