{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/dr2p55g91z/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Bowman, Penina Weisz (2006)"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/082/original/TheBreman_SecondaryMark_Horizontal_Blue_Black.png?1713640889","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2006-05-15 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Audio"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum","Esther and Herbert Taylor Oral History Collection","Jewish Oral History Project of Atlanta"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eSarah Ghitis interviews Penina Bowman on May 15, 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia.\u003c/p\u003e (general)","\u003cp\u003ePenina Bowman was born Pszy Weisz in Cluj, Romania on April 19, 1927. She grew up in a very Orthodox home with her parents, one brother and two sisters. As a teen, Penina enjoyed reading and studied to be a seamstress.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1940, the area of Romania that Penina’s family lived in was annexed by Hungary, an ally of Nazi Germany. More and more restrictions were imposed on Jews until the Jews of Cluj were finally rounded up in May 1940. After more than a week in an overcrowded brick factory with no food except what they had brought with them, the family was loaded onto a train and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePenina’s family was separated when they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her brother and father were transported on to the Dachau concentration camp, where her father would later die. Penina’s mother was sent directly to the gas chambers while Penina, her sisters and an aunt were sent to a barracks. Penina and her two sisters managed to escape the constant selections, although their aunt was eventually taken from them. Finally after six months, all three sisters were selected for a transport to the Mahrisch Weisswasser labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Penina and her two sisters spent the next six months working in an electronics factory. The Soviet army liberated Mahrisch Weisswasser on May 8, 1945.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePenina and her sisters travelled back to Cluj after the war. One sister reunited with her fiancée and decided to remain in Cluj. Penina and her other sister joined a youth group headed to Palestine. The sisters travelled with the group throughout Europe, eventually stopping in Salzburg, Austria, where they were reunited with their brother. Penina was also introduced to an American soldier, Harold Bowman, in Salzburg. Penina and Harold dated until he was sent back to the United States. Penina and her two siblings soon moved on to Italy and in 1946, boarded a ship to Palestine. The British intercepted the ship and the siblings were sent to Cyprus and later interred in Atlit. Meanwhile, Harold had come to Palestine to study in Tel Aviv. Harold and Penina were reunited and married in March 1947.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn October 1947, the young couple moved to the United States so Harold could complete law school. Penina and Harold settled in his hometown of Chicago, Illinois and later moved to Clearwater, Florida and Houston, Texas. While raising three children, Penina was busy writing, painting, gardening, bowling, and volunteering in numerous organizations. In 1993, Penina and Harold moved to Atlanta, Georgia to be closer to their three grandchildren. Harold died in 2008 and Penina passed away in 2018.\u003c/p\u003e (bioghist)","\u003cp\u003ePenina remembers her childhood and what happened before her family was deported. She talks about the ghettoization of Cluj’s Jews. Penina recounts the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau She describes life in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Penina recounts her transfer to a labor camp. She outlines her experiences after the war. Penina reminisces about meeting her husband in a DP camp. She narrates trying to emigrate to Palestine. Penina mentions moving to the United States. She shares memories of her youth. Penina discusses her extended family. She relays her encounters with antisemitism before the war. Penina reminisces about childhood friends and aspirations. She describes her family’s religious observance. Penina talks about the loss of her family. She reports the reaction of prisoners at liberation. Penina expands on the help she received from other prisoners. She details daily routines in the labor camp. Penina considers motivations for survival. She describes living conditions in the labor camp. Penina reviews her survival. She traces the trip to and arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Penina discusses the living conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau. She outlines the journey back to Cluj. Penina chronicles her migration with a group of survivors. She explains how her group travelled to Palestine. Penina expresses the trauma of detention. She recounts finally getting to Palestine. Penina remembers her wedding to Harold. She talks about having children. Penina details her cultural and educational activities in the United States. She relates anecdotes about raising her children. Penina reflects on the influence of religion. She shares photographs from her life.\u003c/p\u003e (scope content)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recorded by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written consent of the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.\u003c/p\u003e"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eSarah Ghitis interviews Penina Bowman on May 15, 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003ePenina Bowman was born Pszy Weisz in Cluj, Romania on April 19, 1927. She grew up in a very Orthodox home with her parents, one brother and two sisters. As a teen, Penina enjoyed reading and studied to be a seamstress.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1940, the area of Romania that Penina\u0026rsquo;s family lived in was annexed by Hungary, an ally of Nazi Germany. More and more restrictions were imposed on Jews until the Jews of Cluj were finally rounded up in May 1940. After more than a week in an overcrowded brick factory with no food except what they had brought with them, the family was loaded onto a train and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePenina\u0026rsquo;s family was separated when they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her brother and father were transported on to the Dachau concentration camp, where her father would later die. Penina\u0026rsquo;s mother was sent directly to the gas chambers while Penina, her sisters and an aunt were sent to a barracks. Penina and her two sisters managed to escape the constant selections, although their aunt was eventually taken from them. Finally after six months, all three sisters were selected for a transport to the Mahrisch Weisswasser labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Penina and her two sisters spent the next six months working in an electronics factory. The Soviet army liberated Mahrisch Weisswasser on May 8, 1945.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003ePenina and her sisters travelled back to Cluj after the war. One sister reunited with her fianc\u0026eacute;e and decided to remain in Cluj. Penina and her other sister joined a youth group headed to Palestine. The sisters travelled with the group throughout Europe, eventually stopping in Salzburg, Austria, where they were reunited with their brother. Penina was also introduced to an American soldier, Harold Bowman, in Salzburg. Penina and Harold dated until he was sent back to the United States. Penina and her two siblings soon moved on to Italy and in 1946, boarded a ship to Palestine. The British intercepted the ship and the siblings were sent to Cyprus and later interred in Atlit. Meanwhile, Harold had come to Palestine to study in Tel Aviv. Harold and Penina were reunited and married in March 1947.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn October 1947, the young couple moved to the United States so Harold could complete law school. Penina and Harold settled in his hometown of Chicago, Illinois and later moved to Clearwater, Florida and Houston, Texas. While raising three children, Penina was busy writing, painting, gardening, bowling, and volunteering in numerous organizations. In 1993, Penina and Harold moved to Atlanta, Georgia to be closer to their three grandchildren. Harold died in 2008 and Penina passed away in 2018.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003ePenina remembers her childhood and what happened before her family was deported. She talks about the ghettoization of Cluj\u0026rsquo;s Jews. Penina recounts the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau She describes life in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Penina recounts her transfer to a labor camp. She outlines her experiences after the war. Penina reminisces about meeting her husband in a DP camp. She narrates trying to emigrate to Palestine. Penina mentions moving to the United States. She shares memories of her youth. Penina discusses her extended family. She relays her encounters with antisemitism before the war. Penina reminisces about childhood friends and aspirations. She describes her family\u0026rsquo;s religious observance. Penina talks about the loss of her family. She reports the reaction of prisoners at liberation. Penina expands on the help she received from other prisoners. She details daily routines in the labor camp. Penina considers motivations for survival. She describes living conditions in the labor camp. Penina reviews her survival. She traces the trip to and arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Penina discusses the living conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau. She outlines the journey back to Cluj. Penina chronicles her migration with a group of survivors. She explains how her group travelled to Palestine. Penina expresses the trauma of detention. She recounts finally getting to Palestine. Penina remembers her wedding to Harold. She talks about having children. Penina details her cultural and educational activities in the United States. She relates anecdotes about raising her children. Penina reflects on the influence of religion. She shares photographs from her life.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recorded by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written consent of the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/082/original/TheBreman_SecondaryMark_Horizontal_Blue_Black.png?1713640889","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Bowman_Penina_Combined.mp3"]},"duration":13391.49388,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-thebreman.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/269/237/original/Bowman_Penina_Combined.mp3?1743606864","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":13391.49388,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=0.0,2.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Today is May 15, 2006. My name is Sarah Ghitis. I am the interviewer. We are in Marietta, Georgia. I am interviewing Mrs. Penina Bowman, B-O-W-M-A-N. The project is [taking place in] Atlanta, [Georgia,] United States. The language is English. Mrs. Bowman, could you please tell me the story of your life?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=2.0,48.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I was born and [raised] in a town called Cluj, Romania. That was Romania when I was born. The area changed in 1940, became Hungarian. It was terrible. We were raised with three languages all the time. My father spoke Yiddish, my mother spoke Hungarian, and us children, we were studying Romanian in school. I was raised in a very Orthodox religious home. We observed all the holidays very seriously, to the extreme, as children. We kept kosher in the home. We children had to abide by all the laws and rules. We couldn't carry anything on the Sabbath. We couldn't wear any short sleeves or Bobby socks. What we wore [was] just the long sleeves and [we were] raised extremely religiously. Our parents were owners of a mikvah, which is the ritual bath house. We had to ... We children all helped out there and the whole town knew us, so we had to be even more careful how we behaved outside. [Unintelligible] I was ... In 1940, overnight, we had to switch from Romanian to Hungarian. Now, I was in about the fifth or sixth [grade of] school. It was not a problem because we all know Hungarian already. After the Hungarians came in, slowly some restrictions started happening. The Jewish people were not allowed to move in certain areas. They were not allowed to walk to certain schools. But overall, later, our situation wasn't too bad. We existed fairly comfortable until April of 1944. Then, there were Hungarian soldiers [who] knocked on our door and told us to line up, to come outside in 20 minutes, and just carry very few things with us. We lined up in the courtyard. We lived on this street called Kadar Utca [Hungarian: Cooper Street] and that was the very first street that the Jewish people were ordered to be outside there, were surrounded by the soldiers, and [they] asked us to march to the brick factory there. We will be taken to work. We had heard rumors all along that the Jewish people were being taken to camp to work. My sister had a friend that lived in the stadium area, and wanted to hide us, and hide our family. My father wouldn't do that. He said that \"The war is a terrible situation, and everybody has to suffer, and soldiers go to fight and are killed, and there's lack of food, and if we Jewish people had to go to work, then we will go to work.\" These were his exact words. He said, \"Since when were Jewish people afraid to go to work?\" So, we thought we were going to work. I'll tell you; it was so convincing because my sister had a boyfriend and this boyfriend was taken to what they call a 'munkatabor,' which is a labor camp. The Hungarian 'munka' means work and 'tabor' means camp. So, my sister's boyfriend, Yanel, was taken to a munkatabor and he had written a postcard to my sister, telling her that he was in a camp working and he's working hard, but everything was fine. So, we thought that there is such a thing as a work camp. My father said our family would stay together. We will all go to work. We children ... My two sisters and a brother ... My oldest sister, [Yaffa]--not my other sister--was 21 and my brother [Mordechai] was 19. I was 17 and my [younger] sister, Miriam, was 15. I don't know what my parents knew, but we children never heard anything about a concentration camp, or Jewish people were being killed, the gas chamber, or anything about the crematorium, or anything like that. I don't know what my parents heard, but we children never heard anything, any talk about that. We couldn't read papers, and we were not allowed to use radios, and there was no way of hearing what's going on. The only thing we knew [was] that on the same contract that we lived, there was a family, a very wealthy family from Poland. One day, they came and arrested them. This was like half a year before we were taken. [They] arrested them because they were not born Hungarians or Romanians. They were from Poland, so they were taken away. [That was] the only thing we knew. We didn't know anything. It was very hard to know what's going on. So, we lined up that morning and we went to camp. We went to a brick factory, which was on the outskirts … This was the town of … At that time, it was called Kolozsvar. My town had three names. It was called Klausenberg. In German, it was called Klausenberg; and in Hungarian, it was called Kolozsvar; and in Romanian, it was called Cluj. This city was the capital of Transylvania. You look on a map, you see it’s right in the middle of the map, Cluj. You can see it in Romania, Transylvania. This was in that area. The Jewish people from there were not taken until April of 1944, just one year before the war ended. But even so, almost half a million Hungarian Jews were killed because, by the time we were taken, they didn’t bother selecting you and sending you to work. Most people were just killed. Anyway, we were lined up and taken to the brick factory that morning. I always tell the story about how we had twenty minutes to get ready. My father said to make sure you take warm clothes and food. Then, when I looked for my walking shoes, I couldn't find them. So, I hurried to the soldier that was guarding our door and asked him if I could go get my ... fetch my shoes because they were just a block down from my street. So, first the soldier said, \"No, I can't let you go. You might escape.\" And I said, \"What would I do without my family?\" So, then, he said, “Okay, I will let you. You can go get your shoes, but I have to go with you,\" and he walked me. This was just a block from where we lived. He walked me down to the shoe repair place to get my shoes and came back. By the time I came back, my family was out in the courtyard, waiting for me to return, and all the neighbors were being lined up. That morning, when they knocked on our door, my mother was kneading the dough for the bread she usually made. My father couldn't go to the synagogue then because by that time, the Hungarians put restrictions on the Jewish people. They couldn't go out before eight in the morning and they had to be back in the house by eight in the evening. So, my father couldn't go to pray in the synagogue. So, in the morning he used to have his tefillin in the house, wrap his phylacteries, and daven—you know, do his prayers in the house. My father was just in the middle of praying when they knocked on our door and my mother was in the middle of kneading the dough. When I first came to this country, I was taking all kinds of creative writing courses, and studying English, and took Americanization classes. Whenever I had to write something my [unintelligible] for composition, I always wrote about my background. So, I had this composition written up about what happened, I mean, when the Nazis knocked on our door. I wrote about how my mother was kneading the dough, and my father was praying, and how I went to fetch my shoes. So, anyway, we were marched to a brick factory, and we were gathered there, and we were there for a few days. This area was just about the size of this area here, maybe the size of like four rooms. Each family got a corner of about a six-foot area, just big enough for you to stretch out. We were a family of six with my brother, two sisters, my mother and father. So, we just grabbed one little corner for our area, and we had our rucksacks there, and we stretched out. We didn't have anything. We were just waiting in this area. Then, another family came and they were in the same area. This was another ... They called it ... tegla var [Hungarian], the old brick factory, tegla var, at the end of the street in Kolozsvar in our city. So, we waited there. We were there for … I don't know if it was a week or ten days and we just couldn't wait. The condition was so bad that we were running out of food. One of the things that my mother packed were onions in her rucksack. That was for us to eat and we were all kidding with her. We said, \"What are you going to do with onions when we going to be with crowds?\" Because of these onions ... They were the only thing that was left for us to munch on when we were on the trains going to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We had nothing else to eat and it kept us awake. So, anyway, we were in this factory for a few days, or maybe a week, or ten days, and then finally, we couldn't wait for them to take us and go to work. We thought we were going to work. Then, finally, we were taken in trains and we had no idea where we were going. We didn’t know where the trains … We just thought we were going to camp to work. We were in the trains for I don’t know how long. Then, when they arrived ... When the trains ... The conditions in the trains were, of course, bad [with] no food and people were crying. This [was] the first time ... I was 17 years old. It was the first time I saw a dead person. My mother said ... There was this old person that was in the train, and was dying, and my mother said, \"Don't turn around.\" Just when she said, “Don’t turn around,” of course, we turned around. I turned around to see what was the matter, and that's when we saw this one long bearded person that was lying on a ... He died right there in front of us. So, that was the first time I saw a dead person. Anyway, we were on the train and then, we arrive. If you want me to talk about when we arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau or you want ... We arrived to Auschwitz-Birkenau and got off the train and immediately there were soldiers in uniforms and also Polish workers wearing the striped uniforms like the prisoner uniforms. Everything happened very fast. People were shoved to the right, and shoved to the left, and had no idea what was going on. Next thing I know, my mother was put to one side with an aunt that came at the same time with one child. She had two young children. [She] was put to one side and my older sister and I--Miriam, and Yaffa, and I--were put to another side. My father and my brother were put to the men's side. That was the last time that I saw my father and the last time I saw my mother. Then, later, we saw that some of the workers that were there when we arrived, were trying to take away …  If they saw a young person with a child, they tried to take away the child from the young person, because they knew that if the child went with the mother, they both would be killed, but if the child was given to a grandmother, then maybe the young person will be saved. But they didn't tell them why. Every now and then, they tried to take the child from the young mother's arms and, of course, the mother didn't let them. Every now and then, she did let go. So, then, my mother arrived there and my aunt with two children. That was the last time we saw her. She probably went with the old people side and were killed. So, anyway, my two sisters and I were taken to one side and we were marched to a barrack and then ... First, we went to one room where somebody sat and cut our hair--first, just with the scissors. Then, we went to the next room and then somebody sat down with ... and shaved us. They shaved our hair. They saved it on our head, they shaved it under the arm, they shaved in the pubic area. They told us they doing that for sanitary reasons. So, we were all shaved. I remember my sister, Yaffa, was standing near me and she started yelling, \"Pesszi! Pesszi, where are you?\" It's interesting. I have seven first names. Every time we were another country, I have another one--Romanian, Hungarian, Jewish, so many. My name was Pesszi at that time in Yiddish. She said, “Pesszi! Pesszi, where are you?” I was standing right next to her. She did not recognize me because I had, like, waist length, long, wavy, beautiful hair, and here I was, shaved, and you know how different you look when the hair is shaved. So, she started crying and she said, \"Oh, no! They cut your beautiful hair!\" I said, \"Oh, don't worry about it. Hair is ... I'm not worried about hair. If that's the worst thing that happens to us, it won't be so bad because hair grows back.\" She said, \"Oh, no, but you had such beautiful hair.\" I said, \"Just think. Now, we won't have to wash, and comb it, and bother.\" My sister used to pay me a few pennies every morning to brush her hair, give it 100 strokes because her hair was very curly. My hair was just wavy, but her hair was very kinky, curly. She didn't like it, so she used to pay me a few pennies to brush her hair every morning, give it 100 strokes so it would be smoother. She said, \"Okay. Now, you don't have to brush it.\" She says, \"But you won't earn any money either.\" So, we started joking about it and we tried to make the best of it. That was when we got our hair shaved. You did not recognize ... You didn't not look like the same human being. Then, we were walked to another spot, where we had ... with the clothes lined up on the floor--big piles of clothing--and we had to pick a dress from the pile. We each picked a dress. After we each picked it, we tried to exchange with each other to try and see which will look better on which person. They actually were like grandma dresses and here we were, my sister was 15, and I was 17, and my [sister], Yaffa, was 21. So, we tried to exchange to look best and this was our arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Then, we were taken to ... We were both in C Lager [German: camp] and we were in B Lager. We ended up in this B Lager or the C Lager--I don't remember which one first—but we were in a barracks. We were in a barrack with over 800 other women and they were from all different parts of Europe. There were some French, and some Hungarian, some Romanian. We were in this barrack [with] three tiers [of bunks]. We stayed in Auschwitz-Birkenau for six months. We had the Zahlappell [German: roll call], the counting, every morning and night. Usually, people didn't stay that long in Auschwitz-Birkenau because at that time, they were either killing people or sending them out. We were not tattooed. They didn't take time to tattoo anymore. We were just waiting for selections. Every two or three days, they would come and say, \"Everybody out.\" We were a barrack with 800 women, so we all started going out. Then, when my sister saw that the people who were selected were not the able bodies and not the strong ones, but always the weak ones, my sister said, \"Let's not hurry to these selections.\" So, we decided to stay back. Many times, there were selections where, like, they would say, \"Everybody out,\" and maybe about 500 were out, and then they stopped it, so the other 300 were not part of the selection, so we went back in the barrack. This happened several times where we avoided the selections. Then, once my sister told me about it, we were still together because that's what's going to keep us alive, to support each other morally and physically. When one was down, the other one could encourage, and to not to ... If one of us is selected, try to escape. My sister in one selection was selected. This time, it was probably the able bodied because she was strong and good looking. So, when she started walking with the group, she stopped. She started bending. In Auschwitz-Birkenau, they had always had these lines of women chopping stones along the roads. So, when she saw she had a chance to escape, she bent down, started chopping stone, and then came back, so she was not picked with the selection. This happened to my older sister, Yaffa, once and this happened to me once. When I was selected, I probably was selected because I was weak, because I was always the thinnest. Even my younger sister, Miriam, two years younger, but she always looked healthier. She always was chubbier and I was always thinner. When I was growing up, my mother always gave me the best part of the food. She would give me the cream from the milk and she tried to fatten me. No matter what I did, I wouldn’t put on weight. That's not the case now. Now, I have to work not to put on weight. So, I was very thin. My sister used to pinch my cheeks before the selections, when we had the line up, we had the Zahlappell, the counting, to make sure I looked healthy. [Unintelligible.] Once, I was selected and I did the same thing when I was just like a block from the ... when we were marching away, where we used to see the trucks go by, you know, carrying people away. We used to see the bodies coming back, you know, on the trucks. We used to see the dead people all over. We didn’t know what was happening. People would say, “You see that? The only way you leave here is through the smoke there.\" We didn't believe it. I mean, we heard rumors. We heard something new every day. Every day [we heard rumors] that [Adolf] Hitler was killed and the war was over. This was already October of 1944. You know, it was so late in the war. We didn't know what rumors to believe, but we just tried to keep up our faith, and we'd keep up our beliefs because of our upbringing. Being raised religiously, we would pray. We would try and celebrate the holidays. We even fasted on Yom Kippur. It was October. We got to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was before Auschwitz-Birkenau. We all saved all our food and didn’t eat it until the end of the day. We didn't know what to believe, but anyway, I escaped once [and] my sister did once. Then, the Blockalteste [German: block elder], the one that overseed [sic] the barrack, took a liking to us because she kept saying ... My maiden name was Weisz, W-E-I-S-Z, the Hungarian spelling. She used to say, \"Look at the Weisz sisters. They are going to survive. They keep their place clean.\" We helped out with bringing the food from the kitchen. We were carrying the food, and we used to sing songs, and we used to say prayers. We tried to keep up the spirit. We were raised ... My sister was a Zionist. We always hoped that someday we will have a land. We sing the songs and say the prayers. I remember when we didn’t know what prayer to say for when we were scared, so my sister said, “Well, let’s just say the prayers for lighting and thunder, just to have something to say.” Anyway, we were in Auschwitz-Birkenau and the overseer of the barracks saw that we were not going to all the selections, that we took our time. So, one day, she said, \"I know you've been avoiding the selections, but I want to tell you, this one is a good selection. I want you to go to it.\" We trusted her. She was the overseed [sic] the barracks. She was a Hungarian woman that worked with the Polish woman that was under the German. This was a Hungarian woman. She said, \"Trust me,\" so, we did. She said, \"Someday, you will kiss the bottom of my feet for sending you to this selection.\" So, we trusted her and went out for the selection. They had the German soldiers looking for 80 women who were immediately to work in their factory, an electronics factory. We were lined up and they were checking the women. The thing they were looking for was good eyesight, and steady hands, and to be able to speak German. So, when we lined up and we showed the hands, you couldn’t have hands shaking and stuff like that. You had to be able to look at the chart, be able to read the small print, and then to speak German. So, my sister said ... You know, our German ... Our Yiddish is so Germanized because my mother grew up in Austria-Hungary. We were not the Galatian Yiddish, the Polish Yiddish; we were not the Hungarian Yiddish; we were Romanian, Transylvanian Yiddish and we spoke .... Sometimes, you couldn't tell if it was German or Yiddish, it was so Germanized. Anyway, she said, \"We will just fake our German.\" We did that to answer a few things. So, they just asked us for our name and how old we were. You know, very few questions. We were able to answer it in German. All three of us we selected. So, they picked 80 women right away, and they were from France, and from England, and Germany. I think there were some people mostly from [France] and [Hungary]. We were shipped out. This was October of 1944. So, we were shipped out of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and we were sent to the place called Mahrisch Weisswasser. Mahrisch is M-A-H-R-I-S-C-H. Mahrisch Weisswasser it was called, in the Sudetenland, and they had this electronics factory. That was Telefunken. We arrived there in the small town, and they had a camp set up for us, and they had, like, four SS women guarding the place, and this barrack is like a big room, two big rooms. We were forty in each one. Every morning, the gong rang. We had to get up, and get dressed, and walk to the factory, which was like maybe a mile away, and we walked there and we worked with Frenchmen. The Frenchmen, they were forced laborers. We were slave laborers. The French were the forced laborers. So, the French were there. Instead of giving them to Germany to be on the front and things like that, they were allowed to go to work in this factory because they needed the work and they would work with us. We became the assembly workers. So, they supervised us. There were, like, half a dozen Frenchmen and they had four or five SS women who guarded us. We had to go out every morning and work in the factory. We soldered wires into telephones. I think it was walkie-talkie radios and telephones. We learned how to use the lead and solder the wires in them. We were under strict German supervision. We weren't allowed to talk to each other. We were only allowed to follow orders from the Frenchmen, who were showing us what to do. But the interesting story here is that you saw a picture in my album of Pierre. He was one of the workers. One day, he motioned to me and he pointed that he was going to put down something under this machinery. So, he put down a piece of paper and he told me that he's going to leave some food for me there the next day. It was in French and I couldn't read it, but we had other women in our group who knew French. So, she read the note, and she translated, and she said, \"Okay, now look, for this spot. When the SS woman are not looking, Pierre is going to leave some food for you.\" So, he goes in and hiding. I am able to take a couple of pieces of bread with butter on it, which is the first time we had that in all these months, which was a big thing to get bread with butter on it. We hid it until the end of the day. Then, when we were back in our barracks, we would share that and eat it. Then, he made sure then the next time he did this ... We were working in that factory for five months. After about the second month, he'd go out ... And he was not Jewish. He would go out on the weekend and do repair work in the town to be able to get more money so he could buy me food and he could bring it, to be able to give that to us so we had more food. Then, he hid pieces of paper and a pencil and he told me to write. Then, I sat with a friend of mine in the same group and she would teach me French. We started writing notes to each other, so we knew each other. Some of the woman that were in this factory--I have pictures in my album--ended up ... When the war was over and the Frenchman came ... Five of the Frenchman came to hide us because they said, \"The war is over and the American soldiers are coming and the Russian soldiers are coming,\" and I had to be careful because the Russian soldiers are sometimes not nice to the girls, and they want to hide us. So, we went with them. Five of us girls went with Pierre and another guy and they hid us in one of the abandoned homes in town, in the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, until the [Russian] Army passed. Then, two of the girls that became friends with the Frenchmen went with them. They were going with them, not to marry them, but Pierre--the man that I was friends with--I said,\" No, I'm staying with my two sisters. I survived the war and I'm not changing my route. I won't go back home. I want to go to Palestine and establish a land for us Jews.\" He wasn't Jewish. He was a few years older. When he came to say goodbye to me--my two sisters and I--he said, \"I'll give you a souvenir and maybe it will help during your road to go back to your home.\" He gave me this ring. This was his grandmother's ring. So, he took it off and he said, \"I know you’re not going with me, but I want you to have it in case you can use it and sell it and buy food with it.” Then, he gave me a couple of pictures and his address. I tried to get in touch in 1959, but the letter came back. He was not Jewish, but he really helped with my survival because after I got there, he gave me food, and then he gave me paper and pencil, and I was writing notes to him. I was learning French and I created this little diary. It was just about an inch and a half, and he gave me paper. I covered small and created this notebook. I put ... It's in the other room. I started writing for my eighteenth birthday. It was April in 1945 and I said, \"I am still in camp although I have hope that I would be liberated and I need to remember the good deeds that people did to me.\" Pierre brought me food and encouraged me to live and get interested in myself again. I created this little diary and I made a button from lead that I worked with and I attached to this little diary. You know, I treasured it so much that I kept in it my jewelry box and in Houston [Texas], our house was broken in, and they stole my jewelry, and they stole this little diary. Luckily, I had a picture of me holding it and I copied some of the things I said in it in Hungarian, so it shows the page written in Hungarian, but I lost it. Anyway, he was instrumental in me wanting to live again and survive after the war because I was very depressed and my two sisters we were helping me. After Pierre came into the picture, I started to wash my hair again, and I started to become interested in myself, and tried and find a mirror to see what I looked like. Then, I was learning French. And by the time I'd finished there, I was able to communicate in French. That's when I learned to speak French. Anyway, we said goodbye, and the war ended, and we found our way back home to Cluj. I mean, it was not that far, but it took us, like two weeks to get back home. We tried to hitchhike rides in horse and buggy, and back of bicycles, and by foot, and every which way we went, just to get back home. And guess what? When we got back home, we were greeted with the exact words of, \"Are you back? We thought the Germans killed all of you.\" I mean, it was the saddest thing that we were not wanted when we returned back home. Then, we went to our home where we lived, the last place we lived, and we saw this tall piece of furniture that was ours. The people said, \"No, this is not yours. This is mine. I live here and it's mine. Get out of here. I call the police,\" so we broke out. The two of us got all scared. My younger sister and I went there. We decided we better not try and get anything back, and we thought, \"This is not the place for us. We're going to sign up with the youth group and try and go to Palestine.\" My older sister, Yaffa, didn't want to because she heard that her boyfriend, Yanel, the one that sent her postcards from camp, was also survived. You know, he survived and he will be home, so Yaffa said, “I'm not going anyplace. I'm going to wait for Yanel.” But Miriam and I, we both ... I was eighteen; Marian was sixteen. We decided to sign up with the youth group, and join the group, and go try and get to Palestine, but Yaffa stayed. Miriam and I signed up to go. We went to ... This was in Cluj. First, they told us we had to go to Bucharest, so we went to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and from there they told us, no, we have to go to Budapest [Hungary], \"That's where you go from.\" We went to Budapest. In Budapest, we joined the group and the first stop was Szombathely, which was a crossing point. It was called Szombathely and that was a crossing point in the Hungarian-Czech border. Then from Szombathely, from there ... Before we got done, we were in about 12 different displaced persons [DP] camps. From there, we went to Graz [Austria], the city of Graz. Then, from there to Linz, in Austria. Then, from there to Salzburg [Austria], and then from there [to] Brivio, in Italy, and then we got on the ship, and then Cyprus, and Atlit. But the interesting part is Salzburg is where I met Harold. That's where Harold was with the American Army. He was stationed [in Salzburg]. This was in October of 1945, right after the war. He was stationed in Salzburg with the army and we were in the displaced persons camp. Harold was always interested in Hebrew. He was one of those rare people who, after he was bar mitzvahed in Chicago [Illinois], he did not stop studying. He joined the youth group, and he was practicing, and going to services, and being part of the youth group that participated on Saturday. He asked around if there were any Jewish groups in Salzburg in the DP camps, so this person--I have a picture of him in my album--directed him to our camp. So, he told Harold that, “I know a group that you might be interested in and you can practice. I'm sure there'll be people speaking Hebrew.\" So, he sent him to our group and Harold found in our group people who were from Munkacs [Hungary], which is the city where people studied English and Hebrew. I did not know any Hebrew. I was raised with Jewish [Yiddish] and I learned how to read, and write, and daven. I just prayed, but I never learned what the meaning of it. So, when Harold came to our group, he met this person named Side and she became my interpreter, Amsel Side. She was from Munkacs, and she knew English, and she knew Hungarian, and she knew Hebrew. So, she would sit with us and Harold would tell her what to tell me. The very first day … I always compare it with the story of [\"South Pacific\"] because, you know, someday you will meet a stranger and he asked me to dance across a crowded room. He asked me to dance and the first time he asked, I didn’t want to, and the second time, [or] the third time. Finally, I came down and danced with him. Then, he told Side that he is going to come back to our group and bring us food back from his soldier friends and he did. Meanwhile, like, a week later, he came back. Whenever he had free time from the army, he came back, and he brought us bars of soap and he brought us tuna cans. Harold did come and he did ... He had all from his army buddies. He would ask them for the cans of tuna, and sardines, and bars of soap, and bring it to us when he came to visit. One of the soldiers that was in the army with him from Chicago--and we are still friends with him--his name is Cal Sutker. He became a commissioner in Chicago. Recently, he was honored for his years of service. I got his book that they read about him and in that, he mentions that he used to give bring some of the stuff--he and the soldiers--to the DP camp in Salzburg. When he used to see me in Chicago, he used to tease me. He said, \"[Unintelligible].\" He used to be with us. Then, we started to ... We were with Side. We talked to him. Harold told me that he would teach me Hebrew. I said, \"Okay. I think I can learn it fast because I know already how to read and write.\" By then, [unintelligible]. So, we sat together, and he would write down the words in Hebrew, and Side would transfer for me in Hungarian, and I would learn the words, and we were ... Harold was teaching me every time he came, maybe once a week, when he could come to that group, he would come visit us and he said he's going to teach me. One way he taught me to learn a language easier is by learning them from songs. We knew the songs already, so I had to just learn that the meaning of the words that were in the songs because I then had to relearn all the rules again because I knew some of the words. Then, he taught me the word's opposite and that was so important because with that, we were able to speak to each other quite a bit because he would say, \"If I demand the opposite of cold, and the opposite of [unintelligible],\" and the opposite of whatever word he could find the opposite, I asked if he could ... He would give me the other word and I would write it down. I still have my notebooks with all the original vocabulary I was learning--not English; I didn't learn English at all. I mean, we just spoke Hebrew to each other. Then, when he would come visit, then, we would go sleighing in the winter snow in Salzburg and go on sleigh rides. Harold took me to see an opera. I saw \"Foust\" and I still have the ticket stub from the time I saw \"Foust\" in February of 1946. We were dating at that time for five months. Then, one day when he came to our camp--it was March of 1946--he said his unit is being sent back to the [United] States and so he's going to give me his address so that I can write to him. He's from Chicago. He promised me that he would be in touch with me and we would write to each other. Before he said goodbye, he gave me ... He took off his Magen David [Hebrew: Star of David] necklace from his neck, which was a bar mitzvah present of his. It was like a marcasite Magen David with eighteen marcasite things. So, he gave me that and then he gave me this package. I said, \"What's in this package?\" It was just roughly wrapped in like ordinary paper. [I asked,] \"What's in this package?\" He said, \"Open it,\" so I opened it and it was two yards of parachute fabric. He said he bought it from somebody for a package of cigarettes. He said, \"It wasn't expense, but it's very meaningful.\" Then, he said, \"Okay, this is what ... I need you to save it for your wedding dress.\" So, I said, \"That means I'm engaged?\" So, that's how I find that I was engaged because I was just 18 years old and I wasn't sure how people proposed. Anyway, he said, \"Okay, save it for your wedding dress and I promise to come and meet [you].\" I said, \"I know I don't want to detour from my route. I want to stay with my sister. I want to go to Palestine. If he likes me enough, then he'll come meet me there. If it's the real thing, it'll last.\" So, anyway, he said, \"Okay, I'm going back to Chicago with my unit and be discharged and I'm going to get in touch, write to each other. I'm going to try to meet you in Palestine as soon as I can.\" So, he made this promise. From there, from Salzsburg, we stayed there for another couple of months. Then, from there, our next stop was in Italy--in Brivio, Italy near Lake Como. When we were still in Salzburg, I wrote to Harold just a postcard that I'm leaving. I didn't put any address down. Then, I wrote another postcard that, \"Our group is over in Innsbruck [Austria], and now we're going to Italy, and I'll write you again.\" So, he got two postcards for me, but no addresses. Then, he couldn't write to me. He didn't know my address. Then, when we got to Brivio, in Italy, I didn't hear from him, so I thought, \"Oh, well. You know, it was one of those wartime romances and I'll just put an end to it and forget about him.\" My group that I was with, they said, \"No, you can't do that because Harold was not that kind of person. He promised to write to you. He'll write to you, even if he doesn't want to come and meet you, but at least he'll write to you.\" So, they said, \"I'll tell you what we do. You wrote to him a couple of times. You didn't hear from him. This time, what we'll do is try and send a telegram.\" This was right after the war and you can only send a telegram if you put the return address down on it. You had to show where you sending it from. I didn't have money, so we all went out and did more chores like cleaning houses and stuff for extra money. I still have the list of eight people who donated each one a few pennies to be able to send a telegram. So, I sent a telegram and right away, I got back a telegram saying, \"I got your address. Letters are coming.\" So, that's when he first found that I was in Brivio, and got my address, and was able to write to me. Finally, a few days later, after the telegram, I got the first letter. I have all those letters. I must have saved about 100 letters between us, corresponding back and forth. I have them all stored away. The first letter I got back was this one. He called me stupid because I didn't put my address down. He said, \"I wanted to write, but how could I write without an address?\" I didn't write down Italy. I didn't put down my actual street address. Anyhow, we established contact and then Harold had to figure out how he's gonna come meet me in Palestine and I had to figure out how I'm going to go to Palestine. So, we were dependent on people who were organizing groups all the time and we had to wait in Brivio until we got word that we were being taken to the ship. We were there like for five months in Brivio. We were corresponding back and forth and then Harold found out that if he signs up with ... The only way ... The British wouldn't let anybody into Palestine. The only way you could do it is if you were studying. So, he decided that he can go and pretend that he's going to school, ask for the G.I. Bill that was paying at that time for soldiers to study at the Technion in Palestine. So, he started to inquire how to sign up and how to get the papers. He inquired with friends and there were a couple other friends of his that wanted to do the same thing. Finally, he got the papers. And he got to Palestine before I did because I was in ... From Brivio, I had to wait for a ship then. Finally, we got a ship. We were on this ship called the Kol Gimmel Twenty-one, which left from Italy, Bari, the port of Bari. Unfortunately, because we waited so long, because we stayed in Salzburg much longer. Usually, what happened was that the groups came in, the DPs, the displaced person people, they came in, they usually stayed two or three nights. They got food and blankets and then they found transport to move on. But our group, we were forty-two boys and girls, and we were very good in running and organizing ourselves in an enthusiastic group. So, the overseer from the Jewish Brigade, Tzvika, he asked us if we didn't mind staying on in this camp and managing it for the other transports that [were] coming through. So, instead of staying there just a couple of weeks, we stayed there five months. That's why I got a chance for me to get to know Harold, because otherwise, I would just meet him once and we'd move on. But we stayed there for five months. We managed the camp there for the other people. The transports were coming through. We gave them food. We would cook, bring them food, put them up, and then a day or two later, they left. By the time we left, the British changed their mind and they wouldn't let people into Palestine. That's why by the time we left, we were the third ship that was caught by the British. Until then, they let them into Palestine and Atlit, but we were the third ship. So, we were caught by the British, and we were detoured, and we were forced off the ship, and we were taken to Cyprus. So, we had to be on the island of Cyprus. In the meantime, Harold was already in Palestine and doesn't know where I am. He tried to any which way to find out, through the British rabbinate, and the Red Cross, and different organizations to see. Finally, he got word that I was in Cyprus. So, one day, he heard that a British photographer was going to Cyprus to take pictures and to be told about the conditions. Harold asked him if he could take a letter for me. So, he said ... His first letter that we established contact was him finding our group in Cyprus, and coming to us ask for me, and tell me that he has a letter from Harold. We all rejoiced and that was how we established contact again. Then, from Cyprus, you had to wait until the British issued certificates to leave Cyprus. Then, they would give you like, a dozen certificates and that's it. Then, one day, our group ... We were 42 boys and girls from Hungary, Romania, and Poland, and France. We were 42. Our group--the 42 of us--got three certificates. So, the three certificates, we had to decide who uses the three certificates. We had one girl that was pregnant. This woman, she got married along the way and she was pregnant. Her name was Chaya. She's the one who helped me make my wedding dress. She and her husband ... They decided that Chaya and her husband will go and there's one more. They decided I would go because Harold was there already, waiting for me, and so I would be the one to go. Then, I had to decide, \"Am I leaving my group?\" Because I had traveled with them the whole time in Europe, and Salzburg, and the camps, and my sister was in the group. I didn't know if I wanted to go before them. Then, finally, they talked me into it, that the group will follow in a month or two, and I should go because Harold's there. So, finally, I said, \"Okay. I'll go, but I won't get married until my whole group comes to Palestine.\" So, I got out. It was December and I had to ... I was first in Atlit, and Binyamina [Israel], and Kiryat Shmuel [a neighborhood in central Jerusalem], and I was like three different places before. Then, I went to them with ... I had a second cousin that lived in Haifa, so I went to live with him while Harold was at the university. I went to live with Chaim Berger and stayed with him until my group came from Cyprus. They followed a couple months later. My very first visit with Harold was when ... Harold would go to the port in Haifa and check to see who is coming in from Cyprus and all over. There were people coming in all the time, you know, new immigrants. He would go there to check and see by any chance [if] I was coming in. The day that I came in, Harold had an exam at school, so he didn't go to the part. So, when I got to the port, I was coming in with the bus and there were the British guards because we were like prisoners when we first got to Atlit, the British guards. I was going on the bus. I said, \"How am I going to let Harold know I am here?\" His name was Chaim at the time. So, I decided, \"Okay, I am going to write him a little note and see if I can give it to somebody to ...\" through the widow and give it to somebody that would take it to the university. So, I wrote this little note thing. I just put down in Hebrew, \"Ani higia,\" [Hebrew: I arrived] with my name. Just passing by, I asked this little girl who was about a 13-year-old girl that was at the port with her mother and I asked her to please bring it to the Haifa university, the Haifa Technion, and give it to Chaim Bowman, my fiancee. This little girl did bring the note to the professor, and the professor told Harold, and Harold came to meet me in Atlit. When he came to meet me in Atlit, was the first time I saw him since March. This was in December. The only way we could meet was through the barbed wire. I put my hand through the barbed wire with the British standing guard. I scratched my arm [and] didn't even know I was bleeding. We were able to touch hands. Then, after ten minutes, the British guard said, \"Time's up.\" He had to leave. That was the first time. We were in Atlit for a whole month. Then, from there, we went to another camp [to] make sure we were okay, not sick. Then, from this other camp, another month. Then finally, Harold brought me to Chaim Berger, my second cousin. He lived in Haifa, not far from the Technion, and we were ... I stayed with him for a couple of months until my group came from Cyprus and got out. In March of 1947, on March 30th, 1947, we got married in an outdoor kibbutz wedding, in the town called Binyamina. And this March of 2006, we just celebrated our 59th wedding anniversary. Fifty-nine years! It's pretty old. I mean, years ago, when people celebrated their 25th anniversary, I thought they were old. I used to think, \"Oh, they have gray hair and they're really old, 25 years married.\" Now, can you imagine 59 years married? Next year, we're going to celebrate. That's going to be a big celebration. Anyway, we were married in Palestine. It was on March 30th. Times were real bad at that time. Bombs were going off, and the Jewish people wanted the British to leave, and the British weren't, and then the Arabs were doing ... I mean, it was a very bad time. When we got married in March, I didn't want to tell my in-laws, Harold's parents, who lived in Chicago. I didn't want to tell them we're getting married March 30th because ... We told them we are getting married, but they did not want to tell us that there's a chance that they can come to visit because the British wouldn't let people in, even at that time, just to visit. So, they didn't want us to hold up with our wedding, so this was March 30th. Then in June, they got word that they could come and visit. So, they came to visit: Harold's mother, father and his sister from Chicago. They came to visit us and they stayed a month in Palestine. This was in June 1947. Times were real bad. His parents went back to Chicago and his sister said, \"Harold, the times are so bad and the kibbutz hasn't been established yet. Why don't you just come back and finish your education in Chicago and you can always come back to Palestine.\" So, just on the spur of the moment, we decided. We were living in this group with people who were speaking all the different languages. We were just learning Hebrew. We decided, \"Okay, maybe we'll do that.\" So, we just decided. Then, Harold's sister stayed on for another month to wait for us to get the papers in order. Harold's sister, Ilene, and Harold, and I came back to the States. Interestingly, his sister fell in love with Palestine--later Israel--and she went back in 1952, and she's been living there since then. I am here and she's there. That is the irony of life. Anyway, I came back to Chicago. I studied. I already knew six languages and I told my mother-in-law, \"I don't have to learn another language. I can speak with Harold in Hebrew, I can read in Hungarian and Romanian, and I can talk Yiddish with my brother, and correspond with my sister, and I don't want to know another language.\" But my mother-in-law said that, \"Now, you are in Chicago. Now, you're in America. You must learn English.\" And she was so determined. She said, \"I don't want you to help\"--we lived with them the first couple years--\"I don't want you to help with cooking, or dusting, or anything; just study.\" So, she really encouraged me and then Harold's sister, Ilene, sat with me and studied. I signed up for Americanization classes and I went to this elementary school where they had the classes, Trezminsky Elementary School, and I studied to become a citizen. Then, I signed up for corresponding courses and I started reading. I mean, when you become a citizen, in those days, you really had to study. I had to go in front of a judge. He asked questions, like, how many kind of congressmen and senators. So different than today. You can just raise your hand and you are a citizen. So, I studied. I figured, \"If I am in this country, I really want to learn the language properly.\" And I read a lot and I decided to stop reading in Hungarian and Romanian and just keep with Hebrew--I didn't want to forget that--and learn English well. So, I took high school correspondence courses, and then, I took all kinds of creative writing, and I took ... You name the course, and I took it, from ceramics to typing, to psychology, to English, to history, to cooking, to gardening, whatever class was offered. So, I became very interested in perfecting my English and joined book clubs. I still remember when I was asked to ... The very first organization I was asked to join was B'nai Brith and I said, \"Well, what can I do? I can't speak the language very well. What can I do in an organization?\" My friend that took me there said, \"You can always lick stamps and pour coffee.\" So, I did that. The first year, that's all I did. I was behind the table, pouring coffee and helped with corresponding, you know, with the envelopes, and addressing, and all that. I always liked ... The fun part about it was that after three years, because I was so determined in learning English properly, after three years, I was co-bulletin chairman. So, I moved up in all my jobs. I always used to say that the organization work was my basic training because I belonged to, like, 18 organizations. I was on, like, seven boards when my children were growing up. I was just my interested in volunteering, and doing, and taking my citizenship seriously. So, anyway, I ... Well, I think basically that's my story. In 1959, we went to visit the first time back to Israel. Then, when I came back from there, all the groups I belonged to, worked--Hadassah and B'nai Brith, and you name it, even League of Women Voters ... I was very interested in arts and crafts, and gardening, and all that. All these groups were interested in hearing in my report about what I saw in Israel and how I felt, and all that, so I started speaking about my experience when I came back in 1959. Then, slowly, I developed into speaking to schools and mostly telling my Holocaust story, and that experience and whatever people were interested in. So, I've been doing that all these years. Now, I'm slowing down because I've been doing it so much. I figure it's time to retire from it, but basically, I feel I'll never retire because my philosophy is to get involved and stay involved, and to teach the lesson so it won't happen again, and especially people are so interested when they meet somebody that actually survived and went through it. Unless people ask me, I won't go into details about life in Auschwitz-Birkenau and all the things, you know, unless people ask direct questions. But I do look at some of the movies sometimes because I want to see how accurate they are, so I can respond to that. But, anyway, you're welcome to ask any questions about whatever I left off. I think I spoke long enough. Just fill in the gaps, okay?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What do you remember about your growing up years in the city of Cluj?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=3600.0,3608.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, now, my memories are all very happy about growing up in Cluj because we were a very close family. We were four children in the family. I had two sisters and a brother. We were very active in the Jewish community. We were very much involved with helping my parents with the ritual bath house. So, we always had to help with selling the towels and the sheets for people that came to take their baths and collect money. We celebrated all the holidays very intensely. We built a sukkah during the Sukkoth holiday and my father even would only sleep in there. I mean, he had all the meals there. And for Passover, we had separate dishes that we stored away upstairs in the attic and we used only those dishes. All day on Sabbath, we were very dedicated to going to synagogue. We didn't use anything on the Sabbath. We didn't build a fire, so we had to always ... On Friday, we prepared the food, like the cholent, which is the beans and the meat thing. That's a popular Jewish dish that my mother would prepare on Friday and send it to the bakery with us children on Friday, and carrying a big, huge pot to the bakery. Then, they would put it in the bakery like huge place, like a pizza oven. All these pots would go in there, and they had numbers on them, and we kept them overnight on Friday [and] Saturday. Then, Saturday after services, we had to always go there and pick it up and bring it back, and that was our main meal for Shabbat. We children were very much involved with helping with the bath house, so we always had to help with the laundry and we always had to hang, help with the laundry. First, my mother would wash things in a big pot and stir the linen, and when it was done, we would have to help with hanging it up on ropes. Then, we were also in charge of during Passover, to make the pots and pans kosher for the holidays. So, we would have to put them in these big urns and rinse them in there. We were part of that. We were always very interested and my parents were always very interested in us reading a lot, so we children, we were all avid readers. Our main pastime on Saturday--we weren't allowed to walk too far, so we would stay in bed, and especially in winter, we would stay in bed and read, always take books from the library, pay for taking books, not like it's free here. We had to always save our little pennies and we had books from the library to read. Because we were very religious, we weren't allowed to be Zionists, so my sister was belonging to the Zionist youth group. We were too young, but my sister was four years older. She belonged to the group and used to sneak out to go to the meetings and learn all the songs, and she would teach us. We would help her out in sneaking out from the house to be able to go to the meetings because my father always thought that Messiah would come and we weren't allowed to physically do something about it, that we had to wait until Messiah will come, and we believed him. Sometimes when we were children, we used to ask, \"How will you know when Messiah will come?\" He said, \"He'll come on the back of a donkey,\" so every time we saw a donkey go by, we children would run in and say, \"We saw a donkey. He made a noise. Maybe Messiah is coming.\" But he was very religious and he was a fanatic in believing how things will happen. My brother was raised very much with just studying. He went to a different school than we did. We girls went to a public school, and then later, when we couldn't go to public school, we went to a religious school. But my brother just went to cheder. He went just to study the Jewish subjects and he was just raised with the religious studies instead of going to regular public school. But, we had a very happy childhood. My mother came from a family of six. One of her sisters was a seamstress. I used to love to go to my aunt, Ilonka. Her name was Ilonka. She used to teach me how to embroider. The younger sister, Rozsi, she was not married and she used to always help out. I learned so much from these two aunts. She designed clothes for department stores and made these beautiful velvet little dresses and things for children. So, as a child, I used to just go there and watch her do things. She used to pay me for separating the yards that she used for embroidery and I used to love to just be patient and do that. To this day, I love embroidering and I love needlepoint. My house is filled with all the artifacts that I made all over, because I think I was exposed to it at a young age through this aunt. Also, in public school, which I think is very good, we had to produce one artifact every year. So, from the first year on, we had to learn how to do different embroidery. Like, the first year, it was just a simple cross-stitch and backstitch, and we'd just make an apron, or a bib, or something. And every year we would have an exhibit in school [of] all the things we produced. I remember the very last year, in the eighth grade, we learned how to do the Madeira stitch, which is very hard to do by hand. To this day, I still love doing all this needlepoint, and bargello, and knitting, and crocheting, and all that. It keeps my hands busy. It's fun. I'm glad I learned when I was young, because if you don't, I think it's hard to learn later.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=3608.0,4074.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What were the names of your parents?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4074.0,4075.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: My mother's name was Leah Weisz Freid and my father's name was Isaac--Itzhak in Hebrew; Eizig, in Hungarian, they spelled it E-I-Z-I-G. It's not like I-S ... You know, like the English way, but it's E-I-Z-I-G, Eizig, the Hungarian way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4075.0,4108.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What was the house where you lived like? Would you describe it?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4108.0,4114.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I tell you, we lived ... First, we moved three times during my childhood. First, we lived in this same courtyard where the synagogue was in Kadar Utca [Hungarian: Cooper Street]. Then, we lived in a very big apartment. And then, we had to move from there. I don't remember why, but we had to move from there and then, we moved to the second place. And then, we moved again. We were evicted because the soldiers needed our house. The very last place was like a big room, like a big kitchen with a huge stove in the middle which you fed with logs. The kitchen was so big, all three of us girls slept in the kitchen. And then they had the bedroom that my father had a bedroom in--my father, and mother, and then my brother, too. We had this old furniture like they use again, which I don't like antique stuff. [Unintelligible] everything I had as a child was this tall armoire with these divided placed. We didn't have closets.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4114.0,4196.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: In which of these houses were you living when your father owned the mikvah? Which house was that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4196.0,4209.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: First, we lived in the same courtyard as the mikvah was. We had the synagogue and then part of the synagogue was the mikvah. And then in the same courtyard, they had this big apartment. They had two or three apartments. First, we lived there, so it was real convenient.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4209.0,4228.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What street was that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4228.0,4229.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: That's also Kadar Utca, yes. And then, we had to move from there. They needed the apartment--I don't remember for what--but we moved across the street, which was just, like, across the street. It was not far, you know, just like half a block. That's where the mikvah, and the synagogue, and everything was still on Kadar Utca, and we moved across the street. It was convenient, so I just had to go across the street to take care of the ... We went back to visit in 1976. I went to see things. But where the mikvah was and everything, the whole area was torn down. They made it into a marketplace, so I couldn't see any of that part, but we did see where my sister's family lived. My sister's husband [who lived at] Georgina 59, my brother-in-law, you know, my sister's boyfriend that survived ... Before the family left, they turned over the flour mill to a Gentile [non-Jewish] family. And then, when my brother-in-law ... when he survived, he came back, this family gave him back the flour mill. His parents owned the flour mill and a house. He got back the flour mill and the house. That's why my sister said, \"I'm not leaving because Yenal is back and we're going to get married.\" He got the house back and the flour mill, so she stayed. She stayed on until 1958, when she had to leave because she couldn't raise the children as Jews. The Romanian government was clamping down on the Jewish lifestyle and she couldn't ... She had a son who was twelve years old and they tried for him to be bar mitzvahed, and they had a tutor that came in the house, and they had to pretend that he [the tutor] was an uncle because they couldn't raise him as a Jewish child. So, then my sister wanted to leave, but they couldn't. Then, finally, in 1958, the Israeli government was able to bribe the Romanian government to move, to let the Jewish people out and she got to Israel in 1958. It was very difficult for them because they had to leave everything behind and they were comfortable. First, they had the flour mill. Then, when the government took that over, because they naturalized things, then, he was very good in auto mechanic, so he had a taxi service business.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4229.0,4422.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Let us go back to your parents. Do you have any idea what year they were born?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4422.0,4430.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes, I knew that both my parents were in their 40s when they were taken away in 1944. My father was born on ... I think it was the year ... Something like ... Well, let's see ... nineteen ... I have it written down someplace--1908 or 1906, something like that. I remember both my mother and my father were 40-something. So, this was 1944, so they were born, like, 1908, just before the turn of the century. I put down my mother was from Tokaj, which is a Hungarian town, and my father was from Maramarossziget [Romania]. I think that's the name. I have it written down someplace in my file because I know I'm going to forget. I wrote down all the names of the aunts, and uncles, and all the cousins, the children when I still remembered. Just recently, like a few years earlier, they read the names of the cousins that were lost during the Holocaust and they were naming the children during the service.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4430.0,4521.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How long had your family been in the area?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4521.0,4526.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: You mean ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4526.0,4526.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: In the region.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4526.0,4528.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: My parents?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4528.0,4530.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Yes, your parents.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4530.0,4531.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: My mother's family was there for a very long time in Hungary, in that area, because my mother's father owned a winery. Everybody made for a long time ... That ... This was from my mother's side, the winery. And they lived in that area all their lives and a nearby area near Kolozsvar. My father's family was from more on the Romanian side and they were there for all their lives, too. But in his family, my father had six brothers. There were seven brothers in the family. One brother, in 1939, went to Palestine and this one brother survived in Palestine. Two brothers were ... One was there, also part the Holocaust, and the other brother was in the Russian Army and he escaped from that, so the two brothers survived the war. So I had these two [uncles]. The oldest brother went to Palestine in 1939, and then the two other brothers survived the war, so when we first visited in 1959, I had the pleasure of being with Uncle Arye, and Uncle Shmuel, and Uncle Josef. I have pictures with them, with long beards. They're very religious. One of them is very religious, to the point where he wouldn't speak with me in Hebrew, only Yiddish. I would speak to him in Hebrew and he would answer me in Yiddish. I said, \"Isn't that odd? I come from America and I'm speaking Hebrew to you, and you answer in Yiddish?\" [He said,] \"Well, because Yiddish was the everyday language and Hebrew is the language of kodesh [Hebrew: sacred]. You're not supposed to us for every day.\" This one uncle is still alive. The other two are not. One uncle is probably about ... I don't know. He must be close to 100 years old or late 90s and, do you know that he still walks to synagogue? He still teaches class. We saw him in 2000.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4531.0,4693.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about the Jewish population of Cluj.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4693.0,4699.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We had ... In Cluj, I always knew that we had about 100,000 people in the city itself and it was a very big, progressive city because it was the capital of Transylvania. We had theater, and we had beautiful churches, and many synagogues, and a very active cultural life, with theater and beautiful statuary, and very pretty mountains. The Carpathian Mountains come in there and it's a very pretty city, picturesque city. We had a hundred thousand population and among them, we had almost 20,000 Jewish people--a little less than 20,000--and a very active Jewish community. Twenty thousand doesn't seem like a lot because we have 100,000 in Atlanta, but 20,000 was very active. We had a lot of synagogues and among them, only 2000 survived. Only 2,000 Jewish people survived, among them my two sisters and brother, our family.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4699.0,4762.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Was there any history of antisemitism?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4762.0,4764.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: It built up slowly, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4764.0,4769.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Historically?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4769.0,4769.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Historically, I mean, it started ... We had a comfortable life, but then slowly, as the conditions changed and the war condition changed, then they started putting restrictions. First, you couldn't go to a certain school, and we couldn't have certain occupations, and then people were arrested who were not born there, and things started. Until the last month, we wore a star, a Jewish star. Then, my father ... We had to be careful because people were beating up Jewish people at night, you know, if you went out at night. We were all worried. We always had to go in groups so that people don't beat you up and then you couldn't go to the synagogue. After eight o'clock, you couldn't go out. So, slowly, the antisemitism was beginning to manifest itself, yes. It just started off slowly. That's why you have to watch it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4769.0,4830.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Do you remember, in the years before the war, experiencing any antisemitism personally?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4830.0,4841.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes. Personally, I just know that one day, when we were walking home, my brother was with me. My brother was very ... You could see he's Jewish because he wore payess--you know, the sideburns and very Jewish. And then these kids that were following us start calling him names, [saying,] \"Let's tear his hair out.\" They were making comments and we ... I was walking with my sister, Miriam, and I, and Mordechai. We were real scared and we started running and they were running, but we got to our house before they were able to catch us. Then later, we heard my father's friends were beaten up while going to synagogue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4841.0,4894.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What year, more or less, was this?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4894.0,4897.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I would say that this was probably maybe a year before we were taken. I would say it was in 1943. In 1940, then, we couldn't go to the same school. We had to go to a Jewish school. We couldn't go with the Gentile people to school.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4897.0,4922.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you interact, in any way, outside the Jewish community?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4922.0,4929.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We did. We didn't live in a ghetto or anything. We had non-Jewish neighbors. As a matter of fact, the next door neighbor was a non-Jewish person that, when we left, when we were told that we had to leave, that we were going to have the backpack, and we had to go to camp to work in camp, my sister was studying to become a seamstress, Yaffa, and she made three dresses while she was learning, and she was so proud of her dresses that she made. So, when she heard that we might be going to camp, she went to make sure those three dresses that she made my hand, that they were saved. So, she took the three dresses and a photo album that she had from her youth groups. See, we were not allowed to take pictures, because if you're very religious, you don't take pictures because you're not supposed to create people in the image of G-d. You don't photograph. Anyway, my sister belonged to the Zionist youth group, so she had friends, and they were taking pictures all the time, so she had this photo album with her outings. She used to go on hikes and meet with the group. So, she took this one photo album of pictures and three dresses that she made by hand and she took them over to the Gentile neighbor, which was right next door to us and had a big yard. We used to go there. She used to let us come there and pick fruit from her trees, you know, like cherries and filberts, so we had a good relationship. And she took them and left them with her. Then, when the war ended and she came back home, she went to this neighbor to see if she had the dresses and the album, and she did. She got back the album. Then when I visited Yaffa in 1959, after Yaffa got out of Romania, I said to her, \"Do you remember when you did that? Do you remember how you took these dresses and you took the photo album?\" And she said, \"Yes, I remember, and I have the photo album.\" So, I said, \"I would love to see it, just to see if there's any pictures in it of me.\" Of course, all the pictures were with her and her boyfriends in the group. She was four years older, so she had different groups than I did. I looked through the album and I just found this one picture, and I was so excited because it shows Yaffa and I sitting in the park. It was just in this famous park in Cluj, Cetatuia [Romanian: Citadel], where we used to go. It had, like, a pond, and you could rent a little boat to go, like a paddleboat, and go in the pond. The music would play in, like, a kiosk, and you could have a drink, and go on this little boat ride, and then just sit in the park. Both Yaffa and I, we loved to read, so we used to walk there. It was, like, a mile from our house. So, we used to walk there and then sit for hours and just read. And there she had this picture of the two of us, sitting in the park and reading. And I was so excited. I couldn't believe [it]. I even remembered the book I was reading. It was Will Durant. It was a real thick book. So, that's the only picture. So, we had a good relationship with the neighbors and we had other Gentile friends we went ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=4929.0,5155.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you have friends that were not Jewish?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5155.0,5158.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes, we had friends that were ... Yes, I personally did have friends that were not Jewish. We had one friend that was ... We were very religious. We had one friend that was ... They call it Neolog. It was like Reform, [but] Jewish in name [only] really, let's put it that way. And they were very rich. They were in the same courtyard that we lived. Their last name was [Unintelligible]. There were in the fur processing business, where they take the fur from the lambs and animals, and then stretch it out in the sun, and you put salt on it, and let it bake in the sun. Well, anyway, this girl was our best friend, in that business, and they were extremely wealthy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5158.0,5213.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What did you do with your friends? What kind of activities did you have outside of school?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5213.0,5220.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay. [It was] not like today. Basically, I think we would play outside, jump rope, outside games. I remember during the holidays from school, we would play with nuts, line up nuts, and try to knock them off, and we played with ... You know, when you played with the pebbles, when you played with the stones, where you have to catch ... I forget what they call it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5220.0,5246.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Jacks?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5246.0,5246.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: What's that called? Jacks, yes, we played that. Our best friend, she was from a very wealthy family and she was also taking piano lessons. She would get the tutor to come and tutor her in another language and learn to play the piano. So, we used to always enjoy going there and try playing do, re, mi, fa, so, la on the piano. And she had a bicycle and we were always very envious because she had the bicycle and she had piano lessons. I always thought, \"When I grew up, that's what I want. I want a bicycle and I want a piano.\" So, the first thing we did when I got to Chicago, and Harold was studying at the University of Chicago, and I was working. We babysat in our free time. In those day, they paid, like, fifty cents for an hour, and we both saved our babysitting money. I wanted to get a piano, to take piano lessons. After a while, we realized it's going to be a long time to save 50 cents. But instead, after I was in this country about eight months, Harold decided I should learn piano because I wanted to do it so much, and he rented a piano. It was just, like, eight dollars a month to rent the piano. So, we had this piano and we hired a person that was retired from music and he came to the house, was teaching me piano. He was ... I still remember his name was Mr. Lipski. In those days, I thought--he was in his seventies--he was very old. He enjoyed it so much. He saw how serious I was that instead of just staying for half an hour or 45 minutes, he would stay, like, for a couple of hours and teach me. I was very serious. I learned how. I was able to play [Edvard] Grieg's Concerto, and \"Blue Danube,\" and all these songs. I still have all my music. I caught on very fast. I was taking lessons until [my daughter] Liora was born. In 1958, she was born. The first thing we did after I rented the piano and then when Harold finished college, we bought a piano. We bought a spinet piano. We still have this piano that we bought in 1949. I think it was about two years we saved our money and we had it. Then, we had it in Chicago and we had it in Florida. Then, when we moved to Houston and we decided who was going to get the piano because I didn't want it anymore, and our son ... All three children took music, but our son was the best in the piano and we decided to give it to him. Allan still has this piano and now our granddaughter, Mollie, is taking lessons on this same piano that we bought with, I think, $800 in 1959.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5246.0,5437.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Let us go back to your city of Cluj.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5437.0,5440.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5440.0,5442.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You said the mikvah was connected to the synagogue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5442.0,5446.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5446.0,5447.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What was the name of that synagogue?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5447.0,5451.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Oh, what was the name? Do you really think I remember? It was an Orthodox synagogue. I probably could find that name, but offhand, I can't remember the name of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5451.0,5462.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Is the synagogue still there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5462.0,5464.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No. See, that whole area was torn [down]. When we went back there, the mikvah, the synagogue, where we lived across the street, that whole street, they took away, and they connected it to ... We were like just about two blocks from a big open area, which was very pretty, and they connected it with that and made an open market, so it's all gone. Another synagogue is there, another synagogue that I used to go with this friend, who was not as religious. She was what they call a Neolog, that she was not Reformed. We used to go. That synagogue is still there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5464.0,5505.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What percentage of the population would you say was Orthodox?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5505.0,5510.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I would say a big percentage. In Cluj--a city of about 30,000 [Jews]--I think we were ... I would say the majority were very religious, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5510.0,5523.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What were your parents' aspirations for you? How did they see your future?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5523.0,5532.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I think most parents' aspirations in those days were just to see that their children grow up to be very fine children, and marry well, and continue in the same style that they did--I mean, become concerned with the relatives and the people ... Not so much to become a career, and go out, and you know, in those days, we didn't.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5532.0,5561.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What did you want for yourself?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5561.0,5567.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Oh, I was studying to become also [a seamstress] because I was so impressed with my aunt, who was a very fine seamstress, and the other aunt was teaching me how to knit, and sew, and do things. But this aunt and her husband, the one that didn't survive, with the two children, Ilonka--her husband manufactured beautiful baby buggies. Ilonka made beautiful dresses with, like, velvet, and with embroidery. So, I always wanted to become a seamstress. Then, I also wanted to become a writer. I always wanted to become a writer because I used to read so much. And then, in later years, when I was in camp and I got this little paper to write, some of the things that I expressed in there were similar to what Anne Frank wrote. I wanted to remember who were good to me, that helped me out during the war, and the good things. I mean, I believed in the future. I believed that things will get better. So, I was optimistic, but I also wrote ... I always liked writing. I would use to write poetry in Hungarian and I used to write just letters. To this day, that's where my passion is because when we first moved away from Chicago in 1970 and we moved to Florida, I didn't want to lose touch with my friends and family. I decided to write an annual letter and since 1970 ... That's how many years now? I still, each year, I write my megillah [Hebrew: scroll; Yiddish: an overly extended explanation or story] and I send it to about 150 people I send it to. Every year, I get responses. People call me, \"Don't drop me from your list,\" and I just tell them, \"If you either call, or write, or something ...\" If not, after two years, I drop them from my list. So, I still do a lot of writing. And I write letters to the editor. You know, letters and things that were published.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5567.0,5702.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Let us go back to your family for a moment. Did you know your grandparents?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5702.0,5710.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I remember ... Two of my grandparents I remember. My father's parents, I don't remember at all. I have a couple of pictures because later I got some, but from my mother's side, I remember my grandfather being very old, with the white beard, just very vaguely. I don't think I remember. My uncle in Israel had a picture of his parents, so that's where I saw the pictures, but I didn't personally know them. See, where we lived in Cluj, and our family, the immediate family lived just nearby, not in Cluj. We had two aunts that lived in Cluj, but then another one that lived in Timisoara, which is another city in Romania. My father's family lived in a different area. My mother's family was in Timisoara. That's one of the cities I remember. And my father's family lived in a different town. We children, we never went out of town. We never traveled. My older sister was the only one that went to visit an aunt out of town. So, the family that was in town, my father's family ... Nobody lived in the same town, so I didn't know. And my mother's family, the two aunts, I became very close to one aunt because one aunt was not married and she used to spend time with us children. But I ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5710.0,5813.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How many members of your family perished in the Holocaust?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5813.0,5817.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: At one time after the war, I started counting because I knew that I would forget. So, I started counting and it was, including my mother and my father. And then I started counting. My father's family had ... He came from a family of seven brothers. And two of them survived the war and one went to Palestine early, so I knew that he had another three brothers that perished. They were married and had families. Then, my mother's sisters, I knew one family. An aunt and her husband I knew had two children. Once we had counted, I came up with 42 immediate family members. That's just aunts, uncles, and cousins that I lost--just the parents, and aunts, and uncles, and cousins.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5817.0,5874.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What is your first image of the time when the Germans occupied?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5874.0,5885.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Our town was occupied in, I think, it was the summer of 1940. It was very ... It happened, like, overnight. It was just very ... not that much excitement. All of a sudden, we saw soldiers in our town and we started seeing ... Instead of being Romania, now it's Hungary. You start speaking Hungarian. In the school, you start teaching Hungarian. It's just very subtle. It happened overnight, not that big deal. Everybody was just looking at the soldiers, \"What are they doing here?\" It was not that unusual because in the area, my parents were used to changing from Hungary to Romania, to Czechoslovakia, to Austria. The area has changed so much back and forth, so it was not a big deal. We had to change overnight. I think I was in, like, sixth grade. We had to change overnight from Romanian to Hungarian. I've always said to people here about it, \"Just imagine if you were to change overnight from English to Chinese.\" It would be a big deal, but for us, it wasn't because we are raised already with Hungarian, and Romanian, and Yiddish, and so it was a language we knew already. Overnight, it was no big deal. We just switched. We still studied things. We had Romanian in school; we spoke Hungarian among ourselves.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5885.0,5996.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did things change for the Jewish people, for your family, for instance?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=5996.0,6002.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Things changed slowly, not right away, but slowly. First, people couldn't do certain occupations. Then, we couldn't move in some areas, but life still went on. It wasn't that drastic. I mean, the people didn't suffer and I think antisemitism started very slowly, and just subtly. So, you can't go to this school? Okay, we'll go to another school.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6002.0,6028.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What did your parents tell you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6028.0,6031.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I tell you, our parents did not tell us much. They were always secretive, talking among themselves, but they were very believing in G-d and everything will turn out okay, and don't ... Just, \"G-d will take care of us. Don't worry.\" They didn't want us to worry. They just told us to \"study hard, go on, and do your lessons.\" My parents continued playing ... My father loved chess. Until the last minute, he would bring friends home and play chess. He would go up in the attic and have a quiet spot [where] he played chess. I remember he was very religious, so the people he brought over were religious, so whenever he wanted water, we girls would go and bring him water. You couldn't give them a glass of water and take it from us. You had to put it down and they take it from there so that they wouldn't look at us or anything because they were so religious.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6031.0,6107.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Then, came the German occupation. What do you remember about that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6107.0,6115.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I don't remember much about that. I don't because we were taken and we were surrounded by Hungarian soldiers, so we didn't really encounter ... We saw them in town, going through, but I don't remember encountering German soldiers or anything until we got to Auschwitz-Birkenau because we were guarded by Hungarian soldiers. Then, in Auschwitz-Birkenau and then, of course, in Mahrisch Weisswasser, the very interesting that happened ... In Mahrisch Weisswasser, we were guarded by the SS women and they were in a separate area. The morning that the gong didn't sound that we should get up and line up to go to work, I wondered why the gong didn't go off. So, I woke up and I went outside to see what's happening. I started walking and when I got to the gate, I saw the gate was open. So, I thought, \"Hmm. Something happened. The gate is open,\" so I looked to see. I went back and I told the other women in my barrack that the war ... Because we kept hearing, \"The war is going to end. The war is going to end.\" So, I said that something must have happened because the gate is open. So, us women all piled out, and we start running to the gate to see, go into the house to see where the SS women were living, to see what's going on. They had a big dog that they used to set on us. Whenever we didn't move fast enough, they shaved our hair again. It was the big pride when hair was growing. So, anyway, they would set the dogs on us and the dog wasn't there. So, then we started investigating, there was one SS woman that was left sleeping. She was always drunk and she was the meanest one. She was the one that always tried to punish us whenever something went wrong. They dragged her out and they were kicking her. They all shouted that, \"We will kill her,\" because she was the meanest to us. I [unintelligible] in there. And I started walking. Then, I walked back. I remembered my father said, \"You will not kill when your life is in danger, you don't kill for revenge or you don't kill a person.\" Like, when I was in camp, I didn't want to eat non-kosher food, so I almost died from it. Used to say, \"That's a bigger sin, to commit suicide than it is not to eat kosher food,\" so I ate. I forced the food in my mouth in camp. Then, when I saw them trying to kill her, I thought, \"I was raised 'thou shall not kill,' and this was not a question of life and death anymore because it looks like the gate is open, and she's by herself, and we are so many.\" I did not participate. I backed out and I did not participate in trying to kill her. But the rest of the people in my group, they did. They killed her with their bare hands, this one SS woman that was left behind because the others escaped. They all ... I don't know if you want this on the record, but that's what happened the day we found the gates open.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6115.0,6360.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What date was that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6360.0,6363.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I never knew the exact date, but April 19th was my birthday and I was still not liberated, because when I wrote the diary, in my little diary that I always liked to write [in], and I said, \"This is April 19th, 1945, and the war is still not ended, and we are still prisoners, and I am still in Mahrisch Weisswasser, and I hope that someday I remember this date when I'm I liberated.\" So, April 19 was still not ... I think it was either the end of April or May [1945].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6363.0,6399.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Late April ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6399.0,6399.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes, it was late already. Either the first week in May or the end of April. The Russians were coming and the Americans were coming about the same time, and all the SS women, they all escaped.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6399.0,6418.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Was this by the Russians?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6418.0,6422.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: The Russian Army came through about the same time the American Army reached this town. So, we heard about ... When we were hiding, the Frenchmen told us that when they arrived, to say that, \"I am Jewish.\" We were hoping that that would help, that they won't hurt us because we are Jewish. \"Je suis Jewish.\" I forget how you say it [in French], \"I'm Jewish.\" So, anyway, the army came through and the Frenchman told us to hide from the Russian Army, but it's okay if the American Army got there first. But the Russian Army ... They're not nice with girls, so to make sure you hide. So, that's why they took us to this house and hid us, the five of us girls: my two sisters, and I, and two other people. The five us hid in this house. We were there for several days. We ate all kinds of food and we got sick. We raided the pantry and the only thing they had were jams--fruit, and jams, and liquor. We all got sick. Some people got real sick after because they ate whatever. But that was the day of liberation. It was not like they show in the movies, with the army coming in and everybody welcoming them then and [unintelligible] them. I mean, we were just ... It was very ... The gate was open, and they abandoned us, and that's why we knew. But this SS woman was the meanest one. I used to get letters with Pierre, the Frenchman, and they used to have inspections in our barracks. My sisters were afraid that during inspections that she's going to find the letters. That's when I was learning French. That girl from France was putting down some words and I was putting down words, and I was writing a few words to Pierre, and I smuggled the letter to him, and then he would write back, and she would translate what it said. Then, I had these letters and I would hide them on my body all the time to make sure nobody finds it. Then, we had the inspections all the time and my sister was afraid that the SS woman will find the letters. So, there were inspections and she's turning over the mattress one day, inspecting and everything, and nothing was found. And I said ... You know, my heart was pounding. I said, \"Am I glad they didn't find my letters!\" I had hid them that day. I hid them under the mattress. So, my sister said, \"Well, the reason they didn't find them is because we burned them all,\" so I started crying and hitting her, saying, \"You burned my love letters?! [Unintelligible] I learned how to write to Pierre!\" They were afraid they would find them, so they burned all the letters, but then I did have my diary, which I kept on my body, so at least I kept that. It had this little lead button that I made [unintelligible]. When they stole my jewelry, they stole about a hundred pieces of my jewelry. I didn't care about any of them except my Magen David necklace than I got from Harold and my diary. I couldn't get it back.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6422.0,6635.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How big was this factory?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6635.0,6639.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: The factory? I would say ... For size, but, like, for instance, you see this room here? I would say it was about twice the size of this room.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6639.0,6650.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How many people worked there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6650.0,6652.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We were eighty women who were all working in this factory and then they had ... I would say they had, like, at least half a dozen Frenchmen, and they had at least four SS women, who were guarding. Then, we had [an] assembly line, like, long rows, doing the same things, soldering the wires and putting it together.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6652.0,6681.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about a day in your life when you were in slave labor at this factory.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6681.0,6688.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: All I remember is in the morning, we would hear this gong go off, I think probably early in the morning, like six o'clock, and we'd get dressed, and then line up and go to ... I don't remember getting food there or getting food ... I think we got food at the factory. We lined up, and we walked to the factory, which was ... I don't know. I think it was pretty far. It wasn't just around the corner. We walked there and the SS women were guarding us. We were not allowed to talk to each other; just be real quiet and you walk. And then we got there and then we were all assigned to the different jobs. They were first easier things and then harder. Those who were better, they would do ... like, I did. I learned the actual soldering the wires. It was the lead that you had ... with this tool that you had to melt the lead and then connect the wires. I started to do that then. Later, when I made this little diary, I made the button from lead, and I put holes in it, and I attached it to my diary. So, we would work there and the only thing [was] that we weren't allowed to communicate with each other. We weren't allowed to talk, only to the person who was showing us what to do. We would have to raise our hand in order to go to the washroom and the SS woman would let one person at a time go in the washroom and come back. We broke for ... I think we broke for something, for coffee, or we had some break, and then we had lunch there. I remember the food was a little bit better than in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I don't remember anymore what we ate. I know we didn't have much food. That's why we were so glad to get extra food from the workers. We worked ... I don't remember how long, but it was quite a few hours. Then, we marched backed to the barracks and we went back to the barracks. I don't remember if we had food in our barracks or not. I don't remember having a kitchen there. So, we were in the barracks and then we were able to do just do whatever we wanted in the evening. That's where we were studying. Some people were studying Hebrew, some people were studying French, and we were singing songs and just ... But basically, the whole day consisted of that. Then, I started to get paper from Pierre that he'd smuggled in. I started learning French. That's when I decided I will make something out of this time and learn another language, so that's what I was learning. But we would just huddle together, and sing songs, and reminisce, and crave food, talk about all the food that we wanted to eat. But basically, it was a very ... I mean, it was monotonous. I mean, every day we did pretty much the same thing. We just marched to work, we worked, and we were marched back.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6688.0,6891.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How far was the march?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6891.0,6897.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: To go to work, I think, it was pretty far. I mean, it wasn't right on the corner. I think we had to walk ... I would say it probably was at least maybe six to eight blocks, or more. I know at Mahrisch Weisswasser, we had to walk at least, maybe more, I think, we had to walk to ... I tell you, at one point I fainted at work, when we worked at Mahrisch Weisswasser, at the factory. I fainted, and because I was a good worker, they took me to an infirmary, and I was there, and my sisters were so worried about me. They thought they'll never see me again. But I was there for two or three days, and then I went back, and I was okay. I was trying to figure out what happened. I used to tell people that I thought it felt like my heart hurt. So, I don't know what it was, but I was in the infirmary, and then I went back, and I survived.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6897.0,6962.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You said one of the guards was especially mean.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6962.0,6966.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes, this SS woman.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6966.0,6967.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What kinds of things did she do?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6967.0,6968.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, she would always, if you didn't walk straight, she would hit you with her ... She had this little cord, this wood thing that she walked with. She would hit you with that if you didn't walk fast enough, also if she caught you talking or something. She would, as soon as you did something--you'd didn't work fast enough--she would use the cane all the time. Then, like, one person she caught talking to the Frenchmen and you're not supposed to talk to them. Her biggest joy was to shave the hair again because she knew that women treasured it. You know, their hair was growing back. This is six months later in the hair was growing. We were so proud of that. So, she always ... The punishment was to shave the person's hair again. So, she did that and she just was very sadistic. She enjoyed hitting people, just beating them for the smallest thing, or take away the food if you did something wrong.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=6968.0,7042.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Were you punished?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7042.0,7049.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I don't remember. I don't remember ever being singled out for punishment, but I was worried that I would be caught smuggling my notes to Pierre, and my sister was worried. She said, \"They're going to shave your hair again.\" And I told them, \"I'm not worried about that.\" I was careful, but I was never caught with that. The only thing I regret is that my sister burned all the letters, but I might have been caught if she didn't because I hid them in my mattress that time and that was the first place they look.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7049.0,7085.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What did you wear?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7085.0,7087.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: You know, I don't think we wore the uniform things. I don't think we ... At one time, I remember we wore the blue and white uniforms. For years, I could not stand ... I wouldn't buy anything that's striped. Anything that was striped would just remind me what the prisoners had to wear. But I think I wore the blue and whites and the real heavy material clothes, because we all looked alike.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7087.0,7116.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What about a badge?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7116.0,7120.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We didn't have stars then. We wore the Jewish stars in Romania. In Cluj, in Kolosvar, we wore. The last two or three months, we had to wear the stars, but not in camp. I don't remember having ... I remember we [wore a] uniform. We all looked alike in these terrible uniforms, but I don't remember.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7120.0,7144.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you have any news about your parents and your brother at this point?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7144.0,7150.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: The only thing was in Auschwitz-Birkenau, they kept saying that the older people were killed and my sister would say, \"Don't believe it.\" You know, it's just people talking. And they'd say, like, Hitler was killed, and Hitler was alive, and the war was ended, and the war didn't end. We kept hearing these rumors and my sister said that, \"What will keep us alive is if we don't believe all these stories. And if people work, they are going to survive.\" The only thing is that we saw the trucks go by with all the bodies. Where did these bodies come from? They were people probably sick. We smelled the smoke and they used to tell us, \"The only way you leave here is through the smoke.\" My sister said, \"We just don't believe that,\" and I just have to have faith and believe G-d will help us, and the war will end, and we will keep ourselves clean and healthy, so we could survive. We didn't know what to believe, but we did see trucks go by and we saw ... My aunt was there for four months, and then she was very weak, and she was picked, and that was the last time we saw her. She knew she would be picked and she knew that she would not survive because she would come and give us her food and say she's not hungry. We would say, \"How can you not be hungry when you get almost no food?\" So, she knew that she would not survive. And one day, she didn't come anymore, and there were selections, and we knew she was gone, but we ourselves saw people kill themselves near the fence, you know, touch the wire. We tried to talk people out of it. We had one girlfriend that I saw an Israel in 2000. We had a get-together and she said ... Her husband Kinyua, we had a get-together with some of the people who survived and he said that, \"I have my wife, Eva. She has you to thank for her survival.\" I said, \"What did I do?\" He said, \"When you were in Auschwitz, Eva wanted to kill herself because she couldn't stand the starvation anymore, and the beatings, and all that, and she wanted to touch the electric wire and kill herself, and you and your sisters, Yaffa and Miriam, talked her out of it.\" So, the three of us told her not to do it and to live, and because of us, he said she survived. So, it was very easy. When we had the selections, people would be missing, and we had to stand in the line for hours because somebody was missing. That person missing sometimes because they killed themselves, because they couldn't take it, so they were dead because of sickness. So, I remember [unintelligible] we were helpful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7150.0,7347.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What surrounded the labor camp?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7347.0,7352.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: At the labor camp, we were in a big room. I think that was, I think, there were two rooms that each had 40 people in bunk beds, but and then it was it ... I remember the headquarters for the SS were at the entrance. It had a gate so that it was surrounded somehow that we couldn't go out.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7352.0,7367.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Was there a wire or a wall?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7367.0,7380.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman:  I'm trying to think what it was. I know it was a gate and then some wires near the gate, so I imagine the whole place was probably surrounded.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7380.0,7392.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: And the camp where you lived, was it surrounded by ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7392.0,7400.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: You mean in Auschwitz-Birkenau?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7400.0,7404.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: When you were in the labor camp and you lived in barracks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7404.0,7414.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right. They were just like ... They weren't really barracks. They were like two places that, like, maybe a factory or a house or something that was taken over, and then they put in the beds and gave us blankets, so it was like an army takes over a place and it was like a makeshift headquarters. We were prisoners. I mean, we were not able to leave that area.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7414.0,7444.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What was at the gates? Were there any guards at the gate?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7444.0,7448.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: There were always guards at the gate, yes. They were always there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7448.0,7451.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What nationality?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7451.0,7453.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: They were German. They were German guards, yes. I think the gate was electrified, too. I think it was electrified and somebody guarding it all the time. When we went out, they had to electrically open it so that we could go out and march to, you know, go to work.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7453.0,7480.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You mentioned that this was an electronics factory.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7480.0,7486.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right. They called it there an electronics factory.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7486.0,7489.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Do you know what exactly they manufactured?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7489.0,7492.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I always thought they made walkie talkie radios, but my sister tells me they made something in telephones. They called the factory Telefunken, so they probably did telephones. But we soldered wires into little instruments. So, I think it was walkie talkie radios or telephones.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7492.0,7516.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Who called the place, the factory, Telefunken?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7516.0,7522.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We always knew the name of that was Telefunken. Then later on, we saw the name and said, \"Oh, that was the name of the factory we were at.\" So, we just knew it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7522.0,7532.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You saw the name where?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7532.0,7533.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Maybe inside the main ... written someplace where we went to work. We saw the name up someplace. And then later, when we saw it in the paper, we said, \"Oh, that was the name of the factory we worked at.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7533.0,7550.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Now, you said there were other prisoners.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7550.0,7553.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, we were 80 women and all of us were making in this area and that they had ... We were all prisoners, and the German women watched over us, and then, they had Frenchmen, who were the specialists that worked, and we were like assembly line. We just assembled the easy stuff.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7553.0,7579.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did they stay together in the same area?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7579.0,7582.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: The women did, yes. The men had their own place. When they finished the work, they could leave and do whatever they wanted to.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7582.0,7595.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How were they treated? Do you know?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7595.0,7597.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No, the men, I guess, they worked ... We didn't see anything happening to them and they told us that they were free to go in the evening. They could go repair things, electronic stuff, at people's homes so that could earn more money. They gave them more bread and fruit. And that's what they did. So, they were free after they left. They could do what they wanted. I don't know if they were treated roughly or not at the factory. We women had to be very careful. We had to ... orders ... Just look down and do our work. We couldn't talk to anybody. We couldn't talk to each other. We just had to work. And we had to raise our hand when we had to go to the washroom, one at a time. If we did something wrong, the SS women used their whips on us right away, and then if you did something really wrong, then the punishment was that they brought you to their house and somebody cut your hair again.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7597.0,7667.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You mentioned someone called Pierre ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7667.0,7671.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7671.0,7672.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: ... who helped you a lot ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7672.0,7673.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7673.0,7674.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: ... who gave you food. Did he ever tell you why he was there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7674.0,7682.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No. We wrote notes to each other, and he just said that this was his share that he had to during the war, and he was sorry for us because we were not treated like he was, and we didn't have as much food, and he felt sorry for us, and he said that he would try and help us out. When the Germans were not looking, he's going to give me some food.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7682.0,7711.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Do you know what moved him to help you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7711.0,7715.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I think he just probably felt he wanted to help me. He probably felt sorry for us. I know the first letter he wrote, he said, \"I watched your sad eyes.\" So, he wanted to help out and make me happier, so he ... You know, we were corresponding back and forth, but it was nothing. I mean, the closest we came was once when I was going to the washroom and he was leaving the workbench at the same time, we were able to touch--you know, like, our hands. That was the closest we came to each other.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7715.0,7752.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Was he Jewish?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7752.0,7753.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No, he was not Jewish. He was not Jewish. He was a few years older than I was. I would say at least ten years older or more. When we wrote back and forth to each other, we always said this is just a platonic relationship or just a light friendship, because I would never marry anybody that was not Jewish, and I would not detour from my route. I would survive with my two sisters, and I wanted to continue with them, and I wanted to go back home to see who I'd find, and then our goal that helped us survive was always to try and build a land in Palestine. So, all along, he knew that I was not going with him, but there were several of the girls in that group who did go with the Frenchmen. They did go, and they got married, and went to France. So, I just said goodbye.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7753.0,7813.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How did you get along with the other inmates?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7813.0,7817.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I tell you, we never had no problem. Like, sometimes you read about how they're fighting for this and that. We always cared for each other. We cooperated. We tried to help each other. Like, for instance, when I got the food from Pierre--after a weekend, he would have more food; maybe he would have bread, and honey, and an apple. We all would jump on our bunk beds and post the guards, make sure that nobody comes to see us, and we shared our food. We didn't just eat it just the three of us, my two sisters and I. We shared it and one of the girls helped me write letters and helped me learn French and we always cooperated. We didn't steal from each other. We reminisced a lot. We talked about our past and we talked about our future. Actually, we got along very well and the same thing in Auschwitz-Birkenau. We cooperated with the others. We helped them out. Those that couldn't do any work, we would help them, bring the food to the bunk, and we encouraged them to get up, and go eat, and to line up in the Zahlappell, in the counting. We would hug each other to try and keep warm and then, we would let go when the guards came. So, I think most of the time, we did not fight. We weren't jealous of each other's better positions. You kind of feel like a zombie. You don't really think much. The closest way I can describe is when I had surgery, and before they put you to kind of half asleep, you don't know what's going on. That's how you felt most of the time. You just don't care about what happens to you. You exist, you know? Like, you walk around. That's why I can't understand sometimes the young people wanting to take drugs and numb their brain, because that's what happened to us. Later ... I always felt that they put something in our food in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and I was talking to a lot of people, trying to find out. Just two or three years ago, we had this woman that was with Anne Frank's father and wrote this book about the Holocaust. I went up to her and asked her, \"Do you know anything about it,\" because the minute we arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, all the women stopped to have their menstrual periods. Nobody menstruated. And it doesn't happen. With starvation, that happens, but it doesn't happen overnight. So, nobody menstruated. I asked her, \"Do you know if anything was put in our food, because we all stopped [menstruating] and we also walked around like zombies?\" And so, she said, \"Yes,\" she read about it and definitely there was bromide put in our food. I was trying to find out since then what that was or how it affects you, but I haven't done any research on it. But she did mention we had bromide that was put in our food.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7817.0,8020.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Now, you spent several months in Auschwitz-Birkenau.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8020.0,8023.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I was in Auschwitz-Birkenau from April until October [1944].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8023.0,7200.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau from ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7200.0,7206.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Cluj.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7206.0,7206.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Cluj to Auschwitz-Birkenau.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7206.0,7210.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, there's not much I can tell you about it. We just were in trains, I mean, closed trains. Later, we heard the expression of [their] being \"cattle cars.\" We couldn't see very much. That's why people refer to them as cattle cars. We were in the train for many days. I have no idea how long. And conditions were very crowded. [We could] just barely sit and we didn't have food. We were hungry and people were dying. I saw the first person die. That was in the same train. We couldn't wait to arrive where we were supposed to arrive and maybe start working. The only thing we took that ... The only food that was left after we left our home and we went to the brick factory, we used up most of the things, because we took some stuff with us, some food and then we didn't have much left. The only thing we had left was onions and we were munching on onions in the train. Yes, and then that ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7210.0,7278.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What did you see when you arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau? You arrived in late ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7278.0,7286.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: It was late April, yes, or early May.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7286.0,7291.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Nineteen forty-four?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7291.0,7292.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Forty-four, yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7292.0,7294.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What were the people ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7294.0,7298.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We just saw lots of crowds of people all getting all off, hurrying, moving them in different lines. We saw soldiers. We saw German soldiers in their uniforms. Sometimes, when I ... Later, when I saw pictures, I could have sworn that one of them was [Dr. Josef] Mengele, because that picture stayed with me because with the tall, high boots and the uniform and the cane in his hand. When he talked with my sister, I said, \"I swear that one of them was Mengele,\" and the motioning people to the left and to the right. Then, they also had uniformed guards, uniformed Polish people who were prisoners already for many years, and the Polish people were also telling [people] to move to the left, move to right, and helping the crowds as they got off their trains, and they were shoving people to the left and right. Every now and then, they would take a young mother and move the mother who was on the grandmother's side because she was carrying a child and they would take the mother and shove her to the other side and take the child away and put the child in the grandmother's lap because they knew what's going to happen to people and then all you hear people crying and they won't let go of the child and then they would push them to the other side.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7298.0,7385.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: With whom did you arrive in Auschwitz-Birkenau?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7385.0,7386.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I arrived ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7386.0,7386.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What members of your family?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7386.0,7388.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: All six members of us arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau at the same time and also an aunt. The six of us were my father, my mother, my brother, and my two sisters, and I. Right away, the three of us, my two sisters and I, were put to one side. My mother was put to another side and my father went with my brother to one side.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7388.0,7418.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What happened after you were separated with your sisters? Where were you sent?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7418.0,7425.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: My two sisters ... We were marched. We had to go to this barrack. We were walked to this barrack. The first place where we were, that's where they cut our hair, first with the scissor, and then you moved to another barrack, and then, they shaved our hair, and then they shaved us all over. I mean, they shaved you under the arm and the pubic area, everywhere.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7425.0,7456.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you have any idea what was going on there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7456.0,7458.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No, we had no idea. We were we were kind of numb. We were scared all the time. We said, \"Okay, so this is happening.\" But we just thought for sanitary reasons we had to be shaved because we are women, and we will be okay. We are going to work. We're still talking about being picked to go to work. We had no idea. We thought the parents were just [in] another place, even though this is 1944, just one year before the war ended. Still, we had no idea. We never heard before then of gas chambers or crematorium. That was the first time we started hearing about it, when we were in Auschwitz-Birkenau.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7458.0,7502.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about your accommodations.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7502.0,7506.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We were in that camp, and we were both in C Larger and B Lager. I didn't know which one I ended up [for] more time, but we were told that at one time a horse stables. So, we were in, like, tiers, two tiers of bunk beds. In each one, three could sleep in one spot and three in the other. Basically, when we lined up and just got ... We could pick a dress from the floor. That was one of the areas. We got a blanket, and we got some kind of a dish that we're going to get food in, and the three of us slept on a lower bunk. There were 800 of us in this one barrack, 800 women.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7506.0,7565.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Were you put the work?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7565.0,7567.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No. We were waiting every day that we were going to be sent out to work, or shipped out of Auschwitz-Birkenau, but we did not go to work. We had to get up early and line up for counting first in the morning and then again ... And sometimes, we were in line for two or three hours and then again in the evening, like 4:00, 5:00, we would stand in line again. The whole day, we did not work. Every now and then, we would be asked to help out with chopping stones, which was, like, just half a block down, and just chop stones, but most of the time, we did not work. The only work we did was people that wanted to volunteer to help carry the food from the kitchen. They had these big urns of food that you had to bring from the kitchen and it was was a hard job because it was heavy. My sister, Yaffa, always volunteered, and we did, too, whenever we could. So, we helped go to the kitchen, bring the porridge, whatever we had one for breakfast, like cereal or the green soup. I called it, like, grass soup. For years, I couldn't eat spinach because it was like the soup like we had. And you'd bring it from the kitchen and then you'd dish it out to the people in the barrack. And that was the job. And then, we had to help with keeping the barrack clean, so my sisters and I, we would always volunteer and help sweep up and we kept the spirit and we ... That's why it helped us survive there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7567.0,7676.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Are you saying your morale was high?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7676.0,7681.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Because the morale was high and, I mean, we did encourage people. We would sing songs, and we'd tell them which prayers to say, and we would remind them of the holidays, and all the good times already. Anyway, my older sister was raised as a Zionist and she would sing all the songs, and we'd all join in, and we would just try and keep up a spirit and that's why the Blockalteste, the one overseer in the barrack, liked our spirit, and that's why once, she said, \"The Weisz sisters will survive because they always keep their place clean, and they volunteer, and they keep up the spirit.\" And she liked that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7681.0,7727.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Why do you think you were able to keep your spirit up? What made that happen?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7727.0,7735.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I think probably several reasons. One of the reasons it was because we were together, my two sisters and I. We were together, like three people, we encouraged each other. When one is sad and one is down or not feeling well, the other one will lift up the spirits of that person, and physically and morally encourage to do it. Like, for instance, I didn't want to eat when we got to Auschwitz-Birkenau because, among the three of us sisters, I was the most religious. I refused to eat because the food was not kosher. My sister tried to encourage me to eat and tell me that it was a sin, that I'm committing suicide, and it's a bigger sin than not to eat kosher meat, that you should eat the food, whatever it is. My sister couldn't do anything so she said, \"I'm going to find Aunt Rozsi.\" Aunt Rozsi was in the same camp. She was not in the same barrack with us, but she was taken the same time, and she ended up being in the same compound at the same camp. Like, our barrack had 800 women; all together, they probably had about 20,000 women in this camp. Aunt Rozsi was my mother's younger sister. She [my sister] found Aunt Rozsi and brought her to our barrack. She said, \"You have to convince Pessie\"--my name was Pessie at that time, a Yiddish name--\"that she has to eat because she'll die if she doesn't.\" Aunt Rozsi started lecturing me and telling me that, you know, \"Oh, you have to eat and it's a sin to commit suicide,\" and all that. Then, she said, \"Okay, you're not listening to me,\" so she took the food, she pushed it in my mouth. So, I said, \"Okay, you made my mouth not kosher. Now, I am going to eat.\" That's why I started eating again. So, if not for my sisters being there, encouraging me to change and eat and Aunt Rozsi ... So, it was a moral support of being together. Also, I think because of our upbringing. I think because we were raised very positively [by] our parents. We had good relationships with our parents and we were a very close family. I think because of the optimistic outlook we were raised with, it kind of traveled with us to camp, too, and we kept up our spirits because we were already close, and we wanted to survive, and we helped each other out. So, I don't know. It was just a combination of things, especially not being alone. That makes a big difference.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7735.0,7919.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What other groups of people did you see at Auschwitz-Birkenau?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7919.0,7925.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Most of the people ... We were very lucky ones that we stayed three of us together because most of them were always alone, just individual people. There were some that ... Every now and then, we saw a mother and daughter that were a younger mother and a daughter. Most of the people there ... Like, my sister was 15, and I was 17, so most of the people there were at least at least 15, or older, or maybe 14 if they looked older. But otherwise, they wouldn't have been in that side. Most of the people, I think they were individuals. A lot of people from Poland were taken very early. So, there weren't too many people from Poland. Most people were from France and there were some people from Germany, for some reason, and a lot of Hungarians, and I think Bulgarians. I think there were gypsies, because they were taken about the same time, groups of people, but there was just two sisters that I remember from Cluj that were together, and us three sisters. All the others, I don't think there was anybody that stands out in my mind who were there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=7925.0,8009.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Let us move ahead to liberation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8009.0,8015.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8015.0,8016.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You had mentioned that one day the gate was open.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8016.0,8020.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8020.0,8022.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What happened after that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8022.0,8025.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: The gate was open. I was among the first ones to notice the gate was open. I went back and yelled to the people that the war must have ended because the gate is open. We were wondering what we were going to do. I mean, it was a happy occasion, but it was also very worrisome, what to do next. So, we ended up with ... I mentioned to you about one of the German women left there. I mentioned that to you already, right? Do you want me to repeat that? Right. So, after, we were wondering what to do and then about four of the Frenchman came to our camp and they told us that the American Army and the Russian Army are coming through, the war ended and they're going to be here on our own and to be careful what to do, so what should we do? So, people ... Some of the other Frenchmen took several people with them; they knew each other already a little bit. Then, Pierre came to tell us that he wanted to hide us until the army passes. So, he took my sisters, Miriam, and Yaffa, and I, and two more people, five of us woman went with Pierre and he took us to town and we found an empty house that was abandoned and he put us up there. So, we stayed in this house and they left, and we were on our own in this house to fend and hide until the army passes. We stayed there and we raided the pantry. We tried to find food in the house and basically, the only food that was left was jars of jams that people preserved and had it in the storage and they had liquor, so we were eating jars of jam and liquor. Everybody got sick, feeling not right. We stayed there for I remember how many days and then Pierre came by once and wanted to know what we have decided. The army passed. What should we do? We decided to say goodbye, and my two sisters and I were going to continue. We're going to try and get back to Cluj because that was our main aim. We wanted to get back and see who survived and see if we can find any relatives. So, we started going back. It wasn't that simple because we had to hitch rides. We found somebody with a horse and buggy, so we went on it. Then, we went on back of bicycles because we didn't know how to ride bicycles. Then, once with the horse and wagon and then, we walked always in the direction to get closer to Cluj. Then, we saw a train going and this train was going in the direction we wanted to go, so when it stopped, we decided to get on the train. So, we got on the train and then, on the train, there were some soldiers, some Russian soldiers, and one of them started to approach my younger sister, Miriam, and started to make passes at her. So, when this train slowed down, my sister, Yaffa, said, \"When it slows down, we all jump off.\" So, when it slowed down, we, all three of us, jumped off. Then, we continued on foot. Then, we continued again trying to hitch rides, but basically ... no car rides, just very primitive transportation. It took us several days and then we finally reached Cluj. Yes, it was quite an adventure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8025.0,8284.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You mentioned that you ended up in a displaced persons camp in Salzburg. How were you contacted so that you were able to leave in order to go on to then Palestine?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8284.0,8306.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay. Well, every camp ... We were in so many displaced persons camps. Every time we would have somebody that ... probably people from Palestine were either with the British Brigade, with the Jewish part of the Brigade, or just volunteers who came from Palestine to help out with the refugees, to organize them, and to try and get them to join groups in Palestine. Each time, we had these leaders. The one that was in Salzburg, his name was Tzvika, and he wore, like, a British uniform with the little hat. I have a picture of him, but he was like a Jewish soldier in the British army. He came there to help organize the Jewish refugees, the survivors, to get to Palestine. So, he would have the list of people who are in this group and he would be in contact with the organization, with the different organizations that were handling this, to find out when we can get a passage. So, he was in touch with us all the time and groups would coming on, and they had to wait for people until they hired boats until they had money to pay for the captains of boats. We were his contact and we had to wait until his orders came what to do for us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8306.0,8407.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You mentioned that you were in several DP camps.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8407.0,8410.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes, I was in quite a few.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8410.0,8413.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/170","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What were the names?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8413.0,8414.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/171","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay. Well, the very first one was Szombathely, which was a border between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And we had to bribe guards to walk us across the border at night and go over across the mountains to cross the border from Hungary to Czechoslovakia. Then from there, we crossed over to ... [It was] always at night, and you had to give bribes, and the bribes that we gave to the guards [was] the money that people sent to help us refugees. We always had the three B's, like, bribes, bread and blankets because that was the first thing that we got. First, we got bribes. Then, we got blankets to keep warm. Blankets were used for everything, to make clothes, like skirts and pants. Then, we crossed the border at night. Then, from Szombathely, we went to this city called Graz. After the war, I visited the city of Graz. I wanted to be there because I was there, Graz. Then, from Graz, we went to another city in Austria called Linz, and then from Linz, we went to another city called Salzburg. In Salzburg, ordinarily, I would have stayed just a few days and moved on, but because we were an enthusiastic group of 42 boys and girls, they asked us to stay on and that's why we stayed on. We managed the camp and that's why I got a chance to meet Harold.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8414.0,8506.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/172","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: When did you find out what had happened with the rest of your family?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8506.0,8512.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/173","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: We were asking all the time after we were liberated, \"Have you seen ... Did you hear ...\" Every person we met, asking. We would hear, \"Okay, this is what happened.\" We did not hear anything about our parents or relatives. If they came with the transport in Auschwitz-Birkenau and they were separated, they were probably killed right away. Then, while the transport was passing through Salzburg, somebody told me, \"Did you know that your brother is alive?\" That's the first time we heard that my brother was alive. Then, we heard the story that my brother was in Dachau, and that was the fifth camp, and he was lying with my father in the gutter, and when my father ... It was too late for him. But slowly, as we talked to people, we heard. Nobody actually told us, \"I saw your parents being killed,\" or anybody. Only one, my brother, knew that my father died a week before he was liberated, but it was just by rumors, and hearsay, and asking. Later, you hear stories that this was in the army, or this was in Russian and Siberia, but we never really heard any direct report of anybody saying, \"Okay, I was there when this was killed.\" Even my Aunt Roszi, she was at Auschwitz-Birkenau for four months. We were there six months, and after four months, she was taken with the transport, and we knew. She came to say goodbye. She was real thin and she used to give me her food. She knew she was going to be killed. She just came to say goodbye and we said, \"This is probably the last time I'll see you here. We have selections every day. I'm sure I'm going to be picked next day.\" After that, she was picked, and we never heard anything more. We just knew the trucks would come and take them away.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8512.0,8637.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/174","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Talking about Auschwitz-Birkenau for a moment, let us go back and please tell me if you ever got sick there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8637.0,8645.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/175","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: In Auschwitz-Birkenau, I probably had a real depression, I think. I didn't want to eat, and I wanted to die because it wasn't kosher food. Basically, I think we were just [sick with], like, colds because it was very hard to not to ... We had to force ourselves to go under the water.  You know, [to take] a cold shower. But basically, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, we did not get sick like I got sick in Cyprus. In Cyprus, I got sick from malnutrition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8645.0,8685.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/176","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Were you ever punished in Auschwitz-Birkenau?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8685.0,8688.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/177","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Punished? Just being hit, just, \"Move faster,\" and being hit, and stuff like that, but not punished separately.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8688.0,8701.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/178","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Can you describe those moments when you were hit?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8701.0,8704.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/179","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Just, we had to be careful. We couldn't look the wrong way. If you looked the wrong way, the SS women loved to walk around with a stick, with this leather stick, and just, if you didn't stand still the right way, they would hit you. And if you didn't get up fast enough and line up, then they'd hit you. I mean, you had to constantly make sure you obeyed and you were not noticed. There were so many of us, and we just tried not to be noticed, tried to blend in with the crowds. We learned to do that real well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8704.0,8745.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/180","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Moving way ahead in time, we were talking about your leaving Europe to go to Palestine. How did it happen that you were able to board the ship? Where were you? In what country? In what city?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8745.0,8767.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/181","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay, we were in Italy, in Brivio, when we heard that we are approaching the time to go to Palestine, we can ... They had a ship for us. So, we packed up. There were 42 boys and girls and we were in Italy, where we were walked through towns, and we went. I just remember going to other towns in Italy and then we went ... Each town we went, we got closer to the area where the ship was, and the ship was docked in Bari, Italy. When we approached it, I couldn't believe that this was the ship that we are all going to go on because it was so small, and we were 800 refugees, 790 refugees. So, the captain ... We were asking and joking, \"Is this the ship?\" Yes, we're all going on this ship. When we started talking about it and find out what kind of ship it was, it turns out that it was a vessel that was built for 80 fisherman and it was converted to hold 800 people, so they had five tiers of bunk beds. We were looking at it and we said, \"We're going on this ship?\" We were hoping that, \"Will it stay afloat with all of us?\" It was just ... I couldn't believe it when we saw the ship. When I first came to this country and I had to study English, I wrote a composition about it, my conversation with the captain, and how we approached the ship. Anyway, we were on this ship and the conditions were the worst ever. People wished they had died in concentration camps, it was so bad. Imagine people being on a boat and you're taking turns to get air because we were five tiers of bunk bed, so you could only lie down and only certain times of the day, you could get up and go on deck, because we were hidden. They couldn't let the British see that we were people. They though it was just fishermen with their load, so we took turns. People were sick, and everyone was throwing up, and they wished that they had died, it was so bad. Then, the problem with our ship was that it broke down. The motor stopped running and so we were floundering like that for two or three days. Then, they had to decide how we're going to get rescued. They had to call and let the British know we were there. So, that's why they had to come to our rescue and tow our ship in because the motor broke down.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8767.0,8943.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/182","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Where did they tow in?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8943.0,8945.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/183","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: They towed us to Haifa, but they didn't let us off in Haifa. We were fighting. We wanted to get off the ship. The British used the water hoses on us, to try and make us move, and go in the direction they want us to go. So, they took us out. They transferred us to take us to the island of Cyprus. So, that was among the most traumatic experiences because we though were already in Palestine and then we had to ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8945.0,8979.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/184","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What was going on inside your heart in those moments?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8979.0,8984.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/185","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: It was one of the worst times because, we thought, here, we survived, and we went through the war and everything, it's going to be better, and the whole world is going to act differently, and we would be living a full life again. And then, to find out that things are not changed, we are still persecuted, and the biggest disappointment was that we thought the British were such gentlemen and here they were, been doing this to us. They would use the water hoses and say, \"Lady, move,\" and using the beautiful language and being so mean. We thought, \"This can't be happening,\" to have people behave like that after all that we went through and, \"What has this world come to?\" We were very disappointed and sad that things were happening like that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=8984.0,9044.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/186","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How long after you left were you captured?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9044.0,9050.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/187","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: You mean in Atlit?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9050.0,9056.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/188","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: In Haifa. You arrived in Haifa how long after you left Italy?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9056.0,9063.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/189","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay, after we left ... Let's see. We were on the sea at least ... On the sea, I think we were, like, ten days because of the ship having broken down. So, we were floundering about at least ten days and then, we arrived in the Haifa area, and then we didn't get off, and we were ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9063.0,9089.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/190","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How long were you in the port?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9089.0,9091.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/191","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I don't remember.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9091.0,9093.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/192","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about your arrival in Cyprus.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9093.0,9098.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/193","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: In Cyprus, well, that was a very traumatic experience because Cyprus was, like, a nothing. The area we came to was like a wilderness and the only thing ... We didn't have clothes.  It was very hot and we didn't have much with us. We had very few things with us. We were taken to this ... I have some pictures of it. We were taken to this area and we had like just cots, like, just wooden boards that we were given for us to sleep on. It was so primitive. We didn't have any dishes, we had just cans that people ... After we opened the cans ... and there were our utensils. We had these huge outdoor ovens that we were able to cook and we warmed things up on. We had just outdoor tables. So, practically just like camp living. We slept on these boards. We didn't do much. We had to line up to go get water. Water was rationed out, so we had to get water. The conditions were so bad and the food was so bad and so little that we were saying that it was almost worst than when we were in labor camp. That was the only time that I got sick. I got really sick because from malnutrition. I broke out in welts all over my body and it was from malnutrition. Some was not going away, so they had nurses that came in from Palestine, from the Hadassah Hospital, and they came in to check the refugees out. I remember I was taken to an infirmary there in Cyprus. They treated me for malnutrition. I had to have some of the things removed. Fortunately, only one spot on my leg that shows the scar where I had that removed because of malnutrition. Conditions then were bad, but our spirits were really high. We organized study groups. We organized discussion groups. We studied Hebrew. We had bulletin boards. I still have pictures of some of the bulletin boards. We would write the Hebrew lessons and we would study Palestinian geography, and history, and Zionism, and songs, and we were always learning and you had ... Today, I laugh at it because I've seen people do it and we did it when we were in Cyprus: You sit around in a circle, in what they call 'sensitivity sessions.' We go around, and each one talks about the other person to say what they like and didn't like and everybody would do that. We would start crying because we didn't like to be criticize. So, we passed the time. Then, we had correspondents, some British newspaper people came in, so we would meet with them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9098.0,9302.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/194","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How did the guards treat you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9302.0,9305.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/195","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: In Cyprus?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9305.0,9307.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/196","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: In Cyprus.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9307.0,9307.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/197","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I tell you, they didn't have that many guards but the camp was surrounded and they had one tall post area and we saw the British with the guns standing there. But overall, we did not see people walking around. We didn't see guards all the time, but we were just there, in a confined area, and we knew that eventually we will leave, but it wasn't like being in prison. We just roamed around in this area.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9307.0,9343.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/198","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Were you able to have a correspondence?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9343.0,9346.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/199","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: No, we were allowed to write letters from Cyprus and periodically people would take the letters out. That's when I was writing to Harold, to Chicago, and some of the letters were not arriving, and then, Harold was trying to find out from the British rabbinate and the Red Cross, trying to trace where his fiancee could be. He still couldn't find out. He would just guess that my ship was probably caught and sent to Cyprus. So, one day, he decided ... A British correspondent was going from Palestine to Cyprus to take pictures and to report about the refugees. So, he asked him could he please bring one letter to his fiancee. This British correspondent was able to get to our group, find our group. We were from Salzburg, so everybody knew us. We were the group from Salzburg and he found us. There was the biggest joy that day when the correspondent comes and says, \"Do you have a person by the name of Pessie Weisz in your group?\" [He was told,] \"Yes.\" He says, \"Well, here's a letter for you.\" So we all jumped on tables and ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9346.0,9427.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/200","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: When did you leave Cyprus?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9427.0,9430.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/201","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I left Cyprus, I think it was about November when somebody came to our group and said, \"We have three certificates,\" because people from Cyprus were able to leave slowly as the British gave them certificates to enter Palestine. So, they came. They told us they had three, and the group had to decide who's going. One couple, they were married and expecting a child, so there was no question that couple goes. And then, the group decided to vote me to go because Harold was already waiting for me in Palestine. So, I left in November of 1946 to go to Palestine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9430.0,9476.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/202","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How did you get there? How did you go?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9476.0,9479.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/203","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I mean, people who were leaving [at] that time, we went on a plane, I think, or in a boat. I can't remember. I think it was a boat. We got to Palestine at the same time and, right away, we were taken to a camp in Palestine. We were taken to Atlit, which was the camp where all the refugees were coming in from Cyprus or other places. We had to be under the British guard. We had to be there for a month in Atlit. And that was the first time that Harold knew I was there and came to visit me. He asked ... We had the British soldiers standing there guarding. He couldn't come in to see me. He could just visit me over the fence.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9479.0,9543.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/204","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Unknown: Through the fence.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9543.0,9543.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/205","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: It was by the fence, right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9543.0,9545.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/206","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Unknown: Yes, through the fence.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9545.0,9545.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/207","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: And I put my hand through, and then Harold put his hand, in order to touch each other and that was the first time when we met after not seeing each other from March of 1946. This was, like, almost ... How many months later? Six months or more. So, anyway, that was our first visit. We were talking in Hebrew, of course, because Harold was teaching me Hebrew. The British guards, after ten minutes, said time was up as if we were prisoners, as if we were in jail. Time was up, so Harold had to leave and then he promised to come back again the next day, whatever. And then from there, it was not the end yet. From Atlit, we were going on. We went from there. We had to go another camp, which was under the Palestinian people, under Jewish supervision, and that was called Kiryat Shmuel or something like that. I think Kiryat Shmuel. And that one, we had to stay there for a month to make sure that we were healthy, that we didn't have any diseases or anything, and then to find out where to send us from there. So, that was in December. Then, we had to decide and luckily, I had ... because my group was not in Palestine yet, so I didn't really know where to go. Harold was studying at the Technion, and he was rooming with something there, and I wouldn't go there anyway, so I had this second cousin that lived in Haifa. His name is Chaim Berger and he offered to have me come to his place and put me up there because he had room, put a bed in for me, and to be there until my group came from Cyprus. So, I stayed with Chaim Berger, who lived not far from the Technion, where Harold was going to school, so he was able to come and visit me. The interesting part about when I stayed with Chaim Berger, that was the first time I visited a dentist. My teeth started hurting and I didn't know what to do. I go to a dentist because before then, as a child, we didn't go to dentists and in Auschwitz-Birkenau, I had a tooth problem, didn't do anything, and in Mahrisch Weisswasser, I had a tooth problem and didn't do anything. Then, finally, in Haifa, my cousin said, \"You got to go to a dentist.\" I go to a dentist and I found out that I had a third tooth growing in the roof of my mouth instead or just sets, I had a third one. So, they had to pull it out. Then, because my tooth in the front--the nerves dies, turned brown, whenever I smiled, I would go like this. I put my hand in front of my mouth. So, the first thing Harold did when we were just engaged--we were not married; we didn't get married until March of 1947 and this was in January-- he wrote home that he needed 800 dollars, I think it was. His parents didn't know ... \"Why does he need that?\" He saved his money in the army. It turns out, he wanted me to go to the dentist and have my teeth fixed. So, that's what he did. We were just engaged, so he bought faulty merchandise.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9545.0,9762.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/208","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about your wedding.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9762.0,9768.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/209","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: The wedding. When Harold have me this material, the parachute fabric, and then when I knew I was getting married, I had this one couple that came with me early from Cyprus, Chaya, and she knew how to sew. So, I had her help me sew this dress into a wedding dress. We just had enough fabric for a short dress and a matching slip. So, she helped me and the two of us were making this dress. Then, on the wedding day, it was outdoors and we were in, like, a kibbutz, but it was like a training kibbutz. We didn't have our own land or anything, but we were just in this little town. It was before Pesach [Yiddish: Passover] and if we didn't get married then, then we had to wait much longer. We didn't want to wait, so that was March 30th. The whole town was invited, anybody that wanted to come in our kibbutz people. So, it was outdoors and was just a simple wedding. We took pictures. Harold had this, like, a camera that he got for cigarettes when he was in the army, so we have some black-and-white pictures of this special day. We were in this kibbutz and just shortly after that was Pesach. We went on a honeymoon later, much later. After we were married, when Harold was [on] vacation from school, we went on a honeymoon. Would you believe it? We went on a motorcycle. He had a motorcycle to ride back and forth to school from our kibbutz. We went on a trip to Jerusalem on these two-lane roads, curving roads, and I sat in back on the motorcycle with him. It is just unbelievable. I would not do it now, that's for sure, but at that time, they didn't have extra roads and it was just amazing. We went all the way to Jerusalem on our honeymoon. So, this was it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9768.0,9891.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/210","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Why did you decide to come to America?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9891.0,9894.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/211","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Times were very difficult then, because it wasn't yet under the partition. This was still before then and bombs were going off, although we were in the ... The Arabs wanted ... The British didn't want it. Finally, they were leaving, and the Arabs didn't want the Jewish people to have the land and there was a lot of ... you know, just problems going on. Our kibbutz, we had problems, too, because we were a group of 42 boys and girls and we used about six different languages, and we thought Hebrew's going to be the common [one], but people are still speaking Hungarian, speaking Romanian, and speaking Polish, and speaking Yiddish. Harold and I were speaking Hebrew, the only language we could speak to each other. So, it was a language problem. Then, Harold's sister and family came to visit and they said, \"Why don't you come back to the States, finish your education?\" Because Harold just started college when he joined the army. He went to the University of Chicago. He had a scholarship at the University of Chicago. So, Ilene said, \"Why don't you come back to the States? Finish your education. Then, you can always come back to Palestine.\" So, this was, like, July or August. Then, on the spur of the moment, Harold decided maybe it would be a good move for him to finish his education and come back. Ilene decided to stay with us until we got the papers, and then in October of 1947, we came back to the States and in November, just one month later, the United Nations announced a petition to partition Israel, and then in April, of course, it became Israel. So, I don't know. If we had stayed there in that period, probably we would not have come back. But anyway, we thought Harold would come back, go to the University of Chicago, and then we would go back. Then, of course, children started arriving and we changed our mind. We did go back many times. We'd been there fourteen times to visit because all the family that survived is in Israel. But Harold wanted to go back more than I did, mostly because I couldn't stand facing war again. I thought, \"I survived, I lived through it, everything in Cluj and then in the war,\" and I just couldn't face ... If the situation was calm and [there was] peace, I probably would have gone back right away. But then, we kept waiting, \"Let's wait until things calm down,\" and since, like, in Israel, it never did. But we love to go back and see our family. Just from the two of us survivors, we had, you know, so many children, and grandchildren, and their grandchildren.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=9894.0,10074.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/212","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about your children. When did your first child arrive?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10074.0,10081.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/213","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Okay. We were married in March of 1947, and our first one, Liora, arrived in March of 1950, three years later. I wanted to work and experience life being married first before we had the first child. So, three years later, we had the first child. Then, four years later, our second child, Allan, was born in 1954. Then, our third child was born in 1956. So, we had three children. I worked until the first one was born.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10081.0,10117.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/214","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: And your youngest child is?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10117.0,10120.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/215","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: My youngest child, Deborah, she was born in 1956.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10120.0,10125.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/216","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You have a son and his name is?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10125.0,10127.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/217","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Allan and he was born in 1954 and Liora was 1950. So, we had three children and they all went to Hebrew school and to college and [are] doing real well. [They] give us a lot of pleasure. Unfortunately, we only have three grandchildren, but at least we experienced the feeling of having grandchildren. They all live in Atlanta and that's why we moved here in 1994. We retired here because we wanted to be close to where the children are.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10127.0,10169.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/218","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You say you worked. What kind of work did you do?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10169.0,10173.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/219","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, when I came here, I immediately started studying English, and went to Americanization classes, and took correspondence courses, and my sister-in-law was teaching me. Right away, I started working for my father-in-law. He had a business of manufacturing gates, folding gates, and he said, \"Well, you can come and work for me and study English at the same time.\" So, I learned how to do the bookkeeping, the accounts receivable, and entries, and the checkbook, and everything. I would go down to work every day. I would go with him or I'd take the CTA, the public transportation in Chicago, and I worked there. Then, later on, when I was able to answer the phone, I would do that. I studied my vocabulary at every opportunity, when I was sitting idle and traveling on the CTA, or stirring the pudding on the stove, I was studying. I guess I learn languages pretty fast because I was raised with many languages. I was very happy to work there. Harold's father was partners with an uncle, with a half-brother. So, this uncle was constantly helping me out to learn English faster and bringing my favorite foods. I worked there. Then, when I was pregnant, I thought I'm going to quit three weeks before Liora was due, and I would have two weeks' vacation, but she spoiled our plans because I quit on a Friday and the next day, she was born. Our third anniversary was coming up, which was March 30th. This was Saturday before the anniversary and Harold and I went to this gift shop. We walked in Hyde Park in Chicago to buy a painting in honor of our anniversary. While I was at the store, this woman kept asking, \"When are you do? When is your child due?\" I said, \"Not for another three weeks.\" We walked to the store and on the way, we walked back. I was wearing a white coat. [We] walked back. On the way, the water bag broke, while walking back. So, I knew that something happened, so we called the doctor. He said, \"Come straight to ...\" It was the University of Chicago hospital. So, we walked there, went straight to the hospital, and four hours later, Liora was born. So, I was very lucky because I was in labor; I just didn't think much of it. I would sit down every now and then, but I still didn't think ... because she wasn't due for three weeks. So, here she came March 25th, and our anniversary was March 30th. In those days, they didn't let people come and visit you in the hospital like they do now, but the nurse was really nice because it's our anniversary, they let Harold, and his sister, Ilene, and Harold's parents in. All four of them came to visit me, and they brought me their first present, which was an eight-millimeter camera and movie projector. So, we were able to take pictures all along of the three children.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10173.0,10383.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/220","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Tell me about your education. How far were you able to go?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10383.0,10391.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/221","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: In Europe, I was just probably, like, in middle of high school. I mean, our education was finished [in] eighth grade and then after that a little bit. But afterwards, I was taking all kinds of courses here in this country. I was taking, first, high school courses in all the different subjects. I would do my lessons, and send it in the mail, and then get back the test results. So, I took history and I took psychology. I took math, the basics, and every subject that people study in high school. Then, I would start taking courses that people study later in college, and I joined the book club, and I was reading books that were classics, so I was constantly studying and exposing myself to learning. It was like the hard-knocks college education and I was also becoming very active in organizations. At one time, I belonged to, like, 18 different organizations.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10391.0,10461.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/222","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Such as?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10461.0,10461.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/223","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Such as I belonged to, of course, the PTOs [Parent-Teacher Organizations], and our children went to three different schools. They went to high school and to Hebrew school. So, I belonged there, and I was festival chairman, and I was whatever they needed in schools. I belonged to B'nai Brith, and I belonged to Hadassah, and I belonged to ORT, and I went to Na'amat, the Pioneer Women, and I belonged to the League of Women Voters. I took Hebrew. Harold and I took Hebrew college courses. Harold went to the College of Jewish Studies for 25 years. The whole time we lived in Chicago, he would take courses on Bible, and Hebrew grammar, whatever, and I would take just courses that I liked. So, we were always studying. I would say the best part of my education was to be able to take all these courses. When we lived in Florida, it was so cheap, just five dollars to register, and I took basic, intermediate, advance and tailoring courses in sewing. After I made about 18 different things, I decided ... You know, like, a four-piece outfit .... After that, I decided it's more fun going shopping to the store, trying things on. So, I gave up, but I can still sew. I have a sewing machine and the children bring all their mending to me in a basket. I still can do that for them, but I'm glad I learned how to do that. And I'd take creative writing. I took ceramics. I learned how to turn the clay on the wheel, by hand, and I made ashtrays, and I made statuary. I do a lot of needlepoint, like, that one over there was done by me. I mean, I learned to do bargello, and knitting, and crocheting, and [was] constantly taking courses. I love to learn.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10461.0,10579.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/224","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How about survivor organizations? Have you been involved with them?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10579.0,10586.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/225","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I tell you ... In Chicago, not much, but in Houston, we had a very strong survivor organization and I was very active in it. We would meet regularly, and have affairs, and we would raise funds to try and build a museum in Houston. We would send out greeting cards, and we'd meet regularly, and we organized a cart to go with books to the libraries and the public schools. We did a lot in Houston. Then, just about a year after I moved away, that's when the Houston museum was established. So, I'm still in touch. It was very active. Here, in Atlanta, I have not been active because mostly, it's too hard to get around in this city. I drive. We still have two cars, but just I can't drive to Midtown, or Buckhead, and all that area, so I have not been active in this town at all. But I was very active when I first came here with the [William Breman Jewish Heritage] Museum. I was one of the people, docents, who came regularly to meet groups and talk and even that became hard to go to that area all the time, so I'm still doing it individually to groups, but not at the museum.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10586.0,10666.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/226","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What about politics?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10666.0,10669.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/227","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Politics? I was very active in politics. I'm a firm believer in voting. I never miss voting and I'm very active. When we lived in Chicago, I was more active. I used to help out with campaigning for my favorite person, or any Jewish cause, or anything that came up that I felt strongly about it. I belonged to the League of Women Voters. I used to register and here, too, I have never missed voting. I feel it's so important for people to get involved and let their voices be heard.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10669.0,10707.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/228","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Which way do you lean politically?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10707.0,10709.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/229","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman:  I used to say all the time that I was a Democrat, but then the last few years, I'm leaning more to be an Independent. I like to vote on issues and also on people like, for instance, when Sam Olens ran to become commissioner here, even though he's a Republican, I voted for him instead of following ... But I just really firmly believe that I'm voting for the best man and the best cause instead of being active in supporting only one party. So, we support both of them. It depends on what the need it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10709.0,10755.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/230","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you share your experiences during the war years with your children?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10755.0,10764.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/231","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes, I believed in sharing from day one, not like some people, like, my sisters, didn't. A lot of people don't, but with my children, I thought to do it in a subtle way, only when they ask, instead of piling everything on them and having that guilt and everything. So, I always waited for an opening, when the children were ready for something, if they questioned me. I know one incident when my youngest daughter, she got a note from school saying that her hair was too long in the front. She had bangs too long. She can't see. She can't read because her hair gets in the way. So, I thought, \"It's time to bring her to have her haircut.\" She was about seven years old. Before we went there, she said, \"Promise me they're not going to cut my bangs,\" because at that time, this was the 1960s, it was very popular to have long hair in the hippie period. So, anyway, I said, \"Okay, they won't cut your bangs.\" So, I talked to the beautician and whispered to her and told her that when she's all done cutting the hair, to make sure she snips off because the teacher sent a note she can't see. So, anyway, she did that and Debbie got real mad at me. She said, \"You promised!\" So, I tell her, \"Okay.\" I thought, \"This is a good time to tell you about my experience.\" She said, \"I'm not going to walk home with you. I'm not going to hold your hand.\" We had to cross this big street in Chicago, on Howard Street. She wouldn't hold my hand because she was so mad at me. So, as we were walking, I said, \"Okay, let me tell you what happened to me when I was a teenager.\" So, I told her about my hair being cut. So, after that, slowly, she gave me her hand and then, when I got home, she gave me a hug and she was asking more. After that, she wanted to watch things about the Holocaust. So, that was her introduction. Another time, my son wanted pajamas that were popular in Chicago, and it was for the Cub Scouts. It was striped and I kept telling him, \"No. You can't have it. You can't have it.\" [He asked,] \"Why not? Why not?\" So, I thought that was a good time to tell him about that. Then, when we were walking on the street and there were dogs, and I said, \"I have to cross the street.\" I was scared of dogs because in Auschwitz-Birkenau and in every camp, we always had the dogs come loose and attack people. So, [he] said, \"Why do we cross? Our house is on that side.\" I said, \"We have to cross.\" So finally, I told him why I'm scared of dogs. So, slowly, I would tell them, but not ... you know. Then, with Anne Frank, when that became popular, the diary, and then when they're reading stuff in school, but not overly much, just when they were asking. And they heard me speak. The biggest impact was on our daughter ten years when she had a role in \"Anne Frank.\" She's an actress and an artist. So, she played a role in \"Anne Frank's Diary.\" That's when it really made an impression on her, an impact, the similar things that I went through. She was very affected by that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10764.0,10970.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/232","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How has the experience of surviving the war affected you?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10970.0,10977.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/233","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I tell you, the experience ... I'm affected probably differently than a lot of people. I am affected by that. I appreciate things instead of blaming, and complaining, and [saying,] \"What if,\" I feel that I appreciate things a lot more than if I had not gone through [it]. I mean, I appreciate. I don't make a big deal of material things that break. For instance, just not long ago, when one of my friends and in my mahjong group moved to California. So, they had a farewell party for her and I brought this antique tray from glass, that was the Depression glass that my mother-in-law had. It carried ... It was a fruit pizza that I made, so I wanted to make sure I carried it right. So, we were carrying that and it broke. The person said, \"Let me hold it,\" and she opened it and she drops it. They were crying and they were so upset, and here, I said, \"It's no big deal. It's just a material thing. There are worse things in life.\" They couldn't get over how I was not upset. I said, \"I don't get upset over material things.\" I'm glad to be alive. I'm glad to be here. I'm glad. I appreciate whatever I have. I think about the past, what I didn't have, so I appreciate it, and to this day, I have to save things. I can't throw things out. I recycle things. And it was so cute when our little granddaughter heard that. Harold asked, \"Should I save this aluminum can?\" I said, \"Yes, we are going to use it again.\" She said, \"You mean you need to recycle it?\" She is seven years only. She is so cute. Yes, I recycle things. Because of my background, I think I appreciate things, and I don't throw things away, and I help out other people, and I find that that gives me the biggest pressure, when I can give.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=10977.0,11102.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/234","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You were helped by people who did not have to help you during the war, like the Hungarian soldier who helped you retrieve your shoes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11102.0,11116.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/235","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11116.0,11117.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/236","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: And then, there was Pierre.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11117.0,11119.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/237","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Pierre, right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11119.0,11119.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/238","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: What are your feelings and thoughts about these people who reached out to help Jews?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11119.0,11131.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/239","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I always felt that you can't categorize people. You can't say everybody that's German is bad or everybody that's Hungarian. You have to take people as individuals, and it depends on how they were raised and what they went through. Some people are going to be good and some people are going to be bad. I was just lucky that we found a soldier that had some compassion, and was able to think past his orders, and let me walk with him, and get them [the shoes], and he was not know worried that he's going to be punished for it. So, it's just people take chances. I'm just lucky that I happened to meet somebody that had a kind heart. Same thing with Pierre. There were several people who were helping out in camp, when we were in the work camp. I think Pierre was ... I think he did that without wanting compensation. Some of the women there were friendly with the boys. They were more friendly. But, in my case, he just did it because he felt that he can help out somebody. He felt sorry for us, felt sorry for me. He would have liked me to go with him, but it was not that kind of relationship. He just wanted to help out. I wanted to nominate him for the Righteous Gentiles later, but when I wrote back in 1959, he was, like, ten, fifteen years older and it probably was too late. I got the letter back. He wasn't there, so I didn't have the address. But he could have been one of those people to get that because he did it without really an ulterior motive like some of the others did it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11131.0,11250.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/240","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you ever receive compensation?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11250.0,11251.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/241","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Did I ever what?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11251.0,11251.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/242","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Receive compensation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11251.0,11255.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/243","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Compensation, I get very little. I mean, the Hungarian government gave just a very small amount and the Germans, I think once for slave labor or something. Very small amounts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11255.0,11271.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/244","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Do you remember how much?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11271.0,11273.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/245","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: It was just a few hundred dollars. It was ridiculous. I told my family I can take them out for dinner once or twice, but it was really no compensation, nothing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11273.0,11283.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/246","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: Did you suffer any permanent or long-lasting physical effects from ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11283.0,11297.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/247","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I probably have. I have my gum problems because I wasn't taking care of them, so that's a permanent problem. I had gum surgery three times already because of malnutrition probably. Then, I probably was hit on my head, and fell, and I have ... They don't know the origin of it, but I have this meningioma tumor that's behind my left eye. It's the size of an egg now, which I probably had it for many years, maybe 40 years or so. I don't know where it came from. Who knows? But fortunately, I don't have any mental problems that, like, some people do and that, other than having the malnutrition and the surgery in my legs. I think, considering it all, I came out pretty healthy. I think it's because of my healthy lifestyle, too. I mean, I firmly believe that a busy mind and busy body keeps the body happy. I was very active in organizations and now in fun things, like playing mahjong. I bowled for 38 years. I was an avid bowler. And I garden. I won awards for my gardening. I won awards for my cooking. I participated ... I used to belong to the L.A. Fitness health club. In Houston, I belonged for fifteen years to the health club [doing] water aerobics and stuff, so I'm physically active. And I think that because I'm surrounded by nice family and I have a lot of nice friends, I think it keeps my body, and mind, and spirit happy and healthy. You hope to be well. I'm seventy-nine years old and I'm much more active than many of my friends. They stopped cooking, and they stopped entertaining, and they ... I've always felt that that's what will keep me young, and I still do a lot of my own cooking, and gardening, and all that. My motto was that the only place I will retire is underground. I once mentioned that. You know, I was written up in the papers many times and I have piles, like, ten inches high with all the times I appeared in papers in Houston, and in Florida, and here now. Once, I mentioned that to the reporter and he said, \"Oh, I can't put that in the paper.\" I said, \"The only place I will be retired is underground.\" But I think what keeps me as healthy and as young is because I like to learn new things all the time and it's so important. Playing this mahjong is my passion and reading.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11297.0,11485.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/248","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: You grew up in a religious ...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11485.0,11488.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/249","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11488.0,11488.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/250","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: ... in an Orthodox home. Has that helped or hindered you? What effect has it had?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11488.0,11497.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/251","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I always felt that it helped. I'm a firm believer that you cannot teach a young person enough and expose them to the various things when they're young. I was very glad that my family was very religious, exposed me to the extreme of being religious because we were the extreme, obeying the laws the way we were. I feel that as I grew up and I grew up, I had a choice. I was able to choose between: Shall I observed these rules, or should I continue doing this, or shall I change? If you're not exposed to it, how will you know the difference? So, I was glad I was extremely Orthodox. Like, when I was in Auschwitz-Birkenau, I didn't eat because it wasn't kosher. Then later, when I was liberated and then I came back, my mother-in-law still had kosher meat, and after a while ... My own rationale is that, okay, we have dishwashers, and the dishes are washed with such hot water, and they're so clean, I don't need two sets of dishes anymore. I'll wash the dishes. So, I made my own rules. I still observe. I like the holidays. We light the candles, we make Kiddush, and I like to get ... We belong to the synagogue. I go quite frequently, but I am glad I was exposed to it because I know the difference. I know how to celebrate the holidays. And if you don't do it as a young child, you never learn it, and you don't have a choice, you just have one way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11497.0,11597.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/252","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: But how do you feel about religious extremism in general?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11597.0,11604.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/253","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: I feel that sometimes people, if they are too fanatic, and, like, I would say like in the past, people who were too fanatic, either they died fastest or they lived longer because they try to take ... They didn't do things, and they just believed that G-d will help them with everything, and they didn't make a move. Those people ... Some people were lost much faster because they wouldn't eat, they couldn't do the things they were used to, so they were such fanatics. I didn't believe in fanaticism. I didn't believe that. I mean, we had to [unintelligible], too. I don't approve of what's going on with the religious in Israel. It was okay when Israel was first established. They had so few people who were very religious, so we had to have a religion continue and had to have people who will further that. So, it was okay for them to say, \"Okay, you know, let's have these people just teach Torah, and not be in the army, and let them continue with the Jewish tradition.\" But now ... That was just a handful. Now, when the country grew and became so many more people, you cannot have so many people abstain from the regular, everyday routine. I don't approve of the fanatics. I don't approve of those that think you have to wait for Messiah to come and not to ... I mean, I don't know what I would do if I lived there, but I don't think I'm nearly as religious as I was when I was growing up. I didn't lose my faith, but I just changed some of my habits because I don't feel some of them are now as important.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11604.0,11726.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/254","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ghitis: How do you see the world today?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11726.0,11729.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/transcript/78127/annotation/255","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bowman: Well, I tell you, I try to be optimistic, but when you read the stuff in the paper about what's going on, I'm scared. I mean, especially after 9/11 and the whole outlook in the world has changed. I mean, it just ... Before, I used to think that there's no safer place than here in America, nothing can happen, and we will always exist, and we always stand up for the right things. But since 9/11, there's so much that happened in this world and I'm real concerned. I don't know where it's going to lead us. And especially now, with Iran working on the bomb. And I think it has to be stopped. Our biggest problem was, in World War Two, that people didn't see the handwriting on the wall, and didn't do things early enough. You know, you can't let things go like that. I think that, hopefully, we learned from that. It's really sad when you see the suffering in this world and the problems all over. But I follow the news and then I have to do whatever I can, help out, send a check here or there, and be involved when I vote, but there's just so much ... I write letters. I am a big letter writer. I have letters that I wrote to editors and my letters were published in all the papers. I have stacks this high. And to correct things when I see that something's wrong. I just have to go through a story. If it's not clear or something, I will write. In Chicago I wrote, like, the kids were standing, waiting for a bus to go to Hebrew school on the wrong corner, and I told them it was dangerous, if they moved down a block, it would be better, and they did. And I wrote, like, to the city that I can't go to the beach. We were two blocks from the beach in Chicago. Because it was real high, you had to jump down to get to the beach. So, I said, \"I'm not a young person. I would like to. Just two concrete steps would help it.\" They wrote back, \"We're going to do it.\" So, I got letters from ... I even have a letter from Barbara Bush, when she was ... when [George H. W. Bush] was president. So, I write letters. With my [unintelligible] I can. I contribute, write, participate, and I surely encourage people to vote, which is very important. Now, here is Harold and I with our three children. That's Liora on the right, and Allan in the middle, and Bo. Actually, her name is Deborah, but she calls herself Bo now. That's the youngest. And then, in this picture here. We were on a cruise together. There's Allan on the right, and next to him is Liora, and me, and Harold, and Deborah, Bo. And this is an interesting picture. We are sitting in the park in Cluj, Romania, reading, my sister, Yaffa and I, reading a book, which was our happy pastime, always in the park. This is the same picture, sitting and reading. I remember reading Will Durant's book, \"The Story of Civilization.\" I was only, I think, about 14 or 15 years old. This is a picture of me, a fairly recent picture of me. That's a picture of my two aunts, my Aunt Ilonka, the two aunts, my mother's younger sisters. They both perished during the Holocaust. This is my father's three brothers. The middle one, Arye, he went to Palestine in 1939, and then, with the beard, that's Uncle Josef, and then Shmuel. They both survived the war. One escaped from Siberia and the other one survived the Holocaust. They all live in Israel. This is an early picture in Chicago, when I was still thin. [It is] Harold and I. I don't remember the year, but it was in our younger days, when I was still very small. That was the picture. This was taken in Brivio, right after the war. I was real proud how my hair grew after it was shaved in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The other one was taken in Salzburg. This was taken in Houston. I had somebody come to the house, a photographer. I like that picture. It was taken in Houston, before we moved here. And this was taken in Atlit, where it shows the bus, the exactly the kind of bus we came in from Cyprus and was taken to Atlit, in the detention, displaced persons camp until we were liberated, let go. And it shows the luggage on top of the bus and it shows the British guard on the end, just exactly how we were when we came in from Atlit. And that's Harold and I when we were married, our wedding day, with wearing my parachute fabric dress. You can see it's a short dress. These are my fellow kibbutz people. These are people that I went ... We were together in Salzburg, and then in Cyprus, and then in Binyamina, in the kibbutz. They were all part of my group of 42 boys and girls. They were close friends from Munkacs, the area in Munkacs, the same group. Okay?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=11729.0,13391.49388"}]},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Annotations [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/256","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eCluj [Romanian; Hungarian: Kolozsvar; German: Klausenburg] is a city in northwestern Romania and is traditionally considered to be the capital of Transylvania. Today the official name of the city is Cluj-Napoca.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/257","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eOrthodox Judaism is a traditional branch of Judaism that strictly follows the written Torah and the oral law concerning prayer, dress, food, sex, family relations, social behavior, the Sabbath day, holidays, and more.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/258","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eKashrut is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jews are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher, from the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew term kashér, meaning \"fit\" (in this context, \"fit for consumption\").\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/259","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eShabbat (Hebrew) or Shabbos/Shabbes (Yiddish) is the Jewish Sabbath and is observed on Saturdays. Shabbat observance entails refraining from work activities and engaging in restful activities to honor the day. Shabbat begins at sundown on Friday night and is ushered in by lighting candles and reciting a blessing. It is closed the following evening with the recitation of the havdalah blessing.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/260","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003e A mikvah is a pool of water, gathered from rain or from a spring, which is used for ritual purification and ablutions.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/261","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eImmediately after the Hungarian annexation of Cluj, anti-Jewish persecution began through several anti-Jewish measures and economic restrictions imposed on Jews throughout the region.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/262","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 1942, most of the military-age men in Cluj were conscripted for forced labor in Munkatabors [munkatábor, Hungarian: work or concentration camp], camps for the Hungarian forced labor battalions. In 1939, Hungary had created a new type of labor service draft and in May 1940, an order was given to mobilize all able-bodied Jewish men ages 18-50 in forced labor battalions. These units at first performed manual labor duties in Hungary and later, after the German invasion into Russia, they were transported into Poland, Ukraine, and Russia to help the German war effort. They built railroads, made tunnels, built airfields, trenches, and performed other hard labor. Most died from starvation or illness. Under the Hungarian labor service system, tens of thousands of Jewish men were also conscripted for the army and forced to perform unarmed service. Before Germany’s occupation of Hungary in March 1944, at least 25,000 Jewish labor servicemen had been killed on the Eastern Front, many by the Hungarian military. At the end of 1944 and early 1945, thousands of surviving Jewish labor servicemen were deported to Germany, where many met their deaths.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/263","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eIn July 1941, hundreds of Jewish families who did not possess Hungarian citizenship were deported to Galicia and murdered near Kamenets-Podolski.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/264","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eTransylvania is a historical region that was part of Hungary until World War I. Afterward it became part of Romania. In 1940, the area was returned to Hungary after arbitration in Vienna by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as a reward for Hungary’s alliance with Germany, bringing the area fully under the influence of Nazi Germany.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/265","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003ePressured by domestic radical nationalists and fascists, the Hungarian government began to build an alliance with Nazi Germany soon after Hitler came to power in 1933. In November 1940, Hungary officially aligned itself with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Hungarian troops participated alongside German troops in the 1941 invasions of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, but Germany did not directly control the internal activities of Hungary until 1944. Hungarian units suffered tremendous losses during the German defeat at Stalingrad on the eastern front in 1942–1943 and the alliance with Germany began to weaken. After the defeat, Hungarian Admiral Miklos Horthy and Prime Minister Miklos Kallay recognized that Germany would likely lose the war. Hungary was under heavy bombardment by American, British and Soviet forces in World War II, with Budapest carpet-bombed on 37 occasions. With the Allies advancing on all fronts, Horthy worried he faced war crimes and halted the deportations of Hungarian Jews on July 7, 1944. With Horthy's tacit approval, Kallay tried to negotiate a separate armistice for Hungary with the western Allies. In August, he dismissed General Dome Sztojay, Hungary’s fanatically pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish minister to Germany, and resumed efforts to reach an armistice, this time with the Soviet Union. To prevent these efforts and losing the territory, German forces occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. Horthy was permitted to remain as Regent. Kallay was dismissed and the Germans installed Sztojay as prime minister. Sztojay committed Hungary to continuing the war effort and cooperated with the Germans in their efforts to deport the Hungarian Jews. \u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/266","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eBetween the end of World War I and 1940, Cluj was part of Romania. Between 1940 and 1945, Cluj was part of Hungary. The Hungarians occupied the city on September 11, 1940, having received the area as the spoils of war for allying with Nazi Germany.\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237/annotation_set/1876/annotation/267","type":"Annotation","motivation":"supplementing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cp\u003eTest\u003c/p\u003e","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/145644/file/269237#t=48.0,3600.0"}]}]}]}