Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Part II
The following is a continuation of an interview with Miriam Troostwyk, begun on May 20th, 1998. The date today is June 3rd, 1999. The place is the University of Michigan-- Dearborn and the interviewer is still Sidney Bolkosky. The last time we talked, you um, mentioned something about your family was preparing to go to the camp. To, to Vught.
The back--backpacks, ??? high backpacks, they were small like this. And all the goods...
Ruck sacks.
were in it, yes.
Okay. And um...
With names on it.
This was 1943?
That was uh, end of ...42, beginning of ...43.
...42. Um, at some point you found out that the, the papers you had gotten from an SS man were illegitimate, that he had forged them, that this...
Yes. Well, we found out there was um, uh, a neighbor--from two brothers from my brother-in-law, they lived in Amsterdam. They were in the fur business. My father was in the fur business in Amersfoort. And we were all a little bit, not only family from my brother-in-law, but uh, the older brother, Uncle Max uh, he was um, married to the sister from my father. So my sister married the youngest brother from--that were nine brothers. And they all uh, went to camps and didn't come back. So...
And that's when you were--so then you, you began to prepare also for, for going to a camp, or your parents did?
Yes, everybody. We--but we had that stamp, but the stamp was not uh, valid. It was uh...
Uh-huh.
an SS' er who wanted to make...
Make some...
money for himself.
Well, do you remember what you thought? I mean you were eleven years old at this point.
Yeah.
I think.
Yeah.
As a--you, you were a fairly...
Eleven or twelve--eleven.
fairly um, uh, aggressive child. I mean, you didn't hold back, it seems to me, you, you...
No.
spoke your mind. What...
I spoke my mind, yeah.
What did you think when they were preparing to go?
Well, I, I said uh, "Let's give it a try and uh, go hiding." But that hiding, I only knew because my girlfriend, Edith was already in hiding, in 1942--in November, October-- November. So she was hiding.
So you knew, knew about the experience.
So...
Were you frightened? Did you, did you feel fear?
I was really scared to go to a camp. And I had the feeling when we go to a camp, we will never come back. But I didn't--that was not a kind of sense I knew that, because my mother and uh, we had family in Germany and in 1938 and ...9, when the pogroms were very badly, they were sent to the--Warsaw to ghettos and to the...
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