Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Zoltan Rubin - January 12, 1983

Immigration to Canada

No.

Yeah. Now this is...See my father was uh, going back, actually going back to my father because he was buying up...people were immigrating from Slovakia to America and to Canada, all over the country. So, my father use to buy up for their farms with a condition that if he comes back the next two, three years, he can get it back as is. And this farmer here in, in uh, Windsor was the story and he came back and Father gave him back their farm. Then two years later, he decided he's going to immigrate completely, so he went back to Canada and in the meantime, they were writing to each other letters. So, I came back after the War, I found a letter at the post office with...the old lady, she was Hungarian lady at the post office, she was in pensions, she kept some of the mail for me, for the family. And I found it. And here's a letter from this guy, so I answered and I says to him, that, what happened. I told him the whole story what happened. So he says, he, I get back a letter, would I like to come to, to Canada? In the meantime, I talked, I talked over with my brother and I kept in touch with my brother in Israel, and my brother in Israel says he doesn't want...feel that I should work as hard as he did. Because when he came, they were working out in the kibbutzim, all the malaria and all that stuff. I should try Canada. So, I wrote him back, to this guy in Canada and he went to his priest, to the Czechoslovakian priest in Windsor and six weeks later I have papers to Canada. And I came back, so I could say that the same goyim who when they were at home they were the big, the big anti-Semites, who the guy who was telling me that, you're not going to eat chazzer, no you're going to eat chazzer already. His brother-in-law send me papers, a Catholic priest send me papers, I should come to Canada. So, to--In conclusion, I, I don't know, I feel that you cannot condemn everybody for, for doing things. You cannot condemn, just say one thing, okay, no good, the Germans are just no good. I don't think it's right. Because I remember that in Germany, in, in camp, they were taking out soldiers uh, for private work, for officers. And one, one day I was picked, so there were eight to nine soldiers, we came to this woman, to this officer's wife house, we did some cleaning up outside and she made a table--I didn't, I didn't mention it to you, not even once--with tablecloth and gave us food, just on white tablecloth with, with dishes, with everything, the prisoners, there were eight of us. And since we spoke German, she says, "I hope somewhere in Russia," that's what she told us, "My son, somebody treats my son the same way." Although this guys, he was not an SS, he was a Wehrmacht, so you see there was a case like this here. So, you just can't say fine, all the Germans no good, all the Slovaks no good. I can't say this. A Slovak did everything possible, and I came here, this man in Windsor had for me already, he wanted to marry me off, he already had a Jewish girl, he had a Jewish girl lined up, a very rich girl in Windsor, I should marry because, because I need the best, I have to have the best. This is how much...today, we are up today, every Christmas we are going there. He's not alive anymore, just the widow. The priest died also, the Windsor priest, but we go there every Christmas, we go there with my family together. So, feel it...On, on one side, you feel that there is no good goy, every goy, uh--how do you say it?-"Tob shebe goyyim harog," you know what it, I know you... The best from the goyim should be killed, which is very wrong. "Tob shebe goyyim harog", I don't think it's right. And on the one hand, you think, you might be right, and on the other hand you say, it's wrong. But one thing I would say, in conclusion, of everything I have to say, for my son, for, for everybody, that we shouldn't forget it.


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