Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Irene Sobel - September 8, 1998

Let me ask you just for a second. In all this time though you were in the States and even in Israel, did you tell anyone the story of what had happened during the war? Did you talk about it?

No, no. I didn't talk about it. I didn't talk to my children about it either.

Why?

Logically I can't explain. I felt that I had no need to talk about it. I was too busy living. I had no need to go back to something that was my past, that was a stage in my life and I was like a cat with nine lives and this is one of the lives and, and that, it was then. I somehow did not experience at all the need to talk about it.

And your mother, did your mother every talk?

No.

Did you ever talk to each other about it?

No.

And she knew your children.

Yes, she knew my children--well, she did not know Naomi. She knew my two boys. But uh, she died when Naomi was about two months old. And she was in Israel and I was here. I brought her over twice to visit us and she was very ill then too. And even when she came she was very ill. She died--she was fifty-eight.

That's very young.

Mm-hm. Now it seems to me. I'm...

Well, when did you decide to talk about it?

You know when I decided to talk about it? And it's very difficult for me to get back to that. Excuse me. Naomi was killed when she was twenty-eight, my daughter. Uh, she was vacationing in Jamaica and was on a motorcycle and was killed. We were very close. She was a very special young woman, very talented, a writer and a playwright that received a number of awards, including two Hopwood Awards. And we had a very close and open relationship.