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Section below transcribed by: Linden W.
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Missing Segment - 30 -40
...and it was like a wave of sound. The women just couldn't ...It's hard to describe when the unbelievable really happens. It's what you were hoping for and this is the day but it's...
Were you on the street? Was it in the morning?
It was in the camp. There were no streets. I think it was late morning. But the situation was so terrible there. There were bodies all around on the ground and it was just terrible. So you were in the state of disbelief. You couldn't believe what was around you; you couldn't believe these soldiers are coming. It was one of those moments you cannot forget. So I think I've come to the end there, no?
May I bring a question before we take a break? I'm curious. You're the only one in this room I would guess that has experienced utter starvation and hunger. Can you describe for us what that's like? We have many people who describe that and it's interesting to compare how the--what you remember in terms of what the ....
What the hunger is. Ah, it's a sense of hollowness, I would say. It's a physical, hollow--it's painful. It's painful and I mean you can look at television and people do not want to really see it. You can see the starving people today in wherever--Rwanda--or I don't know where. You're down to bones and the feeling is hollow and light. I remember the feeling of lightness. There's not much left of you, in a way, you know. So I know lightness always--the word light brings--it's an uplifting. No, there is just sort of a diminishment. I don't know if I described that well, but--hollow and light.
Is it any--you seem as if you were so very young to write a book. To me it just seems very interesting that you would think to put all of this down in writing at such a young age.
Well, I wasn't that young, actually. I was thirty. Yeah... (laughs)...
That's young.
...when I first started.
In comparison, though, most of the Holocaust writers, you were way earlier than most.
But what is interesting about that is that I needed to--I waited like ten years after the end--I needed to come to America. I did not have the idea for the book in Europe. It's as if they all--we all--knew the same things in Europe. It's once I got to America I had this feeling--I have to share this, I have to tell them, the Americans. I have to share this with--they don't know. I had this overwhelming feeling they don't know--where in Europe, I didn't have that. You know, it's just Europe is so small and we all were aware of each other, I mean the countries. So that's how I got to write it.
Before we go on about the book, which I want to ask more questions about, I have a couple of more questions about liberation and right afterwards. How long were you at Bergen-Belsen before you got to leave and what was it like then.
Well, I got typhus Everybody--half of the camp was wiped out with this and I became very ill. We were--Bergen-Belsen was really burned down. The original camp was burned down because of this disease. And we were transferred to some clean quarters which I think were German officers' buildings--I mean the group I was with. So that I couldn't be sent back because I was ill. I got back--and we were liberated in April, April 20. And I got back to Prague in--I believe it was June--of 1945. I think, the end of June.
How did after the liberation, how did people respond to all of the sudden being able to eat again? I mean was that hard on the people?
It was hard. It was hard because the British, bless them, they didn't know what, what to do with us and, and they gave us--I remember that, for some reason, sardines was the first, and we all became so sick. It was just about the worst thing you can, you know, and then they, somebody came in and, hey, you know, then we started to get really good, regular food. They were very caring, very wonderful and they were all liberators and so, you know, we elevated them to--they took very good care of us, in spite of, they were not prepared at all for the large number, you know, that they had to take care of. The hospitals were, you know, totally crowded and then I got back to Prague.
What made you go back to Prague?
Oh, well, it was my home town. I would not have gone anywhere else and, you know, it's where I belonged.
How did you make your way back there?
The British, yeah, in a car. There were cattle cars again but they were open. So it was better. I think we have come to the end, don't you?
I think we want to just bring it to a...
I'm getting tired.
...she's getting very tired, but there may be a couple sort of concluding questions that you really might want to just--I know that you guys have prepared a couple concluding questions and then we're (marching?) to the end.
So as we come to the end of this I just kind of wondered when you said previously that when you came to the United States that you decided to write the book because you though that they didn't know. What was that like in sitting down and preparing to write it?
Well, I didn't--it happened--I then met George, my husband-to-be, and we started to talk and it emerged in incidents, specific incidents, there was no chronology. There were almost sort of symbolic words and I would start writing about that. It was not planned in any orchestrated way.
So can you describe the symbolism that arose during this time and did you carry like a little notebook or did you--how did you jot it...
No, no, I would just when the, you know, when I felt, I would just sit down and write some of the, a lot of the chapters came very quickly. I think it was the needs emerged: I have to put this down. And then I spent time a long, a lot of time rewriting, rewriting, you know, polishing, editing and all that.
Why did you write it as an autobiographical fiction, rather than just your own autobiography?
Because it is not an autobiography. It has fictional elements in it. The characters, for example. The character of Ilse, who is one of the major characters, is a composite of two girls that I have known. And the fiction allowed me to expand on certain elements and downplay others that I didn't want to go into. It gave me more freedom and I could enjoy it, you know. It wasn't the "then and then and then." I stepped back and I think that was part of the creative process that I found satisfying, that I could add that element, the dimension that fiction allowed me to do. You know, to focus, to stand back, all that, which you couldn't do in autobiography
(...) those (topical?) moments question(s)?
Well, I don't know if I'd really call it that (--?--) go that far, but I'm just wondering was there anything else that you'd like to say about your experience
