Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Baruch Spergel - February 4, 2008

Feelings on Experience

Were you happy?

ZF: I don't know. It was a-nobody asked, nobody asked anybody whether they were happy or do you want anything or do you need anything. It just didn't exist. What-you, you, you did what you could when you could. That's it. It was a very different kind of life because every time I was with somebody else. Here, here I was with the aunt and then was with the other aunt, then the old couple and then I was with a nanny and then I went to, to a boarding school in, in, in Wales for two and half years-they did as well and from there I went to Bradford because it was very bad at the end in this boarding school so they couldn't put me into any home so I was there in a hotel-in sort of a hotel place where ??? took care of me. I had lice and I had infantigo and all this and you can't put me into a family with small children and so we stayed there and she took care of me. She washed my hair with gasoline or whatever it was and until I was in a better state. And then I went up to Newcastle to be with a cousin and each um, time it's uh, new different people, middle of the school year with no friends. It's, it's like a, like a sausage this whole thing, you know, this is a slice of Newcastle, slide of this, slice of this, slice of this.

Let me ask you...

ZF: You don't ask any questions-we didn't ask any questions but I was-in Newcastle I was pretty miserable. I was very lonely and also in, in, in-when, when we were in ??? Castle it wasn't a very good place to be. This was a school-a Jewish school that had been um, evacuated to Wales because of the bombing. They came originally from Brighton. There were those reports they were bombed.


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