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Oral history interview with Frank Ephraim

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0419 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0068

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    Oral history interview with Frank Ephraim
    Transcript
    Taped on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum.
    The date is February the 28th, 1997.
    I'm interviewing Frank Ephraim.
    My name is Nancy Alper.
    This is tape number one, side A. Frank,
    please tell me your name at birth, your date of birth,
    and your place of birth.
    My name at birth was Franz Gunter Ephraim.
    I was born on the 19th of February,
    1931 in Berlin, Germany.
    The actual district of birth was Charlottenburg,
    district of Berlin.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit about your parents
    and their background?
    My father, who was born in 1903, was a businessman.
    He originally was an inventor and held patents
    of things like an alligator clip for the electrical or radio
    industry.
    And after the crash, he went into another kind of business.
    He worked for a large firm that made diesel engines,
    narrow gauge engines for sugar cane plantations
    in South America and parts of Asia.
    And he worked there until the Nuremberg laws 1936 no longer
    allowed him to work in an organization of that kind.
    Then he went to work for a textile firm.
    And that's where he was until we left Germany in 1939.
    His father and mother actually owned
    a clothing store in one of the sections of Berlin
    called Friedenau.
    My mother was born in a town called Schneidemuhl,
    which is in West Prussia.
    And her father was a veterinarian
    who had to do with mostly farm animals.
    They were married in 1928 and came to live in Berlin.
    And there she was basically a housewife
    and did some work for a advertising
    firm for some years.
    But then most of the time she did not.
    She was at home.
    Why don't you tell me your mother's maiden name
    and a little bit about her family,
    including where they came from?
    As I mentioned, they came from a town called Schneidemuhl, which
    actually served as a railhead for the Battle of Tannenberg
    in the First World War.
    My grandfather, whose name was Heymann, H-E-Y-M-A-N-N,
    served in that first World War.
    He was a major of cavalry, a veterinary surgeon
    for a cavalry regiment that served also in Tannenberg
    as well as Verdun.
    My mother grew up in Schneidemuhl.
    And her mother, again, was a housewife that did not
    have a particular profession.
    My mother had a twin brother and sister, eight years younger
    than she.
    And they emigrated early from Germany to the United States.
    Actually, they first went to Italy and in 1934
    after the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933.
    So she lived in Berlin with my father,
    and I was born, say, three years after they
    were married in 1931.
    Tell me a little bit about the Jewish background
    both of your parents.
    Both of my parents came from Jewish homes.
    Both grandparents were Jewish.
    They were members of a Jewish temple in Berlin.
    It was a synagogue on Prinzregentren Strasse.
    And they attended that relatively regularly.
    And even though during the somewhat difficult times
    after the rise of Adolf Hitler, they still, of course,
    went to the synagogue.
    In fact, my father was there on the night of Kristallnacht,
    November the 9th, 1938 and did see the ruins of the synagogue
    that next morning.
    Was theirs a more orthodox background, either one of them
    or did they both come from very assimilated families?
    They were relatively assimilated.
    They were not orthodox.
    My grandfather on my mother's side, the veterinarian,
    of course, in his profession, it was
    extremely difficult to practice any orthodox religion,
    because he had to deal with farm animals,
    including pigs and cattle.
    So that he was not orthodox.
    On my father's side, they were also not orthodox.
    We're what one would consider conservative,
    and they went to a conservative synagogue
    as far back as I can remember.
    So I was brought up in the conservative level of Judaism.
    How long, as far as you know, were
    both of your families in the area
    that today we would think of as Germany or Prussia?
    Well, my grandparents on my mother's side,
    the veterinarian, he died in 1933, not long after Adolf
    Hitler came to power.
    And my grandmother died six months later.
    So I barely knew them.
    I was two years old.
    On my father's side, both parents,
    both his parents were born in Berlin.
    And my grandfather died actually the day before Kristallnacht
    on November the 8th, 1938 after a illness, a heart problem.
    My grandmother lived, and she and my uncle,
    my father's younger brother, were
    both taken to Litzmannstadt, which the Germans named
    for Lodz in Poland.
    My grandmother died on the transport nearing the ghetto,
    and my uncle died in the ghetto itself.
    I believe was 1942 that he died there.
    How were you able to ascertain that?
    At what point did you find out what
    had happened to those family members?
    Shortly after the Second World War,
    the Red Cross had gathered names of people
    based on lists that were available to them
    as to place of death.
    And my father just found that out.
    Oh, it must have been sometime in 1949 or so.
    Now, both names are listed in the Gedenkbuch,
    which the Germans have published in 1986
    I believe was the first edition.
    It's a two volume book that lists apparently
    over 100,000 German Jews that perished.
    And it shows where they were from, their maiden names,
    and where they were taken and death if the date of death
    was known.
    And they were designated as missing if the date of death
    is unknown.
    For example, people who perished in Auschwitz,
    there would be no date of death known.
    You may have said this, but I didn't get it.
    What was your mother's maiden name?
    Mother's maiden name was Charlotte Heymann.
    She also had three other middle names.
    It was Rosa Ernestine.
    I've forgotten the third one.
    How did your parents meet?
    My parents met when my father visited Schneidemuhl,
    I guess visiting other relatives that lived in the area.
    And they met in that area.
    My mother belonged or my grandfather,
    actually, belonged to a lodge.
    In those days, that was sort of a common thing,
    particularly for people in the professions.
    And it was actually, it was known as the Odd Fellows Lodge.
    It's an international organization.
    But they have branches all over the world,
    and he was a member of that.
    And there was a lot of social activity
    that went along with being a member of the lodge.
    And at one of the affairs there, they were introduced
    and that's how they met.
    Both of them it sounds like led an integrated life
    with the general social life in the area at the time
    and they didn't just function within
    their own Jewish communities.
    Is that correct?
    To a large degree, although they were always
    close to the Jewish community.
    They were part of it.
    In a place like Schneidemuhl, which
    was a town or city probably somewhere
    in the neighborhood of 80,000 or 90,000 people,
    there were naturally only a few Jewish families
    who, of course, knew one another and went to the same synagogue
    or there may have been more than one synagogue.
    However, they did deal with everyone else.
    Certainly my grandfather being a veterinarian
    did all the veterinary work of the whole farming area
    in the area.
    And he was also the town's meat inspector,
    which sort of went along with being a veterinarian.
    So that integrated him with the rest of the population
    as the family.
    Very often farmers did not pay in cash.
    They paid in goods like eggs or butter.
    So that was the practice in those days.
    So they were more or less part of the rest of the community,
    not segregated or separated.
    There was no ghetto in that town,
    as there were few ghettos in Germany.
    There may have been districts which were largely Jewish,
    but as a rule, not.
    Your father grew up in Berlin.
    Is that correct?
    That's correct.
    Yes, my father grew up in Berlin.
    And he went to school.
    He was a teenager during the First World War
    and sort of took care of the family
    because his father was in the military, the German army,
    the Kaiser's army at that time and was on the front.
    I think he was on the Western Front near Verdun.
    So he had to take care of his mother and younger brother.
    So he was working.
    And as I mentioned before, he did very well
    at inventions, holding patents.
    And then later on that sort of dissipated
    as the crash 1929 occurred.
    And then he went to work for this engineering
    locomotive-- this locomotive engineering firm.
    It was called Orenstein und Koppel.
    They're a well known firm in that field in Germany.
    Still exist.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit about the family store
    that you mentioned?
    Yes.
    My grandfather, that's my father's father
    who had the strange name of Adolf.
    Because in those days, that was a fairly common name.
    Adolf Ephraim.
    And he and my grandmother owned a clothing store in a district
    called Friedenau, which is sort of south
    of the center of Berlin.
    And they ran that store throughout their life.
    And my father, though, never actually worked there.
    He did his own thing.
    And I think his younger brother too
    was interested in other areas.
    So they ran the store until they retired.
    And that must have been in 1936 or so,
    because my grandfather then took ill and died two years later.
    But they ran this--
    it was a general clothing store.
    That's all I really know about it.
    I don't recall having ever been there,
    but that's what I had heard.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit about your childhood?
    And I realize you were very young when you left Germany,
    but what do you recall about your family and your Jewishness
    in Berlin at that time when you were growing up?
    Well, my first recollections as a kid
    were probably when I was perhaps two or three years old.
    I'm estimating that.
    We were living in an area of Berlin called Steglitz
    and it was an apartment flat.
    And I played in a large area nearby.
    And then we moved to an area called
    Charlottenburg in the district of Halensee specifically.
    And there I went first to something
    like a nursery school.
    And I played with a lot of different kids.
    We lived on the street.
    The street's name was [PLACE NAME]..
    It was a dead end street which led off a larger street called
    Paulsborner Strasse, which was one of the larger
    streets in Berlin.
    And there we also lived in an apartment on the ground level.
    And the street, there were lots of kids
    on the street from different families.
    Predominantly, they were non-Jewish.
    Since again, one did not live necessarily in a Jewish area,
    since there weren't very many of those.
    There was one, I recall.
    And I played with all these other kids.
    However, one began to notice even at the age of four or five
    that there were kids who had joined the Hitler Youth,
    and they would occasionally appear
    in uniform, sort of a khaki top and black pants
    and they all wore daggers.
    And they would say that the dagger should not
    be pulled out of a scabbard unless you actually
    plan to use it.
    The other game and toys that they
    liked to play with at the time were ball bearings.
    Germany had been up front in the development
    in a factory of ball bearings.
    So the big thing was for a kid to have a ball bearing.
    And they would roll it along.
    But of course, the Jewish kids couldn't get hold of one
    of those, because for some reason,
    they were only available from certain sources
    and perhaps through the Nazi youth movement or the Hitler
    Youth.
    And so these kids had these ball bearings
    with which they played.
    And they would always ask me as a little kid, are you
    a full Jew, are you a half a Jew or what?
    Because by then, of course, they were
    being indoctrinated thoroughly as to the ills of the Jews,
    which they just simply accepted and practiced.
    I mean, you were considered to be
    a Jew and as such and not really a member of their group
    or their society.
    Although they would not take an active or physical role
    in that, certainly at that time.
    Two of the kids I remember very well.
    One was my age.
    One I was a little younger.
    They were the sons of what we call the portier.
    The portier of an apartment building is like the,
    I don't know what do we call it today here.
    Concierge.
    This man was responsible for all the maintenance and repair
    and he lived in one of the apartments
    also on the ground floor, just sort of next door.
    In fact, they invited me to one of their Christmas Eve fairs.
    Well, he got dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out goodies.
    And he also gave me a packet of German style cookies.
    And so that was kind of interesting.
    I mean, they were not openly anti-Semitic.
    They were, of course, aware of what was going on.
    I mean, whenever there was a major holiday in Germany,
    Adolf Hitler's birthday, for example, April the 20th,
    the Nazi swastika flags would be hanging from the balconies
    three stories down.
    It was very obvious that they were all hanging up the flag.
    Very often there would be a uniformed SS,
    the black uniform, the Schutzstaffel,
    that would be hanging around the area
    or have families living there.
    This was I'm estimating 1935, '36 by then.
    I was four or five years old.
    In Germany, you started school at the age of six
    and you did not start in kindergarten.
    That's something that is really and more of an American thing.
    Although there were kindergartens in Germany,
    these were the nursery schools.
    So you started the equivalent of first grade.
    Actually, in German it's the eighth grade
    and then went to seventh and sixth.
    Eighth would be achte, which is the German term for the eighth.
    I went to school started in 1937.
    The school was a Jewish school, because at that time
    Jews were no longer allowed to go to the regular schools,
    the public schools in Germany.
    So this Jewish school had been founded
    by a woman of the name of Toni Lessler.
    And she was an experienced educator
    and opened up this school in a former villa
    near the Grunewald, which is a very nice area.
    And I went to school there.
    The way it worked is my parents had a dog.
    And actually, the dog was older than I.
    And he had an English name.
    His name was Monkey.
    And he was a white haired terrier.
    And I would head off for school down the street, head
    for the well known street in Berlin called Kurfurstendamm,
    where I pick up a street car.
    It was a number 76.
    And I took it to school.
    And on my way back, my mother would meet me.
    The dog would sort of run back and forth
    as I was coming down the street.
    And so I remember that very well, of course, in those days.
    But also that street would often be used by--
    I would often see people wearing the Nazi uniform,
    the Stormtrooper uniform, the tan and black or the SS all
    black.
    And they would march up and down the street.
    There were lots of them around in Berlin, obviously.
    So these people-- at that time, my looks
    were such that I was never considered to be Jewish.
    I had sort of white blond hair and blue eyes.
    So at first glance, nobody would recognize me as a Jew, at least
    from their description of what you would look like.
    However, once we got on the streetcar nearing
    Lessler Schule, the Jewish school,
    there were often people on the streetcar
    who would make cracks about the kids getting off there.
    Like, these damn Jews, and something of that order.
    So you were familiar with anti-Semitism right
    off the bat.
    Also whenever we walked down the street,
    there were restaurants which had signs on them,
    so Jews not allowed.
    And then of course in 1937, by that time park benches,
    which were mostly painted green, a few of them
    were repainted yellow and had a black J in the center of them.
    Those were for Jews.
    Jews were not allowed to sit on the green benches, only
    the yellow benches.
    So I saw that.
    And on occasion, my father, who was always
    very interested in many different technical things,
    being sort of an engineering mind,
    we would visit parts of town.
    He took me to the middle of Berlin,
    called the Berlin Mitte, the Unter den Linden,
    a very famous Avenue.
    And there was some sort of a parade going on.
    And one of the things that I noticed was that Berlin had
    a police force that wore blue uniforms and had sort of black
    shiny [? schäkels ?].
    That was a particular style of uniform for the Berlin police.
    They were called Schutzpolizei.
    But that was contracted to Schupo.
    So you always know that was the cop on the beat.
    And they were usually very competent people.
    They were typical policemen.
    Except they changed the green uniforms for special occasions
    when they had a Nazi parade or something like that.
    So that was something that sticks in my mind
    as seeing a whole group of them rather than wearing
    their regular blue were now wearing green.
    Unter den Linden, often there was a parade
    and we would watch that, even though it was a Nazi parade.
    I mean, you could still see that and see who was marching
    and you could see them with their drums and banners
    and that sort of thing.
    The other thing is he would take me to the railroad station.
    He was interested in trains.
    So there we would see all different kinds
    of trains coming.
    And one of the famous trains in Germany at the time in English
    would be called the flying hamburger.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    It was a train that ran between Hamburg and Berlin.
    It was a high speed train in those days,
    as fast as you could get in that time.
    So these are some of the things we would do.
    We were still able to do these kinds of excursions.
    However, entrance to restaurants or entrance
    to certain movie theaters and entrance
    to-- in fact, I don't recall, I only
    recall having been to a movie once
    in my whole time in Berlin, which was I
    was born in '31 I left in '39.
    So in those eight years.
    And that was when I was taken one weekend to an aunt
    of my mother's.
    She had six aunts and two uncles.
    And the aunt lived in a sort of a suburb of Berlin
    called Karlshorst.
    It was on the eastern part of Berlin.
    My uncle there was a physician.
    And they had no children.
    So I stayed with them for the weekend,
    and she did take me to a movie.
    They were playing a movie with Shirley Temple in it.
    It was something where she was being chased
    by hordes of horsemen that I don't recall exactly
    on the subject or what the title of the movie was,
    but that was one of my entertainments in Berlin.
    But going back to the school, the Lessler Schule, that
    had a sort of an interesting--
    I don't know if I should move ahead.
    This is like a flashback thing.
    Lessler Schule, as I mentioned, was run by Toni Lessler.
    It had all the grades up through the, well, the last years
    of the equivalent of high school in Germany.
    So it must've been about 12 different grades in the school.
    There was a dean of students who my parents knew
    sort of socially.
    And he was a sort of disciplinarian.
    And I had a few run ins with him because I always
    was the kind of kid that liked to goof off
    or do different things.
    When I entered the first grade, before we go further,
    I just want to identify the district
    that I lived in in Germany.
    As I mentioned, the street's name was [INAUDIBLE]..
    Sort of a weird name.
    And it was just a short block dead end street
    and led off from a larger street called Paulsborner Strasse.
    The actual area's name was Halensee.
    And it was sort of near Charlottenburg, which
    is a major district of Berlin.
    If one were to look at a map, it would be sort of
    in the slightly south central area of Berlin.
    It is today close to the Konrad Adenauer Platz.
    That, of course, that name is more recent than that,
    dating back from that period.
    There is a very large church, a red brick church,
    in that neighborhood.
    And there is a playground that my mother used to take me to.
    It had a large sandlot.
    And I recall playing there.
    In fact, I recall playing there with a Turkish kid.
    He was a son of a consul or something
    like that and in the sandlot.
    And strangely enough, a few years ago in 1992 and also
    again 1995, I was back in Berlin and went back
    to that same playground.
    It's still there and has the same name.
    It's Hochmeisterplatz is the name of the playground.
    And the name of the church is the Hochmeisterkirche,
    which is about a block away.
    Would you characterize this neighborhood
    as upper middle class?
    And I assume also it was mixed religiously.
    Yes.
    It was, of course, mixed religiously.
    Predominantly German Lutheran or Evangelisch
    is what the Germans call the Protestant faith.
    Jews live there.
    I think if you take a look at Berlin
    with probably population of a million or more,
    Jews numbering about 150,000.
    We're talking anywhere from 6% to 10% or more Jewish,
    something in that neighborhood.
    Relatively well mixed throughout Berlin
    except for one area, which was where the name of the streets
    were like Grenadierstrasse or [PLACE NAME]..
    That area was largely inhabited by Jews
    who were more recent immigrants from places in the east,
    such as Poland.
    Had a fairly good sized community
    of people who were refugees from Polish persecution
    and became integrated into the German Jewish community slowly.
    But they in many cases lived in one area,
    as is fairly usual for new immigrants.
    But the area we lived in is hard to classify.
    Probably middle class to upper middle class.
    In that particular area of Halensee,
    there were villas, individual homes in those days,
    which of course were relatively expensive and used
    by the well-to-do.
    There was a railroad station not far away.
    There was-- I don't recall too much else.
    Primarily residential, most of that area.
    We were talking about the school, I believe.
    Oh, and I wanted to ask you, was this a public school or was it
    a private school?
    And were you required to go to a Jewish school at that time?
    Yes, the school was a private school,
    as I mentioned, run by Toni Lessler and her staff.
    And we were forced to go to schools like that
    because we were no longer allowed to attend
    German public schools.
    All Jewish children were sent off away
    from the public schools and had to attend a private school,
    a Jewish school.
    Let me rephrase the question slightly.
    I've interviewed people who had to go to Jewish schools,
    but those Jewish schools were funded by the government
    for the public.
    It sounds like that what you're saying, at least about Berlin
    in particular, if not Germany as a whole,
    you couldn't go to the normal public schools,
    but public Jewish schools were not furnished for you
    or paid for by the government.
    I don't remember that precisely.
    There may have been some public schools financed by the state.
    I'm not aware of it, though.
    I wouldn't have that piece of information.
    This particular school I don't believe
    was financed by the state.
    There were several schools like that.
    An interesting facet about this school
    was the fact that Toni Lessler left Germany
    in the middle of 1939.
    We left in February of '39.
    And I only found out a year ago, 1996,
    through an interesting method that currently
    in the '90s, '80s and '90s, Berlin
    publishes a little newsletter which
    they send to former inhabitants, Jewish inhabitants of Berlin.
    And in it, I found an ad by a man who
    attended this Lessler Schule.
    This was the first time I'd ever heard
    of anyone that went to the same school as I did.
    I contacted him.
    He lives in Toronto.
    And I actually had lunch with him on one of my trips
    up to Toronto.
    And he revealed to me that when this Toni Lessler left
    the school, another woman educator took it over,
    and her name was Goldschmidt.
    And from then on, the school was called the Goldschmidt Schule.
    The Goldschmidt Schule is well known for two reasons.
    Number one, the book Stella by Whitmer.
    I forgot.
    Anyway, a person, Stella, went to the Goldschmidt Schule.
    That's one thing.
    The other is the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum on the fourth floor where you
    begin the permanent exhibition, there is a video.
    It's close to where the movie on anti-Semitism is.
    And that video shows children in a school.
    Which when I always looked at it, the school
    looked awfully familiar.
    And it shows that kids writing Hebrew on the blackboard
    and shows them at various activities,
    all Jewish children.
    And at the end it says, Goldschmidt Schule.
    And I always thought, well, that must
    have been that other school called Goldschmidt Schule.
    I now know that was my school, Lessler Schule,
    because it changed names in the middle of 1939.
    57 years later, I finally discovered
    that that's what I've been looking
    at when I'm on duty up on the fourth floor as a volunteer.
    I see that and I now realize that was really my school.
    So it's a strange feeling.
    You were going to tell me something about the school
    itself.
    And I assume there were certain unique characteristics
    of her teaching methods or the way this school was conducted.
    Well, the unique thing about the school
    was that certainly at that time, we're
    talking now about the years 1936 through 1939,
    I went there actually for two years, '37 through '39.
    The school mixed the required curriculum in all the fields,
    arithmetic and writing.
    And at that time, the first year,
    we had to learn the old German style script,
    which is called Sütterlin, which no one else could read.
    But that's how we began school.
    Only in our second year did we learn the Latin,
    which is very useful.
    Because once I emigrated, Latin was the only thing,
    and Sütterlin would have really fouled me up royally.
    However, this school also, of course,
    had a Jewish component, which meant that everyone who
    went there took the religious part of it, which
    is the holidays, the practices, the Jewish religion,
    its history, its current condition.
    We learned Hebrew, to write and to read.
    And of course, at the same time, we
    learned to read and write German.
    So it had all those features of a complete
    what you say in the United States would
    be a Jewish high school or Jewish day school.
    And it had excellent teachers, because those teachers also
    were no longer able to work in the public or other schools.
    So they went to work in this school.
    So we had some of the finest teachers in Germany
    in these schools.
    And Jews, of course, value education,
    and so this worked extremely well.
    People who went to those schools got an excellent education.
    I only attended two years, so my experience is limited.
    However, we also did excursions.
    We were still able to go out of town or in town to parks
    to view things as a group.
    This was always awkward, because in public
    with a large group of Jewish children,
    there would be all kinds of things
    that you'd hear from bystanders, Germans.
    Any notion that the Germans had no knowledge or had no feeling
    or had no sense of what was occurring is not true.
    They certainly did.
    They were fully aware of the situation.
    Anti-Semitism at that time in Germany was predominant.
    You find it at every street corner.
    That was a given.
    For example, there was a small store
    on the corner of our street where
    you could buy milk and bread and things like that.
    So a small chain.
    The actual name of the chain was Bolle B-O-L-L-E with a little
    accent on the E. And they also had a logo,
    which is like a little man but just a line drawing.
    And you'd walk in there and the Germans would come in there.
    Very often they would walk in and give the Nazi salute
    and say Heil Hitler as a common greeting, and when they left
    they did the same thing.
    And as a Jew, the discrimination was
    rampant and obvious and open.
    There was no covert activity.
    Sure, many Germans were uncomfortable with this
    and openly did not participate, but a great many did.
    So you were always in that situation
    where either you could not enter,
    you were cursed or somehow excluded or whatever.
    You were certainly not a equal member of society.
    That was obvious every day and every hour of the day,
    essentially, once you were out in the open.
    And every time you listened to the radio, same thing.
    When you were with your school, you
    said that there were anti-Semitic comments or acts.
    I assume that you were identifiably Jewish
    as a group of children with teachers
    and the people around you knew that you were Jewish.
    And I wanted to ask you if you remember armbands
    and any other characteristics that would have told people
    that you were Jewish.
    At that time, that is where I'm going up through 1939,
    Jews in Germany were still not required
    to wear the yellow star.
    That occurred some years later, a year or so later.
    There were no actual badges required,
    no armbands required, nothing of that sort.
    These things did come about later.
    However, let's face it, a small group or a larger
    group of children with teachers, I
    guess there were characteristics that identified us as Jews.
    And since perhaps the largest--
    there were not a large number of people
    with blond hair and blue eyes like mine
    and perhaps some darker in complexion
    possibly or with other facial characteristics
    that one would expect to find among Jews, particularly
    if you were a German.
    Because by that time, they were so
    keyed on the racial and physical characteristics
    as being depicted on the pictures and posters
    and other descriptions that they began
    to sense very quickly that you were Jewish.
    In the school itself, and you may have been too young,
    but if you were discussing any kind of German history
    or information about the German government,
    I was curious what you remembered
    about how that material was presented to the children.
    I was perhaps too young for classes
    that dealt in politics or in government.
    By and large, those subjects were not
    taught at the elementary level.
    There was some history dealing with, well,
    in those days, of course, the First World War and times
    before.
    And the First World War saw Jews as part of the German society.
    Although, again, there was certainly anti-Semitism.
    However, as I mentioned about my two grandfathers,
    both served in the German army.
    My grandfather had the rank of major.
    That's from my mother's side, the veterinarian.
    He was the regimental veterinarian.
    And the other grandfather, I don't know what he was.
    I'm just guessing he probably was an enlisted person.
    So the history was given--
    I don't remember as having gotten much there.
    Certainly at my age, I was six, seven, eight years old.
    Politics, they stayed away from that by
    and large, a Jewish school with the conditions and situation
    as it was.
    There was at one time when another group of children
    joined us because they had to leave the building
    and that was their school that was being taken over,
    expropriated.
    And so they had to join our school.
    And so there was this tremendous tension.
    However, I do recall one episode.
    Well, this had to do more with Judaism.
    There was the-- I forgot.
    It was one of the festival, Jewish festivals.
    It was Sukkot, where we were given a grapefruit.
    And that was an unusual fruit for that part of the world,
    but they were available, apparently.
    And our teacher, who was called Miss Fraulein [PERSONAL NAME]
    was her name, and explained the meaning of all of this.
    But I don't recall a great deal of politics,
    history being taught or discussed at that level,
    anyway.
    Do you remember government inspectors or any government
    officials coming to the school to look it over for any purpose
    while you were there?
    No, I don't.
    This is Nancy Alper.
    I'm interviewing Frank Ephraim for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    It's February the 28th, 1997.
    And this is the second side, side B,
    of the first tape of our interview.
    Frank, I was getting ready to ask you,
    I know that by then the ban on Jews being in public places
    had occurred, or at least that's my understanding.
    And you mentioned the schools going out occasionally
    on excursions.
    And I'm wondering how that worked, given that there
    was a ban on Jews in public.
    The way it worked, the excursions were very limited.
    They were in one instance I recall going out to a park.
    Or actually that was the Grunewald,
    which is a park in the city of Berlin.
    Where we just walked, took sort of a nature walk,
    if you will and had a picnic.
    We brought our own food and looked at trees
    and looked at birds and looked at foliage and shrubs.
    And the teachers accompanying us were
    [INAUDIBLE] explain things.
    The other thing, quite aside from the school
    I went to in Berlin, my parents sent me for two summers
    and, let me see, it must have been the summer of '36
    and the summer of '37 or it was '37 and '38.
    I forgot which one.
    They sent me to a camp in the Riesengebirge,
    which is near Czechoslovakia.
    And that camp was actually a mountain camp.
    A huge home, all Jewish, run by two women.
    One was a PhD, a doctor.
    One was actually a medical doctor
    and the other one was a PhD in education.
    And they ran this home all year, actually.
    But in the summer, they would take children of various ages.
    And it was a full boarding and everything.
    And there we actually went on long excursions
    in the mountains and the forests and over rushing
    streams that we had to cross.
    So that was a very delightful experience.
    I would go up by train.
    My mother would take me.
    She would actually take me to the place and then go back.
    And I would stay there for approximately six weeks.
    And again, this was during the Nazi regime.
    That place was operating.
    It was all Jewish.
    And as far as I know, I don't know how long it operated.
    I doubt much past 1939.
    But that was an extra added experience in the summer.
    Going back to the Lessler Schule in Berlin,
    as I mentioned before, it was a mix of education.
    There was a fairly strong effort to educate children
    in the Jewish faith and the Jewish practices.
    This was not a reform type of Judaism.
    Perhaps people often misunderstand.
    Although Reform Judaism was perhaps first formulated
    in Germany or in Europe, it never
    grew to any kind of dimension that we
    know of in this country, in the United States today.
    It was a very small affair.
    The predominant gradiations were the orthodoxy and even
    much larger were the conservative movements
    of various shades or levels.
    So that most of the synagogues in Berlin were conservative.
    There was none that I recall that was
    quote "reform" unquote.
    So that's pretty much all I remember about the school.
    Although one thing, the very first day
    that I went to school, we all followed the German tradition,
    which is every child received from parents and relatives sort
    of a large bag full of candy, of different kinds of candy.
    It's shaped like a cone, a huge cone.
    And it came in various sizes.
    Anything from about a foot to about three feet
    long, which was filled with boxes of candy or candies
    in bags or that sort of thing.
    It's a traditional German type of event
    which occurs when the child goes to his very
    first class in a school.
    So the Jewish school also followed that practice.
    In fact, they followed every German practice.
    Because after all, the people that
    went there and their parents were of the German culture
    in addition to being Jewish.
    So it was a dual thing.
    But things of that nature were done in German style.
    Do you remember supplies or materials changing,
    conditions changing at the school,
    I understand this is the child's impression, up until the time
    that you and your parents fled Berlin?
    Well, I did not notice anything in particular.
    One of the things that I did notice
    was that the Germans certainly in Berlin, as far as I know,
    began a program of conservation.
    In other words, they offered two or three
    different kinds of garbage cans, and they had a cardboard pig
    that they handed out to everyone.
    There was a placard in the shape of a pig and the color pink.
    And on it were written all the things
    that were to be put in this one garbage can that
    could be used to feed pigs.
    That was the idea.
    So that they would have pig food available
    based on the garbage that was dumped by people
    in apartment houses and homes.
    So that was one of the beginning practices of conserving
    materials and food.
    They, of course, had various programs.
    The collection of silver paper.
    I recall that everyone even in the Jewish school, mind you,
    was collecting silver paper, wrappings from chocolate
    and putting it into a ball.
    And that would eventually, once the ball
    was about three or four inches in diameter,
    would be turned in, and that went to some sort of war effort
    to be melted down for its content.
    There was other conservation moves.
    A clothing collection for what the Germans called [GERMAN]
    winter help for the poor.
    I also recall, and we go back nowadays,
    we talk about the persecution of the gypsies.
    There was quite a gypsy community in Berlin.
    They used to come down the street with a horse and wagon
    and either beg or offer to work or whatever
    or pick up old things.
    And they would with horse drawn vehicle would then
    move through the streets.
    And gypsies were onboard.
    So we did get to know what gypsies, who they were and more
    or less what they did.
    There were also times I recall the first sort
    of as an aside the mail trucks that delivered the mail
    or brought mail to the area were electrically driven vehicles.
    It's very unusual for that time.
    There were also interesting things about Berlin.
    For example, the streetcars always
    were a double, a main car and one that was hooked on.
    And the one that was hooked on was called a smoker.
    You were allowed to smoke on that one
    but not in the main car.
    Whereas Berlin had a major subway,
    and I went on that a couple of times with my father.
    Once he took me--
    he always wanted to see things and have me look at things.
    [? Whatever they were ?].
    Again, mostly in the technical area,
    because that was a great interest.
    Berlin has a very large tower, not
    as large as the Eiffel Tower, but it's
    a telegraph tower which is very high
    and has a restaurant halfway up and an observation platform
    at the top.
    It's called a [GERMAN],, meaning sparks, but it refers to radio.
    So we went up in that one time up to the top and down again.
    We were able to do that.
    At that point in that particular place,
    there was no sign no Jews allowed.
    But these places began to be rare.
    So that he had to sort of work hard to find out
    where one could go and not be confronted with these placards
    or this prohibition.
    You mentioned two things that I wanted
    you to amplify on if you could.
    One was antisemitic posters you mentioned.
    And the other was when you went out in such a way
    that you were recognizably Jewish, whatever the reason,
    people would make remarks.
    And I was wondering if you had more specific memories of what
    those were, what people's attitude was.
    Well, basically the expressions that people
    used when they dealt with or saw Jews, those that made remarks,
    the English translation was a dirty Jew.
    Or they'd say Judenkinder, which is
    sort of a demeaning term for Jewish kids or Jewish children.
    Or they would Sau Jude, which means pig Jew or dirty Jew.
    They would also use expressions like that.
    As far as the advertising or billboard type of materials
    concerned, Berlin, like perhaps other large cities,
    has these large round poster kiosks.
    [GERMAN] as they called them in German.
    And on which were posted all kinds of things,
    announcements and so forth.
    And occasionally you'd see rallies announced.
    And sometimes you'd notice that the subject
    was the Jew and the problems that they're
    causing the Germans.
    Cartoons of the like I don't recall seeing.
    Sure, they were there, but for some reason,
    they were not that obvious.
    They were probably more obvious in little booklets or books
    that were given to German children in their schools.
    Since we didn't go to those schools,
    we did not see those books.
    On occasion, we might see them if other German children
    we were playing with had a book like that.
    But that was relatively rare.
    I don't recall seeing that a great deal.
    The friends in your neighborhood that you played with,
    you mentioned that some of them were in the Hitler Youth.
    And I'm wondering how you felt treated
    by most of those children or what, if any,
    other individual incidents you remember
    about how you were being treated when you went outside to play?
    Well, it was mostly one of either exclusion
    or being part of the group but not at their,
    shall we say, level out there.
    However, you're still dealing with children, in most cases.
    And these were young children, my age, ages four, five, six,
    seven, eight.
    And these children were not as inculcated.
    They were not as rabid, because they had just sort of heard it.
    And like children hear things, they repeat them.
    But their heart wasn't necessarily into that.
    And you were still another person that they played with.
    Or if you had a toy that they liked,
    then you'd join them or we would wear hats of various kinds
    or whatever things we did as kids.
    We ran.
    We had a sleigh, had sleighs or sleds in the winter time.
    And so there was not--
    the sort of discrimination there was not as great
    as it was among older children and adults, I'm sure.
    So I was still a fairly young fellow,
    so I didn't really get that much of a negative reaction
    from them.
    What do you remember about what your parents were
    saying when you were around either to each other or to you
    by way of explanation of this differentiation between Germans
    and Jews and just generally what was going on politically
    at the time?
    Well, they didn't say a great deal.
    For one thing, we would occasionally listen to--
    we had a radio, and we listen to that.
    And speeches and occasionally to hear Hitler speak
    or what have you.
    They mostly practiced being careful.
    And they would be very careful of what they said in public
    and also what I might utter in public.
    They would prefer that we not speak too much or little at all
    in public.
    And as a result, these were things
    that I always wondered why we are going about it
    in this fashion.
    I was a fairly open type of person even then.
    And so that was a little bit dismayed
    of having to keep my mouth shut.
    But I realized the reason for it,
    and that was because there was a rampant underlying
    atmosphere of anti-Semitism with remarks with everything
    else that one saw.
    And the explanation, there wasn't any.
    Because in many ways, many people initially
    thought, at least certainly in the first years
    of Hitler's regime, that this will blow over.
    This guy wouldn't last very long or whatever.
    In this, they were all wrong.
    And so perhaps they were just hoping
    that things would subside and blow over or change.
    The Nazis were capable of changing the atmosphere.
    As we well know, in the 1936 Olympics,
    they cleaned up things and subdued things
    so that they would be recognized internationally.
    So there was always, of course, there were newspapers around
    and there were magazines around.
    And we did not get, of course, the German Völkischer
    Beobachter.
    This was the Nazi paper.
    We got the regular newspaper and it had some articles
    from this and that.
    Certainly it was anti-Semitic.
    I didn't read the newspaper thoroughly at the time.
    I read mostly the books and stuff that we got at school.
    And we observed all the Jewish holidays
    and I read some of the Jewish books and things of that sort.
    We didn't go into great discussions.
    My mother was of the kind that was always
    more inclined to try to subdue the situation
    and not give great explanations.
    It was difficult to explain.
    It was very difficult. When you are in a situation like that,
    what is there to explain?
    It's there and you don't know why and you can't explain it.
    So I don't think they were able to explain it.
    No one was able to really explain it.
    I assume too a lot of what they evolved
    into doing by way of their public behavior
    was pretty instinctive.
    They just began to respond in a certain way
    or anticipate things that were going to happen.
    But as you say, it would be very hard to articulate.
    The primary reason for acting in the way they did and most
    Jews did was there was no way out there was no one to go to.
    There was no one to complain to.
    The authorities were the ones that were
    conducting these campaigns.
    It's like say in the United States
    you elected a President that suddenly decided
    the same thing, that he'd like to get rid of the Jews,
    like to keep them out of society,
    would want to expropriate everything they owned.
    And the judges and courts and the authorities and officials
    all were along the same lines.
    There is no one that you could complain to.
    And that, of course, puts a crimp on everything
    you wish to do.
    The only way out is to leave, if you could.
    And that's, of course, what they began to plan.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit about your family
    life within the apartment where you lived
    and your life with your parents at that time,
    including the Jewish part of it?
    At that time, again, my age was approximately six,
    seven, eight.
    As I recall, the apartment I had my own room.
    At the time, my father and then I and my mother,
    we were great entertaining ourselves.
    I got into that habit early in life,
    perhaps because of the environment we lived in,
    but also that was sort of my instinct
    to be technically self-sufficient.
    And I was interested in puppets and we
    had those and built a small puppet theater that was built.
    And we had relatives in the United States
    who lived in places like St. Paul, Minnesota.
    This was a part of my grandmother's family.
    It was my grandmother's brother, who came to the United States
    in the late 1800s and established himself
    as a rancher in North Dakota.
    And they drove cattle and ended up
    in St. Paul, where he settled, and married a woman who
    came from Pennsylvania, a Jewish woman.
    And they were married in Pennsylvania.
    And they raised a family in the United States.
    They would occasionally send us a package of stuff, clothes.
    I remember my first Keds shoes.
    I was the only kid in the block who had anything like that.
    Unknown in Germany.
    And things of that sort.
    And packages of food, which was unusual or whatever.
    And so we had that contact on occasion.
    Now, in my youth, I was a sickly child at times.
    I ran through bouts of diphtheria.
    So I was ill for quite a while.
    Tonsillitis was one of my most favorite illnesses.
    And so I often had the problem with that.
    Whooping cough and stuff.
    But my father was great at building stuff, handicrafts
    or kits or models.
    So early on I had also inherited a set of soldiers that
    dated from the First World War.
    I believe may have been one of my grandfather's toys.
    So I was into doing toys a lot, making things, and designing
    things, drawing a great deal.
    So this is how we entertain ourselves.
    I went to nursery school before I went through the Lessler
    Schule that began in 1937.
    But before that, I spent a couple of years
    in so-called nursery day school, which is not far away.
    And again, this was with Jewish kids.
    And we went to various little parties
    occasionally that were held in different homes
    the parents would hold.
    And sometimes you would do a lot of reading.
    My father worked pretty hard at his job.
    He occasionally had to travel.
    He went to fairs which were in Leipzig and another place
    called Jena, J-E-N-A, which was also a center of fairs.
    And one time I think during that period,
    My mother took me back through her home town of Schneidemuhl
    by train.
    That was the only out of town excursion
    that I recall other than my visits, my summer camps
    to the Riesengebirge, the mountains in Czechoslovakia,
    near Czechoslovakia.
    But I was the only child.
    So as I say, it was a lot of reading, occasionally listening
    to radio, music.
    That's about all I recall.
    I don't remember too much else.
    Did you celebrate Shabbos and were there
    any other Jewish practices being practiced in the home?
    Keeping kosher, for example.
    No, we never kept kosher.
    There was the Sabbath candles, lighting of the candles.
    Hanukkah, which was celebrated, of course, with gifts.
    Unlike in the United States, other countries
    you only give gifts the first night.
    And that was a practice that we held.
    Other holidays, Sukkot was a holiday we celebrated.
    Purim was another one.
    But that was also at school.
    People would dress up and do that sort of thing.
    So these were the Jewish practices.
    As I say, it was not an Orthodox home.
    There was no Hebrew, no great sit down
    and reading or anything of that sort.
    We know some of the songs that went along with the religion.
    But not a kosher home.
    Perhaps there weren't that many strictly kosher
    homes in Germany.
    There was obviously a large kosher Orthodox community,
    but the predominant Jewish community was conservative.
    Do you remember getting together with other family
    members in general for Jewish locations?
    In particular, say, Passover or Shabbos?
    Well, there was a yearly Seder at my grandfather's house,
    which he presided and that where we had
    the Seder ceremony each year.
    That's one.
    There was, of course, the fast of Yom Kippur,
    which both my parents held up to this very day.
    So that was another occasion.
    There were other families who occasionally came to visit.
    The problem you had by then was people were not doing much
    visiting with one another.
    They stayed home for various reasons.
    Both the persecution reason, the danger, the fear.
    So there was not a great deal of that.
    I do recall one night, it was 1938,
    I believe, late '38, in the middle of the night
    was a knock on the door.
    And what appeared was a man who had
    arrived on motorcycle from Schneidemuhl, my mother's
    hometown.
    He had to flee because the Nazis were about to enter his house,
    tear it apart, and take him in.
    So he managed to flee.
    He had a friend who give him some gasoline
    for his motorcycle, and he rode all night by motorcycle
    to Berlin.
    And this was a relative of my mother's, I believe.
    I'm not sure of the exact relationship.
    And he was joined about a month later.
    He stayed with us and he was joined a month later
    by his wife and son.
    And they finally left Germany.
    In fact, they took the similar route we did by ship.
    And he actually died on board ship
    and he was buried in a place called [? Aden ?]
    at the end of the Suez Canal.
    And his wife and son went on and ended up
    in Singapore, which was on the route,
    and they had relatives there, and they stayed in Singapore
    and only later went to Australia,
    where they then settled.
    But that was an incident that sticks out.
    Do you remember any of the specifics
    about why he was going to be picked up by the Germans
    or how he knew?
    How he knew.
    That's always a very interesting facet of life
    or had been in Germany.
    Very often the Germans would send a Gestapo agent or someone
    to the house.
    And then the people that were the subject of that interview,
    if you will, began to get very nervous
    and figured that it won't be long before someone would
    come along and arrest him, because they knew that had
    happened to other people.
    Because Jews were already being arrested,
    as probably everyone knows, almost 1933.
    A concentration camp Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg,
    work and later Dachau and Buchenwald
    were already set up for that purpose.
    So they sense that and so he fled.
    And apparently even fled at a point
    where they had apparently already entered
    the house, began to go through all their things,
    the mattresses, looking for money papers
    and God knows what, and he managed
    to sneak out with his motorbike and by on foot
    and then he got it gassed up and off he went.
    So he went just at a moment's notice.
    So apparently these things happen, particularly
    in the smaller towns, in the villages.
    Not so much in Berlin.
    After all, there you are dealing with a very large city.
    Everyone's watching.
    So the arrests would have to be done
    in the middle of the night, which is the usual case, 4:00
    in the morning or so.
    And my father had to spend nights outside the house.
    He did that on a whole number of occasions.
    He stayed with two maiden aunts of his in Berlin.
    And the only way-- he would come home
    toward the morning and my mother would sort of
    flick the kitchen light on so he could see it from a distance.
    And by flicking the light on, that
    was like a signal to tell him the coast was clear,
    that no one had been to the house to ask for him.
    So that I remember very distinctly.
    That happened we're talking now 1938.
    So this would have been the time that men
    were starting to be picked up.
    Oh yes, yes.
    Yes, they were picked up.
    Relatives, friends already being picked up,
    taken to Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg,
    which is right outside of Berlin,
    and put into those camps.
    Those days many were released after about four or five weeks
    or whatever and went back home.
    However, once you got into that rut,
    you know your days were numbered there.
    And the rush to leave really began to grow.
    To digress a bit, you had mentioned the Olympics
    and that the Nazis were able to put
    on a pretty face for the international community.
    As a child, what do you remember, if anything,
    about the happening of the Olympics?
    The Olympics.
    That brings to mind another incident or two.
    The Olympics were held, of course,
    at the new stadium that was built for that purpose.
    And strangely enough, my school, the Lessler Schule
    and other Jewish schools and German schools all
    were at a large athletic event at that stadium.
    We performed at that time, I recall,
    we had a medicine ball routine which we went through.
    My gym teacher at the Lessler Schule
    got us through those routines.
    And we performed in our blue and white uniforms
    with the Star of David, strangely enough,
    among all these other Germans with their schools
    at that stadium.
    On top of that, one weekend we were near Berlin
    in what was now a separate Jewish rowing or racing shell
    club.
    And there they had the racing shows.
    So the oars had the Star of David on it.
    And across there was the German racing club
    with the swastika on their oars.
    And they're both racing up and down
    and I can imagine there may have been some words exchanged.
    But it was still possible to do that.
    Although, again, that didn't last for very long,
    this separate, and of course, Jewish activity.
    Because we no longer could belong to the German clubs
    or the German schools.
    But yes, that was that event.
    That just preceded the Olympics.
    It was probably one of those affairs put on or allowed
    or a practice carried out to sort of subdue the whole notion
    of persecution.
    And that's what I do recall.
    I do recall the Olympics, '36, I was five years old.
    I remember something about a major event.
    Of course, we were told about things
    at that time that was going to happen.
    I don't recall details.
    I don't remember any personages or anyone like that.
    But that particular event where we
    were at this huge stadium, the Olympic stadium,
    doing our thing along with other Jewish schools
    and loads of other German schools,
    schoolchildren, doing their various athletic activities.
    Were either of your parents involved
    politically or with any sort of Zionist organization at all?
    No, they were not.
    They were certainly aware of it.
    We all, of course, were aware of the Jewish settlement
    in Palestine, as it was known at the time.
    And certainly there were moves afoot
    to take children to Palestine.
    And there were offers to do that by various people.
    I actually was-- they were contemplating at one point
    to do that with me or to send me to England on a child transport
    or to be taken to the United States
    by other relatives of my mother's
    family's many branches who were still
    allowed to come to the US.
    He was a physician, this man and his wife.
    And these people, the American side
    of the family out of St. Paul, Minnesota
    had given them an affidavit to come,
    because he had immediate job possibilities as a physician.
    And he in turn was a Russian, actually,
    who his wife had met when he was a prisoner of war, no less.
    In First World War.
    So there were all these different things
    were being thought about and discussed.
    But my mother being a very anxious kind of person
    was not willing to sort of ship me off to some unknown.
    And so we did wait till we were able to get out as a family.
    I take it you were hearing these discussions going on
    around you.
    And I'm wondering how you felt about this sort
    of free floating conversation about your fate.
    Well, you were always a bit anxious about that,
    obviously, not knowing where all this would
    lead and the discontinuity that you felt at the time.
    However, you began to sort of go along with it
    or go with the flow, so to speak, because it
    was happening to others.
    And you could sense there was a coming to an end of things
    in Germany for Jews.
    Not quite the end--
    that we could not foresee the end as it actually occurred.
    But certainly all the symptoms were there,
    that you were no longer part of that society.
    You were segregated in that society.
    And it did not seem to pass, as many people had hoped.
    So these options began to emerge into reality.
    There was a time when you sort of crossed the Rubicon even
    as a child and you knew that there
    was a very mushy or gray future here
    that needed to be resolved.
    And so therefore, you absorbed these possibilities as real
    after a while.
    How did your father's loss of his employment sort of plug
    in to the kinds of discussions that you
    were hearing in this gray, murky area when you were a child?
    What do you remember about his losing his job?
    Well, he sort of was a very capable guy.
    And when he left one job, he almost immediately
    floated into another.
    As I mentioned before, he began as an inventor,
    essentially, on his own.
    That dissipated with the crash of '29,
    I believe, the inflation, horrendous
    economic problems in Germany and Europe generally.
    And then he worked for this engineering firm
    with the diesel locomotives and stuff, which
    was very interesting for him.
    He dealt with foreigners, with Turks and South Americans.
    And he put together these big packages
    for engines for narrow gauge plantations and so on.
    And then that dissipated into a firm which handled
    textiles, textile production.
    And he always worked.
    I mean, there was no time when he was out of work.
    So he was always earning a living,
    and that sort of kept us going.
    So that helped.
    There was never a period of any length, I believe,
    of unemployment.
    So I did not sense a problem.
    Although financially we were not wealthy, on the other hand,
    we were not poor.
    So we were able to hang on as a sort of middle class family
    throughout.
    So that was the situation at the time.
    What became, of course, of central importance
    was how, when, where, and why to leave.
    On my mother's side, it was less of a problem psychologically.
    Both her parents had died.
    Her various other relatives, her younger brother and sister,
    the twins, had gone to Italy where
    he continued to study medicine.
    And then they immigrated to the United States
    where he finished at the University of Chicago.
    And they were brought to the United States
    again by this American side of the family, got affidavits
    to bring them over in the mid '30s.
    So her side was in large measure, although not
    completely, out of Germany.
    There was another couple who came to Berlin
    from a place called Dramburg, where they lived and they
    perished in the Holocaust, she in Auschwitz
    and he in Theresienstadt.
    But my father's was a little bit tougher.
    His mother and his brother.
    His brother was younger and his brother was always
    one of these adventures sorts.
    Oh, I'll get out somehow, no problem.
    I'll slip into France, whatever.
    His mother, that was difficult. An older woman and it
    was more difficult, of course, to leave her.
    But he had to in the end.
    And my father was a person who was not that inclined
    to make a major change.
    So there was a bit of a duality here.
    But we managed to get out, and I'll
    cover that a little later in detail, through a relative
    of my mother's who lived in the Philippines
    and gave us an affidavit to enter the Philippines.
    But I'll cover that a little later in more detail.
    Did you get the sense that your father's employment was going
    downhill in any way or that he was being discriminated against
    or sort of pushed to the wall as time went
    by in any of these positions?
    I didn't get that sense, but it certainly
    happened, because he had to--
    given the Nuremberg laws, the limitations on employment
    began to grow.
    Anyone who was employed in any kind of skill,
    bricklaying, [? or so, ?] plumbing,
    had to go out of that business.
    The Jews were essentially left to small retail operations
    or sales operations or very small enterprises.
    And of course, he saw that coming.
    And that too naturally worked on him.
    I don't know to what degree.
    He was not a man who went to great lengths to complain.
    And this was not his style.
    He was not-- my mother tended to be a complainer, he not.
    And so you did not hear any gripe
    or moan about that hardly at all.
    What do you remember about your grandfather's death
    the night before Kristallnacht?
    This is a taping of an interview for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    The person being interviewed is Frank Ephraim.
    The interviewee is Nancy Alper.
    It's February the 28th, 1997.
    And this is the beginning of tape two side A.
    And Frank, we were talking about your grandfather's death,
    his illness, and his death right before Kristallnacht.
    Yes, my grandfather took severely
    ill on about must have been in October of 1938.
    And since no Jewish hospitals were really no longer around,
    he was taken to one of the existing hospitals,
    a Christian hospital.
    And I did visit him there once with my parents.
    But he died on November the 8th, 1938, a significant day.
    The next night was the Kristallnacht, the crystal
    night, the Night of Broken Glass.
    And he was buried.
    And they did hold a funeral and had all that.
    That was still possible to do.
    And he was buried at the Weissensee Cemetery,
    which is in a sort of northern part of Berlin.
    The district Weissensee is sort of characterized it
    as a working class district.
    It has a huge, and still existing today,
    a huge Jewish cemetery.
    And it's tree covered.
    It's like a park.
    I had a chance to visit it twice, once in 1992 and once
    in 1995.
    I did actually discover the exact grave.
    Because when my parents visited the area in the '60s and I
    visiting in the 1992 could not actually
    determine the exact site of the grave.
    This last time, in 1996, I was there
    with the person that does the gravestones.
    And he had a map.
    And the authorities there had a map.
    We found the exact grave.
    And there was a small gravestone with his name on it.
    So I took a picture of that for my father
    who was still alive at the time.
    So that's where he was buried.
    My parents, of course, were at the funeral services.
    I was not.
    And that was there, of course, it
    was the mourning period after that for him.
    And of course, that was sort of aggravated
    by the Kristallnacht, the events of crystal night.
    Because my father certainly at that night was--
    wanted to go to the synagogue for the services,
    Armenian service, for his father and, of course,
    found that the synagogue had been burnt.
    And as a result, that could not be held.
    So he was there hardly knowing that this
    had happened during the night.
    Because where we lived, we were somewhat
    distanced from the area.
    And so we weren't--
    he was not really aware that there was something going
    on, which kind of interesting because it was a Nazi-sponsored
    event and--
    but was not really known because--
    until the next day when the radio announced the event,
    what happened but, of course, from the Nazi point of view.
    So that was a double shock for my father
    that he had to confront a burning, a burnt out synagogue
    when he wanted to say the mourning prayer for his father.
    Did anything happen to the family store
    during that Kristallnacht period?
    By that time, the store hadn't--
    it was no longer in their hands.
    I believe they had sold it, because they were retired.
    And so the store was no longer in existence.
    We don't know, I certainly I don't know what, if anything,
    happened to that store in that area.
    However, of course, any Jewish store that you walked by
    had either its glass smashed or there was graffiti on it.
    Or in many cases, they had a storm trooper type standing
    in front of it.
    That was throughout Berlin.
    There was no-- hardly a store or business
    that was unscathed at that, on that day.
    And of course, that day was a major signal.
    By now, things had come to a point of violence,
    widespread official violence, whereas before it
    was somewhat hidden, particularly
    in a largely like Berlin.
    There, it was now official, visible,
    and it certainly now most people who were antsy
    or not certain about what to do, I
    think by then made up their mind.
    And for those who could, they would leave.
    Those were your child impressions
    that as you walked with your parents,
    you saw stores that had windows had been smashed
    and storm troopers the day after?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    You saw them.
    You know, it remind me almost of the riots
    that we had here in Washington after the death of--
    assassination of Martin Luther King
    when stores along the 14th Street area
    were smashed and burned out and so on.
    And the next morning, you had National Guard troops standing
    in front.
    You know, it was almost the picture reflect--
    a reflective image of that, quite different
    of course in context.
    I mean, this was not done by the authorities.
    There, it was.
    So it had a different message.
    Around that time, what do you remember about your parents'
    activities in talking about or actually trying
    to get you out of the country?
    I assume they already had things in the works.
    So maybe you can describe how that progressed
    from your child's eye.
    Well, at that time, one of the family
    members, the people that were--
    where he was a physician, and they
    had, if I remember describing, that they came actually
    from the town called Bad Nauheim and but lived in Berlin.
    And they were ready to emigrate to the United States,
    having been given an affidavit by the American side
    of the family who were living in St. Paul, Minnesota.
    And there was some discussion as to perhaps
    they offered to take me with them to the United States.
    They, in turn, had two daughters who were going along with them.
    These two daughters were my--
    one was a year younger than I. And one
    was about three or four years older than I.
    So they were ages 7 and 11.
    And I was age 8, almost 8.
    I was 7 actually.
    This was 1930, late 1938.
    So there was this thought.
    However, I think my parents did not really want to do that.
    Because they already had, at that time,
    made contact with a relative of my mother's, a distant cousin,
    who, at the time, was living in the Philippine Islands,
    in Manila.
    And his history very briefly was, he was born in Germany,
    married.
    He was in business.
    He had to leave Germany very early on in the '30s, reasons
    not really known.
    He escaped to Spain and stayed in Madrid
    until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
    And I'm not certain whether he had to leave,
    because he always was a sort of a sharp businessman,
    quite bright.
    But one isn't clear as to how and what he was doing.
    But there, too, he left the Philippines.
    And by some strange connection, if one recalls the history,
    the Philippines had been run by Spain since their discovery
    by Magellan.
    And there were connections between the Spanish people,
    the Spanish community, Spanish business with the Philippines,
    a lot of Spaniards or ex-Spaniards living there.
    So he managed to get into the Philippines with his family.
    And there, the Philippines at the time
    was an American Commonwealth and was sort of
    under the same restrictions about immigration entry
    quotas as the United States.
    But the United States quotas were essentially closed.
    One could not get into this country,
    unless one were a physician or had a job or some special skill
    that was needed.
    So the Philippines, there there were
    some minor changes in the rules or whatever applied,
    and the American Consulate was able to issue entry visas,
    once an affidavit had been put together
    by a receiving party, which was this distant cousin.
    And that began to firm up as we went along
    in the latter part of 1938.
    So that, yes, we were scheduled to leave for the Philippine
    Islands sometime in February of 1939.
    Now let me understand the affidavits.
    The purpose of the affidavit was to show the United States
    Consulate that you would be sponsored, or taken care of,
    or supported in some way for some period of time
    if you were allowed to emigrate.
    Is that correct?
    That's absolutely correct.
    Yes, that was a requirement.
    In order to get a visa, the entrance visa,
    an affidavit had to be put down, laid down, before the American
    Consulate or American authority by someone
    who was willing to sponsor and support you
    and the family for whatever period of time,
    so that you'd not be a burden on the local economy.
    What do you remember being part of while all this was going on?
    For example, did you go with your parents
    to the American Consulate to try to get your visa,
    or do you remember the affidavit coming
    in the mail from the cousin?
    I don't remember any of that, the sort of paperwork
    and letters.
    I do recall, at one time, that the thing was
    set, that the affidavit had been given,
    that a visa had been issued, and that things were all set
    for entering the Philippines.
    However, there came then the issue of departing Germany.
    The German authorities, at that time, allowed Jews to leave,
    provided they left for certain.
    And also, they're beginning to have restrictions
    on what one could take along.
    Up until that time, roughly speaking early 1939,
    Jews were allowed to take along what is called a lift.
    A lift, this is-- it's an English word.
    It's a container, a large container
    where you could store furniture and things of that nature,
    personal belongings, anything from couches to chairs
    and what have you.
    They were allowed to take one of these
    along to be loaded aboard ship in Hamburg or Bremen
    and to be shipped to the United States or wherever.
    In our case, going all the way to the Philippines, a lift,
    so to speak, was not really feasible.
    We weren't sure, this was a tropical area.
    We weren't keen on taking furniture.
    So we limited our things to suitcases, steamer trunks,
    hanging steamer trunks, and things of that kind
    and packed two large cases of things
    that were to be shipped to my aunt who lived, at that time,
    in the Illinois, in Chicago, near Chicago.
    And these were like winter clothes,
    which we knew we would not need in the Philippines.
    So that was sort of our general preparations for departure.
    But, of course, to get authorization to leave,
    you had to get cleared by the German government
    and primarily by the Gestapo, the Geheime Staatspolizei,
    secret state police, who came to our house to actually check out
    all the things that we would be taking along.
    So we had to display all the stuff that we were
    going to pack and take with us.
    I recall my mother pulling out a red velvet,
    I don't know, a black velvet cushion
    on which were pinned about seven medals that
    belonged to her father, that he had
    won as a officer in the First World War.
    Amongst these was the Iron Cross, second class I believe,
    and which he had earned or in whatever manner.
    And she asked them whether it was
    OK to take these medals along.
    Because this was something that was strictly German.
    And they were always concerned that you would not
    depart with anything that was German
    or belonged to the German state or that related to it as a Jew,
    because you were no longer a real member
    of the German society.
    So but they said that was OK, take that with you.
    And so she packed it, along with some other things.
    And they checked out everything.
    I was there at the time.
    And there wasn't too much commotion.
    It was two sort of bureaucratic type people.
    And then they signed some little slip of paper.
    And that cleared us for packing up and whatever.
    And they left.
    They spent say two hours, three hours in the apartment
    to check it all out.
    And at that point, you know, we were in the state of departure.
    Was this February of '39 by then?
    Yes, that was approximately at the beginning of February
    or end of January 1939.
    We are now on the preparation stage to leave the country.
    So we have packed everything.
    These trunks, steamer trunks, were picked up
    to be taken to a ship which would be departing from Genoa,
    Italy sometime around February the 23rd or 24th of 1939.
    But this was not the ship, this wasn't the SS Victoria?
    Yes, that was the SS Victoria that
    was going to be taking us from Genoa, Italy
    to Manila, Philippines.
    So we had booked passage on the ship through the company,
    shipping company, steamship company.
    It's called Lloyd Triestino.
    The Lloyd Triestino ran a shipping service
    to the Far East.
    The route would be starting in Genoa to Naples to Port Said,
    at the head of the Suez Canal, to Aden,
    at the other side of the Suez Canal,
    from Aden to what in those days was called Colombo, Ceylon, now
    called Sri Lanka, from there to Bombay,
    from there to Singapore, and from Singapore to Manila,
    and from Manila to Hong Kong, and from Hong Kong to Shanghai.
    Very significant, because the ships were usually
    loaded with people heading for Shanghai.
    So that was the route.
    They had four ships that plied this route.
    The Victoria was the smallest they had.
    The largest was Conte Biancamano.
    They had the Conte Verde and the Conte Rosso.
    Now you, to back up a little bit,
    you're luggage was shipped away.
    And what confused me was, my recollection
    was you left from Genoa on the SS Victoria in March.
    So is that incorrect?
    Well, actually our arrival in the Philippines
    was March the 16th, 1939.
    So you have to work back three weeks, which
    was the passage time.
    And so we're talking probably around the 23rd or so,
    24th of February, that we actually left to Genoa.
    What we did was when we actually left Berlin,
    we closed the apartment.
    It was a rental.
    So, you know, we didn't have to do any selling
    anything of that sort.
    The rent was paid up to that time.
    We took a taxi with our hand luggage
    to the railroad station in Berlin.
    It was called the Anhalter Bahnhof.
    It's right in the center of Berlin.
    It still exists today as a freight railyard.
    In those days, it was a major passenger railroad station,
    Anhalter Bahnhof.
    At the Bahnhof, it was crowded with people.
    It was full of the SS, the various Nazi organizations
    checking everybody out.
    It was, of course, quite obvious all the passengers
    on this train which left at night
    were Jews or were leaving.
    So as usual, they had to check everything three times.
    We met other people that my parents knew, a couple, that
    were also leaving.
    But by coincidence met them, because we did not realize
    they were also leaving that night.
    We got aboard the train.
    And the train left Berlin station.
    I think it must have been--
    oh, it was I believe the 20th of February.
    Because my birthday's on the 19th.
    And I recall, I'd forgotten whether I was actually
    celebrating the birthday on the train the next morning
    or whether it was still in Berlin.
    Anyway, it was either the 19th or the 20th.
    So the train then went on to Munich from Berlin.
    And there we had to change, change
    trains, and went on from Munich to the Brenner Pass.
    The Brenner Pass, of course, separates Austria from Italy.
    And some of the passage was through Austria,
    very pretty trip.
    But in Brenner, what usually is a simple border crossing,
    and you stay on the train to continue on to Genoa,
    turned out to be almost a day and a half stop.
    Because we all had to leave the train, luggage and all.
    The Germans insistent-- insisting
    on searching through all the luggage, that
    is the German border side.
    And this was a large hall, which was on one side with Germans,
    but in the rest of it were Italians already.
    These were the Carabinieri, who wore
    sort of dark green uniforms and dark green capes.
    And when you approached them to ask a questions, they always--
    they could not either understand or did not
    feel like answering, because you were still
    under German jurisdiction.
    They also searched everybody physically
    to make sure they carried nothing that was not sealed.
    Wedding bands, any gold jewelry that you were allowed to take,
    and there was a limit on what you could take,
    had to be sealed in boxes or envelopes
    before you left Germany.
    There was a big red wax seal on the stuff.
    And you could not open that until you crossed the border.
    That was to ensure that you didn't
    take extra things with you, only the things
    that you were supposed to.
    So that whole search procedure delayed us.
    And the train left without us.
    So we had to wait for the next train by the time we were done.
    We got on board the next train and did not
    arrive in Genoa until like 2:00 in the morning at some point.
    It was early in the morning.
    And there with a taxi took us to hotel.
    And I remember the name of the hotel.
    It was The Hotel Helvetia, like name Swiss, name Helvetia.
    And we stayed there the night.
    And the next day, there were members
    of the Italian Jewish community who sort of received refugees
    from Germany or wherever coming across the border.
    And they sort of knew where they would be.
    And they sort of took us in hand and sort of we
    toured the city with them a little bit.
    They showed us sights.
    In fact, they took us up on one of these electric,
    those railways up the side of a mountain.
    I think it was the Rigi, I'm not sure, but just for sightseeing.
    And then a day later, we, again, in a
    cab and went to dockside to board the ship, the SS
    Victoria.
    And--
    Do you remember how you felt or how
    you thought your parents felt say right
    before you crossed into Italy, for example,
    with this long delayed search, whether it seemed
    like an adventure or it seemed frightening or a bit of both
    from a child's perspective?
    Yes.
    It was certainly frightening.
    Because here you were sort of held up by the Germans,
    and you weren't sure where they'd let you go
    and what would happen.
    And they always had always one more thing
    to check out, like a personal search.
    And so that was very nerve-wracking,
    beside having to wait.
    And there's no food available.
    There were all these little personal needs that were not--
    you couldn't take care of too well.
    But eventually, they let us go to the next--
    and then this train we were on left with--
    and we were wondering what would happen, you know,
    is there another train?
    And then via had to check on that.
    And yes, there was another train.
    And then the Carabineri, and we went over to the Italian side.
    And the Carabinieri, the border guards,
    then took care of things.
    And they were sort of nondescript in their manner.
    And we boarded the train.
    And at that point, crossing into Italy,
    even though Italy was under Mussolini and the fascists,
    was a relief.
    Not knowing then, my parents had worked some sort of a code
    before to let people know back in Germany whether we made it
    across safely.
    And they wrote back once we got through to Italy
    or telegraphed that this code, this certain use
    of certain words, which said, yes, we have successfully
    crossed the border and we're wherever, Genoa.
    I have a note from the file that your parents, or your mother,
    was able to take hidden jewelry with them, too.
    And I wonder what the circumstances were for that.
    I don't recall that.
    She may have hidden a ring or two or some, whatever,
    I am not certain about it.
    But I do recall--
    Frank, before we go on to the sea voyage,
    why don't you tell me what, if anything,
    you recall about any particular difficulties your family might
    have had leaving Germany by virtue of your father's
    employment or educational status,
    and anything you remember about saying goodbye
    to family members or friends?
    As far as his college or work status is concerned,
    I don't think there was any real problem.
    He simply left the company and they knew why.
    It was, I think, it was still partially a Jewish company.
    And it was pretty obvious why he would have to leave.
    And there was no problem there at all.
    As far as saying goodbye, I was concerned,
    obviously, I wasn't there at the scene.
    But my grandmother, I did say goodbye to her.
    You know, she was left.
    And my uncle came over, his younger brother,
    but his younger brother was one of these fellows
    that could do anything.
    And so they had hoped to somehow bring them
    out as well later, once we had reached the Philippines
    and were able to perhaps settle and do--
    or continue on to the United States.
    That was really the plan and see what
    we could do about getting them out of there.
    My grandmother was not eager to leave.
    She felt she was kind of old.
    And she wanted to stay.
    And having just buried her husband not too long
    before, it was very difficult-- would have been difficult
    for her to leave.
    We said goodbye to his two aunts that who had also
    had plans to leave Germany.
    They actually ended up in Chile, in Santiago, Chile.
    But other than that, my mother's side,
    the only people left were an aunt and her husband,
    who had moved to Berlin, and some other distant relatives.
    As I mentioned before, her younger brother and sister
    had left for the United States in the mid '30s.
    So I left.
    I left my school in the middle of the semester.
    But again, that was becoming a common thing.
    So I was just one of the other-- another kid
    leaving the country.
    It was not a unique situation.
    So I-- just trying to recall.
    Yeah, another kid was about to leave as well the next day
    type of thing.
    And well, I've never seen any of these kids again/ I have no
    idea what happened to them.
    I'm sure many left or at least certain some left.
    Others, you know, must have perished I'm sure.
    So but it was in a way partially a relief.
    I do remember one incident, of course, that my father--
    I always liked trains and toys and junk like that.
    He took me downtown to the largest department
    store in Berlin.
    It's called the KaDeWe, which is a contraction of the full name
    Kaufahus des Westens.
    It's a huge department store.
    It still exists today.
    And he took me there.
    Because I've often gone there with my mother.
    They had a restaurant in one of the levels.
    And we ate there once.
    And he took me to the toy department
    and bought me an electric train.
    And it was one of these H O gauge railroads,
    which never did work.
    Because the Philippines had a different power [? sharing ?]
    system.
    But and that in itself will lead me to another story
    much later on about that particular model railroad.
    It was destroyed during the Second World War
    when we lived in the house in the Philippines
    and was among many things that was destroyed.
    But he did take me there and take this with me.
    And I did, I packed it into a smaller box.
    And that's, as I say, we left.
    As a child, it was more adventure
    than anything else, high adventure,
    constantly changing railroads, trains, dining cars, bunks,
    chairs, crossing into Italy.
    By the railway side, you know, German plumbing is one thing.
    Italian is another.
    And what you'd see there by the wayside,
    the Italian type, stoop type, so-called Turkish toilets,
    were quite different from what I was
    used to and different things.
    And the food was different.
    The train got very crowded and was dark of night.
    And nobody knew exactly what the next stop would be,
    because there were several stops before you hit Genoa.
    So my father and others would stand
    on the steps outside the train as it
    was roaring into the station to find out whether this was Genoa
    or not.
    So that we knew when to get out, because the train was literally
    packed with Italians and people who
    were traveling at that time.
    Were a lot of the people also leaving the country?
    Were there are a lot of Jews on the train?
    And do you remember the actual journey, that is,
    which towns you went through to get to Genoa?
    Yes, there were lots--
    a good number of Jews heading for Italy.
    Because that was a major departure
    point for the Far East.
    I remember, the trains were packed.
    And there was-- we did manage to get in one dining car.
    The first night on the train, we were in sleepers actually.
    The towns, of course, to Munich, we
    went through many German cities and then Munich
    south through Austria, Innsbruck,
    and places like that it stopped.
    And then Brenner, the Brenner Pass, and then, of course,
    the other trains into Italy, I think,
    if I forgot it was Bolzano was one of the cities
    that we went through.
    But it was dark.
    By the time we went into Italy, it was dark.
    So I didn't see that part of Italy very well.
    And this was a package deal.
    The train trip and the ship transport were all together,
    yes, no?
    No, they didn't have package deals in those days.
    You got yourself a passage on a ship.
    And then to get there, you went, of course, by train,
    buying the tickets.
    And that, again, required--
    you had to, when you were going out of the country,
    you had to show why and that you had a visa and so forth.
    Again, that was highly controlled by the Nazis
    as to who left, who came in.
    And so if you had an authorization,
    if you had the visa for another country,
    and the entry visa into Italy, you had to have that as well.
    That, of course, allowed you.
    But all this time, of course, you
    carried this German passport which had--
    with a red J in it.
    And they immediately knew who and what you were,
    the German authorities.
    The Italians were less sensitive to that sort of thing.
    They seemed to, you know, this was not their primary interest.
    And so Italy felt almost like a free country at that point.
    But whole of-- all of it was a massive adventure.
    And I was eight years old.
    And all these things coming one after the other,
    happening very fast.
    It was very interesting, I found it.
    Do you remember any incidents with the Italian fascists,
    with any of the soldiers at any of the points along the way
    on your way to Genoa or once you got there,
    or the immigration, Italian immigration officials?
    None whatsoever.
    There was not-- the only military I did see, two types,
    one was the typical Carabinieri with the green capes
    at the border, who were very quiet types of people
    and very sort of official types.
    The others were at the railway stations, where they
    have a special Italian police.
    They wear sort of almost like the old-fashioned three
    cornered hat type and with a white leather
    band across their chest, sort of formal uniforms.
    And they would patrol just up and down
    in pairs, always beautifully dressed
    but not, I mean, they did not in any way, you know,
    single us out.
    It was just their job to walk up and down.
    The authorities on the train, there
    may have been a check or two.
    But there was, again, one did not sense any problem in Italy.
    Or there might have been.
    There were obviously Italian fascists.
    But one didn't see them.
    There was not that well displayed.
    How long did the trip take across Italy?
    And what do you remember about getting to Genoa?
    Well, the first thing I remember was
    that the trip from the Brenner to Genoa
    must have been approximately six, seven hours, I'm guessing.
    As I say, most of it was late afternoon and night.
    We arrived in Genoa at approximately 2:00,
    3:00 in the morning.
    We were all kind of tired by then, had not slept very well.
    We did get to this hotel, which was kind of--
    it was locked.
    We had to ring the bell.
    And a man in sort of slippers came out, a night clerk.
    And we had reservations.
    So that was not a problem.
    He showed us to the rooms, registered us.
    We showed the passport.
    Again, there was no incident.
    This was just another person working there.
    And that was it.
    Next morning, we had breakfast.
    And again, it was a very subdued.
    It was not threatening.
    And then as I mentioned before, members
    of the Italian Jewish community showed up and led us around
    and talked to us.
    Also, I want to clarify something
    that I think we were talking about earlier.
    You were saying to me that, contrary to the pre-interview
    material, that you don't recall your parents hiding
    any jewelry or other materials in the process of leaving
    the country.
    Yes, I don't recall saying that.
    It might have been somewhat confusing.
    Because as I mentioned before, you
    were required to place all gold, wedding rings or other jewelry,
    into sealed boxes or envelopes before you
    left Germany and were then allowed to open it once you
    crossed into another country.
    My parents did that.
    And of course, they were also-- my mother
    certainly was searched, physically searched,
    by the Germans at Brenner.
    So it would-- being her nature, it's
    most unlikely that she would have done that.
    There was not a great deal of jewelry she took with her
    anyway.
    And so I don't recall--
    I don't know whether there was any implication
    that there was a hidden.
    Although, I'm sure people did that,
    if they had a lot of jewelry.
    Not in this case, I don't believe.
    After breakfast at that hotel, did you then go directly
    to the ship?
    No, we stayed a day in Genoa.
    Because the departure of the ship was like a day thereafter.
    And as I say, we toured Genoa and some of the outskirts.
    I think it was by cab or by a car.
    And these people showed us around and very nice.
    And then the next day, we--
    I don't remember the evening what we did.
    We must have eaten somewhere.
    But we then left to go to the docks, to the ship,
    and boarded the ship, the SS Victoria.
    And what do you remember about getting
    on the ship and your accommodations
    and the other circumstances of the trip?
    Yes, in those days, these ships, as most ships,
    had three classes, the first class, the second class,
    and the third class.
    And some even had a fourth class, the so-called steerage.
    The largest ship of the line, the Conte Biancamano,
    had that fourth class.
    Victoria being the smallest had three classes, first, second,
    and third.
    And we were booked on second class.
    And these other friends of ours whom
    we'd met at the railway station in Berlin,
    they were in the third class.
    But the differences, of course, first class
    had a very ornate dining room and the larger cabins.
    Second class had regular cabins.
    There was a set of bunks and a regular bed.
    And there were-- they were separated.
    Because each one had their areas on deck and swimming,
    sort of a box like swimming pool for the second class.
    And the ship also had, for some strange reason,
    deck cargo of automobiles, something
    like 20 cars were strapped to the ship on the decks.
    In fact, in one incident I recall, I ran--
    I was a wild kid.
    And I ran into one of those cars and the bumper edge
    went into my knee.
    So I had a big gash in my knee.
    And the Italian surgeon aboard, a doctor aboard the ship, he--
    my father dragged me in there.
    I think it was bleeding like crazy.
    And he took one of these metal clamps and clamped it closed.
    This is rather than with a suture.
    But he felt that it was the best way to do that.
    And sure enough, you know, he checked me out several times
    thereafter.
    And it healed up.
    And I still have the scar.
    So that was a incident I do remember.
    The other one was I tried to swim
    in one of those box like swimming pools
    with sort of a box placed on the deck with water.
    And the ship was rolling.
    And that water was just sloshing around.
    And it was a mess.
    I almost drowned there.
    I think I swallowed some water.
    And so but I got out of it OK.
    The ship, the crew was Italian.
    It was a totally Italian operation of course.
    The dining steward, my mother thought
    it was the handsomest guy.
    They showed up in these sort of black beautiful uniforms
    for serving.
    And you know, second class food was very good.
    The Italian cuisine at the time favored
    a lot of spaghetti, Italian meals, and great on desserts.
    They were sort of rum soaked.
    And the ice cream tasted full of cinnamon to us.
    But, you know, that's the Italian style.
    But it was good.
    And so-- but one major incident, and one
    has to recall that the passengers on that ship
    were, roughly speaking, 90% German Austrian Jews.
    Now they decided, as on most ships,
    what you're going to have a ball sometime along the voyage.
    And so there was a big disagreement,
    and it's amazing, among the Jews,
    between the Viennese or the Austrian and the German Jews.
    So the Viennese decided to have their Viennese ball.
    And the Germans and all the others,
    other than the Viennese, decided to have their own.
    So they had two balls instead of one.
    And that was kind of interesting,
    as a sociological phenomenon for that particular time
    to have a separate or--
    although people could go to either one, I believe, affair.
    The other significant incident was this.
    On board the ship was a family from India
    who were returning from Berlin.
    He was of the Maharajah or whatever,
    upper caste class from India.
    And he had gone to Germany for treatment
    for a heart condition.
    And they were returning with his wife
    and beautiful, beautiful daughter.
    All these single, the bachelors, really looked at her.
    She was always god-like--
    goddess-like looking women.
    And they were traveling second class.
    And they had their own table, you
    know, [INAUDIBLE] little tables.
    And one morning, the wife of the Indian showed up.
    And they always wore saris.
    And she showed up in a sari.
    It had a green background and white swastikas
    all over the place.
    That was the pattern of the sari.
    Now it is an Indian symbol, as we know, it was not invented--
    This is a continuation of an interview for the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum of Frank Ephraim.
    The date is February the 28, 1997.
    And the interview is being conducted by Nancy Alper.
    And Frank and I were discussing his voyage
    on the SS Victoria from Genoa all the way to the Philippines
    and an incident that happened in the dining room
    with an Indian woman's wearing a sari with swastikas on it.
    As I mentioned, these were white swastikas
    on a sort of light green background.
    They were at breakfast time.
    And all the tables around them were
    occupied by refugees, Jews from Germany and Austria.
    And certainly everybody glanced over there and didn't
    quite know what to make of it.
    Because this couple and their daughter
    had been all very friendly.
    And they were very pleasant people
    and very civilized people returning to India, their home.
    And we don't know quite what to do.
    I mean, obviously, .
    There was a certain offense and all that on the one hand.
    On the other, I suppose many realized
    the symbol was something that was more
    universal than the Nazi symbol.
    In any event, by lunchtime, she had changed.
    That was the upshot.
    I'm not certain whether someone had dropped a hint
    to the waiter or what happened.
    But she had put on another sari, of which she had many.
    And that was the end of that.
    I'm not sure, they may have discussed it with them.
    Or they may have-- she may have talked to others about it
    and made some comment about doing this
    inadvertently and so on.
    But, you know, there was no harm done in any of it.
    So that was OK.
    If one will recall, 1939, one of the most popular dances
    was the Lambeth Walk.
    And that was being done big time aboard the ship.
    Because, after all, this was a luxury liner,
    although it had these three classes.
    And people were entertained.
    And they were dancing.
    And certainly, it was a relief from the horrors and conditions
    that they had experienced in Germany and Austria
    and other parts of Europe.
    So the food was good, at least, might
    have been a little repetitive from time to time.
    In any event, our next stop, and I
    may be a little out of context here with the swastika story,
    but the next stop after Genoa was Naples.
    We did not go ashore because the stop
    was about three or four hours.
    And really, there was no point of us going back
    in to access Italy for any reason.
    So we stayed-- everyone stayed aboard.
    The next stop was at 5 AM, a day or so later,
    at Port Said, Egypt.
    Of course, everyone was kind of excited
    because this was now the Middle East and very unique.
    And no one had ever been there.
    And so we were allowed ashore, because one must recall,
    the British held Egypt at that time.
    The British were, contrary to a lot of thinking,
    were not very pro-Jewish ever and certainly not at that time.
    However, we landed not at-- the dock side
    was out in the breakwater, as it was called.
    And little boats took us in.
    And my father wanted to see Port Said.
    And we went at 5 AM ashore and just toured
    around a little bit.
    It was a large, smelly and dirty city, which--
    with a lot of British troops around and Egyptians,
    some still in fezzes.
    It was very, very interesting.
    But we got to get back to the ship,
    so we only had two or three hours at Port Said.
    Then the ship proceeded to the Suez Canal with a pilot
    aboard that was picked up in the port of Port Said.
    And on the way, of course, the ship
    was go slowly because there's two way traffic in the canal
    and no locks on the Suez Canal.
    And we would meet other ships very close by, tankers
    and other passenger liners going the other way and freighters.
    And it was very exciting to see the crews
    and the people on these other ships, oh,
    15, 20, 30 feet away.
    So everybody's aboard, you know, on the decks, cheering away.
    And on the Egyptian side, we saw a train.
    There's a railroad.
    It was all silver, aluminum, or whatever cars
    on the other side, which is the Sinai Peninsula.
    We occasionally saw a camel.
    And that was very exciting for us.
    After all, we hadn't seen camels in that particular environment
    before.
    We passed through the portions of Ismailia,
    which is on the Suez Canal, the Great Bitter Lakes,
    and then finally came out at the other end at Suez
    and proceeded through Aden.
    The ship stopped in the port of Aden,
    again, not along dock side but out in the breakwater.
    And little patrol boats would come up.
    And again, it was a British possession.
    And what I remember was that they
    were lo-- they would have-- they had the people that
    live in Aden, the Adenese or Arabs,
    came aboard and hauling these big trunks of people boarding
    the ship at that point.
    My parents wanted to go ashore in Aden.
    Because the man that had arrived in Berlin
    that one night on his motorcycle had died on the way
    to the Far East.
    And he was buried in Aden.
    But they were unable to leave the ship.
    The British did not allow anybody
    with a red J for Jewish in their German passport
    to leave the ship.
    That was one of the great policies of the British.
    I should say, because I think I didn't earlier,
    that this is the second tape, side B,
    the second side of the tape.
    We're back in Aden.
    And we just spent the night in Aden.
    And the ship then subsequently took off.
    And I believe our next stop, unless I am sadly mistaken,
    was the port of Colombo and at that time Ceylon,
    today Sri Lanka, again, a British possession.
    We were, again, docked not alongside a pier
    but out in the so-called breakwater or harbor
    and were taken in by a small boat, which
    was very low to the water.
    And there were local people standing on the sides
    of the boat all around.
    It was very interesting.
    And this other family whom we had
    met on the ship whose son was my age,
    he was a little roly poly guy.
    If I recall, we were both the same age.
    He later became Assistant Mayor of San Francisco.
    And they were on their way onto Shanghai, rather than
    to Manila, as we were.
    Anyway the two families went ashore with others.
    And we went to along the bazaars.
    And this is the first time that we actually
    saw what I suppose in most of Asia
    is this site of extreme poverty, you know, with kids carrying
    other young kids, mostly naked, running around
    in groups begging and just hounding the tourists or anyone
    else, people who were not--
    were white or Caucasian or tourists
    that were visiting and begging for money or what have you.
    And it was-- things were not very clean in Colombo.
    But we did go into one store and looked at some knickknacks,
    carvings, elephants or animals.
    And they, the store owner there kind of liked
    this other kid a lot.
    So he gave him a present of a little carving.
    But he also gave me one.
    And so after awhile, we went back to the ship.
    And again, the ship took off.
    They never stayed much longer than five to 10 hours in port.
    [CLEARING THROAT]
    The next stop, again, was at night.
    It was in Bombay.
    And about that time, we were close to the equator.
    And it was hot.
    And in Bombay, again, the British would not
    let us ashore, same reason, a red J.
    They let others who had other passports from other countries,
    they let them ashore.
    They did not let us ashore.
    In Bombay, lots of Indians boarded the ship
    for the passage to either Singapore or Manila
    or elsewhere.
    And this family, the ones with the swastika story,
    left the ship.
    They had arrived back home.
    So they got off in Bombay.
    I'm not sure if they were from Bombay or somewhere else.
    But anyway, that's where they got off the ship.
    And again, we left, not long after another four,
    five hours in Bombay.
    And then there was a passage of about two days
    to get to Singapore.
    Now my father's always an old business man.
    And he got to know some of the Indians
    that came on board the ship, because they were also
    businessmen in textiles.
    And in fact, he met a fellow there
    that we were friends with in the Philippines thereafter
    for many years.
    So that, again, was a long, slow voyage to Singapore.
    In Singapore, the British did let us off the ship.
    Strange, the policy's different according to port.
    And there we were met by the widow and son of the man that
    had been buried in Aden.
    And I had experienced a horrendous toothache
    a couple of nights before.
    And one of the first things is that she took us
    to her dentist in Singapore without an appointment.
    But nonetheless, he did the job on me.
    I guess it was a filling.
    And that was that.
    And after that, we toured around a little bit.
    And we stayed most of the day in port and then back on the ship.
    And one of the incidents that my mother relays
    was that, as I mentioned before, the ship was filled
    with German and Austrian Jews.
    And for some reason, there were several bachelor Austrians,
    sort of tall, skinny guys.
    And they would congregate and talk along the rail.
    And as we were approaching Singapore,
    after having been at sea now for, oh, probably
    2 and 1/2 weeks or whatever, about 2 and 1/2 weeks,
    they leaned over the rail and looked
    at the tropical jungle-like shoreline.
    And one said to the other, and I'll translate it.
    I'll first say it in German or Viennese.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] Because of one Gentile, one
    has to travel so far.
    And that was his expression about the, in his Viennese
    accent, about his comment about the situation.
    So anyway, we continued after Singapore
    a four day trip to Manila.
    And of course, now we were getting close to--
    getting ready to disembark into the new land
    where we were going to be staying for a while, all very
    mysterious.
    We approached the Philippines.
    And as you enter the Philippines,
    you enter into Manila Bay, the famous Dewey,
    damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, Manila Bay.
    Manila Bay is guarded at its mouth
    by the island of Corregidor, also, of course, well known
    as result of the Second World War.
    There are two other islands.
    They were very small.
    We passed the island of Corregidor,
    not knowing its name at the time.
    And we entered Manila Bay, a huge bay.
    And you could see the city in the distance, some high rises
    and huts and things like that.
    The pilot boat came out.
    And the pilot got aboard, as is customary.
    And the ship then was brought into the dock.
    Of course, on the decks all the time seeing things.
    The dock had not long before been constructed and completed.
    It was known as the famous Pier 7, the longest
    pier in the Far East.
    It could hold two passenger liners on each side.
    And that's where the ship docked.
    As we neared the dock, we all observed
    the people standing dockside all wearing white suits.
    Everybody wearing white linen suits, the men did anyway.
    Women wore sort of colorful things.
    It was a tropical climate.
    We could tell, of course, the ship was hot as hell.
    And we did finally spy our distant cousin
    who was there with his wife, their driver, and a car.
    So we got off the ship finally.
    And they took us to their house.
    And we stayed at their house for several weeks
    until we were able to find something for ourselves.
    First impression of landing in the Philippines,
    of course, one looks around and sees the sights, the people.
    There were cars, American cars.
    There were American military.
    There were sailors.
    There were American warships in the harbor.
    There were American liners of the American President
    Lines docked nearby.
    Many, many ships berthing along the docks.
    They had a whole bunch of them, a whole row of docks.
    The port area, very busy, lots of cargo.
    And they finally-- we loaded whatever suitcases we had.
    The largest luggage was going to be unloaded from the hold later
    and then somehow stored for the time being.
    But there we were, just suddenly in this tropical country.
    And the people, Filipinos, the Philippines
    was predominantly Catholic.
    With about, population 2% is Protestant.
    The Jewish community, of what we knew of it at that time,
    one has to point out that this ship we were on
    was loaded with Jews, fleeing refugees, most of whom
    were on their way to Shanghai, two more stops to go.
    And the people that got off in the Philippines
    were my parents and myself.
    And I believe there was one or two others that got off
    the ship in the Philippines.
    So that the numbers of people landing in the Philippines,
    Jews escaping from Germany, Austria,
    anywhere else, was always very small.
    It was an American Commonwealth run by a American High
    Commissioner, at that time, Paul McNutt by name,
    later on followed by Francis B Sayre.
    And it had a government run by a elected president, Manuel
    Quezon, and the vice president Sergio Osmena.
    They were promised independence at some point.
    But I will get to that a little later.
    Anyway, the first thing you see or you saw in the Philippines
    were the horse-drawn vehicles.
    There were two kinds, as I later found out.
    One was for passengers, which was like a two or three seater.
    And they called the carromatas.
    And then there were those that carried freight.
    They were a little larger, [? caritelas, ?]
    all drawn by one scrawny horse and lots of those.
    And they would keep to the side of the road.
    Because they were obviously slower than a car
    would be on a highway or a roadway.
    But we got to their house.
    It was a nice house.
    They had a governess for their young daughter,
    who was about four years old at the time.
    And they had other servants.
    Servants were the thing in the Philippines.
    They were cheap and plentiful.
    After all, it was a country that had an economy that--
    where they had more people than they know what to do with.
    But you could tell that the country was run by people
    who were not Filipinos.
    They were wealthy families.
    But there were lots-- a huge Chinese population
    and an American, large American interests.
    So--
    Now this is around March the 16th, '39.
    And where was their house in relation to the city of Manila?
    I assume it was in a suburb.
    Their house was-- actually, I want to point out.
    We landed on March the 16th.
    It so happens, March the 16th was the date
    that Magellan also discovered-- landed in the Philippines,
    just by coincidence of course.
    But anyway, that's the date.
    And the house that these people lived in was not too far away.
    It was in one of the districts not far from Manila Bay itself.
    Manila Bay in Manila is--
    there is a boulevard, which runs along
    it called Dewey Boulevard, of course, at that time
    in honor of the Admiral.
    And it's a palm-lined throughway with nice benches and palm
    trees and walkways that must have run, oh, six
    or eight miles along the coastal portion of Manila Bay.
    And on one end was an area called the Luneta.
    That's where the Manila Hotel is located.
    And then there was the other end that led more toward the south.
    And it is sort of two major local districts
    border the Dewey Boulevard.
    One is called Ermita.
    And the other is called Malate.
    And their house was somewhere in the Ermita area
    and amongst other houses and apartments
    that made up the city.
    And so we could actually walk from their house
    to this boulevard, which we did the very next day
    with the governess and this man's daughter,
    you know, to play in the boulevard area
    there, doing whatever.
    Was this anywhere near the Pasig River?
    No, the Pasig River runs through Manila.
    It is a river that empties into Manila Bay somewhat--
    if one were to face Manila Bay from Manila,
    it would be toward the right or toward the downtown area.
    The Pasig River essentially separates
    the so-called business district from the,
    what then was, the residential district of Manila.
    And alongst the Pasig River are several main--
    there's the main city electric power plant.
    There are government buildings.
    There is Intramuros, which is an ancient walled city.
    There is also docks there for some
    of the smaller interisland ships that
    are docked on the Pasig River.
    So this was sort of a bit south of the Pasig River.
    It was in the area where there is another large avenue which
    is called-- was called Taft Avenue, named after guess who.
    And on Taft Avenue, it was located
    the Jewish, the synagogue, Temple Emil,
    named after Emil Bacharach.
    He was an American Jew who operated a transportation
    company in the Philippines, passenger transportation.
    They had these little [? gitneys ?]
    or Jeepneys which would take people, three or four people
    at a time, through the city.
    So that's why he was a major person in the community.
    And the community, of course, was
    founded by Americans who had immigrated, not immigrated, who
    had come to the Philippines mainly for business reasons.
    So there we were our first few days in Manila.
    So we stayed with this sponsor of ours for about two,
    three weeks.
    Or I don't know, it was actually just a week.
    And then we moved into a small apartment in Manila.
    And my father began to look, see what he could do for a job.
    And he found one not long thereafter
    with an American Jewish businessman
    who was also in sort of office equipment business,
    which my father sort of knew about and knew relatively well.
    And he worked.
    That's where he began.
    And I was, at that time being eight years old,
    I went to school.
    It was a private elementary school
    run by a woman, an American.
    And she had, oh, five or six classes.
    And so that's where I went.
    I spoke hardly any English.
    And that was the first thing I had to sort of adjust to.
    I'd had two years of school in Germany.
    And I forgot, they probably put me back a year, you know,
    because I just couldn't speak the language.
    So that's where I went to school for about a year, about a year.
    And I left that school and went to another school
    thereafter for about a year and a half.
    That was called the De La Salle College.
    And the De La Salle College was a large institution
    run by Jesuits.
    There were a number of us Jewish kids who went there.
    And there we ran into the religious problem.
    Recognizing it was a fully Catholic country,
    the Jesuits, of course, demanded everyone take religion, which
    is part of the curriculum.
    Although it varied among who the teacher was.
    Some excused those that were Jewish from taking part
    in the Catholic--
    Catholicism, the catechism.
    Others were very insistent that you participate.
    And so that raised some problems.
    But they were excellent teachers.
    Most of them stemmed from, well, most of them were German
    or Hungarian, American, English, a variety of nationalities.
    And there were also teachers, Filipino teachers or laymen
    teachers, in the lower grades.
    And I had one of those for a while.
    It was very good.
    And when the spelling bees came, why you would--
    the things you could win was candy or a rosary.
    So you came home with rosaries occasionally after having
    one of those spelling bees.
    But that was the nature of parochial school.
    And it was fairly inexpensive.
    That was probably one of the reasons I went there.
    And at that time, I began to meet people.
    Because all the Jews were part of one community.
    And Temple Emil was the center.
    And the rabbi was Rabbi Joseph Schwartz, who himself
    was a refugee, had landed in the Philippines
    in 1937 I believe with his wife.
    He was a man of about 30 or so at the time, a young rabbi.
    And there was no cantor.
    So one of the older timers, an American
    who was able to do the cantorial work, would be doing that.
    Two of them, they take turns.
    We didn't get a cantor until we finally one arrived
    in a sort of strange way.
    He and his mother were Polish.
    And they were trapped in that famous situation
    at the Polish Corridor.
    The Germans wouldn't let them back in.
    The Poles wouldn't want them back.
    So finally, they were able to get to the Philippines
    by some circuitous route.
    And the rabbi made it a point to go out
    with a pilot to welcome the passenger liners that
    would be coming in.
    He climbed the Jacob's ladder and talked
    to the people, because there was a lot of need
    for a rabbi for whatever reason on board these ships.
    People had died on the passage.
    There were cases of welfare.
    There were all kinds of problems.
    So he would go board and talk to the people,
    as many as he could.
    And on this one occasion when he boarded,
    he discovered they had a cantor.
    So they immediately, you know, set to work.
    In the course of a day, got the cantor and his wife--
    I'm sorry, not his wife, his mother, who only spoke Yiddish,
    off the ship, and he became the cantor of the Temple
    Emil of the Jewish Community.
    So we finally had a cantor.
    The routine of welcoming the ships was common.
    We knew when the ships were coming in, which ships.
    All the Italian ships, of course,
    on the Lloyd Triestino and not only that,
    there were two German ships, the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau,
    not the warships but the passenger liners
    who also plied that trade occasionally and had
    Jews on them, taking them to Shanghai.
    And sure enough, on one of them, we would always meet people,
    or my parents would meet people that they
    knew from the old country.
    And sometimes we were able to get them
    off the ship for the day so that, you know, we
    could spend the day with them.
    And then they would go on to Shanghai.
    We met most of them again after the war in San Francisco
    or somewhere else.
    But that was one of the things.
    I remember one particular instance
    where the Conte Biancamano, the largest of the ships, docked.
    And there was a big welcoming group of local Jews.
    And off the ship came one Herbert Zipper.
    He became quite well-known later amongst many circles.
    But I'll explain.
    He was a conductor.
    And he was born in Vienna, grew up
    in a sort of almost non-Jewish environment,
    but was arrested, taken to Dachau,
    subsequently to Buchenwald, and subsequently
    was able to get out of there because he, too,
    received a visa, an affidavit, from a woman whom
    he knew well back in Vienna who has since
    come to the Philippines.
    And she was the director of the corps de
    ballet in the Philippines.
    And she got him in.
    And he came off the ship and kissed her hand, very Viennese
    style.
    And then subsequently became the conductor of the Manila
    Symphony Orchestra.
    And she was the conductor-- head of the corps de ballet.
    And they did operas and everything.
    I got to know him just vaguely, because my mother was a singer
    and sang in the orchestra choir.
    And so occasionally, she'd take me to rehearsals.
    And I would listen to him conduct.
    It's interesting in this connection.
    Because in 1996, Herbert Zipper, than 92 years old living
    in Los Angeles, was honored by the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    And an event or a movie, a film of his life, was played
    and also a book written about him
    called The Dachau Story was shown.
    And I met him again, at that time being a volunteer.
    And there he was.
    And he didn't remember my mother by name.
    But he says, you know, if I'd see her,
    I would probably know who she was.
    But anyway, that's a going back-- or going forward
    quite a bit, number of years.
    So many people were able to leave Europe, of course,
    with these ships, get to Shanghai,
    that community grew to 25,000.
    Manila community grew to approximately 900 refugees.
    And you add to that about 200 or 300 American and also Jews
    who were Sephardic, who'd lived in the Philippines
    a long time from the Spanish era and who
    lived there as merchants.
    So that was the Manila Jewish community.
    And our routine of going to meet the ships of course
    continued until the war broke out, the Pearl Harbor,
    December 7th, 1941.
    But going back now to my childhood and, again,
    it was at ages 8, 9, 10, roughly speaking,
    I met a lot, of course, Jewish kids who
    were at the Hebrew school.
    We had a Hebrew school going.
    We went every Sunday.
    I was a very reluctant participant.
    Although I did get to be bar mitzvah during the Second World
    War.
    The Japanese occupied Philippines.
    But this is, again, going back to before the war, before 1941.
    It was an active Jewish life.
    There were dances.
    There were youth get togethers.
    There was, of course, as I mentioned, the classes that
    were taught by the rabbi, by the cantor and other scholars,
    Jewish scholars in the community.
    We went to various schools.
    There was no Jewish school.
    As I mentioned, I went to this parochial school.
    Some of the women went to women's parochial school,
    schools like the Santa Scholastica
    which was one of those.
    There was one school which was very inexpensive but very
    difficult to get into.
    Again, they favored Americans or favored British students.
    There was one school called The American School that
    was very expensive and was mainly geared toward Americans
    who were living in the Philippines.
    And most of them were fairly wealthy.
    Because they were in business.
    That was their main reason for being there.
    The Filipinos would always wonder
    how come these white people, these Jews from Germany,
    Austria were so poor.
    Because, to them, anyone who was white was rich.
    Again, this is a cultural thing and that occurred.
    So they were always asking, how come
    we could not afford cars and more servants
    and what have you?
    Frank, in these years before the war broke out,
    before Pearl Harbor and the Japanese occupation,
    what was your daily life like?
    You mentioned that you found an apartment.
    And your father got the job that he did.
    And I'm-- and you talked about poverty within the Jewish
    community.
    Well, it was generally relatively routine.
    Much of it had to do with getting
    acclimated in the Philippines, the food, what you were
    able to obtain, native food.
    Like and there was a lot, of course, of imports as well.
    Apples and oranges were all imported.
    For example, butter was imported.
    Meats were imported.
    Because the native cattle was mostly water buffalo and so on,
    which we later on did eat.
    But so it was just getting acclimated.
    And that-- I remember one major occasion,
    there was before the war a man, both Jewish, husband and wife,
    who had come to the Philippines long ago.
    They were, again, these also called old timers.
    They ran an enormous resort hotel restaurant complex,
    which people would stay over and which was quite expensive.
    Their son was bar mitzvah.
    And they had a bar mitzvah event with the outdoors one
    night, an enormous affair, 500, 600 people.
    And we were invited.
    He invited the whole Jewish community.
    So that was an interesting event that we all participated in.
    As youth, we also, in this part of the group,
    we took tours out of town.
    We went down, oh, 20, 30 miles away to a place called Tagaytay
    for the day for a picnic.
    We went swimming.
    We had to be careful because jellyfish are in the area.
    But we did all these things.
    We did fairly normal things for a change.
    As I say, we went to school.
    We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
    And we socialized.
    We had people to the house.
    It was always interesting to entertain or to meet
    with people that had just arrived, because you tell them
    the strange stories.
    For example, one night we had people over.
    And I don't know, we had another person there who was--
    even had been there much longer.
    And one of the things you see when you sit in a room
    is you see little tiny lizards crawling around the ceiling.
    And that's sort of part of the scene, I mean.
    And when people see them the first time,
    they get very upset.
    And you say, no, no, no, you have to--
    the natives or the locals who've been there awhile
    will tell you, no, you have to buy these.
    Because they eat mosquitoes.
    And that's why, you know, they're very handy.
    But don't worry, occasionally one of their tails
    drops down into your soup.
    But not to worry about that.
    They, you know, you can fish it out.
    Then there's the other story which
    is, when people first arrive there,
    they may go to a small place to eat.
    And they're served a bowl of rice
    and the rice is crawling with ants.
    And so they immediately put it aside.
    They won't touch it.
    Well, they come back a month later again to eat,
    and there's the same bowl again with all the ants.
    So they begin to fish out the ants.
    And then after that, they eat the rice.
    About three months later, they come back.
    And, of course, you know what the end of story is.
    That bowl of rice is again served with the ants.
    This time, they take the fork and eat it, rice and ants
    and all.
    This is what is called acclimatization and getting
    used to the country.
    There are all kinds of stories of that nature.
    People who are used to walking fast in Europe, they acclimate.
    They began to do that in the Philippines.
    Oh, no problem, we're going to just zip along here.
    Well, four, five months later, they began to slow down.
    The heat is oppressive.
    No home was air conditioned.
    The movies were air conditioned.
    So to cool off, occasionally, that's
    when we'd go to the movies.
    But the homes were not.
    They were screened hopefully to keep the mosquitoes out.
    We also slept under mosquito nets most of the time.
    But you did not have air conditioning.
    So the heat was in the 90s all year round.
    There were only two seasons.
    One's the rainy season.
    One's the dry season, both hot.
    So these are things you had to get acclimated to.
    What was hardest for your parents
    to adjust to, I'm wondering?
    And I'm also wondering if the Jewish life
    you had there was different than what you think your Jewish life
    would have been like if you had stayed in Berlin?
    To me, I probably wasn't--
    well, first of all in Berlin, during my experience
    there, it was a repression.
    When I was born, essentially, as far back as I remember
    to the time I left, so there was no open Jewish life in Germany.
    But in the Philippines, there was.
    And the community did make a great effort
    to keep its young, the younger people and teens
    and so on, involved in Jewish life.
    The holidays, everybody went to the synagogue Friday nights.
    We, of course, had the Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah,
    all the holidays.
    The cantor was marvelous who had come just before the war.
    He organized.
    He was really an expert in organizing young people's
    affairs.
    And he was an expert at piano singing and all that.
    He taught piano.
    So this-- and then there were other people
    who also were talented.
    After all, you brought into the Philippines only a few
    but well disciplined and well educated and talented people.
    So they were able to offer things of that nature
    and as best they could.
    Most of them had difficulty finding work, sustaining work.
    Their standard of living was not high for many reasons,
    language reasons, skills.
    We had people there who were lawyers in Germany.
    Well, they couldn't practice law in the Philippines.
    It was impossible.
    Those people who had studied technical,
    had technical backgrounds, were of course in demand.
    Because like a refrigeration engineer,
    we had one person there.
    And he immediately got a job.
    A chemist immediately was hired to develop research chemistry.
    The others were in the merchant class.
    They, too, eventually found things
    to do, either to open their own business, to work for others.
    Many of the women worked in sales fields or whatever.
    Some-- we had physicians.
    And those that were allowed to practice, and most of them
    were allowed to practice, could practice, opened practices
    and did very well.
    There was always a shortage of good physicians.
    So the community, depending on their own skills
    and their own knowledge, did relatively well.
    We had, of course, welfare problems, too.
    But the community banded together
    to take care of the cases.
    Eventually as I will describe also more later,
    one of the events in 1940 was the construction of a community
    home outside of Manila, which included several, about 10, 15,
    20, acres, where they would house
    single people and young families, young couples,
    to work on the farm, work in agricultural environments,
    and sustain themselves in that manner.
    This home was built and the land was given by the Philippines.
    And President Quezon and the president
    of the Jewish community, an American by the name of Alex
    Frieder, who owned a tobacco business,
    were the people who opened the home.
    And I was there with my mother as well as many others.
    And so, you know, these ceremonies
    of the opening of the Marikina Hall, as it was known.
    And at that time, there were articles published
    in the Manila newspapers talking about the policies of President
    Quezon, about his opening of the Philippines
    as best as he could, being under the gun of the United States,
    to welcome Jews.
    There were plans to bring 10,000 Jews in,
    to settle them in Mindanao in the southern highlands.
    These plans were sort of blessed by the State Department.
    And one can go into great detail on that project.
    But unfortunately-- but at times,
    things got to a certain point, it was too late.
    We were dealing 1940 now.
    And of course, by 1941, all of that was out the window.
    So but this home was opened and was served
    to keep these people employed.
    They also served also as a weekend--
    This is the second half of an interview being
    made on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum.
    It is the second half of an interview with Frank Ephraim.
    The first half was made on February the 28th, 1997.
    Today's date is March the 20th, 1997.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    And this is tape number three, side A.
    Frank, when we finished doing the first half
    of the interview on February the 28th, 1997,
    you were talking about the friendly policies
    of the then governor of the Philippines,
    then eventually president of the Philippines,
    Quezon y Molina, toward the Jews and Jewish immigration
    to the Philippines.
    And you mentioned that he, together
    with the leader of the Jewish community, Alex Frieder,
    were instrumental in constructing a community
    home called Mariquina Hall, which
    was planned to house young Jewish immigrants who
    would be working the land which had been donated
    by the government.
    And you mentioned that this was around 1940.
    That's correct.
    The-- there were several other plans going at the same time.
    Alex Frieder, who was then the President
    of the Jewish Community, also worked with Quezon
    to get as many as 10,000 Jews from Europe to the Philippines,
    but they would be settled in a large area of Mindanao, which
    is the southern most island of the Philippines.
    This project was also known, of course,
    by the State Department of the United States,
    and they had a representative whose name I momentary forgot,
    who also was working in this particular area.
    There were several problems involved in that, first
    of all, trying to find out--
    first, you would have to clear land.
    You'd have to have some means by which to produce income.
    You're dealing here with people that are not necessarily
    farmers or are agriculturally-oriented people,
    but people there are largely from the business community
    of Europe or who were in the retail sales,
    or who were possibly lawyers, and things of that nature.
    So the-- you had to sort of combine and look
    at the possibilities.
    However, this project, which was vast in scope for those days
    and would have been, of course, very helpful
    to these 10,000 Jews from Europe,
    did never came about because of the war interrupted
    that, Hitler's invasion of Poland September 1,
    1939, et cetera.
    So that never took place.
    Now, I'd like to maybe cover a little bit about the--
    what I've been referring to as Alex
    Frieder, the so-called American portion
    of the Jewish community.
    That actually goes back to very likely the 1920s, possibly
    the early 1920s.
    They arrived in the Philippines, one, two, or three brothers--
    and I'm not sure-- out of five from the City
    of Cincinnati, Ohio.
    They then established a business in Manila, which was a tobacco
    factory basically manufacturing cigars and cigarettes,
    the Frieder Concern.
    As I mentioned, there were five brothers,
    but only three of them would rotate through the Philippines.
    That was Philip, who was the oldest, Alex was in the middle,
    and Herbert was one of the youngest of those three.
    And they took turns being president
    of the Jewish community because there're very, very few
    Jews there to begin with.
    Later on, they were joined by others.
    A family by the name of Levine and Meadows, Konigsberg
    and a whole group of others.
    I would say probably about 200 to 250 people altogether.
    They established businesses.
    Konigsberg was in-- had one or two good sized bookstores
    that he had established.
    One downtown, I think on the mains and downtown street
    called Escolta.
    And there were others who were in automobile businesses, cars
    that it would sell.
    And there was others in transportation.
    Bachrach was another name.
    In fact, the temple that was subsequently built in the early
    '30s--
    1936, I believe, was completed, or '34, I'm not certain exactly
    about the date, was named after this fellow Bachrach,
    first name was Emil.
    And thus, the temple became Temple Emil.
    And he ran a small transportation operation
    where he took sort of little Jeep
    like vehicles, which could carry four, six passengers,
    and they would zip all over town.
    They have different routes, and at that time,
    the price was five centavos, which
    is about 2 and 1/2 American cents, for a ride.
    And everybody took those vehicles
    because they're very handy.
    You can get anywhere and go very fast.
    They would stop anywhere, pick up, and discharge passengers.
    There were no stops--
    formal stops.
    In any event, these were people who had built their businesses
    in the Philippines.
    And of course, as the situation in Germany
    got very serious, and subsequently in Austria,
    German Jews somehow or other managed
    to get to the Philippines-- a few, at first.
    I believe the first immigration probably
    was sometime around 1935 say.
    I believe the rabbi, Rabbi Josef Schwartz,
    arrived at his young wife.
    He was in his early 30s--
    around about 1936, or '37.
    Before that, members of the existing American Jewish
    community ran the services, I believe,
    [INAUDIBLE] Konigsberg and Levine were
    active in conducting services.
    The temple that they built, it's a beautiful structure.
    It was yellow stucco, was a sort of Moorish design,
    and with two towers.
    And the inside was old wood, sort of a medium dark wood,
    possibly made of the Philippine mahogany called narra.
    And it had a bema and it had, of course,
    the eternal lamp, and the Torah scrolls.
    There were about three or four of them.
    And seating capacity was a balcony level, as well.
    So seating capacity is probably somewhere in the neighborhood
    of about 1,500 all told.
    Now, the-- they established this sort of committee
    that is the Jewish share-- the American Jewish community
    established what one might call the committee,
    which was really a sort of administrative unit.
    And they put in charge a man by the name of Morton I. Netzorg.
    And that was his main job because now immigrants
    were coming in.
    They were trying to help them to find jobs and find housing,
    to feed them, because these were people
    who had escaped from Europe, Germany mostly,
    and Austria, and possibly some other areas.
    What can we do with these people?
    Now, Frieder with his tobacco factory
    did manage to employ a number of people.
    One man in particular, his name was Rosenblatt,
    and he indeed worked in the cigar business in Germany.
    And he was able to actually roll cigars.
    He knew how to do that.
    So he was a valued employee.
    But there were others who did administrative things,
    or whatever he was able to use them for.
    Now of course, he did not-- was not able to employ everyone.
    But he did manage to employ quite a number of people
    or other Jewish businesses.
    For example, my father found a position with a man
    by the name of [? Sherdit ?],, who
    ran a office machine supply--
    office machine business.
    And that was sort of in my father's line.
    And he, of course, had to learn to speak English at that time.
    But that was the type of things that they
    would try to do for the people that were
    coming into the Philippines.
    The-- of course, coming there, as I mentioned,
    we arrived there on March the 16th,
    1939, and were met by this distant cousin
    of my mother's, including car driver, wife, and small child,
    and governess.
    And we stayed at his house for about three weeks.
    And one of the first things that I did,
    I went along with a little--
    the little daughter of his who was much younger than I,
    and the governess, and we went to this famous place
    called the Boulevard.
    The Boulevard was a grand meeting place.
    First of all, the Boulevard ran alongside the shore
    of Manila Bay.
    Manila Bay is a huge bay from Admiral Dewey's day,
    of course, and well-known, facing west of the great Isle
    of Luzon facing west.
    So you could, first of all, see beautiful sunsets there
    each night.
    But the Boulevard itself was constructed like a sort
    of a scenic highway.
    It had-- first of all, there were large rocks
    that fronted the bay.
    Right behind the rocks was a concrete retaining wall about--
    from the shore side about two feet high from the other side
    much higher, and about two feet wide, which certain
    gaps that you could actually go down to the rocks through.
    But people would sit on this wall,
    but they would also sit on benches.
    Benches were all along the Boulevard.
    And there were these beautiful palm trees
    on both sides of the roadway.
    And once you crossed the roadway back away from the shore,
    there would be a space of about 100, 200 feet of grass area,
    or bush area, whatever.
    We used it as playing fields later on for soccer and a game
    called capture the flag.
    But then those days, the Boulevard
    was a place to go to play, to--
    and that's when I would accompany
    the governess and the little girl,
    and we'd hang out there and do whatever, walk around, play
    in the sand, what have you.
    Of course, I also went to school there fairly soon.
    As I may have mentioned this before,
    this was a school called Mrs. Hoyes' kindergarten
    where, of course, I had to learn to speak English
    before I got started.
    But that worked out rather well.
    And so the first years were pretty much
    getting accustomed to everything that
    was so totally new from what I had known in Germany.
    What do you remember, especially when you arrived there
    in those early times that was totally different from anything
    you've ever known before that you had to deal with?
    Well, first of all, the climate.
    In the Philippines, there's only one climate--
    hot.
    And it's divided into two seasons--
    the rainy and the dry.
    I've forgotten exactly-- I think we had just
    emerged from the rainy season when we got there.
    So it was the dry season.
    And the heat was horrendous.
    The other thing was the mosquitoes.
    When one was bitten through and through these fellows,
    they seemed to thrive on our blood.
    And of course, you had to sleep under mosquito nets.
    Although many of the homes had screens,
    there were-- often had holes in them more.
    Somehow the mosquitoes did manage
    to get in when you open the door.
    So these white mosquito nets were a very important item when
    you're--
    over your bed.
    So everyone slept under one of those.
    That was the other-- it was sort of a strange way to sleep,
    because I'd not been used to that, never known it.
    The other thing, of course, was just the clothes and the food
    there.
    You're naturally in a climate like that,
    you wore shorts or just a simple shirt.
    You'd never had to worry about being cold.
    It was hot.
    And of course, there was no air conditioning
    as we know it today.
    The only places there was air conditioning was in the movies.
    And so you were really eager to go to a movie
    because that's where you could cool off, but the only place.
    That was the other thing.
    And the food itself was way different.
    Although, at that time, there was beef and things like that
    available, which were imported, or there's some,
    I guess, cattle in the Philippines.
    But the vegetables were very different.
    There was sort of-- they're almost like today in the United
    States, you describe as Chinese vegetables type of thing.
    The fruit were different.
    They had these huge papayas, and they had bananas,
    and they had this thing called pomelos,
    which is a citrus fruit larger than a grapefruit
    but much drier.
    So they were these different kinds of things.
    And of course, a lot of rice.
    Rice in all forms.
    And a lot of sugar.
    And there was-- first time I saw this brown sugar, which
    sort of a wet type sugar, but people ate that.
    And then the-- of course, to us there
    was the newness of the ice cream and candy.
    I was kind of interested in that.
    The Boulevard featured these people with these yellow carts.
    They were painted yellow, and the word Magnolia
    was written on it in blue, that they sold ice cream.
    It was a larger company that did that.
    And you could get a popsicle.
    And then if you were lucky when you finished your popsicle
    on a little wooden stick would be the word free.
    That meant you could get another one for nothing.
    I also vividly remembered this one man, he was very poor.
    He was Filipino.
    And he would walk along with something
    around his neck sort of like a tray.
    And on it were candy, all kinds of candy bars.
    And his shoes were just sort of falling-- completely
    falling apart.
    And he sold candy bars.
    He'd walk up and down selling candy bars.
    The other thing, when the juice went-- well, in the evening,
    for example, people who also streamed to the Boulevard.
    First of all, there's a little bit of a breeze there.
    It was a beautiful sunset, as I mentioned before.
    It was just like a postcard, just tremendous sun going down
    in the west.
    And by the way, from the Boulevard
    you could see in the distance on the right-hand side the Bataan
    Peninsula.
    And on the left-hand side, you could see a little jet out,
    and that area was called Cavite.
    Cavite is-- it was at that time, and probably still
    is, a Naval repair base.
    It was used by United States Army.
    And on a very clear day between the two,
    you might detect the Island of Corregidor which,
    of course, is quite famous.
    But going back to these Johnson strolls along the Boulevard
    just before dusk, there was, first
    of all, many of the Jewish community
    would go out there, sit on the benches,
    walk around, talk to each other.
    I mean, they were all new, and they sort of
    had a good time, at least resting after a day's work
    coming out to the Boulevard.
    Then there was the-- it was well known
    as the Spanish [? Curso ?].
    This was a tradition by people of Spanish background.
    There were lots of them in the Philippines.
    They would stroll three or four blocks
    worth along the Boulevard in sort of--
    in two directions so that they would see one another.
    That's the way they would meet.
    It was sort of a minor romantic thing.
    People would get to know one another that way.
    It was a tradition, the Spanish [? Curso ?]..
    And of course, the ice cream vendors, as I said,
    there were both these Magnolia, which
    was like a upscale type of ice cream, I guess.
    And then there was sort of local ice cream outfits.
    And they had all different colorful carts,
    and they would sell ice cream.
    And they would-- you'd get a lot more from them
    for less, usually.
    But it was-- some people said not to eat that ice
    cream because they claimed that the milk was from tubercular
    cows [INAUDIBLE].
    We didn't pay much attention to that.
    The other item and product that was sold
    was-- people walk around with a little basket,
    and it was covered with a bit of cloth.
    And they would call out the name of this product.
    It was called balut.
    That's the Philippine delicacy.
    Those are duck eggs which have been half hatched
    with an embryo in it and buried in the soil for some time.
    And that was a Philippine delicacy.
    They would unpeel the shell.
    The stench of that stuff was so horrible
    that I don't think anyone other than aficionados
    would touch it.
    I never-- that's the only thing I never ate.
    And the other thing that you would notice in the Philippines
    is the smells.
    I mean, they're quite different from Europe.
    There was this fried--
    these little fish that-- dried fish.
    They would dry them and then fry them.
    The stench of that would be city wide.
    They were not too bad.
    We ate them later on during the war,
    but again, there was a smell that was totally unusual.
    Why don't you give me the name of the distant cousin
    before I forget.
    And also, I was interested in what
    that family did for a living there,
    how they had gotten there.
    And what your housing was after you left their place.
    You said you were there about three weeks.
    Yes.
    The name of the cousin was Rudy First.
    Rudy First had an interesting history.
    He was married then, and as I mentioned,
    had a small daughter.
    Rudy First was born in Germany.
    He had to leave under unknown circumstances.
    This is the gentleman who went to Spain for a while?
    Exactly.
    I may have mentioned this already
    that he had to leave Germany.
    He went to Spain, was there until about 1936
    when the Spanish Civil War broke out.
    And through connections, managed to get to the Philippines
    because again, the Spanish connection was a factor.
    And he was in business working for a large concern.
    I forgot exactly its name, but they
    were into all kinds of businesses
    as was the tendency almost in the Chinese style.
    They were trades-- trade houses that dealt in goods of all
    sorts--
    import, export, and so on.
    And he was a big wheel there of some kind-- at least
    he thought he was, I believe.
    He had a car and a chauffeur, as I mentioned.
    He had a very nice house and he knew a lot of people,
    and he talked big.
    His name was Rudy First.
    And the name First is--
    in English it will be like Earl or Lord or something like that.
    And he would deal with business.
    I don't-- again, I'm not familiar with the exact
    details.
    But at any event, he had established himself
    rather well.
    And the-- as I mentioned before, we lived with him
    for up to three weeks.
    And then we managed to get into-- in a small apartment.
    I forget exactly the name of the street.
    It might have been the M.H. Del Pilar, which
    was in the Ermita district.
    The Ermita district bordered--
    the Manila Bay was right behind the Dewey Boulevard that I
    mentioned, sort of in the north--
    slightly to the north somewhere close--
    I would say about five miles, six miles south of the Pasig
    River, roughly speaking, and also about three
    or four miles south of the Port area where we had arrived.
    The other thing we did, and of course, I went to school.
    We had very little money.
    My father worked.
    This helped.
    And my mother tried to do some work, as well.
    She tried to get into sales.
    I think there was one woman who made artificial flowers
    and she was in to try to sell those.
    But she also was a housewife and did all that, of course.
    Then on weekends-- and we didn't have
    that much to do except to visit or play around.
    But my father always liked the transportation things,
    like back in Berlin, he took me to the railway station.
    This time we spent many weekends at the port.
    We went to the large piers and went along the piers
    and try to get aboard ships.
    Because in those days, there was not the kind of security
    as there is today in the '90s or '80s.
    And many times we just let-- we would just
    wave to the person on top of the gang plank.
    And they always said, come on board.
    So we visited many, many ships.
    Amongst them was a Dutch freighter where we first
    noticed it was a completely air conditioned
    ship in the passenger quarters.
    It had these forced draft types of air conditioning systems.
    Went aboard that one.
    We went aboard many of the Empress line ships--
    the Empress of Japan, the Empress of Canada,
    the Empress of Russia, all passenger line
    there's a dock there.
    We went aboard some of the American ships--
    the American President Lines, President Hoover,
    President Fillmore, I believe, President Taylor, some
    of these ships that were docking.
    They are on their way to other parts of the Orient.
    We were also aboard ships of the Italian lines
    and some British ships of various kinds.
    So we spent a lot of time visiting ships,
    looking around, and so forth.
    Was your impression that those ships were carrying
    a lot of Jewish immigrants?
    That's the first part of my question.
    And the second is, I'm assuming, perhaps
    incorrectly, that the first wave of immigrants
    in that period of time are from Germany.
    And then as time went on, they came from other countries,
    is that correct?
    Well, the immigrants that came starting, say, in 1935, '36,
    were primarily from Germany, some from Austria.
    But very few from any other place.
    A few here and there from Czechoslovakia, perhaps just
    a handful somehow from Poland.
    But that was about it.
    And one thing I had forgotten to mention,
    I had mentioned the American Jewish community,
    there was also a fairly good sized Sephardic
    community in the Philippines.
    These Jews had been there, we assume, sometime going back
    from the Spanish Inquisition.
    [? Therefore, ?] it's a family by the name of Godol
    who lived across the street from us at one point.
    Large families, usually, and kids.
    However, they all were members of the same Temple Emil
    synagogue.
    So of course, we would see them quite often,
    as most of the Jews did go attend
    the synagogue Fridays, and mostly Saturdays,
    as well as on the holidays.
    So this was an interesting mix of Jews.
    We had people who were called from the United States who
    might have been originally from Russia, and Poland,
    and Germany, wherever.
    And then we had these German and some Austrian Jews emigrating
    in the '30s, and perhaps up to 1940, '41 maybe.
    And then we had these real old timers, the Spanish Jews,
    or Sephardim, who spoke Ladino.
    And of course, also spoke English, as well as
    the native language Tagalog, many of them.
    And they were all in business of some kind
    or another-- jewelry, textiles, you name it, restaurants,
    and things of that nature.
    They were very helpful.
    As I say, there was families but they were always
    very friendly and helpful people, as far
    as I can remember.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit about the kindergarten
    that you mentioned and what it was like for you
    to have to learn English.
    It was very interesting.
    My mother took me there one fine morning.
    And this was Mrs. Hoyes, and she had
    like a little house which divided up into classes.
    Many of the teachers were Filipino
    and some were Americans or other nationalities.
    And my first day in class was-- well,
    they decided to put me in, I guess, the America--
    what it was-- kindergarten or first grade
    because I spoke no English.
    So the first day, these-- it was a Filipino teacher or two,
    they tried to talk to me a little bit.
    And I sat in the class and I was listening and all this stuff.
    And naturally, very little of it I understood.
    I could read some of the things that they
    had written on the board.
    I could certainly look at pictures and things
    of that sort.
    And so after a while, I sat there
    and I would say, oh, within about three or four weeks,
    I was able to begin to communicate.
    And then it sort of naturally you adjust to that.
    You begin to understand the words they use.
    And of course, they try to make it clear to me what they meant.
    So they pointed to things what these were, and what that was,
    or what the word book was, the word pencil was, and so on.
    And so that I could-- so pretty soon
    speak enough at least to understand and to write,
    and later on, to speak, to respond, as well.
    So I would say within, oh, certainly two or three months,
    it was not--
    I spoke the language enough to attend school.
    Were there other Jewish immigrant children
    in the school with you, and also I'm assuming,
    this was a private American school.
    Yes, it was a private American school.
    And there were one or two other immigrant children.
    Forgot-- in my class, there wasn't any-- there was--
    one was a little older, so they stuck him
    into a slightly older class.
    But he, of course, had the same problem.
    So he had to learn the language.
    But there was at one point another family there
    whose son was there.
    They were immigrants from Spain.
    They were the so-called Republican--
    from Republican Spain, the ones that were defeated by Franco
    and the nationalist forces.
    And they had fled to the Philippines,
    and they were fairly well to do.
    They had a car and a chauffeur and the whole bit.
    And he lived not far from me, so I would--
    I got friendly with him.
    In fact, they would pick him up with the car
    and they'd give me a ride.
    Very nice people.
    And of course, he--
    his English wasn't that great, either,
    because he spoke Spanish.
    So he, too, had to learn.
    And that's how we got together.
    And so that was--
    the community was a bit dispersed.
    We did not live in all-- in the same neighborhood.
    I mean, we were either in Ermita, Malate, Pasay,
    and those three areas.
    However, when you figure there were maybe
    800 to 1,000 immigrants between 1935 and 1940,
    early '41, that were just fairly well dispersed, I mean,
    that was an odd chance only that one or two people
    lived next to one another.
    There were cases like that.
    We had neighbors once or twice where the people next door
    were also as we were, refugees from Germany or Austria.
    So there was a great intermingling.
    I mean, people would deal with others socially and otherwise.
    Is it your recollection that when your parents needed help
    with finding out information, or adjusting to life there,
    that they would turn to members of the Jewish community?
    And if so, what do you remember about that?
    Not a great deal.
    They would, of course--
    this committee, which Morton Netzorg was in charge of,
    was usually available for all kinds of things--
    jobs, advice, things of that nature.
    But of course, there was the temple.
    And I'd like to go back a little bit to that.
    Just in addition to being a religious center,
    it was also a sort of social center.
    Because during that time, I believe it was 1939,
    '40, in addition to the temple itself, they
    built an addition next to it, which
    was what became a huge hall, and the classrooms downstairs.
    And upstairs they built a rabbi's living quarters,
    a huge apartment.
    So the rabbi moved in there, and the lower part
    was used for Sunday school, and plays, and get-togethers,
    and social events.
    So there were always get-togethers
    amongst the immigrant Jewish people.
    Whatever there was, they may not have been living next door,
    but they did not live far away.
    So very often we went to see--
    to other people's homes.
    They came to our house.
    We had a man there, for example, who
    was an actor from Czechoslovakia who spoke German, and so on.
    And he was expert at mimicking people.
    So he could entertain you all evening
    with his imitations of other German and Austrian immigrants,
    and their struggle to speak English properly,
    and the way they loused up the language.
    And he was great at that.
    He actually had a job selling airtime for KCRH,
    was the radio station in the Philippines, in Manila.
    And he-- and he spoke English fairly well, an educated man,
    and knew English before he came, actually.
    So there were these possibilities.
    You were never alone.
    There were always people to ask that--
    there were Jewish physicians, both old-timers, so to speak,
    as well as the people who had emigrated fairly recently.
    There was, for example, our physician
    was a Dr. [? Lota Listner ?] and very unassuming man,
    but a very gifted man in terms in the medical field.
    So he treated us.
    And there was also another man by the name of Dr.
    [? Markelson, ?] who'd been there for a while,
    and not as long as Dr. Listner And he
    was ear, nose and throat.
    He actually yanked my tonsils out some time in 1939, '40.
    Had a lot of trouble with that part.
    And so he did the job.
    And I remember very distinctly the day after.
    Again, I will mention that we had very little money.
    And-- but my mother did manage to get me,
    I think, for a nickel or a dime, the newest version
    of the Superman Comic Book.
    So I managed to read that when I was recovering.
    [INAUDIBLE] to give you some ice cream and for that time.
    So these were some of the early memories.
    We-- the physicians were available,
    and what's so good about charging or not charging,
    rather, and if you didn't have enough,
    they would just forget about it, or whatever
    you were able to pay.
    So that was a very--
    obviously, a very useful thing to have around.
    So there was mutual help available.
    No one starved.
    That was a country where it would
    be difficult to starve, although later on,
    as I will come to during the war, that
    was a different story.
    But this-- so there was tremendous amount
    of mutual help among the Jewish community, all of them, really.
    Tell me a little bit about Jewish youth
    and the activities, both religious and social,
    that I assume centered around the temple
    that you were involved in.
    Yes, indeed it did center around the temple,
    because we all went to Sunday school.
    I had to be dragged there myself,
    if I remember, but I'm not--
    was not that eager.
    However, we had several classes.
    One was given by the rabbi.
    He had this sort of older children, the beyond the--
    almost bar mitzvah and beyond age, mid to upper teens.
    Then there was the Cantor, who I may have mentioned,
    came by ship and was taken-- it was actually
    employed as a rabbi.
    I met him on board the ship, Cantor Joseph
    Cysner, who came with his mother, and he was from Poland.
    He had this problem with struggling
    to get across the corridor at that time, the Polish
    [INAUDIBLE], Polish quarter.
    Anyway, he was very, very popular.
    He had a wonderful singing voice.
    He taught music.
    He taught piano.
    But of course, he mainly taught Sunday school.
    And I was in his class.
    And he was marvelous.
    He was a man that, of course, had to learn English, as well,
    very quickly, which he did.
    He was very bright.
    And he taught Sunday school.
    And then there was another even younger class that was also
    taught by, I believe, a lady.
    And then there were about three classes altogether.
    That was sort of the core.
    Because from that, you got to meet all the other Jewish kids.
    Although, you probably knew them already
    because they were at Friday night services.
    And so there were several things going.
    For example, I have a picture that
    was given to me not long ago of a performance we
    put on of Mendelssohn's the Midsummer Night's Dream
    where we all dressed up and I was one of the clowns.
    And absolute performances that were put on by the Jewish youth
    under the supervision of the people of the temple.
    And there were other socials for the various Jewish holidays.
    Purim was dress-up time.
    There was the holidays, the Arbor Day, what is it?
    Whatever.
    Hanukkah, of course, a large celebration.
    And the high all the days when there
    was no celebration, but you all-- we
    all attended the synagogue, which
    was very interesting because we had people that were
    both conservative and orthodox.
    We had no one there was reform as a [? mishmash, ?] perhaps,
    before.
    Reform is an American practice.
    It may have been invented in Germany but not known there.
    So it mostly conservative and orthodox.
    But they were together.
    Now, the orthodox would split up.
    Their wives would be sitting up on the balcony.
    But the others would all sit together.
    It was a mixed type of--
    however, the services were always conducted in Hebrew.
    There's no English whatsoever.
    No responsive reading, for example.
    And the only thing in English was the sermon.
    And the poor rabbi with his difficult English,
    shall we say.
    He was not a very outgoing man to begin with, but have
    trouble--
    but he spoke well, so well with content.
    However, some of the old timers, the American Jews--
    some of them I say, not all--
    would walk out just before he began
    speaking, which is kind of an insult.
    But that was their nature.
    But nonetheless, he was a very popular man.
    Tell me a little bit about the apartment
    and your mother's adjustment to, I
    assume, running things herself and adapting
    to the domestic chores that were unique to the Philippines.
    And how long you were in that apartment, as well.
    Yeah.
    Well, we were in an apartment for a fairly short time.
    If I recall, during the period March 16,
    1939 through, oh, the beginning of the war.
    We must have lived in, oh, five or six different places,
    at least, for various reasons.
    I remember we lived once on one street where we--
    it was a larger house--
    we took in boarders.
    We had three different men living in that place.
    One was-- one's name was Hartman.
    And there was-- well, I'll talk about my mother's--
    I don't want to talk about this little story first.
    Hartman was married to a woman who was not Jewish but still
    in Germany with their children.
    But she came over later.
    Hartman one night-- one morning came down,
    he says, I don't know what happened,
    but if somebody's always calling me in the middle of the night.
    He's calling, Hartman, Hartman.
    And I'm wondering what the heck.
    This guy must have some sort of a problem.
    But as it turned out, it was not somebody calling him Hartman
    in the middle of the night.
    There are such things as geckos, those animals geckos,
    and the gecko was going, go, gecko.
    He's somehow converted that to Hartman.
    And he never experienced the call of a gecko.
    So he was, again, one of those unusual things that people
    confront when they leave the Europe
    and go to the tropics in the Far East.
    So anyway to get back to my mother,
    shopping was always one of her interests, whatever it was.
    And Philippines had open markets.
    That was the main source of food supply.
    They're quite interesting, and they were always
    full of people.
    And they sold meat, and they sold vegetables, and fruit,
    and rice, and all these things.
    And then she would go shopping there and bring her food home
    and prepare it.
    Sometimes we had domestic help.
    They were extremely cheap.
    You could get a person to help you
    for five pesos, 10 pesos a month.
    And they would, of course, eat with us and everything.
    That will all be free, and even live
    there [INAUDIBLE] have a space.
    So there was help like that occasionally.
    And she would manage all that.
    She would bring the food in, prepare it,
    and we'd have usually three meals at home because of the--
    I wouldn't call it siesta, exactly,
    but there was a long lunch period
    in the Philippines because of tremendous noon heat.
    And in fact, the heat all along.
    So in fact, she would also feed the borders.
    They would be there full board.
    They'd be for breakfast and dinner.
    And so she'd have a big chore on her hands
    preparing all the food.
    Sometimes this help.
    But that also was a way we managed to get some income.
    There was another place we lived that was
    sort of like a bungalow.
    And we rented a room out to a man
    who was aboard one of the Navy ships in the harbor.
    It was one of these four stack destroyers called the Perry.
    And he was a Chief Petty Officer.
    And he stayed-- whenever he was ashore, he stayed in his room
    that he rented.
    And that went on for quite a while.
    But he did not eat with us.
    He would be eating out, or wherever he went.
    So that was another place we lived.
    I think that street was A. Mabini.
    That was the name of that particular street,
    all in the Ermita area.
    We also, as I say, often accompanied her shopping
    when I didn't have to go to school.
    So we would hang out near the markets.
    Philippines always also had a lot of beggars.
    And that was one of the things that was new,
    the number of them on the streets.
    So these were things were not pleasant to see.
    But they were there.
    Do you have any impressions, child impressions,
    of how the Filipinos regarded Jews?
    Well, the Filipinos, of course, did not see that many Jews.
    They only saw white people.
    To them, whether you were a Jew or whatever, was secondary.
    You were white.
    So that was-- they had an expression that the--
    Tagalog expression that they used.
    They would call you a mestizo bangus.
    The word mestizo means mixture, a racial mixture.
    Bangus is the name of a fish that they have.
    It's one that's a nice tasting fish,
    but has a lot of bones in it.
    That's what they would--
    so they would--
    This is the second side, Side B, of tape number three
    of an interview for the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum with Frank Ephraim.
    My name is Nancy Alper.
    I'm the interviewer.
    And it is March the 20th, 1997.
    I'm just trying to recall where we were at.
    We were, again, with the Jewish community
    during the year 1939, '40.
    There were many events, of course, that dealt
    where we were involved in.
    The community itself began to grow, of course.
    More people who are coming in.
    Almost every weekend, or whenever possible,
    we went to the docks to see the ships arriving from Europe.
    As I mentioned before, they were primarily
    of the Lloyd Triestino Line.
    There were four different ships that would arrive--
    The Conte Verde, Conte Rosso, Conte Biancamano, the Victoria.
    There were also two German ships that occasionally supplied
    this area and brought Jews out, the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst.
    And there were other ships, as well.
    And every time we went to the dock,
    we'd get aboard the ships, which they allowed you to do.
    And inevitably, my father or mother
    would run into someone that they had known in Germany.
    It was uncanny.
    These people were on their way to Shanghai
    to join that ever-growing large Jewish community there.
    A few would get off in the Philippines that
    had been given visas and so on, had affidavits,
    or whatever you needed.
    But these were very, very few.
    So-- but in any event, the Jewish community did grow.
    And I would estimate in terms of immigrants during those--
    that period of time were about 800 to 1,000, roughly speaking.
    I'm not certain of the exact number.
    I may have also described the arrival of one Herbert
    Zipper, that was one day.
    He became the conductor of the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
    And that was another of my mother's favorite things.
    She also was a singer.
    And she actually went and tried out, auditioned, and got--
    was accepted into the chorus of the Manila Symphony Orchestra.
    And she was in the performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
    in the contralto section.
    That was a fascinating affair, because she would take me
    to the rehearsals.
    This is how I got to know that symphony inside out.
    And the concertmaster was a little
    fellow somewhat under five feet tall by the name of Vallejo.
    He was a violinist, first violinist.
    He was concertmaster.
    The orchestra was almost 100, or perhaps more.
    And made up of people--
    of Filipinos, mestizos mixtures, people from Europe, China.
    I recall the Beethoven's Ninth was performed
    with the fourth soloist, one being-- the tenor
    being Chinese, the soprano Filipino, the contralto
    European, and the bass baritone was a man
    by the name of Desiderius Ligeti who was from Hungary.
    And he later performed in San-- with the San Francisco opera.
    He changed his first name from Desiderius
    to Desire to make it a little easier.
    He was a very nice looking man, nice family,
    and we used to meet him on the Boulevard occasionally walking
    up and down, as we met the soprano.
    She also took walks there with her family.
    So we occasionally meet these people along on that Boulevard
    that I talked about before.
    My mother really enjoyed this.
    And of course, one of the interesting things
    about Beethoven's Ninth as we, of course,
    know the words in the Ode to Joy, the Fourth Movement.
    They decided because of the situation
    that they would sing this in English rather than in German.
    So there was my mother practicing the English version
    of the Ode to Joy, which sounded very strange in English,
    perhaps.
    But to me, was the very first time
    I had ever heard the symphony and so I grew up
    with it in English, rather than in German.
    So that was a fascinating part of my experience there.
    The heat was enormous.
    This conductor was a very active conductor.
    He would be bathed in sweat as he was conducting
    in his old Viennese style.
    But it worked beautifully.
    They played extremely well.
    It was a packed house.
    And they performed that, an opera, of course,
    and ballet, up until the beginning until Pearl Harbor.
    Other facets of the community were, for example, people
    would go on outings to see this little bit
    of the countryside, which is certainly
    quite different from Europe.
    It was jungle like, hot.
    We went to a place called Tagaytay,
    which there was a dead volcano in the bay, the Laguna
    de Bay it was called.
    And on occasion, the earth--
    Manila also suffered from earthquakes.
    And they usually were centered in that particular area
    of Tagaytay.
    There also was, as I mentioned, a Jewish community in Manila.
    There was Jews in other parts of the Philippines
    for work reasons.
    They were in a place called Iloilo, Cebu City,
    and in a place called Baguio, which
    was a resort up in Luzon, the northern part of Luzon
    in the mountains.
    We did visit there during the war,
    and I'll talk about that a little later.
    But there were Jews there who were doing hotel work,
    were doing other businesses, and they went to live in Baguio,
    or wherever else.
    Frank, it sounds like your family made,
    all things considered, a pretty easy adjustment.
    And I wonder what you would recall
    about what was not easy for them to do, your two parents.
    Well, again, from my standpoint, always of course,
    the most difficult was, they did--
    my father did make a living.
    We ate.
    We had clothes.
    We moved around quite a bit, and perhaps for various reasons.
    Either the location was not right,
    the facility was lousy, the--
    whatever.
    The neighbors, there was a problem with the noise,
    or whatever it was.
    And my mother always wanted some improvement.
    So-- and of course, when you are from that kind of background,
    you strive.
    And in the Philippines, it was difficult to strive
    because there were difficulties, first, with the language,
    secondly, with the culture.
    Here we were totally like different type of folk
    in a country that was inhabited by Filipinos.
    And the wealthy-- and of course, Filipinos
    viewed everyone that was white as wealthy.
    It was difficult for them to accept that there
    were poor white people.
    That's just-- unless there were some-- there was one person,
    I don't want to mention his name exactly,
    but he was mentally-- there was something wrong with him.
    He would roam the streets in torn clothes.
    He was white.
    He actually was from a well-to-do family,
    highly educated family.
    But there was really nothing that--
    and he would pop into people's homes
    to ask for food and whatever.
    And they would come to our house occasionally, drop by
    or whatever, and we would feed him.
    But this was not--
    this was a problem he had that was existing.
    But most of the community strive.
    They worked very hard.
    And my father worked a lot, and he worked hard, and so did
    my mother whenever she was actually doing a job, either as
    a housekeeper with the borders, and so on.
    But we always managed.
    There were difficulties with money.
    I recall one particular instance.
    We had managed to bring with us in one of the crates
    a German radio, a nice large table model.
    But it was a good sized one, new one, I think.
    I forgot its brand.
    And we had just moved into a little house on Taft Avenue,
    not all that far-- you could almost walk to the temple.
    And we had three sets of boarders at the time.
    We had a man who was an expert bridge player.
    His name was Berkowitz, or something like that.
    And he used-- had to use a cane.
    He was a young man, but he had something wrong with his leg
    and he used a cane.
    He was in one room.
    Another room was occupied by a couple that had just
    come to the Philippines-- their name
    was Hyman-- a childless couple.
    And he became-- he opened up a tailoring business
    after a while with this fellow Hartman that I had mentioned
    before of the gecko story.
    It was then known as Hartman and Hyman, the tailors.
    And if you may want to recall, the man that was a comic,
    he would do an imitation of their business.
    Their-- none of-- neither of them
    had any experience in tailoring.
    So he would always claim, well, if the shirt-- if the sleeves
    are too long, we just make the pants legs a little longer,
    or too short, whatever.
    He did really take them over the coal rack--
    rack them over the coals.
    But-- and then--
    yes, so we had these people as boarders.
    But still apparently there were problems,
    because I think my father had to change jobs.
    That one job ran out.
    The man went back to the United States.
    Things were getting-- this was already 1940.
    Things were getting a little tough.
    And in fact, shortly before that, I remember distinctly,
    there were lots of people over at our house, maybe
    half a dozen or a dozen.
    It was the night we got the news that Hitler had invaded Poland
    September 1, 1939.
    And there was a lot of crying and a lot of tears
    because that was the signal that no one else could come out
    of Germany anymore.
    And of course, all these people had relatives, or parents,
    or someone left there.
    And of course, at that moment, they all pretty much
    knew they were no longer able to leave unless they
    escaped in some fashion.
    But-- so that was a very trying moment, the invasion of Poland.
    And of course, there were some people
    who may have had relatives in Poland itself.
    And so there was a very tragic day-- or evening for us.
    But one day there was--
    my father said, oh, there were some people
    coming to look at the radio.
    And so, sure enough, a Filipino or two men came.
    And I didn't know what this was about.
    But he sold them the radio.
    So here was a situation where he had to get rid of the-- sell
    the radio for money in order to have money.
    And so the radio was sold.
    They walked out with it.
    So that was kind of a sad day because we no longer
    had this radio.
    And I think-- I don't know what happened
    when we got another radio, but at some point.
    However, of interest, in that particular house
    on Taft Avenue, it was a bungalow type of house.
    Next door, similar house, was a man and his wife.
    And they would ask-- but he would ask my father over.
    Well, this man had a ham radio operation going in his house.
    And my father, being from the radio era,
    and himself having had work done, had patents,
    and radio equipment, radio parts, was very much into it.
    He loved knobs and play around with all these things
    all the time.
    So this guy would tune up the ham radio,
    and my father would be there and all that.
    Interestingly enough as it turned out,
    one night this man had some sort of an attack, or seizure,
    and they called my father over.
    And my father rushed him to-- got him
    on one of these cab or something to the hospital.
    And this man was always very thankful
    thereafter because he felt that my father
    in that sense by rushing him to the hospital saved his life.
    This was an American man by the name of Goodrich,
    just like the tire, but he had nothing to do with tires.
    Strangely enough, this man looked us up after they--
    many years later after the liberation of the Philippines.
    He was in the United States Army and he was the local--
    was a major by that time.
    He was the local commander of the CIC,
    the Counterintelligence Corps.
    That background, of course, in the Philippines
    helped to get him into that particular field.
    And he looked us up and came visiting.
    That was in 1945.
    But I-- that's projecting forward.
    So that was a person that we met at the time.
    It was interesting experience.
    You talked about the Filipinos differentiating
    and characterizing you simply because of the color
    of your skin.
    And I was wondering if there were
    any such differentiations made because of your Jewishness.
    It sounds like there wasn't, but I
    wonder if there were any assumptions about your
    having money because of that.
    Not exactly.
    I did not--
    I personally do not recall any such confrontation or hearing
    anything of that kind.
    Filipinos, as I mentioned before, the country was 99,
    or whatever, percent Catholic.
    And it was very strongly Catholic.
    There were these processions where
    they would take the body of Jesus
    and parade, singing, a very big ceremony at night
    of candlelight down the various streets.
    These schools, of course, particularly one
    that I went to-- as I mentioned, I
    started in this kindergarten of Mrs. Hoyes.
    But I subsequently went to the De La Salle College,
    which was run by Jesuits, which was on Taft Avenue,
    almost walking distance from where we lived.
    I remember from this Taft Avenue house,
    I would take one of these little Jeep like things
    and zip down there and negotiate with the driver instead
    of a nickel, I'd pay him three centavos--
    I mean, five centavos, I was paying three centavos
    and that was fine.
    But-- so we went there.
    Now, this school, the brothers who were the Jesuits,
    were in some cases quite strict.
    I remember one sitting in a class with Brother Victor.
    And Brother Victor, sort of a mean looking guy,
    and he announced right off the bat that anybody in this class
    would be required to take religion
    as he was looking at me and knowing full well that I was
    not a Christian, a Catholic.
    I was Jewish.
    And I was the only Jew in that class.
    There were other Jews in the college.
    But one friend of mine, Ralph Price, was a year older
    and so he was in another class.
    And one other fellow by the name of Hans Heinz [? Herfline, ?]
    who was really only partially Jewish.
    His father was a marine engineer.
    It was just-- but his mother was not.
    They did not attend the temple.
    They did not really practice Judaism.
    These were three I knew of in that school.
    But I never did take catechism.
    My simply that-- during that session,
    I would just sit and do nothing, and that was that.
    He didn't like that idea, but that was the way I did it.
    Do you remember what year you started there,
    and why your parents decided to send you to a Catholic school?
    OK.
    It was not a decision to send me to a Catholic school.
    It was rather a--
    the only thing available for the price.
    There was a school which was a very good school.
    It was-- I've forgotten its name.
    It was extremely difficult to get into.
    They were somewhat discriminatory.
    They did not want the new refugees in there.
    They were strictly limiting it to Americans,
    British, oh, I don't know, other people.
    So many attempts to enroll in that school were futile.
    So the choices then were limited.
    The initial school I went to was largely every elementary school
    for two grades or so.
    And by that time, this was now 1940 or so.
    It was-- well, I was in the second grade--
    I forgot-- or third grade.
    I don't remember exactly.
    And my parents thought I had to change schools in any event.
    And so then there was another school
    called the American School.
    That was very expensive.
    And that was something way out of--
    we could not afford.
    So there was this word that, yes, the De La Salle
    College would take Jews, or it would take others,
    and their fees were relatively low.
    And so a number of Jewish boys went there.
    And it was an excellent school.
    The Jesuits are superb teachers.
    I mean, there you could really learn.
    And there was a no nonsense type of learning.
    I mean, they'd throw a erasers at you.
    They'd cane you and there was all this that was--
    what do you call it--
    about to say capital punishment.
    There was that kind of corporal punishment,
    and that was practiced, and without any question.
    And there was prayer at the beginning of the class,
    at the end of the class-- a very quick prayer.
    There were spelling bees and so on.
    And if you won those, you got a rosary or candies.
    They also had-- other than Jesuits,
    they had some Filipino teachers.
    And I had one of them.
    And he was a very nice man and never--
    in his class, there's no question,
    I never had to take any catechism.
    I sat there and they would just skip over me.
    As the catechism was practiced in those days
    in a sort of singsong fashion, the teacher
    would sing song the question.
    The student-- every other-- as he
    went down the rows would sing song the answer.
    And the same kind of sing song or rhythm
    was used to recite the rosary.
    This was more of a method of learning
    at that age for children, I believe,
    than a typical Catholic practice.
    In any event, every 25th of the month, the whole class
    is at the chapel, the church in the college,
    because that was a celebration of Christmas,
    the birth of Christ.
    I did go along there because that was just
    a matter of visiting.
    The others kneeled and made a sign of the cross
    with the Holy water.
    I didn't do that.
    I sat in the pew and then listened and sat
    there and observed.
    That's it.
    But as I say, some of these brothers were kind of tough.
    Others were kind of lenient.
    It would depend.
    There was a man by the name of Brother Xavier, X-A-V-I-E-R,
    who was the headmaster.
    He was a very nice man.
    He was of, I believe, English or American background.
    There was a Deputy-- a Dean whose name
    is Brother [? Birthwin, ?] and he was of German background.
    Both of them were certainly not requiring the Jewish students
    to take catechism.
    But as I say, there were a couple who
    were kind of nasty about it.
    So that was my experience.
    I went to that school up until the beginning of the war.
    However, by that time, we had moved.
    We moved to a place called the Santa Monica
    Courts, which were row houses.
    And they-- I would estimate about eight rows worth
    of houses where the houses--
    row houses were back to back.
    Between the rows were about 15 foot wide concrete roadways.
    You could run a car through there,
    but no cars were basically allowed.
    But you could walk and everything.
    They were built perpendicular to the Dewey Boulevard.
    And they were right on the Dewey Boulevard.
    And it was these-- in these houses
    that we experienced the actually Pearl Harbor.
    Because what happened was, first of all,
    when Pearl Harbor occurred, I was no longer
    going to this De La Salle College, for whatever reason,
    I forgot.
    I ended up in a place called the Philippine Women's University,
    which allowed boys up until the fourth grade.
    And I was in the fourth grade.
    And there I was in the same grade
    with the two women who were cousins who attended our Manila
    Reunion in 1996--
    Lottie Cassel and Margot Cassel, and a few others.
    And there were a few other boys there in the fourth grade.
    It was still mixed.
    Apparently, it was either a bit cheaper,
    or it was more convenient, because now we
    lived in another spot.
    I was a little boy.
    I remember the Santa Monica Courts was much further away
    from--
    that was not in Ermita, rather than Malate.
    As a result, there was a much, much longer way away
    from the De La Salle College.
    And the Philippine Women's University was closer.
    So that's the reason, I believe, I went there.
    I switched schools a lot.
    But I adapted, because by then I spoke the language
    and picked up whatever I needed.
    I was never the greatest student in those days.
    I was more of a wild kid.
    And I've always been adventurous.
    And well, that's the way it was.
    But anyway, one day my father and I--
    we were living in these courts, and as I explained,
    they were sort of double--
    two stories.
    Across from us on one side lived a family by the name of boss,
    B-O-S-S, a couple, no children, and his mother.
    And also from--
    I believe, from Breslau, yes.
    He was a veteran of the First World War.
    And in the heat, he'd walk around
    in this T-shirt, this sleeveless like a tank top type of affair.
    And there were these huge bayonets scars in the back.
    He had apparently been bayoneted,
    amongst other things, in the First World War.
    And right next to them across the street
    was a woman and a small child.
    She was the wife of a Navy man who
    was in the United States Navy.
    But she also was originally, I believe, from somewhere
    in Europe.
    And then amongst us doing--
    a number of German Austrian Jewish refugee families
    living in these courts.
    Next door to us was a young couple,
    and he was a pilot in the United States Air Force, flew a P40.
    The [? Shallocks ?] were their names.
    He later was in the Death March, and she was taken in-- taken
    from Corregidor and--
    where she had sort of converted to be a nurse
    and spent the war years in Santa Tomas,
    the civilian interment camp.
    And then on the other side were people who were Dutch.
    And they had moved into Manila from out of town.
    And they lived there, and they had a small boy.
    So amongst that whole series of courts,
    I want to say eight rows, there must
    have been 1,000, 2,000 people living there.
    Many Americans, British, Dutch, German, Austrian Jews,
    mixtures of people who came from other countries.
    Not too many Native Filipinos.
    And this was perpendicular to the Boulevard.
    And it was very close to the Hellman's huge operation,
    which I had mentioned before.
    And Sigi Hellman was an ace football player--
    soccer, that is, of course.
    And we often played soccer out there almost every day,
    or capture the flag.
    And once in a while, this one fellow,
    who was the expert football player, would walk by
    and he would honor us occasionally playing with us.
    But he was a bit older.
    But he was very, very good.
    So we enjoyed doing that.
    But it was in that particular period of time,
    we're now dealing with the 1941.
    And when-- one morning my father and I were on the way walking
    down this one street--
    he walked me to the Philippine Women's University
    before he went to work--
    picked up the newspaper, and he was very shocked
    because that was the announcement
    of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
    I continue to go to school, but about an hour into classes,
    they gathered us around and began to send us home.
    So I was put into one of those caratellas, which
    I had described before, horse-drawn vehicle, which
    was more for freight, as opposed to a caramata, which
    is more for passengers.
    And I arrived, told my mother, was looks all full of anxiety.
    She tends to be a very, very anxious person anyway.
    And so I went home, and we were listening to-- by then,
    we had another radio, I guess.
    We heard from other people, and we didn't really
    know very much.
    The American troops-- there were Americans officers,
    and they were talking about it very casually.
    Oh, well.
    And then there were announcements
    made on the radio, all military people
    should report back to the bases.
    But the fellow next door, the pilot, he says, oh, well,
    no problem.
    We don't have to rush it.
    This is just--
    I know I have to be there tonight,
    so I'm not going to bother going now because that's
    my duty time is tonight.
    And he was a fighter pilot.
    But there was this sort of lackadaisical response
    or reaction that I noticed among the service people--
    Navy, Army.
    In those days, of course, the Air Force was part of the Army.
    So we saw more troops around now with those flat helmets,
    and the British style helmets and more
    in those days, and Jeeps.
    A lot of people say the Jeep was not really developed
    during the war.
    Actually, we did have Jeeps in the Philippines in 1941.
    Well, by afternoon, everybody had come home.
    My father come home.
    Everybody was wondering what's happening.
    There was no noise.
    It was just a lot of talk.
    We walked the Boulevard, which was close by.
    We ran into people, talked to them, and they said, well--
    so we went back home.
    And then they announced that the air
    raids alarm system would be operated by the Philippine Boy
    Scouts.
    For some odd reason, that was the way, at least
    that's what they said on the radio.
    And so nothing happened until approximately 10:00 at night,
    oh, must have been December the 7th,
    whatever equivalent time, 1941.
    The air raid sirens rang, the alarm.
    So everybody came from their upstairs bedroom downstairs.
    There's no basements in the Philippines.
    If you dig there for three feet, you're in water.
    So we sat on the stoop and all the other peoples,
    dark, had that blackouts required, of course.
    So-- and then about 10, 15 minutes later,
    the all clear siren rang.
    Said, oh, gee, system works real well.
    It must have been close by and everything's all clear.
    We went back upstairs and went to sleep.
    Well, the next thing I know was a horrendous racket--
    explosions, flashes of light, whatever, airplanes overhead.
    And sure enough, it was a surprise attack
    by the Japanese.
    They went in and began to fire at the ships
    and bombed the ships in the harbor, the Navy ships that
    were there, or had still--
    were left there.
    And there, of course, was no alarm whatsoever.
    The system had broken down.
    And so sure enough, we went downstairs,
    shot under the tables, and stayed there
    till whatever was over.
    It was-- took about 10, 15, 20 minutes, half an hour, perhaps.
    And then these planes and the explosions subsided.
    The planes apparently left.
    And it was only then that the air raid alarm went off.
    So the thing didn't work too well.
    Was there any response from the Americans?
    The response-- we don't know.
    There might have been.
    There might not have been.
    We heard later that they also raided Nichols Field and Clark
    Air bases, or airfields, United States Army airfields
    in the area, and did manage to wipe out
    a goodly number of planes that were lined up wing
    to wing, which was unfortunate that unpreparedness
    at that time.
    There was a feeling that the Japanese would not
    attack at night because they don't see too well.
    And that was the thought about it.
    And that was a myth, of course, but it was--
    but it was accepted doctrine.
    You're dealing in days where lots of myths about Orientals
    and these Asiatics were abound.
    So then the pilot next door came back and he's-- he was actually
    on a mission at that time, was in the middle of the night.
    And he said he was lucky they ran into that Japanese attack
    force, and they had it--
    took a couple of bullets in the plane.
    But he managed to land safely and come back the next day.
    But at that point, they started posting troops
    with sort of antiaircraft guns around the Boulevard
    and in other areas.
    And everybody walking around with gas masks.
    That was the big thing.
    Everybody was concerned that the Japanese would use gas.
    So they taught us how to protect against gas, mustard
    gas, and other gases, with wet handkerchiefs or [INAUDIBLE]
    And all the military people were wearing these big gas
    mask kits and few civilians, where Americans were given that
    by their own country, them being part of the country there.
    When you say they, I assume you're
    talking about the American Army, or was it
    the Filipino government, or the two of them in conjunction
    that were helping you prepare for whatever
    was going to happen?
    It was primarily American Army.
    There was a Philippine Army, of course.
    MacArthur had been put into command,
    and he was actually a Field Marshal in the Philippine Army,
    in addition to being a commander of the United States
    Army and all the armed forces.
    But it was mainly the American Army.
    Also a mixture of the Philippine government.
    We must recall the Philippines were a Commonwealth
    of the United States.
    So it was-- yes, there was a Philippine flag, but also
    an American flag.
    And so it was sort of a mixed command.
    The Philippine Army is very ill equipped unit.
    They mobilized the ROTC of the colleges.
    They were these sort of tropical helmets.
    They had no weapons, and they wore some uniforms.
    But that was just raw manpower.
    They were ill trained.
    And as was the United States Army, it was under equipped.
    It was not well-trained.
    It was really a peacetime army, Garrison army.
    And as a result, tremendous difficulties.
    But that was the first night of the air raid,
    the attacks, which then of course,
    no, there were no more schools.
    They were closed.
    So starting December the 7th, 8th,
    say, 1941, for about a year, none of us went to school.
    Do you remember also hearing on the radio--
    or how did you hear that the United States and Great
    Britain had declared war on the Japanese?
    Yes.
    That came about in the next few days, the word was out.
    And then among other things, they
    began rounding up foreign--
    or aliens that might have been members of the axis,
    including my father.
    Because after all, we were German Jews and not
    citizens of any--
    but-- so they rounded up in the courts where we lived.
    Oh, they came-- it was a Filipino unit of the police,
    very friendly.
    They said, well, we just-- we have
    to take you in, only the men.
    And so on-- and was, well, can--
    we have-- this is-- we were told to do that.
    So they took in, oh, from that area, about 50 or so,
    and then they brought them all to this great police station.
    And they released them about four hours later,
    having identified them as Jews and being
    refugees from Germany.
    And again, the America-- there is where the American Jews came
    in because this committee under Morton Netzorg, they of course
    would roll down to these places in a hurry, and says,
    these people are refugees.
    What are you doing?
    And they were Americans so they had this kind of authority.
    I mean, not authority, but a certain status that they could
    use to convince these people, and they
    weren't that eager to take all these people in anyway.
    So-- but it did take in Germans, real Germans, and of course,
    Japanese.
    Lots of Japanese in the Philippines
    in business and in agriculture.
    They were all taken in at that time and arrested.
    Usually, only the men.
    They did not bother with the women and children.
    There was no internment as such.
    But that was what they did.
    Do you remember any kind of expectation
    that the American Army would protect you from whatever
    the Japanese were going to do?
    Well, there was certainly that hope.
    After all, the United States was always
    regarded as a major power.
    Certainly, it was, and was there to defend the Philippines.
    MacArthur made speeches, and the others
    talked about things that they would do, they were able to do.
    And again, there was a view of the Japanese
    as not having been well equipped, well trained, very
    effective.
    Although, it's surprising because they had been
    victors in Malaya and China.
    Tremendous combat experience in those areas from the Korea
    and Taiwan, wherever they were.
    They had lots of experience.
    And by that time, they were, of course, in Formosa, Taiwan.
    And so the next thing we knew, there were more air raids.
    Normally, be about 20 to 30 planes only coming over.
    They targeted pretty much the military areas
    to a large degree.
    There were a few cases where there
    were bombs that fell into civilian areas
    and there were casualties.
    Was not a horrendous amount, big bombardment.
    The air-- antiaircraft was fairly light also in the area.
    So they came-- they bombed us at will.
    They did not fly that high.
    You could see them coming across, black airplanes,
    bombers.
    I'm not sure, I think they were-- they were probably
    stationed in Formosa.
    Was this usually at night?
    No, it was actually usually during the daytime.
    The first attack was at night.
    There were some attacks at night,
    but most were daytime attacks.
    In fact, usually in the morning, some for a couple hours.
    Everybody knew that this would be the appropriate-- we
    know full well the sirens would go off,
    and we could expect planes.
    And we could expect something.
    Do you recall during that period, the last weeks
    of December of '41, any visible signs of evacuation
    on the part of the Americans, or was there
    still the feeling that the American
    Army was going to stay there?
    Well, that was the expectation, that they
    would be able to defend.
    There had been that whole eight, nine months prior to that time,
    of course, there was a sense of danger of war for many reasons.
    I mean, there was war in Europe.
    The Japanese were making moves into places like Singapore,
    or heading in those directions, in China, and so forth.
    So there certainly were moved--
    Pearl Harbor had occur--
    they were preparing for that.
    So there was a sense of this thing's happening.
    This then resulted in a large number of Americans
    leaving the Philippines, women and children primarily.
    But also members of the Jewish community, American Jews.
    The Frieders all had gone by then.
    Oh, yeah, there was no Frieder left.
    And there was, I think, Konigsberg was left,
    he remained.
    And Levine remained, among other Americans.
    They didn't all leave, but a goodly number of this--
    but certainly, the Frieders had left.
    Now, I assume they were able to go back to the United States,
    or to Ohio, wherever you said they came from.
    But I'm wondering what the options would have
    been for Jews like your family?
    Where could you have gone?
    Did you talk about it?
    Yes.
    That's a very good point, because what happened was this.
    As soon as Hitler invaded Poland, as soon as the Second
    World War began in Europe, a new rule
    was posted at the consulates, American consulates.
    Because many of the Jews, if not all
    the German and Austrian Jews who came to the Philippines,
    looked upon the Philippines as a way station.
    They were going to go on to the United States.
    We were.
    We had family here, and so on.
    They were unable to give us affidavits
    because they were not wealthy.
    Although, parts-- other parts of the family were wealthy but
    they were slow.
    They would correspond with us by--
    not by airmail, but by surface mail, take a long time.
    Anyway, not really-- they weren't--
    they were not aware of the need for hurry, and as a result,
    we were stuck in Philippines.
    But at the point when Hitler invaded Poland,
    the rule came out that no one who had family left in Germany
    could come into the United States
    would be given a visa to enter the United States.
    That was that.
    So we were definitely not able to
    in any fashion into the United States,
    because my father had his mother and brother left in Germany.
    That-- and that was the word.
    And this was it.
    So we were unable in any way, shape or form
    to leave the Philippines.
    There was no option but to stay and to sit it out
    for whatever occurred next, which occurred, the war.
    I-- maybe I'm missing something and I don't
    remember that particular rule.
    What was the rationale for that tying
    the closing of the doors of immigration to family members
    remaining in Europe?
    Because I assume that the doors were closed in Europe
    so the fear would not be that you would arrive in the United
    States and immediately start hauling additional family
    members in.
    I'm not sure what the rationale was.
    There may not have been any real rationale.
    It may have simply been a good reason
    to close the doors further, or tighter, or whatever.
    And the remote reason might be that that could be a security
    problem in some fashion.
    Because after all, there was such a problem.
    The Germans could easily negotiate information
    for a release.
    That has crossed their minds, I'm sure.
    So that may have been a possible reason.
    I'm not certain.
    But in any event, the doors were closed.
    That was that.
    And of course, we knew that the relatives were now
    trapped in Europe.
    That was the hard part of it.
    You had mentioned earlier that your father's job
    with the office machine company had
    ended because that gentleman had closed his business.
    Now, I assume he then went on to some other work.
    And I'm wondering what happened to his work right
    about the time that you're describing?
    Well, whatever happened at the time,
    he was working for an office-- another office machine
    company, which strange enough was run by a German.
    And that--
    This is the fourth tape of an interview
    with Frank Ephraim for the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    It's March the 20th, 1997.
    And this is side A of the fourth tape.
    Yes, we were at the point where my father
    was working for this office machine company.
    And they had a store, a retail store, a very large one,
    they sold adding machines, typewriters,
    and things of that sort, also the very first public address
    systems with the microphones, old microphone
    types they had in those days.
    Now his boss, the man who managed the store,
    was a German, as I mentioned.
    He had come ashore to the Philippines
    after the First World War.
    He was a radio operator.
    His name was Zifkind.
    That was his last name.
    Was sort of a tall man who almost
    looked like the fellow that is president of-- chancellor,
    president of Germany, Kohl.
    And he was a bachelor at the time,
    but he was importing his wife from Germany, a woman
    that he had known there.
    And she was going to come join him later, and she did.
    They were married.
    However, that job went very well.
    He was in that job up until the opening guns of the full war,
    December 7.
    And it, of course, was an American company.
    And one thing was unique about the office was I recall,
    they built--
    Zifkind's office was converted into an air conditioned office
    so far everybody wanted to go to meetings there.
    It was a small office he had.
    I remember going in there.
    And they showed me around.
    And it was air conditioned, one of the first times that they
    installed such a system.
    In any event, my father worked there
    in sales and corporate sales or company sales,
    not just the walk-in retail sales.
    Since naturally, office machines were used by the businesses
    all over the place, and this was in the downtown business
    section of Manila.
    It was on a street called Dasmariñas.
    But of course, here came the war.
    He did manage to get to the office after December 7, 1941.
    But it was not long until there was word
    that the Japanese appeared to be on their way
    to invading the Philippines, which they did.
    They landed, as history has shown, at Lingayen Gulf.
    I'm not certain of the day.
    It was sometime in December.
    During that period, there was a lot of preparation.
    The American forces had established
    antiaircraft installations all over,
    usually heavy machine guns.
    There was a lack of good antiaircraft artillery.
    Everything was blacked out.
    There were patrols at night.
    There were all kinds of restrictions, naturally,
    that had to be followed.
    It was war.
    So we still continued to live pretty much as we had before.
    Food, there was getting to be a little shortage,
    because, obviously, the ships were not coming in.
    There were no longer notifications
    in the shipping pages of the name of the ship that
    was going to be arriving, just it always would say a vessel.
    And it would give the approximate date of arrival,
    again, for security reasons.
    It was a large shipping port.
    Well, the Japanese kept bombing, periodically,
    until we had heard of the landing at Lingayen.
    And then fighting on the ground began.
    We were not totally aware of what exactly was happening.
    However, we were not in school.
    So we were playing soccer, or football,
    as we called it, on the Dewey Boulevard, continuously
    almost every day.
    And then one day my father came out to where we were playing
    and some other of the fathers or mothers of the kids
    that were playing, and because we
    hadn't noticed that provincial buses were coming down
    the boulevard.
    Manila had been declared an open city.
    That's to avoid its destruction and the killing of people,
    civilians.
    That was done by MacArthur.
    Meanwhile, the military was beginning
    to pull out of Manila, to Bataan, where
    they would attempt to resist.
    But the Japanese were making great headway
    in coming, roaring down from Lingayen, down the valleys
    or whatever toward Manila.
    And we were beginning to get that kind of news.
    We were getting word that women should not
    be wearing pants because the Japanese would play games.
    They would say, well, are you a man or a woman?
    And they being sort of traditionalists,
    and that was a word that was passed around,
    among other things.
    As I said, one day, we were playing soccer,
    and these provincial buses-- provincial buses
    are the kind where there's a bus chassis,
    and then there are benches built across, holding people,
    and a roof.
    And you could enter the bus from the side for each bench.
    There was no middle passageway with a front entrance
    to the bus.
    They had different colors on them too, sort of fancy colors.
    And also people could sort of lie or squat on top
    where there was baggage on top of the bus.
    These were the provincial buses, take people to the province
    and back into Manila.
    We saw those coming down.
    And we noticed, playing out, they
    seemed to be full of what looked like soldiers.
    But we weren't sure who they were, exactly.
    There was some suspicion.
    Anyway, our parents would come there and say,
    better come in, because the word is
    the Japanese are in some fashion appear to be entering Manila.
    And, yes, of course, then we realized later--
    we saw some passenger cars with the Japanese flag and civilians
    in them-- that these were the beginnings of the entry
    into Manila of the Japanese forces.
    Prior-- I want to just backtrack a little bit.
    As the United States Military forces
    were departing from the Philippines,
    there was, of course, law and order had broken down.
    So what they did was the policemen were no longer armed.
    They were just armed with sticks,
    it being declared an open city.
    The American forces decided to open up
    their major quartermaster supply depots because they couldn't
    haul the stuff back with them.
    So they opened it up for the populants
    to go in and take what they wished
    and walk off with it, which they all did.
    So down the boulevard, marching from the port area where
    these warehouses were, were Filipinos and others,
    hauling stuff of all sorts, from hats to all--
    there was a story of one time where one of them--
    this is an anecdote--
    I believe, it may have been true--
    where they came back to their homes
    after hauling this huge box.
    And then they opened it and discovered there
    was a coffin with a corpse.
    It had been a person who had passed away
    that was being about readied for shipment
    back to the United States.
    And this of course was all in that dock area,
    and so naturally--
    However, and unfortunately, this whole business of hauling stuff
    led to widespread looting of stores and eventually homes,
    so we decided in these Santa Monica Courts--
    we had us a little community meeting--
    to establish patrols made up of residents.
    And my father had the duty, I believe
    it was like from 11:00 to 1:00 in the evening,
    and he was to relieve another person or two others.
    And so me being of the adventurous kind, my mother
    with great anxiety asked my father,
    gee, I'd like to come along.
    You know, just walking around the area there was no big deal.
    But, so we did that, it was dark,
    and then suddenly, we heard hobnailed boots
    on the concrete.
    And as we turned the corner, there
    was, I guess, a squad of Japanese.
    I mean, obviously, were not Americans.
    They wore the little caps, and long bayonets,
    and these hobnailed boots, I guess.
    And we saw them, they saw us.
    So they stopped, and we stopped.
    And we saw put one arm up, and that's sort of a sign of peace,
    like from the old Indian tales.
    And they spoke no English, but they indicated that we
    should go home, go where--
    so we went back to our apartment, our house.
    Next morning, we noticed that all the,
    as I recalled before, there were passageways
    between these rowhouses, they were all blocked.
    There was a Japanese sentry or two on each end,
    so that you couldn't get in or out, because they had known,
    perhaps, ahead of time that that was
    a home for many Americans, and British, and Dutch,
    who were, of course, enemies.
    And there we were as well.
    So what we did was we took out our old German passports
    with that red J in them.
    And it was sort of dark green passports,
    and we went up to this first sentry
    and showed him this passport.
    And, of course, the passport had this swastika on it,
    emblem with a swastika.
    So he didn't know, and he apparently
    called some other guy over who might have been the sergeant
    or whatever.
    And he looked at that.
    And then he said, ah, Deutsch-ka.
    The word Deutsche is German, and "Deutsch-ka"
    was the Japanese expression for a German.
    So they let us out.
    They let us back in.
    It was unusual that they would do that.
    So those of us who had these crazy passports
    were able to get in and out most of the time.
    Interesting thing about the Japanese.
    I first saw them, extremely ill-clothed.
    They wore these, I guess not puttees,
    but it was sort of like long strips of cloth
    wound around their leg up to the knee,
    like in the First World War.
    And they wore shoes made of rubber where the toe was
    separate from the rest.
    It was a very Japanese style of footwear.
    And they did not each have a rifle,
    because when they changed guard, the rifle would
    stay with the person on duty.
    And the others would hand over the rifle to them.
    The only thing they wore was a bayonet and a cartridge case,
    two leather cartridge boxes on the front of the belt.
    And that was there.
    And they also had no steel helmets.
    They wore sort of either caps or a sort of a type of pith helmet
    in the shape of a steel helmet.
    So they were extremely ill-equipped,
    it looked like any way.
    But they were a tough group.
    They were also mean.
    They were not extremely friendly, certainly not.
    And they were guarding, making sure no one got in and out.
    And a few days later, buses arrived and took--
    and the word came down, the Japanese officers
    and interpreters, that all nationals of American, British,
    Dutch would have to board the buses to be
    taken to an internment camp at Santo Tomas University.
    Prior to your sighting of the first Japanese soldiers,
    was the pier area burned?
    Was that part of what you described
    as this kind of wholesale looting and kind of chaos
    that was going on right before the Japanese came in?
    No.
    They may have bombed some ships.
    I don't think the pier was hit.
    It might have been damaged slightly.
    We're not certain.
    I couldn't swear to that.
    The port area was bombed and some parts.
    And, yes, there were fires before the entry
    of the Japanese came in, but these were largely
    self-set fires.
    All the oil stocks were being burned.
    And the strange thing was, I think the rainy season was
    on upon us, and all that oil smoke, black smoke up there,
    the rain would come down.
    And everybody had to run inside the house,
    because, otherwise, your clothes would
    be completely full of wet soot.
    And so I recall that.
    And there were some explosions where they blew up
    certain installations.
    They blew up outside at a place called Parañaque,
    which was south of Manila.
    There may have been some destruction.
    But this was strictly to avoid stuff falling
    into the hands of the Japanese.
    Do you remember your parents doing anything in particular
    to prepare for whatever was coming, that nobody really
    knew what was coming, like hoarding food or anything
    like that?
    Yes.
    There was a good deal of that, because, of course,
    we knew that tough times were upon us and that.
    So my parents were old hands at that game.
    They were always ready to move, having had that experience all
    their life, much of their life.
    So cans of sardines were being gathered up
    and cans of corned beef and other things, rice, small sacks
    full of rice, and sugar.
    And things of that stuff we had sort of storage,
    it was in storage.
    And people would buy things, or whatever
    they could get hold of.
    They would go to stores that had been half-looted.
    And the owners had come back, and they
    were selling out anything and everything they had.
    So we'd all go to these places and buy whatever canned goods,
    certainly, that we could obtain, because Philippines things will
    rot in a hurry, and so anything in cans, of course,
    would be useful.
    Cigarettes, another thing people bought as best they could.
    They knew that that supply would not last long.
    So all these things were beginning to happen.
    And, of course, then suddenly, of course, the money changed.
    The peso and the dollar, anything like that
    was no longer valid currency, at least officially.
    And Japanese, what we called Mickey Mouse money,
    the Japanese army walked in with that money,
    and used it immediately.
    And it was required to be used.
    So now we had new printed pesos that
    had the Japanese government written on it.
    And it wasn't long-- that devalued very, very quickly--
    that pretty soon that to buy a half a pound of rice,
    it would cost you a thousand pesos, something of that sort.
    That began fairly soon, that was worthless money.
    Do you remember actually seeing people
    being taken to Santo Tomas?
    Oh yes.
    Well, these people that-- when my mother and those of us who
    were not being taken there, German-Austrian Jews
    or statements of what we were, we were there.
    And right by the boulevard where we had played soccer,
    that's where the buses were.
    And these people-- it took about four or five hours to load
    everybody, and buses would leave and come back
    after taking the people to Santo Tomas, and load more.
    So yes, we were there all day, watching and helping
    the people or whatever, and also storing things for them
    because after all, they had to leave their apartment.
    Now, they did exempt people, women
    who were pregnant or very small children,
    they didn't immediately take those people in,
    but the majority of people were taken.
    It was very sad day.
    You have, what, several thousand people in these apartments,
    and suddenly, oh, half, or more than half, no longer there.
    So it was very strange.
    Do you remember seeing the Americans leave?
    What did you see, that you actually
    saw physically, that the Americans,
    either business interests, but primarily soldiers
    and armaments were going away?
    Well, our couple next door, the Shellacs,
    he being the pilot and so on, it was the day before Christmas,
    1941.
    And knocked at the door, and he says that they're leaving.
    And they have to go in order to go to Bataan.
    And there was a convoy or whatever.
    And all the airplanes had all been lost and what have you.
    And both were left.
    And they gave us some of their things and food
    that they wouldn't be taking along.
    And then they left, and then said goodbye,
    and that they hoped to be back.
    But--
    The Filipino government disappeared, I assume.
    And there was this transition to the Japanese government.
    And I was wondering if early on during the Japanese occupation,
    you had to have dealings with whatever
    their governmental units were there.
    Well, actually not.
    What happened was that the Quezon had left with MacArthur,
    to Corregidor, Bataan and Corregidor, as well as Osmeña,
    the vice president, and much of Philippine government.
    However, they left in charge a man
    by the name of Jose Vargas, who was then called chairman
    of the whatever committee that was
    to be in charge of the Philippines,
    to welcome the entry of the Japanese, whose general was
    Masaharu Homma, into Manila, the head of the Japanese Imperial
    Army.
    He had two or three other people on this committee,
    but he was the chair.
    He had a man by the name of Aquino,
    and also I think it was Jose Laurel, but there were others.
    And he was called as Chairman Vargas.
    And he was in charge of the government.
    And the Japanese accepted that, temporarily, certainly,
    and considered him to be the quote, "head of government."
    There was no Japanese civilian head of government,
    only the military.
    There were some civilians that were attached to the military
    and took care of whatever things, but all the services,
    utilities, and whatever management, police even,
    was under this Chairman Vargas.
    So you dealt with those that you had
    dealt with before, essentially.
    There was no change of that nature.
    The Japanese, as I say, were strictly military occupation.
    And they ruled the roost.
    I mean, they had people that would tell him what to do
    or what limitations were and what restrictions there were.
    But if one would recall, the idea of the Japanese
    was to form a greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which
    meant that their aim was to incorporate
    the Philippines and the Filipinos
    as part of their economic world, social and culturally as well.
    So it's that direction that they were
    looking at, rather than subjugation, necessarily.
    Oh, they used subjugation and atrocities and everything
    else as means to get there.
    Nonetheless, the overall aim was that.
    It was anti-white, anti-foreigners, anti-American,
    anti-British, anti--European, et cetera.
    But they were trying to befriend the Philippines.
    So that was the thing they-- and in fact, they
    wanted the schools to open up that they were only
    taught in Tagalog and not in English, to give the Filipinos
    an identity of their own, rather than having
    to rely upon another language.
    So but the Filipinos were the kind
    of people that were very fairly thoroughly Americanized
    and would always say, even throughout the war,
    talking about the future, when ours come back,
    meaning the Americans.
    So they never made too many friends.
    And a few.
    They did manage to, of course, get a few adherents,
    but the minority.
    What do you remember about the radio stations changing,
    the newspapers, and people gathering
    in or around your apartment or within the Jewish community
    to talk about what was going on?
    Yes, there was a lot of that.
    Of course, we kept visiting one another.
    The temple remained open.
    We continued to have services.
    Our American co-religionists, many or most
    were in Santo Tomas.
    A few had remained out for various health reasons,
    or some of the women or children were still there.
    But, of course, the main people were no longer there.
    They were in Santo Tomas, as were
    others who were not Americans, who were of Polish background,
    and later on, they were taken in, and Romanian,
    and they were later on.
    As these countries, they became known as enemies
    to the Japanese, they were interned as well.
    I remember several people that had that citizenship
    and were there.
    However, the community, as usual,
    stuck together early on, anticipating
    one incident that occurred when the Japanese first
    visited the temple.
    It was a detachment of the Kempeitai,
    which is Japanese intelligence service, military intelligence.
    And they visited.
    And the story was told to me--
    I was not there--
    was that they came in, apparently,
    with this photograph of a rabbi, an old man with a big beard.
    And they apparently must have picked that up somewhere
    as part of their intelligence work,
    and they were looking for this rabbi,
    a person who looked like that.
    And here appeared this 36-year-old young fellow,
    always sporting a yellow tie, that was his thing,
    always wore a yellow-- it was white suit, that's
    what you wore on the Philippines--
    and this yellow tie.
    And he said, I'm the rabbi.
    And in fact, he related the anecdote.
    He was there, and he always talked about it a lot.
    And they looked at the picture and looked at him.
    They weren't certain if this guy was telling the truth.
    But he eventually convinced them that, yes, he was the rabbi,
    and he was the religious leader.
    And they said, well OK.
    And they said, well they would be covering the services here.
    They would have people that would attend.
    That was their procedure, and that's
    what they were going to do, and did.
    Every Friday night, these two guys, Japanese
    in civilian clothes, would be sitting
    in the synagogue in the back, with the books open,
    reading, presumably-- we don't know for sure whether they
    read Hebrew or not, might have.
    And they were there, never created
    any kind of fuss or anything, simply sat there, and observed,
    and listened.
    So the notion was that if there were a gathering of people
    who were suspect in any way, however
    tenuously, they were going to be there to make sure
    that nothing arguably subversive was going on.
    Precisely.
    This was certainly one of their-- after all, again,
    we go back to the fact we were a white community.
    This was not within the range of the Greater East Asia
    Co-Prosperity Sphere.
    We were not necessarily enemies, but we
    were certainly not friends.
    And they, of course, knew these Kempeitai,
    or the Japanese higher up hierarchy,
    they knew fairly well the fact that the German
    Jews or Austrian Jews were here because they were kicked out,
    or left Nazi Germany, their ally.
    So that, of course, made us suspect, definitely.
    Things got a lot worse later on.
    This was the beginnings.
    And, remember, the beginnings were
    they were trying, at least partially, to befriend
    rather than confront.
    So people in intelligence in the Japanese army,
    or people who were officers higher up,
    did have an awareness of the difference between Germans
    as a category and German Jews as another category?
    They must have, because of their activities.
    There was a good-sized German non-Jewish community
    in the Philippines.
    And as I mentioned, my father's old boss was one of them.
    There were many of them were old-timers,
    who when they heard what was happening in Nazi Germany,
    were quite shocked, this, and what's going on.
    And they were very friendly to the German
    Jews and Austrian Jews, speaking the language.
    There was no animosity whatsoever.
    In fact, we knew one another, not
    socially necessarily, but certainly on a business level.
    And they had a German club.
    We did not, of course, go to that.
    There was a German consul and all that.
    We did not have much to do with these people either.
    But there were amongst them a small number
    who were fairly good Nazis, and who, essentially,
    went along with the Hitler movement
    and also their theories.
    And they, I believe, at one time or another would make contact
    with the Japanese, being great allies, and inform them of,
    hey, you guys aren't really--
    hey, look at all these Jews here.
    Japanese never took an action against Jews.
    There was in the newspapers, at about a year or two
    into the war, there were occasional articles,
    written either by Germans or by somebody,
    that suggested that perhaps the Jews should wear also
    a different color armband, because anyone that
    was, for example, interned and was let out for temporarily,
    would wear an armband of a certain color.
    Red was Americans, and they had a sort of symbol
    on it, the chi, which is sort of the symbol for American.
    They had to wear that while they were walking around streets.
    Some wore yellow, some wore a pink,
    some wore a-- different nationalities
    would wear a different color.
    And what was for the Jews, they were suggesting,
    maybe it was the Jews, they were suggesting,
    yeah, the yellow one.
    I'm not certain.
    It, of course, never came to pass.
    By that time, the war was into 1944,
    and the Japanese were quite busy with other things,
    that they could not be bothered with a small group of people.
    However, the Japanese were, of course, extremely suspicious
    of any whites.
    And we, as I will perhaps go on a little bit more later,
    they arrested a number of the Jewish community
    from time to time, on the suspicion
    of having shortwave radio, which was one thing you were not
    allowed to have.
    You had to turn in your shortwave radio.
    If it had the shortwave system in it,
    that had to be dismantled, taken out, or actually
    had to be turned in.
    You were not allowed to listen to anything
    but the local radio, to avoid any kind of knowledge
    about what was going on outside.
    So we were largely isolated.
    We knew sort of what was happening.
    The newspapers did report certain things,
    but, obviously, they reported it from a standpoint that was
    totally untrue in most cases.
    I recall the invasion of Europe, Normandy,
    was talked about, a small item in, what,
    the eighth page of the local newspapers,
    saying there was an attempted landing in France,
    which was repulsed with heavy casualties on the Allied side.
    OK, that was their D-day Normandy description.
    And that went on for months, till one time it
    mentioned about there was fighting in and around Paris.
    So by that time, you sort of knew that things were--
    However, we did have shortwave.
    We did have that.
    From the Santa Monica Courts, we moved to--
    we had to get out of the Santa Monica Courts.
    The Japanese took over that whole system
    because it was kind of a neat place for them
    to quarter their officers, junior officers.
    So everybody had to move out of there.
    So we moved into a house on--
    I forgot the street's name.
    Could've been the [INAUDIBLE].
    These were favorite streets.
    It was a bungalow.
    We shared it with this family that
    lived across the street from us, across from us at the Santa de
    [PLACE NAME].
    And we also brought in another man, a bachelor.
    His name was Pollock, and he was an intellectual type of guy
    who was an accountant.
    And we lived in that house, two families and a bachelor,
    for quite some time, until one point--
    my father, as I mentioned, had worked for this American office
    machine company.
    Naturally, that went out of business
    or just was closed because of the fact
    it was Americans, taken over.
    Zifkind, the boss, went into some other business.
    After all, he was a well-known businessman.
    And so did my father.
    What they all did at the time was--
    and my father being a trades type person who knew import,
    export, that kind of thing--
    went into what was crudely known as the buy and sell business.
    And his specialty was hardware, nuts and bolts and things
    like that, which he would buy and sell in large lots
    to industrial concerns.
    And the way it worked was, these were
    all leftover things from the American era before the war.
    And he had a little office on the street, also Dasmariñas,
    downtown.
    And he shared it with this other fellow
    who was into bottles, glass bottles.
    They would sell big lots of glass bottles,
    to put in all kind, pills, whatever.
    And again, these things were no longer made.
    This was just the leftovers, things that
    were left from before the war.
    And they would keep selling it to the next person,
    and the next person would keep selling it to the next person,
    and then it would sell the round, the round, the round.
    Sometimes, over a year, it would never move from the warehouse.
    It was sold on paper and bought on paper.
    And almost like this kind of large scale buys and selling,
    till eventually it might have been
    sold to a Chinese or somebody, and who might eventually have
    sold it to the Japanese, maybe.
    But everyone made their profit on the selling,
    because the value would keep going up.
    What was the purpose of that, to indirectly get it
    to the Japanese?
    Well, the purpose, basically, was
    to make a profit on every time you bought.
    You bought it for price A, thousand, whatever,
    and you sold it for $1,500, and then
    you might see that same thing come around again.
    By now it was $3,000, then you sold it for $3,500.
    And round and round, it went.
    There was always a buyer.
    Because, eventually, see, the Japanese were, of course, very
    interested in buying or acquiring all this stuff,
    as were the Chinese, anybody who had something that they wanted
    to bottle or to build, of nuts and bolts and what have you,
    they would be looking for this.
    But it would be hard to find.
    And the price would be extremely high.
    It was high because it went around the ring so many times.
    However, people were able to make a small profit off
    of it, or a large profit, depending, and thus
    able to make a living, which he did for two years
    in the hardware field.
    And other people did in the pharmaceutical field, books,
    any kind of goods, textiles, construction equipment,
    machinery, whatever, because that's how
    they managed to make a living.
    So the Japanese, through other people,
    or with their own people, were not actually doing
    any manufacturing then.
    And is that because most of the things that
    were in the Philippines were being imported from the United
    States, and there was very little industrial work going on
    to begin with?
    That is largely correct.
    Most things were imported.
    There were some things that were made in the Philippines,
    but there was limited.
    The Philippines was largely known for a producer of rice
    from its rice fields, abacá, which is hemp, Manila rope,
    and paper goods, and also for this sort of copra,
    which is coconut meat.
    That's coconut meat taken out of a coconut and then dried.
    That was made into special oils.
    A lot of basis for our foods these days,
    and that time or other, whatever materials
    was copra, which was shipped out in large batches in the ships.
    So these were these large industries that were available,
    and gold was, of course, another commodity that
    was mined in the Philippines.
    Manufacturing was limited to woven things--
    hats and baskets, and things like that.
    And, of course, there was a substantial other agricultural
    business, water buffalo, and they had fish, a fish industry.
    But this was basically for home consumption.
    And, of course, the Japanese dug into all that.
    They came with nothing, brought in nothing,
    and equipped themselves in the Philippines in a big, big way.
    Leather boots for the troops, the Filipinos
    became adept at making these leather covers,
    handle covers for these Japanese samurai swords.
    And the thing to do for a Japanese officer
    was to have a special leather cover for the big, long handle
    of his samurai sword, big item.
    Things of that nature, the Japanese
    took everything there was to take.
    Of course, all vehicles were immediately impounded.
    There was no gasoline.
    Bicycles, of course, then became the vogue.
    Bicycles were stolen at a horrendous rate.
    I had a little bicycle, my father had a bicycle.
    My mother never learned to ride.
    But we rode all over the place on our bicycles.
    And that was the mode of transport.
    Our doctor had a bicycle, which was run by a little alcohol
    engine, a little thing attached to the rear of a wheel.
    And he would put around the area with this bicycle.
    In those days, of course, doctors would still
    visit patients at home.
    One incident, for example, during the-- well,
    let me go back.
    From this little house, bungalow that we
    shared with this other family and the bachelor,
    we then moved to a much larger house.
    It was in a court, and it was on Dakota Street.
    And you entered the--
    there were six houses which were identical.
    They were very large.
    They had long porches, both on the main
    and on the upper level, and then had bedrooms, a kitchen,
    and all that stuff.
    It was a big house.
    We moved there, it must have been 1942 or 1943.
    I guess it was '42.
    And was this little court on which these six houses stood.
    The first two were right on Dakota Street.
    The other four were in back, and you entered them
    through this small court, which was made of concrete driveway.
    And in the back of that court were
    six garages, where people actually used to have cars.
    And across from us was a house like ours.
    And it was occupied by an American,
    whose name was Wilson.
    And he was interned, so he decided--
    and he owned one of the garages.
    And we had a garage, but, of course, no car.
    There was nothing in the garage except just junk.
    And he decided if we would take his furniture
    and move it into our garage, plus a few other things,
    plus also look after his senior house boy--
    this was a man who was just not a house boy, he could cook.
    He was his cook and everything, the family.
    Well, he was interned.
    He was taken by the Japanese and interned.
    And we held all his furniture.
    And soon other people moved into the house across the way,
    because it was a rental.
    And these six houses we stayed in until the liberation,
    in 1945.
    However, lots of things occurred while we
    were living in that house.
    This is the second side, side B, of the fourth tape
    of an interview for the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum, of Frank Ephraim.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    It's March 20, 1997.
    Frank, we're talking about the period
    during the early part of the Japanese occupation
    of the Philippines in general, and Manila, particularly.
    Yes, there's one sort of short story,
    this is about about lizards.
    Remember, we talked about geckos, some kind of a lizard
    before.
    This is a different one.
    People who had just arrived in Manila
    and were visiting other people, and of course some
    of them were visiting with us in our house,
    would sit down in what was a living room,
    and these rattan chairs that just about
    everyone had, or a couch, with very colorful pillows.
    And sometimes people would sort of look up at the ceiling.
    And, suddenly, they would really jump, practically
    off the chair, because what they saw was little tiny lizards.
    They were about like 3 inches long,
    with tails and everything, chasing one another.
    There might have been two, three, or four, even
    half a dozen, in raised parts of the ceiling, usually
    toward the edge.
    And they said, my god, look up there, lizards.
    Said, oh, no, no.
    You don't have to worry about those.
    One has to actually-- we would joke, we'd say,
    you actually have to buy these little lizards because they're
    there for the sole purpose of catching mosquitoes, that's
    what they eat.
    And so everybody has lizards in their house for that purpose.
    And they would sort of just shake their heads,
    being very surprised.
    After all, this was rather different from what
    they were used to back in, say, Germany or Austria.
    And then we'd also tell them that you
    have to be kind of careful when you're at a dinner
    or something, and there's a plate of soup,
    and suddenly these lizards shed, and the tail
    will drop into your soup.
    And it's something to be aware of
    and this and all, that not be surprised,
    because it does happen.
    Well, that took a lot of people by surprise, of course.
    But like anything else, people do
    adjust to that, which brings us also to other animals, which
    I'd sort of forgotten to mention about, one's first impression
    in the Philippines.
    And that you'll be sitting in the room,
    and they usually had wooden floors,
    and the homes had a lot of windows
    for air to come in and so on.
    But, suddenly, here was this spider.
    And mind you, the spiders are not little fellows.
    They're about the size of your hand.
    It comes crawling across the floor at a high rate of speed.
    People would jump out of their chairs, to run like crazy.
    But then, of course, we were told later not to worry.
    Those are very natural creatures.
    These spiders, too, eat insects.
    And they're harmless, they're not poisonous, not tarantulas.
    They're just very friendly little fellows,
    and they're as scared of you as you are of them.
    The other thing is and everything
    seems to be the sort of large size in the tropics,
    like a cockroach that we see.
    Well, cockroaches in the Philippines
    run up to about 2 inches long in some cases, in most cases.
    And there are obviously large hordes there because
    of in the case of rotting garbage.
    And then there are flying cockroaches.
    We once sat at the table, and the screen
    was either broken or open, and suddenly this thing
    comes flying in.
    It's a flying cockroach, wings and all, makes a loud noise
    and crashes into the wall and stuff like that.
    But these are the sort of animal kingdom
    that you come across in the tropics.
    In addition to these wild animals,
    what was happening on the street after the Japanese occupied
    Manila, in the sense of theft or chaos
    of any kinds that affected your family's life?
    Well, the Japanese were, again, a very different kind
    of people.
    And here, of course, we were mostly
    dealing with military and Japanese residents
    of the Philippines who were working often
    with the military.
    And in some cases, some of our Jewish friends
    had been in business and knew Japanese businessmen,
    personally.
    And so at times, this was a fairly friendly exchange.
    However, the Japanese army was a rather ruthless organization.
    And the greatest problem on the streets
    was not so much theft, but fear.
    They would suddenly stop people, or round up
    people to help carry sandbags, or to help in some construction
    project, or to search you, or to request your ID.
    And they would have no compunction
    about beating people.
    This is one of their big things, was the beating up people.
    Slapping them was a big thing.
    Also, if there was a guard somewhere,
    wherever-- and they had lots of Japanese soldiers
    on guard, always with fixed bayonets.
    That was a characteristic, the bayonet.
    And if you had to bow as you passed the guard,
    regardless of who you were or what you were doing.
    You stopped by and gave a short bow.
    This is the equivalent of saying hello or shaking
    hands in Japan.
    And they expected that of everyone.
    Now, if you didn't do that, they'd
    call you back and make you do that,
    or so they'd even slap you if you did not.
    So there was this kind of atmosphere.
    It was a sort of very unique thing.
    Now, Filipinos are a basically friendly people.
    And they found it rather embarrassing, certainly,
    to be slapped or being scolded for not saluting or greeting
    a Japanese sentry, whom they thought, well, what the heck,
    he's just a sentry.
    But that was one of the characteristics
    of the open streets.
    And then, of course, anything could be confiscated
    --and I'll come to that a little later--
    but any form of transport, later on,
    including bicycles and push carts,
    were confiscated by the Japanese army for their own use.
    But initially, of course, all cars were confiscated.
    The only thing that was running was Japanese military traffic,
    transit buses, and so on.
    And then, eventually, or at some point fairly early
    on in the occupation, they converted gasoline engines
    to gas engines.
    And the gas would be obtained by grinding up
    charcoal in sort of boilers that were attached to the vehicle,
    and then be lit like a furnace.
    And the gas from that concoction would be fed into the engine.
    And that would be a propellant, that would be a fuel.
    So they had this smoking gas, charcoal burner type vehicles,
    mainly buses or larger cars, roaring around the city.
    It was a lot of smoke coming out from everywhere.
    Given what you've just described about what was going on,
    on the streets, I'm wondering how
    it affected your family's decision, your parents'
    decision, about how they wanted you to behave,
    since you describe yourself as a young person who
    was kind of out doing your own thing and having a good time
    and being adventurous.
    I'm wondering if they imposed on you
    a different way of behaving.
    Well, they certainly reacted to the things that were happening.
    And, of course, as anyone would, they were more careful.
    And what you tried to avoid was having to walk by a sentry.
    So all those streets where there were
    sentries for buildings or installations or what have you,
    you try to avoid that, if possible,
    or be as far away from it as you can.
    In those occasions, where indeed you had to do that,
    well, you just gave the guy a quick bow,
    and that was the end of it.
    Most of the time, he gave a little bow back,
    and that was it.
    Now, the only danger was, as I mentioned,
    we lived in this house, which was
    one of six large houses in a court type layout
    off Dakota Street in the District of Malate.
    It was 1942 or so by then, '43 perhaps.
    Japanese patrols would come around, again,
    seven or eight men with a sergeant who
    had a-- or an officer who had a samurai sword,
    and the soldiers all had fixed bayonets.
    And they would enter the houses, and they
    would go in and want to search.
    And their main thing was to search
    for shortwave radios or anything that would in any way
    have a negative effect on what it is that they
    were interested in doing.
    So the other thing, of course, was my father
    being of an age where they could use him for whatever,
    would always attempt--
    if it was a weekend, and if he was in the house,
    he would go into his favorite hiding place.
    There was a place under the stairs,
    sort of around the corner, where it
    would be very difficult to find anyone inside the house.
    But they would always want to look at the cupboards
    and at closets.
    And most particular, we had this huge steamer trunk.
    It's the kind of trunk, which is large enough
    in which you can hang dresses and clothes without folding
    them.
    And it was above 6 feet long, about, oh, 5 feet, 6 feet high.
    And it opened from the top as well as from the side.
    You could actually live in there if you wanted to,
    it was that big.
    That was a steamer trunk that we had
    brought with us from Germany.
    It was the largest piece of luggage we had.
    And that they would want us to open every time because they
    felt if anything was hidden, it might be in there.
    But we did have a shortwave radio that we used,
    and it was hidden, again, where my father used to hide,
    or way in the back, in the middle of the house,
    behind a small staircase or under a small staircase.
    And, occasionally, we would pull it out
    in the middle of the night because you could then pick up
    a broadcast from San Francisco.
    A man by the name of William Winter would broadcast.
    And then, strangely enough, we ran into him sort of,
    after the war, coming to this country.
    He was broadcasting news and news analysis
    in San Francisco on television.
    So we met up with the man.
    We didn't meet him personally, but saw him
    after having heard him all this long distance
    during the war of '42, '43.
    But we were very extremely careful with the unit,
    and as were most people, because if you were caught with that,
    that was not a very pleasant thing.
    Because people were picked up for that
    and brought into a place called Fort Santiago.
    It was an old Spanish fortress, which was used as a prison.
    It had a dungeon, dungeon cells.
    And there were people from the Jewish community,
    a man who once lived with us as a border by the name of Schott,
    S-C-H-O-T-T, I believe.
    And he had come from Germany, was a bachelor.
    And somehow he had gotten caught up in some of that,
    or had gotten caught up in transmitting messages or doing
    something for the so-called underground.
    They arrested him, was taken to Fort Santiago,
    developed apparently an infection,
    and perished, died from that in this fortress,
    on the Kempeitai, Japanese secret police.
    And there was another couple, name was Julius Berger.
    And they too in some fashion--
    they had two sons, and somehow also were involved
    in such clandestine activities.
    Also taken in.
    They, I believe, survived, released eventually.
    But, again, other people, of course,
    did not make it out of Fort Santiago.
    This was known as their secret police headquarters,
    and with the dungeons, and many people
    there, of course, perished under their treatment, interrogation,
    and what have you.
    So this was always these little signals.
    The Jewish community, naturally, had suffered as a result
    because these people were associated with the community.
    And--
    When you say suffer, what do you mean?
    And I also wanted to ask you why your father was
    willing to take the risk of keeping a shortwave radio.
    Well, it was just one of those things
    that you wanted to stay in touch,
    you wanted to know what's happening,
    because the news you heard on the local radio
    or read in the paper were all propaganda, falsehoods,
    and things of that nature.
    So this was just the way he-- and he liked radio.
    This was one of his things in early life.
    And he felt a hidden, a little tiny radio,
    as small as what was available, would not be discovered.
    So he took that risk.
    But many people did.
    It was not unusual.
    Because they did search, but it's
    difficult to search and find, I mean, particularly
    if things are well hidden.
    And they get tired, too, of searching.
    I mean, you have a patrol doing that all day
    long, going into houses, after a while, they just as soon leave.
    That's it.
    So we banked on that, and that turned out to be OK.
    And you mentioned the suffering of the Jewish community because
    of the actions of a few.
    Could you elaborate on that?
    Well, what began to happen was that the people who
    would be observing the services, they
    would begin, I believe, at some point
    putting on some restrictions on the rabbi
    and the community as to, first of all, their travel.
    We were not allowed to leave the city.
    That was one thing.
    The other was that we began, of course,
    to have people in the community that needed help,
    single people, sick people, old people, people who were ill.
    So, eventually, we managed to gather
    some of the elders of the community, which
    included my father, put them on the board.
    They created a board.
    Remember, now, the Americans, who
    were running things earlier before the war,
    were no longer around.
    They were interned or had left.
    So there was very little resources, combined resources
    in the community.
    So they had to figure out a way to take care
    of the people who needed help.
    And so they rented a huge home somewhere not too far
    from Manila, where all these people went to,
    were taken care of, lived.
    And us young guys, we were taken out there
    for agricultural purposes.
    We had to plant gardens.
    And we planted peanuts, and we planted vegetables.
    And so we were under supervision of a guy who was really
    a butcher back in the old days.
    But he knew how to do planting and things.
    So we did that many times so that they
    could grow their own food, to some extent, of course.
    But there was no assistance of whatever
    from any governmental authority.
    There was so-called rationing, which
    meant that you couldn't really buy anything.
    Things like butter were gone.
    Margarine was beginning to be made out of coconut oil,
    but that too began to be very expensive.
    The community, of course, got no aid whatsoever
    from any authority.
    So being white, being Jewish, and having,
    perhaps because of some of the incidents
    that may have occurred with some other members of the community
    that were caught supporting or helping the Allied cause.
    As you may recall, there were many good friends of ours--
    Jews and others-- who had been taken to the internment camp
    at Santo Tomas.
    There too, they were not fed.
    They were beginning to be very, very starved.
    And there were members of the Jewish community who
    would take bicycles, load it up with stuff in the back as much
    as they could, and pedal out to Santo Tomas,
    and drop stuff over the wall.
    And that was kind of risky.
    And there were some that were caught at that.
    And that was also, again, one basis for taking them
    into Fort Santiago.
    And then the other incidents, although not
    directly related to Jewish community,
    American prisoners were often brought into the city to work.
    And not just Jews, but all the Filipinos,
    they all tried to help them--
    throw food at them, or whatever, because they obviously
    knew they were not being fed or treated well in the camps,
    in their prison camps.
    So the Japanese soon began to be very suspicious of all--
    certainly, of all the whites and the Jewish community
    amongst them.
    So in that sense, we began to feel the brunt of their hate
    and their action and their restrictions.
    And being a community of a fairly small size,
    we were 800,000, 900,000 at the most,
    and trying to keep the community together.
    We had services regularly.
    And we had all the things that attended to services.
    But we were beginning to have people
    who had difficulties in coping, and certainly
    in feeding themselves.
    There was really no jobs except for a few people who
    had retail stores, or people who did other businesses,
    or people who performed certain services.
    So that was always great difficulties
    for a certain number of people.
    So the rest of the community had to pull together
    to help them out.
    What was happening to the temple community at that time?
    You're saying services continued.
    And did your family go to the services?
    Oh, yes, we regularly went every Friday night,
    certainly to the services and the high holidays, because that
    was a sort of a center of life, both the meeting
    of the community and for the services, the rabbi's sermons,
    and the cantor.
    It was a small community, so everyone knew pretty much
    one another.
    And we kept up with what was happening to everyone,
    and what happened in various areas of town,
    and what people were doing.
    So that was, of course, a very important thing
    to do was to attend services.
    We did that every week, plus the holidays.
    And the beginning in 1943, February 1943, I
    began to take studies with the Cantor Cysner
    for my bar mitzvah, which was to be held a year from there.
    I was actually, I started these on my birthday
    February 19, 1943.
    The bar mitzvah was scheduled for February the 26th, 1944.
    And so that was my beginning for studies of the bar
    mitzvah at that time.
    We were living then in this house on Dakota Street.
    And there were other events that occurred.
    There was one year, I think it was 1943,
    was a humongous flood.
    The whole city was flooded.
    Apparently, during the typhoons, which occur there often
    that period and certain parts of the year, one of the dams
    broke.
    Or I believe one of the causes was that they had not,
    what is it, plowed up the riverbed, kept it deep enough,
    or whatever.
    Then the dikes broke or whatever happened, and suddenly
    the whole city, Ermita, Malate, they all flooded.
    And you woke up the next morning,
    and you saw these little boats that they
    use in the Philippines, floating down the street.
    People were in them.
    These little boats were called bangkas.
    And they're little outriggers.
    They'd sometimes have either one outrigger on one side,
    or two outriggers on each side.
    They're made out of logs, are wood shaped, cigar shaped.
    And they're used for fishing and whatever.
    But those were being used to transport people around.
    And it so happened on that night,
    it was a very traumatic experience, really,
    there was a couple with their son, who was a year younger
    than I, living next door.
    He was German.
    She was English.
    They had fled from Hong Kong, where he was in business.
    They were not Jewish.
    And they'd moved into the house next door, same house we had,
    next door.
    And he was an avid chess player.
    And they taught me how to play chess,
    which was great, because in the war, not much to do.
    But his wife, apparently, was ill, I believe, with cancer.
    And then the night of the flood, she died.
    And so this was a tremendous problem
    because a physician had to come.
    And he made it, swam part of the way,
    and then walked through the water.
    And then, of course, all the other things
    that had to be taken care of.
    One of those horse-drawn vehicles,
    which are pretty high, came.
    And the boy stayed with us for the next day or two.
    But it was kind of a very--
    I remember it, clearly today, what happened.
    And so that was one of the occurrences,
    that particular year, the year of the flood.
    And it took several days for the water to decline.
    And, finally, they had all kinds of problems,
    naturally, after that.
    And also two ships that had been sunk in the middle of the bay
    were washed ashore, large ships.
    And they were on this boulevard.
    One was smack into the retaining wall,
    and one was behind it, sort of holding it in there.
    They had been, as I say, they had dredged up
    with such tremendous waves.
    So that was also an interesting sight
    to see and see what they did with it.
    Did you or your family have any kind of personal contacts
    or personal information about the underground or the--
    that's not the right word.
    The group of the clandestine resistance
    that was going on at the time that, as I understand it,
    some Jews participated in?
    Well, the participation was different.
    Every Filipino, practically, was a member of the guerrillas
    after the war.
    This guerrilla was the term for these units.
    They were in existence, several formal or guerrilla units.
    One was Marking's guerrillas, fairly well-known.
    And there were some other units.
    And from time to time, the Japanese
    would indeed apprehend or somehow capture
    Americans, soldiers, officers who
    had stayed behind up in the mountains
    that were with these units.
    In Manila, being, of course, a city, many people, I suppose,
    performed intelligence duties in the sense
    that they could relay information through channels
    back to the United States or to the United States Armed Forces.
    One instance which actually occurred much later in the war,
    during already the return of the United States, was--
    my closest involvement in that sort of thing was ships
    were bombed--
    Japanese warships were bombed.
    And we were a living, again, on Dakota Street.
    And across the street from us, a little down the street from us,
    was a huge development of stucco homes, which were painted pink.
    And the Japanese had taken over that whole section,
    must have been about 50 houses, and converted it
    into a red light district for the Japanese Navy, enlisted
    and chief petty officer rank.
    So that was a lot of activity going on there at night.
    Well, that one night, American planes
    came and bombed the Japanese ships in the harbor.
    And the next thing you know, friends of mine,
    after that bombing, it was dark, and we went down the street,
    and there was some wooded areas.
    And we saw where the Japanese were being--
    where sailors were being taken, apparently, ashore and taken
    to these red light district homes.
    Apparently, everything was converted
    into a sort of field hospital overnight,
    using the girls as help.
    And the Japanese, as I say, were dragging,
    hauling what looked like sailors half-drowned sailors.
    And what we did was we looked around to see the caps that
    the sailors wore, because the Japanese Navy, they have hats,
    also of the old-fashioned type, on the rim of which is the name
    of the ship in Katakana, the Japanese simpler--
    it's a script which consists of 76 characters, which
    we learned to read.
    And so we could tell which ship they were from.
    And so we memorized some of the names we saw.
    And then we knew people who presumably had connections
    with the so-called underground.
    And we told them the next day or so, we saw cap with that name
    on it.
    And they said, oh, thanks.
    That's great information.
    Or course, when we passed that on,
    all the way up through the various channels by radio,
    they will know which ship was sunk or hit,
    because, obviously, those sailors came
    from the ships that were hit.
    So that was the sort of, that kind of thing,
    really not very highly exciting, more
    interesting than anything else.
    But there were other people who were more active.
    There were people who did more work in, again, intelligence
    gathering.
    I don't know to what degree.
    In many ways, the guerrilla movement was way overrated.
    They did maybe 1/10 or less of what they claimed they did,
    since the resistance of Japanese was extremely tough and highly
    dangerous.
    Besides, you were on an island.
    There was no ways to escape.
    About the only thing that occurred that we did know about
    was that occasionally an American submarine
    would come close to the island, or one of the islands,
    and drop off people, or to pick up people, or also
    drop off some materials and some magazines.
    Because I did see a Life magazine
    dated 1943, which could only have come in through such
    a clandestine source.
    Obviously, there's no other way it could
    have come into the country.
    So, yes, there was this sort of intelligence type
    of resistance.
    The guerrilla forces were more active later on
    when they actually confront the Japanese during the liberation.
    They were also, of course, active
    in some of the southern islands, Mindanao,
    and in the mountains of Luzon, where they probably
    may have ambushed Japanese, who were looking for them,
    and things of that nature.
    Full-scale war battles were not fought on the guerrilla level.
    It was primarily intelligence work
    that was conducted, and successfully-- locations
    and so on.
    But you heard about people in the Jewish community,
    through the Jewish grapevine, who were doing this?
    Yes.
    Yes, there were a handful who did some of these things, who
    passed information on.
    Mainly, that was it.
    Spying is what you'd call it today.
    They would pass on information about the troop dispositions,
    locations of troops, the Japanese troops,
    size of the force, the so-called order
    of battle type of information that was being gathered always.
    Were there any members of the Jewish community
    that you know of who went out of their way
    to make friends with the Japanese?
    None that I knew of.
    There might have been some that eventually had some business
    relations with other Japanese, stemming perhaps
    from their earlier relationship.
    But there were none that you would call collaborators.
    No.
    In fact, there were very few collaborators
    in the Philippines, period.
    Those few Filipinos, they were relatively rare,
    that were real collaborators.
    The only ones, of course, were Germans--
    a few of the Germans, not all of them, certainly not--
    who could be considered collaborators.
    They did not find too many friends in the Philippines,
    the Japanese, no.
    And is it correct that during 1942 and '43,
    you were not going to school at all?
    No, I did go to school.
    When the Japanese entered Manila,
    which was on New Year's Day, 1942,
    that was the night of the hobnailed boots and the day
    after the buses that we saw on the boulevard.
    About a year went by, say, from that period,
    before I went back to school and went back to the La Salle
    College, where I spent the next two years during the war.
    And what they did in La Salle college was this,
    they interned all brothers who were of American, British,
    or Allied background, or birth, and put them
    in a place outside of the city, where they were interned.
    The brothers who were of German, Hungarian, or whatever,
    more Axis backgrounds, they allowed
    them to continue teaching.
    But it was a weird thing because all these brothers were pretty
    much brothers, and they were--
    but that's how they had to operate.
    They too were under strictures.
    And they continued their teaching
    as they had before, taught religion, taught mathematics,
    and they taught all the things they
    were allowed to, except the Japanese rule was that everyone
    had to learn Tagalog, the native language, and Japanese.
    So they had classes in Tagalog and Japanese.
    And quite obviously, a Filipino, one of the Filipino teachers
    taught Tagalog.
    Now, Japanese was a different story.
    We had a brother who was a big tall bald-headed man.
    I think he was of German origin.
    And he was always called Brother Buko.
    And the word buko has an origin, it
    is the Filipino name of a raw coconut
    that is green on the outside.
    They figure a bald man, that's sort of what they call him.
    They have another name for baldness, which is also
    a funny name, but this was Brother-- he was always
    commonly called Brother Buko, but his real name I forgot now,
    Brother something else.
    But he decided, and Jesuits, of course, that's their field--
    studies and education-- he sat himself down, apparently,
    and began to learn Japanese.
    And from what he learned, he taught and did it very well.
    So we were there taking Japanese from Brother Buko.
    And it was highly interesting.
    And so that's how we learned Japanese.
    Studies were conducted in English,
    plus history was not allowed.
    Instead, we had to learn current events.
    Oh, geography was not allowed as well.
    We had to learn current events, Japanese-style.
    And they provided the curriculum for that current events,
    learning all about Japanese politicians, Japanese politics,
    structure of Japanese--
    political structure, and all their various current affairs
    that were going on, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
    Sphere idea.
    And also we had to learn a course in health.
    And the big Japanese thing was calisthenics.
    Everybody had to go out at lunchtime
    and do exercises, Japanese-style,
    all these sit-ups, push-ups, whatever they did.
    And there was a radio program that
    was designed specifically for that purpose, broadcast
    every day.
    It was called Rajio Taiso.
    Rajio Taiso, it was a radio program or station
    that offered the Japanese-style programs
    and the calisthenics classes once, twice,
    or three times a day.
    And you could see people on top of office buildings
    and during lunchtime, they're doing this exercises and stuff.
    So they instituted this sort of thing.
    The Japanese themselves did it.
    They too had their troops out there,
    and they were doing the same business.
    Yeah, so this was part of their culture
    that they wanted to convey and convert us to.
    Did they come around and visit the La Salle University
    the same way that they were visiting
    the synagogue or any other place to keep
    track of what was going on?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes, they had people in civilian clothes or military
    that would come around, mostly civilian clothes,
    check the place out.
    It was not too obvious, because they didn't come every day.
    But, yes, indeed, I believe at one point
    they even had an office in that building for whatever purpose.
    But, yes, they would check the brothers out,
    they would check the school out, oh, yeah.
    That was part of the action.
    And how often were you going to study for your bar mitzvah?
    I believe I was going once a week.
    I would go to the Cantor Cysner's house.
    He lived with his mother.
    And I would study.
    And the idea for me would be to read the Torah section
    for the day, for the week, I'm sorry,
    and the Haftorah, which is the longer prayer thereafter.
    And, of course, this all had to be learned in the style
    and in the song, processed the way it is meant to be.
    And so I began to study that.
    And was scheduled to be studied for a year
    till I was ready for the bar mitzvah in 1944.
    So that's what happened.
    The cantor also at one point taught piano.
    And so I took that.
    But since we didn't have a piano at home, I couldn't practice.
    So it didn't last very long.
    Were you still, or were the children, the youths
    within the Jewish community, still going to synagogue,
    on Sundays to Sunday School, and participating in whatever youth
    group activities, during those years,
    '42, '43, beginning of '44?
    Absolutely.
    Because, certainly, at that time,
    the synagogue and the activities of synagogue, Jewish community,
    became a very central thing for the Jewish people.
    And that's-- we did this rigorously and regularly,
    because, certainly, that was one way to keep contact with one
    another.
    Also, we, of course, knew one another
    from school anyway, or from certain schools,
    and from where we lived.
    But, yes, that was a center of activity for whatever purpose.
    And so we kept contact through the Jewish community,
    through the building, that hall that was next to the synagogue.
    And so that was quite important to us
    since we had no contact with the outside.
    We kept up with whatever we did with one another that way.
    All the Jews did, yes.
    The interesting thing was on the high holidays, one
    of the biggest events, I happen to have
    been on the synagogue choir.
    I had a voice till I was 13 or 14.
    After that, that was the end of it.
    But at that time, I had a pretty good voice,
    and I was often used to sing the blessing over the candles
    or stuff like that.
    But I was actually a member of the choir.
    My father was as well.
    And we would practice, and then we would--
    This is an interview on behalf of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    It's April the 3, 1997.
    The interview is with Frank Ephraim.
    I'm the interviewer, Nancy Alper.
    This is side A of the fifth tape of the interview with Frank
    Ephraim.
    Frank, we were talking about your attendance, your family's
    attendance, at Yom Kippur services.
    And perhaps you can cue me into the period of time
    that you'd be talking about when you talk about that,
    specifically in the context of your singing
    in the choir with your father.
    And so we're talking now about the year
    1943, possibly also 1942.
    But basically in 1943, we were in the middle
    of the war, occupied by the Japanese, as, of course,
    I've already mentioned.
    Now, the American Jews and the British Jews
    that may have been in the Philippines
    were interned at Santo Tomas University outside of Manila.
    And the remainder of the Jews, which were the ones of German,
    Austrian, and the Czech-- whatever other origin--
    of course continued their services Friday nights.
    And of course, we had a very large Yom Kippur service, where
    in those days, everyone fasted.
    And Rabbi Schwartz and the Cantor Cysner were officiating.
    And there was some rumor or some talk about the fact
    that some of the Americans might be
    brought in for a short period of time
    to attend Yom Kippur services.
    We weren't certain what was going to happen.
    We were all there.
    The synagogue was full.
    And then suddenly, some signal--
    somebody mentioned there was a bus outside had arrived.
    And sure enough, two bus loads actually of internees,
    American Jews, British or others,
    marched into the synagogue.
    So we stopped services for, oh, about half an hour.
    And we welcomed them back and all that sort of thing.
    And of course, we all know each other.
    So that was a very emotional period.
    And normally, they didn't--
    they were so-- it was a conservative type of service,
    not Orthodox and not Reform.
    So normally, you don't interrupt that kind of thing,
    but they did.
    And for about half an hour, they just broke up.
    But then the services continued, and the Americans participated.
    Apparently, this whole thing was organized
    by the rabbi, who tried to get the Japanese to release
    these people for the services.
    And indeed, they did.
    So here they were with us for about two or three hours,
    and then they would have to go back.
    So that was the major event, of course, for us,
    being a very small community under occupation
    and seeing our brethren, who were American citizens.
    I was curious-- and I don't think we discussed it
    in previous tapes--
    whether or not you actually ever went to that camp
    at Santo Tomas or St. Thomas.
    Yeah, no.
    The camp at Santo Tomas was outside the city.
    It was well-guarded, and it was difficult to get to,
    for one thing.
    However, there were people who would, on their bicycles,
    take some food with them and bicycle up to that area.
    It was surrounded by walls and fences.
    You couldn't really get in or anything like that.
    But they did manage to throw stuff over the walls.
    So that was kind of dangerous obviously,
    because if they were caught at it,
    it could mean God knows what.
    But they did that, usually at some remote place
    around the periphery of the campus.
    This was a university campus.
    So it had some wall-like or barbed wire enclosures.
    But you were able to do that at night.
    And of course, there were curfews in those days.
    You weren't allowed to be out at night beyond 11:00 PM.
    So there was all kinds of--
    some people, younger people, who had bicycles and were
    able to do that-- did take that risk
    and did indeed throw food over the walls.
    I was surprised that you had mentioned that services
    continued throughout the war.
    It was my impression from what I had read that the functioning
    of the Jewish community through Temple [?Amiel?] changed fairly
    drastically over a period of time after the Japanese
    occupation, responding to the understandable pressures
    of what it was like to be occupied.
    What was your experience and your family's experience
    of what the Jewish community was doing through the Temple
    during that period?
    Well, they actually did a great deal.
    It was a very close-knit community, of Course
    and I have mentioned it before, but there
    were a number of people in great need and sick or old
    or what have you.
    And a community home was procured.
    And many of us went out there to actually
    plant stuff like peanuts and green vegetables and so forth.
    My father, who had done relatively well
    with his particular kind of business, as did others--
    he was elected to become a member of the board
    of the Jewish community.
    And on one occasion or several occasions, actually--
    it was already later in the war, late '43, perhaps--
    when they had to get money to pay for staff people
    and just to hand out bucks for the people living in that home.
    What he had to do, since he had a lot of Chinese business
    friends who lived on the other side of the Pasig River--
    that is, the northern part.
    And what they did was they collected real American dollars
    and real old pesos, which of course you couldn't use,
    but you could certainly exchange for the so-called "Mickey
    Mouse" Japanese occupation money--
    and, well, had to do that.
    So what he did was he took all those dollar and peso bills
    and put a rubber band around them and on each side,
    put some of the occupation money.
    And that was put into a straw shopping bag.
    And he walked with it over the bridges,
    past the Japanese guards.
    But the reason for the Japanese occupation money
    notes on either end was that if he was searched,
    or the bag was searched, they would
    think he was carrying a big pile of occupation money, which
    was OK, because we'd had to haul tons
    of that around to buy anything.
    So he went over there and exchanged the money
    with his Chinese business friends
    into all so-called Mickey Mouse money.
    Of course, he came back with two bags
    now that he had to get all this extra--
    in 1,000-peso or 10,000-peso notes.
    So he came back over the bridges with that same--
    now with two bags rather than one.
    That was one of his chores.
    It was a bit risky to do, but he's
    the type of guy that did not view that as the world's
    greatest risk, so he did that.
    And then they had meetings and what--
    how to raise money and so on, because after all,
    there was no other source or resource
    available except the Jewish community itself.
    There was no government we could turn to or no business other
    than our own businesses that we could turn to.
    So the Jewish community had to fend
    for itself based on what they had, and that's it.
    The Jewish community acted in some way as a liaison
    to the Japanese.
    Is that not correct?
    And I'm wondering if you had any personal experiences
    of the community having to go to the Japanese,
    either their surveillance division or the military
    itself, to try to protect or help members
    of the Jewish community?
    No, there was really no formal connection
    between the Jewish community per se.
    It was dispersed.
    It was an informal organization more than anything else.
    There was no direct liaison relationship.
    The only one was, of course, the observance
    by the Japanese secret police of the activities in the temple
    and, I guess, occasional--
    whatever, gatherings or meetings that the rabbi might have had.
    But there was none--
    like the board that my father was on,
    there was no contact with the Japanese authorities
    whatsoever.
    Since basically the Philippines were,
    although run by the Japanese, the internal bureaucracy
    was Filipino.
    And of course, they didn't have enough people to do all that.
    So whatever had to be done was done
    through the Philippine portion of the government.
    Then they in turn, of course, were
    under the gun of the Japanese.
    There wasn't a great deal to liaise about
    because most people did their own thing-- whatever.
    And the temple building itself was just that-- a building.
    And the rules and whatever applied to everyone,
    so there was nothing particular.
    The only interesting thing was that those of us who
    had German passports and, of course, were uncertain of who
    and what we were during that time,
    the Japanese did stamp the passports with the term
    "stateless."
    And in fact, I have a passport like that,
    and I'm holding it here in my hand.
    It is my mother's passport, because I was on it,
    since I was a young fellow.
    And there's my mother's picture.
    And there's the fact that there was one child,
    and my name is shown here.
    But there's also now a stamp in Japanese on this passport.
    And I have a translation of that stamp by someone.
    And it says something like--
    it gives the date, which was the 17th of April, I believe.
    It looks like it might have been 19--
    I'm not sure what year it was, probably 1942.
    And it shows that this stamps--
    what it says is that this is a person without a country,
    without citizenship.
    And also, that was a Jewish person.
    The Japanese katakana lettered this for Jewish--
    [JAPANESE] are on that stamp.
    So the Japanese essentially made us
    all stateless, which obviously left us
    without a country and no category whatsoever.
    So essentially they could do with us what they wished.
    But for the time, they just left us alone.
    They did not take any other action.
    As I mentioned before, they were quite busy
    with many, many other things.
    And one has to remember, there was--
    the country at that time had 18 million Filipinos.
    And we're talking here about 10,000 whites
    or so that they had to deal with.
    They simply ignored us or that nothing.
    Do you have any recollection of whatever administrative process
    was carried through in order for the Japanese
    to look at passports and make some decisions as
    to how they were going to handle them administratively?
    Well, that was relatively simple.
    Everyone had to register at some point when they came in--
    Filipinos and all alike.
    I mean, this was something that's
    very common in most countries other than the United
    States and England, perhaps.
    So you had to register.
    And there was a Japanese sitting at a desk or a table.
    And he looked at whatever papers you had.
    And I think this was done in districts or at some point--
    and then gave you another piece of paper, and that was your ID.
    And when they saw a passport like we had,
    then they either deferred things,
    and you had to go to another desk.
    And then they maybe on another day just simply stamped it.
    It was not a very formal procedure.
    And they just simply wanted to know who was who.
    That's all.
    And of course, they often had the road checks, roadblocks,
    where when you pass by on the street,
    they would ask you for your ID.
    And you would show them whatever you had.
    And if you had a stamp on your passport or wherever,
    that was OK.
    So it was fairly informal.
    There was no fancy procedure that you went
    through at that time, anyway.
    Do you have any notion or recollection as to why--
    what would have been the administrative purpose
    of denominating you as stateless or homeless?
    Since my impression from the things
    you've been saying in the interview are
    that the fact that you were German
    was really more significant to the Japanese than the fact
    that you were Jewish.
    Yes, that's an interesting thing.
    Now, to the ordinary Japanese soldier, the German passport
    with a swastika in it, and even with the red,
    it mean nothing to them.
    That was German rather than anything else.
    However, the authorities certainly were knowledgeable.
    And they could see that the passport had run out--
    that was not an up-to-date passport.
    So they asked what this was, and they explained, I suppose.
    It was on that basis where they put the stamp in.
    I'm not sure whether the stamping of the passport--
    whether it was done for the Jewish community
    as a special procedure at some point or not.
    It may well have been.
    However, they decided that since--
    in fact, we refused to be considered German.
    That was another key factor.
    So at some point, they simply decided
    that's the stamp they were going to put in there,
    and that was it.
    There was no other requirements as far as I know.
    That was it.
    I think other countries simply got a stamp as well.
    They simply held onto their passports or whatever papers
    they had.
    And the Filipinos, of course, didn't have a passport,
    so they got ID cards.
    I wanted to ask you a bit during this period--
    and I think we're still talking about 1943, more or less--
    what the organized Jewish youth group
    and/or so-called Sunday school classes, Hebrew classes, bar
    mitzvah classes, were like during that period?
    Well, they were fairly routine.
    I mean, certainly in 1942 and '42,
    and even in the very first part of 1944,
    people simply went to the synagogue on Fridays
    and Saturdays and for holidays.
    And there were occasionally some get-togethers
    by the youth group, youth, maybe for Purim or things like that.
    There was no really organized Jewish youth organization.
    Everybody was pretty busy, either just trying
    to scrape together food and a living, so that--
    or doing their victory garden.
    It wasn't called "victory garden,"
    but doing the gardening.
    We had a big food garden there at our house,
    too, raising chickens and ducks and things.
    So you were pretty busy doing that--
    gathering firewood.
    These were tough times.
    You didn't have time to--
    leisure time to have dances or do things like that.
    That just was not available.
    So you were busy.
    And the other thing were restrictions.
    You couldn't just take off anywhere.
    There were, as I mentioned before, there was curfews.
    And transportation was scarce.
    And we had just that bicycles to get around with.
    So the only recreation was for us maybe
    to play soccer or football or other games
    with other kids someplace, on the empty lots
    or in park-type settings.
    But that was about it.
    Now, the house that you're referring
    to where you had the garden was the house
    that you went to following the period of time
    that you had been in the apartment complex, where
    so many Westerners or non-Asians were.
    And this was, as I recall, the house
    that you lived in that was across the street
    from the so-called "pink house?"
    Yes, that's correct.
    It was a court which lead off from the main street, Dakota
    Street.
    And it was six identical houses.
    They were large houses, and they had big porches
    running the length of the house, both upstairs and downstairs.
    And, yes, it was around that-- in that house
    that I had the garden.
    We grew corn.
    We grew Lima beans.
    We grew all kinds of the Phillipine potatoes--
    not sweet potatoes like yams, but there's
    another kind of sweet potato called kamote,
    which is a sweet potato, but not like the yams-- yellow inside.
    And then we have some ducks and chickens and stuff like that.
    And we had people that made or sewed to help us out.
    And that was the house that we're referring to now.
    The pink houses weren't pink to begin with.
    There was a development, a series of pink bungalow-type
    houses--
    stucco-washed, were made of stucco.
    And they were used-- they were residential,
    until one time, the Japanese just came in and took over,
    and everyone had to leave, except for one
    of the houses, which was turned into a restaurant.
    And the owner's son actually went to school with me.
    And once I went in there, and there was all these chickens
    hanging up from the roast--
    sort of a roasting type of setup.
    But the rest of the houses were converted.
    And these stucco houses, they-- as I say,
    the Japanese cleared out everyone.
    And what they did with that-- they turned the whole thing
    over into a Red Light area for Japanese navy personnel.
    But it was only for what was called-- like petty officer
    ranks, not the very low ratings, but the so-called higher
    sergeant or whatever equivalent level.
    And that was going on there for a year or more.
    And it was staffed by both Japanese and Filipino women.
    The Japanese were geishas, and they wore their kimonos.
    And they had this little pillow-like thing
    in the back of their kimono.
    And some of the guys used to say,
    I says, well, now we know what the pillows are for that they
    wear their kimonos, you see?
    But the interesting part was there
    was a lot of Filipino girls as well.
    And they, of course, made money in the process.
    And what they would do then is send people out
    to buy goodies that were still available because things
    were getting very short.
    For example, they wanted to get some cheese, like a Gouda
    cheese, or something like that, which is essentially not
    available.
    That was all gone.
    Cigarettes were really going fast--
    American cigarettes.
    And some of us would go out and have a little cigar
    box in our hand.
    And when the Japanese sailors or whatever they were
    came by or came out, we would try
    to buy cigarettes from them, because Japanese cigarettes
    were very mild in contrast to the cigarettes that were
    being made in the Philippines.
    And they were very harsh and dark tobacco.
    So we-- some of us were able to buy some and then sell back
    to our fathers and other people like that.
    But that was just a minor thing.
    But, yes, there was a lot of that kind
    of traffic on that street-- a little bit
    further from where we lived.
    I would say about half a block away, but still.
    However, it was during that time when
    I went to school at the De La Salle College
    on Taft Avenue, which was like eight blocks
    further inland from our street.
    Our street paralleled the Dewey Boulevard, which
    was right along the Bay Area.
    And I would be in class.
    And one of my classmates was Benigno Aquino.
    He was a Junior.
    And he was the son of the then puppet speaker
    of the house or the parliament.
    And of course, Benigno Aquino was also
    then later known as "Ninoy."
    And he was the fellow that was killed
    by the Philippine government on his return to the Philippines.
    I forgot now what year it was.
    But he and I were in the same class.
    And we would walk back from school
    together because he lived several blocks
    away from where I did.
    And we would cut back through a barrio, which
    was a native Philippine village, at the outskirts,
    just beyond those pink houses.
    And there were these what we call "nipa huts."
    "Nipa" is the term that's used for the palm thatched
    roof of these houses, which were open.
    They were built on stilts, lots of windows,
    and lots of pigs, children, everything running
    around the area.
    But that was a shortcut for us.
    And we'd cut through there.
    And of course, in doing so, we walked by that whole section--
    all these pink stucco houses.
    It was in daylight, so there wasn't that much activity.
    Then I peeled off to where we lived.
    And then he went on to where he lived.
    And we would do that just about every day.
    And we'd would talk about things.
    And he, of course, like most--
    all Filipinos-- was very pro-American.
    And we'd talk about things that--
    what we would be doing when the war was over.
    And so anyway, that was one interesting episode.
    And that's why I got to know this fellow, Benigno Aquino.
    Why don't you tell me a little bit
    about that school in contrast to the Jesuit school?
    You went a period of time between the Jesuit school
    and the De La Salle school when you weren't in school, right?
    Well, De La Salle was the Jesuit school.
    De La Salle was an order of Jesuits.
    And there was a period prior to that,
    after the entrance of the Japanese into Manila,
    when there was no school.
    But then soon, schools began to open again.
    Things got back to quote, "normal," unquote.
    And that was, of course, one school that was reopened.
    And I went to that school both--
    it was for convenience, and it was reasonable.
    And I had been to that school before the war.
    So we went to that school.
    And I may have mentioned this was--
    there were brothers of all nationalities.
    And there was several brothers who were Americans and British.
    They weren't allowed to teach.
    They were taken to an internment area out of the city.
    So the German and the Polish and whatever other nationalities,
    all Caucasians, were left to teach,
    plus Filipino lay persons who also taught.
    And as I mentioned before, one of the brothers
    had to learn Japanese.
    And he also taught the language, while the Filipino teachers
    taught Tagalog, which was-- both where required.
    So that was the school.
    And the other fellow that was in that school
    was Jose P. Laurel, Junior.
    His father was the puppet president of the Philippines.
    And later, his brother after-- this is now the 1980s,
    became a politician.
    I forgot-- Salvador Laurel.
    And he was ran or was together with Corazon Aquino, the widow
    of Benigno Aquino, who then later became
    president of the Philippines.
    But these people attended schools like that.
    There were several Jesuit schools.
    That was simply just one of them.
    Anyway, there was another incident
    I want to mention that goes back to that particular time.
    And that's the Japanese bicycle incident.
    That was an interesting one.
    The Japanese army was extremely poorly equipped.
    They came in with just really very little.
    They helped themselves to everything
    that the American army left over.
    Their trucks, for example, were painted sort of a brown.
    That was their standard military color.
    And they were Ford trucks, that is, if they had any.
    They were very simple trucks, but that's all they had.
    They used every piece of transportation they could find.
    Every automobile, truck was taken for their use.
    But one time, we were playing out--
    we used to play a lot out near Dewey Boulevard.
    And the Japanese also had large battalions or battalions
    that used nothing but bicycles.
    And these were very cheap Japanese bicycles.
    Japanese material was very poor quality at the time.
    And these bicycle battalions would then come roaring
    down the boulevard.
    And they went where--
    I don't know, came from one place, went to another.
    But we'd get a phone call from our friends that
    lived further up and said, there's a battalion coming by.
    There's about 500 guys on a bicycle.
    And we'd go out there before they arrived, of course.
    And we had these little pieces of glass or metal--
    not that much.
    And we would just run across the boulevard
    and spread that stuff around.
    And naturally, they came up the wrong side of the street,
    because in Japan, you drove like the British on the left,
    rather than in this country or whatever.
    And so we knew how they were coming down the street.
    And we just spread that stuff around,
    and then we continued to play.
    And sure enough, there would be several
    that would get flat tires as they came roaring by.
    And then a guy with a flat tire would jump off his bike,
    hop on the bike of someone--
    of another bicyclist.
    And his bicycle, which was now disabled,
    was then towed by a third bicyclist.
    So we reduced their vehicular capability by some, but not
    by very much, I'm sure.
    But anyway, it was just something
    to do and to show whatever resistance,
    passive or otherwise.
    So that was the Japanese bicycle story.
    And that was done several times.
    Were you surprised when the Japanese actually
    occupied Manila--
    how ill-equipped they were?
    In other words, had whatever information or news reports
    that you were getting--
    did this or anything else shock you,
    what you had heard compared with the reality of what
    they were really like?
    Not particularly shocked us.
    Bit of a surprise when we noted that the first night, when they
    guarded that compound where we lived,
    those apartments, that they did not have their own rifle
    and that the rifle changed hands when they changed guard.
    And the rifle stayed with the people doing the guarding,
    and the others who marched off without a rifle.
    So that was a bit surprising.
    Their very manner of equipment, their poor clothing and so on--
    yes, a bit of a surprise.
    However, we also had heard they were well-experienced,
    having been in China and then Malaysia and other places.
    So from that standpoint, as far as capability is concerned,
    they seemed to have a kind of reputation.
    But materially, yeah, it was a bit of a surprise
    that they did not have the equipment or the quality
    of equipment that you'd expect.
    The Americans had the quality of equipment,
    but unfortunately they needed the manpower.
    Even though they had sufficient training or leadership,
    probably, to resist properly, and of course,
    very little, if any experience in combat, quite contrary
    to the Japanese.
    Were you ever involved in any personal experiences
    that illustrate the lack of organization on their part?
    Or as a rule, did the Japanese, in your experience,
    seem fairly disciplined in their treatment of the locals?
    Yes, Japanese-- they appeared disciplined,
    but that's sort of Japanese nature.
    Everything is by the book.
    And being military on top of that,
    everything went according to a very specific plan.
    They were very thorough.
    They put up a table, for example, to do some processing.
    And the first thing to do was wipe it off, clean it off.
    And then they sat down.
    And it's all very stiff-like.
    In many ways, they were a robot-like people.
    The language sounded robotic to us as well.
    It had this guttural, staccato, very paced type of sound,
    which, of course, we couldn't understand, since we
    didn't know any Japanese.
    And their relationship with one another was very formal.
    They were always doing these short military bows and so on.
    And they also wanted order.
    And they were much like the Germans in that respect.
    People were lining up, and the Filipinos
    tend to be rather lackadaisical in that.
    They'll crowd around and this sort of thing,
    and they're casual.
    The Japanese were not casual.
    The line had to be straight and so on,
    so for the buses and whatever line there was.
    There were a lot of lines.
    There were people lining up for food
    or whatever-- had to be checked or whatever.
    And the Japanese had-- everything had to be just so.
    They were very strict about that.
    It was unreal, certainly.
    And the communication between the Japanese and the others
    was difficult. And they didn't have any capability
    of speaking English.
    A few of the officers did, but not very many.
    The ordinary person there was probably a farm boy.
    And they had no knowledge of English or anything.
    So that, of course, made it difficult to communicate
    and often many times resulted in the Japanese slapping
    people or hitting people or with their rifle butts or whatever.
    That was quite common.
    That's how they operated.
    They had that kind of a mentality.
    I was going to ask you earlier when you talked about the guard
    what your jobs were around the house
    as a member of the family.
    You were obviously going to school
    and running around on the streets to some degree.
    I was wondering what your duties were.
    And then the second piece of that might be,
    when you said "standing in line,"
    it reminded me of what I assume was an increasing food shortage
    and what people had to do to get food
    in your personal experience.
    Well, as I mentioned, we lived now in this larger house.
    And we had some help plus the so-called houseboy or cook
    that we had inherited from the person that
    had lived across the street-- was an American
    and was interned.
    My routine was this.
    Well, first of all, the gas for cooking
    was beginning to run out.
    And maybe you'd get a couple hours' worth of gas a day--
    maybe.
    There was a lot of--
    enough electricity.
    So that one big thing was people got
    their refrigerators shifted--
    changed from gas to electricity.
    And this fellow who did that-- he must have earned a bundle.
    He came over one day.
    And what he did was he took the burner, the flame,
    portion out of the gas refrigerator,
    and the flame was running into a tube that
    was a sort of heating part of the machinery.
    He took that out, and then put in a rod, a ceramic rod,
    wrapped with nichrome wire--
    the kind you use in a hot plate.
    And on each end, he put a piece of asbestos.
    And then that was hooked up to an electric cord.
    And he shoved that into that tube
    underneath the refrigerator.
    And that then became the source of heat once you plugged it in.
    And that converted the refrigerator from gas
    to electricity.
    It was unique.
    And this guy showed up on a bicycle.
    But in those days, there were bicycles and bicycles.
    He came in with a Cadillac of a bicycle
    because he could afford it by now.
    He was a Filipino fellow.
    And he did that conversion in a matter of 25 minutes or less.
    And he charged a pile for it, of course,
    but then he was in great demand because everybody
    wanted their refrigerator to keep working, obviously.
    So that was one of the things that occurred.
    Now we also began to cook with what is in today's age
    called a hibachi stove.
    They were little charcoal-- pottery charcoal stoves.
    Now charcoal was getting expensive.
    But my job every day was to take a little stool, which
    was made out of 2 by 4s with two legs and a piece of 2
    by 4 across the top, on which was connected
    a wrought-iron scraper.
    And I would take two coconuts that we'd
    buy, crack them in half, empty the fluid that
    was in the coconut.
    That eventually became vinegar because it would ferment.
    And then the white meat I would then
    scrape off with these scrapers into a bowl.
    And then you'd have the shredded stuff there
    and this bowl under you.
    And then you would add just a little bit of water
    and give all that a good squeeze into another container.
    And that was like cream.
    And then you add more water, like two cups,
    and then you'd squeeze that and put it into a larger container.
    And that was just a regular milk.
    And pretty soon, you got down to almost skim milk.
    So we were getting milk out of coconuts
    for cooking and for putting into coffee and things like that.
    So that was my-- and then the shells of the coconut
    were used to burn.
    You could actually use them as fuel.
    They'd burn like would or anything like that--
    fairly intense heat out of those.
    So that was my daily chore-- to work over two coconuts
    and get the milk and that stuff.
    And the shredded coconut dried-out meat
    was also put into a pile.
    You could later on mix that with sugar
    and make some kind of candy out of it, which
    was not the greatest, but that's what we used.
    So we were beginning to use all kinds of substitutes
    and things of that nature.
    And of course, services were beginning
    to deteriorate rapidly.
    We had shortages of, as I said, gas.
    Even the electricity would go out from time to time.
    So that was the thing.
    Now, we're still in 1943.
    And before I go into the more serious starvation
    period in the Philippines, I still
    want to mention two things.
    One is our trip to Baguio.
    And Baguio is a little town, sort of a resort town,
    up in the mountains of Northern Luzon.
    And in fact, they grew potatoes and strawberries there,
    which is quite unusual for the Philippines.
    And to get there, normally by car,
    you would have to traverse a road called the Zigzag Road.
    It was a road through the mountains,
    including ravines and so on.
    But to get even to that point, you had to take a train.
    So one fine day, my father said, we're
    all going to go to Baguio.
    We need a break for four or five days.
    And never been there, and we're allowed.
    I've got permission.
    And we were off.
    We went to the, quote, "railway station,"
    and boarded this train.
    Now, we didn't have reserved seats or anything like that.
    And the first thing you saw was about two or three
    of the benches on the train, where
    the Japanese secret police, the Kempeitai, had reserved space.
    And they sat there because they used that train a lot.
    And the rest was full of Japanese troops
    who were being transported.
    And they had all our knapsacks and rifles.
    And they wouldn't move to give us a seat.
    And they were slouched about.
    But eventually, we got to sit down, and we kept going.
    And we ended up in a town called Dagupan, which is north--
    the northern part of Luzon.
    There the train-- we had to get off, because from there,
    we had to get a bus that would take us up the mountains,
    up this Zigzag Road, to Baguio.
    All right, we got through it.
    There were buses, but they were mostly full.
    We had to bribe the drivers.
    And as usual in the Philippines, there
    was luggage and bags on top of the buses
    as well as people on top of the buses and chickens
    and the usual kinds of things.
    So we finally got onto the bus.
    And the bus started taking off.
    And it got to the first bridge over a ravine,
    where there was a Japanese post.
    And they stopped us, and they made
    everyone get off the bus, because apparently, they
    were concerned that the bridge wouldn't
    hold with that heavy load.
    So we walked across the bridge, and the bus then followed us.
    And this procedure went on for eight or nine times.
    They got a lot of bridges.
    Until we got to one post and bridge, and the driver says,
    we want everyone to get out, because he was concerned.
    But the Japanese sentry just got on the running board
    and said, just keep going.
    You know, he made-- yeah, go ahead.
    But he was coming with us.
    So the bus driver went across this bridge, sweating,
    but made it across.
    We finally arrived in Baguio, and we know some people
    up there.
    And they met us.
    And Baguio is very hilly, so there was no transportation.
    But everybody had built a little pushcart.
    And what they would do is they would
    push the pushcart up the hill.
    And then we'd all get on, and it would roll--
    continue rolling down the hill.
    They would go over this procedure
    all the way to the hotel.
    It was a mess, but we finally made it.
    And that was the way they transported one another.
    And it was quite--
    it was cooler up there and very pleasant.
    And I wanted to mention one interesting incident-- well,
    one of the things you had to do immediately--
    you had to get yourself a badge, which had-- it
    was like a white sheet piece of paper,
    and there was a red dot in the middle.
    It was the Japanese flag.
    And you had to put your name on that.
    And then you had to wear that because the Japanese government
    in Baguio required that.
    So, yes, sure enough, so you translated your name
    in this katakana script into--
    what it must sound like.
    My first name-- it came [JAPANESE]
    or something like that.
    We won't even talk about the last name.
    It didn't matter.
    The most interesting site in Baguio was that--
    you may have all heard of headhunters.
    Well that is headhunter country.
    And these people are called Igorots.
    Igorots-- that's the name of this tribe.
    And they wear loincloth--
    sort of large, bulky sack in the front and a g-string
    down the rear.
    So they were quite exposed from the rear.
    And they all had long hair mostly.
    And the women would carry their babies
    in a sort of a container, like the papoose type of thing,
    with a band across their head, holding that thing up
    that was on their back.
    It was like a backpack, but held up
    with a band across their head.
    Well, these Igorots would come to town.
    And they, of course, normally would not
    wear anything on top--
    that is, men.
    They would just wear this heavy loincloth sack
    affair in the front.
    But when they came to town, they would all
    be wearing the coat of a formal business suit--
    just a coat.
    And they would walk around with this striped or whatever
    pattern--
    [AUDIO OUT]
    This interview is being conducted
    on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum on April the 3, 1997.
    The interview is with Frank Ephraim.
    I'm Nancy Alper, the interviewer.
    And this is the second side, side B,
    of the fifth tape of the interview
    Yes, as we were with the Igorot story,
    this was quite unusual to see.
    The Igorots, by the way, are also
    one of the world's finest carvers.
    Their wooden carvings of the carabao,
    which is the Philippine water buffalo,
    very long knives and forks.
    Bookends are really nice pieces, and they do a wonderful job.
    I'm not sure how many heads they actually hunt for,
    but there was rumors.
    And these people indeed looked like they were
    what they were described to be.
    But they were friendly.
    And when they were in town with those--
    their formal wear for town visits,
    they walked around, just as anyone else did.
    But the Japanese, of course, in Baguio and also, of course,
    on the way up by train--
    you were always concerned.
    With the Japanese, you never knew what would happen.
    They're not predictable.
    They could be very friendly to children and smile
    and do-- give out little goodies or whatever.
    But they may start drinking, and then they
    got to be like rogues.
    It was not a predictable behavior.
    You always got that Oriental rage
    or whatever style of life or character sitting in front
    of you.
    And I do want to mention the reason we knew
    they were Japanese secret police or the Kempeitai
    military police was, indeed, there was a sign that says,
    "These two benches are reserved for the Kempeitai."
    And that was the end of it.
    And there were three guys sitting there,
    and they were just sitting there, staring.
    The Japanese traditionally, at least at that time,
    don't go into long conversations on a train with one another,
    as you would find in the United States
    or in many Western countries.
    There would be silence.
    And I did talk to one Japanese man.
    He was an officer, traveling in civilian clothes.
    And he was getting off at some point before we did.
    And I chatted with him a little bit.
    He spoke English.
    This was a Japanese business man in the Philippines
    who was now working with the Japanese government,
    and there was lots of those.
    They, of course, were more familiar
    with the culture, both the Western and Philippine culture.
    So they were quite different from the ordinary soldier
    that you would run into in the Japanese Army.
    You just pretty soon accepted that that
    was the way they were, and that's it.
    But our sojourn in Baguio was fairly short.
    We stayed there for a few days, and then came back.
    By that time, we had heard that the Philippine guerrillas
    were active.
    And they were often active in that area.
    That was a wonderful area to hide out in.
    In fact, there were still some Americans left in that area.
    It was the so-called "Mountain Province,"
    partially jungle, hard to reach, inaccessible areas,
    where they may have had people hiding out.
    And we had heard that these guerrillas had
    mined or blown up a bridge or two on that very famous Zigzag
    Road.
    So instead of going back down the road,
    we went another route.
    I didn't even know it existed, which was not the Zigzag Road--
    very few bridges, if any.
    And got back to where the train was, and then took
    the train back to Manila--
    a relatively uneventful trip, as far as I can remember.
    But it was an interesting-- something different--
    we hadn't had any kind of vacation in so long,
    and so this was a really interesting experience.
    You had said something I think about Jewish families running
    an inn there.
    And maybe you could elaborate a little bit on that.
    Oh, sure.
    Yeah, these families-- there was a family, name of Kowalski.
    And they actually lived in Baguio.
    And they ran a sort of-- that's where we stayed, with them.
    And they ran--
    I guess you could call it an inn, because it
    was sort of a resort anyway, and they had that inn.
    And I went roller skating up nearby.
    There was a little roller-skating rink,
    so I did that.
    And he had built one of those vehicles, a very nice one,
    actually.
    And, well, we would push it.
    And then on the downhill, we'd all hop aboard and roll down
    on that thing.
    It had a brake and a steering wheel.
    And so they were one of perhaps--
    oh, there may have been all of two dozen Jews living
    in Baguio, if that many.
    And the Kowalskis had this little inn-like affair.
    And there were some others who lived up there.
    I think they may have had a store or something like that.
    But again, it was war.
    And the people were all scrounging,
    so they were doing whatever they could.
    But it was nice to see people up there,
    and it was nice to be there.
    So we went back down.
    And I do want to mention one thing in 1943.
    We're dealing with that year, just to finish it off.
    The Japanese, in order to--
    obviously, for propaganda purposes
    produced a movie, a full-length movie.
    It was called Dawn of Freedom.
    And it was designed to ingratiate themselves
    with the Philippines, for the Filipinos,
    because the basic theme of the story
    was one of the Japanese soldiers that
    had arrived with Japanese forces befriended
    a Philippine family, one of the sons of which was very, very
    ill.
    He had some problem that was serious.
    As the film proceeded, the Japanese soldier
    was instrumental in getting this boy to a hospital
    and to a good Japanese doctor and, pretty soon,
    had him cured.
    And this was a heartwarming-rendering,
    all-baloney type of movie.
    But amongst the background of the movie
    was the battle in Bataan and Corregidor.
    And there, they apparently got hold of volunteer whites
    of some kind.
    We're not sure whether these were
    American prisoners that they used or paid
    or someone else to play the role of American soldiers
    that were being overrun by the Japanese forces.
    And that was shown.
    But we never know who these people in fact
    were-- whether they were people living in Japan who were
    brought in for that filming.
    It was not certain.
    They made this long film.
    And then apparently, the problem with this boy,
    the Philippine family.
    He had a with his legs and couldn't walk.
    So at one point during the film, this Japanese soldier,
    part of a regiment that was now leaving the Philippines.
    They were departing, going somewhere else.
    And he was marching away.
    And then it showed the boy, the Philippine boy,
    was able now to walk and wave him goodbye.
    So it was one of these tear-jerker type of affairs.
    And that movie was called The Dawn of Freedom,
    shown everywhere, all the time.
    Of course, we did go to see it, since we
    did go to movies a lot, being cool in the movie house.
    And we saw a lot Japanese war movies.
    And you could sleep through those.
    But that Dawn of Freedom was this big thing
    they tried to pull over.
    Before we go on a bit, what was still available to actually
    purchase at that time?
    And what do you recall personally
    the circumstances of going out and trying to buy something?
    Yes, that actually leads me right into the bar mitzvah bit,
    because as I mentioned before, I was--
    one year before the bar mitzvah actually took place,
    I began to study with the cantor, Joseph Cysner.
    And at that time, as I mentioned,
    we lived in this larger house.
    And my father, being a very smart cookie,
    he began just to scrounge everywhere for goodies
    for the bar mitzvah, amongst which he was able to get hold
    of six cases of Philippine rum and also four or five cases
    of créme de menthe and créme de cocoa and gin.
    We actually drank the gin occasionally.
    It tasted like rosewater.
    It was Philippine gin.
    And the rum was a very common drink in the Philippines,
    but we would mix that in with Philippine lime juice.
    The Philippine limes were called calamansis,
    and they were sold by the hundreds
    from vendors that would tour the local area
    or in the market-- little green fellows, looked
    like limes, a little sweeter than limes,
    yellow on the inside.
    And that would be squeezed out into jars.
    That juice would then mix with brown sugar and rum and ice,
    or whatever-- if you had ice.
    That would be the common drink in the Philippines,
    and the gin occasionally as well.
    But anyway, so he was preparing for the party for the bar
    mitzvah, and he was buying all this stuff.
    However, everything else was beginning to disappear.
    You were forced to buy rice in sacks because--
    and this was not the most white rice anymore.
    It was sort of reddish and not as refined.
    And sugar, brown sugar, in sacks because that was for the future
    because you weren't sure whether there'd be any left.
    So you begin to store up stuff--
    sugar; rice; oil, cooking oil; lard.
    Butter was no longer-- there was never any butter
    after the beginning of the war, which you could get,
    but still was quite rancid by that time.
    So there was margarines and lard.
    And of course, fruit was available,
    but was obviously getting very expensive.
    Bananas was still relatively inexpensive,
    as was these large papayas.
    In the Philippines, papayas are about the size
    of large watermelons-- huge.
    And those were the common fruit that you
    could still get, pretty much.
    There was corn and things of that nature and fish
    occasionally.
    Meat-- there was no beef.
    There was the water buffalo meat, which we ate.
    And there was horse meat, which occasionally we ate.
    We didn't eat it, but you could buy it.
    There was pork, of course, and that was about it.
    But the prices of these things were rising rapidly,
    and there just simply were shortages.
    And everyone began to feel that.
    And as we got into 19--
    end of '43, beginning of '44, my bar mitzvah was approaching.
    It was to be held on the 26th of February, 1944.
    And that was the day of the Torah portion of it
    that I had been studying for.
    And my father's business, which I had mentioned,
    was buying and selling lots--
    not lots, but quantity lots of hardware, nuts and bolts
    and things like that.
    That kind of business was beginning to really decline
    because pretty much all the materiel that
    was left in the Philippines from before the war
    had now essentially been sold to users, whoever they
    might have been at some stage.
    It was being used up, obviously.
    So that business began to really decline.
    And at that point, my father and many other men
    and women in business were essentially
    down to two things--
    selling personal items like silverware.
    We had taken-- gotten out of Germany a roll of serving
    spoons and things like that--
    silverware-- were able to take that out
    and other things of that nature-- began to sell them,
    piece by piece.
    That was how you maintained income.
    Or you would, of course, grow things-- as much as you could.
    Or you would exchange things.
    I mentioned the money was going to be worthless.
    You needed a bag full of money to buy a kilo of rice.
    So that was very tough, and things began to deteriorate.
    However, up until my bar mitzvah,
    things were still possible, sort of.
    And the bar mitzvah was a big affair.
    We had 200 people over for the reception.
    Had 35 people for dinner in the house that night,
    including my father's Philippine friend,
    who worked for the Philippine government still at the time.
    He was in the tax bureau, and it was called the IRS equivalent.
    We had the family physician there.
    We had all kinds of people-- good friends
    that were there for dinner.
    And we put on as much as we could, scraped up
    whatever was possible, and had a decent dinner that night.
    The service was kind of interesting.
    The Temple, as usual, was full, but that was the typical Temple
    crowd on a Saturday morning.
    I did my thing.
    And I recall-- I even have a picture of it.
    I was all dressed in white, short pants.
    Here in the Philippines, so this was a common thing to wear,
    although some wore long pants, depending.
    And the rabbi was there, Rabbi Joseph Schwartz,
    and the sermon and all that--
    all part of the bar mitzvah ceremony
    as part of the regular Saturday morning service.
    And then, as I said, 200 people came over to the house.
    Now, I was always handy with my hands.
    I like to make things.
    And I had made, a year before that, a miniature Torah
    shrine with the scrolls and everything in it.
    And I had that on the table.
    Then people gave me books, and all kinds--
    I must have gotten 200 books, all kinds of books and stuff.
    But that was one thing that was still available, of course.
    It doesn't wear out.
    And the Filipino friend of my father's
    brought me the traditional fountain pen.
    And he, of course, not knowing that that was one of the things
    that you give.
    But indeed, that's what he brought along, just
    by accident.
    And those got interesting that evening.
    And we had all this booze, of course.
    And the rabbi felt so good about it, he got slightly tipsy.
    And he gave his wife his house key, and she could go home.
    And he was going to hang out a little bit longer.
    It was one of those last affairs that people
    could enjoy themselves.
    After that-- we're now talking February, March,
    March 1944-- things began to deteriorate.
    As I mentioned, there were food shortages.
    We were at the point where--
    and of course, my father, as I mentioned,
    was still on the council of the Jewish committee--
    run the community.
    And there were people who were--
    they had fires, and they were burned out.
    And they had to be housed, and all problems of that nature
    in the community.
    People no longer able to earn livings,
    so there was food shortages for them.
    They had to be helped to the degree possible.
    Those people that had something were able to share.
    So that's how you lived for several months, at least.
    And, well, my father was elected or asked to join the Board,
    as they called it, of the Jewish community,
    because he was an active person.
    He had done well during the first portion
    of the war in business.
    The American old-timers were no longer there.
    And they had often been members of the board,
    and they had been established, and they knew their way around.
    And of course, by that time, we'd been there since '39,
    so we'd been there about four years
    at least which, looking back, doesn't
    seem long, but certainly at that time it seemed quite long.
    So they were looking for people to be
    on committees and on boards because, as I mentioned before,
    there were many problems.
    Old people had to be taken care of.
    There was to have a kadisha, the Burial Society--
    I mean, obviously people died, and kids were born.
    And there were difficulties in helping out families.
    So the community was on its own.
    There was really no one to turn to.
    There was no joint--
    there was no governmental agency.
    If anything, they were hostile.
    So we were by ourselves.
    Us 800 to 900 people were on our own.
    And some of the Jews lived in outlying provinces
    like on islands in Liloan, Cebu.
    And so of course, we could not reach them so easily,
    but they were there, also on their own.
    So the community had to take care of itself.
    And so they looked for people.
    And there were many others who joined the board.
    There must have been about a dozen people on this board.
    And they had various functions.
    And as I said, my mother-- my father,
    one of his functions at one time was
    to get that money exchanged.
    And then we also organized work parties
    to help in this one large home for people.
    Or we helped-- there was social work going on voluntarily,
    because we did have people from Germany, and many of whom
    were well-educated, that were lawyers
    and doctors, of course-- extremely busy,
    and they were in practice.
    The lawyers, unfortunately, had difficulty in the Philippines
    because obviously, once you are no longer
    in your particular legal area, you were not able to practice.
    So they went into business, most of them and did well,
    most-- well, relatively well, some better than others.
    And we had some Jews who became-- one was a butcher.
    Akaman-- we'll come back to him later, he and his family.
    He did butcher.
    He butchered, and then he sold his stuff.
    It was not kosher.
    We had some kosher families who, of course,
    had tremendous problems getting food.
    Chickens was about the only thing.
    We had a death, and a young boy died in one
    of the orthodox families.
    We're not certain whether this had
    to do with the fact of the food shortage or something--
    a disease or illness that created
    a serious problem for the boy.
    He died.
    And then there were situations where people
    needed major medical care.
    And they were old, so they had to be--
    the doctors would not take any money.
    Did that for free.
    Of those 800 or 900 Jews who were still
    left in Manila, at least at the time,
    would you say most of those were German Jews?
    It seems to me that toward the end of the period
    where Jews were still able to get into the Philippines,
    there were a few more coming in from Eastern Europe.
    But the bulk were from Germany and Austria.
    I would say we're talking at least 80% German Jews,
    20% Austrian Jews, and then a scattering of some people
    who had come from Poland, Czechoslovakia,
    and other countries that were able to get out at that time.
    So that was the predominant form--
    German-speaking Jews, a strange community in the Philippines,
    including the rabbi.
    But the cantor was from Poland.
    And his mother spoke only Yiddish.
    But Yiddish was not spoken.
    German Jews don't speak Yiddish, nor do Austrian Jews.
    But most spoke English.
    They preferred to speak English to all around.
    And that was the community.
    Was there a Jewish burial ground?
    Yes, there was a Jewish section in one
    of the burial [INAUDIBLE].
    Yes, there was.
    They had arranged for that--
    the community.
    I was not familiar with it.
    I had not been there.
    I don't recall, anyway.
    But, yes, we had a chevra kadisha.
    It was run by a person who was an Orthodox Jew from Germany.
    And they were a couple, childless couple.
    The name was Hahn--
    H-a-h-n.
    And when they went to the synagogue, she said upstairs,
    and he sat downstairs.
    But this was his tradition.
    But he was head.
    Before we go onto the more intensive period in '44,
    you had mentioned to me that if there
    was any organized anti-Semitic activity in Manila
    during this period of Japanese occupation,
    that it came from the non-Jewish German community and not
    from the Japanese government or an arm
    of the Japanese government.
    I am not 100% certain about exactly where anti-Semitism
    might have cropped up.
    It's not impossible that it came in some form at some point
    from the Japanese.
    However, there was an incident-- and I just
    want to retrace a little bit.
    The German community in Manila was mostly made up
    of the so-called "old-timers," who were not there in Nazi
    Germany at any time.
    They had come there right after the First World War.
    However, there was a small group of them, of Germans.
    And there was a big German club.
    They all belonged to that, simply
    because they were Germans.
    But there was a small group that would walk around
    with little pins on their lapels with a swastika on it-- you
    know, "We are good Nazis," et cetera.
    Not many of the Germans wore those pins.
    I would say you probably had maybe 5% or 10% maximum of them
    who would be wearing that.
    The others would not have anything
    to do that sort of thing.
    One fine day in downtown Manila--
    well, there was, first of all, a restaurant called the Astoria.
    It was on Escolta Street.
    It was on a main business street.
    And this was an air-conditioned restaurant, sort of upscale,
    for businessmen.
    And it was actually run and owned by a man called But--
    B-u-t, or something like that.
    He was a big, fat blubbery fella.
    And he was a pro at being a bartender,
    at being a restaurateur.
    And he had long come from Europe.
    He was Jewish, but only partially.
    I don't know.
    I'm not sure exactly what he was, but he owned the Astoria.
    And it was a meeting place of businessmen,
    particular at lunchtime, and also
    became a meeting place for Jews and for who'd be in that area
    and eat there.
    But also, it was a hangout for people who
    were in the diamond exchange.
    So there was always a few people at one
    of the tables that were doing their diamond thing,
    apparently-- or jewelry, whatever.
    Anyway, one fine lunchtime, this German--
    one of the German Germans who wore a little swastika pin--
    at a table rose and began to make a speech.
    And in that speech, he essentially
    mimicked the policies of Adolph Hitler, talked about the fact
    that the Jews ought to be banished.
    He talked about the fact that the Jews
    ought to be put into a camp in Manila and et cetera, et
    cetera, and complained about the Jewish interference
    in business--
    made a whole anti-Semitic speech, plain and simple.
    Well, most the Jews got up and left that were in there.
    The others didn't know what was happening, I'm sure.
    This was related to me, by the way, by someone who was there.
    And one of the persons from the Jewish community--
    I believe he was one of the board members or something.
    And he actually stayed because he
    felt that he wanted to listen to this guy all the way through,
    see what he had to say, just be able to report it.
    And then he did, in fact, tell everyone else about it.
    However, that incident came and went,
    and nothing happened thereafter.
    I mean, he was not arrested or anything like that,
    because again, you're dealing in a situation.
    The Japanese are in command.
    They're allies of the Germans.
    They could care less or wouldn't do anything about it
    anyway and so on.
    But nothing happened.
    There was some talk at one point in the war--
    1943, '44-- some suggestion in one of the newspapers,
    where maybe the Jews ought to be wearing some kind
    of an armband, just to identify them--
    a yellow armband, of course.
    But that never materialized.
    What anti-Semitic, official anti-Semitic processes
    or procedures existed, I can't--
    I'm not sure.
    There might have been, but I did not directly
    see any, although obviously, the Japanese
    were allied with the Germans.
    And one day, during the war, a German flying boat
    arrived in Manila with German naval officers on board.
    And they were trotting around downtown.
    But that was just four or five people,
    and not much attention was paid.
    And it was just partly Japanese-German Axis
    collaboratory event.
    That's it.
    You mentioned that-- and I don't know if it was at every
    service--
    but that the Japanese would show up, periodically anyway,
    when Jews were gathering, particularly
    for services, to make sure nothing subversive
    was going on.
    And I'm wondering if Rabbi Schwartz or anyone else
    transferred information to the Jewish community
    from the pulpit--
    how you knew about an incident like this German
    standing up at the hotel and making this kind of speech.
    Well, the rabbi was pretty set on the way he gave his sermons.
    He was a very slow-spoken, quiet, and non-demonstrative
    type of person.
    He would not make direct reference to that.
    Sermons there were still carried out
    in the traditional Western European manner.
    There were none of these announcements
    type of thing and none of these solicitation type of things.
    In fact, money was never referred to in that Temple
    at any time.
    So if anything, there would be announcements
    made in other venues, maybe after the service was Over
    or it was passed around.
    People are great communicators, and the word gets around
    of anything very quickly.
    So people would phone each other,
    or they would see each other.
    That's how you kept in touch.
    Announcement at the synagogue-- well, first of all,
    it was a bit dangerous.
    If the Kempeitai were sitting there, and they'd heard,
    they would get in--
    we just didn't-- we avoided that sort of thing.
    So that was not the place, for many reasons.
    As I mentioned before, we're now entering '44,
    and the economy is going downhill.
    We were beginning to see people collapse in the street
    and begin to starve out of forced
    starvation in the Philippines.
    Many people were beginning to go hungry.
    This was very widespread, particularly
    in the city, because their food supply was running dry.
    The Japanese took everything.
    I mean, they would often just confiscate stuff,
    whatever it was--
    come into your house and grab stuff.
    Up the street, they were beginning
    to confiscate bicycles.
    People were building little pushcarts to haul stuff around,
    and they would confiscate those pushcarts.
    Their whole supply service was pretty soon--
    consisted of whole trains of these pushcarts, which
    they had Korean or Taiwanese soldiers which
    were under the Japanese Army push around in the streets.
    So that you were beginning to see a tremendous amount
    of shortages.
    And of course, in the course of which,
    there was more theft, although most people didn't
    have that much left anyway.
    There's not much to steal.
    Wood-- any bench, anything made of wood,
    was taken from the streets.
    They were used for firewood.
    You could not leave anything.
    A bicycle with chains they would get to very quickly.
    You had to bring everything into the house, of course.
    So these were times when things were
    getting to the point where--
    and nobody knew what the future would be.
    You didn't see an end to all this.
    Did the Japanese ever come into your house?
    And if so, what were the circumstances?
    Yes, they came regularly in groups of about seven
    with fixed bayonets.
    And again, they looked for radios.
    They looked for shortwave.
    They looked for--
    I don't know what they looked for.
    But I remember once they went across the street in the house
    where now people were living who were mixtures.
    They were Philippine-Spanish mixtures.
    It was some young guys and a younger fellow,
    and then they had a dog.
    And there was an older man.
    And apparently, one of the young guys-- they were sort of--
    well, should I say, they were minor criminals
    in some respect.
    And one of them had been taken by the Japanese
    and given the torture, the water torture.
    And I don't know.
    The Japanese would come back there once in a while.
    Once the dog barked, and the Japanese bayoneted the dog.
    And then they took the old man and took him in,
    and he was never seen again.
    So this was the kind of thing they did.
    And one of the six houses in our court
    was actually occupied by these geisha girls.
    That's where they slept, some of them.
    But these were not the working--
    these were the support geishas.
    They were older, and their job was to haul water
    and to haul food over to those pink houses down the street.
    But they were in that house, but that was soon also vacated.
    That was vacated--
    I may have mentioned the incident when the bombings--
    well, I'll get back to that one.
    But anyway, that was occupied by these geishas or helpers--
    Japanese women.
    Well, in the back of those six houses were garages.
    You drove-- you came into the alley,
    and then just beyond our house was another alley.
    And that led to four garages, above which was a home,
    a place--
    a huge apartment.
    And that was occupied by a man with his extended family who
    came to Manila from a province in Luzon called Pampanga.
    And he fled there.
    And he fled with several horses, these little Filipino horses,
    and a vehicle, a caratella, and all his family.
    And the garages were now used as stalls for the horses.
    In fact, one night a colt was born in that very courtyard.
    And then also one day, one of the kids--
    she was about a 10-year-old-- stopped
    by in the back of our house.
    We'd chat with them.
    And she had a little five-year-old by the hand.
    And she introduced him.
    "This is Jose.
    He is my uncle."
    Now we can talk about the extended families.
    That's how it worked in the Philippines.
    That was very interesting.
    But this fellow who was called--
    the leader of the family-- a "cochero,"
    which means a person who runs a horse and buggy operation.
    But he was a relatively wealthy man
    and had many water buffalo where he came from.
    They lived there throughout this period--
    1942, '43 mainly.
    And one day they had a pig roast in the back.
    And everybody got a big chunk of that, and people sat around.
    That was during the war, so whatever people ate.
    They called it lechón.
    This is the Filipino-Spanish word for "roast pig."
    It was roasted on a spit.
    In any event, that was the--
    now we're into '44.
    And basically we can jump to September of that year.
    September-- a very famous day.
    It was actually September the 21st in 1944.
    I was home from school because I was sick.
    I had a sore throat-- the usual problem.
    And we had one house girl, who was cleaning house.
    And my mother was at the market, and my father was downtown--
    work-- still doing whatever he was doing.
    And the Japanese had announced that they would have
    an air raid practice that day.
    And sure enough, the sirens began to--
    you could hear the air raid sirens.
    And then pretty soon, you could hear some planes flying about.
    And then pretty soon, I heard some thuds, like a gun firing.
    So I went outside.
    And I looked up in the sky, and I see way up there,
    a whole squadron--
    maybe about 50 planes, little, tiny silver
    dots of planes way up there.
    And then I see puffs of smoke like antiaircraft--
    AK AK flak.
    And pretty soon, I see a plane-- it was on fire-- come down.
    And not long after that, I hear--
    most of the houses there are covered
    with some corrugated tin roofs.
    And I hear noises--
    things falling on those roofs.
    And I finally realized, this is shrapnel
    from antiaircraft weapons.
    And those planes up there are American.
    So into the practice air raid was the first raid by what--
    once we found later--
    was an aircraft carrier division.
    I believe that was the one under--
    it was Halsey--
    Mark Mitscher's squadron-- Task Force 58, I believe--
    that raided us with some 200 crewmen F6Fs--
    carrier-based planes.
    And of course, they bombed a lot of areas, strafed
    a lot of areas-- not where we lived,
    but there was chaos all over the city.
    My mother was at the market and out there somewhere.
    And she had a tough time getting back.
    My father was panicking there.
    So they all finally got back.
    But the house girl and I, when we realized what was happening,
    we dived under the table.
    That was where we took shelter because these planes would
    occasionally dive down, strafe, drop a bomb somewhere, and then
    take off again.
    And then pretty soon, the raid was over.
    After that, of course, things got even
    obviously much tighter--
    restrictions.
    The Japanese set up anti-aircraft houses
    and machine guns, anti-aircraft machine guns and artillery
    all over the place.
    But there was quiet.
    Nothing happened for several months after that.
    The task force must have left Philippine waters.
    And of course, we knew that the American forces were coming up
    from Guadalcanal up through Bougainville, Rabaul, all
    these areas.
    At this point in time, how are you
    getting information about what was going on in the Pacific?
    Well, again, people were listening through the shortwave
    and would find out where the Americans were.
    You'd see occasional reports in the newspaper about battles
    or combat and about these tremendous losses that
    were being inflicted on American forces by the Japanese.
    By that time, the Japanese Air Force
    didn't appear to really exist.
    They had biplanes made of some red cloth.
    They looked like the German Ace of First World War--
    borrowed them from Rick Tobin's thing.
    And they were flying in groups of about 20 over the city.
    And you kind of wondered-- these were not true-blue fighter
    planes--
    what they were for.
    They restricted entry to the Dewey Boulevard,
    but that's because they made a landing strip out
    of part of it.
    And then they also made more restrictions.
    Now you couldn't go through a lot of areas of the city.
    And at the same time, of course, food supplies
    were really dwindling fast.
    And so not much more happened till--
    but, well, the first thing that happened after the air raid
    was no more school, since they figured, well,
    I'm not going to send kids to school here with air raids
    and all that kind of stuff.
    And they closed down.
    So September of 1944 was the last day of school until after
    the war, when I was back with a tutor for about a year until
    regular schools opened back in 1946, early '46 or so--
    late '46, '46.
    So we're talking over a year's worth of no formal school
    at that time.
    We now get back to the Jewish community.
    And what were they doing?
    Well, they were doing what they had been doing before--
    trying to scrounge food.
    That was the number-one thing.
    And we didn't have any casualties among them
    from those air raids.
    There were very few casualties among the population.
    After all, they tried to identify military targets.
    And as a result, that's what they were trying to hit.
    However, one of the incidents I want
    to get back to now, talking about those pink houses,
    was the fact that one of the air raids
    at one time during that period-- maybe it was later in October.
    There was a bombing run at night.
    And the aim-- the targets were Japanese warships
    in Manila Bay.
    And the next thing you know, after the raid was over, a few
    of us went out because we were interested to see what's just
    going on because we heard a lot of activity
    down where those pink houses were.
    But they were apparently working furiously
    to drag and bring wounded sailors ashore and carry them
    two blocks or three blocks from the water at Manila
    Bay to these houses.
    And these were all half-drowned, wounded, and what have you.
    And they converted that whole section
    instantly into a sort of hospital
    and used the girls to help out.
    It was unbelievable.
    And as I mentioned, before the incident, we looked around,
    and we saw caps, sailor's caps, lying around.
    And on the sailor's caps with the names of ships.
    And so that information we passed on to other people.
    We knew that eventually, hopefully,
    it would go further up the line.
    And then it would be known by United States forces
    which ships were hit.
    But that major incident-- overnight,
    they converted that whole area, 40 houses, into--
    and then what they did was every morning, they would march.
    A Japanese military unit would march down the street.
    Most of them-- well, two guys would then
    be hauling a kettle of cooked rice.
    This is a taped interview being made
    on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    It is an interview with Frank Ephraim.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    The date is April the 3rd, 1997.
    This is site A or the first side of the sixth tape
    of the interview.
    Well, we were in the process of marching
    down Dakota Street with these Japanese carrying
    the rice and the officer up front carrying a tray of what
    might have been strips of meat.
    And of course, this was designed to feed
    these sailors who had been wounded
    and who are now in these pink stucco houses recuperating
    or whatever.
    The Japanese military, whenever it does anything,
    it's always in a very formal formation.
    And most of the time when they are marching in that order,
    you can sort of smell them a little ways away.
    But interestingly enough, the Japanese army
    has a practice of singing.
    So they would sing song their way
    down the street, some of course totally out of tune.
    But that was their way of marching.
    They'd have this marching type songs.
    And anyway, every day these people would supply this now
    newly converted formerly red light sector and now a hospital
    sector with this food.
    And that went on for many, many weeks.
    That was essentially the end of the red light district
    as we knew it.
    And the conversion seemed to be very swift and efficient.
    The same women that had served in other capacities
    were now helping out in this new capacity.
    The geishas were, of course, in Japanese tradition
    are women that are trained to serve, whatever.
    And they apparently did this all very efficiently.
    Now, heading back from this particular period,
    actually heading down the road, we, as I had noted before,
    began to get air raids which began to get more serious by.
    Early December 1944, we would have daily raids.
    They would be mainly carrier-based airplanes,
    these Grumman F6Fs and others, the Avenger sky
    dive bomber types.
    The anti-aircraft was deadening.
    They must have had some sort of artillery or machine gun
    position, just about I would say every second house,
    but all over the place.
    The air was full of these puffs of flak.
    And when-- and there were air raid warnings.
    And when there were warnings, my father and I
    would go upstairs to the house.
    There was a window in my room, which
    overlooked a good section of that district.
    We could overlook a huge empty lot,
    which was almost the size of a city block.
    And there was another one across from there, behind our house.
    And there was a wall that separated our house
    from that one lot.
    And on the right side were a row of wooden bungalows,
    and I'll come to those later.
    But we could view the whole sky from there,
    including the barrage balloons, which the Japanese had
    raised to prevent dive--
    American planes from diving into the area that the barrage
    balloons were protecting.
    It was a typical defense mechanism.
    But you could see them coming in, little silver dots
    in the sky, hundreds of them.
    And then they would sort of dive down,
    flip over and dive, typical air maneuver, and drop a bomb,
    and strafe.
    And that would go on for about an hour.
    And we were under the table.
    Well, first when they came nearer,
    when we could see those black puffs and the planes
    coming near to where we actually live,
    we would rush downstairs and scoot under the table.
    Or we had one room downstairs that was sort of enclosed,
    and the walls were all made of stone or concrete.
    And we were in that room.
    But as I say, most of the time, we just under a table, and we'd
    hear the bombs fall.
    But again, the targets were all military.
    Only on rare occasions did by accident
    some bombs drop in sort of civilian or residential areas.
    Again, the casualties were minor.
    The raids would go on, and then one day we
    had the beginnings of heavy bombers.
    The famous B24 Liberator bombers came over in large groups
    for bombing runs.
    And one day, a group of-- must have been at least 12 maybe
    24--
    bombers came in formation, and they appeared-- we saw them.
    They appeared to be quite low or much lower than normal.
    And apparently then one was shot down.
    We could see the plane going down in flames,
    and then the others leaving.
    And then we went outside, because we
    could hear the shrapnel had fallen from the aircraft and so
    on.
    We went outside in the back, where this coachman
    and his family lived.
    There was like a cobblestoned yard.
    And we looked-- and I looked up, and I see this white dot way up
    in the sky.
    I didn't know what it was at first,
    but I finally realized it was a parachute.
    So one of the crewmen had parachuted out
    of his B24 Liberator bomber and was coming down
    what looked like right over our house.
    Well, he came down and down.
    It took a while.
    We were all watching.
    Pretty soon everybody saw that, and they
    could see a person hanging from the parachute.
    And it then looked like he was going
    to land about two blocks away.
    And indeed he did.
    And everybody ran over there, but the Japanese
    had surrounded him, more or less.
    And I wasn't there.
    I did not see his actual landing, but some people were.
    They said he came down.
    He was alive.
    It was an officer, a lieutenant.
    I'm not sure what he was.
    And they packed him off into a truck, and took him to a camp,
    I'm sure.
    Some of the Filipinos talked to him or yelled at him, you know,
    waved at him and that sort of thing, which
    is what they would want to do.
    But he landed.
    And he landed apparently safely.
    The other-- there were two other people
    parachuting out of the plane, but further away
    that we heard about later.
    But this was usually a crew of 10.
    So the others might have well gone down with the plane.
    It's hard to say.
    That was a casualty at that time we saw.
    As I say, the raids became more frequent.
    And most of our time was spent going under tables,
    hiding from shrapnel, not leaving the house
    for too much length of time.
    Didn't want to be caught out in the open with an air raid.
    The Japanese were getting very antsy,
    and they would fire at you, or they would hit you,
    or they would shoo you away or whatever.
    So everyone was very, very nervous.
    And at the same time, everybody was
    beginning to get very hungry.
    Because now there was no transport.
    There was no distribution of food.
    The markets were beginning to be bare.
    The money was absolutely worthless.
    You could really only trade things for food.
    There was really no-- the Japanese Mickey Mouse
    money was just paper.
    So that was the thing up to that time.
    We're now talking December.
    Now, the American forces landed in Lingayen Gulf
    in Luzon, the northernmost island
    on which Manila is located.
    And I've forgotten exactly the date of the landing,
    but as soon as they landed in force,
    they also landed in the island of Mindoro,
    which is just south of Luzon.
    And there they landed I believe with an airborne division,
    the 11th Airborne Division under Major General Swing.
    And they were two primary divisions
    that we're concerned with that raced
    or tried to race toward Manila.
    They were part of the 6th Army under General Krueger, who
    reported to General MacArthur.
    And the two divisions were the 37th or Buckeye Division,
    mainly composed of men from the State of Ohio.
    I believe commanded by Major General Beightler,
    of German origin.
    And the other division was the famous 1st Cavalry Division.
    The 1st Cav apparently reports later of course,
    came roaring down Luzon from Lingayen Gulf, and had a--
    one battalion of it managed to liberate the Santo Tomas
    internment camp.
    We did not know this, because there
    was by that time no communication whatsoever.
    The first thing we knew, really, was
    what sounded like artillery fire, the landings of shells,
    way in the distance.
    And we could see from that window of mine
    upstairs a little plane, which later of course, we
    could see more often that closer by was a Piper Cub.
    And of course we learned later that's an artillery spotter
    plane.
    And that thing was flying way in the distance,
    and we couldn't figure out why and what it was doing.
    But we could see tremendous fires
    in the northern part of the city of Manila, near the Pasig River
    area, we estimated.
    And the word was beginning to come down
    that the Japanese were systematically
    burning the city down.
    They were throwing gasoline at the homes and buildings
    and lighting them up with hand grenades
    or whatever they could to ignite gasoline.
    And the black clouds of smoke, and the smoke we saw
    was buildings and homes burning.
    They were going to defend the city, apparently,
    but in the ruins of the city.
    Although we had heard, of course,
    that was later after the war that General Yamashita, who
    was in command of all Japanese forces
    and who had retreated himself to the mountain province
    and to near the city of Baguio, had apparently ordered
    that the city be evacuated.
    However, a naval-- a Japanese marine force,
    or segments of Japanese marine forces,
    were in the city of Manila, and by some strange twist decided
    that they would defend the city.
    They would resist the invasion of the American forces.
    That's all written up very nicely
    in a book called The Battle of Manila
    by three British authors, actually, two at Sandhurst
    and one other historian.
    And I won't go into the battle, that military aspect of it.
    But in any event, it came January,
    we knew the Americans were at the outskirts.
    Because apparently-- I'm not sure
    exactly when Santo Tomas had been liberated,
    and it's in the far north of Manila.
    And the Japanese were now beginning to dig in.
    They were doing two things.
    They were building pillboxes of sorts, out
    of rocks and material all over the area where we lived.
    There were digging holes near the streets,
    like for machine gun nests.
    They were laying mines at certain corners of streets.
    You were, of course, totally restricted.
    You couldn't go very far any in place.
    There was a water shortage by now.
    There was interruption of water.
    So you had to fill up bathtubs and fill up bottles
    just to be sure you had some water.
    People were being digging wells, which was easy.
    You dug three feet, and you got water.
    Of course, it was kind of bad water, but water nonetheless.
    Your food supply, you had to be very careful.
    Once we got the word or heard that they were systematically
    beginning to burn the city down, we prepared to leave the house.
    And what I did was, I built a little, small tiny wagon,
    about two feet by 2 feet, and little small wheels
    that I managed to scrounge.
    And it had a little wooden handle.
    And we filled that up with bottled water, boiled water.
    And we had some bottles of rum in there,
    and some rice, and sugar, and some other basic foods.
    By that time, we still had a house girl.
    And my father and I and my mother lived in the house.
    And the fires came closer and closer.
    And the artillery began to come in,
    long range 155 caliber artillery pieces, howitzers and whatever.
    And then in addition to that, we were
    being raided by these double-bodied P-38 Lightning
    military planes.
    These are land-based planes.
    The Lightnings were very maneuverable,
    and they were just flying around there upside down
    and everything and strafing.
    Now, of course, the strafing would hit anybody.
    And they didn't always hit the Japanese.
    And if they dropped a bomb, which they could,
    that could also hit anybody.
    And so we were beginning to get casualties.
    There was, when we looked out from that window of mine,
    that big empty lot, plus another one across the street from it.
    And at the far corner was a gray concrete-built Catholic church.
    That was beginning to be converted
    into like a hospital, because it was the closest thing available
    that could serve as such.
    And we had volunteer doctors and nurses.
    And people that would get wounded would go there.
    And of course, pretty soon that became a rush.
    Because the American forces were drawing closer and closer,
    and the fires were drawing closer and closer
    until the night of--
    if I recall exactly, it was the night
    of February the 7th or 8th 1945.
    When my father and I were at this window upstairs,
    we took a watch up there, just to see, because the fires were
    now like three blocks away.
    Suddenly, we saw these little bungalows
    that were next to our house.
    They actually were facing Dakota Street,
    but we could see their backs.
    And we knew the family that lived in the first one.
    It was a man of Spanish origin.
    He had four or five kids.
    And we could see, they suddenly went up
    in flames, those houses.
    And we could see him with his kids.
    There was a wall behind this house, the wall that
    separated this house and our house
    from that large empty lot.
    And he was beginning to toss his kids over the wall, and then
    himself and his wife.
    And the house went up in flames.
    And so my father SAID now is the time.
    We got to go.
    So he and I quickly rushed through the whole house.
    And we closed every window and door as tightly as we could.
    We pulled these sort of wooden slatted type of blinds,
    pushed them together, and closed every window and everything
    to make the house as airtight.
    Because when you do that, you can avoid it burning,
    unless they burned that house directly.
    Then, of course, you can't help it.
    They always relied on one house lighting up the other houses
    naturally.
    OK, we left the house with my little wagon.
    And by that time, this wall the back of our house
    had been breached.
    We had all gotten together and smashed it
    so that you could walk through it and get to those empty lots.
    That was like an escape route.
    Because we knew if we go out to Dakota Street,
    there was a Japanese machine gun nest there,
    and we were quite certain it was being manned.
    So we didn't-- the people in the house in front could see that.
    So they said, don't go out that way.
    We're all going to go out the back way, through the wall,
    and camp somewhere in that huge empty-- by that time, hundreds,
    even thousands of people were already
    converging on those empty lots.
    And we could see in the distance,
    they were digging big holes.
    They were burying some people there,
    because they'd been killed by shelling or shrapnel.
    So we were there, and that was nighttime.
    It was dark.
    So we and many other people, we rushed out.
    And against one of the walls--
    we went back to the house.
    My father brought our mattresses,
    and we built a sort of lean-to.
    And we were in that thing, and in that thing all night.
    And meanwhile, everything around us went up in flames.
    It was just like-- it was like Dante's hell.
    Flames all around you, and people streaming out
    and camping out there.
    Some with nothing.
    Of course, they had just run.
    We had prepared a little bit.
    We had some things.
    And we brought out more stuff, because our house was not
    that far away.
    Well, my father took a different route, brought the mattresses
    out.
    And so anyway, we had these mattresses, and some stuff,
    and a bag full of some clothes.
    And there we were, sitting on the ground.
    And by next morning, there was black smoke and everything
    all over the place.
    And we looked.
    Of the six houses in our court, two had remained standing,
    had not been touched by the flames and burned down--
    ours and another.
    So it was a good thing they did not
    light up our house directly, and we had closed the windows.
    However, we did not dare go back into the house.
    The Japanese were all over the place in small groups.
    They came out of their pillboxes.
    They came out of their trenches.
    They came out of God knows where.
    They came amongst all those people camped.
    There were thousands of them in these empty lots--
    in the two empty lots.
    And they would run around there.
    And again, they saw a white face, and they went
    [SPEAKING JAPANESE]
    And they would say--
    [SPEAKING JAPANESE]
    OK, so they went on.
    And that to them was the German.
    It's weird to have to use that as a subterfuge.
    Anyway, the shelling got worse.
    They were now closing in, the American forces.
    They were coming in.
    They had made a sort of a swing from the north down
    through the eastern side of the city,
    and were apparently coming in from the East.
    That was the 38th Division, which we found--
    37th Division, and the seam between it and the 1st Cavalry
    was down the street that I had mentioned once, San Andreas.
    On the north side of San Andreas,
    a little further, it was 37th, it was 1st Cavalry.
    And on our side was the 37th.
    Although that I found out later naturally, not now--
    not at that time.
    We didn't even know from where they were coming.
    But the shelling was intense.
    We were getting casualties by the hundreds
    killed and wounded.
    A woman brought by--
    stopped by our lean-to in the middle
    of a tremendous shelling barrage.
    And she had this little kid.
    We knew her and the kid.
    And then the kid was in her arms,
    was dead, had been killed.
    There were people being killed constantly.
    They were people I knew, neighbors, people we knew some,
    Jewish people who lived nearby.
    There was one man, a young couple, he was killed.
    He was exposed.
    There was another fellow.
    His name was [? Benno ?] [? Wilheim. ?] And he had
    an older brother, a Viennese.
    And he had sort of volunteered to be part of the Red Cross
    or medical aid group that was helping
    people in this hospital.
    And in fact, he even helped bury them.
    He was hit, and he was killed.
    So he was buried there in that place.
    So there was a constant burial party routine going.
    And we were totally exposed.
    The Piper Cub spotter plane was right above us.
    They called artillery in.
    I don't know.
    Obviously they were not trying to hit civilians,
    but the Japanese were in small groups all around.
    So naturally they wanted to neutralize the Japanese.
    Because as I found out later from this book, The Battle
    of Manila, General Beightler's viewpoint was,
    I'm not going to sacrifice a single American soldier here.
    We're going to do everything to wipe out
    the Japanese before we go in.
    Otherwise, we would lose people.
    And he didn't want to be saddled with the charge
    that he was a butcher.
    And so if there were civilians there in large numbers, why,
    that was too bad.
    That was his viewpoint.
    Presumably, anyway.
    So that's exactly what happened.
    The battle lasted in that area for approximately--
    well, actually till-- in our case,
    till the 15th of February.
    This date in February, the 6th or 7th of '45,
    was this the beginning of what you would
    call the Battle of Manila?
    Well, I would probably put it earlier.
    Certainly it started with the liberation of Santa Tomas.
    Later on, we found out that because they rushed down
    to Santa Tomas, one of the two battalions of the 1st Cavalry
    Division, which is a small amount of the division,
    they were stuck there.
    The Japanese had built tremendous defenses.
    They needed to bring the rest of the troops down from Lingayen.
    They needed--
    And there were problems on the way.
    I mean, there was some Japanese resistance, roadways,
    tremendous logistical problems, certainly.
    And it took weeks to get in a position to actually conduct
    the Battle of Manila.
    And on top of that, American forces perhaps
    did not realize that it was going to be defended
    to the last Japanese marine.
    So that of course, created delay.
    And the biggest delay was crossing the Pasig River.
    The Japanese had blown up all the bridges.
    So to cross the river, they needed to send combat engineers
    across, set up pontoon bridges.
    Eventually, they built Bailey bridge sections
    over some of the destroyed bridges
    to get Across and to bring an army across a river, a fairly
    decent-sized river, is no easy task.
    So instead they began to soften up
    the southern part, this part of Manila south of the Pasig,
    beginning, I would say, with major artillery
    sometime late January.
    I'm not certain exactly of the date,
    but certainly by the 5th of February
    we knew that they were beginning to shoot artillery
    into the portion south of the Pasig River,
    where the large residential areas were,
    Paco and to the East Ermita Malate Also
    the Intramuros, the large walled city,
    which was one of the last things that was actually liberated
    by the forces, American forces.
    So the Battle of Manila lasted from January to March.
    And in the course of which, as I'll mention again later,
    100,000 Filipinos and proportionate amount of others
    were killed.
    It was a tremendous battle, very expensive.
    The destruction was as bad as Warsaw,
    and the fighting was bad as Stalingrad.
    The only reason it doesn't get too much play is because,
    one, the casualty--
    the reasons for the casualties, the 100,000 civilians
    were mostly killed by artillery and mortars.
    Although many were killed through Japanese atrocities,
    no question about it.
    But the majority were not.
    They were killed by American or friendly fire.
    So that tends to be a difficult story to tell.
    It hasn't really been told thoroughly
    until more recently here in the 1990s when
    this book was published.
    But that was the fact of the matter.
    In any event, by sometime around February the 13th,
    I believe it might have been, there
    was an enormous barrage we were in our lean-to with the house
    girl, and my father, my mother.
    And people that had lived next to us, this cochero
    and his crew, they had built a huge underground-- they dug out
    a huge ditch or pit, covered it with a palm tree logs,
    made this thing like a bunker.
    And they were all in there.
    And I said to my father and my mother, this shelling,
    this is really bad.
    Let's scoot out of here and dive into their ditch
    during the shelling, which was only about 10, 15 feet away.
    And we did that.
    The house girl froze.
    I tried to pull her, but she wouldn't move.
    She was just lying flat.
    but we moved.
    And the artillery just went on like crazy.
    And then suddenly we heard a huge bang.
    And seconds after that, the house girl
    jumped into this dugout, and she was
    bleeding all over the place.
    She had a hole in her cheek, which was bleeding,
    squirting blood, and she was all-- had collapsed there.
    So we put a cushion against her cheek.
    My father grabbed her, dragged her out of this bunker,
    took her under the artillery barrage
    to this makeshift hospital, left her there,
    because there were people attending to some degree.
    He came back, unscathed luckily.
    And two hours later, she came back as well.
    They had staunched the bleeding, but the place
    had taken several direct hits, including where
    they were operating on people.
    So she escaped from there.
    But she at least been-- blood had been staunched,
    but she was quite weak.
    [PHONE RINGING]
    In any event, after the house girl came back into the dugout
    and the shelling then stopped, there was a lull.
    And we climbed out, and we saw our lean-to
    had received a direct hit.
    Everything was destroyed.
    Everything was in shreds, the mattresses.
    Later on, we had some-- my t-shirts folded,
    and shrapnel had gone through the folded t-shirts.
    And then later on, when I put one on, it was a fresh one,
    it had this sort of interesting pattern of holes in it.
    But the teakettle that my parents had received
    at their wedding, a pewter one, was sitting there somewhere,
    and its top was all bashed in.
    Shrapnel had gone through the thing
    and snipped off at the snout of the teakettle.
    I still have it today as a memento.
    That was about the only thing-- and a picture of her
    that we saved from that area and from the house.
    I just want to go back a little bit in time,
    because I forgot something.
    Our temple, Temple Emil, in the latter part of 1944,
    the Japanese took the building over.
    And there were no more services.
    Services were held in different parts by different people.
    It was now scattered.
    Again, bombing had started and everything.
    They took it over and stored torpedoes in it.
    It was a munitions dump at that point.
    And in the course of the Battle of Manila, it was blown up,
    these torpedoes burned out.
    So the only thing left standing of Temple Emil
    was the outer walls.
    That was it.
    But the temple was not used, and the rabbi
    who had lived next to it also had to leave his apartments,
    and that whole building was taken over by the Japanese.
    I'm not sure whether they did it because it was a temple,
    or they did that to many buildings.
    They were beginning to be very desperate.
    It's hard to say.
    They may have.
    It's possible.
    But in any event, there it was.
    That's what they did.
    And just to mention the fact that it
    was the only synagogue under American-- the American flag
    that was destroyed in the Second World War.
    When I say American flag, it was in the Philippines,
    an American Commonwealth is basically what the area was.
    But getting back to that February the 13th incident,
    whereby now people are being shredded and killed and wounded
    badly in that area, the man with all these horses,
    he had to evacuate the horses, bring them
    through that gap in the wall.
    They, too, were standing.
    And you know what happens when there's artillery fire
    and the horses are in the way.
    They were all killed.
    So there were dead horses lying around.
    But he then asked anyone who wanted to,
    they were essentially slaughtered,
    who wanted to help themselves to the horse meat,
    then they certainly were free to do so.
    And people did, because they had nothing to eat.
    So by that time, that's February the 13th, roughly.
    We should still-- we had to leave.
    The lean-to was gone.
    Everything was gone.
    We were out in the open.
    Artillery fire was going on.
    Things were very desperate.
    I mean, the death rate was horrendous.
    And we were burying people, and lots of people
    wounded, and there was very little attention to the wounds.
    So at one point, a man was kind of bloodied.
    There were some people gathering near the street, that San
    Andreas street.
    And this was a man, he had a Red Cross flag,
    which was kind of bloodied.
    And he was standing there, talking to a Japanese officer.
    And there were people gathering near this.
    There was some rumor that they were trying to lead civilians
    in some direction of where the Americans presumably
    were coming from.
    We didn't know how close they were, nothing.
    The street was littered with bodies.
    There were overturned cars.
    It looked like a scene from Gone With the Wind, the battle
    scene.
    And the hundreds of people are beginning
    to gather around this guy with the Red Cross flag.
    And then there was some overhead shelling, but there was a lull.
    And suddenly people were beginning
    to move in the western direction.
    That's toward where we presumed the American forces were.
    And there were people of all kinds.
    There was my mother and my father, myself.
    We had a cooking pot with us.
    We had one little shopping bag thing.
    And there was a little child all bloodied, and she was alone,
    I was about four-year-old girl.
    I mean, things were sort of in a chaos.
    People were dazed.
    After all, we'd been a week or so under heavy artillery fire.
    And with all that scene, and the food--
    no food.
    I weighed 75 pounds.
    I was 14 years old.
    And it was sort of like a nightmare.
    Unreal.
    Anyway, we started heading in that direction.
    And suddenly we heard machine gunfire open up,
    and everyone went flat.
    That came from the back of us.
    So that came from the Japanese.
    Then pretty soon we got we crossed
    Dakota Street, which was--
    now we were at that intersection,
    Dakota-San Andreas heading east, away from the Bay.
    OK.
    We crossed Dakota Street, and ran across it, actually.
    Because we weren't sure, and then sort of had
    to crouch like an infantryman does on the attack.
    We got to the other side, and then later a little further on,
    we knew there were some tennis courts
    with these high types of fences, you know,
    what are these wire fences.
    And of course, they were not being used.
    But we got to that next block, and there we
    stopped because everybody laid down flat real quick.
    There was no fire or anything like that,
    but what we saw across the street first
    of all, us Germans--
    ex-German or German Jews froze, because what we saw was three
    soldiers who were wearing helmets that looked very much--
    we thought were German helmets.
    They looked like these German army helmets.
    And you know, and they were white.
    They were Caucasian.
    And so being so dazed and everything,
    we said, gee, what's happened here?
    I mean a German paratroop crew has
    come to join the Japanese to help them out?
    What's going on?
    Because we didn't know that the American helmet design
    had changed.
    We actually expected them to come in with these flat tops
    like the British wore, like they had worn before the war.
    And you know, that's what we had expected to see.
    But we saw instead these German-looking troops,
    three of them.
    So as we approached closer, we looked closer
    and they were just like across the street.
    And they saw us.
    And I'll describe it in this way.
    There was one lying on the ground behind a 30
    caliber air-cooled machine gun.
    I found it out later that was the model.
    A guy behind him kneeling.
    He was with a carbine.
    And a guy behind him standing, and he was on the telephone.
    Because they ran telephone lines.
    It was the so-called point that the military uses.
    That's the first unit up front.
    That is the very first.
    That's called the point.
    And there was three guys on the point.
    Now, and then suddenly they saw as soon,
    this whole group of civilians with their hands
    up, some of them and stuff.
    And then we heard them speak English.
    Yeah, very emotional moment, you know, even today.
    Anyway, these people, these three soldiers
    beckoned us to come across and said, oh, you
    can put your hands down.
    You know, we're Americans and so on.
    [INAUDIBLE] And the first thing we did was ask for water.
    Because we had none.
    It was completely dry.
    We had no water.
    It was very hot there.
    And they said, yeah, just come over.
    Come back as fast you can.
    Move as fast as you can, and get in behind us, and please
    don't step on the phone lines, because that's
    the only thing connecting us to our headquarters.
    And just keep calm, and keep going,
    and you can put your hands down now.
    Weird.
    Anyway, so we kept moving, and pretty soon we
    met more of these soldiers and larger groups, platoon 4, 6, 7,
    8, and So on, asking them for more water, because we
    were thirsty and have a lot of people.
    And then we also saw what was the so-called Philippine
    Guerrillas.
    They were now dressed in sort of [? khaki ?] uniforms,
    and they wore--
    some of them wore the old helmets,
    and they had some red bands on their armbands,
    and that showed on the armband what rank they were.
    Captain or lieutenant or private, whatever.
    Anyway, so they began to direct us back behind.
    And soon we got to larger formations in the back.
    And pretty soon, here we are, walking and trooping along,
    and with all the other people.
    And soon it was an American unit, two or three guys
    came up, and they saw us, and they began to ask for papers.
    You know, like who are you guys?
    I mean, we weren't Filipinos and so on.
    So we said who we were.
    Again, we used those passports, Jews, German Jews, and so on,
    stateless.
    I see, all right.
    And found out these were people that
    were with the so-called G2, the intelligence
    section of the army.
    And they'll do screening behind the lines of combat.
    And they directed us to a sort of clearing there
    and says, oh, you wait here.
    And the next thing we know, we met the rabbi.
    There he was, unshaven, carrying his kid on his shoulders,
    and his wife, and a couple others, and his parents.
    No, it was her parents in the group.
    And so we were all gathering there,
    and must have eventually gathered
    about 20 people, all whites.
    In fact, all Jews.
    I think, except for-- well, yeah.
    And then he decided, well, what we're
    going to do with you is we're going to ship you
    down to this camp because we're supposed to gather you up
    and stuff.
    They put us on a truck.
    And the next thing you know, we were heading down
    across the Pasig River.
    We rode over a pontoon bridge.
    But before we did that, walking through that section, I mean,
    there was just again bodies lying around.
    It was totally destroyed.
    Everything was burnt down.
    So they drove us by truck to--
    in fact, our house girl who was wounded sort of
    was along with us.
    But then they separated her out because she
    wanted to go back to her family in that one part of town,
    and she wasn't really subject to being taken anywhere,
    and so we let her--
    made her go her own way back to her family.
    Her family was hopefully still alive, and they were.
    But anyway, they took us across the river.
    And by the way, the date of liberation
    was February the 15th, my father's birthday.
    So 1945.
    And this is the date that you're referring
    to that this happened?
    Yes, this was the date of liberation.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, that day.
    Well, they took us by truck across the river,
    across the pontoon bridge to a section north
    of the Pasig River.
    And it was a wide street, and they took us
    to a place, the Convent of the Holy Ghost,
    a Catholic nunnery--
    it had also been a school--
    and deposited us there, where other--
    we met other Jewish families.
    And there was this huge hall which had bunks in it,
    and they put us up there.
    And in fact, the nuns prepared a meal.
    They were serving-- about the only thing they had was flour,
    so they made these dumplings out of flour,
    and that's what we ate.
    And then we found out very quickly
    that in another wing of the Holy Ghost,
    the whole place had really been taken over
    by the American army, and was used
    as an internment camp for the Germans in the Philippines.
    So there the Germans were, and they
    were being given very good food because the Geneva
    Convention requires that the prisoners and internees be
    fed properly.
    And they were given these so-called 10-in-1 rations
    that the army disperses.
    It comes in a big box, and in it there's vegetables,
    dried beans, and whatever, a sort
    of ersatzbutter, which would not rot in the tropics
    that they had developed, and some chocolate and things
    like that.
    And they were getting fed well, and we
    had to get our water from a well we had to dig.
    And so I began to carry water because many people
    after liberation, eating some rich food like corned beef
    hash, were going to get dysentery like crazy.
    And so-- and this thing was four floors up.
    And so we carried water from this well up
    to the fourth floor until one fine day,
    oh, the second morning, second day we were there,
    there appeared a man that we knew.
    I mentioned his name before, Ackerman, who was a butcher.
    And Ackerman appeared alone.
    He was in great pain.
    He was a big guy.
    He was a pretty strong fella.
    And he had a wife and kid, but they weren't with him.
    And he was-- his eyes were wild, and he was obviously
    in tremendous pain.
    Well, it turned out that he had been hit--
    close to being hit by a white phosphorous grenade,
    and one side of his leg was all burned.
    He was obviously in bad, bad shape.
    So we got him in.
    And luckily I had made contact with what is now called a MASH
    unit down the street.
    This was what is called a cleaning station made up
    of doctors and medical people, American military.
    Because I'd had a big wound on my leg,
    and it had gotten infected.
    So I went in there and asked them
    whether they could dress it, and they did.
    And I got to know some of the people in there.
    So it was that night we laid Ackerman down,
    and he had indeed bad white phosphorous burn along
    his whole leg.
    And I managed to go what's now called the MASH unit,
    the clearing station--
    [AUDIO OUT]
    This is a continuation of a taped interview
    with Frank Ephraim being made on behalf of the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum the date is April the 7th, 1997.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    This is the second side, side B of tape number six.
    Frank, when we stopped the interview several days ago,
    you were talking about the immediate post-war period,
    and you and your family's relationship with the United
    States military, the occupying force.
    And you're making friends with those
    who were members of a so-called MASH unit in Manila.
    Yes, we were at that time at the Holy Ghost convent, which was
    a temporary collection center.
    And there were about 30 or 40 or maybe even
    as many as 50 Jewish people there, families, individuals,
    children, everything, including a rabbi, who we had,
    as I mentioned before, met on the way.
    The Holy Ghost was also used as an internment camp
    for the so-called real Germans.
    And there must have been about 300 or 400
    of them, who were being taken care of by the United States
    Army, fed well, according to the Geneva Convention.
    And we of course, didn't have that kind of food.
    We had to scrounge.
    But they also eventually gave us some army rations.
    And we were in, of course, a different wing,
    all in one large hall and some smaller rooms.
    However, as I mentioned before, one morning,
    oh, about two or three days after we'd
    been there perhaps only two days,
    and we're putting that around 17, 18 of February 1945,
    this man by the name of Ackerman,
    who was essentially a butcher, a member the Jewish community,
    stumbled--
    sort of hobbled into the compound.
    He was apparently in great pain.
    He was a big fellow, very strong.
    And I could see that his leg, pants leg had been ripped,
    and it looked awful.
    And I don't know, it'd been bandaged badly.
    And he was crazed with pain, essentially.
    So we sort of brought him in and laid him down on a mattress.
    And since I had been to this so-called MASH unit, which
    is what we would call it today.
    At that time it was called a clearing station.
    It was used for triage of people that were picked up
    by first aid stations in the battlefront itself,
    which at that time was Intramuros,
    the walled city within Manila.
    And they would bring the wounded,
    and they would be looked at, and then
    they would be either sent off to a general hospital, field
    hospital, treated there, and then possibly returned to duty.
    Anyway, I may had made contact there
    because I had a wound on my knee.
    And they were treating that.
    So I ran down there.
    It was about a block away.
    And they of course, could not come to the Holy Ghost
    Convent, the compound.
    They did come later that night, two army captains, medical men,
    doctors, and managed to come in and look at Ackerman.
    Ackerman, of course, was a phosphorous grenade was
    what hit him.
    And his leg down the side was all burnt.
    And they put ointment on it, and they
    prescribed a whole large dose of, in those days sulfa drugs,
    these large horse pills, and gave him some sedative as well.
    So then they left after about an hour,
    and gave us instructions on what we might
    do with him after a while.
    And he went to sleep.
    And I won't make this a long story,
    but eventually the next day or so, his wife and son found him.
    They came to the compound, because they had been
    separated during the battle.
    And that was a reunion.
    And then more people kept coming in to this compound,
    including a man by the name of [? Moser. ?] He was a bachelor,
    and he was a type of guy who was very, very meticulous.
    Everything had to be just right.
    I'm not sure, I believe he was an accountant.
    And he would be the guy who called the Berliner Tageblatt,
    which is, if you translate into English ,
    would it be the daily newspaper.
    He was a man who knew everything,
    where it was, how it was done, who did what to whom.
    And so he was a very useful person to have around,
    because he knew where everybody ended up,
    and he was always full of that kind of information,
    just as an aside.
    And there were many other people from the Jewish community.
    As I said, probably as many as 40 or 50.
    And at that time, it was like a three story wing
    where we were located.
    And there was no water, no running water.
    So we had to fetch water out of a hand-dug well with buckets.
    And that was quite a strain.
    We had to haul it up to the fourth or third floor
    to flush the toilets, and things were kind of rough,
    because people were having dysentery
    as they were eating some of the food
    that they hadn't eaten for so long,
    like corned beef hash, all the army rations, which they
    had difficulty in digesting.
    This is the Holy Ghost Convent that we're still talking about,
    and it was completely run by the US military?
    Well, yes and no.
    It was actually run by nuns, who were
    of the Order of the Holy Ghost.
    And it was a Catholic convent.
    And it was also a school.
    Like many schools in the Philippines
    were run by either Jesuits or nuns,
    Philippines was a fully Catholic country.
    The archbishops and a cardinal later on, you might say,
    were part of government.
    And that's how the Philippines and I'm
    sure many other countries are indeed run.
    So this was nothing unusual.
    And this convent was simply taken over
    because it had space.
    The classrooms now became rooms for the internees and so forth.
    And the public rooms were used to house us
    in one of the wings.
    And the nuns helped out.
    They helped the cook.
    They helped feed.
    And they helped wash.
    And then of course, went about their own business
    of daily prayers and church.
    They had a chapel right on this small campus.
    So that was the Holy Ghost.
    Now, one fine day we were in the middle
    of hauling water from the wells, and somebody called me
    and says, come on down.
    There is a whole unit.
    They're doing something.
    They're putting up a water tank.
    So some of us younger guys went down there,
    and what we saw was I suppose a platoon of about 20,
    30 soldiers.
    And they were all Black.
    Which of course, we would call as Negroes in those days.
    And we had never seen that many Black Negro people in one place
    at any one time before.
    After all, of course we'd been around the Philippines,
    where there were Filipinos.
    But Negroes, we only knew of one who was there before the war,
    he was an American.
    That's where he came from.
    But here was this whole platoon.
    And of course, we were immediately
    reminded of the gurkhas who served with the British army,
    and even the Jewish brigade was part of the British army,
    as this was some sort of a very special unit.
    The notion of segregation never even
    crossed our minds, because we were totally unaware of that.
    So we went up to them and talked to them,
    and they seemed to be very shy.
    But they were also led by what appeared to be
    a white sergeant or officer.
    And then they proceeded to put up a very heavy, thick canvas
    water tank.
    Oh, it must have been about 20 feet across, enormous thing.
    And that was-- and then to that they pumped water
    from a trailer and put chlorine in there.
    And that was the first good water
    supply we had seen in months.
    And we no longer had to haul the water from the well.
    So that was a very interesting experience,
    just as a sort of a contrast.
    Even at the end of all that, it never
    occurred to us that this was as a result
    of segregation policies in the United States Army.
    We just simply thought that this was a so-called special unit,
    and therefore it was composed of all
    in this case Black soldiers.
    The convent was used as a facility for those--
    exclusively for those who had immigrated to the Philippines
    because of the war?
    Or were there Filipinos there as well?
    There were a few people who were of mestizo or mixed origin.
    But of course, the main reason we were there
    is because we were picked up en route from the battle area.
    And we of course stood out, being white,
    and as a result were being questioned by army G2.
    Filipinos and other mestizos were never stopped,
    because obviously these peoples belong to the country.
    And they were not taken anywhere.
    They were simply left alone, and they did what they did.
    In fact, most of the Jewish community
    were in the same boat.
    They were not picked up.
    They either stayed in their homes,
    if those homes were still intact, or went somewhere else,
    or lived with other people.
    Because not everyone was picked up.
    It just so happened that maybe 40,
    50 at most of the Jewish community
    happened to go through areas where there
    was a unit of the Army Intelligence,
    and they screened you, and then as a result,
    picked you up and took you across the river,
    to this area where the Holy Ghost Convent was.
    Were you personally screened, or was it only your parents?
    And either way, what do you remember about that?
    What kinds of things were they asking you?
    Well, they didn't really do any great screening.
    They simply met us on the battlefield,
    and asked us who we were, and we gave them whatever ID we had.
    And then they said, well, we're going to take you
    to a place across the river.
    And we didn't know where they were taking us.
    Maybe we thought it was a refugee center, which
    in a sense it was.
    Because it was about a week or two after we'd
    been to the Holy--
    in fact, they never asked us any detailed Questions
    they just simply packed us up on a truck and took us over.
    Which, as far as we were concerned, was great.
    Since otherwise, we would have been roving around there
    with nothing to eat, since we had nothing at all.
    We had essentially what you'd call the clothes
    on our back-- period.
    So that was actually a good thing for us, and many people
    even envied us, who did not get that treatment
    and were left to their own devices, which was difficult.
    There was no food even then.
    It was just during the battle.
    Anyway, after two weeks, there was
    a man who was a lieutenant colonel,
    and he was with the Counterintelligence
    Corps, the CIC, and they sort of ran this internment camp.
    And they said to us, well, folks, we
    want to get you out of here.
    You don't belong here.
    You know, you're not German nationals.
    You are Jews, or you're whatever--
    of course, they were not all Jews there--
    and we're going to have to get you out of here.
    And of course, the place was under guard.
    And as I said, you're not supposed to be in this place.
    So after a while, the rabbi got together
    with people who, of course, were on the outside,
    began to get together again the elders of the community,
    so to speak.
    And what they did was, they rented
    a house, a very large house in an area
    called Santa Mesa, one of the suburbs of Manila.
    And I want to also give back to that community house which
    we had during the war.
    That place apparently also survived and remained intact,
    because it was not in the middle of Manila.
    And so it was there, but it was essentially full.
    And those people that were in the Holy Ghost, about 30
    or 40 or 50, and there were some others outside,
    needed a place to stay, because they had no place at all.
    So they rented this huge house on a street
    called Padre Pellaez.
    And it's named after a clergyman, a Catholic clergyman
    in the Philippines.
    But there they shipped us-- oh, wait a minute.
    I'm sorry.
    Before we were actually removed from this place,
    the Holy Ghost, because they definitely wanted us out
    of there, and he says, well, since you all
    have no place to go, we'll have to take you to some other camp.
    So they loaded us on trucks again,
    and we ended up in what is called Bilibid Prison, which
    was a regular prison with like the spokes of a wheel
    type of wings.
    We were prisoners in there.
    We were housed.
    Couldn't get in or out.
    And the rabbi was with us, again, of course,
    with the family.
    But that was like the only place they
    could think of where they could put us.
    Because there was really--
    Manila had burned down, had been destroyed.
    There was a horrendous lack of any place.
    So they gave us that option, and we took it.
    And we spent about a week or so there.
    And then it was we went to this house that
    was rented for the Jewish community on Padre Pellaez.
    And there we stayed about, oh--
    and that was a house of all Jewish people there,
    members of the Jewish community.
    And we stayed there approximately two weeks or so.
    And at that time, my father--
    the man that had lived in the house
    across from us on Dakota street, among those six houses, whose
    house boy we had inherited, and some whose stuff that we
    took care of, looked up my father,
    because he'd been released from Santa Tomas internment camp.
    And he in the meantime had been put
    in charge of a lumber mill in Santa Mesa right by the Pasig
    River.
    And this lumber mill took logs that were brought in,
    and they sawed them up.
    It was all run for the army at that time.
    And he offered my father space in a house
    where he lived with his wife.
    They were like upstairs.
    They had a large apartment upstairs.
    It was fairly simple.
    And he would offer us half a section
    of the house downstairs, which had a bathroom.
    So my father said that's fine.
    I want to get out of this house with all these people in it.
    It's kind of a mess.
    So we packed up whatever we had, which
    was really next to nothing, and moved
    into this house and the lumber mill.
    And it's called the Findlay Miller lumber mill.
    And you entered it.
    There was a sort of a gate.
    It was under guard.
    The whole place had Filipino soldiers or constabulary
    or some kind of people walking around with carbines,
    and they were guarding the place.
    But we of course could go in and out.
    And these huge lumber trucks with trunks of trees
    would come roaring in there and through the mill.
    And the mill would saw it into boards.
    But they also had a huge workshop,
    wood workshop on the second floor of the lumber mill
    up in the loft, where they made little boxes out of wood.
    And eventually they made a whole suite of furniture
    for this friend of my father's in the Chippendale style
    out of the Philippine mahogany.
    The wood is called nara, Philippine mahogany.
    And it was unfinished.
    And eventually when he left for the United States, which
    was about six months later, he took with him
    loads of furniture made there for him back
    to the US-- chairs, tables, the works.
    And so we were in this lumber mill.
    And by that time, the community had gotten itself together
    somewhat.
    There were also, of course, many soldiers, Jewish soldiers.
    We had our first seder.
    This was now April of 1945.
    And it was going to be held at the Hippodrome, which
    was the horse race--
    the horse race-- hippodrome was called.
    And the rabbi and the cantor were there.
    And there must have been over thousand American soldiers,
    Jewish soldiers, some having just
    been released for the day from the front
    up north nearby Baguio in the mountain province, where
    they were still fighting remnants of the Japanese army.
    And they were there with weapons and all.
    We were in the bleachers, and they were there.
    And then most of the Jewish community showed up, of course.
    And we had a seder service, a Passover service
    right there in the open.
    It was quite interesting.
    And there were navy people and army, whatever.
    Yeah.
    And they offered us food, and they
    had these little K rations and stuff and cigarettes
    and everything like that.
    So it was one of the first times the Jewish community again
    got together.
    Because it had been a bit dispersed, obviously,
    during the fighting period.
    But then that was the first seder.
    And then we were back-- went back to our home
    at Findlay Miller lumber yard.
    And then one day, a huge--
    an army unit moved in sort of like next door.
    You have to remember that we were at the Pasig River.
    It was the 11th--
    13th Marine Maintenance Company.
    And their job was to repair all the kinds of riverboats
    that they brought with them, and barges.
    And they were-- all the guys there were mechanics or trades
    types of people.
    All military, it was a military unit.
    And I went over there because they had a big mess hall.
    And that was food, and food was scarce.
    And I got myself in there, and I helped out, and as a result
    was able to eat and also bring home a lot of food that
    was left over.
    So that-- for a while, that was a very great source
    of nourishment.
    Yeah.
    Did your father actually work for the lumber mill in return
    for your being able to stay at this facility?
    And another thing I was going to ask you was,
    did you see any Japanese being rounded up
    at any point from the US occupation
    on through the period that you're talking about?
    No, he did not work for the lumber mill.
    He actually worked for the US army somewhere else.
    And he would be going to a place where
    a truck would come and pick him up and take him there.
    It was some sort of clerical type of temporary work, which
    they needed people to do things, and that's
    what he did for a short period of time.
    As far as the Japanese were concerned,
    there were two incidents.
    One is when we were still at the Holy Ghost.
    One fine day, some people are looking out
    the window out of the second or third floor, I believe.
    And there was a big, grassy open space.
    And they apparently saw two guys crawling
    through that area with rifles.
    And they alerted the authorities,
    the guards in our compound.
    And sure enough, two Japanese soldiers
    were trying to crawl out of some area, and to get water.
    I don't know what they were doing.
    But they were apprehended.
    You know, they jumped them, and shots were fired,
    but that was it.
    The second one was when we were at the Findlay Miller Lumber
    Company, in that house.
    One soldier comes running in, because there
    were lots of soldiers around who were part of the trucking
    groups that brought the trees in and others who
    did some minor management work.
    And they said they got hold of a Japanese
    that they had somehow flushed out of somewhere in that area.
    And they wanted someone to ask him some questions,
    and they thought perhaps that I could do that,
    since I did speak a bit of Japanese,
    since I had taken Japanese for two years during the war.
    It was a requirement.
    So yeah, I went with them to this little building,
    like a hut.
    And there was this Japanese guy.
    And he apparently was a very low ranking individual,
    and they had--
    so I simply asked him whether he was Japanese or not.
    Because very often you could find a Korean or a Taiwanese.
    But no, indeed he was Japanese.
    And he was a plain soldier that just had been hidden.
    And there he was, coming out.
    He was-- he gave me his name, and they also
    wanted me to ask him if he had other comrades around the area.
    So he said yes, there were some, but he didn't know
    where they were at this moment.
    And they were all--
    since they were running out of food and water
    and they had to go out into the open, and try to--
    that's how he was caught.
    That was all.
    It was a very short thing.
    They just took him away and put him into a prison camp,
    and that was that.
    We did not see that many Japanese prisoners,
    because many of them or most Japanese committed suicide.
    One of the last units when we were still
    in the battle area on Dakota Street before we even escaped,
    they had retreated, or begun their retreat
    backwards to Manila Bay.
    And I understand from people who went all the way to-- soldiers
    later who were there, that the last Japanese went
    into the water and appeared to be drowning themselves,
    a small unit that was left at that time.
    Which was relatively believable, because they did indeed--
    were ordered to fight the last.
    And they did that.
    The ones that were captured were mostly
    the Koreans or the Taiwanese.
    They, of course, were not very friendly
    to the Japanese anyway.
    So they gave up, and that was that.
    We-- we're back here now at Findlay Miller.
    We've gone through the marine unit next door.
    Then the word came that there were some American soldiers,
    Jewish soldiers, who had volunteered
    to rebuild the youth group or whatever it might
    be of a youth group in Manila.
    And sure enough, they had-- one of the things
    that they had going, there was a Jewish community center now
    that's a house that was taken over,
    that was given over to the Jewish community.
    Again, much of this was engineered by the rabbi
    and by some of the leaders of the community.
    And of course, the Americans, who
    had Jews, who had been liberated from Santo Tomas,
    they were back in force, of course,
    and very friendly with the army.
    And the army was very cooperative
    and supplied whatever was needed in most cases.
    And in this case-- and the chaplains,
    American Jewish chaplains were there.
    It was a three or four of them, you see.
    So they began a lot of focus on the community.
    And what happened was, they would hold
    sort of socials, even dances.
    And they would pick people up with trucks and ambulances
    to take them there from all over.
    We left this-- one day, this ambulance came up by the house.
    And in it, in the front was a woman.
    She was a lieutenant.
    And there was a driver.
    And the rest of us, you know, my parents and other people,
    Jewish people who had gathered from the area, went in there.
    They drove us all the way to that Jewish Community Center.
    They had some sort of a dance, some social.
    And us guys, we were out there drinking Cokes.
    We hadn't had a Coke in so long, so we drank 10 ice cold Cokes,
    one after the other.
    And that's kind of interesting.
    But strangely enough, this woman in the front was indeed--
    we didn't know that until much later--
    had also been born in Germany, had come to the United States
    and became a nurse, and was in the army.
    And she later on married one of the members
    of the Jewish community, a bachelor.
    And then they lived later on in San Francisco.
    But in any event, either this ambulance or a truck
    would come and pick people up and take
    to these social things, which were going on.
    And of course that brought the community together.
    After so many years, after all this turmoil,
    much of the community had lost most everything.
    Some people were lucky and remained in their homes,
    but nonetheless, things were rough but slowly getting back.
    They were either getting some work done,
    or they were beginning to build up businesses again,
    things of that kind.
    Well, amongst these American volunteers
    were two or three people who were then
    known as chaplain's assistants.
    They were like private first class or corporals.
    And there were two of them who began
    to form a Jewish youth group.
    Actually, two youth groups.
    One they called [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] And that
    was sort of like for teenagers, older teenagers,
    ages bar mitzvah and up.
    And the others were the younger group
    called the Stars of David.
    And they were, as I said, the younger people.
    And they had-- every Sunday, they had to get-together.
    And we would--
    I remember going with Eva Miedzwinski.
    That is the younger sister of a woman
    who gave some oral history here not too long ago.
    And also another girl, Ruth [? Osterreicher ?]
    was her name.
    Lived not far from there.
    And we had to take three different modes
    of transportation to get this Jewish community center,
    but we made it.
    Took us about an hour and a half each way.
    But we went there.
    And it was great, because as it turned out, of course,
    these Jewish soldiers were indeed Zionists.
    They inculcated the notion of Zionism,
    which took good root amongst the Jewish teenagers,
    because here was the notion of a Jewish nation, which
    at that time of course, was an important thing, something
    for the future.
    And of course, the basis there was
    at that time called Palestine, and to be known as Israel
    two years later in 1948.
    This was 1946.
    So we would have these sessions, all kinds of activities.
    There would be descriptions of the Jewish immigration
    to Palestine, the Aliyah, the development
    of the nation there, the hope for the future,
    the problem of the British blockade.
    We were getting into some of those issues
    and learning about them.
    And then of course we had refreshments
    and all other goodies.
    But the man who led this, the American soldier's
    name was Norman [? Shanin, ?] and he was an American.
    And there was also a man by the name of [? Arnie ?] [? Pins, ?]
    who later on married one of the people,
    one of the women that was a member of this group.
    And both of these went to Israel to settle, after some time, oh,
    in 1948, '49, '50, somewhere in that neighborhood.
    And [? Arnie ?] [? Pins ?] died there early on, but Norman
    [? Shanin ?] lives there today.
    This is 1997.
    In fact, he sent some greetings to the reunion
    we had of the Manila group here in Washington on October 21,
    1996.
    But he certainly was the major leader of that group.
    And so as I say, we went there every Sunday.
    And this continued on, and we even
    published a small newsletter, copies of which I still have.
    We also had a competition of art or works or handicraft.
    And one of the girls won.
    She was an art student that did a nice painting.
    And I won second place with a model
    of a cruiser, which is here on a shelf in the room
    that we're sitting in.
    It's a gray ship about a foot and a half long.
    And I made that all out of cardboard,
    and then painted it with real paint,
    and that hardened it, of course.
    And that won second prize.
    I was 15 years old at the time, 1946.
    So this was a very-- a group which really brought
    us together, I think maybe for the first time
    with some direction, with fresh direction from people that
    had certainly a Zionist or nationalistic viewpoint,
    different from a religious one, although that was not absent,
    but nonetheless it was different.
    And I think that was welcome and refreshing,
    and I think it served the younger generation at that time
    and even into the future.
    There was a tragic incident, as we were members of the group.
    There was one fellow by the name of Ernst Fuld, F-U-L-D.
    And he was always interested in radio and electronic things.
    And one day, apparently, he was called upon
    to fool around with a radio that apparently had been working,
    and it was in some store downtown Manila.
    And there was an explosion.
    It had been booby trapped by the Japanese,
    and he was killed in the process.
    So yeah, that was--
    I forgot to ask you earlier about the fate
    of any Jews either as helping interned POW
    or in any kind of counter-military resistance,
    or in any other way, what you knew personally
    of members of the Jewish community who might have been
    hurt or killed, either during or in the aftermath
    of the fighting?
    Yes, the Jewish community lost 60 people killed, roughly
    in proportion to the killing ratio
    that was in the Philippines.
    I did mention 100,000 people in Manila were killed,
    a very, very large number of casualties, plus of course,
    many others wounded.
    We lost 60 killed, and we had 200
    with wounds that were of substantive nature,
    from serious to medium.
    Mine I don't count.
    But yes, and some younger people were killed.
    In fact the man that married the woman who
    was in the ambulance, the nurse, he
    had gone through a period where he had to play dead.
    He was actually bayoneted by Japanese and did not move.
    He played dead, so he survived.
    But the other man, also a bachelor,
    was in that same shelter, was not so lucky.
    He was killed.
    And the killing was in several ways.
    We lost, of course, many friends that we knew for example, a man
    that we knew very well, and he was [? Broniatowski. ?]
    He was killed.
    It was not certain whether he was shot or machine gunned
    or he came into crossfire.
    Many people were simply killed by artillery.
    And then there were the atrocities.
    And there was one example like [? Seit. ?]
    And that is a man who had come to the Philippines, who
    had escaped from Germany in the '30s, early '30s,
    had gone to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
    had to leave there when Mussolini invaded.
    Of course, we know that era.
    And came to the Philippines.
    He was a chemist, a research chemist, and did very well.
    I mean, he did excellent work.
    He knew what he was doing.
    And he lived.
    My parents knew them well.
    I knew them well.
    They had a young daughter.
    She must have been about eight or nine at that time.
    And they, during the battle, were in their home.
    And for some reason, the Japanese of course
    had been burning everything in the area.
    They also went into that home, gathered other people,
    forced them all into that one home,
    piled furniture about them, and then poured gasoline
    into the area, and then threw a hand grenade
    in there, which of course ignited everything.
    It killed his wife and daughter.
    It burned him terribly.
    He was rescued by Filipinos, who carried him out in a chair.
    He was himself or course a doctor,
    and not a medical doctor but a doctor chemistry,
    and did know a little bit about how
    you might want to help himself.
    But he had third degree burns over about 30% of his body.
    He did survive.
    We did visit him in the hospital right after and in the home,
    but he was a very courageous guy, and was able mentally
    and otherwise to survive the ordeal, both his own wounds
    and that of the loss of the family.
    You may have been referring to this indirectly
    a few minutes ago, but I recollect
    there were a group of German Jewish refugees
    who were in some sort of Red Cross facility that was bombed.
    I may be getting that wrong.
    There was the-- it's not a Red Cross facility.
    There was the Philippine General Hospital, which was in Ermita,
    was part of Manila, residential Manila,
    and who were hiding there among others.
    And there was a battle in and around that hospital.
    And as a result, of course, they were all
    trapped there with many others.
    But there may have been some casualties there as well.
    The only other reference to the Red Cross
    was when we were ready to escape from those open lots, where
    we'd been under artillery shelling.
    A man, Filipino, was carrying a bloody Red Cross flag.
    Had nothing to do with the, quote, Red Cross per se.
    It simply was a symbol, and that was all.
    We did not run into the Red Cross at all.
    They may well have been there serving the army and so on.
    We eventually-- the first aid the Jewish community saw
    was from the American Joint Distribution Committee.
    That of course was also limited.
    After all, the Philippines were very far away.
    Their needs were in Europe, and certainly although they
    did what they could.
    They eventually sent batches of clothes.
    However, not realizing this was the Philippines,
    there were a lot of winter clothes.
    So what we did was--
    not their fault. After all, it's one of these happenstances.
    However, what we did, the community
    did was to have those clothes available for anyone that
    was leaving the Philippines to go to the United States
    or Australia.
    Could select one or two pieces for winter in the US.
    And in fact, I did that.
    I got a jacket, which was sort of a camel hair
    or some kind of a jacket.
    And my mother got a sort of overcoat,
    with sort of big fake fur on it.
    And that's how we eventually would arrive in San Francisco.
    But that was about the limit.
    The military, the army chaplains,
    there was a great deal of help given.
    They used their authority or whatever and offices
    to bring food in, to help out.
    As I mentioned, they built up the youth group.
    They help to re--
    And then of course, there was this major event.
    The temple had been destroyed.
    The walls remained standing.
    So they decided that--
    It was really done by soldiers of the army, Jewish soldiers.
    On November the 9th, 1945, a very eventful day,
    this was Crystal Night seven years hence,
    they decided to have a big get-together
    in the ruins of the temple.
    And the Jewish community was there.
    And it was crammed with GIs and sailors, Jewish ones.
    And what they did there was, they
    ran a sort of collection thing, where
    they took bids, like anyone who's ready to for $1,000--
    Now, we were kind of a bit shocked
    at that, because we'd never used a temple for money
    in any way, shape or form.
    Being sort of German conservatives, as I mentioned,
    this was not a thing that we did.
    But this was done to rebuild the temple.
    So there must have been, oh, 300 or 400 people in there.
    I have pictures of it, of that event.
    Where they had a service, and then subsequently went out
    and there were some among these GIs
    was two or three who knew how to do
    that, expert from the States.
    And they raised a lot of money, or enough certainly
    to help begin the fund of rebuilding.
    And so that was another major event.
    The other event I remember, besides all the youth group--
    and of course people were beginning
    to take steps to leave the Philippines,
    since for many it had been an interim place, certainly
    in our case.
    And my father ran again into a man who looked him up,
    who was our neighbor on Taft Avenue, when
    we lived in a bungalow.
    That's the man who he took to the hospital one
    night, who had a seizure.
    And presumably this man claimed that he saved his life.
    And he looked us up, because he was back with the army.
    He was then also in the Counterintelligence Corps.
    That background of his served him well there.
    And he also managed to get us through the--
    there was a sort of a--
    there was bureaucracy, of course,
    to get your papers cleared to the American authorities
    and to the Philippine authorities to immigrate.
    And I think he helped us there in one fashion or another.
    But we were also making ready to leave,
    because our relatives in the United States
    were not in every case able to offer affidavits.
    My uncle had just come out of the army.
    He was with Stilwell in China and Burma theater.
    He was a captain, was a doctor.
    So he really didn't have much wealth.
    He could not sponsor us.
    But I had my so-called godfather,
    whom I also called Uncle.
    He was also a physician.
    He delivered me.
    He lived in Maine at the time, in Gardiner, Maine,
    where he was practicing as a country doctor.
    And he had not been drafted.
    Although he was eager to go into the army,
    they wouldn't have him for two reasons--
    age and the other fact, there was no other doctor
    within 200 miles.
    And so they decided that he would stay.
    Which got him very angry.
    He wanted to get into the reserves and all that.
    He loved that sort of thing.
    He didn't have children, so he was really free.
    This is a taped interview, being made
    on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    The interview is with Frank Ephraim.
    Interviewer, Nancy Alper.
    Today's date is April the 7th, 1997.
    This is the seventh tape, side A, or the first side.
    As we were talking a little while ago about what we did,
    and some of the things that occurred after the liberation,
    we are talking now approximately the latter part of 1945,
    or let's say the middle of 1945.
    We're, let's say at--
    probably on June, July 1945.
    I had not been going to school.
    In fact, the last day of school was when the American forces
    came over Manila, as part of the Japanese drill air raid,
    on September the 1st, 1944.
    So here we here.
    We are almost nine months down the road,
    and no school of any kind.
    There were no schools open yet anywhere.
    Manila, as I mentioned, was essentially destroyed.
    The main parts of Manila, where Ermita Malate,
    the main residential areas, the downtown area.
    But slowly and surely, we, of course,
    decided some schooling was necessary.
    There happened to be a woman, whose name was Mrs. Nathan.
    And she lived by herself, or sometimes
    with her brother, who was married,
    and was in business in Philippines.
    And she was a teacher.
    And she became a tutor for me, and taught me
    for a year, over about a year's worth, roughly,
    nine months, perhaps, two courses--
    algebra and French.
    So I took those two things from her, went to her house.
    And me, being curious about many things,
    like solutions to interesting mathematical,
    or warfare, or sea problems, navigation problems,
    we went to the areas like that, to learn
    about how to do triangulation.
    But again, she gave me the basics
    in algebra, which I'll never forget.
    Because algebra is a basic mathematical skill,
    and it served me well.
    But I was not that good in calculus.
    But algebra was great fun.
    And of course, French--
    now here, I was, having learned, certainly, English in 1939.
    When we arrived in the Philippines,
    Japanese and Tagalog was required during the occupation
    of the Japanese.
    And then I had also taken Spanish sometime
    during the war, from a woman that was still on the, when
    we lived on Dakota street.
    And in fact, she lived just beyond those pink houses
    that I had mentioned before, and she taught me Spanish.
    And so all these languages, I liked languages.
    And this was welcome.
    And so I studied, as I said, French and algebra.
    Then schools began to open again.
    And in this time, my father had gone back into business.
    He was always a self starting businessman.
    And import export was one of his loves.
    And in this case, he began to import things
    from the United States.
    And what he imported was moldings--
    wooden moldings, or wooden moldings covered with metal,
    moldings that's used for home construction interiors.
    Obviously, any kind of materials was in great demand
    in the Philippines, because of the vast destruction.
    And so there was rebuilding, at least slowly, but surely,
    going on.
    And so this kind of material was, of course, also
    in great demand.
    So he began to do relatively well.
    Wasn't rich, but he did relatively well,
    by beginning to open up this business,
    selling these moldings, again, in factory lots,
    to do people who would retail them or use them directly
    in construction.
    And so they were able to afford to send me
    to this, what is known as the American School.
    That was its name, the American School,
    which had previously only been--
    well, was certainly not open during the war.
    Was essentially for Americans who live in the Philippines,
    and anyone else who could afford it.
    Because it was not that cheap.
    But it was not outrageous either.
    It had good teachers, and American teachers,
    who came from the US.
    The teacher I had was a graduate of Vassar,
    who taught me geometry.
    And then that school, also other members of the Jewish community
    my age--
    quite a-- well, not quite a number, but a number of people.
    And the only problem was, to get to this school,
    it was in one part of Manila, and we lived in another.
    We had eventually moved out of this lumber mill,
    into an apartment, which was like a two story house,
    also in the District of Santa Mesa.
    And from there, to get to the American School
    was a heck of a distance.
    So we would have to take all kinds of transportation, which
    was not the world's greatest.
    And two of my buddies, one was Hans Heinz Hoeflein.
    I believe I mentioned his name before.
    He was a son of a marine engineer.
    And the other was a fellow, name of Heli Meyer, Helmut Meyer.
    His father was a physician, only on the periphery
    of the Jewish community.
    Never did attend services.
    Perhaps once a year, for Yom Kippur, he would show up.
    But Heli Meyer was not really schooled in Judaism at all.
    And neither was Hans Heinz Hoeflein.
    But they were essentially, you might
    say, peripherally associated with the community,
    but really on the edge.
    But anyway, they went to that school,
    and they were good friends of mine.
    And what we would do is--
    well, the American kids--
    military kids, most of them--
    were being picked up by army buses and taken to that school.
    So we would just simply hitch a ride with them,
    although we were not really supposed to.
    But we stepped on board, and hi, hi, hi,
    to the bus driver, and he didn't say anything.
    So we sat down.
    And back and forth, we used the American army
    provided transportation. t go to school.
    And that, of course, went on for some time.
    And let's see.
    We're talking now toward the very latter--
    early part of 1946.
    We're about a year after liberation, roughly.
    So there I was, in that school.
    I was a sophomore, second year, taking all these great courses
    in geometry, and struggling through biology,
    which I did not like.
    But by that time, we were very close to emigrating,
    to leaving the Philippines.
    And this, in fact, did occur.
    I may have missed a number of other incidents here.
    But this, in fact, did occur.
    We were prepared to leave the Philippines
    in the latter part of 1946.
    The exact date of departure was to be November the 19th, 1946.
    But as things were, the ship did not leave from Manila itself.
    It left from a small port in the province of Batangas.
    Batangas is a province south of Manila.
    And so therefore, we had to--
    well, first of all, we had to pack up the stuff
    that we were going to take.
    There was no such thing as shipping things separately.
    Because in those days, the only way to get passage
    was on a ship that was under the war shipping administration.
    And the actual ships were operated--
    many of them were what is called the US Victory Ships--
    were operated by the various American shipping companies.
    And in this case, the ship was to be run by the Pacific Far
    East Lines--
    then a fairly large enterprise, run out of San Francisco.
    And the ship's name was the Anchorage Victory.
    This was the second long voyage taken in a ship which
    had the name victory.
    The first one was the Victoria on it.
    But of course, victory was a common name.
    There were sort of thousands of ships
    that were the victory class.
    The Anchorage Victory was the name of the ship.
    But what we did was, we packed our things.
    My father was always very organized.
    I guess I am somewhat similar to that.
    We were given three army foot lockers, one for each of us,
    which she painted blue, with a white stripe across the middle,
    on its narrow part, to identify that these were ours.
    And then we packed what we had in those.
    And then we had some other smaller bags,
    and that was what we left with.
    Now, if you recall, that model that I
    had built for the competition.
    I decided-- I had, in the meantime,
    started a even larger one out of cardboard.
    I'd finished to hull.
    It was to be the USS Missouri, a battleship of the US fleet.
    But I left that behind.
    Because that thing would have been over three feet long.
    But the little fellow, I built a little cardboard box
    to slip it into.
    And that was going to be hand carried.
    And the footlocker was now filled.
    I didn't manage to bring some souvenirs.
    I own a Japanese steel helmet with a bullet hole in it,
    picked up on the field of battle.
    I own a bayonet with three notches in the handle,
    an America bayonet.
    The three notches, apparently showing that this bayonet that
    managed to do in three people, and had been sharpened down
    to half the size that it was.
    A bowie knife that had been given to me by one
    of the soldiers of that 1113th marine unit,
    near where we lived, by the river, in the lumber mill.
    And some insignia badges that I collected from the US army--
    its was of interest of every rank,
    including Colonel, the eagle.
    And those are my personal pieces of junk.
    And things whatever clothes, everything we
    had went into the foot locker.
    And it was with that we went and got into a sort of cab
    like affair, leaving our house in Santa Mesa,
    leaving our cat, a little black and white job,
    with the house girl there, some people who lived downstairs.
    And then left and headed for a sort of central spot
    in Manila, where we boarded a bus that
    would take us to Batangas.
    And that was about an hour and a half ride on the bus,
    I remember.
    We got to the docks.
    And there were three ships there.
    It was a very simple dock, one of which
    was the Anchorage Victory.
    We went aboard.
    The gangplank captain welcome bus,
    and he was out of San Francisco.
    The ship was what was called in ballast,
    which means it was empty.
    It had been in the Far East for three months.
    In ballast, meaning that its tanks
    were filled with water, to weigh it down,
    so that it would be stable.
    And the crew came aboard.
    Most of the crew came aboard a few hours later.
    Most had to be lifted and carried aboard.
    They was there, stone cold drunk.
    This was their last leave, before this voyage
    which was destined to take approximately 17 or 18 days,
    without stop.
    There was no scheduled stop--
    well, the ship
    We were given quarters in what is
    called the gun crew's portion in the after part of the deck.
    That's near the stern, the rear end of the ship.
    In that time, of course, the gun had been taken off the ship.
    That was, of course, used for anti-aircraft defense.
    This being after the war, no need for the gun,
    they took it off.
    But we were given the gun crew's quarters.
    The gun crew's quarters was a one big room
    with three tiered bunks for the men.
    It could hold as many as 18.
    And then there was a small cabin built
    into the after part of the ship which held three people, that
    was for the so-called wipers.
    The wipers is the lowest engineering rank
    onboard the ship.
    But there were no wipers there.
    There were three women among the passengers-- my mother,
    and the daughter of--
    then was a Jewish man and his daughter, name of Stargardter.
    The mother had died in the Philippines.
    And so she was in, one of the three women.
    And the third was a Filipina woman,
    the wife of a man who was also going back to the States.
    About half of the people were Jews
    that were going to the United States.
    The other half were people who had--
    who were ship captains, who were returning after they'd
    delivered ships to the Far East, and were
    returning as passengers.
    And so this was the makeup.
    Now, ships were only allowed to carry 12 passengers.
    So we numbered, all told, three women, nine men.
    And my model ship, in this box, was on the little table,
    which was built into that large cabin, where the the nine
    men slept.
    So we began.
    We left, and we were given food there.
    We ate in what's called the ward room, where the officers ate,
    ship's officers.
    And they served us food.
    And they served us.
    The salad was beet and onions, because these are
    two items that last forever.
    And that was in their stores.
    We thought that would vary.
    But we had beet and onions every night for 17 days,
    and so on and so forth.
    I was the youngest person aboard,
    so I had a good time on the ship.
    But to a day and a half out of Batangas,
    we were in the San Bernardino Straits.
    And suddenly-- I believe it was at night--
    that the ship, they lost the plant.
    And what that means is that the engine stopped.
    That's the term that is used when the machinery stops
    on a ship, or in the large steam pirate operation.
    They lose the plant.
    It stops.
    And so the ship was adrift.
    It had no power.
    No water was being pumped, no lights electricity, no nothing.
    And began to roll like crazy, because it
    had no way of steering, either.
    And not only that, we were very close to an island.
    And it was beginning to drift in that direction.
    Here, this thing is a rolling 30 degrees to each side.
    They were giving us Jews to drink.
    They were trying to get things started again.
    They had to restart something that's
    called an emergency generator, which normally kicks in
    automatically when the engine goes, plant goes down.
    But in this case, it did not.
    So they sent men down into the engine room.
    However, they can only stay there
    for about 15 minutes before they fainted,
    because of the tremendous heat.
    They couldn't breathe.
    So they had to be hauled out.
    They were laid on the hatch covers, which
    are covers to cover the cargo hatches of the victory ship,
    and fanned by people, so they would revive.
    And they were going down in shifts.
    And this was going on and on and on.
    And the ship was drifting toward this island.
    So the captain decided that he would prepare the lifeboats,
    get them ready.
    So indeed, they uncover the lifeboats.
    The victories carried four lifeboats-- one on each side.
    And it was rolling like crazy.
    And of course, lowering a lifeboat in those conditions
    is a little tricky.
    But they were doing that.
    And in the meantime, they sent out
    an SOS on the Greenwich Mean Time frequency,
    that would be heard anywhere.
    And about four or five hours later,
    an American gray hauled freighter, or a military ship,
    rolled over into view, on the horizon.
    And the ship started flashing, blinking at us, in Morse code,
    with their lights.
    Our ship, we couldn't answer.
    Because we had no power.
    So when the crew got on top of the flying bridge,
    which is the open bridge above the real bridge,
    and began to use two silver flags to return the messages.
    But they were going to stand by and see what would happen.
    But eventually, they managed to get this emergency generator
    going, which in turn began to power the plant
    and get the thing the engine started again.
    And by the way, what they did in the emergency situation,
    they dropped both anchors to keep the ship from dragging.
    But even these anchors wouldn't quite hold.
    And they also took the American flag down
    and fluid upside down, which a sign of distress.
    So all these things were going on,
    and it was all quite interesting to me, certainly.
    It was a bit dangerous.
    We thought, we figured, well, we'd be kind of rowing
    ashore on this little, inhabited little island,
    but with the ship running aground, and all that.
    And it was another load of stuff.
    But well-- in any event, they got the ship going again.
    It moved ahead, very slowly.
    The American ship stood by.
    You could see it, nighttime, had its lights on.
    And they were in communication.
    And it was doing what was called two knots, which
    is something like two and a half, three miles an hour,
    making headway.
    And it began to pick up power, and eventually
    brought itself to about 15 knots,
    which is its cruising speed, top, best cruising speed.
    And from then on, day in and day out, we would be on that ship.
    They were chipping the decks.
    They were cleaning the ship.
    And I was buddying up with the crew.
    And then we were a day out of San Francisco, 17 days later.
    The date must have been December the 7th.
    That's an interesting date.
    But what happened was, it was beginning to get cool.
    This was November, as it was no longer the tropics.
    And here, we're about to approach the United States,
    which is a very exciting time.
    Never been there.
    So they said, well, what we do is, when the ship approaches
    land, is we have somebody stand up there in the bow,
    on the bridge.
    And they report to the captain, the first light.
    In other words, the first light that they see in the distance,
    you know-- that's landfall at night.
    So yeah, I'm not going to miss that.
    So I climbed up on the flying bridge.
    That's the bridge above where the captain or the crew
    would steer the ship.
    And I was going to look for that first light myself.
    And indeed, there it was.
    It was about 2:00 in the morning,
    1:00 or 2:00 in the morning.
    I told my parents and [INAUDIBLE] doing that,
    because I wanted to be around when that first light shows up.
    So there I was.
    I saw that at first light.
    And then I heard them down below calling first light.
    And then they begin to head for that light,
    or whatever they do.
    The interesting thing-- as we came close to San Francisco,
    they usually--
    the Farallon Islands are outside of San Francisco.
    And the swells are fairly strong outside of San Francisco.
    So they have a pilot that comes aboard the ship.
    And the way it work at that time, the pilot ship
    was like a slope or a small schooner,
    a sailboat, large sailing craft.
    And we saw that come along.
    It was a distance, came closer.
    From that schooner, they dropped a little tiny rowboat,
    with one man rowing, and then a larger man,
    sitting in the stern.
    And he was dressed in an overcoat and a hat,
    like he was going into business.
    And he had a briefcase.
    And he this man was rode across to us.
    In the meantime, our ship dropped the Jacob's ladder,
    which is the vertical ladder that's thrown overboard.
    And this man began to climb up the Jacob's ladder.
    That was the pilot.
    And gee, that was a must been an old issue
    retired ship captains, these pilots.
    So sure enough, as he his head became visible,
    above the railing, the captain greeted him, and the came--
    stepped aboard.
    And then they went up the bridge.
    And then we-- my feet my parents and all the others--
    stayed up to watch the proceedings.
    And then pretty soon, we were under the Golden Gate Bridge.
    And it was-- must have been all 3:00 in the morning.
    So yeah, that was all--
    the city was lit up.
    You could see lights.
    And so we dropped some pennies over the side.
    And then as it proceeded, my mother looked in the distance.
    And there was looked like some sort of an island,
    and looked like there was a big houses.
    It was all lit up.
    These buildings, beautifully lit up.
    Those looked great.
    She says, oh, you must be a resort of some kind.
    One of the crew next to her said, no ma'am.
    That's Alcatraz.
    That's a big prison.
    And obviously, it was lit up for security reasons.
    Anyway, the ship came into the harbor,
    dropped anchor, and stayed there for the night.
    We did not come along into a dock
    into San Francisco till the next morning, because we
    had to be checked by the customs,
    and by the quarantine people, and had
    to fill out forms, the usual kinds of things
    that you do when you arrive at a port.
    And the next morning, the ship was pulled into Pier 90
    at Hunter's Point, and Hunter's Point's a naval shipyard.
    It's northern, very north.
    It's way inside the bay, and for some reason
    they docked there instead of the regular docks.
    I don't know why.
    Maybe the ship was going to be repaired or something.
    And what happened was my mother has relatives
    all over the world, and there, too,
    were relatives waiting for us.
    They were the [PERSONAL NAME],, a man and his two sisters--
    none of them married--
    who had immigrated to the United States, I suppose, in the 30s
    like other people.
    He worked for Levi Strauss & Company, where he
    was a warehouse men and packer.
    He was sort of a socialist and loved the labor movement,
    and San Francisco being a Union town, this was ideal.
    His two sisters worked in a sausage factory of some kind.
    They were in pretty good shape, and they had us in,
    and we ate with them and everything and very nice to us.
    And there was also a lady that welcomed us
    and the other family onboard.
    She was from the HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,
    and she said, oh, how many--
    you need accommodations?
    And we says, yeah, we do.
    We don't have any place.
    And so she somehow managed to get us a--
    what it was was in the hotel.
    It was called the Richelieu Hotel.
    It was the corner of Van Ness and Geary
    Street in San Francisco, where she got us a room, which
    we paid for, of course.
    And so our very first day in San Francisco was like this.
    We got off the ship.
    There was a cab.
    We loaded our footlockers into the cab.
    We're wearing sort of half-army clothes, at least my father
    and I, khakis, and I wore this jacket
    that I'd gotten from the joint distribution, which
    really, for San Francisco nights, was not very warm.
    But that was the best thing I had.
    We were driven to this hotel.
    I'm quite observant, so as we drove into the city
    from Hunter's Point, we drove down Market Street,
    which is the main street.
    And then we came by what looked like an enormous movie
    house called the Fox Theater.
    It was enormous.
    And I saw on this marquee it was showing
    the movie The Verdict with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.
    And I liked those.
    I really liked that stuff, so I marked it in my head
    and then followed the cab as to where it went because I
    didn't know what was going.
    I didn't know where the hotel was.
    It made one more turn into Van Ness Avenue,
    where they sell cars--
    that's a street where automobiles are sold
    and where there are shops and stuff--
    to the hotel, which happened to be on Van Ness.
    And I sort of estimated the distance
    because I said to myself, tomorrow morning,
    I'm going to walk down there to that movie.
    I want to see that movie.
    So sure enough the next morning we got up,
    and we went across the street to a place called Foster's, which
    was a small chain that served breakfast and things like that,
    very simple food.
    They no longer exist, but they were all
    over the city in those days.
    So after that I think my parents or somebody else
    had already arrived, the San Francisco people they
    know from the Philippines, and they were going to meet them.
    And I was going to go to that movie, which I then walked down
    Van Ness Avenue, made that turn, and there was the movie.
    It was enormous.
    And it was daytime, so I was not that full.
    So I went to see the movie.
    It was one of first things I did in San Francisco.
    It was really--
    Frank, why don't you tell me what
    you remember about the immigration experience itself,
    either when you were departing from the Philippines
    and when you arrived in San Francisco?
    And I assume you still had your Japanese passport that said
    "stateless, homeless Jews."
    Or you were still on your mother's passport, I think.
    Well, that passport was really the German passport
    with these stateless stamp in it that's put in by the Japanese.
    It really was no longer a valid document,
    and it was also an unnecessary document
    because by then we had obtained a visa for entry
    into the United States of the American consulate
    in the Philippines.
    And that was given to us on the strength of these affidavits
    that were given by the relatives to sponsor us to assure that we
    would not be a burden on the government
    or the state of the United States.
    So these are papers that are valid entry papers.
    The only other thing we had to do
    was to go for a physical examination.
    They, of course, screened for tuberculosis and other diseases
    which they had problems with.
    So having passed those physical exams and having the visa was--
    the entry visa was the basic document you needed.
    And when we arrived in San Francisco Bay,
    the people that came aboard were the typical quarantine people.
    They just checked to see whether there
    was any communicable disease onboard,
    whether the people were healthy, standard procedure.
    As far as the immigration was concerned,
    they, of course, looked at the documents, the visa,
    and that was it.
    And I think whether or not they give us
    some kind of piece of paper, a landing paper
    or not I'm not sure.
    I don't remember that.
    But it was fairly pro forma.
    That was not the really--
    I don't recall that as having any complications, at least
    by the time we entered San Francisco.
    I also wanted to ask you before we leave that topic.
    I assume at the time that you were leaving with your parents
    from the Philippines there were a lot of other people
    either in the process of leaving,
    or having already left, or still there but trying to leave.
    Is there anything in particular that you remember
    about promises to get together later, particular experiences
    of where other people were going and what was happening to them?
    Absolutely.
    The Philippine , given this experience,
    was very close-knit.
    Most people left.
    Oh, in the years 46, 47, certainly by 48.
    There were a few that remained.
    They were either in business there.
    It was to their interest to remain for that reason.
    They would perhaps come to the United States for visits
    or send their children here for schooling.
    However, most left.
    And I would say, roughly speaking, 70%
    came to the United States, 30% went to Australia,
    and in between there were some who might have
    gone to Palestine at the time.
    What happened when we got to the United States?
    A number of people settled in San Francisco.
    Many others went East, to New York and other parts
    of the country, but I would say primarily the two coasts
    were the main recipients.
    We ourselves, after having spent some time
    in San Francisco three weeks or so, went to Los Angeles.
    My father thought he would like to, perhaps,
    go into business in LA.
    We took the train down.
    We stayed there for a month.
    We didn't like it, at least my mother didn't.
    I didn't, and I don't think my father did.
    We came back to San Francisco and settled there.
    However, we got together mostly with people
    who also were in the Philippines, again,
    this couple that married, where she was the nurse
    and he was one of the survivors who had been bayoneted.
    There were people like the Leopolds, who--
    he had a butcher shop where they made sausages, frankfurters.
    He was there, and his family came shortly thereafter,
    his wife and two boys.
    There were a whole list of people.
    We indeed had a little Manila Jewish community there.
    Even, I believe, the cantor eventually arrived there
    and married in San Francisco and later on went
    to settle in San Diego, but he also was there.
    That rabbi left.
    In fact, I don't know if he left just before us or not
    long there after.
    He settled in Benton Harbor, Michigan,
    where he ran a congregation for many years until he retired.
    He occasionally came to visit San Francisco with his wife,
    and there was lots of visiting among the people.
    Even to this day--
    we're in 1997-- there is contact, now, of course,
    more of the younger generation.
    The old [HEBREW] group--
    as we had a reunion here, they're
    still try to maintain the connections.
    And I've maintained contact with several friends,
    like the Leopolds, and there was another, two boys,
    the [? Ambruns ?] who lived in San Francisco.
    So there's always been that by-letter contact.
    Even people that went to Australia
    are still in contact with people here in the United States
    and elsewhere, so this bond has remained.
    We even had a Manila Evening once or twice in San Francisco,
    and they had many more like that in New York,
    where there was an even larger number of people
    from the Philippines.
    So we had a mock-wedding of the cantor and his wife,
    who was not in the Philippines, but we did it
    in the Philippine style.
    And it was a very comical idea.
    The man that ran that-- it was a man about 6 foot 6 tall--
    his name was [? Sundheimer ?]---- and his wife was about 4 foot
    2.
    I'm exaggerating a bit.
    But there were a childless couple, and he was a funny guy.
    And they were both in business in San Francisco.
    But he officiated, and he did that all the joke parts
    and everything and initiated them into the kinds of foods
    that people from the Philippines eat,
    and then the kinds of habits that they have, and so on.
    So we had some fun evenings reminiscing
    about the Philippines.
    So there's always been, since then, contact,
    and some are closer.
    Some are not as close.
    It all depends, of course.
    And if you live in the same area, do visit.
    Here in the Washington area, unfortunately, I'm
    the only one, but there are people
    up in New York, Connecticut, and Missouri, and California,
    so we do see one another.
    So yes, that is a continuing bond.
    What kind of business did your father
    get into in San Francisco, and what happened to you in terms
    of schooling and adjustment?
    Well, after the one-week sojourn at the Richelieu Hotel.
    We went to Los Angeles, as I said.
    When we got back, there was no way of getting an apartment
    or renting anything.
    The American soldiers coming back from the war, of course,
    were seeking homes and apartments,
    so the housing situation was hopeless.
    We were forced to move into a hotel, which
    was really set up for--
    like a residential hotel.
    It was the Majestic Hotel in Sutter Street
    in San Francisco, which today has
    been refurbished into a sort of almost neoclassical structure.
    It kind of fancy.
    In those days, it was very simple.
    And that included meals, which weren't very good.
    And in the hotel where also several other families, also
    refugees like us from the Philippines.
    And we had like two rooms and a bath, and that was it.
    And we lived in that hotel for a year.
    Now, at that point, of course, my parents were saying,
    this fella has to get back to school.
    After all, again, I had had a gap,
    mid-November until here we were back in--
    we were now-- we had been Christmas,
    New Year's in Los Angeles.
    We were in late January 1947.
    So what to do?
    Well, they called up the Board of Education
    to find out, well, what do we do with this kid?
    Where do we send him?
    And we asked-- there's this high school called the High School
    of Commerce on Van Ness Avenue.
    Mind you, that's exactly the street
    I walked along when I went to that movie,
    and it's about 12 blocks away.
    And he could take the streetcar down Van Ness Avenue,
    walk two blocks down from Sutter and Gough Street,
    and take the streetcar, and get right there, no problem.
    And on Van Ness, in addition to all the sales places,
    city hall is located on Van Ness Avenue,
    and across from city hall are two large buildings.
    Once the War Memorial Opera House, and next to
    it is the War Memorial something or other, also a huge building,
    and right next to that, on that side, a big football field.
    And next to that is the High School of Commerce.
    And that's where I walked in.
    In fact, my mother took me there because--
    make sure I got there.
    Being the anxious type of person, you want to be certain.
    And so I was taken into that school.
    However, it had so happened that it was at the--
    this was like the very last week of the low sophomore year.
    It was mid-year, so a week or two later
    would be high 10, yeah, high 10, high sophomore.
    Well, they looked at me, and they asked me
    whether I'd taken this, and that, and the other.
    And they said, well, we'll just stick you
    into that last week of the low sophomore
    and then see how you do.
    And then if you do OK, well, you can go into high sophomore.
    Well, this school-- let's face it-- was not a college prep
    high school.
    It was in an area which served, well,
    the Chinese community, the black community,
    the Hispanic community, and maybe
    there were two or three Jews in that place.
    I don't know.
    But I did very well there, and I didn't have any problem.
    And I went into high sophomore.
    I also took gym for a while but wasn't that crazy about gym.
    They offered something called ROTC,
    and I think everyone knows what that
    stands for, the Reserve Officers' Training
    Corps junior-style.
    And my old military itch got into me, and I joined them.
    And this was great stuff, although it
    was reminiscent of the war years,
    but it was the kind of thing that I suppose I drifted to.
    I always was interested in that kind of activity, whenever.
    And so I learned to shoot and was on the rifle team
    and eventually won the [? Hurst ?]
    match, and the other match, and all kinds of stuff.
    And I became a captain in that ROTC,
    and one day they gave me this medal, among others.
    There were other people getting medals.
    And this old man came, and he gave me
    this medal for having had the high score on a combined
    set of matches of some kind, and mind you,
    I was not a citizen of the United States at that time.
    It turned out that he was a member
    of the Sons of the American Revolution,
    and this was the Sons of the American Revolution
    medal for having gotten the highest points [INAUDIBLE]..
    It was sort of the opposite of the DAR.
    It was kind of ironic.
    But nonetheless, as he pinned it on me
    and talked something about Theodore Roosevelt--
    I'd forgotten what he said, but it was really interesting.
    But that was my--
    so I went to high school two and 1/2 years
    and graduated in 1949 from the High School of Commerce.
    Were there any courses that you had
    had no background in whatsoever as a result
    of your rather spotty education in the Philippines?
    English definitely was one, and I had a wonderful teacher
    by the name of Mary Golding.
    And she one day approached me and said, you know,
    Frank, with all your background, we've
    got a couple of things coming up here.
    This was now just before the summer of 1948.
    And she said one is there's a contest that's
    given by the American Legion.
    It's a speaking contest, and winners
    get taken to the Boys State in Sacramento.
    It's a nationwide program.
    Why don't you try out for that?
    And the other, she said, is the same summer.
    It's something called the Junior State of America.
    They give scholarships for six weeks.
    You go up to a place called Montezuma Mountain
    School for Boys near Los Gatos in Santa Cruz,
    and they have all kinds of courses.
    It's very interesting.
    It's very limited.
    There's only 20 boys that are taken there every year
    for summer.
    And then it's also 20 girls, but they actually
    are taken to Mills College for the six weeks,
    and you get together and all kinds of stuff like that.
    This is OK.
    What have I got lose?
    And so I went for this speaking contest, the American Legion.
    There were six other contestants, but I won.
    And there was a panel that judged,
    including the San Francisco Sheriff
    and people like that there were members of the American Legion
    Post.
    And so they gave me a few bucks, and then I
    attended the Boys State in Sacramento.
    And that was fascinating.
    It was about a thousand boys, and they were organized
    into political parties.
    And I learned a lot about the American government.
    And the fellow that actually eventually won, this governor,
    was in the bunk right next to mine.
    I talked to him, a very bright guy
    from the southern part of the state.
    And I met a lot of guys there, and it was very interesting.
    But it was only a week, and then after that, I went
    and I did get that scholarship for the six weeks up
    in Montezuma.
    There was 20 boys.
    I was the only foreigner.
    They were all white, and they were all--
    I was the only Jew.
    The place was actually run by Professor Rogers,
    who had formed this with the idea that--
    his motto was, "Make democracy work."
    And the boys were all politically astute.
    They were like Republicans and Democrats, and 1948,
    we're talking Truman and Dewey.
    Get your ass off the grass.
    It's Dewey in November.
    This is an interview being made on behalf of United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    The interview is with Frank Ephraim.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    Today is April the 7th, 1997.
    This is the second side, side B, of the seventh tape
    of the interview.
    And we were at this point where I was heading for the six weeks
    session in the Montezuma Mountain School
    for Boys near Los Gatos in the Santa Cruz
    area of California, Santa Cruz, the mountain air of California.
    And there was this Professor Rogers,
    who had founded the organization back in the early 30s
    to make democracy work.
    He was a very philosophical type of guy.
    The courses we took there could be divided into government,
    into public speaking, into ethics,
    which he taught himself, and into other aspects of civics.
    It was all totally focused on that.
    Politics were at the center of the thing.
    Most of the boys that were there had some experience
    with local politics already.
    Strange as it may seem, we were all 17 years old, juniors
    in high school, and some of those boys
    became well-known in later years.
    Amongst them were none other than Ed Meese, who
    was an assistant to Ronald Reagan
    then came here to Washington.
    I met him here again.
    Since we all were members of this organization
    as a lifelong thing, once we were a junior statesman
    for our summer sessions--
    we were the '48 session, 1948--
    we became graduate statesmen and are
    still members, directly or indirectly,
    of that organization even today.
    And the other was a fellow named Herb Ellingwood, perhaps not as
    well known.
    He came from a town of Salinas, where his father was a farmer.
    He also was one of the assistants
    to Ronald Reagan during his governorship of California.
    He also came with him here to Washington
    when Reagan was elected president.
    There was another fellow name of Scheer,
    who was a very conservative guy from the La Mesa, San Diego
    area.
    And he and I got along very well,
    but he became later on the California spokesperson
    or campaign manager for George Wallace.
    And there were people, of course, on the Democratic.
    It was a mix of people from liberal to conservative.
    I was sort of an outsider in a way
    because, after all, I'd had very little experience with politics
    in the United States but became very--
    got into that, and it was quite interesting.
    But I never myself was a member of a campaign,
    although a friend of mine did run for something,
    but that's neither here nor there.
    I just want to mention that we now revert back
    to adjustments coming to this country, adjustments
    to the country, adjustments to the people, the schools.
    As you recall, I went through the High School of Commerce
    because it was the closest school.
    However, at the time I had no idea
    what other schools, if any, there where.
    One day each of us had gotten a locker in that school
    to put our clothes or to put books in,
    and I noticed on the locker there were the signs that
    said "Beat Mission."
    And for a moment I thought, my God, this
    is some sort of a anti-religious type of graffiti,
    and so I did finally ask this one fellow, who I got
    to know in my registry class.
    That's a class that meets 20 minutes
    at the beginning of school before we all dispersed
    to our various other courses.
    I says, what's this "Beat Mission" thing?
    Oh, he says, yeah, we're playing Mission
    this weekend at football.
    Mission, Mission?
    What-- Mission is another high school.
    Oh, really?
    And I said, you mean there are two high schools here
    in San Francisco?
    He says, what are you talking about?
    There's seven or eight.
    I said, really?
    Oh, I didn't know that.
    So that was the newness of the situation.
    Now.
    Some of my other friends, as I found out later,
    who, when they came here from the Philippines--
    they went to other schools.
    They went to George Washington High School or Lincoln,
    and those were really far more college prep schools
    than the High School of Commerce.
    However, I did very well at High School of Commerce,
    and also, as I said, I went to these two summer sessions
    back to back in 1948 and then went and completed
    my senior year at the High School of Commerce.
    And meantime, my father was continuing
    to do his export business, and I had a job after school
    at first for Globe Wireless delivering telegraph messages
    in downtown San Francisco.
    And one day I was wearing my ROTC uniform
    and with another fellow.
    By then we were officers, and we went across the street
    to this shop which sold uniforms.
    And the fellow said-- and we bought some stuff, and he says,
    would you like a job as whatever it is, clean-up man
    and helper here?
    And so I took the job, and I worked there for about two
    years after school and on weekends working for L.
    [? Resnik ?] and Son-- it was a Jewish outfit--
    in this uniform store-- it sold police uniforms,
    sold army, Air Force uniforms, and all that sort of thing--
    until I went off to college.
    My father, in the meantime--
    by 1948, that business, actually, was about a year--
    that business he did in the Philippines,
    importing moldings--
    and he was going to continue something
    like that from this end, from the American end, exporting.
    But that did not work out too well.
    So instead he went into importing
    Chinese figurines, little clay figurines,
    unpainted, from China.
    They were shipped to him, and he would sell them
    all over the place.
    He mounted them on driftwood and would sell that stuff.
    However, that began to close down
    because China was occupied by the communists 1948,
    and of course, the Shanghai Jewish community,
    what was left of it, were beginning
    to arrive in Manila by the ship loads.
    And we would go, again, to the docks to meet the ships,
    and again, there were people that we
    knew from way back in Germany, even,
    and we'd known that had gone to Shanghai.
    And these people were being settled, held over
    in San Francisco.
    They were put into hotels, and there
    were all kinds of organized efforts to then move them
    into other areas.
    There was a batch that moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico
    because people felt that that must be a good place
    to settle since San Francisco was beginning
    to be a bit overloaded.
    And a number went to Albuquerque and to other parts
    of the country, but a good number, of course,
    from Shanghai stayed.
    They brought their rabbi, Dr. Kantorowsky.
    They founded a huge community, the B'nai Emunah, a synagogue
    attended by the people from Shanghai.
    We attended a synagogue, again, made up
    of, essentially, German and Austrian Jews in San Francisco.
    It was called the Council of 1933,
    obviously '33 being a significant year
    of the rise of Nazism.
    And this was a group of people, of course,
    who emigrated to the United States thereafter, many of whom
    came directly from Europe.
    Others joined them who were either
    from Shanghai or the Philippines,
    and the Philippine, Manila community was always small.
    So we would always join someone else for services, certainly,
    once a year, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, which they held.
    And so we were part of that from a religious standpoint.
    I was never that great in the religious department,
    though my parents were.
    And they tried to, of course, force me into that,
    but I was not totally enamored with that.
    I did go to Jewish affairs.
    I did go to dances.
    I went to the Jewish Community Center, yes,
    but religiously I was never that strong a believer.
    But in any event, that was our early years in San Francisco.
    We adapted fairly easily.
    My father had some difficulties in earning a living,
    but he was very industrious, always was a busy fellow.
    And he got into-- after this business of exporting
    collapsed, he eventually got in to the optical eyeglass
    and frame business, first working for another person who
    was in that business.
    It was a wholesale thing where you'd
    have you'd go around and sell the eyeglass frames
    and lenses to optometrists, and then later on he
    went into it on his own.
    And my mother helped him, and that's
    what he did until he eventually retired,
    probably by the age of 80.
    And he traveled in California down to as far as Fresno
    and up north and also within the city, of course,
    so that's what he did and did find there.
    It was not enough to send me to the greatest
    college in the country, but I went
    to the University of California at Berkeley
    and stayed there until--
    it was 1950 when the Korean War broke out.
    I was at the university.
    With finances being what they were,
    I thought I'd take a year off.
    I got a job at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.
    At that time I was studying to be a naval architect
    or mechanical engineer-- these two things were taught together
    at the University of California--
    and went to work at Mare Island.
    There was a special program for students in naval architecture,
    and they were very glad to have me.
    And so I stayed there.
    It was just for summer at first, but when I told them
    I'd like to be out of school here,
    he says, great, stay with us.
    That would be wonderful, and then you can earn your money,
    go back to school.
    That was the plan.
    That didn't work.
    The Korean War, of course, drew people
    in from my age group, which was a small number, the Depression
    Babies, so to speak, and I was drafted,
    although the shipyard sent a letter to the Draft
    Board signed by the shipyard commander,
    something to the effect, without me,
    why, the submarine fleet would go out of business.
    It would sink.
    But they didn't buy that, so I was drafted
    in the United States Army.
    I went to the service on December the 2nd, 1952
    and served for 21 months because--
    I was let out three months early because the Korean War had been
    over, and they allowed people out three months early,
    provided they were accepted at a college
    and that the beginning of the college year
    tied in within those three months, which it did.
    So I served in the United States Army.
    I was trained infantry for 16 weeks at Fort Ord, California
    since I was what they call it a "picket fence,"
    had all ones, physically great condition.
    And so I was in the infantry and graduated and that.
    I was sent to Europe because I spoke German,
    and they asked people, anyone here speak a foreign language?
    So I raised my hand, and they gave me a test.
    I actually took the test in German, French, and Spanish,
    passed them all.
    And they said, well, in that case,
    you're great interpreter material,
    and chances are you'll be assigned to European Theater.
    Well, at that time, Korean War was still going strong,
    and the company I was in-- it was about 300 men,
    heavy weapons infantry company.
    And when the time came and the 16 weeks were over,
    we were all assigned, and there were four of us out of that 300
    who were assigned to the European Theater.
    Everyone else was the other assigned to Japan, Korea,
    or remained in the United States for the training.
    And so the four of us went by ourselves by train or whatever
    for the East Coast or to Camp Kilmer
    and from there shipped by ship to Bremerhaven and from there
    by train to [PLACE NAME] and [PLACE NAME] in Germany.
    And there we were interviewed and assigned further.
    There I was sent to a school which-- they first
    said it was finance school, but it turned out
    to be a school where I was to learn the IBM machines.
    It was 1952, and we were taught by a Swiss instructor
    in some sort of German kaserne, which is a German barracks.
    It was in a town called--
    gee, I forgot for the second.
    Lenggries it was called.
    It was near Bad Tolz, which was later a center
    for the 10th Special Forces.
    So I went to that school, took my IBM,
    was assigned to Heidelberg, stayed there one month,
    and was sent to France, and spent
    the rest of my army career in France, stationed there.
    So that now takes us down to the year 1954.
    Of course, during all these years
    I essentially lived in and around San Francisco.
    While I was working at the shipyard,
    I lived in Vallejo, California.
    That's where Mare Island Naval Shipyard was located.
    And I lived in Berkeley when I went to school there.
    But up to the time when I went into the service and even
    thereafter, my parents were always
    members of this Council of '33 group for the simple reason
    that they would go to the services that
    were held only on the high holidays
    and sponsored by this organization.
    It probably is good to point out that Jews with our background,
    from the Philippines, from Germany and Austria,
    were in many ways quite different from most American
    Jews, the reason being--
    well, it's hard to say whether it's culturally or what
    or based on experience, but I suppose
    the majority of American Jews stemmed from Eastern Europe
    and where Yiddish-speaking originally, which the Western
    Jews were not.
    There's a major difference in background.
    Also in experience-- after all, people
    who came to United States, oh, at the beginning
    of the century, established themselves here,
    went through several hours, experienced
    some very hard times also, the depression, and just being
    accepted as Jews here certainly, and were certainly
    on the periphery of things.
    They were not in the big wheels, in the steel business
    but were in the scrap iron business,
    or they were in the clothing business,
    or they wear beginning to be in the professions of medicine
    and law.
    There weren't very many Jewish engineers and still aren't.
    They were certainly not in agriculture.
    So they were a peripheral people,
    as, unfortunately, Jews are in the diaspora today, even.
    So not that the German-Austrians were any different.
    They were the same.
    They also had that similar background, medicine, law,
    clothing, sales, retail, et cetera.
    But we were different because mainly,
    I, think of the experiences, the life we'd gone through.
    We look back, those who came through
    the Philippine experience and perhaps the Shanghai
    experience--
    we left with not very much from Germany,
    had to start again in the Philippines at the beginning.
    Accumulated some things, lost them
    all during the Battle of Manila in 1945,
    accumulated a few things thereafter,
    three footlockers for three people,
    and arrived in San Francisco again,
    starting again from the very beginning.
    By that time, most Jews in America
    had already been accumulated and been established,
    so there was this social and cultural difference that,
    naturally, was there.
    And by the very fact that we'd been
    in another part of the world, we drifted more
    toward those people with similar experiences.
    Birds of a feather flock together.
    It certainly is true.
    So not that there was any animosity.
    I didn't detect any of that.
    But we were different.
    Also we were different simply because, in the Jewish culture,
    there is the Yiddish-speaking, non-Yiddish speaking part.
    And there's the Ladino-speaking, which we have also, of course,
    experienced.
    So these internal Jewish cultural difference
    also existed.
    However, as part of the larger community,
    we were all Jews from that standpoint.
    The other interesting difference was,
    when I came to San Francisco or not too
    long thereafter, while I was going to college,
    these Shanghai people, as I mentioned,
    were coming in in droves in 1948,
    and they, too, were imbued with the Zionist idea.
    A number of them had trained in Shanghai
    as part of the Betar, which was the more conservative group,
    and various labor-oriented Zionist organizations,
    which had formed in Shanghai, trained
    and went to help in Israel, '48, when the state was established.
    Not only that, in San Francisco, most of us
    who came from Shanghai or Manila were members of Zionist groups.
    I was a member of three of them, and they were militant.
    And we did those, quote, "militant" things.
    We went around selling the shekels,
    and we went around trying to convince
    American Jews to participate.
    And it is very interesting.
    At that time, the American Jews, we sensed, who had been here,
    were not that--
    they were certainly pro-Judaism, pro-Israel,
    but they were not really actively participating.
    Collecting funds for Israel was a bear.
    There were people who would come over from Israel expecting
    to be received here, and money being thrown at them,
    and all that because they represented
    various organizations.
    It was difficult, although many took part in the effort,
    like George Jessel, certainly, who
    played a major role, and many important people on the only
    American scene in the movie business and so on.
    However, when it came to doing things
    like trying to gather material for the Israelis
    or for the Israeli army in this country, that was tough.
    There were many American Jews who were very influential.
    There are several books written.
    One's called The Pledge, where people gathered material,
    collected money to buy related war material.
    There was this fellow by the name of Schwimmer,
    who was Israeli, who came to this country
    to procure airplanes.
    And he came to California, and he
    got hold of Constellations, which
    was a commercial airplane, and P-51 Mustangs,
    and eventually three B7 teams Flying Fortresses were
    put together and flown to Israel at that time, 1948.
    But we were active in trying to locate simple things,
    like simple water flasks, and web belts,
    and stuff like that because this was all surplus material
    and could be exported.
    It was not weaponry, although weaponry went as well.
    But those people in Zionist groups
    were promoting this strongly, were trying to assist in it,
    trying to collect money or gather money, yet very
    few, quote, "native" American Jews
    were part of these Zionist organizations in San Francisco.
    We had, as I say, three or four of them,
    and pretty much the majority of membership
    were people who were from Shanghai, who were originally
    from Germany, or Austria, or Poland
    who had come to this country in more recent years
    or a few of us from the Philippines, not very many.
    But that was the consist of the Zionist movement
    in the San Francisco area, although, as I say,
    there were many large rallies for Israel
    where people attended.
    There were evenings.
    They had music, and stuff like that, and speakers, and so on,
    yeah.
    I also wanted to ask you before we move to the post-Korean War
    period, when you were in Germany, when you were assigned
    there, did you go to where you had lived as a child,
    or try to find family, or try to trace
    anything that had happened?
    I never went back-- during my military career,
    I never went back to Berlin.
    At that time, Berlin was, of course, a divided city.
    We were asked or told, really, not
    to go there as military on leave or anything like that,
    so we didn't go.
    Family-- well, we knew they had all perished.
    Whatever was left there was gone,
    and so there was really no point in seeking family there.
    Some people-- we didn't know what happened to them.
    I didn't, perhaps, mention this one uncle, my mother's uncle,
    actually, who lived in a house that was owned by the family.
    And we never knew what had happened to him.
    He was a bachelor.
    We only found that out after I'd been
    a volunteer at the Holocaust Museum here in Washington,
    and these books came in.
    These were two big black books which listed, oh,
    about 100,000 or so names of German Jews--
    they're published by the Germans--
    that had perished, and listed their names,
    and where possible, listed where they
    perished and perhaps the date, if that was available.
    And I looked this man up, and there I found his name.
    This was the first time we knew in all that time
    that he indeed had committed suicide so as not
    to be arrested by the Nazis, and that's
    how we knew then, finally, what happened to him.
    And I had guessed that he might have
    been buried at that cemetery four blocks away.
    I called them up, and they called me back.
    Yes, he's buried there.
    He's listed.
    And I did manage to locate the grave a few years ago visiting
    that area, so these are some of the things that happened later.
    But I never went back to Berlin while I was in the military.
    I did go back in later years, once, twice.
    What was your reaction to being around Germans
    when you were there?
    That was the thing that sort of made me a bit nervous at first.
    We landed by a troop ship at Bremerhaven.
    It must have been sometime around the 1st of April, 1953,
    and the first chairman I heard in
    that context was the dockers docking the ship.
    I was onboard the ship in a special group
    that included other Americans of German origin.
    Interesting enough, none of them were Jewish.
    They were Germans who come here and were still
    somewhat enamored with Germany.
    But these were younger people.
    They were not born in Germany.
    But we were all, quote, "interpreters"
    or something of that nature, and I was with them.
    They did not know I was Jewish since we
    didn't exchange any personal identification at all.
    That was the reason for that.
    But we're in uniform, and so we first
    met Germans with a troop train that
    pulled alongside the ship, the dock,
    and we were put onboard that.
    There was about a thousand of us.
    That took us all the way, practically, to--
    I guess it was to Frankfurt.
    It had seats that turned into bunks so we could sleep there.
    It's like a troop barracks train with a cafeteria car hooked up
    in the middle.
    You could line up, and walk through, and pick up some food.
    But there was a German porter assigned to each car,
    and so it was the first person that you ran
    into that was a German-German.
    And we talked to him in German, and this
    was a very ordinary man.
    Our reaction was, we were military.
    You play the role of that, and you didn't
    have much to do with them.
    My own reaction was that I had little or no interest
    in dealing with the Germans except in an official capacity.
    But this, of course, was often the case.
    I had to deal with them, talk to them.
    They would always see--
    well, they would look at you because you were wearing
    an American uniform when I was in uniform,
    and their view was that you might be-- in their eyes,
    you were sort of, quote, "a traitor" because you
    had deserted Germany to go to America
    and become an American soldier to come back to be a big boss
    or be someone.
    That was their view of you.
    They didn't see me as a Jew, but that was their view.
    It was very interesting.
    But I never let on because, to me, they were robots,
    and I viewed them with that kind of attitude,
    interesting but irrelevant to me.
    If they thought that, that was fine.
    There were times when I was able to, in civilian clothes,
    mingle among the Germans.
    We were at that point--
    in this unit, we're able to do that.
    The interesting part there was one had the impression--
    they had not typically or realistically
    changed very much, not that I was
    an expert on their philosophy or psychology before the war,
    during, or after.
    But their ways of interpreting, their commentary,
    their discretion was very definitely--
    I guess to them, Jews, foreigners, Americans--
    they were not on the preferred list.
    There was one incident alone I recall that I was with three--
    there were four of us, and we were in uniform,
    all German-speaking.
    And we went into this town and went
    to eat in a guest house, a restaurant, and went in there,
    and they sort of looked at us and--
    we said in English--
    we decided we would only talk in English since we
    were wearing American uniforms.
    So they finally gave us a table, which was really for 8,
    but there was four of us, set us down.
    And the place began to fill up, and of course,
    all the other tables were being filled with Germans.
    And they were moving eight people into a section,
    fill up the tables, except they would move no one to our table.
    No one was being asked to sit there.
    Finally, the place got so full that I
    suppose in desperation two couples were put at our table.
    And we continued speaking English amongst one another,
    and these Germans sat down, began to speak German,
    and pretty soon they discussed American soldiers,
    how badly they were behaved, and how lousy they
    were, and all these things.
    And of course, we all understood what they were saying.
    So we decided we were going to go
    back to our base on the train, say, at 10:00 or 10:30,
    and we decided that we would automatically--
    in English we discussed as we quickly among us.
    We would switch automatically into German
    at a certain signal.
    So we were all from California, as it turned out,
    and we said 15 minutes before we leave one of us
    would utter the word "California."
    And from that second on our conversation
    would all be German, which happened.
    California, and we switch into German.
    And these people were so astounded.
    They never uttered a single word until we left, not a word.
    It was just our way of reacting to their views.
    We never said anything to them when we moved.
    Oh, just excuse me, all in German,
    just smiled in there then walked away
    out the door after we paid, of course.
    So these were some of the incidences--
    I'm sorry, incidents that occurred
    when I was in the service in Germany, always interesting.
    They were trying to buy cigarettes
    from us at the railway station.
    When we arrived, say, from Munich
    we were stationed at Lenggries.
    And a box of cigarettes and--
    they tried to, of course, cheat you
    by gathering the cigarettes, offering a very high price,
    and then walking around a little bit,
    and then finally giving you money at the very last moment
    when it would look like plainclothes German police
    arrived.
    They were neither police.
    They were one of their gang but made
    it appear as if they're about to pounce upon all these people
    dealing with cigarettes.
    They would then slip soldiers paper
    with a one, single 10 mark note wrapped around it
    for cigarettes worth 500 marks or something like that.
    So there had been cases like that,
    and so they had sent us to look into the situation
    because we could both be soldiers,
    and we could both be civilians speaking German.
    So yes, indeed.
    And they would always prey on guys or soldiers.
    But then when these plainclothes guys showed up,
    who were really part of the gang,
    we surrounded them, and blocked them from leaving the area,
    and then got the German police to arrest them because we
    did not have civil authority--
    we were not law officers.
    But our job was to protect the American soldier
    from being taken in.
    So these are some of the things that we got into,
    but the rest of the time in the service
    was spent in France because they needed people there.
    And so we were draftees, and that other part of the job
    was not as important anymore.
    I was going to ask you, Frank--
    you mentioned the differences between your Jewish community,
    those who had had experiences and had
    a different cultural derivation than the American Jewish
    community, and I wondered, too, how
    citizenship, how American citizenship in particular,
    felt different for you and perhaps
    for your family and the other members
    of this expatriate community compared to what you saw around
    you in the United States.
    Well, there are two views on that, I think.
    Certainly, we looked forward to becoming
    citizens of the United States.
    After all, we had been stateless all this time,
    and we had taken out our so-called "first papers"
    shortly after we arrived.
    We were allowed to work here and everything.
    So certainly in 1952 it was, I believe--
    it just before I was drafted into the army.
    It was that year, '52.
    March of '52, I believe, we became citizens of the United
    States, having studied and learned all the things you
    needed to know, gone through the testing procedure,
    sworn in in a large group in the opera house
    with Danny Kaye as the guest entertainer
    and speaker for the occasion.
    That was all very interesting, and I
    think that was a big moment in our lives, the first time
    again being a formal citizen of a country, the diverse country,
    obviously, but nonetheless, that was very important to us
    and welcome that we sought that right from the beginning,
    I'm sure as everyone did.
    But of course, after that, there you were, a citizen,
    and you did your voting, and you did everything.
    And most people that became citizens
    were very patriotic people.
    They certainly believed in everything
    that country stood for.
    They are very meticulous about voting.
    They're very meticulous about following the laws, the rules,
    and paying their income tax, and doing all these things,
    and sometimes almost too much so when other people would say,
    oh, you don't have to do this or you don't have to do that.
    Those that became citizens certainly
    liked to follow the laws and the processes in this country.
    But other than that, people after while also looked
    at the policies of this country, and if I sit back here
    I would say that, unfortunately, many times
    what may appear to be a great support
    for the notion of the state of Israel, or for the Israelis,
    or for the Jewish people by American presidents
    or perhaps by the Congress and the public
    tends to get warped a bit.
    I speak from the standpoint of Judaism as a nation.
    I see being Jewish no different from being Irish or Italian.
    When they say, Jews, if you're so interested in Israel,
    why don't you go live there, it's like saying to an Italian,
    if you want to be an Italian, why don't you go live in Italy
    or the Vatican as a Catholic or the same
    with the Irish people or anyone else.
    I view the Jews as a nation, not as a religion.
    I don't view-- the religion is, to me,
    a separate-- well, not quite separate but a different thing.
    I am very, very, very cautious about any kind of cultism
    that can be developed from religion
    and Judaism included because if we look back
    on the origins of Nazism of that era,
    people often say that much of what
    happened in Germany in the 30s is a result of the Versailles
    Treaty, which I believe is nonsense because, really, it
    was the Kaiser who fought the First World War.
    He was the one that did the attacking.
    He's the one that created the situation.
    The Germans suffered accordingly, as did many others
    but not react as the Germans did.
    The Kaiser, unfortunately, was a man that--
    it was a man who was physically somewhat, deformed.
    He had a shriveled arm, and this may or man not
    have given him a complex.
    In pictures you saw him carrying long gloves
    in that shortened arm and his uniform.
    This brings us-- and I will talk about that in a little while--
    to other people who have had what
    we call today disabilities, psychological problems as well,
    and that's when we get, certainly, to the four people
    that formed the core of Nazism in their late 20s and 30s.
    But if you want to wait for that,
    we'll do it just in a moment.
    This is an interview being conducted
    on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    The interview is with Frank Ephraim.
    The interviewer is Nancy Alper.
    Today is April the 7th, 1997.
    This is the first side, side A, of the eighth tape
    of the interview.
    So I want to digress back a little bit from my comments
    just before.
    And this deals really with my beginning and strong interest
    in Judaism as a nationality or Jews as a nation as opposed
    strictly to Jews as a religion.
    And that is the sort of environment
    in which I was brought up in-- the religious aspect of it.
    And of course, when we were liberated,
    as I mentioned, with the inculcation of Zionism,
    the concept of a Jewish state--
    excuse me-- I began to think seriously
    of Judaism as a nation.
    And I was not alone, of course, in this.
    The State of Israel was founded in 1948
    with strong support of people that I was always with.
    And I have continued this particular view ever since.
    I totally disregard the notion that Jews,
    if they're going to be Zionists, should move to Israel.
    This is a nonsensical concept, like I said before,
    as even suggesting Irish Americans move back to Ireland
    and so on.
    As I say, Judaism to me is not solely a religion.
    In fact, I am a little bit suspicious of Orthodox Judaism
    because it becomes cultism.
    And cultism is the kind of thing which says,
    "Do as I do, or die."
    And this is what we have seen in the advent of the Nazi Party.
    We see it in part in the world with the Catholic Church,
    based on my own experience.
    And unfortunately, we continue to see that
    in some South American countries,
    and certainly in the Philippines,
    where, as a result of the interference and involvement
    of the Church in politics and the social life
    of the Philippines, the population has
    grown to such an extent that they, of course, are exporting
    people.
    There is certainly not enough work or sustenance
    for them to stay in the Philippines.
    They have doubled the number to 36 million in contrast
    to 18 million at the time I was there.
    So that the philosophies of birth control
    or being anti-birth control by the Church is one that is,
    in my opinion, very detrimental.
    It's detrimental to a democratic society.
    And it's detrimental to the people,
    to their health, their economy, to their education,
    and unfortunately still prevails in many parts of the world.
    And also then, of course, there is
    Islam, which has similar qualities, wherein
    the philosophy also is, "Do as I do, or die."
    And we see that in places like Saudi Arabia,
    where in fact the United States policy has really not been
    thoroughly involved.
    We ignore the fact that that's a totally undemocratic state
    simply because they're the oil purveyors, providers.
    So that that, in turn, revolves around policies which
    relate to the State of Israel itself
    today in 1997, where there is tremendous pressure
    to go through with something called
    the Peace Process, which is, again,
    a rather naive or nonsensical concept
    when you're dealing with a medieval people like the Arabs,
    and even the Palestinian Arabs, who
    have no compunction about committing terror or blowing
    themselves up or whatever.
    It may also be true that Jews do that sort of thing.
    There have been, of course, incidents
    when single Jews began to fire away at Arabs.
    However, it's never a and never has been and never will
    be a national or policy of any of the Jewish parties
    or Israeli parties.
    So what we're dealing with is two unequal civilizations.
    And to negotiate a peace process is certainly ridiculous.
    I think Israel must preserve itself
    through its own power and military might.
    And that interference by others in how
    they should proceed to protect themselves
    is not really called for.
    And the only reason it's there is because of the oil card.
    Now, from that standpoint again, we
    look at other naive policies.
    And we go back to the rise of Nazism.
    I did talk about the Kaiser and his infirmity.
    We looked at the four central figures of the Nazi Party.
    Adolf Hitler is psychotic; Hermann Goering, a glutton,
    despite the fact he was a so-called war
    ace of the First World War.
    That's really irrelevant.
    We look at Joseph Goebbels, a man of very small stature
    with two club feet whose main concern was chasing actresses
    when he was in power.
    And then we talk about the philosopher Hesse, Rudolf Hess.
    These are four at really the central portion of the Nazi
    Party.
    And when you think about it, that any nation, any individual
    listening to these people, viewing them, and viewing them
    as something that is something to behold or as models,
    you know right away that you've got a problem nation
    on your hands, which is what the German nation is,
    unfortunately.
    It's only been a nation since the advent of Bismarck,
    where they brought the various so-called "tribes" together.
    And it unfortunately has not developed
    into a nation such as the United States
    in more modern times or the British,
    despite the fact that there are flaws and faults in all
    of them.
    But the German people are somewhat unique.
    It's always said that they're either at your feet
    or at your throat, which is probably true.
    I've seen them in both situations.
    When I was in the military, they were at your feet.
    When I was a Jew in Germany, they were at your throat.
    There isn't much in between, unfortunately.
    They're very rigid.
    They're robotic.
    And in that sense, the Japanese also tend to be robotic.
    But they may have great philosophies
    they may have generated or sired important
    and successful people, composers, researchers,
    made great contributions.
    It doesn't necessarily flow from that--
    the people as a whole, the ordinary people,
    the so-called "ordinary Germans,"
    as many have now researched, and clearly show they
    will proceed to commit atrocities whenever
    they're called upon to do so.
    This brings me to the point where
    we can talk about bureaucracy.
    People love to use that word, "bureaucracy."
    If there's anything-- Roosevelt said--
    again, this is sort of a simplistic slogan.
    "One should fear nothing but fear itself."
    The fact is one should fear bureaucracy.
    That's probably the most dangerous thing
    one has to confront.
    Bureaucracy, from my own experience
    in the American government for 30 years,
    is that the people that--
    people, the bureaucracy-- adhere to the leadership.
    This is the people they follow and obey
    because their own interest is their own promotion
    and their own progress.
    And they know they can only get that
    by adhering to the will and the likes
    and the drift of their political leaders.
    This makes them like Eichmann, a machine to perform
    and also one that will keep performing,
    regardless of what the change of leadership is.
    We now know for sure, certainly based
    on the book written by Daniel Goldhagen--
    and his is one of the first and really only good
    explanations and thesis and concepts
    about what ordinary people will do, particularly
    in the case of the Germans--
    is that once you leave a chore, a task,
    in the hands of a bureaucracy, it
    will be done to its very end.
    There's no stopping because the bureaucracy, once in motion,
    like the Newton's law, continues in motion.
    Nothing will stop them, and that's
    what exactly what happened.
    So machinery would be going on today
    in Germany with the extermination of the Jews
    if there was--
    unless they were totally curbed.
    The bureaucracy goes on under any leadership.
    So that's why we should certainly
    fear bureaucracy per se.
    And jokingly, I like to say we ought
    to take the bureaucracy out every four years
    and shoot them all and bring in totally new people,
    if for no other reason than to start the process over
    again in a stumbling way.
    And of course, the American spirit is good in that respect
    since there is great distrust of government,
    which is well-placed.
    Government has a tendency to build its bureaucracy,
    as do other corporations, but government especially
    because it's not profit-oriented,
    but always personally oriented.
    That is the progress made by the individual in the government.
    That's what I have to say about bureaucracy.
    As far as my career went, as we talked
    about the times that was--
    that was in 1948 in the Montezuma Mountain School.
    [INAUDIBLE] went to get in the military in 1952 to 1954.
    I went back to college first to do a year's refresher
    at City College of San Francisco,
    because I was in engineering, which is kind of a tough thing
    to get back into once you've been out for a while.
    I went back to the University of California,
    graduated as a mechanical engineer with architecture
    as a specialty and so-called social science
    as a minor, behavioral science, things of that nature.
    And graduated in 1957.
    Went to work for a Naval architect
    in San Francisco for approximately
    a year and a half, and worked again at Mayor Island for him
    in the submarine development-- guided missile submarines,
    nuclear powered-guided missiles.
    And then that work all fizzled out
    as war contracts began to decline.
    And I went to work for United Airlines for a year.
    And I was there when the jet fleet was introduced--
    the first jet service between San Francisco and New York,
    the DC-8 jetliner.
    And then after a year there, and I came to Washington, DC
    because they offered me a job with the Maritime
    Administration, back in my old field, in 1960.
    And I arrived here on July the 1st, 1960 in Washington, DC.
    And of course, my life had become
    less eventful after my arrival in the United States.
    The first 16 years of my life were
    those that were interesting.
    Some people say, gee, you didn't have a childhood.
    Or you didn't have a good teenage life.
    Well, what is a good teenage life?
    It's hard to define.
    If one defines it in the American terms
    by going to high school and high school proms
    and things of that nature, yes, I didn't quite have that.
    However, in a way I look back, and if I
    compare the lives of people who I meet every day here
    and my life, I find that I've had
    a much more interesting life.
    I learned a lot.
    One of my lessons I've learned is that self-reliance is
    the most important quality to have anywhere, any time--
    anything from being able to put together scraps to build a fire
    or to repair something or to make something.
    I mean, when we were liberated in 1946--
    I'm sorry, in 1945--
    we had absolutely nothing.
    So what we did was I collected some old beer cans
    and put some wire around them to make handles
    and that we could drink from.
    That was our drinking implement.
    Clothes-- I had this t-shirt which was shot full of holes
    from exploding shells.
    Well, I managed to get hold of--
    I think it was a new Japanese Army uniform,
    the top part of it, the jacket.
    Well, it was a bit large for me, so I cut it back
    with a pair of scissors.
    And it turned out become like an Eisenhower jacket.
    And I wore that for some months.
    When it rained, I would wear the jacket.
    And so even these basic things--
    if you're able to manufacture something,
    put something together, repair something-- electrical,
    plumbing.
    I always find that to be quite enjoyable and, of course,
    very useful.
    And I found many of my other colleagues,
    American colleagues, would disdain from anything
    that's do with working by hand because I think
    they feel that that goes back to their ancestors, who
    had to work themselves up by using their hands.
    That was beyond them, beneath them, and so forth.
    They were now-- whatever, professionals of some kind.
    That's one thing I don't believe in.
    I think it's good to learn how to work with your hands
    but also, of course, with your mind.
    So both are very, very important.
    And if that can be inculcated in people,
    it always will give them a better chance of survival
    under any circumstances, whether it's
    war, whether it's a hurricane, or whether it's a flood
    or whatever.
    And also, if they find themself without a job,
    they can suddenly become carpenters' helpers
    and whatever that way-- or paint or do
    whatever needs to be done in the society.
    And that, I think, was a very, very important lesson
    to be learned from the experience.
    The other one, of course goes, again, back to self-reliance
    is in the area of the mind.
    I don't read too many newspapers these days,
    even though we have The Washington Post here
    in Washington, DC area.
    And it's supposed to be one of the best papers.
    I rarely read the paper.
    I always find different papers have drifts.
    Also The San Francisco Examiner, when
    I go out to that area where I used to live,
    that seems to have a horrendously--
    I would call it the liberal, left-wing drift,
    as does The Post.
    I happen to be not a liberal, nor a left-winger.
    Be that as it may, that's a good--
    people have that view, that's fine.
    But to me, TV news, newspapers, often
    represent personal views of those
    that present the news or the news bureaus,
    not necessarily the rational, logical, or truly realistic.
    And so therefore, one should take this
    with a grain of salt--
    almost take it like an automobile commercial,
    because basically, that's the same vein that it's cast.
    So there is this caution in my head
    that that says, well, if I hear this, how much of this
    is really true?
    And what is drift?
    What is hype?
    What is pure lies?
    And these days of the great spin,
    you cannot really believe anything the government tells
    you.
    Of course, I know from my own experience
    that they would spend an awful lot of time trying
    to figure out how to put together
    in a report to the public a news release so as to be sure
    that everything is well covered-up or covered,
    and that perhaps the so-called "real truth"
    is shaded in such a way that it will not reflect badly
    on those who are giving it or on the work of the bureaucracy.
    So that seems to occupy a great deal
    of the time of senior bureaucrats and the politicians
    as well.
    So there is this caution about believing what you hear
    or what you see.
    That may sound a little bit paranoid.
    Perhaps it is.
    But I think that's the way one is built from this experience.
    That's what happens.
    One also then is not ever surprised.
    One also has then the ability to judge
    a situation that is developing, a dangerous one or some crisis,
    with a great deal of calm, which is, again, very important
    because those that panic--
    they will lose out.
    So if you remain calm and begin to logically assess
    what is happening and try to take action in good order,
    set up your priorities, do a sort of triage
    on the situation, you will be better off in the long run.
    You will also survive.
    So here, what we are talking about
    is techniques, mental and physical,
    that let you learn from experiences like mine
    and, of course, from the experiences
    of many, many others who went through the Holocaust period
    and went through life.
    This is not limited to people from that particular period.
    Anyone who went through tough times--
    people who went through the Depression in this country
    also have a certain view.
    They tend to be more thrifty, careful,
    whereas those who grew up in the more yuppie era
    are quite different.
    But it all is a reflection on one's experience,
    and that's all really one can gather from this.
    As I go back now to the parallel life, I came to Washington,
    and I met my wife.
    As it turned out, she was born in Hamburg.
    She also has given oral history to the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum.
    And we married in 1963.
    And as it turned out, we were both born on the very same day.
    And as a result, we're the same age, of course.
    And we had our child, a daughter, Michelle, in 1969.
    I'm sorry, I goofed all this up.
    We were married in 1966.
    Michelle was born in 1969.
    And I raced ahead by three years.
    So, yes, she was born in 1969.
    And we've lived in the Washington area, of course,
    both of us, since the 1960s, which now in 1997 is 37 years.
    I often return home and to San Francisco,
    where my parents live.
    My father passed away in 1996, and my mother
    is living right now near San Francisco.
    And it is April, 1997.
    But in all these years, our relationship
    with the Jewish community has been sort of off and on.
    My wife comes from an Orthodox home.
    She was one of five girls.
    Her father was a shohet, which he practiced in Hamburg
    and also later on in England.
    But of course, since marriage here,
    me being a bit of an outsider to the religion,
    we do go to the synagogue on memorials for memorial services
    and perhaps once a year for the Rosh Hashanah services.
    And she may go more often at other times.
    However, as I say, we do not now belong to any Jewish synagogue.
    We did belong to Eretz Israel and also once
    to Washington Hebrew during the time
    that my daughter was going through her Hebrew
    schooling, which she went to until she was age 13.
    But she chose not to be bat mitzvah,
    although she now has sort of--
    I wouldn't say come back to the faith,
    but she's come back to very much of what
    has been my own philosophy of the Jewish Nation,
    since she's taking a graduate PhD degree,
    and her dissertation is on the subject of the role of Jews,
    particularly Jewish women, during the time
    of the Renaissance and in the Shakespearean era, which,
    if anything, is certainly a nationalistic view of Judaism.
    And I had nothing to do with this.
    I never channeled her in that direction
    and refrained from advising or suggesting anything to her.
    But she has come to that point, which I find very interesting.
    So that is my situation as of this point.
    I do want to at this point-- we're about ready to close,
    here.
    Or maybe Nancy has some more questions.
    But before she does, I do want to mention
    I want to thank Nancy Alper for having
    this tremendous amount of patience
    and sitting through here for I don't know how many hours.
    We had four sessions.
    She's been extremely patient.
    She's had excellent questions.
    She was extremely well-organized.
    And so it's really been my pleasure,
    and I'd like to thank her for doing this.
    We've got to talk about your involvement at the Museum
    and your organization of the reunion for Jews
    who were living in the Philippines during the war.
    And the last specific topic that I was hoping to cover
    was your attempts to get recompense
    for the building that existed in East Berlin-- that
    exists in East Berlin and belonged to your family
    prior to the Holocaust.
    Yes, it is, of course, quite a long story.
    It has almost a subject in and of itself.
    This was a small, old apartment house with 10 apartments.
    And there also is a retail store-- orthopedic shoes
    or something like that-- on the ground floor.
    The building is located in a district called Weissensee,
    which is in the northern part of Berlin and was under
    the Eastern or Communist regime until 1990
    or so, or '89, '90, when this whole--
    the Communist side of Germany collapsed.
    This building was purchased by a man called Abraham Schlimmer,
    who changed his name to Slimmer, when he emigrated to the United
    States sometime in the 1800s.
    He founded what we call the American branch of the Slimmer
    Clan.
    He was one of eight children of the Slimmers,
    the ancient Slimmers, born in Germany.
    And he had a brother called [? Zaarly ?] Schlimmer,
    who lived in an apartment in that house.
    And then he had the rest of--
    the six others were all girls, one of whom was my grandmother.
    And her name was Clara Schlimmer,
    but she married a veterinarian, my grandfather,
    whose name was [? Hyman, ?] so that's the [? Hyman ?] branch.
    In addition, there was the [? Zimone ?] branch.
    That was a woman who name was Cecilia Schlimmer married
    a doctor, [PERSONAL NAME].
    They both perished in the Holocaust, he at Theresienstadt
    and she in Auschwitz thereafter.
    That's another branch.
    Actually, the eighth person was another brother who
    died, who owned the house together with this Abe
    Schlimmer, but who died and left his property to all
    the other seven, I believe as well.
    Yes.
    In other words, the seven branches
    are the heirs of this one oldest brother.
    So this house had been standing all these years.
    It was taken over.
    It was never actually formally taken over
    by the Nazis we found out.
    For some reason, the deed is in existence on record in the--
    what is called the [GERMAN] the housing authority
    of the district of Weissensee.
    The lawyer that we have now has this document.
    It was never formally confiscated.
    So legally, it has always belonged to these seven heirs,
    original heirs--
    my grandmother and her six brothers and sisters.
    Well, this lawyer was got--
    someone recommended him.
    He's from East Berlin.
    I've been working on this project since 1990, 1991--
    almost six years I think by now.
    And the idea is to get this property back
    to the current heirs of all these seven branches.
    I have spent a lot of time identifying
    who the current heirs are by tracing through the families.
    And there's, of course, my mother and my uncle and aunt.
    They're one of the branches.
    There are people living in Israel and London who
    are members of another branch.
    It's called-- we call the [? Manasseh ?] branch.
    This was the married name of one of the women
    heirs, original women heirs.
    Then there is another branch, which the [? Simon ?] branch
    I mentioned before.
    Only about the fourth generation is left from that branch-- two
    young people in New York.
    And then there is another group.
    Then the other three branches have died out.
    There were either no children, or in one case,
    was the man, [? Zaarly ?] Schlimmer, who
    committed suicide living in that house
    before he was taken by the--
    before he could be taken by the Nazis.
    In fact, his funeral arrangements
    were made by the [? Zimone ?] people, who later would take
    him to Theresienstadt and she to Auschwitz because they
    lived in Berlin at that time.
    So they had made the arrangements.
    I found that out by contacting, first
    of all, of course, the cemetery where he was buried,
    and then what they call the [GERMAN]
    like the vital health bureau, vital statistics bureau
    for that area of Weissensee.
    And they sent me all the documents
    because they had them and wanted some blanks filled in, which
    I did for them.
    So three died out, branches-- four remaining branches.
    There are approximately 13 or so people, individuals, involved
    as being current heirs.
    But there's a long process to do all that.
    It requires heirship certificates by German courts.
    The lawyer's pursuing that.
    And of course, in the meantime, we
    discovered that the housing authority of Weissensee,
    unbeknownst to the lawyer or anyone,
    turned this property over to the Jewish Claims Commission that
    is responsible for Jewish property that is not claimed.
    However, they were approached by the lawyer,
    and they have realized that there are
    people claiming the property.
    They had already, in the meantime,
    sold the house, the apartment house.
    So it is now a question though, I
    suppose, divvying up or getting the funds that were received.
    This was not my original mission was
    to make this a monetary thing, because by the time
    it's divided up and lawyers' fees are taken,
    I don't know that the amounts are going to be all that much.
    It's more of the concept of returning
    this property, which was the family's, back into the family.
    Unfortunately, it's been sold.
    But still, I think we will try to perhaps put
    a little plaque on the house.
    And certainly, for the man that committed suicide there,
    one of the seven original branch leaders, we'll get a gravestone
    and put it over his grave at the Weissensee, Cemetery,
    a Jewish cemetery, an enormous cemetery, where some--
    where my grandfather, my father's father, is buried.
    And I did find his grave with a small gravestone,
    and where other members of the Schlimmer family are buried.
    It's quite a few members of both sides,
    from both sides of my family, are buried there.
    Frank, why do you think that you were the one in the family who
    wanted to pursue this?
    Why do you think it ended up being you who
    were motivated enough to do it?
    Well, my mother had talked about this house.
    In fact, they went to see it many,
    many years ago when they were visiting the area
    at the invitation of the Berlin government.
    They have a program where they invite
    people who had lived there back and so forth.
    And they did take advantage of it.
    I don't know.
    I'm by nature a--
    what do you call it?
    A researcher.
    I like to find things out.
    Excuse me.
    It's part of my training as an engineer.
    And I enjoy it as well.
    It's a challenge.
    Any kind of challenge-- that's for me, whatever it is, maybe
    physical or this kind or whatever
    or going on raids or missions.
    That's right up my alley.
    And as long as I'm physically fit, anyway,
    I can do all these things.
    So my mother started that.
    She got hold of this lawyer, and she wrote me
    as to what the situation was.
    But it was a complicated project,
    searching through, having to obtain
    death certificates from God knows where,
    having to obtain birth certificates, wills,
    having to translate wills, tracing exactly what happened
    to whom along the way after all these-- that we go back here.
    This is my grandmother.
    And this is three generations.
    We have to deal sometimes with four generations' worth.
    And then you have to talk to all these people.
    You have to call them up and inform them and ask
    them to do stuff for you.
    I mean, that was not my mother's bag at all.
    She's really-- be reticent in making contact
    with the American side of the family,
    for example, for God knows what reasons.
    I had no compunction about calling them up and explaining,
    identifying who I am.
    And it's the same with the Israel--
    people who live in Israel.
    There was one fellow who was fourth generation.
    His father was killed during the 1948 battle in Israel.
    He was a journalist.
    And so this young fellow--
    well, he's about 40 now, I guess.
    I wrote him a letter, introduced myself.
    And then he wrote back.
    And then we find we both had fax machines,
    so we were able to communicate by fax.
    And he went through a whole procedure
    that you have to go through to show that you are an heir--
    at least to show that you're an heir of his father's and had
    to do that through the American consulate--
    or through the German consulate--
    I'm sorry-- in Israel.
    And so we've had to appear before German consulates
    to get these heirship affidavits written up and notarized and so
    on.
    But I just felt that this was an interesting and challenging
    thing.
    Here is this apartment house, sitting there.
    If nothing was done, it would probably-- who knows--
    end up in German hands, a piece of property
    that belonged to the family.
    Symbolic, really, more than a great value in real estate.
    At the time, the lawyer quoted me
    a sort of value which really wasn't very much.
    It has apparently been sold for a lot more,
    but still, being spread amongst so many people,
    it will not be a fortune by any means.
    Still, I'm the type that takes on--
    I love to take on projects like that.
    I go back to my work with the Maritime Administration
    in the government back in the Lyndon Johnson
    era with a young fellow by the name of Johnson,
    who headed up-- political head of the Maritime Administration.
    He was all of 29 years old, going on 30.
    Was a lawyer from a place in Iowa--
    a very interesting, active guy, great to work with.
    And he gave me the task of trying to come up with--
    to develop the analysis to make a decision as to whether or not
    the United States should pursue a nuclear-powered merchant
    marine program.
    At that time, the USS Savannah was
    being used as an Atoms for Peace ship as a trial,
    as an experiment.
    And the question was, should nuclear power
    be put into merchant ships?
    Is that worthwhile?
    Is that feasible?
    Is that economically right?
    So there I was.
    And I had to form myself a task force of experts
    in the various areas of trade routes and engineering
    and nuclear power and manning questions--
    crewing and health and so on because you're
    dealing with nuclear radiation.
    And that was a fascinating project.
    We finished it in 1964, turned in the result.
    The recommendation then, the result,
    was that it didn't appear to be economically feasible,
    and also with some technical questions.
    As one can see, there's been no nuclear-powered merchant fleet
    because it was certainly not economically feasible.
    So I like projects-- anything that builds up a challenge.
    I've always drifted toward that, whatever it may be.
    Did it matter to you that your wife had also
    had a Holocaust experience, although obviously
    quite a different one?
    And I know a little bit about her background--
    a very little bit.
    But did it matter to you and the two of you deciding
    to get married that you shared to some limited extent
    the same kind of experience?
    And if so, why?
    Well, the answer to that is, yes, of course.
    There's this dual compatibility base.
    One is origin-- similar country, sort of similar experience,
    Holocaust-related, certainly.
    Jewish, obviously-- these brought forth
    cultural similarities, social similarities.
    I think we would have both, had we married--
    and people have.
    It's quote, "Americans," Jews who had lived here a long time.
    It would have been a different relationship.
    I think if I go back, having gone out with many girls
    and women that were Jewish--
    local people born here.
    They, too, were different from myself--
    a different experience, a different view
    of the world, different desires, needs
    that certainly would have been the base
    of some incompatibility, I suspect.
    Although I've seen marriages between people like myself, who
    came here from other countries, to Americans, men or women--
    it's neither here nor there--
    also married out of their religion.
    And this has worked out well.
    There was no real problem.
    In fact, there's no--
    I mentioned my uncle married a native-born American
    of the Episcopalian faith.
    And so in that standpoint, that's not insurmountable.
    Nonetheless, I think one drifts toward the, again,
    birds of a feather.
    It is probably inevitable, if such a bird exists.
    In the case of no such birds, one
    would have to deal with a different flock.
    But then that, too-- one adjusts to that as well.
    I'm not sure whether that was necessary,
    but it did in fact happen.
    And the attraction was certainly a similar background.
    In any event, there's always a basis for that.
    And it may not have worked out.
    I mean, it could have not worked out, too.
    Why don't you discuss a little bit your involvement
    with the Holocaust Museum as a volunteer and your organization
    of this reunion of the Philippine Jews,
    and in both cases, why you had felt compelled
    to do those activities?
    Well, they're compatible with my way of thinking and lifestyle.
    The building of the Holocaust Museum in Washington
    certainly was a spectacular event.
    It was something that I really never expected to see happen.
    After all, we're dealing here with a very Jewish-oriented
    suffering and history.
    What does that have to do with American--
    with the American character or with American history?
    It didn't happen here.
    It's sitting on the Mall or close to the Mall.
    It was by an act of Congress, in many ways quite unusual.
    And aside from that fact, of course the Holocaust--
    this whole creation of a situation
    where Jews were persecuted because of their religion
    and lifestyle--
    did not have a national protector
    in any of these countries.
    To commemorate that, to memorialize it,
    it was extremely important for today's generation
    and the future.
    It spells out very clearly that the defense
    from such an [AUDIO OUT]
    This interview is being made on behalf of the United States
    Holocaust Memorial Museum.
    This is an interview with Frank Ephraim by Nancy Alper.
    The date is April the 7th, 1997.
    And this is side B or the second side of tape number eight.
    To return to the motive for being a volunteer at the United
    States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the very fact
    that this became to me a forum, a foundation,
    a base for educating the--
    not only Jews, but anyone else because the experience
    is common.
    It is what happened to people who were vulnerable, vulnerable
    perhaps in part by their own hand
    because they did not have the strength or the means
    or the foresight or fortitude to organize themselves
    into a defense mechanism to defend society.
    Physical defense is what I'm talking about.
    Jews have always said, when we were at prayer,
    anything can happen.
    We will not move from prayer.
    We believe in God.
    He will take care of us.
    They were wrong.
    None of that was true.
    They were slaughtered like lambs, you know?
    And when that occurs, that is the biggest lesson to learn--
    the self-defense, the communal self-defense,
    last seen in Masada and before the time of Israel.
    So this, too, is a fundamental concept of mine--
    that to help that along, to support it, to help in any way,
    shape or form, that I saw being a volunteer
    there as exactly what I wanted to do.
    And I was looking towards also retirement from my government
    service.
    And I felt that this was be one of the finest ways
    that I could spend my time--
    most interesting ways.
    It had all the elements that I'm interested in-- the concept,
    the philosophy, the research potential,
    any other work that would be--
    that I could offer.
    And so I had once inquired about being a volunteer,
    but they were still very disorganized.
    Their buildings were just under construction.
    And every morning, I drove by that area
    on my way to work to the Transportation
    Department in Southwest.
    And I saw the buildings, the originals being raised,
    and then the new building being constructed.
    And then I finally--
    I knew a person who lived here in the Town of Somerset who
    was also doing oral interview, oral history.
    And she kept me up to date because she
    was getting announcements as to volunteers
    were going to be asked to meet.
    Anyone want to be a volunteer?
    So I began to attend those sessions.
    And we had meetings at lunch, and I would take off from work.
    And I would bring my lunch, and we would listen to the--
    in those days was, Betsy [? McWhirt, ?]
    and also her name was Hill.
    She was coordinating the Visitor Services part of the museum.
    And eventually, they began to organize
    a volunteer training, which occurred
    before the museum opened.
    And I attended those.
    I believe it was six or eight sessions that I attended.
    It was on Sundays because I was working still at that time.
    And I trained with all the other people.
    And pretty soon, we were asked--
    this was mainly for the visitor service part of it.
    And we were told that we were going
    to be wearing these burgundy jackets,
    and so soon we were being fitted for jackets.
    And so pretty soon, the museum opened.
    And we were asked to volunteer for the day of opening.
    And I volunteered for the candlelight portion
    of the evening.
    And that was my very first duty is as a volunteer.
    Oh, I'm not correct in that.
    It was even before the museum opened.
    I'd had a call from a librarian in the library--
    Sheri.
    And she said that she'd heard that I could speak German.
    And that, again, was done through Betsy,
    who was coordinating volunteer matters at the time,
    because she had interviewed me and found out
    that I did speak German and other things about me--
    education, age, the whole bit.
    So she says, gee, I could really use some help because I have
    a lot of journals that we need to go through and to index,
    which means translating the titles
    and doing a short abstract in English of the journal
    and whatever it contained.
    So I said, fine, I'll do that.
    So I went over, and she gave me a batch of them.
    And I did that for about six months or so
    and produced a lot of these indices.
    So I actually started both my volunteer work
    with the museum--
    let's see.
    Museum opened in '93, so this must have been in early 1992.
    So as of today in 1997, we're talking
    five years as a volunteer.
    I have maintained my enthusiasm for it.
    I enjoy working with crowds and people.
    And I like the work on the floor, which
    is the Visitor Services part.
    But I've also done work for the Education Department
    and worked with people there in things like planning and things
    like developing some kind of a scheme
    for the Outreach Education portion,
    where they deal with the various states and the schools
    in the states and trying to forge Holocaust education
    programs.
    In some States, these are actually
    mandated by the legislature.
    In other states, they're recommended by the legislature.
    In many states, of course, there is no such thing,
    but there are groups, and there are individual schools
    and school districts that introduce the subject
    either in history or social science
    or in other courses as part of the course
    or as a segment of a course or as units or as an elective.
    And so in that area, I've done some work with the people
    there.
    Developing surveys and analyzing the surveys--
    I will be doing that actually this year.
    And I've also served--
    this is my second term on the Volunteer Advisory Board.
    I was on the very first one that was formed,
    which again is advising the manager of volunteers as really
    a role and continue to do that.
    So that, too, is invigorating.
    It gets you back into the bureaucracy business.
    And I always counsel the following-- be patient.
    And if things seem to go wrong in the museum,
    you must reflect on the fact that it's new
    and that it has had an overwhelming attendance
    and that it has served very well, given all that.
    And that if there's criticism about the people that
    are manning the place, that are in charge or responsible--
    there have been criticisms by some volunteers,
    perhaps some of the survivors, that these people are--
    they're not Jewish, and they don't have the experience.
    They don't know enough about Holocaust history.
    I have found that to be not true at all.
    I think most people working there
    have a good appreciation of the Holocaust history
    and are very, very dedicated.
    Also, I don't think there's much base to such criticism.
    My last question concerns the reunion
    that you helped to organize of the Jews who
    had been in the Philippines during the Holocaust.
    Well, that was actually not my own thing.
    It began-- my mother, who has always
    been in contact with one of her friends--
    they're from the Philippines.
    The lady has now passed on.
    But her daughter, who is married to a retired rabbi
    here in the United States, had made some exchange of letters
    with my mother.
    And one aspect of it--
    I think at one point, she was also in contact, of course,
    with other people her age and my age about the Philippines.
    We were the so-called teenage generation there--
    the members of the [NON-ENGLISH] some of us.
    And she called me one day and says,
    you know, Frank, I've been thinking.
    I've been talking to Eva, which is another woman.
    Maybe we should have a reunion.
    What do you think of that idea?
    Oh, that sounds like a good idea.
    That would be kind of fun.
    There are lots of people we haven't seen--
    I certainly haven't seen for 50 years.
    Others, I have seen in the meantime.
    Yeah, OK, well, she decided to talk to them for a while.
    They said, well, we should have it in New York.
    She's from Connecticut, and these other people
    are from New York, so naturally in New York.
    So I wrote back, well, we could have it in New York,
    but I said we could also have it in Washington.
    I said, after all, we have two things here
    which might be of interest.
    One is the Holocaust Museum.
    The other is the Philippine Embassy.
    And I don't know.
    We might be able to get something going there-- perhaps
    a visit or what.
    And I said I'd certainly try that.
    And so finally she wrote back.
    Oh, yeah, we had another discussion
    about the whole thing.
    And, yes, Washington would be a good place.
    So at that point, we were in contact quite often.
    And we organized the reunion.
    The reunion took place-- let me see.
    It was October 19 through October 21, 1996.
    I had to make all the arrangements, of course,
    since I was local.
    I got the hotel.
    And we did manage finally to get a session
    with the Philippine ambassador, which is kind of interesting,
    because when we went there, they didn't really
    know what to do with us.
    And we made a presentation.
    We gave them a plaque.
    And that was designed to thank the Philippines
    for allowing us in, for giving us shelter, and so forth.
    And it was a plaque which had a picture of a temple on it
    and also the picture of this event
    that was held in the ruins to collect money
    on November 9, 1945.
    So it had-- on the bottom, it says,
    "In Thanks for"-- and so and so forth--
    plaque framed and everything.
    Well, the ambassador showed up.
    But before he showed up, they had
    us view a film, which was nothing
    more than a vacation-type commercial
    for coming to the Philippines to lay
    on those white beaches and that stuff.
    It was kind of interesting.
    Here are all these German and Austrian and other Jews.
    Rather than showing us something that
    dealt with the current situation in the Philippines
    or something like that, they showed us a travelogue,
    if you will.
    That just points out that they were not
    really prepared for this kind of thing that we had in mind
    or that we would have liked.
    But again, you go with the flow.
    And certainly, they opened the embassy for us.
    The ambassador spent half an hour with us.
    They offered us coffee and cookies afterwards.
    And they were trying to be hospitable and all that,
    and that was very nice.
    But the other thing we arranged--
    and of course, for that day we ordered a bus
    to haul everyone about.
    And we [? saw ?] the private cars as well.
    Because from there, we were going to lunch.
    From there, we went to the Holocaust Museum,
    where we were welcomed by the person that's
    head of the Survivor Registry, Ioanid--
    I think his name's Ioanid, Dr. Ioanid.
    Oh, Dr. Radu Ioanid, that's right.
    And so that, of course, was very interesting.
    Some had been to the Holocaust Museum.
    They were from the New York area, had been there.
    We had one person coming all the way from Israel.
    And she does travel a lot, so it was on one of her trips.
    And the other thing we had was, of course, at the hotel,
    we had in the first evening-- we had a reception,
    and we had dinner.
    And each person introduced themselves
    who was from the Philippines, who had been there.
    We had also attending one of the Army chaplains, who
    was very instrumental in founding the [INAUDIBLE]
    and helping the Jewish community.
    And we had one other soldier there
    who was also part of the liberating force.
    He comes from Pottsville--
    Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
    And he and his brother, Alvin--
    forgot his last name now at the moment.
    But he was there as well.
    We also had the people from the American side of the Manila
    Jewish community.
    We had two daughters of Alex Frieder there.
    And, yes, because there was a third daughter
    who lived right here in the town of Somerset who
    was married to the mayor.
    Accidentally when we first moved here,
    found out that her name had been Frieder, Louise Frieder, one
    of the daughters of Alex Frieder,
    whom I had mentioned much earlier as having
    been president of the Jewish community.
    So we had the two Freiders here and a couple of other people
    who were of the so-called "American clan"
    of the Jewish community in the Philippines.
    And of course, they all spoke and introduced them.
    And I might add, one of them was Becky Konigsburg.
    Her father was the man that ran the Temple proceedings
    in Manila before the rabbi came.
    And if I remember mentioning that he owned
    the bookstore, too, in Manila.
    She was there.
    And she was out of, I believe, Teaneck, New York--
    New Jersey, I'm sorry--
    State.
    She was there with her daughter.
    And some of the Frieders came with a younger--
    with one or two daughters, and one
    of whom is at Berkeley-- lives in Berkeley,
    doesn't go to school anymore.
    And she did a lot of videotaping.
    We had several people do videotaping
    of the affair, various parts of the affair.
    So that was the first night.
    And the second day--
    why, let's see.
    What did we do the second day?
    We had a morning brunch, which lasted for four hours, where
    we exchanged memorabilia.
    We had pictures of ourselves and others during those days.
    And one woman who was now 85 years
    old-- she brought a [? mickan, ?]
    which was a bomb that went off very close to her.
    And it was a piece like that.
    And people brought lots of photos.
    And we laid them on these big tables that we had.
    And we all looked at them.
    And we all laughed about it and stuff like that.
    And we all told our life story since then at that brunch
    the next morning at the hotel.
    And after that, we had some hours' break.
    And then I had everybody over here at my house.
    We had 60 people stuffed in here.
    And then we had a buffet dinner for that.
    And that was kind of fun.
    And then the next day was the last day,
    and that was the day we went in the morning
    by bus to the Philippine embassy,
    and then thereafter to lunch and to the Holocaust Museum.
    And that ended the reunion.
    There are different views on the reunion.
    There were people there from the-- that were very young age,
    who were children at the time--
    babies.
    In fact, one set was born in the United States of parents
    that were in the Philippines.
    There were people there up to the age of about 85, 86.
    Two women showed up that age.
    And so there was a range of people.
    We were actually over 60 people, out of which about half or so
    had actually been in the Philippines.
    The others were spouses.
    So it was an exciting time.
    Some people said, oh, we'd like to do this again.
    Others said, no, this was once-- such a great affair.
    I'm not sure they wanted to do it again--
    different opinions.
    But since then, we've been in contact, some of us.
    And also we'll be meeting again, if we all can,
    here next month in May in New York.
    Two or three of us will be there at the same time
    for some other reasons, and so we'll meet again.
    But it was a an exciting experience.
    Also, interesting, too, what's happened to people--
    were we able to recognize one another?
    And interestingly enough, yeah, you
    could more or less tell who it was perhaps
    if you knew the people back in the Philippines.
    In some cases, I didn't remember them or what they looked like.
    But that was exciting.
    That was a unique experience.
    I'm about to close the interview up.
    And I just wanted to ask you if there
    was anything else that you would like to add before I stop.
    Well, you know, we've covered a lot of ground.
    And at the moment, I'm at a loss as to what else to talk about.
    And so I certainly will close instead of yakking along any
    further and so on.
    As I say again, it's been an excellent time.
    And I've enjoyed telling this story.
    I hope it's of value.
    And of course, there's so many others
    that have many things to say and to talk about.
    But again, we go back to the fundamental lesson learned,
    and that is, again, the notion of Jews as a state,
    as a nation--
    far more important than Jews as a religion.
    The religion can collapse on you.
    It's a bond, certainly.
    It is a common thread, but it is not
    something that will necessarily be with you in perpetuity
    because that's not a building block.
    A nation represents not just the intellectuals, the physicians
    and the lawyers and the thinkers,
    but it really reflects what indeed
    is in large part occurring in the state of Israel,
    where Jews are in many fields--
    farmers and what have you, policemen, laborers.
    Although, of course, they're using the Arabs for that
    quite a bit.
    Still, that is what builds a nation.
    And that is what is survivability,
    and that is the best basis for any defense--
    that is, in cases where Jews are under threat.
    So this is a primary conceptual philosophical lesson.
    The others, of course are the personal one
    again-- the ability to be self-sufficient,
    self-starting, and calm, cool, and collected.
    Cannot always be done.
    There's the human element, of course.
    But these are the sort of bases.
    And again, the dangers that one confronts
    is that bureaucracy, the crowd, the formation
    of a crowd-- an interesting book is the Crowds and Power
    by Canetti, the Nobel Prize winner in 1981,
    who wrote about the crowd in other novels.
    But the development of crowds, which then turn into mobs,
    is a framework and also reflects what happened in Germany--
    that from a bunch of ragamuffins, a bunch of freaks,
    generated a cult, Nazism, which could manipulate through pure
    power of speech on the part of Adolf Hitler and Goebbels
    and others a people who were vulnerable-- the Germans,
    that is--
    and susceptible and easily molded to do things which
    the normal, civilized people-- even the aborigine in New
    Guinea who led a downed pilot back to his base--
    would not do.
    So this is something to keep in mind--
    the degeneration of bureaucracy and the formation of crowds.
    These are one of the key dangers or flags one must watch for.
    Thanks, Frank.
    This concludes the interview with Frank Ephraim on April
    the 7th, 1997.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Franz Gunter Ephraim, born February 19, 1931 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, Germany, describes his family and being raised Jewish but not Orthodox; living an integrated life in the community until 1937 and his participation in the 1936 Olympics events; how Kristallnacht was the impetus for his family immigrating to the Philippines; attending a Hebrew school in Manila before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the politics in Manila; experiencing an open Jewish life; their favorite playing areas, holidays, their several living spaces, and the daily routine in Manila; the attack on Pearl Harbor and his memories of the alarms, airplanes, gas masks, and lack of school for about a year; how after the US declared war there were more air raids and an exodus from the Philippines began; how the US was closed to Jews who still had family in Germany and Europe and his family could not go to the US; the Japanese invasion of the Philippines; the many wartime restrictions, including food shortages, looting, changes in currency, and a new governmental organization; how 1944 was the year when things were really deteriorated and the people were starving; the daily air raids from B24 bombers; the Japanese systematically burning down the city of Manila; how February 1945 brought total chaos and there was no food for several weeks; the liberation of Manila by US forces; leaving the Philippines on November 19, 1946; arriving in San Francisco, CA where relatives were waiting for them, along with HIAF; the closeness of the Manila Jewish community in San Francisco; attending UC Berkeley until the Korean War when he was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe as an interpreter; becoming a US citizen in 1952; his philosophy that the importance of Jews as a nation is far more important than Jews as a religion and that self-reliance is the most important quality to have; graduating from UC Berkeley in 1957; and working for a naval architect specializing in submarines, United Airlines, and the Maritime Administration in Washington, DC.
    Interviewee
    Frank Ephraim
    Interviewer
    Nancy Alper
    Date
    interview:  1997 February 28

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    8 sound cassettes (74 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Ephraim, Frank.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Nancy Alper, a volunteer for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch conducted this interview on February 28, 1997, in Chevy Chase, Md. The interview was transferred to the Museum's Archives on February 28, 1997.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:12:15
    This page:
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    Time Coded Notes (9)

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    Also in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral history volunteer collection

    Consists of interviews with Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators conducted by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Department volunteer staff. The interviewees, among them survivors from Hungary, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Poland, discuss their experiences of life before World War II, life in the ghettos, life in concentration camps, and life after the Holocaust.

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    Oral history interview with Doris Rauch

    Oral History

    Doris Rauch, born August 26, 1920 in Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), discusses her childhood in Brno; the death of her father in 1936; the German invasion of Czechoslovakia; being unable to attend a German-speaking university because she was a Jew; attending a textile school; working in a factory; buying goods on the black market; her deportation to Theresienstadt on a passenger train; volunteering to work planting trees in Bohemia with her mother; returning to Theresienstadt after six weeks; avoiding transports to the East; being put on a transport in September 1942 along with her mother and boyfriend; being taken to Raasiku, Estonia and separated from her mother; being taken to Tallinn, Estonia in December 1942 to clear rubble for the Holzmann construction firm; being taken to a camp in Ereda at the end of 1943; how she and other women stopped menstruating; working in the forest; a romantic relationship between a prisoner and an SS commander; being given a ring by male inmate; contracting hepatitis in Ereda; being taken to Stutthof; how she had written in a diary every day in Estonia; being very sick; arriving at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945; taking another prisoner’s place to work in a factory; finding fliers saying that the Allies were approaching; being taken to the Danish border at the end of April 1945 and turned over to the Danish Red Cross who provided food, care, and new clothing; living in Sweden for two years working as a secretary for the World Jewish Congress; living with two women she met in the camps; moving to the United States in May 1947 and experiencing culture shock; marrying and moving to Chicago, then Pittsburg, and then to Washington D.C.; the effect of her experiences on her religious beliefs; and reparations from Germany.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Elman

    Oral History

    Joseph Elman, born February 5, 1922 in Pruzhany, Poland (present day Belarus), discusses the German and Russian occupations of Pruzhany; his memories of the murder of 11 Jews in Pruzhany by Nazis; being forced into slave labor; the relocation of his family into the ghetto; daily living conditions in the ghetto, which included starvation and crowding; his work in the ghetto’s food department; the liquidation of the ghetto starting in January 1943; his father’s membership in the Judenrat; his father’s suicide; how he and others built a bunker in the ghetto; his contact with a resistance group which was smuggling weapons into the ghetto; his escape from the ghetto with a large group of people during the liquidation; his experience living in the woods as part of a partisan group; forming family bonds with members of the group; liberation by the Russian Army; returning to his home in Pruzhany to find a family living there; living with this family for a period of time; moving to Bialystok, Poland to join his brother; settling in Łódź, Poland; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Gerald Rosenstein

    Oral History

    Gerald Rosenstein (b. Gerhard Rosenstein) describes his early life in Darmstadt, Germany; being attacked and beaten by a schoolmate’s father as a child; immigrating to Amsterdam with his family in May 1940; trying to leave for England after the German occupation; the persecutions Amsterdam’s Jewish community faced; being separated from his family in Westerbork; being sent to Theresienstadt; reuniting with his parents there; living conditions in Theresienstadt; partaking in propaganda for the Red Cross; being deported to Auschwitz with his father; being transferred to Gleiwitz; working conditions in camp; being marched to Blechhammer in January 1945; how he felt at liberation; traveling through Poland, Romania, and Odessa before boarding a Red Cross ship to Paris;

    Oral history interview with Ivan Becker

    Oral History

    Ivan Becker, born in 1929, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his memories of the "hanging priest of Budapest" who killed Jews for refusing conversion to Christianity; the Nazi invasion of Hungary; harsh restrictions on Jews; his father who was sent to Buchenwald; being sent on a death march with his mother from Budapest towards Austria; being separated from his mother and never seeing her again; his life in hiding; his experiences in an unnamed ghetto; his return to Budapest after liberation; his time in a displaced persons camp in Bad Gastein, Austria; his immigration to the United States as a "war orphan" in 1946; and his adjustment to life after the Holocaust and success in business.

    Oral history interview with Romana Koplewicz

    Oral History

    Romana Koplewicz (née Margitte), born April 26, 1919 in Warsaw, Poland, describes her pre-war life in Poland; her parents and sister; her father’s dye factory; her education at a private Jewish school; her law school education at the University of Joseph Pilsudski in Warsaw; the antisemitism she experienced in law school; meeting her husband in 1936; her inability to complete law school due to anti-Jewish legislation; the beginning of the war and ghettoization in Warsaw; working in her father’s factory; her father’s arrest and return in the spring of 1940; the liquidation of the ghetto; her work sewing German uniforms; her escape with her family from numerous selections; the false papers she and her sister acquired in 1943; her work in the ghetto in a manufacturing factory; working as a housekeeper to survive; her time in Otwock Poland working as a chambermaid in summer 1944 at a convent; her escape to Grodzisko Mazovieckie, Poland because the Gestapo were looking for her; her time working for a German in Warsaw; the Warsaw ghetto uprising; the ghetto’s evacuation and her transfer to Piastów, Poland; her survival and return to Warsaw; her reunion with her husband and their marriage; leaving Warsaw for Germany with her husband; her time in Germany with her husband waiting for their visa to the United States; her immigration to the United States in May 1949; her master’s degree in social work; and her two children and her life in the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Koplewicz

    Oral History

    Joseph Koplewicz, born December 7, 1915 in Kielce, Poland, describes his pre-war life in Kielce; his parents and siblings; his father’s occupation as a businessman; his education in Kielce and law school education in Warsaw; his family’s religious attitudes; his experiences with antisemitism while attending law school; the beginning of the war; his arrest in Kielce for not wearing a Star of David badge; the ghettoization of Warsaw; performing forced labor in Warsaw; his father’s death due to health complications; his stay with his sister and her husband in a comfortable apartment; his marriage in 1942; being wounded in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; his transfer to Majdanek concentration camp; his transfer to Budzyn labor camp near Krasnik, Poland until February 1944; his transfer to Mielec, Poland where he worked as a draftsman until July 1944; his short time in Wieliczka, Flossenbürg, Litomerice, and Dachau; his transfer to Augsburg, Germany where he worked in airport construction; his time in Kaufering and Nuremburg; a forced march to Landshut, Germany where the SS guards in charge fled; the marchers subsequent scattering; his survival and return to Poland; his reunion with his wife; their decision to leave Poland and immigrate to the United States in 1949; and his post-war life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Irving Schaffer

    Oral History

    Irving Schaffer, born May 26, 1928 in Chust, Czechoslovakia (present day Khust, Ukraine), discusses growing up in an Orthodox family; his early education; a teacher beating him in front of the class in 1943; experiencing antisemitism before the war; his father’s arrest for receiving milk from a neighbor; the deportation of his father and brother to labor camps; his family’s eviction from their home and deportation to the Chust Ghetto; conditions of the ghetto, such as the Jewish leadership; his assignment as a messenger and pass to leave the ghetto; smuggling in bread from outside the ghetto; people being punished for being Hungarian; being transported by train from the ghetto after three weeks; how partisans blew up the train and told prisoners to jump off and escape; arriving at Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; his memories of Dr. Mengele; being separated from the rest of his family at Auschwitz; being sent to Warsaw, Poland after only three days at Auschwitz; working to clean out the Warsaw Ghetto; prisoners escaping from the Warsaw ghetto; being marched out of the ghetto in August 1944; arriving at Kutno on the German and Polish border; being transported by train to Dachau; living in Camp Seven and working in Mühldorf in an ammunition factory; stealing potatoes and bartering with other prisoners; being transported from Dachau; finding a train transporting sugar that had been bombed and eating the hot sugar; being transported to the Landshut camp; working in Landsberg, Germany; a bombing by American planes; being released by the Germans and then chased down and beaten into a coma; waking up in a German hospital; organizations that assisted in reconnecting families, such as UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee; being liberated in Feldmoching, Germany; finding his brother in Chust; how the Russians did not let him leave Chust; escaping across borders into Germany; attending school in Munich, Germany; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with William Klein

    Oral History

    William Klein, born in 1924, discusses growing up in Užhorod, Czechoslovakia (present day Uzhhorod, Ukraine), in a large family; attending Jewish school until the sixth grade, then entering a public high school; the friendliness between Jews and non-Jews in Užhorod; his two older brothers leaving in 1940 for Yugoslavia and Russia with the army; Jews being made to wear the yellow Star of David badge and comply with a curfew beginning in 1942; hearing rumors about Jews being killed in Poland; being forced into the ghetto in January or February 1944; being taken by train to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; last seeing his parents and sister as they went through the selection process at Auschwitz; being advised by a kapo to volunteer for work outside the camp when he had the opportunity; being taken to what had been the Warsaw Ghetto along with his brother and brother-in-law to demolish buildings and clear debris; finding gold pieces in an abandoned house where he was working and hiding them in a belt; prisoners making up songs and singing as they worked; being forced to march to Dachau as the Russians advanced towards Warsaw; witnessing the death of a rabbi he and his brother had helped on the march; staying in Dachau for a few days; volunteering to work at a construction site; being seriously injured on the construction site and being helped by fellow prisoners, including one who was a doctor; escaping with his brother and brother-in-law from a train and hiding in a farmhouse as the Americans liberated the area; reuniting with his surviving family members in Bratislava and Užhorod; living in Sudetenland and then in a series of displaced persons camps in Germany (Wasserburg, Föhrenwald, and Bremerhaven) and applying to move to the United States; having his application delayed after being accused of being a communist; moving to Chicago in 1951; his pride in his Jewish identity; health problems caused by beatings he received during his time as a prisoner; telling his children about his experiences; and his response to the question of why he does not hate.

    Oral history interview with George Pisik

    Oral History

    George Pisik, born May 25, 1925, describes his experience as a soldier in the U.S. Army’s 15th armored division, 10th infantry battalion; entering Dachau in May 1945 without any prior knowledge of concentration camps; his battalion’s doctor trying to help the prisoners; searching a guard who was subsequently taken by prisoners and killed in the barracks; meeting a 19 year-old female prisoner in Dachau and giving her the mezuzah his grandmother had given him to wear; receiving almost 100 mezuzahs from his family and friends after writing them; giving these mezuzahs to chaplains to distribute and to his fellow soldiers, telling them they were good luck charms; entering Munich and seeing the giant swastika on Munich Stadium, which his commander ordered to be destroyed by tank fire; seeing Germans surrender; conflicts with German civilians; suffering from trench foot and impetigo; returning to the United States expecting to be sent to Japan but staying after the bombing of Hiroshima; after his homecoming, using a swastika flag as a doormat, which drew the attention of the neighborhood and the police when his mother washed it and hung it out to dry; bringing home pistols which his mother took to the army depot to be deactivated; returning to college; his frustration with Holocaust deniers, including a Catholic priest he met in 1950 in Louisiana; the failings of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust; his feelings towards the Germans; his belief that a holocaust could happen again; his level of religious involvement; and the importance of education in preventing another holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rosicka

    Oral History

    Ruth Rosicka, born August 13, 1919 in Nowice, Czechoslovakia (present day Poland), describes her Polish father who was actively pro-Zion; escaping bombing in Bielsko, Poland; escaping through Krakow, Poland and being found by the Russian army; being deported to a camp in Siberia from which she was amnestied in 1941; being drafted by the Czechoslovakian army and working in the medical brigade, where in 1944 she met her husband; being taken to the Carpathian Mountains, to the war front, where they stayed until February 1945; being released from the Army in May 1945 because of her pregnancy; and living in Prague, Czech Republic after the war.

    Oral history interview with Salomon Cohen

    Oral History

    Salomon Cohen, born July 28, 1937 in Athens, Greece, discusses how his family escaped to the south of Greece in February 1943 with the help of partisans; hiding with his family in the mountains for six months; how the partisans obtained food from monasteries in the mountains for his family; using false names while in hiding; traveling to Izmir, Turkey then Syria; being captured by English troops; how the family was taken to British camps in the Gaza Strip; their escape with the help of a Jewish agency; traveling to Ted Aviv, Israel, where they lived from 1944 to 1952; going into the army as a tank fighter; going to Haifa, Israel after leaving the army; getting married and having children; and his visits to Greece.

    Oral history interview with Suzanne Foldes

    Oral History

    Suzanne Foldes (b. Zsuzsi Morvai) discusses her childhood in Miskolc, Hungary; her Jewish and Christian schooling; pre-war antisemitism; training as a gymnast but being denied entry into the Olympics because she was Jewish; her father’s conscription into Hungarian forced labor; getting married in 1942 to Paul Berkowitz; terminating a pregnancy; the German occupation of Hungary; being confined to a ghetto; being transported to Auschwitz by cattle car; learning of her mother’s death by gassing; moving to Buchenwald; how she was good at stealing coal; liberation; returning to Budapest after the war; reuniting with her father; learning of her husband’s death; marrying a friend from before the war; immigrating to the United States in 1956; and speaking about her wartime experiences beginning in the 1990s.

    Oral history interview with Tibor Vince

    Oral History

    Tibor Vince, born in 1910, describes his childhood near Budapest, Hungary; his medical studies in Italy; his escape to Cuba at the outbreak of World War II; his immigration to the United States; his work as a physician in the United States Army; his experiences at Dachau shortly after liberation; his medical treatment of Allied prisoners of war; and his life in New York, NY after 1945.

    Oral history interview with Elias Piorko

    Oral History

    Elias Piorko, born on May 15, 1919, discusses his childhood in Zambrów, Poland; his life in a kibbutz near Slonim, Poland (now Belarus); his experiences with forced labor in Russia; being in four different camps; his travels through Europe on the way to Italy after World War II; and his life in the United States after 1950.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Hildesheim

    Oral History

    Benjamin (Beniek) Hildesheim discusses his childhood in Sieradz, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism and Jewish persecution in Sieradz before the Holocaust; his time in the ghettos of Sieradz and Łódź, Poland; his adoption by Chaim Rumkowski; his imprisonment at Auschwitz, Babice/Babitz (a small agricultural camp west of Auschwitz), and Buchenwald concentration camps; his participation in a death march to Theresienstadt, where he remained until liberation; his time in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), immediately after liberation; his immigration to Palestine in the first Aliyah after World War II in 1945; his participation in the Israel-Arab War of 1948 to 1949; and his life in Brazil and the United States after 1962.

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Peter Masters (né Peter Arany), born February 5, 1922, in Vienna, Austria, describes his prewar life in Vienna; his Viennese mother and Hungarian father; his escape to Britain after the Anschluss in 1938; his family’s internment as “friendly aliens;” his family’s reclassification as enemy aliens in Britain; his experiences volunteering for special hazardous duty in Britain and being assigned the 3rd Group, 10th Commando, an elite paratroop unit mostly consisting of Jewish or political refugees; his identity being anglicized for his protection; his work to petition for the recognition of Austrians who perished fighting the Nazis; his many family members who perished during the war; and his 1997 book, Striking back: A Jewish commando’s war against the Nazis, which he wrote as a counterpoint to the idea the Jews did not fight back during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Wolke

    Oral History

    Joseph Wolke (Wolkeovich), born July 14, 1919 in Tomashov (Tomaszów Mazowiecki), Poland, discusses his family background and religious upbringing; his father’s successful farm outside the city; the rise of Hitler and antisemitism; racial laws against Jews; being deported during Rosh Hashanah; arriving in Krakow, Poland on a cattle train; his disbelief that the war would last so long; escaping from the Germans and returning to Tomashov by bus; how the farm provided for the family; increases in the deportation of Jews; living in the Tomashov ghetto; smuggling food into the ghetto; the liquidation of the ghetto on November 1, 1942; the mass burial of Jews in the ghetto for which he was forced to dig graves; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; being transferred on a cattle train to Auschwitz; forced labor digging ditches outside the camp; being relocated to Gross-Rosen camp; the death march from Rosen, which lasted over a week; starvation during the march; liberation by Russian forces; returning home to Poland; meeting his wife and having a child; immigrating to the United States in August 1950; living in Baltimore, MD with his wife’s family; adjusting to American life; creating a business; and learning the fate of his family members in the years following the war.

    Oral history interview with Ionel Ghelman

    Oral History

    Ionel Ghelman, born on March 27, 1929 in Bucharest, Romania, discusses his mother’s death in 1938 and being raised by his maternal aunt; experiencing antisemitism; seeing boys in 1936 practicing to be in the Iron Guard in the future; the German occupation in 1940; the events in January 1941, including pogroms, stores being burned, and Jews being killed; ration cards and how Jews’ ration cards were half of Rumanians’ cards; the Allied bombardments of Bucharest from late 1943 to early 1944; seeing Russian tanks and troops in August 1944; leaving school in 1946 to work in a locomotive factory; rejecting the Communist Youth Party and feeling a connection to Zionist Hashomer Hatzair; going to Bukovina to prepare for kibbutz in Israel; the banning of Zionist organizations in 1949; being a draftsman for oil pipeline company from 1948 to 1950; marrying a Romanian woman in 1956; his children; being expelled from the Communist Party because parents went to Israel; getting visas for Hungary, France, and Germany in 1976; going to New York in April 21, 1977 with the help of HIAS; and settling in Washington and working for Bechtel.

    Oral history interview with Irimia Solomon

    Oral History

    Irimia Solomon, born on November 3, 1924 in Dorohoi, Romania, describes his parents, who were divorced; how he and his mother lived with his grandparents in Falticeni, Romania; his granfather’s farm; the Jewish community in the town and his family not being particularly religious; Jews in Moldovan cities; his education; playing soccer with non-Jewish children; hearing about antisemitism; wanting to go to Palestine; going to school in Bucharest, Romania to learn a trade; his relationship with his father; an uprising in Romania in September 1940; the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier); returning to Falticeni in December 1941; going to Dorohoi; his father being taken away in June 1942; being taken to forced work, unloading rail cards and sweeping; being deported with his mother to Transnistria and conditions during the journey there; having to trade in their Romanian money for Russian rubles; arriving in Sharhorod, Ukraine; being housed in a synagogue for several weeks; staying in a room in a house of a Christian family with other Jews; being in a ghetto, where there was religious life but no cultural life; building roads and sleeping overnight in rail cars outfitted with bunk bed; typhus in Sharhorod and helping to bury the dead; his mother not working and staying indoors; being helped by a cousin’s Christian husband; being taken back to Dorohoi in December 1943; moving from house to house until they could contact relatives; not feeling relief or happiness; his mother being treated as a war widow and being allowed to sell certain items, such as stamps, alcohol, and tobacco; returning to school and going to the polytechnic in 1945; waiting from 1958 to 1972 to get a passport; going to Israel, where his wife did not like the heat; going to Canada, where they settled in Toronto; working as an engineer; and moving to Montreal.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Salus

    Oral History

    Lotte Salus (b. Charlotte Helena Cohen) discusses her childhood living near the Dutch border in Germany; working for a Jewish family; being arrested and pressed into labor after Kristallnacht; being sent to Amsterdam, Netherlands by her father; living with other Jewish teenagers in The Hague, Netherlands; learning her family had been deported to Westerbork; moving to Amsterdam in May 1940; receiving orders to register with the police; being deported to Westerbork; reuniting with her family; daily life in Westerbork; volunteering to go to Theresienstadt with her parents in 1944; her experiences in the camps Auschwitz, Stutthof, and Praust; being taken on a death march in March 1945; liberation by the Russians; sexual violence perpetrated by the Russians; returning to Germany; immigrating to the United States in 1949; and marrying and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Irena Kirkland

    Oral History

    Irena Neumann discusses her childhood in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); not having a Jewish identity or religious education; evacuating Prague before the Munich Agreement; returning to the city and learning she was Jewish; adapting to restrictions placed on Jews; her feelings about wearing the yellow star; being deported to Theresienstadt with her family; daily life in the camp; contracting encephalitis; being deported to Auschwitz; conditions in camps Auschwitz and Sachsen Chemnitz; returning to Theresienstadt in May 1945; reuniting with her parents; liberation by Russian soldiers; returning to Prague; beginning university; being arrested and released by communists; and immigrating to the United States in 1956.

    Oral history interview with Hans Hirsch

    Oral History

    Hans George Hirsch discusses his early life in Stuttgart, Germany; his father’s role as executive director of the German Jewish Community; graduating gymnasium in 1934; prewar antisemitism; the difficulties he experienced attending university and holding a job in Nazi Germany; visiting Palestine in 1937; receiving a visa to leave for the United States in 1937; working on farms in the U.S.; trying to get his parents out of Europe; teaching German prisoners of war farm management from 1943 to 1946; his career trajectory in food administration and policy; and his retirement from foreign agricultural service.

    Oral history interview with Milton Shurr

    Oral History

    Milton Shurr, born January 28, 1911 in the United States, describes his work with the Jewish Welfare Fund in Oklahoma City, OK in the early 1940s; his draft into the military and entering Officer’s Candidate School; being shipped overseas to England, where he worked in preparation for D-Day in June 1944; his recruitment by the Civil Affairs Unit of the Military Government to gather and identify medical supplies left behind on Omaha Beach, France; helping to provide food for the 15,000 survivors of Buchenwald and working with the Red Cross and Joint Distribution Committee; traveling to Bavaria, Germany to work has a health welfare officer; working to reopen schools, hospitals, banks, and other institutions in Germany; maintaining correspondence with his wife in America during the war; returning to the United States after the war and moving to Chicago as an assistant in health planning; and sharing what he had witnessed in Buchenwald after years of being unable to speak about it.

    Oral history interview with Ludwig Jacob

    Oral History

    Ludwig Jacob discusses his early life in Schmalkalden, Germany; being arrested with his parents on Kristallnacht; being imprisoned in Buchenwald for a month; leaving on a Kindertransport to Holland; living in a children’s home; the German invasion; moving to his brother’s home in Amsterdam; the arrest of his brother, who subsequently was imprisoned and died in Mauthausen; receiving a deportation notice; choosing to live under a false identity; moving to Paris, France and working with the underground; sabotaging the German defense organization where he worked; being denounced and arrested; spending time in Fresnes prison before being deported to Drancy; jumping off the train on the way to Buchenwald; rejoining the resistance; working for Americans in Paris; immigrating to the United States in 1947; and his marriage and life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Artman

    Oral History

    Barbara Feuerstein Artman, born September 12, 1923 in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her parents Elizabeth and Henry Feuerstein and two younger brothers; her 14 aunts and uncles and 27 first cousins, who all perished in the Holocaust; her family’s move to Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine), which in March 1939 was occupied by Hungry; the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944; being forced to live in a ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; her deportation with her family to Auschwitz; conditions in Auschwitz; the treatment of camp guards; being sent to a labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) with her mother; their liberation by the Russians while on a march; walking, at the end of the war, to Krakow; reuniting with one brother; attending medical school but changing her major to chemistry; contacting uncles in United States who arranged for visas and transportation to the US for her, her mother, and her brother; and settling in Forest Hills, NY, where she married another refugee and had one son.

    Oral history interview with Fritz Schonbach

    Oral History

    Fritz (né Frederic) Schonbach, born in 1920, discusses his middle-class childhood in Vienna, Austria; attending private school until Jewish restrictions began in 1938; how life changed with the Nazi annexation of Austria; antisemitism in Austria and the terror campaigns; fleeing to Italy then to England in 1939; his family fleeing to Argentina while he remained in England; his internment in England because of his Austrian background; volunteering for the Australian army; daily life in the army; being discharged in 1946; enrolling in art school after the war; meeting his wife; reuniting with family in Argentina; immigrating to the United States in 1959; and discovering what happened to various family members in the war.

    Oral history interview with Charles Barber

    Oral History

    Charles Barber, born in 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his father, who owned a liquor store; attending a public grade school, where some of the non-Jews wouldn't speak with him; his memories of the first bomb being dropped in Budapest in 1939; his father being drafted into the labor corps of the Hungarian army; his mother’s work as a tailor; being an only child; his father dying after two months in the labor corps; his mother being taken to a camp for eight months in 1943; living with several different people; his mother returning home; his memories of feeling guilty for telling his mother that he was hungry; the Jews being summoned to the courthouse in town and being separated from his mother by the officials; going to live in an orphanage with a Swedish flag out front; the Russian army and their activities in Budapest; his aunt sending him to the Red Cross then a Zionist orphanage in Sagat; returning to Budapest to work in a factory; attending law school but leaving when the revolution began; going to Austria and then the United States with the help of the Red Cross; living with an uncle in the US; becoming an accountant, attending Queensborough Community College and then Bernard Baruch College; working for ABC Transnational Transport; getting married to an Austrian Holocaust survivor; the effects of his Holocaust experience; losing his faith when he lost his parents; visiting Europe; antisemitism in Hungary; wanting to go to Israel; possessing a letter from his mother, which she wrote while she was in Bergen-Belsen, and a picture of his parents (which is in the USHMM Photo Archive); and his other family pictures.

    Oral history interview with Tibor Borsos

    Oral History

    Tibor Borsos, born on March 12, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his highly intellectual Catholic family; his family moving to Debrecen in 1936; having many Jewish friends; how he “looked Jewish” and was sometimes made fun of; his family’s possession of an American flag, National Geographic magazines, and a censored version of Time magazine; his family burning the American flag March 21, 1944 to be safe; his family storing carpets, silver, and jewelry for Jewish friends and hiding them in the university library; his mother being denounced, arrested, and released; his family leaving Debrecen in May 1944; witnessing Jews being rounded up; going to Budapest and living next door to a Swedish protected house; the closing of schools in the fall of 1944; his family going in December 1944 to Halle an der Saale, Germany, where his father taught in a medical school; being drafted into the Hungarian Army in March 1945 and riding on a train for two months to avoid finding his unit; finding his brother on May 8, 1945 in Mitterald; being rounded up by Patton’s troops and sent to Ludwigshafen, Germany; being sent to a POW camp in Heilbronn; going to Gottingen in the British Occupation Zone; sailing to the United States in December 1949 on the USS Harry Taylor; earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at Johns Hopkins; researching cancer at NIH; marrying a survivor of Bergen-Belsen; and his feelings about not being officially Jewish.

    Oral history interview with Robert Kertesz

    Oral History

    Robert Kertesz, born in 1933, discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; antisemitism in Budapest; his family; his religious upbringing; being stuck in Hungary due to travel restrictions; his father being conscripted into the Hungarian Army; the Hungarian Nazis and Arrow Cross Party members in his neighborhood; the increasing antisemitism and abuse; how the ghetto grew in 1943; finding safe houses for children; escaping from the ghetto after his parent’s deportation; hiding in his Christian aunt’s home; returning to Budapest to escape violence; returning to the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; liberation by the Soviets; looting by the Soviet Army in the city; working as a guide and interpreter for Russians; his parents’ return; living in a displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States in 1948; and his life in the U.S.

    Oral history interview with Fred Kahn

    Oral History

    Fred Kahn, born December 19, 1932 in Wiesbaden, Germany, describes being raised until he was six years old by an aunt (Rosa Nassauer) in Wehen, Germany; his older brother, Walter; his Christian friend, Walter Kaltwasser, who protected him from young Nazis; being raised religious by his aunt and uncle; his grandfather dying in 1938; being sent after the Munich Agreement to Aachen, Germany, where he crossed the border and joined his parents and brother in Verviers, Belgium; his father’s successful career as playing bridge; his aunt and uncle being sent to Łódź, Poland; starting school in Belgium; his parents and life in Verviers; going to Liege and Brussels in May 1940 with his family; returning to Verviers; Jews having to register; the small right-wing party, Rexiste, which collaborated with the Nazis; his father being interrogated; getting false identities with the last name Jejeune; being taught Catholic prayers; getting scarlet fever in the spring of 1942; leaving his school after getting in a fight; his principal helping him; going into hiding and the various ways he entertained himself; moving from village to village in 1943; getting a job in 1944, carrying milk; being liberated in September 1944 by the American Army; life when he was in hiding; his mother’s accused of being a German spy and arrested; the Battle of the Bulge; events he heard about involving the underground; factors that helped him survive; developing a sense of humor; and considering Verviers his hometown.

    Oral history interview with Susan Warsinger

    Oral History

    Susan Warsinger (née Hilsinrath), born in 1929, discusses her family and childhood in Bad Kreuznach, Germany; her memories of Kristallnacht; escaping to Paris, France; being homeless; fleeing to Versailles when the Germans invaded; going to Château des Morelles, a home for homeless children; her schooling; getting tickets to the United States from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; immigrating to the U.S. in 1941; her life in the U.S.; her feelings about returning home to Europe; and her life since the war.

    Oral history interview with Arnold Weiss

    Oral History

    Hans Arnold Wangesheim, born in Nuremberg, Germany on July 25, 1924, describes his parents divorcing in 1930; his mother placing him in a very strict Jewish orphanage in Furth; his encounters with Hitler youth; getting passage on a Kindertransport with help of Quakers in 1938; going to Chicago, IL then Milwaukee, WI; running away from a Jewish orphanage and being placed with a family in Janesville, WI; attending a watchmaker’s college; enlisting in 1942 in the Army Air Corps and being a B-17 tail gunner; his training plane crashing in Utah in 1943 and being severely injured; going to OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in Washington in 1944; going in late 1944 to Paris, France then Germany; crossing the Rhine with the 4th Division behind German lines picking up mail from agents; seeing Nuremberg bombed; going back to Furth; going in April 1945 to Dachau to get important political prisoners, including the former French Prime Minister Leon Blum; locating the prisoners in Innsbruck, Austria; his counterintelligence work for de-Nazification and working with Hugh Trevor-Roper to hunt down Wilhelm Zander; being assigned to trace enemy assets including Nazi treasures and Reichsbank gold; his work interrogating Germans, doing anti-Soviet intelligence, and being sent to Czechoslovakia as a contact for Hungarian agents; returning to the US, attending school, and working for the US Treasury; and working for a law firm.

    Oral history interview with Sia Hertsberg

    Oral History

    Sia Hertsberg (née Izrailewitsch), born June 8, 1927 in Riga, Latvia, describes her early family life and schooling; the Jewish community and the state of antisemitism in pre-war Riga; the 1940 Russian invasion; her family’s persecution at the hands of the Russian communists; the 1941 Nazi occupation and implementation of Nazi race laws; the burning of Riga’s synagogues; the help her family received from non-Jewish friends; the establishment and the later liquidation of the Riga ghetto; how a Latvian soldier attempted to rape her; avoiding the Rumbula massacre; working as a seamstress in a Reichskommissariat workshop; her family’s transport to the Kaiserwald concentration camp; how her father saved her sister several times by hiding her amidst the trash or in a pot of soup when the Nazis were looking for young children; the Nazis’ theft of her childhood; the normalcy of discussing death; her family’s transport via ship and cattle car to Stutthof; the typhus epidemic and her work carrying the dead to the crematorium; her mother’s death; her and her sister’s escape from a death march; seeking shelter and being turned away by Polish peasants; liberation by Russian soldiers on March 23, 1945; hospitalization and her sister’s death; her deep depression at losing her family; her hospitalization in Kolomna, Russia; her return to Riga and reunion with her father; falling in love with her future husband; their attempts to illegally immigrate to the United States and her father’s subsequent imprisonment by the Russians; the birth of her two sons; finishing her schooling; her husband’s death; her move to Chicago, Illinois and her post-war life in the United States; and her father’s death on the same day as her sister, thirty years later.

    Oral history interview with Chava Frajhof

    Oral History

    Chava Frajhof (née Geister), born September 20, 1923 in Belzyce, Poland, discusses her family; the German invasion of Poland in 1939; hiding from the Germans; paying the Judenrat to be assigned work in Będzin, Poland; working as a seamstress; being sent to Kraśnik, Poland in 1943; being liberated by the Soviets; fleeing to Lublin, Poland; having a family; going to Frankfurt, Germany then Berlin, Germany; and immigrating to Brazil in 1953 to join her family.

    Oral history interview with Israel Frajhof

    Oral History

    Israel Frajhof, born March 3, 1920 in Krasnik (near Lublin), Poland, describes experiencing violent antisemitism in 1933; the establishment of a ghetto in the fall of 1942; the typhus epidemic and conditions in the ghetto; working outside the ghetto; the deportation of old men, women and children deported to Majdanek and Treblinka in December 1942; trying to become a policeman but being declined permission; doing carpentry work for Germans making furniture; appels, beatings, and sleeping in the synagogue; meeting his future wife Chava Geister, who was in Krasnik camp; the Russians’ arrival in Lublin on July 22,1944; the death march to Germany and escaping into the forest for 10 days; meeting up with Chava and going to Krasnik; going to Lublin; getting married in January 1946; going to Berlin , Germany and being helped by the UNRRA; going to Frankfurt, Germany; going to Brazil in 1953; visiting Majdanek in 1986; and living for his wife and children.

    Oral history interview with Edward Novakoff

    Oral History

    Edward Novakoff, born in 1926 in Boston, Massachusetts, discusses his Ukrainian and Lithuanian immigrant parents; enlisting in the U.S. Army in December 1943; being shipped to Marseilles, France with the 90th Infantry Division; seeing his company wiped out in November 1944; fighting in southern Germany in January 1945; arriving at Flossenbürg in May 1945 and seeing the conditions and the survivors; his transfer to the 26th Regiment, 1st Infantry in August 1945; guarding prisoners for the Nuremburg Trials; having contact with Nuremburg prisoners; returning to the U.S. in December 1945; his life after the war; and helping to create the largest Jewish cemetery in the Boston area.

    Oral history interview with Celia Feldschuh

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicole Yancey

    Oral History

    Nicole Yancey (née Guggenheim), born July 26, 1941 in Saint-Amand-Mont-Rond, France, describes having one sister, Nanette, born November 1938; being separated from her family when she was two years old and sent to a farm to live in a safe and secure environment; still today calling the farmer and his wife her real grandparents; members of the French Resistance coming in for meals because the farm was close to the demarcation line and there was lots of Resistance activity; her daily routine of working, hiding, and eating; how her relationships were all very harmonious; being moved back to Orléans, France when she was five years old and starting school; the severe personality changes of her parents because of their experiences during the Holocaust; the torment her father experienced because he was not able to save his brothers from being murdered; being sponsored by a French/American agency to attend William and Mary College, where she met her husband; remaining in the Tidewater, VA area; converting to Catholicism because her husband is Catholic as are her children; her position now as Consul for the French Embassy in Norfolk, VA; and her assertion that tragedies like the Holocaust will continue as long as people do not learn to accept each other and their differences.

    Oral history interview with Jaffa Munk

    Oral History

    Jaffa Munk (née Noemi Donath), born April 10, 1931 IN Ónod, Hungary, describes her father Philippe, who was a Rabbi, and her mother Olga Shick Donath; having one brother, Joseph, and one sister, Esther Judith; living a very normal life with a family that was religious yet open-minded and encouraged academics; the many changes that began in 1942 and 1943; being moved in May 1944 to the ghetto, where her father was put in charge; being sent to Auschwitz; the brutal arrival and her father’s last words to her: “Wherever you go, continue to believe in God;” being marched to Birkenau, which was the very last time she saw her mother; being selected by Mengele in September 1944 to go to Bergen-Belsen and the grim living situation there; the forced evacuation in January 1945 and a subsequent six week death march; escaping to a forest and being liberated May 8, 1945 by Russian soldiers; eventually returning to Budapest, Hungary, where she lived at an Orthodox refugee orphanage facility, which was started by Esther Eckstein with education as the primary goal; going with a Zionist group with 1800 refugees to Palestine on a boat leaving from Bucharest, Romania and the refusal of the British to allow them entry, but finally being allowed to land at Haifa, Palestine; the break-out of war in 1947 and the desperate living conditions during the war; being taken to Tel Aviv, Israel, where there was less danger and where she attended teacher’s seminary; meeting her husband, who was in the Army; the birth of her first son, Gabriel, which was the highlight of her life because it meant continuation of her family; her teaching positions, starting with 1st grade, where students came from 30 different countries; and how her personal strengths are her sense of hope and having a positive outlook.

    Oral history interview with Frances Hirshfeld

    Oral History

    Frances Hirshfeld (née Frieda Miriam Rosenbloom), born in 1918, discusses her family and childhood in Opatów, Poland; moving to Zawiercie, Poland and its local Jewish population; the beginning of the war; her religious life; antisemitism; Kristallnacht; going into hiding in Ukraine and returning to Poland; the Judenrat; adjusting to anti-Jewish laws; moving into the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; being deported to Auschwitz in 1943; living conditions in Auschwitz; being moved to Birkenau; contracting typhoid fever and scabies; lack of medical care; bombings near the camp; returning to Auschwitz; hearing about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; working in a munitions factory; being on a death march to Ravensbrück; escaping into a forest; liberation by the Soviets; immigrating to the United States in October 1946; her husband immigrating to the U.S. in 1949; visiting Poland; her feelings about Holocaust deniers; and her life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Moris Gluckman

    Oral History

    Moris Glukman, born in Suceava, Romania in 1924, discusses his childhood; the rise in antisemitism; deportation announcements; his arrival in Bessarabia (in Moldova and Ukraine) with his family and how the peasants took the belongings of the Romanian Jews; travel to Moravia, Czech Republic; living at the mercy of the Romanian Gendarmerie; the spread of typhus and diphtheria during the winter of 1941-1942; how the Ukranian police guarded the village in Moravia; the German entrance into Moravia; building bridges and excavating coal from open mines; his knowledge about events in Bessarabia and Russian positions and the approaching front; working in a Kolkhoz; being liberated by the Russians; his schooling in Bucharest, Romania; and immigration to the United States in 1983.

    Oral history interview with Margie Rosenthal

    Oral History

    Margie Rosenthal (née Margit Mary Miedzwinski), born July 19, 1927 in Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland), describes her prewar childhood; her family’s immigration to the Philippines after the Nazi invasion so that her father could continue in the lumber business; her pleasant life in the Philippines until the Japanese bombing in December 1941 and subsequent invasion; severe changes in their lives in Pasay City as Americans began bombing nearby Manila; the delay in her family’s move to the United States in 1948 as a result of immigration quotas; her life in San Francisco; and her marriage to her husband, Ernie.

    Oral history interview with Emma Mogilensky

    Oral History

    Emma Mogilensky (née Hubert), born May 22, 1923 in Kronheim, Bavaria, describes living in the house that had been built by her great-grandfather; having one brother and one sister; living in a friendly and peaceful community until Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938 when antisemitism became so violent that she was sent to Nuremberg, Germany; enrolling in a very strict, all Jewish high school; moving to Augsberg, Germany after her father was released from Dachau; the children’s transport, going to Munich, Germany and being transferred to a boat; finally arriving in London, England, where she and the other children were chosen for English homes such that not one of them would become a public charge; being sent to live with a couple, both physicians, who were extremely helpful; attending school again where English Literature became her best subject; being a Fire Watcher at St. Paul’s Cathedral and joining the British Army when she was 17; antisemitism in the Army; being a cook for 2,000 men; receiving her GED; subsequently attending college on the GI Bill; a trip to Israel with her children after her husband’s death; finding that the cemetery where her grandparents were buried was not desecrated and finding their graves; visiting her foster parents in England every year; and her serious commitment to speaking about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Isaiah Henig

    Oral History

    Isaiah Henig (né Yeshiah Henig), born in 1915, discusses his childhood in Szydlowiec, Poland; his family and the Jewish community; his religious upbringing; the absence of antisemitism before the war; changing anti-Jewish attitudes after the German occupation; the outbreak of the war and changes in daily life; being conscripted for forced labor; the creation of the ghetto; living conditions in the ghetto; working as a laborer in Starachowice, Poland; diseases in the camp; working to build replacement parts for machines; not believing reports about Jewish deaths; being deported to Birkenau in the summer of 1944; working in a factory; being moved to other concentration camps, including Mauthausen and Hannover; Allied bombing of the area; being deported to Bergen-Belsen; living conditions in the camp; his job building cannons; liberation by the British; moving to a displaced persons camp; immigrating to the United States in 1951; his life after the war; and his feelings about what happened.

    Oral history interview with Ida Henig

    Oral History

    Ida Henig (née Markowicz), born in 1924, discusses her family and childhood in Lódź, Poland; Łódź’s Jewish community and economy; not experiencing antisemitism before the war; changing anti-Jewish attitudes when the Germans invaded; fleeing to Częstochowa, Poland; working in the ghetto; not believing stories of mass murder; the Jewish police; liberation by the Soviets in January 1945; going to Germany; coming to the United States in the 1950s; the fates of her family members; and her feelings about the Holocaust and war.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Drimer

    Oral History

    Marcel Drimer (b. Marceli Drimmer), born in 1934, discusses his childhood in Drohobych, Poland (present day Ukraine); his family; his religious upbringing; life before the war; the Russian occupation; the German invasion in 1941; the looting of Jewish property; the deportations in 1942; moving into the ghetto; the fates of his family members; Ukrainian and German police; the Judenrat; hiding in an attic for a week; escape plans being postponed due to the death of his father; how his female relatives were saved by a woman who was recognized as a righteous gentile; their living conditions while in hiding; liberation by the Soviets; adjusting to life after the war; his education; difficult living conditions in Poland; post-war anti-Semitism; immigrating to the United States in 1961; his family going to Israel; and his feelings about the war, Poland, and anti-Semitism.

    Oral history interview with Michael Silberstein

    Oral History

    Michael Silberstein (né Mieczyslaw Silberstein), born in 1930 in Grudziadz, Poland, discusses his family; life before the war; the arrival of the German Army when he was nine years old; moving to Łódź, Poland; the establishment of the Łódź ghetto; being an errand boy and getting arrested in 1942; escaping arrest; living conditions in the ghetto; being deported to Birkenau in the summer of 1944; being sent on a death march in January 1945; arriving in Mauthausen; conditions and life in Mauthausen; liberation by the Americans; reuniting with his family; meeting family in England; immigrating to the United States in1952; being drafted into the U.S. Army; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Joan Schwab

    Oral History

    Joan Schwab (née Nussbaum), born on March 24, 1926, describes living in the Tiergarten area of Berlin, Germany; her memories of Kristallnacht and how two men came for her father; being placed on a Children’s Transport to England on May 21, 1939; staying with Norman and Elsie Denham and going to secondary school and Hebrew school; her brother joining her in August 1939; evacuating in September to Chichester; conditions in the home, where she shared a bed with four girls and showered every two weeks; graduating from high school in 1944 and going back to Denhams in London; sleeping in an air raid shelter when V2 rockets attacked; going after the war to the Joint Distribution Committee in Munich, Germany and finding out that her parents perished in Auschwitz and her grandfather died in Theresienstadt; and immigrating to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Erwin Deutscher

    Oral History

    Erwin Deutscher, born on January 28, 1923 in Vienna, Austria, describes being raised with thorough religious training; being in the Zionist Youth group, HaShomer HaDati; how his maternal grandfather had gone to the United States in 1898 to Oklahoma City, OK; his Bar Mitzvah in 1936; hearing about Hitler’s arrival on March 11, 1938; his father’s dairy business closing; his mother being arrested; getting notice that his youth group was going to go to Palestine and meeting Eichmann at the emigration office with his father; conditions getting worse in Vienna; traveling with 25 others by train to Trieste and by boat to Haifa and arriving October 24, 1938; going to Mikveh Israel agricultural school for two years then to Bnai Akiva yeshiva for another two years; working for Haganah and meeting his wife; fighting in the Israeli War of Independence; his father being taken to Dachau after Kristallnacht and then to Buchenwald from June 1939 to January 1940; his parents immigrating to the United States; his life after the war working for a life insurance company; and getting a Ph. D. in Hebrew letters at Hebrew Union College.

    Oral history interview with George Pick

    Oral History

    George Pick, born in Budapest, Hungary on March 28, 1934, describes his very large extended family; his father losing his job in May 1939 and being sent on labor brigade in September 1940 for three months; seeing German tanks in the streets on March 9, 1944 and the subsequent anti-Jewish laws after including wearing the yellow star and not being allowed to attend school after April; his father having to leave again; being ordered to move to special Jewish houses in the summer of 1944; the air raids in Budapest and the massive bombings on July 2, 1944; his father’s return; he and his mother joining his father in hiding in a uniform factory building in November 1944; the factory being raided December 2, 1944 and bribing their way out; being taken to a Red Cross building and running away; going to the ghetto on December 14, 1944 and his father being in the ghetto police; the siege of Budapest; Wallenberg saving Jews from a massacre in January 1945; liberation; starting school; his Bar Mitzvah in 1947; attending university; going to Austria and then the United States, where his uncle lived; working for the Navy as mechanical engineer and retiring in 1996; his three marriages and not having children; and his commitment to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Hedi Pope

    Oral History

    Hedi Pope (née Politzer), born March 18, 1920 in Vienna, Austria, describes her prosperous family, which was neither religious nor political; wanting to be a dancer as a child; the increase in anti-Semitism in Vienna; her memories, day-by-day, of Hitler’s invasion of Austria in March 1938; rising fears to speak out about Hitler’s actions; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being sent to Dachau; the difficulty of getting all the documents to go to the United States; immigrating to the U.S. in January 1939; living in Newark, NJ; joining the Refugee Artist’s Group as a dancer; going to Miami University in Ohio and graduating in 1942; having two children; maintaining a dance studio in Alexandria, VA until 1980; and working with the volunteer corps at USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Bella Simon Pasternak

    Oral History

    Bella Simon Pasternak, born in 1928, discusses her liberation from Auschwitz by Russians; walking home to Hungary during the winter; being hospitalized with frostbite and starvation; living in a displaced persons camp in Innsbruck, Austria; immigrating to the United States in 1946; her first impressions of the U.S.; Americans’ disbelief at her experiences; meeting her husband, who was also a survivor; her religious views becoming more orthodox; desiring to immigrate to Israel; coping with the Holocaust many years after it occurred and still experiencing nightmares; and how important her grandchildren are to her.

    Oral history interview with Marion Friedman

    Oral History

    Marion Friedman (b. Traute Marion Julia Georgia Sulimas), born in 1922, discusses her childhood in Hamburg, Germany; being raised with her Christian mother and Jewish father; her parents’ upbringings; celebrating both Christian and Jewish holidays; her brothers’ immigrations to China and the United States; the Aryanization of her father’s bank; her mother’s resourcefulness; receiving a visa along with her mother to go to the U.S.; being sent to the U.S. on her own because her mother decided to stay with her father; learning of her parents’ arrest and deaths; adjusting to life in the U.S.; meeting her husband; returning to Germany long after the war; meeting her German family; and dealing with her losses on a daily basis.

    Oral history interview with Elizabeth Strassburger

    Oral History

    Elizabeth Strassburger, born in 1938, discusses her childhood in a small town near Zakopane, Poland; her father’s arrest and imprisonment in Siberia; being forced into the Tarnow ghetto with her mother and grandmother; watching her grandmother being taken by the Germans; hiding under an assumed Christian identity; being drugged and hidden in a basement during dangerous times; the family who hid her and her mother; believing she was a Catholic; her Catholic schooling; liberation by the Russians; learning she was Jewish after the war; being smuggled out of Poland with her mother; living at a Jewish orphanage with her mother in Germany; learning her father was alive; moving to Italy to be with her father; immigrating to England with her family; immigrating to the United States; adjusting to life as a teenager in the U.S.; her marriage; studying social work in college; her volunteer work; and her family.

    Oral history interview with Jadwiga Dziekonski

    Oral History

    Jadwiga Dziekonski, born in 1919, discusses her family’s emigration from Kiev, Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland in 1921 because of the revolution; her Catholic upbringing; attending public school; following the political situation in Germany; meeting her husband; the German invasion and occupation; her father’s exile in London, England as a member of the Bank of Poland; moving to Warsaw with her husband; her husband’s role in the Home Army; her daughter’s birth in 1943; sheltering two Jewish women in her mother’s apartment; the Polish underground’s participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; the Warsaw Uprising; her husband’s arrest and imprisonment in Bergen-Belsen and Gross-Rosen; liberation; readjusting to life after the war; escaping to London through Sweden in 1947; leaving her mother behind; reuniting with her father; immigrating to Detroit in 1951; visiting Poland in 1988 to see her husband’s family; her feelings about being Polish; how she feels about Jewish people and German people; and her two visits to Israel.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey

    Oral History

    Ruth Harvey, born in 1928, describes growing up with mixed Jewish and Christian heritage; her childhood in Berlin, Germany; being expelled from public school in 1938; attending a private Jewish school; witnessing the burning of Berlin’s temple during Kristallnacht; hearing Hitler’s speeches over loudspeakers; leaving Germany in 1939 with her mother to meet her father in Cuba; immigrating to New York in 1940 with her parents; growing up in New York City; moving to Washington, DC for a job with the State Department; getting married and having children; having a sense of confusion about her religious identity; why she chose not to visit any concentration camps; and volunteering at the USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Thomas B. Gardiner

    Oral History

    Thomas Brown Gardiner, born on March 26, 1920 in St. Louis County, Missouri, describes being raised by his widowed mother; life during the Depression; working for a house painter as a teen in St. Louis; getting married in 1940; working for a manufacturer that made small parts for the M1 rifle; being drafted in 1944; training at Camp Robinson in Arkansas; being sent to England in the fall of 1944; going to France; being assigned to the 45th Infantry Division; seeing action in the Vosges Mountains and Alsace-Lorraine; participating in the capture of Schaffenburg; going through Nuremberg and Munich; liberating Dachau as a member of L Company in the 157th Infantry Regiment; guarding the camp while waiting for the military police to arrive; billeting in apartment buildings outside of the camp, where the Nazi officers had lived; typhus in the camp and the high death rate of the survivors; speaking with the survivors and being shown the camp by them; going to Munich then Augsburg for a month; being sent to Le Havre, France; returning to the US; working in military camps in Texas until his release; the effect seeing Dachau had on him; and how he feels stronger in his Christian faith.

    Oral history interview with Roberta Jones

    Oral History

    Roberta Jones, born October 15, 1921 in St. Louis, Missouri, discusses growing up during the Great Depression; enlisting as a nurse in the United States Army; being commissioned as a second lieutenant with the 3rd Army and assigned to the 121st Semi-Mobile Evacuation Hospital; traveling by ship to England and helping in a hospital there; traveling to Luxembourg and then into Germany under dangerous conditions; going to Buchenwald; seeing a crematorium, stacked bodies, and starved prisoners still in uniforms; being offered bread by the prisoners; seeing a lampshade made of human skin in the office of a Nazi official; visiting a smaller liberated concentration camp and watching as American soldiers distributed clothing to naked prisoners; traveling with her hospital to a concentration camp near Linz, Austria (possibly Mauthausen); female nurses being kept outside of the camp fence as men worked inside the camp; meeting newly-liberated English prisoners of war who had been captured at the Battle of Dunkirk; returning to the United States and working at McCormack General Hospital in Pasadena, California; the difficulties of severely disfigured patients integrating into the community in Pasadena; marrying her husband; working at Camp Swift in Texas and Camp Polk in Louisiana, and, during the Korean War, in a military hospital in Michigan; encountering Holocaust deniers; and her insistence that her children know everything about her experience so that they can continue to spread the truth about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Christine Cohen

    Oral History

    Christine Cohen, born April 27, 1940 in the Warsaw ghetto, describes living in the ghetto until 1942 when they escaped; using forged papers showing that they were Christian; having one brother, born in 1948; being sent alone to live with a farm family; being helped and protected by an aristocratic woman, who had befriended an old German officer while she worked for the underground resistance; living with a series of families and caretakers; living in Walbrzych, Poland; not knowing she was Jewish until she was 10 years old and not admitting to it until she moved to Israel (seven years later) in 1957; visiting Germany and Poland after the war and going to Auschwitz, all of which was very difficult; wanting to stay in Israel but because of her parents, moving to the United States; the bitterness she still feels about having her entire extended family taken from her; the recurring nightmares and physical ailments that are all tension-related; and her current life in San Antonio, TX, where there are only a few survivors of her mother’s generation.

    Oral history interview with Hugh Jenkins

    Oral History

    Hugh Jenkins, born December 29, 1914 in Lester, England, describes being the youngest of eight siblings, whose father was a Welsh minister; working before World War II with Quakers and being a conscientious objector even before the war; moving to London, England in 1944 to take part in training at a Quaker institute; being sent to Antwerp, Belgium after the training to do relief work; going to Belsen, Germany on April 22, 1944, soon after the camp had been discovered and the horrific scene; the various response processes at the camp; setting up a hospital, known as the “new camp,” maintaining a first aid station, and finding food; eventually being sent to Poland to be in charge of another camp; how even now he has a sense of desolation in how war is used to settle problems; working as the overseas secretary for the British Friends Relief Service until 1948, when he went to Philadelphia, PA to work with the American Friends Service Committee; and being sent to Washington, DC to be the director of the Foreign Student Service Center.

    Oral history interview with Rene Edgar Tressler

    Oral History

    Rene Edgar Tressler, born April 16, 1927 in Strakonice, Czech Republic, describes his childhood in Strakonice; his parents and brother; escaping to Prague, Czech Republic to live with his grandparents; his brother’s selection to be on the Board of Elders at Theresienstadt; how Theresienstadt was used as a showcase for the Red Cross; his deportation to Auschwitz; his camp number; being moved to Birkenau; his movement to Blechhammer camp; his experiences on a death march in February 1945; his arrival at Buchenwald; reuniting with his parents and brother after the liberation; escaping Czechoslovakia in 1956; immigrating to the United States; and authoring several books.

    Oral history interview with Stefan Wohl

    Oral History

    Stefan Wohl, born February 4, 1934 in Vienna, Austria, discusses the Anschluss in 1938; leaving Vienna through Switzerland to Kraków, Poland; traveling with 14 family members in September 1939 to Jaroslav, Zloczow, and Kolomyja; being captured with his father in November 1939 while trying to cross the border; being released and going to Zloczow; being on a transport for six weeks with his mother, sister, and other relatives in July 1940; arriving in the Yakutsk, Siberia labor camp settlement; leaving in May 1941 by train through Moscow to Lvov where they were reunited with their father; the German invasion on June 22, 1941; going with his sister to a farm in Jaroslav; going to Budapest, Hungary via Monkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine) in the fall 1942; changing their name to Wolinski and pretending to be Catholic; going to Leanyfalu in 1943 and staying for a year; the family going to Seged (Szeged), Hungary; being captured and jailed; being released and staying with an uncle in Budapest; his father’s illness; being liberated by Russians in January 1945; going back to Poland in the spring 1945; going to Sweden in the summer 1946; sailing to Brazil in October 1946; attending school and a university in the United States; and being a film producer in Brazil.

    Oral history interview with Yehuda Adam

    Oral History

    Yehuda Adam (né George Strn), born on July 3, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses being raised in a reform Jewish household; being put into forced labor in Budapest; receiving a Schutzpasse and his family working for Raoul Wallenberg; being liberated by the Soviets in January 15, 1945; going to Palestine in 1949; going to the United States in 1962; and living in both Israel and the US.

    Oral history interview with Arlette de Long

    Oral History

    Arlette de Long, born June 15, 1937 in Brocourt, Somme, France; describes her parents’ medical practice; her early love of the church and uncertainly whether her family was Jewish; villagers’ willingness to maintain friendship with the family because her father was the only physician in the village; having no memory of life before the war; the liberation of France; moving to a suburb of Paris, where she attended Protestant churches rather than synagogue; father’s unwillingness to discuss the Holocaust; her own reluctance to discuss the Holocaust until her sixteen year old daughter insisted that she talk about it; moving to the United States; her work as a psychotherapist for underprivileged children; and her feeling that her story is one of hope, compassion, and gratitude.

    Oral history interview with Eva Adam

    Oral History

    Eva Adam, born September 3, 1932 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her Orthodox Jewish family; her family’s awareness of what was happening to European Jews; their reluctance to leave Hungary; her father and brother’s membership in the Jewish Legion; serving as adjunct personnel to the Hungarian Army; changes in their lives in the late 1930s and early 1940s; her family’s unawareness of concentration camps before 1944; the Arrow Cross Party taking over the Hungarian police; deteriorating conditions for Jews; the murder of Jews at the Danube River; conditions in the ghetto; her post-liberation search for family members; finding that only three of her thirty-six family members survived Auschwitz; leaving Budapest in 1949; living in Israel and then the United States in 1961; her plans to return to Israel in the future; her pride in being a Jew and a Hungarian; the value in caring about others; and her strong work ethic as an explanation of why she was able to survive.

    Oral history interview with Herbert Bitter

    Oral History

    Herbert Jerome Bitter, born August 4, 1919 in New York City, discusses his parents who were Romanian immigrants; growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Manhattan; becoming more religious during his service in the United Sates Army from 1943 to 1945; his experiences at Ohrdruf in 1945 soon after the Germans evacuated the camp; seeing three U.S. generals, Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton, at the camp on April 5, 1945; the generals’ return visit on April 12, 1945 with photographers; how the freed inmates at Ohrdruf were eager to tell their stories to the American liberators; the effect of witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust had on his Jewish identity; and his reluctance to talk about his experiences during the war, especially to children.

    Oral history interview with Rachel Goldfarb

    Oral History

    Rachel Goldfarb, born December 2, 1930 in Poland (now Dokshytsy, Belarus), discusses her life following her liberation by the Russians and her time living in the forests near Bialystok, Poland with her mother; working and living on Russian trains; traveling to Prussia to find shelter provided by various Jewish organizations and the Red Cross; traveling to Italy’s southern coast; attempting to board a ship to Palestine but being blockaded by British authorities; eventually getting to New York City in November 1947 after two and a half years in Italy; visiting Washington, DC after graduation from high school; taking a job with the District Court; attending George Washington University at night; meeting her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, and marrying in 1952; raising two children, both of whom are architects; finally visiting Israel; her good life in the United States; and her advice about valuing what you have in life.

    Oral history interview with Tania Rozmaryn

    Oral History

    Tania Rozmaryn, born on June 16, 1928 in Vilnius, Poland (present day Lithuania), discusses her family as strong Zionists; the changes that took place after the German occupation; family’s escape towards the eastern Russian border; working in the house of an SS officer and being offered guidance on survival; frightening years in the Kovno ghetto; going into hiding until 1944 when the ghetto was liquidated; her deportation with her mother to Stutthof; her mother’s struggles and strategies, trying to make her look less like a child so that she would be chosen for work; being sent to various work camps until March 1945 when they were liberated by the Russians and taken to Central Poland to a displaced persons camp; being sent to Germany with false documents to a kibbutz in Munich; going to the American Zone and teaching at a school in Bergen-Belsen in 1947; getting married in 1949; immigrating to the United States in 1950; graduating summa cum laude from the Teacher’s Institute and receiving an M.A. from Queens College in 1960; moving to Maryland in 1990 where she received an M.S. in Marriage and Family Counseling; nightmares about her Holocaust experiences; and her feelings about her Jewish faith.

    Oral history interview with Peter Phillips

    Oral History

    Ernst Pieter Philipps, born December 5, 1931 in Essen, Germany, describes his twin brothers, who were three years younger; moving to Prague, Czech Republic in 1936 because of his father’s position with his company; life in Prague, which was normal until the Germans occupied Prague beginning April 1939; moving to Genoa, Italy and spending six months there; relocating by an Italian steamer to Quito, Ecuador, where living conditions were rather primitive and where at their second address they experienced antisemitism for the first time; spending two years in Ecuador; relocating to New York City, NY, where the instances of antisemitism directed at him were violent and ugly; his parents moving back to Rotterdam by 1950 while he remained behind in the house his parents had bought in Queens; attending City College of New York for five years and in 1955 joining the US Army and being sent to Germany where, among other duties, he worked as a teacher and Boy Scout leader for American and German boys; after leaving the Army, working first for the New York Times, a newspaper in Danbury, CT, and Business Week magazine; going to Washington, DC to work for McGraw Hill for 20 years; his experiences as a volunteer at the USHMM; and how he believes his experiences as a Jew have affected his outlook.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Ichiuji

    Oral History

    Joseph Ichiuji describes his parents as having immigrated to the US in the early 1900s; his father being a truck farmer and then owning a shoe repair business; working in a fish cannery and living in Fresno, CA until Executive Order 9066, which required that all Japanese Americans be evacuated to internment camps; being sent by train and truck to Flagstaff, Arizona, where they were assigned to barracks number three of the internment camp at Poston, AZ; conditions at the camp, which was run like an army installation with strict regimentation; volunteering for the 442 Combat Team, formed in 1943 and consisting solely of Japanese American soldiers who had families living in internment camps; fighting in Italy at the front lines north of Rome; liberating Livorno, Italy; helping liberate a subcamp of Dachau; conditions of prisoners still alive at the camp; helping two Lithuanian prisoners reconnect with important people in their lives; going home in December 1945 to find his parents released from the internment camp; helping his father with his business until May 1946 when he went to Washington, DC, where he worked in government service for 37 years; and the reunion of Japanese American soldiers in Los Angeles, CA, which a few of the survivors of Dachau attended.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Horowitz

    Oral History

    Ruth Horowitz (née Salzburg), born March 23, 1930 in Hamburg, Germany, describes her Polish parents Isaac Salzberg and Rose R. Kleinert and her sister; life in Hamburg, where they lived until November 1938; leaving Hamburg two days before Kristallnacht; how Hamburg was very open to Jews until Hitler’s regime, though she experienced many instances of antisemitism; being fascinated with the 1936 Olympics; how her father’s efforts to leave Germany began in 1936 and finally succeeded when he dramatically threatened to commit suicide at the US Consul if the visas were not granted; how crossing the Atlantic was very difficult, with cold and seasickness, but they arrived and went to Detroit, MI for a short while, then to New York City, NY, and finally to Washington, DC; learning to speak English by going to lots of movies; her father’s death at age 54; her mother’s transformation from being a housewife to running her husband’s jewelry business after he died; the wartime antisemitism, the problem of quotas, the Nuremburg trials, and the State of Israel; getting married in 1950; traveling to Germany in 1995; and her views on present day Germany.

    Oral history interview with Hermann Kosak

    Oral History

    Hermann Kosak, born May 2, 1924 in Vienna, Austria, describes his younger sister, Margaret; how antisemitism was pervasive and being involved in instances of physical violence as early as kindergarten; the growth of the Nazi movement in Austria; the Anschluss in March 1938; seeing Hitler arriving in Vienna in his car; how quickly the Jews were affected by the Nazi’s changes; Kristallnacht and being arrested the next morning; trying to get out of Vienna at age 14 and finally getting to Brussels, Belgium with his mother; the Germans attack on Belgium; how enrolling in art school after the invasion was the most important thing he did; learning survival, watchfulness, and self-reliance at age 16; beginning a diary on May 9, 1940, describing daily life, and keeping the diary until three weeks before liberation; how out of 50 family members, 43 were killed in camps; finally getting visas for him and his sister in November 1947 by forcing his way into the US Embassy and leaving for the United States; arriving in New York City, NY; being a painting instructor; being drafted, released to Reserves, working for a while, and being called back for the Korean War; being married and eventually getting a job with Boeing as an illustrator; and his views on the effects of the Holocaust on humanity.

    Oral history interview with Dolly Bestandig

    Oral History

    Dolly Bestandig (née Hirsch), born July 24, 1939 in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, discusses her family, which had been in Lithuania for 11 generations; her father, who was a mathematical engineer, and her mother, who was a concert pianist; how her parents were both very religious and wealthy; being sent to the Vilna ghetto, the hardship of which marked the beginning of her mother’s psychological changes; the presence of 90 members of her mother’s family in the ghetto; how at age five, after living in the Minsk ghetto, she and her mother were sent to Auschwitz, where her mother managed to save her life by hiding her in a garbage can during the day while her mother worked; being moved to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and father after four months, where she was again hidden in a garbage can every day until liberation on April 15, 1945 by English soldiers; being sent to Sweden for medical care; being hospitalized in Gothenburg and then in Stockholm, where surgery on her palate was performed; leaving Sweden in 1947 and going to New York, where an uncle met her family; going to Mexico City, where two uncles were waiting; how her mother’s psychological state was deteriorating and she died in 1958; having flashbacks to her life in the camps; going to the Margaret Sanger Institute in New York City in 1967, where she received counseling help and tuberculosis was found throughout her body; recovering and adopting two children; being the Sub-Director of Hebrew instruction at the Yeshiva in Mexico City; and her feelings about her survival.

    Oral history interview with Goldie Gendelman

    Oral History

    Goldie Gendelman, born November 17, 1933 in Lechowichi (possibly Lyakhavichy, Belarus), Poland near Baranowichi (possibly Baranovichi, Belarus), discusses her parents, Chaim and Chana Wolochiwianski; growing up in an extremely Orthodox family; being raised to speak Polish and Yiddish; her family’s attempt to immigrate to the United States; how she and her family made it to Cuba and stayed there for 11 years; living in Regla, Cuba; her struggles to communicate in Spanish; being run over by a bus in Cuba; how she and her family finally were able to immigrate to the United States in 1948; her paternal uncle in the United States who assisted with the immigration process; her experience with antisemitism in Poland and Cuba; graduating from high school in the United States; volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and her feelings about leaving Poland, living in Cuba, and starting a new life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rhoda Kuflik

    Oral History

    Rhoda Kuflik (née Ruzenka Husen), born in October 1937 in Kitev, Poland (now Kuty, Ukraine), describes living in the Kuty ghetto; escaping to Romania and hiding there; being liberated by the Soviets; and immigrating to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with William Hess

    Oral History

    William Hess was born William Verna on August 8, 1921 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was an only child and lived a pleasant life there. Despite the Nuremberg laws, he was permitted to continue his schooling as his father served during World War I. Nevertheless, they lost the service of their maid. William experienced little anti-Semitism in Germany but knew that Hitler made anti-Semitic speeches and had newspaper articles written against the Jews. His father's business suffered little from the boycotting but he sold it in 1938. Anti-Semitism was more severe in the outlying towns than in Stuttgart. William studied English for two years before immigrating to Danville, Illinois with his uncle's assistance in 1937. He had difficulty adjusting to the US so had an English tutor. Additionally, he had difficulty living on his wages of $12.50 as $9 went toward room and board and he also had to cover tutoring and transportation expenses. Kristallnacht and his father's internment in Dachau influenced his parents to leave Germany in 1939 for Danville.

    Oral history interview with Jutta Levy

    Oral History

    Jutta Levy, born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany, describes growing up in a pleasant upper middle class family in a large Jewish community; listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio and seeing him on a school field trip; witnessing Nazi book burning; learning of the death of Hindenburg; drastic changes in Germany after 1933; living in fear as children were taken from school and acquaintances disappeared; father’s dramatic pleading for visas to leave Germany; obtaining passage on the last train from Hamburg on November 6, 1938; traveling to Paris, France and then to Cherbourg, France, from which her family sailed to New York on the Queen Mary; arriving on November 11, 1938; learning about life in concentration camps from family members who survived the Holocaust; and her return to Hamburg and visit to Bergen-Belsen as an adult.

    Oral history interview with Wolfgang Mueller

    Oral History

    Wolfgang Mueller, born in Hanover, Germany on March 10, 1919, discusses his father’s role as a leader in the Jewish community and being head of B’nai B’rith; being aware of the Nazis at an early stage and seeing posters on kiosks denouncing Jews; refusing to say “Heil Hitler” in school and being advised by the principal to leave the country; going to London, England the summer after his Bar Mitzvah (1932); attending Ewell School and going back to Germany on vacations, pretending he was English; attending Cranbrook School with funding from a relative, Max Nordhaus, in the United States; receiving an affidavit from Nordhaus and getting a visa to the US; arriving in the US July 26, 1936 and moving to New Mexico; his mother and sister emigrating; hearing about Kristallnacht; being drafted in September 1941 and being sent to Florida; being in the Signal Corps; applying to officer’s candidate school and being in a group that called themselves the fighting 614s; being made into an MP after his superiors found out he was from Germany; being stationed in Tampa, FL and Jacksonville, FL; getting his American citizenship; volunteering to go overseas; being stationed in England as a technical supply sergeant and a liaison with the RAF; working after V-E Day in the Air Technical Intelligence Office; interrogating prisoners in Czechoslovakia and Austria and engineers at Zeiss works; being in Nordhausen for an hour; translating V-2 documents; being discharged on January 11, 1947; getting married; working in the meat business, real estate, and as a wholesale fish company; being proud to be Jewish; and his dedication to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Klari Rudnai

    Oral History

    Klari Rudnai (née Takacs), born May 19, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her well-to-do family that was not at all religious; her older sister; her father, who was her hero, and her strict mother; how their cook was instrumental in saving their lives by getting counterfeit papers with non-Jewish names for them and by bringing them food as they hid in a one-room apartment in 1944; moving to a nice hotel and having to go to the hotel’s underground bunkers during all the bombing for almost nine months; her father’s seven siblings, who were all sent to Auschwitz; going back to the hotel, the Vadasqur, until it too was bombed; moving to a new villa in 1946; how when she was 19 years she was picked up by Russian soldiers in a jeep and had to fight her way out of an attack by them and was saved by American soldiers who took her to the hospital for a few days; marrying an American soldier and wanting to go to the United States; finishing high school; how the solitary military life and moving a lot to odd places didn’t suit her; divorcing her husband and moving back to Washington, DC; getting married in 1960 to a Jewish doctor, who had been in many concentration camps and was instrumental in getting her interested in her Jewish religion; volunteering at the USHMM in the Archives and Volunteer Services; enjoying all parts of talking to people and the volunteers in her job; and reading a lot of books and newspapers about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jill Pauly

    Oral History

    Jill Pauly, born May 1, 1933 in Cologne, Germany, describes her large, very well-to-do country family; the efforts of her grandmother and uncle to get money to Holland and make arrangements for the family to get to Kenya, where they bought two cattle farms that eventually were very successful; wanting a more orthodox Jewish life after the war; moving to New York City then moving to Vineland, NJ; her family buying a chicken farm, which was destroyed by a hurricane in 1952; the death of her father when he was 66 years old; her mother being her guiding light in terms of religious practice; attending the Pierce School of Business in Philadelphia, PA; working for the Quakers and then for a synagogue; getting her real estate license at the University of Maryland; her two adopted children; retiring in December 1993 from real estate; volunteering at the USHMM in Visitors’ Services and in the Office of Survivor Relations; having very strong feelings about people having access to the Museum; and some of the artifacts that she’s donated to the Museum.

    Oral history interview with Jack Reuben

    Oral History

    Jack Ruben was born Yaakov Ruben on December 8, 1921 in Cincinnati, Ohio and after six months the family moved to LA. He was the only child to Joseph and Sarah Basha Ruben who came from Russia and were not religious. His mother was a garment worker and his father sold fruits and vegetables in a horse and cart in the local area. Due to an eye condition, Jack went to a health camp for a year. Jack's father left the family in 1927 and since lost track of him. Jack was placed in foster homes until the 11th grade and would visit his mother on the weekends. He graduated from high school and worked his way through UCLA by working part-time. In summer of '43 Jack volunteered for the Air Corps and was sent to Pomona College for nine months to study meteorology. He was not picked to be a meteorology officer so joined the infantry and was selected to be a coding clerk. He went to several camps and was shipped to Le Havre. His division had little information of the overall war and no details of concentration camps. From there he was part of the effort to form a bridge over the Moselle and next in a major assault at the Rhine River. Jack was in the Division furthest east in Germany which took many German prisoners as they quickly drove east. His company going east and meeting a surrendering German battalion who were permitted to march on their own. His company formed perimeters around villages and often stayed overnight in a civilian's home. They went through a rural area and saw dead prisoners and dead horses along the road without understanding the situation. They reached Ohrdruf Concentration Camp and saw a few emaciated prisoners leaving and many dead bodies piled up or laying on the ground. Jack did not realize it was a concentration camp at the time or that others existed until later when he returned to the US. The Army newspaper did not publish such information. From there, they went to the Czech border for 3 months which they guarded until VE Day. Then Jack was relocated to a relocation camp near Paris until Christmas '45 when he was shipped home and arrived in NY on New Year's Day '46. He was discharged and married a second time as his first wife was killed in an auto accident. Subsequently, he received a BA in economics, MA in family counseling and PhD in psychology and has practiced 10 years in the field. He has four children. Jack still does not understand how the crimes in the concentration camps could have been performed by fellow human beings.

    Oral history interview with David Bayer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tilda Finzi Cohen

    Oral History

    Tilda Finzi Cohen (née Mazel Tov “Tilda” Finzi) born in Split, Yugoslavia on July 11, 1933, discusses Germans passing through their city in early 1941; her father getting called into the army and returning after one month; the Italians occupying Split, closing businesses and setting a curfew; not being permitted to go to school and the formation of community Jewish schools in different locations around city; her uncle being imprisoned and bringing him food; the Italian capitulation in September 1943; her family joining other people fleeing to partisans in the mountains; going with her mother to Brac Island, to Vis Island; sailing to Bari two days before Yom Kippur; living in a camp then a private house; the Germans dropping gas bombs on ships on December 2, 1943; her family moving to a village near Bari and attending school; attending a Seder arranged by the Jewish Brigade in Bitonto, Italy in the spring of 1944; how after the war their relatives told them of the camps and atrocities and advised them not to return to Split; her family moving to Milan, Italy in 1948; her family immigrating to the United States in 1950; finishing high school and attending college; getting married; and feeling that she is not a part of any country and that she lost her childhood.

    Oral history interview with Zwi Golombek

    Oral History

    Zwi Golombek, born in Warsaw, Poland on September 15, 1934, describes his father’s large construction business; the formation of the Warsaw ghetto and his family moving into one room on Nowolipki Street; his father’s ability to exit and enter the ghetto because he possessed building permits; being aware of danger and seeing beatings; his father striking a German guard in early 1942 and being taken to a ghetto prison then Treblinka; his Uncle Mietek placing him with the Abramzuc family in Jozefow, Poland and his mother and sister disappearing from the ghetto two weeks later; staying hidden for three years and his uncle visiting often and playing the family to hide him; being called Henyek; his uncle placing him in a kibbutzim in Poland and Germany after the war; going to Israel on October 6, 1948; working in Tel Aviv and joining the Israeli army in 1952; fighting war in 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982; getting married; and his two sons.

    Oral history interview with Samuel B. Hagner

    Oral History

    Samuel Hagner, born November 1, 1925 in Philadelphia, PA, discusses his Quaker parents; becoming a Quaker member at age 14; going to a Quaker work camp; being told about antisemitic events in Europe by a Jewish friend named Doris Weil and not believing her; his brother being a conscientious objector and working in a forestry camp during war; attending Oberlin College; being inducted into the army in January 1944 as a 1-A-O; training as a medical corpsman; sailing to Europe in December 1944; joining 7th Army in Germany and moving as the front moved; being made an armed guard at a billet even though he refused to carry a gun; going by truck to help liberate Dachau; the overwhelming experiences of seeing Dachau and feeling anger towards the SS guards; staying in the camp for one week; wavering about being a conscientious objector and writing to Doris to tell her she was right; going to a German hospital with nuns; going to France and the war ending before he was deployed to the Philippines; becoming a scrub nurse during plastic surgery on war victims in Indiana; being discharged and returning to college in the fall of 1946; practicing psychiatry for adults; living with his Dachau experience but not being at peace with it; and his continued abhorrence of war.

    Oral history interview with Werner E. Michel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guta Jacobson

    Oral History

    Guta Jacobson (née Rogowitz), born on April 23, 1925 in Łódź, Poland, discusses her early life in Łódź; relations between Jews and Christians; her activity in a Zionist organization; various holiday celebrations; the German invasion of Poland and the implementation of Nazi race laws; food shortages; the establishment of the Łódź ghetto; her family’s indecision on whether or not to flee; life in the ghetto; losing her faith in God after seeing her parents give up their children; her father’s disappearance; the typhus epidemic; hearing rumors of Chelmno and Auschwitz; hiding from the liquidation of the ghetto and their eventual deportation to Auschwitz in August of 1944; her immediate understanding of what was happening in the camp; Dr. Josef Mengele taking her mother away; being transported to a camp in Birnbäumel, Germany (now Gruszeczka, Poland), to work digging anti-tank trenches; the differing conditions of various camps; hiding in the woods during a death march; her return to a liberated Łódź; marrying her husband; her reunion with her sister who had been recuperating in Sweden after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen; immigrating to the United States; the birth of her children; the death of her husband; her avoidance of discussing her experiences with her children when they were young; her motivations for sharing her story now; and her hopes that the world will never forget.

    Oral history interview with Helen Luksenburg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with William Luksenburg

    Oral History

    William Luksenburg describes going on a death march from Regensburg, Germany to Lebenau, Germany; a German farmer picking him up from the road, where he fell; being brought by the farmer to American troops stationed in the nearby town of Laufen, where he was treated for malnutrition; his cousin coming to the same camp a few months later; returning with his cousin to Bayreuth, Germany, where there were other family members; reuniting in Prague with his future wife, Helen, whom he met in the Blechhammer work camp; getting married in 1947; receiving money and support from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; attending a technical school organized by the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training; immigrating to the United States in September 1949 with Helen; and becoming a mechanic and starting his own business. [Note: This interview focuses on the interviewee’s post-Holocaust experiences. There is an earlier interview focusing on the interviewee’s Holocaust experience. This interview can be accessed by requesting RG-50.030*140.]

    Oral history interview with Rose Weisfeld

    Oral History

    Rose Weisfeld (née Friedman), born on March 28, 1914 in Radom, Poland, discusses her early life and schooling; social integration between Jews and Christians at home and at school; keeping Jewish customs and traditions at home; her religious education; her brothers’ conscription in the Polish army; being badly injured and hospitalized for a year; her family’s forced relocation to the Radom ghetto; her father’s death; the liquidation of the ghetto; doing factory work; being transported to Auschwitz via cattle car; the process of selections; being transported to Ravensbrück in 1944; being liberated by Swedish soldiers and their compassion; weighing 32 pounds at liberation; her hospitalization in Denmark and Sweden; finding work in a factory and regaining her humanity; her marriage in Sweden to another survivor; the birth of her children; finding her brother through the Red Cross after four years; immigrating to the United States to be with her brother; the difficulties of adjusting to life in the US; and the importance of raising her children with Jewish traditions.

    Oral history interview with Ruth E. Greifer

    Oral History

    Ruth Greifer (née Dahl), born May 30, 1922 in Geilenkirchen (near Aachen), Germany, discusses her father, who was a cattle dealer, and her Dutch mother; attending a private Catholic school and experiencing antisemitism but being treated well by the nuns; how the plaque on father’s business was shattered in 1938; moving to Valkenburg, Holland in the spring of 1938; Germans occupying the city on May 10, 1940 and her family hiding in catacombs during the bombing; having to wear the yellow star and obey curfew; her father’s business being taken away; the Germans ordering them to leave in June 1942, but she was allowed to stay because she was sick; her brother and two aunts being taken to Auschwitz; how a Mr. Jansen from the underground arranged for she and her parents to go into hiding; going to a coal miner’s house, while her parents went to another; being thought of as a risk and being relocated to a doctor’s house to be a maid; going into hiding at the Robertson’s house near Treebeek and Hoensbroek with another Jewish woman; getting money from the underground organization; hearing about the June 1944 invasion; going to a house in Treebeek; the heavy bombing in the city and hiding in a potato bin for three days; being liberated September 17, 1944; returning to her parents in Valkenburg; the loss of all of her mother’s Dutch family; sailing to the United states in the spring of 1948; settling with her sister in Pittsburgh, PA; getting married April 8, 1951 and having three daughters; moving to Washington, DC in 1957; and her feelings about Germany.

    Oral history interview with Nesse Godin

    Oral History

    Nesse Godin (née Galperin), born on March 28, 1928 in Siaulai, Lithuania, discusses her life after the war; being liberated by the Russians in Chynowie (known as Chinow in German) near Wejherowo, Poland on March 10, 1945; suffering from typhoid and dysentery and weighing 65 pounds; joining her mother and brother in Feldafing DP camp; going to ORT and UNRRA sponsored classes; getting married to Jack Godin, who had escaped from the Vilna Ghetto and whose family was killed in Ponary; having her first child in Munich, Germany; immigrating to United States in 1950 and settling in Washington, DC; becoming a citizen in 1955 and working as a dressmaker for 26 years; raising her children; sharing her Holocaust experience; working with the UJA, Jewish Community Council and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the US Holocaust Memorial Council; working on projects at USHMM, including the “Remember the Children” exhibit, the ID project, and within the education and development departments; and her thoughts on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Maryla Korn

    Oral History

    Maryla Korn (née Orgel), born on June 10, 1938 in Kraków, Poland, discusses going with her mother first to Wieliczka and then to Bochnia between late 1940 and early 1941; hiding with a peasant family but crying so much that she was returned to her mother; going to a ghetto in Bochnia at the end of 1941; her mother working outside the ghetto in a factory; taking messages outside the ghetto and bringing back food; leaving the ghetto in June 1943 and separating from her mother; carrying diamonds and money, but no luggage and bribing Germans and the Judenrat; traveling by truck to the border then by foot at night; being guided by paid partisans; her grandfather being shot at Bochnia cemetery, her grandmother being taken to Auschwitz, and her uncle being taken to Belzec in the summer of 1942; being by Czech collaborators in Kosice, Slovakia; being released and proceeding to Hungary with help from the Joint; being caught and sent to a prison in Budapest and the Joint getting her out; going to Usod, Hungary in the fall of 1943 and staying there until April 1944 under name of Orglowska; living as a Christian; being treated for gangrene in her leg; the roundup of Hungarian Jews in April 1944; her mother stealing passes and going to Budapest; staying with a Jewish Polish friend and then going to Bucharest, Romania with help from the Joint; almost boarding two different ships in Constanta, Romania going to Palestine, one of which (the Merkur) sank and the other ended up in Cyprus; being liberated by the Russians in the spring of 1945; going to Budapest and staying in a children’s home while her mother went back to Poland to check on family; her mother setting up a business in Vienna, Austria with an uncle; her father returning traumatized from the war; going to Brussels, Belgium in the winter of 1946-1947; going to Israel in 1951; living in both Israel and Brussels until immigrating to the United states in May 1961; getting married in June 1961 to David Korn, who is also a survivor; visiting her parents in Germany; and her work translating for USHMM.

    Oral history interview with Michel Margosis

    Oral History

    Michel Margosis, born in Brussels, Belgium on September 2, 1928, discusses immigrating to the United States in 1943; being taken in by father’s cousin in Brooklyn, then to foster home; his parents coming to the US in 1946; graduating from high school in 1947; graduating with honors from Brooklyn College in 1951; enlisting in the army and being sent to Germany as an interpreter but requesting to be transferred; becoming a medic near Verdun; feeling very American, but did not speak about his childhood with other soldiers; his feeling about Germany; working at USHMM with the Speakers Bureau and translating materials; speaking about his past; and being featured in the book “The Triumphant Spirit” by Nicholas del Calzo.

    Oral history interview with Lena Jurand

    Oral History

    Lena Jurand (Salzberg), born in Przemysl, Poland on September 13, 1917, discusses being an only child, educated in a Catholic school then at a music conservatory; meeting her husband Julian Jurand in 1931 and getting married in May 1940; living in the Russian part of town; her father being chosen for the Judenrat when the Germans took over; Jews having to give up jewelry and wear a star; the ghetto being formed in July 1942; moving with parents and in-laws from Lvov; working in a factory disinfecting uniforms; her father being taken away and how she went to the Gestapo headquarters and saved him from deportation to Auschwitz; meeting a Polish woman in the factory who offered to hide her and Julian; hiding for 22 months in room off of kitchen in a woman’s apartment; being liberated by Russians in August 1944; living in an apartment with her husband and cousins; living in Munich, Germany with UNRRA staff of the Neu Freimann DP Camp; teaching music to child survivors in camp for one year; moving to Genoa, Italy, where Julian practiced medicine; visiting her uncle for six months in New York, NY; going to the United States in 1951; living in New Jersey, where Julian worked in state hospital as a psychiatrist; and Julian becoming the clinical director at St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C.

    Oral history interview with Wallace Witkowski

    Oral History

    Wallace A. Witkowski, born January 12, 1928 in Kielce, Poland, discusses his escape from Poland on a ship to Goteborg, Sweden in 1948; going to the United States; how his sister was caught by the communists and imprisoned; his struggle to find his father who had immigrated to the United States earlier; settling in Detroit, Michigan and adjusting to American life; how his mother and sister arrived in the U.S. later; attending high school and then Wayne State University; getting married in 1951; working as a radio disc jockey using the on-air name Jan Alexander; earning a law degree; working in Washington, DC and traveling between the United States and Poland; working for the Federal Trade Commission; living and working in Micronesia; his thoughts on religion and how the Holocaust affected him; his identity as a Catholic; his work as a translator; and his work with the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

    Oral history interview with Peter Masters

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lena Gitter

    Oral History

    Lena Gitter (née Lieba Rosenblatt), born in 1905 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her life after the Holocaust; immigrating to the US in July 1938 with her husband and small daughter; her husband who worked as a physician; feeling guilty for many years about having escaped Vienna before the Holocaust; her long involvement with the Montessori schools both in Vienna and the United States; the Montessori method; working with people in Mississippi under Johnson’s War on Poverty program; the death of her husband in 1974; her plan to donate her collection of early childhood education materials to a library in Vienna; working under several Presidents of the United States.

    Oral history interview with Jacob Wiener

    Oral History

    Jacob Wiener (né Koppel G. Zwienicki), born March 25, 1917 in Bremen, Germany, discusses his experiences in the United States after World War II; the reaction to the war by the American media; his wife’s experience on the Kindertransport; his memories of watching Nazi war crime trials on television; his thoughts on Israel and Palestine; the Eichmann trial; how he was involved with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from its founding; Holocaust education in American schools; antisemitism in the United States; and how he founded a school for mentally disabled children in the 1950s.

    Oral history interview with Noah Roitman

    Oral History

    Noah Roitman, born in Baranowicze, Poland (Baranavichy, Belarus) on January 10, 1923, discusses his religious upbringing and schooling; being very athletic; receiving warnings from his Christian friends in November 1938; his town being under Soviet rule in 1939; people being deported and his house being burned down; the German invasion on June 27, 1941; the formation of a ghetto on December 12, 1941; wearing the yellow star and working in arms factory; joining the resistance group of Mome Kopelovitz; the first action in the ghetto in March 1942; joining the partisans led by Pougatchov in the forest in August 1942; his activities sabotaging trains and bringing others out of ghetto (saving approximately 80 people); being sent to Pinsk, Belarus in late 1943; joining a group led by Major Igor, attacking trains; being ordered into Russian Army in Slutsk, Belarus in December 1943; fighting Germans and seeing Warsaw destroyed; being wounded by a sniper outside of Berlin, Germany; running a canteen for the Russian Army at the end of the war; returning to Poland; helping Jews get to Czechoslovakia; being captured and jailed, but escaping to Łódź, Poland; meeting his wife; traveling through Germany and France to get to Israel; being detained in Cyprus for 3 to 4 months; having a construction business in Israel; and immigrating to the United States in October 1963.

    Oral history interview with Richard W. Peterson

    Oral History

    Richard W. Peterson, born September 29, 1925 in Iowa, discusses his family’s Danish background; growing up in a Baptist family; first learning about the war in Europe and his family’s concern for Denmark; antisemitism in Iowa; hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor; his involvement with ROTC and Boy Scouts; attending Drake University; joining the Army Specialized Training Reserve Program (ASTRP); reporting to Fort Crook for the reserve program and then to Camp Dodge in Iowa; being sworn into the U.S. Army; training at Camp Livingston in Louisiana with the 86th Blackhawk division; being assigned to A Company, 342nd Infantry; being sent to Le Havre, France; traveling through France, the Netherlands, and Germany; fighting in a battle in Attendorn, Germany; entering what appeared to be a factory in Attendorn and seeing starving people there; the reaction of his comrades to seeing the prisoners; the liberation of Auschwitz; being sent to the Philippines from September 1945 to March 1946; finishing his degree at the University of Iowa; graduating from law school in 1951; getting married; his father’s appointment to the Iowa Supreme Court; how he was a United States Magistrate Judge; his three children; and how he feels about American current events, politics, and world news.

    Oral history interview with Riane Gruss

    Oral History

    Riane Gruss (née Wohl), born on August 18, 1932 in Vienna, Austria, describes her father, who was a banker in Kraków, Poland and an industrialist in Vienna, and how her parents lived half a year in each place; she and her siblings being raised by a governess in Vienna; being in Kraków on September 1, 1939; going to Jaroslav, where there was bombing, then to Zloczow and to Kolomyja; her father and brother being captured at the border and her brother’s release; returning to Zloczow; being sent to Siberia by the Russians in July 1940; her younger brother getting scarlet fever; arriving in August 1940 near Yakutsk and Aldan and going to a labor camp; conditions in the camp; the hard physical labor for adults; how in April 1941 the NKVD said mothers and children could leave; their New York relatives getting them Bolivian passports; leaving in May and meeting her father in Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine); going to a farm in country for four months after the German invasion on June 22, 1941; her family following her uncle Joseph Stieglitz to Munkacs, Hungary (Mukacheve, Ukraine); getting Polish Christian papers; going to Budapest, Hungary; going to Szeged, Hungary, where her father had to be hospitalized; the children being hidden in the fall of 1944 in a caretaker’s house in Buda, Hungary; escaping when the Russians arrived and reuniting with her parents; going with her family to Mako, Hungary for four weeks then to Vienna; her parents returning to Kraków; going with a smuggler to Brno, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) and then joining her parents in Kraków; going with her family to Stockholm, Sweden; going to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in October 1946; going to New York, in February 1951; and getting married in December 195 and having two children.

    Oral history interview with Regina Spiegel

    Oral History

    Regina Spiegel, (née Gutman) born May 12, 1926 in Radom, Poland, discusses her post-war experiences starting with her liberation; traveling with 3,000 other female prisoners by train from Elsnig, Germany to Dachau, Germany; how the train stopped on the way to Dachau because the railway line had been bombed; how the train itself was bombed by the Allies while stopped on the tracks; being able to escape during the bombing; traveling with 15 other women by horse and buggy to Poland; sleeping in German homes while traveling to Poland; avoiding large groups of Russian soldiers; promising her mother and her boyfriend that if they were separated during the war, they would meet in Radom, Poland; how she and her friends boarded a train in Poznań, Poland without any money; meeting a man on the train with whom she had been imprisoned in Pionki, Poland; returning to Radom where she was told that returning Jews were being killed; returning to the Radom Ghetto, where many displaced persons were gathering; writing her name on a list of displaced persons in the Radom Ghetto; traveling from Radom to Kozienice to reunite with her boyfriend, Sam; leaving Poland with Sam and traveling by train to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); traveling with the Joint Distribution Committee from Prague to Pilsen, Czech Republic and then to Germany; staying with Sam in the displaced persons camp Föhrenwald; her marriage to Sam in 1946; moving to Stuttgart, Germany, where she learned to be a seamstress through ORT classes; her involvement with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York; her religious beliefs and how they changed throughout the war; moving to Washington, DC; how she and Sam learned to speak English; working as a seamstress before giving birth to a daughter in August 1951; her thoughts on the Yugoslavian conflict; her work with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum during its early development; her activity with the Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Friends of Greater Washington; returning with Sam to Auschwitz in 1975; speaking publically about the Holocaust; receiving an award from the United Jewish Appeal; and how she and Sam take groups of 16 to 18 year olds to Poland and Israel through the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization.

    Oral history interview with Charles Stein

    Oral History

    Charles Stein (né Karl Robert Stein), born in Vienna, Austria, on November 28, 1919, describes his childhood; attending medical school at the University of Vienna; immigrating to the United States and arriving on December 18, 1939; his draft into the army on October 7, 1941; discovering that his parents had gone into the Łódź ghetto; training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; going to Normandy, France with the 9th Infantry Division as the commander of a prisoner-of-war interrogation team; helping to liberate Nordhausen and interrogating its Ukrainian guards; becoming an Army captain and then the chief of the translation section in the Office of Military History at the Pentagon; serving in Korea and Tokyo for five years; marrying an Air Force lieutenant in Tokyo; returning to the US and settling in Washington, DC; working for the Air Force Intelligence and for the State Department until his retirement in 1978; serving as a foreign service officer and being responsible for the resettlement of refugees in Europe; and writing about his experiences during the war.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

    Hannah Kalman (née Hannah Finer Kalmanowicz), born in 1912 in Opoczno, Poland and describes her family; moving to Łódź, Poland when she was 12 and joining a Zionist organization; meeting her husband in the Zionist organization and getting married in 1937; moving into the Łódź ghetto in 1939; living with her son, sister, and nephew in a small room with bad conditions; being deported with her family on one of the last transports out of the Łódź ghetto; never seeing her son and nephew again after their arrival at Auschwitz; her transport to Waldeslust, Germany, where she did hard labor; going on a death march to Bergen-Belsen; conditions in the camp; being liberated with her sister on April 15, 1945; the death of her sister two months after liberation; traveling around Poland looking for relatives; reuniting with her husband later in Poland; moving to Germany and having a son; immigrating to the United States; settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania; having a daughter; and living in Israel for a short time but ultimately settling in the United States for medical treatment.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosen

    Oral History

    Morris Rosen, born on November 10, 1922 in Częstochowa, Poland, describes his family; being forced to paint rooms for German troops during the war; his deportation to Theresienstadt; being forced on a death march to Buchenwald; receiving help from the Red Cross after the war; traveling around Poland and Germany trying to find his sister; his time spent in displaced persons camps; his memories of the Nuremberg Trials; immigrating to the United States and settling in New York; the mental stress with which he dealt after the war; attending the international law program at Columbia; moving to Baltimore, Maryland in November, 1949; getting married in 1953; collecting items from the World War Two era; and his reflections on the state of antisemitism in today’s world.

    Oral history interview with Sam Spiegel

    Oral History

    Sam Spiegel, born in Kozienice, Poland on August 23, 1922, describes his family and childhood; being forced into a ghetto; his father’s involvement in the underground movement; working for the Judenrat and getting papers to leave the ghetto and get extra food; his deportation to Auschwitz in 1942; meeting his future wife in the camp; the Ukrainian camp guards; conditions in the camp and how inmates helped each other; going on a death march as the Allies neared Auschwitz; returning home and experiencing antisemitism; spending time in displaced persons camps; working for the United Nations Relief Organization and the Joint Distribution Committee after the war; getting married; immigrating to the United States; and returning to Europe to visit the concentration camps.

    Oral history interview with Fred Gutter

    Oral History

    Fred Gutter, born on December 25, 1926 in Sanok, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his memories of celebrating the Jewish holidays and Sabbath services; attending a high school and experiencing antisemitism; increasing persecution against Jews in the 1930s; moving to Lwów because of the difficulties his family faced; his family’s capture by Russian troops and living under Russian control; being released by the Russians at the end of the war and briefly returning to Sanok; staying in several displaced persons camps; reuniting with his father after the war; receiving aid from the Joint Distribution Committee; spending some time in Palestine and fighting in the 1948 war; immigrating to the United States in 1959; and his feelings about American politics.

    Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum

    Oral History

    Henry Greenbaum, born on April 1, 1928 in Starachowice, Poland, describes his family and childhood; his memories of his family celebrating the Jewish holidays; being too young to understand the persecution that was happening around him; his family deciding that one of his sisters should immigrate to the United States in 1937; the establishment of a ghetto in Starachowice; his deportation to a labor camp in October 1942; attempting to escape but getting severely wounded and having to stay in the camp; his transfers to Auschwitz and then Flossenbürg; going on a death march from Flossenbürg; his liberation by the U.S. Army on April 25, 1945; spending time in a displaced persons camp after the war until his sister in America could send papers for him and his brother; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; adjusting to life in America and finding a job at a department store; settling in the Washington metro area; and interacting with other Holocaust survivors who live in his community.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Alper

    Oral History

    Ruth Alper, born on February 18, 1932 in Germany, describes her family and childhood; experiencing little antisemitism as a child; her memories of Kristallnacht; receiving an affidavit from family in Detroit, MI in 1939 to immigrate to the United States; arriving in Cuba and staying there until 1941, when she and her family moved to Miami, FL; the small Jewish community in Havana, Cuba; listening to the progress of the war on the radio; experiencing antisemitism in Miami; her recollections of the response of the American Jewish community experiencing the war from abroad; and creating a new life for herself in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Michael Lin

    Oral History

    Michael Lin, born in Riga, Latvia on September 14, 1936, describes his family and childhood; the Jewish community of Riga; the beginning of the war in 1941 and his family being forced to leave their home to settle in Yaroslavl (IAroslavl' ), Russia; catching malaria and developing pneumonia in 1941 but not being able to get medication; moving to another small village in Russia, where he remained until 1944 when his family moved farther east; having to shave his head to avoid getting lice; his father’s draft into the Russian Army; the end of the war and preparing to return to Riga; his experiences with antisemitism in Russia; beginning school after the war in Latvia; his draft into the Russian Army in September 1955; attending school in Moscow after he left the army; immigrating to Israel in 1969 with his wife and children; immigrating to the United States a few years later; and his reflections on sharing his memories of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Hannah Kalman

    Oral History

    Chana Kalman, born on January 20, 1912 in Opoczno, Poland, describes her family and childhood; her experiences with antisemitism; moving to Łódź, Poland when she was eighteen years old; participating in a Zionist organization with several other young people; working during the day and attending a Hebrew school at night; getting married shortly before the death of her father in 1937; giving birth to a child on January 25, 1939; moving into the Łódź ghetto in 1940 and struggling to find food for herself and her son; the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944; her deportation to Auschwitz with her sister and being forced around by SS men; her transfer to Bergen-Belsen shortly before her liberation; finding out about the death of her husband and child; getting remarried in 1946 and having a son and a daughter; remaining in Germany as a displaced person until 1950, when she immigrated to the United States; settling in Scranton, Pennsylvania; spending some time in Israel once her children had grown up; and her reflections on life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Dorrit L. Ostberg

    Oral History

    Dorrit Liane Ostberg, born in Vienna, Austria on September 29, 1929, describes her family; her father fleeing to Paris, France after the Germans entered Austria; escaping to Paris with her mother and sister but discovering that her father had fled to Yugoslavia; arriving in Yugoslavia several months later; obtaining Yugoslavian citizenship and living in Slavonski-Brod and Zagreb (both in present day Croatia); fleeing to Crikvenica, Croatia after Croatian guards arrested her father; her family’s deportation to an Italian internment camp on Rab; attending school until she contracted hepatitis and had to stay in a hospital for four months; her liberation in September 1943; her family fleeing on a fishing boat to Italy and living openly as Jews in Bari, Italy with two Italian women; immigrating to Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York in July 1944; attending junior high school; moving to New York City after the war ended; attending university and becoming a math teacher; getting married three times and having one son; and her religious feelings.

    Oral history interview with Alice Eberstarkova Masters

    Oral History

    Alice Eberstarkova Masters, born in Trstená, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia) in 1925, describes her youth; her experiences with antisemitism before the war; immigrating to England in 1939 on a Kindertransport; working as a secretary for the Czech government-in-exile in London during the war; following the BBC broadcasts of the war’s progress; the end of the war and discovering that her parents had died in Auschwitz; her reflections on the Nuremberg Trials; participating in Zionist and Jewish organizations while in England; immigrating to the United States in March 1948; working for the International Monetary Fund; losing her religious faith; getting married and starting a family after the war; and telling her children and grandchildren about her experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Martin Weiss

    Oral History

    Martin Weiss, born in Polana, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Veľká Poľana, Slovakia) on January 28, 1929, describes his post-war experiences living in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic with his sister; receiving papers to immigrate to the United States in 1946 and living with a distant cousin; working at a butcher’s shop, so he could support himself; opening his own meat store later in life; eventually deciding to volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and not participating much in his faith anymore.

    Oral history interview with Leonard Gordon

    Oral History

    Leonard Gordon, born on June 8, 1925 in Tilsit, Germany (Sovetsk, Russia), describes growing up in Siauliai, Lithuania; his family; attending Jewish grade school and high school; the German invasion of Lithuania in 1941; trying to escape to Russia but instead having to return home and go into the Siauliai ghetto; his family’s transport to Stutthof in 1944; being transported with his father and brother to Dachau, where they worked at Mühldorf; building the German underground airport, Messerschmitt; his father’s proposal that the three of them commit suicide; hearing about the invasion of Normandy; the liberation of Dachau in May 1945; staying in a displaced persons camp in Feldafing and planning to move to Israel; traveling to Italy and studying to be a radio technician; immigrating to the United States; becoming an electrical engineer and serving in the United States Navy; and rediscovering religion after the death of his wife.

    Oral history interview with Fritz Gluckstein

    Oral History

    Fritz Gluckstein, born January 24, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, describes the end of the war in Berlin; the food and housing shortages; cleaning up rubble from bombings with his father; the difficulties of re-starting his education after the war; immigrating to the United States in January 1948 and settling in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area; becoming a veterinarian; and volunteering for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Brigitte Freidin

    Oral History

    Brigitte Freidin, born in Augsburg, Germany on June 3, 1930, describes her family and childhood; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being arrested and sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht; her father’s release and her parents’ decision to try to immigrate to the United States; traveling to England while waiting for permission to go to the U.S.; immigrating to the U.S. in 1941; staying with relatives who were taking in refugees in Washington, DC; losing touch with much of her family left in Europe and then discovering that many had died; participating in American student clubs during the war; working as a salesgirl when she was fourteen years old to help support her family; getting married and starting a family; and speaking about her personal experiences during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Eva Kristine Belfoure

    Oral History

    Eva Kristine Belfoure, born on October 1, 1924 in Kraków, Poland, describes growing up in a Roman Catholic home; having many Orthodox Jewish friends in her childhood; teaching Catholic prayers to an elderly Jewish lady who was hidden in her home during the war; exchanging goods and delivering messages in the ghetto; being arrested in January 1942 and being taken to the Nordhausen concentration camp, where she worked in various labor camps; her deportation to the Rathsfeld firm, where she worked as a kitchen aide and remained until liberation; doing translation work in a field hospital in Nordhausen after the war; going to the displaced persons camps in Dora, Heilbronn, and Darmstadt; attending the university in Frankfurt after receiving aid from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency; immigrating to the United States in June 1950 and marrying a sailor in 1953; teaching languages in Baltimore County for twenty-five years; and translating for the Red Cross and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with George Hill Leonard

    Oral History

    George Leonard, a concentration camp liberator born on December 24, 1921 in Malden, Massachusetts, describes his childhood; his training in Alabama and California before he and his unit went to England; becoming the company runner, staying close to the captain and lieutenants; translating codes and delivering messages while at war; his memories of the fights at the Siegfried Line; receiving the Bronze Star after being wounded; traveling through parts of Germany along the Czech border and getting ordered to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria; helping to give the victims a proper burial; staying in the Mauthausen area for about six weeks until he went to Spital am Pyhrn, Austria in late July; leaving for America on December 15, 1945; getting married; and teaching at Harvard University after the war.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Roberg

    Oral History

    Kurt Roberg, born May 16, 1924 in Celle, Germany, discusses his childhood; attending a German school where he was the only Jewish student; his father Victor Roberg’s profession as a merchant for the firm Gebrüder Freidberg; his family’s religious practices; Kristallnacht; antisemitism in his hometown; details of German politics of the time; the boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933; how a retired teacher, Hal Lotheim, taught local Jewish students; the Hitler Youth in his community; his Bar Mitzvah; how his brother, Harry, immigrated in 1936 to Holland, the Netherlands to live with their maternal uncle, Wilhelm Marx; how his father had to close his business in 1937; his mother’s 1938 trip to Hamburg, Germany to visit the American consulate; how his father was sent to Oranienburg after Kristallnacht; his father’s release and experiences in Oranienburg; his journey to Holland to join his brother and uncle; how his mother and father used American visa applications to travel to Holland; how his mother, father, and brother immigrated to the United States from Holland in 1940; German attacks on Rotterdam, the Netherlands; being interned in Holland for his status as a German citizen; being sent out of Rotterdam to Gouda, the Netherlands; how a woman organized transports of children from Holland and Belgium to reunite with their parents; receiving his American visa in January 1941; leaving Holland in March 1941; traveling from Germany to Spain and then to Lisbon, Portugal by train with other children; traveling by American ship from Lisbon, Portugal to the United States; being held on Ellis Island for a month because of visa complications; living in New Rochelle, New York with his family; learning about Pearl Harbor; how he and his brother joined the army in 1943; experiencing antisemitism in the army; his experience in the Pacific during World War II; and his life with his family after the war.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Schnog

    Oral History

    Alfred Schnog, born January 25, 1931, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany; growing up in a relatively secular Jewish family on Universität Straße; his relationship with his grandparents who lived in Deutz, a suburb of Cologne; seeing Nazi parades and looking on with interest but feeling unwelcome; being harassed by Nazi Youth on his way home from school with his twin brother, Norbert; seeing signs in businesses barring Jews and learning that few business owners enforced this policy; spending Passover in a Catholic hospital after being injured in a car wreck and being provided with kosher food by the nuns; watching his father throw pieces of a gun into the Rhine when guns were banned for Jews; his father’s metal trade business being taken over by non-Jews; hearing about concentration camps but believing they would primarily affect immigrants (particularly Poles) and seeing Polish children taken out of his classes by the Gestapo; his parents’ search for a way out of Germany and eventual escape to the Netherlands in the summer of 1938; his family’s return to Germany in November 1938 to retrieve belongings; witnessing Kristallnacht from an upper-floor window of the Dome Hotel; his family being taken to jail as they tried to return to the Netherlands after the German borders were sealed, but eventually being allowed to go; attending Jewish school in Amsterdam and learning Dutch; applying to move to the United States and first going by plane to England in Jan 1940, then by ship (the Britannic) from Liverpool to New York City in April 1940; attending school in the United States; speaking Dutch with his brother because they did not want to be associated with Germans; experiencing discrimination in school when his third grade teacher admonished him and his brother for wearing an American flag pin on a holiday when they were not born in America; having his Bar Mitzvah and attending Hebrew school at the synagogue in Regal Park; experiencing antisemitism as his family vacationed in the Adirondacks, finding many signs restricting Jews from staying at hotels; learning that his grandparents had been killed in a concentration camp; graduating from Forest Hill High School and then receiving a degree in engineering from Cornell; going to Korea in 1954 to serve two years in the U.S. Army; starting and running a company; learning that a pair of his father’s cufflinks were given to his father in recognition of his Bar Mitzvah by Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who later led an assassination attempt against Hitler; his reflections on the way those who did not experience the Holocaust and WWII view it; his children’s knowledge of his and his parents’ experiences and how it has affected them; and his thoughts on Israel.

    Oral history interview with Fred Taucher

    Oral History

    Fred Taucher, born on January 29, 1933 in Berlin, Germany, describes his half-brother’s suicide to avoid Nazi concentration camps; the destruction of his father’s store during Kristallnacht; moving to a ghetto in 1938; his father’s inability to leave Germany despite his United State’s citizenship; his family’s relationship with a high ranking Nazi member; his father going into slave labor and then being sent to Auschwitz in 1943; his family’s escape from arrest; living in subway stations to avoid Allied bombings; getting arrested, tortured, and sent to Dachau in April 1945; escaping from the Nazis with some Russian soldiers; his mother’s death during a crossfire between the Germans and the Russians; his 1946 Bar Mitzvah in Berlin; life in Berlin after the Holocaust; his 1946 arrival in America; his decision to join the U.S. Army; his experiences trying to obtain United States citizenship; his life in America as a citizen and his activism in Holocaust survivor networks.

    Oral history interview with Helen Goldkind

    Oral History

    Helen Goldkind, born in Czechoslovakia (near Volosyanka, Ukraine) on July 9, 1928, describes her early childhood; experiencing antisemitism as a child; her recollections of the Nazi occupation of her town in 1944; her deportation to Auschwitz; how her grandfather was beaten to death for not relinquishing a Torah scroll; being sent to work at a munitions factory in Germany; being with her sister when they were liberated by British troops in 1945; spending time in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp to recover; receiving help from the Swedish Red Cross and traveling to Sweden to recover; immigrating to the United States in 1946 with her sister; finding a job as a secretary in New York City; getting married and moving to Baltimore; the death of her sister and raising her children; and her reflections on the current state of the world.

    Oral history interview with Inge Katzenstein

    Oral History

    Inge Katzenstein (née Berg), born March 27, 1929 in Cologne, Germany, describes her family; having to move in with some of her extended family in Cologne after Kristallnacht; attempting to illegally cross into Holland; getting into Holland but immediately being captured and imprisoned; immigrating to Kenya but not being able to leave their home their without permission; attending stenography school to become a secretary; immigrating to the United States in 1951 and settling in Vineland, New Jersey; getting married and raising her children as Orthodox Jews; and returning to Germany twice and getting treated well.

    Oral history interview with Werner Katzenstein

    Oral History

    Werner Katzenstein, born in Wallensen, Germany on April 29, 1922, describes his childhood; having to leave school in 1933 after Hitler came to power in 1933; his father going to prison because he was Jewish but getting released after about a week; his father being forced to close down his business; buying property in Holland and immigrating there in 1937; immigrating to the United States in 1939 and settling in Somerville, New Jersey; being considered an enemy alien; registering for the draft and being called to service in March 1944; being sent for basic training to Camp Blanding in Florida; being classified for intelligence and reconnaissance work; joining the 100th Infantry Division in Fort Bragg, North Carolina; his deployment to Europe; going through southern France and the Vosges Mountains; and getting wounded in combat; returning to his platoon in January 1945 and going through Germany; being in combat in Heidelberg; working for the military government; visiting family who had been in Theresienstadt; returning for New Jersey on April 30,1946; and getting married and settling in Washington, D.C.

    Oral history interview with Fred Goldman

    Oral History

    Fred Goldman, born in Fürth, Germany on September 6, 1915, describes his childhood; his memories of Hitler coming to power; finishing high school and moving to Berlin to train to be a cantor and teacher at a Jewish Teacher’s College; returning to Fürth after three years and moving back in with his mother and sister; immigrating to the United States in January 1939 because a distant cousin vouched for him; arriving in the U.S. with twelve dollars and taking a job as a busboy at a department store in New York; marrying Ruth Schuster, a Jewish women also from Fürth; working in a uniform factory until he was drafted into the army in March 1943; becoming a member of the medical corps but then being transferred into the military intelligence unit when the army learned he was fluent in German; going to Camp Ritchie in Maryland; interrogating prisoners in Europe; staying with the army until March 1946, when he returned to the United States and became a diamond setter; and settling in Silver Spring, Maryland after the war.

    Oral history interview with Paulette Stessin

    Oral History

    Paulette Stessin, born in Metz, France, discusses her family and childhood in France; her parents, who sold clothing in the market; keeping kosher; her understanding of events in Germany in 1938 when she was 17 or 18; her family’s move to Angouleme, France where they thought they would be safe; daily life in Angouleme; her work as a hairdresser in Brive la Gaillarde, France, where there was one Jewish family; being arrested near Brive in April 1944; being transferred to Drancy and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau; her memories of Auschwitz; working on a road hauling stones; “Pitchipoi,” a term referring to the imaginary place they would be sent to and used by the prisoners in Drancy; the addition of a chemical to the women’s soup to suppress their menstrual cycles, which did not work on her; deciding to join her “camp sister”, a Dutch woman in another barrack, who was being deported; arriving at Bergen-Belsen; her memories of the camp; being liberated in April 1945; traveling to Paris; her reintegration at the Hotel Lutetia; and her decision to return to Angouleme.

    Oral history interview with Margitta Cooper

    Oral History

    Margitta Cooper, born on June 10, 1929 in Speyer, Germany, describes her family and childhood; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends; her memories of Kristallnacht; her father being arrested and sent to Dachau after Kristallnacht; her family’s arrest in 1940 and being taken to the Gurs concentration camp; gathering with about 20 other children and being told they were to be sent to the United States; separating from her parents and seeing them for the last time; spending time in a small French town before her immigration; finally travelling to the United States by boat in 1941; taking a train to Baltimore, MD to recover with the other immigrant children; meeting an uncle in New York City; finding out about the fate of her family; settling into life in Baltimore and receiving a job at the Johns Hopkins hospital; and her reflections on what the world knew about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Erika Eckstut

    Oral History

    Erica Eckstut, born June 12, 1928 in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her family; staying with her sister and brother-in-law at the end of the war; marrying a member of the Czech Army, Robert Kauder, on August 28, 1945; living in Freiwaldau (Jeseník), Czech Republic; how her husband was the big boss (Velitel) in the city, removing Germans from the Sudetenland area; moving to Prague, Czech Republic; having two children over the next few years; how her husband testified at the Nuremberg Trials; the death of her husband in 1957; immigrating to the United States; finally arriving in the United States with her children on April 11, 1960 and being greeted by a swarm of reporters because she was among the first to be allowed to leave Communist Czechoslovakia; attending technology school; living with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their children for a year before getting her own apartment; meeting her current husband in 1962; her diagnosis of lung cancer in 1989; participating in a cancer research study and being one of two survivors of the seventy-five person study; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Tole Johannes Madna

    Oral History

    Tolé Johannes Hendricus Madna, born June 8, 1931 in The Hague, the Netherlands, describes his Indonesian father and his Dutch Protestant mother; living in Holland during the war; the divorce of his parents in 1936; living with his father and a nanny; hiding the infant son, Alfred Munzer, of family friends; the child staying with his family for three and a half years and calling him Bobby; moving to Belgium after the war; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Henri Dupuy

    Oral History

    Henri Dupuy, born June 5, 1920 in Thiviers, France and designated Righteous Among Nations, discusses his anger at the French government and Germany; his decision to join the Resistance; Constantin, nom de guerre Jambard, leader of the Armée Secrète (AS) who formed the Maquis in 1942 in Perigueux, France; how his mother, Helene, hid Maquis members in her home and procured ration cards; joining the police to avoid the draft; guarding the Perigueux Gestapo headquarters and stealing letters stamped “Dordogne,” denouncing French citizens; the November 10, 1943 Maquis attack in Perigueux and roundup and deportation of 350 Jews to Auschwitz; the arrest of the Gruska family and escape of their children; how his mother placed two Gruska sons with rural families and the daughter in a convent; how his mother secured forged identity papers with the complicity of Secretary-General Lafont, joining the Messignac Maquis; Maquis attacks from the woods; the supply of small arms by the Riberac police and by parachute drops; how the Maquis were denounced and attacked by Germans; hiding in Coursac, Dordogne, France and joining the Roland Maquis; a Maquis attack on the Neuvic-Bordeaux train carrying French francs to Germany in July or August 1944; and how the Maquis offloaded the francs in a truck to Saint-Alvere, a resistance center in the Dordogne, to support Maquis families and resistance activities.

    Oral history interview with Halina Peabody

    Oral History

    Halina Peabody (née Halina Janna Litman), born in Kraków, Poland on December 12, 1932, describes her childhood; taking on a false identity (Halina Litinska) during the war and pretending to be Catholic; hiding in Jaroslaw with her mother and younger sister; being injured on the day of liberation by a hand grenade; being liberated by the Russian Army; living in group homes with her sister after the war; traveling to Italy with her family and staying at a displaced persons camp; traveling to England and then going to Israel in 1957; taking a job at the American embassy in Tel Aviv; marrying a Bulgarian Jew who worked for the U.S. Information Agency; leaving Israel in 1968 with her husband and five year old son; immigrating to Palo Alto, California, where her husband could get a job at the Hoover Institute; moving to Washington, D.C., where Halina’s husband got a job working for “The Voice of America”; getting a divorce from her husband in 1972 and then marrying Richard Peabody; volunteering at the Holocaust Museum; and getting involved with survivor groups such as the Association of Child Survivors.

    Oral history interview with Marcel Bercau

    Oral History

    Marcel Bercau, born October 17, 1920 in Paris, France, describes his Romanian family; restrictions placed on Jews during German occupation; his deportation to Drancy in 1941; working in a locksmith's workshop and remaining in Drancy with his father and brother for a year before they were deported; going to Auschwitz, where he worked as an earth-worker and then as a bricklayer; working in the schlosser-electriker division, which allowed him to find a little bit of extra food; the evacuation of Auschwitz on January 17, 1945; going on a death march with 60,000 other prisoners and traveling through the snow and the cold with no food; arriving in Gleiwitz, Germany (Gliwice, Poland), where they were put in open cattle cars and transported to Oranienburg; how while they passed through Prague, Czech Republic people threw them bread and water containers; how four out of five people died during the transport; the German abandonment of Landsberg, where he was being held; being rescued and taken to Augsburg, where there was a repatriation camp; and returning to Paris to start a family.

    Oral history interview with Rolph Hammel

    Oral History

    Rolph Hammel, born on September 11, 1912, in Karlsruhe, Germany, describes his family; his involvement with a Zionist youth movement; being forced to do military service in 1933 in Dijon; getting scarlet fever; moving to Strasbourg, France and working in a hardware store before starting his own faucet and fixtures business in 1937; being allowed to remain in France because he had inherited citizenship from his mother who was French; working in the DCA during the war; helping to save 70 Jews in Périgueux, France; going to the ORT school; and his reflections on the treatment of Jews during the war.

    Oral history interview with Norbert V. Hilsberg

    Oral History

    Norbert Hilsberg, born on September 3, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, describes his family; graduating college and serving in the Austrian military for three months; starting the forms to immigrate to the United States after the Anschluss; his parents’ immigration to Cuba, where they stayed until April 1941, when they attained visas for the United States; receiving his visa in June 1938 and traveling to the United States; living with his uncle in Philadelphia, PA when he arrived; learning about the invasion of Poland; working in the advertising department of the Litz department store in Philadelphia; volunteering for the US Army in February 1941; getting sent to an engineering camp, where he made maps; the attachment of his outfit to the general headquarters in DC; being forced to remain in the US when his unit went abroad because he was not yet eligible for his American citizenship; receiving his citizenship in April 1943 and working on plans for the invasion of southern France and Austria; living in North Africa for nearly a year; being sent to Hawaii; leaving the army in 1945; accepting a job with the war department; and settling in Washington, DC with his family.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Munzer

    Oral History

    Alfred Munzer, born in The Hague, Netherlands on November 23, 1941, describes his family; how his parents debated over having him circumcised; his family going into hiding in May 1942; his father being admitted into a psychiatric hospital and his mother working at the psychiatric hospital as a nurse’s aide; his two older sisters being taken in by a Catholic family; going into hiding with a family friend and neighbor, Tolé Madna; how he played in the backyard and was called Bobby; his parents being sent to a concentration camp on December 26, 1942; his mother surviving the war, working first as a seamstress and later as an electrician; how his father died soon after liberation; the death of his sisters in Auschwitz; immigrating to Brussels, Belgium in 1952 and to the United States in 1958 with his mother; settling in New York where he attended Brooklyn College; going on to attend medical school at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn; becoming a lung specialist and interning at several well known-hospitals before doing military service at Andrews Air Force base in Washington, D.C.; and settling in D.C. with his partner Joel Wind.

    Oral history interview with Maria Mandel

    Oral History

    Maria Myriam Mandel, born 1938 in Czerwinsk, Poland, discusses the assembly of the town's citizens in a square and their deportation; her family's escape through a bakery door; hiding from the Gestapo in granaries, cemeteries, and the woods; her parents’ execution by the Gestapo in 1942; her placement by her parents in a neighbor's home from 1942 to 1947; her new name, Katia Gortak; the kindness of her foster mother and brother; her Catholic education; her antisemitic feelings; the painful loss of her brother and sister who were placed in other families and abandoned; the arrival of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) at the end of the war; reuniting with her uncles in America and France; her shock at learning she was Jewish; her transfer to a Jewish orphanage in Czerwinsk, where she received a Jewish education; her recollections of antisemitism at the war's end; her life in the orphanage from 1947 to 1949; visits by her foster mother; her bitterness when visits ceased; how the JDC changed her birth date from 1938 to 1937 to allow her to travel alone from Poland to France; her arrival in Paris, France; her refusal to join her uncle in America; and her life in Perigueux, France with her paternal uncle and his family.

    Oral history interview with Yvonne Mignot de Royere

    Oral History

    Yvonne Mignot de Royere (née Roux), born in Clermont d’Excideuil, France on February, 22, 1925, describes how she and her father, Joseph Roux, saved 21 Jews during World War II; the evacuation of Jews in Strasbourg in 1939; working with her father, who was the mayor; taking in French Jewish refugees; how her work as a municipal clerk gave her access to forms and papers, which she used to provide the Jews with forged identity papers and ration cards; hiding Jews in the village rectory; one of the Jewish women giving birth to her daughter, Arlette Veil, in 1943; she and her father saving several families (last names: Robertso, Schwab, Wertz, and Veil); how three of the families were hidden in the caretaker’s house at the Chateau du Noyer and she helped them secure food; how she occasionally left the mayor’s office unlocked so that the families could secure additional ration cards; living in Excideuil from 1942 to 1944, after which the Jews returned to Alsace to rebuild their lives; staying in touch with the people she helped; and being honored with her father by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations in 1982.

    Oral history interview with Susan Berlin

    Oral History

    Susan Berlin (née Suzanna Reichman), born on June 22, 1926 in Rožňava, Czechoslovakia (present day Slovakia), describes her family; her childhood in Rožňava; her memories of the rise of Nazi power; immigrating to the United States on August 3, 1939; settling in New York City, where she went to Julia Richmond High School; graduating in 1942 and attending Brooklyn College for her undergraduate degree and the University of Pennsylvania for her master’s degree; graduating in 1947 and moving to Washington D.C., where she got a job in the Army Intelligence Map Service as an Army Intelligence Research Analyst; marrying in 1950 and having three daughters; retiring from the Army Intelligence Map Service to raise her daughters; becoming an art teacher when her children got older; and volunteering at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Education Department.

    Oral history interview with John Bucur

    Oral History

    John Bucur, born in Youngstown, Ohio on March 5, 1925, describes his childhood; his Romanian-American parents; the multiracial community he grew up in; graduating high school in 1943 as the valedictorian of his class and receiving a scholarship to Ohio University; enlisting in the Army and being sent to Fort Sill, where he received training to be in Battery B of the 17th Observation Battalion; his first assignment watching a ship off the shore of Omaha Beach in France on D-Day; his unit’s move through England, France, and Germany and then going on a tour of Buchenwald at the end of the war; taking college courses at an American School in Biarritz, France after the war; returning home on December 7, 1945 and being discharged from the army; finishing his degree at Ohio University and graduating in 1948; going on to medical school and becoming a neurosurgeon; having five children with two wives; and moving to Arlington, Virginia to found Fairfax Hospital, Northern Virginia Doctor’s Hospital, and the National Orthopedic Hospital.

    Oral history interview with Lore Schneider

    Oral History

    Lore Schneider (née Heti Lore Koppel), born on October 10, 1924 in Bochum, Germany, describes her family; seeing the Nazi youth in her neighborhood; observing the Nazi parades from her home on the main street; immigrating to the United States in June 1934; settling in Washington, D.C. and attending public school; obtaining U.S. citizenship in 1939, five years after her family’s arrival; attending college at night and working as a stenographer at the Interior Department during the war; and marrying in 1946 and having three children.

    Oral history interview with Frank Liebermann

    Oral History

    Frank Nathan Liebermann (né Franz Natan Liebermann), born in Gleiwitz (Gliwice), Poland on January 19, 1929, describes his family; celebrating Jewish holidays; immigrating to the United States in October 1938 and moving to Dayton, Ohio, where his father set up his medical practice; his family’s involvement in the Jewish community and helping many European Jews to immigrate to the United States; attending Western Reserve University; meeting his wife during his sophomore year and marrying her soon after he graduated; working for a textile converting firm for many years before retiring and moving to Washington, D.C., where his two daughters had already settled; finding a job at a travel firm; and beginning to volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum after September 11th, 2001.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Liebermann

    Oral History

    Marianne Liebermann, born in Vienna, Austria on October 29, 1929, describes her family and childhood; her education; her father searching for ways to leave Vienna and immigrating to the United States after the Anschluss; her father’s efforts to convince a gentile American family, with whom he had previously done business, to vouch for his family; boarding a train to Cherbourg, France in September 1938 and transferring to the Europa ship, which took them to the U.S.; arriving in New York on October 3, 1938 and living there when the war broke out in 1939; graduating from Barnard University and later going on to get her master’s degree at Adelphi University; marrying Frank Liebermann on November 23, 1950; settling down in Great Neck, New York and having three children; becoming a teacher and spending many years teaching English as a second language; and settling in Maryland.

    Oral history interview with Thea S. Rips

    Oral History

    Thea S. Rips, born in Trieste, Italy on February 24, 1922, describes her childhood; her family moving to Rijeka, Croatia when she was five years old; growing up in a Catholic family but having many Jewish friends; witnessing the persecution of nearby Jewish families; aiding several families in their attempts to escape Italy; wanting to become a doctor and working in a shipyard infirmary in Rijeka; getting a job working on the Marshall Plan after the war in Rome, Italy; being offered a chance to move to the United States and work as an interpreter in 1955; meeting her husband, who she was engaged to for eighteen years before they married in February 1976; going to the United States and living in New York; moving to Washington, D.C.; and the death of her husband in September of 1994.

    Oral history interview with Andrew Glass

    Oral History

    Andrew (né Andrej) James Glass, born November 30, 1935 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses his early childhood; spending time in his wealthy grandfather's house because of his mother's illness; his grandfather, Jacob, repatriating millions of dollars which had been deposited in Switzerland, New York, and London, back into zlotys in Poland because of a 1939 government decree; hearing planes and bombs exploding in September 1939; his father being forced to clear rubble and fill sandbags; supplying gas to a gentile taxi driver and two families driving east on September 13; going by horse and cart and then by train and on foot to Vilnius, Lithuania; his father getting picked up by a Lithuanian patrol but being released when he agreed with them that President Roosevelt was Jewish; his family receiving three Japanese visas from Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul; paying 600 dollars to get Soviet transit visas; traveling on the Trans-Siberian Railway and arriving in Japan in December 1940; getting three residence visas to the Dominican Republic and a one week transit visa from the American Consul in Tokyo, Japan; sailing on the Kama Kumakara in April 1941 to San Francisco, CA; taking the train to New York, NY and staying there until 1943; immigrating to Canada; re-entering the U.S. under the Polish quota; his father working in a defense plant and his mother working as a seamstress in New York; how he determined to not feel different; working for the New York Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, Senators Javits and Percy, and Cox newspapers from 1974 to 2001; becoming a Fellow at Harvard and the managing editor of The Hill newspaper; and feeling that he is living on borrowed time, that life is precious, and that there is a randomness to who survives.

    Oral history interview with Renate Fischer Chernoff

    Oral History

    Renate Fischer Chernoff, born on June 25, 1929 in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), describes her early childhood; moving to Racibórz, Poland with her family in 1934; being sent to Berlin, Germany to stay with her grandmother in 1937; her family choosing to immigrate to Canada since her father was a physician; arriving in 1938 and settling in Montreal; moving to New Brunswick; her parents adopting Saul Silvershein, a sixteen year old Polish boy from a displaced persons camp; attending college at Dalhousie University; meeting her husband while in graduate school at the University of Chicago; marrying in New Brunswick in 1953 and moving to Saint Louis, MO where her husband finished his residency and their first child was born; moving to Durham, NC, where they had two more children; and settling in the Washington, DC area in 1980.

    Oral history interview with Eli Dortort

    Oral History

    Eli Dortort (né Klemfner), born on August 30, 1920 in Zdachov, Galicia, Poland, describes his family and childhood; escaping his hometown a few hours before the Germans invaded; traveling with some Russian soldiers to Kiev, Ukraine and then to Starobielsk (Starobil's'k), Ukraine, where he volunteered for the Polish Army; his unit being sent to Israel, where he deserted and worked in a kibbutz; staying in the kibbutz for a year before he joined the British Army and was sent to Italy; later being stationed in Teheran, Iran and Egypt; returning to Israel after the war and fighting in the War of Independence; staying in Israel until the late 1950s, when he immigrated to the United States; and settling in New York City, where he met his wife and had a daughter.

    Oral history interview with Hilda Seftor

    Oral History

    Hilda Seftor (née Cohen), born in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 21, 1923, describes her family and childhood; finding out about the Nazi invasion of Poland; helping her local Jewish community and finding homes for thirty-five Jewish refugee children; her parents founding the Whittingehame Farm School; teaching the school’s Jewish children how to farm and giving them a traditional education; attending the Edinburgh College of Domestic Science and graduating with a degree in household and institutional management in 1943; working in the Edinburgh school system and later at a wartime nursery preparing meals for children; marrying after the war and immigrating to the United States; having four sons; moving to Washington, DC in 1994; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Felix Nicinski

    Oral History

    Felix Nicinski (né Fievish Nicinski), born December 7, 1925 in Lochów, Poland near Lódź, Poland, discusses his early childhood; moving in to the fenced-in ghetto in early 1940; how the Germans bombed their city before entering it; being taken to a work camp in Lienzingen (Mühlacker, Germany) in late 1940 with the other 14 to 18 year old boys to dig ditches; slipping away on a march in the summer of 1941 to work and escape to the fenced-in ghetto in Kalisz, Poland; receiving the false identity of an escaped 27 year old; Kalisz Jews being sent to the Lódź ghetto in 1941; being forced to wear the yellow star and beaten by the German guards; working at an ammunitions plants in Skarżysko-Kamienna for 10 months in 1942; being sent to Dora in 1943 and then to Buchenwald in 1944 for six months; his transfer to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; living in Bamberg, Germany between 1945 to 1948 and learning how to be a barber; immigrating to Australia in 1948 and living there for ten years; immigrating to the United States in 1958; and marrying another survivor of Bergen-Belsen.

    Oral history interview with David Brombart

    Oral History

    David Brombart, born on August 3, 1933 in Brussels, Belgium, discusses his childhood; the German invasion in May 1940 and being able to attend school until mid-1941; the deportation of his sister, Sarah, and his mother in August 1942; running away from a boarding school in Ikla (possibly Uccle in Brussels) and his father placing him in the home of business clients; going into hiding in Hornu, Belgium but visiting his father, who was in hiding in another city; his liberation in September 1944 and returning to Brussels with his father; finding out that his grandfather was a member of the Jewish Committee which made up lists for the Germans; returning to school at age 11 and learning how to write; serving in the Belgian Army from 1952 to 1954 and becoming the head of the Socialist Democratic Youth until 1958; having a full time job with the Young Socialist Guard and attending international conferences as the Labor Secretary from 1958 to 1964; living in Paris, France from 1958 to 1959; getting married in 1961; being offered a job to direct the African Labor Institute of the American organization AFL-CIO; moving to New York and advising labor movements in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia; becoming Deputy Director of the International Department of the AFL-CIO under Lane Kirkland; and being honored for his international labor work by the governments of Dahomey, Togo, and Senegal.

    Oral history interview with Gunter Haimann

    Oral History

    Gunter Haimann, born on January 26, 1922 in Koblenz, Germany, describes his childhood and family; his parents deciding that it was time to leave Germany in the beginning of 1937, when Jewish children were banned from public schools; immigrating to the United States and living with his aunt in Queens, New York; attending high school and night school to learn English; graduating in June 1941 and finding a job at an auto shop; his draft into the army at the beginning of the war and being trained as an interrogator; teaching interrogating techniques at Camp Ritchie in Maryland; his transfer into the 101st Airborne; going to England and jumping on D-Day and landing in Carentan, France; serving with the 101st for the remainder of the war; receiving a Purple Heart after being wounded in Bastogne, Belgium; not taking religion in to account while he was fighting; jumping onto Holland on Rosh Hashonah in 1944; going into Düsseldorf, Germany; finding Hitler’s stationary and using it to write letters; going to Austria and finding Mr. and Mrs. Goering and speaking with Mrs. Goering; seeing Holocaust survivors walking home; returning to the United States and starting a luncheonette business; and meeting his wife and having three children.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Lakritz

    Oral History

    Alfred Julian Lakritz, born on June 1, 1934 in Kiel, Germany, describes his family; narrowly escaping deportation to Poland in 1939 and moving to Antwerp, Belgium and then Marmande, France with his family; experiencing antisemitism from his peers in Marmande; how his father was arrested; speaking with the men who arrested his father many years later, and their regret; being sent with his brother to a Jewish summer camp in Creuse, France in July 1942; going into hiding in various safe houses for two and a half years after leaving the camp; ending up at a convent in Lourdes, France, where they met a Jewish French woman who took them in for the remainder of the war; being placed in a Catholic home in Tarbes with his brother after the war; reuniting with their mother in Marmande and applying for visas to the United States; immigrating to the United States in 1950 and settling in Oakland, CA; attending the University of California at Berkeley; completing his law degree; moving to Los Angeles, CA with his wife, whom he had met in law school; and raising a family.

    Oral history interview with Rita Rubinstein

    Oral History

    Rita Rubinstein (née Frieda Rifka Lifschitz), born on December 12, 1936 in Romania, describes her family and early childhood; her father’s draft into the Russian Army; going into hiding in Transnistria, Ukraine in September 1941; her liberation by Russian troops in April 1944; returning to their home in Romania and discovering that her father had died during the war; attending school for the first time and learning Russian and Ukrainian; traveling to Munich, Germany and posing as a Greek refugee; living in the Feldafing displaced persons camp for some time; developing tuberculosis in 1947 and having to go to a sanitarium in Augsburg, Germany; immigrating to the United States with her mother in September 1949 and settling in New York, NY; and getting married in 1959 and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Anita Etzyon

    Oral History

    Anita Etzyon, born on October 4, 1941 in Boryslav, Poland (present day Ukraine), describes her family and childhood; being one year old when her mother died from tuberculosis; having few direct memories of the war but being told about her family’s life during that time; being taken away to live with a Christian family and getting baptized to better fit into her surroundings; returning to live with her father, who had remarried, after the war; living in a Jewish neighborhood and attending a Jewish school; moving to various cities around Poland with her father and step-mother; being the only Jew in her school in Swidnica, Poland; adjusting to life as a Jew after she had spent four years as a Christian; immigrating to Israel in 1951; learning Hebrew and adjusting to life in Israel; getting married to avoid serving in the Israeli Army; having a daughter; immigrating to the United States with her husband and daughter 1963; settling in Washington, DC and working for a Jewish Day School; and her reflections on being a Jew in the modern world.

    Oral history interview with Melvin Galun

    Oral History

    Melvin Galun, born on May 10, 1940 in Kowal, Poland, describes his parents’ participation in the Zionist movement; his mother’s stories about Jews being sent away to the camps; going into hiding in the nearby forests; his memory of his family’s liberation by Russian troops; staying in several German displaced persons camps after the war; his early education in the displaced persons camps; participating in Zionist youth movements in the camps; immigrating to the United States in November 1949; his studies in the United States at a Yeshiva school; traveling to Israel after graduating school and working in a kibbutz for a year; and getting married in 1963 and starting a family.

    Oral history interview with Magdalena Farkas Berkovics

    Oral History

    Magdalena Farkas Berkovics, born on July 15, 1919 in Cluj, Romania, discusses her childhood, schooling and musical training in a conservatory; experiencing low level antisemitism; getting married in 1939; living in her house in the Cluj ghetto with other women after the city’s Jewish men had been taken away for forced labor; conditions in the ghetto, including food scarcity and the black market; providing piano lessons to Christian children; being deported in June 1944; terrible conditions in the train car; her arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from her family except for one 25-year-old cousin; how her clothes were taken away and her hair removed; going to Stutthof in August 1944 and then digging ditches in Steinort (Sztynort, Poland), Elbing (Elbląg, Poland), and Groudentz; speaking about freedom with the other women and singing Hungarian songs; being liberated and traveling to Satu Mare, Romania, where Jewish volunteers helped her return to Cluj; how she found Christians living in her house and learned that she was the only survivor in her family; marrying, Zoltan Berkovics, in 1946; the birth of their son, Tiberius, who later changed his name to John Sylvanis because of antisemitism in Romania; how Communists nationalized her house and forced her to pay rent; teaching in the Romanian conservatory for 30 years; immigrating with her husband to the United States in the 1980s; and feeling very grateful for American liberty and democracy.

    Oral history interview with Sol Mackler

    Oral History

    Sol Mackler, born on January 15,1921 in Poland, discusses his childhood in a small village; visiting relatives in nearby Radom; being forced to live in a ghetto in 1939 with sixteen people in one house; wearing a yellow star; in late 1941 walking seven miles to Pionki labor camp, being given a striped uniform and the number 1058; working in a munitions factory, then laying railway tracks in a tunnel; escaping with four other prisoners to the forest and joining Polish Jewish partisans; being captured by Germans and being sent by train to Sachsenhausen; seeing his sister and her baby there; smuggling his one year old nephew into Pionki to the child’s father, a tailor who made Nazi uniforms; waiting for Russians at liberation; going back to his village and being severely beaten; living in Bad Nauheim displaced persons camp in Germany; working on the black market selling diamonds from Belgium; arriving in the United States in December 1949 after being sponsored by two Jewish Californian wine makers; moving to New York to work and getting married in 1956; working for his brother-in-law; and finding out his parents were executed in Treblinka.

    Oral history interview with Theresia Bauer

    Oral History

    Theresia Bauer discusses her involvement with the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel), which paralleled the boys’ Hitler Youth (Hitler Jugend); the Soviet occupation of Austria, a time period in which she was constantly hiding from soldiers; and her husband's experience as a prisoner of war in Russia.

    Oral history interview with Carolina Taitz

    Oral History

    Carolina Taitz (née Lena Knoch), born on February 24, 1929 in Russia on a train, discusses her childhood in Viesite, Latvia; having friendly relations with schoolmates in her Latvian public school; how her father, a tree doctor, lost his business and the family house and was temporarily imprisoned as a capitalist when the Russian Communists occupied the town; experiencing a lot of antisemitism; seeing Jews being shot on the street when the Germans came in 1941; being forced to live in the ghetto in Riga, Latvia with five people to a room and little food; getting hit in the eye when a German soldier caught her with a cooked potato; being forced to work in a shoe polish factory from 5 AM to 5 PM; going on a forced march with 30,000 people guarded by German soldiers; seeing and hearing people being shot in a ditch in the Rumbula forest; walking with her mother, sister, and 200 other women to Termini prison; staying on the roof in the cold for two weeks in November 1942 and the birth of a baby, named Termina; going back to the ghetto; dressing as a boy going to work and escaping during a second Aktion when she was 14 years old; taking off her yellow star; being sheltered by a Russian Evangelist priest, Vladimir Michko, and his sister for two and a half years; living in their cellar; going back to Riga at liberation; her mother returning from Auschwitz but dying soon after; attending acting school; getting married and having a daughter; trying for 10 years to go to the United States, and finally getting a visa with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt; arriving in New York in March 1966; working at the New York City Opera for 19 years in charge of costumes, wigs, and makeup for the productions; being widowed twice and moving to Washington, DC in 2008; and still seeing her mother and little brother in her dreams and herself running away from German soldiers.

    Oral history interview with Helen Schwartz

    Oral History

    Helen Schwartz (b. Hela Kirschner), born in 1925, discusses living in the Łódź ghetto in Poland from 1939 to August 1944; working in a laundry in the ghetto; being taken with her family to Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944; being marched from Auschwitz to Stutthof; her liberation by the Russians near Gdansk, Poland; contracting typhus in an outbreak that hit a group of female survivors following liberation; returning to Łódź and reuniting with her sister; reuniting with her brother at the displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating in 1949 to Portland, Maine, where her husband worked in a clothing factory; opening a tailor’s shop in 1954; raising a family; volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and speaking at schools in Silver Spring, Maryland.

    Oral history interview with Irene Silver

    Oral History

    Irene Silver, born Irena Dynkewicz in Łódź, Poland on January 30, 1933, discusses raising her children in the Jewish tradition, being comfortable with friends who understand the Holocaust experience; her anger with people who ask why victims did not fight back during the Holocaust; being tolerant of strangers after having lived with strangers in the Warsaw Ghetto; her work as a social worker and how it was influenced by her wartime experiences; her sympathy with the civil rights movement; her membership in the Hidden Children group in New York where she feels a common ground; receiving Holocaust reparations which she used to help her children; her view that the world has not learned any lessons from the Holocaust; and her emotion at the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, feeling that the rain at the opening ceremony was the heavens crying.

    Oral history interview with Herman Taube

    Oral History

    Herman Taube (né Herschel Taube), born February 2, 1918 in Łódź, Poland, discusses his family; being orphaned by age nine; living with grandparents and later moving to Piyotrkov; attending a yeshiva; being encouraged by a Polish doctor to become a medic; returning to his grandparents in Łódź in 1935 and seeing antisemitic incidents; writing poetry; belonging to a literary society and meeting the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber; working in a military hospital in Alexandrov (possibly Aleksandrów Łódźki, Poland), arranged by Father Jagla, a Catholic priest; joining the Polish Army in August 1939; serving in a medical group that marched to the Bug River where the Soviet Army ordered the group to go to Volodymyr-Volyns'kyĭ, Ukraine to get educated so as to lose their capitalist mentality; accompanying a wounded soldier to Poltawa (Poltava), Ukraine, where an Ukrainian militia man arranged for him to take a new name, Grigori Arionowicz Taube, and live with a Jewish family; going to Samarra (Koibashov or possibly Kuybyshev) and getting more medical training; being sent to Tyumen (Tiumen') in Siberia and working in hospitals and in gulags; in November 1941 going to Tashkent, Uzbekistan and then to Andizhan, Uzbekistan; working in a malaria clinic; leaving the clinic after reporting that people were stealing food from the hospital; going to Seratov, Russia to the Polish Army; being assigned to the Kotsk offensive in June 1944; being badly injured by a mine explosion while riding in a truck; recovering enough by December 1944 and going to Lublin, Poland to the Polish Army headquarters in Majdanek; being assigned to Platte and opening a Red Cross repatriation station where he treated people with typhus; going to Keslin in Bessarabia in June 1945 to acquire more medicine from a CIBA warehouse; meeting a young woman, Susan Strauss, a survivor from Germany and traveling together to Potsdam, Germany; staying in a displaced persons camp in Halle-Merseburg, Germany, where he opened a Red Cross station; meeting a young Auschwitz survivor, Henry Rothfogel; traveling with Susan back to Platte, and getting civilly married and later religiously married; traveling with Susan and Henry in the summer of 1946 to Berlin, Germany with help from the Bricha; adopting a two year old child survivor, Mark; having first child in the Zingenheim displaced persons camp in September 1946; arriving in the United Sates on April 18, 1947 and being interviewed at the pier by the Jewish Daily Forward; going to Baltimore, MD to join Susan's father; writing for the Jewish Daily Forward; traveling to New York, NY to edit a Histadrut yearbook; returning to Baltimore and helping Susan run a grocery store; working for various Jewish organizations; obtaining accreditation as a journalist at the White House and in Congress; and continuing to write poetry, stories, and essays about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Regine Ginsberg

    Oral History

    Regine Ginsberg, born on November 19, 1925, discusses her childhood in Brussels, Belgium; her father’s work in the leather industry; religious observances in the household; speaking Yiddish at home and French in school; how her father wired money to Chase Bank in New York in the 1930s; her family abandoning their home in Brussels to travel by train to France; staying with a farmer in St. Gaudens, France; the family’s arrest in St. Gaudens; how her brother and father were sent to a prison near Toulouse, France and then released seven weeks later; how her mother returned to Brussels and brought back Sabbath candlesticks, prayer shawls, tefillin, and diamond jewelry which she used to bribe guards; how her father contacted a cousin in Pennsylvania; being on the last boat out of France from Marseilles; arriving in New York in June 1942; staying with cousins in Pittsburgh, PA and then settling in McKeesport, PA; her mother and father’s work in the leather industry; moving to Texas where she met her future husband Reuben Ginsberg in Athens, TX; her brother enlisting in the army and being sent to Belgium where he did intelligence work acting as a French interpreter; studying along with her husband at Columbia University in New York; becoming an art dealer and opening up a gallery in the 1970s; her emotional state after the war; and how her wartime experiences affected her life, her marriage, and the way she raised her children.

    Oral history interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney

    Oral History

    Ursula Guttstadt McKinney, born November 17, 1925 in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, discusses her family’s professional and religious background; her childhood and the troubles she faced obtaining schooling due to being half-Jewish; the difficulties her Jewish father and cousins faced; worrying about her father getting arrested; being able to say goodbye to her father when he was taken to prison and subsequently transported to Mauthausen in October 1942; receiving news that her father died; the Third Reich taking ownership of her family’s house; getting expelled from school in October 1942; moving to Berlin, Germany with her mother and sister; the psychological effects of the war, especially the bombings; her limited contact with the underground; working at a convent where there were some hidden Jewish children; her difficulties resuming a normal life after the war; her education after the war; feeling like an outcast because of being half-Jewish; immigrating, along with her sister, to the United States; not wanting to identify as German; her feelings on being a “mischling,” or having a mixed background; not identifying with one religion and being wed in an Unitarian church; and her work as a founding member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Rappaport

    Oral History

    Ruth Rappaport, born May 27, 1923 in Leipzig, Germany, discusses her parents, Mendel Rappaport, a Romanian subject, and Helene Rubinstein, who was born in Poland; how her mother’s cousin, also named Helene Rubinstein, was a well-known cosmetics businesswoman, attending an Orthodox Jewish school and an English language school in Leipzig, Germany; her membership in the Zionist youth group, Habonim; her Romanian passport, which did not identify her as a Jew; moving to Switzerland with her family shortly after Kristallnacht; staying in Zurich, Switzerland as a nanny for the Herzog family after her parents returned to Germany; selling nail polish, which her parents sent because they could not send money; being sponsored by her uncle, Carl Rubinstein, who lived in Seattle, Washington to come to the United States; leaving Europe in December 1939 on the Holland American Line boat, the Veendam; her parents’ attempt to leave Germany with Cuban visas; how her father died in Buchenwald and her mother in Ravensbrück, both in 1943; attending high school in Seattle, then the University of Washington, and finishing at Berkeley, majoring in sociology; working after graduation for a Jewish newspaper in Seattle and for the Zionist Emergency Council; working with Bartley Crum for UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) in San Francisco, CA; working in Israel during the War of Independence in 1948, where she exchanged gunfire with Palestinians; working with Golda Meir; helping establish the Israel Photographic Archives; returning to the United States and working for the Department of Defense as a librarian; living overseas in Okinawa, Japan; Taipei, Taiwan; and Vietnam; and retiring from the government after 19 years.

    Oral history interview with Edith Langer

    Oral History

    Edith Langer, born October 4, 1932 in Hamm, Germany, discusses living on a farm; her devout Lutheran mother; memories of the prewar Jewish community in her town; her early approval of Hitler because his support of public works; meeting Hitler as a member of her scout troop; attending a one-room school with 30 children, 10 of whom were Jewish; her father’s offer to hide the families of two of his Jewish customers in her family’s farm house; her mother’s feeling that hiding Jews was the right thing to do as a Christian; her father's murder by the Nazis for hiding Jews; being sent away from her family to work on a farm, where she stayed from 1941 to 1945 and had no contact with her family; being afraid of German soldiers; seeing murdered Jews in the streets; giving food to the Russian prisoners, who were living on the farm; emigrating from Germany to the United States in 1956; becoming an American citizen in 1961; her hope that more Nazis would be tried, including the one who shot her father; her membership in the Methodist Church; and taking part in protests against the American Nazi Party.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Milkman

    Oral History

    Marianne Friedenthal Milkman, born May 13, 1931 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Germany; being baptized and raised as Christian to have more opportunities; changing schools and apartments in 1938 because of anti-Jewish laws; her aunt Lotte Friedenthal, who worked with Pastor Martin Niemӧller; her father’s deportation to Sachsenhausen in 1938; traveling to Switzerland in January 1939 and then flying with her sister to England on a Kindertransport in May 1939; living with relatives in Cambridge, England; the arrival of her parents in England and her father’s internment on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien; joining her father on the Isle of Man in May 1940; returning to Cambridge in May 1941, where she remained throughout the war; graduating from high school and Cambridge University; coming to the United States in 1957 to study biology; getting married and living in Iowa for 30 years; settling in Washington, DC; her Jewish identity; and her feeling that her experience during the war made her a stronger person.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Cohen

    Oral History

    Ruth Friedman Cohen, born April 26, 1930 in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia (present day Mukacheve, Ukraine), describes her life after the Holocaust; her prewar life in Czechoslovakia; her family’s religious beliefs; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz in 1944; her mother and brother’s death immediately after their arrival at Auschwitz; her transfer to Nuremberg, Germany and then Holachov; the painful effects of tuberculosis that she contracted in Holachov; her survival and liberation by the Russian Army; her and her sister’s return to Mukachevo, where they reunited with their father; her time in Budapest, Hungary and Prague, Czech Republic, where she recuperated from tuberculosis; her immigration to the United States in 1948; the various jobs she had to support herself; her marriage in 1952; her education at the New School for Social Research; and her struggle to recover from the damaging emotional and mental effects of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Phillip Abraham

    Oral History

    Phillip Abraham, born August 10, 1931 in Podului-Turkului (Podu Turcului), Romania, describes his prewar life in Romania; his family’s religious beliefs; his childhood in a close-knit Jewish community; his family’s move to Tecuci, Romania in 1940; his father being taken away and then released in 1942; the lack of food available to the population; his education in a Jewish school; his town’s liberation by the Russian Army; his post-war Romanian education; his membership in Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth organization; his time in Israel; his education at Hebrew University and Weizmann Institute, where he studied physics; his immigration to the United States in 1959; his careers at Raytheon and the Office of Naval Research; his marriage in 1964; and his two children.

    Oral history interview with George Arnstein

    Oral History

    George Ernest Arnstein, born September 20, 1924 in Stuttgart, Germany, describes his prewar life in Germany; the repercussions of the Nuremberg laws; his experiences with antisemitism; his father’s arrest on Kristallnacht; his father’s time in Dachau; his family’s decision to leave Germany and go to Geneva, Switzerland; his family’s immigration to the United States in 1938; the anti-German sentiment in America during World War II and its effects on him; his service for the United States Army beginning in 1943 and his duties as a crypto-analyst; his work in Germany helping to perform interrogations, monitoring anti-American efforts, and denazification; his return to Wisconsin after the war; his education at Berkeley and Geneva; and his life post-war.

    Oral history interview with Gertrude Scarlett Epstein

    Oral History

    Gertrude Scarlett Epstein, born July 13, 1922 in Vienna, Austria, describes her early life growing up in Vienna; her Czech father’s belief in free thinking; how her family was not religious; her parents’ and older brothers’ experiences during World War I; her Uncle Willie, who became wealthy as a textile factory owner; how she began to notice antisemitism in Vienna when her family moved to a non-Jewish part of town in the 1930s; her father’s and oldest brother’s activities in the socialist movement; her memories of a strike in Vienna in 1934; her memories of the Anschluss; her brothers’ immigration to England; her experience securing visas for Czechoslovakia on the day Hitler entered Vienna; her feelings that her moral code shifted as it became necessary to lie; her father’s arrest and later release from jail in Czechoslovakia; the family’s move to Albania by train; help provided to the family by her Uncle Willie; how she smuggled money out of Austria and Czechoslovakia; her family’s life in Albania from November 1938 to April 1939; the reaction of native Albanians towards Austrian refugees; how the Joint Distribution Committee helped refugees in Albania; her experiences teaching German to Albanians and the Italian consulate; problems she and her mother had in securing passage from Albania to England; brutal treatment she and her mother received from German police at a fuel stop in Germany; her memories of learning about concentration camps in 1943 or 1944; and how she tracked down an Albanian family to whom she taught German.

    Oral history interview with Matilde Neuwirt

    Oral History

    Matilde Neuwirt, born December 26, 1930 in Belgrade, Serbia, describes her early life in Belgrade; how her parents spoke Serbo-Croatian and Ladino at home; her family’s upper-middle class lifestyle; her schooling at both a public and a Jewish school; the lack of apprehension she felt in the pre-war years; her mother’s decision that the family leave Yugoslavia in the summer of 1940; her family’s escape westward through Dubrovnik, Croatia and then to Italy; how her parents smuggled money out of Yugoslavia; her family’s arrival in Italy without visas; living in Vicenza, Italy; how her family was moved to a detention camp in Sandrigo by the Italian authorities; the unofficial schooling that families set up for the children in Sandrigo; how the Italian authorities encouraged families to leave Sandrigo when Italy capitulated to the Germans; the help Jewish families received from a government official to get false documents; her family’s experience traveling to Rome, Italy; her memories of German brutality on the streets; how she did not know what was happening to Jews elsewhere in the country nor the rest of Europe; her brother’s return to Yugoslavia to fight with Tito’s partisans; the anti-Jewish sentiment of the partisans; her brother’s disappearance and the lack of information about him from the Yugoslav government; her family’s decision to emigrate from Italy to the United States in 1949; her family’s arrival in New York, NY; her feelings about Americanization and leaving memories of Europe behind; her memories of the Eichmann trial; her experiences returning to Yugoslavia and Italy after the war; and her belief that her family was lucky in the way they lived through the war.

    Oral history interview with Susanne K. Bennet

    Oral History

    Susanne Klejman Bennet, born August 11, 1938 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her memories of entering the Warsaw ghetto; seeing the brick walls being built in the ghetto; living with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles all together in one apartment; beggars asking for food in her building; how her father, a successful art and antiquities dealer, arranged with a non-Jewish friend to have a Polish policeman take her out of the ghetto to a farm in the countryside; how, just before the destruction of the ghetto, her mother escaped from her work group and hid with nuns who gave her a habit and a new name; how the nuns were later rounded up, but were saved on the train platform by a Catholic commandant; how her father escaped from the ghetto through the sewers right before the uprising and went into hiding throughout Warsaw; how as a young child, she knew not to talk about her parents; seeing the red sky in the distance when Warsaw was burning in 1944; her reunion with her parents; the death of most of her relatives during the Holocaust; moving with her parents to Stockholm, Sweden in 1947; receiving visas in 1949 from the Swedish ambassador to Mexico where she and her family stayed for nine months; immigrating to the United States in 1950; living in New York where her father opened up a store off of Fifth Avenue and became a major art dealer with John and Robert Kennedy, the Rockefellers, the Fords, and Greta Garbo as his clients; attending Wellesley College, where she received a masters in library science; meeting her husband Douglas Bennet, who later worked for Hubert Humphrey, Senator Abe Ribicoff, and was an Assistant Secretary of State, head of US AID and NPR, and president of Wesleyan College; their eldest son, Michael, a United States senator from Colorado; their second son, James, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly; their daughter, Holly, a financial adviser; her feelings when visiting Germany with her husband; how her father never spoke about his wartime experience; and how she has only recently started talking about her childhood during the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Roberts

    Oral History

    Marianne Roberts (née Marianne Cohn), born June 20, 1920 in Ludwigshafen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Ludwigshafen; experiencing antisemitism; her father's death from tuberculosis in 1933; her expulsion from school with her sister, Lottie, because they were Jewish; her mother's death in 1936; being photographed at the City Hall to show her "Jewish left ear" and being given the name ‘Sarah’; living with her sister until Kristallnacht; hiding in a basement for three days with no food while their apartment was being destroyed; moving into her sister's fiancé’s family's house for a few months and never going outside; going to the American Consulate to get visas their mother had applied for three years previously; leaving Germany in early 1939 with 4 dollars, pots and pans, and a family ring; sailing on the Cunard White Star to New York, NY; working in a doctor's office in Brooklyn; getting married and having two children; and speaking for past 20 years in schools and colleges about her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Harry Markowicz

    Oral History

    Harry Markowicz, born August 9, 1937 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Antwerp, Belgium; being hidden during the war with the Coons family in Brussels, Belgium, then in a children's home, and then in the Von der Linden's house under the name Henry Von der Linden; his parents who lived in hiding with another couple; how his father did not go outside for two years while in hiding; his brother, Mani, who was saved by Father Joseph Andre; how his mother found him after liberation; the removal of Allied flags at the time of the Battle of the Bulge because of fear that German forces would make their way to Brussels; arriving in the United States with his parents in March 1951; settling in Seattle, WA and going to high school and the University of Washington; traveling to Paris, France for a year for training as a French teacher; traveling to Israel to learn Hebrew; teaching French in Tacoma, WA; learning sign language and working at Gallaudet University for 29 years; feeling more comfortable among Holocaust survivors; and volunteering at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he feels a bond with the other volunteers.

    Oral history interview with Julie A. Keefer

    Oral History

    Julie Keefer (née Jula Weinstock Eisen), born on April 19, 1941 in Lvov, Poland (present day L'viv, Ukraine), discusses her family’s forced relocation into the Lvov ghetto; the escape of her grandfather, Aiski Eisen, from a camp in Janov; her grandfather finding help from Mr. Borecki, who told him in late 1943 that the ghetto was to be burned, and her grandfather’s rescue of her family from the ghetto; her memories of a tunnel or bunker in the forest, to which a few dozen people were smuggled out of the ghetto; her memories of her grandfather donning a Nazi uniform to smuggle people out of the ghetto; being taken out of the bunker because she and her baby sister, Tola, were endangering others by crying; being placed with Mrs. Szwarczynski, a Catholic woman; the arrival of the Russians in Lvov in June 1944; staying in three displaced persons camps in 1945; living in Camp Taylor in Linz, Austria; traveling alone at seven years old to the United States, where she lived in a series of Catholic orphanages, seeing relatives on weekends; being called a Nazi because she spoke German; being sent by the Joint Distribution Committee to the Bellefaire Jewish Children's Orphanage in Cleveland, OH; her adoption by Fred and Tea Klejstadt; attending Oberlin College; getting married and earning a graduate degree in education; feeling grateful to United States; and her desire to find out what happened to her hidden sister whose name became Antonina Noviska.

    Oral history interview with Erica Laufer

    Oral History

    Erica Laufer, born May 11, 1930 in Klagenfurt, Austria, discusses being the only Jewish child in her school, where she was taught by nuns; her mother denying her Jewish identity but her father being observant; an appearance by Hitler after the Anschluss; being forced to wear the yellow Star of David; being barred from attending school; moving into her grandfather's apartment in Vienna, Austria and living there in secret; SA attacks on Jewish homes; witnessing the events of Kristallnacht while hiding in a doorway; how her father obtained tickets to Trinidad; sailing on the Dutch ship Cotica with other refugees; establishing a life in Port of Spain, Trinidad; being forced, as refuges, to live in a detention center after England entered the war; going to a boarding school to be the companion to the daughter of the director; sailing to New York, NY with her parents in December 1940; moving to Washington, DC where she was discriminated against by other children because of her accent; her academic success; her work for the federal government; getting married and starting a family; not raising her children as Jews following an oath to her mother; the number of relatives she lost in Europe; and her attempts to suppress her feelings about the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Goldberg

    Oral History

    Barbara Goldberg, born in 1943 in Wilmington, DE, discusses her parents, Emma and Erich, who received visas from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes to emigrate from France to Portugal; their journey over the Pyrenees to Spain and then to Portugal; their arrival in the United States; her uncle Paul Brennan (born Pavel Briess) who had been in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz; how other relatives made it to Palestine, Australia, and South Africa; speaking only German in the house; how her parents’ personalities were shaped by the war; never discussing the past or other relatives' stories; feeling a connection to refugees; living with the memory of the Holocaust; and her discovery later in life that Aristides de Sousa Mendes had helped her family.

    Oral history interview with Liselotte Epstein Ivry

    Oral History

    Liselotte Epstein Ivry, born July 21, 1925 in Lichtenstein, Czechoslovakia (possibly present day Lichtenstein, Saxony, Germany), describes her family, including her father Victor Ivry, mother Elsa Sicher, and younger brother Hans; the large families on both her father’s and mother’s sides; having heard of Hitler at age 12; being taken by truck with soldiers to live with relatives in a nearby village and then by train to live in Prague, Czech Republic; the many changes after the Germans marched in on March 15, 1939; having been set to go to Great Britain in 1939 on the Kindertransport but instead being sent first to a children’s facility in Prague and then to a private home; being sent to Terezin September 9, 1942 to work as a nurse in the hospital; the transport and death of her mother and brother on March 8, 1944; being sent on December 15, 1943 in a cattle car to Auschwitz, to Block 11; being given number 70663; how the will to live was what kept you alive; being sent to Hamburg, Germany to work first in a sand pit, then as a train switcher, and finally as a brick-maker; how their camp was bombed and they were moved to Bergen-Belsen; the ensuing chaos and then the emotion and celebration after being liberated by the British; eventually going to Canada in 1949 to stay with her uncle; marrying in 1950 to a Lithuanian, Sydney; her children; her attitude about Germany now and forgiving but not forgetting; her book, I Am Their Voice, which is a collection of poems, letters, and anecdotes by children from her 25 years as a speaker; and how now she is doing research for a work about Madeleine Albright.

    Oral history interview with Hans Ziegler

    Oral History

    Hans Ziegler, born June 12, 1925 in Brno, Czechoslovakia, discusses being raised as a Christian with a Jewish father; his parents divorcing in 1934; his father’s factory going out of business in 1937; attending a German elementary school; his father’s deportation to Terezin (Theresienstadt concentration camp) in 1942; being transported to Berlin, Germany in 1943 for forced labor; being sent in September 1944 to Postelberg (Postoloprty), Czech Republic; escaping in April 1945 with two others to the woods; hiding in Brno until the Russians arrived; getting repatriated and going to university for three years; being expelled by the Soviets in 1949 because his father was a capitalist and a diplomat; being in the military for two years; being employed as a chemist in an armaments factory; working in Egypt and Afghanistan; escaping to Germany in 1970 and staying until 1983; going to the United States and working in Warren, Ohio until 1990; going back to Germany; feeling more Jewish than Christian; and how he thinks more about his father and his war-time experiences.

    Oral history interview with Vera Levine

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Guenter Lewy

    Oral History

    Guenter Lewy, born August 22, 1923 in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland), discusses his childhood in a large extended assimilated family; his memory of seeing Hitler at the 1936 Olympics; belonging to a Jewish Zionist youth group; being attacked on a hiking trip by German storm troopers; his father’s three month imprisonment in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht; going with Youth Aliyah via Trieste to Palestine in March 1939; being met in Haifa by his uncle; living on Kibbutz Tzarad where he worked as a shepherd; his parents’ escape to the United States in late 1941; volunteering in early 1942 for the Palestine Regiment of the British Army; joining the Jewish Brigade and being stationed in Egypt; traveling to Italy with Montgomery's 8th Army in late 1944; traveling to Holland at the war’s end; his role in organizing illegal immigration to Palestine; interrogating German civilians in Berlin; returning to Palestine; traveling to the United States to see his parents in late 1946; graduating from college in 1951 and earning a Master's and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1957; teaching at Columbia, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts; teaching in Germany from 1961 to 1962; his feelings about German people today; the strong influence of his youth group on his resilience; his writings on the moral dimensions of history and the Nazi persecution of the Romani peoples; his current interest in writing about Holocaust perpetrators; reoccurring dreams about Nazis brutality; and feeling that some of the best Holocaust scholarship has being written by contemporary young German scholars.

    Oral history interview with Malvy Solomon

    Oral History

    Malvy Solomon (née Aizic), born in 1938 in Bacau, Romania, discusses pre-war violence against Jews; her father’s conscription into forced labor for the Romanian military in 1941; living with her mother and grandmother in the ghetto with little food; her father’s return in 1944; attending a Jewish primary school and learning Hebrew; surviving bombings; the Soviet arrival in Romania at war’s end; Soviet looting after the war; her school’s closure by Soviet authorities; post-war antisemitism and anti-Capitalist feelings; her father’s job working for the communist government after he was forced to close his store; finishing high school at 16; her medical schooling and career; her marriage; immigrating to Israel in 1961; attending medical school in Tel Aviv; getting divorced, treating soldiers and bombing victims; remarrying in 1971; immigrating to the United States; her education in the U.S.; working for the Department of Veterans Affairs; and her feelings about the war, communism, and her life.

    Oral history interview with Elia Miranski and Genia Miranski

    Oral History

    Elia Miranski, born on August 3, 1922 in Mir, Poland (present day Belarus), describes growing up in a poor, moderately religious family but experiencing no antisemitism until the German invasion in 1939; his parents’ deaths in the first few days of the occupation; escaping with his brother, Israel, from the ghetto which had been set up in a castle; joining Russian partisans in the forest; blowing up railroad tracks for two years; trains near Valozhyn, Belarus; planes dropping supplies; others taking the wounded away from the front lines; Russians mobilizing all partisans into the army; being wounded by the Germans; traveling back to Mir after the war; working on a dairy farm for seven years as a supervisor; moving to Minsk, Belarus and working as a house painter; getting married and having a daughter; going to Israel in 1972 and then to the United States in 1995; thinking day and night about his wartime experiences; and going back to Mir from Israel for a memorial ceremony in the cemetery. Genia Miranski, daughter of Elia Miranski, adds to her father’s interview by translating it into English and by describing Elia’s membership in the Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair; Elia’s parents and two younger siblings being shot by Germans; Elia building bridges and roads; witnessing his friend being mauled to death by a dog; living in the castle ghetto; Elia’s experience escaping and hiding in a swamp for three days and at times breathing through a straw when German dogs were nearby; joining Russian partisans; his return to Minsk at the end of the war and experiencing a significant amount of antisemitism; the Six Day War in Israel; going to an underground bakery at night to get Passover matzo; arriving in Israel in 1972; living in underground bunkers in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War; and her own arrival in the U.S. in 1985 and her parents’ arrival in 1995.

    Oral history interview with Maria Kordalewski

    Oral History

    Maria Kordalewski, born April 13, 1924 in Poland, describes her Ukrainian parents and her two siblings, Nicolai and Nadja; going to school and her Jewish friends; the Russians coming in 1939 and the subsequent food shortages; how people were being sent away to Siberia; the absence of antisemitism in their small town until the German occupation in 1941; how her family hid two boys until the boys escaped; how her brother was arrested in 1942, along with other young men, as a means of preventing an uprising; the Russians coming in 1945 when the war was over; being sent with her sister to Lvov (L'viv, Ukraine) to get away from the communists; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Regensburg, Germany and going to school to study pharmaceuticals; arriving in the United States in 1950 by herself; landing in New York City, NY; the various jobs she held at first; moving to Detroit, MI then to California, and finally to Miami, FL; and her feelings that the Holocaust should never be forgotten.

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