Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Sidy Weiss - January 7, 1987

Telling Story II

...to this, you were fourteen-years-old when they took you away.

Yeah.

So you were one of the youngest people to go to Auschwitz. Did you know that? You're one of the youngest to survive Auschwitz. And that--what, do you remember what year that was?

Oh, it was the drunk drivers. I don't even drive.

Um, but still, like, um, it's good to give to something like that. Do you remember what year they took you away? Was it 1941, '42?

Oh, they want to take drunk drivers off from the road. I don't even drive.

Um, it wasn't--you were with your family. Had anybody ever been taken away before from your town?

Oh this is--what, what was her name?

Tell me how you weren't, how you weren't honest.

How I am not honest? I am not honest in that respect that--how you call it? What I said to the lady.

The lady, at work you mean?

This lady.

Oh, this lady.

Yeah.

But she's not Jewish. You said you weren't honest to your Jewish friends.

That's what I say, I am not honest to the Jewish friends and I am not honest with the other friends, it doesn't matter that who they are.

How did you lie to them?

I am not--I didn't do things honestly, that's all.

Tell me--give me an example.

That uh, how you call that...

Alright. Just tell me one thing that uh, do you mean you weren't honest in telling them the stories about what happened to you during the war or after the war?

I am not honest with my people ???, I am not honest with the people uh, here and I am not honest with the--with my own people.

Well, how?

First of all I'm not driving.

Never mind that lady. I don't--I, I can't deal with...

It's very important, this lady.

Why is it important?

Because uh, how you call that, because it's all for everything.

That lady calls everybody who drives and doesn't drive and she asks them to help keep drunk drivers off the road.

Well, I am not a, a drug addict or anything like that. She didn't ask that.

No. And you don't drink either, and, and you're not a drunk, but she calls everybody.

But what I want to say that I...

But she calls everybody...

Okay, so what I am, what I am not honest I am going to tell you. I don't care if it will come to the, the truth, I feel guilty. I feel that-- how you call that? Guilty that I am not honest with my, my, my people and I am not honest with uh, how you call it? The people...

Do you feel guilty about things that happened during the war?

No. Together, together, I, I have some reaction from what uh, what I went through here in the United States and I have reaction--how you call that? What uh, is happening over here now. But I, I wasn't honest to my people, and not over here either. So can I tell you about all that?

Sure.

Okay, so this is where I wasn't honest and--how you call that? I, I uh, work and uh, how--the job that I was doing they were, they were uh, how you call it? Done the proper way? And now--how you call it? This couple days I didn't, I mean, what I was doing I did before that, now this couple days, and it was like a treatment for me.

You mean with a doctor?

Yeah.

??? Who is your doctor?

The doctor's name now, I don't know. I go to the Oak...Oakland uh, Family Services.

Oh I see.

And uh, I wasn't honest and that's all. I am not honest. I tell you everything that you want to know.


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