Ida Skubiejska was born in Poland & forced to emigrate to Siberia during WW2:

Everybody was killed in Auschwitz: my parents, my sister, all my uncles, aunts & cousins. Absolutely everybody except my other sister & my cousin. I was very sociable until I got the news.

Ida's wartime experiences as a deportee & then a nurse had taken her from the USSR to Tehran & eventually, in 1945, to Scotland.

What happened was I kept in touch with doctors all over the place with whom I worked, with senior officers who wrote me long letters. I enjoyed all this huge company from Tehran, from Palestine, from Kiev. Whoever I came across we kept in touch, wrote letters to each other, gave little gifts & this & that & the other.

But when I got the news about my family I sort of completely shut myself in.

I was in Carnoustie at that time, I spent the days getting up very, very early, at daybreak, & running along the seashore. I just had a marathon of running, I was very, very sort of sporty, I could walk, I could mountain-climb, I could do anything in the way of just running. Running helped me.

But for years & years on end, maybe 15 years afterwards, I would not wear any other colour but black. It was quite psychological: it never crossed my mind if I went into a shop or bought a piece of remnant to make something out of it, it had to be black. The same with coats & the same with hats & the same with everything whatever I wore. Black.

Everything started to be all right once I started concentrating on being about to teach geography in English, which was exactly the same except of the sort of different pronunciation. Everything went extremely well.

But one could not ask me where is your mother, or what happened. If I spoke about her, that was all right, but if somebody else asked me I couldn’t answer, tears dropping down.

The same at all the anniversaries & remembrance days. All very strictly observed because that was the generation which knew it. And I couldn’t stand there. To listen to the Last Post [bugle call] was just about as much as I could do.

But now I can. It took me ages & ages before I could even talk about it. Now I can talk without crying.

But only a fortnight ago we had a remembrance service here next door in the main office for all the residents around here, many of whom are ex-service, with the Last Post back again. I could speak all the time about recipes from home. How to make this & that. This I could talk about, but not the rest. So that’s the story.

It doesn’t affect my sleep. What I don’t like is too much loneliness. I like to be with people, I like to go out.

And I don't like Holocaust programmes on television or the books. That’s one thing I will not watch. I would not watch the Pianist, I would not watch Schindler’s List.

A year before my husband died, we went for a month to Poland. We went from place to place. I could photograph the remembrance to my professor who was murdered by the Russians. They stood beside me, they knew I was shivering. And all this was just wonderful for me. I would gladly go there again.

I didn’t go to Auschwitz although we passed the entrance to it a number of times. I didn’t want to go there.

What I did, and what I am proud of: I belonged to the ex-service organisation of ex-Jewish servicemen. I went with them to Jerusalem, to Yad Vashem for a big service. I found the cave with memorial plates instead of tombstones & I bought one & it is in the cave of remembrance at Yad Vashem.

And that’s where I think I buried my parents & my sister. Not in Auschwitz, in Jerusalem.

Ida Skubiejska

Memories

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