Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

Let me ask you a question about um, uh, the present. The, the, the--do your experiences during the war come back to you? Are there things that you do during a routine day or places you go past that touch off an association or a memory that interferes with, uh...

Hardly ever.

Was that always the case?

Uh, if you mean to ask if I have something like nightmares about the war, no I never--I don't recall I ever had those.

Well you did mention that um, you felt that there was this reaction to uh, um, happy occasions, which you didn't fully engage in them. And then is there always--at your son's um, wedding, were there some thoughts about the past that kept you from enjoying everything to the fullest?

Yes, this is something that uh, no one probably has observed. But when I was standing there next to the chuppa, I was crying with tears. I was thinking of my parents, how they would have felt if they had been alive now.

What about holidays? Do you still celebrate the holidays?

Uh, we celebrate the holidays um, I would say in the, in the Israeli way, the secular Israeli traditional way. I do uh, lead the seder in a very modern version. And uh, for example my children um, whenever there was, whenever they still were dependent upon me and, which is still my youngest, for Hanukkah, Purim uh, any of the other holidays, I send a special present uh, to remind them of that and designate it as such.