Interview with Ms. G (translation)
date of interview: December 1st 1991
interview made by Magdalena Muellner
I made this interview almost 20 years ago, not long since I started my reasearch. It was the first hint to the parsonage. Back then I was not aware that the people she talked about were not the Jewish community of Laa, but forced laborers, she was neither aware, which is due to the fact that she was a child when it happened.
parsonage
„I was five or six years old. We went shopping and we had to pass the vicarage. There we lots of people rounded up – that means, we saw many. The door was open and there were many people standing in the entrance and a few were also outside. They were very excited and frightened. One could see it in their eyes. Just as if one is hunted by dogs. I remember almost only women and children. My mother had to take me everywhere she went back then, because I had lost my first mother when I was three. I did not know that she had dies and so I thought that she had left me, so I always clung to my second mother. My mother told me that I should not look there and we quickly passed the vicarage, even though my mother was a good person and certainly would have wanted to help. Then we went shopping and on our way home we had to pass the vicarage again. We lowered our heads and quickly forewent it. But one time I looked at the side and I will never forget as long as I’ll live: There was a very young mother and she had her new born baby wrapped in a paper and she showed us the baby. I did not hear a single word, but I saw that she was pleading for clothes. My mother certainly would have liked to give her something, at least her cardigan, but she knew that we either were taken away with them or they had separated us. My father was in the war and I only had her. All my youth I have never experienced anything like that. My mother always tried to keep me from dangers. At home there was not much talking about that what later was written in history books. It was such a very sad sight and being forced to watch, knowing that one was unable to help, was sad, too. But I know that it hurt my mother till her death, that she wasn’t able to give anything to the woman.”
Do you remember, who rounded those people up?
“No, not at all. I did not see a single person I knew, but I generally didn’t know many people back then. Probably there were people guarding them, but I did not notice them. In my memory this door is just a huge black hole.”
About how many people were in it?
“I don’t know, but this hole, this door, was full.”
door of the parsonage
Did your mother explain to you what was going on? Did you ask her?
“Yes, at home she told me that we would have been separated or killed, if we had given anything to the woman, but this was later. She only did it for my sake.”
Do you know why the people were rounded up in the vicarage?
“No, not till today. Not that I have heard where the synagogue was located, I think that they probably were brought there, so that they don’t have to stand in front of the mill, but this is just my interpretation.”
Do you know at which day time you passed?
“I think it must have been before noon because we went shopping.”
Which season was it?
“It was cold and dull, as I recall it. A nasty kind of weather. Probably it was fall.”
Did your mother explain to you why it happened?
“Probably she did not explain it, probably I forgot it because I did not understand what she said.”
In how far did you know what would happen to the people?
“Back then I thought that people are separated, if the others don’t want them, but I thought that they couldn’t have done anything bad.”
Where there other people there?
“For me all the people there were foreigners, even if they were from Laa. I never went anywhere alone. I only knew our neighbors, the merchant and the baker.”
Do you recall the synagogue?
“No, not even the synagogue, even though it was not far away. I can only recall the restaurant there, but those memories are from a later time.”