Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

You mean they flew?

They flew to Amsterdam, to ??? to Amsterdam Airport.

And did you see them when they flew to Amsterdam?

And then they came to my parents. And they stayed with my parents and with us, yeah.

And then they took the boat?

That was end uh, end of ...39 or beginning of 1940.

And did they ultimately get, get on the Queen Mary?

No. What happened then was that um, they stayed with us and I was very happy to help my sister, because my sister gave me a lot of attention and played with me. And my mother and...

Oh, of course, they were with you...

...my dad were older, they were much older.

They were with you in hiding.

Yeah. And then my brother-in-law said to my sister, I will never forget that. "What do you want? We have six weeks--or eight weeks, I, I don't know exactly--to go to South Hampton. You have an uh, two aunts in England and an uncle in..."--and two uncles that were all brothers and sisters from my father in London. "Do you want to stay fourteen days here with your parents and then we go to London, stay with the family there and from London we go to south Hampton on the boat or do you want to stay that six or eight weeks, what it was, with your parents?" And my sister said, "I want to stay with my parents."

Oh and then and then the invasion came?

And then came 10 of May, the invasion.

Uh-huh.

So it, it was already 1940.

Uh-huh.

Then came the invasion and uh, that was the 10th of May and they were stuck. And in June, was the boat going. So they stayed in Holland. And my father was not very strong and he had--in 1941, an--something with his heart and he passed away. And my mother was the most wonderful mother you can think of, but very, very old fashioned and very ??? you know...

Uh-huh.

very old fashioned. And it was the luck for my mother and for me that my sister and brother-in-law be--were here, because my sis...my brother-in-law took over the business...

I see.

when my father uh, passed away. And he had two brothers in uh, Amsterdam that uh, two older brothers in Amsterdam, which were in the same fur business and what--the oldest brother was married to my father's sister, to one of my father's sisters, because, that were all big families. My father had a lot of brothers and sisters and my, my brother-in-law had nine brothers and two sisters. There was eleven children.