Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Abraham Pasternak - August 13, 1984

Were you thinking about returning to Romania?

Yeah.

Did you?

Yes, I was thinking about going to see whether my parents are alive or who was home or what's going to happen. Yes, we did.

And what happened when you went home?

I haven't found nobody. I found my brothers. By the way, I was reunited with my brothers in Theresienstadt. That was the best thing that had happened. Then my brother got sick, too.

Tell me about the reunion.

We looked at each other and we, we were stunned, we cried... and then we, we didn't have anything to say to one another. The first thing, then finally, because, we, we were, we were divided into separate barracks and I was very angry at myself... You mean to tell me I didn't have anything to say to my brothers. That bothered me. Then we finally got together.

When you got back to Transylvania and found no one there...

I left. I'll, I'll tell you what had happened. What happened was this, I was uh, I saw there was one Wednes-see Wednesdays, everything happens on Wednesdays-there was a group of people, Jewish people were coming back, coming from the East. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention this to you. After the Russians came into Theresienstadt and I knew a little bit of Russian, so I ask him, "[in Russian] Give me a little piece of bread." So uh, they were supposed to be very friendly, you know, they were supposed to be comrades, I mean, and, and share with one another. Uh, he didn't bother, then he says to me just like that, out of thin air, he says, "Why didn't I go..." I told him I was in a concentration camp, he says, "Why didn't I go Partisan?" Why didn't I go Partisan? [in Yiddish] How I was captured and how the Hungarians gendarmes had come in and so on and so forth.