Helen Stransky - January 31, 2008
Jewish Identity
You had your identity taken away.
Yeah and, and my uncle and, and my father's family didn't want the identity revealed either. My cousins on my father's side uh, they had intermarried and they didn't want the background exposed. Um...
So how do you feel about that?
Well, sorry because they ostracized me and they ostracized--the oldest one--the oldest cousin ostracized me as well. Um, they were afraid that I would reveal the truth. Um, but they didn't really have anything personal against me. They were just afraid that their children would know.
Do you think that's a kind of anti-Semitism?
Well, I suppose so. What can you do? They were afraid. That's what--the way their mother had trained them.
Well and your uncle had experienced something similar.
Yeah. Um, so I'll say that the house came back to us and not only that and um, good things happened. Then there was insurance from my grandfather came back and that's happened, I don't know, in the last five years. It was money from America that came to both my brother and I, insurance money that was left from my grandfather in the Czech Republic. He was insured in a couple of com...companies and we were both given a lot of money.
Was there Wiedergutmachung from, from the German government for your parents?
Um, no--well there was. There was a restitution you're talking about.
Yes.
Yeah, there was a restitution um, but nothing, nothing concrete, no. When my, when my uncle died he left money to my brother and he left money to me. Not much, two thousand to my--two thousand dollars to me and four thousand for my brother and I don't know where that came from exactly. Um, it was...
So he may have got restitution.
He might've.
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