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Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.481.34 | RG Number: RG-50.062.0034

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    Oral history interview with Rudolf Schmerl
    Transcript
    OK.
    If you can just look at me all the time one more time.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Stand by.
    Three, two, one, and--
    OK.
    I'm Judy Weightman.
    I'm here today on June 21, 1989, with Rudy Schmerl,
    and we're interviewing at the [PLACE NAME] town
    in Honolulu, Hawaii.
    Rudy, I'm going to start out just asking you
    a few questions that are basically your family
    background.
    And also I need to know what is your present address
    and your place of birth and date of birth.
    My present address is 6750 Hawaii Kai Drive, here
    in Honolulu.
    I was born in August 1930 in Nauen, Germany,
    which is a suburb right outside of Berlin.
    My father was an ophthalmologist.
    We were five in the family, with my mother, my older sister,
    and my mother's mother.
    We moved to Berlin about 1935, where I started school
    at the Theodor Herzl Schule, which was
    a segregated school for Jews.
    By that time, of course, the Nazis were firmly in power.
    Does that get it started?
    Yes.
    And I wanted to go back a little bit
    and find out a little about your grandparents
    and also the names of your family.
    Yes.
    If you could give me that.
    My father was the son and grandson of Berliners.
    My mother was born in Orizaba, Mexico,
    the daughter of a Russian Jew.
    He was actually born in Vilna, but at that time in 1866,
    when he was born, Vilna was part of Russia,
    because there was no Poland.
    And both of those facts--
    the place of her father's birth and the place
    of my mother's birth--
    proved to be of significance in the emigration that occurred
    in my family in the '30s.
    Her mother was from East Prussia.
    That was my grandmother, who lived
    with us for all my childhood and boyhood and early manhood.
    My father's people, I suppose, had come originally from--
    or-- "originally"-- whatever that means-- from Lithuania.
    And the name "Schmerl" is actually a first name.
    And the family tradition is that there were two brothers,
    Schmerl and Simon.
    And Schmerl, according to some people,
    is a diminutive of "Shmarya."
    And the closest I could come to it in English
    would be, I think, "Samuel."
    The children of Schmerl took his name as their last name.
    The children of Simon took his name as their last name.
    This was when the gentiles came through and declared
    that Jews had to have a naming system comparable to theirs.
    As you know, the Hebrew naming system isn't like that at all.
    It's "ben," whatever, "son of so-and-so."
    My grandmother's family goes back to someone
    by the name of Nathan Lichtenstein who
    was born in Russia in 1742, and that's as far back
    as we were able to trace it.
    They were small businessmen, mostly--
    educated, but on their own.
    My grandfather, for example, my mother's father,
    emigrated from Russia because he could not as a Jew
    go to the university in Russia.
    Why was that?
    Do you know?
    Why did the Russians refuse to let Jews go to the university?
    Was there a quota system at that time?
    Yes, there was a very strict quota system.
    He was a linguist and spoke six languages
    and wound up in Mexico working for an import-export firm
    because of his linguistic abilities.
    He actually married my grandmother in Cleveland, Ohio,
    at the home of relatives, at my grandmother's relatives,
    who were then connected politically
    to the Republican machine.
    This was about 1894.
    And from there, they moved to Mexico,
    where my uncle and my mother were born.
    My grandfather was killed about a year and a half
    after my mother's birth.
    The story is that he fell off a train.
    I don't know if that's true.
    He may have fallen off.
    He may have been pushed off.
    I don't know.
    He was still in his early 30s.
    My grandmother, the widow, then returned with the two infants,
    my uncle and mother, to Berlin, where her older brothers
    managed to squander her insurance money fairly rapidly.
    And my uncle, by the time he was 13,
    had to contribute to the welfare of the family by tutoring.
    And my mother became a typist and secretary.
    She was very good at reading other people's handwritings
    and, when she was about 19 or so,
    got a job in the State Department--
    Germany was then in World War I--
    because she was the only one who could
    read the Kaiser's handwriting.
    And she typed whatever the Kaiser had written.
    And so there was some connection then.
    My father had met my mother when he was six and she was four.
    He was my uncle's best friend.
    They had been marched off by their Jewish mothers together,
    nervously, on their first day of school,
    and my mother's mother had taken the little daughter along.
    And that was how my father met my mother.
    Excuse me.
    Was this a segregated school at that time?
    No.
    This was in 1902.
    And Jews in Germany at that time were moving up rather rapidly--
    not in all fields, certainly not in the military
    or in government or the judiciary or anything
    like that.
    But on the whole, Germany was ridding itself
    of the usual restrictions on Jews,
    and there were opportunities--
    unlike the situation in Russia.
    So they could go to school.
    But then the war broke out, and my father was drafted.
    He was a peaceful man who was not for war.
    My uncle, who was more, quote, "patriotic," volunteered.
    So both of them, at the age of 18, went into World War I
    and were on the front, both of them,
    for four years, after which my father went
    to medical school at the University of Berlin--
    with a Rockefeller fellowship, eventually.
    And my uncle went into the judiciary, which
    was very unusual for a Jew.
    He actually became a judge in the Weimar Republic, for which
    the Nazis made him pay later.
    What year was that about, that he went into the judiciary?
    Do you know?
    Well, my father graduated from medical school
    in 1923, when he also got married.
    And my uncle was exactly his age,
    so that must have been about the same time.
    My uncle went to Gottingen. My father went to Berlin.
    These are famous universities.
    My father was a biologist as well as a physician and had
    done some research early, in Berlin,
    which proved to be our saving grace when we came
    to the United States, because he could not speak English and had
    a hard time learning it and so, in his first years after
    struggling here and there as a kind of an assistant physician,
    got a job as a research ophthalmologist in Toledo,
    Ohio-- but that was in 1945--
    and did research actually until he learned enough
    English to pass the exam--
    Although there was another complication.
    He kept failing the exam in New York
    and passed the same exam in Ohio the first time.
    And I think the explanation is that there
    were too many refugee physicians in New York and not enough
    in Ohio.
    So there was that angle.
    That's been known to happen.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    Medicine and biology proved transferable;
    law and the judiciary, of course, were not.
    And so my uncle had to start over when he came here.
    And he became a social worker.
    That was in New York.
    OK, let's get back to the period of time
    when both your father and your uncle
    were able to enter into the professions--
    In the 1920s.
    --in the 1920s.
    Did they ever speak to you about any problems
    that they had entering-- you said the judiciary,
    not too many Jews had gone into.
    What about the medical field?
    Well, a physician normally is his own employer.
    And my father settled in this little suburb of Berlin--
    true, as the only Jewish physician, but also
    as the only ophthalmologist.
    So the people who needed the care of an ophthalmologist
    weren't concerned with his race.
    My father was dark and looked very Jewish.
    There was no mistaking him.
    There was nothing German about his appearance at all.
    But that wasn't a problem until 1933.
    What happened in 1933 that you remember?
    On January 30, 1933, Hitler became
    chancellor of the Bundesrepublik, still then,
    at that moment, the Weimar Republik.
    And for a while, nothing legally--
    for a little while-- nothing legally--
    although the mood of the people changed rapidly.
    Do you remember this?
    You were a very young child.
    I was very young.
    What I remember of that town is only my first meeting
    by the German children.
    I was obviously identified as a Jewish child.
    And once they caught me away from the house.
    We had a dog, a large German police dog,
    as a matter of fact.
    And no one would do anything near the house.
    But once, apparently, I was away from the house,
    and they caught me and beat me up.
    And my sister, who was six years older than I am, of course,
    had a very hard time at school from the children.
    How old were you in 1933?
    Three.
    And your sister was nine--
    Was nine.
    --at that time.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    So she was in school already.
    She was in school and had a hard time.
    Yes.
    When you were around three, you were beaten up-- at that time?
    Or do you think maybe--
    I think I was four or five already.
    Yeah.
    So that would be a little later.
    Do you remember--
    I'll get to your sister in a little while.
    I wondered-- at that period of time,
    do you remember playing with non-Jewish children as well?
    No, I played with no one.
    There were no other Jewish children.
    And I played with no Christian children.
    Was that because they would not play with you
    or because you would not play with them?
    It was dangerous, for everyone-- for the well-intentioned
    gentiles as well as for us.
    The well-intentioned gentiles, who
    might have been perfectly free of racism, of any kind,
    were also watched by the people.
    This this poison spread very, very rapidly.
    And the few older Germans who were decent people
    and courageous actually were foolhardy and took grave risks
    in defying the Nazis.
    Even that early.
    Yes.
    Can you remember what happened when you were beaten up?
    If you could go through that day for yourself.
    No.
    What I remember specifically is being terrified and running,
    and a gang of boys--
    looking back, obviously little boys, but at the time
    they seemed like big boys--
    chasing me and calling me names and--
    What kind of names were they calling you?
    "Judenschwein"-- "Jewish pig."
    So it was because you were Jewish, then--
    Of course.
    Yes.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    And did your mother and father talk to you
    about the problems at that time?
    I remember two conversations--
    one in Europe, one in America.
    I don't come from a religious family at all--
    no religious background of that kind.
    So it was--
    The talk that we had had nothing to do with the religious aspect
    of being Jewish.
    It had to do with knowing something about Jewish history.
    And I think what they were afraid of was that I would
    somehow internalize the hatred directed--
    at us in general and me in particular--
    and think that, yes, there was something wrong with me.
    Which happens, of course, to people who are discriminated
    against-- children, in particular--
    of any race and any color.
    It is a very serious psychological problem that
    is not at all peculiar to Jews.
    And so they wanted me to know something about Jewish history
    and that there was cause for pride and so on.
    And it didn't mean much to me.
    What I knew was that--
    in Berlin, of course, I went to a Jewish school.
    What I knew was that my parents were frightened,
    and therefore I was frightened.
    And it's very frightening, when you're six or seven,
    to see your parents, who are rocks, right,
    uncertain of where to turn and what to do.
    Did they have any friends in the village at all or the town,
    at that time--
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And they helped us get back to Berlin,
    where we spent the last two years of my life in Germany.
    And they had friends that helped us get out--
    also very important-- gentile friends as well as
    Jewish friends.
    I want to emphasize that.
    The--
    Maybe you want to say what "gentile" is.
    "Non-Jewish."
    Yes.
    I hope I don't offend anyone with that word.
    I happen to like it.
    It makes it simple.
    If we could go back then until your first experience
    with yourself was, around three or four years old--
    Yeah.
    --being beaten up-- did you go to school, at that time?
    Were you in any--
    No, I went to school in Berlin.
    I started when I was five and a half,
    which would have been about 1935, '36.
    And that was at Theodor Herzl Schule.
    And your sister, though, was in a regular school.
    Was she--
    In Nauen she was, but in Berlin, of course,
    she went to the same school I did.
    At that point, Jews did not go to German schools anymore.
    So she was in the regular public schools--
    In the same school--
    no, no, no, not a--
    No, in--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    --oh, in Nauen.
    --in Nauen.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    She was in what you would call a "public school" but then,
    in Berlin, in the Jewish school.
    OK.
    And did she talk to you about the experience
    she had when you were in Nauen--
    the experiences of--
    No.
    My sister and I have not talked much at all about Germany.
    We-- [PAUSES] she's very different from me.
    And as I say, she was older and has a lot of pain, I think,
    that is hard for her to talk about.
    We have similar conclusions.
    Neither she nor I have ever been back,
    nor would we go back, to Germany, for any reason, which
    is not something that all members of my family
    share but she and I feel that way.
    And she has been to Europe many times,
    but she would never set foot in that country again.
    And of course I wouldn't.
    So that's a similarity,
    I did want to bring up, though-- you had been talking about--
    although you wouldn't go back to Germany,
    I understand you have German friends that
    are acquaintances that are--
    Yes.
    I'm not a racist, I hope, and I don't
    think that the individual German is responsible for anything
    but for what he or she did.
    I am uncomfortable among large groups of Germans,
    for fairly obvious reasons.
    I have no way of knowing what Germans my age
    or older did at that time, and I don't want to know.
    I would rather not.
    But my first wife was a German, and my children
    are half-German.
    I mean, they were born in America.
    So I'm not-- I'm not crazy.
    [LAUGHS]
    Your first wife was German, and you
    met her in this country, of course,
    because you were already--
    In this country, in America.
    Yes.
    You went to high school and everything here.
    Yes.
    I see.
    OK.
    Well, how did you know about the experiences
    of your sister in school--
    in Nauen?
    Mostly from my mother.
    My mother and I were the talkers in the family.
    My sister and my father are more reserved.
    My father "was" more reserved.
    My sister "is" more reserved.
    And most of what I know comes from my mother.
    And what did she tell you about that?
    Can you remember anything in particular?
    Well, my sister was as discriminated
    against as a Black child was in a White school in the 1950s
    in Little Rock, Arkansas.
    There's no difference.
    Did she have any friends that were--
    She lost them very quickly.
    My sister's also dark.
    And there's no mystery, in Germany, about who is what.
    It's not like America There were two kinds of people.
    There were Germans, and there were us, at that time,
    and we stood out.
    I see.
    Mhm.
    And besides that, the police knew everything anyway.
    Everything was written down.
    It's a very-- or it was-- a very official regimented,
    bureaucratic country with lots of forms--
    lots of papers.
    It's not like America.
    Did your parents, in those early years in Nauen,
    did they think at all about leaving Germany at that time?
    I don't know when they realized that they had to, to survive.
    It was extremely difficult, for all kinds of reasons.
    You can't just leave a place.
    You have to have a place to go to.
    It's not a question of roots.
    "Roots are for trees," as some Jew said long ago,
    and he was right.
    It's a question of survival.
    How do you make a living?
    Where will people give you a chance?
    The prime minister of Canada, at that time,
    when asked how many Jewish refugees he would accept,
    said "Even one would be too many."
    Cordell Hull was the Secretary of State in America,
    at that time.
    He was not running a State Department
    that was particularly interested in welcoming refugee Jews.
    Jews have not been welcome, to my knowledge,
    anywhere for 2,000, years except in Israel once they reconquered
    that country--
    which is another question.
    So it's not just a question of leaving.
    Where do you go, and how do you get there?
    There are all kinds of complications.
    And if you like, I can be fluent about this
    and read you what I've written about the legal system
    at the time.
    Go right ahead, yes.
    Thank you.
    That might be a good time to do that
    We have a couple minutes left on this tape, so--
    OK.
    "The Germans, because we were Jews, defined us as stateless.
    That was legal.
    And as far as I know, all other countries
    defined us either as Germans or as nationals of the countries
    in which we happen to have been born.
    To get into the United States, if you were not
    born in the Western Hemisphere, you
    had to wait your turn according to a quota system fixed by law,
    depending on your country of origin--
    presumed to be the country in which you held citizenship.
    You also had to have a passport issued
    by that country and a visa issued by the United States.
    There were two ways of obtaining a visa.
    You could get an affidavit from a resident of the United
    States, guaranteeing that you would not
    become a public burden, or you could show at least $5,000
    in cash.
    Now, since the Nazis were expert at relieving you
    of all possessions, especially cash,
    the latter requirement made the issuance
    of the passport so much propaganda,
    demonstrating that the Nazis were not the ones blocking
    the emigration of the Jews."
    It was, in effect, a challenge to the rest
    of the gentile world.
    You want them?
    Prove it.
    That's what the Nazis were saying.
    "But it was the quota system, the American quota system,
    that condemned thousands of people--
    to restrictions, as Germans, and to death, as Jews.
    Now, there were no such restrictions
    if you had had the foresight to pick a country in the Western
    Hemisphere as your place of birth.
    And if you were a man, you could bring your wife
    and minor children with you.
    My uncle"-- and I've said this-- "who had become a naturalized
    German to enlist in the army in 1914,
    thus had a German passport but entered the United States with
    his wife and daughter, both born in Germany,
    as in effect a Mexican, although he had left Mexico at the age
    of three.
    Had my mother been willing to abandon her mother, husband,
    and children, she could have entered the United States
    similarly.
    What mattered to the Germans was our race,
    the one thing the Americans-- concerned instead with
    the place of birth, relationship, sex, and age--
    refused to acknowledge."
    I was a minor, so I was all right.
    "Money, of course, mattered to everybody.
    If the various bureaucracies compounded these mazes
    with a few garden-variety errors,
    things became still more complicated.
    An American official in Prague, in Czechoslovakia,
    used the wrong code letter to designate
    my mother's birthplace"--
    What was-- --"resulting"-- for Orizaba, Mexico--
    "and his little clerical error resulted in our stay
    in Ellis Island, where I spent my first week in America
    while papers were sent back to Prague for correction
    and return.
    So not fitting into all the definitions that mattered"--
    which never included religion-- "was what, in fact,
    defined us until we became United States citizens"--
    which was an amazing metamorphosis,
    because we had been enemy aliens.
    When you came to this country.
    When we came as Germans.
    --mean to be a foreign-born academic
    at an American university.
    How does that biculturalism influence
    your teaching, your research, your work on committees, your--
    there's been a fair amount of work on what they've
    contributed to their science.
    Lewis Coser, the sociologist, who's
    also a German Jewish refugee, published a book
    about two years ago, just listing
    the mostly German [LAUGHS] Jewish refugees
    in sociology and political science, and so on,
    who have contributed important work to the research.
    But, to my knowledge, very little recognition
    has come to the fact that American academia is probably
    half foreign, I would guess.
    Is this ready to go on yet?
    Mhm.
    Mhm.
    Let's go ahead.
    I want to get this on.
    We're going.
    OK.
    Are we on?
    We're on.
    We're on right now?
    Mhm.
    All this was on?
    Yeah.
    Oh, all this was on.
    OK.
    At what point did it start being on?
    Started talking about his book--
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    You rolling the tape at the same point
    that we said we should have this on tape?
    OK.
    [LAUGHS] So if you want to just repeat what
    this material had come from.
    Yeah.
    This is from a chapter I've written for a book I'm
    trying to put together.
    I'm editor and organizer of a group of people--
    half of them at my previous institution,
    the University of Michigan, and the remainder, I hope,
    from the University of Hawaii--
    I've recruited one man already--
    to write autobiographical essays on the question
    of what it means to be a foreign-born academic
    at an American university.
    My conviction is that biculturalism of this kind
    has all sorts of ramifications for choice of research topic,
    perhaps even an approach to the topic--
    as a researcher, certainly as a teacher,
    certainly as a committee person--
    functioning inside an American department
    of whatever it is, where you have to make decisions,
    for instance, about what students to recruit and admit
    to graduate school, whom to recruit to join you,
    whom to offer tenure-- which is like a marriage, as you know.
    And the kinds of positions that you take
    and the sorts of reasons that you give for those positions
    and the way you interact with people seems to me
    inevitably to be influenced by your background.
    And if your background is not the presumed solid, White,
    more or less middle-class, straightforward background
    that American universities seem unconsciously to expect,
    then there is going to be some sort of tension.
    For instance, when I was a graduate student in Ann Arbor,
    in my department, English, the assumptions were that you were
    intimately familiar with Christian theology--
    which I was not--
    and you could therefore read and understand
    what was then the canon--
    C-A-N-O-N-- in the department.
    And the department was representative
    of the major departments across the country.
    And people wrote dissertations about John Donne and TS Eliot
    and John Milton, in all of whose work Christian theology
    figures very prominently.
    This was all very foreign to me.
    And no one was interested in my background.
    So it's not surprising that what I remember chiefly
    is my advocacy of other points of view
    and my involvement with what later became known as the Civil
    Rights movement.
    Well, I'd like to get into that a little bit more, too.
    And maybe if we could--
    I'll make a note of that, because I
    want to come back and talk about that--
    Mhm.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Let's get back, then, back to Germany,
    if we could, again and talking a little bit about when
    you left Nauen.
    What made your family leave Nauen?
    Leave--?
    Nauen.
    Nauen.
    Yes.
    Well, we went to Berlin, as I said, in '35.
    And that became progressively more dangerous.
    I remember my mother coming to school in the middle of the day
    to take me out, because the word was
    that the Nazis had organized a parade
    and it would be dangerous for me to come home just
    with my sister.
    And I remember the parade.
    I watched it from the apartment window,
    with the swastika banners and the men in uniform
    and the drums pounding.
    I can still hear the drums.
    And I remember the signs--
    [GERMAN]
    This and that.
    Would you translate that for--
    "No Jews wanted here.
    No Jews can buy here.
    Jews get out."
    And that was the mild part.
    And we used to go for walks, my father's sister and I,
    on Sunday morning, usually to the Grunewald,
    the green forest, which was a famous public park in Berlin.
    And walking then, and probably still,
    was a very common form of recreation.
    It's what we did, especially on Sunday mornings.
    And you would see this-- or, we saw the signs.
    And my father kept trying to shield us.
    You know, we'd cross the street and so on.
    But people started looking at us with very clear hostility
    and so on.
    So my father came to America in--
    Before we get to America--
    Yes.
    --I wanted to go back-- when you first want to Berlin--
    Yes.
    --there was a period there must have been something that
    happened, I imagine, that made your father know that he should
    leave--
    Yes.
    --the small town you were in.
    Do you remember what that incident was?
    He was prohibited, in 1936, from continuing
    to practice medicine--
    I see.
    --as a Jew-- on Germans.
    No, he could practice on Jews.
    But there were no Jews in Nauen.
    I see.
    You see.
    And this was characteristic.
    I still have that piece of paper with a swastika on it,
    by the way, that says, the first three words--
    "Der Jude Schmerl"-- "the Jew Schmerl," you see?
    --"is"-- and so on-- "is hereby prohibited from"--
    What we did to each other, whether on stage in the theatre
    or on newspapers or physician to patient,
    for the time that was all right.
    But we could not have any intercourse, literally as well
    as figuratively, with Germans.
    We were vermin.
    No difference, by the way, between the lies
    told about us and the lies that White people
    have told about Black people in this country.
    No difference.
    I have not heard anything new about Black people
    from White people here that I don't remember
    being said about Jews in Germany,
    down to the last physiological detail.
    OK.
    So, we survived for a while longer in Germany and--
    In Berlin, at this point.
    --in Berlin, yeah.
    And because my father had done some research and had
    published-- of course, in German--
    and because he was a veteran of World War I.
    The Nazis got to the Jewish veterans last.
    And that was partly because of respect for Hindenburg,
    who had been the president of the Weimar Republic
    when Hitler became chancellor--
    you remember this-- and who had been the great World War I
    German general--
    general of the army.
    Would you make the connection, perhaps, that--
    partly out of respect, you said, for him--
    Partly out of respect, yes.
    To that extent, Hindenburg was still somewhat influential,
    and there was this lingering tradition of respect
    for anything military.
    And my father had spent four years in World War I,
    as what was then a German soldier--
    before he had been transformed into an untermensch,
    a subhuman.
    So he was able to get to America--
    I believe, in '38--
    and was offered a job at Johns Hopkins University,
    in Baltimore, provided that he took it immediately.
    And he said, but I have a family.
    I have to go back and get my family out.
    He went from Berlin to the United States.
    To Baltimore.
    Yes
    And how did he get out, that first time?
    Do you know?
    Well, as I say, he was a veteran.
    It wasn't that difficult for him to get a tourist visa for us.
    Oh, he had a tourist visa.
    OK.
    Yeah.
    His brother, with his wife, had left Germany--
    I believe, in '34--
    and had gone to what was then Palestine on a tourist visa.
    The English, as you know, were running Palestine at that time.
    And my uncle, my father's brother,
    simply disappeared and lived underground.
    Oh!
    [LAUGHS] This was in Palestine, so
    it was possible to take the chance
    and to do something illegal-- for survival!
    I'm talking about survival.
    So my father decided, no-- that he couldn't take that chance.
    And he went back to Germany, gave up the opportunity
    to stay in Baltimore, but, for reasons that I can't explain,
    because I don't know them, was separated from us again.
    The rest of us would be my mother, her mother, my sister,
    and I. And he came to America before we
    did, on his own papers.
    We left.
    The four of us left illegally.
    We got on a train, in the summer of 1938.
    My grandmother had broken her leg, some months before that.
    And I still remember that she--
    I believe she was--
    yes, she was still on a cane.
    And if they had checked our papers on that train,
    we would have been stopped, and we couldn't have gotten out,
    and I wouldn't be here today.
    And we took the train to the Sudetenland,
    which was the south German land, the part of Czechoslovakia that
    was negotiated away by Neville Chamberlain
    in the famous conference with Hitler some months later.
    But we got there, and came to a little village--
    Reichenberg.
    The Sudetenland, you have to understand,
    was really a piece of pre World War I Germany full of Germans,
    not Czechs, given to Czechoslovakia
    in the Versailles dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian
    Empire--
    which had been on the losing side of World War
    I-- and the Kaiser's Germany.
    So Czechoslovakia, like other countries,
    was created out of different pieces,
    and different kinds of people lived
    in different sections of it.
    And in this particular section, as you
    can imagine, from the name, it was full of South Germans--
    who were very pro-Nazi.
    There were two Jewish families in this little village--
    an old couple, Ginsberg--
    Herr Ginsberg and Frau Ginsberg-- and us.
    My sister, as far as I know, didn't go to school.
    My mother thought that, because these were [LAUGHS] Germans
    and there were papers and there were police and whatever,
    that I should go to school, so I went.
    And I was the only Jew in this school.
    And that's where I really learned what it was all about.
    And--
    What happened during--
    I was beaten every day and smeared with horseshit.
    I hope you don't mind the vulgarity.
    No, that's--
    And they beat me bloody and tore my clothes every day--
    every day.
    The first day, I was surprised.
    The second day--
    There had been a fat boy--
    I remember him well--
    who had kicked me after the others
    had gotten me down and so on.
    The second day, when they came for me, I ran up to the fat boy
    and hit him as hard as I could in the eye.
    Which probably was a mistake also,
    because after that it was pretty awful.
    And the teachers looked the other way.
    So, after two weeks, I didn't go there anymore.
    And my mother took the chance--
    On I believe it was the night of August 31, 1938--
    I'm not sure about the date.
    It was the night before the troops
    marched, after the Hitler-Chamberlain conference.
    Somebody got word to Herr Ginsberg and to my mother
    that the troops were coming in the next morning.
    Herr Ginsberg got a wheelbarrow.
    I still remember it.
    It was a wonderful night-- warm, full moon.
    And we made our way, with the suitcases in the wheelbarrow,
    to the train station.
    And we had enough money to buy a ticket, somehow or other,
    to Prague--
    Prague.
    And I don't know how we survived in Prague,
    but we were there until March of '39.
    I think people sent us money, somehow or other.
    And the Czechs could see what was coming.
    And of course, we had to have all the paperwork,
    and the German embassy in Prague was not
    terribly interested in helping Jewish refugee families get out
    of Europe.
    So it took a long time.
    Who were you living with, in Prague?
    We had an apartment, somewhere, a corner of an apartment,
    somewhere in Prague.
    I was eight and a half or so.
    And what I remember mostly of Prague
    was that it was a beautiful city and I
    didn't have to go to school because the language was
    impossible.
    And all I was supposed to learn to do was to learn to play
    the piano, from a Jewish piano teacher-- also a refugee,
    obviously-- who persuaded my mother that,
    however nice I might be, I had absolutely no talent
    whatsoever--
    which was true.
    And so I remember the winter and then the first airplane ride
    to Rotterdam, where we had a friend--
    also a refugee--
    I think he was half-Jewish-- who had money.
    And he's the one who got us out
    I see.
    How did you find him there?
    Oh, well, he was from the old days.
    And there was a network.
    And your-- I see.
    And the adults always stayed in touch.
    The old Jewish networks, wherever they are,
    which is how we have survived not this century but for 2,000
    years.
    Let me take you back a little bit.
    You had said, earlier, that you had friends
    who helped you leave Germany.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    And I wanted to go back to those days right
    before you left Berlin--
    or, that was where you left from--
    Yes.
    --when you went across.
    Do you remember anything happening
    to let you know that would be leaving?
    Did your mother talk to you about all of this?
    No, I overheard my parents in a conversation.
    Some people-- my father's cousin, for example,
    went to England with his wife and son.
    And I have already said that his brother had gone
    to what was then Palestine.
    My father was not a Zionist.
    He was a doctor.
    He felt-- I remember him saying this--
    that the last thing the world needed
    was another state and another army.
    Which I find, in retrospect, very prophetic.
    He was proud of Israel later but not the military aspect.
    And that was not an option.
    And England did not attract him.
    And we had some relatives in the United States,
    specifically a cousin of my mother's who
    had converted to Christianity to marry a tall, handsome Lutheran
    minister--
    violently anti-Nazi-- who was already a famous theologian
    and who had gotten a job at Princeton University.
    And they're the ones-- not my Jewish relatives in Cleveland--
    but they're the ones who guaranteed to the United States
    government that these impoverished Jews
    from Mitteleuropa would not become burdens
    on the generosity of Americans.
    And so my father got a job at Union Hospital in New York.
    My mother became a maid.
    My grandmother, sister, and I went to Princeton.
    That's how that worked.
    As I say, it took a long time for all of the papers
    to be signed and accepted and approved and whatever.
    But that was the connection.
    OK, so when you were in-- your father
    left Berlin before you did, then.
    Yes.
    And you were still there--
    Got to New York--
    --about how long before you left Berlin
    did your father leave Berlin?
    Do you know how much time--
    Almost a year, I would think.
    And do you remember what was happening during that year?
    You were with your mother--
    Yes.
    --with your grandmother--
    Yes.
    --with your sister.
    Yes.
    And what was going on with your family?
    Were you staying at home most of the time?
    Yes.
    Were you out?
    You couldn't go out.
    How did you get your food, at that time, do you remember?
    Well, my mother went out and did what she could
    and ignored the insults and--
    but there were also Germans who helped.
    There were decent people.
    For example, in Nauen there was an older lady, a seamstress,
    who had become very friendly with the family.
    And she helped.
    My mother always made sure that I recognized that, whatever
    Germany was, there were many Germans
    who weren't that way at all--
    not at all.
    And they were taking enormous risks
    to help us-- at first, perhaps, not so great.
    But as time passed, the risks became more and more severe.
    Germans went to concentration camps, too.
    And when you were in Berlin, right before you
    left, do you remember that--
    were you living in a house with other--
    In an apartment.
    Were there were only Jews there?
    Or were there--
    No.
    No.
    I do remember that--
    in the New York, you would call them the "superintendent,"
    the janitor-manager--
    was becoming more and more insolent to the Jews,
    because he could see that he could get away with anything.
    And it was more and more difficult.
    But as far as I know, the family was breaking up.
    The older people couldn't--
    they didn't have it in them anymore to start over again.
    My mother had an uncle who had a chance to get out.
    He was in his 60s.
    And my father said to him, but you can go to England now.
    We can arrange that.
    And from there you can go to America.
    Look at it as a springboard.
    And the old man said "and how long am I
    supposed to keep on springing?"
    And they were killed--
    Theresienstadt, Oranienburg, you know.
    That generation didn't get out.
    They didn't have the energy.
    They didn't have the whatever.
    They were done.
    Do you remember the day you left?
    I remember getting on the train in Berlin.
    And I remember the village in Sudetenland.
    And I remember being beaten.
    Do you remember what you took with you?
    Were there suitcases full, or--
    Yes, there were always suitcases.
    There were always suitcases, and there were always
    things to be left behind--
    always.
    I think what remains now are some books, two
    pieces of furniture, and a lot of things
    that had been handed down--
    or, to my mind, a lot of things--
    that had been handed down from one generation to the next--
    objects--
    two silver candlesticks, some porcelain figurines--
    things that my mother dearly loved--
    that sort of thing.
    Maybe two boxes worth of objects that
    remained from six, seven, eight generations.
    [LAUGHS]
    Ehh, useless.
    Useless.
    You don't want to be burdened down, it seems to me.
    What you really want to take with you is money and jewelry--
    and that, they were very good at relieving of.
    You could hide--
    Yes.
    The jewelry, yes.
    Some friends did manage to sew diamonds in the coat lining
    and things like that.
    But others got caught.
    And that was very dangerous.
    And do you remember how you felt when you were leaving Berlin?
    Do you remember--
    Frightened.
    What I remember of my emotions of that whole period is just
    that--
    fear.
    I grew up afraid--
    afraid and angry-- and I still am.
    Mm.
    It takes a while to get through most of that fear and anger.
    And I imagine-- you're saying you still are.
    You don't appear to be, so you must
    have felt some way of dealing with it, though.
    That's not for me to say.
    At least you've made a life for yourself, anyway.
    Yes.
    I hope so.
    When you first got to Prague, did you--
    you said you enjoyed it a little bit more there.
    And I wondered if you could talk a little bit--
    Well, there were no Germans.
    They were Czechs.
    And there were no signs on the street--
    or if there were, I couldn't read them if it was in Czech.
    No, I'm sure there weren't.
    And Masaryk had been president, or still
    was president, who was a freedom-loving man,
    a great man.
    And although I don't know that the Czechs were particularly
    pro-Jewish, I doubt that they were--
    they weren't organizing to kill us or beat us or torture us.
    So you could go into a store and buy what you wanted to.
    And they might resent you as a foreigner
    but not necessarily as a Jew, and [LAUGHS]
    that was a big change.
    Right?
    Mhm.
    There wasn't that hostility.
    For a moment, you had put some distance between you
    and the people who were trying to kill you.
    And you were feeling that.
    You--
    Yes.
    --immediately knew that.
    Yes.
    Because of my mother's face.
    Mhm.
    And you were in touch with your father, during that period--
    I was not.
    My mother must have been--
    must have been.
    Sure.
    I don't remember anything about that.
    As I said, when we got here we continued
    to be separated for quite a while.
    Oh, I didn't realize that.
    How long was that?
    Another year.
    I see.
    For economic reasons.
    Mhm.
    But you knew where he was, at that--
    Oh, yes, we saw each other maybe once a month or something
    like that.
    Mhm?
    And do you remember how you got to Rotterdam from--
    Airplane.
    My first--
    And we don't have to do the whole 20 minutes,
    because we can just start the next portion
    right in the middle.
    Mhm.
    So whenever you feel-- you know, I'll go through--
    That's up to you.
    --yeah.
    OK.
    And I wanted to know whether there
    was anything else that you particularly wanted
    to say about the United States.
    You wanted to talk about the Civil Rights movement.
    No, you wanted me to.
    I don't--
    I want to.
    That's what I mean.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Is there anything else that you wanted to--
    Yes, there was one thread left loose in what I said earlier.
    You want to turn around, there.
    Yes.
    Oh, are we on again?
    Yeah.
    I said--
    Are we ready?
    OK.
    --in response to your question about my reaction
    to the hatred of Jews, that there
    were two [PAUSES] reassurances that I received-- one
    in Germany, and I told you about that, that my parents let
    me know something about Jewish history
    to counteract any feeling of shame I might have had.
    And then there was an episode in America, I said,
    and that was in Princeton.
    And we stayed with my uncle, who was then
    a professor of theology at Princeton University.
    This was on Mercer Street.
    The address was 56 Mercer Street.
    And three blocks up the street was a very famous man
    by the name of Albert Einstein.
    And one day, my grandmother took me for a walk
    to go past the house where Einstein lived.
    And I actually glimpsed him through the window.
    And she wanted me to know that here
    was one of the most famous men in the world, who was living
    here for exactly the same reasons that we were there,
    and he was admired and respected by everybody
    except the Germans, and he was a Jew.
    And that was her way of telling me, don't be ashamed of who
    and what you are.
    So that was the second part of the answer to your question.
    Thank you.
    And we did say--
    we may as well just get back to the part
    on how you got to Rotterdam.
    Yes.
    The airplane.
    Well, that was very exciting, for a small boy in 1939.
    Of course I was frightened and upset and scared.
    And mostly I was afraid that I would throw up-- so I did.
    [LAUGHING]
    But we survived anyway.
    It wasn't nearly as bad as the ship going across the Atlantic,
    which took 10 days.
    It was a converted Dutch tramp steamer
    of some kind-- the Gerolstein I still remember that.
    And I think I developed the measles, around that time,
    so I was sick anyway.
    And then there was a fairly severe storm
    which delayed the ship about three or four days.
    And I remember, the waves were so high
    that there was an accident in the--
    "galley"?
    Is that what you call a ship's kitchen?
    And the soup spilled, and the cook or the cook's helper
    was burned and so on, and this sort of thing.
    It was a memorable journey that I don't care to repeat.
    And then you got to Ellis Island.
    Do you want to talk about that--
    Then we spent a week in Ellis Island.
    Yes.
    And that was an experience.
    That was, I think, the only time I've ever
    been behind barbed wire--
    anywhere.
    And we were incarcerated in a relatively humane environment.
    But the Americans, of course, were
    not attuned to subtle differences in diet and culture
    and so on.
    So this time, as Jews--
    I think it's the only time I've been treated as a Jew
    by officialdom in America-- we were seated with Jews
    from East Europe, whose speech we could not understand,
    whose clothing was also foreign to us, and whose food frankly
    was completely alien.
    And I remember not liking it.
    What I do remember liking was American milk.
    I didn't know that milk could be that rich.
    It was wonderful.
    There were people from all over the world,
    in Ellis Island, who could not speak, read, or write English.
    And so we wound up in each other's bathrooms.
    I remember embarrassing a Chinese lady who
    had gone into the wrong bathroom--
    or maybe I had gone into the wrong bathroom.
    It's also possible.
    On the whole, it's just ironic.
    I remember Ellis Island as a place
    that processed us-- which, by that time, was very familiar.
    You had to have papers.
    You had to wait.
    There were lines.
    There were officials who were bored with you.
    It wasn't a very exciting job, I suppose--
    United States naturalization and Immigration Service.
    There were so many of us and so few of them and so much paper.
    And eventually we got through.
    And as I say, my grandmother, sister, and I
    went to Princeton, which was lovely in 1939.
    And my mother eventually got a job
    somewhere in New York as a maid, as a live-in maid.
    And my father, who could not, as I say,
    speak English, inspected people's rear ends
    for piles and whatever at Union Hospital in the Bowery
    in Manhattan.
    And a year later, we got we got together again in Manhattan.
    I lived in Harlem--
    what was then at the edge of Harlem.
    That was probably the center of it.
    And then I got used to being beaten up for other reasons.
    [LAUGHS] So.
    And where were you in enemy alien,
    and where were you considered to be an enemy alien?
    In the United States of America, from 1941 until
    we became citizens-- when America declared war on Hitler.
    Or was it that Hitler declared war on America?
    I believe, on December 8, 1941, all people
    of presumed German citizenship-- never
    mind what the Germans had said-- since that's
    where we had come from, we must have been German citizens,
    according to the Americans-- resident here
    were automatically enemy aliens.
    And we had to register.
    My grandmother, who never became an American citizen,
    had to register, I think, forever.
    Even after the war had ended, she
    was still registering as a foreign-born noncitizen.
    And that did not stop until my mother became a citizen.
    My father became a citizen earlier,
    because he had arrived here earlier.
    When my mother became an American citizen,
    I became a citizen automatically,
    because I had been under the age of 14
    at my arrival-- which was not true of my sister.
    You see.
    So she had to become a citizen on her own, sometime later.
    I see.
    At least she got her picture in the paper.
    [LAUGHS] Yes.
    That's nice.
    [LAUGHS]
    We were very proud.
    And then you grew up in Harlem?
    Or how long did you stay there?
    No.
    No-- how long-- we moved all over.
    We left New York in 1941 and moved to Louisiana.
    And I spent two years there, as my father kept getting other
    jobs as circumstances developed-- as I say,
    as an assistant physician--
    and worked for a Jewish physician
    in New Orleans for two years.
    And there I acquired a Southern accent
    and learned something about the Southern version--
    this is '41 to '43--
    the Southern version of racism.
    And then we moved back to New York, to the Bronx, in '43.
    What did you learn about racism, in Louisiana?
    That it was exactly the same thing as I
    had experienced in Germany.
    The fundamental sin, in my opinion,
    is to look at a human being and refuse to see the human being.
    And that was what White people were doing with Blacks,
    just as Germans had done with Jews.
    Our neighbors were Black, in New Orleans.
    And we knew White people who had Black live-in servants.
    Black people prepared their food, took care of the babies,
    and the Whites regarded them as furniture.
    They would speak in front of them about racial matters
    without regarding their feelings or without any sensitivity
    at all.
    And yet there was this absolute schizophrenia,
    because they would--
    as part of the Southern way of life of the time,
    they would be available to help Black people in trouble
    if they knew them-- if they were part of the family,
    as servants.
    [PAUSES] Absolute schizophrenia.
    There's no--
    It's a mental illness.
    Racism is a serious, deadly serious, mental illness.
    And it is endemic in various cultures.
    And I am not unique in any way.
    And you were a teenager, at that time--
    No.
    I was-- just about.
    I was 11 in 1941.
    I was 13 when I left New Orleans, yes,
    and went back to the Bronx.
    Oh, back to the Bronx, then.
    Yes.
    Well, I shouldn't say "back to the Bronx."
    The Bronx is not Manhattan.
    Back to New York.
    Yeah.
    Back to New York.
    And I started high school there--
    went another two years there.
    And then my father finally got a job, a real job,
    as a researcher-- as a research ophthalmologist
    at the Toledo Hospital Institute for Medical Research.
    And so I finished high school and college in Toledo.
    And by that time, I was older.
    [LAUGHS]
    And then you were involved in the Civil Rights movement.
    Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
    Well, for, I suppose, two reasons.
    One, I think I've explained-- because
    of my own personal background and my [PAUSES] recognition
    of what is at work in America-- which
    was no different from what was at work in Europe.
    And then for an accidental reason.
    A friend, a wonderful friend I made in Toledo--
    who is still, to this day, my very closest friend--
    who is Black--
    It turned out that I began to make more Black
    friends, certainly in college, than White.
    And in Toledo, the link was chess.
    I play chess-- not terribly well, but I do play chess.
    And there were Black people, more or less
    my age, who played chess, with whom I became acquainted.
    There were two Ys in Toledo--
    the downtown Y, where only Whites went, and the Indiana
    Avenue Y in Toledo, where they went.
    And since they were not comfortable or welcome
    at the White Y, I went with them.
    And that-- one thing led to another.
    So by the time I left Toledo--
    went first to Cleveland, where I started
    my doctoral work, and then to Ann Arbor, after that--
    my opinions on this subject were firm.
    And I haven't changed my mind about any of it.
    Racism is a sin, and it is an evil,
    and it needs to be combated at every opportunity.
    And I say this as a refugee Jew who lost relatives
    in concentration camps.
    I appreciate that very much.
    And let's talk about some of those relatives,
    before we-- this is almost the end of the tape.
    We really left that off, too.
    How many relatives did you leave behind
    that ended up in the concentration camps
    that you know about?
    Oh, at least a dozen.
    And were they your mother's side or father's side?
    Mostly on my mother's side-- aunts and uncles and cousins.
    And did they ever talk about their reasons
    for not leaving when you did?
    As I say, it wasn't that simple.
    You can't just leave.
    This is an American question you're asking me.
    Yes, I am.
    Behind that, there's the picture of somebody
    throwing suitcases in the car and driving off into the--
    it can't happen that way.
    It doesn't happen that way.
    You can't go unless you have a destination.
    And if people don't let you in, and they send you back.
    My cousin's other grandmother was
    on that ship, that famous ship, the St. Louis,
    that went to Cuba and couldn't get in and went to Miami
    and couldn't get in and was sent back
    by Cordell Hull and the American State Department--
    back to France.
    And that woman died in Theresienstadt.
    So most of your family were those people
    who really knew that they wanted to get out
    and attempted to do so--
    It was--
    --rather than, they were--
    Yes.
    --not of the group that thought that things would eventually
    get better then.
    Yes.
    Of my grandmother's generation, most of them
    died in the concentration camps.
    I know of my grandmother and one other woman of her generation
    who got out.
    Of my father's generation--
    I mean, my father was 42 in 1938-- still
    a relatively-- from my point of view
    today, a relatively young man.
    Especially now we think of it as very young.
    Yes.
    Yes.
    So he was still in good health.
    He was vigorous and had a great deal left to offer.
    But people in their 60s, no.
    Mm.
    Had a very difficult time getting the papers to come,
    as well.
    Yes.
    And the psychological [PAUSES] energy that it also required.
    Is there anything that you would like
    to say to the people that will be reading
    the materials, viewing the materials, that
    would relate to any of the areas we talked about?
    Feel free at this time.
    Any last words for us.
    Yes, I would like to repeat what I said at the panel discussion
    at Temple Emanuel, that my conviction is
    that there are lessons in this.
    It isn't just that we must remember
    those who were murdered for their sake
    because that is all we can do for them.
    There's more to it.
    There are also people who are alive today
    whom we must not forget, and these are people of all colors
    and all persuasions-- whether they
    are Black people in South Africa or Arab people
    in Israel or in territories held by Israel or people
    in South America or, most recently and tragically,
    the Chinese in China.
    We're all human.
    And Jews perhaps more than anyone else
    have got to recognize that.
    Thank you so much, Rudy, I really appreciate it.
    Thank you--
    Thank you.
    --very, very much.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    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.
    Interviewee
    Rudolf Schmerl
    Interviewer
    Judy Weightman
    Date
    interview:  1989 June 21
    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
    Schmerl, Rudolf, 1930-

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Judy Weightman, of the Hawaii Holocaust Project, conducted the interview with Rudolf Schmerl on June 21, 1989 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 08:10:20
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511105

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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

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    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 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 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 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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