Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986
Depression
You said you were very--last time too you said you were very depressed.
I was very depressed. I was offered around that time by someone to go back to the study of medicine. Um, the offer was, I would say uh, extremely gracious. I know they meant it. But I was in no mental condition to uh, go back to study at that time. What I was doing at that time was the following. In the Polishe shul where I went to. Um, by the way, the Great Synagogue was unusable there. The, the roof had been removed from it, it couldn't be used. So I went to that Polishe shul and uh, I met there someone who was a Hungarian Jew and he knew that I was without any income and I was looking for work because I didn't want just to be a, a living there, and supported by others without doing anything. So uh, he had a factory of uh, bookbinding and I started working there. He learn...he taught me the tricks of the trade of uh, bookbinding. It was called cartoonage, because carton uh, was used for a, for a binding for books. And this was, by the way, also the first job that I did when I came to Palestine and uh, tried to make a living.
I guess I w...I'm curious to know if you felt happy to have survived, if you were...
I don't think I had any feelings about that at that time. I, I felt much more depressed than happy. I knew it was the right thing that I was doing, but it was not the way I had hoped for. Because this was uh, some, this was let's say short of being killed myself, this was one of the worst options that I had, to go through life alone at least quite a few years, at least until I got married, let's say.
What happened from there?
Pardon?
What happened...
Yes.
from there?
In this Polish uh, synagogue I met an older brother of the eighteen-year-old boy who went with me in hiding the second time when I fled and I told him about it.
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