Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Ruth Muschkies Webber - February 2, 1987

Your sister had come back?

My sister was brought back just before the ghetto was closed in and in fact she continued playing. I remember that there were certain, I guess must have been German officers because they wore uniforms, would come and listen to my sister play and we used to have to hang sheets on the windows so others would not see that these particular people came in to listen to my sister because she was so talented and played very, very well. And because of all this, because of her recognition that she was playing so well, she was placed with a Gentile family to continue her education and not to interrupt her musical career.

Did your parents arrange this?

My father arranged it, and I think maybe this particular German was involved in it too, because he knew the family that my sister was with during the war. These are just little things that I remember. I remember how she was prepared for going to that family. They, I guess, either knew or she was going to be part of their family so they assumed that she was Polish and she had to learn how to pray and she had to know what communion was and anything else pertaining to Christianity. She was being taught all this at home before she left.

She had a teacher come in?

She had, we had a friend that was also involved in music, a teacher from Posnan, I think he was, and he taught her all these things. I remember him mentioning, talking to her about it and with me not being allowed to go anywhere...having to stay around the house I listened to all this and I too picked up quite a bit of it but she was taught all of this and she was told to forget everything else.

Did she?

Well, um, I understand I remember when we ran over to my grandparents when she was going to say goodbye to them, she had asked them that they should just let her know when Yom Kippur comes because she was born on Yom Kippur. That was her birthday. She wanted to make sure that she remembers that birthday, not the birthday that was on her papers, on her Aryan papers. She had fortunately a very easy three years in comparison to what I had to go through.

How did your grandparents feel seeing her go?

They just cried. I don't know how else they felt about it. It was a matter of fact. There was just so much chaos going on. There were so many decisions going on...so many changes. People were always crying.