Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Anne Frank
You've read the Diary of Anne Frank?
Yes.
Uh-huh.
But it was nothing new for me, nothing new...
I see.
because we were about the same age and, uh...
Almost exactly.
Yeah. So I...
What do you think, what do you think of that? I mean, people must have compared the experience, came from Germany, came to Holland.
Yeah.
You were in hiding.
Yeah.
Um. What you, what do you think...
But it was--well, it was a bit different. They were from--she was from German parents.
Right.
And I was from uh, Polish parents. And there was a big difference between uh, the mentality and the thinking.
Tell me about that.
German, German Jews act like Germans a little bit. They are a little bit harder and colder. And the Polish act like Balkan people, like Czechoslovakia, like uh...
Uh-huh.
Hungary, Romania, all this different uh, Russian too.
??? do you think the Frank family behaved like Germans, in what respect?
No--not--no. Not--I'm not...
I mean...
criticizing...
Oh, no, I know--I...
the book or something, but...
Colder than, than...
Yes, because my sister had a girlfriend, George uh, Sonnefeld...
Right.
Gunter Sonnefeld uh, his mother. She was real born German. She didn't know any Jewish words. And she was real--from a German Reformed family. And she was a, a lovely lady, but they are harder and colder. They are different. And they didn't want--before the war, they didn't mix in Germany. The Polish had their own communities, the German Jews had their--and with um, a German Jewish boy wouldn't marry quick a Polish Jewish because they are maybe from poorer people or they are different, something like that.
It was the same, same in Detroit.
Is it?
It was, yeah.
I think it is...
It depends on...
ridiculous. They were not like that.
Polish Jews were not?
No, I--the, the--we were in Amersfoort...
Yeah.
And we mixed with the Dutch...
Uh-huh.
because there were no Polish too. And my father and mother were not like that. And the Jewish people there were not like that. We had a lovely nice community there before the war.
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