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Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0364 | RG Number: RG-50.106.0089

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    Oral history interview with Ruth Harvey
    Transcript
    This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    volunteer collection interview with Ruth Harvey conducted
    by Margaret Garrett on August 22, 1997 in Bethesda, Maryland.
    This interview is part of the museum's project
    to interview Holocaust survivors and witnesses who are also
    volunteers with the museum, tape number one,
    side A. Would you state your name at birth?
    My name at birth was Ruth Abel, A-B-E-L.
    And your date of birth?
    October 9, 1928.
    And place of birth.
    Berlin.
    Would you talk about your parents and your grandparents?
    I only knew my maternal grandparents.
    And they were gentle people.
    But I always thought they were a bit forbidding.
    They didn't have a great way with children.
    And their religion?
    They were Jewish.
    And your mother?
    My mother, as well, was Jewish.
    And what about your father and his parents?
    My father's father was Jewish.
    But in those days, you were German first, and then
    whatever religion you were.
    He happened to fall in love with a Christian girl
    and switched religions in order to be able to marry her.
    In order to--
    Became a Christian.
    Yeah.
    In order to be able to marry her because of her parents, or--
    Now, this is something I do not know.
    I don't know.
    So you--
    This was quite a long time ago.
    But you were just told that--
    I was told that.
    --he could not marry her unless he converted. but you don't--
    I do not--
    --know why.
    --know whether it was a must situation,
    or whether it was just something he chose to do.
    Probably, her parents might have objected.
    But I don't know any of those circumstances.
    So your father was raised Christian?
    Yes, although secularly, really--
    observing the major holidays, but nothing much in between.
    And do you know whether he was Catholic or--
    No.
    No--
    --Protestant?
    --Protestant.
    Lutheran or--
    Yes, Lutheran Protestant.
    So Protestant Lutheran.
    Yes.
    And so his family were secular Lutherans
    and were not very observant, as far as you know.
    I wish I could tell you.
    But my father was already 40 when I was born.
    His parents were long dead.
    I never knew them.
    All I knew was the stories he told me.
    And what kinds of stories did he tell you about his parents?
    Well, I mean the history of the fact
    that he never knew his mother.
    Only after she died he heard some aunt saying, the poor boy.
    And that was actually his first memory,
    because he couldn't remember his mother.
    She was the Christian.
    And his father, he was extremely close to, very, very.
    He loved him and honored and respected him.
    In fact, all during my childhood, not a day
    would pass that he wouldn't mention his papa
    in one nice way or another.
    So you had an idea of him, even though you didn't know him.
    Oh, I saw photos of him, a man with very big eyes,
    worried looking.
    He had been widowed so very early.
    He was never remarried.
    So your father was Lutheran.
    And your mother was Jewish.
    And what was your household like?
    Did your family--
    Well, my parents were not churchgoers or temple goers
    as such.
    My mother, sometimes with friends,
    might go to temple for high holy days, Jewish high holy days.
    But other than that, she never did.
    And my father simply was not a churchgoer, although he
    was a very religious man.
    When I was a teenager, I spoke to him once.
    And he didn't answer me, didn't answer me.
    And after about five minutes, he looked at me.
    And he said, I'm sorry I didn't answer you.
    I was praying.
    That was his religion.
    And it was very deep.
    But he was not a churchgoer.
    But he accomplished miracles, as you will later find out.
    I'm sure it had something to do with this relationship he
    had with a higher being.
    And were you baptized?
    I was actually baptized when I was a young child.
    No, no, I mean I wasn't a toddler or an infant.
    I was already--
    I can't remember how old I was--
    maybe five, something like that.
    And they decided that I should be baptized.
    And we went to Pastor Niemöller's church,
    but he was not there.
    Someone else baptized me with water
    from the river Spree in Berlin.
    And I remember we came home from that.
    And my mother had a close Jewish girlfriend
    who heartily disapproved.
    She said it was just terrible.
    And she told them that.
    Then she invited them in for coffee and cake to celebrate.
    So this would have been 1933 about.
    Probably, or a little later.
    I don't know whether I was--
    I cannot remember what age I was.
    I might have been older.
    Probably, they might have done it
    a little later when things were beginning to look really bad.
    '33 was still fairly early.
    I wasn't aware of what was really happening.
    But some persecution had started in 1933.
    Yes.
    You have these roving bands of Brown Shirts singing
    antisemitic songs, and torch parades,
    a little bit awesome and scary, that sort of thing.
    So you had a baptismal certificate.
    If I ever had one, I don't think I ever saw it, honestly.
    My mother must-- I don't know.
    I just don't-- I've never seen it.
    Do you think that, if you were baptized, that one existed?
    This being Germany, you can be darn sure.
    They had documentation for everything.
    Yes.
    So you went to school.
    Yes.
    To a public school?
    A public school, until a certain time period later, in the '30s.
    When Jewish children were no longer
    allowed in public school, under the logic of the Nazis,
    they had me figured out as being 3/4 Jewish.
    So I went for a time--
    only for a time, because then we left Germany--
    to a private Jewish school.
    Now, you said "they" had you figured out.
    Who were they?
    The Nazis.
    The Nazis.
    Now, how did they know that you were 3/4 Jewish?
    Well, it would be like city hall.
    So they would have traced who your grandparents were?
    Yes.
    Well, everything was documented.
    So they know exactly everyone.
    They knew my roots better than I did.
    So you had to leave the public school.
    Yes.
    Do you remember that?
    Yes.
    And what was that like for you, to have to leave the school?
    Distressing, scary.
    All of a sudden, I was taken out of my--
    although I must tell you that public school
    was no longer a pleasure.
    There was one teacher who was very antisemitic
    and was perfectly beastly to us Jewish children.
    What did the teacher do?
    Oh, it was just her sharpness and her nastiness.
    I don't remember details--
    very quick to slap faces, and things like that.
    Do you remember your face being slapped?
    Yes.
    And did you tell your parents?
    Well, it was the custom for teachers to do that.
    It wasn't-- now it would be a shocking thing.
    In those days, it was done.
    There were other Jewish children in your class?
    That is vague to me.
    I don't really remember any particularly Jewish--
    none of us children really paid attention
    to our different religions.
    We're just kids together.
    And until this day, I could not tell you who was Jewish and who
    wasn't.
    I think there probably were more non-Jewish children
    in that class.
    There may have been a handful, besides myself.
    And did you think of yourself as Jewish?
    I always thought of my-- well, thanks to the Nazis,
    I thought of myself as 3/4 Jewish and 1/4 Christian.
    And what did you think that meant, being Jewish?
    Being 3/4 of one religion and 1/4 of another religion.
    So what did Jewish in particular mean to you?
    I wish I could really explain it to you.
    Later, upon maturity, I realized much more about what it means.
    But as a child.
    As a child, it was just a religion that, for some reason,
    wasn't popular at that time in that country.
    I was just a child.
    So you had to leave the public school.
    Yes.
    Did the Jewish children in your class
    go with you to the same Jewish school?
    No.
    I remember going to this Jewish school, which
    was in a nice suburb there called Rosenthal,
    which means valley of roses.
    And not really.
    No, wait a minute.
    That may not have been there.
    But the lady, my mother's best friend
    whom I stayed with for a while, she lived in Rosenthal.
    I remember having to take a bus in the mornings
    to get to the school.
    I can't tell you to this day where it was.
    But it was a very nice school.
    And everyone there was Jewish.
    And they were all new faces to me.
    Was the curriculum very different
    from the public school?
    The one big difference was that I
    had to learn Hebrew, which was very difficult.
    And of course, I never really learned it.
    I just learned some of the symbols,
    and how to pronounce them, and how to read them.
    But that time period could not have lasted very long,
    because I didn't do that very long.
    And it must be shortly thereafter that we left.
    That means, in other words, that I didn't leave
    the German public school--
    well, I left Germany in '39, probably '38.
    That you left the public school?
    Yes.
    So you were about 10.
    I think I was nine.
    I was 10 when I left.
    Yeah.
    And what else do you remember from that time about what
    your life was like?
    Well, there was one little instance.
    I was down--
    I don't know if it was Wannsee, that great big bathing
    resort outside Berlin.
    I was at the beach, playing in the sand.
    And a little girl came over.
    And she said, may I play with you?
    And I was just about to say, yes, when she added,
    but not if you're Jewish, my mommy
    doesn't let me play with Jewish children.
    So I said, well, I am.
    Well, you can't, or something.
    And that was the end of that.
    But I remember it to this day.
    And I'm now 67 years.
    But you must admit that that is--
    others had much worse experiences.
    And even though this was a small thing,
    it was a pinprick that lasted.
    And let me see.
    What else?
    Well, you just want me to tell you
    about things that went on around me and my reactions to them?
    Sure.
    Well, there were Hitler's speeches
    on the loudspeakers in the streets.
    I would hear this male voice shouting and, of course,
    this Austrian accent.
    I never was able to understand a word that the man was shouting.
    He could have been talking another language.
    I didn't understand what he said.
    And there were all sorts of things in the newspapers, which
    of course I didn't read.
    But I heard my father and my mother
    discussing them at home in the evening.
    And he would furrow his brow and be very worried.
    And he always thought that this couldn't last.
    This was just something that would go away.
    This is your father?
    My father.
    Sorry, my father.
    And he just couldn't believe that this madness could stay.
    And they would be talking.
    There was a current joke that went around in Berlin.
    It ended with, the Jews and the bicyclists.
    And then the question was, why the bicyclist?
    And then the answer would be, why the Jews?
    And that at that time was one of the current jokes
    that was going-- it sounds better in German.
    And let me see.
    What else?
    There was just a general feeling of--
    I don't know-- something dark surrounding us.
    And of course-- should I go on about when my father left?
    Or do you want to ask me that later?
    Well, before we get to that--
    Yes.
    --what was your father's occupation?
    All right.
    He had his own export-import firm.
    And then he hired a new secretary.
    And this was my mother-to-be.
    She was his secretary for about four years.
    And it was a one-man company.
    But of course-- no, he had people that worked for him.
    They were salesmen.
    It was export-import.
    And it was doing quite nicely.
    What export-import--
    Oh, I remember he had British Yardley soap, and things
    like that, all sorts of different things.
    And everything went along well.
    My parents got married after they had known each other
    for four years.
    I was born the next year.
    By then, it was 1928.
    And his business folded.
    Times were bad, horrible.
    And he ended up scrounging around
    for all sorts of different jobs.
    Now, was the business folding--
    was that a result of persecution?
    I believe so.
    I don't know.
    I think it was the economic climate.
    I don't know if it was a depression that touched Germany
    as well.
    I'm not clear about the economic reasons.
    I just know that, before I was born,
    or while I was still an infant, this business
    was no longer supporting him.
    If his father was born Jewish, was he considered a Jew?
    You mean his father?
    No, your father's father--
    Oh, my father.
    --was born Jewish.
    So was your father considered a Jew by the Nazis?
    Yes.
    For the same reason that I was considered 3/4 Jewish,
    he was considered one half Jewish.
    Yes.
    I wondered whether that--
    He had been--
    --affected his business.
    In World War I, he had gotten the Iron Cross, second class.
    And he had been a patriotic German.
    And he was 40 when I was born.
    He had had a very happy young manhood in Berlin,
    enjoying himself, enjoying life in Germany.
    And all of this came like a bad dream.
    And he couldn't believe that it was going to last.
    So backing up a bit, there was bad economic times,
    and his business got into bad trouble.
    And so then what happened?
    Oh, he scrounged around.
    He sold vacuum cleaners.
    He was a wine salesman.
    You see, his great gift to salesmanship.
    His nickname was Fridl.
    They used to joke, Fridl could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.
    He really could.
    So he kept us afloat with that.
    And my mother, when I was older, she went and got herself a job
    at something called the Palästina Amt,
    the Office for Palestine, a Jewish organization near where
    we lived.
    And she had a regular office job there, secretarial.
    And she had that job, actually, until we left.
    Oh, but before she got that, she tried everything.
    I'm going to jump ahead and say, when my dad left--
    OK.
    --she took on a job as a housekeeper for a very nice,
    well-to-do Jewish family.
    And it was really nice, because there
    was a young woman there whom she became very good friends with.
    Her grandfather, the young woman's grandfather
    and her mother, who seemed to be a little bit retarded
    or had some kind of emotional problems--
    her grandfather was a marvelous old gentleman.
    And they adopted me as the child of the house and spoiled me.
    And my mother did cleaning and cooking.
    And it was something she had never done before.
    But she was really great, very adaptable and hard working,
    just to keep us going.
    So she was doing this to support you.
    Yes.
    And also, we started out in a lovely apartment
    when I was four.
    Then we went to a slightly less wonderful argument,
    and finally ended up in a furnished room.
    Things were really, really bad.
    We were poor.
    So going back to your father leaving,
    how did that come about?
    All right.
    This was still before Kristallnacht.
    But things were bad.
    And he was struggling.
    And one day, a letter came from city hall
    to present himself there the next day with his passport.
    And he knew something was up.
    He was very intelligent and aware,
    even though he couldn't believe that this would last.
    But he knew that things were getting dangerous.
    What did he think that was all about?
    Oh, I'll tell you.
    At that time, my mother was already employed
    at the Palästina Amt.
    I don't know.
    I get confused.
    He called here at work.
    And he said, Edith, come home and help me pack.
    Tonight, I have to leave Germany.
    And he explained that they wanted him to present himself
    with his passport at city hall.
    He knew what that meant.
    They were going to put a J in it for Jew,
    which would mean that his travel would be severely curtailed,
    if not made impossible.
    And he decided he going to flee that night, get out of there.
    Before they put a--
    Absolutely.
    --J on his passport.
    Yes.
    And so how did he leave?
    Well, I think he went to his great-aunt, Matilda,
    and borrowed some-- she was the Christian part of the family,
    and quite well-off.
    And she lent him some money.
    And I think he took a train to--
    somehow, he found-- there was two places he went to.
    He was in Amsterdam.
    And he was in London trying to find a stepping stone.
    I'm a little confused where he went first.
    And then, eventually, he ended up briefly in New York
    to gain a foothold.
    But in order to enter legally into the United States,
    he needed a quote number, visa.
    And so in those days, people in that position
    would either go to Canada.
    Some ended up in China, in Shanghai.
    And he opted-- or maybe it was the only choice
    he had-- to go to Havana, Cuba, to wait for this.
    So that's what happened.
    In the meantime, we had a year without him.
    And I must tell you, he was a marvelous cook.
    He was a great cook.
    And he had made a bouillabaisse this last day.
    And I remember, after he had left--
    he had left in the evening.
    And I don't quite know what mode of transportation.
    He must have taken a train to Hamburg
    to take the boat over to England,
    or something like that.
    There we were, with his soup that he had left.
    And I remember my mother and I eating that soup.
    And the tears were just rolling down our cheeks.
    And for many, many, many years, I couldn't stand bouillabaisse.
    I just couldn't stand it.
    Then, much later on, I developed a real liking for it,
    because we were together again.
    But that was something.
    It was a terrible shock to him him gone all of a sudden.
    But he saved himself.
    And he saved us by that action.
    So when he left, you had some awareness
    of what was happening.
    Oh, a great deal of it.
    In fact, fear was our constant companion,
    because then we had Kristallnacht.
    November 9, wasn't it?
    1938, I believe.
    And my mother was a real Berliner.
    There's an expression in Berlin.
    If somebody comes at you all excited,
    you say, [GERMAN],, which means, oh, so where's the fire?
    So at 4 O'clock in the morning, or at 4:30 or 5:00,
    there's a pounding at the door.
    My mother gets up out of her sleep--
    this is some time after my father left,
    I don't know how long--
    all grumpy.
    And she goes to the door and opens it.
    And she said, so where's the fire?
    And the person knocking on the door
    said, the temple across the street
    is on fire, the Jewish temple.
    This was Fasanenstrasse.
    The corner had Hotel Kempinski at it.
    That was the last address we had in Berlin.
    And kitty corner from across the street
    was a Jewish synagogue, which is now,
    by the way, the Jewish Community Center.
    I saw it in 1978.
    They did something very smart.
    They saved the front of this temple.
    It had been a beautiful building.
    They saved a doorway, and made a modern building
    for the Jewish Community Center, and put the doorway there.
    It was a striking and very beautiful thing.
    It was a strange feeling to go back after so many years
    and see that.
    But anyway, to get back to that horrible night or morning,
    my mother must have gone out the door to take a peek at it.
    I don't remember.
    She left me upstairs in bed.
    Or maybe I slept through all this.
    I don't know.
    And I remember-- she stayed home that day.
    And I remember saying, oh, how nice.
    You don't have to go to work.
    You're staying with me.
    And I remember her sad smile.
    And she said, but what a reason.
    I was too young to understand the horrible things that
    were going on around me.
    And another really nightmare moment was--
    we, at this time, lived in a furnished room.
    And I, in fact, slept on a cot in the kitchen.
    It was a nice, big, old Berlin apartment.
    And the lady who lived there was a wonderful old lady.
    Her name was Mrs. Moses.
    I think her first name was Martha.
    I'm not sure.
    She had a retarded daughter, a little shriveled lady,
    must have been in her 40s or 50s.
    Scared me terribly, because I didn't know about retardation.
    But she was kindness itself, very old and tired looking.
    And she was very good to my mother and myself.
    She had some other tenants there, too.
    She had her son living in the apartment above her.
    And I think it was the day after the fire,
    or very shortly thereabouts, that there
    was talk of Jewish men being searched
    for by hordes of SA men.
    Those were the Brown Shirts.
    And there was a brass door sign next to the apartment door
    outside the front door.
    And it said Moses on it.
    That was her name.
    And some very smart person across the way
    said, if I were you, I would unscrew those screws
    and take that sign off.
    It's a very Jewish name.
    They're bound to come to you.
    And my mother, who was a real feisty Berliner always
    said, oh, that's not necessary.
    She didn't want to do that.
    But reason prevailed, and they did it.
    And it's a darn good thing, because later on, we heard
    these boots on the stairs.
    My mother and I were inside the pantry with her arms
    around me, shaking like aspen leaves.
    We heard those pounding boots coming up the stairs.
    And we heard somebody say, oh, don't ring there,
    there's no Jews there.
    And they went on.
    I believe they got her son, either that time, or later.
    I don't know.
    She and her daughter must have ended up dead.
    It was just dreadful.
    Anyhow, that is a moment that is probably
    the most frightening moment of my life.
    Then we crept out of the pantry.
    The Nazis had gone.
    And then shortly thereafter it must've
    been that word came that we should go to--
    from my father who had, at this point, reached Havana.
    And he said, he wrote, go to Hamburg.
    Go to the Cuban consulate.
    And get all your documentation.
    And soon, I'll be able to send for you.
    And so my mother and I took an early morning train--
    it was still dark--
    from Berlin to Hamburg.
    Now, this was right away, the next day?
    Or--
    As a child, your sense of time is really nonexistent.
    It's fueled by events.
    I simply cannot tell.
    It must have been shortly thereafter, I'm sure.
    So there we were.
    I thought it was the greatest treat in the world
    to sit in a dining car, a little--
    no, white tablecloths, with silver, and waiters.
    And I remember eating a soft boiled egg
    and looking out the train window.
    I took my enjoyment where I found it.
    I thought that was great.
    But then we trudged through Hamburg.
    And we went to the consulate.
    Everything was fine.
    It was lunchtime.
    And I was getting hungry.
    And my mother-- everywhere she saw, at restaurants, it said,
    Jews unwanted, forbidden to Jews.
    And she was a mother first.
    And she decided that, heck with all this.
    She had a young child here.
    And she was going to see to it that that child got some lunch.
    And so we just walked into one of those restaurants and ate.
    And of course, it didn't mean much to me.
    But you can imagine her feeling.
    And then, shortly after that, I was able to leave the school.
    And the happy word came that--
    Pardon me.
    Did you go back to Berlin?
    Or did you stay in Hamburg?
    Oh, yeah, this was just a trip to get documentation--
    I see.
    --from the Cuban consulate.
    And then shortly--
    So you went right back to Berlin.
    We went right back to Berlin.
    And then--
    How long was the trip from Berlin to Hamburg?
    You ask me something I don't know.
    I could look at the map here.
    How far is Hamburg from Berlin?
    Maybe-- let's see, Hamburg.
    So you did it in a day?
    Oh, Yes.
    OK.
    Oh, yes.
    It was several hours.
    So you didn't have to stay overnight in Hamburg.
    I don't remember that.
    It must have just been a day trip.
    Yes.
    So then the wonderful word came that we would be able to leave.
    Do you want to ask me anything else?
    Or should I go on into that now?
    Word came.
    And my mother got ready and prepared everything.
    Now I have to go back in childhood memories.
    Before I continue with this, let me go back.
    When we started moving from one nice apartment,
    to one less nice, to one less nice, to a furnished room,
    I remember a lovely place we had.
    Geisenheimer Strasse was the place.
    It was outside of Berlin.
    And it was a little apartment with a balcony.
    But it was on the ground floor.
    And I remember, at that time, I was four years old.
    And I was just starting having this impulse to draw pictures.
    And so I remember sitting at a little table on a little chair
    on this balcony.
    It had a hedge around it to separate it from the road.
    And I would sit there with paper and pencil,
    and scribble and scribble, happy as could be.
    I remember that clearly, the first apartment I remember.
    In fact, my first memory was waking up from a sleep.
    And my parents were in the next room packing.
    And we were going to Denmark the next day for a little trip.
    That was my very first memory.
    I was three then, or something.
    So that was a happy time when you were a very small child--
    Oh, yes.
    --before all the trouble starting.
    My parents were my world.
    I had no siblings.
    And they were always absolutely wonderful parents.
    We had a happy relationship, trouble free.
    But why did I go into that?
    Oh, later on, when I came back with my mother in '78,
    we visited this apartment, because that
    was the only place that held happy memories for me.
    It was raining cats and dogs.
    And the apartment, the whole neighborhood,
    was now filled with Turkish labor immigrants.
    You've read about the Turks.
    And they were having a very hard time
    in foreigner-hating Germany.
    And there were these Turks in that apartment.
    And we couldn't make ourselves understood
    that we used to live here, that we wanted to see.
    It was a blank.
    And it was raining.
    I feel heartbroken.
    I don't know why, but I felt so sad.
    Anyway, that was--
    I'm digressing here.
    I went back into the past.
    Now, this-- but why did I do that?
    Now, what was I trying to tell you?
    You started to talk about leaving Germany.
    And then you--
    Yes.
    And then you went back to your early childhood happiness.
    Oh, yes.
    Now, leaving that neighborhood, we
    had to leave that apartment because we just simply
    didn't have any more money.
    And that's when the furnished room life started.
    No, I think there was one more apartment high under the roof,
    which wasn't too bad.
    But then came the furnished room.
    But anyway, the day that we had to leave Geisenheimer Strasse,
    there was a neighborhood Punch and Judy show.
    In German, it's called Kasperle Theatre.
    And all the neighborhood children
    were getting ready to sit and watch it, and I had to leave.
    I had to drive away with my parents.
    That very time, I felt so bereft.
    So that was a sad thing.
    So it was, in many ways, difficult
    for you to leave your home.
    Well, that home, yes.
    But then later, leaving Fasanenstrasse to go on a boat
    to Cuba was unbelievable happiness.
    I was not sorry to leave that Germany.
    So talk about that leaving.
    All right.
    I was never one for dolls, but I had a lot of stuff toys.
    Particularly, I loved a white stuffed cat,
    beautiful little white stuffed cat
    with green glass eyes, a little pink nose and mustache.
    I loved it.
    And for some reason, with all the excitement
    of packing and getting ready to leave, that got left behind.
    And I don't know whether we were in a taxi to the train,
    or in the train, or what.
    All of a sudden, I remembered.
    And I said, oh, Mutti, I forgot the cat.
    Can we back and get it?
    And she said, no, oh, no.
    Can you imagine, in her mind, going back
    and getting snapped up?
    Of course not.
    But to this day, I have regrets about that stuffed cat.
    But other than that--
    Let's stop here--
    Oh.
    --because we have to turn over the tape.
    Yes.
    Good.
    [AUDIO OUT]
    This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust
    Memorial Museum volunteer collection
    interview with Ruth Harvey, take number one, side B.
    When we stopped, you were talking
    about leaving your animal behind--
    Well, it was not a living animal.
    --your stuffed animal--
    It was a stuffed animal.
    --and how upsetting that was for you to forget that.
    And then you were telling me about a painting
    that you did, which you now have in front of you.
    And the title of the painting is--
    Childhood Memories.
    It is so strange.
    My art teacher suggested a subject,
    because I was at a standstill.
    She said, why don't you paint your childhood memories?
    And it unleashed a torrent in me.
    And it had a very odd result.
    I had been planning a trip through the Rhine country,
    picturesque German towns along the river.
    When I got through painting this painting,
    I had gotten so closely back into my childhood self
    that I was totally unable to go to Germany.
    And I changed my travel plans and went to Greece instead.
    So you had a lot of very strong feelings.
    Oh, my lord, yes.
    And it was catharsis.
    It just came out.
    To do the painting?
    As I did the painting.
    Yes.
    Could you describe some of the things in the painting?
    Yes, I'll be happy to.
    Down here, you see this cornucopia
    with colorful objects spilled out of it.
    This is in the lower right hand.
    The lower right.
    I'm going to go from the lower right hand.
    Now, in Germany, when children reached school age,
    their loving families would present them
    with these cardboard cornucopias filled with candy.
    This is a German tradition for your first day of school.
    I remember mine was just somewhere.
    I have a photo of myself with that in my arms.
    It was this big.
    And it was filled with candy.
    And what this here symbolizes-- it's
    lying on the ground with all these colors spilled out of it.
    And I think of that as my spoiled childhood.
    Spoiled childhood?
    Yes.
    Spilled, spoiled.
    Yes.
    What do you mean, spoiled childhood?
    Well, instead of having a normal childhood,
    going through the normal schools and the normal way,
    it took all sorts of odd twists, and turns, and humiliations,
    and scares, and that sort of thing.
    OK.
    And what else in the painting is especially important to you?
    Well, you see there a little girl
    with her arms outstretched, floating after a white toy cat.
    That's the story I told before.
    To this day, I'm searching for that.
    Over here, then you speak into the microphone.
    Thank you.
    Yes.
    So that is there.
    To the right of it is the Punch and Judy show.
    If you look at it very closely, there's
    a devil with a pitchfork and horns.
    He's all red.
    And there's Kasperle-- or Punch, as he is called in English--
    with his stick, and his pointy cap, and his red nose.
    And later on, when I was all filled anew with fury
    at what had happened, I somehow thought of the Punch
    as a typical stupid German, and the devil--
    namely, Hitler or Goebbels--
    leading him on.
    I thought of that later with an adult mind fairly recently.
    As a child, I just thought of it as Punch and Judy.
    But somehow, it fits into that painting for that reason.
    Now, to the left of this, you see a black rectangle
    with a white bulb on the top.
    And you see two shapes--
    a large female shape, and a small female
    shape-- clutching each other.
    And that was my mother and I in the pantry clutching each other
    in deadly fear.
    Behind it, you see gray steps going up
    and a large red swastika behind it.
    That was the sound we heard of the Nazi boots on the stairs.
    Now, if there's anything else in here
    that you want to ask me about--
    Well, is there anything else that is
    particularly emotional for you?
    Well, all right, emotional-- it's both good and bad.
    Here, you see a gray ship going through the ocean, bravely
    headed in a new direction.
    And that was the German ship, the Orinoco.
    And my mother and I were lucky to get tickets on that.
    We were in fourth class, steerage.
    We were down below in a huge room
    shared with many other women.
    I think there were 40 of them, and lower bunks, and upper.
    My mother and I, of course, were together.
    And I think it was a lower bunk.
    And what she had done--
    brave lady.
    We had a wonderful oil painting.
    It's right over there.
    It's a self portrait of a great-great-grandfather of mine
    who had artistic talent.
    And he did this painting of himself
    in the earlier part of the 19th century.
    So she took it out of the frame, because this
    was the one true antique that we had of great sentimental value,
    a self portrait of an ancestor.
    And she rolled it up.
    And we slept with it between us in a cardboard roll.
    That was the one thing she managed to get out.
    Now it's hanging there.
    Anyhow, that was a pretty unpleasant trip,
    I mean the sleeping conditions.
    The food wasn't too bad.
    It was simple, but good.
    And I, as a child, enjoyed everything.
    The adults, of course, were worried sick.
    And I'm comfortable.
    Now, you were on a German ship.
    Yes.
    With a German--
    In fact, there's something in there
    I'm going to tell you about.
    Yes, It was the first--
    OK, this here, what you see here, is the--
    Now, you're talking about the painting
    here, the upper right hand corner of the painting.
    I'm still in the middle here.
    There's a black-and-white tile floor.
    There are tables with white tablecloths,
    an elegant French door, palm trees, or palm bushes
    in pots, a very elegant salon.
    Well, there was a lady on the ship who was
    a very well-to-do Jewish lady.
    And she was traveling first class.
    My mother and she were acquainted.
    And one day, she invited us up to first class for tea.
    Now, we had been for quite some time down in the hold.
    And here I am, a little girl.
    And when we went up there, I heard violin music playing,
    and waiters scurrying by with trays.
    And I saw all this luxury.
    And it made a very deep impression on me.
    It really did.
    The next picture you see is a man, my father,
    wearing his blue bow tie, white shirt, and gray pants
    with his arms raised in the air.
    And he's standing under a palm tree
    and bidding us welcome, a very welcoming figure.
    And were we ever happy to see him.
    And then it goes on.
    The painting swirls up to the right above.
    And there's little girls floating around.
    Those were the little girls I became friends
    with once we settled in Cuba.
    And they were very lovely.
    And of course, I didn't speak Spanish.
    And they didn't speak German.
    But I managed to learn both Spanish and English,
    at least starting to, while I had that year and a half
    in Havana.
    And the end of the painting, at the upper right,
    you see these white towers, skyscrapers.
    You see the stars in the sky turning into the stars
    in the American flag.
    And this was the land of our dreams,
    which I didn't know yet.
    And I saw these miraculous skyscrapers up there.
    And we had to get there.
    And that was the idealized version of it.
    That pretty well describes everything.
    Oh, that's a very interesting painting
    Thank you.
    Can we go back and fill in some of the details of your trip?
    You and your mother were in the taxicab going to the train.
    Or whatever conveyance.
    Yes.
    And then you got to the train station in Berlin.
    All that is-- no, I don't remember those things.
    You don't.
    No.
    I just remember-- I had never had a terribly good memory.
    Well, you were just--
    I just remember--
    --also a small child.
    --the emotional parts or the dramatic parts.
    How I get somewhere, how long it took,
    this is all gray area, something I honestly don't know.
    At that time, I was about nine years old.
    Yeah.
    Do you remember on the ship, the Orinoco-- it was a German ship.
    And I think you had said it sailed from Hamburg?
    Yes, to Havana.
    Oh, and we stopped in Antwerp once.
    All I remember there are houses with blue tiles.
    We stopped there shortly.
    Do you remember on the ship whether you were treated
    differently being Jewish?
    The German crew for the fourth class were very decent.
    Nobody ever was rude or nasty.
    They were very decent.
    And in fact, my father always had high regard for the German
    Navy, men who were at sea.
    He had wanted to become a naval officer.
    But his astigmatism kept him from that.
    No.
    There was not one instance of any kind
    of rudeness or mistreatment.
    There were other very interesting Jewish people
    who were--
    professional people, who were also down there in steerage.
    And we enjoyed each other's company.
    And I have a photo of that little girl with a scarf
    and a little sailor doll-- must have brought on board--
    looking as happy as could be.
    Were most of the other passengers Jewish?
    The people down at that level certainly were.
    So the trip was as you described it before.
    Do you remember anything else about the ship?
    Just a terrific contrast between our steerage
    and that first class salon with the violin music.
    It was unbelievable.
    I stood there thunderstruck.
    I thought I was dreaming it all.
    Yes.
    And of course, I enjoyed seeing the gray North Atlantic.
    I had never been at the sea before.
    No, I was at Wannsee, which is a huge lake.
    I had never been by the ocean.
    I loved it.
    I thought it was just wonderful.
    I've loved it ever since.
    So you arrived in Havana.
    Yes.
    I have a huge story to tell about my father.
    It shows you what kind of a man he was.
    First of all, he boarded the ship with the pilot.
    Somehow, he wrangle that, greeted us right on deck.
    It was heaven.
    It was so wonderful.
    I had always adored my papi.
    And it was just sheer heaven to be with him again.
    And I'm pretty sure my mother felt the same.
    And then, of course, he couldn't take us right off,
    because there was a Cuban version of Ellis Island called
    Triscornia.
    I think it means "three horns" in Spanish, but I'm not sure.
    And again, with a child's different look at things,
    I thought it was fantastic.
    It was this ancient garden with palm trees.
    I'd never seen palm trees before.
    And they were so wonderful, I thought.
    And we had really unpleasant conditions.
    There were no mattresses.
    We slept right on the metallic springboards
    with a sheet over it.
    But it was the tropics.
    It was very hot.
    And it wasn't too uncomfortable to me.
    The only thing I remember eating there
    was sweet black coffee and red beans.
    I don't remember anything else.
    I thought it was great.
    I enjoyed it.
    And my father got us out of there within two or three days.
    You and your mother stayed there--
    Yes.
    --not your father.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    He had already made living arrangements.
    So he came to get us much quicker than we
    had anticipated.
    Other people were still there.
    I remember saying goodbye to them, and out of sight, out
    of mind.
    I don't even remember anyone particularly.
    So my father confronted my mother.
    And he said, Edith, you have to be very brave.
    Now, you can imagine that I couldn't
    get something very good.
    We don't have any money.
    And you have to be brave.
    It's a bit of a slum, but at least we're together.
    And she said, oh, Fridl, it doesn't matter.
    We're together.
    It's so wonderful.
    We all happily drove to whatever horrible place awaited us.
    Well, he had had his little joke,
    because he had rented half of a two-family house,
    typical Cuban, with gorgeous tile floor, lovely veranda,
    rented furniture.
    We had rocking chairs.
    The one thing I remember inside was a tray with tall glasses
    from Woolworth's with big, red dots on them and a decanter.
    And these were the tropics.
    It looked so good, so inviting.
    And the house inside was cool with these wonderful old tile
    floors.
    Well, we couldn't believe it.
    He totally tricked us.
    We were so happy.
    We didn't know what to think.
    He had his little joke.
    He was so happy, too, to have his family again.
    And I must tell you-- and this is where
    my guilt complex comes in.
    While others were having this great sorrow
    and this great pain in Europe, and they
    were going to ghettos and concentration camps,
    we were having this little ideal lasting over a year or so
    of pure happiness.
    Of course, my father had money worries.
    But the important thing is we were together,
    and we were safe.
    In Cuba at that time, long before Castro,
    it was a wonderful place to be.
    Now, were there particular people back in Germany
    that you were concerned about?
    My grandparents, who were our only close relatives,
    they had gone to South Africa through the help
    of my mother's younger brother.
    He was five years younger than she.
    He, in his youth, had been a Communist idealistic.
    And he saw the writing on the wall in the early '30s.
    And he lit out from Germany.
    And he went to South Africa, established himself
    as a businessman, and became quite well-off.
    He's dead now.
    And he got his parents out.
    They lived there peacefully.
    Did they leave Germany before you and your mother?
    I wish I could tell you for certain.
    Probably.
    Probably.
    I was not close to them.
    They were good people.
    But they didn't have a knack with children.
    And it was the same with my mother.
    They were her parents, but they were not really close.
    She appreciated them, but there was no closeness.
    So I'm not quite certain.
    They must have lived before we did.
    Were there-
    Yes, they must have, because there
    wasn't much later after 1939.
    Yes.
    Were there any people back in Germany that you or--
    There was the Christian side of the family whom we, ourselves,
    didn't know too well.
    My father was the contact there.
    They were doing all right.
    I don't know what they suffered under the Nazis.
    But they were not in any imminent danger.
    My mother-- my father's mother's maiden name was Vogt, V-O-G-T.
    Or maybe it was V-O-I-G-T. I'm not sure.
    But it was pronounced Vogt, which in German means abbot.
    So they were the Christian side.
    And Aunt Matilda, the great-aunt,
    she had married an Abel, so she was Christian.
    But the man she married came from a Jewish family.
    So anyway, there was one aunt much later.
    In fact, just about two years ago,
    I learned that my very glamorous older great-aunt-- she
    was my grandmother's sister.
    Her name was Ida, Eda.
    And she had married a wealthy--
    she was Jewish, and she had married a Jewish gentleman.
    And I learned recently that she had ended up in Theresienstadt.
    I had not know this before, and I was very, very sad.
    I wasn't close to her either.
    But she was an elegant lady, very unhappily married.
    And I remember the stained glass window in her dining room
    when we visited.
    They had one of those phenomenal Berlin apartments.
    But being an only child, we did have some relatives in Dresden
    who were non-Jewish.
    The boys went into the army.
    I think they both died.
    They were an odd family.
    Do you want to hear another childhood memory--
    Sure.
    --when I was in Dresden?
    Two come to mind, neither one of them pleasant.
    Now, I don't think you have mentioned
    why you were in Dresden or when you were in Dresden.
    This was obvious.
    This was when my father was between jobs.
    He was struggling.
    And he wanted to put his wife and child someplace.
    So he decided to leave us with his relatives in Dresden.
    So we went there.
    The lady was an eccentric.
    She had about 13 cats or more and this a big, old rambling
    country house in Dresden.
    She had two sons.
    I remember one of was called Rainer.
    And I can't remember the other one.
    They were much bigger boys.
    I was just a little kid.
    And they played to tricks on me.
    They gave me something that looked just like honey.
    And they said, this is good, Ruth.
    Why don't you eat it?
    I was such an ignoramus.
    I ate it.
    And it was laundry soap.
    To this day, I can remember the taste.
    It was so awful.
    The other thing they did, which did not endear them to me--
    they would put me in a potato sack
    and move me around the garden, just drag me.
    That wasn't too good.
    I was scared to death of them, not having any siblings,
    particularly brothers.
    And the other thing is I developed a typical childhood
    cold.
    And some German families had some peculiar ideas
    of how to raise children.
    This woman's idea of curing me was to tie me, hand and foot,
    in bed and put a lot of blankets on me
    to sweat it out of my system.
    Well, my mother was horrified.
    She felt like she was very vulnerable.
    She was there because she didn't have a penny to her name.
    Her husband was struggling in Berlin
    to find a job and a place to live.
    All she had were these people.
    She didn't want to offend the lady.
    But she didn't want to desert me either.
    So I was lying there, sweating and pleading for her
    to release me, and she was sitting there crying.
    But she didn't have the nerve to untie me.
    This was a very unpleasant memory.
    And remember, this was not done by a Nazi.
    This was done by what was considered a good German parent
    figure--
    not my mother, but this lady who was related to my father
    by marriage.
    It was her husband who was a cousin of his.
    And so my memories of Dresden--
    and it was also ghastly winter weather, and depressing.
    And I was cold, most of--
    it was just simply a horrible memory.
    So that was a difficult time for you.
    But let me throw in how Germans think
    children should be raised.
    I told you how close my father was to his father.
    And his father was a darling man who had
    been widowed much too young.
    He was well-off.
    They had a lovely house.
    And he had my father woken every morning
    by a housekeeper coming in and putting
    ice cold sheets around him to wake him up and toughen him up.
    Can you imagine a little boy, half orphan,
    from waking up in the morning and being wrapped up
    in these icy sheets?
    Well, this was the German way of bringing children up.
    I'm so glad that my own parents didn't have those ideas.
    I just wanted to throw that in.
    OK.
    Well, let's move ahead to Cuba.
    You said that you were very happy--
    Oh, it was unbelievable.
    --with your family there for about a year.
    Did you go to school in Cuba?
    Yes, I did.
    And this is a very interesting thing.
    I went to a place called Miss Phillip's School.
    And it was a private school.
    My father had done some fundraising
    for the American Joint committee, who
    helped many Jewish refugees.
    And they were giving him an allowance.
    That's how we managed to live.
    And I don't know what the financial arrangements
    were for me to attend school.
    But I went to this lovely American Miss Phillip's School
    in Havana.
    It's a lovely tropical building in a nice part of town.
    And I was learning both Spanish and English.
    And I--
    So the school was conducted in English?
    There was a Miss [? Sema. ?] I think
    it was English and Spanish.
    Yes, it was.
    I had an American teacher, Miss Martha Jane Pruitt--
    no, Martha Jane Jones.
    She married a Mr. Pruitt later.
    She was a darling young girl.
    And I remember there was an older
    teacher with white hair, Mrs. Flora [? Sema. ?]
    And she must have been Spanish speaking.
    But I managed, with all these limitations in language,
    to be the second best in my class.
    And I got a silver medal.
    I still have it.
    And the gold medal was earned by another refugee boy
    I remember a nice, plump Jewish boy with a marvelous
    sense of humor.
    And he got the first one, which was gold.
    So these refugee children weren't really outdistancing
    the local kids.
    Were there many refugee children in the school?
    No, but there were many refugees in Havana.
    Yes.
    And at home, did your family still speak German?
    Yes.
    That's probably why I am now working
    in the historical division doing translations,
    because my fundamental German is very deep-seated.
    And I have not really forgotten it,
    because even in this country, until my parents' deaths--
    my mother died in 1984, my father much earlier--
    we would intermingle English and German.
    So German has, for you, the memories
    of being with your mother and with your father and being--
    Yes.
    I know some very embittered people
    who had suffered greatly in camps
    who, when they came to America, refused to speak German.
    And I respect that.
    And I understand it.
    But that's a different situation.
    Well, maybe we can talk more about that later.
    Yes.
    What else about Cuba?
    I thought the Cuban people were so different from anything
    I had seen before.
    I remember pale faced, northern Germans,
    or very Jewish Germans.
    And I was always cold in Germany, it seems to me.
    And everything seemed to be gray.
    Berlin seemed to be gray.
    And all of a sudden, I was on this golden island.
    There were royal palm trees.
    I thought I'd never seen anything so beautiful.
    The sunsets, these tropical skies
    were something I'd never experienced before.
    The music, the people--
    they were very warm and charming and, at that time, happy.
    And did you feel any special treatment as a Jew?
    They couldn't have been nicer to us.
    They were so good, and hospitable, and welcoming.
    So how did you happen to leave Cuba?
    Oh, that was because our quota number came up.
    I see.
    We had done our wait.
    I was heartbroken.
    I remember the day we sailed away.
    My parents had locked me into the cabin,
    because I had been asleep when they left,
    and they didn't want me to be in any danger.
    And I remember waking up as the ship was sailing away.
    And I was looking at the Malecon it's that great stretch of road
    that's the first thing you see when you go to Havana Harbor--
    and the lights twinkling like a pearl necklace.
    And I wanted to go on deck.
    And I couldn't.
    The door was locked.
    And I remember standing in that porthole
    and sobbing, because I didn't want
    to leave Cuba, the people I knew, my girlfriends.
    I was distraught.
    So you did make friends in Cube.
    In fact, just a few months ago, I
    visited one of them, who is now lady my age in her late 60s
    living in Florida.
    That was my dear friend Hilda, whom I met then.
    She was then a very beautiful little girl
    with her own problems.
    Her parents had divorced.
    But she was a well, upper-crust Cuban.
    I mean a very well--
    they were wealthy.
    So she was not a refugee.
    She was an only child, like myself.
    And I fascinated her, because I was a refugee.
    So we became friends.
    And it's a lifelong friendship.
    So it was hard for you to say goodbye to Hilda
    and your friends.
    It was agonizing.
    Yes.
    And why did your parents want to come to the US
    instead of staying in Cuba?
    Oh, because there was no future for us in Cuba.
    It was a marvelous resting--
    stopping off place, better than we ever hoped for or expected.
    But it was not a place to remain.
    There was no way he could make a living or anything.
    We were set to become Americans.
    And did your family have contacts in the United States?
    Well, he had connections with this Joint Committee.
    And he quickly found work.
    But it was a terrible struggle.
    I once wrote an essay about my father,
    and I gave it to my children, in which I
    explained how it was for him.
    Here he was, at this point in his 50s.
    And he looked for any kind of job-- salesman.
    He worked at the Savoy Plaza Hotel
    in the basement as janitorial work.
    And here he was, once a well-set-up gentlemen
    with his little fortune.
    And here he was, now practically a janitor.
    And guys half his age would refer to him as, hey, Al.
    And it was a great come down, or I don't know.
    But he was very gallant about the whole thing.
    He got used to it.
    He struggled with it.
    He put up with it.
    He fought.
    And he finally ended up creating his own position
    with a German-language newspaper, Stats Sanctunk und
    Herald, and Knight Ridder paper.
    And he found a job in their advertising department.
    And with his contacts back in Germany
    and his knowledge of German, he became the advertising director
    for the ads from Germany, big industry ads.
    And I wanted to explain how it was possible
    for him to go back to Germany on business trips
    after all that had happened.
    And this was, of course, after the war when Germany
    was being built up again.
    He knew the high commissioner.
    And he had contacts from business before.
    And he managed to get some fabulous ads for the paper.
    And he did this twice a year for seven years
    until he died of lung cancer.
    And the way that he could do this, as I explained before,
    is that he had had 40, almost up to--
    no, more than 40, mid 40s.
    He had had a good life in Germany.
    This was a nightmare that came upon him in middle age.
    And he had to adjust to it.
    He had to understand that it wasn't
    going to go away, that he had to get away from there.
    He had not been in the camps.
    He had not had the experience.
    And so he was able to come back and deal
    with the post-war Germans.
    He was not eaten up by hatred or revulsion
    like so many rightfully were.
    And so he could do this.
    Can we back up a bit to your arrival in New York?
    Do you remember that?
    Oh, yes.
    He had a good friend in New York.
    His name was Eric Goodall.
    For a while, he was a political cartoonist.
    And the very first night, he took us around in his car,
    I remember, drove us through Little Italy
    where all the lights were lit--
    oh, first the skyscrapers down Fifth Avenue.
    And I was a little child.
    It was an open convertible.
    And I laid back, and just looked up
    at the skyscrapers, and the bright lights, and Little
    Italy, and all over.
    And I remember falling asleep, leaning back
    with my mouth open.
    That's my first night in New York.
    My father, as we were going down Broadway on that first day,
    stopped at 77th Street in Broadway.
    At the corner, there was a hotel called the Benjamin Franklin.
    I looked recently, and the building is still there.
    But it's no longer the Benjamin Franklin.
    It's been rebuilt something else.
    It was a residential hotel.
    And he rented us a nice, large room with kitchen privileges
    for that first night.
    And we lived there for some months.
    And so our arrival in New York was very pleasant.
    I had my parents with me.
    And my father had his good friend there,
    and getting acquainted with New York.
    And then I went to public school.
    And that, of course, was a little frightening.
    But I got used to it.
    So you were about 12.
    11, I think.
    11.
    OK.
    Wait.
    We arrived in 1940.
    I was born in '28.
    12.
    And how was your English by this time?
    Oh, it's so funny.
    I remember being in public school.
    And I asked, what is a bra?
    And this girl laughed and said, imagine Ruthie Abel not knowing
    what bra means.
    I didn't know that it was a brassiere.
    I was still too young for that.
    But the girls were talking about it.
    And there were words I just didn't know yet.
    And I had to learn them.
    And eventually, I realized that I
    was beginning to think in English,
    and that I had really gotten good at it.
    But it took a few years-- not too long, because I was young.
    My mother, although she had a very good knowledge
    of the structure of the language,
    had an accent that is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
    She never mastered the TH's.
    Was she home during the day?
    She worked.
    She did.
    I was a latchkey child for quite awhile.
    And what did she do?
    Secretarial, mostly.
    She was a very good secretary.
    In those days, secretary was not a dirty word.
    Now it is.
    So she was out with the public and had to use her English--
    Yes.
    Oh, yes.
    --every day.
    But she also managed to work for many refugees firms
    where they all spoke German.
    Once she said to me, it's a shame
    I never get a chance to practice my English.
    How am I ever going to improve?
    So she used German at work a lot of the time.
    Different jobs, yes.
    Yeah.
    So you went through school in New York.
    Yes.
    What schools did you go to in New York?
    It was a public school in a neighborhood there.
    And I was just getting adjusted to the American way of life.
    How was it making friends?
    I made a few good ones, not too many, kindred spirits.
    And in fact, one of them, Vera, was a refugee.
    In fact, she's in Chicago now.
    For many years, she taught art at the University of Chicago.
    And her father came from Danzig, a Russian background--
    lovely girl, became very good friends.
    And then there was a darling Irish American, Jill McConnell.
    She became my best friend.
    She was from the neighborhood.
    In fact, she's the one who gave me my middle name.
    Which was?
    Andrea.
    What happened was, after five years,
    my parents had the opportunity to get their citizenship.
    In fact, we went and swore the oath.
    And then we had a big dinner afterwards and celebrated.
    I, as their child, automatically became a citizen.
    And I was told that, when you become a citizen,
    you can have a choice at what name you want.
    Well, I had always been upset at the fact
    that I had one name only, and that was only one syllable,
    Ruth.
    It just wasn't-- yeah, that's how it was pronounced
    in German, "Groot."
    I didn't like it.
    It wasn't enough for me.
    I didn't feel like just "Groot," or Ruth.
    And so she and I took a walk on Riverside Drive,
    because I told her I wanted to get a middle name.
    I had realized that every American I
    knew had a middle name.
    But I only had one, and that was only one syllable.
    So I said, Jill, help me find a name.
    So we walked.
    And we started with the A's, naturally.
    And we didn't get very far, because when she said Andrea,
    I said, say that again.
    And she said, Andrea.
    And I said, I like it.
    What did you like about Andrea?
    The sound, the soft three-syllable sound.
    And so I became Ruth Andrea Abel.
    Did it have any national connotations for you?
    I mean, was it definitely--
    No, I always went by sound rather than rule.
    Later, I learned that it meant something like, gift to God,
    or something.
    I'm not sure.
    I have to look that up again.
    And of course, Ruth Andrea became Randy.
    That was my nickname for many years.
    Now that I work at the Holocaust Museum,
    I feel Randy isn't right.
    So I go with Ruth.
    Were you named after anyone in particular?
    Well, that's the strange thing.
    My parents, when they were waiting for me,
    apparently never had discussions about names the way
    my husband and I did.
    And here's my dear mother, recuperating
    from having had me in bed.
    And my dad hotfoots it to city hall
    and says he wants me named Ruth.
    He had never even consulted her.
    She wanted to call me Ellen.
    But then she thought Ellen Abel doesn't sound good,
    so she hesitated.
    So he comes back with a fait accompli.
    Here I was, Ruth.
    I didn't like it.
    She didn't like it.
    But there it was.
    Do you know why he selected Ruth?
    I wish I knew.
    It would be interesting, wouldn't it?
    I haven't a clue.
    I don't think he ever had a girlfriend named--
    he used to have many girlfriends before he got married.
    In fact, he was married before.
    And he never mentioned Ruth.
    Well, we're almost at the end of this tape.
    So let's stop and turn it over.
    OK.
    This is a continuation of United States Holocaust Memorial
    Museum Volunteer Collection interview
    with Ruth Harvey conducted by Margaret Garrett on August 22,
    1997 in Bethesda, Maryland.
    Tape number two side A. During the break
    you were talking about your father's first marriage.
    Yes, he has always been a stage-door Johnny,
    a man about town.
    He really was.
    He once had a violent love affair
    with a young actress named Ellen Victor,
    and he was so jealous of her.
    He was all set to shoot her.
    He was a very passionate young man.
    Well, he got over that.
    But he did marry an artist as his first wife.
    She was prima ballerina of the Berlin opera.
    Her name was Elizabeth Grub.
    She was non-Jewish, and she was a very good dancer.
    They were married about four years.
    And then she ran off with the stage designer, a Greek stage
    designer.
    And then he was a divorced man, and I
    think it was a very good thing when my mother-to-be walked
    into his life as his secretary.
    So he had no children from his first marriage?
    No. and she later married some titled German
    and barely escaped with her life when
    the Russians overran their estate that they lived on.
    Barely escaped.
    She later died.
    I met her once.
    She was a very charming lady.
    OK, let's go back to New York, and you
    went to high school where?
    I went to the High School of Music and Art,
    which had always been a fond project of Mayor La Guardia's,
    Fiorello La Guardia.
    And you could only go in there by passing certain tests,
    and I'm happy to say I passed them.
    And there were two categories in those days.
    Now it's the High School for the Performing Arts.
    But in those days it was just Music and Art.
    I belonged with the artists.
    It was a regular high school, but they
    were these two different things that we concentrated on,
    a career for music or a career as an artist in addition
    to high school subjects.
    So you graduated from high school in what year?
    I think maybe '48?
    I was always one year behind because of my
    having been a refugee.
    I believe I graduated in '48 if I'm not mistaken.
    And then what happened?
    Well, I went to Cooper Union for a time.
    I did not graduate from there.
    I was-- that's another thing.
    You had to take an exam to get into that.
    I passed that for the day courses.
    And then my parents took me aside and said, Ruthie,
    there just isn't the money there.
    You just going to have to take a daytime job
    and go to night school.
    Well, I was very upset about that.
    All my friends who were able to go to Cooper Union
    were going in the daytime, and it was very hard
    for me to work at jobs, sales jobs.
    The worst job I ever had as a very young person--
    oh, this was ghastly--
    was in some horrible neighborhood downtown
    where we spray painted little monkey masks.
    You know the little faces of little monkeys?
    We spray painted them.
    Every time I sneezed I'd get out a different rainbow color.
    It was unhealthy and unpleasant.
    It was, I would say, factory work.
    It was just ghastly.
    Well, I did-- the jobs I got in those days were not very good.
    And it was a great strain to work that and then
    go to night school.
    And after a while I just dropped out.
    And much to my regret really.
    And then I eventually, after many lesser and less enjoyable
    jobs, I found a lovely secretarial job
    with Paramount Theaters in the Paramount Building
    in Times Square where I stayed for four years,
    and I really enjoyed it.
    I was ordering candy for the theater chains
    and doing secretarial--
    Candy was bigger with them than the films were.
    They got more revenue from that.
    And I stayed with them--
    oh, I must tell you how I got the job at the State Department
    in Washington.
    Would you like to hear how I got that?
    Well, now, were you in New York when you
    got the State Department job?
    Yes, I'll tell you how.
    OK.
    My parents went for a vacation to Nassau.
    And it was February, and I was alone in the apartment
    and feeling a little woebegone.
    Things were not going terribly smoothly in my life.
    And late at night I had the radio on
    and I heard an announcer say, would you
    like a career in the Foreign Service?
    If so, apply for the State Department
    at Center Street downtown and get your form.
    Well, I took off from work the very next day
    and took the subway all the way down the Center Street
    near Wall Street and applied for form 57 for employment
    with the State Department in quintuplicate.
    Why were you interested in applying for the job?
    New York was not a healthy environment for me.
    I had been there 16 years, and I was not flourishing.
    Things were not happening well for me,
    and I felt that I needed a change of life--
    lifestyle, surroundings, everything.
    What was not happening that you wanted to?
    I met a lot of people who I thought were rather neurotic.
    There was something unhealthy about life in New York.
    If you were not well cushioned by money,
    if you had to struggle, it could be
    downright depressing at times.
    And I felt that I was young enough
    and I owed it to myself to go someplace else
    and try something new.
    So the very next day I got the form.
    My parents were still on vacation.
    Every night after work I would lie
    on the floor on the carpet on my stomach
    and fill out some more of this huge, positively endless form
    in quintuplicate.
    You had to go back to your very first beginnings of life,
    everybody you ever knew.
    You had to get references and schools.
    It took a week to fill it out conscientiously.
    I did that, and I listed references here and there
    and whatnot.
    And I mailed it off, and this was February.
    And I forgot about it.
    In May, I'm sitting in my office at the Paramount Theaters
    when the phone rang, and it was Washington offering me a job.
    Well, my father was so pleased because he had always
    had a high regard for diplomats, the diplomats life,
    and here was his little Ruthie entering, true,
    at the very bottom, but still it was the State Department.
    He couldn't have been more pleased.
    So I gave up my job at Paramount and traveled to Washington.
    Now, you had been living still in your parents' home?
    Well, at first in their home, and then
    I managed to get a room in the same building above them.
    But I left all that quite happily
    and settled in Mount Pleasant and worked
    for the State Department for about four years.
    Did you know anyone in Washington?
    I had had a boyfriend who had lived in Washington on and off.
    He was a flight engineer.
    And I had visited him once, and the first thing
    I saw from Union Station was the Capitol and trees everywhere
    I looked.
    I fell hook, line, and sinker.
    I fell in love with Washington, and I wanted to live here.
    So when the State Department job came
    I thought this is wonderful.
    This is a wonderful way to get where I wanted to go.
    So you came down by yourself and you found housing by yourself?
    Yes, my father treated me to my first night's hotel room.
    And then at the State Department I went to the registry
    for housing, and they found me a pleasant place
    on Mount Pleasant.
    Yes, it was nice.
    A group home with lots of other young women.
    And that job worked out pretty well for you?
    Oh, indeed I had a wonderful--
    I loved working for these.
    The odd thing is I wanted to go as a foreign secretary,
    and they offered me such a hideous assignment
    that I simply just switched to domestic because I
    thought I'd be happier than--
    what this country?
    It was landlocked, and I can't think of the name right now.
    But it was the least appealing country in Latin America.
    No ocean, no nothing.
    And I thought to myself, to lose two years of my life
    in this boondocks, that didn't seem right.
    And so I simply--
    and in those days you can get a second choice.
    And so I switched to domestic, and I
    worked on the Latin American division
    with my previous knowledge of Spanish.
    And I had a very good time as a single girl in Washington.
    I enjoyed myself.
    Then I met my husband-to-be, and that starts
    another chapter in my life.
    And how did you meet him?
    Very romantic.
    In those days the Park-Sheraton Hotel
    had a magnificent Olympic-size pool.
    Now it's been paved over as a parking lot.
    Can you imagine?
    But in those days it was a very refreshing,
    beautiful blue-green water.
    And one Labor Day-- it was Labor Day 1957.
    It was very hot.
    My girlfriend and I decided to go
    to that pool for a nice swim.
    And so we went, and that's how I met my husband.
    At the pool?
    He was sitting next to me.
    Mm-hmm.
    And what was he doing?
    Well, this is so strange.
    He said he was also in the foreign service.
    And what he couldn't tell me in those days
    but what I can tell now because he's been dead since 1972
    he was with the CIA.
    Only he didn't tell me that, of course.
    He just-- we exchanged telephone numbers, and he said,
    if you call me and I'm not there,
    just leave a message because that's the way it is.
    I didn't know that, so he called me and he missed me,
    so I called him and he wasn't there.
    And I wasn't going to leave a message, so I just hung up.
    This way we never would have gotten together.
    But finally he got me at home because I'd only
    given him my office number.
    My boss took pity on him and he said,
    I'll give you her home phone number.
    God bless him.
    And then we saw each other every day for about nine months.
    And then he was assigned to Athens, Greece.
    And that's when he asked me to share his life there with him.
    And we got married, and we went to Athens
    and lived happily there for five years.
    And two of my three children were born there.
    Now, when did you learn he was with the CIA?
    He told me after much hemming and hawing months and months
    later.
    Before you get married?
    He had to because I was--
    oh, let me see.
    No, I was aware of what he was doing
    before we talked marriage, yes.
    So before you talked marriage you
    knew that he was with the CIA.
    Yes.
    Was he Jewish?
    Oh, no.
    He was-- he came from Milwaukee of Polish and Welsh stock.
    The Welsh or English part would have been Protestant--
    Unitarian.
    And the other part was Polish Catholic.
    His mother was Catholic.
    She came from Polish peasants, maybe third generation.
    And his father was first generation who--
    they came over from England and went into real estate
    in Milwaukee.
    And what religion was he?
    Well, like his-- well, he was not Catholic like his mother.
    He was like his father.
    Could you stop it for me?
    Yeah, sure.
    I'm trying to-- [AUDIO DROPS] Unitarian.
    It was congregational.
    Oh, would you say that again?
    That tape didn't start when you spoke.
    So would you just repeat that.
    Yes, I had said Unitarian, but I misspoke.
    He's congregationalist, In fact, our three children
    were baptized at Plymouth Church in Milwaukee
    on different home leaves when we came back to visit his folks.
    And he had them christened right there.
    Now, did you consider yourself at that point Jewish, not
    Jewish?
    This is the story of my life.
    I've never figured out exactly what I am.
    I certainly feel more Jewish than anything else.
    And yet I am not really a practicing Jew.
    I don't follow the high holidays or the customs
    because I was raised so differently.
    And so there is sort of a conflict within me
    as to what exactly--
    where do I belong.
    So your children were christened in
    the congregationalist church.
    Yes.
    Now, they're fully aware that my background is Jewish,
    that some of their blood is Jewish, and they know all this.
    And they are simply--
    all three of them, I have tried to get
    them to go to Sunday school or have given them bibles,
    and they're just--
    they're wonderful, they've got good characters,
    but they're non-religious totally.
    And I couldn't get anywhere with them.
    Why did you try to get them to go to Sunday school?
    Because we were in the Foreign Service overseas.
    There was a lot of people going to church.
    It was a social thing for the people to get together.
    Their children went to Sunday school,
    and I thought it'd be kind of good for them
    to learn the stories of the Bible, you know?
    But I couldn't get them.
    They didn't want to.
    And in your home did you celebrate Christmas and--
    Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and birthdays.
    That was about it.
    Mm-hmm.
    So you were in Athens with your husband for five years.
    Yes, five years.
    And you had two children there.
    Well, two were born there, yes.
    The third was born in Fairfax Hospital later.
    How do you think the--
    having been a refugee and that entire experience,
    how do you think that affected your life when you went back
    overseas to Athens?
    This is interesting that you should ask this
    because the Greeks, down back into history,
    have always been known to honor the stranger,
    to give hospitality to the stranger, to the visitor.
    Xenos, a stranger.
    They couldn't have been more hospitable or welcoming.
    It's in their blood.
    And I compare that to the German character
    of mistrusting instinctively the foreign element,
    the alien right away.
    And I thought to myself, what a shame
    that the people have to be so different.
    So the Greeks were hospitable.
    How about other people in the foreign service and in the CIA?
    Did you feel--
    Well, those were the days when there
    was a very idealistic bunch of people
    there like my husband and his friends.
    Very good sort of people and true patriots
    and risking their lives.
    And we had a very high opinion of the people we worked with.
    In fact, I didn't realize-- you know,
    in those days I didn't think about liberal or conservative,
    Democrat or Republican.
    In those days, in the '50s, there
    were so many moderates on both sides that they sort of melded.
    It wasn't really until the '80s and '90s
    that you see this really ugly tooth and nail
    attitude between the Democrats and the Republicans, the ultra
    conservatives, and liberal has become a dirty word.
    This is something that didn't exist then.
    Did you feel there was any discrimination
    about you being Jewish?
    I must say no.
    So you were in Athens for five--
    However-- excuse me for interrupting--
    had there been anything like that I would not have hidden.
    I would have spoken out.
    But I was fortunate in that that never came up.
    Do you think that's because of your previous experience
    that you would have been more likely to speak up?
    Oh, definitely.
    Of course, yes.
    And what about having children?
    Was that for you, do you think, a different experience because
    of your previous life in Germany?
    I would not wed these two ideas together.
    It was something entirely different.
    A totally different trip, and nothing
    to do with religion or past or anything.
    It was something new, a new world that I was going into.
    Yes.
    And so that was--
    Oh, it was the best thing I ever did or went through and gave
    meaning to my life.
    I mean, this is what I had been born for.
    And raising the-- and then later when my husband died fairly
    early we had only been married 14 years,
    leaving me with three children.
    And their ages were at the time 11, 10, and 8.
    And fortunately the government provided pensions
    so we didn't suffer hardship.
    But still, I was the one to raise these three.
    And this is interesting.
    Maybe my past experiences in dealing with hardships
    gave me the strength to endure this terrible shock
    of losing him so young and being in charge of three young lives.
    And I must say, they had such good character.
    it was so easy to raise them.
    I thoroughly enjoyed being a parent.
    And I must say, they didn't give me much grief at all.
    They were good kids.
    I raised them instinctually.
    All of us do.
    I mean, there's no handbook for being a parent.
    And it came out well.
    You have boys?
    I have two boys and the girl is in the middle.
    Now of course they're men and a young woman.
    Jenny just moved to Brooklyn to follow
    her man who got a job there, and she
    is a clinical social worker.
    She just got her master's last year, a year ago.
    And Michael is an honors--
    the oldest boy.
    He's an honors professor in Milwaukee
    at the University of Wisconsin.
    What is his field?
    He's teaching an honors course.
    An honors course, OK.
    Which will be up next year, and then he
    has to struggle to get another job.
    It's not easy.
    So an honors course would cover a number of different subjects?
    Yes, arts, politics.
    And those things are only for three years.
    So when that's over--
    the present problem with teaching and professors
    not having tenure, he'd be lucky if he gets another teaching
    position.
    Although he's very good and the students love him.
    And my youngest is working here in Washington.
    He's got a nice job.
    He just got married recently.
    And nice young couple, very happy with life.
    So I can gratefully say that--
    I would say the most creative thing
    and the most constructive thing in my life
    would be raising these three children having gotten them
    in the first place born healthy, and I'm very, very grateful
    about that.
    And that's what helped me through my widowhood,
    having them to take care of.
    Did you work after your husband died?
    Oh, yes.
    I remember that I had worked--
    I had a little part-time job at an insurance company
    when Johnny was still working for the agency here.
    And then he left.
    And a month after he left I got the death notice.
    And struggled a little bit longer at that job.
    And then they replaced me with somebody
    who'd been there before.
    And like a homing pigeon I fled to the agency
    that he'd worked for and told them my story,
    and they gave me a part-time job,
    which I kept for eight years while raising the children.
    I couldn't take a full-time job.
    I had a part-time job.
    I was home when they came home from school.
    And then I switched to full-time for a few more years
    when they were bigger, and then I took early retirement.
    Now I'm retired, and it's amazing
    how full one's days can be although retired.
    And so have your friends been some refugees, not refugees?
    Well, there's still Vera, although she's far away.
    I've had friends from all over.
    Refugees and Native Americans and Cubans and, oh yes.
    I just take people as they come.
    I don't have groups, you know.
    So you haven't felt limited to having other refugees who have
    similar experiences to yours?
    That is a feeling I had in New York
    when I was a teenager by 13 or so.
    And those days, all those poor, frightened,
    sick people who had survived Nazi Germany had all
    come to Manhattan, had all settled on the West side.
    And I remember how terribly depressing
    it was as a young teenager to see these poor, old, pale, gray
    shadows of themselves walking around Broadway,
    each one a tragic story.
    There were so many of them.
    I remember the feeling I had at the time of how tragic this was
    and how I wanted to get away from it.
    So that was part of your wanting to come to Washington?
    Well, by the time--
    yes, you know, by the time that I was ready to leave,
    those people were still there.
    Oddly enough, many, many decades later I went back.
    They were all gone, and their offspring was doing well,
    and the places had been--
    bad neighborhoods had been made wonderful.
    And New York was totally different,
    a completely different stage set.
    All those poor, poor shadows had vanished.
    And you saw nice young people jogging along, healthy,
    and it was just like it was when I went to Germany and I said,
    this is a brand new country.
    New York was a brand new country decades after I left it.
    But at the time when we were all refugees there together
    I found it very, very sad.
    But when you came to Washington you
    did not have that feeling of all refugees together?
    Oh, no.
    In fact, you know, New Yorkers had this unhappy reputation
    for not being terribly polite.
    Well, I thought everyone in Washington
    seemed so healthy and so pleasant,
    and I really enjoyed the people here.
    I liked it very--
    I mean, I must admit, I had gotten fed up with New York.
    And considered this place a place to get my health back,
    and I did.
    And you went back to Germany when?
    With my-- oh.
    After I became widowed in '72, my mother and I
    managed to plan to go back to Germany.
    I think it was '76 or '78.
    I don't remember which.
    And the sad thing about my husband is he died in Vietnam,
    and when he left here we had decided
    that when he had finished his tour, which was supposed
    to be 18 months, we would meet in Germany
    and I would show it to him.
    He was going to come straight from Vietnam.
    I was going to go straight from Washington.
    We were going to meet there, and I told you
    we're going to paint the town red.
    And I was so looking forward to that.
    He was in Vietnam with the CIA?
    Yes.
    And how did he die?
    Well, there's several versions about it,
    which I don't know that I want to go into.
    One is that he died in a swimming pool
    and the other one is a different version
    that somebody got to him from North Korea.
    And so not knowing the full truth, it's best not to--
    I mean, I don't know.
    I'll never know the truth.
    So I can't really tell you.
    But anyway, the idea being that when he had finished this tour
    we were going to reunite and I was
    going to show him my hometown.
    So you can imagine the state of mind
    I was in when I went years later with my mother.
    I remember being very unhappy and very unpleasant
    and very crabby.
    And I apologized to her.
    I said, Mutti, I'm sorry, but I'm just so sad.
    I pictured this so differently.
    And she said, apologies are not necessary, my dear.
    I fully understand.
    But then after I'd gotten there I
    discovered that everything was so different from what
    I remembered.
    And people were pleasant.
    And this was before the return of the skinheads.
    At this point I thought, oh my, this is marvelous.
    The new Germans are great.
    This is a democracy.
    How nice.
    And it was only later when I was back home a few years later
    and I read about these outrages against the Turkish laborers
    and the skinheads setting houses on fire
    and just being generally nasty to the alien labor forces
    that they had.
    And skinheads with swastikas and whatnot.
    And I get so fed up and so disgusted, you know.
    So as you can see, I've always had a roller coaster
    feeling about Germany.
    It'll always be with me.
    My daughter said, maybe you should see a therapist.
    And I-- I don't know.
    I just don't know.
    Should I or shouldn't I?
    I don't know.
    She thinks I should.
    Let's talk about your experience with the Holocaust Museum.
    Yes.
    It's funny, people had always told me
    through the years, Randy, why don't you
    be a docent maybe at the Smithsonian or something.
    And I'd say, yeah, yeah.
    I didn't really want to.
    I had no desire to.
    They thought you needed an interest
    or you had too much time?
    Yeah, besides I'm garrulous and I like people.
    They thought it'd be terrific.
    And I said that nothing tugged at me.
    And then I read an article in the "Washington Post"
    about the new Holocaust Museum and the idea that I adored.
    In those days they still had those past machines
    where you would take one of those ID cards or pamphlets
    from the machine and you would read--
    people who had been through the Holocaust and you'd
    read their story.
    And in those days you would have to go to a different floor
    and get the second page.
    You couldn't just read the whole thing.
    As you went from floor to floor, the fate of this person
    unfolded.
    They got rid of those machines because they
    were used to death.
    They died.
    They got rid of them.
    They were always breaking down.
    Now you get the whole little passbook,
    and unless you control yourself and wait,
    you can read the whole thing while waiting for the elevator.
    The idea being that you didn't know then would this person
    make it or would they perish.
    And that was rather dramatic.
    I thought the idea was phenomenal, you know.
    And then I read that they were looking for volunteers.
    And all of a sudden it was like boing.
    All of a sudden I was interested.
    My heart was in this.
    This was something that I felt I could
    do so well with my background.
    And so I wrote a letter, and they replied,
    and I came for an interview.
    And I was accepted.
    I was thrilled.
    I love the museum.
    I love what they're doing.
    And I enjoy being a volunteer.
    And were it not for my bad ankle and knee,
    I would be there much more often than I am.
    But fortunately they have an opening for me
    here in the oral history department,
    and I'm very happy translating and checking
    through these documents.
    You said that you love the museum and what they're doing.
    What is it that you love about the museum?
    It's a learning museum.
    It teaches people, often to young people
    who otherwise might be totally unaware of the Holocaust,
    that there was such a thing and that those flakes who
    keep claiming that it never happened are flakes
    and that this really did happen.
    There's enough evidence in this Museum to show that.
    I love that that somebody took the trouble to build it.
    And I love the architect who went to the camps
    and got the idea for the architecture
    directly from the camps, James Ingo Freed.
    And I love what he did.
    It's a magnificent building.
    And the strange thing is when I applied
    I said, please don't put me near scenes of horror.
    I don't want to see them.
    Put me anywhere.
    Well, sure enough, they did just the opposite,
    and I found myself walking through the permanent exhibit.
    But I learned to live with it.
    What was your first assignment there?
    To be a walker through the different floors
    of the permanent exhibit, make sure everything
    was going along well.
    You know, as you come out of the elevator
    you see a horrible thing on the fourth floor up
    against the wall with all the corpses.
    I mean, this is what I had tried to avoid.
    But somehow they got me into that.
    But--
    Did you ever ask to be transferred?
    No, once I was there I decided that having seen it
    once I could live with it and do the job that they
    wanted me to do.
    And of course, there's many others.
    You're not constantly walking through the permanent exhibit.
    There's many other areas.
    So I do it.
    And unfortunately, because of my bad foot now
    I don't go as often.
    I intend to go perhaps once a month on a weekend when
    they need people.
    Keep my foot in, so to speak but concentrate more
    on oral histories of translations.
    You said that when you read about the need for volunteers
    something leapt--
    Oh, my heart just jumped.
    I said to myself, god, if anybody can show the public,
    it's me.
    And I think any one of those volunteers
    must have had that same zing when they read about this.
    Don't you think?
    And can you say more about that feeling that you would
    be able to show the public--
    I had a feeling that my life-- remember now
    that I was a middle aged retired woman
    without a husband in her life, children grown up,
    life a little empty.
    And all of a sudden here is something that totally engaged
    me, my mind and my heart.
    And I said, this is what I was put here for.
    I must say I was in this guilt complex
    because I didn't suffer as much as the others.
    I said, this is maybe how I can atone for that.
    I can tell people what these people went through
    and where they ended up.
    And I can be more dramatic perhaps
    than somebody who wasn't as close to the subject, you know?
    And I had the feeling that this museum
    gave more meaning to my life.
    We have to turn over the tape then we can talk more about it.
    Yes.
    When we stopped you were talking about your work
    at the museum giving meaning to your life.
    Can you say more about that?
    Yes, first of all, when I was an only child and shy
    I didn't know that I really loved people.
    But as I got more mature and more worldly
    I discovered that I really like people very much,
    and it's wonderful working with the public.
    You meet so many different people,
    different outlooks on life.
    I'm able to use by two foreign languages on them.
    When I speak Spanish to some bewildered family
    from Argentina their faces just light up,
    and I can convey to them the things they
    want to know about the museum.
    And when Germans come to visit--
    And this is a strange thing.
    I've seen young German people come in,
    and they have the strangest expressions on their faces.
    Maybe I read more into it because of my background.
    But maybe not.
    There's a mixture-- sort of fear and shame and more.
    It's a combination of impressions.
    Like if I look at the young faces,
    they know what their country has done,
    and I'm sure they feel terrible about it.
    And they feel embarrassed and guilty but eager to see this
    and afraid to see it.
    It's a fascinating expression.
    I've seen it various times.
    And I try to put them at ease.
    I mean, they didn't cause this.
    How do you do that?
    Try to put them at ease?
    I speak their language to them.
    I look at them kindly.
    I'm gentle with them.
    But I say how happy I am that they're here.
    Then I emphasize-- but you of all people,
    you have to know this.
    And that's all I say, and they nod, you know?
    And I have a feeling I'm getting my point across.
    Do you think any of the visitors pick up
    that you were a refugee?
    Oh, this is interesting because one of those minutes
    suggestions was--
    the minutes from the meeting of the survivors--
    that the survivors ought to have special badges saying survivor.
    Some people want that.
    Others, myself included, do not think it's such a great idea.
    But whenever I think it's appropriate
    to a particular group of people given the situation,
    I'll mention.
    There's one place, my favorite in the whole museum,
    and that's Remember the Children, Daniel's House.
    That is my favorite exhibit because that is partly
    my youth growing up in Germany.
    Many of the things in that exhibit--
    it's like walking through a series of stage sets--
    remind me of my own childhood, although it
    didn't have the terrible ending pictured there
    like the ghetto and the camps.
    I left before then.
    But very often when I have a nice family
    who brought their children I'll put the emphasis--
    I'll look at the children and I'll say,
    that's just like my childhood was.
    I grew up under those circumstances.
    And then I say, but I didn't have the sad ending.
    But I say this makes me remember my own childhood there.
    And the children look at me with big eyes.
    It's very useful to be able to do
    that convincingly because it's the truth, you know.
    And I do that when I like a given group
    and I want to add to their knowledge.
    I don't feel that I want to go around with a badge that
    says survivor though, you know?
    I wouldn't do that.
    Was there anything else on this subject
    that you wanted to know?
    Oh, my interaction with people.
    Yes.
    Once this sweetest little old peasant woman
    from some East European country talking Yiddish came.
    She had misplaced some objects, lost something
    that your granddaughter had given her.
    And it had been found in the lost and found,
    and I got it for her and handed it to her.
    And she didn't speak the language.
    She grabbed my hand and kissed it.
    And I thought that was the sweetest, most touching thing.
    And I was smiling the rest of the day.
    Embarrassed, but also touched.
    You meet so many different people.
    Sometimes you see a lady, middle aged, totally overcome.
    There was one where she'd come out of the Hall of Remembrance,
    and she was just standing there and her shoulders were shaking.
    She was leaning against the column, her face to the column.
    And I just gently--
    I know we're not supposed to touch the public,
    but sometimes the human touch is sort of instinctive.
    And I just gently patted her shoulder and stood by her,
    and she calmed down.
    You had the feeling that you are an ambassador
    between the museum and the public,
    and you try to be a good influence
    and help and represent the museum and all that.
    Many other stories.
    How has it been working with the other volunteers there?
    Well, I met the nicest bunch.
    First I went on Wednesday afternoons.
    And then Larry asked if they were anybody there
    who would be willing to work on weekends
    because that's when they really need help.
    So I decided, sure, if that's what's wanted.
    And I worked on Saturdays.
    First in the afternoons and in the morning
    every second Saturday.
    And that worked out very well.
    As I said, everything was fine until I got my trouble
    with the knee and the ankle, which I hope
    will improve so I can do more.
    But I found it very challenging and very nice.
    There's always the odd pill in every crowd.
    There was one that was particularly odd,
    but she's no longer there I'm happy to say.
    And on the whole I found them very pleasant.
    Not everybody is pleasant, but most of them are.
    And some of them have stories to tell, again,
    which makes me feel guilty because I didn't go
    through what they went through.
    It's always that conflict.
    So you mean the other volunteers?
    The volunteers, yes.
    Survivors that have stories to tell.
    And how does that come up?
    Well, I know that Nesse Godin for one, she's legendary.
    When we had our training she was the speaker.
    She told us about when she was a young girl.
    I think she was 15 and she was in one of the worst camps.
    And told of life in camp.
    And you know, ever since then whenever
    I see her I throw my arms around her and hug her.
    And compared to her I feel guilty.
    It's not my fault, mind you.
    I know that.
    But the interesting thing is I discussed this
    with another volunteer, and she looked at me and she said,
    you have the same feeling?
    She said, I thought I was the only one.
    And I said, oh, thank god.
    There's more.
    And it's a common feeling for those of us
    who have not had the utmost pain that the others did.
    So have you had more contact with survivors
    and other refugees through your work at the museum
    than you had before as far as an opportunity to talk about this?
    Oh yes.
    Opportunity arose there which I didn't have before.
    Uh-huh, and has that been helpful to you to have a chance
    to talk about some of these things?
    Absolutely, I mean, it's fascinating.
    There's some such dear people.
    I look at them, and I listen to their past
    as very young people in the camp.
    And I say to myself, how can this man be
    so pleasant and so normal after what he went through, you know?
    Are those things that you didn't think about before?
    Well, those are things which I thought about before but had
    not being confronted with in the flesh.
    And you meet these people actually,
    and you wonder about the human spirit,
    how much it can take and stay normal.
    So overall would you say it's been more upsetting for you
    or it's been more helpful to you to have the volunteer
    experience?
    Oh, it's been heartwarming.
    It has filled an empty place.
    I wanted to do something important, something necessary.
    I was feeling too comfortable here, a little isolated with
    not terribly much to do.
    And I think that for the rest of my life
    until I'm no longer able to, I want
    to be involved with this museum.
    I just love it.
    And you started as a volunteer when?
    At the very beginning when they were first open.
    I was there before they opened the museum
    to the public, the day before.
    Here's another little story.
    I went with my very nice, mature daughter, Jenny.
    And we went to the museum, and she went, you know,
    where those boxes are where adults look down
    at a series of clips below--
    pictures and film clips about the really horrendous things
    that you don't want kids to see.
    Nazi experiments and that, beatings and that sort
    of thing.
    It's kind of sad how many people are always
    eager to look down at that.
    Jenny came up to me and she said, Mom, she said,
    don't ever look at those.
    And I knew exactly what she meant
    because I'm the type if I see an animal being treated cruelly,
    I can't get over it.
    And you see some of these things, it sears your soul.
    You can't forget.
    She did me a big favor.
    And I've been working there since the beginning,
    and I have never gone and looked at those things.
    Never.
    And she warned me.
    I'm very grateful to her.
    Had I looked at that, I probably couldn't
    continue working at the museum.
    You have to shield yourself against the utter horror.
    There's limits to what you can take.
    In fact, I'm going to travel to Eastern
    Europe in the late fall.
    And on the way there'd be a chance to go to the camps.
    And I'm not going to go.
    I don't think I can face it.
    It's enough that I go through a permanent exhibit.
    It's not because I don't care but maybe
    because I care too much that I don't want to go.
    So now you are working less with visitor services,
    and you're spending some time doing translations.
    See this purple folder?
    It's full of a document which was on videotape in German.
    First I took it down word by word in German, 39 pages of it.
    And now I'm translating it from the German to English.
    Unfortunately I'm not ready yet for word processors and things
    like that.
    I understand the museum might give courses on that.
    I'd like that.
    I'm doing it by hand.
    It would be lovely if I could just sort of take it off
    like this.
    So you do this in longhand?
    Oh yes, that's why it's taking a little longer.
    And do you go down to the museum to do this?
    When it's done I'll go down.
    In the meantime--
    No, but--
    --once I have a sufficient amount
    I'll mail it to Miss Rubin.
    Amy Rubin.
    I work for her.
    She's a lovely girl, and I want to have her know
    that I've been working on this.
    It's taking quite a while.
    No, I wanted to understand the process.
    The museum lends you the video.
    I could do it all there in the library.
    But I've chosen to do it at home.
    It makes no difference.
    OK, so you put the video--
    I take that information from the video at the library,
    of course, with their machines.
    And then when I have the document I go home
    and I translate it.
    I see.
    And what is that like for you?
    Fascinating.
    For instance, I'll tell you, there
    is this wonderful video out.
    It's called Weapons of the Spirit,
    and it's about the wonderful French Huguenot mountain
    village of Le Chambon.
    And they're legendary for the aid
    that they gave to Jewish refugees.
    They're famous for it.
    In fact, if you'd like me to lend you this, it's wonderful.
    It's called Weapons of the Spirit.
    And it's this very stirring, which I've always been so moved
    by, that this particular translation
    is of a man who was a French Swiss who worked at Le Chambon
    during the war helping numerous children, caring for them,
    nourishing them, helping them escape,
    and how the village of Le Chambon worked with him.
    And it was a very famous priest, Father Trocme.
    He's legendary.
    And he's mentioned in this manuscript.
    So I have been so thrilled to be working with this material
    because even before I knew of the museum
    I was touched by the story of Le Chambon
    and how they helped the Jews there.
    They were all Huguenots, not Catholics.
    So working--
    It's very thrilling material.
    First I did the story of his wife,
    and now I'm doing his story.
    And it's absolutely thrilling work.
    And it shows you the heroism the people are capable of.
    This is a particularly-- this is not a story only of suffering
    and victimization, but it's what one man with goodwill
    can do to prevent horrors from happening,
    and together-- he always emphasizes in this report
    that he didn't do it by himself.
    He had the help of the village people
    and of the priests and many others.
    But he had this gift of networking, which is a gift.
    And he used it to full advantage to save many lives.
    You can imagine how honored I am to be working with his story.
    You said some minutes ago that working with the museum
    is heartwarming for you.
    Could you say how that is?
    Well, maybe that's the wrong phrase.
    I just have the feeling that it engages my heart, my emotions.
    I'm fully committed to bring out the best
    that this museum has to offer and to share it
    with the public.
    I have had no dealings with creating it or furnishing
    it or anything.
    But what I am able to do is be in between the Museum
    and the public and convey to them some
    of what the Museum is about.
    And I feel that I'm uniquely qualified to do that.
    And that is satisfying.
    And what do you think is the best that the museum has
    to offer?
    What is it that you want to convey?
    It teaches the world about the Holocaust.
    That is its purpose.
    And sometimes I look through the book
    that visitors who leave data on their thoughts about it,
    and it's marvelous, wonderful what they have to say about it.
    You get the occasional oddball who'll say something horrible,
    but fortunately they are few and far between.
    The majority of people are absolutely enthralled by it.
    What kinds of things do you remember people saying.
    How wonderful for you to be here and show
    the world, or this sort of thing must never happen again,
    and may God prevent this from happening again,
    and thank you so much for showing
    gratitude and astonishment.
    And you know, it's just fascinating.
    But I don't know what people know
    that they can go up to the second floor
    and look through these books of what others say about--
    at the end of the exhibition it crosses
    the Hall of Remembrance.
    And then when you go through the little corridor
    there are these big books that you can write in.
    And it shows you that the public really does appreciate it.
    Do you feel that your work is appreciated?
    Definitely.
    I've had numerous-- we have one little gimmick that's
    very satisfying.
    Each one of us receives every month 10 tickets.
    Now, you know the tickets are free,
    but you have to wait in line for a long time.
    And it's very convenient to be handed a ticket.
    Now, I don't always have 10 family members
    or intimate friends that I give these tickets to,
    so I keep them on my person when I'm at the museum.
    And when that hour finally arrives
    when there's no more tickets and I
    see some desperate young visitor from a far off country,
    I'm so happy to slip her a ticket or him.
    And ooh, right after the Oklahoma bombing
    I had the attorney general of Oklahoma.
    He was in the news just the other day.
    I forget his name right now.
    It's Rasmussen or something.
    Very nice man.
    And he looked at me.
    I had no idea who he was.
    And he said, oh, what a shame.
    He said, I can't get any ticket, and I'm only here for the day.
    I said, where are you from?
    He said, Oklahoma.
    He said, I'm the attorney general.
    No, he didn't say that then.
    He just said he was from Oklahoma.
    I liked the way he looked, and he
    seemed like a nice human being.
    And so I reached into my pocket and I said,
    here, let me give you this little pass.
    I'd hate for you to be here for nothing.
    And he thanked me so much and dashed off.
    Hours later he found me where I was collecting
    tickets or something.
    And he said, I want to thank you so much for making it possible
    for me to see.
    He said, I'm the attorney general of Oklahoma.
    And I said, oh my god.
    I said, your poor state.
    I'm so sorry for what you had to go through.
    And it was just like instant friendship.
    We'll never see ea