Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999

Did you ever, after the war, reflect about why they did this, why the, why the persecution and...

Yeah. Every--I was uh, I think I was depressed when I was about sixteen. I think it started already with fifteen, sixteen. It was not in my um, nature to be depressed, but I was depressed.

Because of what?

But I didn't recognize it and my family didn't know it.

Hm. Was it a question of...

It was a mixture from um, getting to be a teenager.

Uh-huh.

Which what--how I...

Sure...

figured, how I look at things. And it was a pity, not only with myself, but what happened to the Jewish people.

Did you ever, did you ever think to yourself, I wish I weren't part of this?

No, never.

Never.

I was more Jewish than ever.

And, and God, did you ever question how God could let this happen or what...

Well, I asked it, but it was the Lubavitche Rebbe and he didn't answer it. [laughs]

But you thought about it.

I thought a lot about it, but I couldn't find an answer for myself. [pause] No. And my family and that was not only my family, but everybody who came from concentration camp and who was in hiding, they had to--they didn't have anything, everybody came back without a penny and with uh, uh...

Without a family.

and without a family. And they had to survive after the war, to make a living again. And uh, well, my uh, uh, father-in-law had a whole family. He had his wife, he had to look after my mother, he was looking after me. And his wife was pregnant in 1946, and she was getting her first baby. So there were two of us and he was not strong, because he was walking the first three or four months, maybe half a year uh, on the--under his shoulder uh, that, uh...

Crutches.

things--yeah. He couldn't walk. He wasn't...

Uh-huh.

And--but he was the one who had to do everything for us.

And you and your mother...

We were...

what did you do?

in the house with uh, my uh, brother-in-law and with my sister and uh, later with the baby. And it was not so easy.