Felicia Fuksman – Oral History

Felicia Fuksman was born in Lodz, Poland. She was nineteen years old when the war began. She worked as a nurse in the Lodz ghetto until August 1944 when she was deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was later sent to work in an airplane factory in Germany where she was liberated by the Russians in 1945. No one in her family was alive. The Nazis had murdered her two brothers, two sisters, and parents. Felicia moved to New Orleans in 1950.

PR     Thanks for allowing me to visit you. Would you be so kind to tell me your name, and where you were born, and when you were born?

FF     I was born in Poland, Lodz, 1920, and my name is Felicia Fuksman. I was born as a Leftvitz, but I married here in the United States. My husband was from the same part of Poland. And I'm Fuksman.

PR     I've also spoken with Ann Levy, and she is also from Lodz. But you didn't know her then?

FF     I know just through an accident. I knew her mother in Poland, and I knew her father cause her sister was born at the time that I worked in the hospital. It was strictly maternity hospital, and I was working there before the war, just before the war. And that's how I got to know. I really didn't know the people because in the hospital you going over a patient just like anybody else. But after they came to United States, and she told me she's from Lodz, and we got to talk, and she told me where her child was born. And then I said, I was working there. I think Lila was it because it was 1938. Lila is fifty years old. Yes this probably was Lila.

PR     And which hospital was that?

FF     This was hospital named Sterling's Maternity Hospital. And it was strictly maternity until we got dissolved, until the Germans came in. And they transferred us to a different, to a regular hospital, and we just had a part in this bigger hospital.

PR     You know, Mrs. Fuksman, I'm so very interested in understanding and trying to portray life in Poland for the Jews between the wars, in the 1920's and the 1930's. And I was wondering if you could describe that life for me and if you had examples that might describe that life as well.

FF     Well, my parents were very poor. We were five children and my parents, which amount to seven people. We were very poor because poverty was very very great in Poland. Even so, because Lodz was a very industry city...

PR     Textile.

FF     Textile. But even so the poverty was very big. And it didn't escape us either. So what we were happy because we had the family together. We were going to school in terrible conditions. I walked in the morning for my school, maybe ten blocks. For eight o'clock we have to be there, it was freezing cold. But there is no other way. We have to go.

PR     What profession were your parents in?

FF     My father was a tailor. When he had work, we had [something] to eat. When he was without work, that was a struggle. A very great struggle just to survive. And to pay rent. Well, the rent was not the biggest problem because we paid only once every three months. But the food, to survive, it was a very big struggle. But we were happy. We didn't know better, I think. They had rich people, rich Jewish people. And I myself had a very rich uncle. But it didn't, I think the people who didn't went through poverty could less understand the people who were [in poverty]. The misfortune people, they were by themselves with no help.

PR     And you spoke Polish as your first language?

FF     Yes, yes. Yiddish we spoke in home. But in school, I was going to a school where they had only Jewish children, it was a public school for Jewish children because we have to have six days a week school. And in order not to observe our Sabbath, so we went Sunday to school. And the school was very strict. And we learned a lot in school. I see how much children learning today, and there is no comparison to what we learned. And we have to learn. There was no excuse. We didn't receive any books from the school board. Like here is the school board, but from the state. No books were distributed to us. We have to buy our own. And my parents couldn't afford to buy me any books. So therefore I was thinking which of my friend has the math book or geography or the other books and I was going from one to the other until I had my homework done. And then I have some errands to make for my mother, and we had a great devotion because we had so much love for our parents. And it was a family life. Even so the poverty was big but we had a family life and we were happy until the war broke out. And for average person it was a struggle in Poland. And the hatred was already big. My grandmother used to live in a small town. The name was _____(Polish). She had a little dry goods store. She came every Thursday to Lodz to shop for her store. And because Friday was the big day, people came to the market. The peasants came to the market to sell their goods, like butter, eggs, cheese, and after they sold their goods they came into those little stores, dry good stores, to buy brooms, pieces of material. So this was a big day, Friday. So my grandmother came every Thursday, but you could see smeared on the walls Don't buy at the Jew. And they even had priests who stood in the front of the store, and dragged away the customers - not to buy at the Jew. So it was a hardship. In Lodz it was the same thing. Just walking in the street and you see all that, what they call it? The writing on the walls?

PR     Graffiti.

FF     Graffiti. And Send the Jews back to Palestine. Death to the Jews. And so on. So life was not only poverty stricken, but it was a struggle to survive from the anti-Semitic way. Because it hurts you. It hurts you today when you hear what is going on. But at the time I was still a young girl. And I didn't understood the consequence. As I grew older, I realized but we have no way of escaping this or going anyplace where the conditions are better. So it was very very hard before the war.

PR     Did you have any Polish Gentile friends?

FF     Very little. Because I was going to school with Jewish children, and I lived in the neighborhood where they had Jewish children. And we had really very little connection with the Gentile children. But my grandmother in that small town where she lived, she had very good neighbors, Gentile, and they were very sweet to her because in the very beginning of the war she has to close her store and leave to the ghetto, to come to Lodz, to ghetto. And her neighbors, Gentile neighbors, took all the goods to their house and they were trying to sell little by little for her and they returned to her the money. They helped with little groceries. They came to Lodz and they brought [food] to her, because she was already old and sick. And, they were very nice. Matter of fact, my grandmother was an old person when she died. But when she was in her late seventies, one of her neighbor married her daughter. And my grandmother, well, at that time we all were very religious Jews. And we didn't dare go to a Catholic church. But when my grandmother's neighbor married off her daughter, she invited all of us to the church, to the wedding. And she took the grandchildren. It was in summer time so we spend the vacation with her. And she said, Listen, [if] we will not go, she will not come to ours, and in order to respect ours we have to respect the lady's religion. We do not have to say any prayers. We do not have to kneel down. But we all going, and we all, the five grandchildren of us, and my grandfather and my grandmother. My parents were at home. But I was with my grandmother. And we all went to church. And you couldn't see a more happy person than this neighbor when she saw all of us at the church. It was really an experience. And I'm still today repeating to my children, Not to hate. Hate is the most awful what you [have], because the children, sometime if they don't want to eat something what they don't like it, they will say, Oh I hate this. There is no such a thing. Hate is the most awful thing. You never say hate. You don't hate. You might like or dislike. But never. And that's what my grandmother taught me. Never hate. Respect in order to be respected. And she was an old woman with very little education in Polish. She was educated in Yiddish and Hebrew. But not in Polish because who was going to school at this time?

PR     I have read so often of Jewish children being accosted on the streets at Passover - Easter for the Christians.

FF     Yeah.

PR     At Christmas time as well, because it's at that point that religious anger of the non-Jew towards the Jew rises to the surface. Did you have any experience like that?

FF     No, because I lived in a much bigger town. In the smaller towns those things happened. But I didn't experience this. No. We heard about what was going on, but I didn't experience this. No. Of course, they were talking about the Jews eating the Matzo on Passover and it's made of the Christian blood, Jesus' blood. Because we as Jews don't believe in Jesus. We know that he's a great man, maybe. A great teacher. But he was not our God. Therefore, I think the whole hatred started off in the church. In Poland the majority was Catholic, and that's what they were taught in the church: to hate the Jews because the Jews are the killer of Jesus. And that's how the anti-Semitism and the hatred started off. And some of the other Poles said, Oh, he's a different Jew. He liked him. Maybe he did something for him. So he's different [from] the other Jews. Who is the other Jews and who I am? I am the same. But that's what I experienced, is only what I saw, really. And there were pogroms in smaller towns, they killed Jews, but not in Lodz. There was one time. We went on, if it's a national holiday, but we went to the synagogue. We had an old synagogue, beautiful. And one time we went with our school flag, and the flag of our country. Two flags to the synagogue for services, and a bunch of hoodlums, Poles, came to us, in the front of us, and they say, You cannot go in there. You don't have any right to wave this flag. You don't deserve to be holding our national flag. But the police came and we went in. That was youth, Polish youth, and the hatred was very big. But somehow we lived with that, on a daily basis. And we couldn't help it.

PR     Pilsudski (Polish president) died in 1935 and when he died...

FF     We cried. I remember. Well, he was a very nice old man, and he was in particular very good to the Jews. And when he died, the Poles said to us, Oh, your father is dead now. And nobody will defend you. And it was a very sad moment for all of us. We wear black arm bands on our right or left arm. And it was a tragedy. Just like Masaryk in Czechoslovakia. I think he was a very good man and we heard about it. It hurt us. Pilsudski, when he left it was a very big change for the Jews. They started off with...what was her name? A lady who question the ritual killing of the cows. In order to be kosher, there is a different way of killing. And she said, It's unfair to the animals. It's not civilized way we doing it. But we did it for cleansing purposes, because when you kill a cow this way, I think, I'm not a butcher, or chicken, and for the blood at the neck, and they hanging for blood to drain out from this animal. And, she said, That's so wrong. That we should abolish that law. And it was going on, a fight, and she probably will win if the war wouldn't break out.

PR     That was official harassment.

FF     Yes, from her.

PR     In Warsaw, I know, they passed a law preventing Jews from working as porters, carrying bags for others at the train station, which was...

FF     This was strictly for Poles, yes. Certain jobs were not given to them. We couldn't go to the universities. If somebody really wants to become a doctor, he has to leave Poland, go to Austria, to Vienna, to France, and study and become a doctor. Because in Poland very few were admitted to the university, and when they were admitted to the university, they were sitting, the Jews were on the right, and the Poles on the left, or the other way around. And it was very few. Higher education was very, very hard to obtain in Poland.

PR     There was a quota.

FF     Yes, so people had to leave. The ones who were better off, they left town. I remember I had a friend and her mother, we lived in the same yard, and her mother left with her, because her father passed away, and that was her only child, and she say she will not stand it. She's going away. She went to Vienna. And up there she study, and she became a neurosurgeon. And then she came back to Poland, and the Poles will not go to a Jewish doctor. They hesitate to go. And in the senate, we had a Sejm, and a senate. What they call like here the three branches of government. It was a democracy in a way. And but very few of the Jewish people could go in, to have a seat in there. It was a hard life, in any directions, it was hard for the Jew.

PR     Do you remember seeing the Endek Party marching down the street in Lodz? The National Democrats, they were...

FF     Oh Endeks, yes, yes. Well, this was already after the war. I came back in 1945, when the war was over. I came back to Poland because the Russians send me back to Poland. And this was May 3, 1945. Was just a few days after I came into Poland. After concentration camp. May the third was a national holiday. And they were carrying caskets, the Poles, they marching on the street with a big parade, and they were carrying caskets, black caskets, and they said, on the top of the casket, This is your Jew. And Death to all of you. And this was horrible. Coming back from concentration camp we thought they changed. They're better people. They experienced on their own harsh time. Because they killed the Poles, too. The Germans. And we thought they had changed, but they didn't. They didn't in the smaller towns, they killed the Jews. And every day I was there, I was frightened. I was afraid to stay there right after. I was one year in Poland. I thought I will find my family. But I didn't find nobody.

PR     Where was that parade?

FF     In Lodz. In Lodz. (Polish) And all the main streets, and it was just horrible. We thought we coming back, everybody will look up to us, because what we went through. But no. I went to my Pole, not the neighbor, but he was taking care on the house, and the whole family they lived in a small little edition to the big building, and I came in to find out if he heard about my family, or he saw somebody from my family. And then I saw our beautiful green covers, velvet covers on the bed. I noticed a lot of things in the house, but I was afraid to tell them to give it to me. I was afraid to ask for anything, because they said, Oh, you should go away from Poland. You shouldn't stay here in Poland, in Lodz. And I was frightened. I was still with my friends. We worked at the hospital together. But we couldn't wait to escape back from Poland. In order to escape from Poland, I have to have money. And I didn't have money. So I worked as a nurse for a young girl. And day and night I worked and I made enough money to pay off the Russians to let me through Poland back to Germany, And that's how I came back to Germany. And from Germany you could only come to United States, not from Poland. So it was hard. In every way the conditions was horrible, and the Poles contribute a lot to it. I don't know why because, when I was in concentration camp, they had Polish girls, too. And they suffered. Of course, there was not genocide like with the Jews. But they killed Poles, they arrest Poles, and why they didn't learn a lesson at the time?

PR     I want to gather the sound of the parade, and also I want to be in Krakow for May 3rd. Because I'm sure there ...

FF     In Krakow. Well Krakow was a very religious city. And how people can be one way so religious, and, on the other hand, they can be such a hateful, so without any feelings. With no compassion. It's hard to understand how people can be. And, after all, we contribute to Poland just the same. We had some people, they were very prominent manufacturers, owners of manufacturers. Doctors, lawyers, musicians. So they shouldn't have do what they did. And we were very, I'm talking for myself now, I was a very good patriot. I loved Poland. When I came to United States all by myself, I came through New York, and I cried terrible. I said, I want to go back home. And home I still called Poland. And what I left behind in Poland? Just enemies. Just horrible people who did so much bad, so harm to me. But I still wanted to go back, to go home. I was young, and since I didn't have nobody, so I think this was my feeling for Poland, and I always, in school, with great pride, we said our hymn. We sang in school every morning our hymn.

PR     Do you still remember it?

FF     (Felicia sings Polish national anthem) And it's going on more and more. But I still remember those things. I remember a lot of things from school. But somehow, because, it I was, I was a good person, a good well, how you call it? I loved Poland.

PR     Patriot?

FF     Patriot. That's right. And I loved Poland dearly. And what I learned I still remember. And, matter of fact, I wish would remember more what I am learning today in English because this doesn't stay with me at all. But Polish I can still speak very well, write good, and whatever I was taught in the Polish school I remember. I loved it. And I didn't deserve to be treated like this. But the hatred was so big.

PR     Mrs. Fuksman, can we go back to September 1, 1939? Do you remember? FD Exactly. When I worked in a hospital, this was my first occasion, September is the ninth month, and the eighth month I got one month vacation. And I got paid very well, and I even got paid for my food, because I lived in a hospital and they provided for me meals, and I got paid for the meals, too. And for the first time I went to a dress maker and had made a beautiful dress, bought nice, and went to visit my grandmother and I wanted to stay the vacation with my grandmother. And all of us every summer we went because she lived in a small town, she has a little garden, it was much better than in our big city. We didn't have to where to go. And up there we had a beautiful vacation. Our grandmother did everything possible to make us happy. She took us swimming one day with my grandfather. And we heard what is going on. We heard already in the hospital before I went on my vacation that the Germans might attack Poland, but we thought, Who cares? France will help us. England will help us. We going to win anyway. That's our attitude. That Poland will not lose the war. But we didn't thought there will be a war with the Jews. And I went on my vacation, and the first of September, the third of September really, we know the war is going on. And the third of September we heard the planes bombing and we saw right in the front of me, I saw a little house turned upside down with the roof to the ground. And my grandmother said a Jewish prayer, and she said, Let's go children to the cellar. We had a cellar right in the house, and we went in into the cellar, and we stood there until it quiet down. And next day, we start to look for transportation back home to Lodz. And it took us a long time. We walked a lot and then we had, it was a special streetcar. And we went back home and it was already bad. When I came back into the hospital, there was already notice that, in such a time, we have to leave the hospital and go to the other hospital which will be considered for the ghetto.

PR     So the Germans were already in Lodz?

FF     Yes. They were. Destroyed the train station. They didn't have no problems to take Lodz, or take other cities. Because we had so many Germans in Poland, and they cooperate with the Germans, and they had no difficulties.

PR     Volksdeutsche.

FF     Volksdeutsche. They had no difficulties of taking Lodz.

PR     Do you remember the sight of the first German soldier?

FF     Yes. That was in (Polish town) at my grandmother's house. We went to the market, because that was a small town, we didn't have no water or any other facilities in the house. We went to the market place to the pumps for water. And when we got there we saw the Germans. They had the motorcycles, but they attached motorcycle to another, for another person to sit. Not on the top of it, but next to it. Attachment.

PR     Sidecar.

FF     Yes. And the whole market was full of them, and they were washing on by the pumps and shaving and cleaning themselves. And they didn't allow us to come for water. This was the first mean thing what we experienced with the Germans. And then later they knocked at the doors. They had some special helpers. That's all the radios. If anybody possesses radios or any other equipment, we have to turn in. There was no television at the time, but any other equipment, phonograph, whatever we have, to turn in to the Germans. And then little by little they were trying to take away our pride. Everything from us. They gradually got to us. And this was the first experience. And, then we went to the streetcar to go back to Lodz, and the Germans were already on the streetcars everywhere. And they pulled us, they throw us almost out from the streetcar, [but] we were allowed to go back to Lodz. And Lodz was a little different because it was a bigger place. Here you deal direct with the Germans. In Lodz they just hanged out notices on the walls and we have to obey. At first we went to ghetto and then they took us to work, and from work nobody came back because that's what happened to my parents. My sister died, small sister, died with typhoid fever and then my oldest sister died with tuberculosis in the ghetto. In Lodz.

PR     One of the first things the Germans did in Lodz was to burn the synagogue.

FF     That's right. The beautiful old synagogue. They burned. They burned the other one. And then they took us all. But they had still left part of the synagogue where they put in all the priests, and the religious people they took them. The Jews they put them in the church. Catholics they put in the synagogue, and without any facilities, without any water, without toilet facilities. They stood there for who knows how long? I wasn't there. We cleaned up afterwards because we left the ghetto from the last, the last people left the ghetto. I wasn't between them. So we cleaned up the ghetto. And we found dead people in churches, priests, nuns in the synagogues. Terrible. Terrible conditions. They suffered, too, the Poles.

PR     The ghetto was established in 1940, correct?

FF     >40. Right, the winter of 1940.

PR     In November.

FF     In November. So this was...no it was before November. We went to the hospital and that was the first winter. The first winter of the war. So it was December. It was still >39. Before 1940 we already were in ghettoes. Not completely. There was still open the ghettoes. But later on they took us out from the hospital and they gave us somewhere else to stay in another hospital.

PR     And when they put the Jews behind walls in the ghettoes, did you have the feeling you were safer, or more vulnerable?

FF     I felt like, because I was between the Jews, that Rumkowski, who took care on that ghetto, he will take care on us. He will promise us he will give us enough work. We work. We had factories in the ghetto, and I worked there and we thought because the Germans needed those factories we will be safe, but still we didn't know what is going on with the Jews. They took us for work, we thought they taking them to work. We didn't know they taking them to kill them. Until the end. We were in the ghettoes. I worked as a nurse. I worked at the fur factory, and needed those heavy furs for the Germans for the winter, the coats with the fur underneath. And this factory I worked as a nurse because they have to have sanitation department and they have to have a nurse for so many people they have two nurses there and even a fireman on duty was all the time. They thought of all the little things and they established in all those Aresorts, they called it, the Germans, and I worked as a nurse until they dissolved the ghetto.

PR     Rumkowski is a very controversial figure.

FF     Well (sigh), we thought that's our God in the very beginning. But at the same time he built only the name for himself I think. He lived a very nice life, which I thought he deserves it because he was the leader of the ghetto. And he risked his life just to talk to the Germans. But it wasn't so. And I don't know what really happened to him. They said he died, or he was killed by some of the Jewish people.

PR     I think he was deported to the camp and killed on the way.

FF     Oh, killed on the way. Yes, I really didn't know what really happened to him. Because they had another man Polish, he was strictly with the factories, like labor minister, and he took care on all the factories. He lived a very good life, too. Because one time he need a nurse and I went to his house. He had a new born baby, and he lived in a beautiful house. There was no sign that there is such a poverty and such a terrible time going on outside beside his house. And he supposedly did something, he hold on to the factories, he hold on to the last, and that's how he saved supposedly a lot of people from being killed in camps. And, on the end, they took us out, all the nurses, the doctors, they took us out. We were supposed to be shipped to Polish camp, they send a man up there first to build some places for us, livable places, and we supposed to be working somewhere in special place. But it wasn't in the ghetto they was talking about and we left with the last transport, but it wasn't so. When we came to Ravensbruck nobody know about Polish camp (slight laugh). They laughed at us. And we were just treated like anybody else until they send us to Wittenberg. Wittenberg on the Elbe. Because they had two Wittenbergs right on the Elbe. We worked very hard, but it was not Yakobowvitz. And they say Yakobowvitz was killed, too. I didn't hear. I was by myself searching for my family, took all my energy, and all my knowledge. And to be all alone, it's a terrible situation.

PR     Were there rumors circulating about these deportations and where they ended up?

FF     No.

PR     Nothing?

FF     I didn't. I personal didn't hear nothing. We just know they're going to work. People going to work. Matter of fact, people took the best what they possessed, the belongings, everything they packed. They wrapped not to break because they thought going to work. Until we saw what is going on, when they put us in those trains. Then we know it is the end of us. Because they shoved us in the train with the tiny little window open. The people didn't have even room to sit. And they put a bucket there. No food, no water. And we stood only. It was terrible. If somebody sat down, it was impossible to sit down because they will step over you. And we were in the train twenty-four hours. I think so. Because it was dark and dark again. And then when they let us out, it rained so hard and we have to run, not walk, and we wind up in Ravensbruck.

PR     On the Baltic Sea.

FF     Ravensbruck? Yes. But it's in Germany.

PR     It's very cold, no?

FF     It was very, very cold, very cold.

PR     Did you meet any Czechoslovakian women there?

FF     Yes.

PR     From Lidice?

FF     No. I don't remember from where. I don't remember. But we have from Czechoslovakia, and we had from Poland. In Ravensbruck we didn't met nobody. We couldn't talk to anybody. They were watching us. And we worked. They took us out in the morning to work. We took some tracks out from the ground, and the Germans took them out probably somewhere else to transfer them. And we did this kind of work up there, and they watched us every minute. We couldn't even talk to communicate with anybody. I was there with my friend, and we slept on one bunkee (bunk). The bunkee didn't have nothing but a sack of straw. And the khaki outfits from the jean material what we were wearing. But we had Poles, I noticed. We at the end of the war went out together with the lady from Poland, and Czechoslovakia we had yes. Ravensbruck actually was more a quarantine. Everybody, before they went, I don't know for what purposes, why they have to have a quarantine because in the conditions they were sent, what's the difference if they have typhoid, or they tuberculosis? They will die anyway, and but they kept us for two weeks in there. Like a garage on the floor without nothing, but we still had our belongings up there in this place. And they took away the children, they took away the mothers, they took away everybody little by little. They took everybody away, separate them, and they send us to the baths. There was no water even in that bath nor in that shower but supposed to be. We were sent to take a shower on one side, and they took everything away from us, and we walked out through another door and they gave us something to wear and we looked at each other. We cried and we laughed because the way we looked it was terrible.

PR     They cut your hair?

FF     They cut the hair completely, and they gave us some rags to wear. They took away everything from us, and we looked at each other, and then they gave us a bowl. The bowl was supposed to be for the soup, for the water, for the tea, for the coffee, for everything. And when I came in those barracks where we supposed to stay and go to work, a gypsy came and took me right away my bowl and the piece of bread what they gave me and took it away from me.

PR     Stole it.

FF     Yes. And then we noticed we here to die. But I was in the camp the whole time with a friend of mine. She was older than me. She was original from Austria, from Salzburg. And when the Crystal Night [November 1938] started off, they killed her husband. She send her two daughters to England to nobody. Twelve and fourteen year old, two little girls. She send them to England. There was a free transportation for Jewish children. And she herself was deported back to Poland because she was born in Poland. And this was right in the beginning of the war, and she came to the hospital where I was still working and we stood together in one room. She was my roommate. She had a degree as a surgical nurse, and they grabbed her in that hospital because they need her. She was carrying the same name what my maiden name. And we became so close, and she gave me all the inspiration because her goal was strictly to be able to see still her children, and she had so much courage, she had so much will power, so much life to live, willingness to live, because she knows that she have something, she undertook something that she wants to accomplish: to see once more her children. And she gave me a lot of courage, and I have to say if wouldn't be for her, I gave up. Because I was sick, terrible sick, and she dragged me out. She says, You have to go because they're going to kill you right here on that bunkee, and really because of her I survived the war, and after the war, until we got back to Poland, took us almost, well, it was two weeks. In the beginning of April. It was the seventh I think, April the seventh or April the tenth, we had opened the gates and we could go but where to go? And she say, We all together and we going. And she really took care on me. And the whole time we were together until we came back to Poland. In Poland, in Lodz, she went to work for NKVD because she knew very well Russian, and she worked because she wanted to go England, and I went back to Germany, and we separate at the time. Through the years we were all the time together. She worked in the hospital for the NKVD. This was strictly for those people. And then there was a time when she asked, You know Felicia, you think I should go to England? Because my children already one is married and one left, and I might be just a burden to them. When they need me, they were young children. I couldn't give them any help. And I told her, You have to go. You don't have to depend on your children, you have an income of your own, but you have to go see. And she went. She went to England and she was not so happy because her daughter married a non-Jewish man and the other daughter was engaged to another non-Jewish man, but she saved her because she sent her to Israel. She send her younger daughter to Israel because her mother was still living, my friend's mother was still living in Israel. And she send her and she married up there, so she was for a short time very happy.

PR     Did she live in England?

FF     She lived the whole time in England. But the last four years she couldn't take, she got older, she was much older than I, and she couldn't take the cold weather, and she moved to Israel. And she died. Four years ago [1985] she died in Israel.

PR     And did you see one another after the war?

FF     She came to stay with me. She was three months here. To visit me.

PR     When you tell me about this friend of yours with whom you survived Ravensbruck, it reminds me of when I was waiting for you to answer the door. I looked out on the street, and it's a very beautiful neighborhood.

FF     It is. It is.

PR     And I thought to myself that I'm about to speak to a woman who has really seen the worst of mankind, and yet she now lives in a beautiful neighborhood, and I wonder what it was like for the two of you to sit here and to look around and to think about where you had been and where you now stood?

FF     I often dreamed about this. My parents couldn't see being happy, and live like this (tears) because I'm thinking the conditions what I lived before in compare with the conditions I'm living now. I will never dream of living like this in Poland. And my parents didn't live to see us being so happy. Cause nobody else survived but me from my whole family. And I'm always thinking and I have still a feeling that I'm living maybe a half. That's how in the beginning I couldn't adjust myself to live in United States. To waste or to eat as much as you wanted and not to worry about food at all because I worked and I make made enough to support myself. But we lived in Poland, we couldn't dream of living like this, and if my mother from her grave and see the way I'm living here, I don't think she will be adjust herself. And it takes a lot because I'm thinking very often about my parents. How happy they will be if they will live just a little different. We lived in two rooms, all seven of us. Two rooms and a small little kitchen, and we were happy, and my children, they all living nicely. We sent them all to school, they have their education thank God. Because it's the United States, it's not Poland.

PR     Was your husband an American?

FF     No. My husband was born at the same part of Poland, in Lodz. And I didn't knew my husband before. I was working for an old lady when I came to New Orleans in 1950, and right across the street was another lady from our newcomers. And she was renting out a room. And she came to me she said, Felicia, you know what? I have two boys in my house and they from Lodz too. Maybe you never know maybe you know them? And I said to this old lady, AI would like to go across the street to see them. And she said, No, you cannot leave me alone here. I say, I'm just going across the street. I'm not going to be long. She was very mean and very mean old lady really. Because she didn't let me go to school either. I could go to school at Rayburn, on Carondelet Street. They had a school for the newcomers free of charge, and she didn't let me go. She said, No, you cannot leave. But I went anyway. I said, Mrs. Katz, I'm going anyway, and I'm not going to be long. She said, Tell them to come here. I said, I cannot tell them. I don't know even those people how can I tell them to come here? And I left and I went there and I looked at them. I didn't know them. I knew exactly where they were going to school because there was a boys' school. I knew the principal, and he knew my principal from the school because we had a co-ed, we didn't go boys were separate from the girls, and we got to talk, and then I told him where I lived, and he told me where he lived and we talked, and he said, You know, write me. I'm leaving. He came strictly to pick up his luggage. He came through New Orleans, and they held back his luggage because he had a set of china and silver ware. The two brothers. My husband, his brother. They wanted for him to pay custom dues on this merchandise. And he said, Why? I brought it for myself. And they didn't want to believe that he brought to sell it to make some business. He said, No. And so he said to the federation in Atlanta, he was assigned to Atlanta, and he said. Well, I don't have the money because I'm just hardly making enough to pay room and board, so the federation send him to New Orleans and they came to stay with this old lady because it was very cheap. And they went on their own, as little as he knows at the time to speak English, but he went to the custom house and they understood very well, and they gave him the blessings and gave him the luggage, the china, and silverware. And meantime we got to write each other, and he said, Now it's time for you to come to Atlanta. And I went to Atlanta. And I couldn't make up my mind because I really, I don't know what to do. We didn't love each other. We married at the time without any love. We just felt like a great need for each other. Because he needs somebody. And I need somebody. And we have so much in common. So we thought eventually we learn to love each other, and that happened. We had thirty-four years, very good years. We loved each other, respect each other. And we got along so wonderful. We have three daughters, and he was still lucky: one of his grandson. And just seven years. It will be seven years in April he passed away, and it was a big lost.

PR     Did he survive the war in Poland as well?

FF     Yes. Oh, he was in more camps. He was in Auschwitz, he was in Dachau, he was in all those. They made him march. I was in camps. I was less time because I was more time in the ghetto. And he was more time in camps, and he buried parents in the ghetto, they died of starvation, and he did a lot for his parents, he was younger, two years younger than I am, but he did so much, and then when he came back to Poland, he didn't leave before he put for his parents around on the cemetery, and he worked very hard to save up the money to do it, because he didn't have the money, and then he left Poland. He left for Germany. But he was in all those camps. He had a hard time. And he was small. He was my size. One inch taller, but my size. He weighed a hundred fifteen-twenty pounds at the most.

PR     How did he survive? And I know that your answer will be: that he was lucky.

FF     Yes, he was lucky, and he too survive in the ghetto. I believe the poor people had a better chance of surviving because it was a continuation of their poverty. The rich one, for them it was an extreme change from one extreme to the other and that's why they gave up right away. And they collapsed. We worked very hard in those camps and if we didn't put anything right right away, they said it was a sabotage, so you had to be very careful. And he had good brains. When they send him to work, he did his work alright, and so we survived off less, and long they didn't killed us we survived. The poverty, the starvation, the conditions didn't kill us (emphasis). But some of them it did. They were killed just because they want to escape, they killed from staying on those appel platz [roll call], what they call it where they get us in the morning for two hours, we stood and they count, until the Germans came out, and they count us, and then they tell us we can go to work. But practically we have no clothes on our self and it was horrible cold, we just wrapped ourselves with paper we found in those factories. Paper. And somebody asked what is mine attitude to the Germans? And I told them, I learned not to hate. I don't hate people for what they did to me. The Germans. I will put them on the same scale with the Poles because the Poles were not better. If we stood in a line for a loaf of bread and we disguised ourselves to look like Poles, and when a Pole passed by and he recognized me he will call the German. I will like to go once more to Poland. Maybe I really misjudge the Poles. Maybe they changed after so many years. They're different people. And to see where I lived, to see the house where I was born, the school I was going to. The cemetery. Of course, they told me, my friends were there, and the cemeteries one big jungle, impossible to recognize any of the tomb stones, but I feel like I should go. If I will have a group with whom I enjoy to be with, and to go to Poland, I will go for sure. Because before I die I want to see Poland again. I just feel like that's my roots, but my husband didn't want to go to Poland. He hate, not hate, he couldn't stand to hear of them, just the same like the Germans. He didn't want to hear me talking about to go back to Poland, but when I'm talking with my children, and they say, That's what I want to do, I should.

PR     There are a lot of Jews who have gone back to Poland to visit. Particularly from Israel. I was in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw this summer, and the bus loads of Jews from Israel came back, and walked about the cemetery looking for names of family members. Very moving.

FF     I will like to go but I cannot undertake something like this on my own. I have to go with somebody from Lodz to share with him, to show this was my house. I lived here, and I went to school here. Maybe those places not existing anymore. But that's why I'd like to go, and I often said, like when I was in Germany and working so hard in those factories, all Germans they were really not so bad. They brought us a little salt. They brought us a thread because that was something what you needed on every day basis. The salt, a little salt, and we drink hot water with that salt. It was a little nourishing for us.

PR     And these were older Germans?

FF     Older Germans, they were the meisters what they call it. Overhead of us. We were groups, each table had a group of so many those prisoners, and one time I clean a bike for my overhead man, and he brought me a little sandwich, and I wrapped that sandwich and I brought it with me into the barracks, to share with my friend, and it was just something what we never had. So you cannot take the overall people, just like the Poles. Maybe they still have some nice one, too, like my grandmother had a nice good neighbor, and maybe they have more of those people now in Poland.

PR     Well, you know, Mrs. Fuksman, last summer when I was in Poland, I interviewed a lot of people who have been anointed Righteous Christians by Yad Vashem.

FF     Yes, yes.

PR     And these were very noble people.

FF     They are.

PR     And as a result of my experiences talking with these people I came back and I then understood that a generalization about anybody...

FF     No, you cannot make it.

PR     Is wrong.

FF     That's right. Positively wrong. You cannot generalize. That everybody's bad, or everybody is good, and I experienced good people too. But my experience was so terrible. When I came out from concentration camp, and I saw that parade on May the 3rd. That's right. Because May the first they have a parade, too. And it hit me so terrible. May the 3rd was a parade on the street and they were holding caskets, black caskets, and they were writing on the casket "That is a Jew, and death to all of the Jews." That's what they had written on the caskets and they were parading.

PR     You were in Poland when that pogrom took place in Kielce.

FF     In Kielce. Yes, yes. Because I was that was still before the war was a pogrom too. And then the summer after the war they have all the time those little places pogroms, but not in Lodz. We heard what was going on. And we didn't react to it. Just like here we don't react what is going on in other parts of the world. So much poverties, so much starvation, so much homeless, we were so involved. Up there we couldn't do it because we didn't have the power to do anything. The Jew didn't have the power, and here we not doing it because we are involved with ourselves so much, I think. And let a man like [David] Duke to become something, and this is a...I just don't have an expression. This is not only Duke, but his followers. It will be not only him. He will bring in with him other people, and who knows next time he might be the governor of Louisiana. If we let it go. We let him go too far. And now we cannot stop. We have to think about how we can stop him. I said, You know, it's a very disturbing situation with Duke now. And my daughter, Oh mother, don't be, because we are very sensitive people and she said, Mother, don't worry. He's only one person. What can he do? And we have a great democracy in the United States, which is true. We have a constitution, we have three branches of our government. He cannot do much. I said, Listen my darling, the Jews in Germany had it very well. And they were the most sophisticated people in Germany. The scholars, there were writers, great writers, and composers, and they were for the Fatherland, for country, they will kill themselves, they were so devoted, and what happened up there? All of sudden they didn't have no country, they didn't have nobody. And it can happen. History repeats itself. And it can happen. Don't say never cannot happen here.

PR     History repeats itself because human nature stays the same.

FF     In a way, yes. Because it's the same in one way, but we are progressing. We live in different times now where the education is so much ahead of us, and we know so much more, and we have ways of getting to know. So it shouldn't. We should realize. You think it stays in one place?

PR     I think that the people who voted for David Duke have the same indifference to minorities as the people who supported Hitler. I think the grievances they have are very similar, the support comes from the lower middle class, a people who fear falling back into the lower classes, and I think that's a phenomenon that is constant.

FF     Maybe, but still, well, he spoke to them, he promised them what they wanted to hear, and what they wanted. Right now it's a big fight about the tax reform with our governor, and he's against it, because he promised the people he will not, he will see to it that it will not be raised the tax, and he wanted to be the one who really stays firm on it. And with Duke it is the same thing. The people are tired of what is going on with the welfare reform. He promised he will take away and they have to pay the welfare. Of course, they have a lot of poor people, too. But this is the kind of people. But they said they don't care what Duke was before, they wanted Duke now. He promised them and he will keep his promises, that what frighten me.

PR     But to leave David Duke and to return to the subject of Poland just for a minute.

FF     Yes.

PR     You were in Poland then for a year after the war to try to earn money enough to go to Germany.

FF     Right.

PR     Now, when you were in Poland during that time did you ever hear anyone address the subject of the Jews in the sense that it was good what Hitler did?

FF     From who? The Poles? Yes. When I came back to Poland, first I went to the house where I lived, and I talked to the people who took care on this house before. Each house had their own caretaker and sweeper and to see that everybody is registered in the house where they lived. So I went where I lived, and the woman, she had grown up children, and one of the girls in Polish, Oh, I thought you were killed. I though you dead! Because she saw me looking at different in this house, and they belonged to us. They probably, everybody grabbed what they could from the Jewish homes, and she was very surprised to see us coming back. And I was frightened because I was by myself, they can kill me, too. They had a big son up there. Then she said, Well, what for you came back? So I asked, Did you saw my people? Did anybody came here from my people? She said, No. You all supposed to be dead. And I was beginning to frighten, and just talking to her, Well, if they didn't come, they will come back here, because I want her to know maybe not to feel that I'm here by myself and they can do anything they wanted with me, that my people will come back. And she said, Oh, I don't think they will come back, before she say, If he is not killed in camp, they will kill on the way. We don't want to have the Jews anymore here around. And that was the terrible thing. And I couldn't do nothing about it. I was afraid to say anything, and then I went to my friends, with whom we worked. We came home together to Lodz, and we rented an apartment somewhere under the roof. It was a very tiny little apartment, and three families lived. My friend's mother survived, too, and she came back from camp and a son, his wife, and another son and his wife, and I was there, too, and we shared one apartment, two-room apartment. And then we talked between ourselves, we have to prepare ourselves to leave Poland, and the sooner we leave the better it will be. But it was hard. We have to have channels where you could do it, you couldn't just ask any Russian, Please take me over the border to Germany, and then we went from Poland, we were in closed up box trucks, we went to Auschwitz, Oswiecim, that was the transit of Poland to Germany. And up there we met another group of Russians and there they took us over the border. We have to have the money to pay the Russians, too, to let us go from Poland.

PR     The name of that town was what?

FF     Strechin.

PR     In the north? Return here now.

FF     Yes. And that's where we got from Lodz to Stre. Osweic. St. And from St the Russians took us over the border to Germany, and in Germany they had camps already prepared for us. On each zone. Ours on the French zone in Berlin. I was three years there. And we waited for our quota to come to the United States.

PR     But Mrs. Fuksman, isn't it ironic that after the war you would feel more secure in Germany of all places?

FF     Well, because I didn't fear anymore Hitler, and the Germans had really very little to do with the Jews, because there had camps for all the Jewish, for the Displaced People, and we felt secure in those camps. HIAS, that was a Jewish organization, they provide for us, the food and clothing, and all necessary things, and we didn't have to do nothing, just to stay in the camps and wait until but the men, they went out and they looked for a little job here and there, but they didn't do nothing for the Germans anyway.

PR     After the war, did you hear Poles identify the Russians with the Jews? The communists with the Jews? Often you read that the Poles disliked the Jews because The Jews were communists. The Jews were working with the Russians. Did you hear that at all?

FF     No, I didn't hear, but the communist party was very big in Poland, and a lot of Jews belonged to the communist party.

PR     Before the war.

FF     Before the war, and it was legal. And there I really didn't hear much of it saying that the Jews are communists, and that's why they dislike them. Maybe one incident or so because I don't know. Maybe I lived in my own circle. I was young, and I didn't experience nothing. I one time was in RETURN HERE NOW at my grandmother's house, and I went on the same yard on the other side of the house my cousin lived, it was a third generation cousin, but when I came there he was trying to take me to walk out a little bit, to take me places and he took me to a pool where the elite belonged to it, the Polish elite. And I said, What I'm going to do in a pool? I'm afraid of water. I'm not going to swim. He said, No, look, let's just go in and see how it looks. I never saw a swimming pool before. And it was beautiful really, and we just sat around, a friend of my cousin was going there often, and they said they recognized my cousin, and the Poles was pointing to him with, He is a Jew. What is he doing here? And I felt very uncomfortable, and I said, Let's go out from here. Why should I be here? And we left. That was, well, I figured I don't have to go there, I don't wanted to see them, I'm not anxious to be with them. And I left and next day a lady came to my grandmother's store, and she said, my grandmother didn't know that I went to this place anyway, and she say, You better told your granddaughter and the other, the cripple, because my cousin was limping on his leg, and that crippled young man, too, not to show up because they going to do something to him up there. Not to come anymore to this place. So my grandmother told me about it. I say, I didn't want to go in the beginning, but Isaac said let's go, so I went with him. I didn't have what to do up there anyway. And she told me, Do not go. And that's how we react to those cases. We didn't stood up and say, I have the same right, or I am a citizen of Poland, and I wanted to use the facilities just like you, but we didn't say nothing, and that was our answer. We didn't say nothing. And, right now, this morning when I went to the meeting, we don't aggravate the story with this, and we don't say out loud out this because we might do worse than better. It's not to say anything, and all our lives we have to live with the idea: that you are not free to speak out, you're not free to say what is really on your mind. Why should I hide? Why should I not be able to speak, that they hate me. Or they will rather kill me than see me alive? But our whole life is to hide, to be quiet. And that's why we should also support Israel, because that's the only place where they are speaking out for their rights. And they not hiding nothing. They feel like it was a long hidden away, it is a situation that's the Poles, how can still the Poles, like we say, we cannot generalize, but the ones are bad, how they all of a sudden can be so good? And so righteous? When all the years they were fed with hatred.

PR     I don't understand why you were sent to Ravensbruck as opposed to being sent to a death camp.

FF     Well, it's just like, not all the camps were death camps, and wherever I guess, wherever there were trains were going that's where you went. And not assigned to any particular place, I guess. Ravensbruck was a death camp too. They had gas chamber.

PR     And, while you were there, did you know of the gas chamber?

FF     We saw the chimneys all the time, but we didn't realize that they're burning people really.

PR     The smell?

FF     No. We didn't. We went early in the morning they took us out for work, and we got back home, so we went into those barracks, and they gave us a piece of bread, and some tea, or it was supposed to be coffee, tea, I don't know, but this we used for washing water, and because we didn't have water to wash ourselves so we often used this to wash ourselves, and from up there they send to different camps from Ravensbruck. This was like they used to call a transit camp, just going through. And from up there they send you to different camps, and I was there only two weeks, and from up there they sent us to Wittenberg, and Wittenberg I was through April, but a lot of people were sent only to camps, like people were sent to Czestochowa. They have an ammunition factory there, and they were sent to this ammunition factory. It was very hard work, but they have more to eat than any other camp. So they had all different kinds of camp. I worked in Ravensbruck. In Wittenberg I worked at the camp where we assembled planes, air planes. We had those big sheet of aluminum, and we put those not a nail, it's a...

PR     A bolt?

FF     A bolt. The other side we have to watch it if it's smooth hand right, and with the machine gun we did it, and it has to be just so. They came and checked it out, and if it wasn't right we have to do it over, and God forbid if the third time we have to do it over. There was a big hole for it. That the hole was too big for that nut, bolt, and it was a problem to us because then we got from our overhead, he screamed, and it wasn't pleasant. It was unpleasant the whole time but this didn't add to the situation, so we really have to watch and we were ten hours in this factory, and two hours they kept us in the morning, before we went to work, and we marched to work a good half a hour, and when it was the end of it, in April, it begin to warm up a little bit, we felt it. We really couldn't raise our feet anymore, and if it will have to last another two months, I think all of us will be dead. But this was the cold weather still kept us a little bit. How cold it was. It looks like it was better than when it warmed up. And maybe it was time already so many months with so little to eat, and we worked on Sundays. We had only decent little soup, the other days we didn't have that. They gave us a little potato and some leaves, and piece of bread. They gave us a loaf of bread to cut it in ten by ourselves, so we watched that nobody gets a hair of an inch a little bigger than the other one. They want us to develop that mistrust to each other, to fight over the piece of bread. That's what they were happy to see. And that was a problem, and some of the times they had an alarm that we have to go. I don't know why they want us to go back in the bunkers because of the alarm [air raid]. Why didn't let us get killed because a lot of them [Germans], they were hidden under the bunkers. They didn't come out to the bunkers. And the light was turned out, so everybody grabbed the piece of bread from that loaf of bread, and the ones that didn't belong to our ten, they grabbed a piece because it was dark, nobody could control it. And that's how they stirred up a mistrust to each other, and to just see us fighting of a piece of bread.

PR     Where there examples of goodness in the camps among the prisoners?

FF     Among the prisoners? Well, we understood each other very well. The only thing we were talking about if we survived, if we get out, we will be able to eat enough bread to cut it from a whole loaf of bread for ourselves, to eat enough potatoes, and we going to eat this and we were going to eat this. Yes, we were talking, we lived in harmony, we didn't really fought, we didn't have the strength to waste on fighting on each other. It was useless.

PR     Was there any talk of revenge?

FF     Well, we were in a territory where the Russians liberate us. And we know that the Russians will take good care on them who did so much harm to us.

PR     Did they?

FF     They did. They did. Once you show them that he was the Obermeister and he was beating us, they took him. They killed him. The Russians did away with a lot of people, we just have to show them, and I don't think any other nation did that. The French I don't think. The English didn't. And the American, no indeed. Because they're nicer people. People in white gloves, we used to call them.

PR     These people who were guards or who were kapos, and when you pointed them out to the Russians, did they change personalities? All of a sudden were they full of fear?

FF     Yes, but with them the Jews handled them separately. They taught them a lesson. I didn't have any Jewish kapos and I didn't look for any revenge, but they had a lot of people who knew a lot of people and they did a lot of harm to the other ones. Special the Jews to the Jews. And I knew only a few of them in the ghetto, but the ghetto was dissolved after so many years I wouldn't take revenge on anybody because everybody was trying to save their skin.

PR     Do you remember the sight when the Russians arrived? Surely there was anticipation that they were coming.

FF     When the Russian arrived in, we were in the camp, and all of a sudden the night before they brought us into the our barrack some jam, and more bread than all the time. We didn't know what is going on. We were sitting on our bunkers, that's where we ate, and we sleep, and we did everything, and nothing, we ate, and we went to sleep, and when we woke up in the morning, nobody woke us up, no whistle, no screaming, no dog barking, we woke up and we saw the gates are open, so we know the Germans left. But where to go? What to do? We didn't have another stitch of clothes on ourselves, but those jean clothes, so my friend, we were together, she say, AYou know, let's go first on the fields and see if they have some potatoes already in the ground. It was April maybe they have some. And we did find some potatoes, and we came back and we were so involved with the potatoes because we couldn't wait until we cooked them. We brought some wood and we wanted to cook the potatoes, and in the meantime from the other barracks they come running to us, Don't you see you're all in the fire, run out quick from this barrack. It's a fire around you, and we ran out and sure enough the Germans before they left they put most probably some dynamite or some explosive and all the barracks were burning, and I left my potatoes and I went down again into the bunkers. We stood there when they had the alarms for the fire, for the bombs before we have to go down there, and we went down there, and we stood there, and then the Russians came down there, too. We had wounded soldiers there, and the Russians, when they saw us running out from (laugh) barracks, they thought that we were spies. They didn't believe that we are prisoners. And we went down and they start to question us, and we told them what is going on, and finally they realized what was here, because they were really only concerned about the front, because this was the front, one side the Germans, the other side the Russians. And Russians soldiers was downstairs with us, and he recognized the different type of war materials what the Russians used, and the Germans, and finally the Russians came in and they took the wounded soldier out. And the soldier told us, It's quiet now. You can get out from those bunkers and go look for a place where you can go in. So we went to the first house on the road, we came into the house, and you should see all the preserves, all the good meat, all what they had, the Germans, in their cellars. They were prepared for the war. But we were afraid to touch anything because so long we didn't eat and we were told not to eat, not to grab too much in one time. So we looked again for potatoes, and we found raw potatoes, and we washed them and we came upstairs into the kitchen and we stopped to boil potatoes again, and I was there with the Russian girl, she was in the camp, too, the Russian girl, and as I stood at the stove cooking, boiling the potatoes, a shrapnel went through the window and killed the Russian girl, and didn't affect on me at all. I stood and I finished boiling my potatoes. I didn't left the place before I finished the potatoes. When I finished boiling the potatoes, I came down into the cellars, and we divided, we were eight girls, and we divided between us the potatoes, and we took the potato with us because we have to leave this house because it was right on the front. The Russians came in and they told us we have to leave again and go farther down. So it was already almost night time, we went to another house and we stood there overnight and we grabbed anything we could in this house, clothes, wheel barrel, we put everything in the wheel barrel. And we went with all our eight of us, and little by little we start to drop because it was too much for us to carry, so we just dressed ourselves better, we took off the jean clothes, and we walked again to another house, far down, then we were afraid of the Russians. The Russian soldiers, they were very wild.

PR     Drunk?

FF     Drunk, and wild. And we were afraid they were going to rape us or do some harm to us, the Russian soldier. And up there in this house, in the neighboring house they were, that's where the Russian soldiers stood. And there was a Jewish officer, and he said, Do not worry. If anything happen you just scream, and I will be here. And meantime we stood there quite a few days. One of the days, was a seamstress, and she fixed those coats a little bit, a pocket or a sleeve was turned and the hems, they never had a hem, they just cut the hem. And she fixed the uniforms for the soldiers and for that we got to stay in this house, and they brought us food to eat and we were content but then they came back, and they say, the Russians say, You are Poles and you have to go back to Poland. And so we start to walk again, and we wind up with the horse and wagon, and my friend from England, she was driving that wagon, and she knew how to speak Russian very well, and one day they held us, What you doing here? And we say, We're going home, and they didn't believe us. And since she spoke very well Russian, so they put her in the barn with the pigs, with the cows, and they want to take her to a prison, to a regular prison, because they thought she's a spy. Well, they found out she said from where she comes, and she explained herself so after twenty-four hours they let her go, and we went again until we hit the trains. And the trains, we went on those. They have not a train. In the beginning they just had the locomotives, so every half a hour they stopped for two hours, so we went down to look for potatoes, that was our own [food to eat], and we start to boil the potatoes, the whistle came on again, and we have to leave the potatoes, and go on the train and go again. Then we went to a train, what they have only not a passenger train, a train what is...

PR     Freight?

FF     A freight train. We went on a freight train. They had special feed for the cows. From the beets they drain the juice out and they dried out the beets to feed the cattle, and I went into this train on the top of the beets, and it rained terrible, and I sunk in it (laugh), and I was afraid to scream because we were afraid of the Russians, they will come and do something, and it took me a long time until I could get out from up there, and that's how we got back to Poland. And when we came to Poland, we didn't have where to go. So we found a place somewhere under the roof, and we didn't pay the rent in the very beginning because we didn't have any rent. But in Poland it was a little Jewish organization before like a welfare, a Jewish welfare, and they helped us out a little bit with the rent to look for an apartment, to find people. When we put the names they did found some people, and that was Poland.

PR     Did you find any people?

FF     No. I didn't found nobody. I came to United States all alone. And because I didn't came with my friends because the children got sick. They came later. I didn't have anybody who will identify me who I'm claiming to be. I could tell them I didn't have any papers. I am anybody else. I didn't have nobody who could identify me. And later on I found some people who lived in Poland, in Lodz, too, and we got to talking, and we got to know each other, but I didn't have nobody. I came to New York, they let me off in New York because a family with my name came to New York, and they thought I belonged to this family. So they dropped me off in New York, and after ten days they shipped me to New Orleans because my papers were here, and I didn't want to come to New Orleans anymore. I want to stay in New York because I thought in New York I can speak Polish, I can speak German, Yiddish, I don't have to learn English. I can get by without English, why should I go to New Orleans? But I have to come to New Orleans.

PR     You learned German in the camps?

FF     I learned a little bit German in the camp, more I learned in Germany after the camp. Because in the camp we didn't spoke German at all, after the camp I was three years in Berlin, and then in school we took German, because it was our neighboring country, we have to learn. This was mandatory. A lot of children took Latin, and I took German.

PR     During the war itself, you did not have the understanding that the Jews were being annihilated?

FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW

PR     Today is September the 11th, the year and I am here to visit Felicia Fulksman, my friend....

PR     But you know what Felicia, what we really didn't talk about the first time on tape, is your life after the war with Max. Now we described Mrs. Kats. Now was she a Mrs. Or a Miss?

FF     Mrs.

PR     Mrs. We described her and the night that the girl comes across the street and says , there's a young man staying in my place. We talked about that. But we didn't talk about when you and Max get married and his effort to get a job, one thing leading to another and Fox Furniture. So, I think that would be important to get on tape, and if you'd be kind enough to describe it as you have done before, but this time, for the record.

FF     Well, Mrs. Katz was not the kindest person to me anyway. When she was sitting on the porch, it was a screen porch, and she knows that I always listen to my favorite opera, which was every Saturday 2 o'clock. She called me a hundred times, 'Come sit with me.' I said 'Ms. Katz, I cannot keep you all the time company, I have to listen to something else.' She said 'That's not important, you see all the young ladies how they're walking fast and good, and I have to sit here in the chair.' And I told her, 'When you was their age, you walk like this too. But you forget in the late 70's.' And well I did my best. But after I married, I lived with her, I think, a couple, maybe six months, I lived together with my husband in the same house.

PR     Now did Max get along with her?

FF     Max had nothing to do with her. He respected her as an old lady. But other than this, he had nothing. She was a very limited person, and very, I couldn't learn nothing from her, never gain a thing. And he was pretty occupied with his job, with his new job, and he didn't want to be bothered.

PR     Now what was his first job in New Orleans?

FF     At Gadcheaux's?

PR     And tell me the story, if you would, of how he got the job.

FF     Well, he walked, First, he don't want to come down to New Orleans, because he had already a good job and he knew that we will have a problem. I said, 'I can not come to Atlanta because I have my best friend here, and I can not leave her to go and marry and stay with you in Atlanta.' So he decided that he will come down, we marry and we will settle down in New Orleans.

PR     And that best friend?

FF     And the best friend. My best friend. I took a policy out for her. The men who came, the old lady had a life policy with these men, and he came, he said 'You should take one too.' I didn't know nothing about insurance and the policies. So he talked me into it, and the beneficiary was my best friend.

PR     That was Gertrude?

FF     Yes. Ralph and Gertrude, they were beneficiaries.

PR     Now, were they married then?

FF     Yeah, they were married, they had already their child. They came with the child, they married in Germany and she had her first child in Germany. And then he came down and he moved in to the lady with me together, and he looked for a job. He looked very, he was little, skinny little, and nobody believed that he can produce anything, to have a job. So he went to Gadchaux's, and he told them 'Give me any kind of job, just some work. And if I will not produce for you, you don't have to pay.' So after a couple of months, they don't want to let him go, but we couldn't survive on 25 dollar a week and he has to look for something better. So he went, somebody recommended I think, to go to Breen Furniture. Mr. Breen was very nice, and he took him. And at this time the old lady passed away, and I have to move on this house, because the Rabbi wants to buy this house. It was close to Assisvah? Phillip and Breinard.

PR     Phillip and what?

FF     And Brienard? It's off on Jackson a couple of blocks. Anyway, he took the job with Mr. Breen, and Mr. Breen was very happy with him. Matter of fact, he took, Mr. Breen took, after being in the business 8 or 9 years, he took the first vacation because he had Max in the store and he was, he could depend on him. He was a man for all seasons. He was a truck driver, he was a delivery man, he was a deadbeat collector. Nobody could, and as little as he knew English, but for some reason he had a very powerful Aget to the people, a way of getting to the people. And they listen to him, and they understood him, and people who never pay, for years didn't pay, they begin to pay on the bill.

PR     How would he do it?

FF     He explain, he sit down and took his time, and he explain that they will have to pay, no matter or if not, they will pick up the furniture. And if to pick up, it's costly, for both of us, and it's better if you can pay only as much as you can pay, if only 50 cents a week. But you paying on the book and your credit will build up again, it will be better than before. And he collect from them.

PR     Didn't you tell me that once a little girl answered the door.

FF     Yeah, once he came to the door and she came, 'My Mama she's not home.' So, he went to the kitchen, not through the front door, and he knew that the mama was there and he told her, 'You don't have to hide from me. If you don't have it, come out straight and tell me that you don't have it. I can understand.' And so, he collect until he felt like he should have a part in the business with Mr. Breen. Mr. Breen was willing to share with Max, but not Mrs. Breen.

PR     Now how do you spell Breen.

FF     B-R-R...B-R-E-E-N.

PR     B-R-E-E-N.

FF     I think so. And so, this was the case he could no longer stay with Mr. Breen. He was there quite a few years. And we lived, we moved from up there, from the old lady's house to Louisiana Avenue Parkway.

PR     Now, didn't she leave you a ring?

FF     The old lady, yeah she left me a ring, and I have hard time forgetting, it was nothing, really inexpensive, but just the idea. There was so, the c??, the family c(inaudible word), he didn't want to give me the ring. But I think the daughter, had told (inaudible ) to give her the ring. And then we moved away from up there. We moved on Louisiana Avenue, on the Parkway, with a old man, the landlord, we lived with him.

PR     What was his name?

FF     Mr. Lagrecco?.

PR     An old Italian man.

FF     and...

PR     Where on Louisiana was that?

FF     In the 3100 black, Louisiana Avenue Parkway. That was not Louisiana Avenue, it was the Parkway. It was a beautiful street. And the old man. Lagrecco say 'Max,' he called him Mac, 'if you so good for your boss, you will be even better for yourself. Go in the business, try to open business for yourself.' And so we left, we didn't have the case. I saved up whatever I could, and from what you make, I know I have to save up for next week, because in the case if you cannot go to work, with the children, I have already two children. Not from up there, I move. I move to Mrs. Nirhaus? house. And then I have a second child, on Louisiana Avenue, and the third one. I moved from Old Lady Katz house in Carrollton. It was Hampton and Burdette, you know where it is, a corner house, a four-plex. This was, the mother-in-law, Mr. Breen's mother-in-law, Mrs. Nirhaus? owned this house. And she said, 'Well, because you working for my son-in-law, I'm not gonna never raise your rent. I lived there two months and she raised the rent. So, and she went up and up, and since we moved away from Mr. Breen, so we moved away from Mrs. Nirhaus? too, and went on Louisiana Avenue. And up there, the old man treat me and treat us very very well. I treat him very good too. I treat like he will be my father really. At night I fix his coffee and cake. Sunday I fix dinner for him. And so he say, Go, so meantime, I cooked for a old lady, meals, three times a week. I brought her, she lived, I lived on Louisiana Avenue, on the Parkway, and she lived on Jeff. Davis. I have to take the Freret Louisiana, what did I take, and Freret bus, and walk to her house, with my child on my arm, and with the jars of food in my hand. And for this she payed me two dollars for a meal. And every two weeks, my husband took the truck from Breen, and he, we went to her to pick up the jars, and she paid me twelve dollars. And he told her about what the old man, Lagrecco suggested, to go in business, she said, 'That's a perfect idea, and I let you have some money.' And she gave, I don't remember how much she gave me, it was two thousand, or three thousand dollars, maybe two thousand, it was, for us, it was a lot of money.

PR     What was her name?

FF     Miss Hymen, Esther Hymen. She was a very rich woman. She have, the old man Hymen, he had the whole subdivision, with properties. But she was the one who was really good at buying and selling property. But he divorced her, Mr. Hymen divorced her, Esther, and he remarried. And she gave me the money. She had the cash in the house and she gave me the money. I really don't remember how much, maybe it was three thousand dollars. And so, well we had the cash. We sold little things like little gold shades from the children, everything that we had, just to make cash. And we went on Cadiz and Freret, into the business. Soon as went into business, a nephew of Mrs. Hymen came to the store and 'My aunt gave you some money, and we'd like to have the money back.' I could deny, because I did not wrote nothing, I didn't sign nothing, but I took from her the money. But I didn't, I said, 'Yes, but she gave me the money.' She wanted the money back. I said, 'Well, how can I give you back, I invested in the merchandise.' Well, I made a deal with him and we paid him so much every month, and I gave him back the money. And I was stupid, I shouldn't have give it, because she didn't need it, she was a very, very wealthy woman. But, I felt good with my own self, when I gave her back the money. And it was very difficult, for five years, we struggled in the business, because we bought for cash, we sold on time. And it needs all the cash we can put it in. But, after five years, until the payments came in, we were able to pay the bills on the payments, it was alright. And little by little, we grew big, and that was a store operate for like family store. The mother recommended her daughter, and the daughter her aunt, and so, and we dealt with the family, and they were very satisfied. And my husband always took care on complaints all by himself. He went, one time a customer called him, she said, 'Mr. Fox, come pick up your table. It collapsed!' A breakfast table. He said, 'Who sat on it?' The kids were jumping on the table, not sat on the table, they were jumping on it, so it broke the legs.' Well he picked it up, and we fixed it, and we brought it back. That was a store that you dealt direct with the owner, and that's why people like it. They were not send to the manager, or to the, we didn't have. We had a man who was working for us, two mans, and they were stealing from us. He didn't turn in the collection, and when the customer had the book, and he had the card, and we had a card, a duplicate card. Sometime the customer came in with the book, she wants to buy on her own without the salesman. So we sold, the book was marked, and my card was not marked. So he collect the money, he mark the book, to collect. One old man, he called in to the unemployment office, not to give him social security, because he was stealing. He didn't, he was always a straight, he didn't know not to be, honest with people, and he did very well with his way of doing. We accomplished a lot, then we bought some property with Ralph. Too bad that Ralph is gone, that was good bodies? And we could afford to live. We bought this house, we bought the house on Louisiana Avenue too, because the man passed away.

PR     Well, tell me more about that man because...

FF     Mr. Lagrecco. Mr. Lagrecco? was a very ordinary person from a country kind, from Sicily. Where they told us, he told us, in the house, there were, they had a lot of children. When the parent brought grapes, they hang them on the ceiling, whoever could reach the grapes, could eat it. He was a good man, and sometime, he had terrible ways too. When I expect my third child, and I said, >Mr. Lagrecco I like to paint, the few rooms, because I will have people coming.' He said, >I won't live in a dump like this. I will move.' So he didn't know that I wanted to do it on my own, he thought I wanted money from him to paint it. But I painted it anyway. And without his OK. I lived and I paid rent, so I think I was entitled to paint, if I want it. And, for Sunday I cooled fro him a nice meal. One time, he came upstairs, the kitchen door was right next to the door form the basement, and I had a broom behind the door, the kitchen door. And the broom fell and closed the door on him. And he was supposed to come upstairs for breakfast, and because the door closed, he went angry to his room. >You don't need to cook for me. I'm not going to eat it. You can move if you want.' He gave me right away the option. I say, 'Mr. Lagrecco I didn't close the door on you. It just the broom fell, and it closed the door.' So, he got better. If I say, 'Mr. Legrecco, don't spit on the floor.' He will spit anyway, because the children were sitting on the step. If I said, when I was expecting, I was already in my eight month, my belly was big, and we had a bathtub on little legs, not on, straight on the floor. And it was deep, big, deep. And I said, Mr.Legrecco, we had already the business, and I have to, be in the business, therefore i have to have somebody in the house with the kids. I said 'Mr. Legrecco, please take a bath before, what was her name, Sylla, Sylvia goes home, and she can clean up the bathtub for me.' He took once a week, a bath, so you can imagine the bathtub, how filthy it was. He don't want to take a bath once a week either. So, because I said so, the air condition came back on, because I said so, he purposely took a bath after she left, so I have to take off my shoes, and go inside in the bath, into the tub, and scrub the tub. It was hard. I couldn't reach the other side, because of my belly.

PR     But, um, at the same time, he was very...

FF     He was very generous, at the same time. He was good to me. He loved my children, we went out somewhere, and I had a babysitter, he will never go to sleep before I come home. He watch the babysitter. And he gave me, when the rent was due, like today is the first, he wanted yesterday the rent. I pay him the rent , he could take from the rent 20 and 30 dollars sometimes, >Go buy some shoes for the children.' Or >Go buy clothes or do something.' He was very good. And for this...Bell rings.

PR     So we were talking about Mr. Legrecco, and um...

FF     Yes, he was a very kind man.

PR     But he was particularly close to one of your daughters.

FF     For Beth, my middle one. He doesn't want to eat without her. When he was sick, they both were lying in the bed. Mr. Ledger, Dr. Ledger came one time and he said, 'Well, who is the patient.' She was, she loved him too. And when he passed away, she couldn't say he died. Mr. Legrecco's like this, she was showing.

PR     Flat?

FF     Flat. And, but she got over it quick, she was young. And then...

PR     But didn't he offer...?

FF     Yes, he offered to be buried in the same tomb with him, where his family tomb.

PR     He offered what?

FF     To be a Catholic, to become Catholic, and she will be able to be buried togther in the same tomb where he was buried.

PR     Your daughter, Beth.

FF     Beth.

PR     If she converted.

FF     Yes, and I told him, 'No sir. Beth wil stay Jewish because that's what all I can for my parents. That's how they taught me, and that's I'm teaching my children. They're not religious fanatic religious, but they have to know where they belong to. And I told him 'No, I'm sorry. Mr. Legrecco, Beth will be buried where I.. In my cemetery.' And she was a young child, why would, what reason to I have to talk about burying my child.

PR     Well, because he saw her conversion to Catholicism as a way to save her.

FF     Yeah. Well, I told him no. He was a little bit angry, but he didn't stop loving her, he really love her. He loved all my children, he just had bad ways. Like one time, the old man came, a black man came twice a week with the vegetable, and he was buying from him vegetables, and then he gave him always a bottle of wine or something, he was treating him nice, But he had a way, 'Oh the Niggas...' And my kids picked up this word, and they don't know the meaning of it, so when they were fussin between each other, the called each other, >Niggar'. And, my maid, the housekeeper, called up, 'You better come home quick because they fighting and the they call each other 'Niggar'.' So, he had bad ways in many ways, but he was a good man, and he meant good, so I forgive him, the things what he didn't right. On Sundays, his brother and his sister-in-law came to eat with us. I make the best gravy, I never knew how to make a red gravy because I've never made it before. But he taught me, buy a peice of, he gave me the money to do it. Buy a piece of veal, a pice of pork, and a pice of beef. And put it in the gravy, let it cook until it's good and tender, and the gravy will. And then he say, 'You make gravy better than a dego?' So, but he another bad way. When his sister-in-law...

PR     He was a dego?.

FF     Yes, he was. When his brother and sister-in-law, they came, they never speak English, they speak Italian, but not really Italian, it's from the country kind-of Italian And, I never understood what they're talking. And I because of him, I never spoke to my children, no other language but English, because I don't want to hurt his feelings, because he will not understand. I could speak to them Polish, they could learn Polish, very easy, Yiddish, whatever, German, but I didn't. With my broken English I spoke to my children because I don't want to hurt his feelings.

PR     And so he eventually dies.

FF     Yes, he died Christmas Eve in the morning. He fell down, and he had a stroke. And they rushed him to the hospital and he never regained conscious. And my husband say I will give anything for the old man who will open his eyes and see what his brother and sister-in-law, his nephews, nieces did to this apartment where he live. They took up the linoleum from the floor to look for money. They couldn't find his wallet. And his wallet was, he had it made special build the draw??, with the double, and that's where he kept the money. (Inaudible) I don't know either. And they thought I know, and I have the money. They took the cellar, he had a cellar with expensive wine. They took it right away apart. They took the shiffera? off his, from the room. He was still living. It was terrible, terrible. He couldn't see that mess. And he died, after Christmas I think, two days after Christmas.

PR     What year?

FF    What year? Wait a minute. 1959, No it was 1960 already. Rosa? was born in 1952, she was going to school, in 1962, most probably, or 61, between...

PR     When did y'all move into this house?

FF     To this one? WE moved quick because, we repaired the Louisiana Avenue, after living ten years, we put ten thousand dollars in the house, to remodel, because the old man never did anything.

PR     So you bought it?

FF     We bought this house with 26 thousand dollars, 28,6, something like that. And we pit in a lot of money, to remodel it. It was a beautiful house, after we remodeled. There was a lot of opportunity in the house. And then, one morning my daughter, one of the girls, walked out of the door, and threw, three girls, across the Claiborne they had the projects, they came in from, a neighbor got shot, he brought the garbage can at night.

PR     What happened? So, your daughter walked outside, what happened?

FF     And then after my daughter came out of the door, and they throw at her a coke bottle. And the killing of the neighbor, it got all together, we decided to move. That we're not going to stay there any longer. (Transcribed by Elizabeth Shraberg)

PR     What was the neighbors name?

FF     I don't know, he worked for Woodward and Rhye. I don't know the name. We called a real estate man, and my husband told him, I wanted $28,000 dollars with everything we had. Do not come with any less and do not ask for any different prices because this is all. Sure enough we sold it very fast, it was cheap. We bought it for $26, we put $10,000 to remodel it, but we wanted to get out. We left the furniture behind, no the dining room we took with us. Anyway we sold it with the drapes, with everything, and we came to look for the house. We didn't want to come in dept like this. We didn't know that whatever we looked in this neighborhood was very expensive. Max said, 'Well we're not going back into a neighborhood where we left'. We want to go to a better neighborhood. We bought this house for $75,000. We took a $50,000 mortgage. It was really plenty for us at the time. But we paid it off, oh its quite a few years since its paid off. Now its worth, at most probably $300,000.

PR     What about the time you and your girls went to Canal Street with your...

FF     Well, one time, I took the housekeeper with us.

PR     And what was her name?

PR     Stella, and we took all the three girls to town with Stella. So the bus driver said she has to sit behind the little board, that was for the black passengers only. I said she has to stay with us and he was mean, the driver, a white old man. We all sat behind with the black passengers, and the whole bus looked at us like we don't know the meaning, we don't know what's going on. But I felt like this, and he couldn't tell me that if I wanted to sit there I could not sit there because I had to sit where she could not sit, in the front. Then my Rhazlin(Sp), the oldest one, she said mama, could we have like a dollar or something. I said if I have left over money I'll buy you something. I got off the bus and was almost at the house, she asked me A Do you have left over money? I didn't buy her nothing, but later on, it was already better. The dollar was easy, we could spend more.

PR     What bus was that on, where that incident occurred?

FF     It was the Claiborne Bus. The Claiborne bus brought us to town. That's right, straight to town. We were going to, of course the better clothes and the nicer things, my brother in law bought. Max's brother lived in Atlanta, when he came to town, he took my children to (can't understand the word.). It was a very expensive store. He bought them, shoes, a dress, a hat, purses, everything. He'd spend a lot of money on them.

PR     That was Max's brother?

FF     Yeah. Of course we helped him too when he wants to go to the beauty school. He was a beautician.

PR     What was his name?

FF     Alex. We helped him with school. Not that he felt obligated but he wants to do something nice. That's the only thing he did, really, in the beginnign but later on he had a bunch of leeches around him. He needs always help, so he'd have a lot of help. Everybody was grabbing from him whatever they could. Until now, he passed away, its already two years, going on the third. The house is not settled because, they say he still owes on the house or something, I don't know. Their still fighting in court, the children. He had two fine boy. One is in the Marines, an officer in the Marines, he's flying some special helicopters, a very good boy, handsome, good looking. The other one is in the police force, but he's looking for another job. He never was close to my husband. He had to pull from him what he did, what was his investment. He always had problems, he built a condo for business, so he had problems with the builders. He always developed because maybe that was the kind of man he was, but he always had problems. Until now it's a problem, the wife can not get the house because he didn't pay, so it's a problem. Can you excuse me, I have to take my medicine.

PR     You know what I think is a perfect time to end.

CONTINUED

PR     Now today is September 29th, 2003. I'm once again on Jade street with Felicia Fulksman and we are going to focus our attention of Felicia's grandmother who she refers to as Henrietta, but in fact her name was

FF     Hencha

PR     And she was from

FF     She was originally, I don't know where she really was from, we never talked about it. I know from the small towns Guess(sp).

PR     Can you spell that for me?

FF     Z-g-e-z with the dot on the top Zgez.

PR     And how far from Woodge (SP) was it?

FF     It was with a special streetcar, we drove between 35 and 40 minutes with no stop. Then you still had to do a little walking from the streetcar to my grandmothers house.

PR     So was it west of Woodge(SP) or in what direction was it?

FF     It probably was east of Woddge(SP) because it was close to, yeah I think it was close to the east. It was a very small town. People didn't have no plumbing in their house, we had an outhouse and two big pumps at the market place. That's were we collected the water for the day or if your rich enough you have people who brought the water to the house, and you paid them. They had special people. (Transcribed by Chip Andrewscavage) And life was very primitive, but it was a very happy life, because we have the family around and we love to be with them. And when my grandfather-I know very little of my grandfather-for some reason he was earlier sick, he got sick in early years, but when he was well he know very well how to carve wood, and he carved for us when we came to see us on our vacation for two months we spend with grandmother. He carved some special what it took us a half a day to put it together, but it kept us occupied and we loved to do it.

PR     But what was it?

FF     It was some kind- at triple cross and you have to fit in the little pieces of wood and when you're through with it, it became like a square piece of wood fit in to each other. It has one to eight pieces of wood. And the size of it after we finished probably was ten inches in diameter. It was very interesting and kept us working on it-it kept us busy. If not we had little stools where we could sit on it and do our puzzles or our reading so he made a little tiny holes, a hole the size of a seed from a cherry. And after we ate a lot of cherries or my grandmother cooked a cherry soup we had a lot of seeds and we took a little special hammer and we put the seed in the little hole what he made it for and we opened the seeds and we ate the seeds from the inside. Just, that was our entertaining. We didn't go to camps. Our parents didn't plan for us to be entertained through the two months of vacation, so we had to look for something which will keep us occupied. We read a little bit, actually we didn't want to read, but grandmother made us read. And then we had a Hebrew tutor, I don't know if I told you about. My grandmother said we should learn Hebrew to read a prayer book, to go to synagogue, and to read. And we said the girls doesn't have to learn, the boys that make them Bar mitzvah, but what do the girls have to do with it? She said: >that's not so, the girls have to learn and you'll feel proud when you come into the synagogue and you can read.' So we have a tutor. The tutor was smelling bad. And took us a half an hour until he got us to sit down and learn from him. She paid him by the hour so the longer we played around the less we learned from him. Matter of fact we learned very little, because I know very little Hebrew. But she tried her best, and she was busy in the store so she didn't know what was going on at home. And he was running after us to sit down. He was-the old people didn't believe in cleaning themselves, keeping clean and he really smelled and we couldn't stand him. When I said something to my grandmother that he smells, she said that's all in your head, you put something in your head against that man. That's not true.' So we didn't say anymore. And she-

PR     She operated a general goods store.

FF     Yes, a dry goods store. She was very good in it and the customers liked her.

PR     Would you describe that building or that store for me?

FF     The store was like a whole line. A block long the same stores. It was in a special place like a marketplace. It was a long line of stores, the same stores, brooms and all kind of straw material, different kind of bags and for ladies bags, and wooden shoes and material. Because every Tuesday and every Friday the peasants came in from the country and they had a market, and they sold their butter, their eggs, their milk, sour cream. And after they finished they sold all their merchandise they came to those stores to buy what they needed for the house. All kind of wooden shoes and brooms and material for then they were sewing their own clothes. So they came after they sold their goods they came to us to buy what they needed for their own use in the house.

PR     The stores were mostly Jewish owned?

FF     Yes, yes and their was a competition between, but we had a lot of-ours was the first one and my grandmother was very kind and ninety-nine percent there were polish people, and have nothing to do with Jewish people. And she was a very happy and she was a good person no matter if there was for a Jew or for a Christian, she treat all the people alike with kindness. And that's why people respect her and they like her.