Vera Schey - June 10, 1994
Deportations
Did you have any idea what the, what the qualifications for selection were? Why some were going in one direction and others...
Not really because these were, this, this aunt and uncle were about the same age group, I mean, four or five years difference. So it wasn't that he was an old man and she was a young woman. And they were uh, also living in one of the houses with the yellow star. And one day they ordered them to go downstairs. They lined up and this and this and this and this and this goes to work camp. This is what they said. Never saw them after that. And he was... So it was...The whole thing, the survival was sheer accident. Sheer luck, sheer accident. You helped your way a little bit, like I did. Not if you were in a camp I don't think you could. But it was sheer accident. I could have been caught several times. And, and several times it was really a hair. Whether I was in the right place at the right moment or whether I... It was just accident. And, and my mother, who was a very self-efficient and very uh, self-reliant person left all the decisions for me. When to go for hiding, when we went to apply for this apartment from the authorities, all that. Whatever you think is right. Because she, at that point she felt that maybe because I'm younger I can do it better or she didn't want the responsibility, I don't know.
But she went.
She--whatever I said, whatever, she was--it was fine.
When you heard--you said you had a boyfriend who was taken to a labor camp.
Yeah.
How did you hear that he died?
He didn't die. He came back.
Oh I thought uh, but people in your family.
Some others, some others. How did I hear about it?
Yeah.
When everybody started coming back. When it was over. And one--I was--we seen my uncle, for instance. My mother's brother who was my absolute favorite in the whole family. Uh, he had uh, not rheu...rheumatism, but something similar, I don't know what it is in English. ??? is there such a thing? No. I don't know what it's called, but it's similar to rheumatism. And when they uh, when they started going from--??? was one of the gathering places for these men, he already was limping and going behind the rest of them. And we knew that it's over. And one of his very close friends who was with him came back, was alive and told us he was shot in the ???.
He was shot.
My aunt--I found out, who went to Bergen-Belsen and then to Theresienstadt, she was alive when they liberated them, then she died in Theresienstadt. And that I know because her sister-in-law came back and she was with her. And she was so--she didn't want her to go to the hospital, she tried to take care of her. But she was so sick that they finally did take her to the hospital. And that was the last she ever knew. She went to the hospital day after day. There was typhoid. She got typhoid fever. They wouldn't let her in. But there was somebody who was coming and going, a nurse and she found out she was there and she found out that she died. And she came back, so that's how we know that she died. A lot of--my grandfather died ???. Where a couple of my other uncles and aunts died, I have no idea.
Were they deported?
They were deported. I know that from ??? they went to Auschwitz, that much I know. But when she died or where.
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