Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Concentration Camp Survivors
And did you start to hear stories about what had happened in the East--in Poland, about Auschwitz and Treblinka?
Well, people that came back were in concentration camps and uh, they didn't have hair on their heads.
Oh, and they were tattooed?
And--yeah, of course. And--but...
So they told you stories?
Yeah, they told sometimes, but they didn't tell much. They were ashamed of it. They were...
They were ashamed?
Yeah, they didn't want to tell it. It was so ??? for them. It was so...
Dehuman...
insulting...
Dehumanizing?
for them.
Dehumanizing?
Yes.
Is that what that meant?
Yeah. So they didn't say anything. And sometimes a little bit.
You think there...
But there was one um, uh couple or what, they came to visit us from Amsterdam or somewhere. We always asked and we went to the Red Cross every ??? it was, where my family was from Amsterdam and the children. And everybody was in Auschwitz or--we said, "Where is that Onkel and Tante and the name of this and the children?" And they said, "We saw Paul, he was alive uh, a few days before the liberation, but they put them in um, a, a--train wagon..."
Uh-huh. A boxcar?
"with more people and they burned him, burned him alive."
In the ca...in the, in the railroad car?
Yeah. And I heard all these things and I was depressed that I couldn't go in...
Yeah.
to school. I went to school, but that was a disaster. Um, at home, they said, "Why don't you learn?" It was uh, very hard. And...
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