Regina Silver - June 21, 1982
Post-War Anti-Semitism
Okay, when you went back to Langenbielau, did you recall any anti-Semitism?
There?
Yes.
There was plenty [laughs]. There was uh, there was uh, still the, the Germans there when I came. I lived in a house with a German doctor he give me a room in his house. Und uh, when I went to the hospital to have mein daughter Esther someone gave me a note in my room she gave me a letter and abandoned the letter and she was saying "Heil Hitler"and I got so scared that I told my husband, "I'm not, I'm not going to stay at this hospital I'm afraid," but she kissed the letter and say "Heil Hitler." And I told this to the, the doctor there was a woman, like uh, doctor, woman doctor, not a man doctor, there was a woman and I told her this and she asked me to, to I should show her who did it she was a German too but then they, they fired her from the hospital then.
What an experience.
Oh plenty filled with plenty.
Do you remember any other experiences?
There was an experience in, in this doctor's house. Mein uh, little boy was three years old and I came I told you I got the bris when he was six weeks and we came back to Poland in Langenbielau and we were living in this German doctor's house so there was a kitchen to cook and they had a, she had a maid so the doctor's wife came into the kitchen and she saw mein little boy's head on the chair so she went over and uh, and took this little head like this like it was a disease she was.
Between your thumb and your index finger?
Yes and she carried it in anger to the door button.
The knob.
I was so annoyed and my husband came in and I told him this and so he went over to her and we give her because we weren't afraid then because we, we, we knew. They made them wear uh, yellow bands, the Germans then the Poles did--they did to them what they did to the Jews.
Oh I didn't know that.
Yes when the Poles took over this German town they made the Germans wear bands. Und they got a curfew they were not allowed in the restaurants and not allowed in the nightclubs were not allowed to go over then--like a curfew they have to be off from the street at 10:00 in the night. You couldn't see a German in the street.
They had the whole house though and you had one room or did they have one room also?
They went up in the attic. There was a lot of other families when they came in from the war took the rooms the Poles...
Oh each of the rooms...
the Poles give them and they cook in one kitchen. So he told her, "You 'Heil Hitler' lassie--we haven't got enough?" My husband told her that.
Did you talk about your experiences after the war?
To who?
Anyone.
I'm talking between...
To neighbors?
To Neighbors, within my children, all the time, all the time.
What is their reaction, their response to it?
Some of them say it's nothing in comparison uh, not even one uh, not what the people uh, how much we lived through in Russia was not what the people live in Auschwitz where they been in concentration camps they got hundred times worse. Please, we were, nobody was standing with a gun trying to, to kill us every second like they were by the Germans.
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