Oral history interview with Gertrude Froehlich
Transcript
- My name is Maran Beth Ostchega.
- Today is March 27, 1984.
- I am here to interview Gertrude Froehlich, who
- is a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
- I am doing this under the auspices of the Oral History
- Project, Jewish community Council of Greater Washington.
- The purpose of this interview is to add
- to the oral history of the Nazi Holocaust
- so that through this living memorial
- future generations will know what happened.
- With this knowledge, hopefully we
- can prevent any such occurrence in the future.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- Please tell us your name and the city and country
- in which you were born.
- OK.
- My name is Gertrude "Fanny" Froehlich.
- I was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany,
- in March 4, 1923.
- Could you describe those who compromised your household
- before the war?
- They comprised my household--
- Who was in your household?
- OK.
- My parents, mother and father, and four children.
- And we had help, as far as I can remember.
- I think two maids staying with us, one for the children
- and some other people that came in the house, as far
- as I remember.
- Would you like to tell me their names
- and relatively where they were in the family?
- Are you the youngest?
- The oldest?
- No, I am the oldest of the second marriage.
- My mother was married before.
- And her husband died in the First World War.
- And I had an older half-sister.
- But I'm the oldest child of the second marriage.
- And then I had a brother, which is 2 and 1/2 years younger than
- I, and a younger sister, who was 5 years younger than I.
- Would you like to tell me their names?
- Oh, my parents also?
- Your parents, sure.
- OK.
- My father's name was Willy Bloch, B-L-O-C-H.
- My mother's name was Freda Vueit.
- And that's V-U-E-I-T. That was mixed up, too.
- My oldest sister was Johanna, Joan actually, Goldschmidt.
- She kept her father's name.
- And then mine, I was Gertrude, and then
- my brother Rudy and my sister Edith.
- OK.
- And were the people who you say helped in your house,
- did they live with you?
- Did they come into--
- Yes, they were live-in help.
- The two people were live-in help.
- But then some people came in to wash or iron or so,
- which was customary in those days in Germany.
- I would say we were maybe upper middle class, middle class
- to upper middle class.
- My dad owned a winery.
- I mean, he made wines and liquors and things like that.
- Was that a large place?
- Did he employ a lot of people?
- No, it wasn't too large.
- He was mostly known to make eggnog.
- He bottled eggnog mostly.
- That was a something special in Germany.
- And he bottled it.
- I can't remember how many people worked for him,
- and the factory was not in the house.
- I don't remember too much about that.
- Was the area you lived in particularly a Jewish area?
- Well, it was southern Germany.
- It's very close to Switzerland and France, kind of in a corner.
- It's the Black Forest area.
- And there were a lot of Jews.
- But I don't know if I could say typical Jewish area.
- I had Jewish friends.
- There was a big synagogue that-- or there were two synagogues.
- There was an Orthodox and another one we attended.
- And Freiburg, I remember as a small child,
- became what they called a city, 100,000--
- was the smallest large city in Germany at one point.
- It was also a big medical center,
- had a big medical university, was very known for that.
- And it was in the foothills of the Black Forest.
- It was very pretty.
- I understand it was mostly destroyed during the war.
- It was bombed.
- It was rebuilt. I was there two years--
- two years ago for the first time.
- I went back, and mainly because my mother
- wanted to go to the cemetery.
- Now, my parents were born not too far away from Freiburg,
- but in smaller towns further away.
- So the family was at least two generations--
- My father traced our--
- his family roots back to the 1400s.
- In Germany?
- In Germany, his--
- I think on his father's side.
- On his mother's side, they came from France, Alsace-Lorraine,
- which I might mention right away,
- he was able to get his French citizenship back.
- And because of this, all the family
- would get it when we moved to France during Hitler's time.
- And I firmly believe that what saved us from being deported
- and among other things at least.
- And your mother's family was in Germany for how long?
- My mother's family, I have--
- I don't know.
- But I know that my great-grandparents--
- or her great-grandparents lived in Germany already.
- That much I know--
- in a small town.
- Perhaps I can find out because I'm going--
- my mother is still alive.
- When I go back this summer, I might be able to find it,
- find that out.
- But there were-- both families were, you know, in Germany.
- My father served in the German army, so did my uncle.
- And my mother's first husband got killed--
- Fighting for Germany?
- Fighting for Germany in the First World War.
- And my father at the time of the First World War
- had a business in Switzerland and was working there
- and came back to Germany to fight.
- And subsequently, you know, stayed.
- What would you say the educational background
- was of the family members?
- My father had at least--
- what they call it?
- I would say, lycée.
- Mhm.
- And my mother--
- I think she-- I'm not really sure if she went to the lycée,
- but at least through high school.
- I know they would at least have had both high school, which
- in those days was quite--
- you know, quite a bit, I think.
- I was thrown out of the German schools in fourth grade.
- So my only formal education is for four grades in school.
- And I always said, I was fortunate to learn how to read
- and basic math.
- And I have educated myself from that point on.
- Can you expound a little bit on your family's
- religious observances?
- And you've mentioned there were two different temples
- and you went to--
- We went what you would call here probably Conservative, not
- Orthodox.
- And I think, my grandparents background was Conservative.
- Of course, I think, in Germany you either were Reformed
- or you had the very Orthodox, you had a segment.
- But I would say pretty much like what [? Charite ?] is,
- and I belong to it.
- That was pretty much my background in Germany.
- But we kept kosher, up to the war anyway.
- My grandparents did.
- We kept the holidays.
- I mean--
- And Sabbath, what kind of observance would there be?
- We would go to shul [LAUGHING] quite a bit,
- maybe not every Sabbath.
- But we had, you know, kiddush Friday night.
- And we had our Shabbat dinner.
- And usually, we didn't work.
- I was a small child in Germany.
- But it was kept, you know, and visited the grandparents,
- things like that.
- Was there a separate religious education for the children?
- Yes.
- In Germany, it was mandatory.
- And the hazzan and the rabbi came to school, I think,
- five days a week.
- We had an hour of religious education in school.
- It was part of the curriculum.
- We did get marked on it in our report cards.
- They came to the German school--
- They came to the German school.
- And the children would either go to Catholic or Protestant
- instruction or Jewish.
- And how long-- you said you were thrown out in fourth grade.
- Was this all the way through the fourth grade?
- That was through the fourth grade.
- That usually went all the way through eighth grade,
- I think, in Germany, if you didn't go to the lycée, which
- I am not aware of.
- I don't know if in the lycée that was still maintained
- because I never went as far.
- I did go for another four years to a one-room school in the--
- by that time, I had moved from Freiburg--
- it was my grandparents-- to Emmendingen,
- which was about an hour away by train from Freiburg.
- And my father had left for France by then.
- And my mother and the children stayed with my grandparents.
- And there was a Jewish teacher who
- had taught in the regular German schools.
- And all the Jewish children had to go to his classes.
- So you had from first grade to eighth grade in this class.
- And if I remember correctly, I finished almost to eighth grade
- there, except we learned very little.
- He was not, unfortunately, the best teacher.
- And he had a cope with eight grades.
- And it was very difficult. I don't
- recall learning too much there.
- So--
- Could you describe your contacts with non-Jews before the war?
- As I remember, I had non-Jewish friends.
- I played with neighbors' children.
- I don't recall many names.
- Of course, I went to school for a while with them.
- I also remember that--
- of course, there were non-Jews that worked for my parents
- and my grandparents, which were very well treated.
- I remember being ill, very ill, at one
- of my grandparents' house.
- And the Catholic sisters at that time
- would come and take care of sick people.
- And she came around.
- She also took care of anybody who was sick in the household.
- And in the small town of Emmendingen,
- there were, as far as I remember,
- very much liked by the Jewish people.
- And the Jews would give them maybe not money,
- but sometimes donation for helping them.
- And I recall that very vividly that they came to the house
- when people were sick, like visiting nurses or something
- like that, to that extent.
- I remember that my grandparents, at least,
- and my parents got along very well with non-Jew and did
- possibly--
- I had left Germany when my grandparents were
- sent to concentration camp.
- But I understand that some of the people
- were bringing food to them and to hide them out.
- So not all the Germans were bad.
- Did you have any antisemitic experiences?
- Yes, I remember very vividly when I went to the Jewish--
- I will call that the Jewish classes, the Jewish school,
- that the children would holler at us,
- dirty Jew, and things like that.
- And at one point, several kids would throw me
- down a big staircase--
- I remember that very well--
- and holler at me, you a dirty Jewess, or something like that.
- And of course, as Hitler went along,
- this became more prevalent in the streets and so on.
- And--
- By this time you were living in your grandparents--
- Yes.
- --town?
- And--
- Yes.
- So it--
- It was a much smaller town than Freiburg.
- And people were known, you know, mostly.
- And I remember it became more difficult to go places.
- You wouldn't go in the cafes anymore or things like that.
- If we're trying to place this in a date period--
- I left my grandparents' house in Germany in January '38.
- So that was between '33 and '38.
- It was before the November of the Kristallnacht.
- And--
- I could say then that by the Kristallnacht,
- my grandfather and uncle, my mother's brother,
- was taken to a concentration camp that night,
- but they were released later again.
- And then they were taken again.
- And you said by then your father had left--
- My father left shortly after Hitler came to power in '33.
- He lost his business.
- And I'm not really sure that it was solely
- because of Hitler at that time.
- I think he had problems with his business.
- So I-- from what I understand.
- I don't think--
- I think Hitler might have had something to do with it.
- But I think that wasn't--
- I don't think that was the only reason.
- But he felt that-- he believed-- you know, Mein Kampf, I think
- he had read it or whatever.
- But my mother preferred to go to her parents.
- She didn't-- they didn't believe less in it,
- which was a common thing for the German Jews.
- They did not believe it could happen, especially where I
- come from in southern Germany.
- I think Jews and non-Jews got along very well compared
- to some of the other parts of Germany, I understand.
- And we just wouldn't believe it that things like that
- could happen.
- Do you remember discussions of this issue at home?
- Very vaguely.
- I was only about 9 or 10.
- And usually, those things weren't
- discussed in front of children at that point.
- Do you think that when your father left,
- he did so with the intention of going and trying
- to re-establish himself and then bring your family there?
- Yes, absolutely.
- I think he would have brought us there earlier,
- but he had very many problems to find work
- till he became a French citizen, which took some years.
- And even then, it was difficult. He was out much money.
- And I think my mother just did not want--
- did not want to go with four children.
- She-- at least she knew she had to eat where we were, which--
- I personally have often thought she should have.
- But--
- Gone with him when he went?
- Or at least sooner.
- But then she was also worried about her parents
- as things, you know, graduated.
- So I cannot put myself in my mother's, you know, ideas.
- But it did-- it began to get a lot worse.
- And my father had found some work.
- And so we left.
- And we went to Switzerland first,
- if I recall it, for a day or two, and from there to France.
- And my mother had some kind of a trouble going out
- of Germany for some reason.
- I don't know if she had an exit visa or whatever.
- But we finally did make it.
- And we came to Paris.
- When you left, were you able to take things with you?
- A suitcase with clothes, nothing else, just what we had
- pretty much, that what we could carry.
- But my mother had sent before that some furniture,
- I think, to my dad, or somebody--
- she got some of the things out which were,
- I think, her silverware or whatever with other people.
- I don't know how that worked.
- I can't remember.
- But I remember we had some furniture
- and I think our dishes and silverware.
- I remember those kind of things, which my mother used
- to visit my father and take things out in the early years,
- I guess.
- But that was subsequently all taken, again, whatever
- we had when the French--
- when the Germans came to Paris.
- And I understand it was more the French people that
- looted the apartment that we had to leave.
- Then it was perhaps the Germans.
- But we lost everything a second time.
- How much of what was going on in the war
- were you aware of where you were living?
- Was it a big part of your life?
- Did you hear frequently about the war?
- I was right in the middle of it in France.
- My first recollection was--
- of course, we heard that Germany was at war.
- We heard that they went into Poland, Czechoslovakia,
- at that part, we heard in France.
- And then subsequently, we heard that they
- went through the Maginot Line and were going to be in Paris.
- And we had heard--
- by that time, we knew that they had
- persecuted the Jews in Germany, that they had sent them
- to camps.
- But like anybody else, I was never--
- I think my parents not either--
- aware of the camps where they, you know,
- concentration camps like Auschwitz and those camps
- where they gassed them.
- We were never aware until after the war
- what really had happened.
- We knew that they were deported.
- But we didn't know just how bad it was.
- I remember people wearing the star, which
- was Jude on it, Jew on it.
- I myself have never worn it.
- My husband did.
- I had left Germany before that was necessary.
- And in France we went underground.
- So we never did wear it.
- But French Jews did wear it also.
- I think myself and my family were rather fortunate
- for some reason.
- We got around some of it.
- But--
- Before we move to your experiences in France,
- I would like to go back, if you can tell me
- a little bit about what happened to the people that remained,
- who exactly of your family got out and who remained
- and what happened to them.
- Yeah, OK.
- My-- let me see where to start this.
- My immediate family, my parents and brothers and sisters
- did get out.
- My grandparents, my uncle--
- my mother had one brother, and he was also
- in the same town as my grandparents.
- His wife came to the United States in the '30s.
- I don't recall when, I think possibly
- after we left to France, I can't recall that.
- He stayed back with my grandparents with one daughter.
- As I said before, the two men were sent to concentration camp.
- They were released.
- And I think after he was released,
- my uncle came to the United States.
- His wife had him come.
- He was an invalid from the Second World War.
- He had--
- The second or the first?
- The first one.
- I'm sorry.
- That's OK.
- It's a good thing you added that in.
- He made it with his daughter to the United States.
- His wife went first.
- My grandparents were subsequently
- sent to a concentration camp in France, to Gurs in France.
- And I was able to get them out of there.
- And they subsequently also came to the United States.
- This both sets of grandparents?
- One set.
- My father's parents died during the Hitler time, at normal--
- Of normal causes?
- Of normal causes.
- One of my father's brother also got out and came to France
- and also became French with his family.
- They all got out--
- let me see.
- One of these--
- I think the immediate family--
- everybody get out.
- My aunt went to South America.
- She still lives in Montevideo.
- Another brother had left as a young man, which
- wouldn't make any difference.
- Where did he go?
- He went to San Salvador as a young man, long before Hitler.
- I think my father's oldest brother.
- My-- let me see, there were--
- and one other-- the two other brothers, the three brothers,
- all went to France and all became French
- and survived with their families.
- Did the family in Germany belong to any of the movements?
- Were they Zionist?
- Were they-- did they belong to any Jewish organizational
- movements that may have influenced their decisions?
- I don't believe so, except the synagogue and what
- that involved, you know, the Sisterhood.
- I know my grandfather and my grandmother and my mother
- belonged to and belonged to the synagogue.
- But we didn't belong to a Zionist movement then.
- OK.
- Then moving on to France.
- You left with your family as a child.
- Mhm.
- And you went, you said, via Switzerland?
- Yeah.
- How did you travel?
- By what means of transportation?
- By train, which is still very common in Europe.
- And do you remember anything about the journey, anything
- that impressed you about it?
- Did you travel openly?
- Yes, yes.
- At that point, we--
- I thought-- there was some problem
- at the crossover from Germany to Switzerland,
- but I can't recall what it was.
- It was a small problem, and we made it out.
- I don't remember exactly what the problem was.
- I only know my mother had a problem,
- but it didn't take very long or anything.
- And we did make it out.
- And, of course, France in '38 was still
- not occupied until '39.
- And you went to where?
- We went to Paris.
- My father had gotten an apartment.
- And my brother and younger sister
- were enrolled in school in the French public school.
- I forgot to mention that my half-sister, my older sister
- came to the United States in-- and I think she left in '37.
- Being that my father never legally adopted her,
- she could not have become French.
- And my mother had uncles in New York.
- They had come as young men to this country
- and did send her an affidavit.
- And she also had a boyfriend.
- So she left for the United States
- rather than come with us to France.
- She was six years older than me so she was a young woman.
- And she also could not finish her schooling.
- Also, she had gone partly to the lycée, and she learned--
- she became a seamstress yet in Germany.
- She was an apprentice and subsequently
- worked here for a while.
- Things really come back.
- I hadn't thought about it for a long time.
- When the younger siblings were enrolled in school--
- you did not--
- My parents wanted to enroll middle school.
- I was at that time 14, I think.
- 14, 15, yeah.
- I-- no, I was not.
- Was I?
- Yeah, about 14, I think.
- They wouldn't accept me in the French schools
- because I did not speak one word of French.
- And they felt they could not put me in first grade,
- but I could put my-- or second grade.
- But my brother and sister could go.
- My parents didn't have the means to send me to private school.
- So they got me a job in a household
- with some Jewish family, which I ran away
- the first night [LAUGHING] after encountering bedbugs.
- And they were rather mean to me.
- There were-- I was a young girl.
- And there were, you know--
- I think there's prejudice among Jews, too.
- They felt, well, I was a German Jew.
- And, you know-- and I had to work hard and all that.
- And I think that the second day I
- ran away and found my way back home
- without speaking the language.
- Were they French who had been in France--
- French too--
- --for a long time or were they from outside of France?
- Do you know?
- I think they must have been there a long time.
- I really don't know.
- But subsequently, I did get another job
- to take care of a little boy.
- And that was very close to the Champs-Elysee.
- I remember the very nice neighborhood.
- And it was a lovely family.
- I took care of a little boy who was about 2 at the time
- and learned a lot of French from him.
- And they were Jewish people by the name of Axelrad.
- He was a dentist.
- He was a doctor.
- And they were very pleasant to me
- and treated me almost like a family.
- And I used to, you know-- but I took care of the little boy,
- took him for walks, and fed him and so on.
- And I stayed there till.
- '39, just before the Germans moved into Paris.
- And I-- my parents had me come home
- because my father said we had to get out of Paris,
- we had to get away from the Germans and at least go south.
- And we left with our clothes and just
- what we could carry on a knapsack
- and started out walking south from France.
- We ended up with the French retreating army
- and went along with them, and a couple of times, got
- bombarded and strafed by airplanes.
- Were there a lot of people doing the same thing?
- Yes.
- You might recall that--
- I have seen newsreels of the theater--
- the whole debacle of France.
- And we walked as far as Marseilles.
- And they weren't all Jews.
- There were Frenchmen who were scared, too,
- but there were a lot of Jews walking.
- And we walked.
- And we walked and slept in maybe barns
- or in the open in the woods.
- And the soldiers might give us some food.
- And I remember we--
- a lot of people left their farms,
- and we found a chicken or two.
- And the soldiers tried to cook it over an open fire.
- And all of a sudden, the airplanes went over.
- And we thought it was the Americans because there
- was still free France.
- It turned out it was the Italians, and they strafed us.
- And I saw an awful lot of dead people,
- including a young mother with a baby,
- and her husband been somewhere with the army--
- not Jewish.
- I don't think, at least.
- And the baby survived, and we just took it along
- till we could give it to somebody.
- Mother got killed.
- [AUDIO OUT]
- OK.
- Some of these soldiers gave us rides
- sometimes in their communes with that big trucks.
- And so once in a while, we didn't have to walk.
- They would give us a ride to wherever they were going south.
- And at that point, we were French.
- We were not considered Jewish.
- And as I said before, I think that helped a great deal
- to maybe save us.
- Did you keep your own name and identity
- as soon as you got in France?
- At that point, yeah.
- You did?
- At that point, we kept our own name.
- Yes.
- And--
- So more like they just weren't concerned with--
- you were just a French person as far as they were concerned.
- Yes.
- They weren't looking to see if you were Jewish or not.
- Yes, at that point.
- And, of course, Hitler occupied about half of France
- after he entered Paris, and the other half stayed unoccupied
- until--
- gee, I don't remember the year, maybe '41.
- I don't remember exactly.
- And in free France, for that time that it wasn't occupied,
- the Jews were pretty safe.
- It was mostly they started out in the occupied area where
- there--
- But another thing also, I think, is
- that the French have a long history of antisemitism,
- probably longer than it was in Germany.
- And they were very willing to help the Germans deport
- Jews at that point.
- So when they were occupied, that was-- later on,
- it was all of France.
- But at that point, I think that German would help.
- And I think some of the French government people or people
- in general, even they might tell them
- the Jews they were not French.
- A lot of German Jews had come to France also, not just us.
- But they were not-- they had not the chance to be reintegrated,
- what they called it.
- And, of course, they were a lot more vulnerable.
- You know, the French Jews were saved a little bit more.
- The Germans hated-- the French hated the Germans anyway,
- so it was both.
- It was Jews and Germans, I think.
- And, of course, you had to carry an identity card
- at all times in France, even before the war.
- So it was very easy to find out who you were.
- So that was written--
- Your religion was written on it.
- Later-- in Germany, I don't remember we had to carry a card.
- In France, we did.
- I'm not sure if the religion was on it.
- That should have been on this card.
- Let me just look quickly.
- Later on, it said Jew on it.
- Nationality-- no, didn't have the religion on it.
- But later on, when occupied, you had--
- you had it on.
- A matter of fact, I just came across one of my husband's birth
- certificate.
- And I looked at it and it said Ludwig Israel.
- And that's what was put on, you know,
- so they knew immediately that you were Jewish.
- When you're talking about the southern part of France,
- free France, is that also what was Vichy France or this--
- That was Vichy France.
- That was Vichy France.
- Yes, that was Vichy France where subsequently went to.
- After we-- we walked as far as Marseilles,
- which was quite a walk.
- [LAUGHING]
- How long did it take?
- I can't remember.
- Several weeks, I think, maybe two weeks.
- I don't remember.
- Dates don't mean a thing to me because you didn't have a paper.
- And I was very young.
- I can't remember dates.
- I wish I would have had a diary.
- But there were so many refugees.
- They put us up in schools and big auditoriums
- and something on straw mats where we slept.
- And after maybe a week or two, maybe not
- that much, I don't remember how long it was,
- but they all shipped us back to Paris--
- all the refugees.
- And they weren't all Jewish.
- So we were just among the French people
- where they shipped back home.
- So we went back to occupied Paris.
- When you say they put you up--
- The French authorities.
- The Vichy authorities?
- Yeah.
- Or maybe even just Marseilles.
- I don't know.
- But we got sent back on trains, regular trains.
- They wouldn't keep us.
- There were too many.
- There was a whole lot of refugees.
- And, of course, we were-- we were counted as French,
- again, you know.
- But I think they shipped all the Jews back too.
- I don't-- I could not--
- I really don't know.
- But you don't remember being singled out in any way?
- No.
- Nobody was--
- That's what I meant to say.
- We weren't singled out at all.
- And we were back-- we went back to our apartment.
- At that point, it was intact.
- It couldn't have been too long.
- I don't remember how long-- maybe I can
- ask my mother when I go back.
- I don't remember.
- She might.
- She remembers a lot more than I do.
- And my father couldn't work.
- He was hiding out mostly in the apartment.
- By that time, they had started to round up the Jews.
- And that was later on in '39.
- And I learned through a Jewish agency--
- my mother went through a Jewish agency.
- And we thought maybe at some point we might--
- you know, the Germans, we didn't know what was
- going to happen during the war.
- My father thought it wouldn't last more than four weeks.
- I remember distinctly saying that.
- And of course, it lasted for years.
- But my mother went to a Jewish agency when we come back.
- And I got an apprenticeship as a manicurist for something
- like several months, not too long ago.
- It was a Jewish doctor who had this school, like a beauty
- school.
- And I learned manicure and facials and-- mostly
- facials and makeup.
- And it was thought at that point that if I ever
- had to emigrate to the United states, which was my mother's
- hope, since she had family here, we
- couldn't stay in France, that it would be something I could do.
- At that point, you felt that you needed something you
- could earn your living with.
- After I got through and got my diploma, I worked--
- I got a false identity.
- And that's not the one I have here.
- I don't remember it.
- And I got a job through the school
- in quite a big beauty parlor where I did
- makeup and a lot of manicures.
- And in those days, there were already men and women together,
- like they had, what they call it here, unisex.
- That was common then, you know, in France.
- And I was earning a lot to the upkeep of the family
- since my father couldn't work and my mother would sew.
- She would do alterations.
- And between the two of us, we managed to survive,
- you know, bought food and so on.
- I recall that after--
- shortly after I started to work in that place,
- I was in Paris, close to the Madeleine Church.
- There was a hotel across.
- And the Germans took it over.
- And I was--
- I used to have to do a lot of manicures on German soldiers.
- But I never let on that I knew German.
- Of course, it would have been dangerous.
- My boss did know that I was Jewish.
- They were French.
- They were not Jewish.
- They did know that I worked under a false identity.
- One day, I don't remember the date.
- I really don't.
- I think it was '40 by then.
- It must have been, late, middle of '40.
- This young soldier I worked on said to me,
- we found out that your German Jew.
- And I want you to leave here just as soon as possible
- and don't go home.
- They will come after you.
- Get your family out.
- I looked at him.
- I said, how come you're telling me this?
- And he said, I had a Jewish mother.
- And that's the only way I can pay her back.
- And, of course, I went to my boss
- and told him exactly what had happened.
- And I told him that please not to tell him where I lived
- or what my name real name was.
- Apparently, they knew.
- For whatever reason, I don't know how they found out.
- I went home.
- And by that time, we all had false papers.
- My mother gave me all the money that she had.
- And she said they would hide out,
- but that I should better get out.
- And I had an uncle that was a brother of my father's
- that had a farm we knew in free France.
- And I should go to him.
- And she gave me an address where I could reach-- not too
- far from Lyon, which where my uncle was, and somebody would,
- for so much money, would help to get across in free France
- if I made contact.
- So I started walking again through the woods out of Paris
- for quite a ways because I didn't
- dare take a train in Paris.
- And finally, I took a train quite a ways away from Paris.
- I walked again south all by myself.
- And I was all of, what, 15?
- And took a train to somewheres on the Rhone, close by to Lyon.
- I don't remember either.
- Anyway, I got there and I got in touch with the address
- that I had.
- And, of course, we couldn't let my uncle know because you
- could not write in those days.
- Or my mother was afraid to write him, said you just--
- I had the address and you just get there.
- And I waited a couple of days.
- And then this man came and he said,
- we take you between patrols tonight
- in a boat over the Rhone River, and the other side
- is free France.
- And I paid him so many 1,000 francs or 100 francs,
- I don't recall, whatever I had.
- And they picked us up in the middle of the night.
- And there were six of us in a little canoe, more or less.
- They tried to get us over the Rhone River.
- And all of a sudden, we heard the dogs and the Germans.
- And they started to shoot at us.
- We were about halfway across.
- And all I remember is diving in the water
- and swimming underwater.
- And I hit the other side and I couldn't see anybody else alive.
- I don't know if anybody else--
- I think one other person made it, some other point.
- And started running in the woods.
- It was a wooded area.
- The people who collected in that house,
- they were not known to you beforehand?
- You were just all there together, waiting to cross?
- Yes.
- And I don't know any names.
- I don't recall.
- It was another young man.
- And I think he also made it.
- But I never saw him again.
- But I had a feeling that I saw somebody run.
- And I think he must have made it.
- And I don't know if-- the people that took us over for money
- were not Jewish.
- They were Frenchmen.
- And of course, in those days everything was black market.
- Matter of fact, I remember on the march
- to Marseilles, the earlier march,
- that some of the farmers who stayed there would sell us
- water because we were so thirsty.
- So the French are very well known for that anyway.
- But it was all black market.
- And I didn't know any of the names.
- I know there was a man and a woman.
- And there's a young man and me and an older woman and an older
- man.
- I believe there were two couple and us single people.
- And they tried to get us over.
- And they did that quite frequently.
- You know, they made a business out of it.
- The only thing I heard the guides holler when
- he heard the dogs, there came--
- they're not-- they're not on their usual times.
- I guess they had time them when the patrols would, you know,
- come across.
- Was there anything waiting for you on the other side?
- No, I was just walking till I came
- to a little town or something.
- And then I asked somebody, give me some money.
- And I did call my uncle.
- And he picked me up.
- This was in--
- This was not--
- --wintertime?
- Was this--
- It was-- no, it was fall, I think.
- It was not that cold.
- It was between summer and fall.
- I don't remember the month.
- Isn't that awful?
- But it must have been a chilling experience in any case.
- Yeah.
- I'm very fortunate I knew how to swim.
- I would not be alive.
- I said that is one thing I remember all the time.
- My uncle got me finally.
- And the first thing I learned when I got to my uncle's house
- was that my grandparents were in Gurs.
- And he was-- he tried to get them out with quite a few
- of the people I have known in my grandparents' town,
- including one of my grandfather's brother and sister
- and some of that--
- There were some of--
- let me see, my grandmother only had a brother.
- And they got out early.
- They went to South America.
- My grandfather had still a brother and his wife and--
- yeah, I think that was all that-- they were also sent
- to that camp and died there.
- How did he receive you?
- Was he glad that you were there?
- Was he--
- Who, my uncle?
- Your uncle, yes.
- Of course.
- Sure.
- Yes.
- I had three cousins.
- And my uncle had three boys.
- And they had a farm.
- My-- this uncle had in Germany-- he also
- lived in Freiburg, like we did.
- And he was a cattle dealer.
- And so ultimately--
- He had had another farm in occupied France.
- And he left for this one.
- He had been able, I think, to take quite a bit of money
- out of Germany at the time.
- I don't remember when they left Germany, but before us, at least
- before my mother and myself.
- I think after my father left.
- Maybe he left after my father had established.
- I don't remember, and my other uncle.
- I still have a cousin in--
- the other brother of my dad actually
- was a partner with my father also in Freiburg.
- And I had one cousin in New Orleans,
- which lived also in France, a different way than I did.
- And then my uncle, I was very welcomed.
- My aunt was also a first cousin to my mother,
- which happened quite often in-- you know, intermarriage.
- And I was very welcome.
- But then I felt I wanted to try to get my parents out.
- And eventually, I think a year later, we did get him across.
- But it was still free France.
- With my brother and sister eventually came out too.
- But my uncle said he has not been
- able to get my grandparents out.
- Even so, my grandfather's brother from the United States
- had sent the affidavits and the papers to him, which he had,
- and money.
- And he was not able to get them out.
- I consequently felt I had to earn some money.
- And since Roanne, the smallest town
- next to where my uncle had the farm
- outside, there was no possibility, I left for Lyon
- and did find a job in another beauty parlor
- and earned enough to support myself.
- I got a room with a Jewish family in Lyon,
- in the skyscraper section of Lyon.
- And after, I had a little money.
- I went all the way to Vichy, to the government.
- And I told him that my--
- I was a French citizen and I demand
- that they release my grandparents out of the camp.
- Was this French people you were talking to?
- Germans?
- Yes, French.
- They were French--
- It was the Vichy government at that time.
- The Vichy government.
- But I had a French passport.
- I was a French citizen.
- And I had my own passport at the time.
- I mean, my own identity.
- I didn't have the card that I showed you.
- And I got a paper.
- And they send it to Gurs.
- And my grandparents were consequently released.
- My uncle was able to pick them up.
- With the money my uncle had for him,
- we were able to get him a room in Roanne,
- in the small town next to my uncle, where my uncle
- and aunt visited quite often.
- I kept my job in Lyon.
- I took the train.
- It was about maybe an hour, I think, train ride from Lyon,
- and visited them every weekend and took them shopping
- and did what I could for them.
- And they had to report every week to the French authorities
- because they were aliens.
- They were Germans.
- But for some reason that my uncle was French
- and it was a small town and he was liked there,
- and they didn't have any problems.
- They were at that time, I would say, were in their 60s,
- maybe 70.
- And we had-- my uncle here in the States.
- I think had put their name in with HIAS.
- And they finally got a paper that they
- would be on a particular ship that
- was going to leave Marseilles such and such
- a date to be there.
- And that went through HIAS.
- I don't know if my uncle paid them here.
- But whatever, they had their papers.
- And I know they got that notice.
- And so I took time off.
- And I went with them to Marseilles,
- tried to put them on a boat.
- And that was the date, which in the United states--
- I learned many years later, I had no idea
- at that time was Pearl Harbor.
- So that date I remember.
- [LAUGHING]
- And I didn't know it was Pearl Harbor.
- But they said that the United States had entered the war.
- And this was the last boat that was going to leave from France.
- And there were a lot of fights in the HIAS office.
- People wanted to bump some other people off
- and try to give money.
- And there were Jews, all of them.
- But I guess when you're in that predicament,
- there were a lot of refugees.
- But my grandparents did go on the boat.
- And they went to Cuba.
- And I think they were two months or something on that ship.
- They wouldn't let them come to the United States or whatever.
- But they finally made it.
- And they landed in New York.
- And I still saw them when I came to this country.
- They were still alive.
- So that was one phase of it.
- When they were released from the concentration camp,
- they had been put there as Jews and were released as Jews?
- Yes, as German Jews.
- They were put there from Germany into non-occupied France,
- into Vichy France.
- It wasn't even occupied.
- And it was a camp for just German Jews.
- It was on the border of Spain.
- But they were not put there as Germans,
- but because they were German Jews--
- Yes, they were German Jews.
- They were just German Jews.
- From that whole area of Germany, there were a lot of them.
- I mean--
- So they had been deported--
- They had been deported--
- --out of Germany--
- --from Germany and instead deported to the Polish camps
- where they ultimately were shipped from Gurs to Auschwitz.
- But first they shipped them-- what I could never understand--
- I could have understand it if it was a camp, like a--
- what's the camp in France?
- Drancy?
- Drancy, right.
- I could have understand that.
- That was occupied Germany.
- But at that time, that was Vichy France.
- It was not occupied.
- And yet--
- But I remember many children were saved out of that camp.
- They were taken out at night over the barbed wire.
- And the nuns were taken in the cloisters.
- Of course, a lot of them, you know,
- didn't know there were Jews later on.
- But a lot of them were--
- did eventually end up in Israel.
- But there were-- some of the people
- were able to get out of there.
- I don't know, because of the French,
- because it wasn't run by Germans?
- I don't know.
- Now, I got them out I know because I went to Vichy.
- Why do you think you succeeded and your uncle had not
- succeeded?
- He had also been trying to get them out?
- I don't think he tried hard enough, perhaps.
- And--
- Because he was also a French citizen.
- Yes.
- But, see, he was not related to my grandparents.
- I was the granddaughter.
- Where he was-- he was--
- that was my mother's parents.
- And this was your father's brother.
- And this was my father's brother.
- And I think, frankly, that he was
- scared to go to Vichy because they could have interned him
- as a French Jew.
- Where I was a little girl, I remember, I--
- they were very nasty to me.
- But I said, look, I'm a French citizen.
- You know, when you're 15, you have a lot of chutzpah, I think.
- And I just didn't know better.
- I wanted-- I loved my grandparents.
- I lived with them for many years.
- And I figured, well, you know, it's worth a try.
- And I was very happy.
- And so they left.
- And I went back to Lyon.
- And my parents came out after that.
- Did you have--
- Through free France.
- I remember because they never saw my grandparents.
- They would have--
- Did you arrange for them to come out?
- Were you involved in that also?
- No, I could not have been.
- We could not get in touch, except through messengers
- or something.
- My uncle was able once in while to tell them we are fine.
- I could let them know we're fine.
- But you didn't dare write because my father was
- mostly hiding out in non-Jewish houses many times.
- So--
- Again, being French, they didn't at that point
- start looking for the French Jews as much.
- They really got out of Paris before they started
- rounding up the French Jews.
- And then finally, we came south.
- And we ended up in Villeneuve-sur-Lot.
- And I don't know why my parents ended up there.
- I cannot really tell you.
- No, but I should jot some of that down.
- You think I have some of that before--
- I will go to France in July.
- Will I have the transcript--
- Oh, yes.
- It should--
- And I will jot some of the questions down.
- My mother can maybe shed some light
- on that, that I don't remember.
- Right.
- That would be really good.
- When you originally were told by the soldier,
- he told you not to go home because they might follow you.
- Yeah.
- And you did at that time.
- Did your parents then leave that apartment?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- We had non-Jewish friends that lived in the area
- not too far away from where we lived in Paris.
- And I had met the family through one of their young men.
- I become very friendly, more or less a boyfriend, you know.
- But they were, I think, six children,
- and they were Catholics.
- And through the young men I met the rest of the family.
- And they had very small children.
- And I loved small children.
- So I became also friends with the sisters.
- And consequently, my parents met them.
- And they would hide my parents and the children
- while that happened.
- And they would hide them out many times later.
- And--
- Did they stay permanently in one hiding place or they moved--
- I can't tell you.
- I wasn't there.
- I just know that my father didn't go to work.
- And I think they did not have at that point
- to hide out that much except when they knew there
- was a, you know, something.
- But again, being French Jews, they
- weren't that much in danger at that part of the--
- So they sort of still stayed headquartered
- in your own apartment--
- Own apartment.
- --and would leave when there was danger--
- When there was danger.
- And, of course, my father couldn't work.
- So it was-- and we had lost most in Germany.
- So it was very difficult money wise, you know.
- But I think my brother and sister went to school.
- I-- as far as I remember, they went to school at that point.
- Again, I think I have to make the point, as French Jews,
- we were not--
- had we been Germans, you had to report
- once a week to the prefecture because you were alien.
- But we didn't have to do that.
- So I'm convinced that what saved us at that point and later
- on also--
- Was being French.
- Yeah.
- You said that the people were living scared and--
- Yeah, you were always scared.
- You knew that they were deporting Jews.
- You knew about that.
- And you just wondered, are you going to be next?
- Or what's going to happen, you know?
- But I remember never having really
- seen that much at that point.
- The only bad thing--
- well, one of the bad things I remember afterwards,
- and I was still in Lyon.
- And I stayed in Lyon working for some time
- after my parents had gone to Villeneuve-sur-Lot.
- It took a while before I joined them there
- because I had the job.
- And I have one thing that I remember partly.
- And that is I was with that family at the room.
- And it was a Jewish section.
- There were a lot of Jews living in that area.
- And they called it the skyscrapers.
- It was about six or eight stories high,
- which was very new in Europe.
- And, well, Jews always move where there's a nice area.
- I can't even remember that family's name.
- Would you believe that?
- I know they had two children.
- One morning about 3:00, 4 o'clock, and I--
- you know, I can't remember whether France--
- Lyon was occupied by then or not.
- I cannot remember.
- But-- it must have been occupied because one morning at 3
- o'clock, we heard these boots and marching.
- And I remember waking up with a German soldier pulling me out
- of bed.
- And the whole family and this--
- they told us to get dressed.
- And there were several in the apartment and all over.
- I heard them screaming, out, out, out.
- Raus.
- And you can just take a bag or something with you.
- You have to be downstairs.
- At that time, you had heard about deportations.
- The next thing I remember is fainting.
- And I woke up in the woods.
- And I don't remember.
- But hearing later, there was about 6,000 Jews or 600--
- I don't know how many.
- Was a lot of Jews in that square.
- And they were all deported to Auschwitz.
- And I ever wondered since I heard about the Butcher
- of Lyon, which--
- so he was in charge of that.
- I never knew that until I started reading that.
- But I remember going downstairs and being
- with a mass of people crying and, you know,
- standing there and fainting.
- And I woke up in the woods.
- Some French people must have pulled me out.
- And that's when I got this identity card.
- You really have no recollection?
- I have no recollection of blacking out.
- I was so scared.
- Were there people right there who would have--
- There were people-- there were people standing around.
- There were not-- of course, you know,
- it was so noisy and everything.
- There were people standing all around the square.
- So someone might have been--
- There must have because--
- You could have run--
- Why would I--
- You could have run, too.
- You couldn't run.
- They would shoot you.
- They had guns all around.
- I remember being close to the sidewalk.
- That much I remember.
- And I remember waking up in the woods.
- And I heard later that all these people
- were deported to Auschwitz.
- And I don't think any of them survived as far as I know,
- at least not very many.
- And this identity card that you have
- shown me, who gave it to you?
- How did the identity get chosen?
- That was the underground.
- When I woke up, I was with an underground--
- whatever.
- You never knew names in those days.
- They would never tell you who they
- were, what they were, except they were living in the woods.
- And then I heard they were blowing bridges and all that.
- And they were--
- I was there for a while, a few days.
- And they gave me the identity card.
- And I went from there--
- I got out with my father.
- Then I joined my parents in Villeneuve-sur-Lot by then.
- You know, I had no place to live.
- And I didn't want to go back to work because they rounded up
- the Jews then.
- And at that point they were French Jews.
- They were not German.
- Did your parents also have false identities--
- Yes.
- --by then?
- Yeah.
- Did they come out of occupied Germany
- with those false identities?
- No.
- Did they get them--
- They got them in Paris.
- It was all black market.
- In Paris?
- So before they left, they had already gotten--
- Oh, yeah.
- You wouldn't dare go--
- by that time, I suppose you had Jew on your identity
- card, or Juif, or whatever.
- And they had all false cards.
- Can you read me what it says on the identity card?
- Since there's no other way of getting it on the tape,
- tell me about it.
- And I think-- I think it fell down behind your chair.
- Yeah, there it is.
- OK, let me see.
- There must be a date-- you know, I
- haven't looked at that since, like, years.
- I was just trying to see if I can find the date.
- It'll give me some idea.
- No.
- Oh, yeah, October '42.
- You would have been 19 at the time.
- Huh?
- 19.
- It says name Pochard, first name Nicole, profession student,
- nationality French, born--
- my birthday March 4, '23.
- They tried to not change too much so you could remember.
- It takes you a long time to remember another name.
- In Toul, M and M. That must be Marne, in the Marne.
- I haven't even heard of that town.
- Where I lived--
- 6 Allée Paul Riquet--
- never heard of it.
- I'm 1 meter 66 centimeters tall.
- I have a middle--
- a mouth middle big-- at moyenne--
- would be-- not a big mouth, not a small mouth.
- What do you call it?
- In the middle somewhere.
- I have a-- my face is oval.
- My hair is--
- [FRENCH] would be brown.
- And my eyes are gray and green.
- And I had a taint, the skin was--
- Skin color.
- Matte, I don't know, skin color, and no particular signs.
- And the photograph is an actual photograph--
- It's an actual photograph--
- --of you from that time?
- Yeah.
- Do you remember the circumstances
- under which it was taken?
- I think it's a passport photograph.
- I had that before I got the card.
- So it was something you already had?
- I had the photograph, yeah.
- You did.
- They went back and got some of my things out of the apartment,
- I remember.
- Somebody went back and got some of my things.
- And that must have been among them.
- You know, they got some clothes and--
- You did not go back?
- Somewhere else--
- No, I didn't.
- Do you remember who that was?
- No.
- It was just someone from the underground?
- Someone from the underground.
- And this card represented what?
- This was a Vichy government issued card?
- Or--
- It's a carte d'identité, which most French people had
- to carry even before the war.
- It was a French document, not a German?
- Yeah.
- No, it's a French document.
- It was done Secretariat de Police--
- Commissariat de Police.
- Can't read the name.
- And it was registered under number 9628.
- So I don't know how these people were able to--
- you know, they had means, I suppose.
- They had friends--
- Of getting you--
- --of getting these things.
- Did they tell you anything whether this
- had been a real person?
- No, I never knew anything about them.
- They just said, this is it?
- Yeah.
- At least I don't recall if they did.
- I don't-- if they did, I don't recall.
- I think I was pretty upset at that point.
- I can imagine.
- And then you said they also gave you this armband.
- If you could describe this--
- I got later.
- When I did join my parents in Villeneuve-sur-Lot,
- there started an underground.
- And that's when I joined the underground there.
- And that was the FFI, French Free--
- Free France-- what was the I standing for?
- Free French-- can't think of it.
- That was the number of the underground.
- And you wore that for identification
- when you went back to the, you know, like in the woods
- where they were.
- And I joined them.
- And at that point, what I mostly did was--
- I did not live in the woods at that time.
- There were several young people, Jewish people at that time,
- which lived in Villeneuve-sur-Lot,
- and we joined them.
- And what we did at night, we would bring them food.
- And we could buy or, you know, get or from some--
- we lived-- it was farm country.
- And we knew some--
- for instance, I knew a farm family we lived very close to
- and which subsequently took us in a couple of times
- and were hiding us in the barns and so on
- and gave us food when we didn't have any.
- And they would get food for us, and we brought it
- to these young people in the underground.
- And they would go out at night and destroy the bridges
- or do all that stuff, you know, at night.
- There were already some young people, some older people, too,
- which had to hide out in the wooded area.
- And sometimes we would bring, if somebody got wounded,
- if they were shot at, we would kind of get them out at night
- and get them in the hospital.
- I remember that doing a couple of times.
- So this was not necessarily a Jewish underground--
- No, that was not a Jewish underground.
- That was a regular French underground.
- Underground movement.
- Underground movement.
- And in this town, your parents-- your family was living openly?
- We were living openly.
- We had-- my parents were able to rent a half
- a house or something.
- And we had no anti-Jewish, you know, anything
- specific from the French there.
- It was a very small place.
- I subsequently got a job in the town.
- We actually lived outside the Villeneuve-sur-Lot
- in the countryside.
- I knew where know I was, where people
- didn't know too much about us.
- As I said, those farmers, my family
- is still in touch with them, the children.
- And her husband was a prisoner in Germany,
- a French prisoner in Germany.
- And so they hated the Germans too.
- And they were really-- there was an old mother and a woman
- and two little boys.
- And we kind of helped each other.
- And we helped them on the farm.
- They had mostly wine grapes.
- Well, that was mostly their livelihoods.
- And I remember working there, cutting the grapes
- when they were ripe.
- My whole family helped because they could not afford help.
- And I remember for two days, one time,
- I made noodles for the people that came to help
- and things like that.
- And they gave us food.
- And, you know, in return and helped
- us hide out when need to be.
- And the children, the younger-- your younger siblings at that
- time were--
- At that time, they were there too.
- They still went to school there, I think, both of them.
- I went to work in like--
- it was not a five and ten, but I was a salesgirl there,
- you know, in--
- A variety store.
- --variety store, something like that.
- And I remember it was about 5 kilometers to walk there.
- So I walked in the morning.
- And you had two hours lunch.
- I walked home for lunch, walked back up.
- So I had my exercise in those days.
- But I walked on--
- I worked under my false identity.
- And your parents were living under a false identity--
- Yes.
- And your siblings--
- My father still couldn't work except on the farms.
- And the woman-- so at one point--
- we lived there for quite a while.
- The woman we had rented the place from
- found out we were Jewish.
- And at what point she was going to turn us in at the Germans,
- and my father almost killed.
- She told us she was going to turn us in.
- There were Germans marching in front of-- on the main highway.
- And there was a river off the highway
- almost close to the house.
- And they were swimming in there.
- But she said she was going to turn us in.
- And I don't know what my father did.
- I think he put her in a room and, you know,
- made sure till the Germans were gone.
- And he said he would burn her house down if she ever did that.
- But she was very antisemitic.
- And she never did then turn us in.
- That was towards the end of the war anyway.
- And this was not the woman whose husband was in prison?
- No, no.
- This was the woman we rented the house from.
- Which was not the farm that you worked on?
- No.
- No.
- There was-- it was very close to the farm.
- But she was known as a--
- she was not a well-liked person by the farmers either, you know.
- And she thought she could do well by turning us in.
- But my father did-- he shut her in a room.
- Whatever he did, I don't know.
- But she didn't-- she was going to turn us in.
- I know.
- She told us, I'm going to go right up there and tell them
- that, you know, you live here.
- But-- so whatever, you know, it's a lot of luck, I suppose.
- Did you see any action with the underground
- in terms of participating in any missions yourself,
- or you basically were the support services?
- Mostly support services at that point.
- Yeah.
- Did you actually go into hiding at any point, where
- you ceased to live openly and actually hid?
- Well, I did for a while when they picked me up in Lyon,
- I was out hiding in the woods for a while.
- And then several times when the Germans
- would march, when they had occupied France by that time,
- and when we knew they were coming, marching there,
- we might go two or three days in the woods
- or something like that.
- And who-- would you go supplied, or did people
- come to supply you with things like that?
- No, there was no way.
- You know, we might not even stay together
- because we wanted to be sure that there was one other--
- one for people-- we would just try
- to live off roots or berries.
- Or, you know, maybe we might take a piece of cheese along
- and things like that.
- Were the people in the town helpful about telling you
- when such actions were going to occur?
- No.
- No.
- Most people didn't know we were Jews at that point.
- So they wouldn't have had reason to warn you.
- Did you know of other people in a similar situation in the area?
- There were more Jews.
- There were some other German Jews.
- I remember that.
- But I don't recall what happened to them.
- I think some of them got deported.
- We were somewhere-- let me see, I
- had a very good friend, a German Jewish girl,
- and that was not in Villeneuve-sur-Lot.
- I'm trying to figure out--
- that might have been in Gray.
- That was also in France.
- I think that was where my uncle had his first farm.
- And at one point, I think we went there from Paris
- when we also had to run away.
- Gee, I can't remember.
- But I remember also there were a lot of German Jews.
- My uncle helped a lot of the German Jews in that area.
- He hid them.
- And this particular girl--
- she was known to my family.
- We became quite friendly for a short time.
- And I know she was deported.
- And we weren't because we were French Jews,
- but they deported the German Jews.
- I knew that a lot of German troops got deported.
- And I think that was in Gray.
- I'm not-- I know it happened, but I'm
- trying to think what that was.
- That's another question I'll have to ask my mother.
- I also know that my uncle did consequently get his
- brother-in-law out of Gurs and his son,
- who was my age at the time, which was the brother--
- after I got my grandparents out, he got his brother-in-law out
- of Gurs and the son.
- And they were staying on the farm
- while I was working in Roanne.
- And later on, I think after my grandparents had left--
- of course, they also were German Jews
- and had a go every week like my grandparents to the prefecture.
- And one night, they came and got them.
- And we never heard from them.
- They were deported.
- How did you finally make out in terms of language?
- Had everybody in your family--
- My father had worked as a young man in Bordeaux.
- And he was in a wine business, right.
- And he had learned the wine business there as a young man.
- As I said, his mother's family came from France and whatever,
- they must have been in the business then.
- He was an apprentice there.
- So he spoke fluent French.
- I never-- we never spoke-- my mother had it in school, so she
- could make herself understand.
- The children learned it very quickly in school,
- like most children do.
- And I learned it fairly quickly because I
- worked with French Jews and just learned it
- as I learned English later on.
- I didn't know English when I came here either,
- just because I had to learn it.
- And I learned it a lot, I remember, with the little boy.
- You know, he talked French to me all the time.
- And people were very nice about trying to correct you.
- And then, of course, my father would help me a little bit
- and taught me how to read the newspapers.
- And he always would say that the best thing to learn language
- is to learn how to read a newspaper.
- And I found that quite helpful when I came to the States.
- I think it's quite true.
- I was thinking of it in terms of being able to pass as non-Jews--
- You could pass as a non-Jew because we would always
- say we were from Alsace-Lorraine,
- which they spoke German.
- And we had that French accent, which
- I think I still have two today.
- But--
- So the cover story--
- The cover story fit--
- --who you were.
- You know.
- Mhm.
- Can you describe that band a little bit?
- Do you know-- did the colors have a significant--
- Well, the color were the French colors, red, white and blue.
- And it was mostly so they would-- you know,
- nobody would get it unless you were in that group.
- And that was a way of identification.
- Or we wore it when we worked in the group
- to show that we are the underground group
- and that's what we stand for.
- It was more along that line.
- You don't know, you told me, I think,
- where your parents got the false papers from.
- You don't know how they came into possession of them?
- Most likely they paid for them.
- There was a big black market.
- And you heard by word of mouth where you can get--
- where you can get the papers.
- Of course, it needed money.
- You could get almost anything for money.
- And sometimes I understand, which didn't happen in our case,
- but I understand sometimes these same people would turn you in,
- too, if you didn't have enough money
- or you couldn't pay them in time.
- It was a regular black market enterprise.
- People will make money off anything.
- I'm sure.
- What was your daily routine like?
- Can you be more specific about what a day was like at the time
- that you were living in France under these--
- with the false papers?
- Well, when I lived in Paris, it was more or less a routine
- there.
- You were just very much afraid to open your mouth for fear
- that you would say something that would incriminate you.
- Perhaps for me, it was not as bad as for some
- of the older people.
- Because looking back on it, I think
- as a young person, at least the age
- I was, you don't realize just how bad things are.
- You knew it was bad.
- But I don't think you really knew
- how bad it was, how bad it could get, what, you know--
- and you live kind of from day to day.
- You knew you had to be scared.
- You knew you wouldn't go out very much.
- I mean, I went to work.
- And that was it.
- You know, you went home, and you kind of stayed together.
- And if you would hear somebody march or somebody
- knock on doors, you'll be scared stiff.
- You didn't know if they'll come for you or for somebody else,
- you know.
- And it-- like I said, I probably was not,
- except for the couple instances, in the worst part where--
- you know, I was not in Paris when they rounded up the Jews.
- I was-- except in Lyon, and that I will never forget.
- I could just see that.
- I woke up out of a sleep.
- And the soldier standing over me,
- and, you know, when you heard them march downstairs.
- It was just-- still today when I hear boots, you know,
- some of those things.
- But then by that time it was also war.
- And you worried about--
- I remember in '39, when we came back to Paris,
- that the sirens would go off.
- And many nights we spent in the caves.
- And we walked around with gas masks all the time.
- So it was not just a Jewish experience
- at that time, which was very bad.
- But you had also the war to contend with and rationing
- and not enough food.
- I remember I was too old to get chocolate.
- My sister would still get a bar of chocolate
- a month under her ration card.
- And she said, if you meant my socks,
- I will give you half of my chocolate.
- But that was not because we were Jewish.
- That was because it was the war.
- Everybody had that problem.
- And we just had the added problem of being Jewish.
- And, you know, later on being afraid that they
- will come and get you.
- And you just made very little noise.
- So you made very--
- you would never go to a cafe in those days
- or what you used to do.
- You know, you didn't live a normal life.
- You were just very scared.
- And in the south, when you were living in the smaller town where
- the whole family was living under false papers,
- did you ever go so far as to go to church on Sundays?
- Did yo--
- Well, you wouldn't go to a synagogue, that's for sure.
- We didn't-- I don't remember going to church either.
- Also, Frances, very Catholic.
- But we just kind of kept to ourselves.
- We kind of-- the less people would know you,
- you know, the better off you were.
- And, of course, like, I was a young girl, then.
- You wouldn't have lived a normal life.
- We wouldn't date.
- You would not date, you know, anything like that.
- You were just kind of keep a lot to yourself, mostly.
- Did you talk within your family about your situation?
- Once you were in your house, did you talk about it?
- Was there any continuance of Jewish observance?
- At that point, very little, because in the south,
- like I say, we lived in somebody's house.
- And for a long time, she didn't know we were Jewish, you see.
- She lived in the other half of the house.
- She was physically there.
- So you weren't really alone.
- We weren't alone.
- And once she knew we were Jewish--
- well, you didn't have anything.
- You didn't have your kiddush cups or so on.
- And by that time, my parents were not quite,
- I think, as religious.
- I think-- well, for one thing, we couldn't keep kosher.
- You ate what you could get to survive.
- And you wouldn't dare chant because you were
- afraid somebody might hear you.
- We knew we were Jews.
- And we knew there was a holiday.
- But you didn't go to shul.
- And you didn't do anything like that.
- Was there a Jewish community in that area?
- An open community?
- I really don't know.
- You didn't--
- There were quite a few Jewish people there.
- It was a small town, were not that many families.
- But I actually never gone to synagogue there.
- I don't know if there--
- You know, there were Jewish agencies on and off there
- that would help people.
- I know that.
- They would come in, somebody maybe from Lyon or so.
- As I said, I remember several German Jews or Polish Jews also
- that lived there.
- And they were helped for some reason many times.
- But I don't remember enough of it to really,
- you know, really talk about it.
- And you essentially did not attempt contact
- with those people.
- You were intent upon saying--
- Yes.
- --to yourself to keep your identity--
- Yes.
- --as secure as possible.
- For instance, Yom Kippur, let's say, would you--
- We would fast.
- You would fast?
- Yeah.
- But we wouldn't go to shul.
- So that there was some observance, what you could do--
- What we could do, you know, we knew it was Friday night.
- And I remember my mother always trying to cook,
- just find something, especially on Friday
- night, to make the meal, you know, and we would wash up.
- And we tried not to work, you know, extra,
- you know, on Shabbos and things like that.
- But we didn't do very much as far as, you know,
- religious observance there.
- Was there any contact after you were
- living in that town with your whole family
- with what had gone on before that, with the people in Paris
- or anything?
- Or once--
- No.
- --you were there, you were there.
- We were there And that was it.
- And that was it.
- And we didn't know we were--
- well, what we did, like at the farm when we went,
- we might at night, especially my dad,
- might listen to the underground radio or even the BBC.
- We could get them, you know, which in itself was--
- they could kill you for it, you know.
- But not because you were Jews.
- It was not allowed.
- And you would get-- hear the news.
- I remember the day the Americans landed, we found out.
- My dad found out through the radio.
- And he-- you know, we were praying that there would--
- you know, that the war would be over.
- Part of this experience for me and my family was the war also,
- you know, was not just a Jewish problem.
- That was the problem on plus or on the side
- or whatever you want.
- But it was-- a lot of it was not caused just
- because of the Jewish problem.
- The day-to-day existence was for everybody--
- [AUDIO OUT]
- OK.
- Do you want that--
- I think another thing that helped
- an identification is that in Germany we probably
- would have looked Jewish.
- We were dark haired, except my younger sister was blonde.
- And we had more of a Semitic than German--
- even so, we-- I don't think you could
- say we were typically Jewish, like you can sometimes pick out.
- But in France, we blended in very well,
- especially with the southern French.
- And where many times, if we would have really looked Jewish,
- what they considered looking Jewish,
- we might not have gone through a checkpoint.
- Where with the false papers and our looks, we made it.
- I recall that very--
- I think there was one incident where--
- you quite often had to go through German checkpoints
- later on.
- You know, they would check your identities quite often.
- And by that time, all our friends was an awful lot better.
- My parents very seldom went out.
- They very seldom went to the village.
- It was always the children that would try
- to get the food and everything.
- We were-- we could talk French better.
- My younger sister, they don't have an accent at all.
- And I think by that time my accent was not--
- Pronounced.
- --pronounced anymore.
- And so we got through the checkpoints quite easily.
- And I remember one time hearing one of them
- say-- and sometimes they were German and French
- on the checkpoint.
- Sometimes they were just French.
- But especially when they were Germans along
- with it, they would say, doesn't she look Jewish?
- No, no, she's French.
- You know, they look like that.
- So that was another way that you probably could get away with--
- of course, another thing, too, my brother
- would very seldom venture out because girls,
- how could they tell?
- Boys, they would pull their pants down, no matter
- what identity you had.
- So--
- Were the partisans aware that you were Jewish?
- Yes.
- And the people on whose farm you worked, did--
- They did also.
- They did also.
- And were there Jews among the active partisans?
- You said there were.
- There were other Jews--
- Yeah.
- --who were part of the active underground?
- At least I think there were.
- You didn't know names.
- You went without identities because this way
- you couldn't tell you knew somebody, you know.
- Or there were a first name basis at the most.
- But they all had covers, sometimes several.
- So you-- I can't recall any names at all.
- Did you just sort of automatically join them
- because there you were, you woke up in the woods, Somebody,
- somehow had saved you from this--
- Yeah.
- --thing in Lyon.
- But I-- this was not the group I went to.
- But when I heard about the group where we lived in Villeneuve,
- I wanted to join them because I, you know,
- wanted to help as much as I can to get perhaps--
- you know, if I needed to hide out, I knew where to go.
- Also, I wanted to help in the war effort.
- I wanted, you know--
- How did you hear about them?
- I have no idea.
- I can't remember.
- Probably through somebody I knew.
- Again, when you're young, you hear something like that
- and I think it is an adventure.
- I think you don't look at it when you do it
- much for any reason except, oh, well, yes,
- I like with the war effort and maybe I do have to hide out
- and maybe I can help some fellow Jews, which we tried at times.
- But I think looking back on it today, in my mind,
- it was more like you would join anything that was exciting when
- you're 18, I'm--
- Sure.
- For sure.
- Could you describe your group, how big it was?
- They lived always in the woods or they came--
- I can't do that either because they were never all together.
- You would meet with one or the other at times.
- Or they wanted you to do certain things, and you would just meet.
- You had what, a contact--
- A contact, yeah.
- --who would come and say, you're supposed
- to do this at such and such.
- Yeah.
- More or less.
- You never met the whole group.
- And I think you mentioned before that throughout the war
- you were not really aware of the extermination.
- You knew about deportation--
- Yes.
- --and the camps, but--
- Yes.
- I never knew till after the war, till, you know, it became known.
- That was not broadcast at all over the BBC or--
- I very seldom listen.
- If anybody listened was my dad or some
- of the underground people.
- And in the area, I was, I think the war at that point
- was more important.
- There weren't that many Jews.
- You know, it was a small town.
- And I'm not aware that I ever heard--
- I personally didn't.
- Maybe my parents knew.
- I don't know.
- But I only heard again what I, you know, probably
- through third person.
- I know my dad came home sometimes and mentioned
- something.
- But, again, I think when I was young,
- children were not always included, you know,
- in conversations for one reason or another.
- Do you know where the group got arms?
- Do you know anything about who helped them
- or where they would have gotten supplies even to blow up
- bridges and that kind of thing?
- No, I don't know where they got it from.
- But I'm sure it was, you know--
- that part was French people that helped them.
- You know, as I say, they hated the Jews,
- but they hated the Germans even more.
- That's a hatred that I think still exist to some extent
- today, you know.
- So wherever the underground, you know--
- I don't know enough about them.
- Can you tell me about how this came to an end?
- How did you know that the war was over?
- Well, that got broadcast on the radio, you know, when--
- that they're-- the Allies went into Paris.
- We were in Villeneuve-sur-Lot.
- And that the war is over.
- And everybody was dancing in the streets and was happy about it.
- What did your family do at that point?
- We were happy.
- We were dancing with everybody else.
- You know, we weren't scared.
- And--
- Were the Germans still around you at that time, the soldiers?
- Or had they pulled out?
- No, they had pulled out, at least out of Villeneuve-sur-Lot,
- you know.
- I think there weren't very many Germans
- stationed there to begin with in that place.
- And I think they were all pulled up north to defend Paris again
- in that area.
- There were no Germans, as I recall.
- There were collaborators, which the underground came out,
- of course, and, you know, they were arrested.
- And I remember a little while after--
- I don't have any recollection if it was days or weeks, somehow
- I don't remember that at all.
- But it was not long afterwards where they said there would--
- we all came to the town square.
- Or was it because I was working that I saw it?
- I don't remember that either.
- But there was a nice-- there was a square.
- And one day, they had so many women
- that had collaborated with the Germans
- and were also girlfriends to the soldiers, which
- there had in the square.
- And I think some men too, but mostly women I recall.
- And they shaved their heads.
- That was the worst thing I ever saw.
- You know, you never seen a woman with a shaved head.
- And they would parade them through the streets and all
- that.
- That I remember.
- That was after the war.
- Did your family immediately give up its false identity?
- Or did you remain there for a while?
- What happened?
- I went back to Paris again, the first one, this time by train.
- And my parents stayed on for a little while,
- like a couple months.
- I went back to scout out what was left of our apartment
- and whether it was safe to return.
- And I did find the apartment.
- It was still there.
- And, of course, it's--
- my parents hadn't bought it.
- Also, a lot of people had.
- My parents didn't have enough money to buy it.
- But once you rent it, you can rent it forever, I suppose.
- My mother still lives in that apartment today.
- But in any case, they had to give it back
- to the Jews that came back.
- And, of course, again, we were French.
- So we had a lot more clout at that point again.
- And--
- You said they had to give it back.
- Were there people living there when you came back and found it?
- No.
- It was empty?
- It was empty.
- They had taken everything out.
- And as my mother told me just recently,
- she believes that it was French.
- She went once into an apartment in the--
- it's a big building, a big area.
- And she saw something that had belonged to us.
- They denied it, of course, you know.
- So I couldn't say the German moved it,
- but it was the French, which they did in many cases,
- you know, take it over.
- I found the apartment.
- But it took, I think, a couple of months before I got it back.
- And I got a job again working in a beauty parlor.
- And when my parents came back, I had
- been able to buy some secondhand furniture,
- you know, so they could stay when they came back to Paris.
- I--
- When you say your parents--
- --rented a room for a couple of months--
- --the other children also came with them?
- This was all four of them came with them?
- Yeah.
- We all came back to Paris.
- And, of course, there was no communications
- with the United States quite a while after the war had ended.
- And my sister said she was very upset because she didn't
- know who was alive or not.
- We never knew that my grandparents
- had landed in the United States through the war.
- We never-- I got them on the boat.
- And that's the last we knew.
- My parents had been back.
- And I moved back with them.
- I had a good job in a big downtown beauty parlor.
- I earned quite good money at that point.
- And, of course, there were a lot of Americans.
- And a friend of mine said, you know,
- they're looking for hostesses, for the synagogue,
- for the American USO.
- So I applied and I got the job.
- And I have to say many of the GIs were just wonderful.
- They would give us, all the hostesses, their rations
- and their chocolates and their fruit.
- And I remember I hadn't seen an orange all during the war.
- And one GI gave me one.
- And when I came back to Paris first,
- I looked at non-Jewish family that helped us so much.
- And I stayed with them for a little while until I had a room.
- And my mother had given her a few things, little things,
- silver things she had, and I think her sewing machine.
- And they had kept that for her.
- But they had a little boy who was at that--
- another little boy that was at that time about 2 or 3
- when I come back, I had him while I was there.
- And when I got that orange, I couldn't eat it.
- I had to bring that to those children.
- And I brought it to him.
- And he said a ball.
- I said, no, it's something to eat.
- And he bit in it.
- And he said, well, that's terrible!
- And I peeled it for him.
- So it gives you an idea that you didn't have those things at all.
- But this, again, has nothing to do with being Jewish
- except that the people were nice and, you know--
- and it was war.
- And it was second part of it.
- And I remember it was October.
- I had come home one night from work.
- And my mother said to me--
- well, that's a whole other story.
- There was a GI there.
- And she said, you remember him?
- And I said, no.
- But I had brought many times to his home
- from the-- that I had met at the synagogue,
- at the Victoire in Paris, and like a Friday night.
- And quite often, they would bring the food
- because we didn't have money or enough food to buy yet.
- And they were just happy to have a Friday night dinner.
- A couple of them, they would come every week.
- And you get to know them better.
- I had quite a few proposals that way.
- And I knew quite a few.
- We brought them home on a--
- and they were just pleased.
- We had nothing, not even much furniture,
- you know, just to be in a Jewish home.
- And they were very thoughtful, most of them that we met.
- And I had a good time.
- We danced.
- You know, it was the first time that I lived a normal life,
- so to speak, you know, where you didn't
- have to be scared or anything.
- And I said to her, no, I don't know him.
- I don't recall having brought him home, you know.
- And she introduced me.
- Well, he was a cousin of my half-sister.
- And also, my mother was his aunt by marriage, right.
- He had been a soldier with the American army.
- After coming out of concentration camp,
- he had enlisted here.
- And he was supposed to look us up, see if he
- could find anything of us.
- Mail just didn't go through yet.
- And he had been many times to the address.
- And, of course, nobody was there.
- And he tried it the night--
- he was shipped out, I think a couple of days later.
- And, of course, my mother was there.
- So he spent the night with us, you know.
- And he was the first one to tell us
- that the grandparents were here and, you know,
- that he could also relay when he got home that we're all right.
- Well, he told me--
- I had at that time--
- no, I think we had--
- I think we had gotten news through.
- Must have because my sister had sent me papers.
- So they must have gone through.
- And he came back because of that and found us
- before he was shipped home.
- He was stationed in Paris area.
- Yeah, it must have been because I have I have
- affidavit papers by that time.
- And I said, I will come to the United States.
- I don't want to stay in this country one more
- day that I have to, you know, the experience,
- which is too bad.
- We're hated here as Jews, and the French Jews were--
- many Frenchmen were as bad from what I heard later, you know,
- not personally.
- I was one of the lucky ones.
- But it was enough at that point what I had seen.
- So he said, well, you come to New York,
- I'll take you on Saturday night.
- And he became my husband.
- [LAUGHING] We realized when I came to New York
- we were not related at all.
- I had been to his house many times as a child
- because my sister, you know, was her uncle and aunt.
- And they met again in this country.
- Isn't that something.
- And his parents got out.
- My father-in-law was in concentration camp.
- His sisters, he had four sisters.
- One had come to this country about the same time my sister.
- She was married.
- And her husband's family sent papers.
- The other three sisters went on children's transport to England.
- And he finished lycée and was thrown out, I think,
- in the last year and went to agricultural college, which
- was partly Hachsharah to prepare him to go to Israel
- or wherever, you know, agriculture.
- And his father was also a cattle dealer,
- so he knew a lot about agriculture.
- Not that he wanted to come there,
- but his parents send him there.
- So he--
- The thing was, when they found out in later years in Germany
- that we had to get out if at all possible.
- You tried-- some of the Jewish agencies tried very hard to--
- like I went in France, but they tried that in Germany
- to train young people--
- I remember-- I come from one thing and the other,
- but I talk and then I remember things.
- When I was still in-- was living with my grandparents,
- we had a very young rabbi in that synagogue.
- By the way, that synagogue got burned, like all most of them,
- I was there.
- It was just a plaque there now.
- I have a picture of it.
- I took a picture of it.
- We had a very young rabbi.
- And he was very--
- he tried very hard to bring all us youngsters--
- you know, like on weekends we would meet.
- And he would try to make it--
- make us live as kids a little bit.
- But we also learned to read and all those in case
- we could go to Israel or wherever, you know--
- the Jewish people in those days tried very hard to--
- a lot of the young kids got thrown out of school,
- but that was mostly local.
- It was not at that point where I got thrown out.
- It was not a coming down from Hitler or so.
- That was-- it started out in local areas for some reason.
- And in that small town, there were a lot of Jewish families.
- And there, we used to go, aside from the religious instructions
- in school, we also went Shabbat to shul.
- And he would, you know, teach us and so on,
- which I-- unfortunately, they're all forgotten.
- But they even tried to teach us on a Sunday
- or so what we might have to do if we get a chance to get out
- of Germany.
- At that point, people realized that they had to get out.
- But nobody wanted us, you know.
- I think a lot more people would have gotten out if--
- And even families, I think didn't realize how bad it was
- and for many years didn't want to help until it was too late,
- you know.
- So that was another part.
- But I remember Larry's parents got out at the very last.
- And they were quite wealthy over there.
- I would say upper class, really.
- And they lost everything.
- They got out with just that clothes on their backs
- through Italy.
- But the children had gotten out on a children's transport
- to England and lived there.
- I think they got over here before Pearl Harbor
- because the sister was here, and the parents were then here.
- And parents worked in New York as a couple.
- And my mother-in-law had never worked a day in her life,
- not even sewed on a button.
- She could cook, you know.
- It was very difficult for her.
- And so, Larry got send to that school for--
- which a lot of parents did, they try to send children to schools
- where they could learn a profession because they figured
- that's what they needed.
- Many times they might only get out on their own.
- And they were set up, the Jewish agency's,
- German or with help from the American agencies,
- I'm sure today, you know, send money over.
- And--
- There's probably a trade--
- Yeah, it is a trade.
- --something marketable, a skill.
- See, here goes my English, you know, the difference.
- Yeah, a marketable skill.
- Like I was taught manicure, which I hate to this day,
- you know.
- I would never go back to it.
- But I survived on it.
- I wouldn't have survived.
- It was something which was good because--
- and that's what, like my husband had tried to teach agriculture.
- It wasn't a accredited German school,
- but there were a lot of Jewish children there.
- I guess, there was--
- I have some articles on it.
- If they're interested in it, I can--
- I have a booklet, I think Mr. Bundy on it.
- I think that was his name.
- But I have some information that.
- And I can get more.
- I think we have a Union.
- I don't know how long he was there.
- But collectively, all the young people--
- there were boys and girls--
- there were not just boys there-- were taken to Buchenwald right
- from that school.
- It was a space in which I think is East Germany,
- now near Breslau or something.
- And that whole Jewish contingent was taken to Buchenwald.
- Do you know when that was?
- No, but I can probably find out.
- Before we go on, I'd like you to tell me
- more about his experiences.
- But to go back to your own family, when they came back
- to live in Paris, did you resume your own identity then?
- Yes.
- You did?
- Yes.
- And did you resume Jewish observances?
- It sounds like it since you brought the men home
- for Sabbath dinner.
- Yes, but not as actively as we did before, I would say.
- It-- of course, my parents were--
- I have to say this possibly before the war, also, we
- observe kashrut and all that.
- I think once we got to France, it got less and less.
- And it was more a question of, again, survival and no money,
- you know, because kosher things were a lot more expensive.
- And I think my parents got very much away from it.
- There were already perhaps even in Germany, more--
- they started out-- my grandparents were very Orthodox.
- And my parents were possibly going more towards Reformed.
- I think the community setting probably--
- Yes.
- --influenced how they behaved--
- Yes.
- --also at a given time.
- I think a lot of the younger parents, which
- were my parents at that point, and, of course,
- the Reform movement started in Germany.
- And I think there even so, they went
- to a Conservative synagogue.
- I don't think there was a--
- I don't think there was a Reform synagogue in Freiburg.
- I don't recall.
- But I would say they were already leaning more--
- we kept everything, but not as strict as we did,
- as my grandparents did.
- I remember that.
- And after the war, it got became a lot less.
- My mother used to say, I don't believe in any God anymore.
- She lost uncles and aunts and cousins
- and-- you know, the broader family, we lost a lot of people.
- So I think that it can go either way.
- Either you become very Orthodox, or you go the other way.
- Did your parents work when they came back to Paris?
- My mother continued to sew a lot.
- She also did some housework at times when need be.
- My father finally did find a sales job again.
- But it was irregular.
- It was-- my father at that point was, you know, getting older.
- And it was very difficult to--
- money-wise, it was very, very difficult.
- Were the other children working also?
- My younger sister went back to school, I think,
- when we came back to Paris.
- I got to ask her.
- She's still alive.
- I left in-- let me see, I left in '46 in January.
- So I was only about a year back in Paris.
- Not even probably.
- Not even.
- Not even quite a year.
- And the reason I left that early, as I said,
- I had my papers.
- My brother-in-law here got very, very ill.
- And my sister asked for special permission
- from Washington to have my papers looked at real quickly.
- And I did get the permission very quickly,
- because even though I was French,
- I had to come on a German quota because I was born in Germany.
- And since no German were allowed to the United States
- after the war, the quota was very open.
- They would let the German Jews come in,
- but not regular Germans.
- And so my papers got processed very quickly.
- And I left in January of '46.
- And I came over here on a troop boat, troop transportation.
- I was one of 11 or 16 civilians on that ship,
- a special permission from Washington.
- I don't ever know how she got it.
- But she's dead.
- I can't ask her.
- So I came--
- I was one probably of the first ones to arrive, you know,
- after the war.
- And she said she had no family, which she didn't.
- She wanted me to come over.
- So I really--
- I know my parents, little by little, you know,
- got back on their feet, not too well.
- Two years after I was here-- we had
- all intentions bringing the whole family over at that point.
- We all believed they wanted to come up to a point.
- But my brother came about two years after I was here.
- And then my parents refused to come.
- They said the war is over.
- We just moved around too much.
- We don't have anything to fear.
- We're French citizens, after all.
- We don't know the English language.
- They were in their 50s, I think.
- Let's see, my mother is 92.
- And that's how many years?
- 40?
- In their 50s, yeah, 40s.
- And they just felt that they didn't
- want to come to this country.
- None of us children had--
- my sister was fairly well-to-do.
- But I didn't And my brother didn't have any money really
- to support our whole family.
- And the youngest daughter was still there with them.
- And another daughter was still there.
- In the meantime, she got engaged and married a French Jew.
- And his mother was in front of the children's eyes
- yanked out of her house and stripped of her clothes
- and paraded naked in the streets of Paris,
- in front of the children.
- They had to look at her.
- And she was deported.
- I don't know why the father and the children,
- they didn't take at that time.
- I should ask Marcel, if he can talk about it.
- He never talked about it.
- I heard that from my mother.
- And so he went consequently to Israel
- and fought in the war of liberation.
- He wanted to get out.
- But he had met my sister, and he wanted her to come to Israel.
- She said, no.
- My parents are here.
- And if I go anywhere, we get the family together
- in the United States.
- So he came back.
- I guess he must have really loved her.
- And, of course, his father was alone.
- So that just-- he was older than my parents.
- And they just felt they didn't want to come and leave
- the parents alone.
- So that's why my parents never did--
- My mother came to visit.
- Of course, we had to come over eventually
- so she could see her parents, which were here.
- And my father came.
- It took me 20 years to go back.
- I didn't see my dad for 18--
- till he came to visit here one time.
- They brought my mother and father over to visit.
- So that's also part of it.
- It destroyed the family, you know.
- Under other circumstances, it probably
- would not have happened--
- No.
- --quite that way.
- They were separated, certainly.
- Your grandparents lived what, with that oldest sister?
- No.
- They had a room with kitchen privileges,
- very close to my husband's family in what they called
- the Fourth Reich in New York.
- It's the Broadway, Washington Heights area.
- My sister lived in Forest Hills at that time.
- And they were much happier.
- They had friends and, you know, like--
- [AUDIO OUT]
- You said that your husband's family
- considered your grandparents--
- Yeah.
- --almost as their--
- --as their family because my husband's mother
- was born in the same town as they lived.
- And my mother-- matter of fact, I think she was the same age
- my mother was born the same day, the same year.
- And were friends all through their life.
- And, of course, that's how she met her first husband.
- And there were other family members,
- like cousins or so, that had made it out.
- So they were much happier there because they had-- you know,
- they could speak German for one.
- They learned very little English at their age.
- They were quite old, but they did become American citizens
- yet.
- And they were very proud.
- And my grandfather used to take the bus from Washington
- Heights to the end and go back.
- And he said, where else can you see a big city for $0.10?
- [LAUGHING] They were very grateful.
- So they did not really work anymore.
- They were too old--
- No.
- --too old--
- They were to wold to work.
- And my uncle, my grandfather's brother and sister kind of,
- and my sister at that point, really did, you know,
- kind of support them.
- What are your feelings today about how
- the war influenced you?
- Oh, I feel that I'm very fortunate to have survived it.
- And I was very, very lucky.
- And like the troops said, I probably was beshert.
- Why should I survive it?
- And my husband survived several months in Buchenwald
- and was able to get out, which was, you know,
- basically unheard of.
- We met again in this country.
- We were able to--
- we had a very wonderful life.
- We were very happy to be in this country, very grateful.
- And I think--
- I feel that I was very lucky because my immediate family,
- we all survived.
- I had not a lot of the trauma that the people
- that lost a lot of family.
- We lost-- I lost friends.
- Of course, I lost friends, larger family.
- But my brothers and sisters and my parents,
- grandparents even, came out.
- And it was a terrible experience.
- And sometimes I think you feel guilty.
- Why should you make it out?
- I think I've had that feeling.
- But I can see a reason for everything.
- I can't really see the reason, but I think perhaps there
- is a reason why things happen.
- I haven't lost my faith.
- I'm not Orthodox, not even--
- I lean-- I'm still between Conservative and--
- I don't keep kosher.
- I don't eat pork, although I've eaten it during the war.
- I feel I don't need it today.
- I try to be a good Jew.
- I try to help other people, which I think is essentially
- what a good Jew should be.
- I always try to, you know, to help in whatever I could be.
- I was very blessed with five children, a lovely family.
- And they are all grown up.
- And they're good children.
- They have all done well.
- I think looking back on it, I will never
- know what I could have been.
- I know I always liked to study.
- And I have-- a few years ago, I got my equivalency certificate
- in New York state.
- And I started going to college.
- And I hope someday I can finish that.
- And that would be a big thing for me,
- having not gone to school.
- And I feel that only in this country
- you have that opportunity.
- So I'm very grateful to live here.
- And I hope it'll stay free.
- I'll do anything in my power, you know, to keep it that way.
- But It's hard to say.
- I think the thing I possibly minded the most for a long time
- was that I did not have a formal education
- and that I missed out on a lot.
- You can only learn so much by reading, which I apparently did.
- I couldn't gone through, you know,
- and gotten the certificate.
- But I have often felt a lot of things that I didn't learn maybe
- hurt me, like maths and science, that you just cannot learn
- on your own as well.
- And I don't know what I might have become.
- I'm sure I would have gone on to school the way
- my family was set up, and probably the higher education,
- you know.
- I don't know.
- I've always loved children.
- But that's speculative.
- You don't know what-- you know, I
- think I was fortunate that I came through as well
- as I did in the long run.
- And I feel you can't live in the past.
- I've forgotten a lot of things that I even remember today.
- We didn't want to dwell on it.
- Matter of fact, we didn't talk on it for years.
- We knew it happened, and that was the past.
- And we had to go on and try to build a new life.
- And--
- Even in your own family, you didn't discuss things?
- No.
- [INAUDIBLE] You just-- it was too difficult to discuss.
- It was just something that, you know-- and as I said,
- you probably felt guilty because a lot of them didn't make it.
- And then it would bring these up,
- and you kind of stayed away from it.
- That's a very common experience.
- Yeah.
- Survivor guilt, a very common experience.
- As I said, the first time my husband and I ever
- really talked about this after we watched The Holocaust
- on TV, which we were both really upset after we watched it.
- But it was one of the few times we ever talked about it.
- And he would even talk less about his experience.
- Can you tell me now, please, what
- you know of his experiences, how he came--
- you explained how he came to be taken to Buchenwald and--
- All I know is that some American Jew,
- and I think he was from Virginia,
- sent 100 affidavits or maybe more
- to Germany for young people.
- And I don't know how they got to Buchenwald.
- But through this man, a lot of these young people
- did get out of Buchenwald.
- And it was in the early stages of the camp.
- I don't think they had started gassing people at that point.
- It was in 19--
- probably '39, yeah, '39, or early '40.
- He then with American--
- I don't know if he was alone in that,
- but with American help from whatever agency--
- had rented a farm in Holland, where when these young people
- came out of Buchenwald, went to Holland first for a year,
- working on that farm.
- And I remember he telling me that he learned how to cut hair.
- And he would get a nickel or so to cut
- the boys' and girls' hair.
- They didn't have much.
- And they gave him some spending money.
- And then he let them come to Virginia.
- He paid, I think, or an agency.
- I really don't know.
- Perhaps I can find out when I go to the reunion.
- It's very possible.
- I will try to find out if all of these kids got out that way.
- There's a lot of them.
- And I know some went to South America.
- Some went to Australia.
- I met one couple that came to visit us.
- They live in Australia today.
- They went to South America and different countries.
- And a lot of them came to the United States.
- And he had bought a farm for them in Virginia.
- And a lot of them started out there on the farm.
- And when the war started, a lot of them enlisted.
- And when--
- When America entered the war, essentially--
- Yeah.
- When America entered the war, my husband was one of those.
- He was with--
- I know you remember it.
- He was with the 80th Infantry--
- 80th Infantry Division.
- And he went back to Europe.
- And a lot of them, they sent to Japan.
- But he-- and a lot of the German-speaking ones, they
- sent to Europe.
- And he was in the infantry.
- And he got wounded.
- He lost his hearing, mainly.
- And then they trained him for intelligence.
- And he was in the Battle of the Bulge,
- as an intelligence officer.
- And one thing I remember, he told us
- once that during the Battle of the Bulge,
- his commanding officer told him, Froehlich,
- you can do-- if you make a prisoner,
- you can do with them what you want.
- You don't have to bring him back.
- I know how you feel about him.
- And he said, I stood--
- I had several prisoners.
- And I pointed the gun at them.
- And I just couldn't kill him.
- I send him back.
- That after all that, I just felt I would be just as
- bad as there would have been.
- I just couldn't do it.
- But he worked for intelligence.
- And they wanted him to go to Munich to the trials.
- But his sister died, and so he came home.
- And that's essentially what I know what he went through
- over there.
- And all his sisters eventually got here from England.
- And that whole family, also the whole immediate family survived.
- Also, on his mother's side, I think
- they all got out, the brothers and sisters,
- except the one who died.
- And one had married a non-Jew in Germany.
- And I think he--
- his wife [? hid ?] him.
- I don't think he ever got out.
- But some of them went to South America.
- So a large percent of that family
- also survived for some reason or another.
- And my father-in-law's brother and two sisters, I believe,
- were sent to France [INAUDIBLE].
- What, if anything, did you communicate to your children
- about the Holocaust?
- You essentially said that you really
- didn't talk about it much when they were growing up.
- Well, when they were growing up, I think--
- for one thing, you didn't hear very much about it.
- We got married in New York shortly after.
- Well, I came here in January.
- And we got married in June, which was really quick.
- But we knew each other, and the families, the rest of our lives.
- And I guess, you know, it kind of precipitated it.
- My husband kept his promise.
- He took me out.
- It was his wrongdoing.
- And we left after my oldest son was born, a year after.
- He was about four weeks old.
- And my husband worked in making custom jewelry and lost his job.