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Oral history interview with Hedy Epstein

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1285.59 | RG Number: RG-50.149.0059

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    Oral history interview with Hedy Epstein
    Transcript
    Epstein, reel one.
    And if I could ask you first of all then Hedy,
    about your life before the war, whereabouts
    you were living in Germany, and the sort of family life
    that you had.
    I was born on August 15, 1924 in Freiburg, Germany.
    And Freiburg is located in the Black Forest.
    But we lived in a village called Kippenheim, which
    is about 40 north of Freiburg.
    My father's family had lived there for a long time.
    I don't know exactly how long.
    I do know that my father was in business,
    and it was a business started by my great grandfather in 1856.
    It was a dry goods business.
    And my father was in business with his brother.
    Really, very much against his own wishes,
    my father was a veteran of World War I.
    And he was a prisoner of the Russians, yeah,
    I guess the Russian government.
    And was in camp on the Black Sea,
    and was repatriated quite late.
    And when the boat that he was on traveled
    through the Mediterranean and through the straits
    of Gibraltar, around Spain, and then
    when they got to where Spain and France abut each other,
    there was a tremendous storm.
    And my father told me that for about a week every morning
    when he woke up, he saw in the distance the same church
    steeple.
    And finally, the storm abated.
    And they went on.
    But they had to make an emergency stop in England
    to take on fuel and food.
    And my father knew when he would go back to Germany,
    he would have to go into his father's business.
    And it was not what he wanted.
    And so he jumped boat and stayed in England,
    and notified his parents.
    And they were, of course, very upset and wanted him home
    and he wouldn't come.
    And finally they wrote to him and told him
    his father was very ill.
    And if he wants to see his father,
    he'd better come home soon.
    And he believed that and went back to Germany.
    And his father was not ill.
    And he had to go into the business.
    And he did, and remained in that.
    But my father was a man of many, many interests,
    both intellectually as well as he was very good doing things
    with his hands.
    He was always building things, repairing things.
    And he was very different from the rest of the siblings
    or the rest of the family.
    And at that time, the way men and women
    met was it was an arranged kind of thing.
    That's not how my parents met.
    Both my parents, independent of each other,
    they didn't know each other were at a fair in Frankfurt,
    which is maybe 200 kilometers north of Kippenheim.
    And my mother came from a city which
    is very close to Frankfurt.
    And she came from Hanau.
    And they were both viewing the same exhibit,
    and started to talk to each other.
    And then after that, at some point later
    on, they got married.
    That was very much looked down upon and disliked,
    and made his family very unhappy.
    And I think my mother always remained the outsider.
    She was never totally accepted because of the way
    they met, that she didn't come from this area.
    She was almost like a foreigner.
    And I think my mother was probably
    very unhappy because of that.
    Also, my mother's interests were different than a lot
    of the people in the community.
    She was more a worldly person, whereas people
    in the village, really all they knew
    was the village, and not much else, if anything else.
    And so I always felt that my parents
    were different than the rest of the family,
    the rest of the community, which then made me different.
    And I wanted very much that we would be like everybody else.
    But for instance, if I was in somebody else's
    house or a friend or so, I didn't feel comfortable there.
    Because it was different from what I was used to.
    And I wanted to be back at home.
    And when I was back at home I wanted
    to be someplace else again.
    And I never really resolved that, but always felt different.
    Another way that we were different.
    We were Jewish.
    And Jewish people in the community, the men on Friday
    evening would go to the synagogue to services,
    and the family would go on Saturday morning.
    And then the custom was after services on Saturday morning,
    families would visit with each other.
    My parents never went to services.
    Consequently, we never had any visitors.
    They also didn't visit.
    And that made me unhappy.
    But nothing I could do about it.
    I didn't really know that I was Jewish
    until I was in first grade.
    Because we didn't observe anything at home.
    And I had been on the Jewish High Holidays,
    my parents did go to services.
    And so I'd been to synagogue.
    But I'd also been to church.
    There was only at that time one church
    which served both the Catholics and the Lutherans,
    which were the only two denominations in the village--
    only two other denominations.
    And I'd been to church.
    And I didn't understand what was going on in church.
    And I didn't understand what was going on in synagogue.
    And it didn't really make any difference to me.
    And when I was in first grade, probably during the first week
    in first grade, because religion was taught as part
    of the regular curriculum.
    The teacher said the next hour is
    going to be religious instruction
    and I don't know all of your denominations.
    So would all the Catholic children raise their hands
    and up went my hand.
    And the teacher who was a neighbor
    said, Hedy put your hand down.
    You're not Catholic.
    Well, OK.
    No problem.
    And then all the Catholic children
    left and went to some other room.
    And then she said, now all the Lutheran children
    raise their hands.
    And up went my hand again.
    And she said, but Hedy you're not Lutheran.
    And oh, I'm not?
    Well what am I?
    And I must have heard somewhere something that being Jewish
    wasn't good, though I can't recall what that may be.
    But when she told me that I was Jewish, I protested vehemently.
    And I said, I'm not Jewish.
    And I'm not going to go to this class.
    And I'm going to tell my mother about it.
    And my mother is going to straighten all this out,
    and I don't have to go.
    But she made me go.
    And the whole hour in that class I protested, I'm not Jewish.
    I don't have to listen.
    I'm going to tell my mother, and so on.
    And then I came home that day.
    And I said, I don't like the teacher.
    I don't want to go back to school.
    And my mother said, what happened?
    And I told her.
    And she said, but you are Jewish.
    And I said, no, I'm not.
    Why are you?
    And she said, yes, I am.
    And I said is daddy Jewish?
    Is grandma Jewish?
    My uncle, my aunts, and so on?
    Yes, they are all Jewish.
    And I said, well, maybe all of you are, but I am not.
    But I had to attend religious classes in school
    because it was part of the regular curriculum.
    By the way, the school that I attended
    which was a public grade school, was the same school
    that my father had attended.
    After I was in that school for four years,
    I left that school to go to attend
    what is called a gymnasium, which I guess at the lower end
    is probably still like grade school.
    At the upper end, it's more like what one calls in the United
    States junior college.
    And that was in a neighboring community.
    That was also a school that my father and my grandfather
    had attended many years before.
    But before I go on with that, I want
    to go back just a little bit.
    I want to go back to 1933 which is the year that Hitler came
    to power on January 30, 1933.
    And I remember very clearly hearing my parents
    and other adults talk about Hitler
    and that he was a bad person.
    And that at first, that they hoped he wouldn't come to power,
    and when he finally did that his regime wouldn't last
    and it couldn't last.
    And I didn't really pay much attention to it.
    This was adults talking.
    And I thought, well, adults sometimes
    talk all this nonsense.
    It doesn't really have anything to do with me.
    But it didn't last very long before I realized it did indeed
    have something to do with me.
    Just two months later, on April 1, 1933,
    there was a boycott of all Jewish businesses
    all over Germany.
    And since my father had a business,
    that boycott affected him.
    And I remember there was an SA man,
    those were the brown-shirted Nazis,
    stood in front of my father's business
    with his legs spread apart, his hands folded behind his back.
    And he seemed to be looking off into the distance.
    The purpose of that man standing there
    was to prevent Christians from coming to the store.
    And not only was there this man standing
    in front of my father's store, but also
    I saw one standing in front of the Jewish butcher,
    the Jewish baker.
    There was a big Jewish hardware store.
    There was somebody standing there.
    And I asked my father, what is this?
    Why are these men standing in front of the stores?
    And my father said, don't worry about it.
    It's nothing.
    It's going to go away.
    And I wanted to believe that.
    And indeed, it did go away it lasted just that one day.
    But I'm sure the economic effects were not just
    that day when Christians probably hesitated or didn't
    come into Jewish stores.
    But it was long range also, though what exactly it
    meant in terms of actual money I don't
    know because I was too young.
    The next thing then that happened
    was when my father took me to register me for the gymnasium,
    the principal said to him, I'm very sorry.
    But Hedy cannot attend school here because you're Jewish.
    And my father didn't say anything,
    but pointed with his finger to something
    that he wore in his lapel.
    And it was something that I'm not exactly sure what it was.
    But it had something to do with the fact
    that he was a veteran of World War I.
    And the principals looked, and said, oh.
    I didn't know that you were a veteran of World War
    I. In that case Hedy can attend the school.
    And that's how I was allowed to go there.
    And that was in 1935.
    When I first got to that school, there
    were a lot of Jewish children in that school, quite a lot of them
    from Kippenheim even.
    Over the years, the numbers decreased,
    some perhaps due to the fact that parents couldn't
    afford to pay the tuition.
    The other reason were that families
    were fortunate to leave Germany, and so the children, of course,
    went with them.
    The next thing that happened that caused
    me to realize that Hitler and his regime
    does have some effect on me was in 1936
    my grandfather, my mother's father who lived in Hanau
    and was in business there, a shoe business
    that he started in 1896.
    He came to live with us for a lengthy period of time.
    And I thought at first that was wonderful to have my grandfather
    there every single day.
    Because before he would come maybe on the weekend.
    My grandmother had died in 1930.
    And the reason my grandfather lived
    with us was because one day he was walking on the sidewalk
    in Hanau, when a Nazi came up to him and said,
    Jews are not allowed to walk on the sidewalk.
    Get off.
    And so he walked in the street.
    And the same Nazi said and Jews aren't allowed
    to walk in the street either.
    You are under arrest.
    And he was taken to jail.
    And after he was there several days
    he was told if you promise to sell your home,
    sell your business, leave town and never come back,
    we will release you.
    And so he agreed to that.
    And so he no longer had a livelihood.
    He no longer had a place to stay.
    And so he came to live with us and stayed with us
    several months.
    And when he felt he was perhaps too much of a burden for us,
    he moved on to my mother's brother and his wife
    and stayed with them for a while.
    And then when he felt it was too much for them,
    he would go to an old age home and stay there
    for several months.
    And then he'd come back to us again.
    And at first I didn't know why that was.
    But later on, I learned what the reason was.
    Things in school began to deteriorate.
    As fewer Jewish children were left,
    it also seemed almost simultaneously
    that the discrimination against me by the Christian children
    increased.
    And of course, I was more dependent on socialization
    with them, as there were fewer Jewish children there.
    For instance, on break which usually
    is the best time of the day was the worst time
    of the day for me.
    Because nobody would talk to me.
    The last couple of years there were only one other child
    and I in school, and the other child was a boy a year younger
    than I.
    And during recess, the boys were in the back of the school
    and the girls in the front.
    So he was alone in the back of the school
    and I was alone in the front of the school.
    And I used to lean up against one
    of the pillars of the building.
    And in fact, when I went back there last year,
    I went to the school.
    I looked to see if there wasn't an indentation
    in that pillar from where I used to lean up against it.
    But there wasn't.
    And for the last 2 and 1/2 years in that school,
    I was there a total of 3 and 1/2 years.
    But for the last 2 and 1/2 years that I was there,
    I had a math teacher who used to come
    to school most of the time in his SS
    uniform, the black uniform.
    And he wore knee-high boots.
    In his right boot he always carried a revolver.
    I don't know if it was loaded or not.
    And when he asked me a question, he
    would either hold his hand on the revolver
    or a couple of times actually pointed it at me.
    And so learning was probably zero for me
    because I was petrified.
    And when he asked me a question, regardless
    whether my answer was right or wrong,
    he would always ridicule me in front of the class
    and say, well, this is a Jewish answer.
    And we know that Jewish answers are no good.
    And then the children would laugh.
    And I would come home and I would
    share this with my parents, and say I
    don't want to go to school anymore.
    I want to go back to the grade school
    that I used to be in because I had no problems there.
    And my father, who was perhaps more of a dreamer and my mother
    was more of the realist, my father
    would say to me well think about what you're
    going to be doing later on when you graduate
    from this school which was many years away yet,
    you will be going to the French speaking part of Switzerland
    or to France to perfect your French.
    And this is something that most of those children,
    if any of them, probably will never do.
    So think about that, that wonderful opportunity
    that you will have.
    And I wanted to think about that and believe that.
    But the next day I was back in school
    and I had to deal with the children not talking to me,
    or calling me a dirty Jew, or some other derogatory term,
    the math teacher ridiculing me.
    And I got angry at my father for saying
    something to me that was so far off that
    was not a reality for me.
    I heard my mother couple of times
    in discussion with my father say,
    maybe we should take her out of school.
    And also I heard her talk still later saying,
    financially we really can't afford it anymore.
    We should take her out.
    And my father said, we can starve.
    But we're not going to take her out of this school.
    And so I remained in this school.
    And it was a very unhappy experience.
    And all the other teachers were fine.
    But this one teacher just spoiled my whole school life
    there.
    I want to talk now about November 9 and November 10,
    which has been known as Crystal Night or the Night
    of the Broken Glass, and how that affected me and my family.
    And I think what I'm going to say probably
    can be more or less duplicated as having
    happened all over Germany and Austria at that time.
    Austria had already been annexed to Germany.
    I remember on a Wednesday night which was I think November 9,
    if I'm not mistaken, in 1938.
    Before I went to bed, my father said to me
    if you hear some strange noises during the night,
    immediately get out of bed and go out and get into the wardrobe
    in the hallway.
    And I said, what are you talking about?
    Why?
    What kind of noise?
    And he said, don't ask any questions.
    Just do as you're told, which was totally unlike my father
    or unlike my parents.
    I was always encouraged to ask questions and received answers.
    Or if I didn't receive direct answers
    I was encouraged to find the answers.
    But here I'm told don't ask questions.
    Just do as you're told.
    And so I went to bed.
    And I probably laid in bed for quite a
    while before I was able to sleep, listening for something
    I didn't know what to listen for,
    and finally fell asleep, and got up the next morning,
    and forgot all about it.
    And got ready to go to school, and left for school
    at 10 minutes after 7:00 just like I did every other day,
    with my bicycle together with this one other Jewish child who
    was at the school who was also from Kippenheim.
    And as we approached the school, we
    had to pass a house where a Jewish dentist had
    his home and his practice.
    And I noticed that every window in that building was broken.
    I'd seen a broken window here or there.
    But here was a whole row of broken windows.
    And though I didn't know why, I assumed
    it was because he was Jewish.
    And as we entered the school yard and parked our bicycles,
    I could just sense something is different.
    But I didn't know what it was.
    And I was afraid to ask.
    And so I proceeded on to my classroom.
    And this young boy proceeded to his classroom.
    And classes started as they did every day.
    And about a half hour later the principal walked in.
    And he gave a long talk which even later that day I couldn't
    remember what he actually said.
    But at some point while he was talking,
    he pointed his finger at me and he said, get out, you dirty Jew.
    And I heard what he said.
    But I could not believe it.
    I mean how could this nice man, this Gentile man, this good man
    whose daughter is one of my classmates,
    how could he have said that?
    I must have dreamed this.
    And so I asked him, please repeat what you said.
    I'm sorry.
    I didn't hear it.
    And he not only repeated it, but came over and took me
    by the elbow , and pushed me out the door.
    And I stood out in the hallway and all kinds of thoughts
    were racing through my head.
    What did I do?
    Did I not listen?
    Did I yawn?
    Did I fall asleep?
    What did I do?
    What am I going to tell my parents?
    And the kinds of searching questions
    that I was asking myself later on I
    learned, is typical of victims look to themselves for what
    have I done, rather than realizing
    that it's an outside force that has caused them the problem.
    And as these thoughts were racing through my head
    and I had no answer for them, the door opened
    and the children came running out.
    They were putting on their coats.
    Some pushed me and others called me a dirty Jew and so on.
    And they all left.
    And I had no idea where they were going, because there was
    no field trip planned that day.
    And I didn't know.
    Now, what do I do?
    Do I go with them?
    Do I stay in the hall?
    Do I go back in the classroom.
    And I finally decided to go back into the classroom.
    And I sat at my desk, got out a book and tried to study.
    I don't think I had any idea what was in that book.
    And very shortly afterwards, I heard soft knocking on the door.
    And the other Jewish boy came in.
    He had had very much the same experience as I did.
    And because I was a year older than he,
    he came to me for advice.
    And I said to him, well, you go back to your classroom
    and you study.
    I'm studying.
    And he said, I can't.
    I'm scared.
    I want to stay here.
    And I said, all right you can stay here.
    But you have to be quiet because I am studying.
    I was being very authoritarian.
    And he said, well, can I go over there to the window
    and look out?
    And I said, yes, go ahead and look out
    but you've got to leave me alone now.
    I need to study.
    And he was at that window maybe an hour or hour and a half,
    when he suddenly became very excited.
    And he said, look.
    Come here.
    What is this?
    And I joined him at the window.
    And we saw men in a row, three in a row chained to each other,
    chained to the ones in front of them,
    chained to the ones behind them, with SS men with whips,
    hitting them and urging them to walk faster.
    And though we didn't recognize any of these men,
    we just assumed that they were Jewish.
    And with that, we decided nothing so far
    today has made a whole lot of sense.
    We better call home.
    And I called my mother and somebody answered the phone
    and said the phone is no longer working.
    And I called my father at his business.
    My aunt and my grandmother and all those phones
    were I got the same answer.
    The phone is no longer working.
    And Hans, the young boy, called his mother.
    And I don't know if some other people.
    And he got the same answer.
    So with that, we decided we just better go home.
    Though we were afraid to leave the school,
    you don't leave at 10:30 in the morning without asking somebody.
    But there also was nobody there to ask
    or we thought there was nobody there to ask.
    As I approached my house, I noticed
    that it looked differently than the way it looked
    when I left in the morning.
    We had green shutters on the house.
    And they were never closed during the daytime,
    sometimes at night in the winter if it was very cold and very
    windy they would be closed.
    And they were closed.
    And I ran to the door.
    And it was locked.
    And I didn't even know that you could lock the door.
    And I ran around the back of the house and that door was locked.
    I came back around the front, rang the doorbell.
    I could hear it.
    But nobody answered.
    And I wondered, where is my mother?
    She should be home.
    And I stood on the sidewalk in front of the building
    for a couple of minutes just trying
    to understand what seemed--
    I just wasn't able to comprehend what was going on.
    When I saw a man walking down the street who
    any other time if I found myself on the same side of the street
    as he, I would have crossed the street
    because I knew him to be one of the town's worst
    or the village's worst Nazis.
    But in my desperation that morning,
    I said to him do you know where my mother is?
    And he said, I don't know where the bitch is.
    But if I find her and she's still alive
    I'm going to kill her.
    Well with that, I just took off and decided
    I've got to find my father, my aunt, my grandmother, somebody.
    And on my way I had to pass this Jewish hardware store.
    And all the windows were broken.
    And there was a crowd of people there reaching in and taking out
    stuff, laughing and joking.
    And it was a carnival kind of atmosphere
    which I also didn't understand.
    And as I approached my aunt's house,
    I could see my mother and my aunt
    looking out of the second story window.
    And I wondered why are they looking out.
    What are they trying to see?
    And my mother opened the door.
    And she looked kind of grotesque.
    And she was taller and thinner than my aunt.
    And she was wearing my aunt's clothes.
    And we exchanged what had occurred to both of us.
    And my mother told me that about 10 minutes after I
    left for school that morning, some Nazis came to the house
    and arrested my father and took him away.
    He was still in his pajamas and slippers.
    They did not give him an opportunity to get dressed
    or even put a coat on.
    And it was very cold.
    And as he was walking out the door, he said to my mother
    find Hedy and try and stay together.
    A couple of the Nazis stayed behind
    and they broke all the windows.
    And that's why my mother closed all the shutters.
    They also did some other vandalism in the house.
    And then after my mother closed the shutters,
    she secured the house and ran down the street to my aunt,
    not realizing that she was still wearing her nightclothes.
    And my aunt--
    [AUDIO OUT]
    Epstein, reel two.
    My uncle had also been arrested earlier that morning,
    though there was no vandalism to their house or any broken
    windows.
    The reason they were looking out the window is somehow,
    and I don't know how or I don't remember
    how they learned, that all the Jewish men starting
    with the age of 16 who had been arrested that morning
    had been taken to the village hall.
    And you could see village hall in the next block
    from my aunt's house.
    And they wanted to see if they were coming out.
    So I joined them at the window.
    And it wasn't long after that that we saw men
    or we saw people coming out of village hall.
    And they formed into group and started to march down the street
    right past my aunt's house.
    And in that group was my father, and my uncle, and many other men
    that I knew also many men that I didn't know.
    And I found out just last year when
    I was back in Kippenheim, who these other men were
    that I didn't know.
    Apparently men from the surrounding area
    were all brought to Kippenheim, and from Kippenheim they
    all marched together to a railroad station
    in the neighboring community.
    But I didn't know that at that time.
    My mother practically hung me out of that second story window.
    And she called out to my father.
    We have Hedy and we're all together.
    Whether my father heard me or saw me, we didn't know.
    But what we saw was exactly what I had described to my mother
    before, men chained to each other,
    and with the SS men whipping them, urging them to go faster.
    And there were men.
    Some men were fully dressed.
    Others were partially dressed.
    Some were in pajamas like my father.
    We watched them until they went around the bend in the road,
    and we couldn't see them anymore.
    And we closed the windows, and we just sat there.
    And very soon after that, we heard loud banging
    on the door downstairs.
    And knowing what had happened in our house,
    we decided to go up in the attic and there was an old wardrobe
    up there.
    And my aunt, my mother, and I hid in that wardrobe.
    I don't really know how long we were in there.
    It seemed to me I spent a lifetime in there.
    And I remember also whispering to my mother,
    I want to get out of here.
    And I don't mean just this wardrobe,
    but I want to get out of Germany.
    And the reason I was saying getting out of Germany
    probably came from the fact that my parents
    had tried for many, many years to get out of Germany.
    And it was easy, or relatively easy,
    to leave Germany because the Nazis wanted
    to get rid of the Jews.
    It was difficult to find a place or a country that
    would receive you.
    It was difficult particularly if you didn't have any relatives
    in those countries or didn't know anybody there,
    and we didn't.
    And so although at some point, my father found some cousins,
    10 times removed, in Chicago.
    And I remember he wrote to that cousin
    asking him to help us to get out of Germany.
    And if he couldn't, to go to his employer.
    Maybe his employer could do something.
    And if not, go to the Jewish community and maybe
    they could help.
    And I remember very clearly the letter
    that this man wrote back to my parents
    saying that he was very fortunate that he
    had a job at that time.
    There was a depression in the United States.
    And he was supporting his elderly mother.
    And so he couldn't help.
    He was afraid to go to his employer,
    because he was afraid he might lose his job.
    And he also did not wish to go to the Jewish community
    because he didn't want to make a fool of himself.
    And so why don't you wait and things will get better?
    And to this day, when somebody says you know it takes time
    or you've got to wait, it's almost like putting a red cloth
    in front of a bull.
    I mean, I get extremely angry.
    It upsets me tremendously.
    When there are times when one cannot wait,
    when one has to act, and has to act now.
    And that was one of those times.
    As I said earlier, I don't know really
    how long we were in this attic.
    But when it seemed quiet for a long time,
    we decided to come down.
    And there was nobody in the building.
    In fact, they never actually broke down the door.
    They did scratch it up, but nothing really happened.
    And what we learned later on that at noon on that day,
    all activities or all aktions against the Jews in Kippenheim
    were called to a halt. And they came to my aunt's house,
    probably a minute or so before noon.
    There were a lot of other things that happened that day.
    For instance, all over Germany synagogues were burned,
    or if not burned they were badly vandalized.
    In Kippenheim, the synagogue was set on fire.
    But they very quickly realized that on either side
    of the synagogue there were Christian homes.
    And since the fire wasn't going to be put out,
    there was some concern that those Christian homes
    would catch fire.
    And so the fire was put out very quickly
    before it did a lot of damage.
    But they vandalized the synagogue,
    both inside and outside.
    For instance, on the top of the synagogue it came to a peak.
    There were the two tablets of Moses
    with the Ten Commandments on it.
    And they were knocked down.
    The windows were broken.
    And again, this is something that I just learned last year.
    The Torah scrolls had been taken out
    and taken to the railroad station, where
    the men had been taken to.
    And were opened up and hung on the railroad
    station on the platform.
    That would have been a very sacrilegious act, would it not?
    Yes, it would have been.
    Because those are, it's like the Jewish law, and all the rituals,
    and all the commandments are in the Torah.
    It's a very holy document.
    Money was confiscated.
    All Jewish businesses had to be permanently closed.
    If you were a doctor, or a dentist, or a lawyer,
    you weren't allowed to practice.
    Christian doctors weren't allowed to treat Jews.
    Jews weren't allowed to go to hospitals.
    Jewish children were no longer allowed
    to attend public or private schools.
    So that morning when I left school,
    that was my last day of school in Germany.
    Jewelry had to be turned in, and other valuables.
    The name Jewish Women had to take on the name of Sarah.
    Jewish men had to take on the name of Israel.
    I think that actually, that law was passed earlier,
    may have been passed as early as 1935 as
    part of the Nuremberg laws.
    But I think it was really enforced only then.
    I was so traumatized by what happened that day
    that I would not permit my aunt or my mother out of my sight.
    If one of us had to go to the bathroom, three of us
    went to the bathroom.
    Since we could not really stay in our house
    with all the broken windows, we decided
    to stay at my aunt's house.
    And I did not want to sleep alone,
    nor did I want to go to bed before my aunt and mother would
    go to bed, so an extra bed was put in the bedroom.
    And all three of us slept in the same bedroom.
    For two weeks, there was no information
    about where the men were, if they were even still alive.
    And then pre-printed post cards arrived.
    And the only thing that was in handwriting
    was to whom it was addressed and from whom it came.
    And the top part of the postcard,
    the left side of the postcard, it said concentration camp,
    Dachau.
    All the men from this section of Germany where I came from
    were sent to Dachau.
    Dachau, by the way, was the very first concentration camp that
    was built in 1933 by the Nazis.
    And the pre-printed cards stated all the do's and don'ts, that
    you cannot come and visit, that all attempts to try to get
    the person released are futile, and so on and so forth.
    Once we knew where my father was and where
    the other men, because everybody within a day or two
    received a postcard like that, my mother took it upon herself
    to visit the Gestapo office.
    That's the Nazi secret police, which
    was in a community of probably 100 kilometers or so, or maybe
    more, away from Kippenheim.
    This was in Karlsruhe.
    And it was very difficult for me to let my mother go.
    But my mother said, you want your father to come home,
    don't you?
    And I'm going to try and see what
    I can do to facilitate that.
    So you must let me go.
    And so she left every morning, early in the morning by train,
    and came back in the evening, and came back every day
    with no information.
    On the Monday of the fourth week after the men had been gone,
    my mother was told that my father would come back
    that week.
    However, if he does not come back by Friday,
    he will never come back because he's dead.
    Unbeknownst to my mother that day,
    the first Jewish men arrived back from Dachau in Kippenheim.
    And we heard about that.
    And so we visited them.
    And I was allowed to come along and say hello, and how are you.
    But then I had to leave the room.
    Because my mother said, we adults want to talk.
    And this is not for you.
    You're still a child.
    But a lasting impression for me was that each and every man that
    came back that day and in the ensuing days
    had his hair completely shaved off.
    And I had never seen that before.
    And just it horrified me somehow.
    It seemed degrading.
    The next morning, Tuesday morning, we of course
    went back to our house because that's where
    my father would naturally come.
    And the people that had arrived on that Monday,
    arrived early in the morning on a train that
    came in at about 7 o'clock.
    And my father did not come home on Tuesday, not on Wednesday,
    and not on Thursday.
    And on Friday morning I think my mother temporarily partially
    lost her sanity, because she refused to get out of bed
    and she just carried on saying it's no sense getting up.
    My husband is dead.
    I don't want to go on living anymore.
    I don't ever want to get out of bed.
    There's no sense to life anymore.
    And my aunt and I tried to prevail upon her to get up.
    That it was important that she get up.
    And I was telling her, my father's coming home today
    and you've got to get up.
    We've got to go over to the house.
    It's getting late.
    We've got to go.
    And she just wouldn't and so I said to my aunt,
    please go with me to the house.
    And she said, I can't leave your mother
    in the condition she's in.
    You go by yourself.
    And I said, no.
    I'm afraid to go by myself.
    And just about then we heard a knock on the door downstairs.
    And I did something for the first time in four weeks
    on my own.
    I went to the window and looked out
    and I thought I saw my father there, and called out
    to my aunts and my mother.
    Daddy's home.
    And my mother said, no, it's the Nazis.
    It's just a ruse.
    Let's go back up in the attic and hide in that wardrobe again.
    But I went downstairs and opened the door,
    and indeed it was my father.
    I expected him to come back in pajamas
    because that's how he left.
    But they had given him clothes.
    And he took off his hat.
    And I said oh, my God.
    They shaved your hair.
    And I thought he's my father.
    He's different.
    They're not going to do this to him.
    And he was so ashamed.
    He took that hat and pulled put it back on,
    and pulled it practically all the way down to his chin.
    And we could hear my mother screaming upstairs.
    Let's go up in the attic.
    The Nazis are here again!
    And my father went upstairs, stood next to her bed.
    And she didn't recognize him.
    And it took a while before she finally came around to it
    and realized this is her husband.
    This is my father.
    And then of course, the joy was great
    that he was back, though somewhat dampened by the fact
    that my uncle hadn't come back yet, my father's brother.
    And there was my aunt standing there.
    And her husband isn't back.
    But my father had some news about him
    because he had seen him in Dachau.
    I noticed that my father's hands were in really bad condition.
    And I asked him, what's wrong with your hands?
    And he said, well, it was very cold in Dachau.
    And I didn't have any gloves.
    And I have frostbite on my hand.
    And also my job was to go to the kitchen at noon
    and pick up this big cauldron of hot soup
    and take it back to the barracks.
    And some of that hot soup would spill.
    And so I also got burns on my hand.
    And he says, but it's nothing.
    It's getting better already and it will heal.
    And my mother tried to prevail upon my father
    to change his clothes, to take a bath,
    or to at least wash up, and get out of these clothes.
    And he said, no, not now, later.
    And finally he admitted that he really
    was afraid to change clothes or to take these clothes off.
    Because he was beaten while he was there.
    And his body was swollen and sore.
    And he felt like he was sort of poured into those clothes.
    And they fit so snugly, he was afraid that it would hurt.
    And so my mother got a pair of scissors
    and cut the sleeves on his jacket
    open and just sort of peeled him out of that jacket.
    And they then went to the bathroom.
    And I never saw my father's body so I
    don't know how badly it looked.
    And my mother never told me and my father never told me.
    While in the bathroom, he apparently
    had a mild heart attack.
    And as I mentioned earlier, Jewish doctors
    weren't allowed to practice.
    There weren't any in Kippenheim anyway.
    And Christian doctors weren't allowed to treat Jews.
    But somehow, my mother had gotten word
    to our family doctor who was a Christian, a Dr. Weber.
    And every night he came and treated my father
    until my father was well.
    The term for people like that has been used
    is Righteous Christian.
    And I think Dr. Weber would qualify
    as a Righteous Christian.
    I don't know what else he did.
    But I know what he did for my father.
    Much to my consternation, last year
    when I was back in Kippenheim, someone
    told me that he was one of the doctors who
    performed medical experiments.
    I just can't quite put that together.
    I prefer to remember him the way I knew him,
    the way he treated me when I was a child,
    and when he came and took care of my father.
    And my father did get better.
    He's no longer alive.
    I met his sister.
    And I thanked his sister last year for what he had done.
    After my father got better, the efforts to leave Germany
    resumed.
    Only now the focus shifted somewhat.
    Whereas before we tried to leave as a family together.
    It was decided that whoever would have the opportunity
    to leave would leave first.
    And then hopefully the others would follow.
    Though I was not to be left alone,
    if my parents would be able to go.
    And I remember when we discussed this,
    it wasn't just a discussion between my parents,
    but I was part of that discussion.
    And my father, everything was always
    supposed to be a learning experience.
    And so he said we're going to have a powwow.
    And this is how Indians in the United States a long time
    ago used to sit together and discuss things.
    And then, for instance, he called my mother the squaw.
    And I don't remember what he called me.
    But I'm sure I must have had some Indian title also.
    And the opportunity for me to leave Germany then
    presented itself in May 1939.
    I was able to leave on May 18, 1939
    with a children's transport of 500 children ranging
    in age from twins six months old to 16 years old.
    And we went to England.
    Most of the children went into either girls homes
    or boys homes, institutional all kinds of settings.
    Some of us went to live with private families.
    I went to live with a private family.
    Probably many, if not most of the children,
    were able to go through the efforts
    of some Jewish organizations.
    That was not the case for me.
    But we had located a cousin of my grandfather's in England,
    a Mrs. Simon who had been in England since she
    was about 18 months old.
    She was at that time a woman in her 70s,
    still going to her own business, which she shared with her son.
    And I did not live with her.
    She I guess didn't want to be bothered with a child.
    And her daughter, a Beatrice Meyer,
    did all the legwork for her.
    And Beatrice Meyer talked to a rabbi in Edgware
    who helped her find a family, and I
    was placed with a family in Edgware,
    a family by the name of Sidney Rose
    and his wife and three children.
    And Mrs. Simon, my grandfather's cousin,
    paid them a certain amount of money monthly or weekly
    for my board and lodging.
    Immediately after I arrived in England,
    just I arrived on a Thursday, the 19th of May 1939,
    on that following Sunday, the Simon and Meyer family
    went on their yearly holiday to France.
    And they were going to be gone all summer.
    And they told me this when I arrived.
    I want to go back to when I was leaving Germany.
    Yes, I was going to ask you if you would do that,
    and how you felt about it.
    You were leaving your--
    Right, well when I was still in Kippenheim
    but knew that I would be leaving I had mixed feelings.
    There were feelings of not wanting to leave
    and being fearful about what I'm getting into,
    and especially when I found out that in England one drinks tea.
    And I didn't like tea, because I associated
    drinking tea with being sick.
    I was not very excited about that.
    On the other hand, my parents were
    trying to paint a wonderful picture for me,
    and going to a big city.
    There's an underground there.
    You'll be going to school again.
    You'll be learning a new language.
    You'll make new friends.
    And we'll be coming soon.
    We'll be together again, if not in England, then
    we'll be together in the United States or someplace.
    We'll be together.
    This is just temporary.
    And this is just-- you were going
    to go to France or to Switzerland,
    and this is just happening a little sooner.
    And I wanted to believe that.
    But I had all these mixed feelings.
    And then all of a sudden, I got the notion into my head
    that my parents really wanted to get rid
    of me, that I wasn't really their child,
    that I was a Gypsy child.
    Because Gypsies used to come to Kippenheim once or twice a year.
    And the story that I heard then always
    was the gypsy steal children.
    And so I was always warned not to be anywhere near there.
    But I used to be fascinated by the Gypsies.
    And I'd go there anyway, even though I wasn't allowed to,
    and stand across the street, and watch them.
    And I used to think, well, maybe I'm a gypsy child.
    Maybe one of these Gypsies is going to say, oh, here you are.
    And so I thought when I was getting ready to leave Germany,
    I said, you know maybe I really am a gypsy child,
    and my parents are trying to get rid of me.
    And the Gypsies didn't reclaim me,
    so now they're getting rid of me.
    And I told them that which must have been extremely
    painful for them, because I'm sure while they didn't share
    their pain of parting with me, never showed it or never talked
    about it, I'm sure they felt it.
    And then for me to say that must have just
    been horrendous for them.
    Plus there were people in the Jewish community who
    were saying to them at a time like this when there are
    problems, you don't separate.
    The family stays together.
    And I was the only Jewish child that
    left on a children's transport from Kippenheim.
    And as my parents put me on the train,
    and the train started, and they were still
    smiling, and this wonderful thing that I'm going to go to.
    As the train started to move away from the station,
    they ran along the platform until the platform ended.
    And I watched and I saw the tears streaming down their face.
    And then I knew they really did love me.
    This was a great act of love.
    And I watched them, and I saw them
    getting smaller and smaller.
    And then there were two dots, and then they were gone.
    I had no knowledge.
    The thought didn't even occur to me
    that this was the very last time that I saw my parents.
    But I immediately sat down with a terrible guilty conscience,
    and wrote a letter to my parents and apologized
    for what I had said to them.
    And that I really knew that they loved me very much.
    And that's why they sent me away,
    because they loved me so much.
    And when the train stopped in Cologne
    I gave the letter to somebody who was on the platform
    because there were new children joining us there.
    And asked them to mail my letter to my parents.
    And they did because my parents acknowledged
    receiving that letter.
    And so I'm very glad that I had enough good sense to do that.
    Now, a little bit about life in England.
    Yes, before we get to England, anything
    more of that journey about the other children, and the control.
    Who was sort of looking after?
    Well, there were adults who traveled
    with us who had to go back to Germany afterwards.
    Because they did not have visas to go to England,
    but they were allowed to take us.
    And that also I guess helped with getting the next transport
    out of Germany, because then they were there
    to take the next people.
    I didn't really know any of that at that time.
    I mean I knew there were adults.
    And I thought they were also going to England.
    And I knew that they were there to chaperone us.
    I don't really remember much about the children
    in the compartment with me.
    Though I apparently described them to my parents
    and described some of the adults,
    because letters that I have from my parents talk about this,
    and how they could visualize what these people looked like
    and how they behaved from my descriptions.
    Like for instance, I referred to one person as snowflake.
    I'm not sure today anymore what that means.
    All of that is gone.
    I don't remember that.
    I remember being very excited when the train stopped
    in Cologne, because the train station in Cologne
    is right next to the cathedral.
    And I had heard about it, but I'd never seen it.
    And so seeing this magnificent cathedral
    was just wonderful for me.
    And I did a lot of writing when while the train was moving,
    writing another letter to my parents, which
    I was going to give to somebody at some point to mail, and did.
    And then as the train crossed over into Holland,
    it stopped very shortly after we crossed the border.
    And there were some women on the platform.
    And I don't know who they were.
    But they gave us juice and cookies.
    And it was the best juice and the best cookies
    I ever had in my whole life.
    And then we passed these enormous fields
    of tulips, all different colors.
    I mean I'd seen tulips before, but these
    were thousands and thousands of tulips as far as you could see,
    tulips everywhere.
    And so I sat down and I wrote to my parents about the tulips.
    And the train took us to Hook of Holland,
    where we were going to get on the boat at 6
    o'clock that night, and did.
    And the boat was not going to leave until midnight,
    and would arrive in Harwich, England the following morning
    at 6 o'clock.
    And I shared a cabin, a very small cabin, with another girl.
    I don't really remember anything about her either.
    I was interested in finding out about this boat.
    And I walked all over this boat, investigated the boat.
    And at some point, I needed to go to the bathroom.
    And I had learned a little bit of English before I left.
    My father was teaching me some English.
    And some of what he remembered, and also by using a book.
    And I had learned that a bathroom is either
    a water closet, or WC.
    And so I looked on the boat for either water closet or WC.
    And I didn't see either one.
    And I thought, well I've been looking left and right.
    I must have missed it, so I'll make--
    --9, reel 3.
    OK.
    I was looking for a water closet, or WC,
    and didn't find it.
    And so I decided, since I'd been looking left and right,
    that maybe I'll circulate the boat and look only on one side
    and then go over and look on the other side.
    But I didn't find it.
    And so I asked one of the stewards or one of the people
    who were working on the boat, where is-- in my best English--
    where is the water closet?
    And he said, we don't have one.
    And so I said, where is the WC.
    We don't have one.
    And all right.
    Well, if he says we don't have one,
    then I guess there isn't one.
    But what am I going to do?
    I mean, it's not urgent now, but 6 o'clock tomorrow
    is when we arrive in England.
    And I don't think I can wait that long.
    And so I, by midnight, when the motors were all revved up
    because the boat was going to leave at midnight,
    it was pretty urgent for me to go to the bathroom.
    I decided-- we were not supposed to leave our cabins after, I
    think, 10 o'clock or so.
    I went up on deck.
    And there was a waterfall up there that I created.
    And I was much relieved after that.
    When we arrived in Harwich, we immediately were put on a train.
    And I don't know whether this is what I remember is real
    or if this is a figment of my imagination,
    but it was a super modern train, as I remember it.
    And there were no compartments.
    It was just a big carriage.
    And there were swivel kind of chairs at different places
    all over this compartment.
    I don't know if that was really so,
    but this is what I seem to remember.
    And I was fascinated by this kind of train.
    I'd never seen that kind of train before.
    And we arrived sometime, I don't know when,
    but that morning at Liverpool Street Station.
    And we were taken to a huge hall.
    And there were children crying, and there were lots
    of people behind a barrier.
    And we were told that the names of the children
    would be called alphabetically.
    And then whoever's name is called should come forward
    to this desk.
    And my name, at that time, was-- so my maiden name was
    Wachenheimer, which is with a W. So I
    decided it's going to be a long time before my name is called,
    and so I didn't really pay much attention to the first names
    being called.
    But I looked around, you know, who--
    because Mrs. Mayer was going to pick me up, and where is she?
    Which one of these many women is she?
    And after a while, I got bored with it
    all and apparently fell asleep sitting on my suitcase.
    And at some point, I woke up, and there was hardly anybody
    there.
    There were only about two children
    left and not many adults.
    And I started to cry.
    You know, I've not been picked up.
    And then somebody came over to me and said, who are you?
    And I was wearing a tag with my name on it.
    And they said, oh, there you are.
    We've been looking for you.
    There is somebody waiting for you.
    And that's when I met Mrs. Mayer, who was frantic
    because she'd been waiting.
    And they'd called my name, and nobody responded.
    And they were worried whether I'd gotten lost somewhere.
    And she spoke no German.
    And my English was so limited.
    I had no idea-- she kept on talking to me.
    I didn't know what she was saying to me.
    And she took me to the subway.
    And I don't know what subway station that was.
    And we-- I know there was a huge, steep escalator
    that we had to go down.
    And she just walked ahead of me and assumed I would follow.
    And I had never been on an escalator
    before in my whole life.
    I'd never seen one.
    And I had a suitcase in my hand, or two suitcase.
    No, she had one suitcase, and I had another suitcase.
    But I had a hat.
    And the hat had an elastic band.
    But the elastic band had broken.
    And it was sort of a pillbox.
    And so I had to carry the hat because otherwise it
    would have fallen off.
    And I had a pocket book, and I never
    had had a pocket book before, and an umbrella.
    And somebody had brought some cookies
    to the train station for me.
    And so I had those.
    And somebody else had brought me a book, and I had that.
    How am I going to get on this escalator?
    I need to hold on both railings, and I don't have any free hands.
    And in the meantime, Mrs. Mayer is down at the bottom.
    And she's motioning to me and calling to me.
    And I'm petrified.
    And other people are coming, and I'm just motioning to them
    to go onto the escalator.
    I'm petrified.
    And I can't get on this thing.
    And so finally I decided to put all my belongings--
    I put those on the escalator.
    And I figured Mrs. Mayer is down there.
    She can take them.
    And then maybe if I hold on both sides, I will go there.
    And I did, but it was a really frightening experience for me
    to go down that escalator.
    And it was so steep.
    And then when we got down there, it was noisy.
    The trains were coming from both directions.
    And we got on this red subway.
    It was-- at least I remember the train.
    The carriages seemed to be red.
    And it was very noisy.
    And Mrs. Mayer keeps on talking to me.
    And I mean, not only that I didn't understand English,
    I couldn't hear because I wasn't used to that kind of noise.
    And we traveled and traveled and traveled forever, it seemed.
    And all of a sudden, we come out into the daylight.
    And I think that was in Hendon.
    And we go a few more stations, and we arrive in Edgware.
    And we get out of the train.
    And then she takes a taxi, and we
    drive to the Rose house, which is on the--
    was on the far end of Edgware, near Mill Hill or Mill Creek.
    Mill Hill, I think it is.
    And the family was waiting for me.
    They had three children, a daughter Eunice, I think,
    who was 19, I think, at the time;
    and another daughter that's about the same age as I, whose
    name I can't remember.
    And then there was Pamela, who was two or three years younger.
    And I shared--
    I was told I would share a bedroom with the girl that
    was the same age as I. And I had all these cookies and chocolates
    and stuff that people had given me.
    And so I gave that to Mrs. Rose because you don't take that
    into your bedroom.
    I mean, I didn't do that at home.
    And I didn't know where to put it, so I just gave it to her.
    And that was the last time I ever saw that.
    And then Mrs. Mayer talked to Mrs. Rose for a while,
    and then she left.
    And I knew that I wouldn't see her
    until sometime the end of summer or early fall
    because they were leaving on Sunday to go on their holiday
    to France.
    And I also was told that the next day I
    would be taken to school by Mrs. Rose to register me for school,
    and I would probably start school on Monday.
    And I was very excited about that.
    And I was getting hungry, but I didn't
    want to say I'm hungry, because I had only had had breakfast
    that morning.
    And I-- and I saw them.
    Then the table was set in the kitchen, and they all sat down,
    and they ate.
    And I was told to go outside and look at the flowers in the yard.
    And I didn't understand that, why.
    But I did.
    And then when they-- then I came back
    in after I looked at the flowers for a little while,
    and they said, no, no, no.
    Go back out there.
    Go back out there.
    And I went back outside.
    And I stayed outside because I didn't know what else to do.
    And then finally I was allowed to come back in,
    and the table was cleared.
    And I was told to sit down, and I
    was given two pieces of toast and butter
    and a cup of tea, which I didn't really want.
    But I was thirsty, so I drank it.
    And I was hungry, and so I ate the toast.
    And then I thought, well, what will
    I-- maybe that's how one starts a meal in England.
    And so I just sat and waited.
    I would get something else.
    And then they said, no.
    They said, you're finished.
    Or they indicated to me that I was finished.
    And I thought, well, I don't know.
    But I wasn't too worried yet.
    And as it turned out, that really basically was my diet
    for the next 10 weeks.
    For breakfast I got a piece of toast and butter and tea.
    And for lunch-- and I used to have to walk home from school,
    and it was a long walk from school.
    I got two pieces of toast and butter and cup of tea.
    And for supper, I get the same, two pieces of toast and butter
    and a cup of tea.
    And on Sundays, Mr. Rose used to come
    to serve all the family and me also a cup of tea
    and a cookie in bed.
    And so on Sunday morning, I had the addition of a cookie
    and an extra cup of tea.
    After a while, I got a little bit
    smarter because at first I drank the tea just plain.
    And then because there was milk and sugar,
    and I poured some milk and some sugar in there
    because I knew that had some nutritious value,
    and I would get a little bit extra.
    In school, the children, you know,
    would have candy or cookies.
    And they would, of course, offer me some.
    And I was dying to have some, but I was--
    I didn't accept it because what could I bring them?
    I had nothing to bring them.
    And the chocolates and the cookies
    that I had brought with me from Germany, I had asked for them.
    And I was told that they had eaten them, that I had given it
    to them as a present.
    And they were all gone.
    So I had nothing to give to the children.
    And so I didn't ever take anything.
    What were they, the rest of the family,
    were they things sort of normal food?
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    So was there any explanation given?
    Yes.
    The explanation was that in Germany I was starving.
    And now that I see food is plentiful in England,
    I want everything.
    And it's not good for me because I need to start to eat--
    increase my diet slowly for health reasons.
    And I tried to explain, and it was difficult
    because I didn't know much English, that I was never
    hungry in Germany.
    I never starved, that the only thing that was rationed
    was butter.
    But that didn't mean that I was ever hungry.
    And what I also found out after a while
    is that my parents had been sending me things.
    My mother would bake some cookies and send them.
    But I didn't know that.
    And they kept them and never told me.
    And at one point, my parents wrote and said,
    you know, you don't have to say thank you
    for the things we send you, but you at least
    should acknowledge them.
    Because if they don't arrive, we won't send anything anymore.
    And like one of the things they had
    sent was a new bathrobe for me, and I never got it.
    But I noticed that this girl who was about my age, at one point
    had a new bathrobe.
    But I didn't know that that was for me.
    I just thought she got a new bathrobe.
    And so I figured it out from what my parents were saying
    that, apparently, these things are arriving
    but I'm not getting them.
    And so I wrote to my parents, please
    don't send any more of anything because I
    have plenty of everything here.
    I didn't want to ever tell my parents.
    They never knew what was going on in this family with what
    was happening to me because I didn't want to worry them.
    And so I said, you know, don't send anything
    because it's just I have too much of everything here.
    And so my parents didn't send anything anymore.
    And--
    This family, were they Jewish?
    Yes.
    And I didn't tell the rabbi.
    I didn't tell anybody.
    I didn't tell my parents.
    I think I would have told Mrs. Mayer or Mrs. Simon,
    but they were in France.
    And I didn't know where they were in France.
    And sometime in, I think it was the middle of July,
    I got a phone call from Mrs. Mayer.
    She said, we have come back early because it looks
    like there might be a war, and we didn't
    want to get caught in France.
    So we're back.
    And how are things?
    And how are you?
    And for the first time ever I said, I'm hungry.
    And it was about 4:30 in the afternoon.
    So she said, well, when do you eat supper?
    And I said, it doesn't make any difference.
    And she said, what do you mean?
    And then I felt uncomfortable to talk
    because I was in the Rose home.
    And I didn't know who was listening.
    And she noticed that I was reluctant to talk.
    So she said, well, why don't you come and visit us
    for lunch on Saturday.
    And Mrs. Rose can give you directions how to get here.
    You'll have to take the subway or the underground,
    I guess you call it in England.
    And so I said, I can't come.
    And she said, why can't you come?
    Are you doing something else?
    And I said, it costs money, and I don't have any money.
    I had left with 10 German marks.
    But I was not going to touch those.
    Those were when things get really, really bad.
    And so I was going to use that to go on the subway.
    And so she said, well, don't you get an allowance?
    Well, I didn't know what that was even.
    And so she explained to me, doesn't Mrs. Rose
    give you some money so that you can
    buy yourself something if you need something
    or want something?
    And I said, no.
    And so she said, well, let me talk to Mrs. Rose.
    And the two of them talked.
    And then I was put back on the phone.
    And I was told that Mrs. Rose would give me
    some money so I could come to visit her,
    and then we would talk.
    And I did go there that Saturday.
    And I think I ate the whole time that I was there.
    And I was told, you know, you can eat as much as you want.
    But you know, maybe you shouldn't
    eat that much because you might really get sick.
    I mean, it's there if you want it.
    And I said, I don't care if I get sick.
    I'm going to eat and eat.
    And I ate, and I ate.
    And I told them what was going on.
    And so Mrs. Mayer was saying, well, school
    will be out in about two weeks.
    And I'd like you to stay there for the remainder of the school
    year.
    And I'll give you some money, and you
    can buy yourself something on the way to school and on the way
    home.
    Don't say anything to the Roses.
    I will try to find another family for you.
    And I will handle this.
    Don't say anything at all to them.
    And so every day then on my way to school,
    on my way from school, I bought myself Cadbury's chocolate, milk
    chocolate with hazelnuts.
    I had smelled some of the-- when some of the children
    were eating it, I'd smelled it.
    And it smelled so good.
    I wanted that more than anything else.
    And that's what I ate every single day.
    And when school was out, I was picked up by Mrs. Mayer
    and taken to her home because she had not yet
    found another family or was in the process,
    and then stayed there about a week.
    And all I did was eat, eat, eat, all day long.
    At night, when I went to bed, she
    used to give me a big plate full of sandwiches and fresh fruit.
    And by morning it was all gone.
    And of course, I had to tell my parents
    that I had a different address.
    And my parents then wanted to know why.
    And then I told them why.
    And they were very angry with me that I didn't tell them.
    And it created a problem of trust.
    Well, can they ever believe me, what
    I tell them from here on in?
    And I promised that I would always be honest and tell them
    everything.
    Even if it's bad, I would tell them that.
    And after about a week at Mrs. Mayer's home,
    I was placed with a second family.
    And their name was Simmons.
    And they lived also in Edgware, but at the opposite end
    of Edgware.
    And they had a son who was a year younger than I,
    David, and a little girl, Janice, who was about seven
    at that time-- six or seven.
    And this family was financially much poorer
    than the Rose family.
    But I think, if anything, they would have taken something
    away from themselves in order to be able to give it to me
    rather than have me suffer in any way.
    And they knew that I had been hungry in the other family,
    so they almost force fed me.
    I had to finally say, please, I can't eat anymore.
    And in September, I went back to school.
    And by that time, somehow over the summer,
    I seem to have somehow picked up an awful lot of English
    because I was able to really begin
    to participate in what was going on in school
    and in the classroom and so on.
    I wish I had kept the essays that I wrote because they must--
    the English must have been really strange.
    While I was-- soon after I got to the Simmons family,
    because I got there in late August, the middle of August I
    think, 1939, I remember that Sunday morning
    when war was declared, listening to the radio and war being
    declared and realizing what this meant,
    that now my parents couldn't get out of Germany,
    that now we would probably not be able to correspond
    with each other anymore, and wondering how long will
    this last, thinking World War I lasted four years.
    Is this going to last four years?
    What's going to happen to my parents?
    What's going to happen to me?
    I just-- the whole thing was a big question to me.
    And I remembered after listening to it on the radio,
    almost immediately afterwards, I think
    the air raid siren went off.
    And we all crouched underneath the dining room table.
    And we had already been issued gas masks.
    And I remember, I took my gas mask out of the case
    and had it ready to slip on because I
    was sure it was going to be--
    I was going to need it immediately.
    And after the-- and being absolutely petrified,
    knowing that we were going to be bombed
    and that we were going to be bombed.
    This house was going to be bombed,
    and there was going to be gas and so on.
    And when the air raid warning cleared
    I really wanted some time alone by myself,
    and I wanted to go upstairs to be by myself.
    And as I was going upstairs, I put my hand on the banister,
    and there was a bee there.
    And it stung me.
    And I guess I'd never been stung by a bee before,
    and I had an allergic reaction to that bee sting
    and passed out, fell backwards down the stairs.
    But the family didn't know that I had been stung by a bee.
    And they didn't know.
    They thought it was probably I was upset,
    which may have helped.
    I don't know.
    But when I came to, by that time my hand was all swollen.
    My parents and I were able to remain
    in contact with each other though, not the way
    it was before, not as frequently.
    For instance, we had friends in Switzerland as well as
    in Holland.
    And both of them being neutral countries, my parents,
    for instance, would write to those people.
    And they would take it out of the--
    would write a letter to me.
    And they would take it out of the envelope
    and readdress a new envelope and send it on to me.
    And I did then the same thing.
    And then there were also Red Cross messages.
    But you could only write 25 words, which wasn't very much.
    And also, you had to be careful.
    I mean, I couldn't talk about London
    because in case the letters were opened by the censor.
    And some of them were opened by the censor.
    I don't know.
    Maybe all of mine were opened.
    I don't really know this.
    But I know some of the letters that
    came from Germany to Holland or to Switzerland
    apparently were opened by the censor.
    And there were a number of things
    that happened in Germany, in Kippenheim and to my parents
    that I never knew, that all these things I found out
    much later.
    For instance, my parents had to move out of the house
    because Jews were congregated together in one area.
    And so they were not allowed to--
    but I didn't know this.
    And the village was--
    and the families who forwarded the letters also
    didn't say this to me.
    And maybe they didn't know.
    The village was so small, all you needed to do
    was write the name and the village,
    and it would arrive there.
    We continued to stay in touch with each other
    until October 22, 1940.
    All the Jews from that section of Germany
    were deported to France.
    I learned about this from somebody
    who was from Kippenheim, who lived
    in England, who read it in a paper, showed me the newspaper.
    And I denied it.
    I said, but not my parents.
    I will get a letter from my parents.
    It takes a long time these days for mail to come,
    but I will hear from my parents.
    And they are still in Kippenheim.
    And he tried to convince me that that wasn't so.
    But I denied that.
    And I think that was perhaps the first time that I was--
    or the beginning of many years of lots of denial on my part.
    I finally did receive a letter from my parents, from France.
    And their new address was at the top of the letter.
    And my father writes saying, as you
    will notice from the top of the-- the address
    on the top of the letter, we moved.
    That's really a euphemism.
    I mean, they were deported.
    Apparently they were given an hour's notice.
    I mean, this is not something I know from my parents.
    This is all information I found out afterwards.
    They were given an hour's notice.
    They were allowed to take with them 100 pounds of whatever they
    wanted to and some money.
    It was a fixed amount of money.
    I don't know how much.
    Much of that, what they took with them,
    was taken from them by the Nazis on the train
    on the way to France.
    They were sent to Camp de Gurs, which
    is in the foothills of the Pyrenean mountains in France.
    The camp, prior to that time, had
    been established during the Spanish Civil
    War, when refugees were coming across the Pyrenean mountains
    into France.
    And they were housed in those camps.
    When the Jews from that section of Germany where I come from
    were brought there, there were still
    some of those Spanish refugees there.
    Not many, but some of them were still there.
    Men and women were separate in the camp.
    All of my family were deported there.
    My mother's father became ill very quickly there.
    He had to keep a special kind of diet because of some stomach
    condition that he had.
    And of course, he couldn't.
    And he died there in December 1940.
    My mother wrote to me about this.
    But my parents never, ever told me the horrendous conditions
    in this camp, that they were starving,
    that the sanitary conditions were awful,
    that it was bitter cold there.
    There was no heat.
    All of that I found out much, much later.
    In the spring of 1941, my father was sent to another camp,
    to Camp des Milles, which is near Marseilles.
    And in order to stay in touch with each other and with me,
    because they were allowed only to write one page a week,
    and that much they did tell me then,
    my father would write one page, send it on to my mother,
    and she'd write on the reverse side and then mail it to me.
    And then the next week, she would write one page,
    send it to my father, and he'd write on the reverse side.
    And I have, to this day still, all those letters
    that my parents sent to me.
    I, of course, was able to write to them as often as I wanted
    to and as much as I wanted to.
    And it was perhaps an aberration of the war.
    But they were able to put a French stamp on it
    and send it directly to England.
    It would always go through the censor and be opened.
    And I'm assuming that my letters were also opened.
    At one point in 1940--
    early 1942 I believe it was, I learned that one
    could send money to the camps--
    I mean, to the people in the camps,
    and that there was a canteen there
    where you could buy such exotic things as bananas and oranges,
    when they were on a starvation diet.
    And I sent my parents money.
    And the money that I sent them came from a stamp collection
    that I sold in England.
    And the stamp collection has a history.
    When I was leaving Germany, I wanted to take it with me.
    And the Nazis did not permit that I take that
    with me because it was something of value.
    And so my parents told me, you can't take it.
    And I was not going to leave Germany
    if I couldn't take my stamps.
    And my parents said, well, you know,
    we'll get-- we'll leave them with somebody,
    and we will get them someday.
    When we leave Germany, we will leave them with someone.
    We'll get them someday.
    Don't worry about it.
    But I was not going to leave without my stamps.
    And so before I left Germany, every night for several nights
    in a row, with a flashlight underneath my covers in my bed,
    I took every stamp out of the stamp album.
    And then my suitcases had been packed
    under the supervision of somebody
    from customs so that when I get to the customs center
    I wouldn't have to go through my suitcases
    being inspected and having to repack them.
    --sign, reel 4.
    So I took this tremendous risk.
    And my suitcases were on the--
    kept on the third floor of the house that I lived in.
    And at night when my parents were asleep,
    I crept up the stairs, and the stairs were squeaking.
    And I was afraid my parents would hear it,
    but apparently they didn't.
    I went up there, opened up the suitcases--
    and there was a little give on that wire that was put around
    the suitcase by the customs people--
    and put each stamp individually into the suitcases, the two
    suitcases that I was taking with me.
    I got all of my stamps in there.
    And I remember, I wrote a note and said,
    my stamps are my picture albums.
    And I put that note in my father's desk.
    And when I-- before I left Germany, when I was already
    on my way, my parents traveled with me
    to visit an uncle and aunt of mine
    before they put me on the train.
    I told them, when you get back home,
    I want you to look in the desk, in the middle drawer
    in the back.
    I left a note there for you.
    And my parents said, well, what did you write?
    Well, you just have to wait until you get back home.
    And then when I got to England, and I opened up my suitcases
    and they were full of stamps everywhere,
    I had to shake everything out because there
    might be a stamp in there.
    I wrote to them, my picture albums have arrived safely.
    And then my parents, of course, found
    that note-- my picture albums are my stamps.
    And my parents were very upset with me and wrote to me
    and said, don't ever do anything like this anymore and so on.
    But it's those stamps that I sold because I
    didn't have any money really.
    And my parents didn't know that it came from the stamps.
    And so my parents were able to buy themselves
    something to supplement their horrible diet, which I'm
    very glad they were able to do.
    They didn't get all the money.
    Probably for every dollar or every shilling,
    I guess I should say-- for every shilling that I sent,
    the Nazis probably kept 90% of it
    and only gave very little to my parents.
    But still, it meant-- it was something.
    And the last amount that I sent, they never
    received because it arrived, obviously,
    after they were already gone from there,
    knowing when I sent it and having found out later
    when they were sent away.
    In July 1942, my mother was deported
    from that camp where both of my parents had been originally,
    from Gurs.
    She was deported to Camp de Rivesaltes, which is halfway
    approximately between Gurs and Milles, where my father was.
    And my mother writes a beautiful letter
    from there describing her trip from--
    I don't know if she was on a train or if she was on a truck.
    She doesn't say.
    But they came past Lourdes, and she got a glimpse of Lourdes.
    And she describes the beauty of Lourdes.
    And then apparently at some point
    she got a glimpse of the Mediterranean.
    And she describes that.
    And she describes the undulating wheat fields and the oranges
    on the trees and the flowers and the other blooms that she
    is seeing.
    And I just took that to believe that she was on a nice journey.
    And she wrote this beautiful letter
    describing all the things she saw.
    Never-- because she didn't say anything bad,
    I wanted to believe that all was well.
    She just moved closer to my father.
    Maybe one more move and they'll be together.
    And then I got a letter from my father written
    the 12th of August 1942, where he says,
    tomorrow I'm going to be deported
    to an unknown destination.
    And it may be a very long time before you hear from me again.
    And then there was a letter from my mother, written September 1,
    1942.
    And I would like to read an excerpt of that into this tape,
    if I may.
    My mother writes in her letter dated September 1, 1942--
    and I'm only going to read parts of the letter.
    She says, "It's very difficult for me to write to you today,
    but there's no use.
    It has to be done."
    And then she refers to some mail that she has received from me.
    And then she goes on.
    "The last few weeks have been very upsetting for all of us,
    but especially for me.
    Your dear papa was deported from Camp le Milles on August 12.
    And unfortunately, I do not know where he was sent.
    The last mail I had from him was dated August 9,
    in which he expressed the hope that somewhere on route we
    would meet because the transport from here left at the same time
    for an unknown destination.
    I remained here because your dear papa lately
    was a forced laborer."
    And that's the only time that I've heard that mentioned.
    I never knew that.
    "But now there is another transport leaving from here.
    And this time I am leaving on it.
    My only hope is that I will still meet dear Papa somewhere.
    And then we will carry our lot, no matter
    how difficult it may be, with dignity and with courage.
    My dear, good child, I will try in every way possible to remain
    in touch with you.
    But it will probably be a long time
    before we hear from each other again."
    And then still later in the letter
    she says, "Continue to be always good and honest,
    carry your head high, and never lose your courage.
    Don't forget your dear parents.
    We shall continue to hope that one day we
    will see each other again, even if it takes a long time.
    My dear, good child, let me greet you and kiss you heartily.
    I will never forget you and deeply love you, Mute."
    And then there was one more postcard
    that I got from my mother, dated September 4.
    And it is mailed in Montauban, which was northwest
    from where she was at the time.
    But she writes in the postcard, and it's
    real shaky handwriting--
    "Traveling to the east, sending you from Montauban many loving
    farewell greetings."
    That doesn't really express it as strongly
    as what she's saying.
    But she's actually saying it's a very final goodbye.
    It's not possible to translate that into English the way
    it is said in German.
    And I, being in the denial stage,
    I, until not too long ago, until just a few years ago,
    read that postcard to read, "traveling
    in an easterly direction."
    And that she's saying, you know, goodbye.
    I'll be seeing you again soon because I'm going on a trip.
    And it's very clear what she's saying.
    But I did not want to understand that.
    And I think that was my coping mechanism.
    Had I understood or tried to understand,
    I don't think I could have really survived it.
    And so I waited and waited and waited.
    And how long is a long time?
    Is it a week?
    A month?
    A year?
    10 years?
    And I decided maybe I need to wait until the war is over.
    And then the war was over, and I didn't hear.
    And so then I made all kinds of excuses.
    I've moved several times, and the post office may not
    have forwarded the letters.
    They perhaps have lost my address.
    Maybe they're suffering from amnesia.
    Maybe they don't know how to find me.
    But someday I will find them.
    And it wasn't-- well, I was back--
    I went back to Germany after the war was over.
    And I will talk more about that later.
    And I was in Germany until 1948, March 1948.
    I was not able to go back to the village
    where I came from until the summer of 1947 because--
    and I think the reason I was not able to
    is, had I gone back before, I would
    have had to admit that they are not there.
    This way I could still fool myself.
    Maybe they're in Kippenheim.
    But if I go there and they're not there,
    I can no longer use that.
    And so finally, at one time I actually
    was on the train going there.
    And when the train stopped the first time,
    I got out and went back to where I was--
    because I couldn't handle it.
    But finally in August of '47, I said, my stay in Germany
    is coming to an end.
    And I either go there to Kippenheim, or I won't go there.
    But I've got to decide.
    And so I decided to go.
    And of course, they were not there.
    But that still didn't make me realize or understand
    or accept what may have happened to them because I still
    kept on hoping to hear.
    And while I was in Germany, I visited displaced persons camps.
    And I tried all kinds of organizations
    to find out where they are, looked at all kinds of lists.
    And they weren't on any lists.
    In 1956, I received two letters, one pertaining to my mother,
    one pertaining to my father, from a French organization,
    which stated that on the 11th of September 1942,
    both of my parents were sent from a camp in France,
    from Drancy, which I later found out was sort of a transit camp
    where everybody from all over France
    was brought there before they were
    sent on to concentration camps or extermination camps
    in Poland--
    that my parents were sent on the 11th of September 1942
    to Auschwitz.
    That was the first time that I had that much concrete evidence.
    And so I still said, well, people survived,
    and they may have survived.
    And I still kept on hoping to hear from them.
    In 1980, I visited the various camps where my parents were,
    not all of them but some of them.
    I visited Camp de Gurs.
    I visited Dachau and Auschwitz.
    And when I stood in Auschwitz on the ramp
    where the decision was made by the camp administration
    as to who will live and who will die,
    that's when I finally suddenly accepted the fact
    that my parents, indeed, are no longer alive
    and did not survive this.
    This was September 1980.
    That's a very long time.
    I think before, I probably intellectually knew
    but emotionally couldn't accept it.
    But by September 1980, I was able to emotionally accept that.
    Last year, in the fall of 1990, the Soviet Union
    released some information about what
    happened to people in various concentration camps,
    including Auschwitz.
    And it was possible to fill out a questionnaire at the American
    Red Cross, which would be sent to an International Tracing
    Service in Germany.
    And I immediately got those forms,
    but I didn't fill them out.
    I wanted to, and I didn't want to.
    And in June of 1991, I was in Germany on a speaking tour
    and realized at one point that I was
    very close to where this International Tracing Service is
    and decided to go there.
    And I met a marvelous woman there,
    a warm, loving, kind, sweet, gentle woman.
    And with her help, I was able to fill out the application form
    to see if that information that was released
    would give some information about my parents.
    She told me it probably wouldn't because the information
    basically are death certificates.
    And death certificates were issued only
    on people who lived in Auschwitz for a length of time
    and then died for whatever reason.
    And my parents probably, by the time
    they got to Auschwitz, if they even survived that trip,
    probably went straight to the gas chambers
    because they had almost two years of camp experience
    behind them and probably were not in very good condition.
    And so probably I won't find out anything.
    And this woman said I would have to wait
    about a year to hear because they've had so many requests.
    And they're going to take them in the order they received them.
    So there was even, as late as this 1990, '91,
    some denial on my part still, or trying to deny,
    or trying not to want to know and yet wanting to know.
    And I'm not sure, you know, what I'll find out.
    I think I know, and I'm not sure how I will deal with that.
    That's still something to be seen.
    Maybe I need to talk about myself in England.
    I remained in school and remained with the Simmons family
    until July of 1940.
    Mrs. Simon, who paid for my board and lodging,
    informed me shortly before my birthday, my 16th birthday
    in August of 1940, that in England one
    only has to go to school until one is 16 years old.
    And since I was going to be 16 on August 15, I needed to drop--
    at the end of the school year, which was the end of July,
    I needed to drop out of school and go to work and earn
    my own living so that I could have a roof over my head
    and be able to support myself.
    And I was just absolutely flabbergasted and shocked.
    I mean, here I was supposed to go on to college,
    and I hadn't even finished high school yet.
    And dropping out of high school, I
    had never heard of anything like that.
    And what would my parents think?
    But I couldn't-- couldn't and wouldn't tell them.
    I could, but I wouldn't tell them that.
    And I said to her, I don't know how to find a job.
    I have no skills.
    I don't know what I can do.
    And so she said, well, I'll see if my daughter can help you.
    And she would always call on her daughter.
    And so Mrs. Mayer found a job for me
    with a cantor, who lived on the same street as she did,
    who was either divorced or separated.
    And he had a 14-year-old daughter who lived with him.
    And he wanted me to be a companion
    to this 14-year-old girl, who had really no friends.
    She's a nice little girl, but she had no friends.
    And so I was to walk her to school
    and pick her up from school.
    And my other job was to dust in the house.
    It was a big house--
    dust the furniture every day.
    And that was basically my duty.
    And I had free board and lodging that way
    and got five shillings a week.
    And I thought I was on my way to being a millionaire because I
    never had so much money.
    I still had the 10 marks from Germany.
    I hadn't touched them because nothing really terrible
    had happened that I needed them for.
    And shortly after I got there, the air raids started.
    The heavy raids started.
    I remember, I believe it was on a Saturday evening,
    we looked out the window to the east, and the sky was all red.
    And it was when the East End was on fire.
    The East End of London was on fire.
    And it looked as though the sun was,
    setting but the sun doesn't set in the east.
    We spent-- when the raids then became fairly regular,
    a shelter was built inside the garage.
    And there was-- the household there
    consisted of the cantor, his daughter, myself,
    but there was also another man living
    there, who was a refugee from Germany
    and a friend of the cantor.
    So there were-- I assumed that four bunks would
    be built in the shelter.
    But there were five bunks built in the shelter.
    And so I had to rationalize that.
    And so I thought, well, maybe his wife is coming back,
    and that's why.
    And once a week on Fridays, a woman
    whose husband also was a cantor, she and her husband
    also were refugees from Germany.
    But her husband was interned in the Isle of Man.
    This woman came on Friday morning
    and cooked a meal for the-- the Sabbath meal and some meals
    that we could warm up during the rest of the week.
    And then she always stayed on Fridays
    and had the Sabbath meal with us.
    And then I don't really know what
    happened because the little girl and I would leave,
    and we'd play or do something.
    And so that was it.
    But then we moved into this shelter.
    And we finally decided, when the raids came fairly regularly
    and lasted a good part of the night,
    we just are going to sleep in the shelter instead
    of going to the shelter and going back to the bedroom.
    And one night I woke up in this shelter,
    and some-- there were two double bunks and a single bunk.
    And something was going on in this single bunk.
    I didn't know what it was.
    I sort of risked one eye and was petrified.
    And the next morning the little 14-year-old girl said to me,
    was there a lot of bombing last night?
    And I knew somehow intuitively that she probably saw and heard
    something and wanted me to explain it to her.
    But I didn't know what it was.
    And I didn't want to admit that I didn't know.
    And so I said, I don't know.
    I slept all night.
    I have no idea.
    But whatever went on in this bunk
    went on then night after night after night.
    I became increasingly more fearful.
    And so one day, when I was alone in the house,
    I called Mrs. Mayer.
    And I said to her, I can't stay here any longer.
    She said, why not?
    What is wrong now?
    And I said, I don't want to witness a murder.
    And she didn't ask me to explain anything.
    But she said, are you there alone?
    And I said, yes.
    And she said, start packing your suitcase.
    I'll be right over.
    And I said, but I have to pick up the little girl from school
    soon.
    Never mind.
    Don't worry about it.
    I will take care of everything.
    Go to your room, start packing, and open the door
    when I ring the doorbell.
    And I will be--
    I'll bring you over here.
    So I went back to Mrs. Mayer's house again.
    And she told me never to have any contact with this family,
    that everything's been taken care of, and not to worry.
    And I stayed with her for a few days, with her and her family.
    And then she placed me into a girls hostel on Belsize Park--
    in Belsize Park, actually.
    And it was on Belsize Park.
    Number 27 Belsize Park was the main address.
    But there were three houses.
    And I was put in the house, number 46 Belsize Park.
    This hostel, there were--
    the women-- because some of them weren't really girls.
    They were women.
    They were women in their 20s, some of them even older.
    I was, at that time, the youngest to arrive there.
    After that they even took younger girls.
    We were all refugees from Germany.
    And the home was run by a Mrs. Glicksman, who was
    herself a refugee from Germany.
    And she was a rather exploitative woman.
    She took whatever she could from us and gave little in return.
    The meals, for instance, I don't think I ever knew what I ate.
    Everything was ground up something.
    I mean, it was never recognizable.
    And for instance, the building that I lived in,
    number 46 Belsize Park, in the winter there was no heat.
    And when the pipes froze, there was no water.
    Number 27, on the third floor, is where Mrs. Glicksman lived.
    That building was heated because she wanted heat.
    And I, after quite some time, I was
    successful in being able to move into number 27.
    So at least I had some heat.
    I had some warm water.
    I had water to wash myself, to wash my clothes.
    I mean, I remember having literally a brown crust
    on my body during the winter, my clothes having
    some unrecognizable gray color because I
    had no way of washing them while I lived in number 46.
    We sometimes got candles, and we would put our hands
    around the candles to keep warm.
    Anyway, when I arrived there, I was placed in this room with--
    there was eight of us in this room.
    And I was told that the women in this room
    don't really speak English, so I'd have to talk German to them.
    And this was the first time that I was going to talk German.
    I hadn't talked any German.
    Though I wrote letters in German to my parents,
    I hadn't spoken German.
    And so I was--
    and I should introduce myself when I get there.
    So I walk in, and I'm trying to tell them who I am.
    And I wanted to say I am the new girl in this room.
    And instead I said, I am the new maid.
    And they immediately showed me where the broom and the mop was.
    And I started to cry, I am not a maid.
    But that's what you told us.
    And so that was just very temporary.
    And I was the youngest one in that room.
    And they wanted to know, of course, what happened, where
    was I, and why did I leave.
    And so I told them that I didn't want to witness this murder.
    And they all started to laugh.
    And I said it wasn't funny.
    I mean, how would you like to witness a murder.
    And so this one woman, she was probably about 20,
    took me aside and explained some of the facts of life to me.
    And I said to her, you have a dirty mind.
    My parents wouldn't want me to associate with you.
    I am never going to talk to you ever anymore.
    And she said, how do you think your parents had you?
    And I said, I don't know, but not that way.
    And for a long time I didn't talk to her.
    Eventually I did.
    Eventually I did learn some more and realized
    that she-- what she was telling me was not dirty
    but were the facts of life.
    This Mrs. Glicksman ran a doll factory in this home,
    where she employed some of the people that lived in the home.
    And I started to work there.
    So I learned how to make dolls and how to make dolls clothes.
    I learned how to sew on a sewing machine.
    So I finally learned some skills.
    And we-- after I had done this for quite some time,
    and I don't remember exactly when--
    though I still have my alien registration book from England,
    and I could probably verify the dates from that.
    Another woman, young woman, who also worked in the doll factory
    with me, she and I decided we were going to strike out
    and we're going to find a job someplace else
    using our sewing skills.
    And we both got a job at Harrod's in where
    they were-- in the department where they
    were making children's clothes.
    In fact, that department made the clothes
    for the now queen of England and princess Margaret.
    But we weren't allowed to do that because those clothes had
    to be perfect.
    And I learned how to smock there.
    And in, I believe it was in 1943, late 1943,
    I decided that I really needed to do something about the war
    effort, and I needed to work in a war factory
    and contribute something to the war effort.
    And so I left Harrod's and worked in a factory.
    And the first job that I had, I was put on a manual press.
    And I worked that press for about a week.
    And I thought, I need to do bigger things,
    more important things.
    And so i-- I had no idea what I was doing on this machine.
    Nobody knew what they were doing.
    And I asked the foreman on the Monday of the second week
    there if I couldn't be put on one of the bigger machines
    and do something more important.
    And so he said, well, I can put you on a power press.
    And he showed me how to use it.
    And I had an accident on that machine
    because the machine was defective, which he knew
    and didn't tell me.
    And I lost the tip of my right index finger.
    And I was not able to work for about seven weeks.
    And then-- I had joined the union during that first week.
    And the union helped me find another job.
    And the company had to pay me my wages the seven weeks
    that I wasn't working.
    And they were very angry when I then didn't come back.
    But I found out that there were several defective machines
    in this shop and several other people had been hurt.
    And so I did not want to go back there.
    And then I worked in another factory.
    We were making bullets.
    It was very obvious we were making bullets.
    And we were rotated.
    There were different things you did to these bullets.
    And we were rotated so that nobody ever did anything
    for any length of time.
    I guess to avoid boredom.
    And after I-- and I was there, by the way--
    I remember this very clearly--
    on D-day, the 6th of June 1944.
    I remember hearing the planes overhead, one after the other.
    After I was there about a--
    After I worked for this company for approximately a year,
    the labor department, British labor department
    contacted me and told me that I could no longer work there
    because the work was of a secret nature.
    And here I had been there a year.
    It was very obvious they were making bullets.
    And I knew all the different steps
    one has to take to make these bullets.
    But because I was an alien, I could not
    continue working there.
    And so I said, well, in that case, you better find me a job.
    And they did.
    And they found me a job in--
    I'm looking at my--
    this little book here--
    in Tottenham, which was way, way out.
    It was a long way.
    I mean, I remember I had to get up very early in the morning
    to get there.
    And I never saw daylight, it seemed.
    I left when it was dark and came home when it was dark.
    And it was an extremely boring job.
    And I just, I couldn't do it.
    It was just too-- it was too deadening.
    And so I found myself another job, also in a factory,
    closer to home.
    And I finally got to do what I hoped to do.
    I was working on this gigantic lathe
    that did all kinds of different functions.
    And what I was making, I don't know.
    And the machine needed to be operated 24 hours a day
    seven days a week.
    And if somebody-- if you needed to go to the bathroom,
    you had to call the foreman.
    And then he would come and work the machine
    while you were gone.
    And it never was a problem.
    I mean, I-- or if you went on your lunch hour, you know,
    somebody else would come and work the machine.
    And on this particular day-- and this was during the period
    when the V-2 rockets were coming over.
    I, well-- overhead, above--
    I should say, above the machine--
    there were no windows in this whole factory.
    But above this machine there was a skylight,
    these heavy glass blocks.
    And for reasons that I never knew,
    I suddenly walked away from the machine.
    And the skylight came crashing down on the machine.
    And it was because a V-2 had fallen in the park,
    not too far away--
    and from the pressure, I guess.
    And the foreman afterwards asked me, why did you walk away?
    I mean, I'm glad you did.
    Where were you going?
    And I said, I have no idea.
    I don't know.
    It was like I had a guardian angel over me,
    and I walked away.
    And I didn't even have a scratch on me.
    Some people did get cut, who were closer than I was.
    But I didn't have.
    And I remained there until the war was over.
    And when-- oh, no, in fact, I think
    I continued for a little while even after the war was over.
    How about your social life all this time?
    You know, it sounds, from what you've described, a sort of--
    that you were very isolated from other people?
    Were you-- were you sort of lonely?
    I was lonely because I didn't have my family.
    I was lonely because I didn't have my parents
    and other family members.
    I made friends in school.
    I had lots of friends in school, both--
    there were lots of refugee children in school,
    so they were both British children as well as
    some of the refugee children.
    But when I got the job with the cantor, which was in Golders
    Green, I moved away from there.
    And so I left.
    You know, I had left school.
    They were still in school.
    So our lifestyles were different too.
    And while I lived with the cantor, I really--
    the only friend, if you can call it that, was the little girl.
    And I had no other social life.
    I mean, that was it.
    I was there seven days a week, all my waking hours
    and all my sleeping hours.
    When I got into the girls' home, that's
    when I developed some friendships
    in amongst the girls in the home.
    And there were-- then with them, sometimes
    I went to other places.
    I remember, there was something called the International
    Center.
    And I think it was in the general area where Harrods was.
    I don't remember exactly where it was,
    but somewhere in that area.
    And they sometimes had socials or dances on weekends.
    And we would go there.
    And I never went alone.
    I always went with one or more of the girls from the home.
    While I lived in the hostel, I also--
    and this goes back to my background at home,
    where learning was always stressed.
    And I had really sorely missed not getting an education.
    I found out from a young man that I
    had befriended that there was a college that one
    could attend at night.
    And it was not towards a degree, but you could just learn.
    And so he and I both attended Morley College,
    which I understand was bombed.
    I don't know if it still exists.
    And I remember taking psychology classes
    and being a junior psychologist, analyzing everybody around me,
    much to their chagrin I'm sure.
    I took some literature courses.
    I remember studying Russian literature, English literature.
    I took a French course to improve my-- to brush up,
    I guess, and improve my French until the college was bombed.
    And then we couldn't go there anymore.
    I remember being a voracious reader.
    The first book, by the way, that I ever
    read in England without being able to understand more
    than every 15th or 20th word was David Copperfield.
    I read it with the help of my dictionary.
    And then it probably took me an hour to read one page.
    And I looked up so many words I didn't
    know what I had looked up.
    A lot of the girls in the home were associating
    with some young men in a home that was right next door to 27
    Belsize Park.
    And this was a home for men, young men.
    And they were all refugees from Spain,
    from the Spanish Civil War.
    And there was a lot of going back and forth there.
    I did not participate in that.
    I don't know whether it was something that I assumed,
    and my assumption was right or wrong.
    But I had a feeling at the time that there
    was a lot of sexual stuff going on
    between these men and the women from the home.
    And I was going to remain pure for my parents.
    I would not be part of that.
    And some of the young women actually became prostitutes.
    And I think it was simply a way of finding love.
    They were separated from their family.
    And this is how they dealt with it.
    And I'm not going to judge this one way or the other.
    We each, I think, did what we had to do
    or what we best knew how to cope.
    And different ones of us coped in different ways.
    There were some girls who committed suicide.
    That was their way of coping.
    My way of coping was trying to deny
    what I didn't want to believe, that maybe my parents--
    I would never see my parents again.
    That thought just never even entered my mind.
    I just eliminated that--
    and to learn as much as I could, to go to lectures,
    to go to Morley College and learn, to go to the library
    and get some books and read.
    And then I also knew that there was
    an organization that had its--
    had its headquarters, I guess, or was
    meeting right across the street from where the hostel was,
    at number 12 Belsize Park.
    And it was called the Free German Youth.
    And I heard a lot of negative things
    about it, that these were some really strange people
    over there with strange political views,
    but that they also had some nice social events.
    And I debated for a long time whether I should or shouldn't
    go and was afraid to go because maybe with these bad things
    that I heard, I shouldn't get involved in,
    even though I didn't really know what they were.
    And so one day I decided to go over there
    to one of their social events.
    It was a dance.
    And people there seemed to be very nice.
    And then I heard about a lecture that they were having next week
    and something else and so on.
    And I became gradually involved in more and more involved
    in the organization.
    And this is really where I got my political education.
    And it was a left wing, if not communist, organization
    of young German Jewish refugees, or mostly Jewish refugees.
    There was also an adult group, but I had nothing
    to do with the adult group.
    And I'm not sure, but I believe the Free German
    Youth was first formed in Czechoslovakia
    by German Jewish refugees who fled Germany and went
    to Czechoslovakia and then later fled
    Czechoslovakia when it became part of Germany
    and went to England.
    And then that group was started, at some point
    I don't know when, in England.
    And I learned a tremendous amount in that organization.
    The goal of the organization was,
    after the war is over, as many as possible of us
    will return to Germany to re-educate the Germans,
    to teach them democracy.
    And that was my intention also.
    In late 1944, I became very close friends
    with the young man by the name of Bernard.
    And we decided that after the war
    we will go to Germany together.
    And at some point we will get married and live happily ever
    after.
    And in-- after the war was over and it
    was in the spring of 1945, I remember
    being in downtown London near Marble Arch.
    I was doing some shopping on a Saturday
    morning for something or other, and I hated shopping then.
    I still hate shopping now.
    Then as now, I go single-mindedly to a store.
    If I have to buy this one item, I will buy that.
    And when I'm done, I'm done.
    And I found rather quickly whatever
    I was looking for that morning, and I
    was to meet somebody for lunch.
    And it was still lots of time.
    And it was a nice, warm spring morning,
    so I just walked up and down--
    can't remember what the name of that street, near Marble
    Arch there.
    Oxford Street, is it?
    Probably was Oxford Street.
    And he happened to come past a building.
    There was a notice on that building, on the door--
    if you want to see the continent and do exciting work,
    come upstairs and inquire.
    And I thought, well, I have time to kill still.
    I'll go upstairs, and I'll inquire.
    And then I can sit down.
    I've been walking for quite a while.
    And lo and behold, I filled out an application form before long
    for a job with the American War Department, working in Germany,
    censoring incoming and outcoming German mail--
    outgoing, I should say, German mail for the US
    civil censorship division.
    And I had to pass--
    take some kind of a test, which I passed, much to my surprise
    because it involved German history that I
    hadn't had, but somehow knew.
    We probably had learned some of that at the Free German Youth.
    And passed the physical.
    And then I was told, because I was not yet 20,
    I needed permission from either my parents or guardian to go.
    And I said, I don't know where my parents are.
    And I don't have a guardian.
    And they said, well, you have to have a guardian.
    And I said, but I don't have one, and I want to go.
    And I finally convinced them.
    I said, look, I have been on my own since I was 16 years old.
    And I have made my own decisions since then.
    And I don't know why I need a guardian when I don't have one.
    And I don't want to be prevented from going because I saw this
    as a way of getting to Germany without it costing me
    any money.
    And I would live out my one-year contract
    and then just remain in Germany instead
    of going back to England.
    And I finally convinced them that I could go.
    But they told me not to talk about the fact
    that I'm not yet 20.
    And when I was over there, I had a big 21st birthday party.
    [LAUGHS] That I was not yet 21--
    I'm sorry-- not 20, 21.
    And I left on the 26 of July 1945.
    I left for Poissy, which is near--
    just outside of Paris in France, where
    we were to have two weeks training before we
    went to Germany.
    It was very difficult for me to make the decision
    to leave England because it meant leaving
    my friend, Bernard, behind.
    And he also had applied but was denied permission,
    was denied to go to Germany.
    And I think the reason he was denied
    is because it was not something that I
    recall knowing at that time but learned earlier this year,
    when I met him again.
    He joined the Communist Party in 1942.
    And probably because of that did not get permission to go.
    And I did not want to leave without him.
    And his parents lived in the United States.
    He had also come to England on a children's transport,
    had been interned, was in Canada for a couple of years,
    and then had come back to England.
    And he said, before I go back to Germany,
    I'm going to visit my parents.
    And you were not going to come with me anyway,
    so we were going to be separate for a while.
    So why don't you go, and then I will meet you in Germany.
    And so that made sense.
    And I said, OK, we'll go.
    I remember he said, will it make it easier if we get married?
    And I said, it's not that.
    Marriage isn't the thing.
    I don't want to be apart from you.
    I want to be with you.
    But I did not get married to him then and left
    for Germany, or France, first.
    Instead of taking the two weeks training
    in Poissy, every morning, I got on the first train to Paris
    and took the last train back from Paris at night,
    around midnight.
    And I walked the streets of Paris.
    And I was in seventh heaven.
    Little Hedy from Kippenheim is in Paris.
    And it was a marvelous two weeks.
    And then we left after two weeks.
    We went to Germany early August, 1945.
    And we were going to Munich, or near Munich, to Pullach.
    Was that a big thing, going back to Germany?
    I had-- to me it was merely a means towards an end.
    I was going to be where I wanted to be,
    and it wasn't going to cost me any money to go there.
    I was going to earn more money than I ever
    earned in my whole life.
    And I was going to be able to use that money
    to do all kinds of wonderful things
    when I then live in Germany after I am through
    with the civil censorship division
    because I was going to save most of that money
    to do whatever I could do with it then, in a constructive way.
    When the train crossed into Germany
    and stopped for the first time-- and I
    don't remember where that was.
    And on the train were people like me, coming from England,
    going back to Germany-- most of them refugees,
    former German Jewish refugees.
    There were little children on the platform,
    waiting and begging for candy, chewing gum, cigarettes,
    and so on.
    And people on the train gave them things.
    And I was just absolutely livid.
    How dare you give these children things.
    These are Nazis.
    Some of these children were only five years old, 10 years old,
    hardly Nazis.
    But I was suddenly possessed with a phenomenal amount
    of hatred that I didn't know I had.
    I don't know where it all of a sudden came from because I
    never before had such feelings.
    And it took me quite a long time to work that through,
    that these little children-- because that begging
    continued for a long time.
    I mean, we left that platform, but I mean in Germany
    that begging continued--
    before I was able to give these children candy or chewing gum
    or cookies, never cigarettes because they're
    too young to smoke.
    And whatever I gave them to eat, they had to eat in front of me
    because I don't know who's at home.
    There may be a Nazi at home, so they
    had to eat it in front of me.
    If they couldn't eat it, they couldn't have it.
    And the hatred against the adults never left me.
    And that really troubled me because how can I
    live in a country and work with people whom I hate?
    It doesn't work.
    What does that mean to this relationship with my friend,
    with Bernard?
    And so I wrote to him and told him what I was feeling
    and that I didn't think I could be in Germany.
    And he wrote back saying that we will work on this,
    and we can work this out.
    And it's not going to be a problem.
    And don't worry about it.
    And I realized that he was not--
    maybe not understanding or not accepting what I was saying.
    And I didn't want him to have to make
    a choice of either going to Germany or me,
    also perhaps fearing and perhaps knowing
    that he would not choose me.
    He would choose Germany--
    and not wanting rejection because, in some ways,
    I don't think I understood it then,
    but I've analyzed myself over the years.
    And in some ways I think, when I left Germany,
    I saw that as a rejection.
    My parents let me go.
    Even though it was an act of love, it was still--
    there was some rejection in there.
    And so I didn't want to be rejected,
    put myself in that place.
    And so I wrote to him and told him
    I had found someone else, which was not true,
    and continued to try to work on these feelings,
    but they just didn't leave me.
    I mean, I just hated the Germans profoundly.
    Bernard, well, after he came back from the United States
    and before he went to Germany, he asked me to come to England.
    And I didn't want to because, how can I
    see this man whom I love so much but can't be with?
    But I finally gave in, and I came.
    And it was very difficult. And then
    he went to Germany shortly afterwards.
    We met in Germany.
    He came to visit me once while I worked in Germany.
    This was still in Germany.
    And over the years, off and on, we
    have had contact with each other.
    And in-- last year I was back in Germany
    because the village where I came from invited all the survivors.
    And I stayed on in Germany afterwards
    to do a number of other things.
    And one of the things that I did is I contacted him.
    We had-- by the way, we had met in 1970 in the United States
    when he was visiting his parents.
    And he had married, had had children, five children.
    And so last October, I contacted him, called him.
    And we met the following day in Cologne, which