Esther Posner - March 11, 1986
Life in Hiding
All in all, it was very difficult to just sit there all day long. You couldn't even look out the window and to just sit in a room and uh, try to pass the time of day, for all of us. The adults had a--there were a few more things that they were able to do. My mother and her sister and her sister-in-law did a lot of uh, mending. There was a, a vegetable man, whatever, a produce man and uh, he would give to the people in the underground their clothing that was full of holes and they would bring it to us and we would mend it and in exchange we would get produce for that. And I remember the food; it was very boring and I was never hungry. I didn't even want to eat what was there. So that was, I don't know, you know, that was kind of fortunate. I don't ever remember feeling hungry. I guess after awhile you just don't feel it anymore. And I don't ever re...I know the food was very unappetizing. And when we would fantasize about food um, you know, we would fantasize about things like broiled chicken and things like that, and it didn't even appeal to me at that time.
Do you remember what the diet was?
Mm, the only thing I remember is that we were not going to eat pork or pork products. And uh, the people we were staying with--she would go to the butcher and ask him for some, some meat and he didn't have anything. And once he gave her some sausage and she sai...and he assured her there was no pork in it. And she brought it to us and she said, "There's no pork in it." And my father, as the expert, you know, tested, smelled it, bit into it, chewed it and spit it out and said, "There is pork in this and we cannot eat it." And nobody even wanted it. We just--we couldn't have cared less. We just were not interested and we didn't eat it. The people from the underground got us ration cards and whatever food there was--it wasn't as bad as, as it was in Amsterdam for us, where we were staying, um...
How far were you?
We were right near the German border and it was a much more uh, what shall I say? Uh, more farm country. This was a city--an industrialized city, but...
Did you start hiding in Amsterdam?
No.
You went right away into...
Right away to Enschede and we were in this one place for a year. They had a series of bells in the house and uh, one bell, where she rang--if she pushed this bell once--it, it rang upstairs in our room--she rang it once uh, it meant somebody was in the house and we had to be, you know, absolutely quiet, couldn't move. Two, I think, was all clear. And three was go into the hiding place. I mean that, someone is looking for you, like there's real danger there. Um...
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