Interview with Sylvia Green Part II
April 22, 1999
Beginning Tape Four, Side A
Question: , Jeff and Toby Herr collection. This is an interview with Mrs. Sylvia
Green, conducted at her home in , on April the 22nd, 1999. This… I’m Arwen Donahue, conducting the interview, and this is a follow up interview to an interview that was conducted with Mrs. Green in, in January of 1996. This is tape number one, side A. Okay, we’re picking up a little bit, on where we left off, the last time that we, that we sat together and, and did an interview, and… and you told me about, about your war time experiences, and some about afterwards, as well. And, and what I… where I thought we would start is at the time of liberation, when you were at , and the, it’s April of 1945, and the…Answer: April the 15th.
Q: April the 15th, 1945.
A: I haven’t forgotten, yeah. I can’t forget that date.
Q: Of course you’ve never forgotten.
A: After my birthday.
Q: Yeah, the day after your birthday.
A: Yeah.
Q: And the British troops came in and you... and you talked about... about what
it was like to see them, and how you... how you remembered the... the anthem, and you sang.A: Yeah.
Q: And I, I wondered if you could just talk some more about that moment, and,
and that… those first couple of days…A: At that moment…
Q: …right after the…
A: Well, that moment, when the tanks, they were driving in, and the British were
driving the tanks, and somebody said, “We liberated, we liberated.” But they had the German officers standing up tied to the front. I said, “What you talking about?” I didn’t even see the British. All I saw is that, “There are the Germans, don’t you see ‘em?” Then somebody said, “No medals, look.” And I stood up, and it is amazing that I had the energy to stand up, before… because we had no food. We couldn’t even venture out the barracks, because if they saw somebody venturing out, you just took your life into your hand. They were digging ditches, they were going to blow up the camp. And, really all… we all were in a semi-conscious state. And I remember I crawled out, I did not walk out. I crawled on all four. And somehow, I had the energy, I don’t know where it came from, I stood up, and I sang God… well, the British anthem, “God Save the King.” I learned that in school. So, they were wonderful. I think the first thing they did, they took us to delousing. This camp was just completely diseased. It was typhus and lice and any kind of disease you want was found in there. And so many piled up that’s all… the, the, the ones that died. And so they took us to delousing, and they gave us clean clothes. And delousing usually was, with the German, too, you left your… you went in through one door, you, you, you walked in the nude in the shower, and then, after you came out, and they sprayed you. So then they gave us a box of food. And it was like a ration. And I remember I ate everything in sight. I did not know what instant coffee was, and powdered milk, and sardines and cigarettes, and chocolate. That whole thing was consumed in the, in the few minutes.Q: Did you get sick?
A: I already was sick, I already had dysentery. I had diarrhea, everybody did.
It is amazing that it somehow blew over, because so many died, with all that rich food, and your stomach conditioned to nothing, emptiness, you know. So, I don’t know, I survived.Q: What did the British do with the perpetrators? You mentioned they were tied
up, were…A: They were tied up. I don’t know what they did with them afterwards. They
burned this camp we were in, and...Q: The British did?
A: The British. That’s that diseased camp, and they gave us the German barracks.
We were moved right away, this was the first thing. But they felt so bad. I mean, they meant well when they brought us boxes and food, and our eyes popped, you know. But they did not realize what it was going to happen to people. But they learned from this mistake, because whenever they have prisoners now, prisoners, they don’t give them all that food, they just gave it to them gradually, and reconditioned them gradually.Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. How was your Aunt Mina at that time? Was she still sick? You
mentioned she had typhus.A: Well, she was, yeah, she had… she had typhus before I had typhus and I got it
afterwards. When she had typhus, I still worked in the kitchen and I stole food, and I sent it in with a friend, through the barbed wires, because when I worked, I was not in the same camp, it was divided. So she was probably in a semi-conscious state too, because we had nothing there.Q: How long did you stay in altogether?
A: I was in … I was transported to Bergen-Belsen from in January 1944.
Q: ‘44 or ‘45? ‘44?
A: ‘44. I was one of the first ones.
Q: Okay, right. Okay, and then after the war ended, how long did you stay in … I
mean, after liberation.A: In , after the liberation, my brother came. My brother was in the American
Army, and I wrote the English letter, and I gave it to a British soldier which I got acquainted with. And he sent the letter to , with his own letter. And his mother sent it to Urbachs in . I didn’t remember the street, but I remembered the name, because my mother drilled it into us. Whenever, whoever survives, get in touch with Leon Urbach, and there was a, a street also, which I didn’t remember, .Q: How long…
A: So my brother was in . They, they called him. He was in the American Army.
They called my brother in , and, and he came to , let’s see, April? Don’t remember exactly the month. But we left in October ‘45. He sent, oh gosh, an ambulance, an American ambulance after us, and a registered nurse, because he didn’t know how we were gonna travel, and he was worried about that.Q: So, April 15th through October, you’re in…
A: I’m in .
Q: …you’re in , and what was…
A: But my brother already was visiting us there.
Q: Did he spend a long time there with you? Or there was…
A: A few days.
Q: Okay.
A: He spent a few days and he brought food, my God. We had a feast. And then he
had to go back and he couldn’t come back with the ambulance, so he sent that ambulance, and registered nurse, and he took us to , and he rented an apartment for us. He didn’t rent it, he evacuated some Germans, told them to get out.Q: Well, before we go to that, would you tell me a little bit more about what
those months in were like for you? Were you mainly just recovering your health, and… and resting, or what… what were you doing during those months?A: Do you know, that’s a good question, what I did those months. We just went
wild. And that’s why they really didn’t just open the… the concentration camp gates and say, “Go.” Because, probably we wouldn’t have been responsible what… what we would have done. That friend of mine, we got acquainted with some British soldiers, who were standing guard on the gate, and he let us ride the bike around the camp on the outside and I returned it. And then one morning, Halina and I, we walked to see how far we can walk. Not to get away, just… and we passed some vegetable gardens and we destroyed some of it, some we stole, and then we came to a cherry orchard. I don’t know whether I told you about that in the other one.Q: No, I don’t think so.
A: And there was a step ladder leaning against the trunk, and I climbed up, and
all in a sudden the German came out, and oh, was he cussing me out, that Hitler should have killed all of us. That was a cherry orchard, I don’t know how many trees, full of trees. I had no bag, all I could do was throw down what I could hold in my hand. Halina was down and picking them up. So how much can you carry? He took the stepladder away, and I got stuck up on top. So, luckily, a Jeep, with British soldiers were driving by, and I yelled at them and told them … I spoke a little English, I had about two years in school, and I told them what happened. Oh, he got so angry. He was cussing the German out, but the German didn’t understand English, so I translated everything for them, and he told him to get that ladder, and no buts about it. And they waited till I had the ladder and I came down and they said, “My God, how much could you carry in two hands?” you know. And they drove away. And that German really got me. He might have been about maybe 60 - 65, and he said, “Hitler knew what he was doing. He should have killed you all. Look what you doing to us,” you know. I got so mad, I took both hands and put it around his neck, and Halina said, “Do it, do it, do it.” And I pressed and I pressed and he was getting kind of pale, and my hand, I had to let go, I couldn’t do it. So I didn’t kill him.Q: Was that before the British… that was after…
A: No, after, that was after the British, because I was…
Q: Oh, you were…
A: …up on the tree.
Q: …stuck in the tree. Where was…
A: I couldn’t have jumped, I would have broken my neck, it was way up high.
Q: What did the… where was the British soldier, what did they do?
A: They left, they left. Because he’s, he knew I was safe and we had the few
cherries, and they left, and after they left, that’s when the German start cussing us out, and we should have been dead and Hitler knew what he was doing. So that’s all we needed. But I’m very thankful I didn’t do it, because I wouldn’t want to carry that with me the rest of my life.Q: But you were… were you feeling angry before that? I mean you, you described
kind of being numb.A: Very angry. Numb, angry, just everything combined. Listen, I was with that
monster 12 years, how can you not be angry? Just thinking about it now, I get angry.Q: Did you… were you feeling happy at all? Did you have a sense of… of feeling
free? That, that you were really liberated, or was that kind of …A: Yeah, yeah, it was a little too much. We just wanted to live, that’s what we
wanted to do. And the best thing was getting out of . And then I was in and my brother in American Army, had some lovely friends. And everybody brought us food and they bought us clothes, and we really had a wonderful time in . I went to the opera, my aunt and I, we went to the opera, and concerts, and shows. And… it’s okay.Q: Do… can you tell me a little bit more about your relationship with your Aunt
Mina, who you were so close with?A: My Aunt Mina was my mother, really. I, I lost my mother while I was still a
child, and I was with my Aunt Mina, I worshipped the ground she walked on, to a point that I modeled myself after her. My mother was a lovely lady, but I never knew… I thought she was stuck up. And then, after my brother married, and I was married, and we had children, I told my brother, we sat down and we talked about the parents and I don’t think we had the same parents even. He remembered things I… which were not important to me. And I said, “You know Mom was stuck up. She had one friend. She knew other people, but just one friend.” He said, “What you talking about? She was so shy. She’s,” he said, “What she used to do is that…” and he was my mother’s boy and I was my dad’s little girl. So we were divided family. She said, “She would snub people first, because she was afraid that they were going to snub her.” I didn’t know that. But Mina was so outgoing and so loving, and... and Mina just could give, give, give. When we were in the camp, she gave me her bread portion. She tells me she was too full, she couldn’t eat it. And I didn’t want to take it and then finally she pushed it on me. But that’s very giving person.Q: Was she your mother’s younger sister?
A: Yeah, but not the youngest. In my mother’s family, there were about ten children.
Q: How much younger than your… how, how, how much older than Mina… than you was Mina?
A: Mina was born in, Mina was born in 1900.
Q: Okay.
A: And I was born in ‘24.
Q: So she… yeah.
A: She was just…
Q: 24 years.
A: for… yes.
Q: Okay, okay.
A: She could have been my mother.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: But I had a third mother, too. I’m a lucky person. My foster parents. They
were my parents, and they were wonderful.Q: Back in… in the immediate… the time immediately following the war, how did
you learn about what had happened, or… to your father and did you ever…A: I knew that, right away, what happened to my dad. My dad was in a ghetto when
they liquidated the ghetto. I only saw my parents from 1942 to ‘43, liquidation of the ghetto, only twice. And the last time I saw my dad was in that makeshift hospital, with a broken leg. And how he broke his leg, they were rounding up some people in the ghetto. Every so often they just picked up people and they… they’d send them, probably, to , or Treblinka, somewheres. Well, they locked them in a room till they had the whole truck full, and my dad jumped out the window. And that’s how he broke his leg, and he was in a makeshift hospital. And when they liquidated the ghetto, March the 13th, 1943, my first cousin, he was still alive at that time, was in the clean up crew, where they cleaned up the bodies, loaded it on trucks, and he told me that my dad was laying on the sidewalk, in the nude. Not just my dad, all the ones they killed. And looking back at that, I… I screamed, I cried. I didn’t cry that they killed him, they took his pajamas off. This was the ultimate, the worst thing could happen, I mean, didn’t even leave the pajamas on. It’s so… seems so degrading to me. So that’s how… I don’t know what happened to my mother, I don’t. I always thought she probably was sent to or somewhere’s gas chamber, I don’t know. But then, when I saw “Schindler’s List,” that’s… they killed a lot of people in the ghetto.Q: Did your… how did you find out from your cousin? Did… was you cousin in, in,
with… when you, with you…A: Plaszow.
Q: …in Plaszow?
A: No, I … when I went up to Plaszow, he was in Plaszow.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: Then they sent him somewheres. I mean, it’s… it’s mind boggling, you know?
Just shipped from one place to another.Q: So you knew really, right after your father…
A: I … I knew that, as soon as we went to Plaszow, which was in September.
That’s when I found out.Q: Mm-hm. After… so, after the war, when you were in , did you try to find out
what had happened to your mother?A: Well, the Red Cross, we found out that they had some papers on them… some
dates, so I went to the Red Cross in , and they never could find out what happened. They were talking about that the Russian released some papers, way after the war, maybe four or five years ago. And I gave them all the dates, and everything I knew about them, you know, where they were, and they couldn’t find out. And I still got the letter from the Red Cross here. And a letter from the Red Cross in . They also said they never could find out.Q: When you think… if we focus just on that time, immediately after the war,
when you were in… in , and… and what your… what your concerns were, and what your hopes were, at that time you weren’t searching for your, for what happened to your mother, or were you, you hadn’t gotten to that point yet?A: Where could I search? Where could I search? Where would you go?
Q: Did you think about going back to your hometown, to talk to anyone?
A: Hometown, ? What was my hometown, ? I left … we had to leave in ‘39, this was
‘45. And how many different camps, and ghetto, and… and factories I was in. There was nothing to go back to for, he killed them all.Q: Had you had any, any other relatives in ?
A: Not… not any more.
Q: Did you… did you feel at all like was your home, or was that… all of that
erased by… by what happened during the war?A: No, no, no. They had a Holocaust reunion in , 50 years after Crystal Day. I
did not know anything about, because I was the only survivor in this part of the country. And some people I knew in , they went, and I met one of them at one of the weddings I went to. And she said, “Would you have gone? I feel bad. I should have notified you, but I didn’t think.” I said, “No, I would not have gone. I don’t want to go there.” My brother went back. My brother was with Borden’s export and import, and he was in a lot, so he was close by, and we had a friend, Fritz Öler. Before Hitler, he was our friend, then he didn’t know us, you know. So he wrote Fritzle a letter, and Fritz wrote him back and he said, “I want you to come home with me, and we going to have dinner together, you meet my wife, you meet my children.” And Bernard said wait a minute. He wrote him, “I don’t want to go to your home. Let’s just meet at the neutral place, in the park, or the depot, just somewheres.” Because, too many hard feelings there. And they met, and Fritzle was happy, Bernard, he… Bernard wanted to make his peace with . So Fritzle was talking and Bernard was talking, and Fritzle said that his parents were still alive. Bernard jumped up, and walked away, didn’t say good-bye or anything. He came back to the , Sarah my sister-in-law told me, he walked into his home, went to the telephone, calling me, “There is no justice, there is no justice.” Fritz Öler… Fritz was like a brother, really. We were raised together, and my mother and Frau Öler were close friends. And then, when Hitler came to power, her husband became a big wheel in the SS. And I was scared of the man. I don’t know, I… how can you be that close, and then all in a sudden looking at you like, “I’m going to come at you and kill you?” And I got the picture of… well, that’s, the picture wouldn’t help you, and I got… here. It’s right in the front. Oh-oh. That’s Fritzle. That’s me.Q: Uh-huh. Was he as close with… with your brother as he was with you?
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Q: Yeah, yeah.
A: We were a family. I had… really, that’s what I said. I was about two or three
here, and I was always tall for my age, I might have been three. And I… I probably didn’t even know the difference between Fritzle and Bernard, you know.Q: Did your brother… how did you, how did these pictures survive? Did your
brother have…A: No, no, some of it were my brother’s, but you see, we, we left a month before
the war. My dad was deported to in… see the dates. October, ‘38, and we had to leave by August, ‘39. So we had the pictures. So, in , my Aunt Mina had a very good friend, we thought. She gave her silver to her, fur coat, her china, her linen. And the linen, everything was hand monogrammed, even sheets were hand-monogrammed, everything. And my aunt gave her everything and her pictures and my pictures. So my Aunt Mina had the maid before the war, so after the war was over with, Mina wrote to Yulche [ph], the maid, to go to the people and tell them that she was alive and then that Mina was going to call her or talk to her, how to ship that… her stuff here to the United States. So when Yulche went there, the woman opened the door and she… and Yulche said that Mina was alive, and she said, “Oh, that poor woman is still alive?” She said, “Well, you write her that right after she left all that stuff with me, the German came and took everything away. I do have the pictures.” So, we were so thankful for those pictures, because the other stuff was material things, you can live without it, but the pictures, Mina… we really were happy. And a lot of those pictures are my Aunt Mina’s. Have you ever seen a picture of her?Q: I don’t think so.
A: Here. Look, I play. That’s me, here. Oh, let’s see, where is my Aunt Mina?
[indecipherable]. That’s my Uncle Alec, Mina’s husband.Q: Uh-huh.
A: It’s Leon Urbach, the people who sponsored us. That’s ’s brother.
Q: What happened to him? What happened…
A: Who?
Q: …to Alec.
A: Alec, Uncle Alec, and Silvusha, Sylvia Frederica, they were taken away in ‘42.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: We… we came home… There’s Mina. Oh, she was sharp. And that was the little
girl, here’s Mina.Q: Uh-huh.
A: There’s the family, Uncle Alec, Mina, and Silvusha. Her name is Sylvia Frederica.
Q: Sylvia Frederica is Mina’s daughter?
A: Yeah.
Q: And she… she and Alec…
A: Alec were taken from the ghetto.
Q: …were taken from the ghetto.
A: In ‘42.
Q: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I see.
A: That’s her. Those are my mother’s three sister. That’s Mina, that’s Lola, and
that’s Gustie. And those are my cousins. That’s , she got killed. That’s Silvusha, Sylvia. And that’s my cousin Janek, the one Goeth shot in Plaszow, think I told you that.Q: Oh yes, you did tell…
A: Yeah.
Q: Do you have all of these photographs labeled on the back for your… for your children?
A: I don’t know. pretty much knows who they are, pretty much. Maybe I… that’s
what I should do. I don’t know, some of them I think are, some of them are not.Q: Yeah, I see, uh-huh. Well, was this… how did this album… was this album in
your brother’s hands, or how did it come to you? Have you had… kept it all of these years?A: I kept the pictures, I just did this… I think I did it not too long ago,
before… oh, maybe a year ago, I put it all together.Q: Well, let’s go back… you can put the album down, but let’s, let’s go back to
, and tell me how you, how you felt about being in , at all, and…A: , I didn’t even think where I was, I was free, I was wild, and just go, go,
go, go.Q: Were you… did you have hopes or dreams of what would come next…
A: No.
Q: …what things that you want to do?
A: No, no, I didn’t. People say, hadn’t you thought about going back to school?
I said, “No, I wanted to live.” That, that, that’s the only thing, I mean 12 years out of your life, I didn’t have a teenage life. I been…Q: Did you date people in ?
A: Yeah, but not single dates. I mean, all my... brother’s friends, American
soldiers, they took us just all the time. And then I got a lot of company from , people came to visit me, people I was in the camp with, they came to visit.Q: What was the atmosphere in like? Were there a lot of refugees, a lot of...
A: Oh, there were a lot of refugees, and there was a museum where the refugees met.
End of Tape Four, Side A
Beginning Tape Four, Side B
Q: You all met at... at a museum, the refugees?
A: Yeah, that’s... yeah, yeah, that’s all some...
Q: And... And...
A: And, but the atmosphere, the Germans... I got my period again, which I didn’t
have. I always thought they put something in our food, but Stuart told me, and Bernard also said no. I needed everything to survive, that’s why we didn’t have our period. And I was flooding, and then finally Mina got scared and Bernard got the German doctor, and he did not know I was a survivor. And he start talking about the Jews and how horrible, what they doing in . We were loud. We really were loud. I mean, you locked up... look, even an animal, you let an animal out, they gonna go wild, you know, you cooped up. We were loud. We didn’t bother anybody, but we were laughing loud, whatever we did, talking loud. And I spoke German to him, with a Badenzer [ph] accent and he thought I was Bernard’s girlfriend. And, so finally he gave some medicine and I told him to get out, and I told him who I was. He didn’t care. So that was after the war.Q: Did you get the, the impression in general that, that the Germans just didn’t
know what happened, or that they knew what happened and they didn’t care?A: No, they knew, they didn’t care, and it’s convenient not to know. Don’t tell
me the little towns near , the people didn’t know what happened? What about ? We had to walk a mile, they never let you out on the… in the main depot and it was always at night, wherever we went. They never let you out in the main depot during the day, it was always at night. As soon as we got out, that… the, the cattle wagon, we knew we were where, because far away, we saw the chimneys burning. Now you telling me that… that the… they didn’t know? They knew, they just didn’t want to know.Q: You knew you were going to be leaving for at some point, is that right?
A: Yeah, yeah.
Q: How did you feel about that?
A: Scared. It was scary. I mean, people I didn’t know, and you don’t know how
you’re going to be treated, you don’t know. But I just was a very lucky girl. Because they took me in right away, they took to me. And Dolly, their daughter, said, “It’s unfair, I have a curfew on a date. Sylvia can go and she can stay out.” She was jealous of me, you know. But then, she didn’t realize I was older. But they were, they were wonderful to the day they died. I loved them dearly. And I still miss them, like Mother’s Day, I always called them. At that time, towards the end, they lived in . From , moved to , from , in a condominium in . And then, they had two condominiums, next to each other, so there was somebody always could watch over them, when they were older. And then they went into a small apartment, and they both said, “You know, we now where we started from.” In a small apartment when they first were married. But Mother’s Day, birthdays, I always called them. And was so hard of hearing and I just miss it. Rose always answered the telephone, and she would yell, “Leon, ,” you know. Took awhile for him to hear, but I miss that. And I always told them, I said, “My God, you took such a chance, taking a stranger in.” And they brought my brother from , too, in 1940, and Bernard was drafted in ‘41.Q: Did your aunt, your Aunt Mina come with you to…
A: .
Q: .
A: Oh yeah.
Q: Okay.
A: We lived… well, it was my Aunt Mina’s brother and sister-in-law, but I was
not related to them.Q: Going back a little to your, to your journey, or to right before your journey
to the , what, what were your ideas about the ? What did you expect to experience?A: I didn’t even think of the experience. I met a lot of young people. My Aunt
Mina was seasick from the second day. They, I don’t know, they were… after you were after 40, they got a cabin, and we had bunkbeds, we were a whole lot in one room. And I met a lot of people, and we had a good time on the boat, so we had to entertain ourselves, because this was not a luxury line, Marine Perch was just a ship. And there was one little room. But we had fun. Like, I met a fellow on the boat, he drank a whole bottle of ketchup. Just showing off, and laughing, you know, it’s… I didn’t think that far, till we got to and somebody had to pick you up. It took us 11 days to come over, because they had some mines, and all in a sudden we just stopped, but they didn’t tell us why. And then they finally deactivated it, and then they told us what happen. We could have been blown up.Q: You mentioned that you met… in the first interview, you told something about
the journey and you mentioned that you met a Hungarian, a young Hungarian man who had proposed…A: Yeah, that’s the one.
Q: …marriage to you.
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Q: He’s the one who drank the ketchup?
A: He drank the ketchup. I thought that was great. Stupid now, you know. He, he
was kind of wild, too. We all were.Q: Did you want to marry him?
A: No. I wasn’t ready for marriage. It would have been the biggest mistake in
the world. My aunt, right away, I was telling her. She said, “You know why? He’s afraid to go to a strange country, to be alone.” That probably was the reason. But we did spend a lot of time together on the, on the ship.Q: Did you see… do you remember approaching the harbor in ? Did you see the
Statue of Liberty?A: Yes, I remember the Statue of Liberty. I had the camera, and it was a good
camera, my, my brother got it for me. Akvakarat [ph]. I don’t think they make them any more now, it was a German camera. And I looked and oh, I saw the Statue of Liberty. When I had it developed, it was nothing but water, I was too far away. You couldn’t see the statue, it just water.Q: Do you remember how you felt seeing it?
A: Yes, I got goose bumps. So… excuse me.
Q: Sure. Okay, you were saying about the, the… seeing the Statue of Liberty. Did
you feel the…A: Yeah, I… I got chills, I really did. It’s… then, as you dock, somebody had to
pick you up. If the sponsors couldn’t do it, then they had to send somebody. You had to be claimed. And Mina and I, and we waited and we waited and we waited, and nobody came. And I start crying. But the nicest thing happened also. A woman came up and she said, “You Sylvia Farber?” And I said yes, I looked at her, she said, “I’m Berndt Weissman’s mother, you went to school,” we went to Jewish school together. And she said, “I didn’t have you on my list, but I looked at the list and I saw Sylvia Farber.” And she said, “I just want to thank you so much, you were so nice to my Bernd.” He had a speech defect. And people, children can be so cruel, they didn’t want to have anything to do with a… with people who are a little bit different. He was brilliant, and I remember I liked Bernd. And when he spoke to me, his speech wasn’t as bad, because he got used to me, you know, and, and he knew I liked him. So, she thanked me. She said, “I saw your name, and I wanted to thank you personally, and then also wish you well.” She said, “We been in ,” her husband was a doctor… doctor while in . So that was kind of nice.Q: It must have been…
A: It… it’s a good feeling.
Q: …a nice way to be greeted…
A: Yes, yes.
Q: …to, to a new country, to have something like that.
A: So, we were the last ones getting off the boat. We were claimed. It’s almost
like having a claim check, you know? It was my cousin, who looks exactly like my dad and my, my brother. The Farber is very predominant, know most of them are gone now. But he came, I knew him from , so they did claim me.Q: So he, he… did he escape before the war started?
A: Benjamin used to live in and then they moved to .
Q: Sorry, what was his full name?
A: Benjamin Farber.
Q: Okay.
A: And they moved to . I don’t think he was in a camp. I really… he’s still
alive in , once in awhile I talk to him. I don’t know, he might have come to the before, I think. I am not sure. There’s so much in there, you know. It goes round and round.Q: So he picked you up, and did you… where did you go?
A: And some cousins, I met some cousins, first cousins. And I, I went home with
them, we stayed the whole week. And they treated us like royalty. We saw Broadway show, it was just too bad we couldn’t understand it too much. But then, on my honeymoon, I went back to see it, like Mr. Roberts, Annie Get Your Gun. Then, I already understood a lot better. And they took us to fabulous restaurants, and the food, my God, it was wonderful. So, my… I really would have loved to stay in . I loved the hustle and the bustle, at that time, not any more now. And my brother wouldn’t let me. He said, “We going to , what’s left of our family, and we going to stay there, and we going to be close together.” So I stayed in then , he lived in . He deserted me then.Q: So you stayed in for just a week before you left?
A: A week, a week, my aunt and I, yeah.
Q: Uh-huh. And did you, how did you get to from, from ?
A: By train.
Q: Mm-hm.
A: George Washington.
Q: Do you remember the journey? Do you remember traveling?
A: Yes, yes, I remember it very well, because it was after the war, there were
no seats on the train, people stood up. And the ladies’ rest room, they had a couch there. And we had the nerve, Mina and I, we lay down on the couch. It was for somebody who got sick. But we were so exhausted, we fell asleep on the couch, and nobody woke us up, till we… till the night was over with.Q: And you didn’t speak English at that point, or just a little?
A: Very little, very. I had two years of English in school. But the…
Q: Did Mina speak English?
A: No, Mina didn’t speak any English. Mina spoke German fluently, and Polish,
but not English. But she learned, and was so proud of her. After they moved, and we wrote letters to him, every so often when we talked, “She wrote a masterpiece.” Do you know he corrected every letter I wrote him? And not to be mean or anything, just to learn. And the last letter he corrected, there was no correction, he wrote, “It was perfect.” And oh wow, I was in seventh heaven. My friends said, “This is ridiculous. I wouldn’t write to him. This is not very nice.” I said, “You don’t understand him, he’s trying to teach me.”Q: Do you remember seeing… you’re on the train, you’re traveling between New
York and Lexington, do you remember looking at the landscape out of the window, or see… approaching…A: There were… There was a mob on the train. People sat on their suitcases. It
was just right after the war. Soldiers coming back. I don’t even think we were near a window, couldn’t even get near a window, had… would have to climb over people.Q: What about arriving in, in ? Can you talk about your first impressions of
the… well, where did the train arrive?A: You know, that’s getting kind… Depot. They had the depot in . It’s very dim,
I don’t remember that much. I was so scared. We both were scared, Mina and I, we talked about that. But Urbach picked, picked us up at the, the train station.Q: How did you feel about meeting them, did you… was it…
A: Scared.
Q: Mm-hm. So it didn’t click right away, or…
A: Well, they were wonderful right away. We had our own room, and she was very
thoughtful. She… right away, she start teaching, after a few days, you know. They send… they paid for picture show, we saw every new picture show, just to sit through, to get used to the English language. Then she went to in , and, so we could attend…Q: She… Mina, you mean?
A: No.
Q: You…
A: Rose Urbach, yeah.
Q: Rose, oh, okay.
A: And we went there for a few hours every day, we’d sit through English
classes, American government classes. She arranged all that. They did not have night classes at the University Kentucky at that time.Q: Were you going for a high school diploma at Henry Clay?
A: No, no, just to get the feel of the language, it’s… the sound is so
different, you know, it… do you speak languages? Any foreign languages? But the, the sound is different, and the sentence construction in German and English, is just the opposite. When I first came, and I thought in German and had to translate it into English, it seemed like I always put the cart before the horse, it seems like it. It just always lost something in the translation, or it was wrong.Q: What language did you speak to the Urbachs with?
A: Well, she start teaching right away, like she said, “Sylvia, we going to set
the table. This is a plate, this is a napkin. Fork, spoon and knife.” And then she would add something to it all the time.Q: She would always speak to you in English?
A: Yeah.
Q: Uh-huh. Did she…
A: spoke a little bit of German. He’d always, “Yah, yah, yah.”
Q: Tell me about what you thought of . What did you… what did it see… what kind
of town was it? What…A: I loved . It was a small town. In ‘46, it had 65,000 people, and now it’s
bulging out in the seams, isn’t it? People were very friendly. And then, Mina and I, we were a novelty. I went... had to go to work in December, and I applied in factories, but they wouldn’t take me, because I didn’t speak English. Times have changed. If it be now, your language has nothing to do with it. But Dolly Urbach, that’s Rose’s daughter, she had a friend, Phyllis Strauss, and her uncle and her mother were owners of Wolf Wile’s, downtown . I got a job there, in, wrapping packages, it was December ‘46. And I wasn’t very happy, because I felt like it was demeaning. I said, “You’re not that stupid.” Talked to myself. “You can do better than that.” So I always sneaked out, and tried to wait on customers, and Joe said, “Come on, Sylvia.” He was very kind, he knew my past. And that’s why he gave me the job, also. And so, by April I was on the floor, waiting on customers. And the first year, I had the most sale for the year, and the second year the most sale. People were curious, so they waited for me. They…Q: They knew something about your, your background?
A: Well, it was in the paper. Refugees, survivors, you know. I was the on… we
were the only ones in .Q: Did people come in and, and ask you about what had happened to you?
A: No, not really. They just wanted to see me, like I was a novelty, and no,
they didn’t ask. And I would not, not have been ready to talk what happened to me. It took years and years before I was able to talk. I didn’t talk about it until ‘83.Q: Were the customers… what, what kind of things were you selling there?
A: It was a ladies’ department store. It was more exclusive, and children’s
clothing and china. It was like a department store.Q: Did you feel any… a sense of antisemitism from anyone in, in town, in , when
you arrived?A: No. This is really strange. I found it more in than I did in . When I first
married Jake, and they didn’t even know about my past, because I had problems enough. My children were different. So I, I didn’t think… I didn’t want to load that on them, being a survivor, also. And this wasn’t made public until ‘83, till I make a documentary, with Dr. Otis Singletary, he was the moderator, and three survivors and two liberators. So that was on television, then they found out. I don’t know, … I changed my mind. I really don’t know whether it was that much antisemitism, as it was ignorance, and also, they didn’t like strangers. They wanted to stay a little town. They didn’t like strangers, because I have talked to people who came, and they were not Jews, and they had the same feeling, that they were not treated right. And I said, “I always thought they were anti-Semitic.” But there were a lot of rich farmers here, who did not want industry, they tried to keep it out… keep them out, till they couldn’t keep them out any more.Q: So, you didn’t hear anything, any comment, comments about the Jews when you…
A: In , no, no.
Q: In , or in the… and did you, do you, did you have the sense that people knew
what had happened during the war in , what had happened to the Jews?A: We just never talked about it. I don’t know, maybe I thought it would go
away. I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t even ready in ‘83, if not Marilyn Moosnick. She said, “You owe it, to do that.” And I told her, I said, about the documentary, I said, “I don’t know, I might cry.” She said, “Well, it’s not going to be on live, anyway.” And the reason for it was, that in ‘81, there was a history teacher at Tate’s , who said the Holocaust never happened, it was a war. So this, well, they were trying to do it in ‘81, and I wouldn’t do it. And then, Dr. David Widstein approached me, and I said, “David, I can’t do it, I might cry.” He said, “No, you couldn’t cry with Dr. Singletary there,” you know. And so he dropped it. But then Marilyn took it in hand, and she used a lot of psychology on me, I guess.Q: I’d like to talk more about that in a little while, but I… stick with the
chronology more and, and talk about right when you arrived in Lexington and, and some of those experiences. Where did you, where did the Urbachs live, what neighborhood was that, or what was their address?A: They lived , area. They lived on , and my brother was discharged from the
Army in ‘86, September ’86 [fn: 46]. He could have been discharged six months before, but he signed up as a civilian with the American Army, so he wanted to make sure that Mina and I would be out of . He was afraid that we didn’t have enough pull or push or what. So then he was discharged in September of ‘46, and we got an apartment. So we weren’t that long with the Urbachs. We came in June. July, August, September, about three months. They didn’t want us to leave. They didn’t think we were ready, but we wanted to be on our own. And we managed, believe it or not, on 90 dollars a month. That was my brother’s Army pay. And then, he would give private lesson, he spoke seven languages fluently, so he would give private lessons. And then he caught the flu and he couldn’t get over it, and sometimes he didn’t get two or three hours of sleep at night. And he was very sick with that flu, and the doctor said, “Something has to give. You have to take better care of you.” And that’s when Mina and I, we went to work.Q: Did Mina work at the same place?
A: No, no. My Aunt Mina got acquainted with people who had a photo shop, sold
cameras and tripods and bulbs and everything. And she developed pictures. And she was very good at it, and she was a wonderful worker and they liked her so much, that my Aunt Mina was sick with cancer for four years off and on, she would go back to work. And even if she didn’t work, he paid her to the end, till she died. But she was a… a very dedicated worker. They went to for a vacation and Mina ran the store. Very loyal.Q: Did you… did you develop ties with the Jewish community in in those early
days in the… did the Urbachs take you to synagogue with them?A: Yeah, the temple.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: The temple. I wasn’t too happy, but the… I was an atheist anyway. I come from
a Orthodox home, but after the war I was an… an atheist. I blamed God for everything. And I did go to the temple with them, but somehow I didn’t feel that comfortable, because I was used to seeing the men wearing yarmulkes, skullcaps, and at the temple, at that time, the Rabbi Lewis, he was ultra, ultra, ultra Reformed, that if you wore a hat, you took it off before you went inside. So, but I went, it was all right.Q: Was this Adath Israel, or... what was the temple?
A: Yeah, yeah.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: Rabbi Adland. But he... he seems like he is more religious. And I really do
think the Reform is leaning towards... more to the Conservative, because they’re having Bar Mitzvahs now, which they used to not to have.Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. You mentioned in the first interview, I’m just going back a
little bit to something that you mentioned, that, that in the early years of the war, when you were in Plaszow...A: Yeah.
Q: You, you had been keeping kosher up until then, and then you couldn’t keep
kosher any more.A: No, it was at Kabelwerk.
Q: Right, okay, Kabelwerk…
A: It was at Kabelwerk, yeah, yeah.
Q: Right, okay. And then did you…
A: Well, what happened was, I worked, and at that time we... we got the pretty
good soup, usually it was just one...Q: Yeah.
A: ...but it wasn’t just cooked for us, because there were a lot Gentile working
there too, in that factory. So, we got the same soup, but I wouldn’t go and get it, because it was not kosher. So I went home and I dragged. And my dad said, “Didn’t they give you anything to eat?” I said... we used to call him Papa, my dad. “Papa, it’s not kosher, I couldn’t eat it.” He said, “You have to eat it. It’s a sin, it’s almost like committing suicide. You have to eat to keep yourself alive.” So, the second day, I ate, but it wouldn’t stay down, it came up quicker than I ate it. And so I came home and I dragged even worse. He said, “What happened?” I told him. He said, “You going to be all right. Tomorrow it’s going to stay down and you’ll be fine.” And it did.Q: After the war ended, you... you mentioned that you were angry at God…
A: Yeah.
Q: Did you... did you get to a point where you thought...
A: I didn’t.
Q:... of changing your diet again, back towards being kosher?
A: No, no.
Q: No.
A: We were not kosher in . We were lucky to buy a pound of hamburger a week. Ate
a lot of potatoes. So, no, even... the only reason I start keeping kosher is because Jake’s father wouldn’t eat at my place. And Jake even asked me, I mean, he knew about how I felt. And he said, “You want to keep kosher or not, that’s up to you.” I said, “Well,” I said, “almost have to keep kosher, if not, your dad couldn’t eat in our house, and that’d be awful, you know.” So I start keeping kosher, and I knew all about it, because I was raised that way. And then when you first start out, you just divide your dishes. It, it was simple.Q: Did you form – you, you mentioned that you were... that you were dating a
little bit, before you met Jake?A: Yeah, but way before, when I first came, it wasn’t single dates that much.
People didn’t single date that much, it was group. And, like a group, I was running around with a group from the university, they have an organization, Hillel there. It’s connected... I don’t think it’s just a temple, I think it’s just the Jewish children on the campus. And I went to parties, but it was mostly groups. But I met a lot and some were nicer than others, and I don’t know whether I told you in the other one, I wore hand-me-downs, and it is not very pleasant...End of Tape Four, Side B
Beginning Tape Five, Side A
Q: This is tape number two, side A, of an interview with Sylvia Green. You were
just talking about being at a Hillel dance.A: Yeah, yeah.
Q: And you were going to tell something about that.
A: Well, I think I told you about the hand-me-downs, you know...
Q: You just mentioned it, yeah.
A: Yeah, so I wore a hand-me-down, and the girl who gave it to me, her name was
Shirley, I will not mention the last name. She doesn’t live here, she lives somewheres else now. And out the blue sky, all happy, talking, dancing, and then the whole group, we were to... having a Coke, or whatever it was, and she said, “Oh, you see Sylvia’s dress?” And they all looked, “Yes, what?” “Don’t you remember I bought it last year, and I really didn’t like it, and I gave it to Sylvia.” Now, how do you think a young girl feels? I wanted the... the ground to open up and swallow me up, you know?Q: Mm, like you…
A: So one of the guys, I... I know his name was Abie Guller [ph], because I met
him in , he was in American Army, and my brother knew him from . He said, “Shirley, I remember that dress when you wore it last year. It sure looked like hell on you, but Sylvia looks beautiful.” I want to hug and kiss him, which I didn’t, you know. So, that was not very pleasant. Now, some other... there’s another girl, that Strauss, I told you Phyllis. I audited some classes at the University Kentucky, I think it was two or three times in the morning, from eight till nine. I supposed to be at work at ten minutes to nine, because I had to take the mail around to different departments. But I talked to Joe Wile, my boss, he said, “That’s all right.” Well, Phyllis would pick me up before eight o’clock, take me to class, was waiting... she was going university at that time, too... was waiting for me, and took me to work. And I told her that not long ago, about three years ago, she lives in now. But Jake passed away, she donated to the synagogue. My brother passed away, she donated to the synagogue. I said, “You know, you were something.” I said, “You picked me up,” she said, “Sylvia, I don’t remember.” So she said, “So it was not that big a deal.” She said, “If I would have had classes, it’d be a different story. Evidently, I didn’t have classes, so I was glad to do it.” So, not everybody is bad, not everybody is good, you know. All kinds of people in this world.Q: Mm-hm. Did you interact at all with non-Jews in the community? With Gentiles
in ?A: Girls, yes. I went out to lunch when I worked at Wolf Wile’s, and they ate
out every day, but I couldn’t afford it. I only could eat out once a week, because the money I made and my... my aunt and my brother, we all pooled together. And they figured out I could eat out once a week. So I went with them, ate out. But I went, and I had the sandwich with me, and I went to restaurants with them, and they let me eat my sandwich and had a glass of water. I don’t know whether I drank coffee at that time, or not, or milk, and paid for that. But they didn’t object, the restaurants. They knew. Yeah, I met some nice people. Dating, no, not much.Q: How long had you been in before you met Jake?
A: I met Jake in ‘47. I think it was September ‘47. His cousin lived a half a
block from us, Martha Steinberg. And Mina, my aunt Mina and Martha got very close. And naturally then, I was close. And she always said, “I have a cousin, a first cousin.” Jake and Martha were more like brothers and sisters, because when Jake’s mother died, Jake went to live with Martha and her parents, so he could say special prayers in the synagogue. It’s called kaddish and you need ten men, at that time. Now women count, too. And so, they felt more like brothers and sisters. And I told her, I said, “Well, I’m going with that fellow in .” And she was just after me and after me, so George and I had an understanding that we were going to date other people, since we were that far apart, to learn about the American way. And, so the first night we went out, he took me dancing, we had a marvelous time. I always said, “How could you understand me?” We spoke... spoke some German, some little Yiddish, sounds like German, he understood Yiddish. And then English. He said he understood me very well. So, it was September ‘47, and we married January the 16th, ‘49.Q: Did he... did he ask you about your experiences during the war, or did you
talk to him about it?A: I don’t think that... I don’t remember, but I don’t think I talked... we
talked about it when we dated. I don’t think so. But after we were married, we wanted children pretty soon, because he was 34, I was 24, and when I got pregnant with Jerry, that was when the nightmares started. And he would come with dry, clean pajamas and a towel, and he sponged me off with a washcloth. He changed the sheets, it just went through. The nightmare was the German came to take my baby away and kill it, because I saw many babies killed and they did not use bullets, they just threw them against the wall, because they couldn’t waste bullets. So, that’s when we talked, usually after I got... he got me all dried off and everything, we would sit on the couch in the living room, and many nights we never went back to sleep, and he didn’t either. And all the time I lived with that man, he never complained. He didn’t let me sleep, because it was even later on at times, I needed to talk. His ear was always there. One time I told him, I said, “I don’t know whether you’re listening, but your ear is there.” I just needed the ear, you know. No, he was... he was a good soul, he really was. I was fortunate.Q: Tell me something about your wedding. What was that... Where did you get married?
A: I’m already... We got married in , we were without a rabbi, and my brother
Bernard paid for the wedding. We had a sit-down dinner, just immediate family. And he paid 300 dollars, and was kosher. And the rabbi performed, it was my brother’s friend, and he hired a cantor. And I got married in a suit. I could have bought... I only could get a wedding dress or a suit, and I was very practical and I got the suit, which I wore years afterwards. I’ve got pictures, I got wedding pictures, I show you later on. You see, Jake was a large family. There were... there were four children, and their wives, and his nieces and nephews. And Urbachs, Rose and Leon, and Grandma, Rose’s mother, and my Aunt Mina, so it was... was a crowd. But he paid for it.Q: Had Jake been in this area for a long time, his family?
A: Jake was born here in . They had the business downtown. When he was born,
Pop, his father, already was in business. It was a small Mom and Pop store, with everything in there. And he was raised on top of tobacco cotton. They had those like bales, you know, rolled up. That’s where... where... where they raised him, right on top of the... the tobacco cotton. It’s a miracle he didn’t fall off.Q: And did Jake carry on in that business then? Was he working in the family business?
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. His sister was also. What happened was, he graduated from
University , in ‘36, and he couldn’t get a job. So he just fell in there, and then he was too lazy to get out. So, he just stayed in there. He always said, “We never going to be rich. You’re going to have a roof over your head, you’re going to have food on the table.” And that’s what we had.Q: What was the name of the store?
A: The Hub Store. Hub. H-u-b.
Q: Uh-huh.
A: The Hub Store. Joe Green.
Q: Here in…
A: On …
Q: Here in .
A: Yeah, on .
Q: You mentioned in the first interview, that when you arrived in the , it was a
hard time in the beginning, because you realized that people knew what had happened in , and that they didn’t do anything about it. Can you... can you explain...A: Yes, what I probably was trying to say is, we in the camps talked about
somebody had to stay alive, to tell the world what was going on in Europe. We thought the world didn’t know. But when I came to the , and I found out that they knew, knew. That that ship came with the Jewish people and they wouldn’t let it in, and they sent it back, they got all killed. This was very upsetting. But then, in another way, I’m not a psychiatrist, but maybe I understand a little more now. I’m older, maybe. That maybe it was good we did not know that the world knew, because if we would have known, I think we would have given up. This is my opinion now. What do you think, that’s a possibility, isn’t it?Q: Mm-hm. Do you remember how you found out that... that knew that... that...
A: Well, I found all that out in the , after I came in ‘46. I don’t know exactly
where I found out. Might have found out from Urbachs, or people, you know.Q: Were you... did you feel anger at the American people?
A: Yes, yes. I was angry. Not at the American people as much as .
Q: So it was more on the political level...
A: Yeah, yeah.
Q:... not on the just common.
A: And there was a very important rabbi who went to to tell about what was going
on. And at that time, Bernard Baruch was advisor to . I don’t know what they talked about, I, I just wonder sometimes. But one person cannot do anything.Q: Did you feel… so you didn’t feel that the American people bore any kind of responsibility?
A: No, it’s... most of the time, the way I see things now, the people have
nothing to do with it, it’s the head of the government. The average person wants exactly the same thing. You want the family, you want your children, you want a roof over your head. You want to be able to have enough money to send them to college, so they make something out of themself. That’s what the average citizen wants. And all along in history, it was always the heads of the government who started the problems. Maybe if they would start fighting each other, maybe this would stop. That’s wishful thinking, right? Silly? Is that silly?Q: No, it’s funny to imagine a fistfight between Clinton and Milosevic or something.
A: It’s not... huh? It wouldn’t be fistfights, believe me. It’d be more.
Q: So, did you feel angry, back then, when... after you arrived in the States?
You said you felt angry while you were in .A: I was angry, I was angry, I was angry for 12 years. I was angry. We had a
large family and it was so wonderful, cousins were like brothers and sisters. You know, you didn’t have anybody. Like, when my son was Bar Mitzvah, Jake had a large family that came from all over. I had nobody. My aunt already had cancer, she was in a wheelchair, and she didn’t want to come to the synagogue. We were going to hire somebody and she said if she can’t walk on her own two feet, she didn’t want to go. So I called Urbachs, I said, “You have to come.” And they came. I said, “I have to have somebody on my side.” Because it makes you feel pretty much alone.Q: I’m sorry, would you say again what event that was? I missed it…
A: My son’s Bar Mitzvah. My brother was out the country. My sister-in-law had
two little kids, so she couldn’t come, because Bernard was out the country. So, but they came, Urbachs came. They were there for me.Q: Can you talk more about the time that you were pregnant and you started to
have these nightmares and it was like the floodgates were opening. What were your feelings about... did other feel-feelings, memories come back to you? Was it... Did it change the way that you...A: No, it was always when I was pregnant, it was all the time the same.
Q: Okay.
A: They were trying to catch me, they were going to take my baby away.
Q: Did having... having the baby change that?
A: Yeah, it got better. I mean, they weren’t constant, the nightmare, they only
were once in awhile and then later on, with , it got less and less.Q: When was your son born?
A: My son was born June, 1950, and was born December ‘54.
Q: And your son’s name?
A: Jerry. Jerry Walden Green. And my daughter’s name was Sandra Ann Green Zuckerman.
Q: Zuckerman now.
A: Zuckerman now, yeah.
Q: Can you tell me something about... about each of them? Tell me something
about your son, first.A: Never gave us any trouble. We didn’t agree on everything, you know, but I
don’t know, if I look at the children now, I don’t think I could raise them now. I mean they... they’re such different children. He was one of the good guys, he didn’t experiment with drugs, he didn’t smoke. He…studies were very important, he wanted to make good grades to get out of . And that was, I think, our doing. We wanted him out of here. There wasn’t much for him to do. He took, he got a degree in Political Science, and History. Undergraduate degree. And then he was turned against it. There was somebody working in , who made appointments with him to come, he could help him and he would go there two, three times and the man wasn’t there. So he got very upset over that. And then he met a girl at IU, and they were dating for awhile, and then they decided he was going into social work. And he went to . He got an undergraduate degree from IU, he went to and got the Masters in social work. And first he worked for the Catholic service in Indianapolis, but now he’s been with the Methodist Hospital now, for about 18 or 19 years, or maybe getting closer to 20. But he said he had to get out of because social workers were underpaid, that he makes a lot more money.Q: And he’s married?
A: He is married. They married in ‘75. She’s a occupational therapist, and they
adopted three Korean children at different times. Jenna is 13, and Cara, she’s beautiful, the middle one, and Cara is 11. And Lindsey is going to be seven. And that’s the one who has cerebral palsy. But she doesn’t know she’s handicapped. She’s very bright, she gets speech lessons. And it’s so much easier to understand her now, over the telephone. The trouble was... Jerry explained it to me, because she kept her mouth too wide open, and she was drooling all the time, and they teach her now to close her mouth, not that wide open. And she drools less, that way you can understand her. About three years ago, she was in a body cast for six weeks. And all the bedrooms in this house are upstairs, so they brought the, her mattress down and she was in the rec room for six weeks. They had to carry her around. She got spoiled, but she never complained. But if she called you, she wanted you there. And the teachers say she is very bright. She just going to finish the first grade. And she makes pretty good grades. Eventually she will need some more surgery. They had to operate on her, if not, the hip would have gone out. You see, the knee hit the other knee. So now, the other knee is doing the same thing, but the pediatrician or... or the... the... the surgeon keep... keep a track on it. It has to be a certain degree before they want to operate. If not, the other hip would go out.Q: So tell me something about your daughter now.
A: My daughter? Oh gosh. I don’t think I could have made it without her. She’s
such a warm person and she worries about me a lot. Like when I was sick, I told you I had the flu, she called three times a day. And we almost talk almost every day. And if I get out of here, I’ll move to .Q: It sounds as if she’s helped you just by being sympathetic and understanding
what your experiences have been.A: Yeah, that... the camps, no I mean, even now, I mean, I lost Jake. I never
could have done it without her. Both children were wonderful. They came and they stayed. Jerry stayed eight days, he had to go back to work. And Sandy stayed ten days, and she had to go... she just works, teaches, at the community college, part time, because with Jay, I told you, her husband is so busy. And many times he has to get up middle in the night, and has to go in if the people can’t work out the problems, then they call the boss, and he has to go in. And the irony is, he didn’t want to go into medicine, because his father is a pediatrician and years ago, when his children were sick, everybody else’s children were sick, and Larry’s mother used to call him, come on home, Larry is sick, or Janet was sick, the daughter. And he said, “Give them an aspirin, I’ll be there in, in ten, 15 minutes,” and sometimes it was hours and hours. So he just didn’t want to become a doctor, but now with the doctors it’s different, they cover for each other. I mean, I see it in the hospital here, they... is your back bothering you?Q: It’s okay.
A: Let me sit there for awhile, and you won’t feel... that be softer.
Q: No, no, it’s fine, really I’m fine.
A: So, now with the computer, he’s called out at night. The doctors only go when
they on call that night. Isn’t life funny? It’s ironic.Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. She’s got how many...
A: One son.
Q: One son.
A: 15, who thinks he’s 25. Last time she came, I said, “, you didn’t bring my
grandson.” He always was so agreeable, “Yes, Bubby, yes, Bubby.” Now I say black, he says white. So I said, “You didn’t bring my grandson.” She said, “Well, that’s the way it’s going to be till 21, get used to it.” If I live that long.Q: When… did you talk to your kids about your experiences during the Holocaust?
A: No.
Q: Did they ask you?
A: No. says it came out a little bit. She said, “We knew more than you think.” I
never talked to them about. They were Jews in the little... little town. And, like I told you about Jerry, was the same. Grades was important get out of here, and they both did. Now, when I complain, will say, “Mommy, you pushed us out.” I said, “Well, there was nothing for you to do here,” you know. was the only Jewish child in the school system, the only Jewish child in high school, and she had a stupid teacher, homeroom teacher, who... it was before Christmas, said one morning, “I was driving up and down , all the houses were decorated for Christmas beautifully, except ’s house. Let’s take up a collection.” How do you think she felt? She came home and she cried, you know. Stupid teacher, he knew why. He thought he was funny. I don’t know. He was crazy, anyway. And then she was… well, if they would have had valedictorian, she was the valedictorian, she got the junior cup. All A’s, from the first grade on. And the minister’s son came up to her, “I would love to date you, but my father would kill me.” So she came home and she cried, and I laughed, and I said to her, “Well, I wouldn’t be so happy about it either,” you know. What you going to say?Q: How did you... what did... how did you convey Jewish culture to them, or a
sense of... of heritage and history?A: They are not as Orthodox... well, I’m not Orthodox, but not observant like I
am. We took them to the synagogue, we took them to Sunday school, we took them to Hebrew school, and that was about the best we could do.Q: When did you...
A: And I observed, I kept kosher. Friday night the candles were lit. Every
holiday was a holiday. Passover, we always had college students. We never were less than 14, sometimes 20 people, sometimes 11 people. So what else could I have done? I mean, you come to a point that they have to do it themselves. And I thought they had enough background. later belonged to a Conservative synagogue, but they only go on High Holidays and I think a lot... the rabbi has a lot to do with it. They had the rabbi, that’s why they joined it, he was wonderful. He was great with young people. They... they went all the time, but this one, he’s such a bore. The first time I went down there, and they were walking around... I don’t know, have you ever... were you ever at services, Jewish services, when they walk around with the Torah, and you kiss the Torah? He was walking around, he didn’t carry a Torah, and he was shaking hands, and I had my hand out. And I said, “Rabbi, I’m ’s daughter,”... I mean, mother, “ is my daughter.” And he said, “Oh.” And then I went... Oh, I went a lot last year. And I even would go more, but I won’t drive, and I have to fly, and ’s been paying for the flight for me to get there, and so I want to kind of slow down on that. She’s going to have a son going to college soon. So, whenever... everywhere I am, I go to Saturday morning services, because I always say I’m a reborn Jew, I was Bat Mitzvah 11 years ago, because women couldn’t participate when I was a child. So we went to the synagogue, he should know me, nothing. Not, “Oh, it’s good you’re visiting again,” or something. How about stopping a minute?End of Tape Five, Side A
Beginning Tape Five, Side B
A: How is it going, all right?
Q: Yeah. This is tape two, side B, of an interview with Sylvia Green. You were
just talking about your synagogue and... and I wondered when you started to be religious again, and when you joined a synagogue, and what synagogue you joined?A: No, no. We joined the synagogue as soon as we were married, Ohavay Zion.
Jake’s father was one of the founders of that synagogue. So, as soon as we got married, there was no question about it. We have been members for 50 years.Q: Uh-huh, that’s the Conservative synagogue in ?
A: That’s the Conservative synagogue on , but that used to be on , where Joe
Bologna is in, the pizza place.Q: Okay. How did it feel, did you start to recover a sense of faith, or feeling…
A: It’s…
Q: …or were you still an atheist, just going to synagogue, or how did that… what
was happening?A: Do you know Jake... I don’t know how it happened, when it happened, it was so
gradual, but it happened a lot more since I can participate. And when I was Bat Mitzvah, there were two other young girls. I’m the only old woman who was Bat Mitzvah, and I don’t know whether I did it as much out of religion, as I was… I think I was jealous of my brother, as a child. All that attention and all the gifts. And here, I knew every speech, I knew his Torah reading, I knew his Haftorah reading, I knew his speech by heart, as well as he did. And they made such a big deal over him. So, I don’t know, in my speech 11 years ago, I said, “You probably are asking why I’m doing this now. I raised my children in a kosher home, in the Jewish religion, to the best I could. I don’t know whether that has anything to do with the religion, I am Bat Mitzvah, or it was jealousy. I had to prove to myself I could do it.” That was my speech. And I said, “I doed it.” But, it was a lucky thing, because it helped me a lot in... after Jake died. The people are wonderful, they... I’m almost the oldest one there, and they’re all young couples, so I’m a grandmother. And then, after Jake died, they came for a whole week here, just saying prayers. And you only need ten people to say prayers. Now women count, too, men and women. Sometimes we had up to 30 here, because they wanted to come. And if I don’t go on a Saturday, I miss it. I go every Saturday, even we had the little bit of snow, and they got mad at me after I walked in. “I thought you wouldn’t be here, maybe you shouldn’t be out.” I said, “Well, it’s supposed to have melted by the time I drove home.” But I miss it, and I feel like this is my family. And in fact, I think I told you, last Saturday, they called me up to say a special prayer, before you read the Torah, or was it between you read the Torah, and I cried, I couldn’t help it. And, so the one who read the Torah raf, he said, “What’s the matter, Sylvia?” And I said, “I feel so alone.” Yeah, they were wishing me a happy birthday and clapping, and in Hebrew, congratulations, you know. And so, I don’t know, I just looked around, there was no... I mean, there were people there, but I was alone. And I told the Torahfa, he said, “What are you talking about? We are your family.” That was sweet. And it helped.Q: Mm-hm, that’s good. That’s good.
A: But then I was still teary eyed, because that Monday I spoke in . I told you,
it takes me forever to get back to normal. So, I’m just the happiest when people leave me alone and I go about my volunteering, or… or just not think about it, I do the best.Q: Did your… I’m jumping around a little bit, but I remembered another question
about your kids. Did they ever ask you about their grandparents, what… I mean did they try to find out what had happened to their…A: Well, my grandmother died. There were ten living children, my grandmother
died on my mother’s side when she was 47 years old. Every year there was a child, stillborn. I had a very active grandfather. Or… stillborn, miscarriage, and only the strong survived and ten survived and she died. I’m named after her. Sarah was her name. My Bible name is Sarah. So they knew about that, and my mother’s… my dad’s mother, she died… let’s see, there was, the war broke out in ‘39, she died around that time. The war already broke out, but it was at the beginning and thank God, the way she died, it was Passover, and she choked on a piece of matzo, and the whole thing was not even a split second. She must have been a hundred. And can you imagine how frightened she would have been in the cattle wagon? So this was really a blessing. So my children did not have a grandmother, because Jake’s mother died when he was nine, and my parents got killed. So that’s why I am a Bubby. ‘Bubby’ is ‘Grandmother’ in eastern Europe. So, when was pregnant with Jay, she asked me whether it be all right, she never had a Bubby, whether Jay can call me Bubby. The other grandmother did not want to be called Bubby, she wanted to be called Grandmama. I said, “That’s fine, if he doesn’t call me… if your baby, my grandchild doesn’t call me anything worse, Bubby is fine.” So I’m still Bubby. But he tells me if he talks about his Bubby to his friends, I’m his grandmother, not Bubby.Q: So your, your own children really didn’t try to find out…
A: No, it isn’t that… no, no, it…
Q: So the information…
A: They were busy. They were busy, they, they, they always had the working time,
the schoolwork, and then, and Sandy was a girl scout, they took piano lessons. And Jerry was a boy scout, he took piano lessons, he was on the Little League and they were busy. And it was good for them, and then both went to work. Jerry went to work at Kroger’s when he was 16, sacking groceries. One time I walk in, Jerry was washing the floor. I said, “Jerry,” somebody dropped a watermelon. I said, “How come you don’t do this at home?” He said, “I don’t get paid. Here I get paid.” He worked for Kroger’s when he went away to college. Now, he never worked during a week, in high school, just on weekends, because the manager ask him, “I need somebody during the week,” and he said, “Mr. Hazelwick, I want to work, but this would defeat the purpose. I want to save money so I can go to college. If I don’t make the grades, then I wouldn’t be accepted.” And he liked his honesty, and he hired him. So when Jerry came home Christmas, and during the summer he worked at Kroger’s till he graduated from college, and he saved enough money up to buy his own car. And worked at IGA as a checker, and she worked from the time she was 16. And she worked the graveyard shift, till 12 o’clock, Jake was waiting for her. If that be now, I wouldn’t let her work the graveyard shift. Be too dangerous.Q: Did you move to right after you got married?
A: Oh yeah.
Q: In 1949?
A: 1949. Papa let us live in the house. There were two little houses, so he let
us live in the house, so it already was painted, and we just moved in. And then he gave us the house.Q: This house?
A: No, no. This house we bought. It was a very small house and we… it was a
one-bedroom house, and then, when I was pregnant with Sandy, we added on another bedroom, and another bathroom, but then we outgrew it again, because I had to separate the kids, so we bought this house. We been living here since… we bought the house in ‘65. I think we moved in ‘66, because we had it all fixed up before we moved in. Painted and repairs and everything.Q: Has… well, let me go back to something else. When you, after you got… before
you got married, you were working.A: Yeah.
Q: Did you stay… did you continue working after you married?
A: No.
Q: No.
A: He didn’t want me to marry... Joe Wile wanted me to marry. I was going to
quit before Christmas, because I wanted to get ready for the wedding and all that, and he ask me to stay till after Christmas. So I stayed till after Christmas, and then they had the sale, and he ask me to stay one more day and then every time I went in there, he wanted me to come back and work. And I said, “No,” I said, “We had an agreement, Jake and I, that I wouldn’t work.” I was the good Hausfrau.Q: Did… was that fine with you?
A: It was all right with me. I needed peace and quiet anyway. And then Jake was
from the old school. Listen, we go way back. It was before your time.Q: When did you become a citizen?
A: ‘52... 1952.
Q: Was that an important event for you?
A: That was a very important event, because I never was a citizen of any
country. I was born and raised in , but my father was a Polish citizen, and they would… your nationality was what your father’s nationality was. So, in , I was a Polack. Then, after we lived in , I was a German. So I never had a country to call my own, and this was a very happy moment. I could have done it earlier, I could have done it in three years, but Jake thought it was better, because Jerry already was a little older. And I did good, I… I passed, I had no problems. At that time, I still had a good memory.Q: Did you feel like an American?
A: I felt like an American, but I was very upset with the judge. There were a
lot of Germans who married American soldiers, they became citizens. There was a girl from , the American fellow she married, he said he owned a newspaper in the , and then when she came here, she found out he was a newspaper boy, delivered papers. And, well, they called you up there, and you sat in front, facing the... oh, I’m sorry... facing the people, you know, I told you I talk with my hands.Q: Yeah.
A: Facing the people, and all in a sudden, he said, “I notice here, you were
incarcerated. What were you incarcerated for?” And that’s all it took. I start crying and screaming. Jake said you could hear me in the back row. The only crime I ever committed was I was born to Jewish parents.Q: Did you tell him that?
A: That’s what I told him. The amazing part was he just... you know, was
mind-boggling to me. And there were German fräuleins there... I mean frau marrying Americans, and he talked so nice to them, you know. That really... Judge Ford, he’s dead, may he rest in peace! No, this was very upsetting to me.Q: What did he say in response to that?
A: “I’m sorry.”
Q: Oh.
A: Nobody heard him. I did. I don’t know, we have a friend here, a lawyer, and
he was one of my witnesses, and another friend, a neighbor, Margaret Walden, she was one of my witnesses, too. Mike said he just wanted to kind of show off, you know. But I screamed, I really did. And that was the only crime I committed.Q: Did you feel safe in this country?
A: Yeah. I felt very safe, yes.
Q: And did you feel at home in ?
A: Well, that was the only state I knew, I mean, I would go to , where my
brother was, or , to visit, but I only lived in . I lived in till I married, and then I came here, and I always lived in . I been to just one time. In ‘85, that was the only time I left the country. And I’m glad I did, because now I don’t think I could take the trip.Q: What did… did you, when you would visit New York, for example, did you, did
you meet people who had stereotypes about Kentucky, and what... and ask you, “Why do you live there, are there any Jews there,” or anything like that?A: No, no, the funny part was, I had a silk blouse, that was the style, and
written Sylvia all over, handwritten on it. I think I’ll show you a picture later on, I think I got enlargement there. And I was visiting my cousin for two weeks every summer, till I got married. And well, one week they could take off, the other week they couldn’t take off, so I waited for them when they came home from work. And I wore that blouse, and a guy passed by and he looked, “Hi Sylvia, how are you?” I says, “Do I know you? I never met you.” “Oh, yes, you know me.” You know. Then he start kind of laughing, then I look down, and I saw it. And so I laughed, I said, “Oh, you tricked me, I forgot I wore the blouse with my name on there.” He said, “You’re not a New Yorker.” I said, “No, I’m from .” And he said, “I noticed the different accent.” Oh, that is funny, isn’t it? Oh gosh.Q: That’s the only time that you came up against a stereotype of, of… about , or...
A: Well, no, no, I… why, do people have?
Q: Yeah, like…
A: They don’t respect people from , or what?
Q: Well, they might think…
A: We’re hicks.
Q: …it’s just a place where there are hillbillies, and what, you know…
A: Oh, about that, listen. I had a cousin, he’s gone now, cousin Harry, and
that’s the ones I stayed with when I first came to the , and spent one week in . About a couple months after we were settled, I think we still lived with Urbachs, so it was about a couple months, he came to visit. He came because he was worried. He heard that in people don’t wear shoes, and they don’t have many Jews, and he wanted to see it with his own eyes, and… and to take me back to . I thought it was very thoughtful, and very sweet, just the cousin who I met, you know. So, he fell in love with , but he wouldn’t move to , but he thought it was such a quiet life. When 65,000 people were in . And, he wouldn’t give up , so…Q: You’ve seen change a lot over the years, I imagine.
A: Oh my God, yes.
Q: Can you kind of describe how, how that’s… how you’ve seen it change?A: Well,
I’ve seen the change… I think I told you, I don’t know, I just got my license, driver’s license when I was 68. This is… in May it’s going to be seven years. And if not my friends here. He took me out for three months, every day. So, I remember when I came to , people drove cars, but there were not many cars. And if you were driving, they would stop, “Go on, go on.” Now, since I drive myself, they… they try to beat you to the stop light. It’s a lot of change in... it’s kind of overgrown, I think. Look what’s going on in Anita Madden’s… that shopping center she has, the mall. I don’t know, I mean, it’s just overgrown. Whenever they have a new shopping mall, people move out from a different place, and move there. I, I just wonder, how many shopping malls do you need?Q: It never… it seems like…
A: How many restaurants?
Q: …never enough.
A: Never enough is right.
Q: Do you remember when you first voted?
A: Oh, yes. As soon as I became a citizen. And I was very nervous. I think in
that old tape, I think, as I recall, I spoke about that Monday, a week ago. When we had to report to the police station, that we had to leave the country, and my mother was sick and she sent me instead, and as he called my mother’s name and I told him my mother was sick, the policeman, he yelled at me to come forward, but he yelled so loud that I was shaking from head to toe. And then he took the… and I couldn’t hold the pencil or pen, whatever it was, in my hand, and I dropped it. And I don’t know, he seemed to be satisfied, maybe I put the ‘X’ down there, I don’t know. Ever since then, any kind of legal, took a long time to overcome. Because I remember when I needed a Social Security number, it took me three hours to get enough nerve to go in there. And Rose said, “No, you have to do it yourself.” She wanted me to do things for myself, it’s so much easier to let somebody else do the things, but she wanted me to learn to be independent. Took three hours. So the first time I voted, just… you have to sign your name and it was going pretty shaky. It took years. Doesn’t bother me any more now, but I don’t know, I don’t think I ever missed an occasion, not to vote.Q: Did you learn about history, or… was it in, of interest to you to…
A: [Indecipherable] a lot, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Q: …to feel part of that, that history, or that you were…
A: I am not part of that history, I am part of the history way up there. You
know what I’m talking about, , , ghetto, concentration camps. But I like , and I was happy in . And I will have to leave . There’ll be a time I won’t be able take care of myself, then I have to leave.Q: And you’ll, you’re thinking you would go to …
A: , yes definitely.
Q: …where your daughter is.
A: It’s not… the children are nice, Jerry and Marcia, they’re nice kids, but
it’s different. A daughter is a daughter all, all your life, a son is a son till he takes a wife. She’s a nice girl, she’s good for him. But she has more ties with her family. But her mother died just two weeks before Jake died. And the father has had cancer now for six, seven years, and it’s lung cancer. And he’s doing okay. He went back to for two weeks. He takes chemotherapy for three weeks and radiation for three weeks, and he’s still here, it’s amazing.Q: Will you tell me about when… you, you mentioned a little earlier about how
there was something that happened in 1981, where a teacher had said that, that there was no Holocaust…A: Yeah.
Q: …and that that caused a reaction here.
A: A history, yes.
Q: And, and caused that documentary…
A: Among the Jewish... not in , in , among the Jewish people.
Q: Tell me about that, what happened and, and your involvement, and, and the documentary.
A: Well, my involvement, it was no involvement, they just got in touch with me
and David, I don’t know whether he already talked to Dr. Otis Singletary to moderate something, I don’t know. He called…Q: This is David who? David…
A: David, Dr. Wedstein. He teaches at medical school. And I said I couldn’t do
it. He called me long distance, he wanted me to speak, like on television, to have a television program. And I said, “I just can’t do it,” never talked before, you know, and then television, my God. I never been on television before. So I told him, I said, “I don’t know, even now I don’t know when I talk about, I cry.” I, I never know, there’s… not that I can say I’m not going to cry, it just comes automatically. So, he said at that time, he said, “No, you can’t cry, after all, Dr. Otis Singletary, you know.” Like you can’t cry. Then they came back to me in ‘83, and it was Marilyn Moosnick. And she said right away, “It’s not going to be on live, it’s going to be taped.” So we all taped the half an hour and the program’s name was, “And I Was There.” And it was shown all over .Q: All over . On public television?
A: I think it was Channel 18. And then, what is it, KET broadcasted it maybe a
couple years later on, or a year later on.Q: Did… did you get the sense up until then, that people in general around you
in Kentucky, among the non-Jewish population, didn’t know about the Holocaust, what had happened, in this, in this state?A: I don’t know, I didn’t… we never talked about that, they all just felt bad
for me. At that time I walked two miles every day and people stopped me, and there was a man one time, “Oh, I feel so sorry for you…for you.” And I said, “Please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m proud what I’ve done with my life, and that’s the past.” I said, “I feel good what I have done with my life. So don’t, I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me.” He apologized, he said, “That’s not what I meant, what I meant, what you had to go through as a child.”Q: Was that the first time? I… you mentioned that before that, you had talked to
Jake about your experiences. Had you talked to anybody else before?A: No, just Mina and I, we talked. Mina died in ‘64, but Mina and I, we talked, still.
Q: So, did that change things for you, starting to relate to people in a… in a
different way? Or did people relate to you differently afterwards, apart from…A: Yeah, I think so. Especially after the documentary. And then Betty Radliff
had the news magazine, and that was my whole life story, with pictures in there. And I think she, she done a good job. I just didn’t go out for two days, I didn’t want to face anybody.Q: What was this magazine?
A: It was a insert to the Winchester Sun. I can show it to you later. I just
didn’t want to go out, I didn’t want to face anybody, I didn’t want to talk about it, and then you had to go out. So I went out, after about a couple days. It’s…Q: And did people start asking you questions, or say…
A: Yeah, then, then, yeah, yeah. I think somehow, I don’t know, they accepted me
more somehow. I really think maybe they felt sorry for me. I don’t know. Right now, where I am here in , I’m part of , all in a sudden. The first 25 years, I did not feel like I was part of it. And really, after Jake retired in ‘83, I wanted to get out of here. And he didn’t, he loved it here, he was born here, he was raised here. And I don’t know whether I told you about the Klu Klux Klan [sic]? Year ago, that was before my time…End of Tape Five, Side B
Beginning Tape Six, Side A
Q: This is tape number three, side A, of an interview with silver… Sylvia Green.
A: They were marching, and Jake was right on Main Street, and one of the Klu
Klux Klan run out, came into the store, “Joe, sell me a handkerchief.” At that time they had those neck… neckerchiefs, red and… like the cowboys wore. That’s what they sold for handkerchiefs. “I’m sweating like a horse.” It was ten cents. He came to a Jewish store to buy. He was sweating like a horse. That poor guy didn’t even know what he was marching for, probably.Q: Did he know that it was a Jewish store?
A: Sure, everybody knew that it was a Jewish store. Papa was there for a long time.
Q: The Klu Klux... Ku Klux Klan didn’t give you or Jake or his family any trouble?
A: No, that’s what I’m talking about. He came to a Jewish store to... to... to
buy a handkerchief. I don’t think he knew why he was marching. He just belonged as a member, probably didn’t know why. So, Jake told me that, I thought that was pretty funny.Q: It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
A: Huh?
Q: It makes you wonder.
A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s the way Hitler started. He started with the
poor. Start giving them black leather pants and jackets and motorcycles. He started with the poor, and that made them feel important, he gave them jobs. That’s the way he started that whole thing.Q: You mentioned that you took a trip to ?
A: Yeah. In ‘85, May ‘85. I always… as a child, I was a member of the Mizrachi,
which is a Zionist organization, and I always wanted to go to as a child, and build up single-handed. I was very enthusiastic. I also was going... I was a member of the Hakoah. Hakoah in Hebrew, it’s The Strong Ones. It was a sports club, and I was going to the Olympics. I mean, I had planned, my future was planned out, except Hitler cut it short. So I always wanted to go, and I always told Jake, “I need to go, I need to go.” But then, I couldn’t go, children in college, so after they got married, I told Jake, I said, “I want to go to . You go with me?” Well, he wouldn’t even fly. And I said, “Jake, I have to go by myself.” I said, “I feel pretty good. If I wait longer, I won’t be able to go.” And I went on the tour, with a group from , and oh, it was wonderful. I came out not the same person. It’s amazing.Q: Tell me more about it.
A: Well, just everything. I mean, how brilliant! You take the desert, where
nothing grows and that irrigation, I was just fascinated with everything. And then, one Shabbat, one Saturday, I spent with a cousin, my first cousin. She left from Breslau in ‘36, and she stopped by in , and we took her to the train station, and she went to , and she became a Hadassah nurse. And I spent a whole Saturday with her, and had dinner with, and met her children, and her grandchildren. And then her sisters came, which I haven’t seen in years and years. So that was memorable. We had a lot of talking to do. And then I have a cousin who survived the Holocaust, who came to , and he lived with us in . I met his wife and his children, they came to the hotel and spent the day with me. But we flew in on a Friday, and then, well the airport is in Tel Aviv, and we took a bus to , that’s where our tour started. So when we came to the hotel… boy, my neck is bothering me now…Q: Oh…
A: We went, we went…
Q: Oh, do you want to stop…
A: No, it’s okay. We went to the hotel and they weren’t ready for us. So, then
we start driving around , and I just didn’t believe it, that I actually was there, you know. But then some things were upsetting. After , then we went to Tel Aviv, and to , different places. And when we went into the department store, you had to open your purse. This was upsetting. They had to check whether you had any guns, you know. It was upsetting.Q: How long did you stay?
A: Two weeks. And I came back and my brother picked me up. My sister-in-law gave
him a 65… 65th birthday party, a surprise party. So we worked that out, his birthday was in June, and I came back, probably around beginning of June, maybe. And she was cooking, she invited 30, 35 people, and she was cooking, and cooking, and cooking, and corned beef, she wanted to cook it herself, do everything herself. She could have ordered that. And Sarah said, “You should have been here, you would have died laughing.” He said, “My gosh, what are you cooking that much?” And she said, “Your sister Sylvia’s coming back from .” She cooked for over 35 people, he had no idea what… what cooking is, you know?Q: What an appetite.
A: Huh?
Q: What an appetite…
A: Appetite for what?
Q: …she must have.
A: Oh, he knew I was a big eater, but he had no, I mean that he had no idea, you
know. So, well I got there, and I slept around the clock. This was Friday. He came, oh, about six o’clock. It didn’t take very long for me to go through custom, I must look honest, because as I got my suitcases and before I had to open it up, he looked at me, and he said, “Do you have anything to declare?” So I told him what I had to declare, he said, “Go on.” I mean, I didn’t buy anything for business, I bought little gifts for everybody. And I was honest about it. And so when I came out, my brother was running in. He said, “You’re already through? I can’t believe it,” you know. I said, “Well, I look honest.” So when I got there, oh, about an hour later on, I went to sleep and I slept around the clock. Woke up Saturday morning, I said, “Sarah,” my sister-in-law, I said, “Boy, I feel so rested, I feel wonderful.” She said, “Good, you can go shopping with me, I want to buy…” her daughter had a birthday and she got her own apartment. “I want to buy her some lamps.” I said, “Good.” We looked at the lamps, and I fell asleep again. I said, “I can’t keep my eyes open.” I’m sorry. She’s gone, too. She died in ‘89. That’s my brother’s wife. We were very close. I don’t know. They all gone.Q: You… were you very close with your brother after the war ended?
A: Yeah, yeah.
Q: Was that… will you say something about your relationship after the war? I
mean, you, you were…A: My relationship after the war was maybe closer than the average. The only
trouble I had with him after the war, when I was single, he was so strict, every boy had to come into the apartment, he had to meet them, he had to interrogate them, whether they good enough for his sister. And Jake took me to , to a ball game, and he was going to take me out. There used to be, up on a hill, it was in , I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, it burned down, it was more of a nightclub. And I told my Aunt Mina we going to be late, but we were even later, because he wanted me to meet his brother and his sister-in-law, and we all went out to dinner, they went with us. So, he threw a fit. And in ‘48, I was 24. He threw a fit, “And you let her go, and you let her go.” And my Aunt Mina said, “She’s not a child. She knows how to behave. She knows what to do, what not to do.” “You just don’t know what goes on,” he told Mina. He had a date, which he took to for a weekend, that was all right, wasn’t it? But not his sister. So this was the only object… objection I had to him.Q: Do you think he was so protective of you because of what had happened during
the war?A: I think so. The thing about it was, after we met again, he said, “I am so
happy, you have no idea. I couldn’t have gone on living if you would have gotten killed.” Because he took my place, by going to .Q: Did you ever feel angry about that?
A: No. No I never did. He… even my aunt and I were talk… he never could have
survived it, he was a scholar. He wasn’t strong. All Bernard knew, Bernard never had a childhood. He was studying, and they tore him apart, because my dad wanted him to be a rabbi, my mother wanted him to be a college professor. He had to bring home all A’s. So poor Bernard just studied all the time. He never could have made it. He couldn’t have made it in any of the camps. So, no, I wasn’t angry about that, I… in fact, after we survived, Mina and I talked a lot about that, how lucky, because he would have been one of the first ones. And we were lucky that they sent him instead, the Jewish Welfare Office. He did not go with the kindertransport, but they send him somewheres else. Probably with the older children, he was four years older.Q: What did he do, as a profession?
A: As a profession, he did not become a rabbi, he did not become a college
professor. He worked for Borden’s in export and imports, and he traveled for them. And, but he did moonlight… he has a beautiful voice, cantorial voice. When I came back, when I buried him in Paramus, New Jersey, and I told you I locked myself in the house for two days and two nights and cried, I played the tape over and over, I must have over ten times, and I said, “You going crazy, you better quit. If not, you’re going to wear out the tape and you’re not going to have any tape.” So, he had a strong, beautiful voice, and he did moonlight sometimes. Like on Passover, he would go in , oh what was that place? It was a hotel and they served food and ceremony… Grossinger. You heard of Grossinger, did you? No?Q: I’m not sure.
A: It’s not there any more, but it was there at one… usually well-to-do people
went down there, and they spent the whole week and you didn’t have to make Passover. You know, our Passover is a week. So my sister-in-law loved it, because it was a lot less work for her. And he used to conduct services, and then the seder he conducted. He loved to do that, but not as a profession.Q: When did he die?
A: Oh, he just died four days before Thanksgiving.
Q: Oh, this last year, in 1998.
A: ‘98, yeah.
Q: Okay.
A: And I’m so happy I was there to see him two months before. And his mind was
gone. So when his daughter, Sharon, picked me up at the airport, I said, “Could we stop by?” It was about eight o’clock. She said, “Sure.” So we stopped by, and the kids bought him a Lazy Boy, and he was asleep, and I walked in, and he was hard of hearing, too, and he couldn’t… the hearing aids, he lost them and lost them and then they didn’t help any, anyway. So I whispered in his ear, “Bernard, Bernard, you lazy boy, wake up. Your sister Sylvia is here.” About three or four time, I repeated that, and all in a sudden, you should have seen his face. Before, he was pale, flushed, his eyes, there was recognition, and a smile from ear to ear. And said, “You know something? I haven’t seen Daddy smile like that since Mama died.” But that was the only recognition, then I was “Hey you,” or “I want to do this, I want to do that.” And when Sharon… before we went to the airport, I… this time I stayed two days, because it just wore me out, just fly in and fly out Sunday. So I, I flew in Thursday, and I was just… because before, I stayed with him all day, and she picked me up just to go to bed at her house. She said, “It’s getting too hard for you, and you just stay a half a day,” but I stayed all day Friday, I stayed all day Saturday, and before we went to the airport, I said, “Do you think you could, we could stop by?” She said, “Sure. We can leave about an hour earlier, and you can stay with him.” So, when I walked in, he said… the day before, we thought he was going to die. Walked in there, “I want to get dressed.” I said, “Okay, you going to get dressed.” I took some clothes and I matched up things. He looked sharp, he really did. And I was going to shave him, but his electric shaver didn’t work, and I wouldn’t use a straight razor, he was a severe diabetic. But I combed his hair, I washed his face. He said, “I want to eat in the dining room.” He hasn’t eaten in the dining room, I don’t remember when. I took him to the dining room in a wheelchair, and sat down next to him. And they wouldn’t give him any bread any more, because he would wad it up, put it in his mouth, and he’d choke. So he saw the bread and he pointed, and his face lit up. So I broke it up in a million little pieces. And then he ate, and I kissed him good-bye. It didn’t bother him that I left, he didn’t know. But I’m just happy I saw him two months before, and this… to recognize him, that he recognized me, this is something I cherish. But he left three beautiful girls. Nice son-in-laws. Good girls. One is going to make Aliyah, she’s moving to .Q: Were you ever frustrated with him that he left after bringing you here, after…
A: Yeah, I laughed about it. No, that’s become home, you know. He left here,
graduated, undergraduate degree from University , so he was with us. And then he went to , and he worked on his Master’s in . And I went to visit him in ‘48. My parents had some friends who survived, who lived in , and I stayed with them for two weeks. And then he went to . And he had enough credit for everything, but he didn’t finish his thesis, he got involved with a girl and got engaged, and it was a mess. But thank God he saw it ahead of time, that he called the engagement off. It wouldn’t have worked.Q: I’m… okay, I wanted to ask you about and Germans. After the war you... you
were, of course, very angry at the…A: Oh, yeah.
Q: …at the Germans. Has that changed over time?
A: Yeah, it’s… I finally let go of it. Took a long time, it was a gradual thing.
And anybody had any connection with or even probably 20 generation way back in , I wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And even the language, I don’t speak German. Maybe I could, I don’t know, I just don’t do it. I think I build a mental block, and even my brother Bernard used to say, Germany was there before Hitler, but when Hitler came to power, I only was nine years old, so to me, the German language was Hitler. So, but that’s gone now, I think.Q: Did you ever have the desire to visit again?
A: No, I don’t have any desire.
Q: Or ?
A: The other… no, mm-mm. I don’t have that happy memories about , either. And
then the Polish Gentiles were very anti-Semitic. They collaborated with the Germans. They were very happy to collaborate with the Germans. So, no, there are other places I would like to go. I would like to go back to , but I don’t know if… I’ve got some problems with my legs. Maybe if I win the lottery and I could fly first-class, then I would go.Q: You were saying a little bit earlier about… off tape, about a woman who you
met at the Kroger…A: Oh, at the… yeah, the Kroger’s.
Q: Will you tell, will you tell about that on, on tape?
A: Well, I have known her. She’s been here as long as I have, over 50 years. She
was from , and maybe a hundred miles away from my hometown, she was… she’s, was from . And some relatives of Jake wanted me to meet her, they thought that she was such a lovely lady, and she probably was, but I didn’t want to meet her, because with the German connection. And for years I didn’t meet her. If I saw her, I would run across the street, just not to have to see her. So then, finally, we did meet and we talked some, and I always said, “She seems nice enough, she couldn’t be my best friend.” And I don’t know whether I would want her as my best friend, because then it’s German again, you know. But I was at Kroger’s, oh it was, I don’t know, November, December, and we were talking about something and it came up, the past, and she starts sobbing and she start crying, and automatically, I cradled her in my arms. I couldn’t believe it, I mean, that was such a automatic gesture, you know. I just couldn’t believe it. So when I came home, I called . I said, “You won’t believe it. I was comforting Lilo Thomps… Thompson.” She said, “Mom, you’ve come a long ways.” I said, “Yes, I have.” But I did tell her also, I said, “Listen, we were born at the wrong time, at the wrong place.” Now, I couldn’t have felt that way a few years back, and it’s true.Q: So your bitter, your bitterness has…
A: It’s, it’s gone…
Q: Has the…
A: …well, it’s kind-of subsided, thank God. Like I said, that I’ve, I feel like
there’s a load off my shoulders, you know, like you carry the world on your shoulders. Thank God it’s not there any more.Q: What… can you identify things that happened in your life that made that
change, that made the bitterness go away?A: I don’t know, I really don’t know. It’s… the few years I have left, I like to
live them out, not with hatred, and it’s even hard enough just to be alone now. Living isn’t easy. So, I don’t know when it left me, I just hope it stays away.Q: I don’t think we mentioned on the tape… that when Jake passed away, that was…
will you say when that was?A: It was January the ninth, ‘97, and we both have a living will, but I… I
wanted him back, so I called 911, and they start working on him. And I called the children, they told me to call the children. They found a very slight pulse. So I called Jerry, then I called , said, “Hang up, I call right back and leave the line open.” So I did, so she heard everything what went on. So, I was so fortunate that night, because my doctor, Dr. Pika was on call that night, and she was called in, and she stayed with me. And called a friend to stay in the hospital with me. And so Dr. Pika told that friend, Ava Tyler, “Miss Tyler,” she didn’t know Ava, “I like to ask a favor of you, would you please spend the night with Mrs. Green? I don’t want her alone.” So, I’m very fortunate to have a caring doctor like she is. And she’s only about 32-33 years old, with two children. She had those while she already was, was in practice. So, she prepared me so, because they were working at, with Jake at the hospital, in emergency room. And she would come back and forth, to see how I was. And after about a half an hour, she said, “Miss Green, you don’t want him back. If he would come back now, he’d be brain-dead and you wouldn’t want him, he wouldn’t want it.” I think he already was gone when she came in telling me that.Q: And I, I’m… I know that you went, recently… we were talking about this a
little bit off tape, too, that you went recently to , to talk, to do a public talk.A: For the first time…
Q: For the first time.
A: Yeah, and it was in the Jewish Community Center. And the only reason I did it
was because my foster brother asked me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it.Q: This is Stuart…
A: Stuart…
Q: …Urbach.
A: Dr. Stuart Urbach, yeah.
Q: Can you tell me about what that experience was like?
A: Well, nerve-racking, that’s all I can say. I didn’t sleep. I might have slept
about five hours in three nights. And I don’t know. When I got up there, I mentioned, first I mentioned my name and then I told them that I never spoke in public, that I have given interviews in the comfort of my own home, but I told them I was very nervous. And well, I did it.Q: And how many people were in the audience?
A: Well, that was strange, because when I walked in, we were a little late, and
Leah was kinda on edge. I said, “You thought I’d be a no-show, huh?”Q: You’re talking about Leah… Leah Dickstein.
A: Like I talked to you on the telephone, Dr., Dr. Dickstein, yeah. So she said,
“No, I just want to show you where you stand and which side you get on the stage, and I’m going to get on the other one, I will introduce you.” And I looked around, I said, “Leah,” I said, “there are over a thousand people here.” She said, “That can’t be, because it only holds 250.” I swear it looked like over a thousand. But then I got the letter from the Federation and they said there were 450 people, that there were chairs all around, then the lobby, a lot of people were there.Q: This was held in the Jewish Federation of Louisville, is that right?
A: What?
Q: Jewish…
A: No, the Community Center.
Q: Community Center.
A: It’s the Jewish Community Center. But the, the Jewish Federation is in charge
of it. And Leah, she… Dr. Dickstein organized the whole thing.Q: Was this the first event of its kind in, in ?
A: No. I don’t know. She said it was a wonderful attendance, and she said there
were a lot of Gentiles and a lot of children. And the children are important, because they never heard of it, they didn’t know anything about it. So that’s the ones we have to teach. We have a Yom Shoah day in . Sometimes you have more people than other times. So I don’t know, they had one here, I think Tuesday, and I don’t know, I didn’t ask… find out how many people there were.Q: Has it gotten any easier for you to speak about your experiences, over time?
A: It still, it still upsets me. You can see it does. Sometimes I wish it’d just
go away. But the only way it’s going to go away, when I go away. That’s the only way.Q: Do you have any sense of relief, or maybe even that it’s necessary to talk?
Do you have a feeling that it’s, that there’s anything good that comes out of it?A: Well, people should know, but…
End of Tape Six, Side A
Beginning Tape Six, Side B
Q: Tape three, side B, of an interview with Sylvia Green. I’m sorry, go ahead.
A: I, I just said, maybe I’m selfish, it just still gets me upset, and I don’t
like to be upset. I would like to live my life out in peace. And see it… the past, I feel like I’ve lived more than two lives. And really, the life right now is not easy, either. Looking back, if Jake would have lived, we would have been married 50 years in January. And I always thought that… well, everybody goes through some kind of hell in life. You’re not promised a rose garden, and I always felt like, well, you’ve gone through your hell at a very young age, and everything was smooth, everything was fine. We had no problems here, the marriage was good, the children were wonderful, and then, then it hit again.Q: What hit again? I’m sorry.
A: Well, Jake passed away, it hit me again. I just thought maybe I will have
smooth sailing the rest of my life, but there’s no guarantee.Q: Do you have ideas of, of what you want now, for the rest of your life? Goals?
A: Goals. I hope and pray, and I pray all the time, I hope when my time comes,
it be quick. I hope I’ll be able to take care of myself and don’t have to be a burden to my children. This bothers me. And that’s my goal. Otherwise, what kind of goal? I mean, I enjoy working in the hospital, I got good relationship with the people I work in, and know everybody there.Q: You mentioned that you volunteer one, one day a week there?
A: Yeah, eight and a half hours. I get there by… well, I used to at eight
o’clock, but then, there’s so much traffic on Boone Avenue when school is in session, if I try to get out here ten to eight, to be in the hospital at eight, I can sit 20 minutes and can’t even get out my driveway. So it’s worthwhile for me to get up a half an hour earlier and leave here about 7:30. But then, we have other things. We have bake sales, we have book sales. And in the morning, I… what I do is like a gopher. Anything they ask, we, we do. And then, the afternoon, I go to the gift shop, because in the morning it’s a lot of running around. And my legs don’t take it as well, so when I get in the gift shop, then it’s more relaxing, except when we have Beanie Babies, then it’s not very relaxing. There’s… people still go wild over the Beanie Babies.Q: What’s the name of the hospital?
A: .
Q: Here in ?
A: Here in , yes.
Q: And what do you do the other days of the week?
A: Well, take somebody else’s place. Like somebody goes out of town, like I was
out of town Monday, so somebody fills in what I do. So, if they go out of town, then I fill in what they do. And then, the only bad thing is that I don’t drive at night, because we really got a lot going on in the synagogue, but it’s always at night. And I have that horror getting stuck on Interstate 64, with a flat tire, or the car stops. So, I do have a car phone, I… I don’t know, it just… it’d be scary. So I don’t go after dark. I do in town, I drive. I’m a member of AARP, and we meet in the evening.Q: Do you have anything else that you’d like to say?
A: No, no. I’m glad it’s over with.
Q: Thank you so much.
A: I enjoyed seeing you again, but that…
Q: I certainly enjoyed seeing you. I thank you so much for doing this.
A: And I wish you well.
Q: Thank you.
End of Tape Six, Side B
Conclusion of Interview
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