Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Nathan Weiselman - January 1, 1985

Then you, you lived in Austria for how long?

For three years.

Yes.

Before we left uh, left for, for Italy. All of us, we try to encourage the Jewish, uh, refugees to go to Palestine that time. A lots of people, uh, not so really, uh, after the Soviet concentration camp very poor condition ??? and then we lived in the camp and we saw it's quite a different uh, after all, nobody was hungry because the ??? provided with clothing and food and everything. So, you have to, got to, they got to push the people to make a, to, in order to make a decision to go out. And I just remember her one, a person came and he talk to us from the Jewish agency. And he said, made a phrase, "When you people came to this DP camp in ???, you said that you cannot go now to, to Palestine because your suit...your suitcases are all empty. Now we tell you to go to Palestine, now you say where I'm going to go, we have so many things, and the, we have to settle so many things. Now you cannot go because the suitcases are too full. So when is going to be the time?" So, so, he made sense and people decided that the, the, it's very immaterial changes, the things don't matter, doesn't mean really too much and they ask the people to go out and, and the people decided uh, one by one it's the right time to, to, you know, to go.

Well, uh, let me ask...

Did you put this on?

Yes. Uh, let me ask uh, about um, well, in thinking back over your experience in the concentration camps.

Yeah.

Uh, were there any moments that particularly-you, you told me of some dangerous moments.

Yeah.

Were there uh, any other moments that were very dangerous?

Yeah. The one moment was the most dangerous in my life that I just uh, can mostly, if, if I'm awake, I cannot sleep, I always think about this dangerous uh, uh, moment that I went through.

[interruption in interview]