Tamara Sessler - February 4, 2008
Moving to an Orphanage
So, uh, my sister managed to get--knew somebody who was in charge of the committee who looked after children and they came and they uh, I don't know where they put me for a week or two but afterwards my sister also arranged for me through friends of hers or some acquaintances to go to an orphanage. This orphanage during the war--for the war effort they took in two boys and me who had parents. This was their little, you know, little bit of war effort. One of the boys is now in America and I think he's been either a space or atomic energy thing--he made it big. He looked for me twenty years ago but I never replied. And I was in this orphanage for two and half years. At first it was very bad because, you know, children are very cruel to each other. You don't speak their language they laugh at you so every night I used to hide underneath my blanket in a dormitory of thirty girl and cried myself my sleep. But eventually you can only cry so much, you get used it, my English improved. I managed it somehow. I had a very, very kind headmaster there. We went to chapel every Sunday and I said to him--I forget what his name was. They should've told us the ???, forgot the name from--just slipped my mind now. I said to him, "I can't go to chapel. I'm not uh, I'm Jewish, I'm not Christian." So he said, "You know what? Could you close your eyes? What you do between--behind those closed, closed eyes is between you and your God. Just go there and close your eyes like the rest of them do." I thought, I thought that was a very nice thing to say.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn