Zwi Steiger - March 27, 1982
Life After the War
Do you have any documents of any kind uh, from that period?
The postcard that my brother sent me was from Auschwitz that he sent, I left in Czechoslovakia because I had my name of it. And when I was uh, escaping Czechoslovakia I didn't have anything with my name on it, so I left it there and I'm sure that it doesn't exist. Documents from that period? It....
Any identification papers or...
I have my, I have my paper--I have a graduation from that Hebrew high school that I went to that I had on me while I was in camp. My mother sent it to me when they were taken--before they were taken away to, to the ghetto, to Ungvar. She sent it to me and I have it with me. I have a identify...I had an identification paper from labor camp that I, I left in Prague too and, because I didn't want to carry it with me. Otherwise I don't, I don't have. While I was in Prague I was trying to get some compensation for property destroyed at home and uh, and I started uh, the so called bureaucratic procedures to uh, declare my parents as dead, which uh, was the first step in Czechoslovakia to, to establish some uh, claims. And--but then, you know, when I left Czechoslovakia everything uh, turned into, into nothing after this. Nothing came out of it. So I don't have any documentation. That's amazing. You ask me if some documents--I remember when I came to Prague after the war and I try to get into school and they always asked you documents--birth certificate and uh, domicile uh, documents and school documents. So they asked me, "Do you have your birth certificate?" I say, "I don't. I don't have." And I remember I said--yeah--I said, "How about this document because I don't have that? I don't have. My parents hid it." I should have documents. And you had to search for certain documents to establish a basis. And the Czechs are very good at this. They had documents from--in the central office in the ministry of interior in, in Prague from the census from the 20s or the 30s. So from there I got some copy that there was a guy that existed by this name--my father--and that I was his son and so forth. And from there I started establishing some documents, you know, to--and I had my uh, my, my certificate that I went to school. And uh, then you, one document you get another and some testimonials of people that knew me--that I'm the same as this guy that is on the document. So this is--but from that era? Of course, a lot of things I lost at home, nothing was left and what was on me was too, except for that, that...
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