Sara Silow - August 8, 1993
Introduction
The following is an interview with Mrs. Sara Silow in her home in Oak Park, Michigan the morning of August 30th, 1993. The interviewer is Sidney Bolkosky.
Could you tell me please something--tell me your name and where you are from first.
My maiden name or now?
Your whole, your whole name--maiden and now.
Sara Parzenczewska. I am born in Łódź, Poland.
And your name now is?
Sara Silow.
Silow.
Yes.
Tell me a little bit about your life before the war.
Before the war everything was fine. I got a nice family with two sisters, a father, a mother, aunts--the whole family.
How many, how many aunts and uncles?
How many aunts?
Aunts and uncles?
My mother gots three sisters, two brothers and their children. In my sister they got--my sisters, they got children. One, one sister with a husband and a little girl they went to Auschwitz. And the other sister went to Russia with her husband. She was pregnant and never returned. And I am the only survivor.
Of all your aunts and uncles and cousins...
Everything was gone in Warsaw ghetto.
They all wound up, wound up in the Warsaw ghetto. How many do you think extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents...
You think this I remember? [pause] Guess I'll say twenty.
Twenty. You already had a sister with children?
Two sisters.
They both had children?
One sister got a little girl about six-years-old and the other one went to Russia. She was pregnant and she don't return.
What were your sisters' names?
My sisters--one sister's name was Bella--Goldman from her husband. The other sister I forgot her name from her husband.
What was your sister's name?
Because she was married in the ghetto.
No, what was her first name?
Manya.
And your mother's maiden name?
Rai... uh, uh, maiden name?
Yeah.
Wiasowski?
And your parent's name as they were before?
Parzenczewska.
But their first names?
My mother's first name?
Yes.
Raizel.
And your father?
Chiel.
What, what did your father do in Łódź?
He got properties and we got the wholesale fish.
Oh. So you sold, sold fish in the market--the family worked in the market?
No, this was a, a wholesale, yeah.
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