Growing up, we had a very close family.  I didn’t realise at the time that we were so loving and so close, I thought this was normal.  My mother didn’t want me to go to my grandmother’s house because I would be spoiled so.  My uncles didn’t know what to do with me, they took me places including to the movies.  I remember sitting in the movies seeing the Dybbuk, I asked questions because I wanted to know what was going on, people were objecting to our talking, so we had to walk out.  They took me to the park to take pictures.  We’d go for walks together.  

 

My mother’s father, my grandfather had a stall in the Open Market, he was called, the Ari the Kopf, (the head) because he was so smart.  He had lost a lot of money in the Depression.  He kept walnuts for me at the stall at the Market.  

 

I had a very happy childhood.  My mother was very beautiful and smart.  She went to another town to go to a high school where she could learn Polish.    

 

I had a girlfriend, we were inseparable, Tushia.  Once I went to the park with Tushia’s family.  They offered me a yellow fruit; I didn’t know what it was, it was a banana!  I was eight or nine years old at the time.  

 

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Tomaszow Lubelski, Poland.  I was eleven, almost twelve, when the Germans invaded Poland.  Germany and Russia had made a non-aggression pact in August 1939; on September 1, 1939, German invaded Poland from the west and later, Russia invaded Poland from the east. Germany and Russia had made an agreement to divide Poland between themselves.  

 

We left to go to the east to get away from the Nazis.  My father’s siblings and family lived, in Chodorow, in the Russian zone.  We were a close knit family and my parents greatly missed their families back in Poland.  The Russians asked my parents to register to become Soviet citizens or they could return home and be under German control.  As we were so close to our family back home my family wrote that they preferred to go back to Poland to be with their family.  The Russian declared that they were "enemies of the state" as we did not choose to become Soviet citizens  The Russian told my parents that they had one hour to pack and that they had to go to the train station.  My father had a lot of money from his job as an accountant that belonged to others.  He wanted to give the money to an officer at the train station. The man said, where you're going, you will need it.  The Russians exiled us to Siberia.  We went to Bodajbo, east Irkutsk, Russia. 

As a child, I remember there was a hole in the train where I had to pee.  Sometimes we stopped in a field.  

 

My father developed an ulcer and was in agony.  There was nothing anyone could do.  When we finally arrived at our destination, my mother was very resourceful and was able to arrange for my father to go to a hospital.  I don’t know how she arranged this.  He was there for weeks.

I attended the fifth grade in Siberia.  I remember they sent us out on a raft made of logs.  I was so scared of drowning.  

In June 1940, I was eleven years old.  We ended up at a settlement called Syniuga [located in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia].  We lived there for about 1-2 years then we moved elsewhere.

My father worked in an office; my mother gave people some of her clothes.  I once saw someone wearing her dress. 

My father didn’t know Russian, he had to prove his worth.  What was life like in Siberia, hunger, people dying, food was poisoned with cyanide.  A friend of my family worked in a meat market.  At times he would bring meat for his neighbors.  

When the war was over, we kept going west.  A man on the train we were on said that there were no Jews alive here, they were all murdered. 

We then went to Lodz, Poland.  The war ended in 1945, but they didn’t let u leave immediately.  We left illegally.  

In 1952, I went to medical school in Munich, Germany.  I told my mother that I now wanted to be a mathematician.  My mother asked, “how will you make a living?”  I said okay, I’ll be a doctor.  I love humanity, I wanted to learn, I have a curious mind.  

I attended medical school and graduated in 1952; I was 24 years old.  I met my first husband in medical school.  It was rare for a woman to be in medical school.  There were two of us, both of us in dermatology.

After graduation, I went to the United States to do an internship at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.  I was there longer because I had to learn English.

My father wanted to leave and go to Israel.  My mother said no, no more wars.  My mother, father, and sister, and I, ended up in New York.  My father bought a chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey.  

Love each other.  Don’t kill each other, I have seen the worst.  Remember, be true and proud of your identity and be loyal to your people.