Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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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