Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Almost Losing Her Father to Auschwitz
And that day, I don't remember the whole day, but I have uh, two really intense memories from that. I remember going to the train station with my mother and my dad was on a train, and I remember thinking, “I think we're going to die.”
Hm.
Because I knew he was leaving and the train kept like, forwarding and then backing up and I just remember there being a long time with my mother, it was like a wooden, some kind of a wooden uh, it was a depot that I remember there were like two um, like sentry booths with Nazis uh, on each side and they had a gun.
Mm-hm.
That I remember like, over their shoulder. They had a uniform on and I remember my dad when he could get to some kind of a space, I don't remember if it was a window or a crack, you know, still talking to us and yelling to us. I did not know that that train, at that time, I had no way of understanding that, that train was taking these people to die uh, to Auschwitz, where most of those went. My mother did not explain anything to me, I just remember this severe, intense anxiety. And then eventually, the train pulled out with my dad.
Mm-hm.
Now this is the part that um, I mean, I don't have a clear understanding of it either, but it is what it is, it just happened.
Mm-hm.
When the train pulled out...
Mm-hm.
My mother said we have to go back. And I told my mother no, because daddy's gonna come back and I have to wait here, in so many words. I didn't speak English then, I spoke Yiddish and Czech, but with my mother and my dad I spoke primarily Yiddish.
Yiddish.
And I refused to leave uh, the, the, I refused to leave from where the train had, had left, had pulled out.
Mm-hm.
And little by little the people that were there to wave or to say goodbye to whomever was on the train, everybody left. My mother got mad at me and gave me a whack because I refused to leave. And I told my mother, but daddy's gonna come back.
Mm-hm.
And this, the train station was not that far from where we lived, it was near that courtyard. All I remember is that eventually my mother yelling at me, everybody was gone, she left me there, she told me uh, come, come home when you come home.
Hm.
I mean, she simply left me there. I was very uh, single minded because I remember saying over and over, they're going to bring daddy back.
Mm-hm.
Now, from my parents, from my dad actually uh, the middle of this story is filled in. A truck, about an hour after the train left or something like that, I don't know the exact time, was sent out to stop the train. The truck had in it the Nazi guy that my dad built these fish catching things for, and that my dad apparently was of use to this guy. When he found out that my dad was on the train he sent the truck out...
Hm.
To get my dad.
Wow.
Now my dad has told me that when they stopped the train at some point, they did stop it, they didn't know which of the uh, which of the train parts he was on.
Uh-huh.
And so, they started calling his name and banging on there and he thought he was going to be pulled off to be shot for some reason. He thought it was, so he wouldn't answer.
Oh my.
He did not--he didn't want to respond because he, he thought he was going to be shot. The part that I myself remember though, is still being at the train station where the train pulled out on this wooden, wooden plank that was set up there. And I remember a truck with my father sitting in the bed of the truck, coming back to Theresienstadt with my father.
Wow.
And then I went home.
Wow, wow. Wow.
And that's a true story.
Wow, wow.
[sighs] Bizarre.
Yeah.
It seems um, unlikely and unreal.
But...
But I remember it.
But he did come back.
He, he did come back.
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