Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Ruth Federman - February 13, 2008

Winton

How you uh, how you discovered...

Oh, yes. I met Hugo, Hugo Marom, who was together with a cousin of mine in England--I think in the Czech school. And he invited me to the movie, when Nicholas Winton was here in Israel and my husband came, my son and my daughter. In the beginning of the movie, my daughter started to shouted, "Listen, here. Your passport picture is in the movie." It was right. And then I see my drawings--fashion drawings, which I did when I was 13 years old. Why? Because--no, I was always, they said, talented in drawings, yes? But we couldn't go to school when Hitler came. And my mother sent me to a, a fashion school and I was drawing pictures. And in the only picture, only picture with colors was in this pic...was in the movie. And I was so surprised because I didn't know that my mother sent these uh, drawings to England, because she was uh, very keen that I leave Prague and go to England, that I could continue study, which I couldn't in, in uh, in Prague. Of course she didn't know the end--what would be the end of the war, but she only wanted me to get out. She said to have--that I should have food because she remembered the first war that there was no food and she said it would be one year, the war, and you will come back or I will come to--just a minute, that, that I'm now already to Palestine. Yes. Why I survived is that I had a certificate to Palestine. Now, all the transport of 250 children came to the station--to the railway station and everybody was sent back home. And as I read uh, Vera Gissing's book that all the 250 peo...uh, children didn't survive the war, and also they started to write in the Jerusalem Post about Winton and the same thing was written there. So I wrote to the Palestine Post that here I am. Because I had a certificate for Palestine and on the fourth of December '39, I, I arrived at the port of Tel Aviv and lived here with a aunt and uncle. My aunt was the sister of my mother. What would you like to know more?


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