[gentle upbeat music] - Where do I go?

- [Man] You're gonna go in the back seat, okay?

[gentle upbeat music] [soft music] - [Hanka] When I was a little girl, my family lived in a tight Jewish community in the city of Krakow.

With many relatives, including 50 cousins and many aunts and uncles and grandparents.

- "The Red Hat" is a book my sister Hanka wrote, and it describes my sister's experiences as a small Jewish girl in Poland.

And our family's struggles and miraculous escape from the ghetto and the Nazis.

[soft music playing] - I wore a red hat, when we escaped from the German occupation of Krakow and went walking through snow which went up to my nose, but I had my red hat, it was like something that kept me safe.

[Hanka chuckles] So I wear a red hat now.

[gentle music] My father's name was Herman Neiger and my mother's name was Sara Neiger.

[gentle music playing] My parents had my older brother and sister, me and my baby sister.

I was born on a street called Vavznsha Ulitza in the Jewish part of Krakow.

- Poland in the 15th, 16th century was a welcome place for Jews to settle because the Kings were tolerant of the Jews.

So they settled in that particular part of Krakow in Poland.

And so that's where my family came from.

- It was a very orthodox Jewish neighborhood.

There was no cars.

You saw a horse once in a while, you could cross the street.

There was no street lights.

It was a free life, to morning we got the rest, got some piece of bread and we were sent out on the street.

- We had three rooms and a huge kitchen where everything took place and lots of relatives around us.

And the synagogue was in a half a block from our house.

It was a very tight group, not only the family but also the community around us.

- My parents sent me alone across the river to my grandparents 'cause she has no time to take care of me.

So I would walk two hours through the streets, through the bridge, the rain, it didn't matter.

I would wind up in my grandparents house and my grandparents said, "Why, we don't have time for you today, so go back."

So I started to walk back and there was about a day of excitement going there and going back with a stick.

You know on the street a four or five years old boy.

[gentle music playing] - My mother had a vegetable store.

She used to get up early in the morning with my father and they would go to the store, and farmers from outside the city would bring in the produce.

She would come home early on Friday and cook all the meals for Shabbat.

And she would bring some fruits and vegetables from the store and so on.

She was a very sociable person and funny, and lively, chubby, she loved to eat.

[Hanka laughs] - She was a strong character my mom, she was a very determined woman, very principled.

- [Hanka] My father was a professional soccer player as a young man.

- [Bosia] He played in the national Polish soccer team.

He was a handsome man and gentle and sweet.

- I had an older sister, Cesia.

She was the authority in all the family when mother was not there.

We listened to Cesia, whatever Cesia said that we did.

She took me on a street car first time in my life.

And that was the most exciting thing ever happened to me, to go one stop on the the street car.

Of course we didn't pay because we had no money.

[gentle instrumental music] It was a different, it was kind of like you see in these old old movies sometimes, that's how it was.

Since the war started, that's changed everything.

[Bomb exploding] [dramatic music] [bomb exploding] [dramatic music] - [Reporter] Poland September, 1939 the German foe begins it's ruthless macho conquests and sets the stage for a World War Two.

Poland and the world the world learned the meaning of a grim new word Blitzkrieg.

- [Basia] On September 1st, 1939 Hitler began his assault on Europe, beginning with the invasion of Poland, the Polish army surrendered in only two weeks.

- [Benjamin] I remember the first airplanes flying over our houses from Germany.

They were dropping bombs, but not explosive.

It was kind of a like tear gas, just to scare the people.

I don't think they wanted to kill anybody at this time.

- [Basia] The first time German war planes flew over the city.

My aunt Hannah gathered all 50 children in our grandfather's basement.

It covered us in feather beds as if she could protect us from the bombing that way.

[gentle somber music] One dark day, Nazi soldiers came into our house.

They took everything of value and told us to prepare to leave.

- [Hanka] They came into our apartment.

They went into every Jewish home, took out all the valuables.

[gentle music playing] - With the clothes on our back, we each packed an extra pair of shoes in a small bag as we were forced to leave our home.

[footsteps thudding] - I remember, the boots and the sound of the boots.

The Germans came in and patrolled the ghetto and they were all wearing these high boots.

And I could hear them come and I knew, I knew that this was not a good sound when I heard the click clock of the boots coming.

- [Hanka] I would run and sometimes hide in a garbage can.

And I would cover that garbage can so they won't see me.

[dog barking] - [Benjamin] We had to move out of our apartment to a ghetto.

They took a few streets, build a wall around it, and all Jews had to go to the ghetto.

If you don't go to the ghetto you were shot.

- [Basia] I began to cry bitterly.

My mother tried to console me.

She saw a pushcart vendor selling hats just at the edge of the ghetto gate.

She pulled out the change in her pocket and bought a red hat for me.

As the gates of the ghetto were locked behind us my mother put the red hat on my head, pulled it down over my ears and dragged me behind her.

I wore my red hat from that moment on.

[dramatic music playing] Once inside, nobody was permitted to leave the ghetto.

My family was placed in a single room, in an apartment with other families we did not know.

many Jewish prisoners were taken out daily to work as laborers in the camp called Plaszow.

The people in the ghetto were starving and some tried to sneak out to find food.

If they were caught by the SS guards they were put into the ghetto jail or shot on the spot.

[dramatic music] [trumpet playing] - I remember a boy, his name was Marcel.

And I used to sit under the stoop of our house and watch him on his bicycle, he had a bicycle and he used to parade himself up and down the street and show off tricks.

And he knew I was sitting there watching him.

And I always used to wave, yeah, it was very nice.

And one day he didn't come, he was gone.

We knew what happened to people who disappeared, he was deported to the camps.

- My mother had a food business outsides the ghetto, every day she would bring two big bags heavy with food and shared with some other people in the ghetto.

And there were a prison, they catch young people that they needed for work, there was no water there, it was horrible situation.

My mother couldn't stand that she had food.

So she would take a big pot, she would cook whatever she had, leftover food.

At night we used to bring the food to the prison.

One day we were dragging it and this was making noise.

So the German guard heard the noise, he took his gun he started to shoot in our direction, [gunshots fired] we left the pot we ran home.

And mother said, "What happened?"

And we told mother they were shooting at us.

And mother started to give us a business.

"You are afraid of somebody shooting at you "and people are starving, "and I was cooking there for so many hours."

And she put the guilt on us that we left that food, the food is going to be cold now, we went back for the pot.

I would drag the pot directly to prison.

That was about the time where things started to change in ghetto.

They started to slowly deport people from ghetto to the concentration camp.

[gentle somber music] - We always knew to run and hide when we saw those shiny black boots coming.

I knew that they wanted to kill the Jews.

They would march in and if they felt like that they would shoot people, you know, just at random.

I remember looking at the orphanage and they were throwing children out the window, infants.

Throwing them out the window before they loaded them up on trucks to transport them out.

They were already dead by the time they fell off the windows.

- [Benjamin] In the ghetto there was a hospital, kept there about 20, 30 old men, that's how my grandfather stayed alive.

One day, my mother got a call from the doctor that was friend of the family, "Come over."

She took me with her.

My mother told me, your grandfather is very, very sick he might not live till tomorrow.

I went with her to the hospital and I saw her doctor she was crying so bitterly.

and she told me, "Go to your grandfather say goodbye "in case he doesn't survive."

And I went to my grandfather and he was sitting on the bed, smoking a cigarette.

And I said, this man is not sick to a point where he's going to die tomorrow, but something was not kosher.

I never saw my grandfather again after that.

But years later my mother told me the story that the German came and said they're going to eliminate the hospital.

The old people will be shot.

And the doctors negotiated with the Germans that they would take care of it, that they would give them an injection.

They told them that, "Look, you have a choice "either be shot by the German or just go to sleep."

And then she decided to go to sleep.

- My mother was telling me she was walking through the ghetto, walking past a pile of corpses and seeing her sister's two year old daughter on top of the pile with a bullet wound through her forehead.

So there was no question of what was going on.

It was there, it was there.

[somber music] At the beginning of the German occupation there were 60,000 Jews in Krakow.

There were schools, markets, temples, there was life.

Now, only a few thousand starving and suffering Jews remained.

[gentle music] [car engine roaring] [gentle music playing] - A truck came to the front of our house.

And some soldiers jumped out and there was the Butcher of Krakow among them.

His specialty shoots little children.

He was a murderer, incredible.

We were warned not to leave the house 'cause on the street if they would find some children they would kill them.

So they came, we heard the truck stop in front of our house.

And the door was closed we shut off the lights we were sitting quietly, there was nothing we could do.

This building had like four storage and these apartments was one on top of the other.

They started to run up the stairs, we heard their boots you know, one after the other.

The soldiers would break the doors with their rifles and he would go in there, he was the shooter.

[gunshots fired] And whoever was alive he was just shot.

I could hear it because there were screaming from fear.

So we hear the screaming and screaming, shooting, and quiet.

And that would go like that from floor to floor to floor.

Above us there was my friends, I used to play with them, we had that they broke the door there.

And we heard this children screaming, and they were shot, and it was quiet.

And we were the last one because we were on the bottom floor.

And he got in his uniform was full of blood, like a butcher.

And he had a gun in his hand, and he stood there like very calmly.

He put his hand into his pocket, he pressed it and the magazine of the bullet came out, and he put the one bullet after the 1, 2, 3, 4, eight of them or six I don't remember.

We were standing watching him doing it.

Then he puts the magazine in and he pointed the gun.

I was so scared, I didn't want to die.

I was thinking I'm 12 years old.

And I knew that the bullet is going to come to my head any second.

[gun corked] My mother said, close your eyes.

And the door opened, and a soldier got in.

He said to him something in German.

And he looked, I remember he looked and then he put the gun in the holster and walked out.

I don't know what the soldier told him.

I cannot imagine what he told him that he didn't shoot us.

He shoot everybody.

This man killed hundred of people why would he stop at us?

We don't know.

[instrument playing] Then the German decided to eliminate the ghetto altogether.

It was the end of Jewish live in Krakow.

[singing in foreign language] - They had reached a stage in the ghetto where they were making families dig their graves, strip naked.

The family got into the hole and then the Germans would throw grenades in.

- My mother said, "That's it, "we're going, what can we lose?"

Either we'll survive, but we don't want to end up like that.

My father said, "I'm not going to just stand by it "and wait for us all to be killed, "I'm gonna go for it and try to get out."

[dramatic music] - My father used to be a quite famous soccer player.

There was a Christian team and he had Christian friends who live in Krakow outside the ghetto.

[soft music playing] My mother had a food business outsides the ghetto, people who had the business of food they got a special permit to get out of the ghetto in the morning, they had to come back at night.

The German soldier at the gate of the ghetto knew my mother well, 'cause she would ride in very well with food.

So my mother, she contacted the Christian team where my father used to play and she told them that our was survival depends on them.

So we got Christian papers, 'cause when we run away from ghetto we're going to be Christian.

And as Christian we have more chance to survive, because as Jewish was zero.

- [Hanka] My mother said, "Don't ever, ever say, you're Jewish, don't ever.

"They will kill you on the spot."

- [Basia] My parents spoke to a Polish farmer who delivered his vegetables into the ghetto in a horse drawn cart every week.

My parents approached him about helping our family escape.

- One dark night they came in when and we were all ready.

They had a kind of a platform underneath the wagon.

And one by one, we slipped into the wagon and hid like we were told.

Our youngest sister was ill at that time, she had pneumonia or a very bad cough.

My mother warned us not a sound, not a breezing sound, not a crying sound.

- The wagon came for refuge, to take refuge out of ghetto, they put us into barrels all my sisters, my parents, he covered us with garbage.

- And we got out of the ghetto without being stopped, asked, questioned.

They assumed he had delivered his fruits and he's going home, and we were out of the ghetto.

He really risked his life doing it.

It was amazing.

[dramatic music] - Nobody expected to survive.

That wasn't even the motivation behind making the decision to get out of the ghetto.

My father in fact had pistols with him.

And the agreement was that if there were being stopped by Germans on the way they would kill the family and each other.

It really was a question of how they were choosing to die rather than survive.

We stayed in a vacated apartment in the city till false identification papers were prepared for us saying that we were Poles not Jews.

When we had our papers, we went to the railroad station to take a train to the Czech border.

It had been snowing for days and the train was two hours behind schedule.

- We arrived and it was snowing and policeman and the Nazi guards waiting, waiting, waiting for the train to arrive.

The train was late because it was snowing for days and the train couldn't come out, and they got fed up after two hours and left.

We stayed and the train came, and we boarded the train and we got to the Czech boarder.

- In czechoslovakia there were no Germans so for us to cross the border meant freedom.

- Then we started walking on foot across the whole mountains and snowy fields and little villages.

- [Basia] My father carried my baby sister in his knapsack and I carried my doll in mine.

I wore my red hat on the long walk in the snow while my shoes fell apart on my feet.

- We walked at night and tried to sleep in little hunting carts during the night or bury ourselves under the snow when we heard dogs because the German guards used to come with their German shepherds, they frightened me more than anything.

- [Benjamin] We walked through the border and there was a first breath of free air.

- [Hanka] We got to the border, to the Czech boarder, and a peasant family took us in.

[soft music playing] [train clacking] - [Benjamin] Two days later we went by train to Hungary.

[soft music] - [Hanka] Finally got across the border to Hungary.

And we ended up in a small town on the border.

Normal life was going on.

People were going about their business.

Synagogues, churches, stores, every thing functioned.

Finally, we got to the railroad station and boarded a train for Budapest.

- [Basia] The family dispersed so that we would not be noticed.

My mother told me to stand still and look out the window and not make any noise.

As the train traveled across the countryside, a man in uniform approached me, but he spoken Hungarian, which I did not understand.

- I just shook my head.

He went to my mom and she couldn't speak Hungarian either, so we were all gathered up, taken off the train and in Budapest we were put into a penitentiary.

- We were taken to jail because we cross the border illegally.

- We had false papers we started out from Krakow with false papers that we were Catholic and Polish not Jewish.

So if the Germans come here now we have to keep up that pretense.

[soft music playing] - [Basia] My three-year-old sister and I were allowed to roam around the female prison outside our cells.

Occasionally, while we were playing, we were stopped by prison guards and pulled into an office for interrogation.

In the office, the guard took a pistol from his belt and pointed it at us.

He asked for our names saying he would shoot us if we did not tell the truth.

- What's your name?

- Her name is Noser.

[soft music playing] My sister is like "Noser!

[Hanka laughs] And they let us go back into our cell.

They couldn't break us.

And finally we were released, and the Jewish community in Hungary in Budapest started taking care of Jewish refugees.

And my parents tried to warn them do anything that's possible to escape because the Germans will come and get you.

And they looked to my parents as if if they were crazy.

Lo and behold they came.

[tank engine roaring] - [Basia] Then the German army invaded Hungary.

And we were sent to a German work camp for Polish laborers in the village of Marcali.

In the camp my father played chess with the village priest every day and they became good friends.

The priest protected our family by assuring the SS guards that we were Catholic.

- My father is circumcised and I am circumcised.

He said, "Look, I can vouch for your father "that he was sick or whatever he had to had to ally, "but when they see a son and a father "they're not going to believe me, "so you have to get rid of your son."

- [Hanka] So my father took him and hid him in a cabin in the woods and we stayed in the village.

[somber music] - So my parents decided to bring me to a big forest Soponya Puszia was called in Hungary, completely deserted.

[somber music] The German were on one side the Russian on the other side.

They kept shooting at each other but none of them went into the forest.

It was such a thick woods that they couldn't with their tanks get in there.

In the forest, there was a barn there.

This barn was a good place to hide.

There were a couple of Jewish gentlemen, there were into their twenties who were waiting for the Russian to liberate us.

Well, my father left me there with these people and said he would have come the next day or day there after with the whole family and we will wait there for the Russian to liberate us.

Few days later the Russian really came.

And the young Jewish man decided to join the Russian, but I was waiting for my father to come so I did not join them.

They all left and I was all alone left in this barn.

Everyday I would sit outside, and wait, and wait, and looked if my father is coming.

I was alone in a gigantic forest because everybody left.

[somber music] - [Basia] My brother was still hiding in the forest when we were transported from the village.

As Russian troops approached the village the Nazis began to prepare the prisoners to move further west.

[soft music] - And we were all packed up like a bunch of animals and driven west away from the Russians.

- [Basia] My father pulled us along on a sled.

Whenever he heard gunshots he would throw his body over us to protect us from the bullets.

- After a couple of days we got on a train.

The train stopped and my mother told me to get off the train.

And I went down and I stood there, and I couldn't budge, I was paralyzed.

I was terrified, I was like, I couldn't believe that I was alone in that snow that went up to my nose.

And she told me to run and I couldn't budge, I couldn't move.

And my father went down, got me and put me back on the train.

And he said to her, "How can you do that?

"How can you do that?

"She's a little girl."

She tried to save one child at least.

- My father said to me, when he saw her out there by herself on that train platform he decided if they were going to die they were going to die together.

[somber music] - I was alone for three months.

And ever day when I decided, I decided I don't want to.

I said, maybe my father would come tomorrow.

And where he's going to find me if I leave?

I used to go to a pond and catch fish and cooks the fish when I had some matches.

And I used up my matches, later I didn't have wood worth to cook the fish.

But you know hunger is something so strong that I used to eat raw fish or whatever I found, some eggs from some birds.

There was a dog which would come to the barn used to keep me company.

Sometimes when it was very cold he would stay with me and keep warm.

One day, middle of the night, there was a big explosion, [loud bang] some kind of a rocket flew into the barn, the whole roof collapsed, that I realized I cannot stay there anymore.

And I said, if my father didn't come in so many months he's not going to come.

And I knew that if I stayed there I would die.

I don't know if my body was 50 pounds, was just bones.

So I decided to leave, just packed up all my stuff and the dog and left.

And we started to walk into the forest in the direction that I never walk, down, down the path about maybe half a mile past the barn.

There was abandoned village.

And I started to search through the village and I smelled sauerkraut.

And there was a factor there of pickled cabbage, there were a big, maybe 12 feet barrel.

And there was a ladder there.

And I walked up the ladder, and I jumped inside the barrel, and I started to eat the cabbage, I was so hungry.

I ate, I had stomachache but it didn't matter I just ate the cabbage.

And then suddenly I realize I did not pull the ladder with me.

And there is there's a wall log that there's nothing inside, just the cabbage.

I said, I'm going to die here, my father is never going to find me.

My worst thing was not the dying but my father would not find me.

I was desperate, the dog was outside barking, but there were no people, with and miles and miles, there's no one, screaming wouldn't help, because there was nobody there.

So I started to touch the bottom of the barrel.

There was a peg there where they used to pick it up to let the water out of the cabbage or whatever, a big wooden thing.

And I took the shovel and I started to bang it until water came out but the cabbage stayed.

I fell asleep when I woke up in morning the cabbage was dry.

And I started to pile up the cabbage.

As much as I could with a shovel.

I piled enough of the cabbage, I puts the shovel on top of it.

I stepped on the shovel, I jumped up and I grabbed the edge of the barrel.

You know, it must be something for people who are in desperation or dying that give you the strength which you don't think you have.

I pulled myself up and I got out of the, I jumped out, I didn't even go to the ladder I just jumped out and I started to walk back to the barn.

I decided I'm going to wait for my father anyway.

[soft music playing] - There was a transit camp in Austria, which was a horror of horrors.

We had to go for inspection as we arrived, take all our clothes off, stand naked.

While men were walking by looking at us.

Was you know, disdain and hatred.

And finally, we went to a more permanent work camp, Strasshof.

My father got ill when we were in that camp, he had a and kidney attack, had to be hospitalized and we were in terror.

So they would find out that he is circumcised and a Jew.

And the doctor treating him said, "Don't worry, no one will know."

[gentle music] [birds shrieking] - On the way back to the barn.

We started to walk down the path and I didn't think I just followed the dog.

The way to the barn was to the left but there was a little walkway to the right and the dog went there.

Suddenly I see a house and I went there, and the lady opens the door.

Near her was a little boy, she was holding the boy by the hand.

And I told her, I probably died, I'm in heaven, it Cannot be.

She kind of became a mother to me.

Her husband was taken to the army he never came back.

So she was alone there with the boy, and then the Russian came.

I used to go at night to look if my father came to the barn.

I used to check if maybe my father is there.

I mean, you know I was 13 years old and I miss my parents and I miss my family.

So I used to go there with a dog and when I come back, this high officer came over whom we never saw before.

And to make the long story short he raped the woman.

After what happened she became very depressed, she wouldn't talk to us anymore.

After a while I decided to go look for my parents.

I didn't want to go to the forests where I lived, but there was a road around the forest.

This road and the fields, because there were Russian and Germans there, and Russian there and German there.

They keep changing and putting mines.

I went to the minefield.

I smelled something very strong.

When I came close there were big craters full of dead soldiers, German origin.

So Russian prominent threw them in there but they never covered them.

I said, well, I'm not going to go with the grass is.

I will go where the craters are.

Over there down the mines because the people are dead already.

Sometimes I had to walk literally on the dead people, on the dead soldiers.

The smell was incredible horrible, you couldn't breath.

[flies buzzing] Finally, when I arrived in the village a friends that I knew, because I had lived there for a year or so.

I asked him what happened to my parents.

He said they were shot, they were killed by the Germans.

Well, and then I realized I'm an orphan.

So I walked back to kapushva after a few months a man who was in the same village that my parents were, he moved to kapshva And the lady that I was with her she knew him.

and somehow this way she said, "Look, take the boy "because there's no future for him.

"Here he is going through chop wood for the rest his life."

In Budapest, there was an orphanage for Jewish children.

And she gave him some money to bring me to Budapest, to the orphanage.

[soft music playing] - [Basia] One morning we woke up very early and the camp was eerily quiet.

There were no commands or shooting in the courtyard.

Not a sound could be heard.

It was as if the whole town had died.

- [Hanka] We saw Russian tanks parked right in our view.

All around our camp there were Russian tanks.

And we didn't dare to go out.

We didn't think it wasn't real, it was safe upon waiting and waiting.

All the Austrians had fled and the prisoners started crawling out of their barracks and looking.

And finally, at last the war was over.

[triumphant music playing] - [Basia] The war was over, we had survived but we did not know where my brother was.

My parents decided to go look for my brother in the town of Marcali where we had all last been together.

- My father stole a horse and a wagon.

We were going to go back to Hungary to find my brother.

Took a long time, but we got there.

Got to the village and nobody knew where he was.

- [Basia] My father took a train to Budapest where the Red Cross was working to reunite families who had been separated during the war.

Nobody there had seen my brother either.

On his way back to the railroad station to return to Marcali my father's spotted a group of orphan children walking on the road, there among them was my brother.

- Well, I stayed in the orphanage and I started to learn how to write and read because I never went to school.

So I had a bag a, b, c, d and I would walk on the street and I pick up my head and my father is there.

I didn't know he is alive.

So when I show him he was, I thought I'm dreaming.

I said it cannot be true.

- Well, it's a joy of joys unheard of.

[Hanka chuckles] He was just beside him so he grabbed him and ran to the train to bring him to us.

And the commotion at that, you can imagine screaming and crying, it was unbelievable, unbelievable joy.

How can you be so lucky?

- I found my father, and my father and my family survived the war, of course I hugged him.

But to be honest with you, I never forgave my parents for leaving in this forest.

As a 13 years old boy be abandoned in the forest by parents, it's painful.

- He never forgave anybody that will have left him to the very day.

- They made a very painful decision, me or the family.

If I would go back the German would find us send us to the concentration camp that would be the end.

so the only way for them to survive was without me.

To tell you the honest truth, with years, the war is over 60, 70 years already I thought that time will take care of it.

And it's true I don't think about it everyday anymore.

I go about my life, but at night sometimes I wake up ooh I have nightmares, And I dream about those times, my brains doesn't let's go.

- What a holocaust does, it makes you lose your home, your language, your background, your family, [soft tunes playing] you're never at home again.

Your life you look for it somewhere, someplace with somebody.

Imagine this is what it's been like for me.

- When you listen to the whole story, it's incredibly heroic.

And it's kind of a reminder of what very regular people are capable of [soft tunes playing] on the horrendous circumstance.

- [Hanka] When I'm really thinking about them being young people in their thirties with very small children going through something that cannot be described.

It is death on every corner, wherever you go, wherever you turn you could be killed, shot, gassed, or found out who you are.

It's a sense of ooh, I think I have my parents, I think they were the ones who were performing miracles we're here.

[piano playing] - I attribute our being together to the war, because of war the constant fear that we're going to die tomorrow.

That we have only one week to live or maybe a month, maybe, because everybody around us is dying, being killed, being shot.

So we knew that our life span is just counted by months or weeks or days.

So that kept us maybe more together than it would be if this would not access.

- It's what we went through and we have those parents and we have those experiences, and no one else in the whole world has these experiences.

That is one aspect of it.

We also have fun together, we have the best time together when we get together.

Like no one else we can laugh and we can carry on and we can tell jokes like no one else.

- We can also cry.

- And we can also cry together.

And we really take care of each other.

And this is what mother always taught us to take care of each other.

I think the sense of humor when you think about it, it may not be totally conscious, but what else can happen to us?

What terrible thing could happen to us?

So this is always looked at with humor as, you know, we went through the worst so at least let's have a little fun.

- That's what bound us I think that tightly for life.

We always tended to congregate in one place where we lived whether we were married, had children, or changed our lives very dramatically.

It still ended up that we were in one spot all of us.

I really feel very unafraid because they are there, they will come and help.

It was always a case one could count on them.

[soft music playing]