Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Death of Family
How did he die?
Uh, he had a uh, heart attack or something like that, with his heart.
So the...
And the Germans came in, he, he knew that it will be most terrible and--but he was a smoker too.
Hm.
Because I would--he smoked a package of E...Egyptian cigarettes every day and they were twenty-five cents. And sometimes he sent me for a package. He was a very, very quiet man, couldn't express himself. He never was--my mother mostly said, "Der shtiller Advocate," the silent lawyer. [laughs]
[laughs]
Something she said.
Um, but of course, this was after the war had begun, so--I mean, the war had been on for over a year.
Five years, 1940 ...til 1945.
But you said he died in 1941...
Yeah.
So the war had already been going on.
End of '41 or--yeah, the Razzi...well, maybe it was beginning of '42, I don't know.
When the Razzias started.
Yeah. I remember when my father died. He was--died in the hospital. And uh, my uh, I had to go out of the house when they were sitting Shivah for the whole week. My mother didn't want me to--didn't want, want me to, to stay at home. So I was with a Jewish girlfriend for that week. I came home, but I saw the mirror was black with the black...
Yeah, the covered mirror.
The covered mirror. And uh, and there was for tzedaka on the table and there were people and there was a dark green, green uh, tablecloth. That is what I remember. And then all the mirrors were uh, and I s...said, "What are you doing?" And my, and my mother said in Yiddish, "Meh tour nisht," you, you may not look in the mirror.
Huh.
She was very uh, old fashioned and very lovable.
What--when your father died--well, we're getting ahead of this, but when your father died...
Yes?
Did, did things--were you up...worried that--what was going to happen?
Um, no, not very much, because um, my sister and my brother-in-law lived with us. They were in Germany. My sister came to Holland with--in 1933. And she was uh, twenty-three or twenty-four, I was two and a half.
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