Annushka Freidman

MOTHER – My mother was a sick woman who suffered a lot and maybe death was a relief. It was just a pity that the type of death was so cruel.

FATHER – My father was 73 when the Germans entered Panevezys. It breaks my heart. I see him ever so often in my dreams. In my nightmares he visits me.... It is so painful to see him, and I always see him in the same position. I always see him naked with his hands trying to hide his body, without a "kipa" (skullcap), put to shame before men and God, and a God-fearing man he was. He is standing at this big pit waiting for his bullet to throw him inside. How many deaths did he die! I can't forgive them for this torture.

FIRST SISTER – She ran with her husband from Kovner and was caught on the road and sent to ghetto Vilkomir, and there she was exterminated with the community.

FIRST BROTHER – Charlie died a natural death in South Africa where he lived before the war.

SECOND SISTER – Dina was such a saint. Her child and mine were almost the same age, so when my child was very sick, she breast-fed her. She hardly had milk for her own. I had none. She lived with me and my uncle in the ghetto, and when it was the first big "aktion" as they called it, they took her away with the child, with my uncle, with my first husband's parents, with the whole family. We lost 10,000 Jews on that unfortunate day.

THIRD SISTER – Rya was in a Jewish hospital. She was giving birth to a child. Until today I don't know whether she gave birth to a child or not. All I know is that she was burned together with the sick, the doctors and the nurses. This was the practice of the Germans....

SECOND BROTHER – David ran to join the partisans. From what I heard from a Jewish partisan, he arrived in the forest with new boots and a revolver. A non-Jewish partisan, a Russian or a Pole (they didn't know), killed him because he wouldn't give up his boots and revolver.

THIRD BROTHER – Dick is alive in South Africa where he has been since before World War II.

FOURTH SISTER – Elka was the youngest. She was engaged to be married. She ran with her fiance. I don't know where she died, where she perished. All I know is that she did not survive.

FIRST DAUGHTER – Who will explain this crime against our innocent children? And it is so hard to live with. Do you know what I have to live with? I smacked my child before she was taken away from me because she cried, and I was frightened that the Germans would hit her. So I smacked her, she should keep quiet. And I can't forgive myself. If on the way to the gas chamber, if the Germans pushed her and hit her – naked, cold, shivering – maybe she thought she deserved it, since her mother also hit her. That is what I've got to live with in my nights. (Her daughter was six years old at the time.)

SECOND DAUGHTER – Imagine coming to me with a little girl the same age and the same name as the one I had lost (a step-daughter from her second husband).

SON – My son, the seventh month premature baby, is huge. He is strong in body and soul.

SELF PAST – I came from Panevezys, famous for its Rabbinical seminars ... which were famous the world over, and sent out Rabbis to communities in the whole of Lithuania, a community that suffered from anti-Semitism because the population was uneducated. Pious Catholics that went regularly to church on Sunday heard the preacher say that their bad luck in business and sickness and every evil comes from the Jews.

SELF HOLOCAUST – I was in Kovner ghetto. They said they were sending us to a work camp where we'd be together with our families. Of course, this was false and, no sooner did we arrive at the railway station, than my husband was sent someplace else. My child was torn out of my hands, and I found myself in a cattle wagon with strangers – men and women together without water, without food, without facilities to relieve yourself. What a hell, three days and three nights. And then we arrived at the first concentration camp in Estonia. They kept moving us from camp to camp because on the marches they didn't have to use bullets. People fell during the marches in the snow. And they always traveled along the sea so they could throw the bodies into the sea. I eventually came to Stutthof, then Oxentall, next to Hamburg. The irony of it all is that we worked in an ammunition factory producing bullets. And finally to Bergen Belsen where I was liberated on April 15, 1945.

SELF PRESENT AND FUTURE – I devote a lot of time to the sick in Hadassah Hospital. Look how I closed my circle. I came from a world where they destroyed lives and I find myself in a place where they do everything to keep you alive. I am so grateful to them. I am also grateful for this life that was given to me as a present. I cried when you talked to me, when I remembered, when I go back to that different world where I came from. But I have my days. This is my life. I have nights that belong to my past. I suffer them. Maybe it is good that it is so balanced. I'm very sane. Maybe because I'm able to cry, maybe because I'm able to tell. This is my aim in life, and I'll tell as long as I keep my eyes open. I promise that I will remember and that I will make people remember, and that is my job in life.

Magda Lidle

FATHER – My father died much earlier. I was 23 years old when he died. My memory is of a very harmonious and happy home. My father was a man of high principles and strong character which I only think back to with feelings of much love and admiration.

FIRST BROTHER – My brother Clemens is still alive. He is my senior by two years, and we are bound up in each other. We meet very often and we complement each other in the best way.

SECOND BROTHER – Klaus was a cheerful person. Humorous and having a very positive outlook on life. We was an active officer in the 100,000-man army, an enthusiastic officer. He had to readjust himself totally after 1945.

THIRD BROTHER – My brother Paul – I almost want to say he was a problem child. He was sick very often as a boy. He enjoyed life and related very well to people. He was a doctor, a fabulous doctor. He was married briefly and died young at the age of 44.

FIRST DAUGHTER – Helga is a happy human being. We are very similar to each other character-wise, and even in our appearance. Although she is a trained pharmacist, she has never practiced her profession. She lives for her husband and her three children and her large home.

SON – Karl-Edward is a somewhat difficult person. He is very self-confident. He is a district attorney. He is artistic and especially interested in history.

SECOND DAUGHTER – Claudia is a somewhat inhibited person. She is a person who should be directed. In my opinion, she is the most beautiful of my children. Her hair is totally black and she has blue eyes.

THIRD DAUGHTER – My daughter Annette is totally the opposite. She is very self-confident and stands very firmly in life, going her own way. The people who live with her have to adapt themselves to her.

SELF PAST – I had a very happy childhood, since 1914, since the first World War. I was five then, and my father was an exceptionally successful architect in Cologne, mainly designing churches. But when he died, none of his children were finished, so to speak. Only my eldest brother had taken his state exam. I got married and had five good years, and then the war started in 1939. At the time I was 30 years old and then the misfortunes began. And since '40-'41 I have had a rather difficult life.

SELF WAR – I lived in Munster in Westphalia, and from the first evening on, there were air raid warnings. Through the war years it was very difficult with the children. Every night, into the cellar or shelter with the small children. My husband was totally against the National Socialists and, therefore, went through very hard times. He was in jail for nine months and contracted tuberculosis there, and at the end of 1945 died from it.

ABOUT JEWS – I never knew any Jews and still don't today. I lived in Munster in Westphalia. We had a strong cardinal there, Cardinal Gahlen, who bravely interceded for religion and Christianity, and who was known as an anti-Nazi. I listened to his sermons live. It was an incredibly tense situation. Nothing happened to him, probably because they were afraid to attack him personally.

SELF PRESENT – Well, properly speaking, it is positive for us.

SELF FUTURE – Well, we shall see. I don't know. We are constantly afraid of the Russians. In our small Germany we will be the first to be in for it. I would recommend to all the young people to emigrate – to America, or Australia. If I were young, I would immediately do that. In any case, I would not stay in this small corridor.