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Oral history interview with Ellen Tarlow

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.23 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0023

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    Oral history interview with Ellen Tarlow

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Ellen Tarlow (née Meinberg), born in 1927 in Gütersloh, Westphalia, Germany, describes how her family had lived in Gütersloh since the 17th century; her father Paul Meinberg, who was an importer of cattle and was decorated with the Iron Cross in WWI; her early childhood in public school and then a Lyceum for girls; feeling antisemitism for the first time at the age of eight and being expelled from school in 1938; studying Hebrew and the Bible once a week; Nazi atrocities during and after Kristallnacht, including social ostracism, the burning of their home and synagogue, her father’s deportation to Buchenwald; her father fleeing from Buchenwald; finding shelter with her remaining family in a local cloister then fleeing to Bielefeld, Germany; their life in a Judenhaus in Gütersloh and the continued attempts to educate the children there; HIAS helping her family many times; receiving aid from several Germans in Gütersloh; a failed attempt to immigrate to Haiti; her family leaving Germany for the United States via Lisbon, Portugal, on the SS Mouzinho in August 1941; the journey from Berlin, Germany to Lisbon in a sealed train and staying in Lisbon in a group home run by HIAS; how refugees organized to cope with primitive conditions on the ship; arriving in Staten Island, NY and going through immigration processing; her life in New York in a group home for refugees sponsored by HIAS; her family’s adjustment to life in the United States and the survivor’s guilt she feels; and her return to Germany by invitation in 1985 accompanied by her husband and daughter.
    Interviewee
    Ellen Tarlow
    Interviewer
    Natalie Packel
    Date
    interview:  1993 November 19
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 sound cassettes (60 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Tarlow, Ellen, 1927-

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive conducted the interview with Ellen Tarlow in Philadelphia, PA on November 19, 1993. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from Gratz College on September 26, 1997.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:36:02
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508644

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