Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Vera Schey - June 10, 1994

Remembering Experiences

Well...

Unless you have any specific questions.

I just want to know if there's anything that you think you may have wanted to include that you might have left out.

I'll probably think about it after you leave.

Well then call me then.

[laughs]

An episode, an experience, some encounter with the Germans or with the Arrow Cross or...

Uh, well I think that the two, the one when I jumped off the streetcar and the one when they came at night are the most outstanding. I had other encounters with German soldiers uh, but they were not unpleasant because--I think I even, somehow it, it seems to me that we were in a street somewhere and they were asking directions and they you know, not, I mean, they were just walking around and, and I offered because I spoke so well Engli...I mean, German. And they were so friendly. And s...but these were not, not the ones who were...

Did you have a yellow star?

No.

You were in hiding.

No, no. It was either before the yellow star in the very beginning or, or when I was in hiding. No, I don't think I would have approached them with a yellow star, even when it was legal to be on the street.

But they were friendly.

I don't know if I wouldn't have. You know uh, to begin, maybe I would have because I, I, I was just very confident. And the ones you saw in the city, in Budapest, walking around. They were occupying forces or whatever. They were not the ones who came to pick you up or to, to, to murder or to schlep you away or whatever.

They were Wehrmacht?

And, huh?

They were Wehrmacht? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were not the SS.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn