Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Michael Opas - [n.d.]

Finding a job at General Motors

Doing what?

Cutting leather.

Mm-hm.

Yeah, well, they gave me a chance because when I told them I'm a furrier--I didn't hide it. I went, at first, a carpenter. I--they felt--they asked me what I did before--what is my occupation. I told them I'm a furrier. "Oh good," they told me, "We have openings for a leather cutters." They said, they said, "It's similar.

Mm-hm.

If you can cut fur, you can cut leather too." I said, "I will try." And uh, that's how it was. They gave me, they, they gave me a chance to try it out and I, I worked for a week. A week I looked around and I learned it and, well, that's how I was hired.

And did you--how long did you work for them?

Oh, I worked for many, for twenty...from twenty-three years until I retired.

I see, okay.

'Til I, I retired at sixty-two.

Mm-hm.

Yeah, sixty-two, I had enough. I didn't want to work any more. Because, you know, they, they, they were--they, they were hiring--they hired a lot of black people. You know, and I found out that black people are, are, are more anti-Semitic than the white people.

How so?

I don't know.

Okay.

I found it very, very hostile people. Blacks. Very hostile. Especially to foreigners.

Mm. Okay.

Maybe, maybe not because I'm a, I'm a Jew, maybe because I'm a foreigner, I don't know. Something was wrong.


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