Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2010.247 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0184

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney
    Transcript
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    volunteer collection interview with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney,
    conducted by Gail Schwartz on August 31, 2010
    in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
    This is track number one.
    Please tell me your full name.
    Ursula Guttstadt McKinney.
    Now, originally I had Ursula Käthe Dora Guttstadt.
    That's the name that you were born with.
    I was born with.
    In a sense.
    Right after you were born.
    Then when I came to the United States, I dropped the "Dora"
    and changed the Käthe to Katherine.
    Oh, OK.
    And then I was Ursula Katherine Guttstadt.
    Then when I got married, I dropped more or less
    the Katherine.
    In some of the documents, I still have the "Katherine."
    But otherwise, I took my maiden name, Guttstadt,
    as my middle name.
    OK.
    And where were you born, and when were you born?
    I was born in Frankfurt Oder on the 17th of November, 1925.
    OK, let's talk a little bit about your family
    and their background.
    Your father's name?
    My father's name was Richard--
    originally Richard Johann Guttstadt.
    And my mother's name was Hannah Augusta Semmler.
    I'm not sure if she had another middle name.
    And my parents got married very late.
    My father was 42.
    My mother was 36.
    So my sister and I were really wanted, which
    helped us during the Nazi time.
    Yeah.
    Let's talk about your family background.
    My father--
    Where was your father born?
    My father was born in Berlin on the 19th October 1879.
    And my mother was born on the 21st of April,
    1886 in Jüterbog.
    That is south of Berlin.
    OK.
    And let's talk about your father's family.
    My father's father was a physician.
    My father was born in the old part of Berlin,
    in Alexandrinenstrasse, which is really the middle core.
    And his father, who was a physician,
    he was very interested, really, in the hygiene, too.
    For he was working really later on for the University
    of Berlin.
    He lectured on medical statistics.
    And he wrote about medical statistics.
    And even under Hitler, his books were in the so-called Gift--
    poison-- closet.
    And students who studied this could use his papers.
    And almost all his things are in the Library of Congress.
    And he wrote his dissertation in Latin.
    You know, the doctors then still wrote in Latin.
    My grandfather really came for Ost--
    from Ost-- from East Prussia.
    And he had not any-- very much money.
    He had one Dukaten, which was then the gold money in Germany.
    And he went to Berlin, and then he studied and did all this.
    And he was-- yeah, he was very interested in statistics.
    He also worked together with Virchow,
    who was a very known physician in the Charité in Berlin,
    which is an old hospital.
    And he wrote about--
    they had cholera then in Berlin.
    So my grandfather really wrote about that
    to fight the cholera is one thing,
    but you really have to fight the hygiene conditions,
    the way how the people live and the water.
    The water condition.
    And just fighting the disease wouldn't
    be any really help very much.
    So he wrote a lot about these kind of things.
    What was his name, your grandfather?
    My father-- grandfather, Albert Guttstadt.
    Albert Guttstadt.
    And in Rastenburg in East Prussia
    they were very proud of him.
    The original, Hitler removed all that, but in the city hall
    there was a picture of my grandfather,
    and one of the streets were named after him.
    And so-- but I never met him.
    My grandfather died before I ever--
    before my parents ever got married.
    I didn't meet any of my father's parents.
    His mother was-- what was her last name?
    Hoo, hoo, hoo. [? Grubauer. ?] She came from Silesia.
    And they had a sugar factory.
    Yes, oops.
    Let's see.
    This is Albert.
    I see-- Klara, yeah.
    My grandfather was born on the 25th
    of January, 1840 in Rastenburg.
    And his father's name was Samuel Guttstadt.
    And his mother was Henrietta Guttstadt, neé Rosenbach.
    And I met lots of the Rosenbachs.
    This was a big family, but they all vanished.
    Every single one vanished in the Holocaust.
    What religion were they?
    All Jewish.
    They were all Jewish.
    They were all Jewish.
    So your father was Jewish.
    Yeah.
    And she-- and my grandmother, Klara Guttstadt, and she
    was-- her maiden name was [? Grubauer. ?]
    She was born in Silesia on the 10th of September, 1850.
    And she died in Berlin.
    And so did my grandfather.
    They both died in Berlin.
    Tell me a little bit more about your father and his work.
    My father, there were three children, really.
    Käthe Guttstadt.
    And she died of diphtheria when she was 13.
    And then my father, Richard, and his father Frederich,
    Friedrich.
    And my father, Richard, and Friedrich
    both started to study law.
    And then my father didn't particularly care for it.
    So then he switched, and he studied
    engineering and architecture.
    And he won the Schinkelpreis, which
    was something which only was given out every five years.
    That is the prize for architects.
    And he got it for designing a railroad station
    and the layout of the tracks.
    And my father's-- and I couldn't find them.
    I looked for them yesterday.
    My father studied at the Technical University in Berlin.
    And yeah, his drawings are there of his things.
    And then he worked for the railroad.
    And he designed tunnels for the railroad.
    There is a path between Berlin and Frankfurt.
    They always-- the tracks are low, and the sights are high.
    And it always was sliding down.
    So my father designed how to prevent that.
    And my father was very--
    all his workers loved him.
    When they tried to-- when they kicked him out,
    the workers striked.
    And they said, we want Guttstadt back.
    But it didn't help under Hitler, certainly.
    Was your father's family a religious family
    an observant family?
    I don't think so.
    I think all my family, as far as I know,
    I think they had maybe a bat mitzvah.
    They went-- but I don't think they even
    ate kosher or anything.
    It was not a very religious family.
    That's one thing Hitler did, all my few surviving families,
    they're all now religious Jews.
    Now, tell me about your mother's family.
    Now, my mother was not Jewish.
    My mother's family is Semmler.
    And--
    What religion were they?
    Lutheran.
    Lutheran.
    Yeah.
    In Germany, in general, you had three, you know,
    which the state supported.
    They took the tax out.
    Either Jewish, Catholic, or Lutheran.
    The state took the tax.
    You could say I'm a member, and they took the tax out.
    But they were not religious either.
    My mother only went to church if she
    liked the minister's sermons.
    You know, there was one, she went to the Kaiser Wilhelm
    Gedachtniskirche in Berlin.
    And then one time there was somebody, the preacher,
    she thought she liked his sermons.
    So then she went.
    But not out of any other conviction.
    And we didn't grow up-- my sister
    and I didn't grow up religious.
    And so you know--
    But you knew you were half-Jewish,
    half-Lutheran in a sense?
    Naja, I knew that only in the beginning, I didn't.
    No, I had no idea.
    I remember that when I was in elementary school,
    we had religious--
    we went in-- my first year, we had religious education
    in school.
    And usually the regular teacher gave the Lutheran.
    And I had a girlfriend, one of my classmates was Lutheran,
    was Catholic.
    And she always wanted to leave.
    And I said, you can't do that.
    I'm not going home alone.
    You have to stay.
    And then there were two people, two of mine,
    and they were Jewish.
    And then [? Hela ?] came in and she said--
    there were the Ten Commandments on.
    And she said, oh, you have the same Ten Commandments as we do.
    And I said, yes, why not?
    So I was really not aware of the difference.
    I thought, you know, that was somewhere
    people said they're different, but I
    didn't know why they said they were different.
    But Frankfurt Oder had a very small Jewish community.
    And they are now on the bridge.
    You know where you have the bridge?
    Frankfurt Oder is written on this.
    They don't have anybody.
    And we knew them all.
    We knew all of them.
    But the--
    So did you live in a mixed neighborhood, in a sense?
    We all lived in mixed neighborhoods.
    OK.
    The whole Jewish community lived in a mixed neighborhood.
    There was no ghetto.
    No.
    Or there was no area--
    Where it was mostly Jewish.
    No, no.
    We're all in with the reform house.
    No.
    Can you describe yourself as a youngster?
    Were you an independent child?
    Or?
    Yeah, I was the second.
    My sister is older.
    So I always was up to her age.
    And her name?
    Her name is Brigitte.
    And so my sister went to school, for example.
    She was two classes above me.
    And so I was-- we had seats.
    And in the middle there was a raised part
    which separated the two seats.
    And there I was sitting.
    And all the teachers, they all knew us.
    You know, Frankfurt Oder had only 60,000 residents.
    So they knew.
    So I was sitting there.
    So one day I appeared, and I was only four.
    And I appeared at the principal.
    And I said-- he said, what do you want?
    And I said, I want to go to school.
    And he said, when were you born?
    And I told him.
    And he said, you can't go to school.
    You are too young.
    So I went home crying, supposedly crying terrible.
    And it took my mother two hours to find out why I was crying.
    [CHUCKLING]
    So yes, I always was.
    When we went to school, my parents both came with me.
    And my sister was always very good in this.
    When my sister went to school, my parents were there.
    And then she went in her class.
    Naja, when I--
    I knew the school.
    So when I came, my parents came with me.
    And then they called our names and said class A or B or C.
    So when they're called A, my parents looked around.
    Ursula was gone.
    There was no Ursula around.
    So they went to class A, and there I was sitting.
    So yeah, and then we went with 10--
    we went into the Gymnasium, in the high school.
    And I owned-- naja, that comes later.
    But my parents-- my mother wanted to come visit me.
    And I said, don't dare to come with me.
    And she didn't.
    So I was-- Yes, I was very--
    so it hit me in some ways maybe harder than my sister,
    to be an outcast in the end.
    Because I also had my whole class were my friends.
    My sister had a few friends, and she
    was standing in the courtyard one time alone.
    And I said, what's the matter with you?
    All my friends are sick.
    They have the flu.
    I said, no, join the other ones.
    No, I can't do that.
    I can't push my way between.
    I said, why not?
    [CHUCKLING]
    And so on.
    So it hit me very hard, probably more than my sister.
    My sister also could do--
    in '38, you see--
    now let me backtrack.
    In '36, I was supposed to go to the Gymnasium.
    We went four years to elementary school.
    And then you could stay in elementary school,
    or you could go in something which
    we called middle school, where you were until you were 16.
    And then you could go to the Gymnasium,
    and you got your Abiturium when you were 18.
    And then you could go to the university.
    But we went-- my school, and we will separate,
    the boys and the girls.
    So in my school, there were 700 girls.
    And from the 700 girls in 1936, only 10%
    could be either Jewish or half-Jewish.
    So the quota was filled.
    And so that would have meant that I
    couldn't go to the high school.
    And then one family moved to Berlin, so I could get in.
    And then in '38, the Jewish kids were kicked out,
    and you know, after Crystal Night,
    they couldn't stay in school.
    But we half-Jews could stay in.
    And my sister still--
    and my sister was lucky.
    She had in her class another half-Jew.
    And after she did the Abiturium, I was the only one.
    And so there were 699 kids in uniforms on Hitler's birthday
    and so on.
    And I was private.
    It was awful.
    It was awful.
    I can feel how the Blacks were feeling in those places,
    you know?
    You did not wear a uniform?
    Oh, no.
    I couldn't get into the Hitler Youth.
    Oh, that was the Hitler Youth.
    That was the Hitler Youth uniform?
    No, we didn't wear any uniforms in school.
    No, we didn't.
    No, no, no.
    And then in '42, they kicked me out.
    Right.
    We'll get to that in a minute.
    Let's back up a little bit.
    So you were a young child, and you went to school,
    and you had Jewish and non-Jewish friends.
    Were you athletic?
    Oh, yeah, very.
    You were in good shape physically?
    Oh, yes.
    Did you have any hobbies?
    Did you like to read or?
    Oh, naja, I read.
    I read extensively.
    My sister and I, we both read a lot.
    My father used to say, how much you
    get paid for reading an hour?
    I read a lot, and I was--
    I swam a lot.
    I bicycled.
    My father-- we were really the children
    of my father in many ways.
    My father took us both bicycling.
    And my father was known in Frankfurt Oder
    with on each side and arm, he had one of his daughters.
    And my father really taught us a lot.
    He was very great.
    When we went on vacation, at first,
    you know, we could go on vacation,
    he gave us a map when we were 8 and so,
    and said now here we are, and there we want to be.
    Now you lead us.
    And so on.
    So when we missed something, then we said Vati, Vati!
    He said, but you are leading us.
    And then he showed us.
    OK, that's where you went wrong.
    So let's go back and then go where we were.
    My father was very good.
    He swam very well.
    And even he walked up some mountains this way,
    instead of going this way.
    [CHUCKLING]
    And so he was really in good shape, too.
    And I was-- yes, I was very good in sports.
    And under Hitler, sport was a major subject.
    And one of my goals was to swim the channel between France
    and England.
    [LAUGHTER]
    But I didn't get to that.
    Not yet, not yet.
    No.
    But let's start talking about when things started changing.
    You were born in '25.
    When did you first hear about a man named Hitler?
    Do you remember?
    Naja, one of the things is when I went to school,
    we still said good morning.
    And then our teacher--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    That-- forget it.
    Our teacher somewhere must have told us
    that we had to say "Heil Hitler" in the morning.
    But I have no recollection of that.
    [PHONE RINGING]
    The teacher in-- you see, in January '33, she must--
    she must-- is the one who told us that we
    had to say "Heil Hitler."
    Now, she was not a Nazi.
    There were lots of--
    so she-- but I have no recollection
    of that, when she ever didn't make any impression of me.
    The first thing, really, we were in Silesia in vacation.
    My father, my mother, and we two.
    And this was when-- in '34, when they killed so many of--
    Hitler killed so many of the Long Knives.
    And when they announced it over the radio,
    my sister and I somewhere knew my father was in danger,
    and we went right and left of him, like we could protect him.
    But we were very small children.
    How did you know he was threatened?
    I don't know.
    I don't know.
    But we-- both of him, we knew that Vati was in danger.
    I guess--
    Do you remember talking this over
    with him or with your mother?
    No, we were really too young to talk--
    Yeah, you were very young.
    --to talk that over, really.
    I don't know.
    It was just, I guess, somewhere I
    guess my parents must have talked about it.
    Also we maybe have overheard some--
    and I know that relatives of my father
    called on him all the time, and you know, what to do.
    And so somewhere not maybe we couldn't really
    put it in words, but somewhere we
    were aware of that the-- my Jewish relatives were
    in danger.
    Do you remember, when you were young,
    hearing Hitler give speeches over the radio?
    Oh, I saw him.
    I saw Hitler, too.
    With Hindenburg.
    That was when Hindenburg was still alive.
    He came to Frankfurt Oder, and we all-- all schoolchildren
    went there.
    And there was a car, open car.
    And there was this old gentleman Hindenburg and Hitler.
    And--
    But did it mean anything to you?
    To none of us.
    We're all just supposed to look at this.
    And we said, ah, that's the rulers, and we didn't care.
    We were too young.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    And didn't make any impression on us, I think.
    But I did see him, yeah.
    Do you remember when exactly that was?
    Naja, when did Hindenburg die?
    That must have been '34, too, you know?
    So I was really, you know?
    Yeah.
    Yeah, you were very young.
    And so on.
    So--
    So at that point, you still didn't feel in danger.
    You knew your father was, but you yourself--
    I didn't feel in danger.
    You didn't feel in danger.
    No, no.
    And this was also--
    then in--
    Then what happened?
    In '35, I think, is when--
    before, you know, people the school gave out
    the forms for being--
    for joining the Hitler Youth.
    And I certainly didn't get it.
    Because my teacher knew that I was half-Jewish.
    And then I came home, and I talked to-- told it Mommy.
    And then Mommy told me why I didn't get it.
    And do you-- do you remember your feelings?
    Yeah, I thought--
    Were you upset?
    Somewhere I was upset, because I didn't--
    I didn't like to be different than the other ones.
    And I was the only one in my class, so you know,
    I was the only one who was somewhat different.
    But on the other hand, is my classmates
    were not anywhere against me.
    Well, that was going to be my next question.
    Did they start to treat you differently?
    No.
    You didn't sense any--
    No, my classmates-- my classmates
    didn't treat me differently.
    My classmates didn't treat me differently
    after the Crystal Night either.
    Not in high school.
    The ones who treated me differently were the teachers.
    Because the teacher--
    Starting when?
    In the very beginning when Hitler came in?
    No, no.
    They didn't.
    My teacher in elementary school was an old spinster, old lady.
    And she was not a Nazi.
    And she didn't treat me any way different.
    And my classmates at this point, it was just small city.
    I mean, it wasn't that obvious.
    And then in high school, the teachers somewhere were afraid.
    I always was a very good student.
    And I loved to study.
    And then my teachers were afraid to give me good grades.
    Because then they would maybe say,
    oh, you are friendly to the Jews.
    But my classmates were not.
    And how does a young person respond to that?
    Did you know that's why the teachers didn't give you--
    Yeah, sure.
    So what--
    Now, that was--
    Were you angry?
    Were you sad?
    What were you?
    Naja, are at this point, you know, that was--
    you just try to--
    at this point, you had the feeling
    that maybe you survive all that without any real bad harm
    and so on.
    But my father then already started
    to talk about people who came back,
    not necessarily Jews, really more communists who came back
    from camps.
    And he told us about a man who came back and had a beard.
    And because his jaws were all broken.
    He didn't want his family to saw that.
    And he never got undressed in front of his wife or anything
    because of that.
    So my father told us about these things.
    But these were mostly the communists, not really
    the Jews.
    And--
    What did you do while the other students were
    going to Hitler Youth meetings?
    Well, that was in the after school.
    No, I'm saying while they were busy going
    to meetings, what did you do?
    I went to ballet school.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I don't know how many people went there, really.
    Oh, I see.
    No, and I went swimming and so on.
    And my best friend, she didn't go to anything that I know of.
    Oh, OK.
    Had you heard of something called the Nuremberg Laws?
    Yeah, the Mendelssohngesetze.
    Yeah, sure.
    And again as a child--
    The Mendelssohn.
    Yeah, we knew all about the Mendel--
    Mendelssohn who did this with--
    yeah.
    And yeah, we knew.
    Then-- by then I knew about it, yeah.
    OK, and again, do you remember what
    was going on inside your head when
    you learned about these laws?
    Naja, my father was stateless, you know?
    They stripped him of his--
    and my father was really a civil servant.
    And then in '36, they sent him a notice
    that he had this special position,
    because you couldn't expect that Aryans would work with a Jew.
    So he had a special assignment.
    And we knew about that, certainly.
    And we knew that--
    I don't know.
    you see, one of these things in the beginning
    is, we all had somewhere the feeling in Germany,
    number one is, the German Jews were in many ways very bad,
    because they were very emancipated.
    They felt very German.
    And their religion was Jewish, like somebody else's
    was Catholic and so on.
    So many of them thought they couldn't
    believe that the Germans would go along with it.
    So many of them really didn't expect
    that it would get that bad and the Germans
    would go along with it.
    There also, you know--
    I don't know how to say this.
    You see, none of my relatives spoke Yiddish.
    They were assimilated.
    Yeah, that was below the-- you know, Yiddish?
    Right, right.
    Yiddish?
    No.
    [CHUCKLING]
    You know?
    Right.
    I mean, so that was the bad part.
    And the Jews got citizenship in Prussia
    before they got it anywhere else.
    The citizen paper of my great-great-grandfather
    is at the Beck Institute.
    My cousin gave it to the Beck Institute.
    So somewhere there was always the belief
    is that somewhere it will be ending before it
    gets really, really bad.
    You know?
    But--
    And did you know how you were considered, having half--
    Oh, yeah.
    Sure, yeah.
    I was a Mischling ersten Grades.
    [CHUCKLING]
    Sure, I know about it.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    But I was-- no, I had blond hair and blue eyes.
    So people didn't realize that.
    I have a cousin, Gerhard Guttstadt,
    who looked very Jewish.
    You know, what they considered.
    He's [? big, ?] dark hair, and everything.
    They beat him up merciless.
    Nobody beat me up.
    But if they had dared, I would have beaten back.
    And I would have won.
    Speaking about your cousin, did you have large extended family?
    No, my father had one brother, who had two sons.
    Albert-- Albert and Gerhard Guttstadt.
    And were you close to those cousins?
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    But you didn't observe holidays or anything?
    No, but there were also half-Jewish.
    Oh, OK.
    He also married a non-Jew.
    And so they were half-Jewish.
    But both of them were in the Organisation Todt.
    You know, which was the labor camp
    for people they didn't put into concentration camp,
    but in a labor camp.
    And both of them were broken, broken men afterwards.
    And they admired my sister and me
    that we had the guts to immigrate.
    And neither one of them immigrated.
    They just didn't have the--
    they couldn't.
    So all right.
    So it's Kristallnacht, you said happened.
    in fall of '38.
    In '38.
    Yeah, and we saw the synagogue burning.
    You did.
    And-- oh, yes.
    And we went down.
    You're almost-- you're 13 now.
    Yeah, and we went down.
    And you know, I mean, we knew all of the--
    now maybe not all, but we knew most of the Jews
    in Frankfurt Oder.
    Yes, we did.
    And again, as a 13-year-old child,
    you said you saw this happening.
    Yeah.
    Do you just stand there?
    What do you--
    Then my sister and--
    my sister and I were lying awake at night.
    And we waited that would take my father.
    We were very much aware that they
    arrested all the Jews then.
    And they didn't take my father at this point.
    And then they had the children's--
    the children went to, with the Quakers, to England.
    And my sister and I wanted badly to go to England.
    And my mother couldn't say goodbye to us, so we stayed.
    But from then on, we were lying awake hours and so on,
    and talking to each other and waiting
    that something might happen.
    Because they didn't hit our house,
    and they didn't do anything to us at this point.
    At that point.
    But the Gestapo came all the time and looked.
    And my father did all those things.
    You know, he had one typewriter, and he typed with two fingers.
    And he typed all the underground and so on.
    And he had-- we knew he had it hidden somewhere,
    and we didn't know where he had it hidden.
    And then came the Gestapo and so on.
    Yeah.
    And I always watched them.
    Some way I was not afraid of the Gestapo.
    I watched them.
    And when they confiscated our typewriter,
    I said to my mother, mommy, they are stealing our typewriter.
    You said that in front of the Gestapo?
    Yeah.
    They didn't do anything to me.
    But some way I wasn't afraid of them.
    But we knew that somewhere that we are doomed, Yeah
    What was your mother's reaction at that point?
    Do you remember her being very fearful?
    Or was she a very strong woman?
    Naja, my father-- there were then people who told my mother,
    why don't you get a divorce, and then you are safe?
    And my mother said, I would never do that.
    Said, I would always stay to my husband
    and to my children, whatever happens.
    So no, she was very much--
    you know, she was very strong.
    And then we had a house in Frankfurt Oder, which
    was in the name of my husband--
    of my father.
    And at first it was Richard Guttstadt.
    And then it was Richard Israel Guttstadt.
    And then it was crossed out in the registry,
    and there was the Third Reich was the owner.
    And my father stayed there.
    They did not kick--
    They let you all stay.
    Naja, my father just refused to move somewhere.
    He didn't.
    But then in October '42, they took my father.
    So up to October '42, you stayed in that house.
    You were going to school.
    Things were--
    In October '42, they kicked me out.
    They took my father.
    When you say they took your father,
    was he at home and they came and arrested him?
    Yeah.
    Did you see that?
    I was in school.
    You were in school when he was taken away.
    Yeah.
    But he was wait a moment.
    He was arrested in '41.
    He was arrested in '41.
    What did he do?
    Yeah, no.
    I was in school still, and I wasn't there.
    But then the--
    Was your mother at home?
    Yeah.
    Did she work, or was she--
    No.
    OK, so she was at home when they came to arrest him.
    Yeah, yeah.
    And then you come home--
    And then there was--
    they took him to the police prison.
    The police station had a small prison.
    And they took my father there and said that--
    and one of the guards there was very--
    was a Roman Catholic.
    And he went to the Monsignor and said
    the Monsignor should go to my mother
    and tell that Vati is there, and they are going
    to transport him to Mauthausen.
    And that she-- when he is on duty then and there,
    Mommy should come.
    And she did.
    And then another time, my sister and I went.
    We said--
    You said goodbye.
    We said goodbye to my father.
    What did you think was happening?
    And my father took us both, and my father never really cried,
    but some way we-- we all knew that this was the end.
    You did know.
    Yeah.
    How did you know that?
    Naja, by then we knew about the concentration camps.
    OK.
    I mean, we--
    How did you know?
    How did we know?
    I don't really know how we knew, but we knew
    about the concentration camps.
    And we knew about the death chambers, the crematoriums.
    And--
    Did you know what Mauthausen was at that point?
    Naja, at this point it was very unusual that they took Vati
    to Mauthausen, which is outside of Linz, in Austria.
    Right.
    Because, you know, usually all of these people
    went to Auschwitz or to any of the--
    Birkenau or any of the Eastern ones.
    And so that they took Vati to Mauthausen
    was somewhat unusual.
    There were more the Austrian Jews and the Dutch Jews,
    and you know, but not really the German Jews.
    But we knew that we would--
    Were there other men picked up that--
    Jewish men picked up that same time?
    There was nobody left.
    By the time your father was arrested.
    Yeah.
    The other men had been taken away.
    The other-- all the Jews were taken away before they were--
    after '38, they were all-- you know,
    my sister and I went into the city of Frankfurt,
    and there they were with their luggage and so on.
    And they went to one of the schools,
    where they were assembled.
    You see, the Gestapo always sent,
    usually through the Judenrat, the papers,
    where the people knew what to take,
    and what they couldn't take, and where to go,
    and what time and so on.
    So we saw them, and we knew where they go.
    And then we went to that school, my sister and I.
    And people say, you shouldn't come.
    And we said, yes, we do have to come.
    So we knew about that.
    And they went all to Warsaw and the ghetto.
    And so my father was the only Jew left in Frankfurt Oder.
    And my father was accompanied by policemen, regular police,
    German police.
    Again, what do you attribute the fact
    that your father was the only one left?
    Because he had a Christian wife.
    Oh.
    I think.
    Though he himself was 100% Jewish.
    Yeah.
    But the fact that he had the Christian wife--
    Yeah, yeah.
    I think that was the--
    so he was-- he was the only one left.
    There was nobody else there.
    There was another Jewish man, but his wife
    divorced him and he was taken before.
    When your father was the only one left,
    did he become depressed, or did he still keep hoping?
    Naja, when you see my pictures of my father, '32, my father
    had blue eyes, but he had very sparkling eyes.
    And then '33, he had sparkle almost gone, and he aged.
    He looked like an old man.
    Once Hitler got into power.
    So my father-- and my father tried to go out.
    But you know, it was very difficult.
    He was-- you know, the Americans didn't let anybody in.
    And his relatives, you know, tried to get him out,
    but he couldn't get in.
    So my father more or less knew that he was doomed.
    So now your father's taken away, and it's your mother
    and you two girls.
    And then they got my father out of the house--
    my mother out of the house.
    She left the house.
    The Gestapo said you have to go.
    And Mommy went.
    With you girls.
    With us two girls.
    And then we rented--
    we rented some rooms with other people.
    Uh-huh.
    And how do you support--
    How did your mother support you all?
    Naja, then my mother worked.
    You see, my mother had really studied music and never
    really worked.
    So then she-- there was a lawyer and--
    a tax lawyer.
    My mother worked in an office then and put--
    stuffed envelopes and all those kind of things.
    And then my mother's mother helped us financially.
    OK.
    And you, at that point, were still in school?
    Or you--
    No, I was kicked out in October '42.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    And again, you're almost 17.
    So what does that do to a 17-year-old girl,
    to be told that?
    [SIGHS]
    Naja, my sister and I left in '42.
    We got the papers in '42.
    To go to-- you know, that we should go.
    We should go to a factory in Briesen,
    which was between a city between Berlin and Frankfurt Oder.
    And we should go there to a factory.
    Oh, OK, to work.
    Yeah.
    And so my sister and I decided we are not going to go.
    And so we took a train to Berlin at night.
    OK, now that's very unusual.
    And what was your mother's role in that?
    Naja, my mother stayed in Frankfurt Oder.
    And the Gestapo called her in and said, where are your girls?
    And Mommy said, they left me.
    I have no idea.
    Now, was it her idea for you girls to leave?
    What?
    I think it was the consent of all of us, that we don't go.
    Because that-- and that Briesen factory
    went to the Warsaw Ghetto.
    So we-- yes, so then we were in Berlin, just
    the two of us, my sister and I.
    How did you get there?
    By train.
    You had papers?
    Did you have papers, ID papers?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah, we had a Kennkarte.
    Yeah, sure.
    Yeah.
    Saying that you were a Mischling?
    No.
    No.
    Anything there showing that you had Jewish parentage?
    No, no.
    It didn't say anything.
    OK.
    So then we went to Berlin, and we stayed with friends,
    and we stayed in a pension.
    And I went to a Carmelite convent
    to help with the children, and my sister worked, and so on.
    And a relative on my mother's side,
    who was a religious nut, but--
    a Christian religious nut, but he was not a Nazi.
    And he hired her, and she worked in his office.
    He was a tax lawyer.
    And she worked there.
    And I helped the nuns with the children.
    Did you live in the convent itself?
    Partly I lived in the convent.
    But then my mother came to Berlin,
    and we lived in, again, in furnished rooms.
    And then the bombs started to fall.
    And in some ways, the bombs were a little bit mixed.
    Because you see, you always had to register in Germany
    at the police station when you moved.
    All the Germans had to do that.
    And so then so many of them were destroyed.
    So it was a little bit easier to evade them.
    And--
    Once your father was taken away, did you
    have any contact with him?
    No.
    He was in Mauthausen.
    Right, that's what I'm just saying.
    Once he said goodbye, there was no more contact.
    No, we got-- we got-- my mother got a letter from Mauthausen
    that my father was killed while he tried to escape.
    All the concentration camps had certain deaths.
    In one they had heart attacks.
    In one they had something else.
    In Mauthausen, they all tried to escape.
    It's all in-- did you ever read The SS State by Kogon?
    No.
    So when was that?
    When did your mother get that letter?
    In '42.
    Oh, so it was soon after he left?
    I see.
    Yeah.
    And so-- and then--
    How did she present that to you girls?
    Was that--
    Well, she told us the letter.
    Was she very emotional?
    Was she--
    Yeah.
    In some ways yes.
    In some ways not.
    And somewhere-- we somewhere knew
    that Vati would not come back.
    In some ways.
    On the other hand, is we didn't trust anything.
    Right.
    So '45, we didn't dare to move anywhere far
    away from Frankfurt Oder, because we thought maybe,
    maybe he comes back.
    There's always that hope, yeah.
    And so on.
    But on the other hand, is then my sister
    and I were running for our life.
    Yes.
    And then the bombs came.
    Did you go into shelters?
    Yeah, sure.
    We sit in the basement in the shelters.
    And so then the bombs came.
    And you know, an the rations, and then, you know,
    we heard the Russian cannons from around Christmas '44.
    And they didn't march into Berlin until April '45.
    You heard all the time the cannons.
    So in some ways, you know, we all moved somewhere like dolls.
    You know, you pull a leg and you move.
    You pull the other one and you move.
    And you just keep-- you're somewhere dull to pain.
    You know, there is so much that you just say,
    you can't anymore.
    And in '45, really Hitler tried to kill
    all the half-Jews and all the Jews
    and all the people in the concentration camp,
    so that nobody could say anything against him and so on.
    So in April '45, the few people I knew, I still had contact to,
    I wrote farewell letters.
    And I said, I'm going to go.
    I'm not going to run anymore.
    I just can't anymore.
    And so on.
    And somewhere, I never said yes again to life.
    You know, I can't--
    people get-- like when I moved out of my house,
    I said, sure, I can go.
    I can't get-- it's very, very difficult. I try--
    I also have trouble getting people too close to me.
    You know, and so on.
    But you know, it was just--
    on the other hand, you were also so divided.
    You know, when the bombs were falling,
    and the apartment houses in Berlin were burning,
    and then the Germans were sitting in front with just
    a little bit belongings.
    You feel sorry for them.
    They were human beings.
    So you were so divided.
    On the one hand, is I hope that more bombs are falling and more
    get destroyed, because then I may be surviving.
    On the other hand, is you know, you felt sorry.
    And in some of the people, you know, like my best friend
    from high school--
    my Mommy's mother lived in Frankfurt Oder.
    And she went to Frankfurt-- to my grandmother,
    and she said, where Ursula?
    And my grandmother said, I can't tell you.
    And she kept on pestering her.
    So finally my grandmother broke down and told her.
    She gave her my address.
    And then she rang the bell, and we usually didn't open.
    Because Mommy always was afraid if the bell rang somebody
    will take us.
    And there she was.
    So some of the people, you know, never abandoned
    me or my sister.
    But it was-- but you were somewhere--
    you thought that either the bombs get you,
    or the Russians get you, or the Gestapo gets you, or somewhere.
    The percentage of survivors was very small.
    It was very small.
    And then after the war, nobody ever
    thought that we were in shock or anything.
    Nobody helped us anywhere.
    Your sister stayed through the end of the war?
    She stayed.
    Oh, yeah.
    We stayed all the time.
    Yeah, we were together.
    My sister wanted to run away from the Russians.
    And we were beating each other.
    And I said, you are crazy to go on the highway.
    We are going to stay.
    And so I won.
    We did stay.
    My biggest fear then, well, really at this point,
    when we knew it was the end, is that the British bombs,
    you know, they had these blockbusters.
    And in the basement, when the alarm was--
    and we were sitting with the Germans, nobody opposed us,
    really--
    it's a blockbuster, but we were sitting.
    You know, my mother, and my sister,
    and I, we were all sitting together.
    I think my sister sat in the middle, and Mommy and I
    on the outside.
    And these blockbuster, the people were blew then.
    You know, because it's just everything burst.
    You know, so they were blew when they were hit.
    But there was sometimes a vacuum.
    And so my fear was always that I sit in the vacuum
    and Mommy and Gitte are dead.
    That was my greatest fear, too, till the end of '45.
    Yeah, you know, I mean--
    What do you mean, people were blew?
    Because all their outer--
    everything burst, when you--
    this is such a strong pressure, from the pressure.
    Oh.
    The blockbusters were awful from the British.
    And they hit, you know, the blockbuster
    means they hit whole blocks.
    And that-- and so it was-- that was one of my fears.
    You know.
    And '45, naja, then I knew that the Gestapo
    wouldn't get me anymore.
    Even the government said to the end
    it's a relief army and so on.
    And in front of us, we had the--
    for the tanks, when the tanks would go on the main streets,
    they would go against it, they would blow up.
    Except the Russian tanks were very small,
    and they went through all the side streets
    and never hit any of these things.
    And it's-- I don't know.
    You know, you were--
    in some ways, you were--
    you were numb.
    But on the other hand, you were not afraid of anything,
    really, anymore.
    You know, it was so bad that you thought, you know, what else?
    You know, one way or another.
    So who cares?
    You know?
    Did you know what had happened to Hitler at that time?
    No, we heard that afterwards.
    Yeah, yeah.
    Yeah, we heard that afterwards.
    We didn't even know Eva Braun existed.
    If what?
    That Eva Braun existed.
    Oh, Eva Braun, yeah.
    We didn't even know that she existed.
    Hitler was such a purist.
    He was a vegetarian.
    And he didn't have girlfriends.
    And he did have.
    [CHUCKLING]
    But--
    When you were in Berlin, did you meet any other Jews in hiding?
    Or did you come across any that you knew of?
    We knew that there are Jews.
    We tried not to find any of them.
    Because you see, any time you tried
    to get in contact with any of them, you endangered them.
    So you, in a sense, did not meet any.
    So you tried not.
    If you somewhere were where there
    were-- at the Jewish cemetery in Weissensee,
    there were Jews hidden in these old-fashioned mausoleums.
    And the gardeners, who were Aryans,
    they gave them food and everything.
    But if you tried to any way to do anything,
    you were afraid to endanger them.
    And so, you know, you tried not to do anything like this.
    Because you-- you know, you hoped
    that nobody would find them.
    And if you found them, somebody else might find them.
    Or you were also afraid that somebody might follow you,
    and you would lead them to something.
    So at this point, we did not really
    try to find anybody in hiding.
    Because you endangered the Jews, but you endangered also
    the people who hid them.
    Right, right.
    You know?
    So you tried not to find out anything about them.
    You knew somewhere-- you know, the trouble
    is, there was always a grapevine,
    so you heard about things.
    I had contact with some Dutch underground people.
    And so I knew about D-Day before anybody ever admitted that
    the English--
    that the Americans had landed because the Dutch Underground
    told me that.
    But you know--
    Tell me your connection with the Dutch Underground.
    How did that happen?
    Naja, the Dutch Underground, you know, Hitler had all these--
    they just took cars, you know, pickup trucks,
    and drove to factories and took all the young men in
    and shipped them to Germany for to manage the factories
    and so on.
    And the Carmelite nuns, you know,
    where I helped them with the kids,
    until the kids were all really sent out
    of Berlin, these Dutch underground kids,
    they were Catholic.
    So they came to that convent.
    And in the evening, and they talked.
    And they told me.
    You yourself never actually worked
    for an underground organization?
    No. no, I didn't.
    Do you know if there were any Jewish children
    hiding in this convent?
    There were some.
    Yes.
    Yes, we did have Jewish kids hid.
    We had-- there was one woman, and she--
    you know, she couldn't marry because, you know,
    Jews couldn't marry--
    marry.
    And she converted to Catholicism,
    but she was in Auschwitz.
    She survived.
    She survived.
    But her son before she--
    her son was with her in this--
    where they all collect all the Jews before they
    shipped them out.
    So somewhere she contacted the Catholic Church.
    And so the nuns--
    they took me with them.
    With them, because they couldn't go alone as just the nuns.
    And I looked so nice and Aryan, you know,
    with blond hair and everything.
    So we went to her-- to the apartment.
    And there was a Gestapo, and it was sealed.
    And so the Gestapo unsealed it, and the nuns took out
    the children's clothes.
    And then the little boy stayed, stayed in the convent.
    And then there was another little girl,
    where we don't know anything about the parents.
    And who they just left her on the front doors.
    One of the problems with that was that the kids itself,
    and they went with it then, there were very few children
    left in Berlin because the schools were all closed.
    Because of the bombs.
    And so the-- so any school age kid was--
    I mean, if they stayed in Berlin,
    they didn't have any school.
    They were all sent in the country and so on.
    So it was a little bit of problem with older children.
    The smaller ones, you know, you could just--
    you can just keep and you just fed them from--
    you had enough from your own cards, you know?
    You know, and so on.
    But the mother of the little boy came back.
    She survived Auschwitz.
    And she talked.
    And this is one thing, too, is that I made a big--
    those things made big impressions
    on me, too, is because they put her into a hole
    and they said, now, if you submit to us--
    you know-- and you know, they wanted to rape her and so on--
    we give you food.
    And she said, I'm not hungry.
    And she always resisted this all.
    This is while she was in Auschwitz.
    In Auschwitz, yeah.
    And so on.
    And so I always thought that it's really
    you should never depend on it.
    People shouldn't be able to kid because they're hold this
    as a coward, you know?
    If you go with us, we give you food if you do that.
    And I said, I'm never going to get dependent on any of that.
    And so on.
    But yes, she survived it.
    But she was not a Catholic afterwards.
    But she collected her son.
    Did she?
    Yeah.
    Do you remember her name or?
    No, I don't.
    And I don't remember the little boy's name either.
    [CHUCKLING]
    You know?
    And so on.
    And so but, yeah, we went in that sealed apartment.
    And the Gestapo was there, two Gestapo men.
    And yeah.
    And we got the clothing out.
    Yeah.
    And some of them also, they went--
    they got people out who were--
    I don't know who was the father of that kid, in any case.
    But they-- you know, sometimes people went to these assemblies
    and got people out they knew.
    And so on.
    And the bad part of this was, you know, sometimes people
    went to the assembly and then they were hijacking, you know,
    some of the people, getting them away and hiding them
    behind rows of other people and so on.
    But the Germans never called names.
    They only count numbers.
    So if there had to be 100 people there, and there were only 98,
    two were missing, they took anybody around,
    regardless who it was.
    And that was another bad thing about going and hiding.
    You know, that you always--
    if you could go in hiding before you ended up on any
    of the lists, that was fine.
    But if you were on one of the lists, and then you didn't go,
    you know you endangered somebody else.
    But my sister and I didn't think about that either.
    In Briesen, I guess, I don't know if somebody else
    had to go for us or not.
    I don't know.
    But they took anybody.
    The number had to be correct.
    It was-- On the other hand, is I think
    technology was not as advanced.
    So it was a little bit easier to find loopholes,
    to find ways of disappearing, and some way of managing
    of keeping on living.
    Because-- and as I said, then when so much was destroyed,
    papers were destroyed, too.
    Yeah.
    Sometimes I think it was just yesterday.
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum volunteer collection interview
    with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney.
    This is track number two, and we were
    talking about the end of the war and the mother
    coming back from Auschwitz.
    Any other memories of that particular time we
    can talk about.
    So people came back, you know?
    You never knew.
    You never knew, and you never trusted any of it.
    But we got that death certificate from Vati.
    And you see, my father was a civil servant.
    He worked for the Reichsbahn, which
    is now Bundesbahn, which would be the federal, you know,
    railway system.
    And then when my father--
    when they kicked him out in '36, they
    gave him a special assignment.
    And then in '38, certainly everything was over.
    And so they paid the pension for my father.
    Only, we never got it.
    The Gestapo collected it.
    Because the German railroads, they thought we cannot--
    we have no reason not to give it--
    send it.
    We have to have a disciplinary thing if he murder somebody
    or something, you know?
    So they paid it.
    And the Gestapo collected it.
    You had said that you were hoping even in '45
    that your father would come.
    Back, yeah.
    Did you go looking for him?
    No, we-- no, we didn't look for him.
    But my mother walked--
    my mother walked to Frankfurt Oder.
    She didn't dare to take Brigitte and me with her, because this
    was all occupied by Russians.
    And she walked because there was no train and nothing.
    And she walked to Frankfurt Oder and looked
    if our house was still there.
    That's about what, 60 miles or so?
    Uh-huh.
    And then she-- and then she went to whatever government
    there was in the city of Frankfurt Oder.
    And so they knew very well that she was there,
    that she was alive and she was there,
    and they had her address.
    And my mother for a while administered the house.
    She stayed in--
    No, no, no, no, no.
    She stayed in Berlin.
    Because then after '45, my mother got us an apartment.
    But she was the one who collected the rent for a while
    and was responsible for it.
    But then she gave it up.
    It was too difficult with the East and so on.
    But the city of Frankfurt Oder.
    After, you know-- this is called "Grundbuch" in German.
    It's a registry for all the properties.
    And there was at first Richard Guttstadt.
    Then it was crossed out.
    Then it was Richard Israel Guttstadt.
    That was crossed out.
    Then it was the Third Reich.
    And then this was crossed out in '45
    and it became poverty of the city of Frankfurt Oder.
    And the person who rented then our house
    was a physician from Silesia.
    And he had his practice on the first floor
    and lived on the second floor.
    And so it was in very good condition,
    because as a physician he also got electrical repairs and all
    of that.
    So it was maintained very well.
    And then he died in the house somewhere in the '60s.
    And then a family came who rented it,
    and they wanted to buy it.
    And they asked the city of Frankfurt Oder and said, look,
    it is Wessi property--
    You know, West German people who had escaped.
    They didn't know that it was Jewish property--
    they had escaped.
    And so we want to buy it.
    And the city of Frankfurt Oder said, sorry, it's not for sale.
    And it's not Wessi property.
    So that was our salvation.
    So my sister and I got the house back.
    You did?
    Mm-hmm.
    My sister got a lawyer through friends.
    And he only took 10--
    15%.
    Much less than the other outfits did.
    And--
    What year was that, that you got the house back?
    After the wall fell.
    You know.
    After the wall fell.
    Because-- and then he-- because then we had all the papers.
    My mother had always a little suitcase
    during the war, where the papers of the house were in,
    the death certificate of my father and all that.
    And we carried-- she carried that said wherever she went.
    And then when my mother died in '81, I had it.
    So we had all the papers.
    And then the city had my father's name and everything.
    So-- and we sold it to the people who want to buy it.
    But we didn't had all these difficulties, because you see--
    and for God's sake, Frankfurt was very destroyed, too.
    But the registry was intact.
    You know, because if this would all have been gone,
    then it would have been very difficult.
    But this was all there.
    And you know, you could trace it.
    And so my sister and I got the house back,
    and then we sold it.
    My sister wanted to move back.
    And I said no deal.
    [CHUCKLING]
    And so on.
    And so we didn't.
    But we got it back, yes.
    And we sold it to the people who had it.
    So my mother, really, went she went in '45
    and she walked to Frankfurt Oder.
    She wanted to make sure that the house was still there,
    and she wanted to make sure that they know where she is.
    So if Vati would come, he would find us.
    So when did you finally realize that he was not
    going to come back?
    Pretty soon.
    Pretty soon.
    Pretty soon, pretty soon.
    Yeah.
    You stayed in Berlin?
    Yes.
    With your sister and your mother.
    Yes.
    And what did you do then, when the war was over?
    When the war was over, I tried to get
    my Abiturium, which was awful.
    And I went to a school which was--
    we were all Jewish or half-Jewish kids who
    wanted to finish high school.
    And anytime there was exam, we all blanked out.
    It was awful.
    We just couldn't function.
    And nobody ever thought that we need any help.
    One person one time said to me, you
    know, you are like somebody who walks along a corridor
    and sees an open door and runs in, in this open door and says,
    oh, no.
    I don't want to be here.
    And then she keeps on running.
    Next open door-- and you know, but it never occurred to them
    that I really-- number one, I didn't
    know what I wanted to do.
    I never knew what--
    You know, I mean, it was OK, though it was over.
    They said, OK, fine, it's over.
    Now you start your life again.
    But how?
    How?
    You know?
    So--
    Did you talk about your experiences
    with the other students?
    No, no.
    Did you all exchange?
    No, nobody of us talked.
    We didn't talk.
    Between each other?
    No, we didn't talk.
    We didn't talk.
    Because you were all numb.
    We were all numb.
    Numb, yeah.
    I mean, sometimes someone said something, and you realized,
    you know, they were in hiding and so on.
    Most of them were kids who had been in hiding, and so on.
    But no, we just-- we just blanked out, you know?
    My sister was a little bit more lucky.
    She had her abiturium, so she could go to the university.
    But I had-- it was very difficult to get back
    to a normal life.
    And it kept on--
    you know-- and you felt somewhere-- then
    you felt maybe more an outcast than before.
    Because before you were so busy trying to survive all that,
    that you couldn't even think about anything.
    And then suddenly life was supposed
    to be more normal again.
    And as I said, my mother got us an apartment.
    But then you were in danger again.
    You know, because I couldn't-- my sister registered with
    the IRO.
    You know, with the International Relief Organization.
    And she came over with a coal boat.
    You know, one of those boats which brought coal
    over and went back empty.
    But I was-- she then had a temporary visa for West Berlin.
    Because in '48, they opened the Free University in West Berlin.
    And my sister was in the--
    East Germany had only one university
    in Berlin, the Humboldt University,
    which was in East Berlin.
    And so she could go to West Berlin.
    And she got a temporary visa.
    And on this she registered and could get out.
    But I was in East Berlin.
    And any time you registered with the IRO
    and were in East Berlin, the Russians
    would arrest you as a spy.
    So you couldn't do that.
    So--
    Let's go back a little bit.
    When you the coal boat, the boat going from?
    Oh, there were the boats after the war,
    which came from America.
    They had coal in and so on.
    They brought it to West Germany for these people.
    I guess it was part of the Marshall Plan.
    And then they went empty back, and they
    had refugees on going back.
    I see.
    I see.
    So she went--
    She went at first to the Freie University, the Free University
    in West Berlin.
    Yeah.
    And she studied there, and then came--
    her major was history.
    And there came a professor from the United States,
    who was a German Jewish immigrant originally.
    But he was, in the meantime, an American citizen
    and a professor of history.
    And he talked to my sister.
    And he said, I get you got a scholarship to--
    An American college.
    Yeah, so he did.
    So she went to Sweet Briar.
    So she was able to get out.
    Mm-hmm.
    And she came to the United States.
    And she had no sponsor.
    My sister had a sponsor, the world [? churches ?]
    were her sponsor.
    So IRO got her a sponsor, which was very impersonal.
    And this was in '48?
    No, my sister-- no.
    That was for between--
    really, between '49 and '50.
    That's all.
    Yeah.
    And you said goodbye.
    Oh, yeah.
    I said goodbye to the--
    when my Jewish relatives went to the concentration camp,
    I went and said goodbye.
    We always knew.
    I had all my aunts.
    I went-- they had the papers.
    I know where they're going, and I went there
    and I said goodbye.
    And I always knew I wouldn't see them again.
    How do you say goodbye in such a situation?
    It was very-- it was very difficult, because one
    of my aunts said to me, "you know,
    I'm going to go to the concentration camp
    because I'm Jewish.
    I don't know why I go there.
    Because I don't believe in anything.
    I never go to the synagogue or anything.
    But I'm Jewish."
    And I felt so bad for her.
    Because I thought, if she would believe in it--
    and during the camps, the Orthodox Jews
    were off the best, because they had a faith
    to set against that horror.
    But people like her, they died off very fast,
    because they had nothing to set against it.
    And I said to so many of them, we said goodbye.
    You always knew when they went--
    we had a young--
    one of the cousins, and they had--
    and they had gotten the baby--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    I can take it off the hook.
    They were-- you know, they all knew that they
    go to the concentration camp.
    But they couldn't-- and many of my relatives were really
    in Posen.
    You know, Poland was partly German, partly Austrian,
    and partly Hungary--
    partly Russian.
    And after the war, Poland was united again.
    And my relatives lived in the German-- many of them
    in German part, which was then Poland.
    After World War I, they could either
    opt for Poland or for Germany, and they opted for Germany.
    And then they were shipped back.
    But they-- somewhere we all knew that--
    and they knew about--
    they didn't think that they're going to leave
    a camp or anything like that.
    They all knew that--
    at least my relatives all knew that was the end.
    Yeah, and that young family, you know, who had that little boy,
    Berl, and he was supposed to be born in the United States,
    except they didn't get in.
    So he went.
    You said that you had known even in '42 about the camps.
    Sure.
    When did you learn the real extent of the camps?
    Oh, naja, this, I guess we knew about the camp.
    My father knew about that camp, and he told us about it.
    And I had-- but the extent of the--
    I guess we only learned, really, after the war how ma--
    but we knew that they had chambers,
    that they died and so on.
    And we knew that people didn't had a chance
    to come back, except very few.
    Some way through the grapevines, you know?
    There were always some people who got news out of it.
    You know, like this one train which went into Auschwitz.
    One time the Swedish Red Cross came in,
    and they said they put linen on the beds and everything,
    in order to make it look good.
    And then they said there will be a train going to Switzerland
    the next morning, and hardly anybody
    went because nobody believed it.
    But one of the German--
    Frankfurt Oder Jews did.
    And it went.
    The Germans, in some ways, sometimes you had a chance.
    And that train went almost empty.
    Because people were afraid.
    They said that's a trap.
    But then these people talked.
    So you heard things.
    And so you knew.
    I mean, we didn't know how many camps were there.
    I mean, the number of camps, this we didn't know.
    And we didn't know the extent of how many people really were--
    I mean, how really is the capacity was of this.
    But you know, there is a place where--
    there were certain places already within in Germany,
    where they tried out some of these things
    on the mentally retarded.
    Right.
    And so then the medical profession somewhere
    heard about it and so on.
    So I think something to that extent,
    it was very difficult to keep it completely secret.
    I never quite understand how people can
    say they never knew about it.
    I mean, didn't they see the carts coming in?
    And didn't they smell all this and so on?
    But the trouble is that Hitler got in power
    when the Depression was.
    And people were out of work, and he promised them work,
    and he built factory, prepared for the war.
    And he built the Autobahn and all this, and people had money.
    Suddenly had money.
    And by the time they realized politically wasn't everything
    that great, they were trapped.
    That's one reason I'm some way afraid of this country here.
    That's the way how it goes.
    How bad can it get so many people to come to these things.
    But so it was a bad time.
    And then there was so many people who
    really didn't know any Jews.
    So Hitler, when they talked about them,
    some people will believe anything which
    is written black and white.
    So it's very difficult. And I mean, there was a curfew
    after the 20th of July.
    You know, when they tried to kill Hitler, Stauffenberg
    and these people.
    There was a curfew.
    You know, you could see there were before--
    when the Jews, still before they were all more or less disposed
    of, there were signs on parks, "No Jews allowed" and so on.
    So it was very obvious.
    And people can read.
    All the Germans could read.
    There were no people who couldn't read.
    But I guess many of them-- and some of the people
    who were very daring, and nothing happened to them.
    We had a high school teacher who taught
    us maths and physics and so on.
    And he was one of these golden Partei members.
    You know, people who joined before '33.
    They had a golden rim around their party member--
    party thing.
    And they [INAUDIBLE] and so on, and were enthusiastic about it.
    And then he sent in '38 or '39 or something around there,
    he sent his membership back.
    And he said, that's not the party I joined.
    He always kept on teaching.
    Nothing happened to him.
    Absolutely nothing.
    So some people, though, it was--
    there were always some people had a loophole or something,
    they got through.
    The majority of my high school teachers
    were not party members.
    But I guess they didn't have enough teachers there
    to keep them.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah.
    When they kicked me out of school
    and I was walking the street in Frankfurt Oder, one
    of my former classmates, which was really 100--
    300% Nazi, and so was her whole family,
    she stopped me in the street.
    And she said, I'm sorry that they kicked you out.
    I said, oh.
    I guess for her, I was just another classmate.
    What's it like to feel to be an outcast?
    It feels awful.
    When I was standing--
    I remember that one time when Hitler's birthday was,
    and everybody came in uniform, Hitler Youth uniform--
    everybody.
    So being a member of the Hitler Youth,
    that didn't really mean that you were a Nazi.
    They were all members.
    And I was there private.
    It's an awful feeling.
    I always thought, you know, I would
    feel like I'm the only Black in a white school.
    And nobody harassed me or anything, but I came home.
    And I said Mommy, next time I'm not going.
    So then I started, when anything like this was going on,
    I didn't go.
    Did you feel inferior?
    Or just angry?
    I was afraid more than I was feeling inferior.
    Maybe-- a certain extent, yes.
    Because when I went to--
    when I went to physical therapy school, you know,
    before I immigrate to the United States, I became--
    I went to the University of Frankfurt
    and became a physical therapist.
    And one of the things I said to myself,
    I want that the people need me, that they want me.
    Because before nobody needed me, nobody wanted me.
    I also went then back to the university,
    to American U and Catholic U, and I got two master's degrees,
    and I was a straight A student, and I got a summa cum
    laude and so on.
    And people say, oh, you were so ambitious.
    I said, no, but I had to prove to myself I can do it.
    That you're not an outcast.
    Yeah, that I can do it.
    You know?
    So in some ways, this all stuck to me all the time, yes.
    Yeah.
    Let's get back just a little bit to the post-war.
    So your sister left.
    You stayed with your mother in Berlin.
    Naja, I went illegally to West Germany.
    Yeah.
    Illegally?
    Oh, yeah.
    Sure.
    I danced.
    I took-- I went to ballet school in Berlin.
    This was my big--
    I danced.
    I danced when I was in Frankfurt Oder,
    and I was on the stage at the Stadttheater.
    And then they kicked me-- they told me
    you couldn't come anymore.
    You are half-Jewish.
    And that was very hard.
    That was more difficult for me, really,
    than to be kicked out of school.
    Because I love dancing.
    So then in '45, I went back to ballet school,
    and I wanted to become a professional dancer.
    And so I joined a group, and we traveled--
    and this was-- you know, at this point there was no wall,
    so you could go very easy from East Berlin to West Berlin
    and so on.
    And so then we went to West Germany.
    And every time I had to go to the police station
    and they put on that I was illegally there.
    So but there was in Hamburg a woman who took pity on me,
    and she was in this office where they give you housing.
    Because you know, the cities were destroyed,
    so first you had to wait until you got something.
    And so she said, all right.
    She said, keep in touch.
    Send me sometimes a postcard.
    So I sent her a postcard.
    And one time I was in Goettingen, which
    isn't too far from Hamburg.
    And I got a postcard, "come to Hamburg as soon as you can."
    I said OK.
    So I took the train and went to Hamburg.
    I only went in--
    and you were so trained in those things, you didn't say "boo."
    And I only said, "hello."
    And she said, oh, I'm so glad you
    came, because it's no good to walk around
    without the identification card.
    I said, mm-hmm.
    And then she gave me a form, and she
    knew where I were, you know that I had this East
    German card in my pocket.
    And in this format, that I lost my identification card.
    It was not written if it was East or West.
    So I got the best German card.
    And on this, then, I could register to immigrate.
    Because then I was legally in West Germany.
    I was always a little bit of afraid then when I--
    and one of my uncles in New York sponsored me.
    But I was a little bit afraid when I then
    registered, when the Americans would find out
    that I'm not really, really in West Germany.
    Or they didn't care, whatever.
    But then, you see, I was legally in West Germany.
    And then my sister was already here,
    and she had switched from history to sociology.
    So she became a psychotherapist.
    And she said, you know you always
    liked dancing and gymnastics.
    Why don't you become a physical therapist?
    That's very much needed in the United States.
    And you see we got restitution from the government.
    And so I did.
    And then so I did, and that's the reason
    I didn't come until '56.
    Because I went there first and got my degree.
    And then I worked one year, because it
    takes some time before you get all the immigration going.
    And you were living with your mother?
    No, no, no.
    I was living in Frankfurt Main.
    I was in West Germany.
    My mother was in Berlin.
    And she stayed in Berlin.
    And she was still in East Berlin at first.
    And then she got a card from the post office.
    Oh, no.
    She was already then also in West Berlin without me.
    She left that apartment.
    Just locked it up and was gone.
    And then she got a card, which said that she and I should
    come to the post office.
    There is a letter which is registered.
    We should pick it up.
    We never went there.
    Because the East Germans were as bad as the Gestapo.
    And so we never went there.
    But then my mother was in West Berlin,
    and she got herself an apartment there.
    And then when the wall came, then
    she went to Hanover, because she was afraid
    that they would cut us off, cut her off from my sister and me.
    And then how did you come to the United States?
    Naja, then I've had the physical therapy degree.
    And you worked for the year.
    And I worked there, and then I registered.
    You know, I put in an application.
    And one of the cousins of my father, Uncle Hans,
    he sponsored me.
    He sponsored you.
    Because my sister couldn't sponsor me,
    because she was just in graduate school then.
    And so she didn't have enough money.
    You had to put down $5,000 in order to--
    so Uncle Hans sponsored me, and then I came over here.
    And then I stayed in Alexandria with my sister here.
    And what did-- and your mother stayed back in--
    She stayed back in Frank--
    in Germany.
    She got the pension restored for my father.
    My mother was very good.
    She got-- she got the restoration and so on.
    She wrote all these letters and so on.
    She was very, very good in that.
    And she got a lawyer to help her and all those things and so on.
    And so she-- she stayed then in Germany.
    She came over here all the time.
    To visit.
    To visit.
    But she didn't want it.
    Number one, the exchange rate at this point was 1 to 4.
    So her pension would have been very small,
    and she didn't want to be a burden.
    And so then to the end, really to the end--
    my mother died with 95--
    she said, I wished I would have made the decision to come.
    Because then we always traveled forth and back, and so forth.
    And I was there when she died.
    But she was-- then she regretted it.
    But then she also was, you see, the trouble
    is just foreign language.
    One of my uncles, not the one who
    sponsored me but one of my other uncles,
    when he was in the Jewish home for the aged in New York,
    and when he-- he suddenly only spoke German.
    Yeah.
    And he was fluent in English.
    And my mother was afraid that she said, if I get sick,
    I can't communicate.
    And we had a patient at GW, where
    I worked as a physical therapist, who had a stroke,
    and who can speak German.
    Who [? again ?] speaks German.
    So I said, OK.
    So he couldn't speak a word except German.
    And then he recovered, and he spoke fluent English.
    And then we all said, ah!
    But he couldn't.
    And that's the deal.
    So Mommy was very much aware of that.
    And she said, I didn't want to be a burden,
    and I don't want to lose the ability
    that I can communication.
    She was very independent and in control.
    And so she didn't want to have this happen to her.
    How fluent were you in English when you came here?
    I was better in English English than American English.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I took-- I mean, I had in high school English.
    My first foreign language was French.
    And I was much better in French than in English.
    And then the second was English, and the third was Latin.
    But then before I immigrated I took English lessons again.
    And then I came here, and I couldn't understand very well
    the Americans.
    Because the English is so much easier.
    You know, the pronunciation is so much more distinct.
    The Americans--
    [IMITATES AMERICAN ACCENT]
    You know?
    But I go a job.
    At first I worked at the office of three surgeons,
    orthopedic surgeons.
    And then I came to GW and so on.
    But if you learn--
    if you're always surrounded by it
    and you don't hear anything else but English, you get--
    and then I also didn't make--
    I read books.
    Like Agatha Christie is good to read because there there
    is so much dialogue in.
    Which is important.
    And one of the things you should never do--
    have a dictionary beside you and if you don't know a word,
    look it up.
    Then the next, look it up.
    You never get anywhere.
    Just say OK, in this context it must
    be meaning something like that.
    Yeah.
    Because if you start to do that, you never get fluent.
    Yeah.
    So you stayed with your sister, and you
    worked at GW, George Washington Hospital?
    And then?
    Then I met my husband.
    Oh, then you met your husband.
    OK.
    And he was American?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes, and he spoke also--
    [IMITATING AMERICAN ACCENT] I mean, I could-- by then
    I could understand that.
    But all our friends, you know, anybody who came over,
    they all had trouble to understand him.
    Because you know, he speaks like that.
    He was-- my husband is from Altoona, Pennsylvania.
    So he also had--
    when we dated, we were sitting at the railroad tracks,
    watching the trains going by.
    Because his father worked for the Pennsylvania railroad,
    and my father the German railroad.
    So when we came back, we lived in an old house,
    in old town Alexandria.
    And then we also had another roommate,
    which was a classmate from graduate school for my sister.
    Jean.
    And she said, oh, you are lying.
    And my sister said, uh-uh, I don't think so.
    [LAUGHTER]
    So what year did you get married?
    '58.
    '58.
    Mm-hmm.
    And then you continued on working?
    Oh, yeah.
    I worked all the time.
    Yeah.
    But then I went back.
    Physical therapy, I was a very good therapy.
    But the trouble with physical therapy
    is, you are involved in the whole family, psychological.
    And you work mentally with the patient and physical,
    which makes it very difficult. Like I had--
    I had one patient.
    I worked also then for the visiting nurses.
    And so we went to the homes.
    And there was one lady, and she lived near DuPont Circle.
    And the house was several levels.
    And she was in the bedroom upstairs.
    And they had put in an elevator on the stairs.
    And she was frightened to death.
    And I said, you can do it!
    I come after work, and we do it.
    And you make sure that your husband and your son is there.
    And so on.
    So they were.
    And I said, OK, you can do it.
    And so you had to be-- and she was much taller than I am.
    And you had to be very strong to convince these people.
    I wasn't so sure if she can, but you can't let them know.
    So she did.
    And she went down.
    And then she had a Martini with her husband and her son.
    And then we went up again.
    And so on.
    So she can do it.
    And then I flew down the stairs, because I said, ah,
    I wasn't sure if we managed.
    And so the husband then said to me, yeah,
    my wife told me that you don't walk down the stairs,
    you fly down.
    And so one time my mother was there,
    and John and my mother and I, we went to a party.
    And everybody was there, and then they couldn't find me.
    And then I was sitting in one room.
    At this point, I was the chief therapist of the Easter Seals
    Treatment Center in Rockville.
    And they couldn't find me.
    And then they found me in a room,
    sitting on a sofa sound asleep.
    Because as a chief therapist, I always thought if anything is--
    I told the other therapists, OK, you take it easy,
    and I took an extra patient.
    And I was just plain exhausted.
    So my husband then talked to the librarian at this point,
    at the bureau of standards.
    It's now the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
    And he said you always loved books and so on.
    So I talked to her, and then I took an exam
    with the civil service in translating German
    into English.
    And after-- so that I could work as a translator.
    And it was the National Bureau of Standards.
    And after I was finished, I thought, gosh,
    if I would be a few years younger,
    I would have flunked my old native tongue.
    Because it was all in German, old German script.
    Yeah.
    And I came home, and I said, John, they still have it
    in the old German script.
    I was--
    And so then I worked as a translator in the library
    at the National Bureau of Standards.
    And I realized that you don't get anywhere in a library
    except you have that master's degree.
    You can have 10 PhDs or whatever.
    You have to have that master's degree in library science.
    So then I went to Catholic U and got the master's degree.
    And then I had to [? side ?] pass,
    because I didn't have enough--
    I had all these medical courses.
    So I didn't had enough liberal arts courses.
    So they sent me pick to undergraduate school.
    So I went to undergraduate school.
    And in order to get it faster, I said, OK, I
    take German literature.
    And so I graduate-- and art history,
    because I had both in them background.
    So I said, OK, so I got this.
    And then I went there.
    And then I worked as a librarian, yeah.
    And I worked first at NBS, and then
    I worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
    as a reference librarian and I worked--
    and then when I retired, I worked there as a consultant.
    And I had all the foreign documents
    coming from Vienna, you know, the National Atomic Energy
    Commission and all of these places.
    Yeah.
    So I worked until 2005.
    And when my husband collapsed, I said,
    my gosh, I wish I had my job back.
    It's the best thing you can have is a job.
    You have to function.
    And something-- also as a physical therapist, you know,
    like with that lady--
    when I was with the Easter Seal, I had an old lady.
    Then I thought was old.
    Was 80 or something.
    She had a hip operation, and she walked with a cane.
    And she said, "the doctor told me I would be like new,
    and here I am walking with a cane."
    I said, "now if I'm in your age and just have a cane,
    I think that would be very happy."
    And she said, "you have good talking.
    You have nothing ever experienced wrong."
    I said, "you really want to know?"
    And I told her my past.
    And then she said, "oh, I think I'm very
    happy to have a cane only."
    But you learn to smile.
    And people don't expect that you have anything like this
    in your past, and so on.
    And at first, I never really talked.
    You know, you didn't talk about it in any case, and so on.
    But one thing, neither John or I could have--
    we couldn't have children.
    I couldn't put any--
    I thought it was so awful, that I would never
    expose any child to the world.
    Who knows if not something like this happens again?
    And John was drafted with 18, and he
    was at the Battle of the Bulge.
    And he came back very badly wounded.
    He has a Purple Heart and everything.
    He lives in-- he is buried in Arlington.
    And we both made a decision, we don't want children.
    Because he thought it was so awful, and I thought--
    and I always think, how can all these people have children?
    I just-- I just couldn't.
    I just couldn't.
    And I confronted my mother one time, when Hitler was on.
    And I said, you know, only because you and Vati
    wanted to have children I had to be born.
    And my mother told me that later,
    and she said she was horrified, and so on.
    But it was so awful for me.
    It was so awful.
    And I was in school, and I had classmates, and I had friends,
    but I always know that somewhere there is no--
    it will hit me.
    And I just couldn't see to have anybody putting into the world.
    But most people did.
    And I don't know how they could manage.
    Did your sister get married?
    No, my sister never got married.
    She never got married.
    No, no.
    No, she never got married.
    So I don't know.
    I just-- you know--
    and Mommy's family was--
    you know, they were all--
    Mommy.
    Mommy, my mother had one brother,
    and they were very close.
    And when Vati died, he refused to see her.
    And it was awful.
    So when he died, John and I were actually in Germany.
    And it was awful for my mother, really.
    But I said, I can't go to his funeral.
    I just can't pretend.
    I'm sorry.
    Yeah, so I didn't go.
    Let's talk a little bit about Germany now.
    Do you feel very German?
    No.
    Do you feel American?
    Yes, yes, yes.
    See, I'm a docent for the National Gallery of Art.
    And I give tours in English on weekends.
    I'm a weekend docent.
    They drafted me to give tours in German,
    because there are only four of them, foreign language docents.
    And one has ovarian cancer, and one has some kind
    of another intestine problem.
    And so there are practically only two left which give tour--
    So I give regularly tours in German.
    And somewhere, each time I have to jump over my own shadow
    to give it in German.
    Psychologically, you mean.
    Mm-hmm.
    Why?
    What are your thoughts about?
    I don't want to speak German.
    You don't want to speak the language.
    That's right.
    I've always said, naja, here in this building,
    as I told you, German conversation,
    they're almost all German survivors.
    I mean, Holocaust survivors.
    And they speak German.
    And then I speak German.
    And I always-- one time--
    next time I think I ask them.
    Because at first, they didn't know.
    They said, you know--
    I said, OK, I come one time, and I
    thought that would be one time I would come and that's all.
    And then realized that they are all more or less Jewish, and so
    on.
    So I have been going from time to time.
    But I don't know.
    They don't seem to have that problem.
    But I don't want to speak to them.
    I also dream in English.
    And I count in English.
    And when I go to Germany, I go in a store and count, one, two,
    three, four.
    Purposely or just naturally?
    Naturally.
    So you go back to Germany frequently or?
    I was-- while my mother lived, when she was very old,
    I went over there quite often.
    Yeah.
    Yeah, I was there when she died and so on.
    When my mother died--
    and you know, my mother lived in a senior citizen home.
    And the people were all very nice to me.
    And I only read English books.
    And I said, I don't want that they are nice to me.
    I don't want that they are nice to me.
    I just didn't.
    And my husband spent a year in--
    was sent from NBS to England.
    And he was supposed to be one year in England and half--
    and the other half-- half a year in England,
    half a year in Goettingen. And I told John,
    OK, I come visit to England, and then I go home and you
    go to Goettingen.
    And needless saying, he didn't go to Goettingen.
    He extended his time in Germany.
    But I couldn't live for half a year in Germany.
    I couldn't.
    He extended his stay in England, you mean.
    Yeah, he spent the whole year in England then.
    Well, what are your thoughts about Germany?
    How would you explain that to somebody?
    Naja, I don't understand.
    I mean, I can now--
    I can go to Germany.
    I can talk to the Germans.
    I can't-- especially the younger generation,
    when we come to Germany, my sister and I all see,
    for example, from my mother's family, the younger generation,
    they all come and want to see us.
    You know, the aunts from England--
    from the United States and so on.
    And they are all Aryans.
    You know, they are all very nice to us and so on.
    And I can talk to them.
    I don't feel that I have to hold this all against them.
    They were not even alive then.
    I don't think they have to apologize for what
    their parents did, you know?
    who knows how they would have reacted?
    Maybe different, maybe not.
    I don't know.
    But I can go to Germany now.
    In the beginning, I couldn't.
    But now I can go to Germany and talk to the Germans and so on.
    But I make sure I have only English books to read.
    And when my sister and I talk, when we go together,
    we talk English.
    You do?
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    And we were-- one time we went to the Lake Constance,
    and we were in a train.
    And there was a young lady.
    And she finally asked us, and she said--
    you know, because you realize that when we talked to her
    we spoke German and so on.
    And she said, but you always talk English to each other.
    And we said yes.
    And I think I do more than my sister, even.
    But then she is two years older, which
    makes slightly different maybe.
    I don't know.
    But I-- sometimes how Germany recovered and so on,
    it's really remarkable.
    You know, but I feel more East German
    than I feel West German, if you see that.
    And it is very sad what's going on in East Germany.
    Do you feel Jewish at all?
    Yeah, because all my--
    most of my friends are Jewish.
    Really?
    And I don't know how it happened.
    The people, most of--
    naja, the majority of people here are Jewish.
    But the people I have dinner with--
    I skip dinner very often, but the ones I have,
    they're all Jews.
    And my best friends, like Renata [? Chernov ?] and so on,
    they're all Jewish.
    Is there anything today that reminds you of the war?
    Times, sights or sounds or smells that bring a flashback?
    Naja, when I see the--
    when I see the wars, pictures, you
    know, from Iraq or from Afghanistan and so on, yes.
    A war is something awful in my eyes.
    It's awful.
    And you always hit the civilians.
    You know?
    I mean, in Berlin when they bombed,
    there's a whole part, which is Siemensstadt.
    Siemens.
    The Americans never bombed Siemensstadt.
    Because they wanted to have all their patents.
    They hit us.
    You know, I always say, why didn't they hit Auschwitz?
    I mean, it was awful for the people,
    but it's better to be over with.
    They never hit it.
    Why didn't they?
    They knew that Auschwitz existed.
    And you know, this one boat, when
    you go to the Holocaust Museum, you know, they show you
    the boat which went to Cuba, and they didn't let in,
    and all the lengths--
    The St. Louis.
    The St. Louis.
    And they didn't let them in.
    You know?
    And they knew.
    I mean, sure, and my cousins, you
    know, the ones who immigrated, who made it out in 30--
    in '39, really, over in London they came here, and so on.
    And [? Loni--- ?] and they are now all going
    to the synagogues, and we go to the bat mitzvahs and all these
    things when it happens in their family,
    and they have Jewish weddings and everything certainly.
    But Loni said we never prayed for the Jews in Germany.
    She said we didn't.
    No, we never did.
    And then I feel you can't get mad at civilians.
    I feel that they abandoned us in Germany.
    Yeah.
    And it was almost impossible to come out.
    But the people who went over the Himalayas,
    like the widow of Mahler the composer
    and so on, all these, the top people, they got out.
    But the little ones, the Jews, they were stuck.
    So then, you know, it's the Germans were awful.
    But then the people who came back out of the concentration
    camps, many of them, when they went back to Poland,
    the Poles killed them.
    So are they better?
    And the Ukrainian guards in the camps
    were worse than the German guards.
    But nobody says anything about it.
    So sometimes, you know, I think--
    and the whole world looked on.
    And America didn't go in the war until much later.
    By then everything was rolling.
    And they knew about it.
    You think it could happen again?
    Yes.
    Maybe different, not with the gas chambers.
    One time my sister gave a party, and one of the people asked us.
    This was-- I was already married then for [? one year. ?]
    And he said, how do you feel?
    And I said, "naja, sometimes I feel
    like this is a really beautiful dream,
    and one day I will wake up, and then
    it's all again like it was."
    And then I asked my sister, and she said,
    just [? the words, ?] "that was a bad dream,
    and this is a reality."
    But yes, I think it can happen again.
    And when East Germany-- when the wall fell,
    I had a terrible dream.
    I was standing on a mountain, and there
    was a railway station.
    And I was in-- obviously in West Germany.
    And the wall fell.
    And I went down to the railroad station and entered the train.
    And then the train went East, and all the people in there
    were dead.
    So it still haunts me.
    So there are certain things, when they happen,
    it just haunts me.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    I never will get over it.
    I never will get really over it.
    And even people say I do so much.
    Yes, and I do supposedly a very good job in giving tours
    and so on.
    But I feel very much different than the other docents.
    I feel different.
    And one of the things is, I feel different is they also--
    one of our docents, there is a Jewish group.
    And they immediately took her in.
    But they didn't take me in.
    I'm not really Jewish.
    And I'm not really there either.
    So all my life I have been struggling somewhere between.
    I feel closer to the Jews, but I'm not really--
    I don't know.
    So John and I got married in the Unitarian Church.
    How did you meet him?
    Oh, I met him in a camp.
    At Prince William Forest.
    Oh.
    My sister had a friend and colleague
    who was a member of the 2030 Club of the Unitarian Church,
    16th Street.
    And they had--
    Memorial Day, they went to a camp
    in Prince William County Forest.
    And they had three camps-- for men,
    for women, and for families.
    So Laura said to my sister, don't you
    and Ursula want to come?
    We said, oh, sure.
    Why not?
    So we did.
    And then we get in--
    I rowed-- was rowing a boat.
    And there came a thunder show, and it poured.
    And the lake in the middle had an island,
    and everybody tried to get there.
    And there was a gentleman who was John.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Who also went there.
    He also had friends who, roommates, who
    were members of the 2030 Club.
    And so he was in the men's camp.
    And then he asked me about cars, about Porsche and all these.
    At this point, he had an MG.
    And I didn't know.
    It was all much--
    I couldn't afford any of those things.
    So I said, fine.
    So then he asked me for a date, which I didn't take.
    And then John had hay fever very badly.
    So he came to GW for shots.
    And I was outside of the physical therapy department,
    because we had inpatient and outpatient.
    And I waited for a patient, and there came a gentleman
    and he said, "oh, you probably don't remember me."
    "No."
    And then he said, "I now have a Porsche."
    Oh.
    That's this guy.
    "And so you want to see it?"
    "Sure."
    Then I came home, and I said to my sister and her roommate--
    and our roommate, if he asks me for a date again, I do it.
    I want to be in this Porsche.
    That's how it started.
    Oh, that's wonderful.
    Yeah.
    That's wonderful.
    So I still had the Porsche when John died.
    I always said, if the Porsche go, I go.
    How long ago did he die?
    Only on the 15th of January 2009.
    Oh.
    He had heart attacks before.
    And he collapsed on the platform of DuPont Circle.
    Oh, my.
    We went-- we went to GW for tests,
    and everybody thought he was sailing along.
    He had a kind of a leukemia, and he had this heart condition,
    and his kidneys didn't function that well anymore.
    But everybody thought he was a [INAUDIBLE]..
    And we went to Kramer's.
    And we had lunch.
    And he really made plans.
    We made plans.
    He thought, oh, maybe we go back.
    We liked to go to Virginia, to the state parks.
    And then he went back to the railroad station and collapsed.
    And they took him to GW, but he was braindead already.
    And they asked me then if we really vigorous
    wanted to revive him.
    And I said, if he has no brain function, no.
    And then he died in the night.
    And he was gone.
    And he was buried-- you said, buried in Arlington.
    Yeah.
    So we were married for 50 years and five months.
    Oh, yeah.
    Yeah.
    That was a shock.
    Yeah, yeah.
    It was very strange.
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum volunteer collection interview
    with Ursula Guttstadt McKinney.
    This is track number three.
    OK, so you were saying before that a few years ago,
    you wouldn't have been willing to be interviewed or talk
    about your experiences.
    What do you think has changed in these last few years?
    Well, in the beginning, it was just too painful.
    Yeah.
    One time somebody asked me about things,
    and about what happened and so on.
    And afterwards when I went back to work,
    I had the telephone the wrong side around
    because I couldn't function anymore.
    And I would just break down and cry.
    And it was just too painful.
    And by now I think, number one, it is longer ago.
    And number two, it's I also think
    that if my generation dies off, there is nobody really anymore
    who can talk about it.
    And so we should just overcome that and just do talk about it.
    Right.
    It's important that you tell us what it was like.
    Yeah, yeah.
    And so on, but it's something that will haunt you
    for the rest of your life.
    And it's nothing which is easy to overcome anywhere.
    That's one reason is that I'm surprised that people could
    put children in the world.
    I couldn't.
    I thought I was too--
    too damaging, was too bad.
    And yeah, and you know when politi--
    and people are not aware of it.
    That is the danger, is always that people say, oh, political,
    it isn't so bad yet.
    Maybe we still can take that and so on.
    And by the time they realize that I can't take it anymore,
    very often people are trapped, and then they really
    can't do anything anymore.
    Yeah.
    But you know, with Germany, too, it's talking about Germany.
    When I worked-- when I was studying
    physical therapy in Frankfurt at University of Frankfurt am
    Main, we also had to go into different hospitals.
    And there was this psychiatric ward
    where they had locked us in, the therapists.
    And we played ball with these men and so on.
    And there was also a women's ward.
    And one time I came there, and they were very excited.
    And I said, "what's the matter?"
    And I said, "oh, a Jew comes back from Germany,
    one from the United States."
    And I said, "so?"
    "We don't want a Jew."
    I said, "well, he might be very nice."
    "We don't want a Jew."
    I said, "well, how many Jews do you know?"
    "None."
    I said, "Oh, how can you say that you don't want him?"
    And when he came, he was very nice.
    And you know, people came back.
    They were not-- not everybody made it.
    And the German government gave them money.
    So he came back, and he got insurance,
    and they paid for him.
    And he was a very quiet, calm man.
    You know, somewhere somebody who was
    not very assertive and so on.
    Because-- and he hadn't made it in the United States.
    So he was very depressed and had problems,
    and everybody loved him.
    And I said, "oh."
    But then they didn't want to hear anymore
    that they once told me that they couldn't stand having one.
    But you know, then these people believed, you know,
    whatever the government fed them, because they really
    didn't know better.
    And then, sure, shortages didn't help either,
    in anything either.
    So it's always difficult, you know.
    I guess in the name of Jesus more people
    were killed than saved.
    If someone asked you today are you German,
    what would you answer?
    I said-- when people ask me, formerly.
    I was formerly German.
    I'm an American.
    Yeah.
    Oh, yeah.
    No, no.
    No, I don't--
    I don't feel German.
    And I don't--
    I don't want to be considered to be a German.
    And so it's not--
    it's not good.
    When you give those tours, you said the German speaking tours
    at the National Gallery, and the tourists ask you,
    do they ask you something about your knowledge of German
    or are you from Germany?
    No, they usually--
    They ask you or they don't ask you?
    You know, they ask me where I'm from.
    I say from Berlin.
    Oh, from Berlin.
    And-- yeah, I know Frankfurt Oder, more or less Berlin.
    Frankfurt Oder they don't know in any case.
    But they-- they don't--
    these are all younger people, really, then.
    No, they don't ask me anything.
    Anymore than--
    No, they don't.
    Right after the wall fell, I got lots--
    there came people over from East Germany, formerly East Germany.
    And one of the women one time said to me,
    you know, when people realize that we are German,
    it's like a curtain goes down.
    There are a lot of Americans who are still
    very much anti-German.
    And you can see it on our collection.
    If you go to the German Collection, it's awful.
    We have some Dürers and so on.
    But don't tell me there are any good Dürers and so on!
    Yeah, so the people who collect it at this point,
    they also didn't want to collect German art.
    Do you remember the Eichmann trial?
    Sure.
    What were some of your thoughts at that time?
    Naja, one of the things is, I guess for many people that
    is a relief.
    For me, neither my mother nor my sister nor I
    ever have tried to find the Gestapo people who hunted us.
    My father was killed.
    They ruined my life to a certain extent.
    Chasing down these people wouldn't do anything for me.
    I always thought, if I would have
    to have gotten these people on a trial--
    maybe somebody else did, I don't know--
    but it would be more horrifying for me
    to have sit through that trial than it
    would have done me any good.
    Because the damage was done.
    And so Eichmann, I mean, he was a horrible guy,
    and I guess justice was done.
    But it's the people.
    You can't undo anything with revenge.
    When the people talk about 9/11, that was awful,
    but trying to-- now they say, oh, they
    should give us so much money for this
    and so on, that doesn't bring you the loved ones back.
    I mean, if you are left as a widow
    and have small children, for God's sake, sure,
    give them a pension and give the kids
    that they can go to school and so on.
    But revenge kills yourself.
    And so I think--
    [PHONE RINGING]
    For many people, it's a relief.
    But for me, I don't know.
    Are you more comfortable being with people
    who survived the war than those who didn't even live
    through it?
    In the beginning, John and I, we saw every war movie.
    I saw every movie on the concentration camps.
    We felt people who didn't go through that
    lived in different worlds than we did.
    But by now, it's the whole generation, the younger ones,
    they never experienced anything like this.
    I mean, I think I personally would never
    serve in the armed services.
    I would never shoot against anybody.
    But I would-- it's certainly in some ways
    easier to be with people who have similar experience
    than I do than with people who don't
    have any idea of what went on.
    But the majority of the people I meet, you know, they don't.
    They read it in books.
    Yeah.
    Would you-- do you think you would
    have been a different person today if you
    hadn't gone through?
    I'm sure I would.
    In what way?
    Naja, one of the things is, you know, not so easy to immigrate,
    even if you are glad to leave your country.
    Somewhere I feel like I started off on the first floor
    and I don't have a basement.
    You know, I've never been to elementary school here.
    Things were very different when I lived here in Alexandria.
    It was so different to anything I had experienced or ever seen
    in my life.
    It's not easy to live--
    to leave your country.
    So in some ways, if I would have stayed in Germany,
    no war, no Nazis, no nothing, I would
    have had a very nice house, I would
    have gone to the university.
    I would have studied.
    In Germany at this point, I could have become an engineer,
    even as a woman.
    I would have studied.