Lola Taubman - December 22, 2009
Being Ill
When did you get typhus?
Pardon me?
When did you get typhus?
Ty...
Typhus.
...ty...typhoid? I never had it.
Daughter: I thought you said you had--you were in a hospital, that you said you had typhus.
No, that--no, I was in a hospital...
She said she had dysentery.
... after the war, after the war, after the war. No, I had inflammation of the ovaries. And they tried to, to treat it with diathermy. You know what that is?
Mm-hm.
Yeah. And that didn't help, so they sent me to a hospital in Munich--a Catholic hospital with nuns. And I was waiting for six weeks to get penicillin. Every time the penicillin came, they would sell it on the black market. So finally when it came, you had to get it every four hours in an oral suspension. And so the nuns would give you the shots and I was due to have it in the middle of the night, she came with a lantern and I said--called them sisters--I said, "Sister I just had a shot here." She said, "Shut up and turn over," and she gave me a shot in the same place and I have a lump to this day. And I'm always, always afraid I'm going to get cancer. And, and when the time came six o'clock they disappeared, the nuns and the priests. They had their, their sorts, so.
Who was running the hospital?
The nuns.
But I mean, was it under American jurisdiction?
Yeah, but very, very little supervision. So then I--this was when I worked for the consulate in Frankfurt. They sent me to Munich to the hospital and to recover they sent me to Berchtesgaden to a hotel. And those young waitresses hated every, every, every appearance of mine they hated. And they had to wash my clothes and some people from the uh, Jewish agency from Palestine came to see me, and, and Hitler's Eagle, Eagle's Nest was across the street from the hotel. When I got better I got to go to the elevator gold--gilded elevator. And I went to the salt mine, through the salt mine that you sit on a leather and slide down.
You had the whole tour.
Daughter: Yeah, the grand tour of Europe on a different scale, right?
So do you think that the nuns and these waitresses mistreated you because you were Jewish?
Yes, they knew I was Jewish. I was sent from the camp, from the consulate. And then, there was a man consulate and he was very nice to me. He was from Germany. And he used to play the, the clarinet.
Daughter: My, my mother also was almost killed by a can of Spam.
Yeah, right. When I was in the hospital, they brought me some Spam and we didn't have refrigerators. I put it between the two windows--we were by some double windows and I ate it and by miracle I didn't get poisoned.
Daughter: But she, she, she had food poisoning but she wasn't killed by it, you know, because it got so old that it spoiled. That was kind of funny. It's a cautionary...
It's traife.
Daughter: ...tale: don't eat ham after all.
It's traife, right.
Where is, where is my purse?
Daughter: It's right under the chair.
I need a Kleenex.
Here, here, here.
Daughter: There's Kleenex right there.
Thank you, thank you. I got to drink something. I talked too much.
No, no, no that's why you're here.
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