Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Natalie Zamczyk - January 30, 1984

Conclusion

Sure.

Yeah. And that's what I am telling you. When you don't go and you don't feel on your skin, you say to them, oh I'm sorry that this happened. But it's different when it hits you, that's what I want to say. Different when it hits you. Yeah. What else?

Well, is there anything else you'd like to add that you'd like to?

No, I told you all about the pogrom even after the war.

Yeah.

Yeah. What else I have to tell you? I tell you the truth, that I was, I, you know there are lots of things what I can, what I didn't tell you. I almost, it was, when I had trouble I almost wanted to put my child in a cloister, you know, is cloister? Where nun live?

Cloister.

Cloister, yeah, I don't know how it goes. Yeah, I went there. They didn't want to take a boy. They didn't they probably felt, but they took a Jewish child there, a girl. The boy they didn't want it risk, you know.

Mm-hm.

So after the war when I don't, didn't see no Jews, my friend was there from Warsaw. She said, Natalie, why don't you stick to the Jews? Nobody's coming. You are the first one, it's no Jews anymore, she said to me. Change Catholic with, with the child, and that's all, and forget it. And you start a new life, that's all. I said to her, no, I am not ready for that. I have to wait, I have to wait. And I, and uh, she told, she said this in front of my child also. So, Morris, you want, no? Because, so he said, yes, when my mama will do it, I will do it also. But when I saw the first Jewish man coming from the concentration camp...

Yeah, yeah.

I knew that I could never. I knew that somebody's here, somebody's coming to hurt my brothers. Never. That's all. That's why I said, you do not have to be religious, you don't have...

Right.

But I'm Jewish.

Sure.

And I would never, never anymore. I had to deny, because I want to say, for now I will never--I will stand up. I haven't got so many years to stand up. My granddaughter someday they will have to stand up themselves because then the hate to us exists. It's no, it's no use.

Sure.

And this, those intermarriages.

Yeah.

We have less Jews and less Jews also. That's all. Yeah.

Well, thank you very much.

You're welcome honey. It was pleasure.


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