Adele Sandel - [n.d.]
Life After Liberation
We stayed in that--with these people ??? for a few days. Then, we went up back to the Dobšina to the town where we came from. Not where I was born but where we had to go, you know, what--we didn't find anything. Absolutely nothing there. No clothes, no furniture, no pots and pans; absolutely nothing. The neighbors, they took away everything. It was still snow. It was the last of January--I don't know twenty-eighth or something.
What about the box that was in the ground of uh, jewelry? Do you remember the box of jewelry your husband--your father...
Oh, we took, we took, we took that with us.
Uh-huh.
We took it with us. We took it with us. We hid it someplace. I don't even know where, but we took it with us because it's here.
You have that jewelry now? Okay.
My mother--oh, I forgot to show you. She still has it in her ears. The ring--my--the doctor when I told you he saved me, he didn't wanted money. He only wanted uh, wanted uh, uh, all these good things what we had. We had beautiful paintings. We had two famous paintings from a famous painter--Munkšcsy was his name--but a painting here would be now at least $100,000. He, he knew that we had those two paintings. He took--he wanted those two paintings. He took that ring from my mother. He knew whatever we had because he was very good friends, you know, but...
What about the earrings?
The earrings were hidden. He didn't see them. He--whatever nice we had in the house--we had beautiful antique uh, vases and antique silver and uh, antique furniture--whatever we had went to him. My father said, "I don't care. I have my child. Let him take whatever he wants." ??? I'm a very, very expensive person.
Hm.
Anyway, we came back to that city, you know, and we didn't hear about my sister, what was going on with her, because then we already knew what was going on. We heard what happened to the Hungarian Jews and what happened with all the Jews. We didn't know if she is alive or not in that Pressburg because every day they were uh, catching Jews and they were like uh, like ??? you know, one another and they know about this and I know about that and, and they were just making those transports and everything went to Auschwitz, everything. They made forty, fifty people--they put them in those wagons and they--that's where they went, that's... AK: Is there any way...
...where they went.
...they could tell from appearance that people were Jewish? Appearance alone?
They could tell from me because I had black hair and I looked real Jewish, but not my sister. She was a blonde, like...
Oh.
She, she didn't. So, our biggest fear was that she wasn't alive. We were all four saved and how it was after the w...after that. What a horror it was in that city. It--we were running around like without heads. Everybody was, was looking for their children uh, for their husbands, for their parents. One was here, one was there. "Did you hear about my husband?" "Did you see my son?" The, the transportation was so terrible. Cars weren't moving. Trains weren't going. There was no food. It was just such a terrible war. You have no idea. You can't imagine here with, with all the goodness and all the luxury what was going on. Do you know that an onion, an onion was such a big deal? A plain onion. My brother somehow uh, brought an onion from somebody and my mother hid that onion--just took a little piece every day for something and she had it hidden some place we shouldn't find it.
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