Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

Outbreak of War

Do you remember where you were in the war started?

Uh, huh-uh, I was uh, in Amersfoort with my sister and my brother and--brother-in-law and my mother and my dad. And I remember when uh, the bombs uh, when they were bombing. And there were parachutes uh, uh, coming down, that uh, at night, my brother-in-law took me out of the bed and we were sitting under the stairs. It was, it was uh, bombs were falling and all this.

So that...

I...

was how you discovered the war had begun, by...

And they were very quiet and they didn't say anything, but they looked at me. They always looked at me, from uh, now we are all getting a heart attack.

And you were nine?

When the war started.

May 1940?

Yes.

Do you remember what you thought about it?

About the war?

How you felt about war?

When uh, we had to evacuate?

When the bombs started to fall.

When the bomb, bombs started, I was afraid, of course, because everybody was afraid. But uh, that was only one night...

Hm.

because...

In five days it was over.

Yeah, it was over.

Yeah.

And then we had to eva...evacuate.

And go where?

Uh, to Warmenhuizen. That is in the north of Holland, it's somewhere here, ??? it's here.

Oh, so it's off the map.

North of Holland.

Uh-huh.

And we stayed there for a week.


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