Saba B., Witness Testimony about Working on the Landsberger Lager-Cajtung (Retrospective, 1982)

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Saba B.: [ . . . ] And I went to another camp, and I didn’t find anybody, but I found a Camp Landsberg. Well, I was very impressed because people were productive already. Took us a little while to find myself a job there.

Question: Was that a DP camp?

Saba B.: Mmhmm. I got myself a job there. Ah, there was one man who was a professional before the war, Dr. Valsonok. He was a Lithuanian; he was a journalist. He had a Ph.D. in journalism before the war. He came up with an idea to publish a Jewish newspaper. They needed a typist. I was not a typist, believe me. But at home we had a typewriter. Okay, I’ll be the typist. I didn’t know Jewish well enough to write it and we didn’t have type, Jewish type. So, I have that newspaper, too bad, I should have brought it, just to show it to you. Ah, I have from the first issue; I opened and I closed. We had been around a Jewish newspaper, Jewish words with Latin letters and an alphabet. One page. We got a press, a German press house that was issuing, making a German newspaper. And he allowed us to make our paper and gave us room. So that Dr. Valsonok was writing his articles, whatever, this one page, I was typing and half of the time I didn’t understand what I was typing, that man was educating me. To make it short, from that one page, after a while, we developed into a 36-page newspaper. And after a while, we got that Jewish type and a Jewish typewriter. For your information, I type on a Jewish typewriter, but I didn’t do it in a long time. [ . . . ]

Transcription: Elisabeth Mait