[question] You know all about this from when we were already discussing it before, the last two times we discuss this already, why do you ask an old lady the same questions again? I think your memory is in worse shape than mine! [humorous comment from interviewer] Like I told you before, Isaac, he was a difficult baby, maybe being in the fire wasn’t good for him already before he was even born. The colic was so bad, I was up every night with him. It was a bad time. A hard time. No baby should be born into so much sorrow. Maybe he got a shock from being in the fire even though he wasn’t born yet.

[question] Yes, that is what people say, the new life is something good, something to enjoy, a new life to have after somebody dies. I always wanted to make the best of my life, it’s true, but it wasn’t so easy, having anything like joy, in those years right after the fire. So much was lost. You just have to live day to day and do what you can to get ahead. Sam was a very good man, you are right. I hope you put in a lot about Sam, even though you’re always so interested in women this and women that. He was a hero. So good to my sister. He was a real mensch and I do not use that word carelessly.

[question] No, I don’t speak about him so much. It tears my heart. Some things are private all your life. Not for talking about.

[question] Sam had no people left. He read in the Forward about his village, Skala, that was in Galicia, how the Cossacks came for all the men, and how there was burning, so it was good he got out before all that happened and so many Jews were killed. You think you can trust your neighbors and everything is peaceful but when the chance comes, neighbors turn on neighbors, because always there is this hatred for the Jews. I never met any of his people.

[question] Isaac wasn’t so much like Sam, no. Who can say what makes a child, where the nature of a child comes. I am no expert on babies and children but everyone knows you can say that saying about how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but even so, every now and then an apple rolls away down a hill and surprises people.

[question] What for would I name my baby after that man? That is a crazy question you are asking. No, no, no. My baby was named for my mother’s father, from when I was a little girl, his name was Yitzak, so I call the baby after him only with an American name. Yitzak Weissman was his name, I remember him when I was a little girl, he was an old man already, and we would get in his lap, my sister and me, and he would give us sometimes a little bit of sugar from his tea, he would keep this sugar all in one big lump, a cone of sugar, he kept it in a wooden box on the table, and he had this special knife for to cut it, and he would take some off for his tea, just a little bit, and put it in his mouth, to drink the tea through. We loved that sugar. He was a very religious man, a very good man, and so I think to name my baby to honor him. What are you, crazy, to suggest I would soil my baby’s name to honor that gonif, that shirtwaist king he called himself?