Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

Evading Round-Up

Vught.

Yeah. And that was in the late afternoon. And uh, my aunt said, "Can I say goodbye to my neighbor upstairs?" And he said, "Yes. I'll keep your children and your husband here, you can say goodbye." So she went up and she--and he was a teacher, the neighbor, he was a gentile. And he said--she said, "Go as quick as possible on the train to uh, Amersfoort and tell them tomorrow that they will be picked up because this is false." They didn't know. But the people who, who make the--who--the Germans who came in to call them, told them this is false and you have to go with us. So she said that to the teacher and the teacher came with the train to Amersfoort. It was forty-five minutes or an hour. And he said, "You have to leave immediately because it's a false paper." And they were picked up and they are going to Vught. And my uh, cousin, where I always played with, I have a lot of pictures from him, he had polio and he went in a child--as a child in Germany. It came from a swimming pool which...

Hm.

which was with bacterias or what. And he was with his two feet ...til here in that--he couldn't walk without it. He couldn't...

Braces.

Yeah, braces. He couldn't even get up without it. And uh, and his sister had polio too, but it was not very bad. When she was walking, she only shaked with one foot. But he was very invalide. And uh, so the teacher came from upstairs and he said, "You have, have immediate my to leave." Now, my only Jewish girlfriend who I always played with was Edith, who--Edith lives in Israel now. She went after the war with her mother, in '48, to Israel. And Edith uh, had a lot of--had an uncle and a lot of sisters from her mother and a cousin. And the youngest sister from her mother uh, got married to a dancing teacher. He was the only son from a Jewish family in Velp, in Velp.

In Velp, uh-huh.

Yes.


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