Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Esther Posner - March 11, 1986

When I first talked to you about it uh, I had the impression that you were, that you had even done this before, it was--like it was almost routine. But then um, when I heard you with the kids--the opening--I realized it was not easy. Of course, I was quite surprised that somebody could--well, I mean, your age maybe because you were only six.

???

Right. I mean, that's altogether understandable. What's less understandable is being able to talk about it at all. For me, I'm amazed every time I sit down with someone.

Um, there are some people who won't talk about it. A lot of them. My parents won't talk about it at all. Absolutely won't talk about it.

What made you decide to talk about it? Was it the exhibit?

The exhibit? Um, yeah. The fact that it was an Anne Frank exhibit and the fact that it was really telling the story about--that it gave us an opportunity to tell the story about the situation in Holland. And also this um, the conference I went to last year, which was a big impetus in my first--I met people at that conference--I had never met people who knew so much about the Holocaust. I mean, had really made a study of it, and uh, that surprised me a lot.

You mean other survivors?

Yes, yeah. And uh, that was really an eye opener, that conference. That was terrific. And the only reason I went to that--I hadn't gone to any of these Holocaust things but the reason I went to that is that I felt that it honored the Righteous Gentiles and it was my way of honoring those people whom I felt--we--I honored some of them since the war, but not all of them. And I felt by honoring the ones I--who did something for me personally but whom I can't honor--I'm honoring someone else's Righteous Gentile--adding my voice to that which I felt was important. We have honored uh, the Kleinjan's and the Mos's since the war. We uh, we brought the Mos's to the United States.

I heard that.

Yeah. And uh, the Kleinjan's, at the same time we had both the Mos's and the Kleinjan's uh, honored by Yad Vashem. The Kleinjan's didn't really want to accept it. They'd become Seventh Day Adventists and they uh, they can't accept something from another government. Yeah, it's something like that and they were very hesitant uh, about receiving any remuneration of any sort. We hoped that was just the honor. And the Mos's went over to them and said, you know, "They'd be honored if you took it." So they did. They accepted.