- This is Sue Platt interviewing Mrs. Abraham, August the 11th.
- Mrs. Abraham, will you begin back with your childhood?
- All right.
- Well, I was born in Vienna, Austria on June 7, 1916.
- It makes me 65 years as of today.
- It was actually not a very exciting childhood
- in that sense.
- The war was on in 1916.
- Times were very rough in Vienna, as I had heard from my parents.
- It was hard to get food.
- People had to stand in line to get milk.
- There were soup kitchens all over the city.
- Some very small incidents, but which are probably
- illustrative of what was going on-- my mother
- stood for hours in line to get a pair of shoes,
- and then found out that she had gotten two left ones.
- Our maid-- Anna was her name, because it was the same name
- as my mother's--
- stood in line for a bag of potatoes, which
- was deposited in the kitchen.
- And this, of course, is only from tales
- that I heard in the family.
- And the next morning, the kitchen
- was swimming because the potatoes were all frozen.
- So it was hard to get food.
- But my father had at that time a comparatively very good job,
- and got bigger food rations apparently.
- He worked for the Supreme Court in Vienna.
- Later on, his position was as an employee
- of the Austrian Anglo-Austrian Bank, which failed
- when I was about 12 years old.
- The marriage of my parents was a very good one.
- In that sense, my childhood was very happy.
- And I remember people telling me, my mother,
- that my father didn't tell her that he had lost his job,
- and went off in the morning as if he would go to work,
- came back in the evening, and never told her.
- How long did that go on?
- For a very long time.
- For months, apparently.
- He got in contact with his relatives
- who were well-to-do relatives that lived in Switzerland.
- As you know, there were very few Jews living in Switzerland--
- still are living.
- There's only a very small number of Swiss Jews.
- And they helped him to start all anew
- in Switzerland in the town named Saint Gallen, Saint Gall, which
- is on the German border.
- And when I was 13 years old, we moved there.
- This was an event of great unhappiness for my mother, who
- had to leave her sister, who she really was very, very close to.
- We lived just around the corner.
- And it was daily that they saw each other.
- You left purely for economic reasons?
- Absolutely.
- There was no reason.
- No, there was, no, not at that time.
- No, certainly not.
- Saint Gallen for me as a 13-year-old,
- was a very, very difficult. I would say, situation.
- I was the only Jewish child in my class.
- There were one or two incidents that are rather
- imprinted in my mind because they were definitely
- antisemitic incidents.
- And when you are very young and very sensitive,
- those things are indelible, almost, in your mind.
- Could you recall them for me?
- Yeah, one I recall, that when I came the first or second day
- to my new class, very frightened,
- not knowing what to expect, there
- was one French girl who came to my desk, looked at me,
- and she says, mm, it smells here.
- So then, later on Dr. Steinfeld's daughter--
- he was a Jewish dentist in the city of Saint Gallen--
- came to my class.
- So that was better.
- We were [INAUDIBLE].
- And anyway, somehow, I would say by dint of my personality,
- but somehow the situation became much, much better.
- I mean, I was definitely accepted in the class.
- I also learned the language.
- There is a-- even so in that part of Switzerland
- you speak German, there is a certain dialect
- which is spoken usually.
- Only in the classroom situation do you speak High German.
- Otherwise, you speak what is called Schweizerdeutsch.
- And of course, being as young as I was, I could learn--
- I learned it rather quickly, spoke it without accent,
- and so therefore was not differentiated from
- the other children in my group.
- This has, later on in life, led to many really almost funny
- incidents.
- When I was in a train once, people
- could not imagine that speaking English to my children,
- I had gone on a vacation to Switzerland,
- that I would understand what they were talking about.
- And when they were halfway in the middle of a conversation,
- and it was too late for me to tell them
- that I was, so to speak, eavesdropping,
- it was the most fascinating conversation
- that I had ever listened to without them
- having the slightest notion that I would be able to.
- Because as a child, you had spoken that dialect.
- Yeah, I still understand it very well.
- Cannot speak it anymore.
- I have forgotten.
- But I mean, if I go back to Switzerland,
- which I have done very often, I understand French very well.
- And there's a sort of nostalgic feeling for me going back
- to Switzerland, of course.
- Oh, I'm certain.
- Yes.
- What about your religious beliefs in Switzerland?
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- As we say, my parents were-- they were conservative,
- I would say.
- I would not say that they were--
- my parents were not kosher or anything like that.
- But certainly on the High Holidays we went to temple.
- My father was an ardent Zionist, which was rather unusual,
- and insisted that I should learn Hebrew,
- and imported a Hebrew teacher to Switzerland eventually,
- to Saint Gallen from Vienna.
- And I had-- not only I, but other girls and boys my age--
- we were very few--
- had private lessons.
- This teacher was maintained solely
- by a very few Jews who felt the need to learn Hebrew.
- And to this day I have a smattering knowledge,
- which came in good stead very often to me,
- and a knowledge of the Bible that I otherwise
- certainly I wouldn't have had.
- So that was really the exception.
- My father later on also was in Israel with my mother.
- But anyway.
- Was there a synagogue in Switzerland?
- There are more than one synagogue.
- We were only 80 families in the city of Saint Gallen.
- But I think there were two synagogues there, to one
- of which my parents did belong.
- So later on, I decided to go back to Vienna.
- I lived with my aunt, that same sister I talked about
- with whom my mother was so friendly, in order to finish up
- the school that I had started, the gymnasium, which
- is a combination of high school, I would say,
- and junior high school.
- And I made my matura, which is the diploma
- that you get after that, and started
- the University of Vienna.
- That's where--
- I want to mention also that my mother, who really
- saw this event of having to go to Switzerland
- as a most traumatic experience of her life,
- later on, of course, had to find out
- that this was the best thing that ever happened to them,
- because my parents at least personally did not
- experience Hitler.
- I, however, who had gone back to my aunt--
- Excuse me.
- At what age did you go back?
- I was about 17.
- Went back and met my first husband,
- with whom I was married 26 years.
- That marriage ended in divorce and I remarried again.
- But I met him in Switzerland.
- Forfeited by this--
- Because of that, of course, my right to live in Switzerland
- except as a visitor, where I had the right before to live
- there permanently.
- My parents had never wanted to become even Swiss citizens,
- but had that right to live there for the rest of their lives.
- They didn't.
- They didn't mostly because of my doing, I must say.
- So I was that much afraid that Hitler would invade Switzerland.
- In retrospect, it doesn't seem that it could have happened,
- but at the moment I was sure, because Holland
- was invaded at that time.
- Switzerland was spared because of reasons that we all know.
- But I was never sure, and so I urged them
- on and on to leave everything.
- And my father later on sold the business and so on.
- Excuse me.
- You were in Vienna when you asked your parents
- to leave Switzerland?
- No, later on.
- See, I was in Vienna, got married in Vienna.
- This was prior to the invasion of Germany.
- I married in 1937.
- I was 21 years old.
- And Hitler came in 1938.
- My husband was a medical student,
- and I was a student of psychology
- at the University of Vienna at the time.
- So we were married one year when Hitler came to Vienna.
- And while the, let's say, the events in Germany--
- not less shocking than the ones in Austria--
- were on a-- how should I say-- slow, slow movement basis,
- one event followed the other.
- And I guess if you had enough foresight, you could sort of--
- maybe not-- have a premonition of things to come.
- Did you have a premonition?
- Yes, I had, but it was too late.
- It came so suddenly in Vienna.
- It came overnight.
- It was really one of those horrible, horrible nights,
- when the night before, I remember my aunt and uncle,
- to whom--
- once that I have mentioned before,
- were sitting in the living room, and they
- had one of those fireplaces that they
- burned all the books that could have any communistic or whatever
- allusions.
- They burned practically their whole library.
- And one knew that things were going at a rapid pace.
- And that was then.
- And then when Hitler invaded, of course.
- That night was a night that I can't forget,
- because my father, who was an extremely intelligent man--
- I don't know what got into him-- but he sent us a telegram
- that is to my husband.
- And he come home for vacation.
- Well, when it came, somebody knocked at the door
- with a telegram at 12 or 1 o'clock at night,
- I was sure it was a Gestapo.
- It was a telegram.
- We didn't do it.
- A few of my former husband's colleagues
- actually did it, left that same night.
- It was still possible to do it for some.
- And some landed in my father's house, who took them in.
- Yes?
- Yes, and we didn't.
- It took us eight weeks then to get out.
- And those eight weeks were the weeks that
- are really unforgettable to me.
- We came out on the last student visa
- that were given out in Vienna.
- In that respect, we were very, very lucky.
- You mean, after the eight weeks, you came out?
- After the eight weeks, yes.
- It was exactly on the 14th of May 1938.
- Hitler had invaded on the 13th of March.
- I had a student, a colleague with whom
- I studied at the psychology department
- in Vienna, whose father had a travel bureau.
- This colleague was not Jewish.
- And he was friendly enough.
- And of course, I had to pay for it, which was the smallest
- thing, to try to get a visa.
- You needed a visa to get to Switzerland at the time.
- Now in order to get a visa, you had
- to give your passport to the person.
- To be found without a passport was the death penalty, you see?
- My mother-in-law was telling me that I
- was pushing her son into this.
- I was 22 years old, completely alone, didn't know whom to ask,
- didn't want to discuss it with my aunt.
- Besides, there was no telephone, and I couldn't walk there,
- and it was too far-- we lived in the ninth district, which
- is very far from us.
- And I said, I'm going to do it because at that time
- I think I realized, young as I was, that there was no way out.
- And I gave him the passports.
- And I wasn't sure that he would get me the visa.
- And here I was two days without a passport.
- And then I had to pick up this visa at a restaurant, a cafe,
- where it says Jews, the entrance is not allowed.
- Now even though I didn't look Jewish, and people did not--
- like some people looked more Jewish than I.
- If you had no Hakenkreuz on your coat, certainly you were Jewish.
- What else?
- Everybody has--
- You didn't have what on your--
- The Hakenkreuz.
- The Emblem.
- The Jewish star?
- No, no.
- The other.
- The Jewish star at that time was not-- you
- didn't have to have the Jewish star.
- But the German emblem.
- You know what a Hakenkreuz is?
- The swastika.
- The swastika.
- Yeah, if you didn't have the swastika,
- then certainly you were--
- So I remember.
- I had sort of a blue coat, one of those coats
- where you can put up the collar.
- And it was-- even if it was a warm day.
- Nevertheless.
- It was in May, as you know.
- I had that coat, like a very fashionable lady.
- Put up.
- Went into this restaurant by myself, got the visa, and left.
- So really and truly, I think, not
- because I was so courageous, but because of desperation,
- that makes you courageous because you
- get very calm when you are--
- get very calm.
- It was very interesting.
- When before those eight weeks were really
- weeks of not fear, but absolute terror,
- you look your faith into the face, and you become very calm.
- So I went into this restaurant-- not
- that my heart was not beating.
- I mean, not that.
- But there was a certain resignation.
- The calm of resignation, I would say.
- Got it and we left.
- Did you get your passport in time?
- Got my passport.
- We left as we were.
- Had nothing on us, of course.
- I remember we were searched, or I
- remember I was searched, rather, very strict on the--
- before we got to the border.
- And my parents were at the border.
- They're on the border.
- And this I remember.
- When we came to my parents' apartment in Saint Gallen,
- whenever I want to talk to them--
- here I was in complete freedom.
- The nightmare was over.
- I closed all the windows and spoke in a whisper.
- For days I could not get used to the idea
- that one was really free.
- So this, of course, my mother and father-in-law, then-mother
- and father-in-law perished.
- But it was terrible story because my brother-in-law
- that was the brother of my husband was a doctor also.
- And he went to Israel, and he was shot by Arabs at the time.
- Oh.
- It was a story.
- In 19--
- 1939.
- Or '38.
- Mm-hmm.
- And so they could not go.
- If you wanted to go to Israel, you had to have somebody
- to apply for you.
- Sponsor you.
- To sponsor you.
- So since he was dead, he could not sponsor me.
- Now I told you that I had known a little Hebrew because
- of my father having insisted that we should learn it.
- There was a congress of the--
- Zionistic congress in Geneva at the time.
- And I took lessons.
- I remember that was after we were in Switzerland,
- and confronted Ben-Gurion as he came out of the restaurant.
- You personally.
- Yes, I personally.
- I was incensed that because of this, really, technicality,
- my in-laws should not be able to go to Israel,
- where the son has really given his life for that cause.
- He referred me to a other man whose name I forgot.
- It started with a D. Nothing came of it.
- However, his-- my husband's younger sister then
- was taken by Youth Aliyah to Israel,
- and the parents, because of the death of their son,
- they were given an opportunity to go
- which was then called Aliya B. It was a clandestine traveling
- to Israel.
- But I think it was sponsored by the Nazis somehow for money
- or so on.
- And more or less all those aliyahs,
- we more or less arrived.
- They were not-- they didn't dare to go.
- And I remember I wrote them a letter.
- I have to translate it, [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Whoever tries has already succeeded half.
- Has half succeeded.
- In other words, if you don't try,
- you certainly will not succeed.
- Funnily enough, that I remember that I
- wrote that same thing to my daughter now who is starting--
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- Yes, I now see the correlation, who is starting law school,
- is having two small children, and who is wavering,
- should she, should she not.
- And I took--
- Wrote the same advice.
- I gave her the same advice.
- Unfortunately, she did not take it, and--
- So they did not leave.
- No, they did not leave.
- Did you say that some of the people
- that went to Israel, they were paid by the Germans,
- and that's how the Germans--
- I don't know who-- yeah, the Germans were paid.
- I think this Aliya B was sponsored.
- I don't know, was it sponsored by some people
- out of the country or so.
- There were, in the beginning yet,
- some people who were able to go there through Yugoslavia,
- and some--
- By the way, that transport that they would have been on,
- had they decided to go all right, because later on,
- you know how many ships were--
- Turned back.
- --turned back and so on.
- But in the very beginning, they arrived.
- Now this eight weeks in Vienna.
- That's probably what you are most interested in.
- Oof, well, I can only tell you--
- Can you relate some of them?
- I can only relate it on the first day.
- I walked on the street with my husband--
- ex-husband, I should say.
- And he was taken away by the Nazis,
- and I didn't know where he was.
- Don't forget that I was 22, which is very young, and not--
- the parents not in the same city.
- I was living in a very beautiful apartment,
- I must say, in a very nice neighborhood in Vienna.
- As a matter of fact, the parents of the French ambassador
- lived underneath us.
- And those French ambassador, the French ambassador--
- the Austrian ambassador to France, rather.
- And he didn't come back, you see, when the Nazis came.
- So they took the parents.
- I remember when a limousine drove up on the morning,
- and the parents were taken, probably never to be returned.
- I lived on the second floor.
- And so I had to go home all by myself to the apartment.
- Didn't know where he was.
- Didn't know where your husband was.
- I didn't know.
- And later on, he came back.
- They had taken them-- that was in the beginning,
- in the very beginning, when they still played games.
- They had taken them to some hall or something, had given them
- all rooms.
- Clean the hall.
- You know that--
- Then, later on, I had a little girlfriend
- with whom I studied sometimes for the exam at the university
- by the name of Bondi.
- She later left for Israel, and I really haven't heard of her.
- She came a day afterwards and told me
- about her brother, who was rather fat.
- He was heavy maybe, you know--
- Very heavy-set.
- Very heavy-set.
- They really tortured this guy.
- Well, anyway, but I only--
- a few incidents.
- I remember that one day they assembled all the Jews that they
- could find on my street.
- Now I have to tell you that there was my house,
- and there was a school on the one side
- and other houses on the other side.
- It was a rather small street.
- I was here.
- And before I tell you the incidents, I wanted to--
- you cannot imagine the psychological impression when
- you have flags, hundreds and thousands of flags with
- the swastika, from all over the windows.
- There was not one that was not decorated with those flags.
- It's really very hard for somebody
- who has not lived through it to imagine what
- it is, what it is devastating.
- It is really not a flag-maker's dream.
- It's terrible.
- Terrifying.
- It's terrifying.
- It's terrifying.
- But anyway, they had--
- and that could happen to you.
- That's why it was so hard to even walk on the street,
- unless you had to absolutely buy something to eat.
- And you didn't eat very much at that time, [INAUDIBLE]..
- If you didn't go to the university.
- Nothing, nothing anymore, because they threw people
- out from the university windows and so on.
- We knew that already.
- But they had rounded up Jews in front of this window,
- in front of my window on the second floor,
- right on the street.
- There was a big circle of Nazis around them.
- The Jews were forced to clean the street with toothbrushes.
- With toothbrushes.
- With toothbrushes.
- And the jeering, and they were knocking them down,
- and they were spitting on them, and who knows
- what their fate was afterwards.
- And I do recall very distinctly the thoughts
- that went through my mind.
- The noise was so enormous that my windows shook, that when
- you have glass shaking.
- You know that noise?
- Yes, certainly.
- I mean, I hear a glass shaking--
- You recall this.
- --I recall this.
- And I was thinking, if I had a machine gun, I would use it.
- I knew I would have used it had I had that, any gun,
- and protected myself at that time.
- I knew, because at that time I didn't even
- have the hope yet to get out.
- That was not the time when I could expect a reason--
- a visa.
- And I knew more or less that my fate was decided.
- That was that-- first and most intense--
- intense recollections that I had.
- What were your neighbors like in the building?
- Were they protective of you?
- [CROSS TALK] No, we had, first of all,
- what you call a house [INAUDIBLE]..
- That is what is in France, la concierge, on whose, let's say,
- benevolence very much depended.
- I would say that they were medium.
- They were neither Nazis nor not Nazis.
- Really, I didn't know what they were,
- but at least they did not--
- they could have easily, when this
- happened in front of my window, taken me out and brought me
- there, because those things were everyday occurrences, of course.
- But they did not.
- And so the whole first floor, there
- were only three floors, each consisting of two apartments.
- But these people, the ambassador's parents,
- had apparently both--
- [? we were there. ?] And then there was a poor--
- not poor.
- She was not poor monetarily.
- But a poor lady, because I remember her.
- And I said, poor.
- She was alone, and a widow.
- And she obviously had no--
- she could not grasp--
- What was happening.
- --what was happening to her.
- I'm sure that she doesn't live anymore.
- I do not recall who was on the third floor.
- Now were these Jewish tenants or--
- This was-- no, the one downstairs were not.
- The lady next door was, because she always
- baked for Friday night.
- I remember.
- And she had a gentleman friend who apparently came.
- He was traveling a lot.
- And she always entertained him.
- Did you get any help at all from anybody other from your--
- Nobody.
- I was on my own two little feet.
- I remember one day--
- that, what I remember also is on the day when
- they took my husband to clean that hall,
- there was a gentleman come.
- He saw me standing on the street, sort of a guest,
- I guess.
- And he had a band around his-- he was a Czechoslovakian
- reporter.
- And so they, of course, were not accosted as yet.
- And he talked to me.
- And let me translated what he said.
- He must have seen the incident.
- And he gave me his telephone number in case
- I should need help, which I didn't use.
- And then he said, at this fight, they are going to--
- wait a minute.
- That's too much.
- They are going to suffocate-- to, yeah, suffocate
- on that fight, meaning having annexed Austria.
- This is not going to help them much, as you know.
- I wonder where he is now?
- I remember.
- I mean, I would not recognize the face, but--
- You remember what he said.
- Yes, you remember what he said.
- Right, right, right.
- When you went to the university, were you harassed at all
- because you were Jewish?
- No, I was not really harassed up to that point.
- But the atmosphere was--
- how should I call it-- thick.
- You felt, you felt that the Nazis were all over.
- You knew that this couldn't last very long.
- It was an impossible, impossible situation.
- Impossible situation.
- One felt that there were great events coming,
- great in the sense of portentous.
- But it was an all-pervading fear already in the last weeks.
- And there were-- yeah, I would say there were--
- all these event were precursors of coming disaster.
- You saw it coming in all ways.
- And yet there were other people who just refused to see it.
- There were many, especially in Germany.
- But after we knew already what had happened in Germany,
- we should have known better.
- But even at that--
- When you are born in a country, could you
- imagine that anything like that could happen in America?
- No, not at all.
- Not at all.
- It could.
- It could.
- Because antisemitism is a very latent thing always.
- You see, it only needs a government
- sponsoring to explode.
- And that book that I'm reading now,
- and which I really haven't finished, but I can see already,
- is very good inasmuch as this man is,
- of having lived through Auschwitz-- he's from Bialystok,
- I think, Poland or Russia, whatever,
- and as a very young child came, was in the concentration camp,
- and really survived by his wits, of which he has many
- because now--
- The book is called--
- Of Blood and Hope, by Pisar.
- He is now an international lawyer of very great renown,
- and is really on very friendly thing, Giscard d'Estaing
- and this Kissinger and so on and so forth.
- He has a terrible premonition of a disaster of a Holocaust
- which our Holocaust, so to say, was contained,
- contained to Europe and to the Jews.
- He has a premonition of a global disaster,
- you see, by which he probably means atomic disaster.
- Because of the events as he sees them,
- he thinks that economy, inflation, and all those things,
- that disadvantaged people all over the world,
- underdeveloped countries, nothing
- is being done to alleviate their fate and so on and so forth.
- And because of what you've been through,
- you feel that anything is possible.
- That to me, there is no doubt that the layer of civilization
- is awfully thin.
- No doubt about it.
- I hope I have conveyed this to my children
- so that in a case of an emergency,
- they would know how to act.
- And you acted very calmly in the face of emergency.
- Calmly not because I was so courageous.
- Believe me, not at all.
- I was terribly afraid.
- Did you practice any religion when you moved back
- to Austria as a--
- Practice?
- Well, we went to the temple every Friday night and so on.
- High Holidays.
- But I wouldn't say that I'm a--
- more than that.
- So now tell me.
- You went back you.
- Got back to Switzerland.
- Got back to Switzerland.
- My former husband finished his studies.
- I wasn't able to finish.
- He became a doctor.
- He's now practicing in Cincinnati.
- And we had two children--
- Anita, who is now living in Richmond,
- and Katie, who's living here, both married to non-Jews.
- Which--
- Both, did you say?
- Both.
- How long did you stay in Switzerland,
- and when did you come to the States?
- Oh, I came to Switzerland in 1938, May 1938,
- and arrived in America in January, I think, of 1940.
- And how did you--
- why did you decide to leave Switzerland?
- Oh, I had to.
- I had no way to stay there.
- I forfeited my right to live there, you see.
- By marrying an Austrian, again, you see.
- My parents lived there, and my sister, but I couldn't.
- And you could not live on a temporary visa.
- Well, yes, but what would my husband
- have done, who now had his doctor degree in medicine.
- And if you cannot practice, what are you going to live on?
- So originally, we had thought to go to Israel.
- The brother was dead, the parents
- were dead, the sister on the Youth Aliyah
- was there alone, but the kibbutz where
- we wanted to go originally, which is called Ein Gev,
- and which is in the Galilee, and which housed--
- and still houses-- very many of my friends.
- I go back there.
- We didn't feel like going.
- So we went to America, which was really and truly ideologically
- my second choice.
- And it was.
- Did you need a sponsor?
- My father had a sponsor for us, yes.
- In the States.
- In the States.
- Mm-hmm.
- And actually we didn't need anything there.
- Since my father was in Switzerland, he had some money.
- He spent it all here, little as it was,
- but we didn't need any help from any Jewish organization.
- And then my husband got an internship.
- I think, the first one was in Lackawanna near Buffalo,
- and then he became a resident at the Jewish hospital.
- In Cincinnati.
- In Cincinnati.
- And that's why he moved here.
- And that's why, but it was the only reason, just by accident.
- Did you speak the language?
- No, not a word.
- How did you--
- I picked it up.
- I picked it up.
- But I had a good Latin background, and I speak French,
- and I speak German, so it wasn't too hard.
- And I think I--
- I make plenty of mistakes I'm sure, but I don't hear them.
- Your children were born--
- Born here in Cincinnati, yes.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yes.
- Do they ever question you about the days gone by?
- No.
- They do not.
- No, they have never questioned me.
- And this often, this was--
- that marriage was not a good one,
- and I think this was part of it.
- I wanted to tell them about it.
- I was very intent on telling them.
- And my former husband felt that I was bitter.
- I was.
- I was bitter, and I think I have every right to be bitter.
- Bitter about your life?
- About what happened, yes, and about
- the unbelievable atrocities and unbelievable situation
- where, really, people were dehumanized.
- And you saw all this.
- And I saw all of it.
- And what I didn't see, I heard through very good friends.
- And I had no doubt that all the things were true,
- even though they look probably, to Americans
- who have been born here and who have
- no idea that such things can happen, sometimes probably
- look like sensationalism.
- I often am reminded of the fact that when I read, like, the--
- like there is a panic or a famine in China,
- my heart goes out.
- I feel very deeply about it.
- But I go and eat lunch and forget it.
- That's the difference, yes.
- Yes.
- But you lived through it.
- I lived through it.
- And I think in the concentration camps,
- and even in other-- in the eight weeks, I was thinking,
- bless America.
- Where is-- there are other countries.
- How can they sit still in the light of what is happening?
- They must know what's going on, and so on.
- It was very hard to take the indifference of the world
- outside.
- What about the world within your community, the Austrians?
- Oh, the Austrians are worse than the Germans, I think.
- They were worse.
- I think they were worse than the Germans.
- They had learned a lot from the Germans.
- And even so, I always say Austria
- is beautiful without the Austrians.
- You got no help from them at all.
- No, I would say no.
- Except I would like to say that this young man,
- he did not have to do it.
- Certainly it was a very charitable thing
- to do, to give to even molest his father,
- or beg his father to do something for Jewish people,
- obviously.
- Did he do it for you and others, or just for you?
- For me.
- Just for you.
- Yeah, well, we had studied together.
- There was a certain--
- Comradeship.
- --comradeship.
- Yeah, yeah, for which I paid him.
- Don't-- but nevertheless, I want to give him credit where credit
- is due.
- But other than that, it was terrible.
- The people were not human.
- I tell you, honestly.
- There must have been very many good ones.
- It's ridiculous to say that they are not--
- I think people are the same all over the world.
- I don't think that some are having
- qualities beyond the others.
- But his worst--
- I don't know.
- I often wonder when I was in Israel also,
- do the Jewish people have more compassion?
- Do they have more humanity?
- Is that because of their long history of persecution?
- Those questions have often bothered me.
- What do you think the answers are?
- [SIGHS] To a certain extent, but not 100% either.
- Because as I found out later on, in the ghetto of Warsaw,
- we would like to idealize it.
- But it was not--
- Jews turned on Jews sometimes.
- In other words, I think human qualities, I have come to think,
- maybe are the same.
- Our history is a little odd.
- And therefore, maybe our feelings
- are more geared to that feeling of compassion
- for the underdog, right?
- Oh, I think so.
- You said you Jews turned on Jews.
- You didn't see that.
- No, I did not see that personally, but I have heard it,
- and I am ready to believe it.
- Yes.
- Let's go back when you said you didn't
- speak of this to your children, your girls never asked at all.
- No.
- Really and truly not.
- It was amazing.
- They were resentful of the fact that we spoke German
- in the home, which we didn't speak always German, of course,
- but often, especially in the beginning
- when my English wasn't as good as it is today.
- And you know how children are at a certain age.
- They have to please their peers.
- My daughter, I'll never forget it, was once in the car.
- And it was one of those funny incidents
- that we laugh about now, but it was very indicative of how
- she must have felt.
- She says, my mother is not American at all.
- She does go to concerts.
- She doesn't eat popcorn.
- And what was the-- and a certain criterion by which I was judged.
- So you weren't American at all.
- I wasn't American at all.
- And that, of course, was terrible,
- because all her girlfriends' mothers were American, you see.
- Now the situation has changed completely.
- I don't have to tell you that.
- They are rather proud of their mother at the moment.
- That's beautiful.
- Yes.
- But it's interesting that they never
- wanted to know what happened in Austria, what happened to you.
- No, not now.
- It's only now.
- Now that my daughter, Anita, married a Catholic
- who was a priest almost.
- He gave it up for ideological reasons.
- This is an interesting story.
- Has she discovered her Jewish identity,
- which is very often the case when you do that.
- Her children are being educated Jewish, of this man.
- They are both Jewish.
- They go to temple.
- And my son-in-law gets dressed up as if he would go--
- how we go to temple.
- He takes it very seriously.
- They light the candles on Friday night.
- Did he convert?
- No.
- But he's just going along now.
- He's going along.
- He is a assistant dean at his department at University of--
- Commonwealth University, in the social work department.
- He applied for a [INAUDIBLE].
- You will like this story.
- You will like this story.
- He applied for a Fulbright, which he got, and went to Israel
- for a year with my daughter.
- Isn't that beautiful?
- Oh, my god.
- It's an interesting story.
- So they went for a year with the two children.
- Erika spoke beautifully Hebrew.
- And she still has that Jewish singsong, which--
- but now she is losing it.
- She is four years old.
- It was too early.
- My daughter liked it very much.
- My son-in-law fell in love with Israel.
- He would love to live there.
- And it was funny to me.
- Those children have no money.
- He's a little-- an assistant dean and makes--
- and mother helps, to be truthful, because
- with two small children.
- And I was there twice.
- I was once there to visit, and the second time I
- took them for Pesach, all to Eilat
- for eight days' vacation, the whole family, my other daughter
- too.
- And when I was walking the streets of Haifa,
- there he was with Bob, which is my son-in-law, and says,
- this is where we are going to build our house.
- Costs only $1 million, or something like that.
- But he had this--
- he had that notion that this is a country where
- he would like to live.
- And they keep up their correspondence
- with all their friends.
- And he made now--
- he will not get it, because of the shortness
- of money at the universities--
- oh, he wrote an article.
- I wish I had it here.
- "Growing Old in Israel."
- A very, very discerning article, very nicely written.
- I think it's published.
- It's very interesting.
- But isn't it interesting that he was-- did you say a priest?
- Almost.
- Almost a priest, and did a complete turnabout?
- Yes.
- Mm-hmm.
- But again, your daughter has never
- questioned you about your life.
- No.
- Neither girl.
- No.
- No.
- Only now.
- And you-- oh, only now.
- Only now Anita wants to know who were her ancestors,
- and blah, blah, blah.
- Never, never a word.
- Only now.
- Now she becomes-- she is more Jewish than I am.
- And has really-- she's going to send her children now to-- they
- go to Sabbath school, to Hebrew daycare.
- They will have to go to a daycare center
- because she will be in school all day long.
- It's going to be very hard.
- So the kids will go to Jewish center daycare.
- She'll do it.
- She'll make it.
- She'll do well.
- Oh, she'll make it because I will
- see to it that she makes it.
- I'm sure.
- I told her, if you never try, you will never succeed.
- That's very true.
- When you came to Cincinnati, then
- you didn't need anybody's help.
- You didn't need any organization's help.
- You were self sufficient.
- Self sufficient.
- I worked very hard, Ms. [PERSONAL NAME]..
- I was-- too.
- I was first a maid.
- Oh, my goodness.
- Yes.
- I know.
- Which is-- which I'm very proud to admit.
- You should be.
- I am.
- I am.
- This was when I was first in New York.
- I worked for a family by the name of Schlesinger.
- Not very long.
- The second year of internship--
- I think I didn't mention it-- was in Dayton, Ohio.
- And there I became an ice-cream maker.
- For years afterwards I couldn't eat ice cream,
- knowing how I made it.
- [LAUGHS]
- You've got a good recipe?
- No.
- Not only don't I have a good recipe,
- but, oh, it was a terrible job.
- I had asked for another job, but I got it
- after I had accepted this one already.
- So I was in a room which had no windows, a windowless room.
- And I think no Black person at that time would accept this job.
- So I got it.
- Because I didn't speak English.
- Nothing.
- Very little.
- Well, in a way, this was a very good job
- because while the machine was going--
- the noise was really tremendous; you
- couldn't hear your own worth.
- I was studying English.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- When I start with an enumeration of my job,
- my educational background was good.
- You needed eight semesters for a doctorate in philosophy.
- I had six.
- So I was very near my doctorate in Europe.
- Therefore, it was easy for me to learn this job.
- Then, in order to better myself, I
- became a Western Union telegraph operator.
- You look so astounded!
- Oh, I think it's great.
- I think it's marvelous all the things that you did.
- Yes, I did, and learned it.
- And my English was already good at that time
- because you had to spell well, which I did,
- and you had to type fast, which I did.
- And then, later on, the children came, and I didn't do anything--
- after the time, actually, where I got my divorce,
- which was many, many years later.
- And then I became that which I really
- wanted, was started out as a hobby
- and later became a profession, which I loved.
- Which was?
- I was a stockbroker.
- Mm-hmm.
- How fascinating.
- I started with Westheimer Company.
- This is really something I am proud about.
- And my children are extremely proud about their mother,
- really.
- Do you still practice your stockbroker--
- No, I didn't, because I did it for seven years.
- I was with Westheimer first, and then with Hayden, Stone,
- which had taken over Westheimer.
- And even though they didn't take women at the time,
- don't forget, this was many years back I became a stock--
- I was really one of the first ones in Cincinnati.
- I became a employee of Hayden, Stone [? by the fall.
- ?] And then I worked for [INAUDIBLE] & Company
- for a year.
- Then I met my second husband, Dr. Abraham, Dr. Martin Abraham.
- And he really didn't want me to work anymore.
- And I decided, why not?
- I loved him well enough to give in on so small a matter.
- So I didn't work, but I kept it as a hobby, and I still--
- I was moderately successful, if I may say so.
- I think you were very, very successful.
- Did you ever think of going back to school,
- finishing your doctorate?
- I have thought about it.
- I have thought about it.
- But now it becomes irrelevant.
- As a matter of fact, I just sent in.
- I want to take--
- Martin died in February.
- He was an extremely good man.
- I'm sure he was.
- Very good.
- We really were absolutely suited to each other,
- even though it didn't last long, because he was sick
- six out of the 10 years, and he was in a nursing home
- the last four years.
- I visited him daily.
- His mind was gone at the end.
- But it was really what I would call an extremely good man.
- In fact, you were very lucky.
- Yes, I was.
- Very lucky.
- Do you ever go back to Austria at all?
- Never.
- Except once I did.
- No, I couldn't.
- I didn't bring myself.
- As Martin never went back to Berlin, where he was born--
- my second husband, he was German.
- He was a doctor already in Germany.
- He was considerably older than I. He would have been,
- this month, 80 years old.
- And he never went back to Germany,
- as he never wanted to go back to Germany.
- So I never wanted to go back to Austria.
- We traveled.
- We were in Italy, we were in Spain, we were in Switzerland.
- But we never went to any of those two countries.
- Which is understandable.
- We harbored so many bad feelings for.
- Yeah, that is-- that people ask me.
- [CROSS TALK]
- No, I just wanted to know whether you had ever gone back.
- Oh, gone back to school?
- Oh, yeah, I just am going to take--
- I want to take a little course in English literature.
- And I just send in my application yesterday.
- But I discussed it with a friend.
- I could possibly, but why work for a degree which
- would make it not possible for me to see Anita in Richmond
- so much.
- And I had really promised her.
- I said, honey, if you want to do that, I will do anything,
- financially or otherwise, and especially
- does she need me, otherwise also.
- Because with two small children and not enough money
- to have help, I can be called at any moment.
- And I said, I shall be with you at a moment's notice.
- Well, you're a real, true, good mother.
- I'm a Jewish mother, and I say it without hesitation,
- and I am a typical Jewish mommy.
- Well, looking back, your life here in America
- was successful due to your efforts.
- Yeah, it probably would have been
- more successful had I not been handicapped
- by my first marriage.
- Really, I must say.
- Because the way I see it-- and that might be--
- sound maybe arrogant or so, but I
- outgrew my husband very early--
- I can understand-- [INAUDIBLE]
- --in my marriage.
- So that is-- and he remarried, and he's happy,
- and he got exactly the wife that he deserved.
- So I feel we are worlds apart.
- We are not in the same class.
- Feeling so superior.
- It's very easy for me to accept it.
- But anyway, the second marriage was [INAUDIBLE]..
- That's the life [INAUDIBLE] I say that your life in America
- was very, very successful, and helped
- to erase-- not erase, but block out some of the memories
- that you have.
- Yes, and Katie, my younger one, didn't
- get married for a long time.
- Did Katie ask about your life in Germany?
- Very little.
- Very little.
- Now, I don't know if Katie-- yeah, Katie went to Israel,
- lived in Israel for half a year.
- She really wanted to marry somebody Jewish
- and didn't find the right person.
- Now the astonishing thing is that Katie--
- and I really don't say that because I'm the mother,
- but is extremely beautiful, very, very good looking.
- Sometimes I, the mother, look myself and can't believe it,
- that that's really my daughter.
- Does she practice any Judaism?
- No.
- No.
- She's a psychiatric social worker.
- She has two master's degrees, one in German
- and one in social work.
- And married right now, somebody who doesn't even-- didn't even
- know what a Jew was, I guess.
- It's a deep, deep [INAUDIBLE].
- We will want-- I wonder how this will end.
- But I think it probably also will.
- Katie knows what she's doing.
- She waited very long.
- And one must think positively.
- Oh, I do.
- I do.
- I certainly didn't put stones in her way
- or discouraged her on a personal basis.
- I think, first of all, she has to be happy.
- Thankfully [INAUDIBLE].
- Well, I want to thank you for--
- You're welcome.
- --reminiscing and looking back with us.
- Thank you.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Ella Abraham
- Interviewer
- Sue Platt
- Date
-
interview:
1981 August 11
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 sound cassette (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Abraham, Ella.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
American Jewish Archives
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Ella Abraham was conducted on August 11, 1981 for a joint project with the National Council of Jewish Women, Cincinnati Section and the American Jewish Archives of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion entitled "Survivors of Hitler's Germany in Cincinnati: An Oral History." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired a copy of the interview in June 1990.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:18:53
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511357
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