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Oral history interview with Margot Lawson

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1984.1.1.14 | RG Number: RG-50.157.0014

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    Oral history interview with Margot Lawson
    Transcript
    My name is Marsha French.
    Today, is September 16, 1984.
    I am here to interview Margot Lawson, who
    was a rescuer of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.
    And she is here in Washington, DC to participate in the Faith
    in Humankind conference.
    What is your complete name?
    Margot, M-A-R-G-O-T, Edith, E-D-I-T-H now Lawson.
    And where and when were you born?
    I was born April the 3rd, 1909, in Mannheim, Germany.
    What were your parents' complete names?
    Hans Scharf and Sofi, S-O-F-I, Scharf.
    What were their occupations?
    My father was a General Motors representative for Europe
    and also had big, big imports for, like, almonds and nuts, so
    for foodstuffs, for all the small stores
    and it was wagon, trains, and so forth.
    Did you have any brothers and sisters?
    Nobody.
    Were you married at the start of the war?
    At the start of the war?
    That was 1936.
    I was married, but I was divorced.
    I-- I don't quite know when the divorce was final.
    You had no children at the time?
    Yes, I had two children.
    Yeah, I was divorced.
    What were their ages?
    Three and six.
    The oldest one is Margit, G-I-T, Roz, R-O-Z, and the little one
    was Evelyn Roz.
    Did your family belong to any particular church?
    No, I belong-- or I did belong to the Catholic Church,
    but I must confess, I didn't go so much to church.
    I'm religious, but I don't believe
    you have to pray in church.
    That was around the time of the war?
    Yeah, it was around the time in 1933 already in Germany.
    I studied in various countries, and I was in Germany
    at that time, in Heidelberg.
    Was your family involved in politics in any way?
    No, no.
    Were you involved in politics?
    No, not at that time.
    Where were you living when the war began?
    In Holland.
    Could you describe the area and the people for us?
    Amsterdam.
    I was an inhabitant of 800,000 of which 100,000 were Jews.
    And after the war--
    that's interesting-- 10,000 came back.
    All the rest was killed.
    Did you or your family have any relationships with Jews
    prior to the war?
    Yes.
    Could you tell us a little bit about that?
    Well, I have a lot of Jewish friends.
    Matter of fact, my best friend was killed in Auschwitz.
    I have an awful lot of Jewish friends.
    And I don't mind what religion anybody
    has as long as I like them.
    Did your parents or your friends discuss
    among themselves what was happening to the Jews
    at the time?
    Yes.
    Could you tell us a little bit about that?
    Well, we discussed it a long time.
    They were persecuting Jews, and in Germany they
    were entering the houses, taking little babies,
    throwing them out of the window, pianos out of the window.
    There was a pogrom.
    You know what that is?
    Not "a"-- several pogroms.
    It was a terrible thing.
    My parents came later on from Berlin to Holland.
    But I was already there.
    It was-- I came to Berlin in 19--
    Amsterdam in 1936, before even.
    So you were speaking of your experiences
    when you were in Germany.
    Yes.
    Before you left for Amsterdam.
    Before I left.
    Yes, it was terrible.
    Hitler gave amnesty to a lot of I almost say crooks and good
    people, and they came in big [FRENCH] and big--
    you're French.
    You should know.
    And they yelled "heil Hitler" and all that stuff,
    and they smashed Jewish windows, Jewish stores.
    They put big swastikas on the doors, and they were just awful.
    Did you personally see these things happen?
    Yes, I did.
    Oh, yes.
    Was there one specific incident that you
    saw that first made you very aware of what was happening?
    That was in 1932 and '33, when we found out what was going
    on when Hindenburg had Hitler put in as--
    Adolf Schicklgruber as his successor.
    Hindenburg was so old.
    Was Hindenburg, wasn't it?
    Yeah.
    He was too old already.
    And he thought a young man, but there
    were these meetings in Munich, and all these little kids,
    and they were in our street.
    They had little brown suits on with knives in their belts.
    And we had a maid, a cook.
    And when her husband made a remark,
    it wasn't even over the government--
    about the government.
    It wasn't even about anything.
    Except they thought it was against Hitler.
    They go and betray.
    That's what they were taught--
    to immediately tell.
    When you didn't like your parents here,
    some of the people, they kill them, the parents.
    You have seen young men killing their father.
    They just went to the government and said,
    my father has done such and such, he's against Hitler.
    And they picked him up, and you have never heard
    another-- like in Argentina.
    You never heard another word about it.
    It was a terrible thing.
    So was the maid's husband-- was he turned in?
    Yeah, yeah.
    He said something.
    And in German, it was-- they had-- they lived in a room,
    and the room had only one toilet way back, and it was filthy.
    In German, you say instead of being dirty with what,
    they say "verschissen."
    It's a German word.
    You heard about it.
    And one of the little boys heard that he said "fascistic."
    And he said a "verschissene bande."
    And he said a "faschistic bande."
    it's pretty similar when you yell and speak loud.
    And he was taken away and killed.
    And that literally means?
    What he thought he said means?
    What?
    In English?
    In English?
    Dirty, filthy people making the toilet so dirty.
    That was the real meaning, but they understood fascistic
    instead of the other word.
    Were they Jewish?
    No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
    That had nothing to do with Jews.
    The Dutch too, they were all-- we are all inferior.
    It doesn't make any difference what religion you had,
    especially of course Jewish and Catholics.
    Because Hitler had to put it on somebody,
    whether it was Jews or anybody, and Catholics especially.
    Because I have a very, very good friend.
    He's an old father, and he worked with us because he--
    I can say that he sacrificed his entire life
    for the lepra, sick people, leprosy,
    and went to Suriname, which is a Dutch colony
    or was a Dutch colony.
    And he was there, and every 10 years the fathers
    who helped there-- he was very young at the time--
    got six months vacation.
    And they came in by boat back to the motherland.
    And he was just about to get ready,
    about six to eight weeks he had left
    to get ready to go back when the Germans fell into Holland.
    He couldn't go back.
    So we associated together.
    I was introduced to him or he to me, whatever the case was.
    And we worked together.
    He came into concentration camps.
    As a matter of fact, I have a little book here
    which I'm going to give you, and you will read about him.
    He was here to visit us three, and he wrote us
    a beautiful letter.
    And I can show it to you if you're interested.
    Fabulous.
    He never forgets his trip too.
    He's not too old.
    He can't even do anything anymore.
    This is some time ago.
    This began-- his helping began in what year that was?
    Well, the Germans were already in, and the war started in '41.
    And a little while later, somebody
    said there's an old father who can't go back.
    And so I was introduced.
    He came every Monday to us for dinner.
    And one Monday, he didn't show up.
    I found out he was in concentration camp.
    Now, he was not Jewish, of course.
    Did you ever see any children being beaten?
    Yes, yes.
    They pulled the people by the ear,
    whether it was children or fathers or mothers
    or whatever and people who were sick and in bed.
    They pulled them by the hair, and I saw it.
    This was in what country?
    Amsterdam.
    Amsterdam.
    Did you see anyone wearing a yellow star?
    Oh, yes.
    I got a yellow star with me.
    Did you see any signs saying not to do business with Jews?
    No.
    You see, when I was picked up one night,
    my father always gave me American dollars
    and thought I can buy everybody.
    I was picked up, and I couldn't buy the guy with dollars.
    And my father said, we had planted a man
    into the Gestapo, one of our Dutch detectives
    and said he had converted and blah, blah.
    And he said I could have bought the whole world but not
    this guy.
    He was so fanatically Nazi.
    You'll hear the whole story, and you can also read.
    When did you decide that you were going to help?
    Right away when somebody asks you for help,
    you don't even decide.
    You don't even think.
    Suppose I'm falling here.
    You run and pick me up, probably.
    And you don't think I'm deciding now to help her get up.
    Who first approached you?
    First the Dutch government.
    It came like this.
    When I came over, I went to the Hague,
    and I said, quasi, I had a letter from my friends
    who are friends of Franco.
    I can go any time to Spain I want.
    It's an open invitation.
    And it seems that there's a war, and the Germans will fall.
    Ah, ridiculous.
    This country has been a long time without war, neutral.
    And now why?
    And I said, well, in case you need anybody,
    I speak and write six languages, not just
    to help myself but perfectly.
    If you need anybody--
    And right after the war-- shortly
    after the war started in Holland, they came,
    we haven't got time to train anybody.
    Would you help us?
    And we would know you if something happens to me.
    I said, that's-- to me?
    That's a very good offer.
    I'll take it.
    So I helped and did whatever I was supposed to do.
    What was the purpose of that original pass?
    What do you mean, original pass?
    The pass that enabled you to go to Spain?
    Well, they gave me a--
    I speak very well German, better than any other language.
    German and French was my first language.
    And they gave me a German passport, which of course, was
    stolen by the break-in, but you can-- my picture was in,
    and everything was in.
    And when you need a stamp, you take a soft-boiled egg--
    I shouldn't tell that--
    and take off the skin, you know the hard skin?
    And make a German-- take any kind of a stamp
    and pull it then on the passport.
    I had a outstanding five-year German passport.
    What break-in are you speaking of when you
    say your passport was stolen?
    They broke into the German headquarters.
    There were lots of blank passports
    and a blank everything, which they stole.
    This was prior to your coming to Amsterdam?
    No, no.
    That was in Amsterdam.
    That was already when the Germans came, yeah.
    So that they could have some people in.
    There were so many-- so few people
    who spoke so perfectly with dialect and everything
    that they could do that too.
    For purposes of clarification, what years were you in Germany
    and when did you leave?
    Well, I was born in Germany and went to school.
    But when I was 15, or a little earlier,
    I went to Geneva to school, which
    French was my first language I knew better than anything else.
    And I passed.
    I looked at all the things because I
    wanted to see what I had.
    Everything was honors.
    And I said, boy, must I have worked and studied.
    And after that when I came home, my father said, what would you
    like to be?
    You got to learn something because money
    can be taken away from you but never
    what you have in your head.
    My father was very, very wealthy,
    and he wanted to spend the money.
    And I said, why?
    Why do I have to go?
    My friends learned tennis playing, tennis and they swim.
    Why have I got to go and learn?
    He said, go to England, learn English, and think about it.
    It so happened-- I can tell all that.
    You have enough tape.
    It so happened one morning, I ran to--
    I went to Pitmans College.
    I ran to the underground.
    And I bought I had already the penny.
    I bought the Beaverbrook paper, which was the daily express.
    And in there, I read a little article which is very--
    which helped me in my life.
    Balfour of Burleigh-- Burleigh-- that's an English peer--
    had a son.
    He said, father, what's diplomacy?
    And the father said, my son-- took him on his knee
    and said, my son, there was a sheikh in Arabia who
    dreamed he lost all his teeth.
    So he had a dervish come to interpret the dream.
    And the dervish said, well, rejoice,
    all your sons will die before you.
    So to this dervish, he had decapitated.
    He decapitated this dervish.
    And he had another dervish come and said, what does it mean?
    I dreamed I lost all my teeth.
    So the other dervish said, go down on your knees
    and thank the Almighty Allah that he
    will let you live so long that you will even
    surlive the lives of your son.
    This, my son, said Balfour of Burleigh, is diplomacy.
    And when I came home from England,
    my father says, well, have you decided?
    I said, yes, I want to go in diplomatic and diplomacy.
    And that's how my life was actually formed about this.
    How you sometimes have little things
    that gets you to do something.
    And I went to all these schools and all the languages,
    the history of the countries and everything,
    and therefore I speak Italian, and you know that.
    OK.
    So when your father said select something,
    and you selected diplomacy--
    Well, I selected actually first languages, and then you learn.
    Like in Italy, I learned--
    I studied all the religions besides the history
    of the country and everything.
    And then they opened a school from the League of Nations
    later on.
    And whoever wanted to come-- there
    were an awful lot of people.
    But for politics like in The Hague
    and the Palais-- the Peace, you see, they were only three,
    and only two passed.
    And I was one of the two.
    Because there you had to have a minimum of four languages.
    I had at the time Five So That was that.
    So you entered this school?
    I entered the school.
    What year?
    That was 1920 something.
    After I've come from all the-- you see, I studied in Italy.
    I studied in Spain and studied--
    and then later on, I went into that school
    from the League of Nations.
    It was in Mannheim, Germany, close to Heidelberg.
    And one of the professors said, you come to the French class,
    and I don't know-- the last minute
    I went to the English class.
    And he said, why didn't you come over to French?
    I said, I don't know.
    And you had to know everything about English history
    and literature and everything.
    So you studied until what year?
    '31 or '32.
    And what prompted you at that time?
    I got married.
    I met a guy.
    I wasn't really very much in love with,
    but you know how it goes sometimes.
    And you remained in Germany?
    No, it was in--
    I went to Holland with him now in 1936, '5, '6,
    around this time.
    When you first began to help people, Jews in Holland,
    were they friends?
    Were they strangers?
    They were friends and strangers, anybody who came along
    and I could do something.
    And I tell you something, Miss French,
    there's so little you can do, so very, very little
    that it is almost--
    I never speak about it, and you forget about it.
    And you come to Holland, the last time
    we were, there my husband spoke to my godfather,
    have you read the book A Bridge Too Far?
    And the guy says, we don't read these things.
    We don't want to talk about it.
    See?
    You were working with a group or were you working--
    Both.
    I was working with a group in a [? band ?] of [? illegal ?]
    workers.
    Suddenly when I woke up, I remembered
    where I have all that stuff.
    That's still the paper.
    And I got a letter paper from them.
    We printed a newspaper.
    We did all sorts of things.
    And here later on, they gave me that I'm a member.
    See?
    [DUTCH] that's Dutch, and means since 1949.
    I was earlier there, but they gave that out in 1949.
    Could you tell us the name of the organization then?
    Well, we didn't really name it because there was no reason
    to do anything of the sort, name it or have it officially known.
    We just were there.
    And when somebody came in and said,
    will you go tonight, blah, blah, and help, you were there.
    And that was it.
    What year was this?
    The Germans came in 1940 in May, and it
    was three months later that I was recruited
    and immediately went out to work.
    Also, I have a very penetrating voice.
    And when I was in jail, they have a heating system that
    goes down with little holes.
    Of course, that heating system--
    not yet, Hafa.
    That heating system, you can only talk through like this,
    and my voice carried.
    And also a friend of mine went down,
    and I went on her shoulders, and I spoke to the holes
    in the wall, which was a triple wall, not a double--
    a triple wall.
    Holes here, holes there, and holes there.
    And I spoke through to get contact with the men in prison.
    And I got everybody.
    [CHUCKLES] I was in a few months when Stalingrad fell,
    which is now Volgograd, see?
    So it must have been in 1942.
    That's right.
    When I was the first time in prison.
    Was most of your work done in prison, contacting?
    Nothing.
    No, I couldn't do a thing.
    I was just making propaganda as much
    as I could, and then was thrown in a separate cell
    because some man came in, and they
    wanted to hear the latest news.
    And I heard it.
    And somebody said, what about Stalingrad?
    And I said, they haven't got it, and they will never get it.
    And they said that Margot knows everything,
    but I didn't know that upstairs a German was listening.
    And he came down, and he asked, what's your name?
    And I said Edith Scharf.
    [INAUDIBLE] And then he slammed the door.
    You always had to get up when the German came and salute,
    because you are all inferior.
    You are inferior, whatever race you are if you
    you're not an Aryan German.
    You know what Aryan means?
    These are the Eurasian Genghis Khan's people
    and the European who have nothing to do with Jews,
    Arabs, or anybody in the whole world.
    But they are pure until the great great great great
    grandfather.
    You would go into the prisons under what guise?
    Nothing guise.
    I was taken.
    I was picked up.
    I was taken as a prisoner.
    When was this?
    The first time, 1942.
    What happened that you were arrested?
    Well, we weren't supposed to be out after 8 o'clock.
    Well, I had a German passport.
    I could, the curfew.
    But I had other people which I shuffled around.
    And when I came in the house, somebody betrayed me.
    And that was the only time I was betrayed.
    How long were you in prison for?
    A few months.
    How did you get out?
    You wouldn't-- you see, it's not like here.
    There's no prison system.
    You go in.
    You don't know why.
    And you go out, you don't know why.
    All of a sudden, the door opens--
    raus.
    You know the German word "raus."
    And out you are.
    Or you go-- one door opened, and Mrs. Knoringer, the poor thing,
    she had to go at 6 o'clock in the morning
    with a few Jewish people, and out in the camp,
    and she was gassed.
    She came back when the cell door was open, and embraced my knee
    and said, if I don't come back, see that my children will
    be good men, will you?
    What can you do?
    You're in there yourself.
    It was the most horrible moment of my life.
    You know, you had tears in your eyes
    because how can you promise something?
    You yourself are a prisoner.
    They had sent her for what unknown reason?
    Well, it's in that book I have written,
    which you were happy to read.
    It's not a book.
    It's a little story I've written.
    I've never shown it to-- except my good friends and my husband
    later on.
    See, when I retired, I didn't know what to do,
    so I started writing stories.
    And you usually write about something you know,
    and that's the only thing I know.
    So.
    Could you tell us?
    About Ms.--
    For the people who are listening, about her?
    Oh, there were a lot of people.
    If you wait-- can you take it off second?
    I open my suitcase.
    In the cell where I was, when I came in,
    there was a one-man cell, just about nine-- eight by eight
    or something like that.
    There were six women.
    For sleeping, they had straw sacks.
    And I came in, and I thought, my God, they look pale.
    They looked so gray.
    And I said, you look awful.
    And then when the food came, I couldn't eat it.
    It came in a little aluminum pot.
    Terrible.
    And after a few days, you're so hungry, you eat anything.
    And there was every week, day, a different--
    so you knew what day it was.
    We found a rusty nail and made the days on the wall.
    Nobody knew, and all of a sudden they opened the door,
    and they yelled Knoringer and Allenford and another woman,
    and they took her away.
    And she never knew why because she was not pro-German, against,
    because you wouldn't like it either
    if somebody comes into your house and tells you what to do.
    And the Dutch are pretty stubborn.
    They don't like that, see?
    A lot of people killed themselves
    who were not strong enough.
    I'm so strong I can't even be hypnotized.
    There was quite a bit of resentment,
    from what you're telling.
    In Holland, an awful lot of resentment.
    Among Gentiles?
    Gentiles especially.
    They helped the Jews immensely.
    Because they didn't like what was going on.
    No, of course not.
    To them, to everyone.
    Terrible things happened.
    I tell you something.
    There was one girl, 19 years old in our cell.
    There was one bed because it was a one-man cell.
    She was on that bed.
    She had like a scene that was horrible.
    So I decided I'll take the food, whatever there is,
    bread, which was nothing, which was like clay,
    and I called the doctor, the only one who spoke German well.
    Now, you push a button, and an arm comes out,
    and then they said, still in there.
    And they yelled.
    And I said, I want a doctor.
    And I screamed and hollered.
    I was mean, see?
    And finally, a big fat German comes and behind him
    a little thin nothing with a briefcase under his arm.
    And he said, what's the matter here?
    And I said, this girl is terribly sick.
    Now, look at her.
    And he looked.
    Didn't touch.
    He just stood there and said, medicine.
    So the guy opened his briefcase, a little schtunk,
    and brought in a salve, kind of a cream, and threw it on the bed
    and said, take that.
    Well, when he was gone, I said, don't touch it.
    I want to see what it is.
    It was against flies.
    The next morning, the girl was dead.
    Then I yelled again, I want disinfection.
    He said, you don't need it.
    I said, this is not the doctor.
    Somebody else, it's the guard, the German.
    I said, disinfection for our cell!
    And he said, no way.
    I yelled.
    And then I said, come here a little bit.
    I said, the girl had syphilis.
    And he yelled, disinfection for cell 19!
    Believe me, we got it quicker than you could say grandmother.
    You were not in prison with any Jews?
    Yes, there were Jews and half-Jews and Gentiles,
    everything.
    Oh, sure.
    And they pulled them in by the ear.
    Terrible thing.
    Oh!
    Oh, nobody has ever molested me, but there
    was a Jewish girl who was--
    I don't want to use the word rape,
    because I don't know how it went.
    She thought she saved her life, because you
    couldn't save your life for all the tea in China.
    I mean, for a little bit of whoopee.
    [CHUCKLES]
    What happened after you got out of prison?
    Did you get very active?
    Oh, yes.
    Did I get active?
    The last two years--
    I was young, you see.
    I couldn't go to bed and sleep.
    I was impossible.
    We were day and night on the post,
    but one night I had some very important papers.
    I had a table, a very antique table, small table.
    You could open it.
    My father had made that, and I threw that in.
    But then when you went by, you did like that, the damn thing
    opened.
    So I turned it.
    I went out of bed.
    I had a headache powder because I was terribly sick.
    And I turned the thing.
    And in the middle of the night, all of a sudden,
    three guys with a gun stand in front of me.
    That was another time, of course.
    And wake up, wake up.
    And I said, wait a minute.
    I have a headache.
    I've taken my sleeping powder.
    Get up!
    And I was not even allowed-- and it's cold in Holland--
    to take a robe or anything.
    I was sitting there.
    I said, can my maid make you a cup of coffee or me?
    No.
    But they went into my refrigerator
    and ate all the sausage that was in there.
    But anyway, they took all the furniture.
    They threw over the couch and slid it open, everything.
    Sliding glass door they took out,
    and looking for-- and then suddenly, they went--
    one was always standing there, and the two others
    were-- he walks by that table and did like this
    and it didn't open.
    The good Lord had made me to turn it around.
    But my heart went like this.
    I didn't move.
    I was cold, shivering.
    I didn't move.
    I was sitting like a poker face.
    And then they said, you go with us in the headquarters.
    I was submitted to a third degree.
    What was in the desk?
    Papers from people, all our papers.
    That's why they later said, give it to Margot,
    because when she's picked up we know she isn't going to talk.
    These were papers of Jews?
    Of Jews and Gentiles and people who wanted to do things.
    Because we had--
    People who were being helped or people who were helping?
    Being helped, suppose it was like this.
    Anne Frank, you heard about her.
    I know exactly where she lived.
    It was to them more important to get
    a little food on the clandestine way which we got in.
    Then it was much more important to get the news,
    when is the war going to end.
    So we had an illegal newspaper we printed.
    And I brought the news along, but there was the addresses
    to get along, see.
    And it was-- it was icy and stony,
    and I was I was behind on a sled of a bicycler.
    Because they took all the cars and everything away.
    And I said, be very careful If you see that there are
    some Germans standing there.
    You better stop and go somewhere else before.
    He didn't see a bunch standing there.
    And I slid off that sled with my stuff,
    and the next guy who came I said, give me your bike.
    And he immediately went down, gave me his bike.
    The Dutch are very helpful.
    And I go on that bike, and I fall down
    around the corner-- it was ice-- and broke my leg.
    And the stuff had to go there.
    And I had high boots on, couldn't get that leg off.
    The butcher took it off.
    They took me in a butcher store.
    Terrible things happened.
    Then, of course, there was no electricity, no nothing.
    And a friend of mine who is a very famous surgeon,
    I had to go on a tricycle where clandestine [? calls ?] on.
    I went to the hospital.
    No elevator, no nothing.
    And a very thin man who helped me up, I went upstairs,
    but down when he said, I can't set your leg.
    What do you want from me?
    I said, you can.
    You feel it.
    You have no X-rays, no electricity.
    You feel it.
    He felt it, and he set my leg.
    It was towards the end of the war.
    But I hobbled around in it.
    Did you form any close relationships with the people
    that you were--
    Only with the man who we had put in the Gestapo,
    and this one just died last year when we were over there.
    This man was--
    Aldi Althof was his name.
    He was a Dutch police.
    Not in uniform, a detective or whatever
    they call these people, not uniformed, with a high standing.
    And we pushed him in there.
    And one day, I'll tell you this little story
    that's also in there.
    He came, and came every night practically.
    And he was frightfully pale.
    I said, my God, you look like death warmed over.
    And he said, I don't like it.
    I said, what?
    Well, you called--
    I called Gestapo headquarters.
    We had a very important thing to say, and we had, of course,
    codes for everything.
    And there's a man saying, headquarters, and I said,
    could I speak to Mr. Althof, please?
    And he said, no, he's not in.
    Can I take a message?
    I said, yes, would you tell you the dinner is at 8:00.
    This is Margot speaking.
    And that message he had on his desk,
    and [DUTCH] in Dutch, you say a rijks for that voice.
    [DUTCH] in Dutch that means I give you a rijksdaalder.
    That's 2 and 1/2 florins, 2 and 1/2 guilders.
    If I can meet that lady with that voice.
    And he didn't like me to introduce.
    I say, why, what's wrong with the guy?
    He's the head of the Dutch Nazi movement.
    I said, fabulous!
    Tomorrow, you're going to invite everybody for lunch.
    Here's the money, and I'll meet the guy.
    And I met him.
    And you will see what happened.
    They picked up at night.
    We were standing.
    He got my friend, of course.
    At night, we were standing at a window, and we were looking out,
    and the Germans were picking up young Dutchmen
    to work in the Eastern European factories.
    And I said, isn't that awful?
    He said, so what?
    Few of them, more or less.
    And I said, listen, my good man.
    Germany is never winning the war, never.
    And one day, I will stand there, and you will be prisoner,
    and I will say, what does it matter, a few of them,
    more or less?
    He said, you got a lot to learn, my darling.
    Gave me a kiss on my forehead and went out.
    You said this to the head of the Dutch Nazi party?
    Yes, and do you know what happened?
    After the war, our people, like the FBI, came and said,
    can you go with us to Westerbork,
    which is a concentration camp?
    I said sure.
    Why?
    What's up?
    Well, I want you to meet somebody.
    Well, this head of the Dutch, shiny buttons, beautiful shoes,
    nice manicured nails, he always looked like he came out
    of an egg, you know, so good.
    And at night, at 10 o'clock, we arrived in Westerbork.
    And these two detectives asked for him,
    and in comes a man without shoes,
    without stockings, without anything,
    dirty nails, filthy, unshaven, open jacket
    with no shiny buttons.
    And he did [GASPS] when he saw me.
    And one of the detectives said, you know this lady?
    He said, yes.
    And he said, how do you know her?
    So he said that they took me to the third degree,
    and that I said, I don't know, but if I knew,
    I wouldn't tell you.
    That was the dumbest thing I ever said.
    And they said, you will.
    I said, no.
    We'll take you, and you will be killed.
    I said, so?
    When was this?
    That was 1944, about.
    I was every five minutes--
    You were being interrogated under what circumstances?
    About talking about some friends of mine, what they did.
    And I said, I don't know.
    But if I knew, I wouldn't tell you.
    Which was dumb to say.
    And then they got nice.
    And you know what it is when they got nice?
    Then you have to be careful.
    If somebody is nice to you and is your enemy, you got to--
    I thought of that French--
    I don't know whether you have the schooling, La Fontaine, le
    Corbeau et Renard, The Fox and the Raven.
    The fox wanted the raven's cheese,
    and the raven didn't let it loose.
    And then he said, I heard you sing so beautiful,
    and he said, oh, yes, I do.
    And he starts singing, and the cheese fell down.
    And I was thinking of that.
    And he suddenly he came and said,
    I don't have anything over for you--
    kind.
    That was him.
    I hear you been here all night.
    The three constantly have interrogated you.
    You know, one for an hour and the other one for an hour.
    You're talking now of the head of the--
    Of the head of the--
    --Dutch Nazi party.
    But he said, I have no use for them, but I admire you.
    And I thought, oh my God.
    Now he is nice.
    Now I have to be careful.
    And he told that story to the people
    at that night, what happened, that I never, never spoke.
    And then he came, and he embraced my foot.
    Now, if they said, we were Nazis, we were convinced,
    that's OK.
    But he said, you know I only followed orders.
    You know.
    And that was so-- and I'll never forget it, so help me God.
    I stood there.
    He was lying there, dirty, filthy.
    And I said, well, actually I'm thinking,
    what does it matter, a few of this kind, more or less?
    I'll tell you what you do, I said,
    to the detective-- kill him.
    And I walked out the door.
    He was hanged the next day.
    By your testimony?
    Yeah, and by our people, by the Dutch people.
    Had you witnessed any acts of barbarism by him?
    No, not by him.
    But there was once in the biggest street there,
    they picked out the men at night.
    They came, [INAUDIBLE] and picked up the men,
    and took them out in the Apollolaan.
    That's a beautiful street like an avenue with flowers and stuff
    in the middle.
    And they put all the mens up, and the women and the kids
    had to look out of the window at 2 o'clock in the morning.
    They shot them.
    And I came to my headquarter friend, and I said,
    what's the big idea?
    What's going on?
    He said, well, you see a German has been killed,
    and we teach them a lesson.
    I said, what happens if the German
    has been killed by somebody else but by Dutchman?
    He said, never.
    I said, will you do me a personal favor?
    Give me one of your German people,
    and I will help investigate it, and we'll see.
    Well, we investigated, and it was another German soldier who
    was jealous and killed his guy.
    And that came out, and he didn't even apologize.
    And those people had been killed in retaliation?
    They had already been killed, yeah.
    Who hung this man at Westerbork?
    The Dutch, the Dutch.
    They hung everybody.
    They killed everybody.
    There's an awful joke there, because somebody said,
    a Dutchman, I saw a German today,
    and I hacked his hands off.
    And he says, why didn't you take his hat off?
    He said, that was off already.
    [LAUGHS]
    Were there any people that you personally
    knew, friends or family who tried
    to dissuade you from the work that you were doing?
    No, nobody knew it.
    Oh my God.
    If anybody would have known it, I wouldn't be sitting here.
    Not everybody is so strong.
    Nobody knew it, not even my children.
    And not even after the war I told them.
    No.
    Except a man I wanted to marry, very, very close friend.
    He knew it, and he was killed in concentration camp, '40.
    He never said it.
    What is she doing?
    And he said, I don't know.
    You know.
    And that went on and on, and he's lying on the floor,
    and he was beaten to death.
    The people that-- your contacts, they
    did know of your involvement.
    This was a small group.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    They knew, and they didn't know.
    They know only little bits of things.
    Was there one particular person in this
    underground that you reported to?
    No.
    We all did our job.
    There was not one particular person.
    Did anyone assign you a task to do?
    No, I had such a good voice.
    I mean, good voice-- loud voice that I was sent to the radio,
    especially because I speak English.
    I learned it in England, by the way.
    And Prince Bernhard, who was the head of the Princess Irene
    Brigade--
    that's a Dutch Army in England, see?
    And he told us what to do through the radio.
    And I gave it on, but there was nobody special.
    At one time, I heard from three Gestapo people,
    tonight we have to be at 1 o'clock
    at the polder, which is north of Amsterdam.
    Because some of the people are going over
    to the Princess Irene Brigade.
    And I said, I don't know nothing about it.
    I said, why don't you come over?
    By 1 o'clock, you've gone there.
    Yeah, we do.
    I got wine and stuff from our people, and I made them drunk.
    By the time my telephone clicked,
    it was just a very small click they didn't know
    it could have been something.
    They were so drunk, they didn't know what hit them.
    And one said, Oh my God.
    It's 1:30.
    We should have been out in the polder at 1:00.
    See?
    I kept them away.
    And what am I going to say?
    I said, you just say that it was a bum steer.
    There was nobody there.
    Hmph.
    I tell you something, speaking of Jews,
    I mean, there are good and bad in everybody.
    But one time, one of these Gestapo people
    whom I knew very well came and said, I have a terrible task.
    Even the Gestapo said that.
    I said, what?
    A man came.
    A Jewish man came to the headquarters
    and said my brother from Rotterdam
    is coming today with his family to live with us.
    And if you make a razzia call tonight, pick him and leave me
    and my family alone.
    And they have to pick him up, the friend,
    the brother from Rotterdam.
    What are we going to do?
    I said, simple.
    I said, pick up the guy who came to the Gestapo by mistake.
    He said that's what we're going to do.
    And they did.
    They let the other guy live.
    Were you able to get Jews out of Holland?
    Yes.
    Oh, yes.
    Through the woods.
    Did you ever hear that very religious Jews wear a wig,
    a Scheitel they call that?
    And where were, Holland, it's called
    Holland, which is houtland.
    Hout is a Dutch name for wood, because we have so much wood.
    And we went through the woods to Belgium.
    [LAUGHS] And all of a sudden, I hear, ah!
    And I run back and said, what happened?
    To her wig was-- her Scheitel was hanging on the tree.
    I said, come on, come on.
    But you see, I helped a lot of kids,
    and there was a young couple who wanted to get out.
    We had addresses and everything.
    And we let them out, and they went through Belgium
    through France to Switzerland.
    And I think maybe they ended up in Jerusalem.
    I don't know who it was.
    There are so many names that comes back to me.
    We had a lot of people hidden in our house too.
    But I said, one day, I wish to God
    I knew whether these kids have arrived well in Switzerland.
    And about a week later, I had a birthday on April the 3rd.
    Somebody comes and said, I have a gift for you.
    I said, what?
    There was a little Swiss handkerchief with Swiss lace,
    and I opened it, and I had a bracelet
    and that was a charm in the form of a diamond, a golden charm.
    On the one side, it said a date, when we
    had taken them over the border.
    And on the other side, it said "thanks" engraved.
    But everything was stolen, so I haven't got it anymore.
    When you took the children out of Holland,
    did you take them as far as the border?
    Sometimes I reunite them with women,
    with their parents who were hid.
    I went at night and picked up some people
    and went over the roofs.
    Now--
    Can you tell me about a typical night where you did this?
    Well, we went over the roof quite often,
    so it was actually not so typical.
    Because I always went over the roof.
    As a matter of fact, we were last year back in Holland,
    and the son of that friend of mine, he had read it.
    And he said, even though you disguised all the names,
    I recognize the people.
    And he was only a kid.
    He said, but I remember that you came in our house
    over the roofs.
    And I said, yeah.
    I climbed with a little kid over my arm over the roof.
    How many people did you take at each trip?
    Oh, not too many at each trip.
    Because I could always say that's my baby, see?
    Just one or two?
    That's my child.
    Yeah, with my German passport if something happened.
    Because they came in practically every other night.
    And they said, Ausweis?
    That means papers.
    And I showed them my permanent passport.
    And I said goodbye.
    The children had no papers?
    No, but could have been my kid with no paper.
    Who knows?
    Who did you turn the children over to?
    At what point did you release them?
    Sometimes I had to go to a certain place which they told me
    the parents were, on the Prinsengracht,
    and so a lot of Dutch people have hidden the Germans.
    And some I have up-- there is a very famous chemist.
    He just passed away too, Dr. Jellinek.
    All his kids are professors.
    He and his wife were up in our things for years.
    Up in your attic?
    Yeah.
    How did--
    Your children knew of these people hiding in your attic?
    No.
    No.
    How did you manage this?
    Well, you see, it was an apartment.
    It was an apartment house.
    And we had that room.
    They didn't know anything.
    How many in your family?
    They never went upstairs.
    We were two-- my two children and.
    I but they never went upstairs.
    How many were the people you were hiding?
    Oh, there was--
    I tell you something, one of the girls whose name I've forgotten,
    there was Lowenthal and there was the two Jellineks.
    And one of the Jewish people, when it was all over with,
    I rang.
    There was no electric bell.
    We had a cow clock.
    I rang about that cow bell.
    And I said-- I wanted to say-- and my foot was in the cast,
    and I said, come on down!
    Everything is over.
    And I lost my voice.
    As a matter of fact, when I get excited, I lose my voice still.
    And I couldn't talk anymore.
    And so one of the girls came down and said,
    let somebody else be a Jew now.
    I have had it.
    You know?
    So that--
    There were three people then living?
    Three and then somebody else.
    And then came somebody in in the middle of the night,
    and we hid that.
    That was going and coming.
    Would you like a peppermint?
    How long did they stay?
    For the voice.
    Jellineks stayed for years.
    How many years would you say?
    Two, three years.
    She's still alive.
    He's dead.
    How did you manage to get them bedding and clothing?
    I'll tell you.
    Mrs. Jellinek was a typical Jewish woman,
    the nose, the attitude.
    I'm so sorry I'm alive.
    You know, Apologetic.
    I'm so sorry.
    You know.
    And this Aldi Althof came one night and said,
    you're with two feet in a grave, and your third foot
    is on a banana peel.
    Now, why don't you do something?
    I said, what am I supposed to do?
    He said, don't let that Jellinek go out of the house.
    Because they'd pick her up any minute.
    I said, she's got good papers.
    My father called him Jonker and had a good, false papers.
    We forged all the papers.
    And he said, do anything you want to do.
    And I got an idea.
    I called my friend, who was the biggest surgeon in Holland,
    to come over and operate her nose.
    And in my house, he operated the nose.
    And when I saw her after the war, I took my husband over,
    and he said, you know I'm so glad I cut my nose.
    My name I had to change again, but my nose?
    Oh, I'm so pleased about it.
    Her Jewish-- I'm sorry-- attitude never left her.
    But with a straight nose and a little bit different,
    she was better.
    It wasn't my death sentence, so to speak.
    It's really true.
    And I swear to you.
    Did these people remain in Holland after the war?
    Yeah, he's a very famous man.
    He was a big chemist.
    He was even-- he had Frutal Works
    I don't know whether you know the Frutal Works in the United
    States.
    And that's a part of it.
    And he made essences, perfumes, and essences for bakeries.
    I had a smell--
    I learned it.
    I had to smell 200 smells a day.
    You had to-- you get trained for these things.
    Do you call his full name?
    Yeah, Dr. Paul Jellinek.
    And I know his address because he died just
    about a year and a half ago.
    And we had visited him.
    He's full of jokes.
    He was from Austria.
    And he was very funny.
    Because when I first came to Los Angeles, I had a car,
    and I had to stop because some people were
    quarreling in the middle of the street, so all cars stopped.
    And I went a little bit to the right, and a lady got out.
    And the lady said, are you from England?
    I said no.
    I had an English accent.
    And I said, no, I'm from Holland.
    He said, oh, I have some relatives in Holland.
    They were rescued by a couple.
    I said-- by a lady especially.
    And I said, who?
    Who?
    What's the name of the people?
    He said, Dr. Jellinek.
    I said, you know it was Scharf who rescued him?
    Yeah, that's the name.
    I said, that's me.
    So small the world is.
    Now you see how small everything.
    How did you manage to-- without your children knowing,
    without your neighbors knowing--
    Nobody knew anything.
    My children were taken into the Catholic convent,
    when I was taken to prison, by my father, see?
    They remained there?
    This book is completely authentic except that my parents
    died.
    I didn't know how to start.
    I'm not a writer.
    I said they were dead, but my father
    was alive and helped everybody.
    We forged all the papers.
    One man by the name of Strauss came, and he said,
    what am I going to do?
    They're going to pick us up, blah, blah, blah.
    My father forged American consulate, American embassy
    papers and wrote that he was a Swiss subject.
    He has to be helped.
    All that stuff was authentic.
    And this gentleman that you were helping, who was he?
    Jellinek.
    That Strauss, I didn't know him so well.
    But he was all of a sudden Swiss.
    [CHUCKLES] And the Jellinek I knew very well.
    What did you do with Strauss?
    Strauss?
    They walked around with papers from the American embassy
    to help them because they are Dutch-- they are Swiss citizens.
    And they pretended that they were Aryan?
    Yeah.
    And so was-- and even if they hadn't, they
    couldn't start with Switzerland too.
    And that was really something.
    With Jellinek, we had all sorts of false papers.
    Their name was Jonker, J-O-N-K-E-R, born in, I think,
    Austria or somewhere.
    I don't know.
    They are from Austria.
    My father made all these things with the foreign office
    in Holland.
    Everybody helped.
    So your father was quite active?
    Oh, was he ever.
    You know something?
    At the end of the war, the German
    had taken every little bit of food.
    We didn't have anything.
    He bought on the clandestine market for an awful lot of money
    a little bit of flour.
    We had of course nothing.
    We had a little stove in one room.
    And we bought candles and coal, and my mother made fire.
    And on top of that stove, we baked the bread.
    And the people who came by always came in
    for dinner, lunch, or whatever it was for food
    and ate in our house every day that God gave.
    Because you haven't seen nothing yet.
    When people are hungry, A, it hurts.
    I know it.
    And B, they swell up.
    They called [DUTCH].
    And they fell down, and they were swollen up.
    And vultures came and took their boots and their jackets
    and stuff like that.
    They were dead in the streets.
    Oh, it was a time you wouldn't believe.
    Were you living in the same house with your parents?
    No, no.
    But my parents were evacuated first
    from university, city of Leiden and Oegstgeest.
    And then they went to Bussum, and they
    were evacuated there too.
    So you see, the Germans--
    So they went from Germany to--
    To Amsterdam first, and then they went to Oegstgeest.
    They had a little house.
    They rented it there.
    Utrecht?
    Ouest Geest O-U-E-S-T and then G-E-E-S-T. Oegstgeest.
    And that is where--
    That's next to Leiden.
    It's like you say it's next door is Virginia, see?
    That's where you live when you want to study or something.
    And the Germans took everybody out of there
    because they sent these missiles over to England from there.
    That was a terrible time.
    But they were helping on their--
    My father helped everybody.
    And my father was very wealthy.
    I told you that.
    I don't want to brag, but he was frightfully wealthy,
    and every little bit of money he had he
    gave away to buy on the clandestine market
    for the poor people who had nothing.
    The bread, the food.
    Yeah, also for the convent.
    He kept the whole convent going with coals and food.
    Your children remained in the convent
    for the duration of the war?
    For quite a while.
    For the duration that I was in prison.
    And then they came out, and they couldn't go anywhere else
    so we pushed them back in again and all sorts of things.
    Did you do this to prevent them from being at risk?
    Yeah, sure.

    There is no transcript available for this track

    On a bad morning in May 1940, I woke up.
    I look out of the window because I hear a lot of noise.
    There were planes over the country.
    And down the planes, like a swarm of locusts
    came German soldiers, not only machine guns,
    but tanks and everything, and in Dutch uniforms,
    and they spoke Dutch.
    But there are three words that somebody who is not born
    in Holland, in this case mine is so born to, cannot pronounce.
    And that was the only weapon they had.
    See?
    This is why I'm so afraid that when
    these countries had no weapons.
    And somebody fights, well, we cannot defend ourselves.
    We are lost.
    Because I've gone through it.
    There was nothing we could do.
    They came down and the sky was black.
    I called a friend and I said, what's going on?
    She said, my God, the Germans are coming.
    I said, no.
    They're not.
    They're going over to England, thought I, which was silly.
    And they came down they spoke Dutch.
    They had Dutch papers, Dutch uniforms.
    And the Dutch wanted to put the whole country under water.
    But lots of traitors put instead of dynamite under the bridges,
    sand under the bridges, and nothing went up.
    And they landed on dry land.
    And they came in.
    It's like you're seeing some burglars
    and they come in regardless.
    And they tell you what to do.
    This was in Holland?
    Holland, everything in Amsterdam.
    This was in 1940?
    1940 in May.
    The Germans in Germany have done terrible things, only not
    the Germans.
    I'm not saying it right.
    No army, it was only the dismissed SS and SA,
    and all these black and brown shirts.
    They were terrible.
    Where it says Jew, they smashed everything, stole everything.
    They stole from me.
    Can you imagine, for instance, I had a carafe in crystal
    with a silver neck, you see where
    you put wine or schnapps or anything in?
    They stole, they turned the silver off, put in their pocket.
    Everything I had, they stole.
    That was the crust of the people, so to speak.
    That wasn't a German soldier.
    As a matter of fact, downstairs was a lady
    who was sent here, a German lady who
    I got very good friends with.
    And she had a maid who was a terrible Nazi.
    And one day I was down there.
    And the doorbell rang and a German soldier came.
    He said, is Miss Fisher in?
    I said, yes, she is.
    Who can I say?
    And he said, he wanted to tell that her brother had died.
    And the last word the brother gave, go and see my sister.
    And he sat there and he said, when my friend said, she's OK.
    She's my friend.
    I'm ashamed to be a German.
    He comes from the Russian front.
    They had the Russians excavate huge, huge holes,
    and stand around these huge holes, and looking in the hole,
    the Germans stood behind them with a gun and killed them.
    And then they said, so, we don't have to feed those.
    And he said he's ashamed to be a German.
    Now, that was a good German.
    They're not all like that.
    You see?
    But some who don't know better, and who had nothing to lose,
    so to speak.
    See?
    The scum SS, I say in this language here.
    When the Germans invaded Holland,
    what at first did the Jews that you knew--
    Some of them kill themselves.
    And some of them thought, oh, it can't be so bad.
    We're in Holland.
    You don't want to believe the bad things.
    You know that yourself.
    And you remember something, you remember the good.
    The bad you forget.
    That's why I've forgotten the whole thing already.
    When I arrived here, I had an uncle
    who came with his arms spread.
    I arrived on the grass on a French boat in New York.
    And he said, now you're here and we welcome you
    to the United States.
    You're here in a free country.
    Forget the past life and start a new life.
    And I thought, that's a good thought
    and I'm going to do that.
    That brings me to an interesting point.
    In what ways has your war experiences
    affected your religious beliefs and your political influence?
    In the cell, people got more religious.
    But I was always deep, deep inside I always believed.
    And I haven't changed.
    I still believe.
    They always said in the underground,
    I have not only one angel, but I have two.
    And everything they wanted hidden.
    They said give it to Margot, because when she's picked up,
    she'll never betray us.
    I couldn't care less whether I died or not.
    Because I think I'm a fatalist in a way.
    I think my life is pointed out and this is what it is.
    This is how it happened.
    And your faith?
    It stays the same.
    I'm an interface.
    I don't care what anybody is.
    I have studied religions.
    I know all about the Jewish religions,
    the Islamic religion, the Mohammedans there,
    and all this Buddhism, the Nirvana,
    and the Catholic of course, and the Protestant.
    And now I'm married to a--
    I don't even know what it is.
    It's a Church of England.
    I mean he's from here.
    But his parents were Swedish.
    So it don't matter to me.
    Either I like him or else they can go wherever they want to.
    In what ways has your war experiences influenced
    your political involvement?
    It has.
    Because I don't want to be ever without a weapon,
    not that I want to use it.
    But if we are attacked, the Nicaraguans,
    the Cubans, the Russians, they're all around us.
    And one day, they may come.
    And we should not use the weapons.
    But then we can defend ourselves.
    I like it freedom.
    I don't like any kind of tyranny, any kind.
    I don't like anybody to command what you should do because you
    have only got one life.
    And see how terrible it is when you're taken away for no reason,
    just because you are Jewish, or just
    because-- that's not your fault what you're born with.
    Were your attitudes any different as far
    as politically 40 years ago?
    No.
    I was always leaning to the right.
    But not to the Hitler's right.
    I was leaning to be strong, and believe, and that's it.
    And you may now conclude what I think of Josephine Ferraro.
    [LAUGHS]
    Is there anything you can think of that we've not
    covered that you would like to tell us about, perhaps
    Czechoslovakia?
    If you want to hear that.
    Well one, there was a Messe, I don't know
    what they call it in English.
    When you go and buy your stuff, you know, like in Leipzig.
    There is a Messe, and there was a guy I knew from America, not
    because I was here.
    But he was there, a Mr. Levy.
    And at 6 o'clock in the morning, he calls up on my phone,
    and says get the hell down here.
    I said, why?
    I was asleep.
    He said, the Germans are marching in.
    I said, oh the hell with you.
    And I hung up.
    And I said the Germans are marching in?
    And I got out of bed.
    And as I was, I ran down.
    And here they were all very big excited.
    And it was a German army coming in.
    The German women, the Czechoslovakian women
    were going up to them.
    And they were slapping them.
    And I was in the middle of the thing.
    And I fell, of course.
    And from the hotel the guy picked us up.
    In the afternoon I said, it's not that bad.
    It's just the army.
    But wait till the Gestapo comes.
    The next day the Gestapo came, took the whole hotel over.
    And the people who had not real passports because Hitler
    made everybody without a state, they said to them,
    you've got to go out.
    And when they go out, and they have to register somewhere,
    they're sunk.
    So I said, I'm an interpreter by the League of Nations.
    I will help you to the Germans, you know, like my-- hello.
    And the guy said, what are we going to do?
    I said some people have a couch.
    Most hotel rooms are three times as large as this one,
    have couches in the thing.
    Let them sleep on the couch.
    Don't sell them out.
    Don't send them out.
    And they had them sleep on the couch.
    See?
    And then they said, we will go out and you stay.
    And I stayed.
    And then Mr. Levy comes to me and says,
    have you got like 50,000 kroner?
    So I said, yeah sure.
    Can you give them to me?
    I said sure.
    I billed out 100,000, you know, that wasn't worth much.
    And somebody got out on that money.
    And when I was in Holland, all of a sudden,
    he sent me the money.
    I never thought he would.
    Can you imagine?
    Things happen terrible.
    There were Jews and non-Jews at the hotel?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes.
    People who were just standing there?
    Yeah, staying there to buy merchandise
    for their stores and stuff, you know like the Messe.
    And you had told the Germans that you would handle--
    I will be happy to translate.
    I said, I'm licensed.
    And what did you do in this capacity of translating.
    I said, look.
    This man has a paper from the British foreign office
    that he is a British subject, that nothing can happen to him.
    He said, all right.
    Put him aside.
    And what did you do with these people who now were vouched for,
    so to speak?
    Nothing.
    They stayed until they could get out.
    There was, of course no train and no plane.
    But as soon as there was one, my clothes
    were already at the plane.
    But I couldn't go either.
    I had to get them back.
    They were still running planes where you were?
    Yeah, they were running planes.
    But when the Germans came in, there
    was no plane, no train, no nothing.
    And then where do you suppose these people went after?
    They stayed.
    And after, they went back to England.
    There was no war yet.
    See?
    The war only started after Poland.
    But this was Czechoslovakia in '39.
    Oh, my God.
    You should have seen the excitement.
    The people hated the Germans.
    And now they are under another tyranny, so to speak.
    It's terrible how the whole world is crazy.
    They tell you what to do.
    And they-- oh, it's awful.
    You had said that you never confided in anyone
    that you were working.
    No, of course not.
    But you did say that there was one person that--
    That was the man I wanted to marry.
    Can you tell us something about him?
    He was the best man in the world.
    He gave everything away.
    He had a factory which the Dutch government gave me later, which
    I don't know nothing about.
    But I worked hard to make a living
    because I didn't have not even a pair of stockings, nothing.
    Everything was stolen.
    I think I have it here.
    Yeah, this I have.
    See, I have that thing.
    That's where he was killed.
    And then when he was killed, they threw him in the canal.
    And the canal and the water was poisoned
    so they had to dig him out and burn everybody.
    And this is he.
    Can you tell us how it came to be that he--
    where he was sent, and why he was sent?
    He was called one night, was called on him.
    What happened to your girlfriend, Margot Scharf?
    He said, what happened to her?
    I don't know.
    And they said, you know where she is.
    And he said, no.
    What is she doing?
    He said, I don't know.
    She's not here.
    And he was taken to a concentration camp.
    Which concentration camp?
    In Vught, and that's where you have there the picture.
    That concentration camp is in Holland?
    Yeah.
    Oh, they made a lot of concentration camps.
    But that was good, because we put them all in there.
    And later, after the war the Dutch put the Germans in there.
    Were you sent to these concentration camps?
    I was never sent, only the Jews or the Catholics.
    The Jews?
    Yeah, I mean they pronounced, like part of the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    who was here, the father.
    Or people such as your sweetheart.
    Yeah, my fiance or whatever you want to call him.
    I was almost married.
    But you couldn't marry during that time.
    You couldn't do anything.
    I'd like to know if you have any comments
    that you'd like to leave--
    Maybe--
    --for your children, for your grandchildren.
    Maybe when you get back, then I think of a million things.
    My children never knew it until now.
    And my oldest daughter said, why didn't you ever tell me?
    I said honey, I couldn't tell it to anybody.
    And then later she said after the war?
    After the war, I said nobody speaks about it.
    Nobody spoke about it.
    They still don't speak about it in Holland.
    What would you like for people to know so that--
    They were so hateful in Holland.
    After the war, there were two Swiss people coming in a train.
    They took them out.
    They talked German.
    German Swiss, and slapped them half dead,
    because you couldn't talk a German word in Holland.
    Well after the war, the queen came.
    See, there is a Jewish part in Amsterdam
    that has a synagogue that stands on 6,000 wooden sticks, so
    to speak.
    There is no electricity, nothing in the ocean.
    The Portuguese who at the time Elizabeth was queen,
    was sent out of the country unless they
    had some non-Kosher meat like pork and so,
    and she put it outside that they saw that they had converted.
    But the conversion didn't help you there.
    But they were--
    In the war?
    With the Germans?
    Yeah, with the Germans didn't help you.
    But they had-- what was I saying now?
    Yeah, in Spain, these people went to Turkey and to Holland.
    And they were called the Sephardi Jews, which is OK.
    So these Sephardi Jews built that Portuguese synagogue.
    And that is the most famous building.
    And the Queen came right away to that building.
    They let that stand outside.
    There's a big monument of the Dutchman who helped them.
    And then one day, she called us to the Hague, only two or three
    people, and she thanked us for that
    what we did for the motherland and her alive.
    And made me, who was actually nothing, German,
    an honorable citizen of the Netherlands.
    But I exclaimed like here, I said,
    I don't want it in the paper.
    I don't want anybody to know it.
    I did it for my heart.
    And I wish I could have done more.
    Queen Wilhelmina, I'm sorry, then later came Queen Juliana.
    Have you anything else you'd like to say?
    Well, you read that.
    Maybe you find something I haven't said.
    Except the beginning, that's my parents were alive.
    Well then in conclusion, I'd like
    to say this has been Marsha French interviewing Margot
    Lawson about her experiences as a rescuer of Jews
    during the Nazi Holocaust.
    This interview will be included as a valuable contribution
    to the oral history of the Nazi Holocaust.
    Thank you very much for participating in this interview.
    There's a little PS.
    You asked me what happened to Mrs. Knoringer who was sent away
    with other women to a camp and asked
    me to see that her children will become good men.
    While you were in prison?
    While I was in prison.
    When I came out, the first thing I did,
    I was checking everywhere to find her husband Mr. Knoringer.
    And I heard from a third person he's up there.
    So immediately I wrote a letter.
    I was in jail with your wife for several months,
    blah, blah, blah.
    And I also have a package for you.
    And I hope you're all right up there, blah.
    I got months later a rain drenched little piece of paper.
    What had happened?
    He got it the day he was sent out in camp in Germany
    to Auschwitz.
    And he could not take the package.
    He left it for other poor people.
    But he wrote on the back of somebody in the train,
    because it was like a cattle train.
    They're standing up.
    And he wrote I got your letter.
    I'm so grateful and all these things.
    And I'm just in the train to be sent out.
    And before the train left Holland he threw it out.
    And you know Holland is raining all the time.
    So months later, I got a letter, a little note.
    I found this on the border.
    And it's wet and I had it dried I hope you can read it.
    And it said dear--
    I have it exactly in words in that book.
    Dear Mrs. Scharf-- that was me.
    I thank you so much.
    I couldn't take that along, and God bless you, and so forth.
    He and his kids were sent to death too.
    So I couldn't do it.
    It's here, and it's a letter word for word.
    I have it here and you are very welcome to read it.
    Because I have a few copies of it.
    But I didn't give it to anybody.
    Because I didn't want any publicity out of it, because I
    don't think it's much.
    It's just so that your heart hurts.
    You cry when you think of what happened to poor people who
    had never done anything bad in their lives,
    just being either Jewish or--
    this year in prison, so that should be afterwards.
    It is terrible, so you can't now 40 years
    later even imagine what these people went through.
    I too, I was never afraid.
    But once, I was very much afraid.
    Here, I think-- not in there.
    Ah, must be here.
    I don't know, but literally, I have a lot of little stories.
    That must be it here.
    Here, dearest Isabel.
    I wrote Isabel, he said Margot.
    By twist of fate and good luck, I
    received-- that's word for word.
    I received your package and letter
    at the very moment we were shipped out
    to a camp in Germany.
    I'm writing on the back of a fellow condemned,
    as we cannot sit down in the cattle car.
    I had to leave the parcel behind.
    But I do want to thank you so very much.
    Your writing gives me strength and faith.
    God bless you.
    Werner Knoringer.
    That was the husband of Mrs. Knoringer.
    He was with his children?
    Yeah.
    And that was actually the only thing I know about him.
    And I couldn't get to be--
    I couldn't get the kids to be good men.
    I had a lot of stories.
    But you can see them in here, a lot of things happened.
    You don't forget four years, and 9 or 10 months that I was
    in that [NON-ENGLISH] almost, say for nothing.
    As my daughter says.
    In the underground?
    Oh, one night they came in and I had everything in my hand.
    And my daughter was in bed.
    And I stuffed it in underneath the thing.
    And here they come, three four men high.
    And they say to me, what have you got in that bed.
    I said, don't go near her.
    She has measles or something very bad, you know?
    You could catch it.
    So they're scared to death.
    And she had everything underneath.
    And the little kid did not say one word, not one word.
    What was underneath?
    Yeah.
    Oh I have something also.
    Then when they looked around the house, I said, OK.
    I go on reading to you.
    I had never read and opened something and read.
    When I stood at the door, they said, you read very well.
    I said, yeah, I do.
    The hell with it, you know?
    And that was it.
    Otherwise, my friend once she wanted everything.
    I came over and she said, I have 18 people for dinner.
    Could you loan me your silver?
    And I said take the whole darn shooting match.
    And she wanted a damask tablecloth,
    and my camera and everything.
    And that night they came too.
    Where's your silver?
    I said, what do you mean, silver?
    I haven't got any.
    That very night.
    And they say, what are you eating with?
    I said, my fingers.
    Oh, he slapped me.
    He didn't like that.
    So who cares?
    Is there anything else you'd like to add?
    No.
    Oh, I have a lot of stuff.
    But that would take all day.
    So you read a few things.
    And I have some more at home.
    I thank you.
    You're very welcome.
    It was very nice meeting you.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Margot Edith Lawson, born April 3, 1909 in Mannheim, Germany, discusses her life in Germany leading up to World War II; growing up in a Catholic family with many Jewish friends; studying in England, Italy, and Spain; her family being aware of and concerned about the persecution of Jews; seeing Hitler Youth on her street; her family’s housekeeper’s husband being accused of speaking against Hitler by members of Hitler Youth; moving with her family to Amsterdam, Netherlands near the beginning of the war; witnessing the mistreatment of Jews in Amsterdam; being given American money by her father, a representative of General Motors, to use to buy her way out of conflicts with Nazis; working with an organization to forge papers for Jews and smuggle Jewish children out of Holland; delivering clandestine newspapers; being taken in for questioning by German authorities for criticizing the Nazi Party or for breaking curfew; being jailed after breaking curfew; witnessing poor conditions in the jail and the sexual abuse of prisoners; the ransacking of her house by Germans who were looking for papers she had hidden there; meeting with the head of the Dutch Nazis, criticizing Nazi policy, and telling him that the Germans would never win and that he would be a prisoner one day; encountering the same man after the war and testifying against him at his trial before he was hanged; her feeling that her faith made her willing to take risks because she was not afraid to die; and how she remembers her wartime experiences now that she lives in the United States.
    Interviewee
    Ms. Margot E. Lawson
    Interviewer
    Marsha French
    Date
    interview:  1984 September 16
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Council

    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
    Lawson, Margot, 1909-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Council interviewed Margot Lawson on September 16, 1984, as part of the international conference "Faith in Humankind: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust" held at the U. S. Department of State, Washington, D.C.
    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 08:18:42
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn510790

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    Oral history interview with Carl Heinz Kneuman

    Oral History

    Carl Heinz Kneuman, born in Bydgoszcs, Poland in 1922 (note that Mr. Kneuman dedicates his interview to Dr. and Mrs. Wolfgang Heubner), describes moving to Berlin, Germany in 1932; his sister getting married and moving to the United States; Dr. Wolfgang Heubner discovering that his institute was being used as a clearinghouse where humans were being used as guinea pigs for new medications; the country’s general strife at the time; hearing about the activities of Kristallnacht in 1938 from his sister, who arrived home completely upset by what she’d seen; how both his father and mother were active in helping Jews escape, as they could not tolerate injustice; the political terror at that time; his father being involved in the black market and how the highest-priced commodity at the time was saccharine since sugar was not available; becoming a journalist because of his experiences during the war; and helping French co-workers who were working with the Danish resistance groups.

    Oral history interview with Rose Koenigsberg

    Oral History

    Rose Koenigsberg, born in 1914 in Velichovky, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic), describes her life teaching in Ralova until March 1939 when the Hungarians occupied the entire town; being arrested but then later being released to return to Velichovky where she lived fairly comfortably until 1944; going into hiding towards the middle of 1944 after they began to feel the pressures of being Jewish; being discovered and arrested by Hungarian guards and then going to Berehove, Ukraine before their transport to Auschwitz; staying with her sisters throughout her time at the camp; the terrible food and the poor clothing in Auschwitz; eventually moving with her sisters to Zittau (a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen), where she worked in an airplane factory; holding various positions at the factory until the camp was liberated by the Russians; returning home to Czechoslovakia and soon being reunited with the rest of her family; and moving to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Jane Laufer

    Oral History

    Jane Laufer (née Rosenblum), born in Poland on July 25, 1922, describes growing up with a younger brother; being aware of the war because so many people were coming from Austria; her memory of September 1, 1939 as a big propaganda day and being told to leave; walking with their luggage; hiding in the woods; Germans making them move to the ghetto starting in in May 1941; remaining in the ghetto until September 1942; the deportations of people to work camps; being helped by some nuns; a priest preparing a passport for her so that she could work in a restaurant, where she worked until 1944 when the restaurant closed; being liberated by the Russians on January 21, 1945; going home and finding that the Russians had taken all the food so there was literally nothing to eat; living in the Black Forest to hide from the Russians and eventually moving to Munich, Germany for a few years; going to the United States in September 1956; the effects of the Holocaust on her; experiencing nightmares, sleeplessness, and stress; and her reasons for never returning to her home town.

    Oral history interview with Eva Lewin

    Oral History

    Eva Lewin (née Lipschutz), born in 1925 in Swinemünde, Germany (now Swinoujscie, Poland), describes having one brother, Hans, who was four years older; having a nice childhood until 1933 when they had to move to Berlin, Germany; how her family tried unsuccessfully to emigrate; trying to get papers so that she and her brother could go to a kibbutz in Palestine in 1939, but her papers did not go through; being contacted by a Quaker woman, Mrs. Landmann, in England who arranged for her to go to a farm in August 1939; going on the children’s transport to London and being taken in by a woman who ran a youth hostel; staying with a couple who ran a school; going to the United States after the war to become a nurse; continuing her connection with Mrs. Landmann, who is now 95 years old and has a tree planted at the Avenue of the Righteous in Israel; how Mrs. Landmann worked every day to get affidavits for children without being paid; and Mrs. Landmann’s sacrifice to save about 70 children.

    Oral history interview with Barbara Makuch

    Oral History

    Barbara Makuch, born in Russia in 1917, describes growing up mostly in eastern Poland, in a Catholic family; being approached beginning in 1942 by several Jews seeking help; sheltering Malka Glass, a six year-old girl, for approximately six months, telling neighbors that Malka was her cousin; how, as it became more dangerous, she found a convent that agreed to accept Malka; helping another Jew, Sophia Price, by buying her a train ticket to a large city; aiding a pediatrician, Dr. Olga Lilion, by telling the director of the school at which she worked that she had a friend who needed a job; helping to save another young Jewish boy, Stefan Jacobchek, by getting him enrolled at the school; joining an underground organization that provided false documents, money, and food to Jews in hiding; acting as a courier and being caught by the Germans; being held in prison for a month, but being released after the Germans were bribed; being sent to Ravensbrück, where she remained until the end of the war; making her way back to Poland and later traveling to Canada, where she met her husband; settling in Montreal; staying in touch with several of the people she saved during the war; and being recognized for her heroism by Yad Vashem.

    Oral history interview with Alice Meilof

    Oral History

    Alice Meilof (née Prviksma), born in the Netherlands 20 miles from the German border, describes being 14 to 19 years of age during the war; her brothers and sisters; her father, who took in three Jewish boys brought to him by the underground; having to move the boys from time to time; how the boys helped her father in his work as a butcher; the hiding place in their house, which was simply a hole in the floor with a carpet rolled over it; the Germans never coming to search the house; her father’s motivation to take in the Jewish boys because of his belief in the Christian Reformed concept of “to do something good is normal”; her mother providing farm food to people who had escaped the bigger cities of Rotterdam and Amsterdam; how her father was in command of a region of the underground; her work as a messenger; how nothing could be spoken out loud since neighbors or others might overhear and report their activities; the lack of food in the big cities such that people were eating tulip bulbs and their pets; housing five policemen for two nights; her emotions when they were liberated by the Canadians; and still feeling sorry for the German soldiers in their defeat.

    Oral history interview with Halina Melnyczuk

    Oral History

    Halina Sophia Melnyczuk (née Zahaikiewicz), born February 21, 1921 in Przemysl, Poland, describes her two brothers and one sister; growing up in a vaguely religious Ukrainian Catholic family that was not political; living in an apartment building where they were the only non-Jews; how when the war started in 1939 they had as many as 30 Jews living with them and their housekeeper threatened to turn them in to the Nazis; moving to another apartment in 1942 because the old one had heavy damage from shelling; how the new apartment was across from the police station; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943 and taking in a young couple, Edek and Eda Scheffler, whom they hid by camouflaging the pantry to look like bookshelves; sharing their rations and sometimes selling items from their apartment to buy meat; instances when it seemed they’d been found out; being on the list to be transported to a concentration camp in Siberia but deciding to emigrate instead; leaving everything behind, including the Schefflers, who now live in Israel; living in Kraków, Poland; fleeing to Vienna, Austria in 1944; how the war did not change her religious beliefs but left her more tolerant of other people; and her belief that the most important thing is to do good deeds.

    Oral history interview with Tjitske Mulder

    Oral History

    Tjitske Mulder (née Hoogeveen), born June 23, 1909 in Westermeer, Netherlands, describes growing up in a very close family with five brothers and two sisters; her father, who was a dairy farmer and a member of an anti-revolutionary party and the underground; her father teaching her that the most important attribute was to be independent and to ignore social class structures; getting married in Bergum, Netherlands in 1930 to a barber; having two sons in the small city of Sneek, Netherlands during the war years; how in Sneek Jews were always well thought of; her and her husband’s first rescue activity moving a Jewish girl from one hiding place to another; hiding the parents of the Jewish girl, whom the Gestapo were chasing; an interesting subterfuge they used when the Gestapo came to their house; remaining friends with the girl, Lydia; speaking frequently publicly about their activities; their children and grandchildren, who are as strongly supportive of what they did during the war; their willingness to help anyone, whether they knew them or not, and doing so without regret; the friendship that grew between the two families when they lived together, praying, singing, and arguing together; her husband’s belief that Hitler was doing wrong by the Jews and how his own inner voice told him to help, as the Bible was his guide; and how they were given no money to keep the Jews in hiding.

    Oral history interview with Wanda Ollbryska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Irene Opdyke

    Oral History

    Irene Opdyke, born in Kozienice, Poland, describes growing up in a close, Catholic family with four younger sisters, all of whom were taught always to keep an open heart, to be helpful; joining the Polish army then hiding in the forest after Poland was defeated; being very brutally treated by Russian troops and eventually being sent to an ammunitions factory in Poland, where she acted as a server; being sent to the front in Poland, close to the Russian border where she witnessed horrendous brutalities carried out on Jewish families; being moved again to work in the laundry room of about 300 Germans and the local head of the Gestapo in Ternopil', Ukraine; befriending 12 Jews working there and creating an information network; becoming the housekeeper to a German major and managing to hide Jews in the cellar in an underground area under the gazebo; the liquidation of the ghetto in early 1943 and taking the 12 Jews to the forest to join others in hiding; building a bunker where the Jews stayed until the Russian Army liberated them; joining the Polish partisans to help in the fight against the Russians and eventually being arrested and put in detention; escaping by jumping out a window; going to Krakow, Poland; going to the United States in 1949 and becoming a US citizen; working in the garment center in NYC; getting married to a man who worked for the United Nations; and the tree planted in her honor on the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem.

    Oral history interview with Jacob Oversloot

    Oral History

    Jacob Simon Oversloot, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, describe growing up in a family that was not religious and not political; his six siblings; living in The Hague, Netherlands when the war broke out and working at a department store in the furs section; people arriving from Poland and Germany starting in 1938; the German occupation and Germans shipping staple goods to Germany, leaving nothing for residents; taking in his close Jewish business acquaintance (Leo Krell) along with his wife and son when they were going to be transported to Auschwitz and hiding them from 1940 to 1944; making fur coats with this man; the persecution and deportation of the Jews; never witnessing acts of violence against Jews; his hatred for the occupying Germans and refusing to follow their laws or do what they told him to; no one in their family knowing that he and his wife were hiding Jews; how they kept the Jews safe; getting foods from the black market and from the underground movement; restarting his fur business after the war, until 1950 when he moved to Canada; how his rescue activities strengthened his inner faith and that he would do the same now; and his lifetime friendship with the family he hid.

    Oral history interview with Alice Paulus

    Oral History

    Alice Paulus (née Rijskamp), born in 1915, describes being newly married with a five month old baby when she and her husband began their rescue activities; helping to rescue five people; one couple staying with them for two and a half years in hiding; how many of their friends would not help the Jews, thinking it much too dangerous; believing it was their Christian duty; the most stressful time during the war when her second child was born and there was no hospital, few medicines, and bombs dropping on the city; conducting rescue activities from October 1942 to the end of the war in May 1945, but continuing to host the couple because there was no place for them to live; how three of her husband’s brothers also hid Jews; speaking to church groups often when they first came to Ohio in 1957-1962; speaking in the pubic schools; the major influence religion now has on how she lives her life; and her admiration for Winston Churchill and the Holland leadership for being very honest.

    Oral history interview with Marion Pritchard

    Oral History

    Marion Pritchard, born November 7, 1920 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, describes her apolitical family; her brother; her family’s Jewish friends; how her father was upset with the Dutch government because they didn’t just open their borders to refugees; her work finding foster homes for Jewish children and also hiding Jews; how her family did not know all of what she was doing, which was for their safety; the widespread antisemitism in Holland; being imprisoned for six months in a jail in Amsterdam after being caught with friends who put out an anti-Nazi newssheet; being threatened and intimidated, but not physically abused; leaving Holland in 1945 to work with the United Nations in displaced persons camps in Germany; becoming active with Zionists trying get to Israel; going to the United States in 1947; her thoughts on Elie Wiesel; her husband, who was a liberator at Buchenwald; and her belief that you must do the right thing if you can find out what the right thing is.

    Oral history interview with Mary Barys Szul

    Oral History

    Mary Szul (née Barys), born in 1928, describes being 15 years old and living in a little village in Poland with her mother, brother, and sister at the start of the war; rescuing a total of four people, the first being a widow with two small children, whom they hid in the attic in the summer and in a bunker built under straw in the barn in the winter; being caught by the Germans and being badly beaten then jailed for two weeks; being freed and finding her way home, a 70 mile trek; going to Austria to a displaced persons camp; going in 1948 to Canada, where she found the Jews she had rescued and ended up living with them as family; the reason she got involved in rescue activities; how her rescue activities started in May 1943 and continued for 18 months; her neighbors’ disapproving of her family’s rescue activities when they found out about them after the war; and her life now in London, Ontario.

    Oral history interview with Magda Trocme

    Oral History

    Magda Trocme, born in 1901, describes her rescue activities during WWII in the French village of Le Chambon sur Lignon; Philip Hallie’s book, “Lest innocent blood be shed,” which describes the French village Le Chambon as a safe haven for Jewish escapees; working with the Quakers; one of their first rescued Jews, Hanna Hirsch, and the quasi-underground arrangement for refugees, so that she eventually ended up in Switzerland and then Queens, New York after the war; how the French people got involved with rescue activities and inspired others to help; the daily routine during the war and the large numbers of refugees who were sharing their house; the difficulty in explaining the rescue activities to their children so that the refugees wouldn’t be discovered and how it was a matter of constant problem-solving and resisting in small ways; being very aware of the danger they were in but never considering not helping; her husband’s arrest because he was the organizer of the rescue activities and most responsible; her husband’s release after the war was over; leaving Le Chambon in 1960 and moving first to Versailles and later to Geneva, where her husband was a minister; and visiting Yad Vashem in Israel, where a tree was planted in her husband’s honor.

    Oral history interview with Andrew van Schilfgaarde

    Oral History

    Andrew van Schilfgaarde, born in 1933 in The Hague, Netherlands, describes growing up one of seven children; being members of the Christian Community Church but not being particularly religious or political, though they did vote; having many Jewish friends; being aware of the persecution against Jews as his friends dropped out of school and were deported; the vacated homes being looted or taken over by the Germans; his attempts to listen to the BBC and being caught with a radio, which was a forbidden item; stealing food to survive and selling the food back on the black market; hiding Jews for a few days in the attic before they went on to another house, then to France, and then to England; how his neighbors were a problem because they might report them; the role of resistance groups as the contact point for the rescue activities; how human values change due to starvation; leaving Holland in 1956 and going to the United States; having a landscape business then working in the food and drink business; not discussing his wartime experiences with his wife or friends; his life-philosophy to live day by day; and knowing that the past cannot be changed but something like the Holocaust should never happen again.

    Oral history interview with Ann van Veldhuizen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Johanna Vos

    Oral History

    Johanna Vos, born December 29, 1909 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, discusses her upbringing and the influence her parents had on her life; her family’s religious background in the Christian Reformed Church; moving frequently as a result of her father’s job as a military officer but living in Leiden for most of her school years; dating a Jewish boy at age seventeen despite her parents’ disapproval; leaving home at age 20 to go to Paris, France; studying at the Sorbonne and working in Paris as a freelance journalist and as a delivery person for a Dutch grocer; marrying a German artist against her parents’ wishes and later divorcing; living in Laren, Holland during World War II; marrying her second husband and having children; becoming involved in activities to help Jews, first by helping her Jewish friends and then joining the Dutch underground; wearing the Star of David in solidarity with the Jewish population; falsifying papers and smuggling the belongings of German Jewish refugees into the Netherlands; serving as a messenger; hiding more than 36 people in her home, most of whom were Jews but some of whom were intellectuals or others targeted by the Nazis; her husband picking up weapons airdropped by Allied forces for the resistance; the killing of an author by the Gestapo and the capture of a fellow member of the underground; being confronted by the Gestapo at her home; facing the challenge of hiding small children who did not fully understand their situation; coping with the mental breakdown of a woman hiding in her home; her husband’s pension through the Stichting 1940-1945 and his suffering from “Twenty Year Syndrome;” and her thoughts about her actions during the war.

    Oral history interview with Theresa Weerstra

    Oral History

    Theresa Weerstra, born August 6, 1907 in Wijckel, Netherlands, describes her father Hans Peopjes, who was a fisherman, and her mother Arendje Roskan; her eight younger siblings, who were all girls; growing up in a family that was not religious but taught her to be generous to everything that is living, from flowers to human beings and never to be prejudiced; living in IJlst in Freisland province when the war broke out; getting married to Martin in 1930 and moving to Chicago, IL that same year during the recession but returning home soon thereafter; living two miles from the Nazi headquarters for the Netherlands; living near a large antisemitic population; taking in an orphaned young Jewish girl, which opened the door to helping many, many more Jews, some of whom she remains in contact with; hiding places they created in their home; housing 18 Jews at one point; receiving help from friends, who got them extra ration cards; delivering a baby born to one of the Jewish couples; the large network of people working in the rescue effort and using codes to relay messages since as there was only one phone in town; and how she is still upset by the Holocaust and does not consider herself a hero.

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