To force us to march to the ghetto. The
ghetto was in the Jewish section of the town which was on the other side of the town.
[Interviewer] Were Your neighbors aware of what was going on? [Barbara] Oh yes, oh yes.
Those very neighbors,
in whose courtyard I played in as a child,
those very neighbors who were guests at my mother's dining room table months before
peaked through the windows,
and turned their faces.
And as I look back now strange that
it pains me so much that treck
through the main street in the middle of the street driven like cattle
with the valises,
with the baggages
with my little nieces with the little infant who was
five, six weeks old
being driven to that [corso]
where my father had a big business where people would come
to buy would tip their hat and say, "How do you do Mr. Fishman?" and turn to my mother and say,
"How are you?", not [Jaguar Sonam]
which is a very respectful way to address a lady in Hungarian. "How are you my lady?"
These very people who used to watch me bicycle through town and say, "Bubka,
you have the first girl's bicycle" because they never saw a girl's bicycle you know without the handbar
These neighbors who used to pinch my cheek when I was a little girl. They stood and watched
stony-faced
as we were driven to this town
With the Hungarian gendarmes using truncheons on all the people who couldn't walk fast enough.
It was so
shameful so humiliating.
But I know now that the shame was theirs not ours, but I didn't know it then.
And so we got to the ghetto