Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993

Feelings on Persecution

Let me interrupt for a second. What kinds of things were you thinking about through all of this? Were you wondering why they were singling the Jews out? Were you angry about it, or just frightened?

Well, uh, of course, we were angry, but the fear and the terror were greater than the intellectual anger. You know, in order to arrive at anger, you have to concentrate your thoughts and put up, you know, a villain and a good guy. There was no time for that. Things were happening constantly that you had to dodge. There was terror. You don't have time to stop when you're, when you're being chased. And you stop and analyze that the guy that chases you, what is he? Is he a villain? Is he a bad guy? We knew they were bad guys and why he's doing it. There was no time to uh, explain at the time because things were constantly happening. You were constantly dodging and devising ways to survive. You know, it's like, it's like, uh, something going the full gear--your survival uh, machinery.

Okay.

Does it make any sense what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, of course. You have to deal with the moment.

Yeah, at the moment. There was no analysis of who these people are, why are they doing this to us, you know, for what purpose. It's the time was to catch-can--whatever you can at the time, it's just, you know, uh, get every opportunity, you know, to, to, to protect yourself and survive. This was, was my, my uh, mental state. So we got to Warsaw and we had relatives on one of the streets that I knew the address that were permanently living in Warsaw before the war.

What was the street?

Nowolipki, Nowolipki uh, 50.


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