Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

They were deported to Warsaw?

Yeah and to the uh, concentration camps. But before they went to the concentration camps, sometimes we got a letter via the Red Cross.

So they were in the ghetto.

And--yes. And they were uh, uh, uh, writing, but not real writing, it is terrible or something, but, "I'm going to aunt so and so." Well, aunt so-and-so was dead for a long time already. Uh, we are going to this camp or whatever. So they wrote things that we knew how terrible it was. And my uh, parents and my sister and brother-in-law, who just uh, um, my sister got married in 194...uh, 35 and she uh, went back to Germany from Amersfoort.

She wanted to take you?

Well, I was not dreaming of going...

No, you were...

with my sister, because I had my parents. But um, well, she, she was nearly twenty-one years older, so she liked a little girl to uh, have around her...

Right.

but she didn't want to take me for good, just for, um...

For a visit?

For visits.

Uh-huh.

But I was so scared. I said, "I'm not going to Germany." Because my father, every s...uh, weekend or what, he was uh, listening to the radio and then Hitler was on the radio. And I heard always that man screaming and--about the Jews and everything, so that scared me. And then my uh, uh father and my mother were talking about it. And they wanted that my sister came out from Germany with her husband. And uh, well--and then they phoned and uh, they heard terrible things...