Esther Praw - May 22, 1983
Recollections of Others in Camps
I would be eager to hear anything that you that you would recall.
Oh, in, in Starachowice they beat up a girl. Two sisters were. They were from Ostrowiec it's a town near Opatów, not too far. For nothing. They beat her up so badly, a girl, she was this time by eighteen, her sister was maybe fourteen, and her sister was crying so bitter, they were sitting together, they were sitting, what they did to her for nothing. For nothing, you know. And then, I, after that, I, I don't know what happened. Then I helped two Hungarian girls, what I helped, they were young kids, too, and I, I didn't know the name, I couldn't look for them, you know. If I forgot names, then you cannot--if I would go when they had the Holocaust, we didn't go this time, because we're a little bit short on money and my husband just had surgery and he didn't work for a year, and then, I, I figure, I would like to go but maybe I would see some friends what I didn't see for so many years. In New York I was walking with my little girl, six month old, in the buggy and I saw a man walking up the street. I ran up to him because he was walking very fast. And I said to him, is your name Adder? He said yes. I recognize him from camp you know. He is still around somewhere, because after, I saw him once more you know. It's something when you see somebody from camp, it's mean to you so much, you know, you just feel great, you know that, that you met, that somebody is alive, because the people there, it's very hard to recognize, because the way they look there and the way they look now. Except sometimes, you can, you know, just from looking, when you are close with people you can see. So now I promise for the next one they have a Holocaust if I'm alive I will go for sure. Maybe I will see somebody. My husband feels bad because three years ago, the telephone rang, and operator said to him, do you have a brother? And he said no. It bothers him if it was his brother, but I explained to him if he would had a brother, he would know by now, you know. Because most of us you know, they know if they have any relatives anywhere, so now somehow they did find out, so he could've said to the operator, who, who is asking for me, I had a brother before, you know, what's his name, or... Then he called back the operator, he went downtown, he went to telephone company, he checked all over, they couldn't... And wherever he goes, wherever he travel, he always looks in the telephone books because the name that he has is, it's not too many names like that. If it's any name, it has to be a relative. And he didn't short his name, this was the name in Europe, the original, because a lot of people changed the name or shorten it.
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