Zoltan Rubin - January 12, 1983
Reaction to Persecution of Father
All right. What, what were your reactions to, to that?
What was our... ? This...the reaction was that we were ready...this was the time when my father completely gave in. He resigned himself completely to the idea that we are going to be eliminated.
And how did you feel when you saw that happen?
I couldn't, I couldn't...I really wouldn't be able...It's a question that I couldn't even answer. How I felt about it?
You watched them shave his beard?
Oh yeah, certainly. It was right there in front of me. My father never had shaved his beard. So I said my father didn't have long peyes. He was really, like they say at home, bechoved, a bechoved Jew. My father used to... He had, he had a friend, an attorney, who used to come--one of the best attorneys in, in Prešov--and whenever he had a problem, he used to come to my father, down to the village, to get advice from him. As a matter, I remember like today, once uh, these...I don't know how little things like this stays in a person's mind because I was a little kid, I was...The man had a problem and he came down and my father says to him, "Leave me the papers." And the next morning my father went to the city and told him what...And in the meantime all his business...My father had a little vest, in a little, little book, book, and all his businesses were in Jewish, everything the books were in Jewish and the whole business was in this little book. So, he was a very bechoved Jew and, and this time and this time I could see two old people broken to pieces and this is when I said, my mother said, "I would like to go where my kids are, where my children are." She would like to go after them. As far as I uh, personally, I really don't know, I couldn't, I couldn't give an opinion how I felt about it. We knew that we made...one thing we knew that we...The mistake was there that we didn't go away, when the time was to go away to Israel in 1938. We had the means, we had the...Everything was available and we didn't do it.
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