Survivor Testimonies- Karyssa Adame

Brigitte Altman tells her story through many touching words and really shows her emotions. She sits down to tell us what she remembers from this sad experience and her memory of her family. She starts with when she was a child and being an only child too. Her family was quit well off when she was younger and her father always had some sort of money stored away in case of emergencies. She described her father as being, "a farmer" and always very handy. She looked up to her mother and says that she was always very gracious and kind. As she got older she realized that where she was growing up there wasnt very many Jews in the community. Through out her teens she was in a couple of religious groups that were mainly classified as sports groups back then. She said she wasnt "the most athletic" but she enjoyed it. She goes on to tell her story of when the Nazis took over and how they were eventually living in the ghetto. Her family didnt live in a nice place in the ghetto because they didnt own their previous house they didnt have anything to trade for once they got to the actual ghetto. Their living quarters were small and it was one room per family. She remembers at this point that all Jews were wearing a star on their clothing and were not allowed to walk on the streets.
As she got older she was semi separated from her family and bounced around a lot of places until she ended up at a brigade with others her age and finally had things like blankets, fires and clothes. She finally found her father after she arrived in Italy. Her and her father tried to get their Visas for the United States and it took 4 years for their applications to go through, arriving in the US in 1949.



Joseph Morton was the oldest out of 5 brothers and 1 sister. As I first started watching this interview one of the first things i noticed was that his memory was not as clear as the other interview i watched so he didnt give as much detail and didnt say as much. He states that "celebrating Jewish holidays is a must." He talks about his childhood and what he remembers about school, which wasnt a lot. He says he remembers having few friends that he played some sports with. His town that he lived in was invaded very quickly! Morton says it only took "2 days" and they came in and were grabbing people and taking them away! Joseph had a job doing odd tasks while he was in the ghetto and did everything he could to survive. He eventually made his way somehow onto a train that would be taking him to Auschwitz. He says he he couldnt see anything from the train and remembers just feeling trapped in there and knew nothing about where he was going and what would await him. He was told he was going some place to do work and thats all he knew. He arrived during there in August of 1944 and says "that was the end of the family."
Like other stories I have heard, he to tells how he was immediately separated by how he looked and whether not he looked like he could work. There were people all around giving orders and people scared out of their minds. After all that he went through he never received anything about how or when his mother and sister died. He eventually moved to Canada in June 1948 with his brother and his father stayed in Germany. He resided in Montreal where he there made a living!