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Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.481.32 | RG Number: RG-50.062.0032

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    Oral history interview with Gerda Samuel
    Transcript
    And then we'll go through the beginning part of the name,
    address, et cetera.
    OK.
    OK?
    I'm Judy Weightman here with Gerda Samuel in Honolulu,
    Hawaii in Gerda's apartment.
    It's June 2, 1988.
    And Gerda, I'm just going to ask you a few questions.
    Your present address right now?
    Yes, it's 1545 Liona Street, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96814.
    And where were you born and when?
    I was born in Hamburg, Germany, 16 of June, 1921.
    OK.
    And could you tell me a little bit
    about your mother, and your father, and your grandparents,
    or any family you remember?
    My father was a printer in Germany.
    We had a big business.
    And we had a printing press.
    And my father's name was Richard Samuel.
    And my mother's name was Liebermann--
    L-I-E-B-E-R-M-A-N-N. She was related to a painter called Max
    Liebermann.
    Oh, wow.
    And we had a comfortable life.
    And I was a young girl.
    I was five or six.
    And we had a maid.
    And my mother's sister used to live with us.
    She never married.
    She adored my mother, though.
    She always wanted to live with my mother.
    So when I was living in Germany, my father
    had this big printing place.
    And it was 1930, '31, about that time.
    The moment I went to school, we had Jewish schools for girls
    only.
    There was a school for girls.
    And there was a school for boys.
    And I learned Hebrew before I learned German--
    and all Jewish teachers.
    And we say 19--
    Hitler came to power in 1933.
    1934, one day, the uniform SS came, took my father
    by the neck, dragged him out, closed the shop,
    and we never saw him again.
    You never saw your father?
    No, never saw him again.
    This was in 1934?
    I don't exact date-- could have been 1935, '30--
    I don't remember the exact date.
    So here was my mother, had no idea of business.
    My aunt had no idea of business.
    They closed the shop, took everything they could possibly
    get, took us, and put us in a--
    I would say ghetto today.
    The abbreviation of ghetto is different than it was--
    then my mother, myself, and my aunt into a compound,
    like the apartment.
    And there were about, oh, I don't
    know how many families living.
    And there was an iron gate.
    So if you're not home by 10 o'clock in the evening,
    they closed the gate.
    Winter, summer, snow, rain, you don't get back.
    That was the early time.
    We say '35, '36.
    And it was the most horrible place in the world.
    There was no bathroom.
    I mean, where you-- there was a bathroom go to toilet.
    But there was no shower.
    Shower, we never heard of.
    We had a kitchen with a iron stove.
    And on that you had to cook.
    And there was a bedroom.
    And there was a living room.
    And we were put into there.
    And we had-- all our money is gone.
    We didn't have anything.
    The Germans took-- the business my father had was closed.
    So we didn't have any money.
    So today, we would say, it's welfare we got.
    There was a Jewish committee and the Quakers,
    who did give us clothes and food.
    So you had to go every week and get either secondhand clothes
    or you get your food.
    And every single day, on the streets of Germany,
    there was a man called Julius Streicher.
    I don't know if you know him.
    He wrote the Stürmer.
    This is-- the Stürmer means storm.
    And he had caricatures of the Jews with the long noses.
    And he said, they were non-Aryan.
    And they had bad blood.
    And they-- you were not allowed to mix with them.
    And I was young.
    And I didn't understand, in Germany, when you were a girl,
    you were not--
    you don't know anything about politics.
    You didn't know anything about politics--
    no women either drank or was interested in politics
    at that time.
    So we lived in this ghetto right in the middle of town
    in Germany.
    It was the most horrible place.
    And every single day, somebody got arrested.
    We heard, between the Jews kept together,
    and they had what they call now soup kitchens.
    But it was a little better than soup kitchen.
    They had those.
    And the Jews met there.
    And they used to whisper and say, oh, gosh,
    who got arrested today?
    Who didn't get arrested?
    What's happening to this big business?
    You see, like Liberty House here, they used to--
    Jews used to own all these very big stores.
    So they used to try to get the money
    from those stores for themselves and get rid of the Jews.
    As Julius Streicher said in his papers, don't--
    you're not allowed to mix with them.
    So every day, he came out with different rules and regulation
    what the Jews can do and what the Jews can't do.
    So now, I go to school.
    And every other day, one of the teachers is missing.
    You were still in the Jewish school?
    Yes.
    There was the other one that I wouldn't be able to go.
    And they were missing.
    So so far I know, they were arrested.
    And some of them also left.
    I have to say one thing-- the people with a lot of money
    either went to America--
    we say the Rockefellers or Rothschild--
    and England, who had relatives there.
    And the poor Jew who didn't have any money
    had to stay behind and take all the abuse.
    The abuse was done in a very, very small way.
    It was done daily by this newspaper called The Stürmer.
    So then my father had a brother who had
    an affair with the German girl.
    And she herself went and told the Nazis.
    She was not punished.
    And my uncle was hanged in Berlin.
    They hanged him for that.
    That was my father's brother.
    And my father's sister married a non-Jew in a small town.
    And she was OK.
    I mean, you know--
    Why was she OK?
    She was OK--
    Camera is rolling.
    OK.
    Got about five minutes left on this tape.
    OK.
    So Gerda, maybe we should go back
    to talking about what happened, if I can take you
    back a little bit to 1933, '34, when you were in school.
    And if you can-- do you remember anything
    about those early days with your neighborhood?
    Yes.
    Well, when I went to school, I went to only for girls.
    They call it the high school for girls.
    And every day, there was somebody missing.
    So they most probably arrested one by one.
    I don't say every day, maybe every week.
    And we didn't learn much because everybody
    was very scared of Hitler.
    Everybody was scared of Hitler.
    But nobody ever, for a million years,
    would have thought what happened.
    Anyway, the Jewish people were very German.
    The German Jew is more German than Jewish--
    not all of them, but that's it.
    You cook German, you speak German,
    you live there, the culture.
    And that's it.
    So they never for a minute thought
    what was going on later that that would happen.
    So I went to school.
    And so our teacher wasn't there, I didn't have any lessons.
    I was very happy.
    I didn't have to learn anything.
    That's the point.
    Then anyway, when we were moved into this so-called ghetto
    in the middle of Germany in Hamburg,
    it was the most horrible place.
    And it was like no money, hardly any food from-- we
    say from 1935 till 1937, I was living there
    under the most horrible circumstances.
    It was dirty.
    And we survived.
    I mean--
    Did you try to find your father during that period of time?
    No.
    There was no way.
    We were not allowed to do this.
    And on a movie-- they started to go and put on the movies,
    [GERMAN].
    That means, Jews are not allowed.
    You could not go into a movie.
    You could not go into a coffeehouse.
    Because the woman used to go and have coffee
    and cake in the afternoon.
    And the music was playing.
    This is the European way.
    They said, Jews not allowed.
    And when you wanted to get food, you could get food,
    but you had to stand in the line.
    So they did it very--
    if you killed somebody, you do it very slowly.
    So from '35, '36, '37, there were Communist Party who
    was fighting against Hitler.
    But they were very small.
    The Jewish population was very small.
    They could not fight for themselves.
    They didn't have a chance.
    And with this newspaper coming out,
    this Stürmer, people became more and more anti-Jewish.
    If I wasn't Jewish, I would believe
    what they would have said too.
    He said, we were non-Aryan, meaning
    we were different blood.
    That's what I said before.
    And intermarriage was completely out.
    Were not supposed to mix, have any friends,
    or go to the movies.
    You just waited for the next order
    to come out, more or less.
    And I was young.
    I didn't know anything about politics.
    I didn't know anything about Hitler.
    I had no idea what was going on.
    Did your mother talk to you at all about what happened?
    My mother was dead scared.
    They were all scared.
    They were all scared because these Germans who were in those
    uniform, big, strong, blue-eyed, blonde, they--
    you don't say anything to them.
    You were dead afraid of them.
    So we were-- was here third-class citizen.
    I think it was worse than third-class citizens, really.
    Did you have any non-Jewish friends?
    Not that I remember because--
    and I think then the Jews had, in Germany,
    more or less kept to themselves.
    They went to synagogue.
    And they went to the places we could eat.
    We could eat only certain places.
    And then they-- Quakers started a Jewish Culture Club,
    where the Jews could not be any more active.
    They could not be any more movies there.
    So they all got together.
    And they made a club.
    And in that club, was also a restaurant.
    You could eat in there.
    And then they had their own performances,
    which was nice at the time.
    And that must have been 1936, 1937.
    And then people were going all over the world
    to leave Germany.
    As I said, the people with money went where they could go.
    The poor people, they left behind.
    So we were living in this ghetto in the middle of town.
    And we were on welfare.
    I would say it was welfare.
    And I laughed at everything.
    I thought everything was funny.
    OK.
    OK.
    And you laughed at everything.
    Well, I was a happy person.
    I have a good disposition.
    And therefore, my mother was scared of them.
    So there was no cars.
    Nobody had a car.
    We never heard of it.
    And having a bicycle--
    I did have a bicycle.
    And sometimes, I used to go on a bicycle.
    And my mother used to say, please, be careful.
    Because they did have demonstration
    against the Nazis, honestly, in the earlier days.
    The Communist Party did.
    But they were hitting them with sticks and all kinds of stuff.
    It was just a horrible youth, a horrible youth.
    Was there any way to identify you as Jewish when you would be
    out on the bike at that time?
    No.
    I just don't go out--
    I suppose, your address, wherever you lived, they knew.
    They knew where the Jews were by the name.
    My name is Samuel.
    Who would not know that you're Jewish?
    And all the people in Germany had all Jewish names.
    I would say that they did it that way.
    They seemed to know where all the Jewish people lived.
    And in the beginning, I don't think
    that they had all intention of killing as many as they did.
    I have no idea.
    But your father was taken very early?
    He was taken, yes.
    But we didn't know where he went.
    There was no way.
    We had no rights.
    There were no rights.
    We didn't have any rights at all.
    Did your mother go down to the police station or anything?
    No, they didn't listen to you.
    We had no rights.
    And that's why I still have a inferiority complex.
    Because you were inferior to everyone who was German.
    And they spitted you on the street.
    That couldn't-- that didn't-- that was it.
    I mean, Jews-- and they used to annoy you
    and all that kind of thing.
    Because we lived in this compound.
    They used to stand and spit at you.
    That was the Germans.
    And I don't care what anybody said.
    There were 25% of the Germans who were not Nazis.
    And I think 75% were Nazis because they got housing.
    Hitler was very good in that.
    He took care of a lot of things for the Germans.
    And so why not join the party?
    I mean, if you can, why not?
    And he was hard on the non-Jews and the Catholics also.
    He was not just Jewish.
    And my mother-- we were terrified.
    We were afraid.
    We lived in-- and then one day, they were looking for my father
    in that compound we lived in.
    And they had already taken him.
    They didn't keep any records.
    But later on, I found that they did keep records.
    Do you know where he was taken?
    No, not my father.
    My mother, yes.
    But I did get some money then a long time ago, very long time.
    I-- after the war was over, the Red Cross
    tried to get the records of all the Jews which they had killed.
    And they did have a record of my mother and my aunt.
    And that's it.
    So your mother and your aunt were both living with you
    at the compound.
    You had mentioned that your aunt, another aunt,
    had married?
    Yeah, my father's sister married a non-Jew.
    And he was in the German Army, fighting in the German Army,
    but was very anti-Hitler.
    He had to go in.
    And he kept his wife--
    his family disowned him immediately.
    Nobody in his family spoke to him.
    And he didn't care.
    He was very anti-Nazi.
    And he died a normal death.
    He was never-- anyway, he used to be
    in where you get the food.
    And he used to send us packages of food and all that.
    He was a wonderful guy.
    He was German.
    But he was one of the very few.
    He was a wonderful guy.
    And they had one child who is still alive today in Germany.
    And he is a Protestant.
    And he lives a completely different life.
    I can never go back to Germany.
    I got once so sick going back to Germany that I never go again.
    Everything came back.
    On a plane, I got sick.
    It came-- for some reason, I don't want to go back ever.
    I just-- I speak German.
    I cook German.
    I like German food.
    I talk to anybody who is.
    But going back, no, never.
    So you've never-- you haven't been back?
    I have been back when I first worked for the airlines.
    I used to visit my aunt, my father's sister.
    And she was never in a concentration camp
    because he paid plenty of money not
    for her to have to go in there.
    He paid people off.
    And my cousin was in a labor camp.
    And he still has something wrong with his lungs.
    He was interned in a labor camp.
    That was all the time I wasn't there.
    I don't know what happened, really.
    And most of the people who are half-Jewish in Germany today
    don't want to say that they're Jewish.
    They don't want to say.
    And they don't want to say they got Jewish relatives,
    so far I see it.
    My cousin is not too happy if I go there
    because my name is Samuel.
    So I don't think in a small town, they--
    to me, they're still antisemitic.
    I don't care.
    I still feel that.
    Lots and lots of Germans are still antisemitic.
    I don't say all of them, especially not
    the ones who live here.
    But we have it here too.
    We have it here too.
    So that's it.
    You were in the compound until about 1937, you were saying?
    I would say yes.
    I would say 1937.
    1938, the Jewish and the Quakers got together.
    And they gathered 500 children.
    And they said, we have to send the children out first
    because the children have a life to live.
    And they have a future.
    We don't know what we're going to do
    with the rest of people who--
    women and children.
    Most of the men had gone by that time.
    Nobody knew there were any concentration camp.
    And so they said--
    I was on the last transportation.
    There were three transportation of 500 children-- mixed
    marriages, and Jews, and Catholics-- very few Catholics.
    And we were sent to Harwich in England,
    which was a summer camp.
    And it was winter.
    And we were staying in one room.
    And there was a little thing like a sink
    where you could wash yourself.
    And you could hear the water drip.
    It was ice.
    It was only two beds in it.
    And we were this huge camp, which was OK for the summer.
    It was not OK for the-- but you were 14-15 years old,
    it was OK by that time.
    And from there, you got adopted to various places--
    England, Scotland, Ireland, anywhere they wanted you.
    And I was adopted to go to Belfast in Northern Ireland.
    Let's go back a little bit to when
    you found out you were leaving.
    Yes.
    Do you remember that?
    Yes.
    My mother said, you better leave.
    And I'll be coming.
    I will come after that.
    So all I had is one suitcase.
    And I remember the suit I was wearing.
    I got it from the welfare.
    And it was nice.
    And we went on a train in Germany in Hamburg.
    From there, we took a boat-- only children.
    From-- with your mother?
    No.
    When did your mother leave you?
    At what point was that?
    At this station in Germany.
    And that's it.
    No.
    Do you remember anything about that at all?
    Yeah, I remember saying goodbye, like
    if you're going on vacation, and never saw
    her again-- and my aunt also.
    Your aunt was there with you at the station?
    My aunt liked me a lot.
    My aunt took very good care of me.
    And that's when I left--
    1938 or '39 in December, Germany.
    And it was the last time I saw my parent-- my mother
    and her sister on the station in Hamburg in Germany.
    And from there, I got on a train.
    And we went to England.
    Did you know when you left, did your mother
    think at all that she would not be able to follow?
    No.
    But there were so many rumors going around.
    People were trying so hard not to believe what was going on.
    They were dead afraid.
    And there was no money.
    You don't know for one day if somebody knocks on the door,
    you'll be taken.
    That's it.
    We didn't know if we were taken.
    And I was happy to leave.
    I was very happy to leave.
    Did you worry-- how did you feel going off
    by yourself without any family?
    I thought it was very exciting.
    I thought it was very exciting because I had never
    been anywhere.
    And I was poor.
    I didn't have anything.
    For me to go to England, that was wonderful.
    And I was a young girl.
    And there were all the other girls.
    And we had a lot of-- we even had lots of fun,
    even though it was a terrible time.
    We had lots of fun.
    And I never realized, of course, that I'll never
    see my mother again.
    And of course, who would think of such a thing?
    We never thought of it.
    And even in the camp, we had entertainment and everything
    in that camp.
    We had enough food.
    And we were out of Germany.
    That was very important.
    And I was happy.
    And I thought, this is it.
    This is-- my whole world is opening up.
    I can get away from these Nazis.
    Because those-- I'm still today see those Nazis in front of me.
    They were unbelievable.
    They would spit at you if they know you're Jewish.
    So as I say, I'm not look that Jewish.
    But if they know you're Jewish, you haven't got a chance.
    They'll go to any government agency.
    Nobody would help.
    If you had any problems, they didn't care.
    They didn't care.
    They didn't give you a chance.
    When-- were there any Nazis on the train with you
    when you were leaving?
    No.
    No.
    The Quakers and?
    Quaker, yeah.
    I must say, the Quakers, they most probably
    gave the money to it.
    I don't remember.
    I mean, I don't know what they did.
    I was a child.
    And no.
    And we got to England in one piece.
    Were you able to--
    The last one.
    No, we were not allowed to write.
    No.
    That was 1939.
    We didn't write.
    I don't know.
    The letters never got to wherever we sent them to.
    We never did.
    So you didn't hear from your mother at all either?
    No.
    No, until after the war, I found out, never before.
    And the people I was adopted with,
    they thought that they could eventually get
    my mother and her sister over.
    But of course, it never came.
    Never came.
    Do you want to talk about your Belfast?
    And then we can go back to what you heard?
    Or do you-- whatever you feel.
    Well, we were in this camp in Harwich.
    It was a training center-- a holding center for refugees.
    And I had one suitcase.
    And one-- whatever I had on.
    And there were some Jewish people in Belfast
    who had adopted out of 515 people.
    And I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland.
    Here, I get to Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Catholics
    and the Protestant fighting between each other, which
    I could not believe.
    But the people who adopted me were very nice.
    They were actually very nice, except the son.
    I didn't like him.
    Why was that?
    Well, I think he liked me.
    And I was 18.
    And he tried to make love to me.
    And I didn't-- I couldn't speak one word of English.
    So he just did whatever he wanted to do.
    And I couldn't say anything.
    I had nowhere to go.
    I had no money.
    And I didn't say a word.
    And he used to creep up at night at my little room in the attic
    and did whatever you can think of.
    And I was afraid to say anything.
    I was already so afraid of everything.
    And I couldn't speak a word of English.
    And that's when I joined, 1941, the British Army.
    Because I wanted to get out of there just because of this boy.
    And the parents were very nice.
    And the daughter was very nice.
    They did everything for me.
    They had a dressmaking salon.
    I got all my clothes.
    And they fed me well.
    And I learned, supposingly, dressmaking which I never
    did because I didn't like it.
    But I did try.
    And I joined, 1941, the British Army.
    And then what happened?
    Well, the British--
    Well, how did you learn English, first of all?
    I learned it in Belfast.
    I had to speak English.
    They didn't speak German.
    So I just learned it by listening.
    That time, we didn't have TV, so far I remember.
    I just learned it.
    In languages, I'm quick.
    I could pick it up.
    I never learned-- I never went to school.
    I just picked it up.
    If you have to and you have to learn a language
    to get food or get clothes, you learn it.
    That's the way I feel about it.
    You have to.
    And then in the British Army, we were all foreign girls.
    We were all different nationalities, different ages--
    well, I mean, more or less the same age.
    And we were all Jewish.
    So the British would not let us do any real work.
    And we had to be orderly, so cooks.
    That's all.
    So I was an orderly.
    I washed dishes three times a day
    in the men's training center.
    And they give you $10 a week.
    But I was happy.
    I wanted to fight the Germans.
    That's what I was thinking of.
    And we were a nice group of girls.
    So I didn't mind the army at all.
    It gave me something which I thought
    I was doing the right thing.
    I hated-- actually, I became to hate the Germans,
    to hate them, really.
    And for me to do this, five years of hard work,
    I paid my dues.
    That's what I think, anyhow.
    So when I was in the army, I never
    learned anything, except--
    now, they promoted me to be a waitress in the officer's mess.
    That wasn't too bad.
    But washing dishes in a machine was hard.
    But then you were young, you didn't care.
    That's what I did.
    And I learned my English.
    And I had my exercise.
    And I had good food.
    And I was quite happy.
    Did you know what was going on in Germany?
    Yes.
    We-- in the army, we had-- every day,
    we had lessons what was going on, but not about the Jews,
    just about how far the German--
    and the British Army was fighting the Germans,
    and what was going on.
    We did have that every day.
    It's like you talk about politics,
    that's what we did every day.
    And when did you first hear about the concentration camps,
    did you?
    We didn't.
    We didn't hear about the concentration camp
    till after the war.
    I didn't hear anything about it.
    Because we were trying to get--
    to see what happened to my relatives, or my mother,
    or my cousin in Germany still.
    After the war, you found out that they were killed.
    And it took-- oh, I don't know, months, and months, and months
    to find out if they were really killed.
    How did you find out?
    The Red Cross-- the Red Cross checked it out.
    And I got a letter one day and said,
    they were killed that and that date.
    And that's so bad.
    Where-- did they get--
    I think it was Belsen.
    I'm not sure now.
    Both of them were together?
    Yeah.
    But my aunt in Germany, that one who was married to a non-Jew,
    was still alive.
    And my cousin was still alive.
    And they became Protestant.
    And they have a German name.
    So it wasn't too bad.
    Do you have any other family at all?
    No.
    I was the only child.
    I was the only child.
    So anyway, I came out of the army.
    I had no profession.
    My English was not very good, I mean,
    grammatically or having any real good English.
    No, I never had time to go to school.
    I had to earn my living.
    So being five years in the army, you
    got the money they saved for you.
    And you got out.
    And I got to London.
    And I was a waitress in London.
    And I did good.
    I made good money.
    And I lived with a girl who, later on, gave me an affidavit
    to the United States.
    I met this girl--
    I knew her from Belfast.
    I went dancing one day in the Ladies' Room in London.
    And we met in the Ladies' Room.
    And she said, oh, my god, I'm looking for a roommate.
    So why don't we go and stay together.
    So we stayed together in London.
    I was working as a waitress.
    And I don't remember-- oh, she was a dressmaker also.
    And she went later on to the United States.
    And she gave me an affidavit of support
    to come to the United States.
    And she changed her Jewish name, which
    was that long Polish, to Kelly.
    Kelly?
    Kelly, yes.
    From the Belfast, yeah?
    Very religion-- no, she was a very religious Jew
    with the name of Kelly.
    They couldn't pronounce the Polish name.
    They changed it to Kelly.
    That was-- I think it's funny.
    So I came.
    No, you have to-- that's not true.
    You have to go back.
    Back, that's what I thought.
    We have to go back.
    And I got confused.
    Before that, when you went to--
    I went to England to be a waitress.
    While I was a waitress, I met this man
    in the place I was working.
    And he was the chief of police of Singapore.
    And I became engaged to be married 1948.
    And he made me come to Singapore.
    He paid my fare.
    And we were engaged to be married.
    And I got to Singapore, had one suitcase again.
    And he said, Gerda, you're a very nice girl.
    But I don't want to marry you.
    And he-- I stuck in Singapore, didn't know a soul,
    had no money.
    And I cried to everybody.
    I was going to commit suicide, all this, and that, and that.
    Anyway, somebody took me and said, look,
    don't worry about it.
    I get you a job.
    Now, Singapore at that time was Malaya.
    And it was ruled by the British.
    And I had a British passport coming out of the army.
    And they don't give white women any jobs
    because they wanted their own people
    to work, which is understandable,
    because it's very hard.
    Anyhow, I met this--
    he was a director of KLM.
    He was the director.
    He had an office in Singapore.
    He was Dutch.
    And when I did go to his office, he
    said, look, don't tell me your life story.
    I don't want to hear it.
    I've heard it already.
    I give you a job, two weeks' notice,
    and you see what you can do.
    And it was a headquarters of the Japanese.
    The Japanese had occupied Singapore in 1947, I think.
    And this was the headquarters of the Japanese.
    He bought this house on the sideline,
    like a side job, an extra job for him.
    And he made it a night stop for the pilots
    from Amsterdam, Singapore, Australia.
    So that was a one-night stop.
    They stayed overnight.
    And it was my job to see that they get out on time,
    get to the airport on time, and get their meals on time.
    So I had a two weeks' notice.
    I was there five years.
    He didn't know me from Adams.
    He just took me on my face value.
    And my English by that time was very good.
    I'm sure.
    I'm sure about that.
    Yeah.
    And then 1952, couldn't stand the tropical heat.
    It was too much.
    And I then went to New York, 1952.
    With your friend's affidavit from--
    Yeah, we kept in contact, that girlfriend I had in London
    I lived with.
    And she didn't like my fiance in the first place.
    But anyhow, she gave me affidavit of support.
    I went to New York.
    And I worked also as a waitress in New York.
    And then I had a letter of recommendation
    from Mr. Perkins from Singapore.
    And I went to KLM.
    And I gave my name.
    I didn't have to pass any test, nothing at that time.
    And six months later, I got a job.
    And I was there 32 years.
    I learned computer.
    I learned to speak English.
    I learned to write in English.
    I did everything and really, basically,
    had no really foundation.
    And I wanted to take you back a little bit
    to get back to the London period when you were in the army.
    Yeah.
    And did you talk to anyone during that period
    about what your experiences had been in Germany?
    All of us had the same experience.
    All the girls who were with me, we were all refugees.
    We were all leaving our parents behind.
    So I wasn't just the only one-- which was good in one way.
    You don't feel sorry for yourself
    because everybody was in the same boat.
    And well, we all went our own ways.
    I-- in the army, we didn't have that much time.
    They make you work.
    And then you have your exercise.
    And then you have to do this.
    The army years were an education for me.
    And I learned, really, English well.
    And it was interesting.
    We wanted to win the war.
    We wanted to win the war.
    We wanted to get those Nazis out.
    And that was our main interest.
    And we really--
    I don't know, maybe because we were younger,
    so we didn't really want to talk politics.
    We didn't want to think.
    We wanted to get the war over with and see if we ever
    going to get our parents back.
    --less than anybody else.
    I've always had that.
    That's the way they spit at me in Germany.
    And they make you really suffer.
    Luckily, I was young.
    But can you imagine my mother, who was in her 40s?
    She had me very late, how she suffered much more than I did,
    really.
    Is it ready?
    Are we on?
    OK.
    Go ahead and start.
    OK.
    Did you ever talk to your mother about the changes in her life
    and what was happening?
    All I was always told-- don't talk on the street.
    We were always afraid.
    And I have to say that some of the people
    overhear a conversation, they will go to the Nazis.
    And they get money for it if they say, we didn't like this
    and we didn't like this.
    The next thing is you go in a concentration-- you were taken.
    I mean, we didn't know where.
    They had taken over completely.
    They had taken over completely.
    Did you have any non-Jewish friends at all in Germany?
    Not that I remember.
    The Jews did keep to themselves in Germany in Hamburg.
    Because-- I didn't agree with that, but that's the way
    I was brought up.
    And I was not religious, but I was Jewish.
    And as you say, on holidays, we did go to synagogue.
    And my aunt in Germany, who was my father's sister,
    she also went to synagogue.
    Though she was married to a non-Jew, but she did go.
    And I wanted to ask you again, getting back-- we'll
    go back to London right now-- when
    you were in the war-- in the military,
    did you have any non-Jewish friends
    at that time in the military?
    Yeah.
    I mean, there were some girls who were not brought up Jewish,
    but had a Jewish father or a Jewish mother.
    For instance, my girlfriend who I still see--
    we've been friends for 60 years--
    she and I went to the same school in Germany.
    Her father was a non-Jew.
    But her second father was Jewish.
    So her mother got killed.
    And her second father got killed.
    And her--
    Got killed?
    --first father-- well, got put in camp.
    Her first father died.
    So she married an American soldier in Belfast.
    We went to Belfast together.
    And she doesn't know anything about Judaism.
    She became Catholic.
    She married a Catholic.
    Her children are Catholic.
    And she also-- we both went to the same school,
    the same background, and it's completely different.
    She only was here recently.
    But she's a wonderful person.
    We went through a hell of a lot.
    And she was adopted in Belfast.
    And the Jewish people were not that nice to her.
    They made her work eight hours or 10 hours a day
    in the shop, cutting coats or dresses, dressmaking.
    And then when she came home at night,
    she had to do the housework for five people--
    and paid her hardly anything.
    And she never found out anything about any other relatives
    that were in Germany either?
    No.
    No.
    What do you think is the general view that Americans have,
    American Jews have about the Holocaust?
    Have you thought about that at all?
    I don't know what you mean by that.
    Do you think the American Jews who have not
    been through it are aware?
    American Jews would say there was a Holocaust.
    But you see, nobody ever--
    I mean, I have never been in camp.
    I myself cannot imagine what happened there.
    I mean, you hear stories that were just unbelievable.
    Well, you have an accident.
    And you lose your leg.
    You usually-- you are in pain.
    I feel for you, but I don't have pain,
    meaning that unless you yourself have been in a camp,
    it is very hard for anyone else to understand.
    I think that you cannot put yourself in there.
    It was just impossible.
    You could just not imagine it.
    It's like, as some people say, there was no Holocaust.
    They cannot believe what happened.
    And if any German tells me, he didn't
    know there was-- after the war, that they didn't know about it,
    then I don't believe that.
    And today, there are lots of Nazis in Germany.
    There are lots of Nazis in the US.
    Have you ever met any?
    Oh, plenty.
    I went after-- when we were traveling in Vienna,
    the guy in Vienna--
    I went with another girl from my office.
    When he heard I was Jewish, he got up and left.
    And that was, oh, 20 years after.
    Oh, he left.
    Oh, there are plenty of German and Austrians
    today who don't like Jews.
    I heard it here too.
    I met a girl who said, the Jews didn't-- well,
    I don't want to mention the hospital I went to.
    She said, I don't-- you won't feel happy here because they
    don't like Jewish people.
    They are the 400, the higher national.
    And they didn't want the--
    I wanted to go as a volunteer.
    She said, I just want to be truthful to you.
    You're Jewish, aren't you?
    I said, yes.
    And she said, I don't think you'll be happy here.
    Where was that?
    I don't want to mention.
    I mean, in Hawaii?
    Yeah.
    Oh, yes.
    I came up-- in my office in New York once, somebody said to me,
    I don't like Jews.
    And I know you're Jewish.
    And I said, that's OK.
    You're allowed to have your opinion.
    You're allowed to be able not to like the Jews.
    And I said, just give me a reason why.
    He said, they always whining and crying.
    That's what he told me.
    And I worked with him.
    And of course, how can you like somebody who said that?
    But he told me the truth.
    That's it.
    And we used to have these Jewish people going
    to Israel with those payos.
    And it was hard to deal with them at the time.
    They were praying on the floor in the departure hall.
    They were lying on the floor.
    And I mean, the non-Jew look at this and say,
    what is going on here?
    Yeah.
    And you can talk to them till doomsday.
    They won't get up.
    You know what I'm saying?
    You've seen that.
    Yeah.
    And that's what was today in Israel.
    I think that the whole situation is very bad.
    And now, we're coming to the thing.
    I would never want to go to Israel.
    I don't know what it is, but they--
    Jews have always been persecuted.
    And I can't reason why.
    I'd like to know why.
    Because even in-- between the Jews--
    the Polish Jews don't like the German Jews,
    the Russian Jews don't like the Germans.
    The German Jew is very much disliked because he's
    more German, which is true.
    That's me.
    I can see myself doing very German in many ways
    and very Jewish in other ways.
    And not liking those Germans who are still in Germany though?
    No.
    No.
    I don't understand that ever.
    It could never be that bad for me to ever go back to Germany.
    Do you talk about your experiences in Germany
    with anyone?
    It's too long ago.
    People don't want to listen to that.
    Some people here don't even know what Jewish is.
    I told her-- she said, what is this?
    Are you Irish?
    I said, no, I'm Jewish.
    She said, what's Jewish?
    I mean, she never heard of it.
    It was in a government agency.
    Yeah.
    No, people don't want to talk about that now.
    It's too long past.
    They want to forget about it.
    And most of the Germans want to forget about it too.
    And I'm sure there are lots of Germans who are very nice.
    But-- and especially now, they are sorry.
    I met a woman in the club I belong to.
    And she said, every time I meet a Jewish person, I feel guilty.
    And I said, you don't have to feel guilty with me
    because I forgot about it.
    I want to forget about it.
    I don't want to think about my childhood ever.
    I want to go ahead and not backwards.
    I do not like to think about it.
    It was the most horrible time of my life.
    It was.
    So that's why I'm happy I'm here.
    Do you think, in looking back, that there
    was any way that things could have been different in Germany?
    Hitler was so incredible with his politic and his advertising
    that if I was not Jewish, as I said it before,
    you were dragged into this.
    It's like something you believe.
    And there was nothing else.
    He was absolutely wonderful to a lot of people.
    Could have been different, I don't know.
    It was different before Hitler came there.
    And before Hitler-- do you remember the time before Hitler
    at all?
    Well, when I was a child--
    You were a child.
    I was very young and, well, not too rich--
    not too rich.
    We didn't have many things.
    We didn't have a car.
    We didn't have a bathroom.
    We used to go once a week to a public bath and have a bath.
    That was like, oh, something terrific.
    And eating chicken, or strawberries, or steak,
    that was something out of this world.
    That was the earlier days then.
    You see, they had a depression, I think, after 1914, '18.
    After that was a depression in Germany.
    I was never spoiled.
    We used to eat always bean soup and god
    knows what-- everything soup.
    They put everything in it, and that's what you eat.
    And then you eat a lot of fish.
    Where I came from, we eat a lot of herring.
    That's it.
    But no, never spoiled.
    There was not such a thing.
    But I always thought, I'm going to be a movie star
    one of these days.
    I used to run to movies all the time when I was very young.
    I used to be fascinating with that.
    That's my aim, it was, but I never made it.
    Well, you did today.
    Oh, today, yes, now I'm a movie star.
    But still, at that time, I was young,
    and pretty, and full of life.
    Were you able to save anything at all from the war
    or during the-- from Germany?
    Do you have anything left from your family?
    I may have it, but I don't have it here.
    I have-- when I left New York, I took one suitcase
    and I came here because I didn't want to take anything.
    My girlfriend has a lot of--
    I don't think.
    I'm not a saver.
    I throw everything out.
    I don't think so.
    I have a birth certificate of my father.
    I have a birth certificate of my mother, which I have here.
    That's it.
    I know where I came from.
    That's it.
    And do you have any suggestions or any,
    I guess, maybe advice for those of us
    who did not live through that time,
    if there's anything we could ever do to prevent it
    from happening again?
    I see it here.
    I don't say Honolulu.
    I would say what we have seen outside Boston--
    was it Boston or Chicago, that one town where they had already
    lots of the Ku Klux Klan--
    Skokie.
    --and those-- there's nothing we can stop.
    This is a free country.
    They-- if you dislike a Jew, you dislike a Jew.
    There were lots of dislike about the Japanese in Singapore
    when I came.
    The Japanese were not allowed to go to Singapore for many years
    after the occupation.
    They did horrible things also.
    But you're entitled to your opinion.
    This is a free country.
    You're entitled.
    No, I would say there's not a thing you
    can do because the more you're going to fight against it,
    the worse is going to be.
    The only thing, we don't want another Hitler.
    But we have quite a few of them in the United States.
    We have a lot of antisemitism.
    I am sure of it.
    I read about it, I hear about it, and I know about it.
    Well, how did the Ku Klux Klan gets ahead?
    Fanatics-- this is the point.
    Fanatics in anything is no good to me because we all human.
    We are here on Earth.
    And what's the difference?
    If you're Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Japanese,
    I can see absolutely no difference.
    To me, that's--
    I can't stand racism.
    I can't stand discrimination.
    I just-- that I have learned.
    I cannot say, oh, because he's Japanese, I hate him.
    Or he's Samoan, I hate him.
    I came here first and somebody said, don't you
    dare talk to a Samoan.
    They're very dangerous.
    Automatically, I hate that.
    I cannot stand that.
    It goes right through me.
    And same thing with the Blacks in New York.
    Someone say, oh, how do you go?
    I say, I don't care.
    I don't care because I've been discriminated when I was young.
    I know what it is.
    I could never do it.
    OK.
    Thank you so much.
    Is there anything else, Gerda, that you would like to tell us?
    I'm just happy I'm in Honolulu.
    I tell you, this is the happiest time of my life and the most
    money I ever had.
    When I say money--
    even when I was working, I didn't have enough to spend.
    Now, I saved all these years.
    And it's not that I'm rich or anything, but I can go out.
    And I can do things which I could never do before.
    This is more or less a very happy time of my life.
    And I'm happy I'm here.
    We are too.
    Thank you.
    Thank you so much.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Gerda Samuel
    Interviewer
    Judy Weightman
    Date
    interview:  1988 June 02
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, acquired from the Hawaii Holocaust Project

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 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
    Samuel, Gerda, 1921-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Judy Weightman, of the Hawaii Holocaust Project, conducted the interview with Gerda Samuel on June 2, 1988 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 08:10:19
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511103

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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

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    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 Anne Flagg

    Oral history interview with Anne Flagg

    Oral History

    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.

    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 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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