Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Rose Wagner - August 14, 2002

Relations with non-Jews

Did you have non-Jewish friends in school?

No.

No?

No.

Uh...

No, I didn't.

D...do you remember any kind of anti-Semitism in the school or...

You know, my father had a lot of Germans coming to him and, and you know, he had business with them. A lot of German friends we had. But not as a kid.

Volksdeutsche .

I didn't have. You know Volksd...right. Not as a kid, so I didn't, right. Not as a kid. I didn't.

So he had good relations with them.

Oh, he had very good relations with them.

Did it matter in the end?

You know, he, he was like every year you know, about once a year you had to make out the taxes.

Uh-huh.

You know, people couldn't write, a lot of the older people, they couldn't write so they came and they made, you know.

Did it help when the...

Well...

...when the war started?

Well, you know, when uh, when they had to pay, you used to say "podatek." You're from Poland aren't you?

No.

Oh, you not? Well, you had to, when they had to pay taxes.

Uh-huh.

They came with the money and then they made the criss-cross. My, my father you know, that's what he did.

And when the war started, did those people help at all?

No.

No.

Somehow we just--they disappeared. They just disappeared. I guess maybe my father didn't ask, you know. He didn't ask. He--well we didn't think that something like this is going to happen.


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