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Oral history interview with Anne Flagg

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.481.9 | RG Number: RG-50.062.0009

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    Oral history interview with Anne Flagg
    Transcript

    There is no transcript available for this track

    There is no transcript available for this track

    Ready?
    Rolling.
    Ready.
    Stand by.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Go.
    Go, go.
    OK, go ahead.
    OK?
    Anne, you were saying that you wanted to tell me
    about your other grandparents.
    Well, my mother came from a small town near Bad Kissingen,
    which was a very famed spa.
    And the Russian court was there every year.
    And my grandparents lived only about 20 miles from there,
    and much of their social life spent there.
    So this is how they came to have quite a formal life in spite
    of living in a small town.
    My mother was one of nine children.
    Each of the children had played an instrument.
    Every Friday evening, they had to put a concert
    on for their father.
    And my mother was a very good pianist,
    and she studied with Artur Schnabel.
    I don't know if that's-- well, he was a very famous pianist.
    And every one of those nine children
    was an accomplished musician in different instruments.
    My mother learned Greek and Latin
    by sneaking in when-- they had two home teachers, teachers
    living in a house, to teach the boys.
    And my mother sat in when the boys were taught,
    and that's how she learned Latin and Greek.
    She went to school with the nuns.
    And she has always loved the nuns.
    And after the war, she sent a lot of food to the nuns.
    By the way, when Hitler's edict came out
    and nobody could visit the Jews anymore, no doctors or nurses,
    the nuns would come at night and bring food
    to the Jews who were sick in our hometown and looked after them.
    And when we heard that, of course, we send a lot of food
    over to the nuns.
    Then, the first time I went over there, I visited the nuns.
    And she said, thank you, Mother, so much for all the food
    she sent the children.
    They never used anything for themselves.
    They gave it all to the orphans.
    You had one other--
    when you were talking about the nuns and the priests that
    reminded me about the story about your Catholic priest
    that you--
    Oh, yes.
    Do you want to hear that?
    Yes, I do.
    OK.
    When I first started school, I was six years old, in 1916,
    during the First World War.
    We had two Jewish teachers in our home town.
    One was killed at the front.
    The other one had a shot through his throat
    and couldn't talk anymore.
    You could not attend public school in Germany,
    if you didn't have religious instruction in school.
    The state and the religion was the same thing.
    The rabbi was hired by the state.
    The rabbi in Germany--
    Was hired by the state and fired by the state,
    not by the community.
    So I had to have religious instructions,
    so I went to Catholic lessons.
    And I learned by catechism.
    And we had a very lovely, wise priest instructing us.
    And when the children would kneel down, he would say, Anne,
    you don't kneel down.
    Our Christ didn't kneel down.
    He always pointed out to the other children
    that Anne is the same religion as our Christ was.
    Well, sooner or later, some people
    objected about a Jewish child being in--
    learning catechism and what have you.
    So he took three candles.
    He took a Lutheran child and gave him
    a candle and a Catholic child and gave me a candle--
    long candles.
    He lit all three candles, and we had
    to tilt them so they came together in the middle.
    There was only one flame.
    And he explained to the children,
    it doesn't matter from where you pray, from which church
    or which temple.
    There's only one God, like there is only one flame here now.
    I was six years old, but I have never forgotten that--
    Sounds like the first beginning of "We Are One"
    that we use in--
    Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    Was beautiful thing.
    Mhm.
    Yeah.
    And there was one other story, too, that--
    well, we don't have to get the other story.
    I want to get back to something else that I wanted to hear--
    OK.
    [LAUGHS] All right.
    --and I hope we can get back in the mood.
    Anne, you had a lot of wonderful things happen in your life.
    I mean, your life was much more blessed
    than many others that were growing up with probably.
    So I just wanted to know if you can remember the first time
    that things were not so good in your family or your community,
    when you did not feel good about being Jewish.
    Well, I lived through the First World War,
    with starvation more or less.
    I told you how I had to give my dollhouse up
    to get flour for bread.
    And I remember, when I went to school later on,
    when I didn't buy my book in the morning, when
    I went to school--
    I was too late-- on the way home,
    I couldn't pay for it anymore, because the money devaluated
    so fast.
    Finally, we had to carry trunks with us for money
    to buy the smallest little thing.
    I remember that my parents settled our rent
    for a pound of meat!
    And they were blessed ever after,
    because who could buy a pound of meat with rent?
    By the time the rent came around,
    money was nothing anymore, you know.
    And everything, more or less, was barter.
    So I came through a hard school then.
    But somehow, the family was happy together,
    and we lived in a beautiful town.
    We hiked a lot.
    We were trained--
    After the Treaty of Versailles, Germany could not
    have a standing army anymore.
    But they insisted on training the people anyway.
    So we had to make a hike from kindergarten on.
    And kindergarten was 1 mile.
    By the time we came out of high school,
    you had to hike 20 miles a day with a full pack.
    So it was the equivalent of military training.
    And many of those things were equivalent
    of military training.
    The hang gliders came out of that time.
    We weren't allowed to have any airplanes with engines,
    so the hang glider was invented.
    Many of those things were inventioned out of need.
    But if everybody does the same thing, you don't feel deprived.
    That's true.
    You know--
    What about after then?
    You got married, you had your children,
    and then what was your first awareness of the Nazis?
    Well, when it came in closer and closer and closer.
    But it didn't hit my immediate family
    because we didn't have a doctor or a lawyer.
    See, in the beginning it hit only the professional people,
    who couldn't do their professions anymore.
    How did you hear about that?
    Oh, we heard that every day.
    We heard it on the radio.
    We read it in the paper, when those things were withdrawn.
    And new edicts came out every five minutes,
    and you heard about it.
    And we had constantly people leaving, you know,
    saying goodbye.
    But at that time, as I said, it was a financial necessity.
    When we left, it was a matter of life and death to leave.
    But actually, before that period,
    you were realizing that there might not
    be a reason for you to stay in Germany any longer.
    Well, no.
    It took an awful long time to realize that we
    thought we were Germans!
    My god!
    There came a man, a paperhanger from Austria,
    and told us who have been since 1500-and-something in Germany,
    had contributed so much to the culture
    and to the science in Germany, that we weren't German anymore.
    The man was insane.
    I mean, we just couldn't believe it.
    It was, either he was insane or I was insane!
    You know?
    [LAUGHS] I mean, we just couldn't believe those things.
    Did you in any way try to show the people
    that you were more German or that you
    were just like they were?
    No.
    We had proof.
    I mean, the family had done so much.
    And the Jewish people had done so much.
    I mean, all the scientists, from Freud, Semmelweis, Ehrlich
    on down, but all this--
    I don't know if you ever heard-- when all the books were
    burned, other things.
    Tell us about that.
    You couldn't do much!
    I mean, when all the books and everything were burned,
    they didn't want to have anything
    which came down from Jews.
    And of course, their whole culture
    fell apart, as we found out afterwards.
    And they had a terrible brain drain,
    because all the scientists left.
    I mean, the people who invented the atomic bomb were
    German Jews.
    Did they take the books from your home
    or from your school where there--
    At that time, we had already packed our lift van,
    but it wasn't sent out.
    It was confiscated.
    We then had subleased-- we were in our country home
    and then had subleased a smaller apartment from some friends who
    had already left Germany.
    And that was one reason they didn't find my husband, early
    that night, because we had subleased something,
    and they were not looking for him in that place.
    In the meantime, my French governess took him, you know.
    So that's how he escaped.
    When you weren't at your home and they--
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    --and you heard later that they came to your home?
    Oh, yes.
    I was there when they came.
    What did you do when they came to your door?
    Well, I have an eerie sense of humor.
    They came and they took everything apart.
    They took my jewelry and pocketed it
    and everything that was there.
    And then we had a bathroom in the front,
    and the men unrolled the toilet paper.
    They were looking for foreign currency.
    And I stood there.
    And I said, we only wipe ourselves with dollar bills.
    And of course, that was the wrong thing to say, [LAUGHS]
    you know!
    My maid stood behind me, and she kicked me.
    And I suddenly realized what I was doing.
    You know, you don't make fun of the Gestapo, you know?
    [LAUGHS]
    So they took everything apart.
    They took the films out of the camera.
    They slashed the pictures.
    And--
    Did you stand there when--
    Yeah, mhm.
    Nothing I could do.
    And they slashed the quilt, looking for money, everywhere.
    The feather all over.
    You know, the thing is that many things were funny to me.
    I always had a hard time to controlling my laughter.
    Like, grown-up men pulling pillows apart!
    I mean, it was silly!
    You know?
    It was silly, when you analyzed it.
    You saw a big soldier, taking pillows apart,
    and be covered with feathers.
    It was silly!
    Did you feel that way while they were there?
    I had a terrible sense of humor.
    I mean, it very often came up to me, the silliness, the--
    it just hit me very often.
    Were you afraid at all with any--
    I think I was past the state of being afraid.
    I was afraid for my children, all the time.
    But they slept.
    They were fast asleep when they came in.
    Did they go in their room?
    Yeah, they looked in there, and both kids were asleep.
    And the nurse was sitting with them.
    But they didn't take anything apart in the children's room.
    They took my jewelry apart, and they
    took all the papers, valuable family papers, and stuff
    like that.
    What did they say when they left?
    Well, there were people from out of town.
    But one man was an older man.
    When he saw the decorations my dad had gotten in the war,
    he said, well, maybe we should leave you those things,
    you know.
    And the other said, certainly not, you know, and went away.
    The younger people didn't care for anything.
    The older people, who were in the war,
    know that the Jewish people fought next to them just as
    bravely as the others.
    Did they take your father's--
    Yeah, they took everything away, yeah.
    And the [INAUDIBLE] they took all the things with them.
    And that all of a sudden--
    Yeah.
    It's all gone.
    But that's the least.
    [LAUGHS]
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    [LAUGHS]
    Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?
    I don't know, except that we were darn lucky,
    and I was darn lucky with my children,
    that I came out all in one piece.
    [LAUGHS] So.
    You certainly were.
    Mhm.
    Because all of your family survived, pretty much.
    Right.
    Yeah, well, except uncles and aunts were--
    You didn't-- what happened to the--
    Well, they were taken to concentration camp
    but never heard of again, you know-- quite a number.
    From Germany?
    Yeah, yeah, there.
    My immediate family, my brother and my parents came out,
    and my husband's family came out.
    And Arnold, the boy who was in the English army, that I
    told you was--
    he came after the war over here, and he is living here now
    and has raised three lovely children.
    So the immediate family came out--
    and, very often, miraculously, came out.
    So your uncles and aunts-- that was your father--
    My father's family, yeah.
    Many of them were killed.
    Why didn't they leave?
    They couldn't!
    You had to have somebody here-- you
    had to have a black sheep in the family who
    emigrated to America in 1860 or '80, who had made
    enough money to vouch for you.
    So you wouldn't be a public nuisance.
    And I wanted to just ask a few more questions.
    OK.
    What would you most want Americans
    to remember about that Nazi experience,
    if you had anything to say to them?
    Well, I think that sooner or later it's
    going to be forgotten.
    Already my grandchildren hardly know anything about it.
    And I'm sure that-- maybe they know because they are directly
    connected, but I'm sure their friends in college
    would not know about it.
    I told you that I was interviewed by a girl
    from the evening paper who had never heard the word "pogrom"
    and didn't know what Crystal Night was.
    And she was a college graduate from Iowa.
    And she interviewed you--
    She interviewed me.
    --about your experience.
    Yeah.
    Yeah.
    Mhm.
    And had no idea.
    So what do you think we can do to have
    people know about this experience and not to forget?
    I think comparative religion and understanding
    each other is the most important thing.
    We should study the New Testament,
    and they should study the Old Testament.
    More understanding is the most important thing.
    So do you think that a lot of what happened
    was due to prejudice and--
    No, what happened was really the end of the First World War,
    when Germany was completely degraded.
    All their factories were dismantled.
    It was occupied by foreign powers.
    And the biggest degradation was that when the French brought
    all the Negro people in to occupy the Germans--
    who had never seen a Negro before and were completely--
    The Germans were starved.
    They had to feed first the foreign armies
    before they could put food on their own table.
    And in the complete degradation of Germany, Hitler could rise.
    I mean, you talk about the Depression here and the apple
    sellers and food lines.
    Well, that was all over Germany.
    And then, of course, after the Second World War
    the Americans leaned over backwards.
    Then they had the Marshall Plan and built up
    Germany and German factories before they built up
    our own factories here.
    Do you think that could happen here,
    that a Nazi experience could happen here?
    Oh, yes.
    Yes, it can, because if people have
    a gun in their hand and people are afraid,
    what are you going to do?
    She needs to say that.
    Hmm?
    Would you say that, please?
    If people have a gun in their hand--
    --that the Nazis--
    --that it's possible that--
    Yeah, it's possible.
    --the Nazis-- go ahead and say that in a statement.
    Say that it's possible--
    Oh.
    It's possible that same thing could happen here.
    If somebody has power and has a gun in their hand,
    then you can't do anything.
    And as long as you want to protect your family,
    you will always give in, order to protect
    the child, the life of the children and of your family.
    Doesn't matter what.
    If people have a gun in their hand, they have the power.
    So what can we do to stop that?
    Not just studying a religion.
    [CROSS TALK]
    No, no.
    We should not have guns.
    We should not-- we have just have to more understanding
    and take the guns away from the--
    look what happened yesterday, with how many people
    were killed.
    It's only because you can go and buy a gun anywhere.
    So if you have 100 youngsters buying guns,
    and they come in here and have you in front of them,
    what are you going to do?
    Do you think anything is--
    getting back to the understanding of people
    and understanding each other, do you
    think understanding about other people's ethnic groups
    and knowing them as a people make any difference?
    Oh, yes, very much so.
    I think that's why we have a better and easier life here
    in Hawaii, because we have so many ethnic groups living next
    to each other.
    But in other places, that isn't so.
    Ethnic groups are little ghettos.
    I think ghettos are very dangerous.
    We have to spread out of ghettos,
    whether it's a Jewish ghetto or any other--
    Japanese or Chinese ghetto.
    We have to mix and understand each other.
    Do you think that the experience you've heard about with
    the Japanese-Americans from the 522nd who are really
    attempting-- do you have anything to say about these men
    who are--
    Well, it was a war hysteria.
    And whenever there's a war, you will have a war hysteria,
    where people desperately try to protect themselves.
    And that was happened then.
    It happened when?
    When the Japanese here were interned.
    It was a war hysteria.
    Anne, you know about the Japanese-Americans who
    were at Dachau and now are working with them
    on this project.
    Yeah, yeah, you told me about it.
    Mhm.
    --yeah.
    What do you think about the idea that they are so concerned
    about, that this should never happen again,
    and that they go--
    Because the next time it might be them again.
    They have gone through it once.
    It might be again.
    So of course they are interested not to have
    those things happen again.
    Every ethnic group is afraid of that.
    Whether it's the Vietnamese or Laotian,
    every ethnic group is afraid that the next time it
    could be them.
    The only salvation is to understand each other
    and do away with ghettos.
    I'm not a philosopher, so.
    [LAUGHS]
    No, that's-- Anne, I thank you so much for--
    Well, thank you.
    How much time do we have?
    We have about five, six minutes left.
    OK.
    We may as well do a few more-- just two more minutes on you.
    And that is, I just wanted to know--
    you had told me about that one incident of, you know,
    no Jews allowed in Wisconsin.
    Mhm?
    Have you experienced any other antisemitic--
    Actually, not, no.
    Actually not, no.
    I experienced some other things when I was
    in real estate in Wisconsin.
    And when I showed a Black doctor houses,
    I had to leave Milwaukee in a hurry the next morning.
    When you were a Realtor--
    I was a realtor, and showed a Black doctor houses
    in a White neighborhood.
    And--
    What happened?
    Well, there were calls coming into my office.
    And by the time I came back to the office,
    my boss had made a reservation for me
    to leave the next morning for Hawaii, to get out of town.
    And it was time that I left it.
    You know, that was in the '60s, with the freedom walks and all
    that, and Wisconsin was in the middle of it.
    And it was very sad-- many things.
    Wow.
    Yeah.
    For many experiences-- not against Jews only.
    I mean, against Black--
    and it's still going on, as you know.
    It's human nature, I guess.
    But we were very lucky.
    And my husband insisted on the best schools for the children.
    And we were very lucky that we could do it.
    He started a tannery in Wisconsin
    and worked there and had it until he got sick.
    Well, thank you so much.
    Well, thank you, Judy.
    Does anyone else have anything to ask Anne?
    [? Paul? ?]
    Anything?
    Tim?
    Yeah, I have one question.
    OK.
    You moved to Milwaukee during World War II.
    Pardon me?
    Did you move to Milwaukee during World War II?
    Yes, uh-huh.
    There was supposed to have been a group of Japanese internees
    in the Milwaukee-to-Madison area.
    And I was wondering if you ever ran into any of them.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    My friend Sebias had a Japanese girl working
    for them, a lovely girl.
    And out of this internment camp--
    it wasn't a very big camp-- people
    could hire people to work for them.
    And they were all good workers--
    and was very successful.
    Could you just repeat that about the relocation camps,
    the internment camps, that were in Wisconsin, the Japanese--
    Well, I only know of very few people
    who hired people out of that camp to work-- yeah.
    Out of what camp?
    --out of that internment camp-- there was one, I think--
    Where?
    --to work in their homes.
    And this was where?
    In Milwaukee, in Shorewood-- the suburb.
    And our friends, who also live now here,
    had a Japanese girl all during the war.
    I see.
    What was the feeling about the Japanese at that time?
    Do you remember about--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    All our press-- everything was so full of hatred, you know,
    you didn't know where to turn.
    We only heard the one side of it.
    We never heard the other side.
    And of course, when we heard about the march
    in Bataan and all that, everybody was aghast.
    You were too young to remember that [LAUGHS] on.
    It was a very sad winter.
    You know, and then the winter of the Battle of the Bulge.
    We had, on Rosh ha-Shanah in '45,
    six young sailors from the Great Lakes at our house.
    I called up there.
    And two were supposed to come.
    And they brought four more.
    And I made all the kids call home-- their homes.
    And at that time, I was a chain smoker,
    and I couldn't buy any cigarettes.
    So I told the kids, I can't buy any cigarettes.
    And they promised me they'd send me some from the base.
    Now, I wanted to ask--
    let me just get one question, before that,
    because the tape's going to run out.
    Did anyone connect there that the Japanese that were interned
    there were American citizens?
    No.
    Never came up.
    I mean, that wasn't--
    except for the few people who worked for private people,
    I never heard about the Japanese much.
    We were too far away from everything.
    But let me just tell you about those boys
    who came for Rosh ha-Shanah.
    They all called home.
    Two weeks later, I got a package of cigarettes, postmarked New
    York.
    So those kids, after four weeks' basic training,
    were shipped to the Battle of the Bulge.
    Only one came back.
    That was the last Jewish meal they had in our house.
    They were Jewish boys--
    Yeah, Jewish boys.
    They came over for Rosh ha-Shanah.
    And then my husband got them dates from a private school,
    and they had a good time that evening.
    And then they were moved out to the Battle of the Bulge.
    And they only had four weeks' basic training.
    They were youngsters, 18 years old.
    These were boys who grew up in the United States?
    No, they were from--
    yeah, from Los Angeles.
    They were from all over.
    They were for basic training at the Great Lakes.
    And for the holidays, or any occasion,
    we would call up there and had kids come to us.
    You know, it was only an hour ride away.
    And they stayed sometimes overnight.
    And they were happy to have a home away from home.
    Did you know of any Jewish boys that left Germany
    in the '30s that were in the United States--
    Oh, sure, many, like my brother.
    All my contemporaries and my brother's contemporaries
    fought in the American--
    Could you just repeat the statement, in that, Anne,
    if you could just--
    Oh.
    Many, many Jewish boys who left Germany,
    they volunteered here after they became citizen.
    And many of them went back.
    My cousins, my brother--
    many.
    All my contemporaries went back to fight.
    Sure.
    Yeah.
    Thank you so much, Anne.
    OK, Well, thank you very much.
    [APPLAUSE]
    That was wonderful!
    --tape--
    --stopping--
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER]
    Oh.
    Pat, you don't know if you're [INAUDIBLE]..
    And she [INAUDIBLE].
    Hold still.
    --and all kinds of things in Alaska.
    So here she is, giving us her expertise.
    How many people--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    OK, they're just finishing up this, Walter.
    But you know what we can do in the meantime.
    I was talking--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    OK, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Oh, I'm sorry, Walter.
    Come in.
    I saw you [INAUDIBLE].
    [INAUDIBLE]
    One of our sisters is a the buro.
    What's going on?
    I got the macro.
    Let me-- hold it.
    Jesus, look at that.
    I can't.
    I've got to get further back.
    Get a soft-focus tight shot.
    [BACKGROUND CHATTER]
    Just relax for one second.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Yeah, just stop shaking.
    [LAUGHS]
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    OK, here.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Stop.
    Focus.
    Beautiful.
    Hold it.
    Don't move.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    It does, yeah, but it's an old picture.
    That's good.
    All right, now get the whole thing.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
    OK, receipts.
    [INAUDIBLE] Beautiful.
    Is that focused?
    Yep.
    1, 2, 3, [INAUDIBLE].
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    OK?
    OK?
    OK.
    Is that in focus?
    It must be in focus.
    Yeah.
    that's awesome because it's closer.
    This closer.
    Oh, oh, there.
    There?
    [INAUDIBLE] Good.
    OK?
    Thank you.
    Boys.
    Is that focused?
    Yeah.
    Beautiful.
    Hold it.
    OK, I'm going to pan.
    1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
    OK, go.
    1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
    You can box it.
    1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
    Wait.
    Start again.
    OK.
    It's OK.
    Now let's just [INAUDIBLE].
    Right now?
    When.
    You ready?
    Yeah.
    It's rolling.
    OK.
    [INAUDIBLE]

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Anne Flagg (née Flagenheimer), born September 17, 1910 in Germany, describes how Hitler invaded the Rhineland when her children were infants; her father’s factory; how Jews were forbidden from going to concerts or to the opera; how the synagogue was burned during Kristallnacht; how the Nazis destroyed their house and the French governess saved her husband; the first pogrom in 1934; how some of her relatives got out of Germany; how she went to their summer home in February 1938; how she went to Stuttgart to get visas and how they did not have passports; finally getting passports; how the train she was on to Holland, the Netherlands was searched by the Gestapo and they stole her watch; meeting her husband in Holland; taking a ship to the United States; how her parents got out soon after; how the maid saved their silver and the bookkeeper took accounts receivable and buried it and collected for her parents for later; how her friend rescued many Jews by posing as a Nazi; visiting Germany in 1952; life after WWI; how the Nazis stole their possessions; the fates of her aunts and uncles; and how she believes the Holocaust could happen again.
    Interviewee
    Anne Flagg
    Interviewer
    Judy Weightman
    Date
    interview:  1987 December 29
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, acquired from the Hawaii Holocaust Project

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    3 videocassette (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. See collections release form for details regarding restrictions.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Flagg, Anne, 1910-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Judy Weightman, of the Hawaii Holocaust Project, conducted the interview with Anne Flagg on December 29, 1987 as part of a project to interview Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators currently living in Hawaii. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview in March 1990.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:10:11
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511085

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    Also in Oral History interviews of the Hawaii Holocaust Project

    Contains 34 oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors and concentration camp liberators all currently living in Hawaii

    Date: 1987-1991

    AJA Photos

    AJA Photos

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Michael Akamine

    Oral history interview with Michael Akamine

    Oral History

    Michael Akamine, born August 15, 1922, describes his parents; moving to Oahu, Hawaii when he was six years old; graduating high school in 1942; working for the as a carpenter and construction worker; working on a poultry farm when Pearl Harbor was bombed; how his parents were from Okinawa, Japan; volunteering for the U.S. Army in 1943; going to Camp Shelby; not knowing anyone who went to a relocation camp; being a battery agent in the 522nd; how his father had told him about the Dachau concentration camp; going to Dachau and the conditions in the camp; meeting up with his friends from the army every year; how he has not talked about his experience before this interview; and why he decided to volunteer in the army.

    Oral history interview with Stanley Akita

    Oral history interview with Stanley Akita

    Oral History

    Stanley Akita, born in 1923 in Hawaii, going to Honolulu to vocational school; how he volunteered for the 442nd; going to training at Camp Shelby; being picked to join the 100th and being sent to Southern France; being captured by Germans and asked why a Japanese man was fighting with the Americans; being sent to Koma, Strassburg, Stuttgard, and the prison, Starlite 70; being forced to clean the streets of Munich; bribing guards for food with cigarettes; being liberated by American troops; and being taken to Königsberg, Germany (Kaliningrad, Russia) then France and Boston.

    442nd Banquet

    442nd Banquet

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tana Basa

    Oral history interview with Tana Basa

    Oral History

    Tana Basa (née Hecht), born April 18, 1940 in Berlin, Germany, shows pictures of her family from before the war. She discusses her father’s role as a cantor during WWI; how her first memory was of Theresienstadt; staying in the camp until the end of the war in a single room; having all her hair cut; being hungry a lot; having her leg in traction; her mother’s death; how two of her sisters went to Auschwitz and one sister went to Bergen-Belsen; how her father hid her under the tub when the guards came for her; how her father got a Jewish doctor to take her to a tuberculosis sanatorium, where she stayed until they were liberated; how she reunited with her two sisters, who went to Bergen-Belsen; the death of her aunt and uncle; being in a displaced persons camp; how her father remarried and she and one of her sisters were put in a German Jewish orphanage, where she stayed for five years until her father took her back; and immigrating to the United States with her father when she was 11 years old.

    Oral history interview with Carla Chotzen

    Oral history interview with Carla Chotzen

    Oral History

    Carla Chotzen, born in Weimar, Germany in 1924, describes her family; going to England; moving to Berlin, Germany in 1935; going to school in Berlin and getting kicked out soon after; going to a Jewish school and then Switzerland; how her father had read Mein Kampf and knew that they would have to leave Germany; how her father left them in Switzerland and met her mother in Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic); immigrating to the United States when she was 11 and stayed with her grandparents in Buffalo, NY while her parents were in England; going to the University of Rochester; and working for the American Jewish Committee in New York; the fate of her extended family.

    Oral history interview with Walter Chotzen

    Oral history interview with Walter Chotzen

    Oral History

    Walter Chotzen, born May 17, 1911 in Ziegenhalt, Germany (Glucholazy, Poland), describes the small town where he was born; attending the University of Berlin and quitting after a few semesters; working for a manufacturing business, where he was fired once Hitler came to power; working for his father; being socially shunned for being Jewish; being called up by the draft board; smuggling money past the border into Czechoslovakia and being questioned by the Gestapo about this activity; how his father sold his factory in 1938; going to Holland; how his parents hid in Berlin for a year then fled to Sweden; how he lived in Seattle during this time; his family history; his education in Germany; the antisemitism before the war; his experiences in Berlin between 1933 and 1935; going to a Nazi Party parade on Unter der Linden; the fate of his extended family; how he became socialist as Hitler became stronger; his thoughts on the internment camps in the U.S. for Japanese Americans; and his thoughts on the liberation of Dachau by Japanese-American troops.

    Crystal Night oral history interview

    Crystal Night oral history interview

    Oral History

    Five individuals who lived in Germany and Austria before, during, or after Kristallnacht discuss their experiences. The interviewees describe the Nazi Party in Austria; growing up in Berlin, Germany and being persecuted for being Jewish; life in Frankfurt, Germany, where there were boycotts against Jewish stores; a parade of storm troopers (Sturmabteilung); a torchlight parade in 1933 on Under Der Linden in Berlin where 100,000 storm troopers marched singing; how the Nazis took most of their possessions; seeing a synagogue burning in Austria during Kristallnacht; how they all left Europe; and their thoughts on preventing the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Royce Higa

    Oral history interview with Royce Higa

    Oral History

    Royce Higa, born in 1920 in Honolulu, Hawaii, describes leaving school early to work; working as a dishwasher in Okinawa, Japan; being Japanese and the difference between Akin and Japanese; organizing a labor movement at age 16; graduating from the University of Michigan; becoming the director of a tuberculosis organization; joining the army in 1945; his brother’s death in Italy; training at Camp Shelby; getting the measles and suffering depression; going to Germany where he was a forward observer; crossing the Rhine River and not meeting any resistance; seeing a death march from Dachau and how they did not know at the time that they were Jewish prisoners; going to Augsburg, Germany; meeting a Lithuanian Jew and helping him find his family; getting his master’s degree in public health after the war; his life in politics; seeing the attack on Pearl Harbor, which were close to his home; and the Japanese who were loaded on to ships and taken to the mainland.

    Oral history interview with Fred Hirayama

    Oral history interview with Fred Hirayama

    Oral History

    Fred Hirayama, born in Hawaii, describes living on a plantation; volunteering for the army; the discrimination his brother experienced as a Japanese American; how his parents were proud of him for serving; how no one in his family was sent to a relocation center; going to Camp Shelby and never experiencing any discrimination; serving in the 522nd in France and Germany; his experiences with the concentration camps; going to Dachau where he saw the atrocities, gas chambers, and the inmates; returning to Germany in 1984; his memories of the Pearl Harbor attack; and some pictures he has of the state of Texas honoring the 442nd regiment.

    Oral history interview with Hazel Ishii

    Oral history interview with Hazel Ishii

    Oral History

    Hazel Ishii, born December 15, 1917, describes her Japanese parents and how she identifies as American; being in Maui, Hawaii during the attack on Pear Harbor; not having experienced any prejudice; how conditions changed for Japanese Americans after the war; a friend’s experience in a Japanese American internment camp; her daughter’s pursuit of archeology and Hebrew studies; and her family’s efforts to remember the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Susumu Ishii

    Oral history interview with Susumu Ishii

    Oral History

    Susumu Ishii, born on January 2, 1918 in Hawaii, describes being a second generation Japanese American; being 24 years old when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred; being drafted a few months before the Pearl Harbor attack; how the commander told the Japanese Americans that they could not be trusted; how he identified as an American; attending a Japanese school; training at Camp Shelby and in Wisconsin; visiting a friend at a Japanese American relocation camp and his view on the camps; not experiencing any discrimination when he was in Mississippi but witnessing discrimination against black Americans; attending annual Holocaust memorial services; his daughter’s pursuit of Hebrew studies; and his view that those who were relocated to camps in the U.S. should be compensated.

    Oral history interview with Stanley Kaneshiro

    Oral history interview with Stanley Kaneshiro

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral history interview with Richard Kuba

    Oral History

    Richard Kuba, born in March 1921 in Kailua, Hawaii, describes being a first generation Japanese American; living in Kailua when Pearl Harbor was attacked; volunteering to serve in March 1943; his non-Japanese friends and their views of the Japanese; how he heard nothing against Americans in the Japanese community; being stationed at Fort Shelby (probably Camp Shelby) in the infantry; being a radio operator when he went overseas; being in combat; feeling like his battalion was treated differently because they were Japanese Americans; his views on Hitler; how he did not know anything about the concentration camps other than what he read in the papers; and his first contact with the liberated prisoners.

    Oral history interview with Borys Kusne

    Oral history interview with Borys Kusne

    Oral History

    Borys Kusne, born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania on August 17, 1918, describes growing up in a middle class Jewish family; the antisemitism in Vilnius; being the only Jew at his college in 1938; being inducted into the Polish army in 1939; how both the Russians and Germans were taking Polish prisoners of war; walking back home; the Nazi invasion in 1941; the new rules established for Jews; working at the railroad then moving to the ghetto and working in a hospital; being in the ghetto until 1942, when he was deported to Estonia to a liquidation camp; never seeing his mother again; conditions in the camp; and marching all night and leaving the group for the forest.

    Oral history interview with Hedy Marmorstein

    Oral history interview with Hedy Marmorstein

    Oral History

    Hedy Marmorstein, born in Vienna, Austria November 18, 1921, describes her parents; going to school until she was 16; finishing high school in New York; leaving Vienna in December 1938; her Jewish education; how they accepted antisemitism as a part of life; experiencing antisemitism in school and protesting; her non-Jewish friends; being sponsored by her father’s nephew to come to the United States; corresponding with her parents until the attack on Pearl Harbor; learning later that her parents were deported to Riga, Latvia (Kaiserwald concentration camp); how when she arrived in the U.S., Americans did not realize how sinister Hitler was; her experiences during Kristallnacht; antisemitism in the U.S.; how her experiences have affected her life; living in Hawaii versus New York; her views on the internment of Japanese Americans; how when she left Austria some of her possessions were destroyed and strip-searched in France; returning to Austria in 1959; and being in an Austrian club.

    Oral history interview with Katsugo Miho

    Oral history interview with Katsugo Miho

    Oral History

    Katsugo Miho, born in Maui, Hawaii, describes his Japanese parents; graduating high school in 1940 and beginning his university studies in 1941; being a member of the ROTC; volunteering for the army on December 7, 1941; being part of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard; how they were gathered in a school one morning and told that all Japanese Americans would be discharged because an American officer did not like the idea of Japanese Americans serving for the U.S. Army; working as a carpenter’s helper at the airfield; volunteering for the army in 1943 with his brother; going to Schofield and Camp Shelby; being in the artillery while his brother was in the medical section; how his father was picked up as an enemy alien in 1941, taken to a prison, then shipped to Sand Island, Honolulu, and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Alabama; the death of his brother in a bus accident when he visited their father; training until April 1944; visiting camps (possibly Japanese American internment camps); going to France and losing many men while trying to rescue a lost battalion from Texas; joining with the 7th Army and the 3rd Army; fighting battles in the German cities of Mannheim, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg; seeing civilians with yellow stars on their clothes in Aachen, Germany; and witnessing a death march from Dachau and not knowing at the time that they were Jewish prisoners.

    Oral history interview with Yuzuru Morita

    Oral history interview with Yuzuru Morita

    Oral History

    Yuzuru Morita, born in Hawaii on May 8, 1917, describes his Japanese American parents; being age 24 and in the army when Pearl Harbor was attacked; working on a sugar plantation and factory, where there were Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, and Chinese men working together; being assigned to the 395th Battalion at Diamond Head; handling all the outgoing military goods for the army; being at home during the attack on Pearl Harbor and having to get back to the base; his response to seeing Japanese flags on the attacking airplanes; staying in the army throughout the war and becoming a sergeant; how both of his brothers entered the army when the 442nd was formed; going to Camp Shelby; not encountering any racial prejudice, but how Japanese-American soldiers had their allegiance continually doubted; his daily duties in the camp; becoming part of the 527th Artillery; how his brothers also fought and survived the war; how his parents were proud of them for fighting; going to Germany and Italy; how German soldiers surrendered to them; seeing Jewish prisoners for the first time at Dachau and how he did not even know it was called Dachau until 1988 because no one ever talked about it; going to Bavaria, Germany after the war, where they remained as occupational troops; how his service in the army was appreciated by people when he returned to the U.S. and how he did not experience any racial prejudice; and his outlook on life.

    Oral history interview with Neil Nagareda

    Oral history interview with Neil Nagareda

    Oral History

    Neil Nagareda, born May 2, 1924 on Hawaii Island, Hawaii, describes living on a plantation with a mixture of Filipino, Portuguese, Japanese, and Spanish families; how there were no anti-Japanese feelings; hearing that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; how his parents were from Hiroshima , Japan; joining the army in 1943; being trained at Camp Shelby; how he was supposed to go to Camp Jerome but missed going; how his unit went to Europe; having no idea about the concentration camps when they came across Dachau; the conditions of the Jewish inmates; meeting up with the 522nd; how there were no orders as to what they should do at the camp nor with the prisoners; being a communications unit; leaving Germany in December 1945; the racism he experienced in Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, MS, and New York; not talking very much about his war experiences; and his advice to his children.

    Oral history interview with Barton Nagata

    Oral history interview with Barton Nagata

    Oral History

    Barton Nagata, born in Maui, Hawaii, describes his family; going to Grinnell College in Iowa; being drafted in 1942 and sent to Arkansas for basic training; asking to be transferred to the 442nd Battalion; being sent to Camp Shelby attached to the headquarters battery as a clerk; working in radio and in the foreign observatory team; seeing some action in Italy with the infantry; being Colonel Harrington's radio operator; his education at Grinnell College, where he did not experience any discrimination; being on guard duty when he was not needed as a radio operator on the Riviera in France; being detached from his unit and made a MP, guarding German prisoners and AWOL American prisoners near Nice, France; liberating French prisoners in Germany; seeing a death march near Munich, Germany, not realizing the prisoners were Jews, and giving them some food; going to Dachau; speaking about his experiences when he was a high school history teacher; the importance of education to prevent racism; being an active protestant; going to a British university; and telling his children about his experiences.

    Oral history interview with Armin Nagel

    Oral history interview with Armin Nagel

    Oral History

    Armin Nagel, born June 1920 in Breznov (possibly Brașov), Romania, describes his early life; learning Hungarian and attending Hebrew school; moving near the border of Romania; moving to Bucharest, Romania with his siblings; finishing high school in 1938; working as a photographer; working as a dentist’s assistant until 1940; how the Romanian Nazis became active in 1939; how his brother, who was a printer, secretly printed material against the Nazis; being mistaken as his brother and taken to a train to go to a concentration camp; going with 2,000 other Jews and non-Jews to Terazu, a work camp; conditions in the camp and making teeth out of bones to aid eating; how in 1942 all the Jews in the camp were taken to Varnecka (possibly Varnikai, Lithuania); learning later that experiments were being conducted at the camp, where prisoners were given poison in the food; how, as a dental assistant, he was able to smuggle medicines to the prisoners; being able to survive because he ate with the dentist; being in the camp from May 1941 to August 1944; being taken to another camp in Groslovo (Velyka Mykhaĭlivka, Ukraine), where he worked as a dental assistant for one year; walking 80 miles towards Romania and ending up in Tagena; how his brothers survived and went to Israel; joining his mother in Bucharest, where he worked and went to school for engineering; immigrating eventually to the United States and settling in Honolulu, Hawaii; and the number of Jewish Romanians who left for Israel.

    Oral history interview with Hideo Nakamine

    Oral history interview with Hideo Nakamine

    Oral History

    Hideo Nakamine, born in Paauilo, Hawaii and raised in Honokaa, HI, describes being in Honolulu, HI with his brother when Pearl Harbor was attacked; enlisting and joining the 442nd; going to Camp Shelby for training; being put into the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion; fighting in Italy and France and going into Germany at the end of the war; how the first camp he saw was in Bad Tölz, Germany; seeing approximately 5,000 prisoners being marched away from Dachau and how the German soldiers scattered when they saw the U.S. troops; how some of the soldiers gave food to the prisoners and how they had been ordered not to give food to anyone because they needed their rations; going through other German death camp areas in Horgau, Augsburg, and Munich; visiting the museum at Dachau during the 40th reunion; going to a gathering of Holocaust survivors in Philadelphia, PA in 1985; how his parents had been driven off the plantation where they worked for being of Japanese descent; and his views on freedom and prejudice.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Obayashi

    Oral history interview with Joseph Obayashi

    Oral History

    Joseph Obayashi, born on April 18, 1924 in Maui, Hawaii, describes growing up in a community called Whalo; how his father grew pineapples; how he felt that Japanese Americans were not discriminated against even after the attack on Pearl Harbor; enlisting into the 442nd; how he trusted the U.S. government when they relocated Japanese Americans to camps; training at Camp Shelby; being in the 3rd and 5th Divisions during the war; being shot down when he was in the 3rd Division; the captain of the 442nd, Captain Fiberman, and his squadron commander, James Harrison; landing in Italy in 1944; how his job was to carry a radio on his back to help with the intelligence of the 1st Division; how the 442nd and 100th (rifle company) never drew back; going through France then Germany; hearing rumors about the concentration camps; seeing a concentration camp and prisoners eating a dead horse; meeting former inmates in Germany in 1984; encountering inmates in other areas of Germany in 1945; and his outlook on life.

    Oral history interview with Otto Orenstein

    Oral history interview with Otto Orenstein

    Oral History

    Otto Orenstein, born in Vienna, Austria on July 16, 1921, describes his parents and their ancestry; his education in Vienna; not experiencing any antisemitism when he was young; how his family observed some holidays but was not very religious; leaving Vienna on December 28, 1938 for Cologne, Germany; making it across the Belgian border; how some Belgian farmers smuggled them to Brussels, Belgium and gave them money for railroad tickets; arriving in Antwerp, Belgium, where a relative lived; getting a visa to the United States, and arriving in the U.S. in April 1940; how the rest of his immediate family arrived in the following few months; how in July 1927 there had been riots at the Ministry Building in Vienna; his memories of political events and backlashes in 1932, 1934, and 1938; being a member of the Austrian boy scouts and being kicked out for being Jewish; his memories of the Anschluss and seeing Himmler and Goering; conditions during the Nazi occupation; getting kicked out of the apartment where his family had lived for 30 years and going to live with his grandmother; how his uncle committed suicide; getting rounded up with other Jews on November 11, 1938 and taken to an SS barracks; seeing a Portuguese temple burning; how he was let go because he was only 17 years old; his journey to Antwerp and his difficulty crossing the border; going to a detention camp in Belgium September 1939 until his visa came in March 1940; how his parents left from Norway; going to Honolulu with his family in July 1940 and how his parents had brought artifacts from Norway and were featured on the front page of the Honolulu Advertiser on July 16, 1940; how when he first arrived in New York he stayed at Stephen Weiss’s house, which was a temporary shelter for refugees; how his family was interned on Sand Island, HI as enemy aliens; how his mother ended up being the leader of the women’s side of the camp; the things he brought with him (birth certificate, train ticket from Brussels to Antwerp, student card, and passport); how he has talked to his family about his experiences; not experiencing any antisemitism in Honolulu; and some of his memories from 1938. The interviewee also shows a picture of his birth certificate and his student card.

    Oral history interview with members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral history interview with members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral History

    Members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion discuss their experiences as Japanese Americans when Pearl Harbor was attacked; deciding to join the army; the anti-Japanese sentiment in the press and the reactions of their peers; being evacuated from the west coast and waiting for Japanese American detainment camps to be built; people they knew whom were detained; the experiences of their families before the war; how many of their possessions were taken by the federal government; training at Camp Shelby; the status of family members as enemy aliens; Holocaust denial and Holocaust education; going to the military camp in Arkansas (possibly Camp Jerome); the confiscation of their diaries; their views on reparations for the Americans who were detained during WWII; their activities on the Western Front, including the detachment of the 522nd, how the artillery was often ahead of the infantry, and going through many towns; arriving at Dachau; seeing the prisoners and Reverend Martin Niemöller; not staying long at the camp; being ordered not to feed the camp survivors because they could not eat the food; passing a camp outside of Munich, Germany while they were scouting; seeing two dead horses and later seeing a group of prisoners gathered around eating them; feeding the survivors at their camp and speaking to some of them; seeing the gas chambers, crematoriums, and shooting sites at the camp; going to the displaced person camps and attending a wedding at one of them; going to a survivors' meeting in Philadelphia, PA; the irony of being a persecuted minority in America then helping a minority during the war; and the presence of prejudice organizations in the U.S.

    Panel discussion with Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Panel discussion with Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion

    Oral History

    Holocaust survivors and members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion discuss the internment of enemy aliens in the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack; learning about the concentration camps in Europe; the experience of being a Japanese American after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; the experiences of Sarah Rozenberg, who lived in the Warsaw ghetto, was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp on April 23, 1943, worked in the ammunition factory, and was liberated by the Russian Army on January 15, 1945; Rozenberg’s experiences with the Germans and the brutality of the Jewish police as well as the underground activities in the Warsaw ghetto; and Holocaust education.

    Jewish/552nd Panel

    Jewish/552nd Panel

    Oral History

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Punchbowl Memorial

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

    Oral history interview with Sarah Rozenberg

    Oral History

    Yom HaShoah

    Yom HaShoah

    Oral History

    The recording includes a service for Yom HaShoah during which Mayor Frank Fasi of Honolulu, HI; Chuck Freedman, director of communications in the office of the Hawaiian governor; Jacob Liebermann of the Jewish Federation of Honolulu; Gerald Clay, president of the Jewish Federation of Honolulu; and Judy Weightman honor the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust and thank those who helped save Jews and work to fight present-day Holocaust denial. The recording also includes a musical performance.

    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

    Oral History

    Gerda Samuel, born in Hamburg, Germany in 1921, describes her father, who was a printer; attending a Jewish school for girls in 1931; how her father was taken by the SS in 1934 and she never saw him again; being sent to the ghetto; conditions in the ghetto; being sent to England in 1938; being adopted by a Jewish family in Belfast, Northern Ireland; never seeing her mother or aunt again; being raped by the son of her adopted family; joining the British Army in 1941; not hearing about the concentration camps until after the war; going to London, England to work as a waitress after she left the army; moving to Singapore in 1948; immigrating to the United States in 1952; her conversion to Catholicism; antisemitism in Hawaii; and her memories of the Depression.

    Oral history interview with John Sato

    Oral history interview with John Sato

    Oral History

    John Sato, born in the state of Washington in 1921, describes experiencing some discrimination as Japanese American when he went to a university in 1939; how his family was evacuated from their farm; living in the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho; conditions in the camp; volunteering for the army; going to Camp Shelby; being in the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion; joining the air force intelligence; visiting his family in the camp; being transferred to the Hawaii Air Force Base for nine months; being sent to Guam; going on a bomb trip to Japan with scientists; and his life after the war.

    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

    Oral History

    Rudolf Schmerl, born in August 1930 outside of Berlin, Germany, describes his family; moving to Berlin in 1935; his family history; experiencing antisemitism as a child from his peers; his view of Germans; wanting to leave Germany and having difficulty; how Germany defined his family as stateless; how his father went to the United States in1938 to work as a doctor; going with his mother and grandmother on a train illegally to Czechoslovakia; being beaten at his new school; going to Prague, Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) on August 31, 1938; getting measles on the ship heading to the United States; being detained on Ellis Island; living in Harlem, NY; how his grandmother never became a U.S. citizen; leaving New York in 1941 for Louisiana; seeing racism in New Orleans; moving to Toledo, OH, and seeing the segregation; the fates of his relatives in Germany; and the lessons of the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Jedidah Shashai

    Oral history interview with Jedidah Shashai

    Oral History

    Jedidah Shashai, born in Vienna, Austria on May 19, 1924, describes growing up in poverty in Vienna; having no Jewish school education; experiencing antisemitism; her father’s death when she was 12 years old; how the Nazis took many of their possessions; the uniforms of the women Nazis; how she had no connection with Judaism; wanting to be part of the mainstream and not being accepted; how the Nazis took her family’s business; how she went to Belgium and her sister and mother went to England; antisemitism in newspapers; wanting to go to Hawaii; getting out in a transport of children and feeling guilty because she was not a child; going to Belgium first then England; staying with different families in Belgium; being placed in a small village in England in 1939 by the Rotary and experiencing antisemitism; not experiencing antisemitism in Hawaii; and her approach to life.

    Oral history interview with Don Shimazu

    Oral history interview with Don Shimazu

    Oral History

    Don Shimazu, born in Punei, Maui, Hawaii, describes his role as a staff sergeant in charge of the 522nd Battalion survey section, with the responsibility for accurately locating targets; growing up on a plantation on Maui, where there was a subtle discrimination against all minorities; beginning ROTC at the university in September 1941; his memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor; experiencing some animosity for being Japanese immediately after the attack; how he had been schooled in the Japanese samurai tradition, which taught him to have loyalty to his country (the U.S.) first and how this tradition led to the success of the 442nd and 522nd; enlisting and the disbanding of his first unit; becoming a carpenter’s apprentice; learning about the Japanese internment camps; volunteering for the army on March 24, 1943; going to Camp Shelby; being made second in command of his cadre; how his division was known for being the most accurate artillery division; his combat experiences in Italy in the towns of Grosseto, Livorno, Castellano, Pisa, and Florence; going to Marseille, France; joining the 7th Army and traveling through the French Riviera, Dijon, and Lyon; crossing a minefield without realizing it; saving the lost battalion (131st Field Artillery, 2nd Battalion); staying in Southern France until March 1945; serving with various battalions, including the 63rd, 45th, 44th, and the 101st to assist in the Allied crossing of the Rhine; travelling through Mannheim, Germany and the Siegfried Line; entering Dachau; being told not to feed the camp survivors as they would be unable to cope with the soldier’s food; going to Munich, Germany; returning to Dachau in 1984; the similarities and differences between the German and American internment camps; his memories of the concentration camps in Germany; and ways to prevent the Holocaust from happening again.

    Oral history interview with Ignace Speiser

    Oral history interview with Ignace Speiser

    Oral History

    Ignace (né Yitzhak) Speiser, born January 5, 1908 in Warsaw, Poland, describes his second wife; studying in Paris, France after WWI; learning to play the mandolin and the violin; going to the consortium in Warsaw; being age 21 when he attended the Ecole de Musique in Paris; officially leaving Warsaw in 1931; his siblings and his parents; trying to leave France for the United States in 1939 but being prevented by the beginning of the war; being taken by the Germans from Toulouse, France in 1943; being sent to a concentration camp in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland; being asked to play his violin; how the inmates dug a tunnel, which was discovered; how all the imamates were deported to Auschwitz; being on the train with his friend, a cantor, who sang one symphony the whole ride; how people jumped off the train; how his wife was still in Toulouse; being separated from the others at Auschwitz because he was a musician; playing Ernest Bloch’s Baal Sham; going to Fürstengrube to work in a coal mine, but being separated as a musician with his opera singer friend; being beaten once; being in Birkenau for a few weeks; how a dentist would bring him food and ask him to play Mozart; having a birthday party in 1945; how he had been in Auschwitz for two years and Fürstengrube for one year; giving concerts once or twice a week in Fürstengrube; how after awhile he was not afraid of dying; selection processes; being removed from Auschwitz in January 1945 at which point they were walking and on the train; going to a place near Lübeck, Germany and being taken by the Red Cross to Sweden; the conditions on the train and the deaths during the journey; and his tattoo.

    Oral history interview with Louise Spitzer

    Oral history interview with Louise Spitzer

    Oral History

    Louise Spitzer, born December 6, 1916, in Vienna, Austria, describes her parents and childhood; going to Brussels, Belgium to perfect her French and graduating from hotel management school in 1938; life in Vienna and the intermingling of Jews and the Christians; how she had no antisemitic experiences in her childhood; wearing a three arrows patch to present herself as socialist in protest of Nazism; the death of her father; having boarders in their home beginning in 1938; being picked up by the Nazis to clean the synagogue; how the Nazis took all their linens and silverware, she went to the Nazi headquarters to demand it back, and they gave it back; going to work as a servant and later a nanny for a family in London, England; leaving on November 10, 1938; the deportation of her uncle to Dachau and the death of her mother in 1939; being beaten at the German border; staying with the English family’s children in Wales when the war broke out; returning to London to work in a secret factory until the end of the war; volunteering to help the Americans because she spoke German and being stationed in Germany in the censorship division; visiting her aunt and uncle in Vienna after they were released from Dachau; her interactions with the Russians upon her return to Germany; applying to go to the United States after she received British citizenship; leaving the army in 1948 and immigrating to the U.S.; working for American Express and Sabena; receiving some money from the Austrian government for confiscated belongings; and her views on antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

    Oral history interview with Richard Strauss

    Oral history interview with Richard Strauss

    Oral History

    Richard Strauss, born in Mainz, Germany in 1924, describes growing up in Germany and Italy; working for most of his life in the hotel food industry; attending a German public school; hearing antisemitism on occasion from his classmates; how his father was active in the Social Democratic party and was warned to leave on the night of the 1933 election, which he did; the camps near his town where dissidents were taken; how laws preventing Jews from attending high school began in 1935; his uncle’s wine exporting business, which he was allowed to continue operating despite the limits on Jewish businesses; his parents’ divorce; being socially shunned by non-Jewish friends in 1935; being sent to Besel, Switzerland to his father when their business was being reviewed; being placed in a boarding school in Italy from 1935 to 1938; returning to his mother in August 1938 when Mussolini enacted antisemitic laws; how his father went to Cuba and then Australia in 1940; how his mother’s attitude about remaining in Germany changed after Kristallnacht; how shop keepers would allow them to purchase items even though they had signs up banning Jewish customers; being hidden by a family friend who was a member of the Nazi Party, in a park the night of Kristallnacht; seeing the destruction of the city the next morning; how the thugs who committed the atrocities were brought in from another city; taking in homeless families because their home was intact; being on the English Rotary Club’s transport that got children out of Germany; going to Portsmouth, England and working as a window dresser’s apprentice; how his mother left Germany in November 1941 and went from Portugal to the United States; being interned on the Isle of Mann; being sent to Glasgow, Scotland and then transported to Australia; the conditions on the ship and the maltreatment of the refugees; being placed in an internment camp in Australia; sending a postcard to family friends in Australia, where his father also happened to be; being given the choice to return to England or join the Australian Army, and choosing the latter; joining in 1942 and becoming an interpreter at the rank of sergeant; guarding prisoners of war captured in North Africa that were interned in Australia; getting out of the army in 1947 and immigrating to the U.S. in December 1947; getting an apprenticeship at the Biltmore Hotel; going to California, Utah, Hawaii, and New York; his experiences guarding Italian and German prisoners and not telling them he was Jewish; witnessing some antisemitism in the U.S.; and his reflections on the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Billy Taylor

    Oral history interview with Billy Taylor

    Oral History

    Billy Taylor, born October 15, 1912 in Oklahoma, describes growing up on a farm in a suburb of Oklahoma City; attending the University of Oklahoma and studying petroleum engineering; joining the ROTC, working with the horse-drawn artillery; receiving his lieutenant's commission in 1935; working for the conservation corps in Oregon; getting married in 1938 and going to Texas; joining the armed forces in March 1941; going to Fort Sill to be an instructor; going to the 155 Howitzer Battalion; briefly being the captain of an Arkansas unit of the National Guard; being selected for secret duty at Camp Shelby, training Japanese American soldiers; how the men were loyal and they wanted to prove it; going to Italy; forming units at the University of Naples; going to combat north of Rome; his duties as well as the technical and logistical details of their campaign; going to Florence; how the unit was sent to Marseille, France but he got sick and was sent to the hospital; hitching a ride to Marseille a month later; experiencing their worst fighting in the Vosges Mountains; being assigned to rescue a battalion (131st Field Artillery, 2nd Battalion) in October 1944; emptying a brothel of women, who had been collaborating with the Germans; details about the rescue of the lost battalion and sustaining great casualties; the split of the 442nd and the 522nd; crossing the Rhine River at Worms, Germany; taking Mannheim, Germany; coming across a training camp for German youth and a compound of imported food; being northwest of Munich and Dachau and supporting the 101 Airborne; going to the Dachau concentration camp, which had been emptied of many prisoners; going to a meeting of units to discuss what they should do with the corpses; not staying at the camp for very long; the smell of the camp; heading south and finding a group of former Dachau prisoners in a village where they had been abandoned by the SS; seeing the survivors eating dead horses; the physical condition of the prisoners and their orders to not feed them; forming a camp for these people and sending many back to Poland; how the Russians were rough with the refugees; going north of Munich to search for SS troops; remaining in the reserve until 1954; receiving the Croix de Guerre from the French; working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs; how he is part Cherokee; how he never questioned the loyalty of his men in WWII but that at the beginning there was censoring of individual mail and some men were taken out of the unit; and his feelings about Dachau.

    Oral history interview with Ted Tsukiyama

    Oral history interview with Ted Tsukiyama

    Oral History

    Ted Tsukiyama describes the shock of the Pearl Harbor attacks, especially by Japanese Americans; being in the first ROTC unit to enter the war; being assigned to St. Louis to find paratroopers; becoming part of the territorial guard; never having a problem being Japanese American; being honorably discharged because of his Japanese heritage; going back to school; volunteering in a labor battalion, building defenses and serving for 11 months; how a few months later Japanese Americans were allowed in the armed forces; how his wife grew up in California and was put into a camp; being given intelligence training in Minnesota; being sent to Northern Burma Jungle as an intelligence translator for the Air Force; spending over a year, until end of war, in Northern Burma; going back to Hawaii; how he feels that the war experience countered prejudice towards Japanese Americans; and becoming a lawyer in labor relations.

    Oral history interview with Harold Ueoka

    Oral history interview with Harold Ueoka

    Oral History

    Harold Ueoka, born in Lawai, Hawaii in 1919, describes his Japanese parents; serving with the 526th Artillery Battalion; working in Honolulu before the Pearl Harbor attacks; how there was no real discrimination before war, except for his summer job working for a plantation; volunteering for the army when the war started; his memories of the Pearl Harbor attack; being head of the baseball team and how four of his teammates decided to join the army; how he felt that if he did not volunteer he would shame the people in Hawaii; how when his unit was in Europe, his destination was Hitler's home; seeing the crematoriums at Dachau and the places where people were shot; and how during the war he heard from other soldiers what was going on in the camps.

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