Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Adele Sandel - [n.d.]

Relations with Gentiles

Excuse me...

Yes?

...let me just ask a few questions about the pool.

Sure.

How old were you when you were at the swimming pool?

I think sixteen.

About sixteen?

About fifteen or sixteen. So, most of our friends--we didn't know a difference between the Gentile and Jewish friends. We had about ten Jewish friends, about ten Gentile friends. My sister played beautifully the piano. We took lessons the same time her and me, but I never wanted to practice [cough] so to this day I don't know how to play, but she played. By the way, my sister died seventeen years ago. She was forty-two. But, at home she played beautiful the piano and she, she gave lessons to this uh, to these girls and we were, we were having such a good time always. We had absolutely, like, not an idea, that, that the Gentiles couldn't come to our house and we couldn't go there. We knew that they had their Sunday and we had our Shabbos and that was it. And we ate kosher and they didn't, but there was absolutely no difference. But when those troubled times came--started--they were just like shifting slowly away from us, you know drifting away. They didn't look in the direction where we were walking. As a matter of fact, 'til this day I remember, my best friend turned around when she saw me. I think that was the--that was the most uh, terrible thing what could happen to me because we were like sisters. We went to school together. We went to picnics together. We did, whatever, after school activities together and all of a sudden she just like turned around her head like that. So, I knew that she heared at home and she was probably, by her parents, she was told not to associate with us anymore. And, you saw already in the newspapers and your heard on the radio and every place that, that Jews are not well and they are murderers and we shouldn't--we have to kill them in order to make peace, and--not peace, I'm sorry eh, to make the city clean of them and they are parasites and that they are cancer and we have to cut them out. So, evidently, she was already poisoned by that so she did it, you know.


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