Sonia Nothman - January 4, 1983
Germany II
She said, "Why are you going? With a little baby, you don't have anybody." She was right, but I didn't have there anybody either. You know, especially Germans. She said, "We'll, we'll help you here." Of course, in Germany you could make business, you could have anything there. But I couldn't, I, I couldn't be there. And she cried, she said, "With a little baby." She was, she was sad. When I came here she said, "How can you go?" And she cried, really cried. But I told her, "I cannot stay here." They're all ??? I cannot. I'm glad I'm going out. And I told her. She said, "Don't feel like this. Not all Germans are like this." But this, where I live, I know. They told me, "That's enough. That's enough." And my husband have a friend, a, a German, he used to ???, his father was an SS. Okay, it's not his fault, he didn't know nothing. And many--they told me later, the Germans, they told me. There was one restaurant where, where I ate. Because I didn't know how to cook, I didn't have where to cook and what to cook, nothing. So we ate there. In Germany you eat dinner one o'clock. So she make something. She was very good to me, very good. Of course, not everybody's bad. She cried. I, I remember, she cried when I left. Especially maybe not for me, for my husband, for the baby. Yeah, but I was glad. When I was sitting on the plane. I was, oh...It wasn't a good year at first too, but I didn't care. I didn't...I was free. I was not afraid of anybody. No, I never trust them and I never wanted to go back. I have many opportunities to go back to Germany, to go back to Poland. I could never do it. I couldn't. I was now in uh, Paris three years ago ???.
Did you go back to your hometown right after the war at all?
Never, never. My sister went back. She lived in Poland. She was in Russia and she came back to Poland. And she said, one day she went back. And she came to the house. She couldn't go in. I dreamt lots of night that I...When I opened the door, I was home. She couldn't go in, she couldn't go in. No, I wouldn't go there. No. I had many opportunities to go back right away in the beginning. I couldn't go, no. Oh lots of people went back, I know. I get uh, literature from our home town. But I don't know. But there is no Jews there.
There are no Jews there now.
Oh no. Not even one Jew. One couple--a couple, the husband, they killed him. But she and her brother, I don't know. ??? But no Jews. Not in Kielce. After the war was a pogrom. In Kielce they, they killed uh, a friend of mine, her husband.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn