Esther Posner - March 11, 1986
Conclusion
And then there was the morning that we woke up and my father said, "Roosevelt died," and it was--we, we were in hiding in that basement and everybody was crying. We must have been twenty people in that basement. Besides the family, we, we were living--the family that we lived with, the Spitz's--they were four, and then there was four, four Jews, and then there were people who lived on the other side of the river but couldn't get back because the bridges were all out. And then there were people who had been bombed out of their house. It, it was like a whole big group of people but everybody was happy and, and, and, and uh, hopeful and just, you know, thrilled. And then the next morning we got up and we put on our nice clothes and we walked like from here to the end of the building and we waited for the tanks to come, and we were liberated by the Canadians. And my mother--my aunt had this Magen David that she wore--the Star of David--and she kept showing it to the soldiers--she was looking for other Jews. And when...whenever she found a Jew she would point to all of us and, you know, that we were all Jews and had been--that were still Jews alive. And they were very good to us. They immediately gave us uh, food and bread and then load us with--loaded us up with all kinds of things. They moved in with us for the first uh, two or three days 'til they had set up the camp somehow. And May 11, when my birthday came, one of them who was a baker had baked a birthday cake that said, in English, "Happy Birthday Mariana." And uh, meanwhile my father had come back. Do you remember I told you the story about my father disappeared for four weeks...
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