Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Irene Sobel - September 8, 1998

Conclusion

Do you think that the Child Survivor of Hidden Children Group has been of some help?

Here again I am ambivalent about it. First time I came and they wanted to know who I am. And I couldn't talk about myself without telling them what brought me on here and I talked to them about Naomi. And it was a wonderful feeling to see that here I have met those strangers, friends who have not known me and saw me and heard me for the first time and were very compassionate and understanding and it felt wonderful. When I went to the next meeting and they talked about the conferences and the politics and all that and it seemed to me so boring and so trivial, I mean I absolutely had no interest. And so it, so illogical, like, like a power play. Uh, and I asked myself "What am I doing here?" I skipped a few months and then I came back. Some aspects, yes, it kind of brings me back in touch with I--the survivor, which someone is, something is kindled in me and. But there are some things that I find, again, totally uninteresting and so remote. As I said, this politics and, and, and the preoccupation, the, the national this, the survivors, the hidden children and all this seems so much baloney that. So this is why I'm ambivalent. And some people as individuals I enjoy and others I don't. Not that I dislike them but I have no interest in getting to know them better than what I do. ???

Well, I guess there's ambivalence about all aspects of this is what it comes down...

Yeah.

...to, besides just the group. Anything else you want to add to this?

No. I talked and talked not just about my past but about my present.

They are connected.

Yes.

Okay, this is a good place to stop. Thank you.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn