Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Vera Schey - June 10, 1994

Did you know Eichmann's name? Was that a familiar...

No, not at that time. Oh. I left out another story. I had a Schutzpass, a Swiss--not, not from uh, uh, not the Swedish. That was in between also.

A protective, a protection...

You know, it's so many things happening these few months.

Protection card basically.

Protection card. It was like a passport, but it really stated that you are under the protection of the Swiss government. The Swiss were the first to come out, who came out with it. Uh, Wallenberg and the Swedish came later. The Swiss were giving it by the hundreds. So they were not as valuable as the Swedish were. But by the time the Swedish came I already was hiding under fal...with false papers. But for awhile I was in a Swiss house too.

How did you get in a Swiss house?

By getting--I had a friend I think from uh, not Hada...there was an organization like Hadassah, but for a younger people, for, for women. I, I can't...

[pause]

And I belonged to that and I had a friend who had a friend. I mean, this is how things worked. You had a friend who had a friend who had a friend. And from the Swedish uh, from the uh, Swiss embassy I had the paper, the Schutzpass. I don't have it unfortuna...I have the paper, my false paper, that I.D. I have, but all the rest. I guess when I went into hiding I must have torn it up because that was naturally under my own name, Vera Lauffer and my mother. And we lived for maybe a month in that Swiss house too, but that I don't remember. At, at that point it started not being safe. The, the only thing which seemed to me personally reasonable is, is going under fal...with the false paper. And I think...

What...

But they were taking-- deportations were going on and we knew that because we knew that my uncle, for instance, they were in a line and this one goes, this one doesn't. And my aunt went and s...her, her sister went and my uncle didn't go.