Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Family
I, I may have asked you this the last time, but tell me again: How large do you think the extended family was, including first cousins, say, so your aunts, your uncles?
I don't know. We had a picture always in a uh, before the war in--at home, it was from my grandparents from my father's side, with uh, they had maybe--that they were married for twenty years or twenty-five years. And there was a name Udem--and her name I don't know anymore, because I never knew them. And there was the whole family was there, with the children and the grandchildren. And in my opinion, that were maybe twenty-five or thirty people all together, twenty-five.
Including--okay, you said that.
Twenty-eight. From my...
This is your father's side?
But that was only from my father's side. My mother had two brothers, one in Philadelphia, one in Poland. And um, two--I think four sisters or three sisters, that I don't know.
And they had children?
So there were also--and they all had children and, uh...
Maybe another thirty people, you think?
With my mother's family? I'm not sure. But my, my sister--I can ask my sister because she lives here. She's mixed up, but these are the things she knows.
Hm. Well, I'm just looking for a kind of rough estimate of the, of the--all those people.
Yeah.
Your immediate family survived together in hiding, right?
Yeah. My...
Your mother, you and your sister...
Only my mother, my sister and my brother-in-law. And the other ones who were in Holland, the two brothers, with their wives and the children, they all um, they passed away.
Okay. So there's this small group. How many of the rest do you think--do--do you reckon survived?
Well, my uh, my uncle in Amsterdam--there was one uncle in Amsterdam that was a brother for my brother-in-law and he was married to my uh, father's sister and they had three boys, Yohem, Addie and uh, Powell. Powell was the only one who was home. He was at a Jewish high school. At that time he was sixteen. The other two uh, were--one was studying in Vienna and the other one was studying--and then they went to Israel, so they didn't see them anymore. They went very early, I think already in 1936, they both went to Israel.
They were Kibbutzniks?
Yes, from the beginning. And they were in Haganah in ...48.
Um, but still, would you estimate half survived, half, half the, half the number survived, more than half, uh...
Well, the sister--my father had uh, a sister in Israel--he had--with her family. He had a sister in uh, London with her family and he had a brother in London with a family and the youngest brother was in London with the family and they all have children.
And they--so they--oh, so they ???...
And the children are all alive.
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