Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Kurt Stern - February 11, 2008

Traveling to Meet Foster Family

What happened?

We were met evidently by a social worker and I and my cousin and another woman who I didn't know about were sent to East Anglia with this woman. I--we--when we met at this reunion in 1989--it was the first reunion; we were put together according to I think it was countries and things like that. And there was at one end of the hall a note--a blackboard or something and hundreds of stick 'em pieces of paper looking for whatever and I saw a notice there, "Looking for brother and sister who came to East Anglia in June 1939." And I thought, "I'll phone her," with a phone number but after the meeting. I mean, she's probably at the meeting. And the last day of this reunion, we sat at this table and we talked about our reason for coming to the reunion and this lady next to me said, "Oh, I'm looking for the brother and sister that went with me to East Anglia." So I said, "Well, it's not a brother and sister. It was cousins. It was me and my cousin Ruth." And she told me she's been looking for fifty years for this brother and sister because that's her last memory of home. She evidently was taken to a family in East Anglia--she said she came to visit us once. And I'm, by the way, still in touch with her today. Um, she um, evidently was put up with a family that weren't very nice to her and this was her last memory. She says, "I remember every minute of arrive at Liverpool Street to East Anglia. You was uh, was the boy that sat next to the driver, there was the social worker and myself and Ruth was sitting at the back. I didn't feel well so we changed places." She remembers every second of this drive and I didn't remember anything. All I did remember is when we arrived at Mr. and Mrs. ??? in '39 in this small village, Redgrave, which is in--near this in East Anglia. It was a thatched roof, no electricity in the house and the toilets were still outside and no running water, there was a pump. And uh, Ruth and I from Europe--developed in Europe we were afraid the house would fall down. We were knocking on the walls to see if it would hold up. And we wanted to sleep together but Mr. and Mrs. ??? didn't agree. She was twelve and I was ten.


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