Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Adele Sandel - [n.d.]

Mother Passes as Gentile

Yeah.

Whatever they came to offer for my father he bought for money. They came to offer--there was a time and you, you bought time with Hungarian vi...passport. So we bought it for $100,000 koruna. That was lots of money. There was a time when they came to--that everyday--uh, you know, paper that you are--you became Gentile. He made my mother a Gentile person. She went to the church, believe it or not, religious as she is, she wore--she never, she never wore her hair without, uh...

Covering.

...covering. She, she went to the church and she was praying there and she was kneeling in church on Sundays um, to save, you know, because that saved--it wasn't worth more than two, three weeks, but for those two, three weeks you bought life with the time, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And then in three weeks they, they, they um, found that person who was selling because he was selling for money. That was a, a Christian uh, Protestant priest, and he heard that the Jews want to do that so for money he did it. He took his books and he wrote in that this Irene ??? became Gentile on February 13, 1941, and he made a cross that she's Gentile ???. So, but from the people you had to show something so she went, my mother, two, three times in a church. She never--she almost died. That was the hardest thing for her to go and my father kept on begging her, "You are doing it for your children. You are doing it for your children. Go! You know, God knows that this is only fake and when you do that you think of Riboyne Shel O'lem how you love Him and you--how you respect Him and, and this is over we, we..." you know, it wasn't even a sin, I don't think it was a sin to do that because uh, really, because maybe those two, three weeks we wouldn't have. We would have all been transported away and we, we wouldn't be here.


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