Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

You said, you, you made your way to Israel eventually, or to Palestine.

Yes.

How did that happen?

Um, I uh, joined after the war, the Agudat Israel, or more precisely Poale-Agudat Israel that means the working, the labor arm of the very Orthodox movement uh, being still very Orthodox myself at that time. And one day I heard one of the other uh, activist there, the leaders there saying that so and so had gone to--left Holland to go to Palestine. I said, "Why didn't you tell me?" He said, "We didn't know you were interested." And it was just a matter of days before uh, I was given the information and I was put on my route to enter Paris and I made it through. By the way, I have written up in other people's books uh, the episode when I went from the theater to the nurse's door to spend the night there. It's in Leesha Rose's book The Tulips are Red, on page 110. And then there is a very leftist American author I.F. Stone.

Sure.

He wrote the--he went with us during that uh, illegal boat trip from France to Palestine. And uh, he doesn't exactly write about me in person, but uh, I was on that boat too.

And you were in the war for Independence. Well, how did you get in?

When I got there. Okay. You want to hear details or more roughly uh, description?

Mm, details.

Details? Uh, I had a first cousin of my father living in Tel Aviv, plus a half sister of my father was living in Kiryat Chaim next to Haifa. Uh, when--okay, when I arrived with the boat ??? into Haifa, first we went on a hunger strike because we were told, if you are in that harbor of Haifa, you won't be counted among the monthly quota yet. So we want to do... And we found out that if we are in Atlit camp that we would be counted. So we first, for one day we, we had the hunger strike and then they took us uh, to that Atlit camp. I stayed there for two months. Um, after that I was sometime with my aunt and then I stayed most of the time until I went into a kibbutz uh, with my father's first cousin in Tel Aviv. Um, you ask about--what was the question? How I...