Memory Incapabilities

Annie Bleiberg

“Polish winter.  Very cold winter.  And so I started to walk, and I still did not really realize completely the situation I was in.  And then I met a woman, I mentioned, and we walked together.  Did we exchange some words?  I don’t know, I don’t remember.  Then we saw a man, and I remember this man very vividly.  He was standing with a lantern in the entrance to his house.  Now if he said anything or what, I don’t know, I don’t remember.  But he let us in.  And he sat there for a while, and I remember the inside of the house very vividly, too.  And he gave us two cold potatoes, cooked, or baked or whatever.  And he apologized he hasn’t any bread, otherwise he would have given us some.  I wish I could understand that.  He was a very nice man.  I don’t know who he was.  And I don’t know even exactly the town, or the vicinity where he was.”  (emphasis added)

Henry Starer

“We were chased out of the Catholic house.  We traveled three days and two nights, or two days and three nights, and the sanitary conditions were non-existent.  I really don’t know where I peed, I don’t remember the details, but it was no fun existence.  And there was no water, and no food.  I think we got a piece of bread, but it didn’t last.  And we were packed so tight that…an old man, probably wasn’t more than forty—to me he was old—he stood in front of me.  He died after that one day.  And he stood for the rest of the trip looking at me.”  (emphasis added)