Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Peri Berki - December 9, 1983

Jewish Free State.

And we said it's impossible that they can deport us. And my husband was born here, my, his father, his grandma, my, all my grandparents were born in Hungary. And so why I, you ask me why I hate them, I was born there and my father was born there. I have, I lost my brother on the battlefield and my husband's brother was killed on the battlefield and they said you are not a Hungarian, you are a Jew? So what, what is your feeling? Sure I hate them. Even if I talk about it. Here I have one friend who, whose husband was an officer and somehow through connection they brought us together and for the first time I didn't even want to go to see her because I knew the husband, the Hungarian officer. And then, and then I. And I like her, but I still consider her that even when we are not there, she thinks different about us. Like my husband had a very high ranking officer, we had many Christian friends at that time before the war because he was a landowner and worked in government. A very, a high ranking officer, and I don't know, more than major. I don't know what, what he was.

Captain.

Yeah, and then during, and when we had to leave already all this many ??? exactly I don't remember. My husband wrote to us when he was still in the, I couldn't see him yet he wrote us that I should go to this man. He was a very high ranking officer, it was in a German headquarter. But he was hired, a Hungarian office. I went there and asked him to help us. My husband said that he, they were very good friends before the war, maybe he can do something. I went up and he said, I can't help you anything, anyhow, when you go out and they catch you, they will kill you. So that's, that's how much he helped. So what can I? I don't want to bring up these events, I'd rather bring up events when people helped.

I understand.

Because when I talk about it, I'm very angry.

Yes, well that's, I hear that. But I think it's important that you explain why because both those experiences are interesting.

And my, my son's idea is that here in America educated people are not anti-Semitic, only uneducated people. I don't believe in it. I don't want to argue with him. He always said mother, I understand your feeling, the, the thing you went through, I understand you. But you are very prejudiced. And I tell you something, I know I am prejudiced and I can't change. I'm sure I can't. I wouldn't be able to talk this way to a Gentile people, although I say a lot of good things about Gentile people, right. But I wouldn't be open myself so much with them as this. Basically I, I left my Hungarian citizenship and I'm a Jew.