Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999

The following is an interview with Mrs. Miriam Troostwyk, at her American residence in Bloomfield, Michigan, on the morning of May 28th, 1998. The interviewer is Sidney Bolkosky.

I could say a little thing ??? a voice or something.

Oh, that's good, yes. Could you tell me your name, please and uh, where you were born?

My name is Miriam Troostwyk. And I'm born in Leipzig. My uh, official name is Miriam Kaircoat, that is my uh, maiden surname. And uh, I'm born in 1931, in Leipzig. Um, I lived with my parents and my sister. My sister is twenty years older than I am. And uh, well, so I had two mothers really--who were playing with a little baby and--that's what they told me. And after two and a half years it was in 1933, my parents and some of the family from my father's side decided to go to, to immigrate to Holland--the Netherlands.

Now um, did you have family in the Netherlands?

No, nobody.

So what made them decide for the Netherlands and not, say, France?

Um, well, I don't know why it wasn't France, because I always asked them, "Why didn't you go to Switzerland?"

Switzerland.

But nobody knew that Switzerland would stay out of the war in that time. But, well, I asked my family, why didn't you go to England? Because in England we had family. But it was hard to get into a country, as a Jew when you were immigrating. And Holland took us in.

Now...

And my parents wanted to go because of in 1933 it started all together--already, the Nazis and the anti-Semitism and...

Now, your parents weren't German, were they?

My parents were Polish and they came from--as children from Poland to Germany. My father was seventeen years when he went to Germany. He had there uh, one brother that I know. And uh, he came out of the Yeshiva. He stayed in the shi...Yeshiva...

Your...

until seventeen years.

Your father did?

Yes.

But do you know where in Poland that was?

That was in Plonsk.

Plonsk. So did, did you leave--did you have family that you knew that were in Plonsk?

Well, the only thing I know was that uh, the whole family from my father came from Plonsk and the whole family from my mother came from Plonsk. And my grandfather was a shochet from father's side. They were very Orthodox.

So it was an Orthodox family.

Yes.