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Somehow Victoria and Solon knew about their parents - that they would never return. They would know it by what the people that came back; by what the survivors of the concentrations camps, were saying and they were not saying much.
I never had an opportunity to talk with people who returned. We were not discussing the subject, not even with the Capon family that retuned, Hasday Capon, who was a close friend of ours and we were going out together often, never spoke. We didn't talk about it because they refused to touch the subject. Even Marcel, Marcel Nadgari who, as you know, wrote whatever he could, and put it in a bottle which he buried, and it was found years later, and this is how they know what happened to him. Even him, he never talked about his experience in the concentration camps at that time.
All the people who came back, refused to talk about their experiences, as they didn't want to remember it. Also, they were confronted at first with people's disbelief and that didn't help at all. It was only later, after fifty or sixty years, that they decided to talk.
Since their experiences contained extreme acts, difficult for the human brain to grasp, in terms of evil, and the people who would listen couldn't believe that those things had really happened, it was only at the end of the survivors' lives and under the fear of the approaching end that they decided to write and talk about their experiences so that people would know. Some of them fifty years later.
It has never happened. Discussions were not welcome and Hasday wouldn't talk. How can I explain, the Jewish society that was left were all Spanish and Italians. Even some Italians had disappeared at the end, as had happened to the Fernandez family that was completely wiped out.
We never discussed the subject with Solon either. It was silently decided that as they had no news, they would never return. Neither his parents nor Yvonne, the other sister, who had been deported with her son and husband and never returned. They never really learned it officially. What did you expect? For them to send you the death certificate?
Still, it is good that some talked. I was listening at Simone Veil [26], who was explaining why she started talking, and about the implications they were making, as if they had gone on a pleasure trip. And she said to herself, at the end, they are going to give them medals! Let me sit down and write things as they are.
I never discussed these subjects with my children because they never had the patience to sit down and listen. I am very sorry to say it but had you not been asking, you would not know how I grew up, what I have been through and how and how my life has been.
I never had an opportunity to talk with people who returned. We were not discussing the subject, not even with the Capon family that retuned, Hasday Capon, who was a close friend of ours and we were going out together often, never spoke. We didn't talk about it because they refused to touch the subject. Even Marcel, Marcel Nadgari who, as you know, wrote whatever he could, and put it in a bottle which he buried, and it was found years later, and this is how they know what happened to him. Even him, he never talked about his experience in the concentration camps at that time.
All the people who came back, refused to talk about their experiences, as they didn't want to remember it. Also, they were confronted at first with people's disbelief and that didn't help at all. It was only later, after fifty or sixty years, that they decided to talk.
Since their experiences contained extreme acts, difficult for the human brain to grasp, in terms of evil, and the people who would listen couldn't believe that those things had really happened, it was only at the end of the survivors' lives and under the fear of the approaching end that they decided to write and talk about their experiences so that people would know. Some of them fifty years later.
It has never happened. Discussions were not welcome and Hasday wouldn't talk. How can I explain, the Jewish society that was left were all Spanish and Italians. Even some Italians had disappeared at the end, as had happened to the Fernandez family that was completely wiped out.
We never discussed the subject with Solon either. It was silently decided that as they had no news, they would never return. Neither his parents nor Yvonne, the other sister, who had been deported with her son and husband and never returned. They never really learned it officially. What did you expect? For them to send you the death certificate?
Still, it is good that some talked. I was listening at Simone Veil [26], who was explaining why she started talking, and about the implications they were making, as if they had gone on a pleasure trip. And she said to herself, at the end, they are going to give them medals! Let me sit down and write things as they are.
I never discussed these subjects with my children because they never had the patience to sit down and listen. I am very sorry to say it but had you not been asking, you would not know how I grew up, what I have been through and how and how my life has been.
Period
Interview
Renée Molho