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Oral history interview with Gertrud Wittner

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1993.A.0094.45 | RG Number: RG-50.150.0045

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    Oral history interview with Gertrud Wittner
    Transcript
    So when and where you were born.
    I was born in a very small town in Germany,
    near the French-German border on the German side.
    And the place was named Wittlich.
    And I was there from 1921 to 1937.
    Actually, at the end of '36 we left.
    Can you tell me a little bit about your education
    in Wittlich?
    Ah, there were, I think, three or four years.
    I don't remember that exactly.
    Jewish volksschule.
    Jewish volksschule?
    Right.
    And from there, I had to go to private school.
    And it was Catholic lyceum.
    When you say you went to the Jewish volksschule,
    what was the Jewish population of Wittlich?
    There was actually a big population,
    compared-- the city had about 7 to 8,000 people.
    And there were about 80 Jewish families,
    which was quite an amount for a small town like that.
    Were the 70 or 80 families all members of one congregation?
    Yes, there was just one congregation.
    And was it more Orthodox or liberal?
    No, that was a very conservative synagogue.
    And the teacher was a rabbi, and he was a cantor.
    He was everything.
    Was this Jewish volksschule affiliated
    with the congregation?
    I don't believe so.
    I think in this part of Germany each religion
    had their own volksschule, which you had to attend,
    whether you're Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant.
    And from there on, you could go to realschule,
    what they call realschule, high school.
    Here it's not high school.
    No.
    It's a private school.
    Or you could stay on in Jewish school for eight years, right?
    But I went to a Catholic school.
    Besides, there were very few Jewish children at my age left,
    you know.
    There were a few younger ones, and a few much older ones.
    But just my age, there were very few children.
    When did you start to attend this realschule?
    When did I start school--
    wait a minute.
    I was born-- probably from '20s, 1927 to 1930.
    That's when you were in the--
    Jewish.
    --Jewish school.
    And after that?
    And then I went to a Catholic parochial school.
    I mean, this was Ursuline order.
    And there I spent the years from '30 or '31,
    I don't remember that exactly to '36.
    How would you characterize the relationship
    between the Jewish children and the non-Jewish children
    in Wittlich before Hitler came to power, in your school years?
    In my school--
    Early.
    --early?
    A very, very close relationship, there
    was actually no difference between the Jewish children
    and the others.
    I mean, maybe I myself felt very, very young almost
    like an outsider.
    So everybody was nice to us, but I was very Jewish-thinking
    always.
    It was very deep-rooted in me.
    And certain things I just went along, but not
    with all my heart.
    But I was accepted there.
    When you went to this Catholic school, did you notice,
    after Hitler came to power, did you notice a change in attitude
    among them?
    Tremendously, from one day to another.
    How would you describe that change?
    I would say this is, let's say, I
    feel my greatest loss in my life until today.
    You know, I feel these few years, were devastating to me.
    I feel today, I still think, I'm a person without a normal--
    without childhood.
    Because let's say the teenage years, even later,
    after I was out, I just couldn't adjust.
    There's like a loss, a lack, a loss in the middle of my life.
    There's something which is missing.
    And this was the years when I was--
    actually, it started already before Hitler that I had fears.
    And it probably came--
    my father was from Saarland, which was at this time status
    quo between France and Germany.
    And we were always listening to the radio, what will be,
    for these people.
    Father, for instance, left Saarland one year too early.
    Otherwise, I don't know exactly the date or what the year,
    one had to be in Saarland to still be a Saarlander.
    And Father left, I think, 1917, if I'm right.
    I've forgot that.
    His brothers and sisters were still there.
    So when Hitler came, they were called Saarlanders
    though they lived in Germany.
    And they were able to leave the country.
    My father could not because he was considered a German.
    Yeah.
    So this sitting there, listening what will be,
    provoked tremendous fear.
    You know, I was very young.
    I was, maybe-- I was nine years old.
    That's right.
    But I was afraid what would be.
    And then from then on, it was constantly
    listening quietly to the radio.
    And this is so deep, now still, nowadays in my mind,
    in my memory, sometimes I think it's crazy.
    Why can't I forget this?
    Well, what happens in one's childhood
    is very often with you.
    Oh, yes, yes.
    Did these girls that were in the Catholic school
    with you, were many of them members of the BDM or--
    All of them.
    All of them?
    All of them.
    I was the only Jewish girl in the class.
    That must have had an effect on you.
    How did that--
    And this affected me, I think--
    I mean, thinking back now, I think
    I probably would have needed later
    on a psychologist, somebody to help me to get over this.
    But who had money?
    And we just went on, and we went to work,
    and you did this and that.
    But it's affected me so tremendously that, like,
    now I think, probably it could have
    been helped to overcome that.
    How did they act towards you?
    Towards me?
    That, first of all, nobody ever came to me anymore.
    I was not able to--
    I went to classes.
    I had to sit in [GERMAN].
    I had to send in every week speeches for the schools
    in Germany, radio.
    Goebbels, Himmler, whatever we had learned about.
    And we were sitting there.
    And then I had, as I said, [GERMAN]..
    We had special teachers.
    Because the nuns refused to teach it.
    And they were actually my good luck.
    These people really protected us as much as it was possible.
    But I had to attend these classes not very long,
    then I was able to stay out.
    But it also had a tremendous impact on me
    through here, there, and after that, you had [GERMAN]..
    And it was talked about how inferior
    the Jewish race is, and so on.
    And you just sat there.
    I know there were some people, I know
    a cousin of mine, who spoke up.
    She was older than I was.
    But I just was sitting there, and saying nothing,
    and brooding, and coming home, and being unhappy.
    When you came home, did you tell your parents?
    No, not really, no.
    You see, I wanted to protect them.
    Why?
    They had their own tsuris And I didn't talk about it.
    Later on in life I did.
    That must have been very difficult for a young girl
    to listen to that.
    Oh, yeah, I think it was the worst.
    I think it was the worst.
    Were these girls, had they been friendly towards you before?
    Yes, very much so.
    There were very few who didn't do anything.
    I mean, nothing against me.
    But they didn't tell me, either, you are still my friend or so.
    They just were afraid.
    I would say it was fear on their part
    and not that they disliked me or hated me or Jews, in general.
    But they would just be quiet.
    Children always like to be accepted.
    You know, by--
    Yes, right.
    Here in, for instance, in--
    when we had, for instance, one hour of games,
    I was not allowed to play with them.
    They pushed me out, ball games, anything like that.
    Did you ever have the feeling that you
    didn't want to come back to school the next morning?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, sure, naturally.
    But I did go.
    And I went until I think one teacher once came to my parents
    and said, why don't you take her out?
    I see what's going on.
    And so I was 14 only when I left that school.
    To the regret of the teachers, because they really
    were very, very good to me.
    Was it a nun who came to your parents?
    No, no, it was a lay teacher.
    A lay teacher?
    Yeah, but she was very, very nice and understanding.
    She was not my teacher.
    When she came to your parents, how did your parents
    react to what she told them?
    I don't remember that very well.
    I only know that I quit school afterwards, very soon,
    and went to some relatives in another town
    and went to what they called berufsschule.
    It was a very, very short time.
    Was this berufsschule organized with the purpose of emigrating
    from the [INAUDIBLE] or--
    Right.
    I couldn't take many courses there
    because I didn't live in that city.
    And I just took English, I took some Hebrew,
    and did some sewing, which I hated.
    [LAUGHS]
    And then I had to go back again for some reason, I forgot.
    And then my parents saw to it that I went out of Germany.
    And it was for a short time, but a very, very short time,
    in Luxembourg with some of my relatives who were Saarlander
    and could get out.
    And had gone to--
    Yeah, and until we got our visa to Israel, our certificate.
    And then I had to go back to Germany, which I was afraid,
    again--
    To go back?
    --to go back.
    Let me just backtrack for a moment.
    In the years that you were in school,
    how did your father earn a living?
    Was he in business?
    Yes, we had our own business.
    But this business went down immediately in '33.
    April '33, we had--
    April 1, '33, we had the boycott.
    And what type of business was he in?
    We had a shoe store.
    And retail?
    Retail, right.
    Were most of his customers Gentile or--
    Yes, yes.
    And they were influenced by the boycott?
    Yes, very much so, because this was
    a city where the district courts were.
    And around us were villages where farmers lived.
    And the farmers were threatened.
    If you buy there, you cannot get this and that.
    But the district court workers, and there was a tremendous jail
    building there, too, they all were,
    how you call you know employed by the government,
    government employed.
    So they were threatened.
    They'd lose their job.
    This was the main population there.
    And so they just didn't come anymore.
    And we had to keep all the people who my father employed
    though the income was going down, down, down,
    and we were not allowed to fire a non-Jewish employee.
    Right.
    Did your father ever have any problems
    with non-Jewish employees who were party members?
    No, no, no, no, they were not.
    They were pretty nice.
    But coming back to this day of boycott,
    I still consider this my worst day in my life.
    I mean, I went through quite a lot later on.
    But this was a day which comes back sometimes in my dreams,
    after all these years.
    Not often, but it was such unbelievable fear, this.
    And I have friends who went through the same thing
    and forgot about-- not forgot.
    It's the wrong word.
    But it didn't affect them so much.
    But I was a young child.
    I was in school that Saturday morning.
    And I asked before whether I could go home earlier.
    And they said, yes, sure.
    And the school was a little bit out of the district there,
    middle of the city where my parents had
    their store on the marketplace.
    And there were different roads you could go down
    to the street to our store.
    And I came from school and was permitted
    to leave an hour earlier.
    But they started earlier, too, marching, which I didn't know.
    And I heard these drums.
    And I think this was unbelievable fear.
    And I ran, just as my school friends, down the street
    and ran into them.
    I thought they would walk the other street,
    and I went by them.
    But when I came to our house, they, of course,
    were standing already.
    We had a very large entrance to our store.
    And on each side was one man standing.
    And this is the plat that the Jews had, Juden central zone
    [GERMAN] or whatever it was.
    And I had to go under that sign, through.
    And my parents were standing in the store and they had locked.
    And they saw me coming.
    And later on my father and my mother
    said they never saw me as white as I was.
    And I went in there and I started
    sobbing, and my parents, too.
    And that was the worst--
    Day that-- at that point, did your parents--
    you felt it earlier in this small town than many people
    did in larger cities.
    Sure, my husband was in Berlin.
    Here in the small town, everybody knew everybody.
    You know, I probably knew every person, not by name, but--
    By sight.
    --by sight.
    I knew the people.
    And I knew many people by name.
    And my parents were very, very well-liked.
    And when we left Germany, many came in the back entrance
    and said, we didn't mean you.
    These are Jews in Berlin and in Frankfurt am Main,
    yeah, they are bad people.
    But you, we love you, and come back, and so on.
    Yeah.
    When you saw these, when you came home that day,
    when you saw these--
    I don't know if they were SS men,
    but whatever, were you afraid of physical--
    For my father.
    For your father?
    For my father.
    Because I saw before that Jews were beaten in our town.
    Yeah.
    You had witnessed that yourself, that Jews were beaten?
    I did not witness it, no.
    But I saw, later on, after that, I saw Jews were beaten.
    Not Jews, I saw one man beaten.
    But others were beaten, but I saw one.
    Did you ever see any signs, Juden Unerwünscht in stores
    around?
    All over, all over.
    Was it possible for you to buy what
    you needed, or your family to buy what you needed?
    Yes, yes.
    Living in a small town?
    We were able to buy things, yeah.
    For a young girl, how does that feel to--
    it's a difficult question.
    But how does one feel to be kind of rejected
    by the girls in school that you're going with
    and not to be able to go, to see a sign, Juden [GERMAN]??
    It was a time, which really destroyed, I would say,
    a young person if he wasn't very strong.
    Right?
    It seems to me that I was not very strong, you know.
    Now, later on in life, you think,
    compared to other people, you really didn't go through much.
    If you compare, we didn't.
    But at 12 years old, that's not an easy thing.
    I remember they built a stadium.
    And I went with a girlfriend, Jewish girlfriend,
    who went there looking.
    And then the first thing we saw, Juden [GERMAN]..
    Juden [GERMAN].
    So this was also not--
    this didn't affect me so much because I didn't need it.
    There were other things which were much--
    or, for instance, little cafe houses had it there.
    But this didn't affect me so much either
    because I didn't need it.
    It was much more what went on in, you know, school
    at that time, which I had to go to,
    and the fear for my parents.
    You heard about what happened to this and that person.
    There were people, friends of my parents, who fled overnight.
    And I don't believe they did anything wrong.
    I mean, they were framed or whatever.
    And--
    When was this that you were sent--
    that you left for Luxembourg?
    Probably beginning of '36, 1936.
    Between the time of the boycott in '33 and this time that
    you left for Luxembourg, did your parents
    discuss emigrating?
    Oh, yes.
    We tried to get out already '34.
    That was always.
    I mean, we tried very hard to get out just anywhere.
    And we were one of the first people who decided to leave.
    And my father's friends just said
    we are absolutely out of our mind.
    There was one man.
    He said, we are going to Holland.
    Why don't you come over?
    And we will find work for you also.
    And they didn't come out any more.
    They went to Holland.
    But when we said, at that time, we go to Israel,
    people just came and said, you will be back very soon.
    You are just overreacting.
    And I wouldn't say that my father never was Zionist.
    It was just my father knew or had the feeling it will take
    quite a while, and we cannot afford it.
    I mean, we just couldn't afford it financially to stay on.
    It was impossible.
    And besides, my parents were just as unhappy
    as I was, maybe more about my--
    I have a younger brother.
    Our school and everything was actually almost--
    you know, came to an end.
    Right.
    So we had to leave.
    Did your parents consider coming to America at that time?
    Oh, yes.
    It was actually our first choice.
    And my mother had also some relatives here who, I guess,
    left after or before World War I as young children.
    But everybody in the whole family wrote to them,
    and they gave some affidavits.
    But when we wrote, it was already,
    we gave already so many.
    And we cannot take the responsibility.
    And it took us quite a while until we found this people.
    And we tried to get just out anywheres.
    And to Israel, we applied pretty early.
    And this was still, that time, Palestine, naturally.
    Palestine.
    And there were three possibilities for Jews
    to get in there from Germany.
    Either you had to have a trade, which father did not have,
    you had to be a farmer, which he was not,
    or you have to be a capitalist, which
    we were not either anymore.
    I mean, before, my parents were not rich,
    but we were pretty well-off.
    And so the question was how to get this money
    to get out because we were unable to sell the store.
    I was going to ask you.
    At that point after the boycott and in the next few years,
    did your father attempt to sell the store?
    Oh, sure.
    Immediately.
    Nobody came.
    And it took a few years.
    And then we were able to sell for a very, very low price,
    but we had to get out.
    And it was probably enough to get us out of Germany.
    I don't remember exactly the financial standing,
    but I only know that the 1,000 pounds were not
    available at the moment when we tried to get out.
    We didn't have-- sold the store yet.
    So we were lucky enough that we had one relative here
    in the United States already, a brother
    of my father, who deposited 1,000 pounds in a bank
    in Israel in our name.
    It was never our money because he helped many people
    to get out with the same money.
    Right.
    Yeah.
    But with that money there, we got a certificate,
    what they call at that time, an affidavit, to get into Israel.
    Now, when you went to Luxembourg,
    that was in the beginning of 1936.
    Did you go to relatives there?
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    You mentioned that you had a brother.
    Yes.
    Did you go alone, or--
    I went alone, yes.
    He still was in first or second grade.
    How did you react to 1936?
    You were 15.
    How did you react to leaving?
    Did you want to go or--
    Where to?
    To Luxembourg?
    I wanted to be away from the small town where I was.
    I was not crazy about going to Luxembourg
    for personal reasons, but I went anyway and made the best of it.
    I was not very happy there, but it was better than--
    I missed my parents tremendously.
    For many years, I was the only child.
    And then my brother came, and I was what they called [GERMAN]..
    And, yeah, it was not the way I wanted it to be,
    but it was better to be out.
    And it was, anyhow, for a few months.
    And I was called back.
    Went back.
    And we went to Israel.
    On the day that you left your home,
    you mentioned that some people came around to the back.
    Did any of your friends that you had gone to school with,
    either Jewish or non-Jewish, come to say goodbye?
    Oh, the Jewish children, naturally.
    Yes.
    I belonged at that time to a--
    this was the only really good thing.
    I belonged to a Jewish Zionist movement.
    And this was the only thing which we really
    enjoyed very much.
    And you forgot when you were there all your troubles.
    And they naturally, we-- in fact,
    I got a party at that time.
    And we left.
    And it was good things that happened.
    This was the Habonim that you belonged to?
    Yes, yeah.
    Do you ever remember discussions within the group
    about the situation in Germany?
    Oh, yes.
    Oh, yes.
    Sure, sure.
    We had also people coming from bigger cities
    to talk with us about it.
    And I was actually supposed to go to Youth Aliyah,
    but our visa came earlier than my going to Berlin
    for Youth Aliyah.
    So I went with my parents.
    And how did you get to Israel?
    Let me stop just for a moment.
    Did your father serve in the First World War?
    Yes.
    How did he feel towards Germany?
    My father was a super German.
    As a child looking at one's father,
    how do you think that the growing Nazi pressure changed
    him?
    It took him a long time to change.
    It was just for him almost unacceptable to be
    suddenly seen by other people as a non-German.
    He, in fact, it went so far--
    and as children we always were laughing about him in Israel.
    Father took his Eiserne Kreuz to Israel, yeah?
    And my brother put it on and marched around
    and sang German songs.
    That went over big in Israel.
    But I found it now, whether you believe it or not.
    My mother passed away last year, and we cleared the apartment
    here.
    And I found this here with a few letters from German government.
    Disgusting, absolutely, but he had.
    No, he changed completely later on when
    we were in Israel, yeah.
    No, but I meant really in those beginning years.
    In the beginning years, it was really--
    It was unacceptable to him.
    It was absolutely unacceptable, yeah.
    Did he think there was any chance
    that this wouldn't last long?
    It was probably hoping more than believing
    because we felt it so badly, this antisemitism, in our town.
    And he knew, also, what was taught in schools, you know,
    that this cannot go over very fast.
    I mean, what these kids at my age were taught in school
    must have gone deep in them.
    And they will carry it on to the next generation.
    I'm sure, certainly.
    I mean, even if, nowadays, they say the youth of Germany
    is better now, I'm sure there's still quite a lot of in them
    what their parents were taught.
    When your father-- when you all left Germany that day,
    how would you describe your feelings about leaving?
    My feelings were absolutely mixed.
    If I think today, something was not right with me
    that I still had bad feelings of leaving.
    On one hand, I was happy to be out of the Nazi mind,
    but Germany was probably--
    I was-- I loved that land.
    Because though I was very, very young, I loved German poetry.
    I still read it.
    I mean, this is the only thing I read in German, but I loved it.
    I was the best student in German and German history.
    And there was other things I was not so good, math, was--
    But it affected me deeply.
    It was something like a tremendous loss.
    So I was happy to be out.
    This is where this conflicts, tremendous conflicts.
    And you were part--
    [AUDIO OUT] we were, as I said, accepted and loved everything
    around us.
    And then the sudden, the very sudden, change must have felt
    were, many young people tremendous--
    That's hard.
    It's leaving home, you know?
    I mean--
    Yes, yeah.
    I remember that I cried when we left.
    And on the other hand, I was so happy to go out.
    Yeah.
    I don't know that a child watches their parents'
    reactions at such a time.
    But how did your parents feel?
    I know that they didn't talk at all
    until we were out of Germany.
    It was just--
    When you say they didn't talk--
    On the train, nobody talked.
    It was probably inner turmoil.
    Did they leave family behind?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    My mother had many sisters and brothers,
    and very few came out.
    A few came out, but the others were
    all in concentration camps.
    And--
    Do you remember going to--
    I don't know that you did.
    But did you go to say goodbye to some of these aunts and uncles
    before you left?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes, yes.
    We went.
    Do you remember a discussion of, well,
    urging them to find ways to emigrate?
    We didn't have to urge them.
    They all wanted to get out.
    They all wanted to get out.
    And this was also, I would say, very
    frustrating that we got later on letters from some relatives.
    You could have helped us to get out.
    You know, they still had in mind that my parents were once
    very well-off.
    And they were not so much.
    But they see you, with your money,
    you could have helped us.
    But it wasn't so.
    We didn't have it any more.
    Were you--
    But father probably was much too proud to say, you know,
    I'm at the end of the--
    Yeah.
    You were you only able to leave with the 10 Reichsmark?
    No.
    We were able to take--
    since we left early, we were able to take out
    furniture and the belongings, the household belongings.
    And I don't remember how much we were
    able to take out, a certain amount, but more than that.
    We were able to live in Israel for, I'd say,
    four years on the money we had.
    That's what I-- how did you get to Israel?
    Not much.
    You mentioned that you took the train to--
    Oh, yes.
    Yeah.
    No, actually, the first thing was that one Gentile man
    took us, picked us up early, early in the morning
    before the people got out.
    Not that we had-- we had a visa.
    We were free to go.
    We had all the papers.
    It was not like fleeing, but my father
    didn't want to have any commotion.
    Because it happened that one family who left before us,
    they all came to the house and screamed
    and say get rid of you or something like that.
    And to avoid that, there was one Gentile man.
    I am sure he risked quite a lot of things.
    He took us by car to the next city, larger city.
    And from there, we took the train to France.
    And then from there, from Marseilles, we went to Israel.
    By boat?
    By boat, yes.
    When you came to Israel--
    Yeah.
    --how did you find Israel?
    As a young girl, did you know anybody in Israel
    to go to the first--
    Very few, very few people, no, not that I know.
    What happened to you those first few days
    when you got off the boat?
    My uncle helped us.
    He had an address where we went to, strange people.
    And they had what they call pensione.
    We had one room for the four of us.
    And then we knew it was much more money
    that we could afford.
    And we rented a room in a rooming house, all four of us,
    again, in one room.
    If people say now, you cannot--
    you know, one has to have space.
    So we needed space, too, believe me.
    But it wasn't there.
    And I was the first one who worked.
    How did you get a job?
    You were at this time 15?
    15.
    How did you get a job?
    How did I get a job?
    There was a man in the same place living where we were.
    He was a lawyer, and he worked as a waiter.
    He was a lawyer in Germany?
    In Germany, right.
    He worked as a waiter in the cafe house in Haifa.
    And he came to my mother and said,
    I have a job for you in the kitchen.
    And I nearly jumped at his throat.
    My mother working in the kitchen?
    I take it.
    And my mother said, no, you're too young.
    And I went.
    Next morning, I was in that kitchen.
    And it was very, very hard work.
    And I was this skinny little thing.
    And I was very upset with everything which was told--
    well, people told me what to do.
    I had not the slightest idea how to do it,
    and he screamed at me.
    And it was very, very unpleasant.
    But I stayed until I got something better.
    Did you know either English or Hebrew?
    A little bit, a little bit, what I learned in school and that
    was all.
    How did you make yourself understood?
    They all spoke German.
    Oh, they did speak--
    Unfortunately.
    I would say, unfortunately, yes.
    This was a German place.
    And they took tremendous advantage of us, unbelievable.
    And what made me--
    I'm not sure-- let's say what was hard for me to understand
    when I came to Israel-- because I was in the Zionist movement.
    I was looking forward to come to this land
    and be free and have the same rights
    and not be looked down as a Jew, which
    is fantastic, but suddenly to be looked down as a German.
    It was very hard to accept.
    You know, we came--
    I had to because of the job, to become
    a member of the Histadrut
    Yes.
    And everybody got a job, but the German Jews.
    This was also, again, a conflict,
    which I was absolutely unable to understand.
    Was this as a result of the fact that most Israelis at the time
    were of Eastern European background?
    Yes.
    Right.
    I mean, they were earlier.
    There is no question about it that they asked sometimes,
    did you come from Germany out of Zionism or out of Germany?
    And we came out of Germany.
    And there's no question about it.
    I mean, not that there were no German Zionists,
    but we were not.
    But this I did not know.
    I mean, I wanted to come to Israel.
    I was looking forward to live there happily and forget
    about everything.
    But to be looked down then again as a German Jew
    and not finding a job, which other people who
    were less time in the [INAUDIBLE]
    made me very unhappy.
    Sure.
    How did they show this anti-German Jewish feeling?
    Oh, you were the Yekkes.
    Wherever we-- you know, the word Yekkes.
    I don't know whether you--
    Yes.
    --heard it.
    But if you heard--
    they didn't tell you openly.
    No, they didn't do that.
    But it was hard as a German Jew to--
    besides our knowledge of Hebrew or even
    our being able to speak Hebrew as well as the others
    was not good.
    I mean--
    And also, no Yiddish.
    No Yiddish.
    Which I'm sure was--
    Right, was beside.
    All right, Yiddish, we had our next door
    neighbors were Yiddish speaking people.
    And they were very, very helpful.
    They came over immediately and helped us in many things.
    So my parents spoke German with them, and they spoke Yiddish.
    And they understood each other--
    They could, yeah.
    --very well.
    And they were really very, very good friends.
    Were you at all given the option of going to school in Israel?
    I would say probably I was given the option,
    but I had such a sense of responsibility, which probably,
    if I think back now, was overdone on my part.
    My father developed, in Germany, a heart trouble
    and was unable for quite a while to work in Israel.
    And mother, also, I mean, mother worked.
    My mother worked very, very hard in the household
    and in other people's household.
    And I did.
    And I did everything what's--
    But I should have gone to school.
    And somehow, if I would have been a fighter,
    I would have probably would have gone back to school some time.
    What I did, I took courses here and there.
    But they were more on the cultural thing
    than what one learns in school.
    I mean, I missed out there.
    You mentioned anybody actually who went to Israel
    or who even goes to Israel now kind of was caught up
    in the idealism, you know, of Israel especially
    in the beginning.
    Yes.
    No matter what the condition of Israel was,
    I'm sure it didn't come up to the idealistic view.
    How did you feel about that?
    No my expectations, right.
    I expected much more.
    I expected it much easier.
    I would say probably, if I would have
    gone into a kibbutz away from home,
    I would have adjusted better.
    So I was immediately where I was only 15 years
    in the [INAUDIBLE] of work and, you know,
    worrying about whether I'd be paid.
    And you know, I'm the one who is the strongest.
    My brother was only seven years old when he came here.
    Right.
    He went to school in Israel?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    And also, then my brother studied.
    And I had to help, or I had felt I happy to help.
    You mentioned also that your mother was working.
    Yeah.
    What kind of employment was she able to get?
    Only household, taking care of children and so on,
    which I did for quite a while, too.
    I was just going to--
    It was just actually the only jobs
    which were available if you didn't
    speak the language fluently.
    Later on, I worked in different places, but it was office work.
    And at the same time, we had also help.
    It was a factory, and I worked in the office there.
    But we had to help all over the place, you know?
    But--
    Were you ever able to get any help from any organizations?
    No, I didn't.
    I don't think I ever asked for help from an organization.
    We were able always to manage all together, to survive.
    Yeah.
    Your intention was to make a life for yourselves in Israel.
    Yeah, right.
    Was there at the time--
    it was a British mandate.
    Yes.
    When the war broke out, how did the outbreak of the war
    affect you?
    I guess like everybody else.
    We were in the--
    really we were Israelis.
    It wasn't-- you couldn't call it Israelis.
    We were affected by everything.
    Whether my life was ideal or not personally,
    we lived through so many things there,
    the riots between Arabs and Jews,
    between the Jews and the British.
    And our hearts were pleading for all the things
    which happened there.
    We were in it whether we personally had our struggles.
    We lived there.
    You lived the life of--
    you know, you lead with this every Jew had
    to suffer [INAUDIBLE].
    But what was the question?
    Was there a big German-Jewish refugee community
    there as the years went by?
    Oh, yes.
    Yeah.
    We were quite a lot of German-Jews.
    And we lived in Haifa.
    And did you associate mostly with them?
    Mostly, yes.
    But I had other friends, too.
    Yes, I did.
    It was not-- let's say Western European, not
    absolutely German.
    German, yeah.
    No, I had friends from all the way and--
    But people who had come--
    yeah.
    --from Austria, Czechoslovakia, mainly Western European
    or middle European.
    When you mentioned before the trouble with the Arabs,
    did that ever personally affect you?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    I lost very, very good friends, young people.
    When was that?
    It was before World War II.
    They were caught.
    They built a new kibbutz.
    And the Arabs built a barrier.
    And well, I think there were 15 they killed.
    And two of them were friends of mine.
    It affected me like everybody else.
    Sure.
    I mean, it was nothing personal, but so many things happened.
    Then World War II came.
    And we had very hard times, but more or less everybody
    was in the same boat.
    Nowadays, I have a friend here.
    We lived in the same building in Haifa.
    And we were good friends in there,
    but we are better friends here, you know.
    And when we look back, sometimes we joke about it.
    We have fun thinking back at these times.
    I said, we took these things very, very hard.
    But now, it's a long time back.
    And--
    I was just going to say.
    That's the perspective of time.
    Right.
    And compared to certain things we go through now in our lives,
    maybe it was nothing, but still.
    What was morale like in Israel at that time?
    High, very high morale.
    Were there many people who were involved in rescue efforts
    that you knew in Europe?
    Rescue efforts?
    Let's say, they were not my immediate friends directly
    in Haifa, the city.
    But I know people who I know from years back from Germany
    who were in rescue groups.
    But they were most of them were lived in kibbutzim.
    Yeah, they were the ones who really did things.
    For your parents, who were older at the time,
    older than a young person, was it difficult
    for them to make the adjustment to Israel?
    For my father, yes.
    For my mother, my mother was adjusted to everything in life
    as most women do better than men, no question about it.
    I mean, I know of so many people,
    especially, let's say, the German academically trained
    man, they really didn't do anything really to--
    should we--
    How did your father--
    you mentioned that he didn't adjust as well as your mother.
    What things did you see that make you think that?
    I would say it was not only my father.
    It was all the men at this age-- which let's say that father was
    around 50 when he came there--
    who were not used to that.
    How can one do, you know?
    One is not used to dry the dishes in the house or whatever
    if one is a doctor or whatever.
    On the other hand, there were quite a lot of them
    who built villages.
    And some of the most beautiful villages
    in Israel were built by Dutch [? academia, ?] you know?
    There were jokes about it.
    And they build it up.
    And they built the houses themselves from the bucket.
    They [INAUDIBLE] bucket from one hand to the next one.
    And we said, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    You know, it's-- but Father and all his friends,
    the people I knew, it took them longer, just longer, to adjust.
    He adjusted, father adjusted to life in Israel quite well,
    but it took him longer than the women.
    We went out immediately to work.
    The men usually waited for the opportunity
    to do the same thing they did once in Europe,
    which was impossible.
    That's right.
    It wasn't possible.
    But you know, in Europe, a big part of one's standing
    was based on occupation.
    Yes, for sure.
    And this was all taken away.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    And that's really what I'm asking
    in terms of was his morale--
    was he depressed over that?
    He was very depressed, yes.
    And I would say his heart trouble
    he had suffered in Israel from was affected by that.
    What shall I do?
    What will people think if I do this and that, which Herr so
    and so did not do in Germany?
    But he did.
    Later on, he did quite a lot of hard work,
    and just this was harder for him to accept.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    When did you come to the decision
    that you were not going to stay in Israel?
    It was actually my father who didn't--
    I wouldn't say he pushed me, but his heart
    was so deeply in it to see his brothers and sisters again
    who lived all here in the United States.
    You see, they were, as I told you, Saarlander,
    and were able to leave Luxembourg where they were,
    made a stopover.
    And then they went to--
    not to Spain, to--
    They may have gone over France through Spain and Portugal.
    Portugal, they lived in Portugal for a while.
    From there, they went to the United States.
    And he wanted very much to see the family again.
    And again, I said, you know, I'm the youngest.
    I'm not the youngest.
    My brother was the youngest, but he
    was in the middle of studies.
    Maybe I saw it, also, as an adventure,
    to see something different.
    And I said I'd go, but I will come back.
    I will see how I like it there, and maybe you can come over.
    I bring you over and make money.
    And--
    When was this?
    I left Israel, '47.
    What was the condition in Israel like in 1947?
    When I left?
    Yeah.
    It was very, very hard.
    Otherwise, I probably would have refused
    to go because I got adjusted more or less to life in Israel.
    And I had friends.
    But economically, it was very, very hard.
    I would say this was probably the reason why I gave
    in and said, OK, I'm going.
    But if I don't like it, I'll come back.
    Yeah.
    For a person living in Israel at the end of the war,
    what kind of things did you see as far as--
    at the end of the war, all these people who had been survivors
    were coming to Israel.
    [BOTH TALKING]
    How did that-- can you describe that a little bit?
    Can I describe?
    You saw the misery they were in.
    I saw some--
    I had one experience which affected me personally,
    also, very much because I saw it with my eyes.
    This was the going down of the Patria,
    which I saw, really saw.
    Haifa is built on a hill.
    And I had that time a job pretty high up on the mountain.
    And I took care of two children at that time.
    And the mother of the children didn't see very well.
    And so we went.
    You could look down at the harbor in Haifa.
    And we knew there was the Patria.
    I don't know whether you know the story of the Patria.
    I'm sure you do.
    We knew that some--
    It was illegal, right?
    Illegal shipload?
    Yes.
    Right.
    The ship was there.
    And there were some--
    illegal ships were coming in.
    And they loaded the people on the Patria
    to bring them back to Cyprus.
    It was not-- there were other ships.
    They were going back to Europe, but here it was to Cyprus.
    And the Irgun wanted to delay the departure of the ship.
    And unfortunately, they blew out the whole wall of the ship
    instead of making just a small hole, right,
    what they intended to do.
    And this woman said to me, look, Trude, down there.
    Do you think this ship is not standing straight?
    And I looked.
    I said, my god, you know?
    And we took the binoculars.
    And we saw.
    The ship was very fast, was 20 minutes.
    The ship was underwater.
    And I had friends I knew they were on the ship.
    We know beforehand that they would come.
    And it was-- and we visited later on some of the survivors
    there.
    In fact, some are here now in the United States.
    And others, a very good friend of mine, she's
    in kibbutz in Israel.
    And this was one of the most horrible things.
    But we went to the beaches there.
    And they looked in the morning for people who arrived,
    you know?
    And we were called by Haganah or whatever organization you
    belong to for clothing there.
    And it was actually astonishing how well most of them adjusted,
    of these people.
    Well, after what they had been through--
    Right.
    I always feel, the more people went through, the easier
    was the adjustment later on.
    And as I said before, we went actually
    through very little personal.
    We didn't go to concentration camps,
    and nothing happened to our parents.
    And still, we did not adjust as well
    as some of the people who went through much worse.
    Did you belong to any organizations,
    like Haganah or Irgun or--
    Haganah-- a very short time only, you know.
    I don't know which--
    I think I was maybe one year or so.
    We were called in for certain trainings,
    and then they dropped it.
    And it was nothing outstanding in my mind
    that I went through there.
    When you came here in 1947, did you
    stay permanently at that point?
    I came as a visitor, as an immigrant because I was
    told at that time it is better.
    You always can go back anyway.
    But if you are as a visitor--
    and it makes it very hard to stay here in case
    you would like to stay here.
    And I came as an immigrant.
    And after a few days, I said, in one year,
    I will be back in Israel.
    But it didn't turn out this way.
    When you came here, did your relatives meet you at the boat?
    Yes.
    How did you earn a living in New York in the first few weeks?
    I took the job with a newborn baby.
    I was not a baby nurse, but I worked for many years
    as a, let's say, untrained baby nurse.
    But I did very nicely with--
    That makes you a trained baby nurse.
    Yes.
    How did you get this job?
    I got the job through either [INAUDIBLE] or [? Selfhelp. ?]
    I'm not sure anymore.
    They gave me two addresses.
    And the first one I came to, they said,
    you can come tomorrow.
    Where did you live?
    I lived for quite a while with my relatives,
    and then I got myself a room.
    When you left Israel, you mentioned that your intention
    was to go back.
    Did your parents intend to come here?
    My father wanted very much to come here not because he
    didn't like it in Israel.
    He wanted to see his family again.
    His family.
    They were a very close-knit family.
    And I would have had to work a few years,
    then I would be able to send them the money to come out.
    And after three years, my father passed away.
    In Israel?
    Yeah.
    So that was that.
    And did your mother come to the United States?
    Much later, much later, she came here in--
    1959 or 1960 she came here.
    When you left Israel, after all that
    you had gone through and moving around at a very early age,
    were you very lonely?
    Here?
    Yes.
    In the beginning, yes.
    Yeah.
    I visited millions of people whose names were still
    in my book.
    But with all the people around me, I was lonely, very lonely.
    And so it took her about, let's say, two years.
    And then I wasn't lonely anymore.
    Well, let's put it this way.
    How did you overcome the loneliness?
    Did you join any organizations or--
    No, I had personal friends.
    Did you live in Washington Heights when you came?
    Yeah, yeah.
    Yeah.
    You were of a dating age, I guess.
    Yes.
    Right.
    How did you meet eligible men?
    How did I meet them?
    Or even girlfriends?
    Through friends, probably.
    I went sometimes, not to often, to the New World Club.
    They had, what they call at that time, [GERMAN]..
    I was actually too young for them.
    They were, in my opinion, very old men.
    They are at least 40 years.
    After having been in Israel where
    you had adjusted to a more mixed group of Jews
    from all origins--
    Yes.
    --when you came here, did you still associate mostly
    with German-Jews?
    Yes, I was more or less forced to it, and I didn't like it.
    I absolutely disliked it very much.
    I felt it's like ghetto.
    I said Washington Heights is a horrible place to live.
    I just found it almost impossible
    until I had a boyfriend or so and it was more pleasant.
    But, otherwise, I still feel I wished
    I didn't have to live here.
    But on the other hand, you know, I was in different places,
    smaller towns.
    And that's not right, not good for immigrants to--
    almost impossible to make a living or whatever, right?
    But--
    --the types of jobs that you have here?
    Until we got married, I always worked here.
    As a baby nurse?
    Mm-hmm.
    Baby nurse.
    Later on, I stayed with some people,
    their children were no babies anymore.
    They were bigger children, and I stayed with them
    because they were awfully nice to me.
    And it was actually my home.
    It was my home.
    I'm still very close with these people I stayed for a few years
    with.
    Uh-huh.
    I feel now it was wrong to do it,
    because I never went into business life et cetera.
    No, I never had the opportunity I could have had.
    Probably it was the easy way out.
    Well, it was a possibility at that time.
    Sure.
    Sure.
    I accuse myself of that now.
    But--
    English was at that point no problem anymore,
    was it, when you came here?
    Oh, in Israel we didn't speak English.
    You spoke only Hebrew.
    Some Hebrew and German.
    But-- but English, I learned English.
    I took two courses in Israel before I left.
    This was actually all my knowledge I had.
    I started English in school in Germany, but very, very short
    time.
    We had French, and maybe I had half a year.
    I stopped school so young that there was probably nothing
    left of that.
    And my English was pretty poor when I came here,
    but I could make out.
    I mean, the people--
    I came to-- there was a newborn baby.
    There was no necessity.
    But she said, you just go out.
    She spoke only English to me, though she was from Germany.
    And as if she wouldn't understand a word of German.
    And that was very good.
    And she told me, you go down with the baby at the drive.
    You sit down with most--
    stay with American ladies.
    They will teach you.
    They will correct you.
    And it helped tremendously.
    I would say after a year I spoke quite well.
    I mean, my accent is still here, but-- but I
    was able to make out very easily with English.
    I went to lectures.
    She was fantastic, this woman.
    Told me go there and go there, and listen to the radio.
    Don't turn on the radio in German--
    only English, only the news, only this and that.
    And it was easy.
    Well, I would say I had, in this respect,
    very easy adjustment here what language concerns.
    What do you think was the greatest adjustment
    that you had to make here?
    Hmm.
    You have to feel really at home.
    It was-- New York's such a big city, and there are lots--
    it took-- what language concerned,
    I said it was an easy adjustment,
    but otherwise to make friends, which
    was much easier in Israel.
    Much, much easier.
    Why do you think that was so?
    No idea.
    Probably because we were--
    first of all, we were much more open minded than American--
    the German Jew or the American Jew is.
    I think the people here are much more selfish than over there.
    Even nowadays, where people have all nice apartments,
    if it's not six rooms, at least we have three or four rooms.
    And I hear still, how can we have visitors?
    We only have-- we always have room here.
    We always make room, and that's me.
    Because whenever I went in Israel places,
    these people had just as little room as we had at home.
    But you made room for everybody.
    We had in Haifa--
    my parents, we had a three room apartment, small rooms.
    But we were very happy.
    But we had two terraces, which have to be built in Haifa.
    If there was not enough room on the floor, in the bedroom,
    or whatever we call it, both were bedrooms and living rooms
    sometimes, they slept-- some people slept on the terrace.
    And you had enough to eat.
    If you had very little, you stretched it.
    You made it.
    You stretched it.
    And this I found here, at the beginning,
    especially hard to accept that-- not to me.
    To me, everybody was very nice.
    But thinking of people, they are selfishness.
    And this I almost couldn't accept.
    And therefore I would have liked to go back.
    To Israel.
    Yes.
    Yeah, because, honestly, this being together constantly
    was a journey.
    I don't know whether the German Jew at that time
    was not accepted by others, but they stuck together,
    which I thought was wrong.
    Mm-hmm.
    You had the experience of Israel.
    Yes.
    Which was--
    Yes, much-- we are--
    I mean, just talking about the building where we lived,
    and it was a small house.
    Maybe there were 12, 14 apartments.
    And there were people from all countries, you know.
    And we were friendly with all of them.
    Do you feel yourself today more a part
    of the American mainstream or more part
    of the German-Jewish community in New York?
    No.
    Now, I'm probably more of the German-Jewish, at my age now.
    Yeah.
    Because I-- I didn't get into the other--
    other stream.
    But I would have liked to, but now I'm
    married to a man from also German-Jewish background.
    And I'm hoping my son will have it different.
    He will.
    He will, no question about it.
    In what sense do you hope your son will have it different?
    Because I think it's absolutely ridiculous to live in a land
    and stick together with your own people only.
    Yeah.
    Sure, he has a background, and he said--
    very often, he says to me, I'm very
    glad I have that background, because culturally I
    have now the European and also the American.
    He is the only one of his whole group
    of people who goes to classical concerts, which come from us--
    the only child who we took him very early in life to a museum
    and gave him this of, let's say, what was
    our German-Jewish background.
    And he said this is an advantage.
    But still, he-- his group of people, his friends,
    they are from different-- different cultures.
    Yeah.
    I was going to ask you that.
    In the early years, what did you do with any free time
    that you had?
    Here?
    Here.
    Oh, in the beginning, I went very often
    to lectures and to widen my little horizon.
    Because I really-- I missed out in school so much,
    and here-- and here you have the opportunity to learn.
    And I was very often at the Y on 92nd Street,
    and you know, when I wasn't tied down yet.
    And I wasn't bored here.
    I was not bored.
    I was at times lonely, but you had things to do.
    Did your parents find that difficult in Israel,
    coming from--
    did they participate in the cultural events in Wittlich?
    You know, whatever culture--
    In German?
    Yeah.
    In Germany, you mean?
    Yes.
    They did?
    They did?
    Yeah.
    Did they find that difficult when they went to Israel?
    Were they able to participate to the same degree?
    No.
    No, they were not.
    Did they find that hard?
    Yes, right.
    Especially language-wise.
    Yeah.
    I mean, if they went to a theater
    and they didn't understand half of it.
    That's right.
    My Hebrew was not good either, unfortunately.
    But I was able to, you know.
    Yeah.
    But my brother, he was fantastic.
    He's still-- I would say it's still his best language.
    Oh.
    Well, he was educated in Israel.
    Yes, yes.
    Right.
    Yes.
    So different.
    I asked your husband this, too.
    Have you ever been back to Germany?
    We were back.
    Four years back, we were in Europe.
    My husband probably told you that.
    And he decided immediately not to enter Germany.
    Absolutely no.
    And I wasn't 100% sure.
    I had a friend who lives directly
    over the border in Strasbourg, which
    is an hour from the town where I was born in Germany.
    And they go every year once to Germany
    when she has the Yahrzeit for her father.
    And she wrote me that time.
    I wrote her we come to Europe.
    That was the first time I saw her since 1935,
    because they left earlier.
    We were children.
    We still correspond.
    Every two or three months, I get a letter from her.
    In fact, they're coming soon to the United States to visit.
    So I said I make sure we will see them.
    We were in Switzerland.
    We were in France.
    And we were in Switzerland, Italy,
    and my husband wanted very, very much
    to go to Austria, which the idea just killed me.
    I don't know why.
    And he wanted to go to Innsbruck where he spent vacation
    when he was a child.
    And whether you believe it or not,
    Innsbruck made me physically sick.
    And there was one thing-- he laughs still now
    when we talk about it.
    It was the clothing of the young people.
    I don't know whether this is Austrian or Bavarian dresses,
    you know, dirndlkleider.
    Yeah.
    And the knitted jacket, which in Germany, in my class
    the children wore it for that celebration.
    They called it Berchtesgadene [? Jackchen. ?]
    And when we entered Innsbruck, the first thing I saw that.
    And then the hotel was just as unpleasant as I had it
    in my memory that Germany was.
    And in the evening, he called me down.
    He was downstairs.
    I still was dressing upstairs.
    Come down.
    They are dancing down here.
    And on the stage, there is--
    they were-- to me, they were nothing like the Nazis.
    You know, these were--
    actually, this is an Austrian tradition.
    It probably has nothing to do with Nazis at all, right?
    But to me, this was the memories, the clothing
    of these people, the dancing.
    And I nearly threw up.
    I say, I'm sorry.
    I cannot stay down here.
    And he said, das hat überhaupt nichts--
    this has nothing to do with Nazi Germany.
    But to me--
    But to you.
    To me, it was.
    And I said, let's get out of here.
    We had anyhow only planned to stay one night and a day.
    And he had to show me what--
    What he remembered.
    He was a child.
    He had memories.
    He had to see what--
    I forgot what it was, but he enjoyed seeing it again.
    And I went along naturally.
    But then he said to Germany, no.
    And then my girlfriend said, listen.
    I postponed this for until you come.
    And we will go over just for one day.
    And I have two relatives there, buried.
    And I said, OK, I'm coming along.
    My feelings were very, very mixed.
    But I felt, what can happen one day?
    Maybe I tell them turn immediately over, go home.
    And then it happened that my girlfriend had a very, very
    serious operation just a few weeks before we came,
    and she was unable to travel.
    And I had already written to this--
    these people who took us out of Germany that time.
    This young Gentile man.
    Young Gentile man, his wife.
    He worked for my father.
    And she worked in our house.
    So-- so I called them from there, from Strasbourg.
    And she said, I'm really very hurt if you don't come.
    And I really felt here there's one person I
    would like to say thank you to.
    And I went by myself.
    Fred went home by plane.
    We-- anyhow, we had-- we came different planes because it
    was our son's wish, we should not go on one plane with a kid
    there.
    So I went over to Germany, and I was two days there.
    And I was, let's say, two days too much.
    Did you go to--
    The people were very nice.
    No question about it.
    They tried very hard to be.
    They couldn't have been any nicer.
    Did you go to your home?
    I couldn't.
    I was standing in front of this house.
    And this woman said to me, willst du reingehen?
    I know the people.
    They know that you are here.
    I couldn't.
    I couldn't.
    I just was standing there looking,
    and my heart started beating.
    And then we went to our cemetery, which was partly
    all right and probably thrown down the stones,
    but they say it was bad weather.
    And then I went to the synagogue,
    which was still in a ruin.
    They built it up now for a cultural center.
    Mm-hmm.
    Just the other--
    It was in a ruin from Kristallnacht or from--
    Yes, Kristallnacht.
    We were not there anymore, but it still was in ruins.
    I went by houses all by myself.
    I said to this woman, let me go by myself.
    Yeah.
    I want to go through the city the way I remember.
    First of all, it's not anymore as you remembered it.
    It's a town, a big, big--
    it's not a big city, but it's more city-like than the time
    when I was there.
    I went through the streets as I had remembered them.
    I mean, I found everything I wanted to see.
    And there I remembered all these people who I knew,
    and they were strange faces, and nobody knew me.
    I didn't even want to see them.
    Yeah.
    Right?
    And I came--
    Did you-- did you come in contact?
    Did you have any contact with them at all?
    One-- one girl came to see me, one woman.
    A woman?
    She was one of the girls in my school.
    She talked with me.
    How did you feel about--
    Nothing left anymore.
    Just nothing.
    You know, it just left me very cold, and probably her, too.
    I know she heard that I was there, and she came.
    And it was probably nice, and--
    Was the conversation about what happened ever opened up?
    Or--
    I went with this woman in one store.
    And he said to me--
    this woman said to her, this is former Trude [? Wolf. ?]
    Remember her?
    And he said, oh, yeah, sure.
    So his wife happened to be one of my classmates.
    And he called her immediately.
    He came down, and she was very pleasant.
    And then I had a very interesting conversation
    with a man who seemed to be very, very polite.
    And he asked about some Jewish people who came out alive.
    And he did not want to speak about the things which
    happened there.
    He only said, you know, we were all in the Hitlerjugend,
    as you know.
    It was so much fun.
    You must understand this.
    It was something like an apology.
    Yeah.
    You must understand this was nothing
    to do with Jewish people.
    So it was so nice to march, and to sing, and have campfires,
    and they're very appealing to young people.
    But we didn't know what it led to, that it led us into a war
    where we lost thousands and thousands of our people.
    There's no mention of Jews, you know?
    And I said, and how about the people we lost?
    Six million.
    She said, yeah, unfortunately.
    But he came back again about the war.
    Hitler brought us, Germany, into that war.
    And I was so disgusted with that.
    He said, why don't-- why don't you come in in the evening?
    I said, no, I'm leaving tomorrow morning.
    And that was all I could swallow.
    Yeah.
    How do you feel about the concept of Wiedergutmachung?
    My parents accepted it.
    I have-- I have no part of it because I didn't get anything.
    I was much too young.
    I would say it helped my mother.
    She, on the other hand, always called it also blood money,
    and--
    but she accepted it because especially she did not get it
    when she was in Israel still.
    Very, very small amount.
    And until it came so far she came to the United States,
    it helped her.
    And I have the feeling they owed us something,
    but I would have had mixed feelings, too, about it.
    My husband did not want to have any part of it.
    And when we got married, I said, don't be stupid.
    Take it.
    I will say I was not 100% true to my own feelings, you know,
    because how can money make good if you lose your parents as you
    did, right?
    But on the other hand, they took everything away they had.
    I was just going to say, in your mother's case.
    It was her only income here.
    Yeah.
    How did your mother feel about coming here after Israel?
    Mother came here after our son was born.
    I went over to Israel to see my mother and took the baby along.
    And that made her come.
    Before she said absolutely.
    Now she has nothing to do in the United States.
    She has her friends here.
    And it was a big decision on both parts,
    on my own part of my husband's part and my mother,
    too, because I didn't know how she can adjust here.
    She refused that time to live with us.
    She wants to be on her own.
    She always was a very strong woman.
    And she said she wants that, even with one room only.
    But she wants to be on her own.
    We wanted to get a larger apartment
    and have her live with us.
    My husband would have gotten with her on very well.
    I mean, no question about it.
    She was a very easy-going person.
    But she-- no, no.
    She wanted to be on her own.
    Maybe on the long run it was better.
    But it was not easy for her.
    No.
    She missed her friends so much.
    And--
    How old was when she came here?
    Mother died in 1936.
    She was 81.
    She was about 69 when she came here.
    And at this age it's not easy.
    No, it's not easy.
    She had all her friends, the whole street.
    She knew everybody.
    It was a small street where we lived,
    and she had so many good, good friends.
    You know, when I was there visiting, I said,
    dear god, how everybody came, all her friends came to see me.
    You know, it was fantastic.
    And here it took quite a while, but she adjusted.
    As she had adjusted in Israel, she
    adjusted fantastically here.
    What do you think helped her adjust here the most?
    That we were here.
    That we were here.
    You know, she was alone there at that time in Israel.
    My brother didn't live there anymore either, so she--
    I felt, I was more worried constantly
    what is going on over there.
    Is she well?
    Is she not well?
    And I felt it's much better if she's here,
    that I could look after her.
    She lived in the building next to ours.
    That was-- that made it the--
    have you ever told this story to your son?
    Oh, yes.
    He knows.
    Oh, yes.
    I mean, I might have not gone into every detail,
    But yes, he knows more or less my feelings about it.
    Is he interested in the story, both your husband's and yours?
    Yes, yeah.
    Oh, yes.
    Yeah, yeah.
    In looking back on the whole set of circumstances,
    what do you think affected you most of that Nazi period?
    A hard question.
    I think, very hard.
    The insecurity and fear.
    I would say that, as I said.
    In what way--
    I don't know that one is ever able to come to this,
    but in what way do you think that had a lasting effect?
    It was probably so deep, so-- so--
    yeah.
    Especially, the fear for my father.
    This was something I just couldn't forget.
    The little, little, very little very little events,
    you know, that they come back to you if you see a film.
    I remember we saw a film once.
    I was not even in New York.
    It's something that was made in Czechoslovakia.
    Oh, "Shop on Main Street"?
    - "Shop on Main Street."
    You know, there was one time when the old man--
    the barber wrapped his things, put them away--
    I don't know whether you remember that--
    hoping that someday he will be able to unpack it again.
    It reminds me so much of my father, too.
    Yeah.
    And I remember we were in that film, was on vacation
    somewhere.
    It was not in New York.
    And people took us.
    We don't have a car.
    And on the way back, I started to cry.
    And we had such a good time talking.
    And they'd look, what happened?
    What?
    I couldn't say why I cried.
    My husband knew why I was crying so,
    but certain things bring back thoughts, the memories.
    It can be something other people wouldn't even know.
    How do you-- speaking of fear and insecurity,
    how do you feel about people who are in very exposed positions
    and successful, like Kissinger or any Jews who--
    Javits?
    I don't have the feeling that most American people have.
    You see, I was more--
    more or less a lefter in Israel.
    And my galut thinking is gone.
    We are people like everybody else.
    And we make-- we have good Jews and bad Jews.
    And I'm not afraid because somebody is a Jew
    and gets a high position.
    If he is decent, so let's say I think
    Kissinger is a decent man.
    I don't agree with everything he said and did.
    Yeah.
    But I was not afraid that his being a Jew
    would bring bad luck to us or to Israel.
    I mean, he was opposed in Israel.
    Yeah.
    By many people because he is a Jew.
    Maybe it's better that somebody else
    is there who is non-Jewish, but I never
    had this feeling that he as a Jew could bring harm.
    Do you think so?
    No.
    No.
    Good.
    But that's--
    Yeah, no.
    No, this is--

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Gertrud Wittner, born in Wittlich, Germany circa 1921, describes her education in Wittlich, where she attended Jewish and Catholic schools; the Jewish population in Wittlich; being friends with Jews and non-Jews; the changes in the relations with Gentiles after the Nazi rise to power; learning English and Hebrew in preparation for emigration; her parents sending her to Luxembourg in 1936 to live with relatives; her father’s shoes business and the effects of the anti-Jewish boycotts in 1933; her parents’ attempts to emigrate; her life in Luxembourg; going with her family to Palestine; getting a job in Haifa when she was 15 years old; being looked down upon as a German; having to become a member of the Histadrut; life in Palestine during the war; her parents’ adjustments to life there; leaving Israel in 1947 and going to the United States; her life in New York, NY; the differences she’s found between Israelis and Americans; and visiting Germany with her husband.
    Interviewee
    Gertrud Wittner
    Interviewer
    Rosalyn Manowitz
    Date
    interview:  1978 January 08

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 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
    Wittner, Gertrud.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Gertrud Wittner was conducted by Rosalyn Manowitz on January 8, 1978. Rosalyn Manowitz wrote an account of the experiences of survivors who were members of the Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation for distribution to its members. The interview was given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on October 13, 1993.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:17:51
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn510648

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