Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Malka Sternberg - January 31, 2008

No foster families for you.

No, no foster families but what the family--we were the fifth wh...wheel to the cart and they, they usually found somebody to take care of us--there was not just my brother, there was a cousin as well. But one of the pictures I've got from us when we were there I couldn't find. I've got other pictures here but there some--what--spur of the moment. Before I go on I want to tell you the tragic part. My brother isn't alive anymore.

I'm sorry.

It was a car crash. He was a doctor and I've never seen a doctor with the, the patients so, so full of love for him. Was when he sold his practice it was Tisha B'Av there. He's got three sacks of let...letters which they wrote him--everyone didn't know the other person involved. For thirty years no, no patient ever left him and they all insisted that their rest of the family as they grew that he should be their doctor as well. So, he was a very, very good doc...appreciated doctor, a good doctor.

Was this in England?

In Eng...no, it's in Canada. Afterwards when, when--I'm talking about England now, this is another picture of my mother. That was taken--that was really after we left.

What is she wearing?

Nothing, it was her hair.

No, that's not a star or something is it?

No, it's probably a brooch or something.

Brooch, I see.

I can't see it so well. This my mother was very angry with my father that he had photographed him as he was playing, he was not, not prop...properly dressed. She was very particular. That's for that time. This is from later times right here. That's my father.

Tell me again, what did you father do?

He was a business man. You know the shmate business?

I do.

That's what--yeah, he had a shmate business but he did very well with it. Apart from that my father had a big problem. He was shell shocked in the First World War and that lasted him right through life until to his dying day. He was in his seventies when he died and he still was shell shocked with everything. And how my mother took care of him in such a condition--okay let's, let's go on to something relevant now. So anyway, this came first of all the other places. We didn't go to Uruguay we didn't go to any of the other unmentionable na...names of--I don't even know the names of the places but we did--England came first with this transport.