Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Baruch Spergel - February 4, 2008

Living Through the Blitz

They bombed Golders Green too?

ZF: The bombed Golders Green, the blowed-that bombed all here-all London was bombed. It wasn't one of the worst places, which is...

BS: No, I...

ZF: And the kids would go out in the morning and look, you know, for shrapnel, you know, they would-everybody had their collections of stuff ??? children. I don't, I don't...

BS: I was in London during the Blitz.

ZF: You, you was in London during the whole Blitz.

BS: I was there during the whole Blitz, the bombing and everything but I uh, I got used to it. I think I never went to a shelter. I just put the, the blanket over my head and said, "Whatever will be, will be," that's it. And somehow we got through it but few hours the bombs fell and once I went to work when-this was, was ??? at the time of V-1. The V-1, you know, was like a jet plane because suddenly it stopped and it fell and well, we watched it again and again.

ZF: Rockets.

Rockets.

BS: And one day I went to work in the morning with, with one fellow worker and we saw one coming in our direction so I, I, laid down there on the street besides the what's it name? The, um...

ZF: Pavement.

BS: Pavement, yes. And the other one ran a little different. The friend ran in a different direction and he was killed. I found him without a head, yes. We had um, it was about the closest I came to being hit but the when it was done it was a lot of bombing in London. But, but one day I, I-there was a very strong bombardment and I woke up in the morning I couldn't recognize-I couldn't get to work. I worked in the East End where most of the bombs fell and I had to walk to work because there was no, no uh, trains, nothing, no, no buses and it was hard but one gets used to everything. People, people somehow get used to the worst nightmares but uh, of course we were lucky, you know, we were in London, we were not in, in-under German occupation.


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