Malka Sternberg - January 31, 2008
Feelings on Being Sent Away
Do you think the little girl stayed in your life?
No, no, my mother stayed with me. My mother stays with me to this day but I don't, I don't blame her for sending me. On the contrary I think she saved our lives. I tried to tell that to my brother that she saved our lives. You know, there was an extra transport with through the Winton...
The last one...
The last one which didn't come out. One child is left of them. She's the owner of this hotel.
And her brother.
Yes. Yeah, her brother I don't think was on the train. She was on the train.
I am going to interview her...
Yes, well you'll hear...
...so I'll find out.
Yes. So, she's the only one that's left of them on this train and I'm certain what would have been our, our fate. So I tried to tell him that his mother saved his life and no, no talking to him. "She abandoned me. Four years I was old and she abandoned me." It's like an illness, you know, like somebody has cancer, it sticks in you. He was killed in a car crash in--it's now seven years ago. His wife--he married a lovely, lovely wife. I've gotta a picture here of them. It's the only one I can get ahold of now. I--the good ones which I have mislaid. That was their engagement. That was years ago. Here he is--my brother--when he was a school boy, a school boy in England. And here he is with my father in Israel, he was visiting.
Had you heard anything about what was going on with the Jews in Europe?
What everybody else heard I heard as well.
But not while you were living...
Well, we didn't know it at the time but later on when people knew I knew as well. This pictures speaks for itself how neglected we were that while I was staying in England in one of the places. This is my brother as a grown man, that's his wife and that's me next to her. It's on a ??? in, in, Jerusa...in Israel. They came very, very oft...as often as they could. They came and they stayed with us and we went to ??? with them. You can see him grown up here. He is climbing a tree--he was already then, then in nearly his sixties there. I just came across ??? in our house. Moishe took his picture.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn