Rohan+K

Introduction: This is the story of Leitha, a 35 year old woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through some tough times, and had a lot of troubles in her life. This is her story of her cancer journey, and how it changed her. Thank you for listening to Leitha's story.

media type="file" key="rohank.mp3"

I was born in Amsterdam, Holland. I was born to two deaf parents, and had three sisters and one brother. Life in my young age was very good, because I had very close friends and had a good relationship with our community. I got married in 1936. Holland was just beyond the border of Germany, and during the rein of Hitler many Jews started fleeing here. Many people told us what was happening to us Jews, but Holland couldn't be harmed. We were neutral in the last World War, and we would in this one too. Before we knew it, Hitler was on our tails; a neutral country was being invaded. All the Jews were forced to wear yellow starts and became very restricted. We couldn't do a lot of things that we usually could. So we moved to a smaller town on the beach. It was nice. There were only two or three jewish families, so we became very close friends with other religions. Then news came that lots and lots of jews had moved to Amsterdam, and we were forced to leave. The police helped us hide in some families attic. My parents were arrested because they couldn't help themselves, being deaf. So this family took them in too. They were just the nicest people, risking their lives for our safety. Then we got issued rations, and things took a turn for the worse. This family was now supposed to feed four extra adults with just a stamp for two. There was an underground resistance brewing, and made fake food stamps. That's how we survived for a little bit. But the neighbors got suspicious of the amount of food the family was bringing in, because they reported us to the gestapo. So, all four of us were arrested. We were seperated from my father and other men and forced to go along another line. There, we were stripped and shaved completely of all bodily hairs, then put on a prisoner's suit. Suddenly, a truck came and took all "old" women, including my mother, who was 49. We were about to be experimented on, and the Nazi handed out papers. They were giving us a choice: either go and get experiments performed on you by your own free will, or go and get gassed. Some choice. A lot of women chose to die, but I decided to sign the papers. They injected us with several injections, around 24, all over our body. My body was terribly sore after that. The next day, they injected into our womb some substance, we didn't know what, and it hurt a lot. We were in lots of pain. And the Nazi did not use any anasthetic. Finally, in April of 1945, we were liberated by the Russian army.

Questions: What were you diagnosed wihth? When were you diagnosed? How did you feel when you were diagnosed? What effects did it have on your life? What was your treatment? What were some of the negatives? What were some of the positives? How did it affect your family? What sacrifices did you have to make? What sacrifices did your family have to make? If you had bad days, what were some of them like? How did it change you as a person? How did it change your family? How do you feel it changed others around you? When were you officially a survivor?