Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Michael Opas - [n.d.]

Finding Sister

How did you find them in Poland?

I found, I found my on...my sister--only one sister...

Mm-hm.

...and my sister-in-law I found.

Mm-hm. How did you find them?

Well, I went to the building where my sister, my sister was, was the--had a, had an apar...my hus...my brother-in-law actually was the owner of a apartment building. Was a very well to do man. The building where my parents lived there--in this building and my sister lived there. She went. This was her only place--I forget--where could she go? This was her building. So I went there and uh, but na...naturally she didn't stay in her own apartment. She couldn't--because uh, it was empty actually, but she couldn't go in because she--her children--she lost two children. Twins--she had two twin children and they both were, both were dead and her husband is dead. She couldn't go back. And so she took another--a small apartment there in the same building it was all empty. When I came into this building in the morning--about six o'clock in the morning, the house keep...the--how do you call this now? Well, the super, who takes care of the--when I saw--he saw me coming in, he said, "Your sister is here, she survived." I started crying, crying over him. So he, he, he calmed me down. He took me over to the place where she--I, I didn't even know it--where she stayed I couldn't find it--it was like a big building. There were about ninety, ninety tenants in this building. So he took me over. And it's hard to describe, but I found her--because I cried for ten hours all together. Well, this was it. I probably stayed long in Poland. While I was in Poland I witnessed about five murders. Jews were coming back from the camps--they were killed. I was going by one, one building and next, in the neighborhood there. There were two Jews laying, laying dead on the floor. So I said, "No, Poland's not for me." I couldn't stay there. After three weeks I went back to Germany.


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