Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?

While you were living outside the ghetto you were wearing the Jewish star and um, did, where did you buy groceries and things of that nature?

Well, I guess at the same places where, you know, where the Jews had always segregated and they had their own flea markets. But uh, to give you the exact details, I couldn't because I wasn't doing the shopping. I was too young to do anything and... I was a spoiled brat, let's put it this way, you know. But under the circumstances, you know, it was uh, painful uh, watching my mother cry every night because they took her husband away. But uh, uh, where they were shopping uh, I imagine they must have been shopping in the same segregated area in the ghetto, because the Jews wherever they went they formed this ki...these kind of flea markets. And how this food got in into the ghetto, I cannot even tell you. I don't remember and I don't recall anybody discussing it with me.

They sold, they sold only food.

Oh yes, there was no allowance for clothing or anything like that. We were not jailed. We just--were just put there and I guess it was rationed, you know. That's what we're allowed to get. But uh, the worst was yet to come and we didn't know it.

While you were living outside of the ghetto um, was the ghetto itself closed up? You could go in and out of the ghetto area?

Yes, yes.

Before you moved in.

It was like an island separated from the town. But we could live yet in our home because we were living across the street. So we, we still lived in our hometown. But uh, it was a certain uh, uh, a certain uh, hour that we had to be in.

You had curfew.

Oh yes, absolutely. Yes.

And um, you went back and forth to the ghetto. It was open at that time.

Oh yes, yes. Yes...

Could you go...

...you couldn't go to town.

Oh.

No. No way. Uh, just like in the vicinity where the Jewish people were.

Were you going to school before um, when the war first broke out, were you attending some type of schooling?

Yes, I went to this public school and I went to the Hebrew school. Highly religious uh, uh, which I remember I was crying. I didn't want to wear the long sleeves when it was hot. And uh, it was you know, like I say, every Jew in Eastern Europe was religious. There was no such thing, poor or rich, everybody kept it up.