Tova Schlessinger
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Inge Traum
ABOUT NAZISM – I was lured into a trap and was cheated. I thought it was something that was right. I thought it was something good. My father returned from England to Germany in 1933 because he thought that there would really be a new beginning. He was deceived and very disappointed, but I only noticed that later. I, therefore, have a great deal of rage and bitterness when I think how an entire nation was deceived. I don't want to go into details now about all the terrible things that happened under a cloak of what we considered to be good things. That is a trauma that you cannot take from our generation. It is a lasting trauma because we were never given the opportunity to really and openly digest it. Since you are coming from an analytical side, you can understand that some things have to be worked through in order to get over with. The Americans introduced the de-Nazification process, demanding a slip from everybody that they did not have anything to do with the Nazis. So essentially, nobody stood up to the things that happened or why and how he was a Nazi or in what he believed. Instead, everyone demonstrated that they were not Nazis. And even among friends, among good friends, there was no discussion about what had actually happened. And to this day it is incomprehensible to me.
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MOTHER – We arrived at Auschwitz on May 23. When we were separated from our mother, mother cried, "My children are being taken away from me." I thought of that when you asked me about my mother.
FATHER
– Yes. In 1942 he was taken from Kassow to Russia. I waited from
early in the morning until late, until six o'clock in the evening, in
order to see him. And then he was allowed to come for a few minutes.
It was very difficult for me because I knew he would be taken to Russia
now.
FIRST BROTHER – I heard that a Hungarian killed him with a sword. In 1945 he escaped from the Russians and came back to Hungary. He was killed by a Hungarian soldier because he didn't have any strength to walk. He was tired, he was sick, and he was weak.
FIRST SISTER – We were four sisters. After the liberation in 1945, she became very ill. She suffered from an ear infection and she was very weak. My younger sister held her hand and said, "You are our mother after all. We will go home. The English have already liberated us. Be strong!" And then she met her death.
SECOND BROTHER – The second brother came with us to Auschwitz. I believe that he was so weak from the ghetto that they took him on the same day. I don't believe that they sent him to a labor camp. I imagine when they saw his legs they thought he was an unfit person. He was 18 years old.
SECOND SISTER – This sister was also in Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. She also had typhus, we all had it. She was very brave, and I loved her extraordinarily, more than the other sisters. She was a very precious child. When the English arrived – yes, the beginning of May – she went to the clinic and got something to rinse her mouth with, and she did that. They told her to come back on Shabbat (Saturday). Her ears were hurting and she cried quietly, without complaining. She controlled herself. They told her to come back on Saturday, and on Friday she died.
THIRD BROTHER – I heard that he was in a labor camp as late as 1945. I don't know what happened to him. He was a very good child. He was seen up until February, 1945. I wrote a letter to the parish saying that we were two sisters from such and such, and that we were looking for our brother. We received a letter in return saying that nobody from our family was on their list.
THIRD
SISTER – The good Lord let my sister and I survive, and we have
a duty to continue leading our lives.
DAUGHTER – My daughter lives in Israel. She is married for nine years and has four children.
SON – My son was in the Israeli army for eight years and today he lives in Yad Benjamin. He is also married and has two children.
SELF HOLOCAUST – Horrible, horrible – that human beings would do that to other human beings. And today, the Germans want to tell you it was not possible, that it was an illusion, that people only dreamt it. Why do they say it? They know how many people were killed. After all, they counted us all the time, the transportations, everything. Every day they took a roll call, twice! Never should they be excused for it. For the German people it was a disgrace. And they are prospering, and the world supports them, and they are allowed to live. We cannot take our revenge, but the good God willing – He shall mock them as they deserve. I personally couldn't do anything to them.
SELF PRESENT – I want to make sure that the world won't forget it. I am one of the survivors, and I want the document to remain. People shall not forget it.
SELF
FUTURE – That the good Lord will give me strength, I shall be healthy
and I shall not depend on anybody. That the Jewish people shall live.
It shall not happen again. The good Lord has promised that we will be
an eternal nation.
MOTHER
– My mother is 88 years now, 88 years, yes, and she is a problem
for me. She lives alone and she manages alright but she'd like very
much to come and stay with me. That would be impossible for me because
if she comes here in the house, and sometimes when she is sick I take
her along, and as long as she is sick, everything is OK, and I can
look after her and so on. And as soon as she is fit again, I hear
her say to my housekeeper, "You must do this the other way, and you
must do that." So much energy, and she takes the whole managing of
the household and, if possible, my office too – and that's impossible.
FATHER – I just said that my mother was a highly energetic person. My father was a very smooth and gentle person. I felt even as a child that he didn't want such a hectic life as my mother wanted. A very sensible person, and I believe he liked me very much. I liked my father very much.
BROTHER
– He died in Russia. He had been in Africa and came back with a
wound. And then, when he was alright again, they sent him to Russia,
and he lasted two or three weeks more. He went from the front with a
few people to do look out. (Recon.) They were all killed.
FIRST DAUGHTER – She'd be very, very angry with me, always angry with me. If I say she's like my mother – highly energetic – she doesn't like to be set in a comparison. She doesn't like to be compared with my mother, but she's the eldest child and the child who always did what she wanted as a child. The time when she was a student and out of school, she was very rebellious, and I had a lot of problems with her, which were quite different from the problems that I had with the other children. I often had the feeling that I was in competition with her. But we've talked a lot about it and now we are good friends. But nobody else ever allowed themselves to say such things to me as Stephie.
SECOND DAUGHTER – She is a painter and she is very attached to me. All three children are eight years apart. I had two children in between who died. Charlotte, of course, was a very important child for me from the beginning. Well, she was a very quiet child. She didn't say much. She didn't talk much. She didn't go to the kindergarden. She didn't want to. She was all around the house and so on. But she always did what she wanted. She did not conform as much as Stephie. She made her degree in general studies and then one day she came and said she wanted to be a sculptor. What an idea! So she made her way to the academy in Stuttgart. And, in the same year, a cousin of my husband died and I had to take all the household goods out because the house was going to be sold. It was a house where many generations of Traums had lived, and I found these pictures of her grandfather and great grandfather, three or four generations, who had all been sculptors – and that was a very great surprise for me.
SON
– This is rather difficult for me because he was an uncomplicated
boy until two years ago. He had, from one day to another, a very deep
crisis. So he is having talks with an analyst in Heidelberg, but just
for about four or five weeks now. I have a feeling that he is already
better.
SELF
PAST – I have had many losses in my life. The losses that I had
of people that I was very attached to – first, my brother in the
war. Wartime wasn't so bad for me because we always heard that everything
was best; we didn't hear about what really happened. You know. We only
heard triumph. But from the moment my brother died, I didn't believe
anything anymore. Everything broke. During the war everything wasn't
so bad for me. We had enough to eat. It was when the war was past that
we had hunger and so on. Everything difficult that really happened was
after the war. Because we heard many things that we hadn't heard before,
and it was as if we woke up from a bad dream. You know. As if we hadn't
lived through the war in real consciousness. It was rather after the
war that we noticed what happened.
SELF PRESENT – You know, I'm a widow for 10 years, and I am trying to build up a new life. I am doing all sorts of things. I'm going to draw, going here, going there, and, more or less, I am successful.
SELF FUTURE – My outlook is quite positive today, at least, because I think I will have another period of good times. I had many problems with my first child, many problems with the second child, and I have to just keep steady for another time, and my son will perhaps be alright. And then I want to have a period of good time and then ... (I say that she has the genetic background to live a long Inge she says, "I hope not.")
