Adele Sandel - [n.d.]
Life in Dobšina
But, we didn't know that what was going on. We did not know, believe me. We didn't know. It was so near and it was so close. It wasn't like today, like television and telephone. It was such a primitive world yet. No, nobody flew. It was like--and the trains didn't come there. They didn't let people go so we didn't hear. It is really--last night I didn't sleep one minute because I thought back how I will make this interview, if I still remember, you know? And, if I think back--I, I tried not to think about it because if you tried to think about it what happened, I should have had the nicest, the best years of my life like dating from sixteen 'til twenty to twenty-one. Like, dating and, and being all this nice things what the girls are being here, you know what I mean? Going through dates and then seeing movies and concerts. So, you heard what I did. Like um, like a piece of bread was and, and, and minute of peace was a big deal the five years--the nicest years of my life, and my sister so that's in fear we lived.
Your sister and uh, when she was working in the bank her life was...
She was in the bank but, yes, but she was, she was scared every minute that they would recognize her and they did. They did many times, but nobody said anything. They did recognize her.
So, she stayed inside, too, pretty much?
She tried. She stayed. She went to the bank as she did and then she went home. She stayed inside.
Inside, yeah.
Anyhow, we came to this Dobšina and we uh, had a real nice life. We were there all summer long. We were visiting with our--these friends and we were going on picnics and...
Did you get your own apartment in this city?
Yes. We had an apartment, yeah. And, we lived a nice normal little life like, you know, in a small city and there, there was no shul anymore. We just--they made uh, minyan in a house, you know. And, uh, we cooked and we baked and, and did the normal things like you and we were waiting that this should, this should uh, uh,..
End.
...be over--end. And, every half an hour, every ten minutes all kind of news came where the Russians are, where the Germans are, how they are progressing. We knew that he cannot win, this Hitler, that war. We knew that his uh, closest--whatever the plans, we knew that it has to come to an end, that this not going to be--because if he would have won, it would be no use for us to stay alive. We would have killed ourselves, you know?
Yeah.
That maniac, because if we would not kill ourselves, he would have finished us, but everybody knew that his plans were wahnsinnig? You know what a wahnsinnig is? Like uh, uh, stupid dream like he had, like how--finished.
Yeah.
Not only 6,000,000 Jews died. You know how many Germans died there.
Sure.
Anyway, I don't feel sorry for them who died. I just--they died with a gun in their ha...ha...hands, not like we did, the innocent uh, I don't have to--if you are involved, you know, and I don't want to go into that. So how many children and old people? My father--my grandfather was seventy-five-years old, how he went. He couldn't walk anymore and they, they took him into the wagon and, and they told us--I--he didn't see us because he lived in, in Hungary. But he was an old man, he was seventy-five, he's not too old today but those days, forty years ago, it was...
Yeah.
Anyway, I, I can't help uh, jumping because really if I think about it I uh, anyway, we lived in the Dobšina for a few months and it was pretty good. We have beautiful communication with my sister. We knew what she was doing. We sent her packages. She couldn't have no kosher meat there because there was absolutely nothing so we even sent her from this Dobšina some chicken and some um, whatever we could, you know. And she was working there and we were staying here.
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