Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

Of course, of course, right. So--and this and this boyfriend...

And this boyfriend, I talked about it with him. And I said, "I have trouble in school." And he said, "Well, my sister was not very good in school and she went to a private school, more Montessori. And when--maybe when you go there, they don't have so much classical. They put you um, the age will be the same, but everybody has different..."

Right, different levels.

Yes.

Uh-huh.

"And the classes are small and the teachers have more time to explain it to everybody." And I told that at home and they said, "Well, then we put you in that private school." I said I wanted to go there. So I went to that school and uh, there I had--you had to do um, proven, it was very different from another school. And that was very good. There was another Jewish uh, boy and...always the best of the best, so I felt strong. My English, I picked up English very quick and that was very good. Um, then I had private lessons from a very good friend from us, he was a, a teacher in a high school, a trade high school. And he gave me uh, uh, private lessons, how to uh, uh, well, that I can uh, rechnet--how do you say that?

Calculate?

Yeah. Uh, that I had private then. And then, um, I was reading a lot for myself. And I thought, well, I'm sometimes so depressed, you know what I do? I buy books, how you can change that, I was reading in books.

Self-help books?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

And--but I didn't tell that to...

[laughs]

I was just uh, uh, helping myself over things and well, it worked. It worked quite well. And, um...

So you cured yourself?

Yeah, a little bit. I couldn't--nobody was talking about psychiatrists, nobody was talking about psychologists. Nobody had time for that. It was working to make a living and to survive. And for the children it was not, "Do you like to go to here or do you like to go to that--do you work? We pay for everything and do it." And people were uh, ashamed to tell what the, the trouble was why they didn't do it. And if I would tell things, this is a different time where we living--where we are living in, uh, that parents listen what children want or what is good for children or with school. That was in the time that I raised my daughter too, but it was not after the war.

Hm.

So that was very uh, it was difficult, but uh, we managed. [laughs]