Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Lola Taubman - December 22, 2009

Thoughts on Being Jewish

What went through your mind all this time? Did you ever stop to wonder why this was happening?

I, I said, "What's going to be the end? Why do they do this to us?" And, and, and uh, the first radio I heard was at liberation when the Russians and the Americans met and I heard the American radio saying that President Roosevelt died. Until then I, I didn't hear anything. And, uh...

Did you ever resent being Jewish?

No, no.

You never thought this is happening because I'm Jewish?

No. I was, I was born that way and that's what I'm going to be. I never considered turning, turning Catholic or anything else. And uh, I don't hide my Jewishness either. I am in Gla...in uh, Glacier Hills so there's another Jewish woman is my section and everybody hates her because she's from New York and she's got a son who teaches at the university and works for--he's an attorney--he works for uh, Domino Farms and he married a, a Chinese woman. He has six children and he's the biggest slob you have ever seen. He comes in with, with keys hanging and the six children are running in and out. Gentile people are not used to that.

Daughter: Well, he--she's, she's just a very coarse woman is the other thing, so.

So I want to have nothing to do with her. They, they keep saying to me, "You see those children running around?"

They have to blame somebody.

Daughter: They are--the women--the people there are fascinated by my mother though.

They're, they're more Jewish people there in the manor--in the, the assisted living.

Uh-huh. And where is this located?

Daughter: In Ann Arbor on Earhart Road.

Oh sure, I know where that is.

Daughter: Yeah.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn