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Oral history interview with Gerda Cohn

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0122.17 | RG Number: RG-50.477.0017

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    Oral history interview with Gerda Cohn
    Transcript
    1700 Alameda de las Pulgas in San Mateo, California.
    We are interviewing Gerda Cohn.
    My name is Peter Ryan, interviewer,
    and Jay Levin is doing the videotape.
    Could we begin my asking you where and when you were born?
    I was born in Breslau, in Germany,
    in the province of Silesia, which
    was close to Czechoslovakia and Poland.
    And I was born on September 29, 1914.
    How many people were in your family?
    My family consisted of my mother and father--
    What were their names?
    My father's name was Alfred Fischer,
    and my mother's name was Margarete.
    Her maiden name was Riesenfeld.
    And I had a brother.
    Older, younger?
    Younger-- 6 and 1/2 years younger than I was.
    OK.
    And his name was Klaus Peter Fischer.
    And I also had a sister who was 13 and 1/2 years younger than I
    was, and her name was Lori Fischer.
    Uh-huh.
    What kind of work did your father do?
    My father was an engineer, and he
    had a scrap iron business which he developed after the First
    World War.
    Was he--
    Excuse me?
    --in the war?
    He was in the war, yes.
    But he was of Czechoslovakian birth,
    and he fought in the Austrian army.
    Now, you say Czechoslovakian.
    Was there a Czechoslovakia when he was born?
    Yes.
    He was born in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia.
    And that was part of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire?
    Well, it must have been, but that I really
    am not too sure about.
    OK.
    How about your mother?
    Where was she born?
    My mother was born in Breslau.
    In Breslau--
    Yes.
    Where did they meet?
    I'm really not sure.
    OK.
    Do you know when they met?
    I only know that they got married.
    I know when they got married, in 1913.
    In 1913--
    Yeah.
    So I guess they must have met a little while before--
    I guess not too much before that.
    Did they meet in Breslau, do you think?
    Yes, I think so.
    Uh-huh.
    How big a city was Breslau then?
    I think we had about 500,000 inhabitants.
    And was there a big Jewish community?
    Yes.
    I would think so.
    I remember that we had three temples--
    an orthodox, a conservative-- no,
    I think these were only the two--
    a conservative and an orthodox.
    I don't think we had anything like reformed temples
    at that time.
    OK.
    What kind of living quarters did you have?
    Could you describe it?
    Yes.
    You mean when I grow up?
    Yeah.
    Did you live in the city?
    We lived in the city-- a little bit towards the suburbs
    actually, not in the middle of the city.
    OK.
    And we lived in an apartment.
    I remember that.
    And I think it was rather large apartment.
    And we had [? two in-help ?].
    Do you have good memories of the apartment?
    Yes, yes-- very good.
    What can you tell us?
    Well, I had a wonderful room to myself,
    and it was rather large and beautifully furnished.
    And I liked that I had an alcove, which
    had two sit-in chairs.
    And it had windows all around.
    And I remember that I loved that the best, to sit there.
    --private place--
    Yeah, sort of-- read and do things like that.
    It was a wonderful way of life that I was privileged to have.
    Well, my parents apparently did very well.
    We had a car, and I had about everything
    that anybody could really want.
    Although, I must say, it wasn't like it
    is today with young people.
    Birthday presents were maybe two very nice presents.
    Not 20--
    Not 20, not 30-- no.
    OK.
    But my father was rather strict.
    How would he express being strict?
    Well, he was easy with a hand to give us a patch.
    And he was demanding that we did extremely well in school.
    And if it was only a B, he was very upset, and punished us.
    And also, he had what I remember I was a very sensitive person,
    and he always teased me so that I'd very often--
    when we had our meal, that I had cried.
    And when I was a grown up, very grown up, I once asked him--
    I said, why did you do this to me?
    Because I've never forgotten that.
    And he said, I thought, with that,
    I could get you over your sensitivity.
    Because he recognized that you were pretty sensitive.
    Right, right.
    How would he tease you?
    Oh, that I really can't tell you.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I don't know the way it--
    no, no, it wasn't anything like that.
    It was more maybe about my manners to other people.
    And I always thought I did so nicely,
    but he would find little things and tease me about that.
    And I think, later on, I just sort of wanted
    to forget about it and not think about it anymore.
    Because it made you unhappy.
    Made me unhappy-- but on the other hand,
    he was really a very good father, and would--
    he was always very much for us to be with him.
    And on Sundays, he would get us out of bed--
    6 o'clock in the morning, which we all
    did and very much appreciate.
    He said, come, come, we'll go to the country.
    And we would drive out, and he would take us to the woods
    and explain the different berries to us
    and the different kinds of mushrooms--
    which ones were poisonous, and which ones were not.
    Was that fun?
    That was a lot of fun.
    We just absolutely loved it.
    Did your mother go?
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And we would be out in the wheat fields,
    and there were always poppies and corn
    flowers growing in there.
    And this was very nice.
    Anybody could go in there and pick the flowers,
    and we would pick all these wonderful flowers.
    Was Silesia a big farming place?
    There was a lot of open country around, a lot of farming.
    And when we went further, we went to Czechoslovakia a lot,
    especially in the wintertime for skiing.
    We almost went, I would say, probably every two weeks.
    Now, this was after World War I and--
    Oh, yeah.
    This was already when my siblings were--
    Older--
    --children.
    And that I always really enjoyed a lot.
    So there was always a lot of being together,
    but we also had--
    I had a grandfather that was my mom's father,
    and he was quite religious.
    Did he live with you?
    No.
    No.
    He lived with my mother's sister.
    And we always had these family gatherings,
    especially on the holidays.
    And that was-- brought us all very close.
    I had a lot of aunts, and cousins, and uncles.
    On your mother's side?
    On my mother's side--
    on my dad's side, I only had-- my dad had a brother who lived
    in Vienna, and a sister who passed away at an early age,
    and my grandparents in Olomouc, and then--
    This was your father's--?
    They're both my father's parents.
    They lived in Czechoslovakia?
    Mm-hmm.
    And they were already elderly, and my father took--
    financially took care of them.
    And then, when the money and Germany
    became less and less and less, he
    told them one day they just had to come to Germany, because it
    was going to be a lot easier.
    And so they came, and I never forget my--
    they came, and my grandma came with a bird in a cage.
    And that was something I've never forgotten.
    So they came to live with you?
    They came, and my dad took them, provided
    a small apartment for them.
    And they came every single day and ate with us.
    The main meal was in the middle of the day.
    Right.
    And so that was always very nice.
    And then they spent the afternoon--
    my grandmother usually helped a little bit in the kitchen.
    And my grandfather, who was a very tall, very good
    looking man, and had a little mustache--
    gray mustache-- and he was sitting there all afternoon
    brushing his mustache.
    But these were all very happy times for me.
    Can you explain why it was easier
    for them to be in Germany than Czechoslovakia?
    Because remember, the mark was devaluated, and so--
    I remember, one time, my mother sent me to the fish market,
    and she said, well, here's--
    lot more money than it should cost--
    but buy such and such.
    I don't know what it was.
    So I did go, and by the time I got there,
    I could not purchase what she has asked me to for the money
    that I had.
    Right.
    And I remember that I was very upset about that.
    And it was easier that way to take care of my grandparents.
    Did you have a grandmother on your mother's side?
    No.
    My mother's mother passed away when
    my mother was 16 years old.
    She had diabetes, and at that time,
    there wasn't too much that people knew about all that.
    Yeah.
    When did you begin going to school?
    I went to school when I was six.
    And I went to a private school.
    Religious?
    No.
    No.
    No, it was a private school.
    It was a very nice school and a very good school.
    And the first day, I remember--
    when you came out of school, and really behaved yourself,
    and didn't cry for your mommy outside,
    you got what they call a [? Zucker ?] [INAUDIBLE],,
    which was a large cone about this high made out
    of cardboard, I would say, and decorated in beautiful colors.
    And it was totally filled to the brim with all the candy
    that you loved.
    And that was always a very nice treat.
    Now, would[ these things being made at home, or bought?
    No, no.
    This was always bought.
    Bought--
    Yeah.
    Every child got that right the first day of school.
    If they were good--
    If they were good-- and then, of course,
    since you knew you got that, you were very good.
    So what are your memories from that school?
    I have very good memories of that school.
    I made a lot of friends.
    And also, the teachers were very kind,
    except the teacher who taught us sewing, and knitting,
    and things like that.
    She was the principal's sister, and she was terrible.
    She was ugly, and we called her the owl,
    because that's exactly what she looked like.
    And she was just so strict, and if you made a mistake,
    she would hit you over your fingers.
    With a ruler?
    I beg your pardon.
    With a ruler?
    With a ruler, yeah--
    and she was just awful.
    And that wasn't a good memory of that school.
    But the other teachers were very nice,
    and I have very, very fond memories of that school.
    Was your family religious, Gerda?
    My family was religious on the holidays,
    and then they were very religious.
    We only walked to temple, which was a very long, long walk.
    On Yom Kippur, we stayed all day in temple.
    Now, which temple did you go to?
    To the conservative--
    To the conservative--
    I also had religious training in school.
    And then, as I grew a little older,
    I got very into the religion.
    I took Hebrew lessons, and then I came home one day
    and I said to my mom, I love to light the candles on Friday
    night.
    Well, this, I guess, was not what they liked to acknowledge.
    And so my mother said to me, if you want to light the candles,
    you can do this in your room.
    I have nothing against that.
    In other words, they didn't do it.
    No.
    It was not going to be a family affair--
    absolutely not.
    So did you?
    Did you light them in your room?
    Yes, I did.
    I did.
    All by yourself?
    All by myself-- and that was very interesting.
    Then, on the holidays, we were always
    together with my grandfather and my aunts.
    I have wonderful memories of a large family,
    and everybody was very loving.
    And especially when I was smaller,
    they all wanted to take care of me.
    Yeah.
    Well, you were the only grandchild then weren't you?
    Yeah, but it wasn't so much my grandfather.
    It was more my uncles, who also--
    and their families-- had fewer children and grandchildren.
    But for some reason--
    I don't know-- I guess they liked me a lot.
    Maybe it was something about you.
    I don't know.
    I don't know.
    I only know what my mom told me when--
    my mother was very fun loving.
    And she liked to be with the family,
    and she liked to go out.
    And my dad was in the war, and when I was little,
    she always took me along when I was a baby.
    And then everybody took care of me.
    And I remember they played a lot of cards
    all on one large table.
    It was called [GERMAN].
    I don't know-- what kind of a game that would be today.
    But they loved that.
    They played with very little money
    and, I guess, just had a wonderful, fun time.
    So those are good memories?
    Yeah-- all good memories.
    Now, did you have friends who were not
    Jews as well as Jewish?
    Yes.
    I already started with my non-Jewish friends when I was
    in that school, in my first school--
    by the name of Irming Schuller.
    And I had a lot of non-Jewish friends also.
    Did those friendships continue?
    These friendships continued to this day.
    Would you believe it?
    And I have seen them.
    I went back to Germany for the--
    I did not go last year because of my eyes,
    but before that, for three summers in a row,
    I went back for a few days to visit them.
    And they're all non-Jewish friends.
    I have one Jewish friend whom I have contact with,
    who lives in Argentina.
    And then, two years ago, I discovered
    three more Jewish friends from school in London,
    and I went to visit them.
    In London?
    Mm-hmm.
    What was that like that visit?
    It was very interesting to me.
    It was not as close a contact that I
    could develop as it was with my non-Jewish friends, which
    was really interesting.
    They were very much into their own lives,
    and really not too interested in my own.
    It was wonderful that we got together,
    but it wasn't anything that I thought that we
    would talk about former times.
    They did not touch on that.
    For what reason--
    --don't talk about--
    No.
    Well, I wanted to, and I started to,
    but I didn't get too much of a response, which
    was very strange.
    They wanted to talk about today.
    And then I had dinner with one of them,
    and then I could get a little more information
    about what she knew about all the school friends
    that we had who have passed away.
    But she knew a lot more than the others
    were willing to communicate.
    It was strange that way.
    Had she gotten to England before the war?
    I don't think so.
    And I know very little about them,
    because they were not too open to talk about it,
    and I did not want to dig.
    I felt it wasn't my place to do that.
    So how long did you go to that school, the first one
    that you--
    The first one I went uh-- past you
    see, they started at the 10th grade.
    They started The other way around.
    And I went there to--
    through sixth grade.
    And then I went to another school, Auguste Schule,
    which was school of--
    what I would say-- probably higher learning, I guess.
    No, it's more than that, because they call it gymnasium--
    because when I came to this country and I thought maybe
    I would have an opportunity to go to college,
    they would recognize two years of college on my diploma.
    Do you remember what year that was
    that you went to that school?
    Yeah.
    What year was it?
    Well, I was six, so 9-- to that school.
    Well, let me go backwards.
    I had six-- eight years there, and I graduated in '34.
    So '26 I must have gone.
    And I went through seventh and eighth,
    and then [GERMAN] you have here the juniors, and seniors,
    and sophomores.
    You have the double one.
    And I graduated in 1934.
    Now, did they have religious instruction in that school?
    I don't believe that.
    I don't remember that.
    No, I don't think so.
    Now, in the first school, you did have religious instruction.
    Yes.
    Was it actually at the school?
    Yeah, it was in school--
    I think, as I remember--
    And what would they do?
    They would separate the class by religion?
    Yeah, that's right.
    A rabbi came in.
    How many people were in that class,
    the religious instruction?
    I don't know-- maybe 10.
    I don't really remember the exact number--
    maybe 10, I would say.
    I think I still had a little bit of religious instruction
    in the other one, maybe in the seventh grade.
    So you seemed more interested in religion than your parents.
    Yes-- always was more.
    Did that continue?
    Yes-- absolutely.
    There were years-- let's say, when I came to this country--
    where I don't think that was something--
    and I didn't go to any temple for quite a number of years.
    The beginning was not an easy one,
    and we were very consumed with working.
    Survival--
    I beg your pardon.
    With survival--
    With survival-- and not only that--
    I was very intent on getting my family out of Germany.
    I wanted very much to study medicine.
    That was always my wish.
    But of course, after '33, there was no such thing
    that a Jewish person could go to the university.
    And you see, the school system was such that,
    when I graduated, then I could have gone to the university
    immediately.
    There was no such thing like four years of college
    or something like that.
    That was forbidden.
    I asked my father if it wouldn't be possible to send me
    to the Sorbonne so that I could fulfill my wish,
    and he was totally against that.
    Why?
    He felt you don't leave Germany--
    for him, for the longest time was absolutely
    no reason to leave Germany.
    He was convinced this would pass?
    Yeah.
    He was absolutely sure.
    As a matter of fact, he always said,
    I hope maybe Hitler should get in.
    He's so crazy that he'll be out in no time,
    and then we can forget about that.
    [MUMBLING]
    But that was not the case.
    But he was still not at all convinced about anything.
    What was there to do for me?
    Nothing--
    When did you graduate?
    When I graduated-- '34.
    I was seeing a young man--
    dated him.
    And we decided to get married in '35.
    How old were you then?
    I was 20.
    Not 21?
    I was not 21 yet.
    I was only 20.
    My father still had to go and sign for me [INAUDIBLE]..
    Did they--?
    --that I was allowed to get married.
    Did they approve of the marriage?
    Yes, they approved of the marriage--
    my father not too much, my mother yes.
    He came from a very fine family and he was a very fine person.
    You met in school?
    No, no.
    He was already studying law, and I met him--
    I think I met him at students-- law students function--
    one of those functions, I guess.
    What year?
    Well, must have been '33, I would say, probably.
    How aware were you in 1933 of changes that
    might be going on in Germany?
    In '33?
    Yeah.
    Not at all, not at all--
    I was in school.
    I was always a little frightened, I would say,
    because all the teachers-- especially the men--
    wore Nazi uniforms.
    In school?
    In school-- oh, yes.
    And while before, we were always--
    it was the custom that, when you passed the teacher,
    you curtsied, but then it was always heil Hitler.
    And you had to do it.
    If I could get away from it, I tried,
    but if they just looked you into your face and into your eyes,
    you better did it.
    And then they separated the Jewish girls
    from the Christian girls and put them in the back of the room.
    What year was that?
    That was already, I think, in probably the end of '33.
    They put you in the back of the room?
    Yeah.
    Like you didn't belong--
    We were separated.
    And very much so, there was a lot
    of a lot of remarks about Jewish people--
    Who would make them?
    --by the teachers-- not very flattering, of course,
    as you can imagine.
    And you had to just swallow this.
    Were they talking about specific people in the room,
    or just in general?
    No, it was a general remark.
    And I remember that I had a teacher whom
    I was very fond of.
    I had him for, I think, probably three years already.
    And he was always very nice-- no remarks, nothing.
    And we were still sitting in our regular seats,
    not in the back of the room.
    And two of the Jewish girls were constantly
    talking while he was trying to teach.
    And so I guess his temper let loose, and he started to--
    it's always the Jews who have to disturb things.
    And it was just terrible.
    And I was so upset, because he was really my favorite teacher,
    and so I ran out of the room.
    I remember that.
    And I went to the bathroom and I cried my heart out.
    I was so disappointed and so hurt that he would do that.
    And it was very strange.
    Two days before a final exam--
    he taught physics.
    He called me.
    I still remember that like yesterday.
    We had windows, and he was standing there
    in the hallway by the windows.
    And I walked by to another class, and he called me.
    And I was very--
    not too friendly, I guess.
    And he said, you know, I have to talk to you about something.
    It's two days before the exam.
    I have in my book what everybody knows best,
    but I have nothing about you.
    How come?
    I said, I don't know.
    Maybe I don't know very much.
    And he said, well, I'm sure you know about this,
    and you know about that, and about this.
    I think you know about that.
    And I said, well, if I have to know, I will.
    And after school, I went right away
    to a girl who had graduated the year before,
    and was just fantastic in physics.
    I said, I have to help me here and teach me that.
    And sure enough, in the exam, these three things came up,
    and of course, I could do it.
    Now, how would he know that people
    were good at this or that?
    By just observing them in class or by--?
    No.
    It was certain things about certain things that--
    how he knew?
    Yeah.
    Yes-- I guess so.
    Why didn't he know about you?
    Was it because [BOTH TALKING]
    Well, I think he knew some, but I guess he wanted to-- or he
    was asked to ask these particular themes by whoever
    made up the questions that he--
    Were you quiet in class?
    Yes-- partly.
    What I liked--
    I was very verbal.
    What I didn't care for so much--
    I was probably quiet.
    But it wasn't that I didn't know anything about that,
    that I wasn't any good at it.
    It was just that these particular questions--
    that I wanted to be sure that I know this,
    and I thought it was very nice of him to alert me.
    Somehow he didn't have you in the same category
    as a troublemaker, huh?
    No.
    I think he really always liked me very much,
    and I think he felt terrible that he
    let his temper get loose.
    Oh yeah?
    You think he did?
    I think he did.
    I really do.
    What makes you think that?
    Well, because he was basically a very kind man.
    But the whole atmosphere in Germany
    was so that I guess everybody was drawn into the--
    this whole Jewish thing.
    And I remember even I met a teacher, and I went home--
    this was already outside at the end of '33--
    I went home on the streetcar, and one of my teachers
    and in Nazi uniform was sitting down.
    And I came in, and there were no seats.
    And he got up and he said, please, take my seat.
    So basically, I'm sure that a lot of these people in uniform
    really weren't totally, totally convinced,
    but then they tried to save their own skin.
    And I think that was that.
    They got on the bandwagon, but maybe not with their full heart
    in it.
    Right.
    But I want to tell you another thing that was really
    funny in that last school year.
    That was also 1933.
    We were still sitting in our regular seats,
    and we had a substitute teacher.
    I don't really know exactly what it was.
    He was a substitute for the day, and he
    wanted to really teach us something very interesting--
    how an Aryan, a real true Aryan looks like,
    and what his measurements would be.
    And he wanted to teach us that and show us that.
    He pointed to me and said, come here.
    And he had all these instruments,
    and he put them on my head, and he put it
    all on the blackboard-- and my ears, and everything.
    He measured me all over the place.
    Nobody said anything in class-- nobody.
    Were you blonde?
    Everybody was quiet.
    Yes-- very, very blonde.
    So when he was finished, he said, you see?
    This is what an Aryan person is born with.
    This is a true Aryan.
    Nobody giggled?
    Well, of course, the whole class burst out laughing.
    And I turned around and I said, I'm
    so sorry that I have to disappoint you,
    because I'm Jewish.
    Well, he took his things and he ran out of this room
    so fast like you wouldn't believe.
    And that was really funny.
    How did the kids respond to you about this whole incident?
    Well, the kids really--
    I cannot remember that anybody was really anti-Semitic in this
    whole class.
    We were all very good friends, and we all
    had a very good time together, and nobody--
    and nobody was into this too much yet in 1933.
    People just gradually sifted into this whole atmosphere.
    And I think that people who were non-Jewish
    were beginning to be very afraid, because the propaganda
    was such that something would happen to their own family.
    And I think that's why they gradually pulled back.
    Right.
    In 1933, they were still offering you their seat--
    Yes.
    Yes, absolutely-- which really surprised me.
    But I was shocked.
    A few years later, that wouldn't--
    Oh my gosh--
    I wouldn't have liked to meet him.
    God knows what-- but that was very interesting.
    When I had the final exam, the questions
    were asked by my teachers, but the grades
    were given by a lot of principals from other schools
    and from universities who had absolutely nothing
    to do with my teachers.
    They just came from the outside.
    And I was really scared that--
    I wasn't worried that they won't give me the best grades.
    I knew that that was going to happen.
    But I was really concerned that they would not let me pass.
    That they'd fail you out?
    Yeah-- that they failed me for some weird reason
    and-- because I was Jewish.
    Yeah.
    Now, this what, in spring of 1934?
    That was May 1934.
    OK.
    And tell me how it actually went.
    And it was scary.
    It was hours of grilling, and it was very scary.
    Verbal questions?
    Verbal, all verbal-- the written things
    we had done probably a month before.
    It was all verbal.
    So was there one teacher questioning you, or a number?
    No, no.
    All of our teachers were questioning us.
    The questions that apparently had come from--
    I don't know whether it was the government already,
    or whether it came from some university people,
    or where the questions really came from.
    Did they test you separately one by one, or together?
    One by one--
    One by one--
    Mm-hmm.
    So how many people were questioning you
    when you took your exam?
    I don't know-- quite a number.
    I don't know-- maybe six, maybe eight.
    And the principals and the other people who were going to give
    the grades-- they didn't [BOTH TALKING]..
    None whatsoever, none whatsoever--
    They sat and watched?
    They sat, and watched, and listened.
    How did it go?
    I never knew how it went.
    I had absolutely no idea, until a few days later.
    I think the grades were posted, or it
    was said, you have passed, or whatever it was.
    I don't know.
    That was really the only thing I have left
    is my diploma, which I brought.
    I remember that I was very scared.
    But you passed?
    But I passed.
    Yeah.
    But you knew you weren't going to be able to go on?
    Well, even if I had failed, you see,
    I wouldn't have been able to go back to repeat.
    That would have been impossible.
    So that was scary.
    So then I remember--
    this was still, I think, while I was still going to school.
    I was walking down a very prominent-- one
    of the most prominent street in Breslau,
    and I was walking along with then fiancee who
    was-- who had dark hair and a little darker complexion
    than I had.
    And two Nazi officers passed us by,
    and they rammed me and they spit into my face.
    That wasn't a very good experience.
    Did they say anything?
    Not one single word, not one single word--
    Did they just do it to you or to both of you?
    Just to me--
    I passed there on the street-- just to me.
    They thought that you were--
    Well, they did not like that I went with--
    This dark person--
    With this darker person, who looked a little-- maybe,
    in their eyes, a little bit Jewish.
    And there were many incidents that
    happened where you were-- where they rammed you, pushed
    you, even called you Jew.
    You remember?
    I remember a few incidents.
    But otherwise, it wasn't as bad in the streets.
    But you were always worried, because there
    were constant proclamations about one thing or another.
    One day it was said that they were
    going to do house-to-house searches for weapons.
    And I remember we were sitting at dinner,
    and all of a sudden, my dad got very pale.
    And he said, my God, I just remembered something.
    I have a saber and a pistol from the war in the attic.
    So we went into the attic and we found it.
    And that same night--
    I will never forget that my dad put on a long coat,
    and he strapped that saber on him and the pistol
    in his pocket, and we went in the car
    and drove quite far away to a very quiet little village,
    which had a small little lake.
    And we sat in the car for a long time
    to see if anybody was coming, but it was all very quiet.
    And then my dad got out, and he threw the sabre and the pistol
    into that lake.
    And then we left in a hurry, and thank God, nobody saw us.
    What year do you think that was?
    That was, I would say, the beginning of '34.
    And he was still saying, we should all stay Germany?
    Yes.
    We got married.
    In '35--
    In '35--
    What did you do that year after you got out of school?
    After you got out of school, that was '34--
    nothing, absolutely nothing.
    Could you work, if you wanted?
    No.
    There was no way that I would have gotten a job.
    And I think I did absolutely nothing.
    I read, and things that I could do at home.
    No, then there came a time when I said to my dad, you know,
    this, to me, doesn't look very good.
    And I think that you should think
    about it, leaving the country.
    My dad still had his business, and it was still going OK.
    I'll never forget that, that he turned around
    and he looked me in the face, and he said,
    you are absolutely crazy.
    Why would you do a thing like that?
    Do you know where your mother stood on that?
    My mother never said anything.
    My mother was very much with my dad--
    never said anything.
    I presume that she felt the same way.
    And then we got married in June of '35, and there were
    preparations and everything, and--
    except for the book burning that happened and-- where we had
    to go and bring all our books that had any kind of--
    they listed exactly the books that you had to bring.
    When was that?
    That was in '34.
    Did you have to witness the book burning?
    Not only that-- I had to bring all my books.
    And my fiance I had a lot of books,
    and his family had a lot of books,
    and we had to bring them to a certain place--
    a big open place, and then--
    yes, I was there, hidden from view
    when they burned all the books.
    And it was absolutely terrible.
    What type of books?
    Like Thomas Mann, Heinrich Heine, Jewish writings.
    And this was mostly what I really
    remember, because those were some of my most favorite books.
    And that was very, very upsetting.
    Do you think that was before or after you told your father
    that maybe we shouldn't stay?
    No, I think that was before I told my father.
    But my father always said, these are little incidents.
    Don't pay too much attention to it.
    It'll all blow over.
    Now, there wasn't any difficulty about two Jewish people
    married?
    No.
    No, there was no problem yet.
    My father had to sign for me, and we went to the place where
    you--
    City hall?
    City hall-- [GERMAN] they called it--
    city hall, yeah.
    We got married.
    No, there was really nothing.
    And then we had a wedding at the temple.
    Did you have a big wedding?
    Yes-- had a very big wedding.
    That all went still OK.
    I guess we were all caught up and the beauty of the moment,
    I presume.
    And that was still all right.
    That was in June.
    And then my husband and I really started seriously
    thinking about leaving Germany.
    The two of you?
    The two of us--
    at first, we decided, since Switzerland was neutral--
    well, you couldn't work in Switzerland.
    That was not allowed.
    But we went to Liechtenstein, and we
    saw that that was a wonderful little country
    where my husband--
    he was a lawyer, but he couldn't--
    he thought he wouldn't probably be in his profession.
    But he had already entered a furniture factory
    where the man who owned it, who was
    a friend of my dad's, wanted a junior partner
    to teach him everything.
    And I think that was already in '34 sometimes.
    And then fiance went to work there,
    and learned the business.
    And we decided that's what we were going to do,
    and we already picked out the location,
    and this was all very, very great.
    Did your father think you were crazy for doing that?
    Oh, yes-- absolutely.
    My parents-- they just couldn't think of it.
    And when we came back home, I started thinking about it,
    and I said, you know, this might not even be a good idea.
    Who says that Hitler, who threatens
    to take Czechoslovakia, who threatens to take Poland--
    why won't they take Switzerland?
    Why won't he go into Liechtenstein also?
    It's also close.
    And I came up with the idea maybe we should go to America.
    My husband had relatives in Czechoslovakia
    who had business-- great business
    connections in New York.
    And they gave us letters of introduction to people
    who would possibly help us.
    We went in--
    I think it was November.
    I believe it was November of '35 we went to America.
    You had no trouble getting into America?
    That was no trouble at the time.
    You still got a passport, and you could come in--
    on a visitor's visa.
    We had to get a visitor's visa.
    And we came, and we visited the people
    whom we had recommendations to.
    And they were very, very nice to us,
    and really wined and dined us, and gave us affidavits.
    We had two who gave us affidavits,
    and when we came to the third one, this gentleman said,
    this is so strange that you come at this time for what
    you come for.
    And he told us a story that he had
    many years before a lumberyard.
    And he had a partner, and they had made already
    pretty nice money and had money in the bank.
    And the partner went to the dock to pick up, I presume--
    oversee the picking up of big a big lumber shipment.
    And I guess he took quite a bit of money and--
    to pay for the shipment, and he never came back.
    He never came back.
    And nobody could find out what happened to the man,
    and why did he run away with the money,
    and what happened to everything?
    And then this gentleman decided, well,
    he was going to close up the lumber yard
    and do something else.
    And that was in years he had built up a very nice,
    I would say, probably a giftware shop.
    This was where?
    That was in New York.
    It was rather large, I remember.
    He had a ground floor and a second floor,
    and the offices were on the second floor on the side.
    So he said, two days before we came,
    he had a caller, and this man--
    his former partner came in.
    And he said, you must think that this is unreal
    that I'm coming here to you after what happened.
    And so he told him he was at the lumber yard,
    and he was standing there and was looking up
    at this big lumber shipment that they brought down on the crane.
    And something broke, and this whole shipment fell down
    to the ground onto him.
    And he was given up for dead.
    He was in the hospital for over a year
    until they were able to repair all the damage that
    had been done to him.
    And then, when he was well again,
    he needed a lot of therapy.
    So it was, I think, two or three years
    until he was back on his feet.
    How he got to Washington I don't know,
    and what he did in Washington I don't remember,
    but he had absolutely the connections to the whole--
    everybody in the government.
    And so he came to him and he said,
    now I've been in Washington, and I have really
    gotten a permanent position, and I
    want to give you back all the money that I
    took and everything that I had done to you.
    And whatever I can do for you, just name it--
    I'll do it.
    And so he told him that we were coming
    and we were looking for wonderful connections
    so that we could go to America and get a visa.
    And he took us to Washington, and we met the Speaker
    of the House, then Bankhead--
    and even met Tallulah Bankhead, who was there--
    his daughter-- and a lot of people in the State Department.
    And everybody gave us a letter of recommendations
    so that we could come over.
    And the consul in Berlin would not recognize any of that.
    Wouldn't recognize it?
    Nothing, nothing-- he said, I only
    give a visa to people who have relatives in America,
    and we have no relatives.
    All these wonderful letters and everything
    didn't help us at all.
    We went back and forth to the consulate,
    and I think, after we went there for many, many times,
    he finally said, well, I'll give you
    a visa if a bank account of $10,000 is opened in your name.
    And then I will give you a visa.
    And one of the people who were so kind to us
    opened a bank account of $10,000 for us and sent it.
    The German consulate didn't care whether you--
    The German consulate only wanted us out.
    It was the American consul who didn't
    want us to have the visa.
    And when he saw that, then he finally gave us the visa.
    So this was the American consul.
    It was the American consul who did not want to give us a visa.
    He said, I only let you go to America if you have a relative.
    And all the people who had maybe a sister, or brother, or--
    Someone [INAUDIBLE] to take care--
    And if a cousin--
    they got their visa immediately.
    And we had a very hard time getting it.
    How long did it take to get?
    It took a long time.
    We left in November of '36, so it
    must have been probably until maybe a month before that
    or so.
    And still my parents--
    Now, when you say left, left America?
    Left Germany--
    Left Germany--
    Germany to come to America--
    OK.
    Finally-- and my parents were still--
    You went to New York.
    You go to all these wonderful letters.
    Right, right.
    Did you have to go back to Germany?
    No, no, no, no.
    No, no.
    You stayed.
    Once the American consul gave us the visa, we came to America.
    Of course, we went to Ellis Island,
    and that was rough, because they examined
    you physically and mentally.
    And that was really a gruesome examination.
    And then, when we were through with that,
    then they allowed us to enter New York.
    The last words that they said--
    when you are in public, you speak only English.
    And if you become a public charge,
    we will report you right back to Germany.
    And that was our last words from--
    [INAUDIBLE]?
    Oh, yeah.
    That went real fast.
    Did you know English when you came?
    English-- that I learned in school.
    I was perfect in spelling and perfect and grammar,
    but very poor in conversation.
    Did your husband know English?
    There was the same way.
    This is what you learned in Germany.
    You really never had an opportunity to speak English.
    They didn't have conversational English,
    so we were very good and in grammar and spelling,
    but not in conversational English.
    So it took a little doing.
    I was always walking around with a--
    Dictionary--
    --dictionary.
    And it was quite hot at the beginning.
    What did you do the both of you?
    These last few weeks that I was in Germany, I went to Berlin
    and learned how to make these very fine handmade gloves,
    which were very fashionable at the time--
    very thin, fine leather.
    And so I had made a collection.
    On the ship, we met a couple who had an art gallery in Germany,
    and they came to America.
    I don't know exactly the reason, whether they transferred--
    wanted to transfer some things from Germany into American
    museums or what--
    art galleries-- whatever it was.
    But they were awfully kind to us.
    And they also asked us a question.
    Now, what do you want to do?
    So we said, we really don't know.
    My husband couldn't practice law.
    That was all he knew.
    And I knew nothing, practically.
    I didn't have a profession.
    So they said, well, don't worry.
    You'll come down with us at the pier.
    We are met by the nose and throat specialist of New York.
    He is very prominent.
    And just wait what's going to happen.
    So we came down there, and we met this man and his wife.
    And these newfound friends of ours said, oh,
    listen to this man-- his first name was Caesar--
    said, listen, Caesar, I think your son should have violin
    lessons, and here's a young man-- he can give you--
    your son violin lessons.
    My husband played the violin just for fun.
    And so she said, I am going to--
    I'm going to Chicago now and I'm meeting
    a lady who has a boutique on Lakeshore Drive,
    and I will get in touch with her,
    and she will be in touch with you,
    and maybe you can do something with your gloves.
    And so my husband started with violin lessons,
    and they were very kind.
    They overpaid.
    And I started making a collection of gloves.
    And in a very short while, two ladies knocked at our door.
    There was the one from Chicago and her friend,
    who had a boutique in New York.
    And they wanted to see the gloves.
    And the lady in Chicago ordered something,
    and she took my collection along.
    And the lady from New York--
    her name was Mrs. [PERSONAL NAME]----
    said that she would also be interested,
    and I should give her three or four pair of gloves and see
    if she could do any business.
    That was the beginning.
    And it took a little while.
    I got some orders from Chicago--
    not much, but after a pretty short while,
    this Mrs. [PERSONAL NAME] from New York called me.
    And she said, you know, I don't have much trade for the gloves.
    Do you want to come and work for me?
    Well, of course, I was delighted.
    So I did go, and she interviewed me.
    And she said, yes, I need somebody who could model,
    and somebody who could sell, and even
    be my personal social secretary sometimes.
    Well, of course, I was delighted.
    She offered me $20 a week, which was very--
    a very good salary at the time.
    And I was really delighted.
    Later on, a couple of weeks later,
    she rescinded her generous offer and said, no.
    I was thinking about it.
    It's a little too much.
    I'll pay you $18.
    So that was my beginning.
    Now, this was 1937 now?
    That was 1937-- just the very beginning of '37.
    And I worked for her for, I think, four years.
    She was a very--
    let's put it that way--
    not a very nice person.
    She took terrible advantage of me,
    and times were really not so that I
    could afford to even look around for another job, because we
    really needed every penny.
    What kind of advantage?
    She would be mean.
    She would say 10 minutes for lunch is much too much.
    Take five.
    And lunch for me was going around the corner to a bakery
    and buying a couple of rolls, and go to the bathroom
    and eat my dry rolls, and have some water out of my hand
    from the sink.
    And that was my lunch.
    But 10 minutes was too much for her.
    Five had to be-- and I had to work very hard.
    And I worked six days a week, Saturday also.
    And then she said to me one day, there
    is a man in the house who just lost his wife
    and who was looking around for somebody
    who would come in and clean his apartment every day,
    and change his linens, and do his dishes,
    and vacuum, and just keep his apartment clean.
    And I had heard the man talk to her
    that he was looking for somebody.
    And he said to her, get me somebody,
    and then tell me how much it is, and I will pay you.
    I will reimburse you the money.
    And so she said to me, this is the situation.
    Why don't you come in at 8:00 instead of 9:00,
    and go up there and keep his apartment clean?
    [INAUDIBLE]?
    I was delighted, because every penny for me--
    for us was just so important.
    And so I went there every day at 8 o'clock,
    and I worked very hard do the right job and please him.
    And at the end of the week, this gentleman
    came down and told her that he was delighted.
    She must have found a wonderful person for him,
    because everything is just so perfect.
    And how much did he owe her?
    And so I don't remember what it was.
    So he gave her the money, and she put the money in her purse.
    I did that for years.
    Never, ever did I see a penny.
    And she did many things like that.
    When my father and my brother were taken
    to concentration camp, I--
    my mother sent me a telegram, and she just
    signed it, and Mom and Lori.
    So I knew what had happened.
    You knew what that meant.
    I know exactly what that meant.
    May I just have a sip of water?
    Sure.
    When was that?
    That was the end of '38.
    And I was very perturbed, of course, as you can imagine.
    And she came in and she said, why you look so grim today?
    I told her I just had a telegram,
    and I knew that my father and brother must
    be in a concentration camp.
    So she said to me, oh, God--
    they must have really done something terrible.
    They must have stolen something done something really bad,
    because otherwise, nobody would put anybody
    into a concentration camp.
    And I tried to explain to her.
    She wouldn't listen.
    She was Jewish?
    Oh, no.
    No, she wasn't Jewish at all.
    No, a Jewish person wouldn't have done that.
    But she did many of these very nasty things
    and made my life pretty miserable.
    She finally-- I think it was in 1941--
    she finally closed the boutique, and that
    was when I finally could leave and was out of her grasp--
    which was good.
    Now, what did your husband do during those years?
    My husband went into the insurance business, and by then
    already--
    we had already better times.
    The years in between, we worked very hard to try to get my--
    well, let me go back a little bit.
    My mother came to visit me in 1937,
    and I told her that I was absolutely determined
    to get my brother and sister out of Germany.
    She was very unhappy about that thought,
    but she didn't really fight me particularly.
    So you were saying, I want my brother and sister--
    I was saying, you got to leave.
    But not them--
    You can't stay.
    Yeah, I told them.
    She said no.
    You know how we feel about it.
    No, no.
    And she said, you really think this is necessary?
    So I said, yes, I really feel very strongly about that.
    And if you're not going to be happy about it,
    I said, I will have to do it anyway,
    because I see absolutely no future.
    Then my dad came in '38 to visit me.
    And that was already in the latter part of '38.
    And I've said to him, you can go to Cuba.
    It takes three days to immigrate to America.
    Do it, and let mom dissolve the business and everything.
    Well, he had about a fit.
    He was very angry at me that I would suggest such a thing.
    And he went back to Germany, and that was just the time
    when they started putting people into camps.
    The manager of his business had asked him about his--
    the manager's son, who was always in trouble.
    And he was 16 years old.
    And he said to my dad, couldn't you just give him a small job?
    I think, if he would have steady work,
    he would really straighten up.
    And so my dad said OK.
    This young guy came while my brother and my dad
    were at the camp.
    He came to my mother's house.
    He denounced my brother and--
    my dad and my brother.
    And so he told the Nazis, here's a Jewish people,
    and here are two men.
    And they came right away and they took them away.
    And then he came in his uniform up to my mother's apartment
    with an ax.
    First, he took all the jewelry.
    That was the first thing.
    And then he took an ax to the furniture
    and just did horrible, horrible damage so
    that they couldn't they couldn't stay there anymore.
    And they moved in with my husband's parents,
    who had a very large home, and then they lived there.
    And in the meantime, I found out that, if you
    got a visa for somebody who is in a concentration camp
    to another country, then they would--
    the Nazis would let them go.
    And they had to leave without anything.
    They had to leave within three days and leave Germany.
    And so we were able, with borrowing and whatever--
    everything that we had--
    to buy a visa for my parents for England.
    And in the meantime, my brothers and my sister's visa
    came through from America, and--
    Which you had applied for--
    --which I had applied for.
    And so my mother was able to get them both out of the camp,
    and took my sister and my brother
    immediately to the Bremen and put them
    on the ship to come to me.
    To America?
    To America-- and then my dad and my mother
    went to England, to London.
    Now, how long was your father in the camp?
    Do you know?
    It must have been many months.
    I don't know exactly how many of this.
    I really don't recall.
    But it must have been very hard.
    And they had nothing to eat.
    He never, never talked about that,
    and neither did my brother.
    When you started talking about it,
    then they would not tell you.
    The only thing my dad told me once
    was that he tried to get himself a job in the kitchen,
    and then he stole a few slices of bread
    and brought it to my brother so that he would have something
    to eat.
    That was the only thing that I ever heard.
    And my brother and sister came to me.
    And my brother was 17.
    They were both terribly, terribly spoiled,
    because my parents saw that money
    was going to be taken away from them anyway,
    so they gave them anything their little heart desired.
    So whatever came to their heads, they got.
    And so they came to me, and I didn't have a thing,
    and they couldn't have what they thought they were entitled to.
    When did they come to you?
    So that must have been, I would say, '39.
    Early part of '39?
    Do you know when?
    Must have been, I would say, probably--
    maybe in the summer of '39, I would say, probably.
    My brother was passed away when he was 50 years old in 1970--
    '71, I think-- yeah, 1971.
    And my sister passed away, oh, just very shortly after that.
    So I never had really an opportunity anymore
    to question them, ask them anything.
    Were very glad to be out of Germany?
    Well, I don't believe that they really realized
    too much what was happening.
    Even though your brother was in the camp?
    Yeah, even so--
    I don't really believe that even that had made
    a very big impression on him.
    But I really don't know, because he never would
    venture to tell me anything.
    Do you know what camp he was in?
    I'm not sure whether it was Buchenwald,
    but I'm really not 100% sure.
    My brother was just 17 and my sister was 11.
    And I was able to get a job for my brother.
    He worked in a jewelry store.
    And we needed every penny, because we needed
    to send money to England.
    My parents weren't allowed to work,
    so we had to sustain them.
    And my sister had a horrible time.
    She went to-- I put here through school.
    I worked two jobs, and I was never home really before 9:00--
    8:00, 9:00.
    And she was in school, and every week I
    had a letter from the teacher to come and see me--
    to come and see her.
    And she said, I don't know what to do with this girl.
    She sits on the last bench in the back.
    She sucks her thumb.
    And she will not learn English, she will not participate,
    she will not talk to anybody--
    nothing.
    And then she would go home and she would sit on the couch.
    The beds weren't made, we all rushed out so early
    in the morning.
    The dishes were still in the sink.
    She wouldn't do a thing.
    And I said to her, you know, you're 11 years old,
    and we all work so hard.
    This is your job.
    You'll have to learn English.
    You have to do good in school, and you have
    to help a little in the house.
    Nothing I could do with her-- nothing.
    I met a very nice Jewish family who lived in the suburbs.
    And they were really, really very sweet,
    and tried to help somebody.
    And they told me that.
    And I told them about my sister, so they
    said, how would you feel and how would she feel
    if we take her to live with us?
    They had two little girls.
    One was a little older than my sister and one
    was a bit younger.
    Had they met your sister?
    No.
    So when I introduced them, and they said-- they asked her,
    would you like to come and live with us?
    She said, yeah.
    Well, within a month, she was the best in school.
    She spoke perfect English.
    They called them mom and dad.
    And they spoiled her.
    She had the best things, and she had
    just an absolute wonderful, wonderful life--
    until my mother came.
    My mother came--
    I believe it must have been '41.
    And you say your mother, not your father?
    No.
    My mother wanted to stay with my dad, but it was--
    we didn't have the kind of money that we could afford.
    And I said to my mother, if you would come,
    we only have to send money for daddy.
    And then you could help me in the house,
    because I work very hard.
    And so they finally decided it would be the right thing to do,
    and so my mom came.
    Just your mother?
    Mm-hmm.
    And the minute that my sister knew that my mother was there,
    she was not to be lived with.
    She just wanted to come home.
    She was really not very gracious to these people.
    And it was terrible for me, because they
    had been so good to her.
    And I didn't know what kind of excuse
    to make that she would make such--
    How long was she with that family?
    Well, she was with this family for, I would say,
    probably close to two years.
    She wanted to come home.
    And so finally, that's what we had to do.
    And it was very hard, because my mother was very ill.
    And so one day I said, you look so terrible
    and you don't feel well.
    You have to go and see a doctor.
    There was no money for a doctor, so I
    said, there's a clinic in Mt.
    Sinai Hospital.
    And that's supposed to be a very good clinic,
    and so why don't you go?
    It costs $0.25.
    And so she went, and when she came home,
    she said, well, she had a wonderful doctor--
    an older man.
    And he said, if she wasn't operated on immediately,
    she would absolutely--
    she would pass away.
    What did she have?
    She was bleeding internally.
    I think she had some woman's problem.
    And that's what she came home with.
    And she was already so anemic from losing all this blood--
    which, I had no idea that was happening.
    And so I didn't know what to do.
    And I asked her who it was, and she gave me
    the name of the doctor.
    And so I looked him up in the phone book,
    and it happened that his residence was
    very close to where we lived.
    And I called him up, and he was very gracious.
    And I asked him if I could come and see him,
    and he said, of course.
    And so he told me that that was true.
    If she wasn't operated on within three days, she would--
    she couldn't make it.
    And so I said, well, how does this work in the clinic?
    He said, you see, we give one day a week--
    one day a month, I think it was--
    to the clinic to help people.
    We don't get paid for that.
    And she might get a first year resident
    to do his first operation, or it's
    possible she gets to a wonderful surgeon.
    Well, that, of course, broke my heart,
    because I wasn't going to take any chances with my mother.
    I asked him what he would charge for the operation,
    and he told me, normally, he would charge $200.
    I said, doctor, this is my mother.
    I would like for you to do it, but I don't have any $200.
    I will promise you I pay you that,
    but how long that will take, I don't know.
    We have absolutely nothing.
    And I guess, since he was Jewish himself, he took pity on me,
    I suppose.
    And he said, OK, I'll agree to that.
    And he operated on my mother.
    My mother got well.
    And it took me many, many, many years
    before I could put two $100 bills into a nice new billfold
    and bring it to him.
    And he said, I didn't think that that would happen,
    but I trusted you anyway.
    So that was that.
    And then it was getting to be very hard.
    My dad always felt, in America, you
    have to have your own business.
    I kept saying, daddy, to have your own business,
    you have to have money.
    He said, well, yeah, but I can't take a job.
    I have to have my own business.
    When did he come here?
    He came about five months after my mom.
    And of course, I called our apartment the [? rabbi ?]
    apartment, because all we had was a living room, a dining
    room, and two very small bedrooms,
    and we all lived there.
    And it was beginning to be very difficult,
    because we needed really more income to do what we--
    to sustain such a big family.
    So my husband finally said, you know what we have to do?
    We have to get your parents an apartment,
    and we'll pay for five months, and then
    we tell your dad, in five months,
    you have to be on your own.
    Between the two men, they should be able to sustain the family.
    And my parents, of course, were beside themselves,
    and they were very angry with me that I--
    they felt I put them out.
    But there was nothing I can do about it.
    And I had met a very nice lady who was looking for a companion
    to go to Florida with her.
    She had a home and an orange plantation,
    and she was widowed, and she didn't want to go by herself.
    And she needed somebody to go with her for five months.
    A cousin of hers asked me, do you know anybody?
    And we didn't know anybody.
    And then, after a while, I said, well, what about me?
    I'm just losing my job, and I could really
    use a good vacation.
    And my husband was very much for that.
    She wasn't going to pay me anything,
    but it was also not going to cost anything.
    And he had very good friends where
    he could live until I came back, and then we
    would be on our own.
    And in the meantime, we could--
    with the money that he made, we could sustain my parents
    for five months.
    Did your brother and sister go with your parents?
    Yeah, right.
    And so I went to Florida with this lady,
    and didn't take a month and my father had a fantastic job.
    Doing what?
    You remember that film company Pathé?
    News.
    Yeah, something like that--
    News reel.
    Yeah-- correct, correct.
    Now, exactly what he did for them--
    but it was in the engineering field.
    And then he was there for quite a while,
    and then he changed to some kind of an outfit that
    made storm windows.
    And he designed this these windows.
    They were custom made so--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Oh, absolutely, absolutely--
    Could he speak English?
    Well, he learned, like everybody--
    every one of us had to learn--
    the same way.
    Your mother learned?
    My mother learned.
    And in the end, my father was very, very successful
    with this company.
    They lived there-- of course, then my brother got married,
    and then he had his own life.
    And then my sister got married, and she moved out of the house.
    Now, where were they living?
    My brother was living in Larchmont,
    which is a suburb of New York.
    And my sister was living in Forrest Hills--
    And your parents-- where were they living?
    Was also New York.
    My parents still stayed, and they
    lived in West 180th Street.
    Manhattan?
    In Manhattan-- and then my mom passed away.
    And then my dad couldn't stay by himself,
    and he went into a senior home, and he stayed there a number
    of years until he passed away.
    Were they glad they had come to America?
    Yes.
    Well, and especially with what happened in Germany, of course,
    they were very glad.
    They liked America very much.
    And they traveled around a lot and got to know the country.
    No, no.
    They were totally integrated into American life.
    How about the grandparents?
    My grandfather on my mother's--
    of my mother still passed away while I was still in Germany.
    It was even before I got married, he passed away.
    And on your father [INAUDIBLE]?
    And my father's parents passed away.
    My grandfather passed away while I was on my excursion trip
    to America in 1935, and then my grandfather passed away very
    shortly after that too.
    My grandmother passed away shortly after that also.
    Did you have cousins?
    Yeah, but I had really lost all track of-- some went to Israel.
    A lot of them went to the gas chamber.
    And I had I tried very hard to get my mother's sister
    out to come to America.
    She was my favorite aunt, and it just didn't work out anymore.
    She was taken to a camp, and perished there.
    I had no idea where any cousins went, and only lately, I
    heard--
    and I have to look into this-- that I still have a cousin who
    lives somewhere in Texas.
    I have contact to a cousin in Australia,
    but they are really the only ones that I have contact with.
    What did your husband end up doing in America?
    My husband ended up to--
    Oh, insurance--
    --to be in the insurance business.
    When I came back, I also took my insurance exam
    to work with him for a while.
    I did not like that.
    I also took the real estate brokers exam.
    I did not like that.
    You still wanted to be a doctor, huh?
    I wanted so much to be a doctor.
    Well, we sort of drifted apart, and in 1942--
    at the end of 1942, I met a dentist who
    was just going into practice.
    And he asked me if I would be interested in becoming
    his assistant, and that he would teach me everything.
    I had no idea about anything.
    And he was only going to work a half a day to begin with,
    and so I worked--
    since I didn't like the real estate,
    I thought I could drop that.
    And then the insurance business--
    I just worked a half a day, so that was great.
    So he only started in the afternoon.
    It was from-- I think from 3:00 to 8:00.
    And he really taught me, and I was with him
    for quite a number of years.
    What were you, like a dental assistant?
    Yeah-- right, right.
    I worked at the chair, I did all the surgery with him,
    and I also kept the books and worked in the office--
    sort of an all around person.
    And I really loved that.
    And then, in 1942, I--
    my husband and I divorced.
    Was that painful to you?
    No, it wasn't painful, because we had really drifted apart.
    It wasn't painful for me.
    As a matter of fact, I really felt I was still so young,
    and we didn't have any children.
    Wasn't that better to just go our separate ways and build
    a life for myself--
    which I did.
    I learned all that the assisting, and I really,
    really loved that job.
    And after a few months, he went into practice all day,
    and by then, I was already trained,
    and that was really nice.
    And then, in 1946, a friend--
    it was really a family friend.
    She was 10 years older than I was,
    and she was very close to my parents.
    And she had married in Germany, and they ran all over--
    to France, to Italy, and everything,
    and finally landed in America.
    He was a conductor by profession,
    and also that was a hard beginning for them.
    And he developed cancer very soon
    after they came to this country.
    And when he passed away, she wrote a very, very sad letter
    to my mother and asked her if she couldn't come and be
    with her for a little while.
    But my mother couldn't leave the family.
    My brother and my sister were then still--
    I think that they were still at home, I believe.
    Where did this woman live?
    She lived in San Francisco.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Yeah.
    So I said, you know what, I could take two weeks' vacation.
    I haven't had a vacation in a long time.
    And I could go, and that way, I see some of the country.
    That'd be wonderful.
    So I took a vacation, and I came out to be with her,
    and I fell in love with San Francisco--
    absolutely fell in love with it.
    That was the first time that I really felt, oh boy, this
    feels like home--
    for a city.
    And after the two weeks were over, she wasn't so sad.
    She already had a boyfriend, and she had lots of friends,
    and so it was really a wonderful time.
    And after two weeks, I--
    even before two weeks, I went and looked around,
    and I found myself in a room.
    And I wrote my boss-- sorry, I can't come back.
    I'm going to stay here.
    And I found a job.
    In the dental field?
    No.
    I worked for Maisson Mendessolle.
    For what?
    Maisson Mendessolle.
    Have you been to San Francisco for a long time?
    That was a very, very fancy dress shop
    in the St. Francis Hotel.
    And I started there.
    I had a recommendation from someone, and they took me,
    but it was a straight commission job.
    They would pay me $200 a month, but I had to make it up
    and commission.
    Well, the old sales ladies who were there
    didn't let you get to anybody, and it was really, really
    a terrible struggle to make these $200.
    And I was a wreck.
    It was so stressful.
    I hated every minute of it.
    And there was another young person who was there also,
    and she didn't like it.
    And she got an offer at [INAUDIBLE] that
    was a sporting goods store.
    And she said they offered her the job as a buyer.
    And she said, I'll tell you what, if you want,
    I'll take you with me.
    You won't make $200, but if you want, it'll be probably fun.
    And since I was so much into sports
    when I was a young person, I said, OK.
    So instead of $200, I made $175, but I had the time of my life.
    It was just absolutely, absolutely what I loved.
    I sold ski wear, and tennis gear, and--
    You worked in the store?
    I worked in the store.
    I grew up with a lot of sport, and so I had good knowledge.
    You didn't tell us about that that part of--
    I probably haven't told you a lot
    of things that have happened.
    But anyway, I was very, very, very happy there.
    It was a lot of fun.
    It was fun to sell that.
    But $175--
    Didn't go very far--
    Came the 28th, that was rough.
    And all our friends--
    they were in the same boat.
    Nobody made a lot of money.
    Came the 28th, everybody had a problem.
    And so we always got together, and we pooled our resources.
    One would bring bread.
    The other one would bring avocados
    from a neighbor's tree.
    Another one would bring an apple or something like that.
    So we lived until the 30th or the 31st
    until we, again, had money, and could do it all over again.
    But that was a wonderful, wonderful time for me.
    How long did you work there?
    I stayed until the beginning of 1948--
    not quite two years.
    And I had met my husband and-- my next husband,
    my second husband--
    already in New York.
    He was a patient in the doctor's office, so I knew him.
    And he really pursued me.
    Cross-country--
    Cross-country-- religiously, every week--
    and well, we fell in love.
    And in 1948, I went back to New York to get married.
    And that was the end of my very beautiful, carefree San
    Francisco time.
    You stayed in New York?
    We stayed in New York.
    Our daughter was born in November of '48.
    We got married in January of '48,
    and Jackie was born in November '48.
    And my husband lost his very, very good job on the day
    our daughter was born.
    New government regulations after the war
    didn't permit these people that he
    worked for-- he was a textile chemist,
    and he had his own lab, and developed all these yarns.
    And these yarns were sold to foreign countries.
    And all of a sudden, the government
    did not allow this anymore, and the business had to fold up,
    and he lost his job.
    That was a shock.
    And now came very lean years.
    It was hard for him.
    He tried a couple of things, which didn't work out.
    And in the end, he decided that the only way to do this
    was to have his own business.
    Just like your father said--
    Right.
    And with the help of some friends, and finding a partner,
    he founded [INAUDIBLE] Incorporated,
    which was a converting business where the yarn was
    made into certain fabrics, and then dyed,
    and finished, and sold.
    He limited himself to the flag and banner industry, and sold--
    Flags and banners?
    Flags and banners, yeah-- sold this--
    these particular fabrics only to flag and banner people
    all over the United States and Canada.
    We had an office, and also a stock room
    where the finished fabrics would come in.
    And we had a manager, and a secretary,
    and a packing person, and then it
    was shipped all over the country.
    And as the years went on, he traveled a lot.
    And in '53, our son was born.
    And he, as he grew up, was always
    pretty sick in the wintertime.
    He constantly had throat infections.
    And when he started school, he was more at home than--
    [INAUDIBLE] California [INAUDIBLE]..
    --in school.
    No, no-- not yet.
    And so one day, my husband said, you know, I have traveled--
    I have to travel so much-- he was away about six weeks
    at a time.
    He said, you know what, why don't we try Florida?
    Why don't you go to the--
    to Florida with the children for the winter,
    and see if he doesn't do better in a warm climate?
    And at first, I couldn't believe it.
    I said, we can't do that like that.
    And he said, yeah, yeah.
    That's not so hard.
    He said, I come after my travels.
    I come to Florida, and I am in touch
    by telephone and special delivery letters
    with the office every day, so it's no problem.
    And then, in the summer, of course,
    we have to go to New York for a month or six weeks.
    So I left in--
    So he was going to keep the business in New York
    [BOTH TALKING]--
    Yes, yes.
    --Florida?
    Yeah.
    Well, just come to Florida--
    still, we had our apartment in New York, and--
    but he felt he could be with me in Florida for quite a bit,
    and then be in New York for a bit.
    So I said, well, could I come anyway?
    And she said, you can come.
    I can show it to you.
    it won't do you any good.
    Well, it happened that we just clicked.
    I liked her a lot, and she liked me a lot, and she said,
    you know what?
    Let's go look at the apartment.
    Well, I walked into the apartment.
    I didn't even look at the bedroom or anything else.
    I fell in love with it.
    And I said, this is it.
    She said, you got it.
    And that's how I came and I've been living there for 14 years
    and love it as I loved it the first day.
    And that's very nice.
    Now you have been back to Germany.
    I went back to Germany only for a few days
    to see my school friends.
    When?
    I went-- So last year it was seven.
    I went in '94, '95 and '96.
    '94 was the first time you went?
    Tell me what that was like.
    And I had only corresponded with one.
    How did you keep in touch with that person?
    Through another school friend who consequently passed away.
    And she was really my best friend
    since we were little kids.
    My dad worked for a time for her father
    and so we played when we were way before school
    and then we went through the whole school together.
    And she, for one reason or another,
    I don't know why, she went to Europe all these years
    and I guess she found all the girls.
    And then she told me of this one and she gave me her address
    and I started to correspond with her.
    Not for too long really until I had found her.
    And so I told her I would come.
    And then in the last minute I wrote to her and I said,
    we haven't seen each other in 58 years.
    How will we know?
    I said, you better come to my hotel.
    Well, she came and she knocked on the door.
    And I opened the door, and I want to tell you something.
    She has not changed since our school days.
    Her face is still the same.
    Her hair's a little thinner, but that was always thin.
    And she is just as tall and just exactly as she was.
    None of the others, but this one has stayed exactly the same.
    So then she got me together with all the others.
    There are eight of them.
    And we just had a wonderful time together.
    I did not touch--
    I wanted to tell her about what happened
    and so on and so forth.
    And she shut the door immediately.
    No, nothing from before.
    The only remark she made, she said you think you had it hard?
    We had it just as hard.
    We had to flee.
    I had a baby.
    I had no milk.
    I had nothing to feed the baby.
    We went from farm to farm where we milked the cows
    and clean the stables and did horrible work
    so that our little boy would have a potato or something
    to eat.
    So I decided I'm not going to touch on anything.
    I didn't want to hear how she went through the Nazi time.
    And she married.
    I didn't want to hear if she has in her living room
    a picture of her husband from--
    I don't know whether it was a war
    or what it was in a uniform, in a military uniform,
    let's put it that way.
    So I have no idea was he a Nazi was he not,
    how did she feel about it.
    I have no idea.
    They don't talk about it.
    They don't talk about anything.
    And I thought, well, I'm not going
    to be the one to start it.
    We reminisced a lot and laughed a lot
    and really had wonderful times together.
    What was it like for you to be in Breslau?
    I did not go to Breslau.
    I only went to Munich.
    That's all.
    They are all there.
    And now a lot of Jewish people who were born there
    and grew up there are going to Breslau.
    I can't understand that.
    I don't want to do that.
    Why not?
    I have wonderful memories of my growing up years.
    I don't want to destroy those.
    It's supposed to be terrible.
    In what way?
    It's not Polish.
    There isn't a German, not a street name or anything around.
    Most of all the buildings are destroyed
    and there are just very military barracks built instead
    and so on and so forth.
    Our school is still standing.
    I know this from one of the girls who went there and found
    the school and went inside where everything
    seems to be all the same thing.
    I just don't want to see it.
    I have a very hard time looking at films
    that have to do with that time.
    It took me two years before I finally
    got the courage to go to the Holocaust Museum
    in Washington, which was a wonderful experience for me
    because I think it's done in such unbelievable taste.
    You really don't get the horror feeling in there
    and I really like that a lot.
    But it's very strange.
    I didn't even go through the horror time,
    but I have a hard time dealing with that.
    Why it is I don't know.
    Go ahead.
    No, you ask me.
    So all the people that you knew from school are all in Munich.
    Yes, some of them, not all of them.
    There are eight in Munich and they all
    have contact to one another, which I think is very nice.
    One is already in pretty bad shape
    and they all have little things here and there.
    I think with all the things that I
    have to contend with, with my inconvenience about my eyes,
    I'm still I think in the best shape,
    better than they are together.
    But it always was a very enjoyable time
    because we do have a lot of memories to go back to.
    And so this last year and this year I haven't gone.
    And I don't think I will.
    These are people that you went to school with
    and the school that you graduated in 1934.
    And from the very first school day at the other school
    too, yes.
    And none of them want to talk about it.
    No, they don't talk about it at all.
    Did that disappoint you that you couldn't talk about it?
    Not really.
    Because I'm very honest with you.
    I always felt a little strange about that part of our lives.
    And I was kind of glad maybe.
    I like them all so much, I really
    didn't want to maybe discover that there was something
    there that they did that I would be very upset about.
    And I mean you would not believe how warm they are
    and how sweet they are.
    And they go out of their way when they see me.
    I mean it's unreal.
    And they write me the most wonderful letters
    and everything.
    And when I talk to them it's really interesting
    that after all these years and being Jewish and different
    from them that that's the way they are.
    You're the only one who's Jewish?
    Yes.
    There is one in Argentina whom I have contact with
    and she goes also to Germany once a year to visit them.
    And we just loosely correspond, but she's Jewish.
    So not wanting to talk about it, not
    wanting to find out something that might not feel good to you
    is sort of like not wanting to see Breslau.
    Yes, for basically the same reason.
    I have, like I said, I have really such wonderful memories
    of growing up.
    I don't want to destroy that.
    And so I'd rather think about it if I ever think back--
    I'm a very strange person.
    I never really look back and I always look forward.
    And I'll never forget, I think I've always been this way,
    but I never forget a sermon that our rabbi in Hollywood,
    a part of a sermon that he talked about,
    and he said at the end God has given your two
    eyes in front of your head.
    If he wanted you to always look back,
    He would have put them in the back of your head.
    And I've never forgotten that.
    And with this I have helped a lot
    of people, people who are unhappy about things
    that happened to them in their lives or anything like that.
    And I always quote that.
    And then they come to me and say,
    you know this is really wonderful.
    I feel so much better.
    So I am I'm always looking forward,
    I'm not a person to look backwards.
    And it was very strange, because when I talked to you
    I really had to sit down and think a little bit about it
    because I haven't thought of that in years
    and years and years and years.
    Did the German government ever invite you back?
    Well, the German government only invites the people
    from Berlin, and now also from other cities,
    but never from Breslau.
    Because Breslau is not Germany.
    Right.
    And then once I wrote to them a few years ago.
    My husband was from Berlin, and I wrote to them
    and I said you know I would like to come
    to Berlin to see all the places that my husband always
    talked about.
    And I explained to them that I was from Breslau
    and so on and so forth.
    And they invited me to come.
    I mean, I have to pay my own passage,
    but I think other people have to do that too.
    But they invited me that any time I wanted to come I
    should come.
    But I really don't have the desire.
    You don't.
    Mm-hmm.
    I don't have the desire to go to Germany at all.
    I mean, I like Munich.
    I had never been in my life to Munich
    and I liked the thought that this is such a wonderful city.
    And I have no memories of anything in Munich,
    so it was all new to me and nice.
    And I met my friends and I saw a lot and that's enough for me.
    Otherwise, I don't really want to go anywhere else.
    I have no desire.
    Your parents never went back to Germany.
    No.
    Your brother?
    My brother was in the war and he was in Germany.
    He was in the American Army?
    Mm-hmm.
    And it was so funny.
    We always joked about that, because when he came back,
    his German was really bad, and we always joked about it.
    Already he lost it so fast?
    And no, my brother was in the war.
    And then he built up a wonderful business.
    He was one of the really first people
    who went to Japan to buy cameras and bring them
    into the United States.
    And he built up an absolutely fabulous business and was,
    unfortunately, too young to go.
    And my sister married a man who was
    20 years older than she was, but she had a wonderful marriage.
    My brother and sister each had two children
    and they all grew up and are doing really fine.
    And the family got sort of pulled apart so early.
    That was very sad because also their children were just
    too young to lose their father or their mother.
    But I guess they summoned up enough strength.
    This was your sister's family you're talking about?
    My sister's as well as my brother's.
    My brother had a boy and a girl and my sister
    had a boy and a girl and everybody is doing well.
    Gerda, what do you think has been the effect on you
    and the way you have lived your life from these experiences
    that you described and your needing to leave Germany
    the way you did?
    Well, I think I always, when I look back on it,
    I think it was an absolutely--
    how we did this I don't know.
    Why we did it, to be so to have such a foresight to do that
    so early in the game.
    All the experiences I would say have
    made me a very strong person and a very tolerant person.
    I don't think that I was exactly weak or intolerant,
    but I think I have developed that
    during the course of my lifetime.
    And also I think going through the experiences
    that I've had I would say that I probably only
    told you a very small part of all the things
    that we went through.
    But I think it was good.
    I think when I look back on my life I think I did well
    and I helped a lot of people.
    When I came to California, I immediately,
    except for my husband's family and we were not too close
    and my sister-in-law passed away real fast,
    I volunteered at the hospital right away,
    and I joined the temple, and I make friends very easily.
    This is no problem for me.
    I connect easily.
    And I built myself a very full life.
    And I two years ago started to lose my eyesight.
    And within months I lost it completely.
    I don't see anything but shapes.
    And I can't write anymore and I can't watch television.
    I lost the driving.
    I lost a great deal of my life through that.
    And I sat down and I thought, I am not
    ready to sit in a wheelchair and just
    listen to my talking books.
    That's not the life for me.
    And I got involved with the Center for the Blind
    in Palo Alto.
    And through that, the social worker
    I had worked with thought that I was
    lucky to be able to accept this in such a short time
    with the limitations that it has given me
    that she felt I should apply to the Commission on Disabilities.
    They had nine seats available on the Commission that's
    going to be turned over.
    And so I said, but I have no experience in politics.
    I have no experience in anything like that.
    And she said, I want you to apply.
    And so she sent me the application.
    And when I saw the application I said, no.
    I still saw this through my--
    I want to explain this.
    I have what they call a CCTV.
    It looks like a computer and it has a moving table underneath
    and a very, very strong light.
    And it enlarges the letters to I would say probably 4 inches.
    And so with that I was still able to read anything that came
    along that I needed to read.
    So when I read the application I thought,
    how would they ever be interested in me?
    But I filled it in and I told them very much I had no--
    They asked what experience do you have in that field?
    I said, I don't have any experience
    but I've dealt with the public, I volunteered an awful lot
    and I've dealt with the public.
    And that's all I can offer really.
    And so I send it, and my kids said, oh my God.
    You will never get it.
    So one day I got a call for an interview and they took me.
    And I'm very active working and I
    work on all different kinds of committees
    and trying very hard to make the public aware of disabilities.
    Now what Commission is this?
    The state?
    That is the San Mateo County Commission on Disabilities.
    It is a subdivision under the supervisors.
    And there are 21 commissioners.
    And we have a lot of professional people.
    And we have I think two or three or four in wheel chairs.
    We have two that are hearing impaired.
    I'm the only vision-impaired person.
    And a couple of people with mental disabilities.
    I couldn't even call it that.
    I mean, they have a hard time talking.
    I don't know exactly what the problem has been there.
    And it's been a wonderful experience.
    I am working very hard now to try to go into the schools
    to make especially teenagers aware of disabilities.
    They have absolutely no idea or let's say you no feeling.
    I can't walk very much in the streets anymore,
    it's just very difficult, but I do try to walk around the block
    where I know pretty much the unevenness in the street.
    And I come home maybe sometimes from when the schools are out.
    So there's a bus stop at our corner
    and they want to sit on the ground there, on the sidewalk,
    and if you think anyone would move or get up step aside
    for me or anything like that?
    I have to go out into the street and go around them.
    And sometimes I feel like saying,
    don't you know what that means if a person can't see?
    And you got a little feeling.
    I think that you can do something
    like take a pair of glasses and put Vaseline on it.
    Then they can see the way I see.
    And take a person in a wheelchair with a dog maybe.
    And a person who is hard of hearing.
    She would bring the dog more than--
    We have one person with a wheelchair who brings a dog.
    And just sort of spread awareness.
    We do all kinds of leaflets and things
    we have now the disability expo on the fairgrounds
    where they will have, I think, 21 exhibitors
    who deal with all kinds of disabilities.
    We also will have a booth and I will work in that.
    I can't do much but talk to people.
    I am really always very sorry and I've been looking around
    and maybe I put an idea into your head.
    I would love to see somebody make a documentary
    about macular deterioration.
    It is not written up much.
    It's not discussed much.
    Most people don't even know what it is.
    And the ophthalmologist does not enlighten you
    until you are suddenly in trouble
    and seek a specialist who might still be able to help you
    with laser treatments or not.
    And there is nothing that can be done.
    There's absolutely nothing.
    I have tried every avenue possible.
    I've been everywhere, to everything,
    have been examined by lots of people, was willing to go
    all over the place.
    And when I talk to doctors they will say,
    your sight is too far gone.
    We can't help you.
    And what I'm out for, this is really
    not a very sad thing because everybody, as you grow older--
    after all I'm 84 years old--
    everybody has a little something in my generation.
    And I'm very lucky that this is really the only thing
    that I have.
    And as I say, I call it my inconvenience.
    I don't think it's a disability.
    There is so much out there to help you
    that is unbelievable that people could take advantage of
    and don't know about.
    And I have created a full life.
    I've been in the support group for the blind.
    I'm now being trained to be a peer counselor.
    I have tried to find out what can you
    give me to help me so I can be as independent as possible,
    and they have given me all the help it's all there.
    It's all there.
    And people get so caught up I see it
    in the support group of this as they
    call it this terrible thing that has happened to me, why me?
    why this, that they don't know that there's
    a lot of life beyond that.
    And that you just have to pick yourself up and say well I
    have this I have to accept it and I can get all the help
    there is.
    Gerda, in listening to your life story
    it sounds like you've been doing that almost all your life.
    Yes, it's true.
    And that's why I have been able to accept that
    as fast as it needed to be accepted for myself.
    But I notice that I have helped already so
    many people who have that.
    And I really have made a sort of a little mission in my life
    and I'd like to do as much as I can.
    Because it's so sad that people feel
    when you lose your eyesight that there's nothing left for them.
    And that's not true.
    You can absolutely be very functional in your home.
    Of course the company that makes TV dinners is making more
    money, there's no doubt about that,
    because it gets a little difficult to peel the potatoes.
    The oranges become blood oranges all of a sudden
    and you cut yourself all the time and it's hard.
    But you can learn to remember.
    Your senses get so much keener.
    Your sense of hearing is stronger,
    your sense of direction is stronger.
    Wherever I go I will remember how many steps I have to take.
    I don't forget it and I manage very well on my own.
    I only have help once in two weeks to do my house cleaning.
    And then sometimes during the other week
    I take a young woman who came from Russia
    and she comes and she takes me shopping.
    I don't see anything on the shelves
    and I don't want to bother my friends all the time because it
    can begin to be a nuisance, so she takes me shopping.
    If I have to go anything anywhere special,
    she will take me.
    And we will take a walk.
    And she will clean my kitchen because that I
    don't know whether it is always the way I want it
    because I don't see when I drop something.
    And it's a full life.
    I have a wonderful, full life.
    And I still have a social life.
    I take Ready Wheels when we meet for lunch,
    when I meet friends for lunch, and when I go somewhere.
    And once in a while I take a cab.
    And I walk down to Burlingame Plaza,
    that I have learned to do.
    And I had a mobility teacher to teach me how to use a cane
    and how to get along in the street
    and how to cross the street, which is very hard.
    And when it came to cross El Camino at Truesdale,
    I did go across three times and he followed me.
    And when I came back I said to him, you know what?
    I'll take a cab.
    It's just too hard because the cars that have the U-turn
    come around so fast and I can't see anything.
    I hardly see the cars in the first lane
    and so I have abandoned this.
    Maybe one day.
    But he just told me the other day,
    since you lost so much more I can still
    teach you more things.
    And I will take him up on that.
    And you can always learn.
    Whatever you do you can learn from books.
    I mean, I enjoy so much reading.
    I have never been able to have too much time to read history.
    And I have myself involved in that so thoroughly.
    They sent me wonderful books and I enjoy it.
    I sometimes say, oh gosh, I have to get up and get going here.
    I have something to do.
    But I don't want to even stop.
    What periods of history are you interested in?
    All kinds of periods, especially Roman history.
    And they have wonderful books.
    And it's been a real pleasure.
    And it was funny, because when I called up
    at the library for the blind in Sacramento
    they assign a person to you that you
    can talk to what kind of books you want
    and so on and so forth.
    And I told her what I was interested in,
    and there hasn't been one book that she has sent me,
    and I'm doing this since December of last year,
    that I had to send back unread or that I didn't like
    or anything like that.
    I've never talked to her since December of last year.
    She sends me all these books and every one
    is better than the other.
    Are these books where it's read?
    Yes.
    Yes, I have a 4-track tape recorder.
    The tape has four sides.
    And it's about this big.
    And then it has a switch.
    When you have read two sides you have
    to turn the switch so that you can read three and four.
    And they have sometimes 19 sides,
    sometimes only eight sides.
    And I just read a lovely story which
    had nothing to do with history about a couple who
    were so much in love till the end of their days.
    And this lady developed Alzheimer's, and how
    this old man who was so crippled himself and so sick,
    how he carried on with this love.
    It was really very moving, and it was only four sides.
    But the books come from Sacramento
    encased in a little green shell that you snap closed.
    And you just have to turn the label around
    to send it back to them.
    It doesn't cost a penny.
    Nothing.
    That's wonderful.
    And as soon as you send one back--
    I always have seven books at home--
    as soon as you send one back the next one comes.
    Now you said earlier that there was
    one thing that you had in the back of your mind
    that you were thinking about doing.
    Yeah.
    Well, this was that somebody would make a documentary
    about that and to show this in the doctor's offices
    and wherever.
    I haven't thought about that much,
    but I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful
    if you come to the doctor and you still
    have some of your sight and you can still look at TV,
    let's say.
    I can't look at TV anymore, but most of the time and they
    come to the doctor's office they still have sight left.
    And to show that and show them that this is not the end.
    This is the beginning of a new life of what
    you can do with yourself.
    And how really resilient a human body is,
    what you can still get out to do good in your community,
    to do good for yourself, and to just live your life.
    And that's what I always had in mind.
    That's what I would love to say.
    I am very impressed with the Commission on Disabilities.
    They are really doing an awful lot
    of good, a lot of awareness.
    I mean, a sighted person really never pays
    any attention to that, like that the bathrooms have been made
    accessible, that there are ramps where there are stairs,
    that in the airports the signs are so clear, that you have
    help everywhere you go, that there's
    housing for disability people.
    There's so much.
    They do so much, it's unbelievable.
    I was always--
    When I remember back, even when I was very young when
    I saw a blind person I would always go and say,
    can I help you in any way?
    Or something like that.
    But that was really the extent that I would go to.
    I was never going any further to really find out what
    has happened to this person.
    Why is a person like that?
    And how does a person live like that?
    And now of course I'm very aware of everything.
    And I'm trying my best to be as helpful as I can
    and to spread awareness that people,
    even people in wheelchairs, can live their lives.
    And people who don't hear can still be very productive.
    It should not be the end of anybody's life.
    And it goes on and on and on.
    And especially I find that older people
    get so desperate about something like that happening to them.
    And it's true when you think back how much you really
    read, if there's a good show on television how much you
    enjoy that.
    And just to cross the street without worrying,
    even just walk around the block without thinking
    about every step you take.
    And to function in the home.
    And it's easy.
    It's real easy.
    I even had a little party for lunch the other day.
    We were six and I cooked.
    And I did a good job.
    I had to try myself out if I could still
    do it because I used to entertain so much.
    Yes, I can still do it.
    That's not the end.
    So it's been wonderful for me.
    So I really always can say I have such a good life
    and I'm so grateful to that.
    And I must mention that I have two wonderful children who
    are so attentive to me and two great grandchildren.
    Not great-grandchildren, but great grandchildren.
    And I'm really blessed that way with everything
    that has happened.
    So I'm grateful.
    Gerda, on behalf of the Holocaust Oral History Project,
    I want to thank you tremendously for being willing to come
    and for sharing your story with us.
    And for being such an inspirational person.
    Thank you very much.
    It's been a pleasure.
    Thanks, and thank you too.
    Thank you very much too.
    This is my school diploma, my final exam.
    It was given to me in 1934 when I graduated.
    And as you can see, you have the Nazi emblem.
    I'm going to open it up now so we can see the emblem.
    Where's the Nazi emblem?
    I think it's on the front, isn't it?
    Wasn't it on the front?
    What is it you asked?
    The Nazi emblem.
    Oh, I think it's here.
    Is it there?
    Yeah.
    I'm going to zoom in on it.
    Is it the eagle?
    It's the Reichstadt--
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    It was the Nazi, that's right.
    You want me to describe anymore?
    I don't think so.
    The grades are on the front page and I
    thought the Nazi emblem is also on the front
    but I guess not maybe.
    OK.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Gerda Cohn, born on September 29, 1914 in Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland), describes her parents, Alfred Fischer and Margarete Riesenfeld; her two siblings, Klaus Peter and Lori; growing up in a well-off family; attending school; having blonde hair and light complexion and was often mistaken for an Aryan woman; her first experience of Nazi violence around 1934 when a Nazi officer confused her for an Aryan woman and shoved her and spit in her face because she was walking around with her Jewish fiancée; pleading unsuccessfully with her father to flee to America; getting married in June of 1935 at the age of 20; convincing her new husband to flee to the US; obtaining visas in November of 1936; receiving a telegram from her mother in 1938 notifying her that her father and brother had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp; the release of her father and brother when she obtained visas for them; her parents fleeing to England, while her younger siblings going to the US and living with her; and her life in the US.
    Interviewee
    Gerda Cohn
    Date
    interview:  1998 October 21
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Cohn, Gerda, 1914-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with Gerda Cohn on October 21, 1998. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from the Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project in August 1999.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:43:23
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn507689

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    Summary (English)
    Time Coded Notes (2)

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    Oral history interview with Leon Benson

    Oral History

    Leon Benson (né Leon Samuel Szmelcan), born in Łódź, Poland in 1931, describes his family’s immigration to Paris, France when Leon was three years old; his father’s work as a furrier; the German occupation of Paris; being deported with his mother (Yana Benson), older brother, and younger sister to Auschwitz; being separated from his mother and sister, but remaining with his brother for a brief time; working in a grenade factory; being sent on a forced march to Buchenwald towards the end of the war; being liberated by the US Army in April of 1945; returning to Paris and living in a home for child survivors; being the only survivor from his immediate family; joining the Zionist movement and planning to immigrate to Israel; being contacted by relatives of his mother who had settled in the US and deciding to go to the US; living briefly on the east coast before moving to San Francisco, CA; his wife Lillian and their two sons and daughter; and ushering for the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Giants during his retirement.

    Oral history interview with Leon Benson

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ileana Farkas

    Oral history interview with Ileana Farkas

    Oral History

    Ileana Farkas (née Marmustein), born in 1929, discusses her childhood in Satu Mare, Transylvania, Romania; her memories of antisemitic incidents after the Hungarian invasion in 1940; her brother's flight to Budapest, Hungary, where he lived using false identity papers; the increase in harassment of Jews in 1943; her brother's return from Budapest to encourage his family to flee; fleeing with her sister to Budapest in 1944; her brother's capture, arrest, and deportation to Auschwitz; the deportation of her other sister and parents from Satu Mare to Auschwitz; her life with her sister in Budapest using false papers; hiding in basements during the bombing of Budapest; the liberation of Budapest by Soviet troops in January 1945; returning with her sister to Satu Mare to find their brother and sister; learning about their parents' deaths in Auschwitz; meeting and marrying her husband in 1946; her life in Romania; immigrating with her husband and family in 1962 to the United States; and her adjustment to life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Oral history interview with Sol Farkas

    Oral history interview with Sol Farkas

    Oral History

    Sol Farkas describes his childhood in Satu Mare, Romania; joining the Hungarian Army in December 1940 and working on a labor brigade with his brother Morris; returning to his town in January 1944, where it was turned into a ghetto in April 1944; being transported to Auschwitz with his family, where his parents were selected and perished in the gas chambers; the terrible conditions he endured, working in grain fields and being moved to Austria to work in an underground laboratory; being liberated by the American Army; the family's attempts to emigrate from Romania; his brother’s illegal escape to Hungary, Austria, and finally to the United States; remaining in Romania for 14 more years; and immigrating to the US.

    Oral history interview with Adda Gerstel

    Oral history interview with Adda Gerstel

    Oral History

    Adda Gerstel discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her education in a private school and her graduation from business school in 1929; the death of her mother in 1932 and her father in 1934; her brother losing his work as an attorney because of anti-Jewish laws and taking over the family brewery; her marriage in 1937; her memories of the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, when both her husband and her brother were arrested and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp; the release of her husband and brother; her brother's immigration to the United States; fleeing Germany for Shanghai, China with her husband and young daughter in June 1939; her experiences in a refugee camp in Shanghai, and in the Hong-Kew (Hongkou Qu) ghetto; immigrating to the United States after the war; her family life in San Francisco, CA; and her brother's return to Germany.

    Oral history interview with Clara Markovits

    Oral history interview with Clara Markovits

    Oral History

    Clara Markovits describes her childhood in Budapest, Hungary and Satu Mare, Romania; the increase in antisemitism after the Hungarians seized parts of Romania; her family's deportation to a ghetto in Satu Mare after the Nazi German invasion of Romania in 1944; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz, where she remained from June until October 1944; her subsequent work in a bomb factory near Dresden, Germany from October 1944 until her liberation by the Russians in May 1945; her father's and sister's deaths at Auschwitz and her thoughts of suicide; the aftermath of the bombing of Dresden; her postwar experience in a hospital at Terezin, Czech Republic; her life in Romania and Hungary until her immigration to the United States in 1962; and the emotional and psychological effects of her wartime experiences on her postwar life.

    Oral history interview with Laurence Moitozo

    Oral history interview with Laurence Moitozo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Samuel

    Oral history interview with Leo Samuel

    Oral History

    Leo Samuel, born in 1924, discusses his childhood in Cherna, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the effect of the economic depression of the 1930s on his family; his deportation to Khust, Ukraine in September 1939; the Hungarian annexation of the region; his work as a tailor in Budapest, Hungary and Cherna; his experiences in the ghetto at Khust; the conditions in the ghetto; the things he had heard about the camps; being deported to Auschwitz in early 1944; being separated from his family; his transfer to Płaszów and the conditions there; working as a tailor; his encounters with Göth's assistant Wilek Chilowicz; being transferred to Melk (subcamp of Mauthausen) several months later; the conditions in Melk; the people he encountered; the help he received from a friend; the work he performed building tunnels and crematoria; his transfer to Ebensee; working in the kitchen; his liberation by the United States Army; his postwar life; his immigration to the United States; and his life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral History

    Lily Spitz discusses her childhood in Satu Mare, Romania; her family life; her religious upbringing; the changes she observed after 1939, the increased antisemitism, and the difficulty in attending school; the changes she experienced when her region became part of Hungary in 1944; her family's deportation to a ghetto and the conditions there; her experiences during her family's deportation to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; the selection process, and her entry into the camp; her experiences in Auschwitz, the work she performed, and the many selections she endured; her transfer by train to Mauthausen in early 1945; being liberated; the medical care she received from the United States Army; her reunion with her surviving siblings and their return to Romania in July 1945; her marriage and family; their immigration to the United States in 1964; and their life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral History

    Melvin Suhd discusses his childhood in Detroit, Michigan; the antisemitism he experienced in school; his education as an electrical engineer; his decision to join the military in 1943; his training in weaponry; his arrival in France in December 1944; the military actions he was involved in; his experiences while helping to liberate Dachau and his emotions at the time; his life after he returned from the front; and the psychological aftermath of his wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral History

    Bernard Broclawski, born January 27, 1917, describes his childhood in Pabianice, Poland; how he began to work at 13 to support his family; his socialist political leanings; his involvement in Jewish socialist organizations from 1936-1939; his awareness of political events in Germany; being drafted into the Polish Army; his time in Soviet-occupied Poland; reuniting with his father and brothers in Grodno, Poland (Hrodna, Belarus); his work as a machinist in Siberian coal mines in January 1940; his work as a German-language teacher in 1941; his arrest for giving a counter-revolutionary speech in 1943; his experiences in prison from 1944 to 1948; his release from prison and return to Poland in 1948; his marriage and the birth of his daughter; his involvement in workers' organizations; his studies at the University of Łódź; the increase of antisemitism in 1968; how and why he immigrated to the United States with his family; their immigration with the assistance of the HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society); and his life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral History

    Julius Drabkin, born in 1918 in Maritopa, Latvia, describes his parents, Mikhail and Sarah Daviolovna; life before the war when he lived in Riga, Latvia; being a soldier in the Latvian Army until the German invasion in July 1941; living in the ghetto for most of the war; getting married to his first wife, Amalia, in 1941; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being sent to Kaiserwald camp; being liberated on March 10, 1945 at Stutthof; returning to Riga after the war because he was distressed, even though he had the opportunity to emigrate; the perishing of all of his family during the Holocaust, except for one of his aunts; getting remarried shortly after the war (his wife also lost all her family); having two sons and living in Riga until he immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s; emigrating because his older son found it impossible to pursue his career because he was Jewish; and visiting Riga for the World Conference of Holocaust Survivors.

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral History

    Renee Duering, born January 7, 1921 in Cologne, Germany, describes her childhood in Cologne; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933; her experiences in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation; getting married in 1941; the time she and her husband spent in hiding; her family's deportation to Westerbork in July 1943; her experiences in Westerbork; her parents’ deportation to Bergen-Belsen; her and her husband's deportation to Auschwitz; how her husband perished in Auschwitz; being a subject of medical experiments, including those involving sterilization; her deportation to three other camps; her experiences on a death march to Ravensbrück in January 1945; her escape during the march; hiding near Dresden, Germany until liberation by the Soviets; living with her sister after the war; moving to Israel; immigrating to the United States; her second marriage; and her joy at becoming pregnant despite the experiments she endured.

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral History

    Werner Epstein discusses his childhood in Berlin, Germany; the anti-Jewish regulations he and his family encountered when the Nazis rose to power; his decision to leave Germany after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing by bicycle to Belgium, where he prospered until the war began in September 1939; being arrested as an enemy alien; his experiences in a series of detention camps in southern France; his arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz; volunteering to work in a coal mine in Silesia, where he remained until December 1944; being ill with malaria, which he contracted while in French detention camps; the death march he endured after the camp’s evacuation in advance of the Soviet Army’s approach; being liberated by Russian Mongol soldiers; journeying to a transit camp in Magdeburg, Germany; reuniting with his fiancee; returning with her to Paris, France, where they settled and he became a chef; and immigrating to California in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

    Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania (Chisinau, Moldova); her family's flight after the invasion of Nazi Germany; a traumatic incident in which Romanian soldiers sexually assaulted the women in their group, after which the family returned to their home town; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, Ukraine from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage; her life in Riga, Latvia; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco, California in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral History

    Lore Gilbert, born in Worms, Germany in 1929, describes her childhood in Worms; the antisemitism she experienced as a child; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938 and its impact on her family when her father's assets were confiscated; the family's move to Heidelberg, Germany and their deportation to France; their experiences in Gurs concentration camp; the family's selection by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) to be sent to the Dominican Republic; the Jewish refugee community in Sosua, Dominican Republic; the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina; the security and safety Jewish refugees enjoyed in the Dominican Republic during the war years; her family's immigration to the United States; her father's difficulties in adjusting to their new life; the experiences of her grandparents, who remained in France during the war years and were sheltered by the French Catholic Church; and the trauma and fear she has felt over the years as a result of her Holocaust-related experiences.

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral History

    Rita Goldman discusses her childhood in Berlin, Germany; her parents' painful decision to send her on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for England in 1939; the kindness of the family with whom she stayed; the events of the war years; corresponding with her parents, who had fled to Shanghai, China; her reunion with her parents after the war; and the difficulties she experienced in adjusting to life with them.

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral History

    Mala Holcberg describes her childhood in Poland; her early memories of the Nazi occupation of Poland and crimes committed against Jews and her family's desire to flee Poland; the confiscation of her family's possessions and the family's deportation to an unidentified ghetto; her experiences in the ghetto; the murder of her father; being deported to an unidentified concentration camp, where the inmates were forced to make bombs and grenades; the terrible conditions in the camp and her illnesses; the camp's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Poland; her marriage and family; her present ill health and the lasting emotional effects of her experiences during the Holocaust; and the loss of many family members.

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral History

    Kate Kaiser describes her childhood in Mistek, Austria (now Czech Republic); her marriage and move to Hamburg, Germany; the rise of antisemitism after the Nazi's rise to power; how she and her husband were affected by the Nuremberg Laws; their decision to leave Germany after their daughter was born; the wait to obtain papers; her husband's move to the United States in advance of them; waiting with her daughter in Mistek until August 1938 when their visas arrived; her adjustment to life as an immigrant in the United States; her attempts to find her family after the war; learning of the death of her family, all of whom perished except for one brother and a cousin; and her trip to Prague, Czech Republic in 1998 to discover the details of her mother's fate.

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral History

    Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner describes her childhood in Odessa, Ukraine; her family life and her marriage at age 19; the outbreak of World War II being ejected from her home by her neighbors and being imprisoned with her family in Odessa; the ensuing chaotic events; being separated from two of her brothers; being placed on trains to a small village, where she endured terrible conditions with her younger brother, daughter, and mother; the threat of mass murder; escaping with her mother and daughter; being transported to a series of villages; attempted sexual assault at the hands of a Rumanian officer; being separated from her mother; successfully passing as a non-Jew and working as a cook at a police station until the end of the war; reuniting with her mother and husband; and immigrating to the United States with her family in 1978.

    Oral history interview with Vera J. Lieban-Kalmar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral History

    Bernard Offen discusses his childhood in Krakow, Poland; his early experiences with antisemitism; the events he witnessed during the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his experiences in the Krakow Ghetto starting in 1941, including the deportations of many family members and hiding from raids; being deported to Płaszów in 1943; his narrow escape from Płaszów; hiding in a nearby camp with a family member; his deportation to Mauthausen; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his experiences in Auschwitz; his transfer in October 1944 to a subcamp of Dachau near Landsberg; his experiences in the subcamp; being on a death march in May 1945; being liberated by the United States Army; his search for other surviving family members; the fates of the rest of his family; immigrating to the United Kingdom after the war; his subsequent immigration to the United States; enlisting in the United States Army to serve in the Korean War; his life after the war; returning to Poland to conduct tours of Holocaust-related sites; the time he spends speaking about his personal experiences.

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral History

    William Pels, born on May 11, 1924 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his prewar experiences in Amsterdam; his memories of the German invasion of Holland in 1940; the changes that he witnessed during the occupation; witnessing the arrest and deportation of Jews; the German raids on homes to find hidden Jews; his own close call with deportation; moving to Vienna, Austria in 1942 to work in a hotel; his experiences with wartime Vienna; the bombing campaign by the Soviets in March 1945; travelling into Hungary, where he remained until May 1945; his postwar activities; working for the United States Army; working in a former concentration camp; returning to Holland; marrying his wife in Great Britain; immigrating to the United States in 1957; and his life in America.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral History

    Ruth Plainfield (née Oppenheimer), born on January 27, 1925 in Gau Bickelheim, Germany, discusses her childhood in Mainz, Germany; the rise of the Nazi party to power; her father's arrest in 1935 and the effect that had on her; her childhood encounters with antisemitism; her family's immigration to the United States; living first in New York and then San Francisco, CA; her family's experiences in California; her education; and learning of the fate of family members, including a grandfather who died in Theresienstadt.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral History

    Thomas Schneider discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; being raised as a Catholic child of a Jewish father and a Jewish mother who had converted to Catholicism; being forced to leave school and study at a Jewish school in 1938 after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany; his family's immigration in March 1939 to the United States; settling in New York, NY; his experiences in school, college, and law school; his legal career; and the conflicts he has felt throughout his life about his Jewish identity.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Shlyapochnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    Benjamin Sieradzki, born on February 4, 1927 in Zgierz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Zgierz; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1939; hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet section of Poland; his family&