Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Death in the Camp
Uh-huh.
And I think at some point I, I did, I was cognizant of the fact, eventually, that this was some place that dead bodies were brought.
Uh-huh. What did they do with the dead bodies?
They uh, they burned them.
They had the crematorium there?
Mm-hm. As a matter of fact, at the end of the war they, many people were dying uh, faster because there was more sickness, they weren't being taken care of at all. And they were burning them uh, fast. And one of my job--one of the jobs my dad told me he had was to, at the end they, not just him, but there were men carrying ashes from the crem...crematorium, over to a river and dumping them into the river. And my dad collected some of these ashes and put them in some kind of a little leather thing. And sometime in the '70s he and my mother went to Israel and he had it buried there at Yad Vashem.
Oh wow.
He kept those ashes, and I remember those ashes terrifying me...
Uh-huh.
Throughout my childhood after the war...
Uh-huh.
Because I knew they existed.
Uh-huh.
And I understood what they were from.
Yes, horrible. So, let me, I just--your moth...your dad is working, your mother is around? She's...
Around.
She's around, but she sounds like she is so frightened, upset, and scared that she was there but she was just so distraught and...
Yeah.
She couldn't...
I had a stronger connection during those years to my dad...
Okay.
Then I did to my mother, I recognize that. And later it reversed.
Uh-huh.
Later I became much, much uh, more appreciative...
Mm-hm.
Of my mother and as time went on less and less appreciative of my dad.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Without getting to, you know, what, what do you think changed the...
I, I think what changed was that um, as I was growing up in the United States and my parents failed in every way shape available to adapt to life here, and to help me in my growing up process.
Mm-hm.
Um, I began to realize that they were not meeting my needs.
Mm-hm.
And as much as I thought that my dad was keeping us alive during the war, it so reversed itself as I was growing up in the United States to the polar opposite I became aware of the fact that he wasn't getting anywhere.
Uh-huh. He wasn't getting...
He, he wasn't getting how to live here, he wasn't getting what needed to be done. He couldn't work. We were desperately poor.
Ah.
There was uh, he couldn't speak the language, they couldn't write the language. Anything having to do with school they didn't understand a thing about it. Everything uh, including my own report cards, I used to sign my own report cards.
[laughs]
Forget about it. They didn't know for what. They uh, and then as I got older I began to, I think as a way of saving, trying to save myself. That's the...
Yeah.
Snow removal.
Yeah.
As a way of trying to save myself uh, because I was always fearful of just losing it somehow. I began to read, I know this sounds weird, but I began to read books on psychology...
Mm-hm.
From the age of twelve on.
Wow.
I read them all of my life and I think that's what helped save me emotionally, to a large extent. Although it didn't really because I had many very, very tough years, but I uh, I became gradually informed because I feel like I spent my entire early childhood, middle years, young years learning how to psychologically survive, despite all the things that were bothering me.
Yes.
And bothering me badly. And I became very disappointed in how my father could not make it in the United States. Probably I became angry also towards him uh, and indirectly towards my mother, but then I realized uh, you know, my mother uh, my mother was a, you know, a European lady born in 1909.
Hm.
What did she, she didn't...
Yeah, yeah.
Know.
Yeah.
So, uh...
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