Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Residents of the Camp
So. May I ask you a change uh, do you remember, you know uh, Terezin is famous for uh, as a family, sort of infamous actually...
Yeah.
As a family camp and we, the, the children's drawings that we see of Theresienstadt.
Mm-hm.
Did you come...
None of that.
None of that.
And the reason, I think as, as I think about it now, is I was too young.
Ah.
I wasn't old enough to be going to any kind of classes or school or anything.
Uh-huh.
I was three.
Uh-huh.
And then four, and then five, but they still--they did not do that with children that young. I don't know how old you had to be, but...
Mm-hm. Yeah.
You had to be older, because I did not attend any kind of formal anything that, cause' I think I would've remem... I remember going to school right after we were freed in Prague.
Uh-huh.
And I remember all that, but no school, no drawing memory, no school memory.
No. Do you remember other, being with other children at all?
No.
No. So...
Adults.
You, you remember adults?
I remember people that would disappear, they would be there, they were people that my parents apparently must have had some kind of relationship with. Uh, I have one clear memory of going to see this couple with my parents in Terezin to where they lived, wherever that was. And, I remember them asking me if I wanted something. I mean, I have such a sad clear memory of that, and I said I wanted bread with some jam.
Hm.
And the woman actually gave me some kind of piece of bread with something like jam, because it was sweet. But I remember them laughing, my parents laughing and I-- my feelings were--I was embarrassed.
Oh.
I remember feeling ashamed that I asked for bread...
Oh.
And jam.
Mm-hm. Hm.
Maybe because uh, I, uh, I don't know, maybe because I should have understood that there...
There was none...
Was no bread and jam, but that's what I asked for.
So, during the day you wer... were you, were by yourself, you were with your mother, who, who?
During the day I played in that courtyard a lot.
By yourself?
By myself. Now I remember occasionally someone coming through there, a person coming there uh, talking to me. I remember some young people, I'm gonna say maybe, I don't know, at that time they would have seemed adult to me, but I don't know that they were grown up adult, maybe late teens or early twenties.
Mm-hm.
I, I just remember people uh, but mainly I remember my mother and my father.
Mm-hm.
And being by myself a lot.
Mm-hm. Where, where were your mother and father during the day?
My father went to Arbeit work of some sort. Uh, I think he was in a group that used to, do like field work and then he caught fish...
Mm-hm.
For them.
Mm-hm.
And my mother, I do not have anywhere near as clear a memory of mother as I do of my dad during that time.
Mm-hm.
Uh, I think my dad played a far more prominent role...
Mm-hm.
Than my mother did, but she was there.
Mm-hm.
What I remember about my mother is always trying to give me something to eat and me not wanting to eat.
Oh wow.
One of the memories that I have, in terms of food, I have never in my adult life or in my young childhood or ever been able to drink milk...
Mm-hm.
For instance. I--in my mind I trace that back to the fact that one of the things my dad did for this Nazi guy is he and his wife had a cat. And my dad, one of my dad's jobs was to feed--bring goat milk to the cat.
Hm.
So that the cat would be fed. And he would steal some of this milk and put it into something or other, I don't know how he did it, and bring this milk back...
Mm-hm.
To this, where we lived in this pigsty. And my mother--and it had like a skin and stuff on top and I--it, it grossed me out even then. I was a little kid, but I didn't want to drink it and I was forced to drink it.
Mm-hm, yeah.
Because it was necessary on the one hand, but on the other hand I've never been able to look at, drink milk.
Mm-hm.
And have even the remotest desire to taste it, because I, I uh...
Yeah, yeah.
So.
Okay so, your, your, your parents are off at work. You're...
Not my mother.
Not your mother.
I remember her being, her presence there uh, and my dad leaving and coming back, leaving and coming back, leaving and coming back.
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