Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Vera Schey - June 10, 1994

Reminders

Last thing, is there anything that um, are there moments when something happens that touches off a memory of something back then? Some--daily basis.

On a daily basis you mean? I think when I read about Fascism now in the Italian government, it's horrible. When I heard from Hungarian friends and we still have some friends in Hungary and we go back. The happenings there and I heard about in the Parliament, one of--it has changed now, there was new elections actually, you know about it. But like a couple years ago, yes, it comes. You, you have a feeling like, God, wasn't that enough? Wasn't what happened enough to teach them? Still this will go on? This can happen again? And I would never say it can happen, because seeing that how nobody lifted a finger--these are the exceptions, a few friends here or there for a few of us. Nobody, the whole world didn't lift a finger. It can happen again. So when it, when I think of what happened, I think of what happened when, when it happened in this year, when, when I read about uh, anti-Semitic remarks or, or synagogues being desecrated or, or uh, cemeteries. Then, then it starts flowing back, all that happened. And so in everyday basis, I don't think I think about it.

Is it connected to things like to Bosnia and Rwanda and...

No. Can't be com....I mean it's horrible what happens there, but how can it be compared with a structured, planned by a civilized nation? How can you compare that because there are ethnic misunderstandings? Not that I want to belittle it, not that it's not horrible. Nothing. The Armenian thing. Nothing can compare to this. This was the most cultured nation in the world. Really. Weren't the Germans the most--at, at least among the most cultured? That this could have happened. What, what can compare to it? Nothing. What can forgive the world to stand by and do nothing? Roosevelt, we thought Hungary, Roosevelt was God. God. God he was not. And what the state department, what--he had knowledge, they had knowledge here already months and months and months before. Maybe not from '39 on, I'm not saying... Maybe it's so close to my heart the Hungarian Jews, but the Hungarian Jews should have never happened. The war was lost at the time of it. In the last few months they were able to do this and nobody lifted a finger. How can you compare that to anything?

Well, anything you want to add besides?

Hm?

Anything else you want to add?

No, I just, I just hope that my children will be involved in, in some kind of a Holocaust education or, or talking about it or not letting forget it. And, and have their children know about it. And I can't say that they're doing it to the point where I would like to see it.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn