- --blown.
- You were 17 years old.
- How you found yourself, how you found
- a peer group or any agencies helpful, how
- you found a congregation or a religious associates.
- Just how you fit into the community.
- I didn't go to any agencies, but very helpful to me.
- After about a year and a half.
- Before that, I went no place except downtown
- to do janitor jobs, and go home and take a bath.
- And well, I went to school already right away, so far as
- that goes.
- I went to university at night when I did that.
- Immediately when you--
- So-- yeah, so I didn't have a comfortable chair,
- so I used to lay on the bed and write my notes.
- And I had a typewriter that I brought over
- from Germany, which I don't use anymore because the types is
- a little different.
- You have to be so careful.
- I got an American typewriter now.
- And I used to type the papers for school.
- I got good grades here in school, but I didn't finish.
- And then I met, through distant relationship,
- being a relative of a relative of a relative of mine, Martin
- Heldman, and in those days, also William Schroeder-- may
- he rest in peace.
- And there was another gentleman that I forget his name, Otto
- [PERSONAL NAME] all with the People's Bank,
- and with some building and loan association
- whose name I forget there, when the Dixie Terminal
- building in those days.
- That were-- became the Atlas later on.
- I don't know what it became.
- It's not there anymore.
- And they took me to the Rockdale Temple.
- Oh, they did.
- That's how became--
- Yeah, Martin Heldman, as a matter of fact, yeah.
- And they made me a member.
- And then I went there on Saturdays.
- I didn't have to work on Saturdays anyhow.
- And sometimes Friday nights.
- And I started getting interested.
- And then I started getting interested in politics, which
- I don't like to go into because everybody has different politics
- and it's not--
- Sorry, we're talking about your life.
- But I mean, I was mostly among a Democrat.
- In fact, I still am.
- But I'm not a fanatic.
- I mean, you vote for the person.
- Everything, certainly not for the party.
- But primarily I'm a Democrat, and I
- guess I'm what you call a liberal, which
- is not very popular nowadays.
- If you want to know somebody that I would pattern myself
- after, in my opinion, so I guess it
- would be Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York,
- and that type of liberal.
- They're a rarity nowadays.
- But when I first came here on the Roosevelt,
- there was a majority.
- Right.
- That's correct.
- So that you, for a year and a half,
- you really had not much social.
- No, nothing.
- I didn't know what to do with myself.
- Did you become active then in Rockdale.
- After a year and a half, I went quite often.
- I met the rabbis.
- I knew Dr. Philipson that year.
- I was a little bit scared of him,
- to be honest, because he was so big, and he had a beard.
- I don't know.
- He seemed like a very difficult man.
- Dr. Reichert and I, he's done a very good friend of mine.
- He's one of the very few friends I've kept.
- I read him Robert Frost's poetry [INAUDIBLE].
- That was the best friend.
- Of course.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But--
- Go ahead.
- I'm sorry.
- Did you make friends with the people that Rockdale, or did
- you have--
- I knew quite a few.
- Some of the people moved out of the city since that time,
- and some of them died.
- I met a-- they moved out.
- [? Herbie ?] Ornstein was a good friend of mine.
- His mother was a Levy.
- She was August and Charles Levy's sister,
- from Charles [? Mers' ?] Corporation.
- In fact, I was privileged to meet Mr. Charles Mers who's
- been dead a long, long time.
- He was a very, very fine gentleman.
- That Mers was one S. M-E-R-S. Yeah.
- I also knew the Mersses with the two S,
- but that was a different family.
- He used to travel most of the time.
- He was [? Manning ?] Ornstein's uncle and cousin--
- Charles Levy's uncle.
- They inherited his fortune when he died, the three of them.
- And I met another fellow.
- Yeah, yeah, Goodman.
- He is president from Elder-Beerman
- now, chairman of the board.
- Max Goodman.
- He lives in there.
- He moved after a short while from Cincinnati to Dayton,
- but we used to double date.
- You said you were not helped by any of the agencies,
- but that somebody was--
- Agencies.
- They tried once, but nothing much came of it.
- I forget that gentleman's name is.
- He was not related to me, but his last name was Levy.
- He lived on Gholson Avenue.
- He was very well known at that time.
- But that's almost 50 years ago, and I can't remember
- his first name anymore.
- He was helpful to you?
- Yeah, yeah, he tried.
- He went around with me trying to look for a job.
- But I finally found my own job.
- And the language barrier was no problem?
- You were in school, and you were--
- Well, my language was better then than it is now
- because I paid more attention.
- I took more care and I was more careful.
- I guess I got careless over the years.
- It didn't seem to make any difference.
- I did pretty good in business while I was in it.
- Unfortunately, I had a lot of experiences.
- I was very charitable.
- I gave to almost all the charities.
- I should have brought you my references.
- [LAUGHS] Your best reference is the way you're talking.
- Really, very enjoyable.
- And I made quite a few friends.
- But like I say, some moved away, some died.
- Then I made friends with [? Arnon ?] Mielziner.
- His father was a rabbi from the old Jewish temple
- on Reading Road in the southern part of Reading Road.
- Then it got to be a Greek church,
- and now it's a Black church.
- And his grandfather was president of the Hebrew Union
- College, Dr. Moses Mielziner.
- And we don't see each other much anymore.
- I'm sick, and he lives quite a distance from me.
- He invited me to his 60th birthday.
- But I can't go.
- I have diabetes also, and I can't
- eat and drink very much at all.
- I'm better off at home.
- But you might enjoy the sociability.
- Did you say that you'd also done some traveling, Mr. Mosse?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I used to get a lot of pleasure out of it.
- I don't like to go to the seashore, to the mountainside.
- I never did.
- I like to go to big cities.
- There's a lot of places to go and a lot of things to do.
- I've been in almost every major big city in the United States.
- And of course, I've been all over the state of Florida
- when I was in the Army.
- And then I was on troop movements.
- I didn't move.
- I was in charge of the troop movement,
- and I had to watch the recruits that they didn't desert,
- but nobody deserted, so it didn't make any difference.
- And I got to places where otherwise I might have gone.
- I myself went to South America, and about two years ago I
- was in Argentina.
- I have a cousin there, Professor [? Genlisch. ?]
- But he's very sick.
- He's about 80.
- And I don't guess he'll get any better anymore.
- Did you ever go back to Europe?
- No, I never went back to Europe.
- I was in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee,
- and almost any.
- Washington, whatever, any major United States city.
- What are your feelings about Israel?
- My feelings about Israel, I was not brought up to be a Zionist.
- We were not Zionists at home.
- We were not against them.
- We were neutral.
- I guess it's better to be neutral sometimes.
- Today, my feelings are that I welcome the State of Israel,
- and I wish them all the luck in the world.
- And I hope they do well.
- And I hope the Arabs won't be able to do them any harm.
- Personally, I wouldn't want to go--
- I mean, live there.
- I would rather live here.
- And I notice that quite a few people from Israel
- seem to come over here.
- But they have done a very good job,
- and whatever I can do to help them, I always did.
- My feelings are more for Israel than against.
- I'm not against it at all.
- But I'm not an ardent Zionist.
- No.
- Do you know of any Germans that were in your town who ended up
- in Israel?
- Do you have any acquaintances or friends or family there?
- There were a few of them.
- I got out of touch with them.
- In the beginning, almost as many as went to the United States.
- Later on, it was easier to get to the United States.
- The English made it so difficult.
- But I lost touch with them.
- Do you have any contact with anyone in Germany today?
- Not anymore.
- I did a couple of years ago.
- There was a Christian gentleman that married
- my aunt's sister-in-law, who was Jewish,
- and he hid her all through the war between his own--
- he was a farmer--
- between his own buildings and his brothers and cousins
- and uncles.
- They just kept moving around.
- And the Nazis never did catch her.
- And she only died a couple of years ago.
- And of course, she's dead now.
- And I don't have anybody at all anymore.
- That was the last one.
- She stayed in Germany after the war, then.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Long after the war.
- She lived for a long time after the war.
- So you have no contacts there today.
- No.
- My aunt Agnes, who married my Uncle Jacob, [INAUDIBLE]
- they moved here in Cincinnati, her sister
- married a gentleman who got [INAUDIBLE].
- And he got killed in the concentration camp.
- His sister is still living in Dayton, Ohio.
- She is in the 90s now.
- But she's still very alert and very active.
- In fact, she went to Florida on a vacation.
- I get together with them once in a while.
- Their name is Guggenheimer.
- Guggenheimer.
- But that's about all I can think of.
- You mentioned that you were friendly with Mr.
- [? Petrakov. ?]
- Oh, very, very.
- We were very good friends.
- So as a result of that, do you ever
- participate in the Jewish Center?
- Oh, yeah.
- For years I did.
- Now I can't anymore.
- But I always was one of the what they
- called sponsors or stewards.
- And I can give $100.
- 100 people give $100.
- Yeah, I did.
- And I gave to the--
- and it comes up every year, the day of fun
- or whatever it is here.
- Yeah, I think $200 and $300 at a time.
- Would you enjoy participating in the activities?
- They have a very active senior adult program there.
- No, it's too far from me from where I live.
- I don't drive and I don't have an automobile.
- It's too much for me.
- I'm not in good health now, neither mentally nor--
- "mentally" is a bad word.
- I mean, my nerves are no good.
- And-- not so good.
- And physically, I'm very sick.
- I don't want to bore you with all my diseases.
- That would take till tomorrow morning.
- Can you think of anything else that we could discuss,
- or that you'd like to add to your--
- [INAUDIBLE] Oh, when I came here the 1st--
- 3rd December in '57, the first 20 years, approximately,
- I was a very big movie fan.
- I went to the movies a whole lot.
- After that, I gave it up, and I started listening to the radio,
- and then to the stereo for classical music.
- I went in more for classical music, which
- I was trained to do in Germany.
- But the old movies, I know almost each
- and every one of them.
- The new ones, I don't know anymore.
- I gave that up.
- Now I have a very few friends left where I go.
- Sometimes they're sick, I mean, they're healthy and I'm sick,
- and they know it and they overlook it.
- They don't hold it against me.
- So you obviously, you haven't participated
- in the Cincinnati cultural life, in the symphony and the--
- I participated in all that till recently.
- I just recently gave it all up.
- I can't help it.
- I have no way to do it.
- Did you mention before, Mr. Mosse, that your father served
- in the war?
- With the German army.
- In the Germany army during World War I.
- Yeah.
- Did he ever talk about that with you?
- Yes.
- He seemed to be satisfied.
- Everybody treated him all right.
- And the Kaiser was not very much against the Jews.
- He had Jewish friends and all that, I mean.
- How this all came about is from the dire necessity.
- When people don't have to eat, they will do anything.
- And that's how Hitler got his followers.
- The antisemitism came later.
- I mean, he didn't get the followers for antisemitism.
- He got them because he got them jobs and he promised them
- they would have to eat.
- And he did keep his promise.
- They did have to eat.
- So I guess they kept their promise and turned antisemites.
- I guess the most impressive thing
- that I'm feeling about you is that you were 17 years old.
- You came here all alone.
- Well, I was really only 16.
- I got 17 two months later.
- And it sounds from what you have been discussing, that you really
- had no fears.
- You really were just looking forward to a new life here.
- Well, I've been to [? Romans ?] in [INAUDIBLE].
- Suit because the German suits, I had all-new suits.
- My parents bought them for me to come to America.
- But they didn't look good here.
- You could tell right away it was not an American suit.
- Material not exactly the same.
- They weren't in those days.
- I don't know how it is today, the same way as American suits.
- And they look different.
- And I didn't want to look so different.
- So I bought a suit by [? Romans. ?]
- It was very reasonable.
- It was a nice suit for summer.
- I come here in the middle of summer.
- Of course, [? Romans ?] is long out of business.
- Yes.
- Where we now?
- But you were very much alone, and yet you
- made yourself very comfortable here.
- Well, the first year and a half, I didn't do very much.
- After that, after I started living with Arthur and Evelyn,
- Mrs. Brand.
- Miss Brand just died a couple of years ago.
- She had a hiatus hernia too, unfortunately.
- I went out on Saturday nights.
- I used to take girls out.
- Now this is almost over 40 years ago,
- and I don't remember all their names anymore.
- But we used to either go to Beverly Hills
- or we used to go to the Pavilion Caprice, which
- always had a good promotions on Saturday nights.
- I remember it.
- Yeah, I went almost every Saturday
- till I got into the army.
- Then, when I come out, I didn't go so much anymore.
- Once in a while, but not that often.
- But I always did go out once in a while
- and take somebody to a concert or to the conservatory of music
- and all that, till about till I got pretty sick.
- The last years, the last two years, gradually till now.
- OK.
- Could we maybe finish off with thinking about perhaps what
- were your most impressive memories when you left Germany--
- the thing that stands out in your mind
- perhaps the strongest about leaving Germany?
- And looking back, how do you feel about your heritage?
- Are you German?
- Do you feel German, American, German-American,
- Jewish-American.
- This is very hard to answer.
- I feel I'm an American, actually.
- I was in the Army and all that.
- Our German heritage goes back 1,600 years as a fellow in New
- York.
- I don't have the $56.
- He wrote a book.
- It's out of print, but you can get it for $56.
- And it traces part of my mother's family, the Levys
- and Levy [INAUDIBLE].
- And that traces them way, way back, over 1,000 years almost.
- They lived in the electorate of Hesse-Kassel,
- which later on became Prussia.
- Everything later on became Prussia,
- and then it became Hitler, Nazism.
- And I still do feel--
- I don't feel German, like a German nationality or something,
- but I feel like a German Jew.
- I mean, I don't think I could ever
- be anything but a German Jew.
- All my ancestors were German Jews.
- And nationally, I feel like an American.
- That's the only way I could answer that.
- OK.
- Well, it's certainly been delightful sitting
- here talking with you, and I hope that we'll
- get together again sometime.
- Yeah, I'm very glad I met you.
- Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
- You're very welcome.
- I'm sorry I couldn't tell you any more.
- It's not so-- everything is not in my memory anymore.
- It's been too many years.
- Oh, no, [INAUDIBLE].
- On Monday afternoon, June 1, 1981.
- Mr. Mosse we'd love to hear now the story of your life,
- starting with when and where you were born,
- and what your life in Germany was like.
- Before I start, I would just like to say that tomorrow,
- if he would have lived, it would have been my father's birthday.
- He would have been 99 years old.
- Unfortunately, of course, he is not around.
- I was born in Dortmund--
- D-O-R-T-M-U-N-D-- Germany on September the 4th, 1920.
- Dortmund is in Westfalen--
- W-E-S-T-F-A-L-E-N-- Westphalian in English.
- That is the Ruhr district in the center of the iron and coal
- industry in Germany.
- It's a city from about 600,000 to 650,000 people.
- The school year is different in Germany
- than it is in the United States.
- It starts and ends in April.
- And I was born just in time, so I got [INAUDIBLE] to school
- one year earlier than most kids.
- I was a year ahead, not due to any special talent,
- but due to the date of my birth.
- My parents had a sister--
- a daughter, my sister.
- She was seven years older than I am.
- She was born in 1913.
- We lived in what you call in Germany an Einfamilienhaus.
- That means a house for one family, only a private home,
- which in those days--
- I don't know how it was in this country-- but in those days
- very few people did in Germany.
- In the big cities and small towns they all had their own.
- Was a very nice house.
- We had everything.
- We had a window garden where the grass grow and plants in it.
- And of course, I was very little then.
- I don't remember it so really good.
- Very nice house.
- My father was in the woolen business, W-O-O-L-E-N.
- And he had woolen yard goods.
- He was in the wholesale business.
- In Germany, this was observed very strictly
- under the Weimar Republic.
- There was a law that a manufacturer could not
- sell to a retailer, and a retailer could not
- buy from a manufacturer.
- There was a penalty against it.
- That means they had to go through wholesaler, one to two
- [INAUDIBLE].
- That means sometimes a medium-sized wholesaler
- could have very big department stores for customers,
- because they couldn't buy from the manufacturer themselves.
- That was not allowed.
- And this is the type of business my father did.
- He sold mostly to big stores, dry-goods stores, department
- stores.
- He had a pretty big territory.
- He had a couple people working for him.
- He didn't keep too much stock.
- Sometimes he would buy yard goods
- from the factories and the chains and labels on them
- and send them right back to his customers.
- And they never came into his place.
- He worked on, which was unusual in Germany, fairly small profit
- and on a very big volume.
- In those days in Germany, the opposite was customary.
- You worked on whatever volume you could get
- and you made a big profit.
- He was pretty progressive, I guess.
- I went to kindergarten, which was nothing like in the United
- States.
- In Germany, education is compulsory.
- Kindergarten is not compulsory.
- But education is not free.
- You have to pay for it.
- In the United states, I understand up
- to high school was free.
- In kindergarten, not many children went.
- I mean, just a few families.
- And this was unusual.
- I forget what system they used.
- It's too long ago, like Montessori
- or something like that.
- I even had a little girlfriend, a Christian girl.
- I forget her name by now.
- I was only four and a half years.
- Excuse me.
- Was your life mostly centered around Jewish people
- or was your--
- No, no, I wouldn't say that.
- You want me to pick a percentage,
- maybe something like 60-40, or 60% Jewish people,
- 40% Protestants or Catholics, even though there were more
- Protestants in Germany than Catholics.
- So it was a mix.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- We had quite a few Christian friends.
- We had a lot of Jewish friends too.
- So I got into the--
- see, there was, in Germany, a system
- where you could go to a public school, which
- was very reasonable, but where you didn't
- learn very much in a way.
- It was not very educational.
- It's just a custodial place, somebody
- to keep you and discipline you.
- I went to a private school, which was expensive,
- which was only for four years.
- That prepared you for the--
- well, in Germany, said, gymnasium.
- I don't like to say "gymnasium" because that denotes physical
- activity.
- And the gymnasium had very little physical activity--
- especially before Hitler.
- And I went to the gymnasium for 12 years
- before I immigrated to the United
- states, which is the same time as a high school education here.
- In those days, however, the German school system
- went up to 13 years.
- But shortly after I left, they changed that to 12 years anyhow.
- So it doesn't really make any difference.
- And my grades were medium.
- I was a intelligent child, but I was not very hard working.
- I had a lot of other interests, and they
- seemed to interest me more than school.
- In school, the teachers were tolerable.
- Even after Hitler, they were fairly nice to me.
- They didn't discriminate.
- Once in a great while, a few teachers
- made disparaging remarks, but you almost had to overlook it.
- It didn't happen often, and it was not that severe.
- What was your religious life like?
- Were you--
- I was fairly religious.
- The town I come from, there weren't
- as many Jewish people in Germany,
- percentage-wise as there are in the United States.
- I don't know if anybody realizes that there were only about,
- I think, only about over 500,000 in the entire country
- of Germany.
- In my town, city, were about 4,000 Jews.
- There were perhaps a few more, if you count
- a few small towns around there.
- But I can't go in there because I don't know.
- And we had a very nice synagogue,
- and it was what they called the [GERMAN].
- That's a liberal union, which in a way, in its ideas and ideals,
- comes to us to Reform Judaism.
- But in a practice like the Saturday and Friday night
- services, it's kind of in-between Conservative
- and Reform.
- It is not Orthodox.
- There were very few Orthodox people.
- They had their own little hall where they went to pray.
- But I don't know very much about that.
- I went to synagogue almost every Friday night, and then also
- holidays.
- On Saturdays I had to go to school, till after, Hitler,
- who wouldn't let the Jews go to school on Saturdays.
- So of course you got behind in your schoolwork
- because you missed the full day.
- And I went to the synagogue.
- I didn't realize that you had schooling six days a week.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Six days a week in Germany.
- And only one month's vacation in summer.
- And you were not allowed after Hitler to go on Saturday?
- After about a year or so after Hitler, yeah.
- Hitler came to power in 1933.
- I remember, I was on a ice-skating rink.
- It was in January, end of January.
- I didn't do so good with the ice skating.
- And the men announced from there--
- they already had a loudspeaker at that time.
- Germany was very progressive.
- They had a lot of things mechanically.
- And he announced that President Von Hindenburg
- appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of the German Reich.
- So we packed up our shoes and went home
- because we didn't know what the future would bring.
- You were that aware of it.
- Yeah, sure, sure, because all the propaganda.
- In '32, Hitler was running against Von Hindenburg.
- But actually he lost.
- But unfortunately, he was appointed
- chancellor anyhow a year later.
- I meant to say fortunately he lost.
- I don't know if I said fortunately or unfortunately.
- That's all right.
- [INAUDIBLE] Actually, I went to school the next day,
- and for a short period of time, nothing happened at all.
- Then the Nazis got a little belligerent, especially
- the grown-ups-- not so much in school.
- And they arrested some Jewish people.
- And even the rabbi in our city-- we had two rabbis.
- The older one was arrested.
- And they were put in a regular jail,
- not in any concentration camp, which they started shortly
- after they came to power.
- But these people were just in jail.
- And after a few weeks they let them out again.
- The only reason for that is that they were Jews.
- They didn't do anything wrong or didn't bother anybody.
- Did they--
- They-- go ahead.
- Excuse me.
- Did they bother your father at all as far
- as his business was concerned?
- No.
- They came, in those first few weeks, they came to our house.
- Late at night the Nazis had a habit
- of always coming late at night.
- It was their stock and trade.
- And looking for guns.
- Now, if they would have found a gun, revolver, a pistol,
- something like that, they would have probably taken
- the person in custody or put them in a concentration camp.
- We did have a gun in the house, but it was pretty well hidden.
- And also, my mother and father kept telling,
- the children are asleep, and it's so late at night.
- And the Nazis were not-- they were belligerent,
- but they were not very diligent in their search,
- and they didn't find the guns.
- So they left again.
- And the next day, my father took the gun,
- threw it into the Ruhr River--
- R-U-H-R-- to get rid of it, but fingerprints off.
- And that way we didn't have to worry about that anymore.
- After that, I don't remember nothing very bad
- for a long time.
- The Jewish people started to realize--
- they didn't do very much about it.
- They lived in Germany for maybe something like 1,600 years.
- They came in with the Roman legions
- as traders behind the Roman legions,
- selling stuff to the populace.
- And they felt very secure in Germany.
- They were wrong.
- They thought Hitler would change his mind,
- or they thought the government would change again,
- which it frequently did during the Weimar Republic.
- But nothing like that has been or ever happened.
- As far as the religion, I was very interested in religion.
- In fact, when I was a young boy, even.
- Yeah, but I was always a young boy in Germany.
- But I mean, during all that time,
- I had in mind to maybe become a rabbi.
- Yeah.
- The German rabbis were more involved in secular things
- than the American rabbis usually are.
- Some are and some aren't here.
- But they were.
- Especially before Hitler.
- After Hitler, they were no longer desired.
- Like I mentioned before we turned the tape on, another
- restaurant had signs up, "Dogs and Jews not permitted."
- They did this to please the Nazis, and if you went in there
- and would wait, and take your money,
- and nothing would happen at all--
- in spite of the sign on the door.
- Later on, that changed.
- But the first few years, that's the way it was.
- Did you continue your religious studies after?
- Yeah, I studied with a private tutor, a very religious man.
- Very nice man.
- He's dead, of course, by now.
- They're almost all dead.
- And according to the Orthodox United States standards,
- I really didn't know anything.
- But according to Reform standards here,
- I was pretty well up on my studies.
- And like I said, the size was about 4,000 people.
- And since most of them did go to the synagogue,
- we had an organ, a very beautiful organ.
- It was, like, before Hitler and the first year after Hitler,
- we had quite a few organists from the Catholic and Protestant
- churches play our organ.
- It was a better organ.
- They liked to play it better.
- That's very interesting.
- But after that, they were scared and they didn't come anymore.
- After Hitler was in power a couple of years or so,
- a Gestapo man would usually come to the Jewish services
- and sit there to hear that nobody would say anything
- against the country, and against the Nazis, and against Hitler.
- The rabbis, being smarter than the Gestapo men,
- were very careful to express themselves in such a way
- that they could not really pin them down.
- But everybody knew what they were talking about anyhow,
- except the Gestapo.
- It sounds like they were very discreet.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- There is feeling between Jews and non-Jews
- in the first couple of years before Hitler was very good.
- There were no Jewish neighborhoods
- like there are in United States.
- Jewish people who lived there, it was they
- found a nice house, or a nice home, or a nice apartment.
- And Jews, Protestants, or Catholics all mixed together.
- You couldn't find a Jewish neighborhood.
- There wasn't any.
- The synagogue was pretty close to the center of town,
- so people could come from all over.
- The first couple of years after Hitler came to power,
- Jews and non-Jews would still occasionally
- go to parties together, or invite each other.
- But after a couple of years, the propaganda got so bad,
- and the newspapers were so violently against the Jews,
- that that pretty much stopped.
- Not altogether.
- Just pretty much.
- Once in a while, you had a fairly courageous Christian
- that would still visit Jewish people--
- even till the time I left.
- It happened.
- Did your family have any employees in the home?
- Yeah.
- We had very nice girls.
- We had three maids.
- After a few years--
- and I don't remember how many-- you were not
- allowed to have German girls working for Jews anymore
- unless they were over a certain age.
- Over a certain age was very difficult. We tried that.
- That didn't work.
- Then we hired some girls that lived in Germany,
- but they're not German.
- They were Czechoslovakian, or Polish,
- or some kind of Eastern Europe.
- They were not too good, neither, by comparison,
- but you couldn't help it.
- And in the very end, just before we left,
- we had to hire Jewish girls that really didn't
- fit for that sort of job.
- But their parents run out of money,
- and they didn't have any other way to get along.
- But that's about the time I left.
- And I don't know too much about it.
- How about your father?
- Did he have employees?
- He had-- how do you say-- representatives on the road,
- yeah.
- But they were Jewish, so it didn't really
- make any difference.
- In the textile business, among other people were Jewish.
- Not all, but quite a few.
- In school, the boys knew me from the first day I went there.
- I stayed with the same class.
- And my few friends were not nasty to me.
- They didn't maybe invite me as often as they used to before,
- and gradually they got a little more distant.
- But altogether, nasty, I would not say.
- I didn't experience it.
- In fact, when I went to the--
- my uncle and aunt that also lived
- in Dortmund, the rest of them lived in the United States.
- My grandparents had 10 children, and left Germany in 1933.
- My uncle was a very intelligent man.
- And he said, this is going to come to no good in the end.
- If you read a book like Mein Kampf,
- and Hitler followed through on that, we'll all get killed--
- which was true.
- And I myself figured the same way.
- I figured every year it got a little bit more
- difficult in school.
- My friends got a little bit less friendly.
- I figured it was time to leave.
- I could not.
- Unfortunately, my sister, in 1933, my parents did that.
- They wanted to have another outside connection,
- because they were afraid too.
- Went to Holland, to Amsterdam.
- And she had a very good position there with Hirsch Copper.
- I think they are still in business.
- It was a big syndicate, a copper syndicate,
- for a partner in Palestine, which is now Israel.
- In those days it was Palestine.
- And partly in Western Europe.
- And she was a secretary, and she had a very good job,
- and made good money and got a lot of time off.
- She went to the beach at Scheveningen,
- which was the nicest beach in Holland.
- It still is.
- So your sister left Germany.
- Yeah, but she came on visits from time to time.
- She had a passport.
- We all got passports.
- But then it was still easy to get them, right after Hitler.
- There were no new regulations till months later.
- Were your parents' families and their parents
- also living in Germany at this time?
- No, my parents and family, my father and my mother's,
- both died before I was born.
- They were very old people when they died.
- As I said, they had 10 children, but they didn't have every year.
- They had them in intervals.
- And most of my uncles and aunts were old enough
- to be my grandparents.
- My mother was the youngest.
- The reason I came to--
- I made up my mind to--
- OK.
- The reason I came to Cincinnati--
- I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself--
- is because I had relatives in Cincinnati.
- So I could have just as soon gone to any other American city.
- But that's the reason I came here.
- It didn't seem to make much difference after I got here,
- but I didn't know that.
- Did they sign an affidavit for you?
- Yeah.
- My uncle Moses Levy--
- L-E-V-Y-- signed the affidavit.
- Julius Schild signed for most of the people in my--
- the opposite for me, given my--
- Oh, from your extended family.
- Extended family.
- But he had already signed too many
- and he couldn't sign anymore.
- So then Moses Levy starts.
- He was retired.
- He was in business with Julius's brother, Joseph Schild.
- So that was Levy & Schild pants company.
- Then he retired and he went with Arthur and Jesse Frank,
- was A&J Frank & Company.
- Yes, I remember.
- They are dead and out of business.
- I'm trying to remember when Julius Schild came over.
- A long, long time ago, Julius Schild.
- Julius Schild was my parents' age,
- and I mean, maybe even a little older.
- I think he came over as a young boy.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- OK.
- When I taught my, I guess you would call, the principal.
- We didn't call it that in Germany.
- But that's what it was, from the gymnasium,
- that I was going to leave the school and immigrate to America,
- he invited me to his office, and he brought out
- a bottle of schnapps.
- In Germany, any alcoholic beverage
- was known as schnapps here.
- They called schnapps certain, like peppermint.
- And so there, as long as it was alcohol, it was schnapps.
- And the principal brought that out.
- Yeah, and with a tray and two glasses.
- And he toasted me to my good health, and to my good future
- in America.
- He was a very leading member of the Nazi party,
- and he was one of the first people in our school
- that belonged to the National Socialistic Party.
- But that didn't seem to prevent him from being friendly to me.
- Very interesting.
- Well, nobody knew it.
- I mean, the room was closed, just like this room.
- And we were together.
- I wasn't going to talk about it and he
- wasn't going to talk about it.
- So it didn't make much difference.
- Now, what would happen in the Jewish congregation
- from 1933 till 1937, when I left, every--
- I don't know the exact intervals anymore.
- It's too long ago.
- Every month, something like that.
- Every three weeks, every five weeks.
- All of a sudden you would hear that a family
- had left overnight.
- Just gone.
- Dr. So-and-so went to Argentina, Dr. Leon, for instance,
- [INAUDIBLE] came to Cincinnati with his family very early,
- around '33 already.
- And a lot of these people had very good connections
- in the different countries, good friends.
- And so some of them had plenty of money,
- which they got out of Germany.
- And before Hitler, that is, they expected something terrible
- would happen.
- So you lost a few friends, gradually their children, too.
- So some of the kids you went around with
- were not there anymore.
- In the meantime, peculiarly to the conditions of Nazism
- and antisemitism, the Jewish youth movement
- was very, very active in Germany--
- very active.
- And of course, before Hitler, it had never been very religious.
- I mean, like Reform here, even more Reformed, practically not
- religious at all.
- But after Hitler, it seemed to have produced a reaction,
- and they started having Friday-night services
- with white tablecloth and candles.
- They didn't even know any Hebrew people like me.
- There were a few of us and no German Jews,
- and we had to say the few prayers.
- The rest didn't know.
- They said, amen.
- Did you become a member of the Hitler Youth,
- of the youth movement?
- Yeah, yeah.
- I was very active, and I was one of the leaders.
- And I was too young, but I was old for my age.
- I always stayed mostly with older people.
- I don't mean 70 or 80.
- I mean with boys or girls two or three years older than I am.
- One of my friends that I went to school with,
- Dr. Gerhard [? Norbeck, ?] became professor
- at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis.
- He was written up in Life magazine and in--
- no, Look magazine, and in the Playboy Club, he is one of them.
- I am out of touch with him, unfortunately.
- He is one of America's foremost experts on sex.
- So that's what he teaches.
- And he left when?
- He left much later than I did.
- He left when he had to.
- He was lucky he got out.
- But a lot of my friends did gradually leave.
- It seems like whenever one real good friend left,
- I picked up another one.
- There were quite a few to begin with.
- But when I left, there weren't terribly many young people left.
- Most of the old people, older people, were left.
- They did not leave Germany by the time that I left in '37.
- The business conditions were good,
- and except for a few occasions, more or less,
- and occasional crackdowns, nobody
- bothered the Jewish businesspeople that much,
- and they made very good money.
- The times before Hitler were not so really good.
- As everybody knows, we were in Weltwirtschaftskrise--
- a Great--
- Depression?
- --Depression, yeah.
- And of course, he had to work hard,
- and my father's friends still made a good living,
- but not as good as when, the first few years
- when Hitler was in power.
- In fact, some of the stores sold to the Nazis,
- and of course, he sold to the stores
- so he couldn't be boycotted.
- He didn't sell to any individual people.
- There was nothing to boycott.
- So his business was not terrible.
- Of course, they started things, like Jewish doctors
- and Jewish lawyers--
- that's about the time I left--
- could no longer have Christian clients.
- They had to make a living of Jewish clients,
- which they couldn't.
- Maybe they could and maybe they couldn't.
- I don't know.
- And another Jewish people went to Holland.
- It was neutral on the First World War,
- and they thought it would be neutral again.
- They smuggled a lot of their money out of Germany,
- which was not so terribly hard to do
- because the German-Dutch boundary was very irregular,
- And You could go into a what you would call
- a tavern in this country, and where the people sat down,
- had their drinks, was Germany.
- And behind the bar was Holland.
- The border went right through the bar.
- And there was race to get the money and diamonds.
- Jewish people bought a lot of diamonds.
- Diamonds were very valuable in those days in Europe.
- And you could smuggle them across the Dutch border easier
- than any place else.
- You could probably smuggle them over some other borders, too,
- but since I lived close to the Dutch border,
- I'm more acquainted.
- Also, they had tours in a beautiful excursion
- boat, kind of like--
- what was that boat they had on the river when I came over here?
- Island Queen?
- Island Queen, yeah.
- And they made excursions on the Rhine River.
- And you paid for the round trip before you got on the boat.
- And it went from Germany.
- The Rhine goes from Germany into Holland.
- So did the boat.
- They left you off in Holland to walk around and look
- at the trees, and the botanical gardens, and whatever there was.
- And you just went your own way and never went back on the boat.
- Since they already got your money,
- they didn't really care if you came back or not.
- In the end, the Nazis plugged up all those loopholes,
- but for many years they did not.
- So that was an easy way to leave--
- There were ways without taking too much of a chance.
- Once in a while, somebody got caught, and in those days,
- they didn't kill anybody, but they
- got sent to the concentration camp, which was almost as bad.
- And I guess, in the end, they got killed anyhow.
- But most of them got by with it.
- Was your father taking any money out of the country?
- Yeah.
- He took that to Holland.
- Not to me.
- I was only a young boy.
- My parents didn't.
- They loved me very much.
- They treated me very nice.
- They were modern people.
- I'm not that old.
- This was already modern times.
- And they let me do pretty much-- my sister too-- what we pleased.
- They were very nice to us, and gave
- us presents for the birthdays and holidays.
- And they didn't bear down on us.
- I mean, we were not brought up very strict.
- We were brought up very liberal.
- I mean, we felt almost grown up.
- I mean, we did pretty much what we had in mind to do here.
- Independent.
- Yeah, right.
- I taught my-- oh, yeah, I'm sorry.
- My sister then got married in Holland to a German, also
- from Krefeld.
- That's the pretty fair-sized city also in the Rhine district.
- That was a center for neckties in Germany.
- They made all the silk neckties.
- In those days, there was very little nylon,
- and the better-class people didn't want rayon.
- Wool ties some people wore in wintertime.
- And he went into some kind of business.
- It's so long ago.
- I think it was electrical business, which
- he didn't do too bad.
- And they took an apartment in Amsterdam.
- And I went with them.
- I was just a young boy.
- And we bought the furniture.
- It was very modern.
- I mean, it was, compared to something in this room here,
- real up to date.
- They didn't get much furniture, but it was two people.
- But what they got was real up to date and modern.
- And that was when the fluorescent lights first
- came out.
- And they had a fluorescent light over the sofa.
- The men that furnished the apartment took care of all that.
- Before that, in Germany, we didn't even
- have any fluorescent lights then.
- But in Holland they started getting them.
- They also, in those days already,
- had a few diesel trains instead of steam.
- And that was in Holland.
- In Germany, I don't know.
- They got them later.
- So did you say your father was taking money out of Germany?
- Yeah, yeah, but not enough.
- He still thought he would live his life out in Germany.
- He lived there.
- Our ancestors lived there.
- Like, I have cousins now in New York, first cousins.
- They're very old.
- He was a counselor, an attorney in Germany.
- And he went to America right in 1933
- because Kassel was one of the very few towns where
- there was some kind of a pogrom in process.
- And one of his law partners was very, very badly beaten up.
- I mean, he was hurt severely.
- I don't think he died, but I mean, pretty close.
- And he didn't want to stay there anymore.
- He didn't go back in the law business.
- He had an underwear factory on Long Island.
- He still works a couple of days a week, but he's close to 80
- now, even 80.
- And I don't guess he could work much longer.
- Most of my relatives that came over here are dead by now
- because they were so much older.
- What have I missed?
- What-- nothing.
- I was interested in how, then, you came.
- What precipitated that--
- My grades in school were good the first few years.
- Later on, as I said before, they wouldn't
- let the Jewish people come on Saturdays, which
- was a full day in Germany.
- They also wouldn't let us in on the--
- quite a few on various Nazi holidays who
- celebrated almost everything.
- Horst Wessel's Birthday, Horst Wessel song.
- Oh, right.
- Who was actually a procurer before Hitler's time.
- But they decided to overlook that.
- And all kinds of people that anybody hardly ever heard of.
- But they celebrated their birthdays, or memorials,
- or something.
- So we missed another school time,
- so you couldn't have such good grades.
- And some subjects, like mathematics,
- if you missed two days out of a week, you missed it.
- I mean, there is just nothing you can do.
- But I didn't pay any more attention,
- because I didn't care.
- I personally didn't realize that America
- would be very, very much different from Germany
- culturally, and educationally, and the background,
- and the whole attitude, really.
- I was never in America.
- How should I know?
- I was only a young boy.
- I did ask my parents and my sister and brother-in-law
- to come with me, but they didn't want to, and they refused.
- I brought a little money with me when I came over here.
- You came alone.
- Yeah, I came alone.
- I came very nice on the Statendam out of Rotterdam.
- Oh, I spent a long time in Holland, the last time,
- about six weeks, like a vacation,
- before I came over here.
- In Amsterdam.
- But then we had to go to Rotterdam
- because that's where the steamers left for the United
- States.
- And it was very nice.
- I had a very nice cabin, and the food was very good,
- and it was a nice crossing.
- And there were a little bit faster boats,
- but the Statendam was a good boat.
- I think it took about 10 days.
- I don't remember exactly.
- It could have been 11.
- Excuse me.
- You were about 17 years old at that point.
- Not quite.
- I was 16, but I was going on-- two months later I was 17.
- Had you studied English at all in school, Mr. Mosse?
- I studied a little English in school,
- and I had a tutor in American.
- He was not even English.
- He was American.
- And Mr. Ryn--
- R-Y-N; must have been Irish originally-- he lived downtown,
- and he didn't make much money, and he took pupils on
- to teach English.
- He apparently didn't teach me very well because I never
- did get rid of the accent.
- But that I can't tell.
- When I come over here, quite a few people
- received me at the Union Terminal.
- I come by Pennsylvania.
- Yeah, Pennsylvania railroad on the Pullman train.
- And I had a good time on the train.
- And these people were all pretty much strangers to me.
- They had visited Germany, and I'd seen them once or twice,
- but that doesn't make them very intimate or anything.
- And they didn't have very much, I'm sorry to say,
- very much interest in me.
- Unfortunately, a lot of other German Jews from Germany,
- I mean, had the same experiences.
- They didn't understand the situation in Germany.
- They thought we came here because we didn't have nothing
- to eat in Germany or something.
- Nothing like that was the case at that time.
- We came here because we didn't want to stay in Germany.
- And they helped me.
- We were too friendly.
- They had to support us or something, which
- was not the case neither.
- So they were not very friendly.
- So your impression was that you don't remember them
- as being extremely warm or helpful?
- No, not nasty or anything, but highly disinterested.
- Once in a great while they'd invite you for dinner.
- So you came just before the dinner, and shortly after dinner
- they said they were tired, or they had
- to read a book or something.
- Then you went home again.
- I always had an apartment of my own.
- I never stayed with anybody.
- From the time you came here.
- You were 17.
- Where did you move?
- Where did you live at that point?
- First I lived in a little room on Dana Avenue.
- The family rented out a furnished room,
- and I had a bathroom.
- And then I moved to some very nice people.
- Her husband died.
- Mrs. Brand.
- She just died a couple of years ago.
- Arthur Brand's mother, the builder.
- And Evelyn Leshner married David Leshner,
- was by the way, the Leshner Corporation from Hamilton.
- Yes, of course.
- Yeah.
- And I stayed with them for about three and a half years,
- I would say.
- Maybe a little longer.
- I forget.
- It's a long time ago.
- And they were very, very nice to me.
- That's the first time I felt kind of like a human
- being again.
- Like, people were nice to me.
- They took me to see their friends when
- their friends visit, and they asked me
- if I wanted to stay downstairs and have a visit.
- Were you more or less boarded with them.
- Is that what you would say?
- I didn't eat, except they gave me a lot of stuff to eat anyhow.
- When I came home in the evenings, I ate out.
- But I stayed with--
- it was very nice.
- It was almost like Evelyn and Arthur were almost
- like a brother and sister to me.
- That's interesting.
- My relatives gradually, over the years,
- when they saw that they didn't have to support me,
- then got a little friendlier.
- But not very.
- We never got very close.
- How were you supporting yourself at this point?
- I didn't understand about education, and nobody taught me,
- and nobody taught me anything.
- In Germany, if you had a gymnasium,
- education was considered very good,
- and you could get almost any kind of a job.
- Here, this doesn't mean anything.
- I didn't know what to do with myself.
- I had a couple part-time jobs that I don't remember
- and don't want to go into them.
- Were not very good, and I didn't make much money.
- I didn't need the money so bad.
- The jobs were no good.
- I went to the university three nights a week for--
- I forget.
- Either two or three courses a night.
- I took about as much as I can take.
- And then I went for a half a year during the day.
- And then I got tired of that again,
- and I started looking for these--
- I mean, better-- not these, but better job anyhow.
- And I finally--
- Evelyn Brand got married to David Leshner,
- and Mrs. Brand gave up the apartment, so I had to move out.
- So I rented a little apartment on North Crescent Avenue
- from some people by the name of Turner.
- They were in the outdoor construction business.
- Also very nice view.
- I never got too close to them.
- I had my apartment on the third floor.
- And it was pretty nice.
- And I had a bathroom.
- And the sun was shining in through the window.
- And I lived next door to David Levine, he's L-E-V-I-N-E,
- he is dead now.
- Been dead since '68.
- And he took a liking to me.
- And I started eating breakfast there sometimes early
- in the morning, and I started eating--
- not every night.
- I ate once in a while, by my relatives.
- I ate out sometimes.
- But I started eating dinner there once in a while.
- They had four children.
- They were small then.
- I wasn't so old, either.
- And he took me into his business,
- and I stayed with him till he died in 1968.
- He was originally in the wool business.
- I can't pronounce it, obviously, but W-O-O-L.
- And then he went into the furniture business,
- and furniture company, and I stayed with him there.
- And altogether, I was with the company for 43 years.
- I was treasurer, and I had a very good job.
- Unfortunately, he left the--
- he didn't leave them, but he gave it over to his son-in-law,
- Jerome S. Cohen, who was also very nice and very kind to me,
- and very agreeable.
- But unfortunately, there were things
- that I can't go into detail here in the families
- which I have nothing to do with.
- And the management and ownership changed.
- And after 43 years there, I wasn't there anymore.
- I don't truthfully remember.
- We got into an argument.
- Whether I got fired or whether I quit, I can't say.
- I don't know.
- I even wrote that on my report to the government.
- I still don't know.
- But I wasn't there anymore, after 43 years and one day.
- If Mr. Levine had still been living,
- I would have been there for the rest of my life, of course.
- So that was fairly recently.
- That was about a little bit over two years ago.
- I haven't done any good ever since I got very sick.
- I can't get a job and I can't make a living.
- I made a very good living over the years.
- I was with some furniture, but I also lived very well,
- and I had a lot of friends.
- And I spent a lot for charity.
- And I traveled a whole lot.
- I was in South America.
- I was in the old country, but I visited all my relatives.
- I didn't know how important the education was here.
- I went later on [INAUDIBLE] when I was in the Army and the Army
- specialized training program.
- But I never did finish anything.
- You were in the Army, did you say?
- Yeah, I was in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946.
- I'm a veteran.
- Oh.
- Did you go overseas?
- No.
- I did get a veteran's pension, but under the new system
- now, they cut it off, and I don't get it anymore.
- Just the last couple of months, which makes it very hard on me.
- I'm not married.
- I never got married.
- I went out a whole lot.
- I kind of got engaged, but I never really did get married.
- That's when I got drafted, so that broke that up.
- And didn't have any children.
- And I forgot I had a job for life after 43 years.
- So I spent almost all my money.
- I was pretty well fixed at one time.
- I mean, I was inherited a lot of money from my relatives
- when they died, but I spent that too.
- Could we go back for a moment?
- Yeah, sure.
- What happened with your parents?
- Did they ever leave Germany?
- My parents went to Holland, and he
- found a very nice man who was in the same line of business, also
- a Jewish man.
- He was a Hollander.
- And they went in business together,
- and he did pretty good there.
- So he left Germany about a year after I did.
- He sold everything.
- He got everything, I think, out of Germany, what he could
- get out, his furniture, too.
- What happened to it, I don't know.
- The Nazis come in, and they took everything away.
- And they took my parents, and my sister, and my brother-in-law
- to the concentration camp.
- And after I got out of the Army, I
- didn't know that while I was in the Army
- I could suspect or think about things, what I didn't know--
- I had no contact--
- that they got killed.
- Mrs. [? Okonek ?] from the American Red Cross--
- that was on Auburn Avenue at that time.
- Her husband was a captain.
- He was killed in the army.
- She read me the whole story from the International Red Cross,
- that they were all taken to the concentration camp and killed.
- I think-- it's so long ago-- one of them jumped off the truck
- and got shot.
- But anyhow, they all got killed.
- But they did have a record of all that.
- Yeah.
- That's the only records they had.
- They didn't have a record of anything else.
- But that was very shortly before the end of the war.
- And if we would have won the war a little bit,
- a few months sooner, they would still be alive.
- But unfortunately that was not the case.
- Now after I made a fairly good living,
- I got very interested in things, and I was with almost all
- the organizations here.
- I was on the board from the College
- Conservatory of Music and WGUC.
- I had to resign all this.
- Now I don't have any more money.
- And the Zoological Society.
- And, oh, quite a few more.
- I can't remember them all.
- And I was also active in the Rockdale Temple.
- But sometimes I felt, like I say, I was interested in Judaism
- when I was a young boy, and sometimes I
- felt like a little bit more--
- it isn't any more religion.
- That's the wrong expression.
- A deeper type of religion.
- And quite often I went to Adath Israel.
- I happened to have a very good friend who belonged there,
- in addition to all the other friends I got.
- Unfortunately, he passed away.
- He was one of my best friends all these years.
- Herman [? Petrakov. ?] You've probably heard of him.
- Oh, yes.
- Yes, yes.
- We used to read English poetry to each other on the telephone.
- Very few people do that, and discuss a symphony,
- and things like that.
- I also went to the symphony, sure.
- I went to all the openings and from the federation, whenever
- they had these big openings, with a program and all that.
- I sponsored it.
- And I took people, and I spent all my money.
- I thought I would keep making it.
- Did they give you a pension?
- No, nothing since.
- I never got anything.
- All I get is a disability, Social Security.
- I also got the Veterans Administration.
- Between the two, I could make a living.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Henry Mosse
- Date
-
interview:
1981 June 01
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
- Mosse, Henry.
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
American Jewish Archives
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Henry Mosse was conducted on June 1, 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 08:19:12
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn511416
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- See Rights and Restrictions
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- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
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