Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Letters from Family in Poland
The--these letter from Warsaw that you were getting.
That was from my mother's side.
Um, when...
That was a sister from my mother. Her name was Sifkah.
When did they stop? Did they stop at some point? Did the--did the letters stop coming? I mean, they must have stopped at some point?
Yeah, but there were not much letters coming through, a few letters.
Um. All right. ???.
But they had from other family--also from cousin or what they had letters and--well, the letter was always on the table. And then the, the Dutch Jewish people, when they come to us uh, and there were a lot of friends and they couldn't believe that, because they have a very--they couldn't believe what happened in Germany. They said, well, everybody is making it worse than it is.
These were--where were they from?
The Dutch uh...
The Dutch Jews?
friends?
Yeah.
They were uh, mostly uh, a lot were Sephardic and a lot were uh, from Germany. But they stayed already so long in Holland, their parents and, uh.
That they were Dutch?
that they really were, they were really Dutch.
Um...
But they were discussing it. And everybody discussed everything when I was there, so I was always listening. And I was uh, like an only child ???. In Yiddish they say, I gave my Draya, I said my thing too...
Yeah. [laughs]
when they [laughs] were discussing.
Um, had you heard of Auschwitz?
No.
or specific concentration camps...
Nothing...
anything?
Not the uh, the names. We didn't know the names.
Okay.
Nobody. That we heard after the war.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn