This Is Home Now: Kentucky's Holocaust Survivors Speak by Arwen Donahue

Author:Arwen Donahue [Donahue, Arwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Jewish, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Holocaust, Social Science, Emigration & Immigration, sociology, Rural, Jewish Studies, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9780813173429
Google: WaVKEalpiBoC
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2009-06-26T00:11:01.281523+00:00

SYLVIA GREEN

OSCAR HABER

OSCAR HABER

ROBERT HOLCZER

ABOVE AND RIGHT: ABRAM JAKUBOWICZ

ANN KLEIN

JUSTINE LERNER

JUSTINE LERNER

ALEXANDER ROSENBERG

ALEXANDER ROSENBERG

JOHN ROSENBERG

JOHN ROSENBERG

JOHN ROSENBERG

PAUL SCHLISSER

PAUL SCHLISSER

CHAPTER 6

Justine Lerner

Justine Lerner was born in Białystok, Poland, in 1923, one of eight children in a close-knit family. Justine was the only member of her family who survived the Holocaust. This interview took place on May 5, 1999, in Justine’s home in Louisville. She had moved to Kentucky only two years before, to be near her son, after she’d been brutally attacked by a robber in her Brooklyn apartment. Justine had always rejected being interviewed, but now that she was growing older, she felt that it was time to record her story.

JL: My father, may he rest in peace, was a medic in the First World War and he always says that the Germans may put you to work, but they will never harm you in any way. And like anything else, you listen to your parents, whatever they told you. In our town, first came in the Russians. And we were with the Russians maybe a year. Then the Russians left and the Germans came in. When the men went to the temple, they burned down the whole temple with the people inside, whoever it was there. A while later, they put us into the ghetto, and this was terrible. The ghetto was terrible.1

In the ghetto, I had to go out to get some food, because nobody else could. My brother wouldn’t go out, he was afraid. And my father couldn’t carry anything, so I used to take off the yellow star that we wore. And I was blonde. I went out through a hole they made [in the fence that surrounded the ghetto]. I went to the Poles, the ones that used to do business with my mother. I used to buy from them potatoes and bring it in [to the ghetto], the same way like I came out. And I did it quite often for the family, they should have what to eat.

AD: So, of the children that were left with your parents, you were the main caregiver?

JL: Right. Caregiver. [Two of my sisters] were married already and they had babies, so they couldn’t go with us when we were hiding. Because if the kids start crying, the SS will hear.

AD: When did you go into hiding? How did that come about?

JL: Because you heard rumors that they’re going to take people away from the ghetto. And they’re going to ship them to Auschwitz. So everybody went in, either to a basement or they built something underneath, and that’s the way they’re hiding. You took some water with you or some bread. We heard them walking upstairs, Germans with the boots, and we were underneath. And from nowheres they found out. They knocked on the door. They took us out from there.

People remained after they took us away, of course.2 And you couldn’t take nothing with you, because you had to carry it. Just like a pillow case, that’s where you put your belongings.

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