Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999
Working with Germans
A month, hm.
So it--and I had in Amsterdam eighty-five, but I had to pay forty for my fare.
Transportation, yeah.
For my transportation. So I said, "I want to earn from you 180 guilders a month. But when I work a half a year in your office, I'd like to have 225 if you,"--it was not 250 yet. I thought, well, the other twenty-five, it's--if he sees that I'm good, he will give that to me. And he came up ...til 325 when I left.
Wow. Did it bother you to work in a place where, where there was German all around you?
No. And I'll tell you why. That were two brothers. When they were liberated by the Americans, they went in an open jeep with the general to Germany to get the import and they got it from the Americans. And that was--everybody knew it and they were not German minded. They were--they got this and they really got millionaires from it.
Yeah. It's...
But that was from the German generals--the American generals who went with them, right after the war, in the green jeeps, right to Wolfsburg and they said, give me that uh...
So just the sound of the words didn't bother you? Because some, some people were...
The Volkswagen?
No, no. The sound of the language itself.
No. I always said, I don't want to drive in a Volkswagen.
Uh-huh.
I will never buy it, even if it is a good one.
Uh-huh.
I don't want to--there are other cars enough. But I didn't need a car and in--and the transportation is in, in, in very good and in that time...
Public, public transportation, yeah.
Yes. In that time, it was nobody--a, a woman, a, a lady or whatever, a girl, she just did not drive. It were the men that were driving.
Okay. So where--now, where does your husband come into this?
I was uh, seventeen and I was looking for a job. And uh, I went to Macabee in Amsterdam with a friend for my sister, a couple who lived in Amsterdam. And they had no children and they both came from concentration camp, from Theresienstadt.
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