Ruth Deutschmann

Benjamin Epp

Innsbruck

2008-08-21

And yes, that's the way it was. I loved my father very much. In the war he - first he also didn't hear well and he was wounded in the war, I think also his head and so on. He took strong medication. It was a - it smelled of almonds. He took that repeatedly - probably against the pain, he took it again and again. He wasn't supposed to but the pharmacist gave it to him. And father, of course - he had some and also drank some alcohol - a beer at noon and apparently it didn't agree with him - in the evening he took something from a bulbous bottle. Sometimes I was allowed to get it for him. And, that was his illness because he - he couldn't - probably he was in pain, because he - he changed. He was - he had a violent temper. Sometimes I... Because of small things - if a cupboard didn't open - Quite a few people I have loved had bad tempers. And he too, somehow. But he was a very musical person, very. He always liked to sing with me and I was his "little bird". According to my aunt, Ilse's mother, he said at the train station: "I'm not going to see my little bird again." So, he must have felt that something was wrong. It was terrible for me. Because my father was a model for me. Of course, my mother did a lot. This is grandmother Wasserer and that is grandmother - grandmother.. she was called Baur then; of course later she was called Brüll. And those two. Then, when they married, mother and father, they didn't tell anyone. They didn't want to tell me. But I can understand it. They would have had to - the entire Jewish family - and that would probably have been very difficult. He was right about that.