Brigitte Altman is from Memel, now known
as Klypida. Her parents were quite wealthy. They lived in a house with two
stories and two living rooms. Brigitte went to school and she was an only
child. Her family was very observant of the Jewish holidays. One of the first
things she noticed when the Germans began taking over is that the friends that
she used to have stopped talking to her completely and the teachers at school
began treating her very rudely. They knew they could not stay where they were
at so they moved with her grandparents. They moved again to a small village
where they were then caught and forced into the ghettos. They survived for the
most part with her having a job growing mostly vegetables out of season and her
father having a job working on machines. Her mother was very ill and could hardly
walk so stayed home. She did pass away leaving only herself and her father. Her
father knew someone outside of the ghetto and found out that they made trips every
so often to the ghetto for deliveries. He devised a plan to get her out and it
took a couple of months. The way she got out was by staying with this certain
group of only about fifteen people and going outside of the ghetto which they
did occasionally to call a friend or to do some other errands. Then the driver
of this truck bribed the guard to look away long enough for her to take off her
star which was only pinned to her clothing so she could then get into the truck
and leave. A consequence to surviving would be that she has to live on without
her mother and also that most of the people that she used to know are no longer
around so she is alone in that aspect.
“Neighbors
would even announce if they suspected neighbors were hiding something.”
“Everyone
in the ghetto was to come to the democracy square which was only a five minute
walk… my mother was still immobile.”
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