Zwi Steiger - March 27, 1982
Religious Attitudes
Before the war you were, you--as you've said were from a religious family. You were very religious and observant.
We were religious and observant. My father didn't have a beard but he was--I think he was--my mother was deeply religious. They--but at the same time my father and my mother had a broad education. And uh, and the thing that I remember from my home that we had art books, that we had books in general literature, in German or Hungarian. And uh, they were well read and I'm sure that, that uh, my father would, and my mother would have had no problems adjusting to life in, in London, England or to--or in New York, if they had known the language, so...
You're not--you don't lead a religiously observant life now...
Now? No, I...
...and you haven't since the war...
No I even...
...since you left home.
Since I left home, and even before, it was--I--not that I didn't, I didn't hate religious life, I--the people I, I went to the shul, I knew, I knew them, they knew me, they knew where I stand and uh, and uh, they knew where I stand--I don't know if I'm repeating myself--but basically despite being--having a religious upbringing I was never deeply religious. I read and I enjoy reading uh, some prayers, but I wasn't religious. The war itself it made me less religious. And I--the experience of the war and the, the bestiality of people. And there's no, there's no account--they didn't give an account, except that some of them died, the perpet...the--those that uh, perpetrated the killing. And I always felt that there was one justice in life and this that death evens us out because if there is a supreme human being, the way I was brought up in, in cheder, you know that there is justice and there's somebody who controls things and that can do anything he wants. And then your kids---everything is, you know, if God wants a broom will shoot. And there was nobody who, who, who could control it, or did control it. And if there is, if I would be an omnipotent, I would control it and I would do a better job than He.
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