Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Relationships with Others in Hiding
But you had a, but you had a wonderful time?
Yeah. Because we got along very nicely. We were like one family. And we matched together very well, because these were children from parents that came from Poland too.
Now, who...
The grownups.
You don't mean...
Like my sister, in the age...
Yeah.
for my sister.
But they were all your family?
No, that was not my family.
Who?
Only my sister, my mother...
Right, right. And who...
my brother-in-law and me.
were the others?
That was um, Edith...
Edith ??? oh, okay.
Her family
Right.
Edith had a lot of mishpocheh there.
You said, we were together...
Yes.
and we were like a family.
And we act like mishpocheh. I may--there is a possibility that I have pictures from all of them. And Edith was in Holland a few months ago and we were in Breendonk, in the synagogue there. And I was uh, the Consul from Israel, the ambassador couldn't make it that day, but the Consulate came. And there was a reception and, uh...
You have a videotape of it?
for the Yad Vashem. And they come from the...
You--didn't you make a videotape?
Yes, my husband...
You, you showed it to me, I, I remember seeing...
No, that is another tape, that was a half a year before. It's now a year ago...
Oh.
that Edith came to Holland, because she has children, they live in the kibbutz there-- kibbutz children...
Uh-huh.
with her, with their um, husbands. And they--and she has grandchildren already from in, in--twenty or older. But one daughter came to Holland. She is very artistic and she wanted to be a uh, movie uh, operator, she wanted to make films. So she went to...
Hm.
a kind of school.
Uh-huh.
Um, and there were two young men with her and Edith. And the uh, she had to make for her final um, to get her diploma, to get her uh, degree...
Uh-huh.
from the school, she, she had to make a film.
And she--so she taped...
And she wanted to make the film from the life of her mother, starting in Germany and that her parents were divorced and her father went to Argentina. And uh, and then, part in the war, where I was uh, playing with her and we were girlfriends and then the part from--that we were hiding. And after the war in 1947, she went to Israel with her mother. And there she got married and there she got three children.
And does she make films?
Well, we got one film.
Oh, she did make one film.
That film, yes--where she uh, with Edith was uh, Edith was talking. It was not a very exciting film, because my husband is making films himself as in a hobby and he did that already. He does it already since we were engaged, he was first making photographs. But I was working somewhere--where and they were making advert...uh, advertisements for in the cinema. At that time there was no TV yet.
Uh-huh.
And I had to be in that film. And in the evening when they were uh, where I worked in the office uh, there was a, like a little party and they were showing the film. And they said to my hu...uh, husband, which was my fiancé at that time, ...Come to and, and see it," because we are going--when we are getting married, maybe we can buy a little Bell & Howell or whatever, a small second-hand one, then when we go on honeymoon, that we make a film. So he came and he liked it very much, because he always made pic... pictures and he was drawing and so--and since--and then we came back from honeymoon and we went to a film club. And there he learned and I learned and we filmed and we made a uh, uh, script and uh, a dry book. So we made films from holidays and with a little story in it and all kinds of things. So he makes very good films...
Uh-huh.
and got a lot of--had a lot of lectures about things and bought me books about it and...
Well, we'll come, we'll come back to that, because that's not his--not his vocation, it's...
Yeah. But Edith was a lot talking, too much talking in that film. But I have that film, I could show it to you. And I have to make a copy in Holland that you can show it in the States.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn