Malka Sternberg - January 31, 2008
Leaving for England
Tell me a little more about the platform when you said...
The platform was terrible. Everybody was weeping, the parents--children not so much. The children--we were going for an adventure, we were going to England, we're going to England, we're going to see the sea. We've never seen the sea before. We going to see the sea and we've got uncles and aunts in England and all of us were given absolutely food for I think for months. One girl in our con...compartment had a whole goose. Yes, her mother gave her a whole fried goose--big goose and none of us could eat anything. We just couldn't eat, we were too excited and it wouldn't work. And that platform my mother wanted to take us off and she was weeping and crying and it is a scene I'll never forget and it was the last time I saw her.
Do you remember what she said to you?
She just told me take care of my brother. He's so little. He was four exactly like on that picture and to be a big girl, you know, for the aunts. But she told me that it might happened that we never see each other again and I thought that's impossible. I told her, "It can't. It can't. I've never been without my mother." But she didn't repeat it and she didn't want to worr...didn't want to ??? everything and we came to England. The trip was amazing. None of us ate in the whole--all of the compartments near us none of us could have touched the food. And then we came to Holland and then they gave us sandwiches. We were starving already by then but we had the sandwiches but we couldn't eat them until we got on the boat. We got on the boat and there we got an appetite. We hadn't eaten for two, two days, none of us. The food all had to be left. We couldn't go out with anything, just as we were. We were given the cases and everything were in our , in our cab...in our cabins but we were given them afterwards so we got off but I knew that my brother who was called ??? as a nickname, he hadn't eaten and I took out a skirt--you can see here it was a pleated skirt and I had underneath knickers with the elastic so I stuffed those with these buns which I know that he liked. The buns were stuffed full of buns and we went on the boat and we got an English supper which was very, very thin slices of bread that was almost transparent with cucumbers in the middle. Very nice and very ap...appetizing but we were starving, to us it was nothing. We got a glass of cocoa as well so everyone was hungry. And my brother had started crying, "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry," so I said, "Stop saying you're hungry and tell me you want pee pee." So, he said, "I want pee pee, I want pee pee," he straight away got the idea. I took him to the toilet and gave him these buns and that went on right until we ca...came to, to England.
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