Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eva Wimmer - January 1, 1985

Physical Effects

I, I can't even recall what was going on after the war. After the war, so many died because they couldn't survive. They were so weak. We really, the five of us, were really lucky got okay. There are--like my sister, my sister has uh, a disease which she is shaking so badly it's, it's from the camp she was--she is very sensitive. This is my older sister. Uh, she has this illness. My brother was in fifteen camps. The worst camps ever my brother was and he was a young boy of fifteen when he arrived to the first camp. So, he said--he explained many times for us because we didn't see him the whole six years. During the war, we did not see my brother and after we got together, he explained that would the war take another four weeks, that's it, he wouldn't because he was really holding the walls or whatever he could hold onto because he couldn't walk by himself. This is how weak he was. He was uh, completely gone or almost. But, luckily, the war was over and, and he, he survived. So--but he had a terrible back, back trouble from the day he survived 'til now. He is uh, 57, my brother and he, he has terrible trouble with his back. He, he already--they did so much in Sweden for him and here in the United States. And he wears a corset uh, a big one, always, but, still, he has uh, injured his back while he was working in the factories. And one of my other sisters uh, my third oldest sister, she developed tuberculosis in camp in, in our--she had a terrible job. She was working while uh, she had--she wasn't, it wasn't a heavy job, but, but it was a dangerous job at the same camp where I was in our camp. She developed--from the dust. In Sweden they called it a mop. She had--from the dust she accumulated uh, uh, a lump on, on her lungs and it so happened and--when, when, when we decided to emigrate to the United States, she couldn't come with us because they wouldn't allow her in to the United States. She had tuberculosis. She had uh, uh, something going on in her lungs, but after three years uh, she came to the States.


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