Len's cousin

Comments on the Miniseries “Shoah”

Esther’s daughter, the older daughter, I think Shaindel was her name, she was really interested. When we came, we went to her home, and she was really interested to know how we survived. Not too many people do it, especially now, 40-45 years after. Even when you came originally, people didn’t. They thought maybe it’s too painful to talk about, or something, but she was really interested to know how and what happened.

Esther was our cousin, the daughter of Baruch Morgenstern, who lived in Mexico City, where Mannes had recently visited for the wedding of a relative.

Because the truth is, it was terrible, you know. Whole cities were wiped out. And in our city, we were fortunate, because we were exiled, like a lot of people, but there were cities that was literally nobody left. In the city where Idverke’s [phonetic] parents lived, the whole city went kaput. They took them to a mass grave, and they buried them in it. There was no [word inaudible] yet. That must have been in 1942. The whole city was killed.

I don’t know who Idverke was

As a matter of fact, did you ever see Shoah? You know the nine-hour..

Len: Yes, I saw part of it.

M: In this Shoah movie, they interviewed people, and they mentioned the name of the town where Idverke lived. It’s Mezeritch, you know. She was in Mezeritch, the city. In fact, I happened to be there. I was there in... I studied there for a year. That’s how I know their family.

And they took them out, and that was almost a complete town of Jews. There were 80% Jews and 20% Poles. It was a Jewish town. Beautiful Jewish city, you know. And they came in and took them all away to a mass grave, and that was it.

And as a matter of fact on The Shoah, one fellow told the story that the Rabbi of the town of Mezeritch, when they took him out to the graves, delivered a speech to the Jews. But that’s not true, you know. But, of course, there were rumors that the Poles spread among themselves, different rumors on accound of the Church. The Church kept on harping on their idea that God meted out punishment to the Jews for not accepting Christ. So, in order to supplement these, they were telling all kinds of stories about Jews admitting that this is their deserved punishment. So the guy said that the Rabbi said to the people, “Let’s go because that’s God’s will. We didn’t accept Christ, that’s why we have to perish.”

Len: That’s very unlikely.