A story of another's childhood.

So, this summer I caught up some with the one resthome resident who used to give me candy at the resthome where I used to work, and she got to reminiscing about when she first moved to the U.S.

She had told me bits before about her (English) teacher who did such a good job with the classroom by pointing to everything while she said it, like pointing to her nose and saying “nose,” but this time she told me quite a bit more, including about how her family moved to this steel plant where they had a house and her father was the night watchman while they got settled.

It turns out that though they had at least one distant relative in the U.S., he wouldn’t help them or the rest of their extended family, but this one random (Jewish) (owner) guy at the factory would help families he didn’t know come over, and he’d provide them housing and let them get acclimated for a number of months, and then let them move on to something else and bring the next family in to where they were.

“You make this sound like there’s this small house right in the middle of the plant,” I was like.  “Like it’s just standing there, and there’s these giant factory buildings and chimneys with fire coming out all around.”

“That’s exactly what it was like,” she was like.

She also said that a lot of (Germans) from the factory would come over to their house to eat lunch, and her mother would put on coffee for them.

“Were they German Jews, or Germans?”, I was like.

“Mostly Germans,” she was like.

“So did you have any problems with them?”, I was like.

“No,” she was like, “We didn’t, here.”

She also said that when she was a girl back before they moved, even the small children would call out “dirty Jew!” at people, and she had seen a synagogue in flames.

She also has had no desire to go back and participate in reconciliation efforts, she has mentioned to me any number of times, though different people she know has.

“When you see something like that, you never forget it”, she was like. “Why would you want to go back?”

She also was saying that someone she knew, they named a street in Germany after someone from their family who got sent to the camps, and the mayor participated in a big formal event and everything and the family was invited and went.

“But what good does that do?”, she was like. “It doesn’t bring them back. Now, if they could bring them back, that would be something.”