Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Natalie Zamczyk - January 30, 1984

Introduction

The following is an interview with Mrs. Natalie Zamczyk at her home in Farmington Hills on the morning of January 30, 1984. Donna Miller is the interviewer.

Can you tell me your name?

Yes. My real name?

Uh-huh.

Natalie Zamczyk.

And what was your maiden name?

Haber. H-a-b-e-r.

And where were you born?

In Poland, in Krakow.

In what year?

1911.

Can you please tell me something about your life in Krakow before the war began?

How long before the war?

Well, whatever you can remember about...

Well, I remember everything well. My father had a butcher shop; that I know. I even help him when my mother got sick. And we were three children: me, my younger sister, Sela, and my brother, Max. And my father was financially well off, we had a goods store, and we had a nice life. I never was hungry, I always was dressed well, and I went to school and had a business, uh, I went to business school for three years after public school. And later I, I got my job before I got married. That's what I learned stenography, German and Polish. And that's what I first got a job in a special firm who had contact with outside and they needed somebody with German uh, stenography. And I got the job and I was working there 'til I got married. And after I got married I live again in Krakow. I never left Krakow 'til, 'til after the war broke out. That was after... Two years after the war broke out. What else you ask me?

Was the rest of your family living in Krakow? Did you have a large family?

Yes, I had large, large family. The, most of them were gone. Large family. Mine close, I mean, my father and my mother and my sister, they--I just tell you later, but I don't want to now, what happened to them.


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