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Oral history interview with Abraham Grossman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0122.459 | RG Number: RG-50.477.0459

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    Oral history interview with Abraham Grossman
    Transcript
    10 seconds, Peggy.
    [INAUDIBLE] OK.
    We're interviewing Abraham Grossman.
    It is April 26, 1991.
    We're interviewing him for the Holocaust Oral History
    Project at Temple Beth Sholom.
    My name is Peggy Coster, and with me is Tanya Zatkin.
    OK, could you start by saying where you were born
    and when you're born?
    And spell out the name, if you can.
    My name is, as you mentioned, is Abraham Grossman.
    But I was not born Abraham Grossman.
    But I was born with the name of Adolf Everybody calls me Ali,
    so when I came to Israel in 1948,
    I changed my name to Abraham, because Adolf
    wouldn't go very well along.
    I was born in a small town in Germany
    in the province of Mecklenburg.
    The town is called Güstrow, a very small town of about 25,000
    inhabitants.
    In fact, I was back in Güstrow about nine months ago,
    and nothing has really changed.
    Even the population has remained at the same number of people.
    I grew up in Güstrow to the age of 11, and then I left it.
    But I'd like to come to that a little bit later.
    My parents were born in Warsaw, in the capital city of Poland.
    And my father emigrated in the '20s to that town.
    And I'd like to go into how he decided to go into Germany.
    What I know was my parents never really spoke about their past.
    Apparently, their past was something they
    didn't like to speak about.
    But from a sentence here and a remark
    there, I gleaned certain facts, how they came into Germany.
    We had a distant relative who served in the Russian army
    in the First World War.
    And he was incarcerated in a prisoner of war camp next
    to that town, Güstrow.
    And when he was released, he decided to stay in the town
    and not return to Warsaw.
    So he notified by post, I suppose,
    my parents that a good living was to be made in the town,
    much better than in poverty-stricken Poland.
    So one day, my grandfather, my father's father,
    my paternal grandfather-- he was a glazier.
    And he used to go through the streets of the city repairing
    window panes.
    So one day, a shegetz, a gentile person,
    came and beat him up and broke all his panes.
    My father, hearing of it, went after the shegetz
    and beat him so much that he thought he had killed him.
    Feeling retribution, he decided to leave, that very night,
    Poland.
    And he crossed the border into Germany.
    Soon after that, he made a little bit of money,
    and he brought my mother over.
    And they were married then in Güstrow.
    I had two brothers and one sister.
    I was the youngest son.
    There was Jacob, there was Bernard, and Adolf--
    that is me-- I was the youngest son.
    And then, a few years later, to the joy of my father,
    a girl was born, and her name was Tzili.
    Unfortunately, her fate was to die in Auschwitz.
    I went to school, to a German school.
    There were-- I don't recollect.
    There must have been about 20 to 25 children, Jewish children.
    But in my class, I was the only one
    except a distant-related cousin of mine.
    We were the only two in the same class.
    I grew up in--
    it was before the advent of the National Socialist Hitler, when
    he came to power in 1933.
    A natural playful child, I had absolutely no apprehensions
    or no fright.
    And I grew up playfully, and I played with gentile mates.
    And I can't say that I felt any kind of discrimination
    against me whatsoever.
    Opposite us, there was a bar which was
    patronized by the population.
    And it was full to capacity every night
    and drinking and singing, and it was joyful.
    And I used to, very often, stand in the entrance of that bar
    and had a look inside what was going on.
    It was a kind of a game.
    There was an old man.
    He had a parrot.
    And I remember it because, when I went back
    nine months ago, the kind of remembrance, to me,
    it's important.
    I don't know whether, to this particular talk,
    it has any relevance.
    But it's so important to me that I would like to mention it.
    There was a kind of an alleyway we used to play in.
    And every time we passed the door of this lonely old man,
    the parrot used to shout in perfect German,
    "Halt. Who goes there?
    Halt. Who goes there?"
    From time to time, the man used to call me in,
    and I used to run errands for him.
    And he used to reward me always with some sticky candies
    and some few pfennigs.
    And so we grew up till the advent
    of the National Socialists, when they came to power in 1933.
    Things started to change.
    Suddenly, the people who used to come into our house
    and in our shop-- by the way, my father
    opened a shop where he sold everything
    from buttons to watches and shoes
    and coats, kind of a super shop.
    Everything was sold to the populace.
    And there were lots of farms around our town
    and their laborers.
    And that's how my father made a living,
    and he made quite a decent living, because he, in the end,
    purchased a house.
    And then he purchased a second one.
    And when the Nazis came to power,
    things started to change.
    Those people I had associated with suddenly started--
    kind of a metamorphosis overcame them.
    They became terrible, terrible antisemites suddenly.
    In my childish mind-- here I was, 11 years old--
    I couldn't make out why suddenly people
    should change in such a manner, why suddenly they hated us.
    And the word of "Jew" and sau Jude," which means "pig Jew,"
    was thrown around easily at us.
    I couldn't make it out why suddenly my friends didn't
    speak to us any longer.
    But opposite us lived a man.
    His name was [Personal name] and he had a bicycle repair shop.
    And he was a communist.
    And his son was ostracized by his gentile friends,
    so he played always with us.
    In fact, when I went back nine months ago to the town,
    I met him.
    And we exchanged lots of memories.
    He had lots of knowledge which I remembered,
    but I didn't think that he could ever
    remember them, because they were important and relevant to me.
    But he remembered everything, and that amazed me.
    So he used to play with us.
    And we used to do a lot of tricks.
    And we had a synagogue, a very nice synagogue,
    which served not only the town but all
    the smaller towns and the villages where Jews lived.
    It served those people, and especially on the High Holy
    Days.
    They all used to come in order to take part in the services.
    And the cantor, his name was Blumenfeld.
    I remember him very well.
    He was a small kind of a man.
    And he used to be, also, the shochet.
    And he used to teach us how to read the prayer book.
    And I had an incident with the man from time to time.
    He had a very broad finger.
    And when he wanted me to read a word,
    he used to put his finger on the word.
    And I invariably got the wrong word.
    And that annoyed him.
    He took it as a personal offense.
    And any time I read the wrong word, he used to take a ruler,
    and he used to slap me across the knuckles.
    I took it very badly.
    I couldn't make out why he would do such a thing.
    But as things go, things pass.
    So I forgave him, and he forgave me.
    Things were OK with him.
    But I remember my mother used to send me
    with a chicken to be slaughtered, to the shochet.
    He was the shochet.
    and I remember he used to come down
    with a big sort of dressing gown reaching down to his ankles.
    And he had a fez on his top and a pompom.
    And he had Meerschuam pipe clenched between his teeth
    which reached down to the ground.
    And that's how he used to come down to kill the chicken.
    So he had a kind of a beautiful case inlaid with purple velvet.
    And there was a big, huge shiny knife in there.
    And I handed him the chicken, and he took the chicken,
    and he put the knife in his mouth with the dull edge first.
    And then he took the chicken, and he pulled
    the head back of the chicken.
    And he felt it all over for blemishes.
    Finding none, he took the knife, and with one swift stroke,
    he cut the throat of the chicken and threw into the next bush.
    And the chicken used to run, cawing at the top of his voice,
    run around, run around till it fell and breathed its last.
    So I used to take the chicken home to my mother.
    And she-- it was [LAUGHS] rather shocking to me.
    But then I ate the foods my mother made of this chicken,
    so I soon forgot about these incidents.
    In 1936, my father got ill.
    And he died.
    So my mother decided to send me to a--
    no, I must go back a little bit in school.
    We had a teacher.
    His name was Kruger.
    And he was an art teacher.
    And he had a pronounced limp.
    And he always maintained that the war was caused by the Jews.
    And he, in his demeanor, in his behavior towards us
    two pupils in that class was something outrageous.
    The man was something terrible.
    Anyway, one day in 1933, when a teacher
    used to come into the class, all the children used
    to get up and say, good morning, herr teacher.
    He never used to get up, and he used to say, morning, sit down.
    One day, he comes in, and he had a uniform on of the Brownshirt,
    of the SA.
    And he lifted his hand in a Nazi salute,
    and he shouted heil Hitler.
    And from that day on, everybody got up.
    And he told them when he said, heil Hitler, everybody say,
    heil Hitler.
    One day, my mother went to Poland, to Warsaw,
    to visit her folks, her parents and her sisters and brothers.
    I had never known them.
    In fact, I didn't know anybody.
    But she went, and she went to visit her parents.
    And when she came back after a few weeks,
    she brought lots of beautiful Jewish food with her.
    And we enjoyed all that food, especially
    she bought a salami along.
    And I loved that salami.
    It was full of garlic, knoblauch It was wonderful.
    I loved that garlic and I loved that sausage.
    It was wonderful.
    Anyway, my mother made sandwiches, wrapped them up
    in cellophane and gave it to me, And I took it to school.
    I put it under my desk.
    And that morning, Kruger came in, and he said, heil.
    And he couldn't finish his word.
    He couldn't finish "Hitler."
    He smelled the garlic.
    And he said-- in German, it's knoblauch-- he said, knoblauch,
    knoblauch.
    Oh my, God, when I realized immediately that there's
    going to be trouble.
    So he played a kind of a game, cat-and-mouse game.
    He went all along the desks of all the children
    and left me to the very last.
    And then when he came to my desk, he looked below the desk,
    and he found those sandwiches.
    And he took them by the tip of his fingers, lifting them up,
    and pulled a kind of a grimace and disgusting kind of a way.
    And then he took me by the scruff of my neck in the other.
    And then he propelled me toward the door, opened the door,
    and threw the sandwiches out.
    And then he kicked me out.
    And I slid across the corridor on the floor
    and I banged my head against the opposite wall.
    How old were you?
    11.
    So I cursed him under my breath, that monster.
    Even at those days, I thought this terrible injustice,
    this kind of behavior towards a child was not to be understood.
    Anyway, I went home and told my mother about that story.
    And she said, come along.
    And she took me straight back to school,
    and she entered the office of the principal.
    I must, again, tell you, I went back on my visit
    to that same office where the principal received my mother.
    Nothing had changed except principal.
    He was a young man.
    I looked back, and my heart--
    something happened to me when I stood and sat there
    in that office, and I saw my--
    I remembered my mother speaking to that principal.
    And my mother spoke German with a very thick accent.
    Mainly we spoke Yiddish at home, but she
    spoke German, but with a thick accent, which
    caused me a lot of distress.
    I was mortified by her accent.
    In fact, today, I love it.
    I like people when they speak with an accent.
    I love it if they speak with a Yiddish accent.
    Well, in those days, it was different.
    The Germans didn't like anybody speaking only hochdeutsch,
    the best of German.
    So she complained.
    And the teacher said, Mrs. Grossman, you know,
    we are living in very difficult times.
    There's nothing I can do.
    And that's how it ended.
    There was nothing could be done, but it had some after effects.
    My classmates, from that very day on,
    used to wait for me outside the school
    and used to accompany me home.
    And they used to chant, in unison,
    some antisemitic verses.
    In German, so it's impossible to translate it into English.
    And they took me home.
    And the next morning, when I was going to go back to school,
    they were there again.
    They congregated in front of my house.
    And they took me back to school, chanting
    all the way, again, these terrible antisemitic verses.
    It became so bad.
    I don't know.
    In a way, I don't feel good, because all these stories,
    they pale against these terrible with people have passed through
    in the camps.
    And thank God, I didn't.
    My mother died, and my sister died.
    But I, personally, didn't go through the camps.
    So these things are small things in comparison
    to what people went through.
    Yet I think, in a way, it is important to tell
    my story because all this led up later to the most
    terrible crime in human history in the annals of mankind,
    that such things, that people could
    have committed not only to my people, to my family, to this--
    I'm outraged by it.
    It's unbelievable.
    In fact, the older I grow, the angrier I get.
    I've been many times back in Germany.
    In fact-- I will come back to this a little bit later--
    I served in the British Army and in the Jewish Brigade.
    And I was stationed in Germany, in Bielefeld,
    in Westphalia, one and a half years.
    And in the meantime, I'd gone back many, many times
    to Germany.
    So my father died, and the business went down completely.
    My mother decided to send me to the next big town, which
    is Szczecin, in Pomerania, which belongs today to Poland.
    It's called Szczecin.
    It was a huge harbor town-- harbor town, you say?
    Yeah.
    And there was a kind of an home for Jewish children,
    and there was a Jewish school.
    And I went to school there.
    And things started, for me, to be a little bit more
    comfortable because I moved amongst Jewish children
    and Jewish teachers.
    Now, the principal and his wife of that children's home,
    they were wonderful people.
    I have to express my admiration and credit to those people.
    Unfortunately, they are not alive today.
    But they did emigrate, in the end, to Israel,
    and I met them there, too.
    And they were wonderful educators.
    And I'd forgotten what people were like in contrast to what
    had happened to me in the school I went to in Güstrow,
    in Mecklenburg.
    The Germans, in preparation for the Second World War,
    decided to evict all Polish nationals.
    I don't know whether you know about this.
    It is well known, because that triggered off
    the Kristallnacht--
    the night of the broken glass, I believe,
    it is called in English.
    And one night-- it must have been about after midnight,
    maybe 1 or 2 o'clock--
    this principal-- his name was Mr. [Personal name]
    He woke me up and said, dress.
    I said, why?
    It's still night.
    He said, you must dress.
    You must come.
    And I dressed.
    And he says, then you come to my room.
    And I came to the room.
    There were two men sitting there.
    They looked, to me, then I understood
    that they were Gestapo men.
    And I was a small child.
    And they looked at me and said, this is Adolf Grossman?
    They expected maybe-- I don't know what they did expect.
    And they said, you come along with us.
    And I asked them where to, and they said, you come along.
    So we went down the stairs, and outside
    was a van filled with Jews.
    Oh, I could hear, according to the actions,
    that they were from all Ostland, from Poland.
    And I was very crestfallen.
    I didn't know what was happening.
    And they took us to the local police station.
    And I was put in with the women.
    I was too small to be with the men, I reckon.
    So the next morning, they drove us to the railway station.
    And while I was entering the train,
    somebody shouted Ali, Ali.
    And I looked, and there was Mr. [Personal name]
    He had come to the station.
    I don't know how he had even thought that we would be
    taken to the railway station.
    But there he was, and he was waving at me.
    And they wouldn't let him come near me,
    but he was there to, so to speak, see me off.
    Anyway, we were driven to the nearest border crossing
    between Germany and Poland.
    And I said it was winter.
    I think it was maybe September or October.
    It was bitter cold, and I wasn't really dressed for the cold.
    And I must have looked a pity sight.
    So a woman came up to me and said to me,
    where are your parents?
    And I said, I have no idea.
    She said, are you by yourself?
    I said, I am.
    And she said, well, have you any relations in Poland?
    And I said, I heard that my parents, on both sides,
    had brothers and sisters and parents.
    But I'd never met them.
    I do know that they live in Warsaw.
    I even heard the street they lived in.
    It was the Krochmalna and the [Place name] It meant nothing
    to me, but my parents always did talk
    about the streets they lived in.
    In fact, these two streets became very, very infamous
    in all the books written on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
    That was part, later, of the Warsaw Ghetto, these two
    streets.
    So apparently, my parents lived in the Jewish section
    of Warsaw.
    I understood that.
    So she said to me, I tell you what--
    I'll say to the border guard that I am your mother.
    And we'll cross the border into Poland,
    and then we'll take a train to Warsaw.
    And then we'll go to the Jewish community,
    and we'll find out where your relations are.
    I do believe that your--
    I'm speaking about my parents, but my father
    had died in '36 already.
    But my mother had remarried.
    She said that probably they would be
    at a different border crossing.
    And you'll probably meet them in Warsaw.
    You better come along with me.
    And I agreed.
    So we came to the official on the border.
    And he stamping the passport, and there I
    was, across in Poland.
    So we went to-- there was a kind of a restaurant, a bar,
    so we sat there.
    And she ordered for me some cocoa, and I was drinking then.
    We were sitting there two or three hours,
    waiting for the train to take us to Warsaw.
    While I was sitting there, I made a decision
    at the age of 12--
    I made a decision which--
    by the grace of God, I'm sitting here today-- saved my life.
    I had the impression of Poland through the talks
    of my parents and their friends and what I gleaned from them.
    My parents started to work with the age of 11--
    three, four in a bed, in one room, maybe 10 people--
    terrible, terrible poverty, which I had no idea
    even existed, because Germany was fundamentally a country
    where people didn't starve.
    There was no poverty.
    It was a clean country, and people were decently clothed.
    And everybody had shoes.
    And everybody slept in a bed and had a roof over his head.
    The impression I got of Poland, in my childish mind,
    was a dark hole.
    It made a terrible impression on me that Poland--
    and I had a vivid imagination, I can assure you.
    So I went to the woman, and I said, I'm going back.
    I'm not going to Poland.
    She said, why?
    What have you got to do in Germany?
    You come.
    And I said, no.
    I decided that I wouldn't.
    So I went back to the border guard, and I spoke to him.
    And he didn't understand German, and I don't understand Polish.
    So somebody translated for him and told him
    that I had had no passport and that the woman had taken me
    over just illegally.
    So he started to curse in Polish and told
    me to go back to Germany.
    That's what I did.
    I went back to the German officials
    who had dealt with this whole transfer.
    And I told them I have no passport.
    And there were another few people
    who were being sent back because the Poles did not accept them.
    So we were-- that night, I arrived again by train
    in the same town, Szczecin.
    And I phoned up to Mr. [Personal name]
    the principal of that children's home.
    And when he heard my voice, he was full of joy.
    And he said, you come home towards the home.
    And I and my wife will come towards you.
    We'll meet.
    And that's what we did.
    And even the rabbi was there.
    I remember his name was Richter what a wonderful man.
    They all died, except [Personal name] of course.
    Richter died later, I heard, in Lublin--
    what a wonderful young rabbi.
    He used to do sports with us-- such a wonderful man.
    And to think of it, that he was gassed and killed,
    it doesn't make sense to me at all.
    Anyway, I continue to go to school.
    And to tell a little bit about the Kristallnacht, how
    it affected me, amongst those people
    deported was a woman by the name of Grynszpan.
    And one of the German soldiers, one of the guards,
    he pushed her.
    And she fell, and she broke part of her spine.
    And she fell.
    And then she had a son.
    He studied in the Sorbonne in Paris.
    And when he heard of it, he decided to take revenge.
    And he went to the German embassy.
    He waited in front.
    And an official came out by the name of Ernst vom Rath,
    and he took a revolver and shot him.
    After lingering on for a bit, a day or two, he died.
    And that triggered off the Kristallnacht.
    Hermann Goring-- he was the, I think,
    the minister of the interior, second in command of Hitler.
    He instigated the Kristallnacht.
    Every single synagogue was burned that night.
    Every single pane in every Jewish home was broken.
    That's why it's called the Kristallnacht.
    And every male above the age of 16
    was sent into the concentration camp.
    And they said that we are putting them in camps in order
    to save them from the anger of the German population,
    to guard them against it.
    But it was all nonsense.
    That morning, when the synagogues
    were burning, on my way to school,
    I saw lots of people standing there
    in front of the synagogue.
    I had to pass the synagogue on my way to school.
    And I saw the flames shooting out of the synagogue,
    out of the roof, and hundreds of people standing there.
    And there was the fire department,
    but they weren't putting the fire out.
    They were only dousing the homes and the property next.
    That shouldn't burn.
    But I could see that they were not trying to put the fire out.
    They saw to it that the synagogue burned.
    And I was blonde, and apparently I didn't look so Jewish.
    So I mingled amongst the crowd.
    And I stood next to two women, and one of them
    was holding a little child in her arm.
    And I looked at her face, and I thought this kind of woman
    can look at a burning synagogue and not
    even remark that it is wrong to burn the house of God.
    She didn't.
    She had the face of a middle-class woman with her
    child--
    no remorse, no compassion, no nothing.
    Again, it made no sense to me that people
    could behave like that.
    Even as a child, I could see something was wrong.
    Suddenly, I saw a man, a Jew whom I had known, with a beard
    and with payots, running out of the synagogue with a scroll,
    with a Torah in his arm.
    He tried to salvage a Torah scroll.
    And there was an SS man, really huge man--
    a bully, he looked to me-- with an SS uniform
    and jackboots and cruel face.
    He got hold of that man, pulled him by the scruff of the neck,
    threw him down.
    And then he rolled the scroll out on the street,
    and he said to the man, you dance on this.
    And he took a revolver and held it next to his head.
    And I was standing there shocked.
    I was shocked.
    I couldn't believe it.
    That I'd never seen.
    I mean, I heard the ranting of Hitler
    on the radio, always Jews, international Jewry,
    the banks are Jewish, and the press are Jewish, and the Jews,
    and the Jews, and the Jews.
    You really could not make out what he was talking about.
    But I always heard Jews, the Jews.
    And we were-- we were frightened.
    It was terrible.
    So he took the--
    that SS man, he took a revolver to the head of that pious Jew.
    I don't think he was a rabbi, but he was definitely
    a Talmid Chacham.
    He was one of the sages of the town.
    And he said, you dance.
    And he put a revolver on his head.
    And the Jew went on the Torah, and he danced.
    And he danced like a puppet, stiffly--
    like a zombie.
    It shook me.
    And there and then I made a decision.
    There and then, I became a Zionist.
    I said, if the Jewish people will not
    have a state of their own, a country
    of their own, their own army, and their own government,
    and to be able to decide their own fate, it can never be.
    And later on, I put this decision into action.
    And I did become a soldier in the British Army and even
    in the Jewish Brigade, although I did not live in Palestine
    in those days.
    So I went to school.
    I was shaken.
    I was shaken, completely shaken.
    And there was Mr. [Personal name] the principal.
    He was also a teacher, by the way, in the same school.
    And he said, sit down, children.
    Don't be nervous.
    Don't be excited.
    And he took a book, and he read us a story.
    Suddenly, the door burst open, and two Gestapo men
    came in, took the book out of his hand very roughly,
    looked at it, closed the book, and threw it into the corner,
    and took my teacher, Mr. [Personal name] took him out,
    dragged him out.
    When I looked at it-- and I adored that man--
    I had so much respect for him, and I saw him being dragged out
    of that classroom.
    And there was a van outside.
    And they pushed him and all the teachers,
    they pushed into the van.
    And they took them to the concentration camp.
    He was released later.
    But why do I say, by the grace of God
    I'm sitting here, when I made this decision
    to go back to Germany?
    Because my stepfather was given the option that
    he would be released from camp if he would
    leave Germany within 24 hours.
    That was before the Wannsee Conference, where the plan was
    concocted to kill all the Jews.
    In those days, they were going to get rid of the Jews.
    So my father took this opportunity,
    and he came out of the concentration camp.
    And immediately, there was what we called the Kindertransport
    to England.
    They sent-- I believe about 10,000 children were
    able to go to England.
    They were sent to England, and I was one of the children.
    I was sent to England.
    And also, my two brothers were sent to England.
    My stepfather, my mother, and my sister, that very same night,
    crossed the border illegally into Belgium.
    And they settled down in Brussels.
    Later on, I came with the forces, British forces,
    into Brussels, when it was liberated.
    And I went to their home where they
    lived, because I had received, in the meantime,
    two letters through the Swiss Red Cross.
    So I knew their addresses.
    So I came to, first of all, a camp
    in Dovercourt, near Harwich.
    After a few months, I was transferred to London.
    And there was another hostel where
    Jewish children of the same background as me, from Germany,
    was established.
    And I went to school in England for--
    till the war broke out on the 3rd of September, 1939.
    And then we were evacuated.
    We were evacuated to a small town
    called Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire.
    And I was taken in by a gentile family.
    That was a kind of a plan the British government worked out
    to take in children, to take them away
    from London because they thought that London
    was going to be bombed, which it was later, as we know.
    And they transferred all the schools
    from the cities which might have been bombed to small satellite
    towns where they thought that the Germans would not bomb,
    their bombs wouldn't reach it.
    There would be no interest to bomb small towns.
    So when I reached the age of 16, I
    went to a technical school, the old school,
    and I learned a trade.
    And when I reached the age of 18,
    the Jewish Brigade was formed, and I decided immediately
    to join the Army.
    In the meantime, I had gone on hachsharah.
    Hachsharah is a kind of a preparation for aliyah
    to, in those days, it was Palestine.
    It wasn't Israel then.
    It was on the same system as a kibbutz, exactly.
    So we were maybe 50 or 60 people.
    There must have been about 10 hachsharah that.
    And it was a religious hachsharah.
    I had a religious background at home,
    so I wanted to be in a religious environment.
    And that's where I met my wife.
    She was 16 years old.
    And we became friends.
    And eventually, we married, but that at a later stage.
    She was an only child.
    And I would like to digress, because I am really
    anxious to tell that story, what happened to her parents.
    She was an only child.
    She was a very, very beautiful child.
    She had a lovely voice.
    And she was a very talented girl,
    although she had never gone to school.
    And she left school in Germany with 11.
    I went to school in England for a few years, but she never did.
    She finished her schooling with 11 years, and that was that.
    And then she went on hachsharah.
    But later on, when we were in Israel--
    as I say, I would like to digress a little bit,
    because it seems important to me to tell this story.
    A relation of her father came to Israel.
    He had survived the Holocaust.
    She was born in Berlin.
    Her parents lived in Berlin, but things
    were getting so bad that they decided to go back to Poland
    to their relations, to their folks.
    And they went back there in order
    to be with their parents and brothers and sisters
    and so forth.
    And they went to the same town where this
    survivor who came to Israel--
    I think it was Przemysl maybe--
    or Rzeszów.
    I think it was Rzeszów where they went to.
    And he told us the following story.
    He said that, one day, the Germans
    rounded the whole population, the Jewish population,
    up and brought them to the nearest road.
    And there was a ditch prepared.
    And they put all the Jews along the ditch and shot them.
    And they fell into the ditch.
    And this relation who had escaped to Israel,
    he was able to hide himself in some bushes.
    And while he was lying there, he was watching what was going on.
    He saw the parents of my wife standing
    at the edge of a ditch holding hands.
    As far as I understood from my wife,
    they were a very loving sort of husband and wife relation.
    And they loved their child, my wife, in an extraordinary way.
    But it was an only child.
    And it was a little girl.
    And there they stood holding hands.
    And in my imagination, I always thought that--
    I was thinking, what were their last thoughts while they were
    standing there holding hands?
    And I'm so convinced-- it's a kind of premonition,
    a kind of a feeling I've got-- that they were thinking
    of their child, of Genya.
    And then he said there was a burst of fire
    from a machine gun, and they fell back into the ditch.
    That is the story of the parents of my wife, Genya.
    So when the Jewish Brigade was formed in 1944,
    I decided to join.
    I was sent to Maidstone, in England, in Kent.
    And I was given basic training for about four weeks.
    And immediately-- and there must have been about another 100
    who had the same idea as I, to fight Germans.
    And we were sent immediately over the Mediterranean,
    to Italy.
    I arrived in Naples and we made our way up
    to the North of Italy.
    And we saw action on the Senio River,
    and we even took some prisoners.
    And then the war ended.
    And I was stationed next to the Yugoslav-Austrian border
    in Italy for maybe three or four months.
    And then we were given orders, the whole Brigade--
    there were 5,000--
    we were given orders to move to Antwerp, in Brussels--
    I'm sorry, in Belgium.
    So the whole Brigade, about 5,000, 6,000 men,
    a self-contained brigade with its artillery and mortars
    and infantry and signals, complete self-contained
    brigade, moved over the Brenner Pass through Germany.
    I'd like to mention that the insignia on our shoulders
    was in Hebrew.
    It said [HEBREW],, which means, not
    soldier, but [HEBREW],, which means
    "Fighting Jewish Brigade Force."
    And there was a big Magen David on our arm,
    with the blue white and blue, which
    later became the Jewish flag.
    And of course, I was awfully proud to walk around with it.
    The badge of shame had become a badge of honor and pride.
    Very proud, I used to walk with my arms stretched out
    a little bit in order to--
    that was probably a conditioned reflex,
    just to show that there was absolutely
    no indignity of wearing the yellow badge.
    And here I had this golden Magen David
    on my left arm walking around in Europe, in Germany, later.
    So one -- we bivouacked in a little village.
    And suddenly, we were woken up by a commotion.
    And I woke up, and I saw a barn burning.
    And we ran towards a barn.
    It was straw inside.
    There's no way of putting it out,
    and nobody had any intention.
    That was in Germany, by the way.
    We had, of course, no intention to put it out,
    but it burned to the ground.
    And then there was--
    we had a rabbi with us.
    His name was Rabbi Casper, and he became later the Chief
    Rabbi of South Africa.
    He took all 5,000 men and gave us a speech.
    And I was amazed at his speech.
    He said, we should be ashamed of ourselves, whoever did this,
    to burn a barn down with straw.
    We Jews don't do these things.
    And people shouted, you talk about a barn?
    While they killed 6 million people, you talk about a barn.
    I think he must have felt that he had made a mistake.
    Talking about a barn--
    we didn't kill anybody.
    We didn't destroy anything.
    We didn't loot.
    We didn't rape.
    And it was a barn that went up in fire, so big deal.
    And the most amazing thing was that the owners of the barn,
    some farmer and his wife-- they were pretty young--
    standing at the window.
    And they were shouting and waving their fists at us.
    And I took my rifle, and I was so disgusted.
    I was so disgusted I was going to shoot them.
    But I didn't.
    But the urge in me was to shoot these people.
    They were complaining about a barn?
    It seemed to be incongruous to me that they I mean --
    they didn't hide under the beds.
    So we continued through Germany, and we arrived
    at the town of Landsberg.
    I'd like to remind you that Landsberg
    was a fortress where Hitler was imprisoned in the '20s.
    And that's where he wrote his book, Mein Kampf,
    this infamous book, Mein Kampf.
    And it had been made into a DP camp.
    And the whole Brigade--
    and I'd like to point out that, in all the trucks and all
    the tanks and all the half-tracks
    was the same emblem, the Magen David
    on the background, the flag.
    And we went through the main gate, through the courtyard,
    and out the back.
    And there were thousands of survivors standing there.
    And their hair had grown maybe an inch.
    It must have been a few weeks only after the liberation.
    I can hear now how they yelled and how they cried,
    almost animal-like.
    They saw themselves on the cars and they kissed Magen David.
    They grabbed the rifles from our hands and kissed the rifles.
    Only imagine that they suddenly saw
    these big burly Palestinians as Jews,
    singing at top of their voices with deep, masculine voices,
    just strength coming out of all of them.
    This is unbelievable.
    This picture never leaves me, how they went and they stopped.
    They wouldn't-- didn't want-- they wanted to keep us forever.
    They couldn't imagine that suddenly Jewish soldiers
    with armament, with tanks, with rifles, with machine guns,
    with artillery, with mortars--
    it's an unbelievable picture.
    I believe maybe a picture should be made of this.
    A film should be made only of this incident
    when we went through this Landsberg from the main gate,
    through the courtyard, through the back.
    And while we had to go on-- we couldn't stop.
    I mean, we had an aim to get into Antwerp, into Belgium.
    They ran, thousands of people ran
    after till we saw them disappearing in the background.
    It left me--
    I'm a sensitive kind of person.
    It left me shaken.
    And I had a feeling that Hitler had achieved nothing.
    He had not broken an iota of the Jewish spirit.
    There they were.
    I mean if somebody would be told all the time, you're no good,
    and the Jews are this, and the Jews are that.
    And we are nothing.
    We are dirt.
    And here they are, their pride coming out of the very pores--
    not denying their Jewishness.
    And when they saw Magen David, they--
    I mean, a question could be asked, where was God?
    Where is the Jewish God?
    What did he do?
    Why did he allow this?
    Of course, in the question of faith, it's a dilemma.
    Sometimes I believe, and sometimes I
    have my moments of doubt.
    But I do believe that those moments of doubt
    are part of the struggle we all go through.
    I fervently believe in the Jewish God.
    I have never really gone away from Him.
    I believe very strongly in God--
    not that I'm religious.
    I'm not religious, but I believe very strongly in God.
    Even though, how can I say, that God has done it to us,
    or people have done it to us, I have no idea.
    But God didn't help us in those days.
    Righteous people died.
    Children died.
    Women died who had done nothing.
    And they died.
    They died a most horrible, horrific death--
    not that you get a bullet, and you die, but these tortures,
    these things they went through.
    So eventually, we arrived in Antwerp.
    And as I told you before, the first thing I did,
    I went to Brussels in order to see what I could find out
    about my parents.
    And I went to the address.
    And the man came down.
    He was the owner of the house.
    And I had taken a person along with me who spoke
    French to interpret for me.
    And he didn't interpret.
    He spoke.
    And I asked him translate.
    It was a horrible situation.
    I couldn't make-- but I did see the man was nervous.
    He was shaking.
    I had the impression, of course, it can't be--
    I can't prove it-- had the impression
    that he had something to do with maybe giving my parents away.
    I have no idea.
    Maybe he was he was an informer.
    I have no idea.
    But a man came down, a Jew.
    And he said, who are you?
    And I said who I am.
    And I said, my parents lived here.
    And my sister lived here.
    He said, your parents?
    I know them and your sister, Tzili.
    Oh, we were in--
    I forgot now where they were put in a [GERMAN]
    in order to be deported to Auschwitz.
    You had such a lovely sister.
    You used to dance and sing.
    I said, how did you escape?
    He said, well, I am a South African citizen--
    not South African, South American citizen.
    And I had a passport, and the Germans couldn't touch me.
    So I was released.
    But I know your parents, wonderful people.
    I wish to go and visit them.
    I had my first contact and my only contact with my parents.
    He told me-- but he said, you know what?
    You go to the former Gestapo headquarters.
    They have all the records there of people who
    lived in Antwerp, in Brussels.
    So I made my way to that office.
    And there was the Gestapo headquarters, former Gestapo.
    And it was staffed now by Belgian officials.
    And I went in there, and I spoke to one of the officials.
    And he spoke pretty good English.
    And I said, look, my parents lived here in Antwerp,
    in [Place name] I still remember the street.
    And maybe you could help me to find out what was their fate.
    And he said, what was their name?
    And I gave the name.
    And he went along the files.
    There were hundreds of files.
    And he pulled out a file, and he opened the file.
    And there was the picture of my mother
    and my sister, which I have right here.
    And he said-- I asked him, can I have this picture?
    He said, please.
    He pulled out the picture.
    And he pulled out a picture of my sister,
    and he gave it to me.
    I said, tell me, do you know, by any chance,
    according to this file, what happened?
    What was the fate of my mother and my sister?
    And I saw a big V in red.
    He said, this means vernichtung, extermination.
    Those people weren't even selected--
    not right and not left, not to work, not--
    Oh.
    It doesn't matter.
    [? Let ?] [? me ?] [? get-- ?] the tape [? going to ?] start.
    [INAUDIBLE] the tape to the correct speed.
    OK, I'd say any time.
    Any time I'm ready.
    OK.
    Tell me when.
    OK.
    So we were stationed in Antwerp.
    And our job was now to guard trains, provisions
    and munition, prisoners of war, to all kinds
    of directions, all over Europe.
    So we were in the last wagon.
    There was a stove potbellied stove in there
    where we used to make a fire.
    And we used to make our Army rations and so forth.
    And that's how we spent time, guarding trains.
    So I had a very good friend with me
    whom I went through this whole campaign with me.
    And his name was Henry Stern.
    He's now a member of the kibbutz which I also was a member of.
    And I was a founder of that kibbutz,
    which is in the Lower Galilee, right next to Tiberias.
    One day, he received a notification
    that his brother is in the South of France,
    and he had survived the Holocaust.
    So he went to the chaplain and asked for compassionate leave.
    He said, look, that's the only person which
    has survived my family.
    I need to go and see my brother.
    And he gave him permission, for one week, to go.
    And before he went, I said to him, you know,
    Henry, before I left my mother, she
    gave me an address of my uncle.
    And this uncle lived in Paris, and he has got four sons.
    But I believe that they are not alive any longer.
    I think they also were deported.
    But you know, if you maybe are in Paris--
    he said, I am going to be in Paris.
    He had to go to the South of France somewhere, Nice.
    I am going to be in Paris, and if I can possibly,
    I'll check over for you.
    I had the address, and I gave him the address.
    And he went off to the South of France and to meet his brother.
    And after a week, he came back.
    And he told me stories about his brother which is hair-raising.
    His brother had a job of burying people,
    but he was somewhere in Lithuania.
    And doing the work there, he had to bury the dead.
    And the ground was so hard they had to use
    dynamite to open the ground.
    And he spoke-- he told to me in detail how he exploded,
    how he dynamited the ground and how they put the people in.
    Well, we all know about this.
    It's not necessary to go do these eerie details.
    And so I asked him after he had told me
    at length about his brother, what he had gone through.
    I asked him, tell me, did you manage
    to go to the address I gave you of my family.
    He said, yes, I met them all.
    I said, you met my uncle?
    He was the brother of my father, also Grossman.
    And I said, I can't believe it.
    And his sons?
    He said they're all there, four of them.
    And his wife?
    She's all there.
    I said, how did they survive?
    He said, well, he told me that he had gone.
    He had fled to Vichy France, which
    was the part of France which was first given independence
    from Germany.
    And later, Germany took it over completely.
    And they hid in a village.
    I went straight to the chaplain.
    I said, I want compassionate leave.
    And he said, what for?
    I said, well, I found an uncle of mine, the only survivor,
    with his four sons.
    And I need to go.
    He said, I can't give you leave.
    I said, can you arrange for me, on one of those trains which
    goes towards Paris, of those trains which we guarded also
    went to Paris--
    can you at least arrange that for me?
    He said, I will try.
    And after a few days, I was given the job, the task,
    of guarding a train to Paris.
    So it took maybe 10 days.
    It stopped, and it changed and wagons--
    and a hell of a journey.
    So one late night, we arrived in Paris.
    And we were quartered in an army hostel, terrible hostel.
    It was icy cold, and I was black from that coal.
    You can't imagine.
    There was no way of washing.
    You washed in a bowl with a maybe--
    on a tap and a faucet--
    no way we could really wash.
    And it was icy cold, but I just couldn't stand myself
    any longer.
    I remember somewhere in the loft, there was a shower.
    And I went into that shower.
    And it was icy cold ice.
    It was January.
    So I had a cold shower, icy cold shower.
    I washed myself and I caught a kind of a cold.
    I could hardly talk.
    But I got myself up the next morning with my overcoat,
    my army overcoat, and put on my beret, took a map of Paris,
    and walked towards Rue de Cléry.
    That's where he lived.
    And I came to Rue de Cléry, which is also the Jewish part
    of Paris, where all the people lived who are tailors.
    And I came and I saw Rue de Cléry, number whatever it was.
    And I saw an old house steps worn by maybe
    by the times of Napoleon.
    They were all worn out, [LAUGHS] really
    worn by people passing on those stairs.
    So I walked up those stairs.
    Suddenly, a young man came down.
    And I looked at his face.
    And he looked like family.
    He looked Grossman.
    A very handsome boy, he was the eldest.
    His name was Bernard.
    And my father was Bernard.
    And he looked at me, and he had, of course,
    heard that I might come because my friend had told him earlier.
    And they heard.
    They never saw me or never ever met me.
    But they heard that I was existing.
    And they knew all the names of the children.
    And I went up, and he made a U-turn and came up behind me.
    So I walked up the stairs, and I knocked on one door.
    And a Frenchman came out, and I said, family Grossman.
    I don't speak French.
    And he says, upstairs.
    So I went upstairs.
    It was the very top.
    And there were some rooms, and there
    must have been six sewing machines with six girls
    sewing, sewing, sewing, sewing.
    They were making textiles.
    They were making something.
    And there I saw my uncle.
    And my god, he looked the image of my father--
    the exact, exact image of my father.
    I looked at him in my heart.
    And over my heart went, into my throat.
    I looked at him, and he looked at me.
    And there was a British soldier in uniform, and he said, Ali.
    And he came in and embraced me, and there was his wife.
    And they embraced me.
    And they were all working.
    They were all working on sewing machines.
    And he sent all the girls home.
    He folded up the sewing machines,
    and he put them on top, and he put them under the bin.
    It was so small, you can't imagine where he put them all.
    And it was 1st of January, the New Year.
    And he made a big party for me--
    food, and they put big bottles of wine.
    And they all poured bottles of wine
    in glasses filled to the very brim.
    Up they went, and then next.
    And then up they went.
    And I was able only to manage this much.
    And then my head started to go--
    maybe this bit.
    And then I looked at them with wonderment and amazement
    how they could manage to drink so much wine.
    They were conditioned to it, I think, the whole constitution
    of drinking wine in France, which
    is a natural thing, though.
    [LAUGHS] They were conditioned for it.
    My head was spinning.
    I just couldn't-- couldn't take this wine.
    Anyway, we talked and talked and talked.
    It was one of the highlights of my life, to meet, suddenly,
    family that's the only family I ever met.
    And they were really wonderful people.
    The unfortunate thing was that all four of them
    are communists, terrible communists,
    extremely so-- fanatics.
    And they talked-- and there was no state of Israel then,
    but they talked about the rights of the Arabs.
    And it really annoyed me.
    We got in hot discussions and my uncle, in his wisdom,
    said, look, we will not talk about politics.
    We will talk about family, anything.
    And he stopped us talking about politics.
    It was getting really to a state where I
    felt great, great aggravation.
    Did you stay in contact with this family?]
    Pardon?
    I'm sorry.
    Did you stay in contact with these family?
    I'll come to that in a minute.
    I'll come to that in a minute.
    So it was, again, as I say, it was, to me, upsetting
    that, after, the Jews won't learn from history.
    they won't learn throughout history, from the Inquisition
    to the pogroms, to the very contemporary days, where
    6 million Jews got killed.
    And they got away with murder.
    That whole family survived, which is so rare.
    And I said, look, look--
    he said, no, we are Frenchmen.
    And they talked about French culture.
    And I said, you have your own Jewish culture.
    It's very nice French culture, but you have your own Jewish--
    I couldn't make it [? break. ?] And then I was only 19.
    How much-- if I would talk to them today, I'd talk different.
    So in later years, they all visited me in Israel.
    And they became very pro-Zionist.
    I thought, what about your communism?
    They used to say, we were young.
    So they dropped their communism, all of them,
    and they became, all them, in those days, in later years,
    all their vacations were spent in Poland or in Hungary and all
    these communist countries.
    In later years, they all came invariably, every year,
    to Israel.
    And I mean, there are things to be said about whether they
    couldn't--
    the enthusiasm on Israel was so great
    that there could be nothing, for them, bad in Israel.
    And that was, of course, a source
    of great gratification for me.
    Did they tell you what they saw when they visited Poland
    and the communist countries?
    Pardon?
    Did they tell you what they--
    No, we didn't-- they didn't need to tell me.
    I mean, [LAUGHS] I knew what was going on in those countries.
    But they were so imbued with the ideology of communism
    that nothing could be wrong.
    Or even if it were wrong, communism
    would be the ultimate aim to save the world and humanity.
    So today, we are having a hard time.
    But you will see--
    you will see how communism was going
    to change the world for the good of all of us.
    That was the way of thinking.
    And I remember they took me to a meeting of the Communist Party.
    And then my cousin, he was a little bit
    of a macher, a little bit of an active person in that thing.
    He got up on the stage and said, I have a wonderful announcement
    to make to you.
    And he spoke in French.
    I didn't know, but my uncle translated for me.
    We spoke in Yiddish, my uncle and me.
    And he said, I would like to tell you that Russia
    has got the atom bomb.
    And everybody cheered.
    I said, oy, goodness gracious.
    That's what he he's talking about,
    that Russia has got the atom bomb--
    so big deal.
    My time-- oh, then we--
    so the Jewish Brigade was disbanded.
    They were sent back to Palestine.
    I, not being a Palestinian but, so to speak, British,
    I joined the British Army and was transferred
    to the Jewish Brigade.
    I was not allowed to go to Palestine.
    They were sent back and demobilized, discharged
    from the Army in Palestine.
    And I had to continue my service.
    I was transferred to Germany into Bielefeld, which is
    in Westphalia, in Lower Saxony.
    And again, we did guard duties.
    But I spent most of my time going to DP camps.
    DP camps were spotted all over Europe, displaced persons camp,
    by the Jewish agency, organized in the most difficult way
    to get people organized in the DP camps
    and, eventually, bring them over illegally into Palestine.
    So whenever I was free, I used to hitch
    down into one of those camps in order to be,
    first and foremost, amongst Jews, amongst survivors.
    And one day, I came to a DP camp.
    And there were all these lists there
    of who were in those camps.
    And I saw, suddenly, the name Eduard Berger.
    And I knew an Eduard Berger.
    He was in my class in Szczecin.
    He was from a family of very, very talented and bright
    children, good people.
    So they were outstanding.
    So I remembered them very well.
    There were about four or five children,
    and they were all rosy cheeked and very, very blond.
    And so I said, could that be Eduard Berger, the one I know?
    And a person passed me, and I said to him, tell me,
    do you know Eduard Berger?
    He said, sure.
    I said, could you tell me where he is?
    He said, oh, he's right there playing ping-pong.
    And I saw somebody a little bit stout, blown up.
    They were a blown up from after the camps
    until they regain their natural stature.
    And he was playing ping-pong with his back to me.
    It was outside.
    And I walked up, and I looked from the side.
    And it was Eduard Berger, my schoolmate.
    And I said, Eduard?
    And he turned to me, and he said, who are you?
    I was in uniform, a soldier.
    I said, do you remember me?
    My name is Ali Grossman.
    We were in the same class in Szczecin.
    He said Ali, and he remembered me.
    And he dropped the bat, and he set on a kind of a hillock,
    and we talked.
    And I said, what happened to the community of Szczecin.
    There was a cantor, [Personal name]
    He had such a beautiful voice, and he told me the bar mitzvah.
    And I remember, when I came up to the read the Torah,
    I was too short.
    I was too small.
    I remember he put a bench under me
    that I could reach the Torah to read it.
    That was [Personal name] When he made a kiddush, it was--
    and it was a Reform synagogue with an organ.
    He had such a voice it was unbelievable.
    I said, what happened to the community?
    He said, we were all sent to Lublin and then to Auschwitz.
    And he told me his story, as well.
    I do not want to go into the same thing.
    He went through terrible things.
    He said, I don't know where my father
    is, my sister, my mother.
    But he says, you know--
    I said, he could have a brother, Felix.
    He was older than us.
    He says, yes.
    I said, where's Felix.
    Well, he went, before the war, to America.
    I said, he went to America?
    Do you know where he is?
    Do you have his address?
    He said, no.
    So I said, you know, how old is he?
    About 21.
    I said, he must be serving in the Army.
    He must be in the Army, and maybe he's in England.
    Maybe he-- but how can I find him?
    I said, look, Eduard, in two days,
    I'm going to England on compassionate leave.
    I'm getting six days.
    I'll see what I can do.
    But I really didn't think--
    I didn't know where to start.
    How does one start such a thing, to look for a soldier?
    There were 2 million British soldiers in England.
    The island was about to sink.
    So many soldiers were there.
    You can't imagine, from all over the world,
    from India, from New Zealand, from Australia,
    from South Africa, from France, from Denmark, from Holland.
    England was full of soldiers.
    So I went over on the ferry to England,
    and there was another Jewish soldier
    from the brigade with me, and he said to me,
    where are you going to go?
    I said, I have nobody.
    But I used to go to England on leave.
    I used to go in an Army hospital.
    And at night, Friday night, I used
    to walk past and look into the windows.
    And when I saw candles lit on Erev Shabbat,
    I used to look in and cry and remember my days
    I sat with my parents and my brothers and sisters,
    and we had a Shabbat.
    And then I saw--
    of course, I didn't knock on the door and say, I'm Jewish.
    Can I partake in your meal?
    But I looked at the candles and that
    was a wonderful feeling for me.
    That was great gratification to see candles on Shabbat.
    So I said, well, the usual thing.
    I'll go to a hostel.
    I'll walk around in the streets of London, where I would--
    or maybe go to a canteen, or to a,
    what we call in English, the NAAFI, I think it's called,
    the PX stores and the American term.
    NAAFI, well, you know, the soldiers
    go and drink beer and play and all kinds of things, and music.
    And sometimes there was vomit.
    These were the canteens for the British Army.
    I said, that's what I'll do.
    What else can I do?
    He said, you know, there's a Jewish family in London
    who only want to invite Jewish soldiers.
    They made it their aim that any time--
    the day, night makes no difference-- there's always
    a meal for a Jewish soldier.
    And that's where Jewish soldiers meet--
    a couple who made it their aim to invite Jewish soldiers.
    So I said, I'm a little bit shy.
    But he said, no, you are doing them a favor.
    It's a problem for them to invite Jewish soldiers
    to eat at their table.
    I said, well, OK.
    So he came along.
    And I was sitting there, very shy.
    I was sitting there by myself.
    And the hostess was a woman, was a wonderful women,
    Jewish heart.
    And she saw what I was, and I was so shy.
    And she came up to me and said, don't be shy.
    Eat, be happy.
    You are in family.
    We're all Jewish and so forth.
    So I just came out and I said to her,
    you know, I met a schoolmate.
    He's the first person, just living being,
    who knew anything of my past.
    And I'm so full of it.
    And he has a brother.
    His name is-- maybe he's an American soldier.
    Where can I start to look for him?
    I want to help him.
    I want to bring them together, if that's at all possible.
    She says, well, what is his name.
    I said, Felix Berger.
    She said, Felix Berger?
    Three days ago he was here.
    He's an American soldier.
    He ate in our house.
    I said, what?
    I can't believe it.
    She says, yes.
    What does he look like?
    She said, well, he's a little bit stout, and he's blond,
    and he's got rosy--
    I said, my god, that's Felix.
    His father looked exactly the same--
    light complexion, rosy cheeks, blond hair.
    I said, I can't believe.
    Where is he?
    She said, well, he was shipped over to Germany.
    Only three days ago, he came to say goodbye
    and thanked me for having being in hospitable to him
    and opening our house, which of course, it
    is the privilege for us, not for him.
    He doesn't know that.
    I said, I can't believe it.
    What can I do to find him?
    She said, no problem.
    She gave me an address to an American liaison office.
    And I went there, and I said, could I
    please have the address of Felix Berger.
    They looked up.
    He says, here's hi post office thing.
    Every army personnel has a hasn't
    got an address, but a number.
    So I couldn't wait for the day to go back.
    And immediately, I went back to the camp where Eduard was.
    And I said, Eduard, come here.
    I must tell you something.
    He said, what?
    He'd forgotten.
    He hadn't even thought that's a possibility, the feasibility,
    was even remotely that I would find his brother.
    I mean, that's something.
    I said, I found your brother.
    He said, (EXCITEDLY) what?
    Where is he?
    I said, he's right here in Germany.
    And here's his address, and I've sent a telegram.
    I sent a telegram.
    He's going to contact you.
    And he contacted him within two days.
    Within four days, they met.
    And his brother had, already, information
    that his mother and his sister had been saved,
    and they were sent to Switzerland into a sanitarium
    because they had tuberculosis.
    The rest all died.
    They were a big family.
    They're must have been eight or 10 children, all talented,
    all beautiful children.
    Only his sister and his mother and Felix, of course,
    he [? wasn't ?] [INAUDIBLE].
    They survived.
    And he emigrated later to America, Eduard.
    And I have lost track of him.
    I would very much like to find him.
    Again, I don't know where to start.
    [LAUGHS] I would very much like to reach him.
    Anyway, one day, I came to a DP camp, and it struck me,
    it struck me that everything was organized.
    There were schools and kindergarten
    and cultural activities, and there were concerts.
    People who had been only a short time ago,
    they were the dregs of the Earth.
    There were just a nonentity.
    They were nothing.
    this -- and there they were--
    as if you were going into a kind of an amusement world,
    kind of a--
    I can't explain it.
    Kind of a club--
    everybody was happy.
    Everybody was singing.
    They didn't look like people from camps
    who, only maybe a month or two months ago,
    came out of camps that were saved.
    And there they were, organized.
    There was a toastmaster, and there was a-- no,
    and she was a woman, wonderful woman.
    She had this number on her arm and so.
    She was directing the whole thing, introducing and happy,
    and in a beautiful voice.
    It was an elderly woman, but a wonderful voice,
    singing very resonant.
    And she was singing, and I couldn't make this out.
    I thought people would be--
    you know, all these terrible experiences,
    they would be down.
    And I think they-- and then it occurred to me now,
    in later years, there are Arabs sitting
    in those camps for 40 years, and nothing is happening.
    And there we Jews are up.
    We are up, and we are doing things.
    And we are creating things.
    Well, what can I tell you?
    I feel so proud of my Jewishness,
    just because of this resilience and this courage
    and this determination.
    I mean, when I think of my Jewishness, my chest swells.
    I'm so proud of being Jewish.
    We cannot be beaten.
    All the nations of all cultures of the Earth are gone--
    the Romans and the Greeks and the Mamluks and the crusaders.
    They don't exist anymore.
    And we Jews, despite the fact that we have been so
    persecuted, we are right here.
    And look how we look.
    What struck me, that people came in there-- they were strangers.
    And when you meet strangers, you either introduce them,
    or you talk.
    There's one thing they did.
    They took each other by the arm, and they turned the arm around
    and looked at the numbers--
    a sign of recognition.
    The numbers could probably tell them in which camp they were
    and what kind of work they did and all kinds of things,
    which I really don't know.
    And they said, oh, you were here, you were there,
    according maybe to the size of the number.
    I don't know.
    But it struck me as something very pathetic--
    that's how to recognize a person, by his number.
    Suddenly, I received from my girlfriend, Genya,
    who became my wife later, a notification that her aunt,
    the wife of her uncle, the uncle,
    the brother of her mother, she had survived.
    She is in Berlin.
    Again, I went to the padre, to the chaplain.
    And I said, look, I need compassionate leave.
    I found an aunt in Berlin, and I need to go there.
    And he said--
    I don't know what was wrong with him.
    He said, no.
    Everything was no with him.
    I said, look, you're the padre.
    You should have compassion in your heart.
    Your Christianity is based on love, on compassion.
    You have no compassion.
    We Jews have compassion.
    You have no-- and he didn't like it.
    He didn't like the way I talked to him.
    I said, look, where's your way of showing me your love?
    He wouldn't do it.
    I said, I'll show you.
    So I stole one night into the leave office,
    and I took out a form, filled it out, stamped it, and wrote
    down, Colonel Lokshen Kugel.
    That's how I signed it, Colonel Lokshen
    Kugel, just to show them.
    You know what lokshen kugel is?
    This is a Yiddish food, lokshen kugel.
    [LAUGHS] So I signed it as Colonel Lokshen Kugel.
    It's a wonderful Jewish food.
    And with that, and I wrote myself out a letter.
    I typed it out that night.
    I broke into the-- went through the window, typed out
    a letter, and "to whom it may concern, this soldier
    it's on an urgent mission into Berlin.
    Please give him all assistance."
    I took that, stamped it, and put it into my pocket.
    And that night, I went to Hanover,
    waited till the midnight train to Berlin--
    there were only midnight trains to Berlin, sealed.
    It had to go through the Russian sector.
    And I went AWL, Absent Without Leave,
    just disappeared and went into Berlin.
    All night, the train went, sealed, into--
    in the morning, I arrived in Berlin.
    And I had the address of her aunt.
    And then I beckoned a Volkswagen. And I said,
    I'll give you 10 cigarettes if you take me to this address.
    (EXCITEDLY) 10 cigarettes?
    Come.
    I went into this Volkswagen, and he drove to the address.
    And I knocked on the door.
    Nobody was there.
    It was empty.
    Not empty, it was closed.
    There was nobody there.
    So I knocked on the door opposite,
    and I said, do you know Frau Tuchman.
    She said, yes, I know Frau Tuchman.
    Does she still live here?
    She said, yes.
    I said to her, where could she be?
    She said, oh, she's always in a DP camp in Berlin.
    It was another DP camp.
    She had two girls which she's raising,
    two survivors, two lovely girls.
    And she's like a mother to them.
    She's always there.
    I said, how can I get there.
    She said, oh, it's difficult to explain.
    I said, would you please give her a message.
    I wrote out a note that I'm the friend of Genya, her niece.
    And I'll be back at 6 o'clock that afternoon.
    In the meantime, I went again to a hostel and washed myself
    and so forth.
    At 6 o'clock, I came, and there she was.
    What happiness, what joy in this story she told.
    Now, everybody knows what people went through, the camps.
    I don't want to sin here.
    But it is worse not to be in a camp.
    What she did, every night, she slept somewhere else.
    Once she went to the cemetery next to her husband
    that died and slept next to his grave.
    When there was a raid on, she used
    to go mingle with the Germans and go into the underground,
    into the subway.
    Once, she told me, she had befriended a prostitute.
    So she slept with the prostitute when the prostitute
    had her business.
    And she was under the bed.
    I said to her, Tante Rosa, I said, Aunt Rosa,
    how did it occur to you to hide.
    After all, I mean, nobody could have
    realized that the Germans are going to do what they did.
    What made you do such a thing?
    It always sort of bothered me that by--
    after all, they were told they're going to camps to work,
    so you know what.
    They never were told that they were
    going to be killed, of course.
    So what made you-- she said, I'll tell you the story,
    She said, I was alone.
    I have no children.
    My husband died after the Kristallnacht.
    He was released.
    He was beaten so much, one day had a heart attack and died.
    I'm here by myself.
    So I always was with friends.
    Every night, I went to the house with my friends.
    And she had to wear that star, and she had to go to work.
    And she said she worked so hard with so little rations.
    And when she came home on the subway, she wasn't able to sit.
    Jews were not able to sit.
    Jews were only allowed to stand.
    They were not allowed to lean against the wall of the subway.
    And she said-- she's a little bit dramatic-- she said,
    I was so tired.
    I needed to lean against the wall.
    And I leaned once against the wall for tiredness.
    So a German came and said [GERMAN] and pulled me away.
    Don't you touch with your shoulder a German wall.
    And she had to stand there like that for an hour's journey
    after 12 hours terrible work with very little calories,
    little rations.
    So one night, she was at her friend's.
    And the door burst open, and the Gestapo came in with a list.
    And they read the list.
    They said, down.
    And the van was waiting.
    And she wasn't called.
    And she said, please take me, too.
    And thy said to her, you're not on our list.
    We can't take you.
    See, the Germans-- we can't take you.
    But if you hurry home where you live,
    maybe they'll get you there.
    So she said, oh, [INAUDIBLE] we'll see.
    I'll see you.
    I'll see you very soon.
    So she rushed down in order to go to her house,
    in order to be taken to be together with them.
    So when she rushed down, suddenly, she passed the door.
    A man came out and pulled her inside by her arm.
    And the man said, come inside, Frau Tuchman.
    She said, how do you know me?
    He said, your husband.
    I have a cigar shop I sell cigarettes, tobacco shop.
    And your husband used to be a customer of mine.
    He used to buy his cigars and cigar--
    for years.
    I know him very well.
    I knew him very well.
    I know he died.
    And I know that you're his wife.
    Please sit down.
    She said, no, no.
    I have to hurry, she said.
    He said, please take five minutes to let me tell you.
    He said, I swear to you--
    I swear-- I beg of you, do not go.
    Look, my daughter died in an air raid attack.
    I have her papers.
    Take the papers and hide.
    She said, no, I don't want to hide.
    I want to go with my friends.
    He said to her, hide.
    I beg you.
    I beg you.
    The Germans are up to no good.
    He didn't say kill.
    I met the man.
    So she made a decision, like I made a decision when I was
    11 years old to listen to him.
    So she stayed with him for a bit and got the papers.
    And from then on, as I told you, she went from place to place.
    And one day, she went onto a farm and spoke to the farmer
    and said, please, allow me to work here.
    Berlin is being bombed.
    I can't stand it anymore.
    I haven't slept for weeks.
    Please allow me to stay here.
    I'll work.
    You don't have to pay me.
    I'll pay you.
    The farmer agreed.
    A big [INAUDIBLE],, wonderful thing for him.
    So she worked.
    And one day, the farmer's son came
    home, furloughed from Russia.
    And while they were talking, he was telling all the exploits
    of the wonderful victories in Russia
    and how they stood in front of Moscow.
    And Stalingrad hadn't happened yet.
    And he said to her.
    And he said to his parents while she was present, he said,
    we are getting rid of all the Jews.
    That's it.
    We are-- we are solving the Jewish problem.
    That was a kind of a German motto,
    to solve the Jewish problem, getting rid of them.
    And she hadn't known.
    And she looked at him.
    And he said, what do you mean?
    He said, well, we are getting rid of all the Jews.
    We are killing and hanging them.
    We are just shooting them.
    So she started to cry.
    And he said, why do you care about Jews?
    Maybe you like Jews?
    She said, no, but they're human beings, too.
    He said, human beings?
    They are vermin.
    And then she realized for the first time
    that Jews were being exterminated.
    Why did this come up?
    A very profound question, because I maintained
    all the time they all knew, they must
    have known, because they worked in factories.
    And they were led to the streets, and in the factories
    also were Germans.
    And of course, thousands of people
    must have been associated with the annihilation, the trains,
    the maintenance, the guards, rumors.
    I mean, it is out of the question that--
    and there she says to me, I didn't know.
    I said, you didn't know because you didn't speak to Germans.
    You were hiding all the time.
    That's why you didn't know.
    That's why you had this revelation by this soldier who
    came on furlough.
    That's why you didn't know.
    But I maintain to this day that there wasn't a single German
    who didn't know.
    The only thing is they didn't want to know.
    The question, profound question, is, of course, what
    could they have done?
    What could the Germans have done?
    Because if they would have helped,
    in the most minute way, a Jew, the punishment
    would have been severe.
    I'm not talking about shooting.
    That could have been, too--
    not only on them, but on their family.
    Another thing-- in Europe, there were undergrounds
    who fought against the Germans.
    In Germany, there was no underground.
    There was only an underground when
    they saw the Germans were being defeated.
    And the underground wasn't by the--
    the rebellion wasn't by the people,
    it was by officers who tried to assassinate Hitler.
    But the people-- nothing.
    After, the shame on them --
    Germany.
    Only when they saw that the war was hopeless,
    then the officers decided to get rid
    of Hitler, which of course, they didn't succeed.
    But that's a different story.
    Now, this aunt is living.
    She's very old now, but she lives in Israel.
    And we always talk about the time
    when I came and visited her.
    I bought her food, and I brought--
    she never forgets that I bought her a needle and yarn.
    She never forgot that I brought-- that was
    something which wasn't there.
    She could sew her whatever was torn, her clothes or her socks.
    She didn't talk about the nice foods I brought,
    the salami and then the tins and so forth.
    I brought a lot of things.
    She was always talking about the needle and the yarn.
    You brought me needle and yarn.
    [LAUGHS] Every time I visit her, she tells me about it.
    Anyway, she took me to the grave of her husband.
    And there she stood there, and to my embarrassment,
    she spoke to the grave, to her husband, and said, look,
    he is Ali, the [NON-ENGLISH] of Genya, [NON-ENGLISH],,
    the [NON-ENGLISH] of Genya.
    And he's come here, out of the free world.
    And you know she talked to him and cried.
    I stood, as a child almost, 19.
    I was embarrassed by it, talking to a mound of earth.
    Anyway, she said to me, you know,
    Genya's father, in order to eke out a little bit of a living,
    he used to deliver milk in an urn-- urn, you call it?
    Mhm.
    An urn.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Pardon?
    A can.
    A can.
    And finally, in the middle of Berlin
    was a cow shed where a man milked his cows.
    And then he used to sell the milk to the neighborhood.
    So her father used to go and sell milk.
    And she said, he owes him money.
    We'll get that money.
    And you should know, that money wasn't worth,
    in those days, maybe 1,000 marks, two cigarettes.
    It was worth nothing, and he owed him maybe 300 marks.
    300 marks wasn't worth a grain of a bit of coffee.
    It wasn't worth nothing, but a principle.
    I'm a principled man.
    So we went there.
    And when he saw her, the man who owned the cow shed,
    he turned pale.
    I don't know why, but he turned very pale.
    And she said to him, you owe Mr. Zucker money.
    He said, yes, but I don't know where he is.
    He made himself what we call {?_{?_[NON-ENGLISH],_?},_?} he made
    himself out [INAUDIBLE].
    I said, do you know where he is?
    You know where he is.
    Where all the Jews went, that's where he was.
    So she said, how much do you owe him?
    He said, 200 marks.
    So he said, I give.
    I give.
    So he gave me the 200 marks, which was,
    of course, worth nothing.
    I tore it to pieces and threw it in his face and left.
    And while we were waiting for the tram
    to take us back into the western part of Berlin--
    I was in the east, by the way, in the Russian Zone.
    And in those days, Allied soldiers were disappearing.
    The Russians were killing them.
    I don't know whether you know that.
    They were kidnapped.
    They disappeared off the face of the-- they
    were sent to Siberia.
    I think, to this day, they don't know where many--
    I mean, it has completely disappeared now, this episode.
    But there were soldiers who disappeared.
    Communist Russia took them.
    I don't know why.
    Out of malice?
    I have no idea.
    They disappeared.
    Did they disappear out of West and East Berlin or just East?
    I think maybe, when American or British soldiers,
    they to go into the East Zone.
    I don't think they kidnapped them out of the West.
    They just took them.
    They disappeared.
    If you look into history books, you
    will find that I'm correct about that.
    So I was standing there.
    Suddenly, a Russian officer comes up to me.
    He hadn't shaven, and his coat was very drab.
    He didn't look [INAUDIBLE].
    And he asked me for a papirosi.
    He wanted a cigarette of me.
    So my aunt says, give him, give it to him.
    She was frightened.
    So I gave him a cigarette.
    After all, he was an Allied soldier.
    He was a comrade in arms with me,
    so I gave him some cigarettes.
    A minute later, a German policeman
    comes up to me with a bicycle and says,
    [GERMAN], your papers.
    That was really the last straw-- a German policeman should ask
    a British soldier for papers?
    So I told him to make his way backward.
    I'm not showing you no papers.
    And my aunt says, show him the papers.
    She was still so intimidated-- unbelievable.
    I said, I'm not going to show no papers.
    I said, you go off.
    He said, if you don't show me your papers,
    I have to take you to the police station.
    And there I was in the Russian Zone.
    And I said, you'll see no papers from me.
    So he said, then I have to take you in, he said to me.
    I said, well, you better take me in then,
    because you're not going to.
    So he took me to the police station.
    And there was a police there.
    And I spoke in perfect German.
    I speak very good German.
    And I said, I'm not going to show no paper to nobody.
    I'm a British soldier, and that's all there is to it.
    They said, OK, {?_{?_[GERMAN]._?}._?} Excuse us, please.
    You can go.
    So I went.
    So a week or two later, I received another letter
    from Genya, from my wife, that her uncle is in Bergen-Belsen.
    Her uncle-- that's, again, her mother's
    brother, another brother.
    He is in Bergen-Belsen.
    It's an hour from me.
    His name is Max.
    He's living in Israel, too.
    I said, he's in Bergen-Belsen?
    And one day, it was a day later, only I hadn't
    had the opportunity yet to go.
    By the way, I had been to Bergen-Belsen many times.
    I came very soon after the liberation,
    and still there were things going on--
    burials, and they exhumed bodies.
    It was something terrible.
    I have pictures, also, of the gas
    chambers and the crematoriums.
    I have them here.
    So one day, while I was in my room, a soldier comes up to me.
    He says there's somebody at the gate who wants to speak to you.
    So I said, who is it?
    He says, no, he only speaks German.
    He was also born in Berlin.
    And I said, who could that be, for crying out loud?
    Who wants to speak to me?
    I thought maybe a German wants to speak to me.
    I have no idea.
    So I walked down, and there was a handsome man there.
    And he said, are you Ali?
    I said, yeah.
    He said, I'm the uncle of Genya.
    I said, what?
    And he said, I'm with my wife and my two daughters
    in Bergen-Belsen.
    Bergen-Belsen had been made into a DP camp.
    I said, where were you during the war?
    I said, well, I was deported to Poland, like me.
    I made the decision to go back.
    And then with the German advance into Poland,
    I fled to Russia, like many Jews.
    You must know about that, of course.
    Many Jews went to Russia, and then they
    were deported to Siberia.
    And he-- in fact, they caught him doing some business
    with either money or bread or food,
    and he was in prison for seven years in a Russian jail.
    Seven years he was in for trying to feed his family.
    But he seemed happy enough.
    And oh, yeah, yeah, he was so happy.
    So I said, you wait.
    I went to the PX store, and although I didn't have much
    money-- we got very little money in the Army--
    I bought all the things I could buy and bring him.
    And then, of course, we met several times.
    I went to Bergen-Belsen to visit him, his wife,
    and his daughters, beautiful daughters, and little children.
    They spoke Polish and Russian and German.
    And now they're all in Israel, and they're very well off
    and very happy, a happy family.
    So there I was in Germany 1 and 1/2 years.
    And in principle, I never spoke to Germans.
    Germans used to pass me with a Volkswagen--
    They said do you want to hitch in town.
    I said, I'm walking.
    I wasn't going to talk to any German.
    In fact, there was a non-fraternization law
    in the beginning, that Allied soldiers were not
    allowed to speak to Germans.
    But later on, that was lifted, and we
    were able to speak to Germans, but I never.
    But I did go sometimes into nightclubs.
    And the Germans used to come and try and make all kinds of deals
    with us, for cigarettes and coffee and all kinds of things.
    And these Germans, I would like to point out,
    these proud Germans who strutted all over with their jackboots
    all over Europe, dominating people, killing
    people, and ruthless people--
    they were selling their wives and their daughters
    for one pound of coffee.
    They were offering you, I have a beautiful wife.
    I have a beautiful daughter.
    10 cigarettes, you can have her.
    And I looked at these Germans.
    I said, my god, how can you compare yourself
    to us Jewish people?
    You were going to think that you are the supermen?
    You are super?
    I was so taken aback.
    In fact, I was so, in a way, disgusted with these Germans.
    They were cringing almost.
    Every time they came, the way, their demeanor,
    how they talked to me, they used to sort of bow down
    a little bit.
    Actually, it was pitifying to see them.
    There they were, these proud Germans in their uniforms.
    And in their defeat, they were outrageous--
    outrageous.
    I wonder sometimes what would happen to anybody else
    if, God forbid, there's a defeat, how people would react.
    But when I saw those Germans react in that way,
    it was a disillusionment almost.
    Anyway, the time came for me to be demobilized.
    And I went back to England.
    And very soon, I got married to my beautiful Genya.
    Can I interrupt you?
    Want to stop a minute?
    There.
    Pause.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    Wait 10 seconds.
    I'll give you two.
    Any time.
    OK.
    It's June 19, 1991.
    We're at Temple Beth Shalom interviewing Abraham Grossman
    for the Holocaust Oral History Project.
    My name is Peggy Coster and with me are Tanya Zatkin and John
    Grant as the producer.
    OK, why don't we just start out today
    by going over who was in your family?
    My family consisted of my father, my mother,
    and four children.
    So it was Jacob, the eldest, and then was Bernard,
    and I was the youngest son.
    And there was one girl by the name of Tzili.
    And she was older or younger than you?
    Beg pardon.
    She was older a younger than you?
    No, she was the youngest.
    And when were you born?
    I was born in March 21, 1925, in Güstrow in the province
    of Mecklenburg in Germany, East Germany.
    Could you spell that Gus--
    G-U-, two things on top, S-T-R-O-W.
    In the province of Mecklenburg.
    OK.
    Was there a lot of years between your older brothers and you?
    My eldest brother was born in 1920.
    Bernard, the middle brother, was born in 1923.
    And I, as I mentioned before, in 1925.
    My sister was born in 1930.
    What did your father do for a living?
    My father was-- he had a shop where he sold everything
    to the surrounding villages and the agricultural workers.
    But he also manufactured jackboots,
    the shafts of the boots, and then
    he had them, the lower parts, he had them made by a shoemaker.
    So we used to carry them to the shoemaker,
    and he used to attach the lower part the sole and then they
    were sold to either in the shop or even
    they were sold in quantity to surrounding shops.
    These jackboots, are they same ones that the Nazis wore?
    Exactly the same.
    They look the same exactly.
    Did he sell any to the Nazis?
    Well, the Germans, I suppose, were
    members of the Social Democratic Party.
    And they were all Nazis, I suppose.
    And whoever came into the shop, they were sold to.
    So you didn't sell them to the army?
    No, they were-- he had no contracts with the army
    whatsoever, but he sold a lot.
    I remember he used to sell them--
    even there were sometimes fairs.
    So he used to put up a stall and sold them at fairs,
    and I know he sold a lot.
    So, actually, before they were the German army
    boot or whatever, they were just the ordinary German boots?
    Yes.
    The Germans, I think it was fashion.
    Many workers in certain professions
    used to wear those kind of boots,
    so I don't think it had any kind of connection,
    Actually, with the Nazis.
    They were just born in Germany in those days.
    Were you raised in that town?
    I was born in that town, and I lived there
    until the age of either 11 or 12, I don't remember.
    I think until 1937.
    And I went to school there.
    And in 1937, things got so bad, and my father had died in 1936.
    So I was sent away to a bigger town,
    to the town of Szczecin which is, today, Poland.
    It's called Szczecin today.
    And I went into a kind of a hostel for boys,
    and then I attended a Jewish school in Szczecin
    Was the hostel connected to the boys' school?
    Eh, no, not directly, but the director, he and his wife
    taught in the same school.
    But it had no connection, financially or otherwise,
    with that school.
    How big was the school?
    I think maybe between 400 and 600 children?
    Quite a big school.
    Did all the boys live in a hostel?
    No, no.
    The pupils who attended that school
    were from the town who lived and were probably born
    in the same town of Szczecin and they went to that school.
    The only persons who went out of the town
    was the hostel, maybe 50 or 60 children, boys,
    and they attended the same school.
    Did you-- when you were at this school,
    that was after the Nazis already had a lot of power, so--
    Yes.
    Did you encounter-- and it was a Jewish school, so
    did you encounter a lot of antisemitism
    from the surrounding townspeople?
    Yes, very much so, of course.
    I remember the day when the names
    of every male Jewish person--
    to his name was added the name of Israel.
    If my name was Abraham Grossman--
    but it was not Abraham in those days, it was Adolf.
    So my name was incongruent.
    It was Adolf Israel Grossman.
    And the girl had to take the additional name of Sarah.
    If she had her own name, then Sarah was added.
    And that was kind of a thing to accentuate
    the fact that they were Jewish.
    It was a kind of a directed way of making Jews feel that they
    are lower than anybody else.
    And the antisemitism in the town was like anywhere else.
    I encountered it in the streets.
    I encountered it wherever I went.
    We had it all the time.
    What specifically?
    Were there anything specific?
    Well, how can I express myself?
    It's the usual things.
    You went on the streets.
    If somebody knew you were Jewish,
    they used to go and taunt you and shout and yell after you,
    you dirty Jew, whatever.
    But I remember the 10th of November, the Kristallnacht.
    I had to go--
    on my way to school, I passed the synagogue,
    and the synagogue was in flames.
    And I didn't quite know what to make of it.
    So there's a big crowd there, and I
    mingled amongst the crowds.
    And I was blond.
    I don't think I looked particularly Jewish,
    and nobody took any notice of me.
    And I saw the fire brigade.
    They were not putting the flames out,
    but they were trying to keep the flames from spreading
    to the neighboring houses.
    And I stood amongst the people.
    And I noticed especially that a young woman holding a baby
    in her hand, and she looked so ordinary.
    And I thought maybe she would have
    some compassion on her face that the House of God was burning,
    but not so.
    She said-- I remember the words like today-- she said,
    it's about time that the Jews know what the Germans are,
    she said in German because this is a translation.
    But it seems to be--
    in my mind, it's never left me when
    she said that because it made such an impression on me
    that a woman holding a baby would look on and look on
    without compassion, without pity, that a synagogue should
    be burning.
    And while i was standing there, an elderly Jew.
    In fact, his synagogue was a conservative synagogue.
    It had an organ, and that was a beautiful synagogue.
    And an elderly Jew with side locks and a beard
    came running out of that synagogue,
    out of the burning synagogue, carrying a Torah scroll.
    He saved it from the flames.
    And a big, burly SS man came up to him,
    pulled him by the beard, and threw him on the floor.
    And the Torah fell on the floor, and it opened up.
    And he got hold of the elderly Jew by the scruff of his neck
    and commanded him to dance on the Torah scroll.
    And he pulled out a revolver and held it to his head.
    And I was wondering in my mind, is this person
    going to either die or is he going
    to do what he's being told?
    But now I understand that the saving of one's life
    is even more important than the Torah, so he danced.
    Like a zombie, he danced on the Torah
    in a very stiff sort of manner.
    And it shook me to my very core when I saw that.
    And I was only about--
    I had just had bar mitzvah.
    I remember because my tallis and my tefillin
    were inside the synagogue, and they went up in flames.
    So I lost those.
    And when I looked on this picture, this man
    dancing on the Torah scroll and this terrible SS man in uniform
    and the death skull on his cap pointing the revolver
    at the temple of this person, I know
    that is the day I became a Zionist.
    At the age of 13, I thought to myself
    that if the Jewish people do not have a state of their own,
    if they do not have an army, if they do not
    have their independence, then something
    is wrong with this world.
    So I continued and went to the school,
    and everybody apparently already knew what was happening.
    And that very day, that very time I
    came in, the director of the hostel I lived in,
    he gave a lesson.
    And he pulled out a book, and he read a story to us.
    He hadn't read even two lines, suddenly the door burst open,
    and two Gestapo men came inside.
    You know, typical Gestapo men, slouch hats and raincoat.
    They went straight to him, pulled the book out
    of his hand, and asked, what are you reading?
    And he said, I'm just reading a story.
    So they took the book and flung it
    into the corner in a very most brutal way, got hold of him,
    and dragged him outside.
    Outside was a truck already loaded
    with the rest of the teachers, and they pushed him
    onto the truck.
    And later on, he was sent to Sachsenhausen, a concentration
    camp.
    He was released later, but he came back somewhat broken
    with his hair shorn off.
    I was very, very much affected by this sort of thing
    I'd really never encountered except the thing I just
    told about, this Jewish person who had danced on the Torah.
    But, really, I'd never seen anything like it.
    And it affected me to such an extent
    it has really never left me.
    When you said that now you understand
    that it's important to save your life,
    does that mean that at the time, you
    felt like a Jewish man shouldn't have danced on the Torah?
    Ah, it's a difficult question, but I felt, I was praying,
    that he would do what the SS men told him.
    I didn't want him, God forbid, to be shot.
    It would have even been worse.
    Even now that I'm, of course, grown up,
    I have the same kind of concept, that it is more important
    that life should be saved than the Torah scroll.
    After all, the Torah scroll is holy to the Jewish people.
    We revere it, but I think life is more important.
    The Torah scroll can be remade, it can be rewritten.
    Your life can never be resurrected ever again.
    So the teacher went ahead and acted
    like it was a regular day even though all this stuff was
    going outside?
    I'm sorry.
    Can you repeat your question?
    So the teacher just kind of went on
    and acted like it was a regular day until the SS men came in?
    I'm sorry.
    You have to make your-- clarify your question.
    I guess I'm thinking--
    I guess that's one way of handling when all this stuff is
    going on outside and there's really
    nothing you can do about it, that's how the teacher handled
    it was to just kind of go on as though it was a regular day,
    or did you talk about what was going on outside?
    Oh, no.
    I remember I was a child full of energy.
    I was bursting with energy and was always joyful.
    All these things had no meaning to me.
    It absolutely didn't affect me even though these things were--
    First and foremost, I didn't even
    know that other things were a part of one's life
    because since I remember, we've always been mistreated,
    and I thought that's how the world goes around.
    I had no idea that things were different.
    So I was somehow conditioned to that kind of treatment.
    But this particular treatment was more than I had ever
    experienced, so it affected me.
    And it affected me in such a way that it probably
    made my life and my whole concept
    of thinking that I wanted to go to a Jewish state.
    And, in fact, in 1948, when the Jewish state was founded,
    I made my way illegally on a Romanian cattle boat,
    and I came to take part in the War of Liberation.
    I took part in that one and other ones.
    But I think this was the effect that [INAUDIBLE] on me.
    I never wavered from it ever, that I wanted very fervently
    a Jewish state, and I put this into a realization.
    I did go, and my two sons were born there into my country.
    You said the SS men acted like a typical SS man.
    What was a typical SS man?
    In the town I lived in Güstrow in Mecklenburg,
    which I had mentioned before, we had a bar opposite our house.
    And there were lots of going on in that bar day
    and night, lots of noise.
    And I sometimes used to go in there,
    make my way in there in order to--
    I was just a little bit of a kid who liked excitement.
    So I used to go in, and I saw these people drinking.
    The bar was filled with the aroma of tobacco and beer.
    And I saw all these people drinking and drinking.
    And then sometimes they had a fight.
    And sometimes they were thrown out into the street,
    and the policemen came.
    All these people who drank mostly,
    and when in 1933, the SS was founded,
    they were the first to be in uniform.
    They became big to us, big machers. you know,
    they felt important.
    They had a uniform, and they had black boots.
    And they were given--
    probably Hitler and his stooges, they
    needed these kind of people, these brutal people.
    And these were probably the stereotypes at first.
    Later on, many more went into the SS.
    But in the beginning, were those low types, those drunkards,
    those people who had no jobs.
    And when they were given a uniform,
    a wonderful black uniform with a big belt
    and a strap across their chest and a pistol,
    and then they felt great, they felt big, they felt important.
    Did they have very many shows, marches, or--
    Oh, yes, very often, very often.
    They used to march through the streets of the town,
    the little town I came from.
    And they used to sing those terrible songs
    about how they're going to finish off the Jews.
    One particular song comes to my mind.
    It goes something like, when Jewish blood spurts off
    our knives.
    I mean, even then, I realized it's--
    I mean, it doesn't seem even logical to me
    that anybody who has a wife and children
    would even think of when Jewish blood spurts off our knives.
    I mean, it seems ludicrous to me that anybody
    would sing such a song.
    Where was the decency?
    They practiced religion.
    Every Sunday, they went to the church,
    and they listened to the pastor.
    They sat in the aisles, and the pastor was in the pulpit,
    and he preached.
    And I'm sure they kept the Ten Commandments.
    But treating the Jews in the way they did,
    that seemed to be in a different category.
    On the one hand, they kept, I suppose, a decent family life.
    And I'm sure they loved their wives in most
    cases and their children.
    And yet, they looked at the Jews as something
    completely different.
    They were able to differentiate between living
    a kind of a middle-class, bourgeois life
    and then treating the Jews, that was a different story.
    Now whoever can explain that, but I'm not able to.
    It doesn't make any sense to me.
    Do you remember any more of the "Horst Wessel" song?
    Oh, yes.
    I know them all.
    Can you sing it a little bit?
    Yeah, I know.
    I can sing it.
    I won't sing it to you, but I'll say it to you.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] in German?
    How about in German and--
    In German, and I will translate to you if I can.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] It is something like--
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] the flag's high [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    the rows are closed [SPEAKING GERMAN] these
    are the stormtroopers [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    with quiet, solid steps [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    comrades who were shot by the Communist
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] March in spirit together in one row.
    And then, of course, the German song which
    is Sudeten national anthem.
    It's called "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,"
    but that wasn't a real Nazi song.
    But there were so many Nazi songs, terrible.
    Do you remember the words to any more?
    Any more songs?
    Any Nazi songs.
    Yeah, I do.
    Wait a minute.
    Let me think a minute.
    Yeah.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] We marched through Berlin.
    We fight for Adolf Hitler.
    The Communists killed them one by one.
    Attention, keep the streets free.
    Something of that sort.
    You know, silly, stupid, really nonsensical songs.
    And everybody used to sing them.
    They were so-- every time they sang,
    cheering with these songs, even then,
    they seemed stupid to me, even as a child.
    Do you remember any more?
    Yeah, but I haven't got them quite ready.
    I'm sorry.
    If you would have told me before,
    I would have prepared them.
    Actually, if you can remember any more,
    maybe you could next time.
    Yeah.
    I'll gladly even sing them to you
    although I haven't got a good voice.
    Oh no.
    That's no problem at all.
    Yeah, yeah.
    So, OK, next time.
    Yeah, I will prepare you some songs.
    I have them all.
    What did-- so you heard these songs your whole life,
    actually, from a very young age?
    What did that do to your self-esteem?
    Did you take it personally?
    As I said, you know, I was a child
    who was so full of energy, and I was playful,
    and I played with Gentile friends.
    It really didn't have much of an effect on me.
    I suppose it was part and parcel of my life to hear those songs.
    I remember when Hitler used to speak on the radio.
    So we had a neighbor who had a radio shop.
    So he used to put up in our street, all along the street,
    he used to put up these microphones, the other end
    of the microphones.
    The loudspeakers?
    Loudspeakers, so everybody-- not many people in those days
    had radios.
    They couldn't afford them.
    So he put a loudspeaker so everybody
    was able to hear the speech of Adolf Hitler.
    And I remember, I didn't really understand
    what he was talking about.
    But what I do remember, he was always--
    every sentence was intermittent with accusations
    against the Jews, that the Jews are
    the instigators of all the troubles in the world,
    they caused the First World War, they caused the unemployment,
    and they caused that people have no homes.
    In the end, he used to shout, [SPEAKING GERMAN] Judah,
    perish.
    And somehow it was frightening.
    And when he used to speak, then we
    always used to go into our homes and closed ourselves and be--
    in a way, we were frightened.
    So although I wasn't a frightened child,
    and my parents weren't frightened at all,
    but for safety's sake, we didn't venture out
    into the streets on those occasions.
    What might happen if you did venture into the street?
    Oh, some person would have probably attacked us.
    Not the whole population.
    I doubt it.
    But some of these persons I mentioned before,
    those people who drank.
    And, as I said, there was a bar opposite our house,
    and they could have come out, and maybe
    beat us up or something of that sort.
    I remember one occasion, if I may tell the story,
    it was a Friday night, and the whole family
    sat around the table.
    There were Shabbos candles on the table.
    There's a beautiful tablecloth on the table
    and two challah on the table, a goblet of wine.
    My father had just finished making
    the kiddush when suddenly, we heard
    a tremendous crash outside.
    So we all left the table, went outside, and there
    we saw a burly fellow.
    He heaved a big--
    one of those tree trunks which were used to split wood
    on for making kindling.
    Everybody had it in their yard.
    We used to split kindling on this thing.
    He took it and threw it into our shop window,
    and he was threatening us.
    Later on, we found that he had been drinking,
    and he ran out of money.
    And so the bar owner refused to serve him any more,
    so he blamed the Jews.
    He blamed the Jews that he had no more money.
    So he took one of those things and threw it
    into our shop window and threatened us, to kill us.
    Anyway, my father being a very impetuous man, ran outside.
    He was two heads shorter than him.
    He lunged out and hit him in the face.
    And the man fell like a log.
    He was in a stupor, in any case.
    So the police came and dragged my father
    to the police station.
    And they kept him there for one day and two days,
    and my mother--
    they were Polish citizens.
    They emigrated from Poland to Germany
    because Germany in those days was a liberal country,
    and it was a country where people
    could make a decent living like many immigrants came
    to this country, to America.
    So many Jews from Eastern Europe went to Germany
    to improve their situation because Poland
    was a terrible country.
    Terrible country.
    The stories I heard about Poland in my childhood mind,
    it made me feel that it was a terrible place to live in.
    So my mother contacted the Polish consul in the nearest
    town and after a few days, he arrived,
    and she spoke to him in Polish, explaining the situation.
    And I saw the scorn in his face, this condescension
    when my mother spoke to him.
    Anyway, when I mentioned this to my mother
    and I said, look, this man, he had a kind of expression
    on his face as if he was saying, or thinking at least,
    the Jews cause nothing but trouble.
    So I told my mother about the impression I had upon that man.
    And she said, [SPEAKING YIDDISH]..
    He can go and be buried, in juicy Yiddish.
    Anyway, he got my father out, and then we
    realized that Germany was getting really, really
    bad for the Jewish people.
    And my mother always spoke to my father
    and said, let's leave, let's go to Palestine,
    let's go to a Jewish country.
    My father always used to say, oh,
    [NON-ENGLISH] come and [NON-ENGLISH] go.
    And, you know, this Hitler, is a mishugenah
    He'll go like the rest of them, and we'll prevail.
    But, of course, it didn't happen, unfortunately.
    Was your family an observant Jewish family?
    That's a very difficult question to ask.
    I don't think consciously they were so religious,
    but coming from Poland, from a very poor family
    was endemic to be religious, to keep the laws,
    to keep the halakha.
    And so they kept all the Jewish customs,
    but I don't think really they understood
    what religion really meant.
    I'm different today.
    If I would be religious, it would be because of conviction.
    I would have maybe thought about it or read about it
    or discussed.
    But I think in my parents, it was a question of habit.
    Their parents and their parents and their parents
    and their surroundings were always religious.
    And to be not religious in those environment
    would have been rebelling, like jumping out of the circle.
    I think that would have been impossible, not to keep kosher
    and not to keep the Shabbat.
    I think that's the only reason they
    kept the laws, the Jewish laws.
    But I don't think consciously they were really religious.
    Again, I think it was a question of habit.
    And what is your-- what do you do now?
    You said if you were religious.
    Oh, you want to know about my conviction about--
    again, it's a very profound, very difficult question
    to answer.
    But I do go to synagogue every Saturday.
    And there are several reasons for it.
    I believe there's nothing else for me.
    And besides, I live in the diaspora.
    I don't live in Israel, and this is my connection to my Judaism.
    And I look very, very strongly to be amongst Jewish people.
    Therefore, I go every--
    it's very interesting to listen to the sermons of the rabbis.
    It gives me a tremendous lot.
    And I look at my Jewish fellowmen,
    and I have great gratification.
    I think, without being too overmodest,
    I think we are a great people.
    There's nothing wrong with us.
    So when I go there, I usually take the [NON-ENGLISH],,
    the Tanakh the portion of the Torah which is being read,
    and I study and I read and I find in my religion many things
    which can be found.
    I find many things in it.
    What did you mean by there's nothing else for you?
    Well, I suppose we have all gone through stages,
    every single person goes through stages of kind of developments.
    I know when I was 16, I lived in England,
    and I belonged to trade unions, and I became a member
    of the Communist party.
    And then I became a member of the Fabian Society, which
    was founded by Bernard Shaw.
    And then I became a socialist and all kinds of things.
    I think nothing ever really stuck except my Judaism.
    That's the only thing that I think that remained
    very strongly within me.
    It is unshakable.
    Did you have a large extended family?
    What does it mean?
    Like?
    Well--
    Like cousins--
    Yeah, well.
    I really know very little.
    My parents never spoke about their family.
    I know they had parents, of course,
    on my mother's side and my father's
    side and their brothers and sisters,
    but I'd never met anyone.
    But I did meet-- and with your permission,
    like to tell you the story.
    My father had a brother.
    His name was Max, Max Grossman.
    And when I left my mother, she handed me a note and said,
    look, this is the address of your uncle,
    your father's brother.
    He lives in Paris.
    And I kept it with me all the time,
    not realizing that one day, with this note, I would find him.
    And the story was as follows.
    Let me first tell you in a few words how we got to Paris.
    My father, my parents--
    I wasn't born then-- they decided,
    at one stage in their life--
    I think it was 1923-- to go to Palestine.
    And they went to Palestine, and they stayed there only
    half a year.
    They weren't able to acclimatize themselves
    to the climate and the food and the conditions.
    They thought it wasn't for Jews, so they went back to Germany.
    And on the way back on the ship--
    and his brother Max also went with him, with his family--
    one of his children got sick.
    And they went off the ship in Marseilles in France,
    and the child was hospitalized.
    And the child got well and then he went to Paris
    and he stayed there with his whole family.
    In the meantime, some other children were born.
    My father went back to this town, Güstrow,
    where I was born.
    And then I was born.
    In 1944, I joined the army, British Army, and then
    I had a transfer to the Jewish Brigade.
    And then I was stationed in Germany.
    I was stationed in Germany in a town
    called Bielefeld in Westphalia.
    And our duties was to guard trains going all over Europe
    with ammunition, with prisoners, with provisions,
    all kinds of things.
    And I had a very good friend.
    He was very close to me.
    And one day, he received a notification
    that his brother had survived a concentration camp,
    and he's in the South of France.
    And he received leave to visit his brother,
    and I asked him, are you, by any chance, going through Paris?
    And he said, yeah, I'm staying about a day in Paris
    and then I'll take a train to the South of France.
    I said, look, I have an address of my uncle.
    But I don't think he's still alive.
    He's probably been deported.
    He has a family.
    I don't know exactly how many children,
    but if you have nothing to do, just have a look.
    So he went to--
    he met his brother and after about 10 days, he came back,
    and he told me about terrible stories
    his brother had told him what he had gone through
    and, you know, he'd survived.
    And then I asked him, do you go to the address I gave you?
    And he said, yes, I saw your uncle and his children.
    I said, you saw my uncle and his children?
    He said, yes, he's still at the same address.
    So I can't believe it.
    What do they look like?
    He said, well, he's got four sons.
    And he looks very much like you, he said to me, the uncle.
    I said, I can't believe it.
    And what about the mother?
    He says, they're all there.
    So I went straight to my commanding officer
    and asked for leave, and he didn't want to give it to me.
    So I went to the window and the officer, got myself a pass.
    But it wasn't necessary because he came to me the very next--
    few hours later.
    He said, you know, there's a train going to Paris
    and if you want to be part of that train to guard it,
    I will put you on that train.
    I said, of course.
    So I went on the train, and it took a long time to get there.
    They used to stop and they used to change wagons and so forth.
    But eventually, I arrived one night.
    I arrived in Paris.
    That was just after the war in 1945.
    I remember it was in January.
    It was very, very cold.
    I had caught a cold in the meantime.
    And the trains were drawn by coal,
    and there's smoke coming out of the chimneys.
    I looked as black as anything.
    I needed to shower badly, and we had no way
    of washing for those then.
    So we were quartered in an army kind of a hostel.
    And I remember I want to take a shower.
    There was no warm water.
    It was icy cold.
    It was January.
    I had no choice.
    I had to take a shower, so I washed myself.
    Nothing much came of the cold water,
    but somehow, I had a semblance of a human being again.
    And the very next morning, I had a map of Paris,
    and I walked towards that address, and I found it.
    And I remember it very clearly, it's
    a Jewish part of Paris where all the people
    lived who worked in textiles.
    So I came to that house, and I saw the number.
    And I went inside.
    Very old house, steps were all worn away from usage
    from hundreds of years.
    And while walking up the stairs, a person came down.
    And I looked at him, and he looked at me,
    and he looked very familiar to me.
    He looked like one of my family, I know.
    Very handsome young man.
    He must have been about--
    well, I was about 18, he must have been about 22.
    And when he saw me in uniform, of course,
    and he had heard from my friend that I'm around
    and that I might be-- and he assumed
    that I might be coming one day.
    I might make my way to Paris to see him.
    Anyway, I walked up, and he made a turn, and he came after me.
    And I knocked on one of the doors,
    and the men came out reeking of alcohol.
    And I said--
    I don't speak French--
    I said, family Grossman?
    He said, upstairs.
    He showed me, and I went upstairs,
    and he came behind me.
    And I knocked on the door, and I heard the noise
    of sewing machines there.
    When I opened the door, there was a little apartment,
    with 3, 4 sewing machines.
    And they were all sewing, you know, those foot things.
    They are sewing things.
    Then I saw my uncle.
    My God, he looked exactly like my father.
    They were not, of course, twins, but they were very similar.
    And he looked at me, I looked at him,
    and he immediately recognized me.
    Probably I also had a resemblance to his family.
    And, of course, his joy was great.
    And immediately, they packed the machines away.
    They were pushed under the bed, and the clothes
    were rolled up and put up.
    Everything was so-- it was so small, everything.
    And he had two girls.
    Regularly, he sent them home on vacation.
    And then we started to--
    He was so happy.
    So immediately, she served a wonderful meal.
    Oh, yeah, it was first of January.
    It was New Year.
    And they put a bottle of wine on the table and, of course,
    they poured themselves wine.
    I remember big glasses.
    They drank it like water.
    I couldn't manage more than this.
    That was my portion.
    I couldn't.
    And my head started to spin.
    Anyway, I stayed there about three or four days,
    and it was a wonderful reunion.
    These were the only relations I have ever met,
    and they were all communists, by the way.
    They were all convinced communists, but in later years,
    when I lived in Israel already, they all came to Israel.
    They had all changed their minds.
    They had discarded their communism.
    They all become very pro-Israel.
    In those days when they talked to me,
    they only condemned Israel, not Israel, Palestine
    in those days.
    But thank God, they all came to visit me in later years.
    How did they happen to survive if the same part
    where they lived in before--
    No.
    I don't know.
    I asked my uncle what made him-- he went to Vichy, France,
    you know.
    France was divided into an independent Vichy, France.
    And he took all his family to Vichy, France,
    and there they lived on a farm.
    And some of his sons, I think two sons,
    even joined the Maquis, the French underground,
    and they survived.
    And then when the war was over, they all came back.
    He paid the farmer.
    He told me that he paid the farmer lots of money
    to hide him because afterwards, the Germans took
    over that part of France as well,
    and they did the same things they did
    with the Jews of Vichy, France, they
    did with the rest of France.
    But he was able to hide, and he came back.
    And he came back to the same apartment he lived in.
    But he told me that the apartment he lived in,
    that wasn't really his apartment but the apartment downstairs.
    It was very much bigger.
    But in later years, he got that back.
    Both of your parents were from Poland, right?
    Yes.
    You said you heard some horrible stories about Poland.
    What stories did you hear?
    My parents spoke very little about their childhoods.
    I gleaned from a remark and some words,
    I gleaned that they had to start work at the age of 11 or 12.
    They had no money.
    Their parents had no money to send them to school.
    They could neither read nor write.
    My father only knew how to read and write
    in Hebrew, in the Hebrew vernacular, the writing.
    But in Latin, he didn't know.
    I had to read all the letters on newspapers.
    Both of them couldn't read or write.
    And they told me that two or three had to sleep in one bed,
    and the Poles always used to taunt them
    and to antagonize them.
    The reason my father really came to Poland, to Germany,
    was that his father, my grandfather,
    my paternal grandfather was a glazier.
    So he used to strap some glass on his back,
    and he used to go through the towns of Warsaw
    proclaiming that he wants to repair windows.
    One day, a Pole came and beat him up and broke all his glass.
    So my father heard about it, and he went after this Pole,
    and he beat him so much he thought he had killed him.
    So that night, he fled Poland and went to Germany.
    And then he pulled my mother over,
    and he married in Germany.
    So all this stories, terrible.
    It left a terrible impression upon me,
    this life in Poland, this poverty and the squalor
    and the ignorance.
    And it seemed very black to me, Poland.
    In fact, to save my life one day this concept of Poland--
    would you like me to tell this?
    And it was in 1938 when--
    I might have told this story.
    I don't know about Herschel Greenspan.
    Did I tell the story?
    Yeah, but tell it again.
    And the Germans decided to take all the Polish nationals,
    the citizens, and evict them from Germany to Poland.
    To cut a long story short, I was on that transport.
    And I was sent to Poland.
    And the woman saw me at the frontier,
    and she said, where are your parents?
    And I said, my parents aren't here.
    I came from this hostel in Stettin.
    And she said, have you got a passport?
    I said, I have none.
    And she said, well I'll say that you are my son,
    and I'll take you over the border
    and then you go to Warsaw and you'll find your relations
    or even your parents probably crossed the border
    at a different place.
    So I agreed.
    So she took me over, and the official just
    stamped the passport.
    It didn't even count her children and me,
    and I was over in Poland.
    And then all these things came back to me,
    these memories of Poland, these remarks by my parents,
    and so forth.
    And I went up to her and said, look,
    I'm going back into Germany.
    I'm not going to go to Poland.
    And she said no, what's the use of going back to Germany?
    Germany is no good.
    I said, no, I'm going back to Germany.
    So I went back to the frontier, and I
    spoke to the Polish official, and I was sent back to Germany,
    to Stettin, but I came home.
    And eventually, I was sent to England.
    If I would have remained in Poland,
    I would have either ended up in the Warsaw ghetto
    or in Auschwitz.
    So this decision saved my life when I was only 13 years old.
    Were you caught between the two borders at any time?
    The German and Polish borders?
    No.
    The Germans-- there were a few who didn't have any passports,
    and the Poles didn't want to take them
    because they had no passports.
    The Germans took them back, and they
    went back on the train from the town, then from their homes
    where they came from.
    And we went back where we lived.
    But then, of course, soon after was the Kristallnacht and then
    things started to roll, you know.
    And after the Kristallnacht, I was sent to England.
    How much time did this take, this going to Poland and back?
    About 48 hours.
    Maybe 24 hours because they took me--
    the Gestapo came about 2:00 o'clock in the morning,
    took me to the jail.
    Everybody was there.
    Next morning, we were sent on a train to the border.
    So probably 24 hours.
    And that night I came back again.
    I was sent back.
    Did they give you food?
    Yeah.
    They gave us sausage and all being Polish.
    As I explained before, nobody ate that nonkosher food,
    so nobody would touch it.
    I remember that German said, when in need, even the devil
    eats flies, so you better eat that sausage.
    But nobody would touch it because all the Polish
    Jews in those days were mostly religious or at least
    they kept kosher.
    But I don't remember beside that that we got any food.
    I don't think so.
    How did people treat you on the train
    with the other Jewish people?
    How did people treat you --
    Yeah.
    How was that [? train? ?]
    There were families there.
    I was by myself.
    I was by myself.
    They had food.
    I don't remember that I had --
    It's too long ago to remember the small details.
    But there were families, you know.
    Father, mother, and their children and lots
    of crying and lots of confusion and lots of unhappiness.
    People being taken away from their homes,
    being sent to Poland where they came from years ago, and full
    of premonitions and full of fear.
    I remember there was a lot of hysteria
    going on in that train, lots of noise,
    and lots of crying and weeping.
    Did any of the children get together
    With children--
    Other children on the train?
    Oh, that's-- I don't remember.
    I cannot remember.
    There were lots of children, I do know.
    But I was-- in a way I was terrified by this action,
    you know?
    And I didn't feel too much like playing.
    I was concerned with what's going to be.
    Where I'm going to be and so forth.
    Besides, I was there by myself.
    I was the only one who was by himself.
    The rest were all with families.
    Where was your mother and your sister?
    Oh, they were also--
    later on, they were sent in another frontier crossing,
    and they also had no valid passport.
    So they also were sent back.
    They came back and then they met me instead.
    They came to Stettin, to that hostel,
    and then suddenly, the doorbell rang and there she was.
    Only to be later sent away to Auschwitz,
    but that's another story.
    How did the-- did the Poles shout insults at you, or --
    No.
    You see it was a frontier.
    There were no Poles.
    But on the other side in Poland, we went into a kind of an inn.
    And I don't think there were any Poles in there
    except the owner who was selling whatever tea or coffee or--
    I don't remember.
    Or sandwiches maybe.
    I don't remember that exactly.
    But there were no Poles in that inn.
    It was filled with the Jewish people
    who were being evicted and waiting for the train
    to take them to Warsaw.
    When you were on the train with all these other families,
    did anybody kind of see that you were alone and take you in?
    No.
    Only when we arrived at the frontier.
    And I was standing there by myself,
    and I must have looked a miserable little--
    very, very sort of pale and cold.
    And this woman took pity on me.
    She came to me, and she looked at me.
    And when she looked at me, she started to cry.
    She started to cry.
    She felt a lot of compassion for me.
    And she asked me, where are your parents?
    And told you this.
    I said, they are not here.
    Anybody you are with?
    I said, no, nobody.
    And then she offered to take me over the border to Warsaw
    and then maybe find my relations.
    And thank God I came to a decision
    not to continue to Warsaw.
    Did you have any money with you?
    No.
    None.
    How did you get the train fare back?
    The Germans did it.
    The Germans put me on the train, put me back.
    In fact, when I arrived back in Szczecin,
    this office was still open with the officials
    who did the sending away.
    They were still sitting in there.
    And I knocked on the door, and I came in.
    And he thought I was a German child.
    I mentioned before I was very blond.
    And when I told him that I had been on this train,
    he said, OK, you can go home.
    I said, well, I'd like to phone.
    And so he gave me few pfennigs, and I phoned.
    And this director of the school, he was still up, you know.
    He was so worried about me.
    And when he heard my voice on the phone,
    he said he was so happy.
    He said, you come towards the hospital, and I'll meet you.
    I'll come towards the railway station.
    So this German official gave me some pfennigs and I phoned.
    And so we met, and I came back again home.
    Excuse me.
    Can I get some can I
    Ask it
    Start with that one.
    Let's say at any time or we're all set.
    OK, so I was curious because your memories
    of the antisemitism in Poland and from your parents' memories
    is so scary and dark and overwhelming
    and yet the antisemitism that you're
    describing in Germany at that time
    was ongoing and daily and very menacing.
    And it's interesting, that contrast.
    My answer to that question is that Germany was my life
    and Germany must not--
    we didn't suffer any poverty.
    We had always-- we had a good life materially.
    My parents were well off.
    We had a shop.
    We always had enough to eat.
    We had nice clothes.
    And we had a nice house, and the house was furnished.
    It was our own house.
    And I went to school.
    And, as I explained before, the antisemitism
    that I encountered in Germany, it was sort of part of my life.
    I didn't know any difference.
    But in contrast, Poland it seemed
    such a life full of troubles, full of poorness.
    People never had enough to eat.
    There was no such thing as a child going to work
    in Germany at the age of 11.
    The earliest a child could go to work was the age of 14.
    And, of course, schooling.
    My parents had no schooling.
    And Germany was a very well-organized country,
    and this whole antisemitism wasn't so virulent.
    It was here and there somebody used to abuse you, insult you,
    but it wasn't every day.
    It wasn't every day.
    Sometimes somebody and then--
    And we had German friends, too, who
    used to come into our house.
    And my mother used to talk to neighbors.
    And I used to go into shops.
    So it seemed the kind of an ordinary life we led.
    So we knew the outburst of antisemitism, there was no--
    how can I explain it?
    There was no fear of anything happening to us in those days.
    OK, it happened.
    And my parents were even used to that sort of thing in Poland.
    And I saw it in Germany but only from time to time.
    It didn't happen every day.
    But sometimes, things were pretty tough for me
    in the German school, very tough.
    I remember an incident.
    One day, my mother went to Poland to visit her parents
    and when she came back, she brought
    a sausage, a kosher sausage.
    Did I tell you that story?
    And it was a wonderful sausage, and it was full of garlic
    and I love that sausage smell to high heaven.
    So the next day, my mother made me
    sandwiches to take to school.
    And she put a very generous portion of garlic
    on my sandwiches, and I took it to school
    and put it under my desk.
    And that morning, a krieger came,
    and he was our art teacher.
    And he had a limp.
    And he was wounded in the First World War,
    and he blamed the Jews for having this limp.
    They were the cause of his infirmity.
    So in the olden days, when the teacher used to come in,
    then all the children used to get up
    and we used to say in unison, good morning,
    Herr teacher, Herr Lehrer, used to bow down,
    that sort of thing.
    But he was already in SA uniform.
    And when he came in, he raised his hand,
    and he was going to say, Heil Hitler.
    But he didn't quite manage the Hitler because he said Heil
    and then he smelled the garlic.
    So he wasn't able to finish the Hitler.
    So he pulled his nose up and he immediately
    knew who was the perpetrator.
    So he started to play cat and mouse.
    He went from desk to desk to smell
    and left me to the very last, and I
    was sitting there squirming.
    At last he reached my desk and then he looked under the desk.
    He pulled out the bag of sandwiches
    and held it very far from his body
    so that he shouldn't be contaminated by the garlic
    because garlic was a food the Germans said
    is endemic to Jews.
    They love garlic as if the Germans didn't like it,
    but that's a different story.
    So he took those sandwiches between his thumb
    and his forefinger, and he took me by the scruff of the neck
    and propelled me to the door, opened the door,
    and kicked me with his foot out of the door.
    I slid across the corridor against the wall,
    and I held my head.
    And he threw the sandwiches after me.
    So I cursed him, that monster, under my breath.
    And I went home, and I told my mother this story.
    So she took her hat, and she took me by the hand
    and hurried back to school and had
    an interview with the director of the school.
    And I remember like today he said,
    Frau Grossman, there's nothing I can do.
    We are living in hard times.
    So that was a story about the garlic sausage.
    How old were you?
    I was about 11, 11 and 1/2.
    And from that day on, the children in the school
    used to accompany me home.
    And they, in unison, used to chant verses against the Jews,
    you know, Jews with long noses and long, dirty fingernails
    and so forth.
    And then the next morning, they waited in front of my house
    in order to accompany me home again to school
    and that went on for quite a bit.
    And then my mother decided it's about time
    to go to a Jewish school because it was getting too much.
    But that wasn't every day.
    It was occurrences.
    And we took it in our stride.
    You know we were conditioned to it.
    Actually, I personally didn't know any difference.
    That's the way the world went around with me.
    I didn't know that there was any--
    I thought it was the way Jews lived.
    That's it.
    We had to take it.
    But then, of course, today I've undergone a metamorphosis.
    I wouldn't take nobody from nothing.
    I mean, even to think that I would tolerate
    any kind of treatment of that sort is so alien to me
    that I mean, it wouldn't occur to me
    that I should even tolerate or agree to such treatment.
    I mean, it won't happen to me again or to my children
    or to my grandchildren to nobody, or to no Jew.
    Last time you said something about some antisemitic verses
    kids in Poland yelled at you?
    In Poland?
    No.
    I was never in Poland except on the frontier.
    Only in Germany.
    OK.
    I don't remember what it was like, so I won't ask it now.
    You mentioned about, last time again,
    about how there were two streets your family lived on in Warsaw
    that became famous.
    Why did they become famous?
    And I heard that my mother lived in the Nalewki
    and my father lived on the Krochmalna I had, as a child,
    my father used to speak in Yiddish.
    Then they spoke Polish only when they
    didn't want me to understand what they were talking about.
    But Yiddish, I speak and understand very well.
    Indeed, it's very close to German.
    So very often they talked about the Nalewki and the Krochmalna
    And I came across these two streets later on,
    and they were part of the Warsaw ghetto.
    And I read several books on the Warsaw ghetto,
    and I came and I saw maps and there the two streets
    were right in the ghetto.
    So then I assumed that my parents
    lived in the Jewish district of Warsaw, in the poorer district.
    Even in films I sometimes saw the streets, you know,
    slums and the Warsaw ghetto, so I recognized them.
    What was life in your family like?
    I think my father had a kind of frustration.
    He wanted his children to become doctors and lawyers.
    I didn't think we could make it.
    I didn't think we had it in us.
    And besides, he was a simple man as I described before.
    He didn't know how to read and write.
    He never went to school except maybe to trade
    and to learn how to read a prayer book.
    But fundamentally, he was not an educated man.
    Neither was my mother, but they had this cleverness
    of simple people.
    They knew how to shape their lives and to make a good living
    and they're very good, in a way, good merchants.
    And, you know, he bought a house,
    and he bought another house, and he had a nice shop,
    and he raised his family.
    There was nothing wrong with that.
    But he never went to school, but like all Jewish parents,
    they wanted their children to become something.
    But we had some kind of conditioning
    because in the school, my learning was stunting.
    I couldn't even think of learning because I was always
    thinking of what is going to happen next, what
    is the teacher going to be next, and what
    are the children, my fellow pupils, what
    are they going to be next?
    I could never really concentrate on learning.
    I was stunted completely.
    My whole thoughts were focused on only,
    I hope it's going to be--
    this class is going to be over, and I'm
    going to be able to get home without my fellow pupils
    accompanying me home and shouting
    these terrible verses after me.
    And the next day again I said, what is the teacher,
    he always makes terrible remarks about the Jews.
    So my whole mind could not be concentrated
    on learning at all.
    That's happened to my two brothers as well.
    My sister, I don't know, I don't remember.
    It followed me very long in life since I didn't have
    the fundamentals of learning.
    Any child, I think, it's the most important years
    of his life and he gets the rudiments of learning,
    which I didn't have.
    I just couldn't study.
    But in later years, thank God, I think
    I got a little bit of wisdom, maybe [INAUDIBLE]..
    In fact, I educated myself, I think.
    I read a lot and what I do is I think a lot.
    So I'm always thinking, so I read a lot.
    And thank God I think I'm late bloomer
    so I got some knowledge and some wisdom,
    so to speak, in later life.
    But I was never able to fulfill the dreams of my father
    to become something.
    So I think my father was a little bit frustrated.
    He saw that his children couldn't be
    that what he wanted them to be.
    He was also an impetuous man.
    He was quick tempered, but he never touched his children.
    But I think the whole question of livelihood
    under those circumstances were a strain on him.
    But we had nice Shabbatot, and we had nice holy holidays
    and so forth.
    On the festivals, you know, we all went to synagogue
    and so forth.
    My father sat down with us in order
    to learn a little bit of the Tanakh of the Old Testament.
    Although I don't think he was such an expert,
    but he wanted us to learn.
    But it was a middle-class family.
    It was lots of love in our family.
    I think there was nothing out of the ordinary.
    It was enough within the framework of our family
    except of course the surroundings were tough.
    In fact, I know when I told you I went--
    last year, I went back to the town
    I was born in after 50 years.
    And I looked around and all those memories
    came flooding back to me, and I saw the same streets.
    They hadn't changed.
    Same cobblestones.
    In fact, I saw the same people.
    I saw, of course, there was a new generation there.
    And there were people of my age.
    I went to the school in order to find out--
    pupils, you know, fellow students.
    But I wasn't able to because the records were not there
    and it was too long.
    The contemporary director, principal of the school,
    he said he didn't have any records of--
    I was trying to find somebody to speak to him
    and maybe remind them of what they did to me.
    Anyway, I wasn't able to, but people
    didn't look any different to me, and I
    don't know whether I'm wrong or whether I'm right.
    Given the same circumstances, I think
    nothing has changed in Germany.
    It could happen again.
    It happened before not so long ago.
    But, you know, no change except in myself.
    I was a changed person.
    I was-- in the olden days, when somebody used to speak,
    hushed Jewish people.
    They used to say, don't talk so loud.
    You're making [NON-ENGLISH].
    The word [NON-ENGLISH] means you're creating antisemitism.
    Don't dress too ostentatiously.
    Don't do this and don't do that, you know.
    We were a frightened people.
    And I was motorcycle racing in the two days
    I was in my friend's house.
    My friend took me there.
    And I looked at the people.
    I was the only Jew who had ever come back
    to the town, the only person.
    And I looked-- you know, he didn't know what he was talking
    to me about, motorcycle racing.
    But I'd seen once or twice.
    That was enough for me but again and again, it had--
    nothing to me.
    You've seen once, you've seen them all.
    So my mind was one thing.
    And then I saw my parents and, you know,
    those memories came flooding back into my mind.
    And I looked at these people.
    When the races were over, there were a million beer bottles
    lying there, all pointed towards me.
    And I said, my God, I said, you just
    tell these people the Jews are the cause of all your troubles.
    For 50 years, you had communism.
    And for 50 years, you were deprived of the good things
    the West did.
    And you have no work, and you have no state,
    and you've got these terrible Trabant cars you're driving.
    And there you see in the West that they
    drive those beautiful cars, and they make a wonderful living.
    It's Jews.
    It's the Jews who had fought, so I felt that and--
    Did you actually hear that when you went there?
    No.
    No, there is a phenomena there.
    I met a friend.
    Actually, a friend of my brother's.
    He was older as me.
    He lives opposite our house.
    And you know, seeing each other was
    a tremendous experience for me.
    And he was very close to the Jewish community
    there because his father was a kind of a socialist communist,
    and he always played with the Jewish children.
    And he brought back so many--
    he had so much knowledge about the Jewish community
    and what we did as children.
    He amazed me, what he knew.
    I only thought that I knew them.
    But he came out with such things, you know, I was amazed.
    Really, truly, I was amazed what he
    knew, that he should have kept these memories
    because to me, they were close.
    And to him they must have been just sort of not important.
    But he knew them all.
    So what did you ask me?
    Oh, if you had actually heard--
    Oh, yes.
    Well, he introduced me--
    he's a well-known personality there.
    Everybody knows him.
    And he introduced me practically to maybe a hundred,
    a hundred-fifty people.
    He said, this is Ali Grossman, and he was born in this town,
    and he is an Israeli, and he lives at the moment in America.
    You know, there wasn't a single question.
    Really?
    How is America?
    How is Israel?
    When did you leave?
    When did you come back?
    There was no reaction whatsoever on part of the Germans.
    And he must have introduced me, as I
    said, to many, many people.
    They just said, hi.
    In fact, he introduced me to an elderly man whom he told me
    he had been in prison for about 15 years for killing people,
    Jews maybe.
    But he said, well, you know, maybe--
    he tried to excuse him, but I was standing right next
    to that man.
    And he looked an ordinary man to me and ordinary face,
    and then he was for 50 years in prison for murdering Jews.
    And I was standing right next to him,
    and he had been released from prison.
    He had served his time.
    And he introduced me to him, and there was no reaction.
    He wasn't frightened, he wasn't embarrassed, nothing.
    But one incident I'd like to tell you about.
    The day I left, I had rented a car in Hamburg
    and driven with that car to this East German town.
    And it had West German marking, of course, on the car.
    You know, the-- and I had it in front
    of the inn I was staying in, a kind of a hotel,
    kind of a family hotel.
    And I was lugging my suitcases out and stowing away
    into the boot when two elderly men passed,
    and they saw this West German sign on my car.
    One came up to me, took hold of my hand, and shook my hand,
    says, where you from?
    From Munich?
    From Frankfurt?
    From Hamburg?
    I said no, I'm from Jerusalem.
    In German, of course.
    He said-- went like this, in an elderly way says,
    where you from?
    I said, [SPEAKING GERMAN] Jerusalem.
    I'm from Jerusalem.
    He said, [SPEAKING GERMAN].
    I said, I repeated again, [SPEAKING GERMAN] Jerusalem.
    I'm from Jerusalem, Israel.
    So he turned to his companion and said, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    He's crazy, he's nuts.
    And he walked on.
    He thought I was nuts.
    So that was the only reaction I had from being introduced to--
    Why do you think he thought you were nuts?
    I don't know.
    It was so incongruous to him that somebody
    should come from a country like Israel to this town.
    For the last 60, 55 years, there had been
    no single Jew in that town.
    I was the only one, the only person
    ever to have returned to that town.
    And when that happened, he was also a younger man.
    And I know it went on his head that anybody
    should be still alive and come back to the town, I don't know.
    I have no idea.
    But an interesting thing, I wrote a letter to the mayor.
    I didn't bring that letter.
    I promised to bring it last time and pictures,
    but could be another time.
    You know, complaining about the fact
    that he knew I was coming because I asked
    him to arrange lodging for me.
    And he had done it, and he knew the day I was coming.
    And I really thought that he would invite me to his office
    and speak to me.
    Welcome.
    We'll send the press, even, you know.
    After all, no Jew had ever come back.
    It's an occurrence.
    Well, it didn't happen.
    So I wrote a letter.
    I have also translated it into English.
    Maybe it would be interesting to read.
    Anyway, that letter was published
    in the local newspaper in German and a maid of ours--
    she must be 90 now--
    read that letter.
    And one of her children wrote me in tearful letter.
    You know that she--
    before she died, she wants to see me.
    So that was the only kind of reaction I can tell you about.
    So as if would have been no Jewish community there.
    Not a single person who had known any Jew or my parents
    except, of course, my friend who lived opposite.
    But, really, nobody.
    Did he talk to you about the war in those times?
    Yes, he talked a lot about it.
    What kind of-- what was the--
    what kind of relationship did you develop?
    What kind of things did he talk about?
    Oh, he, first of all, talked about his army service,
    that he was a mechanic, and he served in Italy.
    And then he was captured by the Americans
    and incarcerated in some--
    and then he came back.
    And he hated the Communist regime.
    In fact, one of his sons tried to flee East Germany
    to get into West Germany.
    And he was caught at the border, and he was imprisoned
    3 or 4 years for that.
    So he really hated the communists.
    But otherwise, in a way, he was a kind of a patriot.
    He took me to a museum, and there was a local sculpture.
    And he showed a sort of pride that the sculptor
    was born in this city.
    So I felt that he had some pride of his town.
    After all he lived all his life.
    But otherwise, I--
    Did he express compassion for what had happened to the Jews?
    No.
    You know, I have sometimes spoken
    to people about what was done to my people very often,
    and I spoke vehemently about it, you know, accusingly.
    And it always turned out sour.
    Nobody liked it.
    Nobody liked it when I spoke, you know,
    when I expressed myself forcefully.
    I said, you know, the time of reckoning
    hasn't yet come between the Jews and the Germans.
    The time will come.
    The Jews have a long arm, and we have a long memory.
    We shall never forgive.
    And don't you worry.
    Your time-- you know, that sort of thing.
    I was very, very--
    and I felt I was in his home, and he took me
    to his children's home, and they avoided talking about it.
    And I felt that I had made this mistake of people --
    and I estranged people for that.
    I mean, not that I care so much, but sometimes,
    you are together with people, it's, in fact--
    but let me put it this way.
    I was in-- after the Six-Day War, I went to Germany.
    And I went into a traveling agency
    and then, of course, the whole world was behind Israel.
    You know the Six-Day War, they admired the Israeli army
    and what this little Israel had done to beat
    so many armies in six days.
    So the man, I asked him about the fare to Israel.
    He said, are you from Israel?
    I said, yes.
    And he was so enthusiastic about Israel.
    And then I started this tirade against Germany.
    And he said, you know, I understand you,
    but Israel needs friends.
    But it you talk like that, you will estrange people.
    It taught me a lesson.
    I can't do much.
    I mean, if I would give a speech or I have an audience,
    then I can say what I want.
    But I felt the man was right.
    It's no use just letting myself go
    and giving vent to my feelings.
    And it won't get me nowhere.
    So there I was in his home.
    And there I was in his children's home.
    And the children were even born after the war.
    And I know he was a good man.
    I know his father was a good man.
    His father was always for the Jews.
    He never put in his window, for instance, the sign which
    everybody had, we do not serve Jews or dogs
    or something of that sort.
    So something can be said for his family.
    So if I would have brought up the subject of the Holocaust,
    I think I would have estranged him.
    I would have brought in an aura of embarrassment.
    You're talking about the friend back in your hometown now?
    Yeah, yeah.
    I think it was an opportunity to talk to him.
    I felt that he was a patriot, you know.
    After all, he grew up in the town,
    and his children were born there.
    However bad it is, you have a feeling for your country.
    I think it's a good thing, actually.
    But I never spoke to him about the Holocaust.
    He asked me where's your mother?
    Where's Tzili?
    Where's your sister?
    And I said, they died in Auschwitz.
    And he said, your mother was so beautiful.
    You know, she liked him.
    She always gave him to eat.
    She called him.
    She called him Bubi.
    He said, I didn't remember that.
    She sent him sometimes to the ritual slaughter
    to take a chicken to be slaughtered.
    He explained to me how he slaughtered the chickens.
    And he explained it so well exactly how it happened.
    Anyway, I felt that it wouldn't serve any purpose at all
    to speak to him about the Holocaust.
    I did speak to a pastor about it.
    A pastor was very interested to meet me.
    He left me a message.
    He heard that I was in town, and he had a very nice church.
    And we had long discussions about this.
    And then I accused Germany.
    And he was a very compassionate man.
    I think he was a just man.
    And he was also too young to have taken part
    in the Holocaust definitely.
    But he was a child and maybe a little bit younger than me.
    But definitely not at the age where he could
    have done anything.
    And he was full of compassion.
    He tried very much to resurrect the memory
    of the Jewish community, to put up
    a monument to resurrect where the synagogue used to stand.
    It was burned, of course.
    Part of the cemetery is still standing
    and where they used to bring the dead people to be washed.
    What is it called in English?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Not-- be ready--
    in Jewish custom, a person who is dead
    is being prepared for burial.
    He's washed completely and then a shroud is put on him.
    And a man gets a tallis and he's prepared.
    So they have in the synagogue, in the cemetery
    they have a kind of a building.
    So he gave me pictures of all these things, which I have.
    But my friend told me the following story, which
    I have written in the letter to the mayor,
    that after the Kristallnacht you know
    the Night of the Broken Glass, they
    took all the Jews, the remaining Jews of the town,
    and put them on the Jewish hearse.
    He said, you had a beautiful hearse.
    I don't even remember a hearse which
    was towed by horses to the cemetery
    from the synagogue where the dead person was put before,
    you know, for every-- to pay respects
    and then it was put on the hearse,
    and it was transported to the cemetery.
    So they put all the Jews, the remaining Jews, on the hearse
    and had the two most prominent Jews put instead of the horses
    and made them pull it to the town
    while all the population jeered and cheered.
    He told me that story.
    I wasn't present then, of course.
    So what kind of things did the pastor say?
    What did he say?
    First, he wanted me to recount all
    I knew about the Jewish community, which was very
    little because I was too young.
    But I remembered most of the names.
    But he had all the lists of all that,
    including the names of my parents,
    which he had taken out of the marriage certificates all
    the taxes but I don't know, he got them all out.
    And he gave me that list.
    And he had pictures of the synagogue
    from the inside and the outside.
    He had pictures of the cemetery.
    He had pictures of that building where the dead are
    prepared for burial.
    And, in fact, I wrote my letter--
    I wrote to the mayor, and he asked the mayor
    for an interview because he wanted
    to speak to him to get funds in order to put up a monument
    or even to get Russian Jews to settle in that town.
    He was going to do something.
    So when he came to the mayor, the mayor showed him my letter.
    He didn't know that I wrote that letter,
    so he was very much touched by my letter.
    I will, maybe if there's an opportunity,
    I will bring that letter next time.
    I'll show it to you.
    And he spoke to me about the terrible crimes
    the Germans had committed, which is unforgiving.
    He was, in my opinion, a true Christian
    in the very true sense of the word, a man of compassion,
    a man of forgiveness, a man of deep thought, profound thought.
    And his biggest wish was to visit the state of Israel, he
    and his wife.
    And he knew also about, of course,
    all the details about the Holocaust.
    And he couldn't forgive himself what his people
    had done to my people.
    In fact, he wrote me several letters
    after I returned to America.
    He went to one of the West German towns,
    and he went to a synagogue.
    And he took part in the service.
    He was very much moved and touched by the service.
    The letter was full of his experience in that synagogue.
    A most curious incident happened when
    I had this interview with him.
    It took me a few hours.
    I went back to my friend's home and just when I entered,
    the telephone rang.
    And he phoned and he spoke to my friend.
    I didn't know what he was talking about.
    And my friend turned to me and said, look,
    the pastor wants to see you again.
    It's very important.
    Could I come tomorrow at 10:00, 11 o'clock?
    I said, well, you know I'm leaving tomorrow
    at about 12:00.
    I'm going towards Hamburg again to catch a plane to Israel
    and return my car, but at 10 o'clock for half an hour,
    it'll be fine.
    So and he told him that I'd be coming at 10 o'clock.
    So on the way there, I saw a flower shop,
    and I bought some flowers for his wife.
    That was part because I felt that he was a decent man,
    and I also wanted to show to him that, I don't know,
    I have the feeling that if such things can be done to people,
    there must be something wrong with those people.
    Maybe they have horns.
    Maybe I had to prove to him that I
    have at least the same culture as he has,
    and part of that culture is to bring flowers to his wife.
    I needed to prove that to him, that I'm a human being.
    Maybe it's a negative kind of view.
    I don't know, but I needed to prove to him
    that we have the same mannerisms,
    same culture, as they have had.
    Maybe he'd forgotten about it.
    Maybe because of all the things he has read and heard,
    there must be something peculiar about this.
    I want to show them that I'm an ordinary person
    with ordinary manners, and I look the same
    as he does, and I don't, as I said, grow any horns
    because some people have the understanding that Jews
    have horns, something wrong with them.
    Anyway, I came there and I brought flowers to his wife.
    And she was very moved by it, that I bought her flowers.
    And she said to me, look I have to ask
    you a very important question.
    But I could answer.
    I said, well, you haven't asked, I don't know.
    I'm really not an expert on the Jewish religion.
    I have a general knowledge about it, but please ask.
    She said, look, we intend to go to Israel.
    We will be saving to go to Israel.
    The first thing we'll do, we want to go to Israel.
    But my father is Jewish, she said.
    He lives in a village nearby, and he also survived the war.
    And, of course, I'm Christian.
    I'm the wife of the pastor.
    How is Israel going to receive me?
    And well, that was a simple answer.
    I said, Israel is going to respect you and receive you
    like any decent human being.
    It makes no difference in Israel what color, creed, or religion
    you are.
    Absolutely, this question is I can answer you 100%,
    you come to Israel, if you want to mention
    that your father's Jewish and that you are Christian
    and that you are married to a pastor,
    we treat you with complete deference and respect.
    There'll be absolutely no discrimination against you.
    And if you don't want to mention it, it's also fine.
    Nobody will ask you.
    So she was very pleased, and she gave me a kind of a--
    from the scriptures, from the New Testament
    and kind of for the journey, some kind of a prayer.
    She said, I haven't got anything else to give you,
    so I would like to give you this.
    I said, this is more precious than any
    present you could have given me, your wish
    that I have a safe journey.
    So she embraced and kissed me, and he embraced and kissed me.
    So it was very, very moving.
    When you said that, I don't know,
    when you talked about those beer bottles
    all pointing towards you and you said that you just felt like,
    when you were in East Germany in this town, that the same thing,
    just how the Holocaust could happen all over again,
    what gave you--
    did they talk, did you hear anything antisemitic?
    No, none.
    What gave you that impression?
    None because I was reminiscing.
    I was thinking back of days of yonder, and I was--
    And they looked the same, the children there
    and the young people, the young girls and the young men,
    they looked the same.
    They looked no different.
    They were blond and clean and everything.
    And a little incident.
    I had too much of this motorcycle racing,
    so I went to the side somewhere--
    there were some trees, and I laid down, and I fell asleep.
    I felt I was very tired.
    I couldn't sleep at night there because of the memory
    and because of the bad food.
    I didn't eat any meat there, only the cheese.
    But the cheese was so bad.
    It's unbelievable that cheese could
    be made in such a fashion.
    Anyway, I had a tough time there with sleeping and eating.
    And I lay there.
    And suddenly, a policeman came up to me
    and knocked me with his foot.
    He said, get up.
    And I opened my eyes.
    I didn't know where I was from.
    I had fallen asleep.
    And he said, get up.
    He probably thought I might have been drunk and fallen
    asleep in under the trees.
    And I got up and said in German, what do you want?
    He said, [SPEAKING GERMAN] where are your papers?
    I said, what do you want my papers for?
    You know, it is customary that a German,
    if he's asked for papers, then he shows his papers,
    by another German.
    And I don't take any nonsense of that sort of thing, you know.
    I'm an Israeli.
    He said, I want your papers.
    I said, well, I have no papers.
    He said, what have you got?
    I said, I've got a passport.
    You show it to me.
    Very curt sort of thing.
    Well, I pulled out my Israeli passport,
    and he looked at the side.
    It's on one side.
    It's in Hebrew and the other is in English.
    And he said, what is this, what it this?
    I said, well, have a look on the other side, you'll see.
    I was very sort of gotten annoyed with him on purpose.
    And he said, Israel?
    I said, Yes.
    He said, what you doing here?
    I said, I don't understand.
    What's your business what I'm doing here?
    You see I have a visa?
    I'll do what I want.
    So he called another policeman.
    And they talked, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    He's in Israel.
    Leave him.
    And they walked off.
    You know so very reminiscent of the treatment
    by the Nazi regime, also that sort of thing.
    They just, you know--
    But all these small things, in fact, this motor racing
    was also done when I was a child.
    That was the only diversion there.
    There was one cinema there, no nothing, no theater, no nothing
    there.
    I don't know what the young people do.
    I don't know.
    I asked my friend, what do they do?
    What can you do?
    They go to the bars and drink.
    Now when you go to the bars and drink, what goes in, you know,
    comes out.
    When you drink and you drink enough,
    and you run out of money, and the beer isn't just
    good quality the way it should be,
    then you have to find a scapegoat.
    So all this, I saw in my life.
    Hopefully, nothing will ever happen.
    But then I'm susceptible to very much on my guard
    concerning Holocaust and security.
    And in Israel, we are only thinking of security.
    So my whole being is conditioned on these things, you know?
    What will happen when I have children, I have grandchildren,
    and my sons go to the army?
    And time to come, my grandchildren
    will have to go to the army.
    So my whole concern is about--
    it's about security and about antisemitism,
    which is a very important factor in my life.
    So when I looked at these people,
    hopefully nothing will happen, but my parents
    said that can never happen.
    The Americans say it can never happen.
    I don't think it will happen.
    But Germany was as good a country as America, liberal.
    It was an enlightened country.
    It was a wonderful country to live in.
    Jews were tremendously rich, tremendously educated.
    They gave so much of their intellect
    and of their skills to Germany as a state and as a society
    that it was not feasible even to think that Germany
    would do what they did.
    So what can I say?
    I say, I have to be strong.
    I have to be united.
    I have to believe in my own destiny, in my own strength,
    and I can't rely upon anybody else.
    I don't think any agreement or any pact
    is worth the paper it's written on.
    We have to be strong.
    We have to be united.
    And we have to take care of ourselves
    fundamentally, that's what I think.
    When you were in the East Germany when you went to visit,
    what was your impression of the difference
    between East and West Germany?
    That's a very nice question.
    You see, when I passed the frontier into East Germany,
    and I drove that Volkswagen, West German Volkswagen,
    and I had the music on, it was German.
    The commentator was talking in German,
    and they were even talking in Platt,
    which is the vernacular which I used to talk as a child.
    Platt German, they speak that in Mecklenburg.
    You won't, if somebody speaks German,
    he will not understand that.
    It is almost a strange language.
    So it came back to me.
    It came flooding back to me, and I saw the trees and the woods.
    And those trees who didn't even speak when this
    was happening to my people.
    All these familiar surroundings came
    flooding back into my mind, and I was shaken
    by my approaching my town.
    And I saw very soon the signs, 30 kilometers took us 25
    minutes to Güstrow and then 10 k --
    And I had always recurring dreams
    that I would be returning.
    And I would come to my front door,
    and I was about to enter our house.
    And I always woke up.
    I was never ever able to enter my home.
    And then I was approaching it, you know.
    I was approaching it, and I said,
    either you'll have an accident, or you'll have a heart attack.
    You will never do it.
    And I came-- suddenly I saw Güstrow, the sign.
    That was a sign of the town where I was born, educated.
    So I got out and took my camera, and I photographed the sign
    said Güstrow, you know, [INAUDIBLE] Schwerin.
    Saw a woman pass, and I said, where is the center
    of the town, the Marktplatz?
    That's where the city hall is and the church.
    You know, the center of the town.
    She said about a hundred meters.
    I couldn't believe it.
    I said, now when I go in the car, the car won't start.
    So I went in the car, and it started.
    It was a beautiful, new car.
    Two minutes later, I was in the center of the city,
    and I looked around, and everything is just
    the way it was, cobblestones and the old houses, only
    more decrepit, everything no paint, everything was peeling.
    And I didn't quite--
    and the street from our house is just a minute from there.
    But I didn't quite know how to approach it.
    So I asked a man passing by, tell me
    where is the Baustrasse?
    He said, just go here.
    It's right there.
    So I went, drove my car around, and there it was.
    I saw Baustrasse] in this Gothic script.
    You know how the Germans write.
    Baustrasse, I said.
    I can't believe it.
    I'm in Baustrasse.
    So I drove along the street to the very end,
    and I didn't see our house.
    Didn't see our house.
    I couldn't, I didn't see it.
    I said, my God.
    But our house was right next to a big, huge commercial school
    and opposite was the fire brigade.
    How do you say it in English?
    Fire station.
    I didn't see the fire station with its big doors
    where the truck used to drive out, an old Daimler-Benz.
    And I didn't see that.
    I didn't see it.
    So I went back and didn't see it again.
    And there was a man standing there.
    I said, I thought I might have made a mistake.
    I said, where's the Baustrasse?
    From where to where does it go?
    He said, from right where you stand
    to where your eye can see, not far, maybe 400, 500 feet.
    It's, you know, not a very long street.
    I said, but there was a fire station.
    He said, well, it's right there.
    I said, there was a commercial school.
    But didn't you see it?
    It's right there.
    And I sat down, and I put my hands in my--
    my face into my hands.
    I said, like, take care of yourself
    because my heart was sobbing into my throat.
    I was so moved by this being there.
    I'd reached it, you know.
    It's as if you'd reached Mount Everest or something.
    So I went slowly and there I saw the fire station.
    There was this big gates, and I said, well,
    just diagonally across must be our house.
    And there it was.
    Number 34.
    I saw 34.
    I said, Oh, my God.
    This is the house where we lived in.
    But the show window had been taken out
    and two windows, all of them in the living room were put in.
    And I parked my car opposite, and I looked at that house.
    The same handle, and I remember we had a huge key
    to open the door, these old-fashioned keys.
    And the same lock was there.
    And I said, look, my parents had touched this,
    and I touched this as a child.
    And I saw two people were living there.
    There were two bells and two names.
    So I rang and rang, and nobody answered.
    I rang the second.
    Nobody answered.
    Suddenly, a young woman came up, and she started to ring.
    I said, you don't have to ring.
    Nobody's rang.
    And she said, who are you?
    Well, I said, this is my house.
    I was born in this house, and I lived here until the age of 11.
    She said, who are you?
    I said, I'm from Israel.
    And I'm Jewish.
    This is the house of my parents.
    So she said, yes.
    She said, you've come back.
    As if she were saying, you're still alive.
    She might have thought every Jew was dead.
    I said, yes.
    I'd like to see inside.
    Who's living here?
    And she said, well, there's a girl
    with a child living downstairs and a girl
    with a child living upstairs.
    We had about eight or nine homes upstairs and downstairs.
    And I said, and who are you?
    And she said, oh, I'm an insurance agent.
    I need to see those people.
    And then she suddenly started to cry.
    And I said, I'm so sorry for you.
    I said, don't be sorry.
    Why should you be sorry for me?
    What we Germans did to the Jewish people, she said to me.
    You know she must have been about 28,
    30.
    I said, well, what can we do?
    There's nothing we can do about it now.
    Maybe you should teach your children to be concerned
    and not to practice any of the things your parents did.
    I said, you know this street?
    I used to play in this street.
    This was my street.
    And you see all the surrounding?
    This was mine.
    I said that's where i grew up.
    You know, she really cried, tears
    were running down her cheeks.
    I said, you know my heart is full of terrible memories here.
    My parents went into Auschwitz.
    They died.
    My little sister died.
    But I said to her, well, the only thing you can do now
    is to educate your children towards understanding
    towards the Jewish people and to make up
    to the Jewish people what the Germans, what you Germans have
    done.
    Anyway, that [INAUDIBLE] answers your question.
    Did you get inside the house?
    Oh, yes.
    But it took me two days.
    Then I went back.
    Then I only went to the inn.
    Then I went to the inn.
    And the woman, I had written her that I
    had delayed my coming for a little bit
    because it was Pesach.
    I made a mistake.
    So I wrote, I'll be coming three days later
    than the established date which we had fixed upon.
    And when I came in, she asked me, who are you?
    And I said, my name is Adolf Grossman.
    Oh, she said, yes, yes.
    We reserved a home for you, but unfortunately, we
    have only a home now with two beds.
    You'll have to pay more.
    I said, there's no problem.
    It was so cheap.
    I supposed East Germany, then it turned out it was West Germany.
    Even then, it was so cheap.
    So I said, no problem.
    But why didn't you answer my letter?
    She said to me, you know how long
    it takes to receive a letter?
    I didn't quite believe it.
    But when I sent picture postcards from my town
    to various people here, it took about two months to reach.
    It's crazy.
    There's something wrong with the whole system.
    Anyway, so I went into the shower to shower.
    I had been from San Francisco to Germany to Frankfurt and from
    Frankfurt to Hamburg and from Hamburg to Güstrow.
    I was 24 hours on the way and, you know,
    I wasn't exhausted because I was full of excitement.
    But I need to shower, so I said, have you got a bathroom?
    She said, yeah, here.
    So I went in there and undressed.
    I'm in the shower and opened the water, and two drops came out.
    So I dressed and I said, what's wrong with your shower?
    She said, Herr Grossman, that's what we've got.
    We got no materials.
    We have no craftsmen, no people who can repair anything.
    You see those tiles?
    We waited seven years for those tiles.
    But you have a little bit more cold water, she says to me.
    If you can wash cold, that's fine.
    So again, I washed with cold.
    There was no hot there.
    Two drops only.
    So I changed clothes.
    And I left my car there, and I walked towards our house.
    On the way, I went into a restaurant.
    I said, I'll eat a bit.
    I'll find something to eat.
    And I looked at the menu.
    It was all in marks, and I didn't
    have any East German marks on me,
    but I only had dollars and a few West German marks, which
    I had from my previous trip.
    I had some West German mark.
    I said, do you accept dollars?
    She said, no, no dollars.
    I said, well, do you accept West German marks?
    She said, oh, yes.
    So it said, maybe a meal.
    I said have you got anything vegetarian?
    So she gave me potatoes and some cheese
    and some vegetables, really awful food.
    And when it came to paying, I gave her West German marks,
    but West German marks are three times as much
    as one East German mark, but she cheated me there.
    I was pleased that she cheated me.
    It only showed to me it's not only the Jews who cheat
    but also the Germans.
    So it wasn't really very much.
    So after I had eaten, I went to the house of my friend,
    and I knocked on the door and, you know, nobody answered.
    So I opened the front door and there was a hallway there.
    The plaster was falling off the walls.
    The banister was hanging in the --
    And the stairs were all crooked.
    So I walked up, and there was a door,
    and his name was on there.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] And right next door
    was an outhouse, kind of the toilet.
    It was terribly primitive.
    So I knocked on the door and a woman's voice
    said, who's there?
    And I said, I did not-- what shall I say?
    And then she opened the door.
    I said, can I come in?
    She said, yeah, I opened the door now.
    And there she was, an elderly woman.
    She was cooking.
    And there was a sink, a cast-iron sink
    with a cold-water tap and a little geyser for hot water.
    A little geyser for hot water.
    You know the geysers?
    It's a hot-water heater.
    It's called a geyser.
    And by the way, I asked him later, tell me,
    have you got a shower?
    He said no.
    For 50 years, I've been washing over that cast-iron sink
    with the geyser.
    So I said to the woman, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    She said, I'm Frau [Personal name]
    She said, well is your husband [Personal name] Yeah.
    Well, could I speak to him?
    So she said, [Personal name] And I heard a gruff voice
    from the living room.
    What do you want, [SPEAKING GERMAN],, he said.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    You have a visitor.
    He said, I got no lots of visitors.
    I hear him.
    You know, he was fed up with life.
    He said, but he wants to speak to you.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    Leave me in peace.
    He said, [Personal name] come, somebody wants to see you.
    So suddenly he appears in the doorway of the kitchen.
    He was dressed in physical training shorts,
    what you call the shorts.
    And he had a vest on, a sleeveless vest,
    horn-rimmed glasses.
    And he looks and looks and looks at me.
    And he says, Ari.
    He recognized me.
    I can't believe it, Ari, he said like that.
    We were children when we had seen each other.
    I was 11, and he was about 14.
    He took me, and he lifted me up, embraced me and kissed me,
    and he carried me like this into the living room.
    I don't believe it.
    I can't believe it.
    I can't believe it.
    I sat down on that decrepit sofa.
    It was all worn out.
    It was a horrible living room, like a poor person.
    And they had a shop a repair bicycle shop, I mean.
    But everything was in disrepair there.
    So we talked, and we talked, and we talked, and he made a plan.
    He gave me a book where he wrote me, you know, dedication.
    And he wrote at the end, shalom and so forth, you know.
    And then he suddenly burst out.
    He said, the only decent people still around in this world
    are the Jewish people.
    He hated everybody.
    He hated everybody, all the Christians and all the--
    everybody, the communists, and the socialists,
    and the capitalists.
    The only decent people in this world are the Jewish people.
    But he meant it.
    He meant it.
    I mean, you could see that he was annoyed with everybody.
    So he made me a plan.
    And I went home to the-- very excited.
    I couldn't sleep.
    It is [? second ?] that night.
    I was staring at the ceiling.
    I saw the Jewish community pass and my parents
    in front of my eyes.
    It was-- I just couldn't fall asleep.
    And then the stomach juices came up from the--
    essence came out from the terrible food
    that people are conditioned to.
    [INAUDIBLE] that food.
    I wasn't.
    I'm used to good food.
    So the next day, we went everywhere.
    And then I said, you know, I'd like to take out
    a birth certificate.
    My birth certificate, which I have still,
    has a swastika on it.
    On my birth certificate.
    I don't want a swastika.
    So we went to the ministry of whatever it is where they
    take our birth certificates.
    And there was a stamp of the East German on it.
    It's a kind of a compass with the hammer, whatever it is.
    So my birth certificate number hundredth.
    She found it straightaway, and she gave
    it and she said I want 5 marks.
    I said, you'll get no 5 marks from me.
    She says, why not?
    I said, well, if you wouldn't have done what you did to me,
    I need no birth certificate.
    You better give it to me for nothing.
    You can have it.
    I didn't pay for it.
    I mean, 5 marks is nothing, maybe $0.60, $0.70.
    It's just a question of annoying them.
    So we went everywhere all day, and he
    said you see this meadow here?
    And I didn't think even that he knew.
    You remember where those cows were and the milk that's
    used to milk the cows?
    And we used to come with cups, and they
    used to put the milk in there.
    And we used to drink a lot.
    You remember that?
    He remembered the smallest nuances, the smallest details,
    the things I thought I wouldn't even mention to him because--
    then he mentioned, you know who lived there?
    I said, no.
    He said, you know the Members of Parrot?
    Oh, I'd forgotten about that Members of Parrot.
    We used to live in-- there was a kind of-- we
    had to pass in a kind of a passageway
    where we used to play hide and seek.
    And every time we passed the door
    of that lonely old man, the parrot used to shout
    [SPEAKING GERMAN] in German.
    Halt, who goes there?
    Halt, who goes there?
    Such a shrieking, squeaky voice like a parrot.
    From time to time, I used to go into the man,
    and I used to run errands for him.
    So he used to give me some sticky candies, which
    I used to exchange with my friends
    for marbles and frogs and bugs and so on.
    Anyway, I said, my God, I'd forgotten about that parrot.
    And then he reminded me of so many things
    which were latent in my mind.
    But many things I remembered, didn't want to mention,
    and he mentioned them.
    He remembered every Jewish person in that town.
    Amazing memory, but the fact that he remembered
    the things which were close to me and not close to him,
    that amazed me completely.
    So I stayed there for five days.
    They were eventful days.
    And the only trouble is I couldn't express myself.
    I was numbed.
    Usually, I'm fully [? tired. ?] I can speak, I can explain,
    I can think.
    I was completely numb there.
    I couldn't speak.
    I couldn't think.
    I was-- as if my head was in a vise.
    A kind of euphoria in the bad sense.
    In shock.
    Pardon?
    In shock.
    It wasn't real shock, but there was a numbness about me.
    And then I walked through the streets,
    and I saw hundreds of people walking there.
    And I said, these people live in this town?
    People going to work, coming from home,
    going shopping, standing in line for
    those ridiculous supermarkets.
    There's terrible wares in them, terrible food in there.
    In fact, one morning I went--
    I always went for five days to his home
    to eat breakfast with him.
    I didn't really want to, but he insisted.
    It was really a good thing.
    Where could you eat?
    There's no facilities.
    Like, you can't even compare it to--
    I mean, if I compare it to America, there's no comparison.
    So one day, I went into a kind of a store.
    I wanted to bring him something.
    I didn't want to come empty handed, always eat.
    And I bought things and I was really--
    I looked at these wares.
    There were a few things from the West like yogurt
    and a little bit of cream and so on, you know.
    Bread was gray.
    It was-- butter wasn't butter.
    So I bought quite a few things, and when
    I paid for it, she said, why don't you take the things?
    I said, well, haven't you got a bag?
    She said, no, you've got to bring your own bag.
    I said, I haven't got a bag.
    So I man said next to me, buy a newspaper
    and put it in the newspaper.
    I bought a newspaper and put it in the newspaper.
    So it boggles the mind to think.
    You can't compare it to the West.
    You can't compare it to Israel.
    Israel is the West.
    I mean, you get, like here in America,
    you get wonderful foods and the things, the bags you put in
    is the standard of America.
    And they got these ridiculous machines
    where they punch in the money, and the bell dings,
    and these ornament things like 50 years ago.
    They haven't got these computers they have today.
    Doesn't exist.
    And one morning, I didn't want to come so early,
    so I went to a baker shop.
    I went to a baker shop to have a cup of coffee and a cake.
    And I just want to remember the days I had those cakes.
    There was a sponge cake, and napoleons,
    those German cakes which were wonderful in those days.
    And I opened the door, and I went in, and I sat down,
    and nobody came up to me.
    There were four girls sitting at a table smoking.
    Everything was smoking.
    In America, one doesn't really smoke anymore.
    And they were smoking.
    They didn't come up to me.
    And I said, after I was sitting there 5,
    6 minutes, nobody came up to me, I said, can I
    have some service, in German.
    She said, not 8 o'clock yet.
    So the door was opened by mistake, so I didn't know.
    Only at exactly 8 o'clock, one got up
    and said, what would you like?
    I said, well, can I have a cup of coffee and a cake?
    So she brought me a cup of coffee.
    You should have seen that coffee.
    You should have seen that cake.
    It was maybe a week old.
    So I went up to said, This is stale.
    She said, well, we only bake once a week.
    What do you want?
    Said, I want nothing.
    It's fine.
    How much do I owe you?
    So that was East Germany.
    It's coming to them.
    It's OK.
    I don't care.
    So these were eventful days.
    I swore to myself I'd never go back.
    But since I received a letter from this maid of ours,
    so maybe I will revisit this town.
    When did you make this trip?
    Exactly a year ago.
    Was that before the reunification?
    Yes.
    I needed a visa.
    I needed a visa to get in there, and a visa
    could be taken out in San Francisco.
    There's a travel agency who dealt with visas.
    It was quite a business to get a visa because you could not,
    in those days, go to any countries of the Eastern Bloc
    without having accommodations.
    And that's why I wrote to the burgermeister, to the mayor,
    to arrange, to make--
    I told him that I was born in the city.
    It's difficult for me to make arrangements for a hotel
    because I don't know any hotels.
    But then, of course, a traveling agent, he could have done that.
    It would have taken a long time.
    So he arranged it.
    He gave it to one of his--
    in office who deals with tourists.
    And she wrote me and said, we have made arrangements for you
    to come to this and this inn in the Feldstrasse.
    And so he knew.
    I told him I'd be coming from this on this date.
    So he knew when I was coming.
    In fact, when I wrote him the letter, which
    I mentioned already--
    I'd like to show you--
    I received an answer from him.
    It was a scathing letter against the man.
    And I received a response from him.
    He answered that letter.
    And he, in fact, he said that because of the reunification,
    his mind was taking off.
    And he set my letter aside in order
    to answer at a later date, and he forgot about it.
    And he was very touched by my letter,
    and he wishes to apologize.
    The next time I come, then he will receive me.
    I thought maybe he would name a street in my name,
    but to receive me, I'm not even interested
    that he should receive me.
    Did you think--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Got 5 seconds time before you go--
    OK.
    I was just going to go back to your childhood
    before the time of Kristallnacht when the armies were marching,
    the SS were already marching in the street
    and singing the Nazi songs and the fervor.
    And I was just wondering, you know,
    when you were with the other Jewish kids
    if there were incidents of antisemitism
    or with the Nazis marching in the streets, what were
    your attitudes with each other?
    Did you talk about it or say anything about it or--
    How did-- how did it affect your relation, you know,
    how you acted with each other?
    I mentioned before that all these events and occurrences
    were a natural phenomena.
    Nazis walking down the streets and parades and bands and flag
    waving were part of our life.
    And usually when that happened, we
    did not dare go out in the streets
    because our parents told us to go inside and not
    be seen outside.
    Those were the times when usually the population was
    in a state of fervor and upheaval,
    and they were being made to--
    they were told, you know-- so then it all came up,
    this whole thing of the antisemitism,
    of the propaganda.
    Then it really took hold.
    So the best thing for us was always
    not to be seen in the streets usually.
    But sometimes, there were parades by the Wehrmacht,
    by the Army, so those things were a usual occurrence.
    But when the Nazi, the SS, or the stormtroopers,
    the SA, those are by the Brownshirts.
    The SS were dressed in black, but they
    used to march through the streets
    and usually went into our homes, and we locked the doors
    and locked the windows and tried to keep a low profile.
    So when the incident happened that you really
    felt that inside, you made the decision that there
    needed to be a Jewish state and did
    you ever talk with friends about those ideas and those feelings?
    Well, we used to belong to a Zionist youth
    movement called the Maccabi.
    It was also a sports kind of movement.
    This movement transcended all other movements.
    It had no political affiliation except for the fact
    that all the Jewish children took part in it.
    It was a kind of a movement for Jewish children,
    and it was a Zionist movement without any affiliation
    to any kind of specific political trend.
    So we used to go on outings and sit around a bonfire,
    and we used to talk and somebody used to give the leader I
    gave a talk about.
    Lead, I hate that word for the lack of another word,
    the person in charge of us.
    And he used to talk about Eretz Israel.
    He might have been once in Eretz Israel,
    and he came back with stories, which were beautiful to us
    because it showed us a life in Eretz Israel, the free life.
    And he talked about the agriculture
    and Jews' first time working physically which was also
    a phenomena to me because I didn't know
    any single person, a Jewish person, who worked as a laborer
    or as a craftsman.
    They were all middle-class, all intellectuals
    like lawyers and doctors and so forth, and shopkeepers.
    But there, we suddenly heard that people work the land.
    They work in factories, which was completely alien to me.
    So he explained to us, I remember like today,
    that the social structure is like a pyramid, the very point
    at the top and a broad base at the bottom, the broad base
    being the proletariat and in the middle, the middle class,
    and on the top, very top, the intellectuals.
    But with the Jewish people, it was the other way around.
    It stood on its point, with the proletariat at the bottom, very
    few, and then the middle class and then
    the intellectuals, the very broad base.
    So he told us that it should be turned around the natural way,
    that it should stand on its broad base,
    that people must work the land.
    By working, they get attached to the land,
    and they love the land, and they build up the land.
    And so that is maybe one of the reasons we [INAUDIBLE]
    to go to universities.
    There might have been an opportunity at some time.
    But there was a philosopher called A.D. Gordon
    in Israel, in Palestine, not Israel,
    and he was a philosopher.
    And he preached this.
    That was his theory, that a Jew must be tied to the land
    and work the land and work in factories in order
    to be a natural people.
    And we listened to those stories and were
    enchanted by those stories.
    We listened very carefully, and we
    wanted all to go to Palestine and build up the land.
    We're sort of building up the land
    like sitting around the bonfire and singing beautiful songs.
    Didn't really occur to us how hard,
    backbreaking work it really is to work
    in the orchards and the orange groves.
    But I suppose we built up a country,
    and it's a good country.
    You know when you were talking earlier
    about being in school, about how it was hard for you
    to study because you were always thinking
    of what was going to happen to you next
    and how could you kind of avoid it maybe.
    Does that mean like with this and all of the grade school,
    like, did you have several teachers who
    would torment you or--
    Not all teachers were virulent antisemites,
    but they were all inclined to, if not positively but--
    and not actively, but they would sort have
    a kind of a dislike for us.
    And even if they didn't have this,
    they couldn't show any affection for us or special--
    so they didn't pay special attention to us.
    They behaved in such a manner as to be not aware of us,
    so to speak.
    When you say they couldn't behave
    with affection towards you, was that political?
    Definitely.
    They couldn't show any kind of kindness towards us even
    or attention towards us.
    That was impossible.
    If they would have done that, they
    would have been called Jew lovers.
    They couldn't do that.
    In fact, I remember a specific case
    where a teacher didn't treat me so well in school,
    but he came in the evening to apologize to my parents,
    and he said these are the times there's nothing I can do.
    At least he had a kind of a conscience about it,
    and he knew that he was not treating me
    the way he was treating the other children so he
    came and felt that he had to explain why that is.
    He said that he could do nothing about it.
    What were the differences between how
    he and other teachers would treat you
    and how they'll treat other children?
    Well, the non-Jewish children were always
    treated in a sort of different way.
    It's very difficult to explain but, for instance,
    when school was over, when the vacation time came along,
    there was always a ceremony in the yard
    where the Nazi flag was raised.
    Then the "Horst Wessel" song, the Nazi song,
    and "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,"
    the German national song was sung and everybody raised his
    hand.
    And we, of course, did not raise our hands.
    We were not allowed to, even if-- we didn't even want to,
    but we were not allowed to.
    And we could not partake in the singing of it, so for a child
    not to be able to take part even in that
    is being discriminated against and we felt that all the time.
    The Christian children, the non-Jewish children,
    were treated as ordinary children.
    If he was a good pupil, probably he
    was treated better than the next.
    But we were all treated with some kind
    of dissent, some kind of a--
    it's a little difficult to explain,
    but I can't say that every teacher really
    treated us intentionally badly.
    Can you think of anything specific
    that you recall besides the sausage incident?
    Let me just think a minute.
    There are not too many incidents except that one day,
    I had a fight with another pupil, and I broke his leg.
    And then I knew that I was in great trouble,
    so I ran away to the woods and only very late evening I
    returned home.
    I was very hungry, and I made my way into the house.
    And there my parents were waiting, and they were waiting,
    they were frightened.
    I don't know exactly how we overcame this,
    but I know that the mood was terrible.
    I don't recollect today exactly what happened,
    but nothing good came of it.
    I don't remember exactly how the whole thing ended.
    What kind of things would the children taunt you with?
    What did they say to you?
    Besides what I told you about taking me, you know,
    accompanying me home or from home to school,
    not always but from time to time they used to call us a dirty
    Jew, or they used to call us what they said [NON-ENGLISH],,
    which means pig Jew.
    Well, I can't say that they always did it.
    I mean, we used to play together.
    And we used to go, in the schoolyard,
    we used to, during the recession,
    we used to sort of have games.
    So it only came up at times when maybe a report appeared
    in the local newspaper that some Jew had
    done this or something of another sort,
    but not always did they taunt me because we were children,
    and children play.
    And we used to play marbles, and we
    used to exchange all kinds of valuables like all children do.
    So I can't really say that this was constant.
    It was only at times.
    Did adults ever insult you when you were on the street?
    Eh, I remember one particular case.
    There was a neighbor, a little 3, 4 streets away,
    and all the shops after the--
    I don't know exactly when it was,
    but the shops, all the stores had in their shop windows
    a sign which said, we do not serve Jews.
    So we couldn't go into shops.
    It was, I don't know how we managed to get food
    into our house, but one day, my mother said to me,
    go to the bakery and get some bread.
    So I went and then when I was just buying the bread,
    this neighbor came in, and he ignored me completely.
    And he spoke to the shopkeeper and said,
    I thought you don't serve Jews.
    So she started to stutter and then I was taken aback.
    And she said to me, you go.
    No, we don't serve Jews.
    So I walked home, and I said to my mother,
    she won't sell me bread.
    It is difficult to recollect exactly how we
    got all these foods, but after time, I think it was lifted,
    and we were able to go to the shops again and buy food.
    Oh, yes, I remember down the street
    on the opposite side was a man, and his name was
    [Personal name] And he used to erect fences.
    And he had a big old Alsatian dog, a German dog.
    At exactly 2 o'clock every day, he
    used to take his dog by the leash,
    and he used to pass the houses of the Jewish people,
    and they used to stand in the doorway sometime.
    So at 2:00 he used to pass the houses of the Jews
    and when he passed the entrance as he
    used to tell his dog by the word of dirty Jew,
    the dog would strain against the leash.
    He was going to eat us all up.
    So he was really a terrible man.
    But one day he died of natural causes
    and we were all happy about it.
    We looked at when they carried his coffin out
    and there was a band from his cronies
    from the First World War and they played
    this famous German song, "I Had a Comrade,"
    in very subdued tones.
    So we were happy that he was gone.
    What happened to his dog?
    I don't know what happened.
    Well, he went also to his maker I reckon.
    No, he was really something that man.
    He was he was a violent anti-Semite for no reason
    but I can think of.
    Do you ever recall his dog actually
    attacking a Jewish person.
    No, no.
    He held him in a leash, very short,
    but he used to say [GERMAN] Dirty Jew,
    and the dog used to flash his teeth and he used to strain
    in order to get to you, but he didn't.
    He didn't let him go ever.
    Do you recall any other incidents
    of adults attacking a child?
    No, I don't remember one single case like that.
    And it does--
    I don't I don't remember that--
    No I really can't remember anything
    of that sort happened to me.
    What would the teachers do?
    How would they treat you?
    What would they say to you?
    Oh, I can't really recollect too much.
    But I remember this Krieger.
    He was an art teacher.
    He taught us how to draw and paint.
    And then invariably when he used to take red paint
    he said now you paint this red except the Jews.
    The Jews don't paint red because that reminds us
    of the blood of the pigs and the Jews don't eat pigs,
    they don't eat pork.
    So that sort of nonsense he used to say.
    So a lot of it was just stupid stuff.
    Very stupid.
    It made no sense to me even then.
    It makes less sense to me today.
    It just ingrained in people to be ignorant.
    If they would have thought a little bit, I don't think--
    If a person would think, I don't think he
    would behave the way he does.
    I mean, there's no--
    It's full of nonsense.
    I mean, I understand if a person has a dislike for somebody
    so it's based on some certain kinds of reasons.
    But there are no reasons to behave the way they did.
    So I think it was just this constant hammering
    into their minds this propaganda on the media
    and in the newspapers so they followed along.
    But it didn't make any sense to me even when I was a child.
    And I wasn't really very much affected by it
    because I was a happy child.
    I was a playful child, so it did happen, big deal.
    I was wondering.
    You mentioned the synagogue burning that you witnessed.
    Could you tell us the name of that synagogue?
    No, I do not remember the name.
    I mentioned before that it was in the town of Szczecin, which
    is today Poland is called Techin.
    It was a very elaborate synagogue,
    a beautiful synagogue.
    And I think I mentioned it was a conservative one with an organ.
    I remember the cantor.
    His name was Reinovitz.
    He had an impressive, wonderful voice.
    And he was also a teacher in the Jewish school at the same time
    on Jewish subjects.
    And there was a big community there.
    The name I do not remember of that synagogue.
    You mentioned that you lived across the street from a bar
    and that the people who spent time in the bar
    drinking and carrying on were the first people
    to put on the SS uniforms in 1933.
    Could you tell us a specific story
    about a specific person who went through this transformation
    period, and what kind of things he
    did before he was given this new title and responsibility?
    And then the sorts of things that he did after he
    got this new responsibility?
    Yeah, there's very little except I remember one man very
    clearly.
    He was always unemployed and he was always drunk.
    As soon as he had a little bit of money,
    he used to go and drink.
    And from time to time he used to do small jobs for us,
    for my father.
    And my father used to give him some schnapps which
    my father brewed by himself.
    It was something he learned in Poland to do.
    Very strong, almost 100% alcohol.
    And he used to give him one or two of these things.
    And he was attached to my father in a way.
    But then when the Nazis came to power he joined the SS
    and he had a beautiful uniform on.
    And I can't even say he became such an enemy of us.
    He continued to come very secretly into our house
    in order to get the schnapps.
    So he looked very peculiar in his uniform
    to be in a Jewish home.
    But I remember he was still on a first-name basis
    with my father.
    But I don't remember any specific incident
    except for one thing.
    One day the street next to us bees got loose
    and they were swarming in the street.
    And he went there with his uniform,
    and he stood amongst them because he made himself out
    to be a hero but he got stung very soon so he rushed off
    and he looked incongruous in his uniform running away
    from those bees.
    That's a childhood memory that I remember of that man,
    but I can't really remember anything else.
    Do you recall him doing any anti-Semitic things
    or saying anything against the Jews?
    Not in particular, no.
    Do you remember him ever helping a Jewish person?
    Yes, he used to do a lot for Jewish people
    before he had the uniform.
    He always used to go from Jewish home to Jewish home
    to help in order to get a little bit of money.
    And then of course he spent that money on drinks.
    But later on I only remember him that he came from time to time
    to the house to get the schnapps my father always
    used to give him.
    And he was on friendly terms even then.
    Of course, one must understand those times
    that it was a natural thing to be in uniform.
    If you weren't in black uniform you were in brown uniform.
    But everybody was in uniform.
    Everybody was a Nazi everybody wore the swastika.
    So people are people.
    Although he had this uniform on, he still spoke to my father.
    Do you think he was so much enamored by the uniform
    as by the ideology?
    Do you think he was all that aware?
    No, I don't think so.
    I think that it gave him a sort of a lift up in his ego.
    Suddenly he was somebody.
    He was nobody before.
    And then having this uniform it gave him authority
    and he walked around very proud.
    He had nothing to do really except to be
    in uniform, to be present.
    But he had no specific duties except maybe to go to meetings
    or to parades and raise his hand and shout, Heil Hitler.
    But I don't think he had any specific task.
    Hitler apparently needed lots of people in his party,
    so at least he got paid on a regular basis,
    so that made him happy.
    How did your father die?
    It's not quite clear to me.
    Because my father died of an enlarged liver
    which pressed on his heart.
    And the doctor said, if I remember correctly,
    that while cutting the leather he
    passed it against his liver, which
    enlarged it and did something.
    Anyway, he was pretty sick.
    He was in bad.
    He couldn't work anymore.
    And then it went from bad to worse.
    And I remember the night he died my mother started
    to cry very loudly and soon some neighbors came in,
    Jewish neighbors, and he died that night.
    He was only 36 years old when he died.
    36?
    He died in '36.
    No, he was 38.
    He was born in 1898, I remember.
    Did your family have many Gentile friends?
    I don't think they had many Gentile friends.
    They had a few who came.
    In fact, we also had not only this maid I mentioned,
    we had from time to time a girl used to clean the house
    and look after us.
    In fact, I remember we had a maid from Poland.
    Her name was Marie.
    And she used to put butter in her hair
    to make her hair really shiny.
    She was a very primitive woman.
    So she used to be our maid for many years.
    She was a Gentile, too, but she wasn't German, she was Polish.
    But I remember a man called Wagner.
    He was a police officer, but not in uniform.
    He was a detective.
    And he used to come from time to time to speak to my father.
    And also my father used to give him the schnapps.
    They all liked his schnapps.
    Very fond of it.
    And of course the annushka.
    I don't think so many, except of course, our clients.
    All our clients were non-Jewish.
    My father used to sell army surplus like overcoats and army
    uniforms and they all came in to buy them.
    There was a season for asparagus.
    So Polish workers were imported from Poland
    and they used to come and work on the surrounding farmsteads.
    And then when they had money they
    used to come very often to our shop and buy wares.
    And then when the asparagus season
    was finished they went back to Poland,
    took all the wares with them.
    And next year they came back again.
    What were your aspirations before the war,
    before everything got so bad?
    Before the war.
    I see.
    Well, I've told you that I've written
    a kind of a manuscript of my childhood.
    I have not passed my childhood manuscript.
    So it became clear to me there were two stages when I made
    a decision what I wanted to be.
    The first one was when a troop of German soldiers
    came into our street and bivouacked there.
    And one of the soldiers said to me, can you hold my horse?
    And he gave me the privilege of holding
    his horse by the holster while he ate his food.
    And the horse always used to neigh and lift up his head,
    lifting me up in the air while I was holding onto the holster.
    And I was so impressed by this horse of his and his uniform
    and his iron rations.
    When I finished, he gave me as a reward some of his food.
    So I want to become a soldier.
    That was for sure I was going to be a soldier.
    But then we had a yearly fair.
    There was a fair.
    And sometimes some Cossacks came from Russia
    and they did all kinds of daring feats on the horses,
    gyrating from the back to the stomach
    and galloping, holding onto the mane of the horse,
    shouting at the top of the voices.
    And I said, I'm going to be a horse rider like the Cossacks.
    That's what I want it to be.
    What secular activities did you have?
    Oh, there was a couple of cinemas there with still
    films, those silent films.
    So every Sunday at 2:00 we used to take 10 pfennigs
    and go to the cinema.
    And we used to look at those movies.
    We saw Tom Hicks and Rin Tin Tin and Charlie Chaplin and Harold
    Lloyd.
    I remember those.
    And who else?
    Well, German actors like Gustav Freilich and whoever.
    I forgot all those names.
    They used to put barrels up and they put planks across
    and there we sat.
    And then in the middle they used to come and check our tickets,
    and I, for excitement, used to eat those tickets up and then
    when I had no ticket they used to throw us out.
    So my brothers used to blame me for not having those tickets.
    But there was maybe some Hanukkah party
    for the grown ups once a year.
    But I don't think was anything else.
    And except those motorcycles, I think,
    but there was very little in the way of entertainment
    in those days.
    Of course, there was no television.
    Even radio.
    I don't think we had.
    We had an old gramophone, those things you used to wind up.
    But yeah, Jewish friends used to come in.
    They used to play cards.
    And then of course was a synagogue on every Saturday.
    But that was entertainment of a sort.
    And the high holy days once a year.
    But otherwise--
    Well, I had no lack of entertainment.
    I used to play on the streets with my cronies.
    I used to play marbles.
    And we used to--
    Oh yes, we had this Zionist organization, the Maccabees.
    So we used to go on outings.
    Sometimes there were outings from the school.
    But I don't think for the grown ups
    there was much recreation, or very little of it.
    But I don't think they expected that as much
    as they have today.
    How did your family spend their evenings?
    Oh, we sit at home.
    We sat in the yard.
    We played outside when it was summer.
    And we sat.
    I don't know what we did.
    I forgot we had a swimming, it wasn't a pool,
    it was a kind of institution for swimming.
    We used to go there and swim sometimes.
    I revisited it on my recent visit there.
    It's still there, but it's not in use any longer.
    And there was of course two lakes.
    On weekends we used to go out to the lakes
    and we used to picnic there.
    Or my father used to rent a little boat
    and we used to go on the boat and go out into the sea.
    But not really much, I don't think.
    People used to sit at home.
    My mother used to clean or cook and my father, I don't know.
    Not much one could do.
    Did you talk to your parents much?
    Nothing about serious things.
    My parents, my mother constantly used
    to admonish me because I was full of tricks.
    She used to say, don't do that, and don't
    play with those children, don't play with those children.
    But actual talks I don't know.
    I was too young to speak to my mother
    on any serious kind of subject.
    None.
    Did they communicate to you a fear or concern
    about the growing Nazi--
    Not to me.
    I heard my parents spoke to each other in Yiddish
    that things don't look good and maybe we
    should think of emigrating.
    But my father had established himself
    and he had built up a business.
    And to liquidate a business and then restart again,
    and he had no real profession, he
    didn't think that it was possible to.
    And he had this experience before when
    he went to Palestine and it didn't work out.
    He came back.
    And anyway he died when he was 38 and my mother was--
    She remarried then.
    So they made no real steps to--
    No.
    None whatsoever.
    Not many people thought that what did happen
    could really happen.
    That is something out of this world
    to have thought any human mind could think in these terms
    that the Holocaust could have happened.
    That is an extraordinary phenomena,
    and nobody could have even thought that such a thing could
    have happened.
    OK, so you had anti-Semitism, butt they were so conditioned
    to anti-Semitism all their lives, in their childhood,
    in their adulthood, and even when
    they came to Germany until 1933 it was fine.
    But from 1933 immediately when the Nuremberg
    laws where were inaugurated--
    But I suppose a person gets conditioned even
    to bad conditions to bear circumstances.
    And then you draw your conclusions.
    You think, oh, these things will pass.
    If you look at Jewish history, you
    will find that there have always been oppressors
    against the Jewish people.
    Then things pass and there's a rebirth
    of a flourishing Jewish culture.
    And people made a living and they did very well
    for themselves.
    And my father comparatively did well for himself.
    I don't think he could face liquidating
    and then restarting.
    It is no easy thing to do, especially
    when he had four children.
    When did he go to Palestine?
    In 1923.
    Did you talk about any incidents at school or problems
    at school with your parents.
    Yes, I told my mother that I didn't want to go to school
    and I pretended that I have a stomach ache
    and my leg hurts and my arm hurts and my head aches.
    But she knew exactly why I didn't want to go.
    I was fearful of going to school.
    This what is going to be tomorrow?
    What are they going to do to me tomorrow?
    I couldn't face it.
    To face the next day going to school and sitting in school
    and being made fun of, or being not spoken
    to like an ordinary person, it affected me.
    So I asked my mother, I can't go to school.
    I don't feel well, and so forth.
    But mostly my mother didn't allow.
    You had to go to school.
    If you didn't come one or two days to school then
    the police would come.
    You would have to go to school.
    And if you did not appear at school,
    you'd have to have a certificate from the doctor
    to say why you didn't appear.
    Even I as a Jewish child there was a law
    that I had to appear in school.
    This law applied to everybody.
    How come your parents when to Palestine when they went?
    Well, it was before my time, of course.
    But I heard that my father had a partner and something went
    wrong and he lost everything.
    And then he said, in any case, I tried to explain
    the concept of religion.
    They had the same concept about Zionism.
    It wasn't real political Zionism like I
    say I want the state of my own.
    I want a government of my own.
    I want an army of my own.
    I want to be free.
    For them it was a concoction, a mixture
    of religion and sentiments.
    But it wasn't really in the sense
    of what Theodor Herzl wanted of a Jewish state
    and later thinkers.
    They went because they always heard, next year in Jerusalem.
    A Jewish state.
    But I don't think it had any real meaning to them.
    They thought, maybe if we're amongst Jewish people
    it'll be better for us.
    But this ideology of creating a state,
    I don't think ever occurred to them.
    Because they didn't last very long then, maybe half a year
    or so.
    So it wasn't really rooted in them.
    Even if a person is an idealist, he
    will go to Israel or to Palestine in those days
    and he wants to achieve a Jewish state.
    To them, if it wasn't good they would leave.
    And it didn't work out so they had
    no real attachment to neither an ideal nor to a Jewish country.
    They wanted to go where it's good for them.
    If Israel, Palestine in those days,
    would have been good to them and easy for them,
    they would have stayed.
    But they had to struggle.
    And it was hot and it was primitive in comparison
    to Germany.
    They had no motivation at all to stay there.
    So after some time they returned and then I was born in 1925.
    What was the first violence you saw?
    Oh, that was in the bar.
    But that was by Germans against Germans.
    There used to be rowdy lot in that bar.
    And a lot of singing a lot of noise.
    And from time to time somebody went beyond his usual behavior.
    So he had some chucker-outers, some people--
    A bouncer.
    Oh, that's in English you call them bouncers.
    So they used to carry them by the shoulders and by the feet
    and they used to shout in unison, Ho!
    and they used to throw them out into the street.
    And this had used to hit the pavement with a sickening sound
    and they just left him there.
    And then when he slept off his stupor or the police
    would come take him to the jail and he would sleep,
    the next day he would come back again to the bar
    as if nothing had happened.
    That was the first thing I ever saw.
    There used to be a lot of fights,
    especially amongst kids and grown ups.
    You know I've been here 10 years in America.
    I have never seen a physical fight between two people,
    not even once.
    I know they exist.
    I know there's crime, I know there's drugs,
    but I personally haven't seen any of these things
    ever in America.
    But in Germany you see fights all over.
    Every five minutes you see people fighting.
    And the policemen come and take you to prison.
    I've seen handcuffs put on here in America, but in Germany
    in those days, even today, I saw it last year in Germany,
    a person was handcuffed and then the policeman
    come with the truncheon and beat them all the time,
    and beats him and beats him.
    That is an indication of what kind of a people they are.
    I've never seen anybody being beaten in this country.
    You saw that last year in Germany?
    Mm-hmm.
    What part of Germany?
    I was in Hamburg.
    And I was walking a little bit, I was going next into the plane
    and going to Israel, And I was walking
    through the streets a bit before I went to my hotel.
    Suddenly I saw an elderly policeman dragging out
    a man out of a bar, handcuffed, and with the truncheon
    he was beating him all the time like this.
    And the man had his hands up, trying to sort of fend off
    the beatings.
    It made such an impression on me that really, really honestly
    I think nothing had changed.
    You talk about democracy in Germany,
    you talk about freedom, but the concept of freedom
    has not really set well with the Germans yet.
    It needs a lot of time for them to become
    like any normal persons.
    If they can do that, they can do it to somebody else.
    I don't quite trust the Germans.
    In fact, I saw a similar case when in '45 I
    was stationed in Germany.
    And a time train passed, one of those trains.
    There were two conductors.
    And they said to a man, it's full.
    You can't come here.
    You have to wait for the next one.
    And he didn't want to, so he clung on to the railing.
    And so they took him the same way.
    They took him by the shoulders and they threw him
    onto the pavement.
    I've never seen-- It is so cruel.
    You know, I've seen people being pushed
    around in Israel and so forth.
    I've never once seen such kind of treatment
    from one human being to the next.
    And on various occasions I saw that in Germany.
    In the times of Hitler, of course I've seen it.
    And this one occasion in '45, after the War.
    Of course I told you about Hamburg
    when this policeman with the truncheon
    hit this man he dragged out of the bar.
    And the man wasn't violent.
    He was just sort of trying to guard his head.
    What was the first violence you saw against Jews?
    I told you the story about Kristallnacht
    when I saw this man being forced to dance on the Torah.
    And then my teacher being dragged out of the class.
    That was the first violence you'd actually seen.
    Yeah, and you know I haven't seen any violence afterwards
    because I left Germany.
    When you were in this crowd watching the synagogue burn,
    what did you hear people around you saying?
    It's not what I heard them saying
    but what they didn't say.
    Nobody spoke in sympathy of the Jewish people,
    or like I mentioned this house of God burning.
    I had only this woman say what she said, it's about time
    that the Jews will taste what the Germans are like.
    It's about time that they are taught a lesson.
    But everybody was looking on and not
    objecting and not voicing an opinion that this is wrong.
    Not so much as what they did say what they didn't say.
    Nobody objected.
    I mean any decent society, if you see a church burned
    or any house of God or gravestone,
    I should see the day when a Jews would turn a gravestone
    or put a pipe bomb in a church.
    It doesn't seem right to me.
    It's ridiculous to me to even think about such things.
    So I don't know what to say that such things could really
    be perpetrated by human beings against another.
    When did you first see a Brownshirts?
    Oh, that was even before 1933.
    Hitler, I think, established this SR,
    it's called the Sturmabteilung, I think before 1933.
    That was his party.
    That was the Nazi Party.
    But they came most prevalent in 1933.
    Hitler came to power in 1933 so they were, all of them, they
    even used to dress babies in uniform and taught them to say,
    Heil Hitler, a child which couldn't even talk yet
    but they could teach a little baby to say a few words.
    The first thing they used to teach.
    It's a real replica of the uniform with the hat,
    baby maybe six months old, one year old,
    and they dressed them in this uniform.
    And they made them--
    And if child usually says a clever word they say, look!
    My child knows how to say, Heil Hitler.
    But actually in 1933, they were all party members.
    Every single one.
    When did you first see a Brownshirt parade?
    In 1933, all the time.
    They were always marching through the streets
    with those standards and those hundreds
    of flags and their jackboots.
    All the time there were parades.
    Every little occasion they made parades to show presence.
    And it was pretty frightening the way they walked through.
    All young men, all vicious, and all found now their position
    in life.
    So many.
    When did the SS start joining the Brownshirts?
    No they didn't join.
    They were the SS.
    Schutzstaffel.
    They were the lifeguard of Hitler.
    That was Hitler's personal lifeguard.
    And they also came into being in 1933.
    They were the elite.
    Only specific person, specific background maybe,
    specific height.
    They had to look a very Germanic way.
    And to get into that in those days was kind of a privilege.
    That was privileged.
    Did any of your friends or neighbors
    participate in the Brownshirts?
    Oh yes, all of them.
    And the Gestapo?
    Gestapo?
    Oh, SS.
    I can't say except this one man whom I talked about.
    I don't recall.
    But the SR, I think everybody became a member of the National
    Socialist Party.
    Whoever didn't, I think he had a hard time of it.
    He had to join.
    Did anybody ever exhibit embarrassment about--
    No.
    It was a proud moment when somebody
    could don this uniform.
    It was an accepted kind of honor.
    Did your parents change as they noticed
    the Brownshirts and the SS become more prevalent?
    Did your parents kind of become quieter or change in any way?
    Oh, I think they became more fearful.
    They saw the signs on the wall, I think.
    They realized that things are turning from bad to worse.
    But to undergo this change of emigrating,
    to do something about it, that was a different story.
    Because they thought this is only the beginning
    until everything gets settled and the government will be OK.
    And only the beginning one needs to use certain methods in order
    to gain power, in order to subjugate other parties.
    But all in all, I think that people were expecting things
    to do to get really bad in Germany.
    Because when the Nuremberg Laws, I
    think they were published in 1933 if I remember correctly,
    when they came out everybody knew that things
    were going to go really bad.
    I heard or read one time that it didn't
    get really terrible until after the Olympic games.
    In 1936?
    Yeah.
    Did you notice a big change then?
    I can't say.
    I only remember an incident when Jesse--
    what was his name--
    Jesse Owens won so many gold medals and Hitler
    couldn't take the fact that a Black person won
    against a white person.
    So then we heard disparaging remarks about Blacks.
    And then of course, there was an American Jewish boxer
    called Max Baer.
    And he was a very good boxer.
    And I think he defeated Schmeling.
    I'm not sure.
    Schmeling was a world master in boxing, German.
    And of course he fought against Joe Louis, American Black
    boxer.
    And Joe Louis finished him off in the first round.
    He knocked him out.
    He KO'd him and finished him.
    That was a terrible blow to the Nazi Party
    that a Black man, American, was able to defeat the world
    champion Max Schmeling.
    You heard of Max Schmeling?
    Oh yeah.
    He's still alive.
    He lives in Hamburg Joe Louis, of course, died some years ago.
    And he defeated him.
    And that was also a terrible blow to the Nazi movement.
    Oh yes, there was a Jewish--
    Helena Meyer, and she was in the Olympics
    and she fought for Germany in fencing.
    And she won the gold medal for Germany.
    And of course, they didn't publish the fact that she
    was Jewish, but she was Jewish.
    What do you recall about the day the Nazis placed Brownshirts
    in the doorway of all Jewish businesses?
    Oh, I remember that very well indeed.
    They didn't allow anybody to go in and buy in Jewish stores.
    And whoever did go in was assaulted and was photographed.
    And their photograph was published
    the next day in the newspapers.
    So whoever did go in was a very courageous person, but very few
    did go in.
    Did you know the man stationed at your shop?
    Pardon?
    Did you know the man stationed at your shop?
    No.
    He was a stranger.
    What was his attitude?
    A terrible anti-Semite.
    He was a completely idealistic Nazi.
    He had a job to do and he did it well.
    All Germans do their jobs well, whatever it is.
    And he stood in front of our shop
    and whoever wanted to come in he said, don't go.
    Don't buy from Jews.
    And if he did go in then his name was taken
    and his picture was taken and it was
    published in the newspapers.
    So there were very few who were that courageous.
    I mean, you can't really blame them.
    Did anybody go into your shop to buy?
    I think one or two that didn't care for the Nazis so they did.
    Those days, even if you did the worst thing that
    could have happened to you, as I mentioned,
    that was that their name was published in the newspaper
    and their photograph.
    But no more than that.
    They weren't imprisoned or incarcerated
    in concentration camps.
    Did you ever wish when you were a child
    that you could join the Hitler Youth for the acceptance
    and the hikes and the fun things?
    No.
    In fact, I wanted to be also in uniform.
    When I was a child, I dreamed of being in uniform like the rest,
    wearing jackboots and having this SS, Nazi and the swastika,
    sure.
    I thought I was underprivileged.
    All my friends had it, why shouldn't I?
    Did you ever express this to your parents?
    No.
    No, but I had it in my heart I wanted to become one of them,
    sure.
    When did you totally lose that?
    Oh, when I came to the Jewish school
    and I came amongst my Jewish compatriots.
    Because we had so few children in the town where
    I came from that one couldn't really express oneself.
    But when I came amongst Jewish teachers
    and Jewish surroundings and Jewish children,
    a new world was opened for me.
    I was taught Jewish subjects and I
    saw how wonderful these teachers were
    and how compassionate and kind and lovable.
    Such a contrast between those teachers
    I had before and then certainly Jewish teachers
    who were tremendous, wonderful people.
    Quiet, nice, educated people.
    I felt even at that age the education
    and the culture they had within the--
    I mean, the Germans couldn't get near those kind of--
    Despite all these tribulations, despite all
    these terrible things which were done to us,
    we never lost our faith.
    We never lost our belief.
    I mean, those teachers, every single one of them,
    the rabbi and the cantor and the ritual slaughter
    and the teachers, the male and female teachers,
    they were beautiful, wonderful people.
    They taught us with such love and compassion
    and some wonderful educators.
    And then of course, all the children
    there were wonderful children.
    There was no hatred, there was no spite,
    there was no running after me calling me [GERMAN]..
    And brilliant children amongst them.
    I know today children, a few from this whom I know,
    they are lawyers and doctors and one
    is one of the greatest people in the Israeli National Bank.
    A very capable people and most of them modest people.
    Despite all that, we kept our image of God.
    a different world was opened for me.
    I started to live.
    I started to breathe.
    And the first time I could even think and learn
    without all this terrible residue
    on my head, these terrible apprehensions which I had.
    It was a bit late, I was only two years
    whatever I gleaned that I have today
    it's probably from that period.
    How did your family get through the Depression and all
    that inflation?
    Oh, I don't know.
    It was before my time.
    But I know we had in our loft big coffers full of money.
    100 million marks.
    And I was told about that.
    When you got your wages and before you got home,
    you couldn't buy a pair of shoes with a month's wages.
    I heard about these things.
    The fact that the money was in our loft,
    and I used to say to my father, I said, what is this money for?
    And then he explained to me.
    But you see the trouble started right there.
    Jews were plenty smart.
    They bought property.
    So property didn't go.
    So when all this was over, they bought the property.
    They had houses.
    They had whole streets.
    They had half of a city.
    They owned all that.
    And of course the envy and the jealousy of the Gentile
    population was reenacted through all this
    and Jews were blamed even for this Depression,
    for the inflation.
    Maybe you are not allowed to be too clever.
    Maybe one should keep a low profile.
    I don't know.
    But then why stop it?
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Please tell us about this picture.
    This is a picture which was taken in England when
    I turned 16 years of age and I needed an identity card,
    which was then required by the British authorities.
    I was an alien.
    And this was a photo which was taken by the authorities.
    And what year was that?
    In 1941, maybe.
    Please tell us about this picture.
    This is a picture a maid, which worked for us probably
    in 1928 or 1929.
    It has a connection with when I visited East Germany
    about one year ago.
    I wrote a letter to the mayor, which
    I'm going to read out later.
    And this letter was published in the local newspaper.
    And apparently she saw that article
    and, to her great surprise, she found out
    that I was still alive.
    This is the house where she lived?
    That is the house where she lived.
    And then she wrote me a very tearful letter
    begging me to answer.
    And she sent me a photograph of herself
    and the house she lived in.
    And she begged me to come.
    And she told me that I'd always be welcome.
    There would be a home for me ready there.
    What year was this photograph taken?
    I have no idea.
    And what town is this photograph in?
    In Güstrow Mecklenburg, East Germany.
    Can you spell that?
    G-Ü-- two dots on top --S-T-R-O-W.
    OK, please tell us about this picture.
    This is a maid who worked for us, and her husband.
    This must have been taken many years
    ago because she is probably very, very old today,
    probably in her 90s.
    I remember her husband.
    When I was a child, he used to tell us stories about the First
    World War.
    I was enthralled by his stories.
    I don't remember his face, but I do remember
    when he told us the stories.
    Did you ever visit her or contact her
    after she wrote to you?
    No.
    When I was on a visit to the town I was born in,
    my friend told me about her.
    And I had forgotten.
    And he reminded me.
    And some kind of memories flooded back into my brain.
    And he said, she's old, she's probably not alive.
    And I regretted this because she was alive.
    Because she wrote me a letter.
    I missed that opportunity to visit her.
    But I have made up my mind that as soon as I can,
    I will go and visit her.
    When did you receive the letter from her?
    After your visit?
    After my visit.
    When this letter I wrote to the mayor was published.
    So she found this article in the newspaper
    and she wrote me back immediately.
    OK.
    And just for the record, how do we spell Mecklenburg?
    M-E-C-K-L-E-N-B-U-R-G.
    What's your maid's name?
    What was the maid's name?
    Her name is Stanislawa Jesper.
    She is from Poland really.
    Oh, OK.
    You probably should spell that too because the--
    Her name is Stanislawa Jesper and it's spelled
    S-T-A-N-I-S-L-A-W-A. that.
    Is her first name.
    And her second name is J-E-S-P-E-R.
    Thanks.
    OK, so this is the article that the maid saw that ultimately
    caused her to contact you.
    Exactly, yes.
    So tell us about this article please.
    And we'll make a photocopy of this article
    so it'll be easier to read.
    I will only tell you the headlines
    because I will read that letter later, which
    I've translated to English.
    It says "a Jew comes back after 53 years
    to the town of his birth."
    OK.
    Tell us about this picture please.
    This is a picture my mother gave me when I left her in 1938.
    It is her when she was at the age of 16.
    Her father and her siblings in Warsaw, Poland.
    And what year do you think this was taken?
    1916.
    1916?
    No, no, no.
    One moment.
    She was-- probably in 1915 or '14.
    I think she was born maybe in 1898.
    So she's the tall woman in the back?
    Yeah.
    And the small children?
    Her siblings, her brother and sister and her father.
    What were their names?
    I don't know.
    I've never met them.
    I never heard of them.
    Did they survive the Holocaust?
    I don't think so.
    I have no idea, but I don't think so.
    What was your mother's name?
    Her first name was [Personal name]
    and her second name was Kramkimel.
    Can you spell those?
    K-R-A-M-K-I-M-E-L, Kramkimel.
    OK.
    Tell us about this picture please.
    This is my mother again.
    And I was serving in the British army.
    I arrived in Antwerp.
    And my mother and my sister went illegally in 1938 to Belgium.
    And they were deported in 1942.
    I went to the former Gestapo headquarters
    to find out the fate of my mother and my sister.
    And he found the file and he pulled out the file.
    And this picture was in the file.
    And he gave me the picture.
    And he told me according to the file
    that this transport, which went to Auschwitz,
    there were no survivors.
    And who took the photograph and what year?
    I have no idea, no idea.
    Did the Nazis take this picture?
    Probably, probably.
    Did they take a picture of all the people
    they sent on transport?
    I have no idea.
    I think so.
    Probably in every file there must
    have been a picture because in the file of my mother
    was this picture.
    What about your sister?
    Also-- maybe I brought it, maybe not.
    I found her picture too.
    I don't think I must have brought it.
    I must have missed bringing it.
    I can send it.
    Maybe next time you can?
    Yeah, fine, fine.
    And tell us about this drawing please?
    This is a drawing which my little sister drew.
    It probably depicts a Belgian policeman
    with his wife or his girlfriend.
    She sent it to me while I was in England through the Swiss Red
    Cross.
    I received it.
    I had no idea that my little sister was artistic.
    But I've kept it for many years and it's very precious to me.
    And what year did she draw this picture, and how old was she?
    Probably in '41 and she must have
    been about eight years old.
    And what town was she living in when she drew the picture?
    In Brussels, Belgium.
    Was your sister sent on the same transport as your mother?
    Yes, yes.
    So she didn't survive either?
    No.
    So you're saying the character on the right is a policeman?
    Looks to me like a policeman.
    Any thoughts about the character on the left?
    They look both like-- a little bit like cats.
    So she might have made them into human beings.
    I really don't know.
    Please tell us about this picture.
    This is an army photo.
    And this was--
    I'm wearing a winter uniform.
    I was inducted in 1944 in January.
    It was before I was sent overseas.
    And so what year was it taken, and what town was it taken in?
    I think it was taken in London in 1944.
    --please?
    I was serving in Germany, in Westphalia,
    in the town of Bielefeld.
    And I was about 19 years old and I had
    my picture taken in Germany.
    And again, what year would this have been?
    1945, after the war, after the war had finished.
    Could you spell the town?
    Bielefeld, B-I-E-L-E-F-E-L-D.
    And Westphalia?
    W-E-S-T-P-H-A-L-I-A, Westphalia.
    Thanks.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is taken in Israel in the kibbutz, Kibbutz Lavi which
    was established in 1950.
    You can see the rocks and the first [INAUDIBLE]
    having been erected.
    That's my wife and my firstborn child, Benjamin.
    And I was sent on an officer's course in the Israeli army.
    How did you spell the name of that--
    Kibbutz L-A-V-I, Lavi, which means lioness.
    What was your-- you lived on the kibbutz
    but you were sent away too I was sent
    by the kibbutz on an officer's course
    in order to be made in charge of the security of the region.
    What did the kibbutz grow?
    It's based on agriculture.
    And it has a hotel.
    Hotel?
    Hotel, beautiful hotel.
    And it has fruits trees and vineyards.
    All those rocks, we cleared those rocks.
    It took us 20 years to clear them.
    It's very fruitful today.
    What was your job on that?
    I was a truck driver at some time of my stay there.
    And I used to be in charge of the repair shop.
    Thanks.
    Please tell us about this picture.
    When I visited the town I was born in, a pastor contacted me.
    He heard that I was in town.
    And I went to him and he was very
    interested in the Jews, the local Jews,
    who lived in that town.
    And he gave me this picture of the synagogue.
    Of course, it does not exist any longer.
    It was destroyed in the Kristallnacht in 1938.
    I was very interested to receive these pictures.
    I remember the synagogue very well indeed.
    Was there only one synagogue in your town?
    Only one synagogue.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is the inside of the synagogue.
    I also received this from the same pastor.
    I remember the synagogue very well indeed.
    What you see in the foreground--
    the director used to sit there.
    All the important people who were
    the directors of that synagogue, they
    used to sit in there with top hats
    while the congregation sat back at the benches.
    It brings back memories.
    I remember very, very well indeed
    the synagogue from the inside.
    And please tell us about this photo.
    This is the mortuary in the cemetery.
    Which, of course, doesn't exist anymore either.
    But according to Jewish law, every person who dies
    gets cleansed and then put in a shroud and then buried.
    I remember that mortuary also.
    I remember my father being bought there
    and the whole family went there for his burial.
    So, of course, as I mentioned before,
    it does not exist any longer.
    And this also was destroyed on Kristallnacht?
    I don't know when it was destroyed.
    I imagine that it was destroyed the same day.
    Would you please tell us about this picture?
    This is a kind of a supermarket the town
    built on the cemetery itself.
    This was probably the outer perimeter of the cemetery.
    And they built this supermarket on it.
    And what year did you take this photograph?
    In 1990, when I went back to visit the town.
    Is part of the Jewish cemetery still intact?
    No, it isn't.
    They took gravestones and put them aside.
    And they put a kind of an ornamental fence around it
    and a placard depicting that this is the Jewish cemetery.
    But I do not think it is the place where bodies are buried.
    So it's more of a commemorative site--
    Yes, but it's right next to it.
    --rather than an actual cemetery.
    It's right next to it.
    And so the pictures you have of the gravestones
    are from that commemorative site?
    Yes, exactly.
    They took them and put them up.
    OK.
    Please tell us about this picture.
    The person standing there is the only person who I recognized.
    He was a former schoolmate of my brother.
    He's slightly older than me.
    He took me around the town.
    He took me to the cemetery.
    So this is what remains of the old cemetery?
    I wouldn't say it remained.
    I think that the authorities took the grave stones
    from their original places and put them
    slightly next to the cemetery in order
    to commemorate the cemetery.
    So you think that the people are not buried here?
    I do not think so.
    And what is your friend's name?
    Jonny Janoshka.
    Can you spell that for us please?
    J-O-N-N-Y. And his second name is Janoshka, J-A-N-O-S-H-K-A.
    And he is not Jewish?
    He is not Jewish, but he always associated with us as children
    as his father was a--
    either a communist or a social democrat.
    And he was at odds with the German authorities.
    He gave me lots of information of our childhood.
    I was amazed of what he knew.
    Have we talked about that on the earlier tapes?
    Yes.
    Yes, we did.
    He appears there.
    Which authorities made this kind of commemorative?
    The Russian authorities?
    No, the East German.
    The town.
    The town?
    The city.
    What happened to the Jewish cemetery during the war?
    I have no idea.
    I have no idea what happened to it.
    Well, as you know, they built the supermarket on it.
    And they displaced the stones and put them somewhere else
    near to it, quite close to it.
    Maybe this was even part of the cemetery.
    I think so.
    Tell us about this please.
    You see in the foreground the iron fence
    which depicts the Jewish candelabra, which Germans
    probably did, the East Germans.
    And it is, again, part of the cemetery with the gravestones.
    And my friend Jonny Janoshka standing there.
    Tell us about this please.
    Well, these are the gravestones from the original cemetery.
    And it shows according to the date when
    the person died how long the inhabitants of this town
    lived in the town.
    Maybe 150, maybe even more years,
    many years they must have lived there.
    On this gravestone it looks like the dates are 1790 to 1865.
    So that's 200 years.
    But I think that the history might even go back much longer.
    And this?
    Again, gravestones.
    And again, the dates are of importance,
    showing how long Jews lived in that town.
    Probably 1858, or something like that.
    Yes, this please.
    Again, another gravestone.
    One of those gravestones I, of course,
    do not know any of these names.
    They were, of course, inhabitants of the town.
    Was your town destroyed during the war?
    No, it wasn't even touched.
    I asked my friend what happened, how the town was captured.
    He told me that the Russians approached
    the town and the burgermeister, the mayor,
    and all the notables of the town went with a white flag
    and surrendered.
    Nothing.
    It wasn't even shelled or bombed.
    What happened to all the newer gravestones?
    I mean, did you look for your father's gravestone?
    Nothing to look at.
    What you saw here was very small indeed,
    maybe 10 or 12 or 15 gravestones.
    I went through those gravestones.
    They were all old ones, maybe 200 or 150 years old.
    There were no-- nothing less than 200 years old.
    So I have no idea what happened to those gravestones.
    OK.
    Tell us about this please.
    When I went to the cemetery, I saw the sign which says
    Jüdischer Friedhof, which means Jewish cemetery.
    And I saw it standing crooked.
    And I was taken aback by this.
    And I tried to straighten it.
    It was impossible.
    So in my letter, which I wrote to the mayor,
    I mentioned this crooked placard which says Jewish cemetery.
    Did the mayor respond to that?
    Yes, I received a letter from the mayor.
    But he did not respond to that.
    He did not respond to the crooked signs?
    No.
    So you don't know if they fixed it or not?
    I have no idea.
    Do you have any idea why it's crooked,
    or why they just leave it that way?
    Wear and tear.
    Nothing is repaired in East Germany.
    Everything was in disrepair.
    They had no money.
    They had no workers.
    They had no materials.
    I suppose this wouldn't have taken much to repair it.
    But when I do go back, I will repair it myself.
    We need to spell that for the transcriber.
    J-U-D-I-S-C-H-E-R F-R-I-E-D-H-O-F.
    And below the Friedhof says restanlage,
    which means "place of rest."
    OK.
    Friedhof is-- what's that word mean?
    Friedhof, cemetery.
    OK.
    Jewish cemetery.
    Fried means actually "peace" and hof means yard, court.
    Court of peace in literal translation,
    but it means cemetery.
    Thank you.
    --about this picture please.
    When I came to the cemetery with my friend Jonny Janoshka,
    I tried to find out where my father was buried.
    He died in 1936, so I was eight years old.
    I thought that he was buried in a different place.
    But he told me that he had been present at the at the burial.
    And he said he thinks that this is the place where
    my father is buried.
    So I photographed it and I put on a yarmulke
    and I said Kaddish in front of him.
    He looked at me, but he understood.
    Where is that today?
    Is it near what is the Jewish cemetery?
    Next to the supermarket, it is there, exactly
    on the pictures you saw before.
    I have my doubts.
    I think he was buried--
    but then, of course, I was only seven or eight years old.
    And he must have been about 11 or 12.
    He is five or six years older.
    He told me that my father would be approximately buried there.
    Tell us about this photograph please.
    This is our house.
    This is the only one of the Jewish houses still standing.
    And in fact, there are two girls living in there-- one
    upstairs and one downstairs.
    Now, you see, the two windows at the bottom.
    Those were put in later.
    They used to be a show window.
    We had a shop there.
    So my father had a shop.
    You see the bricks lying there.
    Nothing is repaired.
    I didn't even recognize.
    I didn't realize that the roof was so steep.
    But eventually I entered the house,
    and I was very much moved.
    I saw my family there in my mind and everything came back to me.
    In fact, the house was taken from us.
    And I am, at the moment, in contact
    with the German authorities in order to get it back.
    How is that going?
    What have they said to you?
    Oh, they sent me from pillar to post.
    I wrote to the West German authorities.
    They told me to contact the council in that town, which
    I have done.
    I have received in the meantime.
    There really isn't a break through.
    There's really what?
    No break through.
    It's not easy to.
    And it's very close to the center of the town.
    So probably, it might have some real estate
    value in the future.
    At the moment, I don't think so.
    But there might be possibilities.
    And what years did you live in this house originally?
    I think from about--
    maybe from 1928 to 1938.
    And this photograph was taken in 1990?
    Yes.
    When I was there, I took that photograph.
    And when you say it's the only one of the Jewish houses left
    standing, what do you mean by that?
    What transpired?
    Well, this is the only house which people live in.
    The rest of the houses are shells.
    They are ruins.
    I went into every single house.
    Was that because the Jewish people lived there?
    Or just because they were destroyed during the war,
    or they fell apart since then?
    Nothing was destroyed during the war in that town.
    They looked, in a way, burned out.
    And completely-- in a way, it was a shell.
    You will see soon a picture of my cousin's house
    who lived maybe 10 houses up in the same street.
    And I went in that house.
    And everything which could be taken out
    was taken out-- the frames and the staircase
    and so forth, and the doors.
    And I have no idea how that happened,
    why they let it go like that.
    But in essence, the Germans in East Germany
    didn't repair anything.
    They didn't have workers.
    And the workers they had were sent to Berlin, I heard.
    And they had no materials to repair anything.
    Did you meet either of the two women
    who are the current tenant in the house?
    Yes, yes.
    Did they have anything to say to you
    about the history of the house?
    No, they were young women.
    They didn't know anything about the history of the house.
    My friend heard some of it.
    He said there was an ice cream parlor there, and then a shop,
    and then it was turned into a house for people to live in.
    And these two girls didn't know much.
    They only were compassionate and sympathetic.
    And they allowed me to go through all the rooms.
    And I took pictures of the inside and of the courtyard.
    But they were detached in a way.
    I don't think they could have felt what I felt.
    --about this picture.
    This is one of the rooms in our house.
    And I think it was the room where I slept in.
    --about this, please.
    This is a kitchen.
    I remember my mother working in that kitchen making
    those wonderful Jewish foods.
    And all these thoughts came back into my mind
    when she prepared those foods and we
    sat around the table on weekdays,
    on Shabbat, eating her wonderful cooking.
    Now, these are all taken when you went back?
    Yes.
    So they're in this condition the house is in now?
    They changed things a little bit, not very much.
    Like these tiles, for instance, weren't there.
    But fundamentally, nothing has changed.
    Have the cooking utensils changed much?
    Yes, they have changed.
    We used to have a stove that we used to put in coal briquettes.
    Briquettes, you call it?
    Briquettes.
    Briquettes.
    And we used to put those in.
    And my mother used to cook on those.
    I don't remember what they cooked on.
    They haven't really advanced in any way, the East Germans.
    Maybe today.
    Probably with the reunification, probably things
    will pick up in Germany.
    Please?
    This is what we used to call the dark room.
    In German, the [GERMAN],, the dark room.
    It still looks dark.
    Yes but they put a window in.
    It did not have a window.
    That's where we used to eat.
    And we always used to have electric light in there.
    And it was right next to the shop we had, to the store.
    And I went in there and, of course, again,
    all these memories went back when
    we sat around that table, the whole family eating.
    Were all houses built so that they
    would have a dark room or rooms without windows?
    In those days.
    They didn't have much of architects.
    It was a good house.
    We grew up in that house.
    Tell us about this please.
    Well, this is a lavatory which my father had
    put in probably in 1935 or '34.
    It was most probably the first water closet in the whole city.
    There was no such a thing.
    I, being a plumber today, have no idea how he connected it
    to a sewer system.
    I don't know whether there was a sewer system.
    But before that, we had an outhouse
    in the yard which was used.
    And then once a month, some people
    came and used to empty that outhouse.
    It was-- it used to create a terrible stench.
    So my father had this water closet put in.
    And I don't think that the system, the toilet itself,
    is from those days.
    But the sanitary installation were put in by him.
    What's the difference between the toilet
    and the sanitary installation?
    Well, the toilets were probably different in those days.
    And the tank, which is probably here,
    which you see in the picture, is made of plastic.
    In those days, they were higher up
    and it had a cast iron system with a chain to pull it.
    This is a different thing.
    But the system, the sanitary system, is probably the same.
    Only the utensils are different.
    One time when we were talking you
    said that even today many houses in that town
    have no indoor facilities?
    Yes, yes.
    There still is-- nothing has really advanced in that town,
    in East Germany on the whole.
    Does that mean most houses don't have indoor facilities today?
    I suppose today they do have.
    I would say that, yes.
    But in 1934 when my father had this installed, none of them
    had.
    Or very few, at least, had inside toilets.
    And this please?
    This was a room my two brothers slept in.
    This is also a bedroom.
    And I remember we used to have battles with pillows.
    In those days, we were very happy kids.
    How many rooms were in the house?
    Let me think.
    One, two, three, four, five, six-- about eight homes.
    How many were bedrooms?
    About six.
    Six bedrooms?
    How big were the rooms in terms of feet?
    To tell you, there were Maybe 10 by 6, something like that,
    on the average.
    Not very big rooms, but big enough.
    There was a kitchen and there was a stove.
    And there was a entrance corridor and the stairs going
    upstairs, and a big huge loft where
    we used to play when it rained.
    And my mother used to put apples in store,
    and so we have apples out of season.
    Or cucumbers, he used to put in barrels.
    And those we used to eat.
    Very nice.
    And this?
    This used to be the store, the shop.
    And it was turned into a living room.
    And I remembered all the wares we had for sale
    then there on the counters and so forth.
    So that did not exist any longer.
    It was turned into a living room.
    OK, tell us about this please.
    This is my friend, Jonny Janoshka standing
    in the courtyard of our house.
    And the girl with her back towards us
    is one of the girls living in that house.
    Now, the courtyard-- was that formed
    by several houses being built around the courtyard,
    or was the courtyard in the middle of your house?
    In the middle of the house, middle of the house.
    And I don't know what the back was [? difficult. ?]
    On one side I think was a courtyard of a neighbor house.
    And this?
    This is also the courtyard.
    You can see the drainpipes which lead away
    the rainwater from the roofs.
    They made a kind of a concoction to lead the water away,
    very primitive.
    As I mentioned before, they have no materials and no craftsmen
    to do anything.
    They probably did it by themselves.
    And this?
    This was the washroom where my mother used to boil the washing
    and she washed all our clothes in.
    Now, those windows-- there was a broken window
    on the right-hand side, on the lower right-hand side.
    And we used to invite all our friends from the street.
    And we used to put up [? bells ?] with planks.
    And everybody had to pay five pfenigs And I used
    to go through that window--
    the snake man.
    [LAUGHS]
    And what did you do?
    Went through the window.
    Just went through the window?
    And they had to play five pfenigs
    to see me go through that window.
    We make performances.
    How much did you make?
    [LAUGHTER]
    So these pictures are all taken when
    you went back in 1990 and the condition
    the houses are in now?
    Correct.
    OK.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is the house I was born.
    I had no idea, really.
    But I did take my birth certificate along.
    And then I saw the street and the number.
    So I went to that house and had myself photographed.
    This is the house I was born in.
    And so what year was that and how long did you live there?
    I have no idea.
    I was born in 1925, delivered by a midwife.
    And that was in this house.
    OK.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is the house my distant related cousin lived in.
    As you can see, it's a shell.
    I don't know what happened to it.
    Everything has been taken out-- the doors,
    the staircases, window frames.
    I went in there and I remembered their family
    sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating.
    They had a maid, Marie.
    I mentioned it in one of my audiences
    here that she used to serve them.
    And she used to put butter in her hair.
    And sometimes she used to work for us,
    and sometimes she used to work for them.
    I contacted my cousin.
    He lives in New Jersey today.
    And I sent him those photographs.
    He seemed unmoved.
    He doesn't want to go back.
    Is the maid the woman whose pictures were at the beginning?
    No, no.
    Another one.
    That's a different maid.
    Another one.
    But in the street we lived in, there
    were maybe six or seven Jewish families
    who had stores, who had shops.
    And not a single house remains, or it looks the same
    as you can see on those photographs.
    The only house which is still inhabitable is only ours.
    How many of the houses in your town are inhabitable today?
    Are many of them like these houses?
    No, no.
    Most of them are inhabited by the population.
    Only Jewish homes look like that.
    Only Jewish homes?
    Only Jewish homes.
    Did you find out why that is?
    No, no, I didn't ask.
    I do not know why.
    I mean, a house like that, I mean, still standing.
    The fundaments are there the walls are there.
    it could be rehabilitated, this house.
    But as I understood, there was no money
    and there was no materials, as I said, and no craftsmen.
    And so this is 10 blocks away, you said, from the--
    No, 10 houses.
    10 houses Away from your house?
    10 houses away.
    Very close to our house.
    A minute away.
    And it's just the Jewish homes?
    Yeah.
    I think it's only the Jewish homes which look like this.
    Obviously it's the same courtyard.
    No, it's the same house, only taken from a different angle.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is a kind of a yard on the left.
    It used to be a hotel which served the travelers who
    used to come to the town.
    Today, it's a shell.
    On the very left--
    you can't see --it was an entrance where
    they used to put their horses.
    In those days, we didn't have cars but they had horses.
    And there was a kind of a stable where the horses were put up
    for the night.
    We used to play in there.
    At the back where you see the white kind of placard,
    we used to play football and that was the goal.
    And very often, the ball used to go over this gate.
    And me, being the smallest, I had to go underneath
    to retrieve the ball.
    The yard beyond it belonged to the city.
    They had all the materials and tools there.
    So was that the origin of your snake man
    routine, going under this gate?
    Part of it.
    [LAUGHTER]
    Tell us about this please.
    This is an annex to the synagogue
    where the cantor used to live.
    And the cantor was also the ritual slaughterer.
    There were also rooms for classrooms
    where the children used to learn Hebrew reading and writing.
    And sometimes services were held there on weekdays
    because synagogue was too big and the attendant
    were only a few.
    Maybe a minyan, maybe a 10.
    So a big synagogue was not used.
    But on weekdays, this building was used for prayer.
    About how many children would go to the classes?
    Maybe 15 or 20.
    This please?
    This is the same annex, only from a different angle.
    That used to be the entrance to the annex.
    And the two windows you see, those
    were the rooms where we learned to read and write Hebrew.
    And this?
    It is the same building, taken from a different angle.
    And tell us about this please.
    This is the empty plot where the synagogue used to stand.
    It was burned in the Kristallnacht.
    And as you can see, there is nothing
    left of it, no sign of it.
    And they want to put up a monument depicting
    that this was a place where the Jewish synagogue stood once.
    Are there any Jewish inhabitants of this town today?
    None.
    In fact, the pastor whom I had spoken to,
    he wanted to bring in Russian Jews.
    Russian Jews are coming into Germany.
    He wanted to rehabilitate the buildings
    and house in those buildings Russian Jews.
    And he asked me to try and find funds for it.
    I didn't respond to that.
    I'm not interested in Russian Jews would go to Germany.
    Please tell us about this.
    This is a letter my sister wrote to my mother on Mother's Day,
    I suppose.
    It's in French.
    I don't speak French.
    She learned French while living in Brussels
    and she sent it to me.
    I can see she has a beautiful script.
    I didn't even realize that she wrote so nicely.
    We'll make a Xerox photocopy of the letter
    so it'll be easier to read.
    OK.
    Do you have a translation of what it says?
    Somebody translated it.
    It talks about how she loves her mother and wishes her--
    congratulates her on Mother's Day.
    Something of that sort.
    Actually, this has to do with the last set of pictures.
    What was the pastor's name who is
    so interested in the Jewish people, who wants to bring
    Jewish people back here?
    His name is Pastor [Personal name]
    And he is a pastor of the most beautiful church next door,
    a really nice church.
    A very compassionate man and a true Christian.
    And we had a long talk.
    But I already spoke about this.
    And he went to the mayor and wanted
    to speak to him about funds of putting up a monument where
    the synagogue used to stand.
    And when he came there, the mayor
    showed him the letter I had written him.
    So I had quite a correspondence with him,
    but I have somehow not answered some of his letters.
    I just-- I suppose I should do it, but I haven't done it.
    This is interesting.
    You mentioned-- this is the envelope that the pastor sent
    you a letter in.
    Yes.
    And you had a comment about the stamps.
    Could you tell us please?
    Well, I was surprised after all the relations we had with East
    Germany which were strained, which were Russian-orientated,
    and there I saw a stamp with the Jewish candelabra on it,
    and I was very much surprised.
    You know, those articles that have been in the paper
    lately about that East German town that's had--
    I don't know if it was just antisemitism, but they--
    Against foreigners.
    --through riots, they kicked out all minorities.
    Yeah.
    Do you think that that could be a problem in this town?
    I don't think the town is a single foreigner.
    I mean do you think the sentiment,
    so that if a foreigner were to move in?
    Yes, certainly.
    I'm convinced of it.
    Because there's lots of unemployment today
    in East Germany because of the whole reconstruction
    of the economy.
    And in any case, they were very bitter against their regime.
    So imagine that there would be immigrants coming or foreigners
    coming into that town and taking the few jobs which
    are available away from them.
    So I see no reason why they shouldn't behave the way they
    behaved anywhere else.
    I always maintained that fundamentally,
    that there's no change within the Germans.
    They haven't changed at all.
    Even one talks about the new generation, they're different.
    I, for one, think there's absolutely no difference.
    I think they haven't changed.
    Why?
    I don't know why, but I do think they haven't changed.
    I think it's within the German psyche
    that they haven't changed.
    I think they're militant, and I think they are--
    they have the capacity of being brutal, which
    many other nations haven't got.
    I live in America for some years,
    and I find a lot of compassion here in this country.
    When I think back of how the Germans behaved,
    I feel this great lack of compassion.
    There are individuals, there are just men in Germany.
    I'm not saying that.
    But on the whole, I think the character of the German people
    has always been war-like.
    And I think it hasn't changed.
    And I don't think it can be changed that easily.
    One talks about democracy in Germany.
    I think democracy cannot be hung like an ornament around
    somebody.
    It takes probably, not only years,
    but generations to educate people to be democratic.
    I don't think that works in Germany that fast.
    I don't believe for one moment.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is a membership in the Maccabi sports organization,
    a Zionist organization, which transcended
    all political beliefs.
    It was for Jewish children in the town I lived in.
    And I was a member of it, like all other Jewish children.
    It showed that it was given to me in 1937.
    OK.
    We'll make a Xerox copy of this document
    so it'll be easier for people to see.
    OK.
    --about this please.
    This is an East German policeman.
    I was at a motorcycling race and I was very tired.
    So I went among some trees to take a rest and I fell asleep.
    And suddenly, he kicked me with his boots and said, get up.
    He might have thought that I was drunk or something.
    When I got up, I was very annoyed with him.
    And he said he wanted to see my papers.
    And I said, what papers?
    It reminded me very much of the Nazis, the way he handled me.
    So I was--
    I said, I have no papers.
    He said, you have got an identity card?
    Of course, I spoke German.
    He didn't know that I was not German.
    So I pulled out my Israeli passport.
    And in one side is Hebrew.
    And he opened that side in Hebrew.
    And he asked me what it was.
    And I told him that I was an Israeli and I was a tourist.
    He showed no kind of reaction whatsoever.
    But I was very annoyed by his handling of me,
    the way he kicked me and the way he asked for my papers.
    But then he left.
    I took his photograph.
    And there he is.
    How did he feel about you taking his photograph?
    Did he have a problem with that?
    He agreed.
    There were two.
    There were two, in fact.
    And I asked, can I take your photograph?
    The other one walked off, and he posed for me.
    Did you find out what his name was?
    No.
    I never did.
    I wasn't interested in him.
    And tell us about this please.
    This is one of the two lakes in the town I lived in.
    And the whole family used to go in summer,
    and we used to picnic there.
    And we had a beautiful time there.
    And my father used to own the boat.
    And all the family went in that boat.
    And we used to go out into the middle of the boat.
    Wonderful memories.
    Who's that person in the bottom left?
    This is the wife of my friend.
    Jonny's wife?
    Jonny's wife.
    I'm sorry, did I interrupt you?
    Were you going to say something else?
    No, that is essentially what I have to say about this lake.
    What's the name of the lake?
    Sumpfsee.
    Could you spell that please?
    S-U-M-P-F, and the [? Csee ?] is a C-S-E-E.
    Tell us about this please.
    This is a East German produced car called a Trabant,
    which is being scrapped right now.
    It's [INAUDIBLE] car.
    It so polluted.
    It belches out such a lot of smoke, it's unbelievable.
    When I was at there at the racing,
    so many people drove those cars.
    And in fact, you had to wait maybe 7 to 10 years
    to get such a rubbish car.
    Terrible car.
    Now, I read in the newspapers, they're being scrapped.
    I photographed it because I heard about that car so much.
    And it works like a motorcycle.
    It makes a noise of a motorcycle.
    I went to East Germany before the reunification.
    They were talking about reunification.
    And I needed a visa.
    And this is the border crossing.
    What were the guards like at the border crossing?
    How did they treat you?
    One had to show one's passport and one's visa.
    And I really thought that they would remark upon the fact
    that I had an Israeli passport, because I don't think
    there were hardly anybody going into East Germany
    with an Israeli passport.
    But then it occurred to me that this
    was all of the crossing which went to Berlin.
    So probably many Israelis went to Berlin, that crossing.
    So there was really no reaction.
    But they took my passport.
    And he went to some office.
    And they came back and I had to add another few marks
    in western currency.
    I didn't really know why, but I paid.
    It was simple.
    It was simple to cross that border.
    It was no problem.
    And this please?
    Again, the border crossing.
    I think on my way back.
    --tell a story about your border crossing?
    Yes.
    On the way back when I came to the border,
    I had some East German money left.
    And I wanted to get rid of it.
    So there was a restaurant there and I
    thought I might go into the restaurant and have some food.
    I had been five days in Güstrow, in the town I was born in.
    And the food was terrible.
    I don't eat non-kosher food.
    And I had cheese and maybe some fish.
    It was so bad that my stomach juices used
    to come up during the night.
    It was-- really, I suffered a lot from the food.
    But I thought maybe I'd find some milk or some dairy food
    in there.
    And I went in there.
    It was a big restaurant, many people there.
    So the waitress told me to fill up a table.
    It's not like in America that you
    don't fill up tables you wait till you
    get a table by yourself.
    But there in Germany, you fill up.
    And there was a man sitting there.
    And the waitress came up to me and said, what would you like?
    And I said, well, have you got some dairy food?
    She said no.
    I have some pork and this.
    I said, well, I don't eat pork.
    So she says, why don't you eat pork?
    I said, well, I don't eat pork.
    I don't want any meat.
    So the man opposite me looked at me and said,
    she doesn't know what kosher is.
    So I was a little bit surprised that the man
    would know what kosher is.
    So he started up a conversation with me.
    And he said, well, I'm from Frankfurt and I'm on vacation.
    I'm going into East Germany.
    And he ordered his food.
    And there wasn't much for me to order except some cheese, which
    was also terrible.
    It was so acidy.
    It killed me, that food.
    So I ate a bit.
    I nibbled at the food.
    I didn't really eat it.
    Then suddenly, he came up and looked at me in my eyes
    and he said to me, I have a problem.
    Maybe you could help me?
    I said, well, you tell me your problem
    but I don't know whether I can help you.
    I'll try my best.
    He said, I have an elderly mother who lives in my house.
    And she still lives in the era of the Nazis of Hitler.
    She used to work for big shots in the party.
    And every time I have visitors, she
    bursts into the room she raises her hand and shouts "Heil
    Hitler."
    So [LAUGHS].
    I said, what can I tell you?
    Not much I can tell you.
    You could possibly do one of two things--
    when you have visitors, see to it that your mother is
    in a room and you close it that she shouldn't embarrass you.
    Or you can do another thing.
    She is your mother.
    You have to respect her and you have to love her.
    You might want to put her into an institute if she's so old.
    So I was taken aback by this kind of advice he wanted of me.
    Anyway, he said she lives still in the glory of the olden days
    and she can't forget it.
    I said, she's your mother.
    There's nothing much you can do except one of those two things.
    See to it that she cannot enter the room when you have visitors
    or you put her into an institution.
    And he thanked me.
    And he said, you gave me sound advice.
    [LAUGHS]
    Tell us about this please.
    Well, this is a picture with my friend
    on a place where I stood 53 years earlier with my brother
    and my sister, taken in the same place.
    When I showed my friend the picture which
    had been taken 53 years earlier, he recognized the place
    immediately.
    And he said, I'll take you.
    I'll take you there.
    And he took me there.
    And we were photographed there in the same place.
    OK.
    In the next photograph, we'll show the original photo of you
    in the old place.
    Tell us about this.
    This is the original photo you referred to?
    Yes.
    That was taken--
    I don't know exactly in what year, but probably
    in 1936 or '37.
    And left to right, the three people are who?
    On the very left, the little girl is my little sister.
    She looks so nice.
    I didn't even realize I had such a nice little sister.
    And this is my brother, the middle one.
    And there on the right am I with a school cap.
    I was really a terrible little chap.
    I was always full of tricks.
    You can see the way I stand, I had no patience
    to be photographed.
    I wanted to get away and play.
    The snake man.
    [LAUGHS]
    OK, and this photo is reprinted from Tikvah magazine.
    Correct.
    And you have the original.
    Tikvah had the original.
    And Tikvah is spelled T-I-K-V-A-H.
    If you take this a page further, you will see me.
    I've written an article.
    You-- this is another article you wrote in the same Tikvah
    News magazine?
    No, this is an excerpt of a book I'm writing.
    I've written approximately already 20 pages.
    And they have taken out an excerpt and printed it.
    Hopefully if I have the patience and the stamina,
    I will finish that book.
    If you would be interested, I could send you those 20 pages.
    They're interesting.
    We would very much love to have it, very much.
    OK, I will send it to you.
    I was bar mitzvah then, 13 years old.
    This is the same spot from the earlier photo?
    Yeah, exactly the same spot.
    --about this please.
    This is when I approached the town, Güstrow.
    You see it on the top on the right.
    And I went out of my car and I photographed it.
    And all these names, like Sternberg
    and Wismar and Ventschow, they were so familiar to me.
    I'd forgotten about them.
    And they brought back all these memories.
    We need to spell those for the transcriber.
    And this please?
    This is the beginning, the entrance to the town.
    I thought I would never reach it, and there I was.
    I had reached it.
    In my dreams, I always dreamed I would be coming to the town
    and I never really reached it.
    And there I was.
    I had arrived.
    Did you get a lot of memories and feelings as you entered?
    Tremendously.
    I couldn't believe it.
    I was so euphoric.
    When I spoke, I thought somebody else was speaking.
    You know that kind of feeling?
    My head was in the clouds.
    I couldn't-- I wasn't volatile.
    I couldn't even express an opinion.
    I couldn't talk.
    Something was happening to me that I just wasn't myself
    at all.
    Well, next time I'll go, maybe I'll be able to be different.
    But something happened to me there, I don't know.
    You can go.
    I'll give you an [? invitation. ?]
    I returned to the town I was born in just over a year ago.
    And I had contacted the mayor of that town
    in order to be able to get a visa.
    It was before the reunification.
    And in order to get a visa, one had to prove accommodation.
    And that would have taken too long.
    So I wrote him a letter that he should
    help me to get a visa fast in order
    to be able to get into his town.
    So he knew when I was coming.
    And when I did come there and I stayed five days.
    And when I returned, I stayed in a hotel in Hamburg.
    And I wasn't able to sleep, so I got up
    in the middle of the night and I wrote him the following letter.
    I wrote it to him in German, and this is
    the translation into English.
    "June 6, 1990.
    Dear Mr. Mayor, I had informed you that I would be staying
    in your city, Güstrow, between April 19 and 25, 1990.
    Yet you did not find it necessary to either invite me
    to your office or to inform the local press that a former
    resident of Güstrow would be visiting the house of his
    parents and the city he was born in after more than 50 years.
    You did not pay me this respect.
    And by this, you deprived all former Jewish residents
    of Güstrow of this honor.
    During my stay in Güstrow, I sat one day on a bench opposite
    the City Hall where your office is located.
    And I looked at the people passing before me.
    I looked especially at the people of the older generation.
    And in my mind, I saw these people
    as they cheered when all the remaining Jews of your city
    were forced to sit on the top of the Jewish hearse
    while a few elderly Jews were put in place of horses
    and were made to pull the hearse through the city.
    I spent five sleepless nights staring
    at the ceiling of the hotel you reserved for me
    in the [Place name] Strasse.
    And I saw the shadows of the murdered Jewish community
    pass before my eyes.
    Those people who choked to death in the gas chambers or were
    burned alive in the Warsaw ghetto.
    I remember my mother and my little sister whose ashes were
    scattered into the Vistula.
    A supermarket was built on the grave of my father.
    And the signpost pointing out the site
    of the former Jewish cemetery stands crooked and is broken.
    All this in contrast to my people,
    who, despite all persecutions and humiliations,
    stand straight and proud.
    At the site of the former synagogue,
    I found an empty lot filled with garbage and weeds.
    Only the memories of the prayers and hymns of the Jews
    who prayed to the only God for millennium
    pass like ghosts in front of my eyes.
    I remembered when on Jewish holidays and on the Sabbath,
    the Jews came from all directions toward the synagogue
    to pray with their families.
    I remember how with devotion, we also
    prayed for the well-being of the German government
    and for our fellow citizens.
    I did not see one single street named after Jewish personality
    who lived in your city.
    In the Bible we are told that Sodom
    was destroyed because Abraham, who
    begged God to spare the town, was unable to find
    a single righteous man.
    During my visit in your city, I searched and found
    several righteous people.
    And I believe that their existence is a reason why
    Güstrow was spared from destruction.
    I am sure that our Jewish dead have not yet found peace
    in Güstrow's Jewish cemetery.
    Mr. Mayor, if you search, I am sure that you will
    find your image of God again.
    Sincerely, Abraham Adolf Grossman, Berkeley,
    California."
    Stop.
    Did you--
    10 seconds.
    I received a reply from the burgermeister, which he
    wrote on the 26th of June 1990.
    He wrote-- I will read it in German first,
    and then I will try and translate it into English.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    Can't read it.
    [SPEAKING GERMAN]
    I will try and translate it now into English.
    "Dear Mr. Grossman, I would like to thank you
    for your letter which you wrote on the 6th of June 1990, which
    moved me to my very depths.
    I have to tell you, though, that I
    am only the mayor since the 22nd of May 1990
    as the mayor of the city.
    My predecessor left things, lots of work,
    which I haven't been able to attend to.
    But I do work with the Protestant church in Güstrow
    since July, and the first steps are being taken in order
    to revive and work on the persecution of the Jewish
    people in the city.
    I would be very happy to greet you in Güstrow in this town.
    Maybe there would be in future time
    an opportunity to greet you.
    Best regards, Mr. [Personal name] the mayor."
    With your permission, I'd like to write two stories which
    I have written, of quite a few stories which
    have quite a connection with the Holocaust.
    It is called "The Tale of the Dying Horse."
    And I have written a dedication to my children
    and grandchildren, which I would also like to read to you.
    "This story is dedicated to my four grandchildren.
    [Personal name] the first born, handsome and proud and
    intelligent, serious and at the same time light-hearted.
    Tamar, his sister, beautiful and sensitive,
    the delight of my heart.
    Natan the present given by God in his mercy
    to my beloved son, Benjamin, and his wife, Lillian.
    Intelligent child with a compassionate heart.
    [Personal name the youngest, who radiates beauty and adroitness
    and has a marking of a person who will go far.
    All of them possess a paramount virtue
    to be found in a human being--
    goodness of heart, and love for their fellow man.
    May the story, for all it is worth,
    be an indication of the dangers lurking
    in the shadows for the Jewish people.
    I have never spoken to my grandchildren nor to my sons
    about those dangers as I know they really cannot understand
    them, for all of them were born free people in a free country
    in a Jewish land.
    May God bless my grandchildren and their parents,
    Benjamin and Lillian, [Personal name]
    and his lovely wife, [Personal name].
    The Tale of the Dying Horse.
    The whole country was filled with the fragrance of oranges.
    It was the month of January.
    And in the orange groves, the branches of the trees
    were weighed down with luscious and juicy fruit.
    Hundreds of trucks made their way to the markets
    and to the harbors with tons of fruit to be sold
    or to be shipped to all parts of the world.
    The skies were overcast and a steady rain
    fell to clear and refreshen the air.
    After a long hot and parching summer,
    the whole countryside turned to green.
    And what had been lifeless and dull
    was reborn in glorious and invigorating splendor.
    I had won a bid for 100-unit housing development project
    to install the plumbing in all those units.
    The engineer in charge of this enterprise
    advised me to get acquainted with the building site
    and to get in touch with the project manager.
    I drove my car on a rainy day to the building site
    and arrived there at midday.
    Recognizing the prefabricated hut
    which was the only building, I knocked on the door.
    And on hearing a gruff voice bidding me to enter,
    I stepped inside.
    The foreman, with a full face and heavy set,
    was in the process of eating his lunch.
    He turned toward me and with his mouth filled with food,
    introduced himself and said, my name is Shimon.
    Ali is my name, I introduce myself.
    I am the person who will do all the plumbing here.
    He seemed unconcerned and continued
    to eat his lunch while completely ignoring me.
    I watched him eat and a feeling of aversion
    overcame me as I saw him gulp his food down.
    He held a chicken in his hand and was devouring it
    ravenously.
    His mouth was filled with food to capacity.
    His cheeks blown out.
    He tore at the chicken almost without chewing,
    in the manner of dogs.
    Grease was dripping down from both sides of his mouth
    and running down his chin.
    Eating noisily while constantly smacking his lips,
    only interrupted from time to time by a tremendous burp.
    He seemed oblivious of my presence.
    I was so taken aback by the spectacle
    that a remark escaped me which I was to regret to my dying day.
    I said, can't you eat like a decent human being?
    As soon as I have made this remark,
    I was appalled at my behavior.
    It was a slip of the tongue.
    Instead of a well-deserved admonition,
    Shimon to turn slowly toward me on his round chair
    and replied, listen, I want to tell you a story.
    I had just turned 14 years of age
    when the Germans decided to evacuate
    all the remaining inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex
    to the west, away from the advancing Red Army.
    I had already been three years in various camps
    and weighed less than 50 pounds.
    Of 30,000 people who were let out of the camp, only 5,000
    survived this terrible ordeal.
    They dropped by the side of the road
    from starvation, exhaustion, and succumbed and froze
    to the death from the bitter cold.
    All those who still had some life in them
    were shot by the brutal guards.
    I was scantily dressed in a striped uniform
    and a similar cap on my head.
    I had no shoes and I had several layers of old newspaper wrapped
    around my feet.
    I did not feel my toes.
    They were frostbitten.
    I walked dazed in a stupor, dreadfully famished,
    shivering from the cold, along with the column.
    From time to time, the column closed as more and more people
    dropped by the side.
    I walked and walked, 12 hours each day
    with only one ladle of watery soup
    doled out to the prisoners.
    Suddenly, a person who had closed
    ranks was walking next to me turned his head
    and said, isn't your name Shimon?
    Are you not from Rzeszów I looked up and recognized
    a former schoolmate of mine by the name of Jonny.
    He looked as emaciated as myself.
    He was my age, but look a wizened old man.
    I saw your father a few columns back, he told me.
    I stared at him unbelievingly.
    And slowly, without drawing the attention of the guards,
    I retreated line by line.
    All of us were herded like cattle, punctuated
    with beatings and whippings.
    Anyone who screamed or caused any inconvenience
    to the murderers could reckon on being gunned down on the spot.
    All pleas for mercy were answered with disdain.
    Suddenly, I recognized my father.
    And what I saw caused me to weep.
    My proud father, still a young man, looked like a skeleton.
    His hair was shorn and he was unshaven.
    All his teeth were gone and his cheeks were sunken.
    Also, he had no shoes and was walking barefoot in the snow.
    A number like my own was tattooed on his left arm.
    Rage against the Germans built up in my chest.
    The day of reckoning has yet to come.
    I was filled with anguish that I could do nothing
    to help my father.
    This sense of sense of helplessness
    left me with the feeling of guilt,
    which will never leave me.
    I walked next to my father, supporting him.
    When a Polish peasant on a cart torn by a horse passed by us.
    Suddenly, the horse stumbled on the ice and fell down.
    The peasant jumped from his cart and in a woeful voice cried out
    that his horse had broken its leg.
    A German guard took his rifle, pointed it
    at the head of the horse, and pulled the trigger.
    A jet of blood and brains spurted from the horse's head.
    The prisoners, crazed from hunger,
    threw themselves upon the horse like flies around honey,
    and started to devour the horse.
    The German guards who were wearing belts
    on whose buckles was written, [GERMAN],, "God with us,"
    started to beat the people with the butt of their rifles,
    but to no avail.
    Only when there was nothing left of the horse
    did the prisoners desist.
    Of the horse, only the bones and hooves remained.
    Everything had been eaten, even the skin with the hairs.
    My father and also I had taken part in this orgy.
    Shocked to the core by this narrative, I sat there pale
    and shaken.
    And the thought flashed through my mind,
    how can those Germans have the chutzpah to count themselves
    as part of the human race?
    You see, he said, whenever I eat,
    I am always afraid that the food will be taken away from me.
    That is the reason why I eat so fast.
    I did not utter one word.
    In my heart, I asked God for forgiveness.
    This day I learned a valuable lesson
    which has guided me ever since.
    Do not judge a flask by its exterior,
    but look for what is in the inside.
    Thus says the Lord, the people who
    survive the sword shall find grace in the wilderness.
    When Israel goes to seek rest from afar,
    the Lord appeared saying, with everlasting love, I love you.
    Hence, I draw you to me with affection.
    Again, I shall build you and you shall
    be restored, maiden of Israel.
    Again, you shall array yourselves in your temples
    and join the merry dances.
    Again shall you plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria.
    The planter shall plant and enjoy the fruit.
    The day will come when the watchman among the [INAUDIBLE]
    shall call.
    Let us rise and go up to Zion, to the Lord, our God."
    That's a true story?
    Yes.
    Can I read the second?
    Yes, please.
    Good story?
    Yes.
    It is called, "A Dispatch From the Front."
    Is it on?
    Yes.
    "A Dispatch From the Front.
    I could not fall asleep.
    Only from time to time I fell into a fitful slumber which
    only lasted a few minutes.
    I was wrapped up in a military overcoat inside a sleeping bag,
    but the bitter desert cold penetrated to my bones
    and left me shivering and unable to get some rest.
    I gazed at the firmament above me, this vast expanse
    with millions of stars.
    I recognized the Big Dipper, and the small one, the North Star
    and the star Cassiopea.
    pointing towards my home, so near and yet so far.
    I realized that my not being able to sleep
    was not only caused by the cold, but also by my thoughts.
    I thought of my two sons who were somewhere
    facing terrible danger.
    It was the first time that all three of us were called up
    and my thoughts were wholly focused on them.
    On prior similar emergency, it was only myself had to go
    and my family stayed at home.
    I thought of my wife who stood by the main arteries,
    handing out food and refreshments to the passing
    troops.
    I was immersed in prayer on Yom Kippur in our local synagogue
    when suddenly, I heard the noise of passing traffic
    and loudspeakers making incomprehensible announcements.
    On Yom Kippur, the holiest of holiest
    of festivals in the Jewish faith,
    it was unprecedented that a single vehicle
    could be driven on this day.
    I hurried outside and I was able to understand what's been
    announced on the loudspeakers--
    go home everybody and turn on your television and radios.
    Go home, go home.
    I reached home and as soon as I turned on the TV,
    I heard all the secret code words--
    dark knight, open windows, steel and fire, running water.
    I recognized the codes of my two sons
    and also the code relevant to me.
    Both my sons took their uniforms and weapons
    and made their way immediately to their respective units.
    I suddenly realized that only two weeks before
    I was given orders to join another unit.
    I had served with my unit for 20 years,
    and apparently it was time to transfer people
    of my age out of crack units into other less
    strict and demanding brigades.
    My unit belonged to the 11th brigade of the southern front.
    A unit which had distinguished itself in many wars
    and in many battles.
    My eldest son was in the Navy on a missile boat.
    And my youngest son was in the Army Corps in the north.
    According to the media, the Egyptians
    had taken us by surprise and crossed the Suez Canal
    with great success and there were fierce battles.
    Without telling my wife, I left and made my way
    to the headquarters of my former unit.
    The fortress was empty of soldiers.
    Where there was always a hum of activity,
    now there was an eerie quiet.
    In one of the offices, I found a woman soldier
    who told me my unit had left to Sinai two days earlier.
    I decided on the spot to join my unit.
    In uniform and carrying an Uzi submachine gun,
    I hitched to Bir Gofgofa the biggest encampment in Sinai.
    While passing Gaza and El Arish on the way,
    I had the feeling that we were not
    being told the true situation.
    In the demeanor of the Arabs I passed,
    I noticed something I had never seen before--
    arrogance.
    They were different.
    Making our way through the streets of Gaza
    with our military vehicle, they were
    slow to make way for us, as if they owned the streets.
    Arriving in Bir Gofgofa I went straight
    to my former unit's offices and was
    told that the whole brigade was at the front.
    No transport being available, I hitched my way
    towards the front a command car took me halfway and then
    disappeared in a different direction.
    The sun was setting and I was alone
    in the vast desert, only sand and sky, not a single tree
    or bush.
    I laid down on my pack for a pillow, a loaded Uzi
    and a spare magazine beside me.
    I hope for a vehicle to pass.
    I must have dozed off when I was woken
    by the noise of an approaching vehicle.
    Egyptian commanders were roaming the desert,
    attacking our forces in lightning strikes
    and disappearing in the darkness of the night.
    I had to make a desperate decision
    whether to show myself or remain in hiding.
    It was too dark to discern whether the approaching vehicle
    was ours or that of the enemy.
    I had only 30 seconds to make a decision.
    I stood up and stood in the middle
    of the road waving to the approaching vehicle to stop.
    It came to a screeching halt and two soldiers jumped off,
    weapons pointed at me, not knowing if I was one of them
    or one of ours.
    One of the soldiers pulled out a flashlight and lit up my face.
    Grossman, you crazy bastard.
    What in hell are you doing in this desert by yourself?
    They were my buddies from my unit.
    I hopped onto the command car heaving a sigh of relief.
    Apparently, God looks after the ignorant.
    The welcome I received on arriving at the encampment
    was memorable.
    David, the brigade commander, gave me a hug and kiss me
    on both cheeks, exclaiming, this is unbelievable,
    this is unbelievable.
    David briefed me on the situation.
    It was serious.
    The Egyptians had crossed the canal, established a foothold,
    and had captured every bastion along the Suez Canal
    from Port Said in the north to Bea Tawfik in the south.
    Only one single bastion stood fast.
    The fuel line along the canal had failed to ignite.
    Egyptian frogmen had sabotaged it secretly and successfully.
    The Syrians had recaptured the Golan
    and were approaching the borders of the state of Israel.
    The task of our brigade was to prevent the Egyptian forces
    from reaching the Gidi and Mitla passes,
    for this was the key on which hinged
    the possibility of recapturing the Sinai peninsula.
    I was put in charge of my old unit
    and a feeling of confidence was felt by all the soldiers
    and also by myself.
    I was back in my natural element.
    That same night, our brigade moved
    and fierce battles ensued.
    We stood fast and in the end prevailed,
    though suffering considerable losses in armor and men.
    In that battle, the Egyptian lost 600 tanks.
    I had my first night's rest when the battle was done.
    It was bitterly cold and I could not sleep.
    My thoughts were with my sons.
    Some soldiers feeling the terrible cold
    had lit the fire to warm their bones.
    I got up and told them to douse it.
    There were lots of Egyptian commanders and soldiers
    who had been separated from their units.
    Those soldiers were desperate.
    They were searching for water to slake their agonized thirsts.
    The field telephone rang and my commander was on the line.
    A Piper plane will come in 20 minutes
    to take you to Jerusalem, he told me.
    Pack up your gear.
    He put down the phone before I could ask any questions.
    I got ready and the plane came.
    An hour and a half later, I was in Jerusalem.
    We landed at Atarot airfield and a waiting staff car whisked me
    to the line fortress in Shuafat, headquarters
    of the central command.
    My transfer had come through at last.
    While walking through the fortress,
    I passed a glass-plate window and saw my image.
    My uniform was covered with yellow sand from the desert.
    Storm goggles were hanging around my neck.
    My hair was disheveled and dusty.
    My 12-day-old beard had turned gray in those 12 days.
    My eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.
    I reached the office of the executive officer.
    A high-ranking officer was sitting in a comfortable chair
    smoking a cigar.
    He gave me my new appointment.
    You shall be a liaison officer between the military
    and the civilian arm.
    With this appointment, you shall hold the rank of captain.
    It dawned upon me what this appointment meant.
    One of many duties, it also entailed
    visiting the families who had lost the next of kin--
    a husband, a son, or a father who had fallen in battle.
    I wanted to object but the officer told me, that is all.
    Proceed to the Kirya in Tel Aviv immediately.
    In the meantime, the brigade of [name]
    had crossed the canal, established
    bridgehead and proceeded to destroy
    the SAM-2 and SAM-3 surface-to-air missiles that
    had been playing havoc with our planes.
    The decision to cross the canal and destroy the missiles
    on their launching site turned the tide of the war.
    The second and third Egyptian army
    on the west side of the canal were cut off
    from all the possibility of getting supplies.
    Half a million Egyptian soldiers were at the mercy of the IDF.
    They had no water, no food, no fuel.
    After a few days, Israel gave permission for water and food
    to be brought their mortal enemies.
    We had reached a point of 101 kilometers from Cairo.
    The situation in the north was similar.
    The Golan Heights were recaptured
    and our soldiers were within 14 kilometer of Damascus.
    The Arab armies had suffered a terrible and devastating
    defeat.
    I was attending the funeral of a soldier who
    had died in the Battle of the Chinese Farm.
    I was there to represent the IDF.
    He was of Moroccan ancestry and the shrieks and wailing
    of the family were unsettling.
    I had seen too much of death.
    I had a surprising feeling of impatience.
    I was standing apart from the mourners
    when suddenly I noticed a person a few feet from me
    with his back towards me.
    Somehow he seemed familiar.
    His clothes hung from his body, his shirt
    outside his pants, shoes dirty, and his curly, white hair
    disheveled.
    I sidled up to him.
    I recognized him immediately.
    It was Mihail.
    He turned his face toward me.
    His eyes were glazed.
    No light of recognition sparked in them.
    His face was vacant.
    There was something about the stance
    I recognized as a kind of post endemic to deranged people.
    I said to him, Mihail, I'm Ali, your old friend.
    Don't you know me?
    It seemed as if he had not heard me.
    I had met Mihail in the fall of '52
    when I was a member of a kibbutz and I was a truck driver.
    Every day I used to drive to Tiberius to bring provisions
    to the kibbutz.
    I also brought water in a tank to the kibbutz
    in the beginning.
    It had not been connected to the national water supply system.
    Mihail was the owner of a laundry
    and I brought the laundry of the kibbutz to him to be washed.
    We became friends.
    He had black, curly hair and was always singing
    at the top of his voice.
    Invariably, he had something good to eat--
    a juicy slice of watermelon, some bananas from the Jordan
    Valley, wonderful grilled fish from the Kinneret
    or some hummus or [INAUDIBLE] steeped in olive oil.
    When I left the kibbutz a few years later,
    I settled in the developed town in the south.
    While visiting a neighboring town which had a hospital,
    I met Mihail who had become an ambulance driver.
    We gave cries of surprise when we met up with each other.
    I had not seen Mihail for a considerable time
    when I recognized him at the cemetery.
    He asked me in an eerie voice, a freakish smile on his lips,
    whether I would like to meet his son.
    I readily agreed and said, of course,
    I would be delighted to meet him.
    Mihail took me by the hand and led me
    to a grave that had a military headstone.
    The name of his son was engraved upon the stone,
    the day of his birth, and the day when he fell.
    He spoke to his son and introduced him to me.
    Then he turned into himself and forgot that I was standing next
    to him.
    I turned slowly and walked to some trees.
    I covered my eyes with my hands and wept.
    I could not remember the last time I had cried.
    By Nebo's lonely mountain on this side Jordan's wave,
    in a veil in the land of Moab, there lies a lonely grave."
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Tell us your story about your writing please.
    Well, I was once invited to give a talk.
    And I really never did public speaking.
    I have done so little bit lately.
    And I was telling part of my life story
    when I noticed an elderly man looking at me all the time.
    And I was a little bit taken aback
    by the way he looked at me.
    But I didn't know him.
    When I had finished, he came up to me
    and he introduced himself.
    And he said that his name was Max Knight.
    And he said that he is a writer.
    He is a writer who writes a book.
    And he is from Vienna.
    And he said to me, you know, you should write.
    I teach writing in the university.
    And please write and write 10 pages and give them to me.
    Well, I wrote 20 pages and I sent them to him by mail.
    And the very next day.
    He phoned me up very excited, and he said,
    I'd like you to come up to my house immediately.
    And I came up.
    I had no idea.
    I was a little bit embarrassed by my writing
    because I didn't know the value of it.
    When I came to his house, he told me
    he was very impressed by my writing.
    It was so simple way, a modest way of writing.
    I don't quite know what he really meant by all that.
    So forthright, without complications.
    At least, maybe, I became a little bit vain.
    So he encouraged me all the time to write.
    So I started to write stories.
    I've written more stories than those two I read just now.
    And they seem to strike a chord within people
    because whomever I have given it to, they all liked it.
    It does something very nice to me to be able to write.
    And maybe it's a gift from God, which I have never
    really utilized it.
    I intend to write a book.
    I've and started to write a book on my childhood.
    And hoping to this day, coming to America,
    I hope to finish that book.
    [LAUGHS] It's a lot of work.
    It needs a lot of editing and spelling
    and whatever writing entails.
    Hopefully I'm able to write a book.
    In fact, I sent it to a journalist.
    And she said it would make wonderful film material.
    That is even better.
    OK?
    OK.
    Well, earlier we were talking about Germany and the Germans
    today and what do you think about whether or not
    Germans have changed.
    Well, I maintained all the time that there
    is no change Germany.
    Of course, it was based on only feelings.
    But it was certainly strengthened
    by the fact when I did go back to the town I was born in,
    I didn't see any change.
    Although, I didn't feel any antisemitism there whatsoever.
    People didn't react to the fact that I was Jewish,
    although I was being introduced as being Jewish.
    But the fact that in my mind--
    I have no indication of it, but people didn't
    seem changed to me at all.
    Except I was the only one who had changed because I
    wasn't a frightened person any longer.
    I was completely self-confident and have an Israeli passport
    with an Israeli flag.
    And I have a land of my own.
    I felt that because of the situation
    with the reunification of Germany,
    the economy is not in a sound situation.
    Many East Germans are reading the newspapers don't
    like the idea of the reunification
    because they lost their jobs.
    All the factories are outdated.
    They need to-- everything has to be renewed.
    And of course it'll take time.
    I'm sure that in time Germany is going
    to be very prosperous with the influx of another 36
    million Germans.
    But in the meantime, things are bad.
    And we see it in the newspapers, of course,
    that there are riots against foreigners and immigrants.
    And that is typical of Germany.
    Now, I know in America there are immigrants
    and there are blacks and whites and yellow-- all kinds
    of people.
    And it would be inconceivable that there
    should be riots against immigrants or newcomers
    or whatever.
    It doesn't happen in America.
    Everybody is accepted.
    If there is unemployment, poverty
    is not blamed on blacks, on whites, on yellows.
    Whatever it's blamed on, I don't quite know.
    But in Germany, I know that--
    I read the newspaper, for instance,
    that a German said, pointing towards a black person, that he
    could even maintain that he is German because he's black.
    He couldn't conceive that a black person
    could call himself a German.
    That again shows only how the Germans are concerning
    their theory under the Hitler dream of the purity
    of the race, that only whites can be German,
    and not Jews or Gypsies or Blacks or whatever.
    So I do believe that given certain circumstances,
    that the Germans would be very antisemitic.
    I don't know whether this, what happened under the Nazi regime
    could ever happen again, but who knows.
    But I am not able to trust the Germans.
    I think they have a military past.
    And Germans are aggressive.
    They are very aggressive.
    They easily become excited and they will have fights.
    I've seen those fights.
    I've seen those fights when I was a child.
    And I have seen fights when I was stationed in Germany.
    I've seen fights when I was there not long ago,
    people fighting in the streets.
    I've been nine years in America, I
    haven't seen a single fight in the streets.
    America is different from Germany.
    I don't believe that Germany will become--
    it is a democracy in words, in theory.
    But I don't believe that Germany is a true democracy yet.
    It'll take not years, but it'll take generations.
    One has to change not only the mentality,
    but history will have to be changed.
    It'll take a long time before Germany becomes a member
    of the nations of the world.
    I don't believe it.
    I cannot trust the Germans.
    Do you think there was a reaction among younger Germans
    now, the grandchildren of the people
    who lived in the Hitler area, that to react to the blame
    by denying the blame--
    do you know what I'm saying?
    Yes, I understand exactly what you mean.
    Let me put it this way.
    I will not answer your question directly,
    but by giving you a kind of a picture.
    I compare the remorse the Germans feel-- there are
    many Germans who have remorse.
    And they want to make up what they did to the Jewish people
    by doing all kinds of things, even going to Israel
    and helping Israel by going into a kibbutz
    or into the army to help.
    I would say if a thief, as long as he steals and is not
    found out, he feels good.
    But as soon as he's found out, he has remorse.
    That kind of thing applies to the German people.
    As long as they won in the war, they had no remorse.
    They had only remorse when they were defeated.
    If the Germans, God forbid, would have won the war
    and would have captured the whole world, which was--
    it was would have been possible in a certain stage of the war,
    they were very victorious.
    They had captured half the world.
    Hitler would have been today buried in a mausoleum
    and he would have been revered by the German people.
    He would have been a great hero, like Napoleon.
    And there would have been no remorse.
    There would have been only a glorification
    of the Hitler regime and especially of Hitler.
    They would have made out of him a saint.
    And only because they lost the war,
    like a thief when he is found out, then there is remorse.
    This remorse, in my opinion, is not genuine.
    It's not true.
    Of course, the younger generation
    wasn't at fault. They weren't alive.
    But I should say that the Jewish people
    should take heed and be very careful of what
    Germans are doing.
    Especially I would like to say that during the Yom Kippur War
    when Israel was in dire, in dire, in dire danger.
    The situation in Israel was unprecedented.
    That America under Nixon sent armament to Israel
    and they needed it fast.
    And Germany did not allow for the American planes to land.
    In order to refuel, they had to be refueled in the air.
    So when you talk about Germany, I will not,
    I cannot accept anything which can be said for Germany at all.
    So do you think part of the reason there's still
    a problem today is the difference between real remorse
    and remorse?
    I'm not sure I want to call it fake remorse.
    I mean, I think it's probably genuine remorse,
    but it's based on "we got caught" sort of thing.
    The difference between true repentance and repentance
    because you got caught.
    Do you think that if it had been true remorse
    that Germany and Germans would be different today?
    Well, let me put it this way.
    Again, I'd like to repeat what I said, if they would have won.
    And kept -- the question of remorse wouldn't have come up,
    not at all.
    Now because of these terrible revelations,
    these terrible crimes they committed,
    these inhuman crimes, never before happening
    in the annals of human history.
    This is something extraordinary what people could do.
    I mean, after all, they had families.
    They had children.
    They had wives.
    They had parents.
    This complete disregard for human life, which is--
    I don't think anybody can explain that.
    So I would say that had they won the war,
    you couldn't talk about remorse.
    You would have only talked about like Germany
    has had lots of stories about their ancestors,
    like the Greek--
    God, the Greek gods?
    No, no.
    The Greek stories.
    The Greek-- whatever the--
    mythology.
    Also Germany has German mythology.
    And they revere their heroes.
    And the heroes are the most important.
    But the Jewish people have their profits and their God
    and their religion and the laws.
    We don't revere heroes who won battles,
    except maybe the Maccabeans, but that
    was a war against oppression.
    The Germans always revered war.
    And it is only because of these revelations.
    Because they lost the war, that's why there is remorse
    and why they want to make up.
    I have had contact with Germans.
    I've had contact with German authorities.
    I went-- several times I had to go to the consulate.
    I felt there's no remorse.
    If I would belong to a nation who
    had done such terrible things, I don't
    think I would want to be part of that nation at all.
    I would probably emigrate.
    I would not stay in such a nation.
    I would be ashamed of such a nation.
    But you don't have Germans say I'm ashamed of Germany,
    I don't want to belong to that nation any longer.
    That, I have never heard.
    And only two or three weeks ago, I went to the German consulate
    in San Francisco.
    And she knew I was Jewish.
    And she knew I was Israeli.
    One could have felt maybe a kind of a sign --
    a special kind of relationship, a kind
    of a behavior towards me.
    None.
    None whatsoever.
    I think they resent the fact that they
    had to pay so much restitution to the Jewish people.
    I have that kind of feeling.
    If somebody comes and maybe would
    like to inquire for pension, I think
    the feeling is you've had enough, how much do you want?
    That's my definite feeling, that they
    think that the Jewish people are only grasping for money
    and they want something that doesn't belong to them.
    They don't realize what they have taken not only in life,
    but in actual monies and properties and destruction
    and so forth of their livelihood and so forth.
    I'm talking about taking of life, which
    can't be repaid in any way.
    So my definite opinion is that the remorse
    is genuine but under these certain circumstances.
    I guess the reason I was asking the question
    between true remorse and remorse based on getting caught
    is because I hear a lot about there must never
    be another Holocaust and we must do everything we can
    to prevent another Holocaust.
    And I'm thinking of motivation as being
    the reason for the Holocaust.
    Ultimately, some motivation was the reason.
    So the reason I was asking that is how do you change people?
    How do you change motivations?
    How do you think, so that in fact we could actually
    prevent another Holocaust?
    The only way to prevent a Holocaust is to be strong,
    to support Israel completely, and to be united,
    and to educate, not only the Germans,
    but to educate ourselves, the Jewish people.
    That the only way we can protect ourselves
    is to have a strong army, and to be purposeful,
    and not to give in to anybody.
    I believe the Salvation can only come
    from the Jewish people itself.
    Any promise-- and there have been plenty of promises
    --isn't worth the paper it is written on.
    The only way we can preserve ourselves and see
    that we are safe, us and our children,
    is through the Jewish people-- through Israel
    and the Jewish people.
    I don't think-- we haven't changed
    the outlook, fundamentally, of Christianity
    towards the Jewish people.
    I don't think so.
    I don't believe for one moment that these things have changed.
    I mean, there are, of course, people
    of the church who are benevolent and understanding
    towards Jewish people.
    Fundamentally, I don't think the Jewish people have ever
    been forgiven for having, so to speak, "killed their Savior,
    Jesus Christ."
    I think that is ingrained in many, many people,
    especially in the Catholic church.
    And when it comes to to the real crunch.
    To the what?
    To the crunch, to the real crunch, to the point where--
    To the crunch.
    To the crunch, then I think there's no forgiveness
    of the Jewish people.
    For?
    For what they have done.
    I mean, for, I think, first and foremost that they
    have crucified Jesus Christ.
    And there is no-- it doesn't seem--
    they don't seem to be able to forgive
    the Jewish people for that.
    And that is the basis of it.
    And then, of course, in history.
    When you read Shakespeare about Shylock
    and then you read Charles Dickens about Fagin and all
    these things which were--
    I mean, plenty of things are happening.
    I hear it on the radio and television sometimes.
    People come up with questions, very venomous against the Jews.
    They haven't changed.
    Of course, I'm not saying that everybody.
    Many people have changed and are true friends
    of the Jewish people.
    But again, one has to take heed.
    One has to be careful.
    One has to be strong.
    One has to be united.
    And-- it's OK.
    Well, those people that you said really, truly
    did change, what caused them to change do you think?
    Again, this is a phenomenon.
    I think, too, religion has changed.
    And you see, to be a religious person is not easy.
    One has to be a truly religious and to keep
    all the Commandments of the Christian religion, which is
    based on love and forgiveness.
    And if you are a true Christian, then salvation
    can lie within this context.
    But if you are only religious in name and say,
    I'm a Christian, that isn't good enough.
    You have to practice true Christianity in order
    to forgive and to understand.
    And that isn't easy.
    Most people are not like that.
    But I have many friends who are true friends
    of the Jewish people.
    They are true friends of mine.
    I do believe that they are certainly not antisemitic.
    But that isn't good enough to have a few friends.
    I think, fundamentally, there must be a change.
    The change won't come from without.
    From without?
    Yeah, from-- it will not come from the Gentiles.
    It'll have to come within the Jewish people.
    It hasn't changed for how many centuries?
    For 2,000, 3,000 years.
    I don't see any reason why it should change now.
    Especially with this problem in the Middle East.
    This is even exasperating the whole problem.
    It's making it even worse.
    How?
    Well, the Jews have been considered victims
    all their lives, all throughout history.
    And suddenly we are not victims any longer.
    As long as we were victims, then the poor Jewish people.
    They might have helped them.
    Might not have helped.
    But we are looked upon now as oppressors.
    You know, we are pressing the Arabs.
    And we have taken the lands and so forth.
    People don't like it.
    But I, personally, don't care about this opinion.
    I care about oppressing another nation, which I think
    one should solve this problem.
    I think one should solve the Israeli-Arab conflict.
    Hopefully, the peace negotiations
    have started yesterday.
    I am crossing my fingers that peace
    will come out of it after all.
    I have children.
    I have grandchildren who will eventually
    have to go into the army.
    And I have been in the army almost all my life.
    I don't want--
    I really want peace more than anything else,
    but not under any price.
    We have to be--
    people don't understand that the security
    problem is the most crucial problem with this conflict.
    If we haven't got security, we can't give anything up.
    But on the other hand, I do believe that we should not
    rule another people.
    I think they should have their own political and national
    aspirations.
    They have a right to it.
    How and when, I don't know.
    But first and foremost, security.
    I want to go back to some other questions
    I had ready to ask you today.
    I believe we left at just about the time that you were
    to go on a Kindertransport.
    So how did you get the chance to go on the Kindertransport?
    Well, it was after the Kristallnacht and the 10th
    of November 1938, when all Jews, male Jews over the age of 16
    were taken to concentration camps.
    And then when they were released but given the opportunity
    to emigrate.
    In those days, Jews were allowed to leave.
    But then after the war, they couldn't leave any longer.
    I think Hitler was trapped.
    He didn't know what to do with the Jews,
    so he started to annihilate the Jews I think.
    Beforehand, Jews could leave.
    So the situation was so bad that all Jews
    wanted to leave Germany.
    So a organization was founded by the Jewish community in England
    and maybe together with the British government,
    and they took almost 10,000 children
    from the age of very young to the age of maybe 16 or 17 who
    were allowed to go to England.
    I was amongst those children.
    Where did you go to--
    how did you get there?
    By boat, train?
    We were brought to Berlin.
    And from there, we were taken by train to Holland.
    To Hoek van Holland, which is a town in Holland.
    I think it's a town by the sea somewhere.
    And then we were brought over by ferry to Dovercourt,
    near Harwich in England.
    And there I stayed for three months in a kind of a camp.
    And then we were taken to London into a hostel.
    In a hostel?
    Yeah, I stayed in hostel.
    When the war broke out, we were evacuated with our schools
    to smaller towns.
    How big was the hostel?
    Maybe 25 children.
    All Jewish?
    All Jewish.
    All from the Kindertransport.
    Who ran it?
    The Jewish community, I believe.
    And there was a matron there.
    And we had accommodations and slept there and so forth,
    and ate there.
    And we went to school.
    What was school like?
    The British schools are kind of--
    have a real reputation.
    [LAUGHTER]
    I don't know.
    I didn't know any English when I came to England,
    and so it was pretty tough for me.
    And then I was stunted by going to German schools.
    I was always frightened what the teachers would do next,
    you know?
    What they would do to me.
    And I wasn't really a good pupil because of this.
    I had no fundament.
    I had no-- I couldn't learn.
    I was always persecuted in the German schools.
    So I came to England.
    I was a mediocre kind of.
    But I learned English pretty fast.
    And it was a grammar school.
    And I learned all the usual subjects.
    We had decent teachers, except one.
    He was an Irishman.
    He didn't like the Jews.
    His name was Mr. Flanagan.
    I remember him very well.
    And he always used to run the Jews down.
    And he had almost the same kind of theory about the Jews
    like the Germans.
    The Jews looked different.
    That they had long noses, and long fingernails,
    and kinky hair.
    All this kind of nonsense.
    And they let him teach you?
    Yes.
    I asked him.
    Even being only 14 years old, I went up to him.
    I said Mr. Flanagan, why don't you like Jews?
    I said, if you're going to hit me-- because in those days,
    you were being caned.
    Had a cane and they slapped you across the hand
    with the most terrific force, without any compassion, the way
    to hit a child.
    Anyway, this doesn't seem today sensible to hit.
    You're not allowed to.
    In those days, you were beaten.
    I thought he was going to cane me, but he didn't.
    He said, you know why I don't like Jews?
    And he said it in a very sort of venomous manner.
    He said, because one day I went to the East End of London
    and I bought a jacket and he cheated me.
    And he was a Jew.
    So I asked him-- only 14 years, I said,
    didn't Christians ever cheat you?
    And he was very angry with me.
    [LAUGHS] He's a stupid man.
    He's a teacher.
    The authorities never talked to him about his attitude?
    I don't remember.
    I don't think so.
    You know, there's antisemitism in England
    as well as anywhere else in the world.
    Always stupid England people, you find them.
    More than I would like them to be.
    You went to a regular English public--
    their terms are different.
    No, it wasn't a public school.
    It was a--
    A regular English day school?
    Yeah.
    With other English children?
    Yes.
    What was it like?
    Is it like all the rumors are about English schools?
    Well, I didn't make many friends.
    They called us Germans because the war broke out
    and there was lots of propaganda against the Germans.
    And then German refugees were interned on the Isle of Man.
    Were you interned?
    No, I was too young.
    Over the age of 16, they were all interned.
    Like the Japanese were interned here,
    they thought anybody German is a spy.
    Until they realized that we were Jewish refugees,
    until they sorted things out, there was a panic in England.
    Hitler had captured France and they
    were about to invade England.
    So they went into a panic.
    But slowly, they were released and they were
    even able to join the army.
    So things started to get normal.
    But the children in school when--
    I had a German accent, of course.
    They thought I was German.
    They didn't quite realize the difference
    being German and Jewish.
    Were there a lot of culture shock?
    For me?
    For you.
    You can't talk about culture.
    What culture does a boy of 14 got?
    I left my parents.
    It was tough, of course.
    I had to eat at somebody else's table.
    And I was fundamentally very shy.
    And there I was taken away from my home, go somewhere else.
    And not easy.
    When I look at children of 14 I'm surprised-- and 13,
    I was really when I left.
    That a child like that can be taken away from the parents
    and brought into the big world.
    And has to fend, in a way, for themselves.
    Not materially.
    We had to eat.
    And we had, of course, all these material things.
    But spiritually, we had to fend for ourselves.
    We couldn't go to a parent and maybe cry
    or ask for advice or to be consoled.
    I had nowhere to go to for the child.
    These elementary things a child needs,
    I didn't have those anymore.
    That was gone.
    Nobody at the school at least tried to, to some degree,
    fulfill that function?
    None.
    I never had it since I left my parents.
    I haven't.
    That was gone.
    It was gone.
    I sometimes think about these things that a child of 13--
    really never did I have anybody whom I could confide in or look
    for sympathy.
    That was gone.
    That, -- the Nazis took away from us.
    They took away our childhood, took away our youth completely.
    And that can never be repaid.
    Whatever they paid, gave us in restitution money,
    there's no way.
    Some don't realize that maybe.
    I don't think the authorities are concerned about things.
    They're concerned about, we have an agreement with the Jews
    to pay them and that's it.
    We've paid.
    That's all we can do.
    Maybe the other people who work on-- maybe the church
    or intellectuals or people who deal with these things.
    They probably will realize what has been done.
    Books have been written about it.
    But the German authorities deal with figures.
    How did not having anybody to talk to anymore affect you
    throughout your life?
    You know, I'm fundamentally a very strong person.
    And I adapt myself easily.
    But there were times when I had to go through crisises.
    Sometimes I remember the Shabbat with my family.
    And I remember even today, I remember my parents.
    And in fact, it gets worse even.
    When I was a child somehow it was deflected.
    But now sometimes suddenly I see a picture of my sister,
    like today, and I almost want to cry.
    But I haven't done it before.
    It's gone.
    Very difficult to define.
    And then I saw my mother's picture here suddenly.
    And I realized suddenly that she was a beautiful woman.
    As a woman, a young girl of 16, she looked so nice.
    And I never looked at my mother as somebody who was beautiful.
    Mother, you know, she was maybe when she died, 38.
    Or when I knew her she was maybe 32 or 33 or 34.
    So she was an old woman.
    You know, I looked at my mother like a child
    looks at the mother.
    He doesn't look at his mother as if she were also once young
    or she was a child.
    But for me, she was a mother, another generation, old.
    But now when I look at those pictures,
    the thoughts flood into my mind.
    She was a child.
    She was an adolescent.
    These things come only late.
    And this is a--
    well, this is a terrible crime, what they did.
    It is.
    You see, honestly, I want to tell, I can't forgive.
    We talk about today, you must forgive
    but you must never forget.
    It's not for me to forgive.
    It's for the dead to forgive.
    The victims to forgive.
    Who am I to forgive?
    I will never forgive the Germans.
    The question is, of course, what does a new generation--
    difficult. I don't know.
    I can't, I can't deal with the Germans,
    whether it's a new generation or the old generations.
    I will not deal with this.
    I won't even think of it because it's
    too difficult even to analyze and crystallize
    this whole situation.
    But I have, I carry rancor in my heart against the Germans.
    Outrageous, disgusting people to do such things to other people.
    It's beyond my comprehension, just beyond.
    I can't make it out.
    I know when I see a dog or a cat suffering,
    I mean, I have compassion, or men
    begging for money or hungry.
    Without these feelings, well, I have no idea.
    Even people who deal with these things,
    I don't think there's an explanation for that at all.
    But don't talk to me about forgiveness.
    I will not forgive.
    When you were sent away from them,
    how long did you live in the hostel?
    Oh, maybe about seven, eight months.
    And the war broke out.
    And we were all evacuated to a small town.
    All school children were evacuated from London,
    which was bombed, as you know.
    And they were sent to smaller towns.
    And the schools were erected there in those little towns.
    Where were you sent?
    To a place called Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire,
    maybe an hour from London.
    And I stayed with a Gentile family, very nice.
    The problem only arose when their son
    was set to join the army.
    So he joined the 6th airborne army, which were parachutists.
    And he was sent to Palestine.
    [LAUGHS] And there were those, you know,
    those terrorists, the Etzel and the Lehi
    the Jewish underground playing havoc with the 150,000
    British soldiers.
    So he used to write home letters what the dirty Jews do to them.
    [LAUGHS] And I was in his parents' home.
    So that created a little bit of a problem.
    How people were in the family?
    How many children?
    Oh, they were an elderly couple.
    And they had two daughters and this son.
    And one daughter had a husband.
    His name was Benjamin.
    And he was a very bright man.
    But what he used to do, he used to deliver bread.
    And on the weekend I used to go with him.
    Delivered bread in a van and I helped him.
    And he told me wonderful stories.
    He came from a very religious home, Christian.
    And his parents made him go to church three times a day
    or something like that.
    He rebelled.
    And he joined the army to get away from them.
    And he joined the Air Force.
    And unfortunately, he was shot down over the Gulf of Biscay
    and he died.
    And I was really heartbroken because he was something
    which I could relate to.
    He got somebody I could speak to.
    The others were really--
    English working people are primitive.
    They are not educated.
    They have very little knowledge.
    You know, I could never speak to them.
    Although, I was only a child.
    But some things I could maybe speak to them about.
    About Judaism, about my religion,
    about my life in Germany and so forth, about my parents.
    I couldn't talk to them about it.
    They talked about their daily lives
    and about their livelihood and maybe
    about football and about beer.
    That's the things they talked about,
    which was even then strange to me.
    But Ben was a little bit of a knowledgeable man.
    He was a little bit of an intellectual.
    He had read things.
    So I had spiritual contact with him.
    And I liked him very much.
    And then when he died over the Gulf of Biscay,
    I was heartbroken.
    He was one link which I had that went.
    So did that leave you feeling very lonely?
    Very.
    I was always lonely.
    I was always lonely.
    I was living in a Gentile home.
    And I had to eat the Gentile food, even bacon and pork,
    which I would never touch.
    I had to sort of fall in with the pattern of their living.
    I couldn't be any different.
    But it irked me.
    It irked me that I had no choice.
    And the terrible loneliness about me.
    I was all by myself.
    And thank God, I don't think it has left on me any mark.
    Because I feel myself to be a normal person, thank God.
    Was the food a culture shock?
    Yeah.
    Well, if you know about English food with the Yorkshire pudding
    and everything's boiled, and the cup of tea with the milk
    and so forth, you know?
    I acclimatized myself to it.
    I lived.
    And of course, there was rationing in England
    in those days during the war.
    And the way of eating--
    everybody had to eat with a peculiar mannerism.
    The fork isn't held like this, but it's
    held the other way around and peculiar.
    The fork is built in such a way that there's
    a hollow the food should go into.
    But the British hold it the other way around.
    So I learned all that.
    They have a good table manners, the British.
    But they're very sparse in eating.
    They don't eat a lot.
    They're very careful with what they spend.
    But I was never hungry.
    It was OK.
    What was the food like?
    What did you get with rations?
    Oh, bread wasn't rationed, for one thing.
    Butter was rationed.
    Milk was rationed.
    Tea was rationed.
    Meat was.
    Everything was rationed.
    But it was enough to keep you going.
    There was no petrol, gas for the car.
    No cars ran.
    But I think everything was rationed.
    Maybe bread, I think, was not rationed
    if I remember correctly.
    Eggs were rationed.
    Fish.
    Everything.
    Everything had to be bought on ration cards.
    I was talking to a British woman whose mother
    was alive during the war.
    And this woman told me that all of--
    she said all of.
    I don't know if it was really all of.
    All of the British mothers would have arsenic or cyanide,
    some poison.
    But they kept it in the house in case the Germans ever actually
    would be landing.
    And they intended to kill their children with it
    and gas themselves.
    I don't think so.
    Maybe there were some who thought.
    I know that the woman I lived with, with the family,
    she said if the Germans would come,
    she would put her head into the gas oven.
    Now, if the Germans would have come
    I doubt that she would have done that.
    After all, the Germans did capture the Netherlands
    and Belgium and France.
    And the whole population didn't commit suicide.
    Some people were taken away for slave labor and so forth.
    Some people were killed.
    But on the whole, the whole population survived.
    I mean, they left them in peace.
    Now, they wouldn't have killed--
    OK, go ahead.
    I don't believe that people had cyanide or arsenic.
    I don't know whether they could have got it from,
    but this was a matter of just saying these things.
    I don't think meant anything.
    It meant more something that they wouldn't
    want to live under the German domination,
    but I don't think it was serious the whole thing.
    People don't just commit suicide and take their lives
    or the lives of their children.
    It is more of a phrase than reality.
    Did the family you live with treat you as one of the family
    or as a guest or how did they treat you?
    They treated me very nicely.
    Well, the scheme was to take in children.
    The scheme was financed by the government.
    They received some money for it.
    And they felt maybe their patriotic duty to do this.
    But they were very decent and very nice
    and, decent people, very solid, simple people.
    What did you do for recreation?
    Oh, I used to belong to the Boy Scouts.
    And then we had these outings from time to time.
    And sometimes, we used to go to the cinema.
    We used to roam the streets and maybe what all children do.
    Nothing out of the ordinary.
    I don't think there was much recreation
    in those days in England.
    Everything was towards the war effort.
    And whatever occasion there was maybe cinema, not much more
    than that.
    Were you in touch with your parents?
    I received two letters from them through the Swiss Red Cross,
    and that's why I knew where they were.
    That's why I had the address.
    And later on, I was able to go there when I came-- well,
    while I was a soldier, I went to Belgium to try and find them.
    And I went to the address which I have through the letters I
    received from the Red Cross.
    But otherwise, not, I had no contact with them at all.
    Because it was a war, you had no contact.
    Did you experience much anti-German prejudice
    in the village?
    Well, in the beginning, they knew that we were from Germany,
    but then soon they realized that, of course,
    we were Jewish.
    And there was a difference being German and being German Jewish.
    And I don't think there was any kind of enmity towards us,
    they were fundamentally good people.
    Except of course after the war, oh, no, during the war
    even when the British were attacked
    by the Jewish underground, then there was some feeling.
    They didn't like that.
    But not really-- it wasn't bad, it was OK.
    Did you remain in touch with family after the war?
    No.
    I lost complete contact of them.
    I don't think they are alive today.
    Maybe their children, the grandchildren might be around,
    but their children already must be very old now.
    Because they were then, maybe, in their 30 or 35,
    close to their 40s, so they must be 90 now or maybe close
    to 100, their children.
    Did you and the family that you lived with,
    did you got to love each other?
    No, I don't think so.
    I don't think there was this kind of relationship of love.
    There was just a decent affectionate,
    but love you give to it solely not to strangers.
    You were in the Jewish Brigade?
    Yes.
    Can you talk about that?
    Well I think the Jewish Brigade was formed in 1944.
    And who ever wanted to, Jewish personnel, Jewish soldiers
    could opt to join it.
    And of course, I immediately opted for it,
    and I was transferred.
    I was sent to Italy where the Jewish Brigade was.
    I came to Napoli, and they were already there in the north.
    And I joined them there.
    And it was almost towards the end of the war.
    There were a few small battles which we took part in,
    and then we were sent to Belgium and Holland.
    And then, they were suspended.
    They were sent back to Palestine.
    I went to Germany when I went back to my British unit,
    and I stayed in Germany another year and a half.
    That was my first contact with Palestine
    with the Palestinians.
    It wasn't Israel then, of course, in those days.
    So I saw the first time people from Palestine,
    from Kibbutzim and Moshavim and so forth.
    In your first interview that we did in March,
    you mentioned that when you were a kid that children recited
    anti-Semitic verses to you.
    Yes, yes.
    Do you remember any of those and tell us
    about that and what they contained and so
    forth in those situations?
    They were cold and lewd kind of things and terrible words.
    They still exist today, I think.
    And they used to chant them all the time
    about Jews being dirty and filthy and being pigs
    and what else?
    It was terrible things really.
    What were the kinds of situations
    in which you would hear this?
    Was this after school?
    Yeah, after school, they would--
    any time they used to see me.
    They used to chant and they used to sing them and so forth.
    And it really doesn't affect me anymore.
    In those days, of course, it was terribly humiliating
    because I was in a different situation.
    Today, if anybody would call me even a dirty Jew,
    I wouldn't even care.
    It would just kind water off a duck's back.
    Makes no difference to me.
    OK.
    I had one other question.
    You mentioned again in your first interview,
    you said that when you were a kid,
    you knew a fellow who was a Polish communist.
    And then last year, you met him and he
    had changed his views about communism and politics
    dramatically.
    Was this Jonny, the person that you--
    No, no, no, no.
    These were my--
    Tell us a little about this person and this change
    of political views.
    No, these were my cousins.
    Oh, your cousins?
    My cousins in Paris.
    They were all communists.
    They were fervent communists.
    Communists could do nothing wrong.
    Russia could do nothing wrong.
    This is back in the '20s and '30s?
    No, that was in '45 when the war ended.
    Oh, I see.
    That was in '45, and I met them in Paris.
    I think I have recorded this entire recordings.
    I said when I met them in Paris, they expressed their views
    on communism, and communism was going
    to save the world and so forth.
    And then, of course, everything changed.
    Even the state was created and slowly, maybe in the '70s,
    they all came to Israel to visit me,
    and they came every vacation.
    We occasionally spent in Israel.
    They were very pro-Israel then.
    In those days, they were against the establishment of the state.
    And the state wasn't then founded.
    But when was talking about creating
    a Jewish state and they said, no, Jews shouldn't have
    a state of their own, Jews who live in France
    are Frenchmen and Jews who live in England are English
    and so forth.
    But thank God, later, they came to their senses,
    and they became very Jewish and very, very zionistic.
    Can you tell us anything about the changes
    that they went through personally?
    I have no idea.
    I hadn't seen them in the intermittent years.
    Probably, it's kind of an evolution.
    You get disenchanted with communism.
    After all, they came from a kind of a bourgeois family.
    They were not employed people, they work for themselves
    in textiles.
    And so we all go, every one of us goes through these phases.
    We all are rebels when we are in our youth.
    And then slowly, we evolve and we develop
    and we come to our senses.
    We look at things different.
    Even now, what is happening in Russia,
    it's becoming hopefully a democracy.
    People change their minds about communism.
    It's really not a system which can work.
    I mean it's a good idea and saying
    the quality of the classes is a wonderful idea,
    but maybe not meant for human beings.
    When you were in England, were you
    allowed to talk about your experiences in Germany?
    When you were a kid?
    I never spoke about them.
    I didn't have anybody to speak to about them.
    Besides, all the kids have these similar experiences.
    And as I explained to my landlady
    where I lived with them, I never spoke to them
    about these things.
    I don't they would have grasped what I was telling them.
    And nobody asked you?
    Nobody asked.
    Nobody asked.
    I never spoke about that.
    Would you have liked somebody to ask?
    No, but you see, when I was that age and that at that stage,
    I thought that was a natural thing to be treated like that.
    I didn't think it was out of the ordinary.
    I think Jews had to be treated that way.
    I didn't rebel.
    I thought that was the order of things.
    I didn't know any different until I developed and evolved
    and so forth.
    And then I knew different.
    But as a child, I grew up with this kind
    of treatment, this kind of attitude
    that we Jews were always treated in such a terrible manner.
    But we never rebelled, we didn't know any different.
    So when I came to England, why I tell such a thing?
    You don't talk about natural things.
    And slowly, it takes time for your mind to grow and see
    things in a different way.
    And then, of course, I became a completely different person.
    Were there any sayings or beliefs
    that surprised you or customs when you went to England?
    To England?
    No.
    England it's an island, it's isolated.
    It has different customs altogether.
    Many things surprised me.
    For instance, when I came to England,
    I saw many children in torn clothes
    which I never seen in Germany.
    I saw slums, which I really never in Germany.
    I thought England was a rich country.
    It was an empire, and I saw poor people suddenly.
    I never realized that.
    And, of course, the language and of course
    the mannerism, everything was different
    than I was used to Germany.
    But then I was a child.
    You get used to these things, and they were not
    things which were harmful.
    They were just different, and they weren't bad.
    So you get used to these things and you accommodate yourself
    to these things.
    There were no slums in Germany?
    Not that I remember.
    Not the way I saw in London.
    It was dreadful.
    Can you describe it?
    Yeah, well, one day, a boy, a schoolmate of mine
    took me to his home.
    And bare walls and water was running down the wall
    and the floor was broken, the steps were broken.
    I've never seen anything like it.
    Poor, poor home.
    Rickety furniture, very dirty, and the kitchen was awful.
    I'd never seen it ever before.
    How come you were sent to England and your sister wasn't?
    I don't know.
    Maybe, my mother wanted to keep one child.
    I can't really answer that.
    I don't think she realized or anybody realized what
    their fate was going to be.
    So she kept the girl with her.
    And then hopefully, when the war's over--
    there was no war in 1938.
    After all this has blown over, and then
    we would be meet again, and we would be a family again.
    So she kept one child with her.
    She was the only girl.
    But it's a difficult question to answer.
    They sent all three of us away and the girl she kept.
    Because you were boys?
    Because, I don't know, she was the youngest.
    What trade school did you attend in England?
    It's the ORT School.
    Old School?
    ORT, O-R-T. And it's a Jewish technical school.
    It's all over the world.
    It's financed and organized by the ORT.
    It's a Jewish for the habilitation and training
    of children for trades.
    It was in Leeds, in Yorkshire.
    And I went there for two years and I learned metalwork,
    like on a lathe and turning and filing and whatever.
    Earlier, in one of our interviews,
    you talked about a story.
    A friend told you about people in Lithuania?
    And they also said something about the Lublin ghetto?
    Yes.
    Can you tell me more about?
    These are two different things.
    I think that a schoolfriend I met,
    the only one I met, I think he was in Lithuania,
    and he had to dig graves for the dead.
    And the ground was so hard, they had
    to be given dynamite to blow up to make graves.
    That's about Lithuania.
    I think that's the only thing I mentioned about Lithuania
    that he was in a camp in Lithuania
    and that was his task to bury the dead.
    And it stayed with me because this idea of digging
    the ground with dynamite, they couldn't open the ground
    because it was so frozen.
    And Lublin, I went--
    I was in a home in Stettin, in Szczecin.
    And the whole population of the town was sent to Lublin.
    And from there, they were sent to the concentration camp.
    But the whole congregation of Stettin was sent to Lublin.
    That's what the same person told me.
    Why don't we get the spellings and then we can come back.
    OK, OK.
    Well, might as well start with Stettin.
    S-T-E-T-T-I-N. It is Szczecin today.
    I don't know how to spell it in Polish.
    It's become part of Poland, but it's in Pomerania,
    and I spelled it for you.
    Thanks.
    What town were you in in Britain when they evacuated you
    to the village?
    What village was that again?
    It was Hemel Hempstead.
    Hemel?
    Hempstead.
    How do you spell Hemel?
    H-E-M-E-L and an apostrophe and then Hempstead,
    H-E-M-P-S-T-E-A-D.
    And the town that you were taken to in Holland?
    Hook von Holland.
    How do you spell that?
    H-O-O-K V-A-N and then Holland, H-O-L-L-A-N-D.
    Now, when you were reading the first story,
    you mentioned that it was dedicated
    to your four grandchildren.
    Yes.
    How did you spell their names?
    Rotem is R-O-T-E-M and then his sister Tamar, T-A-M-A-R.
    And there is Natanel, which means given by God, Natan,
    N-A-T-A-N-E-L, Natanel.
    And there's Gal, G-A-L.
    You also mentioned something that
    sounded to me like Schumer?
    Shimon.
    And that's?
    S-H-I-M-O-N.
    Now, in the second story, you said a phrase that sounded
    something like guards in [Personal name] [Personal name]
    something like that.
    I mentioned [? Elohim? ?]
    I'm not sure, that's what it sounded like,
    but I could wrong.
    Did I say the name in Hebrew?
    Possibly.
    It's what it sounded like.
    It was guards in then this word.
    If you make it clear, maybe, I know exactly what you--
    Elowen maybe?
    I didn't mention [? Elohim. ?] I don't think so.
    Did I quote it from the Old Testament that one?
    No.
    Ephraim?
    It was near the beginning.
    That's OK.
    We'll just skip that one.
    OK.
    Now, Uzi is spelled?
    Pardon?
    Uzi?
    Uzi is spelled--
    I think U-Z-I.
    U-Z-I. And that's the gun.
    Then there was town that you arrived in your story.
    Birgafgafa.
    That's spelled?
    B-I-R-G-A-F-G-A-F-A, Birgafgafa.
    And Elarish, E-L-A-R-I-S-H.
    Were there any others?
    Gaza, G-A-Z-A.
    Then Shuafat?
    Shuafat, S-H-U-A-F-A-T. I got it you remember Shuafat.
    Now there is a phrase that was something like, proceed to--
    sounded to me like--
    Kiriya, Kyriya.
    That is the headquarters of the army.
    That's where all the officers are.
    It's K-I-R-I-Y-A, Kiriya.
    And IDF?
    Israeli Defense Force.
    Golan Heights?
    G-O-L-A-N and Heights you know.
    Mihail?
    Mishael, Michael, exactly like Michael.
    Oh, OK.
    Michael.
    It is spelled?
    M-I-S-H-A-E-L, like Michael.
    Thanks.
    Now, there was also something that
    sounded like gildfish from the-- and I didn't get the word.
    Pardon?
    There was also--
    Oh, gildfish.
    Yeah, what kind of fish is that?
    It's kind of is a something fish in the kinneret.
    Can you spell it?
    I've forgotten.
    Something grilled, to grill a fish.
    Gild fish?
    No, grill.
    G-R-I-L-L-E-D, to grill a fish.
    Oh, to grill a fish.
    Oh, I'm sorry.
    I'm sorry.
    I have a problem with my r's.
    OK.
    So it's grilled fish the what?
    From the kinneret.
    And that's spelled?
    K-I-N-N-E-R-E-T. Kinneret.
    Thanks a lot.
    Good.
    It really helps the transcribers.
    I'm going to conclude the interview for today
    and continue it another time.
    But these stories don't really belong to this or do they?
    Yes, they do.

    There is no transcript available for this track

    OK.
    Actually, it's probably getting real close to the end now.
    Let me ask you a couple of questions
    that I've asked before because it
    was so long ago that we did this so I
    don't remember every question.
    Did you attempt to get anything back,
    any possessions from friends and neighbors after the war?
    Well, as you know, part of the history,
    the history of the restitution, Ben-Gurion met with, Adenauer .
    I think in the Waldorf Astoria in New York,
    and they came to an agreement that the Jews
    personally and the Jewish state should be restituted.
    Money should be given what the Germans had done.
    So I having lost my parents, I received--
    I had a share with my two brothers and so forth
    and loss of education.
    I received a sum of money but not really very much,
    maybe $12,000, $10,000.
    I don't remember exactly.
    And my wife received some money but nothing in ratio,
    in comparison, to what we should have got.
    My wife, for instance, she had to start work in agriculture
    at the age of 11 or 12, and she had no education,
    formal education, whatsoever.
    So we received some money.
    We had a house.
    We still have a house in the town I was born in.
    And when I was back there 1 and 1/2 years ago,
    I went into that house.
    This is almost the only house of the Jews
    who lived there which is still inhabitable.
    The other house, our old haunts--
    I went to several houses of people I knew--
    and they were just shells.
    Similar to East Germany, didn't build or repair anything
    at all.
    It's unbelievable.
    But our house still stands.
    And there are two people living in it.
    A girl downstairs.
    And it is a really not a bad house and nothing
    to shout about, but it's not a bad house.
    It's very close to the center and with a little bit
    of a imagination I could say that with the reunification
    of Germany, they are building, the house
    will have potential value.
    Maybe they'll tear it down and build a --
    I'm sure in time to come, it will go up in value.
    So I contacted the German authorities,
    and they received several letters.
    And then they directed me toward the city itself.
    And I have written them a letter.
    In the meantime, you know, asking for that house back,
    but in the meantime, I have received no response.
    And if I do, it'll probably be a prolonged--
    I don't know.
    I know it's going to be.
    It's not fair.
    It's our house.
    And when I knocked on the door to go in,
    I had to ask permission but I could have a look at the house.
    And I, you know, I showed you photographs of that house.
    You know, I went there and I saw in my mind
    my family sitting on the Shabbat table with the candles on.
    I saw my father and my mother and all the children.
    And my father made kiddush.
    I saw all that.
    My mind I saw I slept in my parents' bedroom.
    I saw the kitchen where my mother made the food,
    and I went into the yard where we
    used to split the wood for the and you
    know where we used to heat the stove with wood
    to do in those days to cook the food.
    It's all the same.
    Nothing has really changed except it
    was dilapidated a bit.
    Same house.
    And I remember I was 11 years old when I left,
    but I remembered it very well.
    I didn't remember the slanting roof.
    But I sat opposite at my friend's house.
    He lives opposite.
    I sat at the window for hours looking at the house,
    and I saw my mother coming out of the house dressed
    with a hat and a coat and have bag going shopping.
    I saw her.
    I saw, you know, in my imagination,
    I saw her going out.
    And I saw my father and we had a shop there.
    Customers as you know I have a hell of a vivid imagination.
    I saw the customers.
    We had a shop.
    And they all came in, and they bought things and so forth.
    And then I had to knock on the--
    I came the first day.
    There was nobody there.
    The first thing I did when I came off
    the plane in Frankfurt, I rented a car in Frankfurt.
    No, no.
    In Frankfurt, and I took a plane to Hamburg.
    And I rented a car, and I went over the border.
    It wasn't-- I needed a visa in those days, wasn't unified.
    The first thing I did, I had been six hours
    from the plane and another two hours from Frankfurt
    to Hamburg, another three hours driving with the car.
    Before I did anything, I went to our house.
    And then I was standing in front of our house.
    I couldn't believe that I had reached it.
    I just dreamt all the time that I was
    standing in front of our house.
    And when I was about to enter, I always woke up.
    I was never able to enter.
    And there I was actually in front of our house.
    I couldn't believe it.
    Couldn't believe.
    I had to pinch myself to believe that I'm standing right
    in front of our house.
    So there's absolutely no justice may be in this world.
    Our house, it's my house.
    I suppose it's my house, belonged to my parents.
    And there were two strange girls living in that house,
    and I had to ask permission to whether I could look,
    and they were very nice.
    They let me look around.
    And I went up to the loft, and I went down to the cellar,
    and I went up the stairs, and I went to every room,
    and I photographed every single room.
    And I was shaken.
    I mean, I didn't show it, but I was really shaken.
    Completely, I was shaken to my core.
    It was a horrible experience.
    I didn't feel well there.
    The food was bad.
    And I don't touch their food and I don't touch pork.
    I never touch pork.
    I'm not that kosher, I will never touch pork.
    And everything in Germany's pork was awful.
    The smell of it, I couldn't take it.
    And then I asked only for vegetarian.
    They haven't got--
    Cheese, they have cheese, but the cheese
    is so bad that it caused me such heartburn.
    Every night, I went to sleep, the stomach juices came up.
    Then I went to the shop.
    I bought milk.
    I only drink milk and milk in order
    to soothe the terrible revolution in my stomach.
    It was burning inside me.
    Couldn't take it anymore.
    So that reminds me of a story which happened to me
    the following --
    I know whether I told that story.
    I'm full of stories.
    When I left that day, I loaded my baggage onto the car boot.
    I had gone to Did I tell this story?
    German markings on there.
    And I was about to leave this little town to West Germany,
    to Hamburg, and then fly to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt,
    Tel Aviv.
    Two elderly men passed me.
    And one of them came up to me, and he saw the car
    with the West German markings.
    And he grabbed hold of my hand and said in German,
    he said to me, how do you do?
    Where you from?
    From Munich?
    From Frankfurt?
    I said, no, I'm from Jerusalem.
    So like saying Jerusalem, like you
    would say, for instance, if you would say, what language do you
    speak?
    You say in English, it sounds like Greek to me.
    If, you know--
    If you say it to somebody in Germany,
    you're from Jerusalem like--
    there's a German saying, where are you from?
    I'm from Buxtehude, from Honolulu.
    You know, it's like a joke.
    He said, what do you mean you're from Jerusalem?
    I said, well, I'm from Israel, I'm from Jerusalem.
    So he turned to his friend and said, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    He's nuts.
    You know, he's sort of impatient with him.
    I didn't want to answer him but, in fact, I am from Jerusalem.
    You know, I spoke German.
    He gave me up as a bad joke.
    So anyway, I took the car, and I drove towards the border
    in order to--
    And I had still some East German money, and I was hungry.
    I hadn't eaten, you know.
    And I thought-- and I came to the border crossing
    and-- on the East side still-- and I
    asked is there a restaurant Yeah, Huge restaurant.
    You can go in and eat.
    I went into that restaurant.
    It was full with people, and the same smells, poor, poor.
    It was smelly.
    You go to an American restaurant, there is no smell.
    It's beautifully clean.
    Every restaurant you go into in America, no smell, nothing
    from the kitchen.
    It is beautiful.
    The service is good.
    Immediately they pour cold water.
    Would you like coffee, sir?
    There's no such thing there.
    So when I smelled that, I said, well, I
    have still some German--
    East German currency.
    I want to get rid of it.
    So I said to the waitress, where can I sit down?
    She said, sit down there.
    There you have to join tables.
    You can't sit by yourself on one table like in America.
    Say you have to join somebody where there's a single seat,
    and there are three or four people, you have to join them.
    So there was a man.
    There was a table for two.
    There was a man sitting there.
    And there was one seat, and he sat there.
    And the man was eating.
    And then the waitress came up to me
    and said, what would you like?
    I said, have you got the menu?
    And I looked again and schwein this and schwein that.
    You know, pork this, pork that.
    I said, well, have you got something vegetarian?
    She didn't even know what I was talking about.
    I said, well, maybe bring me some cheese.
    And I had this experience cheese already
    and I said, maybe here, they have decent cheese.
    What's the big deal?
    Cheese is made out of milk, so what can go wrong with cheese,
    for crying out loud?
    So the man says to me, in German he says to me,
    don't be concerned.
    She doesn't know what kosher is.
    I looked at him.
    You know an East German should know what kosher means.
    He said, no, I'm from Hamburg.
    I'm West German.
    So he knew what kosher means.
    He knew what kosher was.
    I was a little bit pleased about the man
    who knows what kosher is.
    So she brought me this cheese.
    It was the same cheese.
    Oh, not today.
    And he had a big meal.
    And then he turned to me, and we talked a little bit.
    And then he said to me the following.
    He said-- he asked me first, where I was from
    and I explained to him, and I asked him.
    Then he said, I got a terrible problem.
    Maybe you could help me.
    I said to him, I don't know.
    Maybe you'd tell me what your problem is.
    He said, you know I'm married, and my wife is gone now.
    And I'm on a visit to East Germany, but I have a mother.
    She's very old.
    And she used to be a big something in the Nazi party,
    and she still lives in the glories of the Nazi party.
    And every time I have visitors in the house,
    she bursts into the room, and she raises her hand,
    and she shouts, Heil Hitler.
    What shall I do with such a woman?
    I said, I'm [INAUDIBLE],, take a revolver and shoot her.
    I said, look, she's your mother.
    You've got to honor your mother.
    I mean, your mother apparently is not quite right in the head.
    I mean, if she does such a thing.
    He says, well, she isn't.
    Either you can do one or two things.
    Make sure when you have visitors to lock her into a room then
    she doesn't come, or send her to a home.
    He says, that's a good idea.
    And it's sort of--
    it's a brilliant idea to come up with such thing.
    That was another little experience
    I had before I crossed into West Germany.
    You know, the experience I have every time I'm in Germany,
    I'm very annoyed, always very angry.
    I speak to people angrily and so forth.
    Terrible.
    I should not go, really.
    I've been many times back to Germany in the meantime,
    but I feel so angry when I'm there.
    It's unbelievable.
    I look at the people who probably have nothing
    to do with the Holocaust.
    They're too young or--
    I know I went onto a wrong plane.
    I had to board a plane, and I went to the wrong entrance.
    And the number on my ticket didn't tally
    with the number on the seat.
    And it says, you're on the wrong plane,
    and I quickly went off the plane.
    It almost took off with me to a different destination.
    So there was a stewardess on the ground.
    And she said, you went--
    I said, and I was annoyed.
    I was annoyed.
    I mean, it was my fault.
    So she turned to me and she said to me in German,
    why are you so annoyed?
    It is no problem.
    I've already phoned for a bus to take you back to the--
    what do you call it?
    To the-- you know, where the people are.
    Terminal?
    Terminal.
    To the terminal.
    Don't worry.
    You have plenty of time to catch your right plane.
    But why are you so annoyed?
    Why are you so angry?
    So I said, do you know why I'm angry?
    I said, I'm angry because I came back to Germany.
    She knew looking into my passport or something
    that I was an Israeli.
    I have an Israeli passport.
    I said, that's why I'm annoyed.
    I'm not annoyed about the fact that I went on the plane.
    I think this is a punishment from heaven, I said.
    That I went on the wrong-- everything
    goes wrong here in Germany.
    I shouldn't have come back.
    She was a young girl, maybe 21 or 22, so forth.
    She didn't say one word.
    Maybe we shouldn't go to Germany.
    Well.
    Did you ever seek psychiatric help after the Holocaust?
    No.
    I don't think I needed it.
    I think myself to be completely balanced and normal.
    I don't think anything's wrong with me.
    I'm very pragmatic.
    I didn't feel that I needed any.
    After all, I didn't go through the camps.
    And I don't think the inmates of the camps,
    the survivors' camp did get that kind of treatment,
    so why should I?
    It's never been--
    I don't think necessary for me.
    I feel I'm a happy person.
    I don't feel sad.
    I don't feel-- despite the fact that--
    I think I've been strengthened so for all this.
    I'm a much more conscious Jewish person today.
    I'm very proud Israeli.
    Very proud to be Jewish.
    I've come to America.
    I've seen the Jewish community in America.
    I'm very proud of them.
    I go to synagogue.
    I have lots of contact with Jewish people,
    and I see in every Jewish person something very,
    very, very, very positive.
    I mean, we have all our failures and some people are not
    that what we want them to be.
    But on the whole, I've met wonderful American Jews,
    the best, strong people, intelligent people,
    cultured people.
    I can only be proud of my life, honestly.
    It's not only the Israelis who are good.
    I think American Jews are first class.
    I've great admiration for them.
    Thinking back, who was most helpful to you?
    It depends where you mean.
    Coming out of, you know, during the time
    while you were still in Germany.
    You know, this is a profound question.
    I can't think of a single person who
    was except the institutions and the--
    who did get me out of Germany, you know.
    Probably it was the Jewish community in conjunction
    with the British government.
    So it was an impersonal thing, but to think of a person who
    was helpful to me, I think it was
    from my own initiative that I--
    whatever I did, whatever it is, whatever I may be,
    it was only through my own--
    through my own work and through my own self development.
    I went-- I left my parents at 11 years old.
    I've never asked anything from anybody.
    I've always felt uncomfortable when somebody was giving me
    something, which--
    I feel uncomfortable when somebody gives me something,
    takes me out to dinner.
    I'd rather pay for it.
    I feel awfully uncomfortable if I'm given something.
    Not that I've been given something because I'd rather
    give and take.
    But the bottom line is that there
    hasn't been a special person or a special case
    where I have been given help.
    Everything has been done through my own initiative.
    Did anyone you considered a friend
    betray you during that period of time?
    Yes.
    And I think all of us here or anywhere
    have this kind of experience.
    You make friends and sometime or another, they--
    you have a kind of a feeling that there
    should have been loyalty.
    There wasn't quite the loyalty you expected
    but then as you grow old, you don't expect maybe
    so much loyalty.
    You take things as they come, and you are more forgiving.
    So I don't expect so much of people today.
    If you want to live together with people, you have to be--
    you have to give.
    And there was a time and stage in my age
    when I was not able to, that I wasn't flexible.
    I'm very flexible today.
    I can see in people that they are people,
    and they have their mistakes, and so I have mine.
    So I will not be too harsh in judgment of people.
    It's OK.
    I have many friends.
    Did you attend the Holocaust survivors' conference in 1985?
    Where was it?
    I think that might have been in DC.
    No.
    No.
    No.
    Did you go to the one that was in Jerusalem in, I believe,
    '81?
    No.
    No.
    No, I'm not a survivor, so--
    I'm not a Holocaust survivor or am I?
    Yeah, we consider you a Holocaust survivor.
    Yes, well, I've never been.
    Because you were forced to leave your home.
    I see, no.
    No.
    I have never been.
    Do you have any questions?
    They may have been covered before, but first thing,
    why do you go back to Germany?
    Oh.
    I tell you why I went back to Germany.
    The first time I went back to Germany
    was after the Six-Day War.
    It was in '67 when my wife had received from Germany
    because she had something wrong with her health
    because of the persecution, and she received what one called
    health--
    for health, you could go to Germany to a sanatorium.
    So we went there, had some terrible experiences,
    and I swore to myself that I'd never go back.
    I'd never go back.
    I tell you this small experience.
    I stayed in a kind of a pension.
    And I had agreed with the woman, the owner of the pension
    that I would pay her so much money.
    And I'm fundamentally a very decent and honest person.
    I don't think I've ever cheated anybody.
    And when it came to paying, she quoted me a higher price.
    And I said to her, I think you're mistaken,
    that we agreed upon a price.
    I think that's a natural thing to say.
    And she ran out, and her husband came,
    and he looked at me with fire in his eyes.
    And I knew immediately that trouble was brewing.
    And I said, why are you so excited?
    I had an agreement with your wife
    that I would only pay so much.
    And now she comes out.
    Maybe she's mistaken.
    And he said-- he didn't even react to that.
    He said, if you don't pay, you will not take your luggage out.
    Just arbitrarily like that.
    I said, I wasn't talking about that.
    I wasn't talking about not paying you.
    I was just-- there seems to be a misunderstanding.
    No misunderstanding, in a terrible way.
    And I have a good relationship when it came to money.
    Because he jumped to the conclusion
    immediately when it comes to money,
    the Jews are all no good.
    That's the conclusion he came to,
    which is, of course, an antisemitic one, which
    is an outrage.
    So I paid.
    I wasn't going to create a furor and give my country
    a bad name for a few pfennigs although I'm
    a man of principles.
    You know I wanted to.
    I was insistent.
    I said, you know what?
    Keep your luggage.
    I'll go to the police.
    But I didn't want it.
    I didn't want to create for a few pfennigs.
    So the next morning, I paid him.
    And when I left, out of almost-- out of embarrassment,
    I spoke to him, and I had something on my hand.
    I had something, a kind of a rash.
    And I was going like this all the time.
    It was itching me.
    So he mimicked me.
    He said, oh, you Jews like money, even like this.
    When I was scratching my--
    I was itching here because I had a rash.
    He mimicked me, and he said, oh, you Jews like money,
    even like this.
    Of course, I see what the Germans always did.
    They made this movement, Jews like money.
    Like this, they used to.
    I remembered as a child when they
    talked about Jews and money, they used to go like that.
    Well, that did something to me.
    Something went right into my brain when he did that.
    And he was in Stalingrad.
    He was captured and then he came back.
    And he went through terrible things himself.
    He hadn't forgotten his antisemitism.
    And I said, tell me--
    I was really mad at him.
    And I said-- whatever I said, I don't want to mention it,
    but I was really rough on him then as I cursed him like hell.
    Bastard.
    He got the money, and we just [INAUDIBLE]..
    Of course, he might have said dirty Jew
    or whatever he-- you know.
    He probably did say that.
    He probably told all the guests what the Jews are.
    Who cares?
    That was a terrible experience and you
    know I'm a man of goodwill.
    Very good relationship until it came to money.
    When I said, there is a misunderstanding
    about this thing.
    And I think it's my valid right to question
    if something was wrong.
    But he associated money with Jews
    in the most terrible manner.
    And that, you know, it really mattered much to me.
    I had my-- and my flag.
    And I had my national anthem.
    And I had my country so the lunatic there.
    Who cares for him?
    I had very, very literally -- but I said-- again, I said,
    you know, we shouldn't have come to Germany.
    It was a punishment from God.
    We shouldn't have even--
    we should have taken our convalescence--
    you can take it in Israel, too.
    You don't have to go to Germany.
    My wife wanted to, so I went.
    But in the meantime, every time I went to Israel,
    it's a long journey, 16 hours, 18 hours.
    So I made a stopover and came over with Lufthansa.
    I think was maybe the cheapest price
    so maybe I'm not such a man of principle
    when it comes to money after all.
    So oh, we stayed the night over in Frankfurt.
    And then I go into a hotel in Frankfurt
    and then people speak to me, and I speak to people,
    and I sit next to people, and I, you know--
    So I've been back to Germany several times.
    And then, of course, I went five days to East Germany.
    So I walk around and memories flood my brain.
    Maybe doesn't matter, really.
    Maybe I shouldn't go or maybe I should.
    I don't know.
    It's not a crucial question.
    My other question is also there was a plan,
    I believe, by Morgenthau after the war to make
    Germany an agrarian society.
    Certainly nothing like the Marshall Plan.
    Would you have come here?
    Would you have thought then, and do you think now
    it would have been a good idea?
    No.
    You know, I'm not an expert in economics.
    The fact that they would not be ever an industrial society
    or will not get help.
    They basically would have to pay and live poorly
    for quite a number of years.
    Well, my instinct would say to me
    that they should be punished like hell, that they
    should live really the way they did, what they did to us.
    But it never works out that way.
    I know too little about the Morgenthau Program
    I know a lot about the Marshall Plan,
    and it did a lot to raise the living
    standard and not only of Germany but the whole of Europe.
    In '45, I was in Europe.
    I was in Holland and Belgium and Italy.
    And I was in the army.
    I saw the destruction of Germany.
    I think that if they wouldn't have helped Germany to rebuild,
    it might have affected-- in Japan,
    it might have affected the living standards
    of many, many people in the world in the wake of making
    them [INAUDIBLE] in the country of Germany,
    which is an industrial country.
    Who am I to say, I like the Germans punished.
    In which way, I don't know.
    Maybe do some good.
    You see, after all, I mean, even it might have an effect
    if Germany would have been a poor country, an agrarian
    country.
    It would have been a reflection even on my own country.
    Maybe my country wouldn't have had this restitution money.
    People [INAUDIBLE] the creative industries with it
    and all kinds of things with it.
    And the living standards sort of went up
    quite a bit because of that.
    Who am I to say?
    And after all, one has to take into consideration in order
    to be fair.
    What does a new generation--
    are they at fault what their parents did?
    You know, it's such a difficult question to answer.
    You know, I've spoken to so many young Germans.
    Nice people.
    I know many, many Germans who are nice,
    who were filled with remorse what they did,
    what their country did.
    Even in East Germany, while I was standing
    in front of my house ringing the bell, the very first moment
    I arrived, a girl arrived.
    And she also rang the bell, and I said, who are you?
    And she was an insurance agent.
    And she was also trying to reach those two girls.
    And then she spoke to me and she says, who are you?
    I looked strange.
    Maybe a little bit--
    maybe my [INAUDIBLE] you know, I looked different.
    Different.
    You can-- maybe my dress was a little bit different,
    not quite East German.
    I had a West German car then.
    And I told her who I was.
    I lived in America, but I'm an Israeli, and I was born here.
    And this is our house.
    So she started to cry, real big tears.
    And I must have been woman of maybe 28;
    she had two children, very nice looking, very quiet.
    She looked a nice girl, a real nice girl,
    and she cried when I told her my story.
    Didn't take long, 4, 5 minutes.
    I gave a background, and she cried so much.
    And she said, oh my God.
    What we Germans did to you will be, I can't--
    So, you know, I'm full of this dilemma.
    I wish upon those dogs, those monsters the worst.
    Can you blame-- I've written a--
    I've read a book about the children of leaders,
    of the German leaders.
    There's a book written by an Israeli psychiatrist.
    He interviewed the children of these monsters,
    of Hess and of--
    no, Himmler, his children died of-- all kinds of children
    of these German leaders.
    I have forgotten exactly but in order to quote,
    but it's terrible what they even go through,
    the children of the German leaders who are still alive.
    One is a minister of a church.
    They're all full of remorse, what their parents did.
    So who am I to say?
    Difficult for me to say, really.
    Going back to your arrival in the--
    to Israel and the time after that in '48
    after the independence and after the armistices,
    what was life in Israel like?
    When you went on the kibbutz, you were then on the kibbutz,
    what did you do?
    How was the social life?
    You mean specifically in the kibbutz or generally?
    Specifically because you were specifically
    in the kibbutz in '48.
    Let's start from there.
    Well, it was a time of upbuilding
    of the state of Israel.
    You know it was the inception, the creation of a new state.
    And surprisingly, all the institutions worked.
    You know, like the ministry of the interior
    and the ministry of the food distribution.
    Everything worked first class in Israel.
    You know, one always says about the Jews, they are disorganized
    and, you know, Judenschule they used to say,
    but everything worked well in Israel.
    The bus service was first class and the--
    well, in short, everything was fine.
    And there was an aura of idealism in Israel,
    which, unfortunately, isn't there today
    as it was in those days.
    People were pioneers.
    They were prepared to go to the desert
    and make the, metaphorically, the desert bloom.
    We were all prepared to do many things which today we
    have become much more a society of materialist, much more.
    People are more out for worldly things.
    But those days, we were very, very patriotic.
    We were prepared to go to the army.
    We were prepared to go to the ends of Israel
    in order to create a new state.
    And people maybe asked for less but then we Jewish
    people are very active, and we are very--
    seeing that Israel is fundamentally a poor country,
    we all have a high living standard.
    Everybody wanted, you know, good living standards and good food
    and good clothing and a vacation here and then.
    And I think Israel has achieved it.
    I went back five, six months ago to Israel,
    and I went to Tel Aviv.
    And I went--
    I mean, you have malls like in America, beautiful malls
    and aesthetic, beautiful cafes and restaurants.
    And I mean, the service is good.
    I mean, still, a lot has to be worked for.
    Many things have still to be done,
    but then you have to take into consideration
    it's a country of immigration.
    It's so many diverse cultures come
    to the country with their own ideas of how
    to make things work.
    And there are cultural issues in Israel.
    So it makes a little bit for harsh living.
    But hopefully, you know, this time
    to come generation and integration.
    Hopefully, things will come a little bit more gracious
    in Israel.
    In the meantime, we have to swallow a bit.
    When you came, you mentioned a German or kibbutz that was
    Yavneh.
    That was made by German--
    people from Germany.
    What was the language?
    What language did you speak?
    Hebrew.
    He spoke Ivritz.
    I didn't speak so well Ivrit, but I
    had learned Ivrit when I was in the Jewish Brigade.
    And I had the rudiments of Ivrit.
    I spoke a little bit, but they all spoke German.
    So just in case I couldn't get through with Hebrew,
    I spoke German.
    I'd never forgotten my German although I was
    only 11 years old when I left.
    But I tried to speak Hebrew, and I mastered it
    in a very short time.
    It's not a difficult language, Hebrew, by the way.
    It's phonetic and it's easy.
    In those [INAUDIBLE] kibbutz, in another kibbutz was there
    a lot of, I mean, were there are a lot of meetings
    to decide what to do, how was that being handled?
    Yeah, it's called an assepha.
    It's called an assepha.
    It's a meeting.
    Every week, the members of the kibbutz used to assemble
    and the problems and the whatever came up,
    we used to sit down and discuss them.
    Although I was not a member of that particular kibbutz,
    so I could not have the right to vote.
    But I used to take part in order to listen in.
    And it was divided into committees and a secretary
    and so forth.
    It was a well organized society which, to this day,
    works very well indeed.
    In fact, I was back five months ago when I went to Israel.
    On my last visit, I went back to the kibbutz which I was
    a founder of after many years.
    And I came back, and all those memories flashed.
    My two sons were born in that kibbutz.
    Not in the kibbutz --
    I was a member of the kibbutz.
    They were born in TIberius.
    And I received the most beautiful
    welcome that it was moving when they saw me and they all
    embraced me and kissed me.
    They had no, you know, after all I had left the kibbutz,
    and I had left the country even.
    So I was a kind of a [INAUDIBLE] which
    I don't like that word because I don't consider myself
    a [INAUDIBLE] because I'm only here on a visit, so to speak,
    and on a long visit.
    So I'm definitely going back to my country.
    But it was a most wonderful visit.
    All those people brought back these wonderful memories
    of the kibbutz, the establishing of the kibbutz.
    Probably went and we erected the first fence and the watchtower
    and the water tower and we created an effect that
    was [INAUDIBLE] by the Arabs.
    They woke up the next morning and there
    was a Jewish settlement.
    And it's a beautiful kibbutz today.
    It has a most wonderful hotel, which looks upon the Kinneret,
    upon the Sea of Galilee.
    And what amazed me most was we had
    hard times in the beginning, really hard times.
    And the food was a lot less then.
    It was poor.
    The food we were served was maybe a five-star hotel.
    The breakfast and the supper and the dinner was--
    you could choose what you wanted.
    Wonderful.
    I couldn't believe the food, much better than each day.
    In fact, I went with a lady.
    She's a lawyer.
    She lives in Berkeley who I've met in a synagogue,
    and she was, at the same time, in Israel.
    And I took her along to the kibbutz.
    And she was she was-- it was a highlight of her visit
    to Israel.
    So all the old [INAUDIBLE] comrades
    the members of the kibbutz that night we
    met and we exchanged memories and spoke
    of the good old times.
    I gave a little talk.
    And I'm in correspondence again.
    You know, I recreated the bond between myself and the kibbutz.
    It's really a wonderful life to live in a kibbutz.
    Why did you leave?
    Why did I leave?
    Well, I suppose maybe I made a mistake.
    I shouldn't have left.
    But I felt there was a kind of a--
    the kind of kibbutz--
    I'm a very-- a person who wants to do things,
    who wants to get on in life.
    I have great ambition.
    In the kibbutz, you cut down your ambition, you can't--
    the only thing you can do--
    I used to be a truck driver in the kibbutz.
    And then I was a as I said, a commander.
    And that's all you could ever reach,
    but I wanted to reach more.
    I want to reach for the stars.
    And I am a very driven person, very dedicated.
    I work very, very hard, you know?
    The man [INAUDIBLE] for the kibbutz, for the country.
    And I was a little bit crazy.
    And there's some people who didn't, and they
    had the same living standard as I.
    And I found that it's an inequity and an injustice.
    I working so hard, have the same kind
    of results of a person who doesn't do nothing.
    So I felt immature in a way.
    Again, I wasn't flexible enough.
    I felt that me working so hard and doing so many things,
    I deserved more.
    And I thought that we'll see something was missing
    that kibbutz, that didn't give scope to a person who
    wanted to reach the zenith.
    I reached a certain line, and you
    couldn't overreach that line.
    So I said, I need to go and do something more than that.
    So I left and that's--
    I did what I did.
    And I became a plumbing contractor, and I did OK.
    I had two children, and I educated--
    I had a very nice house in Israel.
    And I had a comfortable life.
    I made myself a comfortable life.
    In a way, I succeeded.
    You know, top of the world with enough,
    a nice, comfortable life with friends and activities.
    Nothing was missing in my life.
    Moneywise, it was fine.
    I came at quite an advanced age to America,
    and there's nothing missing here for me as well.
    You know, when I was--
    how old was I?
    54, I think I came to America.
    I immediately started to work for somebody
    and then I gave that up and became independent.
    And I have a house today and a couple
    of cars today and nothing missing in my house.
    So this is the kind of person I am.
    That's why I left the kibbutz.
    It restricted me.
    But again, maybe I shouldn't have.
    Did you have any more questions?
    Well, personally, what are you most proud of in your life?
    Tell you that very easily.
    The two most proud moments of my life were the following.
    The most privileged was that I was
    present at the establishment of the Jewish state
    when Ben-Gurion declared the state on the 15th of May.
    Was it '48?
    And I was present at the establishment
    of a Jewish state.
    It was an unbelievable privilege for me.
    And the moment when Moshe Dayan put the officer's thing
    on my shoulder.
    I became an officer.
    I went to an officer's course.
    Moshe Dayan was the commander-in-chief
    of the Israeli army, and I was an outstanding cadet.
    And he took the he took off the white -- you know,
    the white on the epaulets, the white kind of a piece
    of material.
    He took it off and he put on my first insignia
    that I became an officer in the Israeli army.
    That was also an unbelievable fact that I was here,
    an officer in the first sovereign Israeli army.
    Two outstanding moments in my life.
    May have been cut off before.
    What-- well, it's a funny question.
    Can you see anything that was, quote, good
    that came after the Holocaust?
    What was the good, so to speak, if any?
    How can-- well, it's good.
    It's terrible.
    It's the most horrific experience that anybody can--
    affected the Jewish people that--
    a third, every third Jew was killed.
    Third.
    Yeah, we were 18, 16 million we were at least.
    Close to every third Jew was annihilated in that.
    One half million children were gassed, were killed.
    Good, well, hopefully, it united the Jewish people
    against all the dangers lurking in the shadows for us.
    We've become a careful people.
    We can see it in the politics of Israel today,
    that we are so careful about our security, may be overcareful.
    I don't know.
    I don't think anyone can be overcareful.
    But, of course, maybe some people
    deny the Jewish state came out of it.
    Some people say not so.
    Even if the Holocaust would not have happened,
    the Jewish state would have happened in any case.
    It was ripe for it.
    But maybe not.
    But I can't quite answer that.
    I don't think much good can come out of anything like that.
    Maybe some positive things came out that people--
    you see, I remember when I was a child
    and when one spoke to Jews, many said, I'm not a Zionist.
    I don't believe in a Jewish state.
    I want to go to Mexico.
    I want to go to the Argentine.
    I want to go to America.
    I want to go to Canada.
    Even so, many people want to do that today.
    Any responsible Jew will never say I'm not a Zionist.
    So all for the Jewish state, if they have any sense.
    A person who has no sense, I mean, I
    can't talk about these people.
    If any person denies and says, I'm not for Jews,
    then he's nuts.
    He might not want to live there.
    He might not even be a Zionist.
    But to say I'm against the Jewish state,
    then that person is not normal because if that same person
    who's Jewish and something is done to that person,
    he has a whole Israeli army behind him.
    They will do everything in order to save him
    like they saved the Jews in Entebbe and so forth.
    I don't have to go into these.
    If anybody maintains and says I'm not for a Jewish state,
    then I have nothing to talk to them.
    This is not normal.
    So that has maybe come out of the Holocaust.
    All Jews, or normal Jews, will never
    be against the Jewish state like in the olden days.
    And now we don't want to live amongst Jews.
    We are European Jews.
    We are German Jews, Polish Jews, Russian Jews.
    I have this experience with my cousins
    whom I discovered in Paris.
    They were Communists.
    Said no.
    We are Jews, but we are French.
    We are Communists.
    And, of course, even after the Holocaust.
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    And that is great that I can talk to Jews
    and speak to them in the same language.
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    all our eyes light up.
    That's fine.
    Even our differences about Israeli politics
    and Israelis' attitudes, our love for Israel transcends
    that.
    OK, we know.
    Maybe many people don't like the policies of Shamir
    or the policies of [INAUDIBLE].
    We know all that.
    But our love, our positive attitude towards Israel
    transcends politics.
    That's a different story.
    Do you have anything you'd like to say to end this in Ivritz?
    Well, I've been interviewed so many times now, I'm
    running dry, out of stories, but I suppose if you goad me on,
    there'll be more stories.
    I've said many things.
    I said things which I didn't expect
    to say in the very beginning.
    I thought when I should only talk
    about the experiences in connection with the Holocaust,
    but we have interwoven many things like politics
    and affiliations and attitudes.
    And I'm happy that I was able to bring it up from the video.
    Hopefully, this is going to contribute whoever
    looks at it sometimes that I will help this person
    to be maybe a little bit a better Jew
    and maybe increase his love for the state of Israel.
    Thank you.
    Do you want to read that last letter before we end?
    Which letter?
    That you said you got another letter back after you wrote--
    The mayor?
    Is the mayor in East Germany?
    But it's in German.
    You could read it in German and then translate it.
    Tough.
    Can you give this to me?
    I wrote a letter to the mayor of the town I was born,
    and I'm afraid I haven't got it here.
    And in it, I tell him that he knew of my coming to the town,
    and he didn't receive me as a returning resident.
    And it was a rather seething letter.
    I haven't got it here, so it's not relevant.
    Anyway, he wrote me a letter back to my greatest surprise,
    and here's the letter.
    And I will read it first in German
    and then I will try to translate into English.
    It says, [GERMAN] Herr Grossmann, [SPEAKING GERMAN]..
    I'll try to [INAUDIBLE].
    Dear Mr. Grossman, I would like to thank you
    for your letter, which you wrote on the 6th of the 6th, 1990,
    which moved me very deeply.
    I have to tell you that I am the mayor only
    from the 22nd of May 1990.
    I entered this office, and I have
    to carry all the things which my predecessor has left me.
    I belong to the Christian Democratic Party who work
    in conjunction with the Methodist Church in Güstrow
    since July, and we are making the first steps in order
    to reconstruct the Jewish--
    the Jewish population of this town.
    I would be very happy to greet you here back in Güstrow.
    Maybe you will find an opportunity in short time
    to pay us a visit again.
    Best regards.
    [INAUDIBLE] the mayor.
    Thank you.
    And thank you for all of your time and generosity.
    Thank you.
    It was a pleasure.
    And before you go, we need to get the spellings
    of about pages of--
    Oh, good.
    OK.
    Are we still on?
    Let me start.
    Yeah, we're still on.
    Let me start with the names.
    You spell your name.
    I-L-A-N-A. And my last name is spelled B-R-A-U-N. OK,
    and Laurie?
    Mine's gonna be on the slate, so it's all written down
    in the beginning, but it's L-A-U-R-I-E-S-O-S-N-A.
    It's all in the beginning of the tape.
    The stuff that we're concerned with
    are the proper names and stuff.
    So what we're going to do now is read off some of the words
    that you used, and we'd like you to spell them
    for us in as close approximation as possible.
    OK, fine.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Are you--
    Are we rolling.
    That's OK That's good.
    Just speak the word clearly and loudly.
    OK.
    Kindertransport
    K-I-N-D-E-R-T-R-A-N-S-P-O-R-T.
    The Mossad.
    Mossad.
    M-O-S-S-A-D.
    Haifa.
    H-A-I-F-A.
    Tel Aviv.
    T-E-L-A-V-I-V.
    Hachshera.
    H-A-C-H-S-H-E-R-A.
    Alija.
    A-L-I-J-A.
    Exodus Agnes.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    Kibbutz.
    K-I-B-B-U-T-Z.
    Javneh.
    J-A-V-N-E-H.
    Lavi. .
    L-A-V-I
    Should we spell Galilee?
    I think that's [INAUDIBLE] I don't know.
    Irgun.
    I-R-G-U-N.
    Egel.
    E-G-E-L.
    Irgun Zvai Leumi.
    I-R-G-U-N Z-V-A-I L-E-U-M-I.
    Bren Gun.
    B-R-E-N G-U-N.
    Eshdod.
    E-S-H-D-O-D.
    Yishuv.
    Y-I-S-H-U-V.
    Givati.
    G-I-V-A-T-I.
    Ben-Gurion.
    B-E-N G-U-R-I-O-N.
    Kirjat Gat.
    K-I-R-J-A-T G-A-T.
    Chazor.
    C-H-A-Z-O-R.
    Ashkelon.
    A-S-H-K-E-L-O-N.
    Rakusen Matzo.
    R-A-K-U-S-E-N M-A-T-Z-O.
    Sinai.
    S-I-N-A-I.
    Kibbutz and rodges.
    The German--
    Rodges.
    Kibbutz?
    K-I-B-B-U-T-Z R-O-D-G-E-S.
    Tnuva.
    T-N-U-V-A.
    Kastel.
    K-A-S-T-E-L.
    Salame Street.
    S-A-L-A-M-E.
    Jaffa.
    J-A-F-F-A.
    Hapoel Hamisrathi.
    H-A-P-O-E-L H-A-M-I-S-R-A-T-H-I.
    Ramle.
    R-A-M-L-E.
    Lod.
    L-O-D.
    Maabarot.
    M-A-A-B-A-R-O-T.
    Mordechai Levy.
    M-O-R-D-E-C-H-A-I L-E-V-Y.
    Cholent.
    Cholent.
    [INAUDIBLE] cholent.
    Oh, Cholent.
    C-H-O-L-E-N-T.
    Ashkenazi.
    A-S-H-K-E-N-A-Z-I.
    Scfartim.
    S-C-F-A-R-T-I-M.
    Moshav.
    M-O-S-H-A-V.
    Sejera.
    S-E-J-E-R-A.
    Keep going.
    Go ahead.
    [INTERPOSING VOICES]
    We're doing this because the transcriber really needs it.
    Regoshavski.
    Regoshavski.
    R-E-G-O-S-H-A-V-S-K-I.
    Sde Boker.
    S-D-E B-O-K-E-R.
    Negev.
    N-E-G-E-V.
    Golde Meir
    No.
    Jonah.
    J-O-N-A-H.
    Benjamin.
    B-E-N-J-A-M-I-N.
    Uri.
    U-R-I-.
    Bir Kafka.
    B-I-R K-A-F-K-A.
    Degel Adom.
    D-E-G-E-L A-D-O-M.
    Kafar Aza.
    K-A-F-A-R A-Z-A.
    Kantara.
    K-A-N-T-A-R-A.
    Uzi.
    U-Z-I.
    Chanukah.
    C-H-A-N-U-K-A-H.
    Yom Kippur.
    Yom Kippur [INAUDIBLE].
    Yom Kippur.
    Yom Kippur.
    Y-O-M K-I-P-P-U-R.
    Hagah.
    H-A-G-A-H.
    Bir Chamad.
    Bir Chamad
    B-I-R C-H-A-M-A-D.
    Shma Jisrael.
    S-H-M-A apostrophe I-S-R-A-E-L.
    Bar Lev.
    B-A-R L-E-V.
    Mitleh.
    M-I-T-L-E-H.
    And the name of the other path of GIdi
    Giddi.
    J-I-D-E-H. No, no, I'm sorry.
    Giddi.
    G-I-D-D-I. Giddi.
    Jehoshaphat I thought you mentioned he was the commander
    Jehoshaphat.
    Maybe I got it wrong.
    No.
    I didn't mention Jehoshaphat.
    Malach Hamavet.
    M-A-L-A-C-H H-A-M-A-V-E-T.
    Torah.
    T-O-R-A-H.
    Synagogue.
    Oh, that's OK.
    Litani.
    L-I-T-A-N-I.
    Kibbutz Jat.
    K-I-B-B-U-T-Z J-A-T.
    Har Setim.
    H-A-R S-E-T-I-M.
    Seychelles Island, they will understand?
    Seychelles.
    Seychelles Islands?
    Better spell it.
    S-A-Y-C-H-E-L-L-E and islands, you know.
    Gurevich.
    G-U-R-E-V-I-C-H.
    Gonen.
    G-O-N-E-N.
    Yeshiva Bocher.
    Y-E-S-H-I-V-A B-O-C-H-E-R.
    Shmuel.
    S-H-M-U-E-L.
    Ali.
    A-L-I.
    Shmulik.
    S-H-M-U-L-I-K.
    There was a German word.
    Something like weltanschauung.
    Weltanschauung.
    W-E-L-T-A-N-S-C-H-A-U-U-N-G. It's a long word.
    Riches.
    R-I-C-H-E-S.
    Buxtehude.
    B-U-X-T-E-H-U-D-E.
    Pfennigs.
    Pfennigs.
    P-F-E-N-N-I-G-S.
    Assepha.
    A-S-S-E-P-H-A.
    Jored.
    J-O-R-E-D.
    Kinneret.
    K-I-N-N-E-R-E-T.
    Chaverin.
    C-H-A-V-E-R-I-N.
    Laman Hamoledet.
    L-A-M-A-N H-A-M-O-L-E-D-E-T.
    Moshe Dayan.
    M-O-S-H-E D-A-Y-A-N.
    That's it.
    Did you get the German word for Honolulu?
    Buxtehude.
    Buxtehude.
    Buxtehude is a town somewhere.
    Where are you from?
    From Buxtehude.
    OK.
    Well, listen, I really want to thank you again.
    Did you just feel like you're in a Spelling Bee?
    I did well in spelling, huh?
    I never make a mistake in English in spelling.
    In Hebrew, I'm full of mistakes.
    You tell me approximately when this photograph was taken.
    How old am I there?
    Probably 1935?
    1935.
    And you are in this photograph?
    The last one, the tiniest one.
    The tiniest one right on-- right on--
    right
    The left.
    Far left side of the frame?
    And where was this taken?
    In Güstrow.
    In the time I was born in front of the synagogue.
    Which does not exist any longer, the synagogue.
    It was burned on the Kristallnacht.
    And so these are all your schoolmates then or--
    No, no, no, no.
    All children.
    All ages.
    These were all the children of the town.
    And approximately how old were you when the photo was taken?
    Maybe eight.
    Eight?
    So that was--
    Or seven, seven maybe?
    --is you.
    It's a little difficult. I can't get it to zoom any closer.
    That's about as close as I can get.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Abraham Grossman discusses his childhood in Güstrow, Germany; the antisemitism he endured while in school; the restrictions placed on Jews under the Nazi regime; Kristallnacht in November 1938; his transport to Poland; his inclusion on a Kindertransport to England in 1939 with his two brothers; deciding to join the British Army in 1944, his membership in the Jewish brigade; serving during the war in Italy; attempting to learn what happened to his family, and his reunion with them; illegally immigrating to Israel in 1947; his involvement in kibbutz life; Israel's War of Liberation in 1948; eventually emigrating to the United States.
    Interviewee
    Abraham Grossman
    Interviewer
    Ilana Braun
    Peggy Coster
    Sarah Rosenthal
    tanya zatkin
    Date
    interview:  1991 March 26
    interview:  1991 June 19
    interview:  1991 October 31
    interview:  1991 December 12
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    7 videocassette (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Grossman, Abraham.
    Corporate Name
    Great Britain. Army

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with Abraham Grossman on March 26, 1991, June 19, 1991, October 31, 1991, and December 12, 1991. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from the Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project in December 2002.
    Related Materials
    Additional Record Group Number: RG-50.477.0460
    Additional Record Group Number: RG-50.477.0461
    Additional Record Group Number: RG-50.477.0462
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:45:21
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn512344

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    Transcripts (7)
    Time Coded Notes (6)

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    Oral history interview with Adda Gerstel

    Oral History

    Adda Gerstel discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her education in a private school and her graduation from business school in 1929; the death of her mother in 1932 and her father in 1934; her brother losing his work as an attorney because of anti-Jewish laws and taking over the family brewery; her marriage in 1937; her memories of the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, when both her husband and her brother were arrested and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp; the release of her husband and brother; her brother's immigration to the United States; fleeing Germany for Shanghai, China with her husband and young daughter in June 1939; her experiences in a refugee camp in Shanghai, and in the Hong-Kew (Hongkou Qu) ghetto; immigrating to the United States after the war; her family life in San Francisco, CA; and her brother's return to Germany.

    Oral history interview with Clara Markovits

    Oral history interview with Clara Markovits

    Oral History

    Clara Markovits describes her childhood in Budapest, Hungary and Satu Mare, Romania; the increase in antisemitism after the Hungarians seized parts of Romania; her family's deportation to a ghetto in Satu Mare after the Nazi German invasion of Romania in 1944; her family’s deportation to Auschwitz, where she remained from June until October 1944; her subsequent work in a bomb factory near Dresden, Germany from October 1944 until her liberation by the Russians in May 1945; her father's and sister's deaths at Auschwitz and her thoughts of suicide; the aftermath of the bombing of Dresden; her postwar experience in a hospital at Terezin, Czech Republic; her life in Romania and Hungary until her immigration to the United States in 1962; and the emotional and psychological effects of her wartime experiences on her postwar life.

    Oral history interview with Laurence Moitozo

    Oral history interview with Laurence Moitozo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Samuel

    Oral history interview with Leo Samuel

    Oral History

    Leo Samuel, born in 1924, discusses his childhood in Cherna, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the effect of the economic depression of the 1930s on his family; his deportation to Khust, Ukraine in September 1939; the Hungarian annexation of the region; his work as a tailor in Budapest, Hungary and Cherna; his experiences in the ghetto at Khust; the conditions in the ghetto; the things he had heard about the camps; being deported to Auschwitz in early 1944; being separated from his family; his transfer to Płaszów and the conditions there; working as a tailor; his encounters with Göth's assistant Wilek Chilowicz; being transferred to Melk (subcamp of Mauthausen) several months later; the conditions in Melk; the people he encountered; the help he received from a friend; the work he performed building tunnels and crematoria; his transfer to Ebensee; working in the kitchen; his liberation by the United States Army; his postwar life; his immigration to the United States; and his life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral History

    Lily Spitz discusses her childhood in Satu Mare, Romania; her family life; her religious upbringing; the changes she observed after 1939, the increased antisemitism, and the difficulty in attending school; the changes she experienced when her region became part of Hungary in 1944; her family's deportation to a ghetto and the conditions there; her experiences during her family's deportation to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944; the selection process, and her entry into the camp; her experiences in Auschwitz, the work she performed, and the many selections she endured; her transfer by train to Mauthausen in early 1945; being liberated; the medical care she received from the United States Army; her reunion with her surviving siblings and their return to Romania in July 1945; her marriage and family; their immigration to the United States in 1964; and their life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral History

    Melvin Suhd discusses his childhood in Detroit, Michigan; the antisemitism he experienced in school; his education as an electrical engineer; his decision to join the military in 1943; his training in weaponry; his arrival in France in December 1944; the military actions he was involved in; his experiences while helping to liberate Dachau and his emotions at the time; his life after he returned from the front; and the psychological aftermath of his wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral History

    Bernard Broclawski, born January 27, 1917, describes his childhood in Pabianice, Poland; how he began to work at 13 to support his family; his socialist political leanings; his involvement in Jewish socialist organizations from 1936-1939; his awareness of political events in Germany; being drafted into the Polish Army; his time in Soviet-occupied Poland; reuniting with his father and brothers in Grodno, Poland (Hrodna, Belarus); his work as a machinist in Siberian coal mines in January 1940; his work as a German-language teacher in 1941; his arrest for giving a counter-revolutionary speech in 1943; his experiences in prison from 1944 to 1948; his release from prison and return to Poland in 1948; his marriage and the birth of his daughter; his involvement in workers' organizations; his studies at the University of Łódź; the increase of antisemitism in 1968; how and why he immigrated to the United States with his family; their immigration with the assistance of the HIAS (Hebrew Immigration Aid Society); and his life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral History

    Julius Drabkin, born in 1918 in Maritopa, Latvia, describes his parents, Mikhail and Sarah Daviolovna; life before the war when he lived in Riga, Latvia; being a soldier in the Latvian Army until the German invasion in July 1941; living in the ghetto for most of the war; getting married to his first wife, Amalia, in 1941; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; being sent to Kaiserwald camp; being liberated on March 10, 1945 at Stutthof; returning to Riga after the war because he was distressed, even though he had the opportunity to emigrate; the perishing of all of his family during the Holocaust, except for one of his aunts; getting remarried shortly after the war (his wife also lost all her family); having two sons and living in Riga until he immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s; emigrating because his older son found it impossible to pursue his career because he was Jewish; and visiting Riga for the World Conference of Holocaust Survivors.

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral History

    Renee Duering, born January 7, 1921 in Cologne, Germany, describes her childhood in Cologne; moving to Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933; her experiences in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation; getting married in 1941; the time she and her husband spent in hiding; her family's deportation to Westerbork in July 1943; her experiences in Westerbork; her parents’ deportation to Bergen-Belsen; her and her husband's deportation to Auschwitz; how her husband perished in Auschwitz; being a subject of medical experiments, including those involving sterilization; her deportation to three other camps; her experiences on a death march to Ravensbrück in January 1945; her escape during the march; hiding near Dresden, Germany until liberation by the Soviets; living with her sister after the war; moving to Israel; immigrating to the United States; her second marriage; and her joy at becoming pregnant despite the experiments she endured.

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral History

    Werner Epstein discusses his childhood in Berlin, Germany; the anti-Jewish regulations he and his family encountered when the Nazis rose to power; his decision to leave Germany after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing by bicycle to Belgium, where he prospered until the war began in September 1939; being arrested as an enemy alien; his experiences in a series of detention camps in southern France; his arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to Auschwitz; arriving at Auschwitz; volunteering to work in a coal mine in Silesia, where he remained until December 1944; being ill with malaria, which he contracted while in French detention camps; the death march he endured after the camp’s evacuation in advance of the Soviet Army’s approach; being liberated by Russian Mongol soldiers; journeying to a transit camp in Magdeburg, Germany; reuniting with his fiancee; returning with her to Paris, France, where they settled and he became a chef; and immigrating to California in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

    Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania (Chisinau, Moldova); her family's flight after the invasion of Nazi Germany; a traumatic incident in which Romanian soldiers sexually assaulted the women in their group, after which the family returned to their home town; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, Ukraine from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage; her life in Riga, Latvia; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco, California in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral History

    Lore Gilbert, born in Worms, Germany in 1929, describes her childhood in Worms; the antisemitism she experienced as a child; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938 and its impact on her family when her father's assets were confiscated; the family's move to Heidelberg, Germany and their deportation to France; their experiences in Gurs concentration camp; the family's selection by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) to be sent to the Dominican Republic; the Jewish refugee community in Sosua, Dominican Republic; the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina; the security and safety Jewish refugees enjoyed in the Dominican Republic during the war years; her family's immigration to the United States; her father's difficulties in adjusting to their new life; the experiences of her grandparents, who remained in France during the war years and were sheltered by the French Catholic Church; and the trauma and fear she has felt over the years as a result of her Holocaust-related experiences.

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral History

    Rita Goldman discusses her childhood in Berlin, Germany; her parents' painful decision to send her on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for England in 1939; the kindness of the family with whom she stayed; the events of the war years; corresponding with her parents, who had fled to Shanghai, China; her reunion with her parents after the war; and the difficulties she experienced in adjusting to life with them.

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral History

    Mala Holcberg describes her childhood in Poland; her early memories of the Nazi occupation of Poland and crimes committed against Jews and her family's desire to flee Poland; the confiscation of her family's possessions and the family's deportation to an unidentified ghetto; her experiences in the ghetto; the murder of her father; being deported to an unidentified concentration camp, where the inmates were forced to make bombs and grenades; the terrible conditions in the camp and her illnesses; the camp's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Poland; her marriage and family; her present ill health and the lasting emotional effects of her experiences during the Holocaust; and the loss of many family members.

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral History

    Kate Kaiser describes her childhood in Mistek, Austria (now Czech Republic); her marriage and move to Hamburg, Germany; the rise of antisemitism after the Nazi's rise to power; how she and her husband were affected by the Nuremberg Laws; their decision to leave Germany after their daughter was born; the wait to obtain papers; her husband's move to the United States in advance of them; waiting with her daughter in Mistek until August 1938 when their visas arrived; her adjustment to life as an immigrant in the United States; her attempts to find her family after the war; learning of the death of her family, all of whom perished except for one brother and a cousin; and her trip to Prague, Czech Republic in 1998 to discover the details of her mother's fate.

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral History

    Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner describes her childhood in Odessa, Ukraine; her family life and her marriage at age 19; the outbreak of World War II being ejected from her home by her neighbors and being imprisoned with her family in Odessa; the ensuing chaotic events; being separated from two of her brothers; being placed on trains to a small village, where she endured terrible conditions with her younger brother, daughter, and mother; the threat of mass murder; escaping with her mother and daughter; being transported to a series of villages; attempted sexual assault at the hands of a Rumanian officer; being separated from her mother; successfully passing as a non-Jew and working as a cook at a police station until the end of the war; reuniting with her mother and husband; and immigrating to the United States with her family in 1978.

    Oral history interview with Vera J. Lieban-Kalmar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral History

    Bernard Offen discusses his childhood in Krakow, Poland; his early experiences with antisemitism; the events he witnessed during the German invasion of Poland in 1939; his experiences in the Krakow Ghetto starting in 1941, including the deportations of many family members and hiding from raids; being deported to Płaszów in 1943; his narrow escape from Płaszów; hiding in a nearby camp with a family member; his deportation to Mauthausen; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; his experiences in Auschwitz; his transfer in October 1944 to a subcamp of Dachau near Landsberg; his experiences in the subcamp; being on a death march in May 1945; being liberated by the United States Army; his search for other surviving family members; the fates of the rest of his family; immigrating to the United Kingdom after the war; his subsequent immigration to the United States; enlisting in the United States Army to serve in the Korean War; his life after the war; returning to Poland to conduct tours of Holocaust-related sites; the time he spends speaking about his personal experiences.

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral History

    William Pels, born on May 11, 1924 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses his prewar experiences in Amsterdam; his memories of the German invasion of Holland in 1940; the changes that he witnessed during the occupation; witnessing the arrest and deportation of Jews; the German raids on homes to find hidden Jews; his own close call with deportation; moving to Vienna, Austria in 1942 to work in a hotel; his experiences with wartime Vienna; the bombing campaign by the Soviets in March 1945; travelling into Hungary, where he remained until May 1945; his postwar activities; working for the United States Army; working in a former concentration camp; returning to Holland; marrying his wife in Great Britain; immigrating to the United States in 1957; and his life in America.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral History

    Ruth Plainfield (née Oppenheimer), born on January 27, 1925 in Gau Bickelheim, Germany, discusses her childhood in Mainz, Germany; the rise of the Nazi party to power; her father's arrest in 1935 and the effect that had on her; her childhood encounters with antisemitism; her family's immigration to the United States; living first in New York and then San Francisco, CA; her family's experiences in California; her education; and learning of the fate of family members, including a grandfather who died in Theresienstadt.

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral History

    Thomas Schneider discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; being raised as a Catholic child of a Jewish father and a Jewish mother who had converted to Catholicism; being forced to leave school and study at a Jewish school in 1938 after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany; his family's immigration in March 1939 to the United States; settling in New York, NY; his experiences in school, college, and law school; his legal career; and the conflicts he has felt throughout his life about his Jewish identity.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Shlyapochnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    Benjamin Sieradzki, born on February 4, 1927 in Zgierz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Zgierz; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1939; hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet section of Poland; his family's move to the Łódź ghetto; the harsh conditions in the ghetto; the first deportations in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly, and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans; the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching the selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers; his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory; being forced to work in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentery, and indifferent to his fate; the abandonment of the camp by German troops; being liberated; the state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden; experiencing anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden; being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle; his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war; the difficulties of his living situation; his immigration to the United States in 1953; and his marriage and family life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral History

    Erika Weingarten (née Mosler), born on October 9, 1918 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; her assimilated family life; her education; the few instances of antisemitism she experienced; her family's decision to send her out of Germany to attend school in Switzerland and her experiences there; her journey in August 1939 to Great Britain, where she reunited with her parents; their immigration to the United States in March 1940; the work she performed; her continued education; passing as Swiss when she tried to get work; her trips to Europe in later years and the closure she experienced; and her thoughts about the German people.

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral History

    Max Weingarten, born in April 1913 in Lechnau, Poland, discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; his education and religious upbringing; studying the law; his work in the film industry with his uncle in London beginning in 1936; his immigration to the United States in 1938 and the work he performed in the film industry; his experiences in the United States Army and his work in intelligence and international law; his life after the war; his marriage and children; his work as a lawyer; his feelings about the United States; and the fates of his other family members.

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral History

    Liza Avrutin, born in 1930 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes her big family, which consisted of nine brothers and sisters; how even though her family was not very religious, Liza remembers various religious traditions such as all of the kids saying a Shabbat wish in front of the candles; her mother’s reluctance to leave before the Nazi occupation; her uncle’s evacuation to Tashkent where he and his family survived the Holocaust; the Nazi occupation in October 1941 and the summoning of Jewish residents on December 22; being taken with other Jewish residents to Slobodka (a section of Odessa) where they spent three months; a pogrom in Odessa on October 23-24, 1941 in which much of the remaining Jewish population was murdered; being sent with her family on cattle trains to Vaselinivska; the train journey, during which many passengers died including her father and her four-year-old brother, Boris; her mother’s psychological reaction to their deaths and her eventual death; being taken to Vasnisenska (Voznesensk, Ukraine), where they were sorted and sent to different places; being sent to Babini Balki in Krivoruchka, Ukraine; the lack of food and the death of many of the imprisoned people from starvation; the arrival of the Russians, who murdered all the civilians; being one of two survivors (Rosa Lifchitza also survived) who were rescued by the nearby villagers; waking up in Nadia Zhigalovna’s house with a bullet wound on the top of her head; hiding her Jewish identity by saying her name was “Lida” not “Liza”; changing her name to Valentina Ivanovna Panchivka; her life in the village and the sacrifices her new mother made for her; living with Nadia and her family until 1947; staying in close contact with the family that rescued her; getting married and immigrated to the United States; and changing her name back to Liza when she became a US citizen.

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral History

    Aleksandr Belfor, born September 18, 1923, describes his childhood in Kishinev, Ukraine (now Chisinău Moldova); the onset of the war and his family's escape from the approaching Nazi forces to Alma-Ata, Khazakstan, where Mr.Belfor lived and studied medicine until he was inducted into the Soviet Army; the stories he heard about the tragic fate of many family members during the Holocaust, including the sexual assault of one aunt; being arrested and imprisoned after the end of the war; his life in the Soviet Union and the antisemitism he encountered there; and his immigration to the United States in 1983.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral History

    Semyon Berenshteyn discusses his childhood in Moldova; the family's move from Balta to Odesa after the beginning of the war in 1941; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto in Balta; working for a Christian friend; passing as a non-Jew by wearing a crucifix; learning of war news from Christian neighbors; the forced labor imposed on Jews; the murders of Jewish men, women and children by German soldiers, including the death of his father; liberation by Soviet troops in March 1944; his service in the Soviet armed forces; his marriage and the birth of his son; and his immigration with his family to the United States in 1988.

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral History

    Lev Dumer, born in 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes the Jewish community in Odessa before the war; experiencing antisemitism before the war; the deaths of his maternal grandparents in pogroms; receiving a degree in radio engineering; working in Kirovograd (Kropyvnyts'kyi, Ukraine) when the war began; the German occupation of Kiev; the Jewish response to the invasion; his family’s evacuation to Chelyabinsk in August 1941; his grandmother, Pena Gershova Dumer, dying while evacuating later in 1943; the Romanians entering Odessa; Jews having to register; the denouncement of Jewish families by antisemitic neighbors living in the same building as his family; the hanging of his college mathematics and physics professor, Foodim, for failing to register; the roundups and mass murders in Odessa; Alexander Sepino, who was able to escape imprisonment; observing a minute of silence every day for five years as a prayer for those who perished; the deportation of the remaining Jews to a ghetto in Slobodka; various righteous people who risked their lives to save Jews, including Oleg Krist and Jora Temoshenko; the experience of his aunt, uncle, and two cousins in Pervopol; the difficulty of living during the Stalin regime; the growing antisemitic trend in Russia during the years following WWII; the Russian government hiding the evidence of the Holocaust from the people; and spending many years gathering information from survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust in Ukraine in order to preserve the memory for future generations.

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral History

    Anisim Dworkin, born in 1923 in Smirenskiy, Soviet Union (possibly one of the many Russian places named Smirnovskiy), describes how at the time Jews were required to live in a few designated towns in the Soviet Union; his great-grandfather, who served in the Tsar’s army as a cannon operator for 12 years and was thus given the right to live in a Russian town even though he was Jewish; the regret he feels for having spent his childhood in a Russian town because it stripped him of the rich Jewish culture he saw in his parents, including celebration of Jewish holidays and speaking Yiddish; not experiencing antisemitism as a child but being teased as a child for being part of the lower middle-class; moving with his family to a kolkhoz in Smolensk in 1928; having a good life on the farm until the famine in 1933; several of his aunts and uncles who moved to Brest, Belarus with their families; the arrest of his older brother for writing a letter expressing anti-Hitler sympathies in 1939; the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; being sent to the east since he was not able to serve in the army because of an injury to the eye; being accepted to serve in the Allied army for four months; studying after the war at a university in Ural (possibly Ural Federal University); working in the oil industry in Ural after the war and being discriminated against because of his religion; being fired from a job as head of the research department at a university because of rumors that he was involved in the Zionist movement; his life now in Perim, North Ural (probably Perm’, Russia); his daughter who is married to a non-Jew; and reuniting with his older brother in 1987.

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral History

    Ernest Feld discusses his childhood in Lucenec, Slovakia, close to the Hungarian border; the occupation of his town by Hungary in 1938; the onset of anti-Jewish restrictions and curfews; his removal to a ghetto; being conscripted for forced labor in 1944; being able to continue his apprenticeship in a bakery; the advance of the Soviet Army and the ensuing confusion; his return to Lucenec in November 1945; his reunion with his mother; their move to Prague, and then Karlsbad; their decision to immigrate to Israel; the boat trip to Israel; the detention of the group in Cyprus by the British; his life in Cyprus until 1949; emigrating from Cyprus to Israel with his wife, whom he met in Cyprus; his successful bakeries in Israel; his later move to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

    Lya Galperin discusses her childhood in a small town near Kishinev, Romania; her family's flight after the German invasion; the gang rape of women by Romanian soldiers; her family’s imprisonment in the local synagogue; her experiences in the ghetto of Beshard, in the Ukraine, from 1943 until her liberation in 1945; her postwar life in the Soviet Union; her marriage and life in Riga; her mother's attempts at helping the family immigrate to the west; and her eventual immigration to San Francisco in 1981.

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral History

    Inna Kagan, born in 1937 in Kharkov (Kharkiv), Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Kharkov; being a descendant from Khazars; the evacuation of her family in September 1941 to Khazakstan; her father's later evacuation to Perm, Russia; her family's move to Bukhoro, Uzbekistan; and the family's reunion in Kharkov in December 1944. She dicsusses the destruction of the city and learning of the death of her paternal grandparents at the hands of the Nazis. Ms. Kagan describes the increase in antisemitism that she experienced after the war, and emigrating with her family to the United States in 1989.

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral History

    Vilem Kriz discusses his experiences in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) in the late 1930s and under Nazi occupation; his observations, as a journalist, of the unfolding events of Nazi aggression; an encounter with Reinhard Heydrich in 1936; the mobilization of a small national army in 1937; the betrayal of Czechoslovakia by its allies in 1938; the grief of the Czech people after Nazi troops occupied Prague in March 1939; demonstrations against the Nazis by university students and reprisals that came after; his experiences as part of the Czech underground; and conditions in Czechoslovakia during its occupation and after the war ended.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral History

    Mikhail Lapan, born on March 9, 1920 in Bobruisk, Belarus, discusses his childhood in Bobruisk; his enlistment in 1941 at the age of 16 in the Soviet Army; the German attack on Bobruisk; his hospitalization in 1942 in Stalingrad (Volgograd); the invasion of Stalingrad by the Germans; an incident in which the German troops removed the hospital patients and selected Jews and Communists for execution, and that by using the name of a fellow patient who had died earlier that day, he was able to escape that fate; being forced to work in a salt mine in Peine, Germany; having his Jewish identity betrayed; his escape, recapture, and removal to Braunschweig concentration camp; being liberated by US troops; being returned to the Soviet Union; his work in a coal mine in Harlov; his marriage; his return to Bobruisk, where he discovered that he parents had died during the war; and his eventual immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral History

    Shaya Neys, born on June 28, 1927 in Liepaja, Latvia, discusses his childhood in Liepaja; the arrest of his family in June 1941 by the Russian security agency NKVD, and the family's transport to a military port, where the men were separated from the women and children; traveling by train with his mother to Krasnoyarsk, Russia; their experiences of forced labor and misery in various locations in Siberia until the end of the war; difficulties in returning to Latvia after the war ended and his return in 1956; his reunion with his son and their lives in Riga, Latvia; learning that his father died in a labor camp, and that many of his relatives from Liepaja perished; and his reflections that their deportation to Siberia probably saved his and his mother's lives.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

    The interview describes Mr. Sieradzki's childhood in Zgierz, Poland; his awareness in 1938 about Hitler and the discrimination experienced by German Jews; his memories of the mobilization of the Polish Army, and the invasion of Poland by Nazi forces in September 1938. Mr. Sieradzki describes hiding from the bombing; his brothers' escape to the Soviet sector of Poland; and his family's move to the Łódź ghetto. Mr. Sieradzki recalls the harsh conditions there; the first transports in 1941; Chaim Rumkowski's leadership in the ghetto; a visit by Heinrich Himmler in 1942; and the deportation in September 1942 of the ill, elderly and children, during which his parents were sent to Chelmno and killed in gas vans. He describes the liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; his transport, with one sister, to Auschwitz; watching Dr. Mengele make selections and seeing his sister being taken to the gas chambers. Mr. Sieradzki describes his experiences in Birkenau, then in a concentration camp in Hannover where he worked for the Continental Rubber factory, and then in a quarry, where he became emaciated, sick with dysentary, and indifferent to his fate. He recalls the abandonment of the camp by German troops, his liberation, the dreadful state of his health and his experiences in military hospitals and then in convalescent homes in Sweden. Mr. Sieradzki describes anti-Jewish sentiment in Sweden, being smuggled to Denmark to stay with his uncle, and his reunion with his older brothers, who had survived the war. He discusses the difficulties of his living situation, and describes his immigration to the United States in 1953, and his marriage and family life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral History

    Rahilia Sirota (née Aizenman), born in 1913, discusses her childhood in Chemirovits (now Chemerivtsi), Ukraine; the Nazi occupation of her town in the summer of 1941; her move to a nearby village; learning that the Jewish community of Chemirovits had been taken to the Kamentsk Podolsky ghetto, where 80 of her relatives were killed days after their arrival (this included her parents and younger brother); living in fear in the village she had moved to, and being rescued by two brothers, Nikolay and Pavlo Kuchman [PH], who hid her and then her boyfriend throughout the remaining years of the war; living in holes in the corn fields and caves; moving from village to village; living in barns and hiding from the Ukrainian SS; the assistance she received from the Kuchman brothers and other Ukrainians; learning of the liberation of the Chemirovits in March 1945; her reunion with her boyfriend; finding that everything they had was gone; getting married; the birth of her son; her life in post-war Ukraine until her immigration to the United States; and her enduring gratitude to those who hid and save her during the war years.

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral History

    Tom Szelenyi discusses his childhood in Budapest, Hungary; his assimilated family life; his education; his religious upbringing; the antisemitism he experienced while growing up and the increase of antisemitism after the war began in 1939; his family's deportation to the ghetto in Budapest; the anti-Jewish laws; being deported to a Hungarian military labor camp in 1944 and the changes he experienced after the Germans occupied Hungary; his experiences on a forced march in October 1944 from Budapest to Wiener Neustadt, Austria; his journey to Buchenwald by train; the conditions there; the cruelty of the guards; his transfer to Colditz a month later; the work he performed; his experiences on a death march in April 1945 to Terezin (Theresienstadt); his liberation there by the Soviet Army and the conditions after; his return to Budapest; his reunion with his mother; his work with the American Joint Distribution Committee; his experiences in the DP (displaced persons) camp in Ulm, Germany; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his life in the US; his family; and his work.

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral History

    Tamara Iosifovna Albukh, born on December 21, 1918 in Minsk, Belarus, describes her childhood; having to leave school after six years to work and contribute to her family financially; getting married and having two daughters (Sara born on May 5, 1940 and Gena born on August 31, 1942); not being able to evacuate once the war started; the German occupation of Minsk; her husband being taken into the army; moving into one of the Jewish ghettos in Minsk; pogroms in the ghettos; doing forced labor in the ghetto and the murder of her daughters one day while she was working; being moved to Trostinetskiy (Maly Trostinec) concentration camp and having to work for the Germans; the murder of inmates every day in the camp and ghetto; escaping the camp on July 29, 1944; the intensification of antisemitism during the war; hearing Russians scream the slogan “Kill Jews, save Russia” which continued even after the war; and having two daughters after the war in 1946 and 1949.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    George Denes, born on September 9, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes his family and early life; the fates of different family members; growing up Jewish but not Orthodox; the beginning of the war at which point his father was sent to the front to perform forced military labor and his return before the German occupation began; antisemitism before and during the war; Polish refugees arriving in 1939 and 1940; the belief amongst Hungarian Jews that the Nazi policies would not affect them; the German occupation and his father relocating the immediate family to another part of the city; his mother working as a nurse for a wealthy family while he and his brother stayed in a "private day care" for Jewish children; being discovered and escaping; his father acquiring false papers for the family (new surname was Faketta); staying with an older Christian woman until her son, a Nazi sympathizer, had the boys and their father arrested and taken to a local Nazi headquarters; being imprisoned in the basement of the building with other Jews and some other people arrested by the Nazis; being taken on December 29, 1944 with his family to the river to be shot by the Nazis and being saved when the German army prevented the Hungarian Nazis from shooting in this area; escaping the prison a few days later; reuniting with his mother and going with his family to the eastern side of the river; hiding for several weeks in the basement of a villa; having difficulties acquiring food and being near starvation by the time the Red Army liberated the city; being given food, baths, and clean clothes by the Russians; attending a Jewish high school after the war; being refused by the university because he attended a religious high school; befriending the head of the university's engineering department and being accepted the following year (1956) [note that the first interview includes family photographs]; the revolutionary period following 1956 as well as his life as a university student in mechanical engineering; everyday life in post-war Communist Hungary, including some analysis of the political and social climate of that period; his life after the revolution, including his marriage, the birth of his son, and his military career; his family's two attempts to defect, once without help, and once with help (the second one was successful); the time they spent in Vienna, Austria while their refugee status was established; the help given to them by HIAS; the medical care given to Robert, who had contracted typhus during their escape; his life in the United States, including his career as an electrical engineer working in semiconductors and his divorce; and his state of mind at various points in his life.

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral History

    Audrey Doughty, born in San Diego, California in 1921, describes her mother, who died when Audrey was three years old; her father, who was a naval officer and a member of the diplomatic core; going with her father to Berlin when he was stationed there in 1938; transferring from Stanford University to the University of Berlin; being in Berlin during Kristallnacht and taking photos afterward; writing a journal entry describing that night; having little notion of what was really happening in Germany apart from Kristallnacht as well as the antisemitic and anti-American sentiment from the Germans; how soon after arriving in Berlin, she and her father were invited to review the troops with Nazi officials; sitting in the stands three feet from Adolf Hitler, watching endless waves of troops pass underneath; going with her grandmother on a tour of Germany and neighboring countries in 1939; working at the American consulate after she turned 18; her duties, which consisted of convincing refugees applying for visas to leave the country; being evacuated to Copenhagen in 1940; returning to the US after the war ended; graduating from Stanford University; working as a war correspondent in Honolulu and then went to work for the San Francisco Chronicle; working in the Office of War Information and then working as an Associated Press correspondent in China; leaving journalism and pursuing a career as a social worker; becoming the director of the International Institute in San Francisco from 1975 to 1983; spending two and a half years as the director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation; founding and directing the AIDS Benefits Counselors; directing AIDS Indigent Direct Services; her plans to write a book about her family's history; writing many editorials on possible fascist trends in American society; and her thoughts on Germans [note that artifacts relating to her experiences are shown at the close of the interview].

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

    Sara Gelender (née Buzyn), born circa 1927 in Warsaw, Poland, discusses her childhood in Warsaw; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's escape to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; getting married in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, France, where they lived until 1951; their immigration first to Canada, and then to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral History

    Sofia Ginzbursky (born on December 27, 1915 in Asipavichy, Belarus) describes her mother, who died at the age of 27, soon after she gave birth; going with her siblings to live with their grandfather, who observed Jewish traditions; studying at a technical school in Gomel (Homel), Belarus; living in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), working as a nanny and secretary; getting married and moving to Gomel; moving later to Belostock (Białystok), Poland; being left alone with their two children when her husband was called up for military duty at the beginning of WWII; evacuating from Belostock by train to Zlobin (ZHlobin, Belarus) and then to Baranovichi, Ukraine; destroying all her documents to hide her Jewish identity; witnessing the persecution of Jews in Ukraine when locals helped the Nazis find Jews; how speaking German helped her find a job at a food exchange center where she received food to feed her children; obtaining false papers with a new last name that showed she was Russian and not Jewish; returning to Gomel to look for remaining family members and being captured by the Nazis and was humiliated by Politsai for several days; being released and living with a woman named Nadia Lisitskaya; passing as a gentile refugee from Poland; washing clothes for the German army in exchange for soap and kerosene; seeing the deportation of hundreds of Jews from the Gomel ghetto; traveling with her friend, Sonia, as well as all their children to Oryol (Orel), Russia; finding a new place of stay every night so no one would suspect them of being Jewish; living with Sonia and the children at the house of a Latvian lady for two years; choosing to not wear the Star of David as was requried for the Jews by the Nazis; passing as Russian Orthodox; having a Russian lady teach her son how to pray to an icon when bombings occured; working small jobs while in Oryol; being liberated and moving to Leningrad; getting a new passport and stating her nationality as “Jewish” again; reuniting with her husband in Chkalov (possibly Orenburg, Russia) with the help of her sister; experiencing even more antisemitism after the war; and becoming more observant after the war.

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral History

    Annemarie Roeper (née Bondy), born August 27, 1918 in Vienna, Austria, describes her childhood in Vienna; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi ascension to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with Annemarie’s siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father selling their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

    Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral History

    Clara Tsukerman discusses her childhood in Chisneau, Romania (now Chișinău, Moldova) and her experiences after the war began in her region in 1941; her experiences during her family's journey on foot to Vasylivka, Ukraine; their efforts to evade the advancing German front; and their life in hiding in an unnamed village after the Germans caught up with them; the help and protection they received from the villagers, as well as her experiences during and after the war.

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral History

    Sam Weiss, born in 1928 in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Ricka, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of the town by Hungarian soldiers; the conscription of Jewish men for forced labor; his father being sent to Germany for forced labor; the institution of anti-Jewish restrictions such as yellow stars and in March 1944, the deportation of the Jews of Ricka; his arrival at Auschwitz; being separated from his family and sent first a children's barracks; being sent to Camp Four in Munich, Germany; being sent to Landsberg, a sub-camp of Dachau, where he was liberated by American troops in 1945; his return to Ricka, where he was reunited with his sister; his attempts to escape Czechoslovakia; his imprisonment by Russian soldiers; his escape to Munich; his immigration to the United States; his service in the United States military; and his family life and career in California.

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Laszlo Vass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral History

    Isaac Silber, born in 1913 in Złoczów Poland (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood in Złoczów; the occupation of Złoczów by German troops; the violent and terrifying conditions of the Nazi occupation; his escape from murder by German troops; being conscripted for forced labor in a brick factory; returning to Złoczów to learn of the murder of family members; his experiences in the Złoczów ghetto and in work camps; giving up his baby daughter to be cared for by a non-Jewish family; escaping with his wife and finding refuge in the farmhouse of a Polish man who hid them; and the gratitude he feels to his rescuer.

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Roeper

    Oral History

    Anne Marie Roeper describes her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her parents' progressive boarding school; her memories of the Nazi acsencion to power; her mother's move to Switzerland in 1936 with her siblings; remaining behind to graduate; her father's selling of their school; the family's reunion in Switzerland; her psychoanalysis studies in Vienna with Anna Freund; her husband-to-be's warning to flee; immigrating with her family to the United States in 1939; moving to Vermont, where they opened a school; her marriage and move to Michigan with her husband; and opening a progressive school for gifted children there called Roeper School.

    Oral history interview with Janina Swift

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

    Paul Nebenzahl, born August 9, 1921, discusses his childhood in Long Island, New York; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS operational group; working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral History

    Janice Auerbach, born August 7, 1934 in South London, England, describes her childhood in London; the bombings and fear she felt during World War II; her evacuation to a farm in Cornwall; the discomfort she experienced while there; her reunion with her family after the war; her various employments around the world; and her marriage to a Jewish man in 1962.

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral History

    Helmut Kobler, born on January 18, 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Pohorelice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); his experiences growing up with his Jewish father and Catholic mother; his experiences after the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938; his mother's decision to move herself and her son to Brno, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the conditions they lived under; the Nazis' search for his father; being deported to a camp near Ivancice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) in 1939; the camp’s transformation from a concentration camp to a forced labor camp; working as a coal miner at the camp; the camp’s liquidation in June 1942; being transferred to another labor camp near Oslavany, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); the work he continued as a coal miner; the conditions at the camp; the brutality of the Czech and German guards; being transferred in the summer of 1944 to a labor camp near Postoloprty, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic); working to construct an underground fuel pipeline; an accusation against him of sabotage; his subsequent imprisonment in Saaz, Czechoslovakia and Karlsbad, Germany (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic); the brutality of the guards; the poor conditions there; his escape from Karlsbad while out on a labor detail; being recaptured in Brno; the executions he witnessed while imprisoned there; being transferred by cattle car to a prison in Mirosov; escaping from Mirosov in May 1945, a few days before liberation by the United States Army; the aid he received from refugee organizations after the war; reuniting with his mother; being educated as a mining engineer; defecting to the west with a sample of uranium ore; moving to Canada; and immigrating to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral History

    Anne Marie Yellin (née Feller), born on December 6, 1928 in Chemnitz, Germany, discusses her childhood in Chemnitz; her family life; the changes she experienced after Kristallnacht in November 1938; her father's arrest and release; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her journey with her parents to Belgium in September 1939; her experiences after the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940 and her father's decision to hide her in a convent; her experiences in the convent; moving between institutions to avoid capture by the Nazis; her conversion to Catholicism; her reunion with her parents after liberation in September 1944; their immigration to the United States at a later point; her life in the US; and the emotional aftermath of her wartime experiences.

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral History

    Adele Silber discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her education in a Catholic school; her family's religious practices; her experiences during the German invasion in 1939; hiding her young daughter with a Catholic family; living in hiding on a farm with a group of partisans; her experiences while in hiding, including the lack of food and the necessity of living in the woods near the end of the war; her reunion with her daughter; her decision to immigrate to the United States with her husband and daughter in 1946; and their life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral History

    Sylvie Marshall (née Bedel), born on July 1, 1923 in Paris, France, discusses her childhood; her older brother Michel Bedel (born 1918) and her younger brother Alain Bedel (born 1926); her father, who was the president of the largest moving and storage company in France before the war; her adolescence in Paris; being raised Catholic; the participation of her father and brother Michel in the French Resistance; her life with her mother in south central France; the liberation of Paris; the story of her father and brother's arrests by the Gestapo and her father's subsequent death in Buchenwald.

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral History

    Elena H. Javor (née Gross), born December 15, 1914 in Martin, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia), describes her childhood in Martin; her siblings; her medical education and practice; the birth of her three children; the threat of deportation in 1942; her escape from deportation due to her husband's exemption; Allied bombing in spring 1944; the Slovak national uprising in August 1944; her husband's enlistment to fight; fleeing with her children to a monastery, where they were sheltered; joining her husband in Banska Bystrica; her arrest in October 1944; her husband's disappearance; her liberation in April 1945; her reunion with her three children; learning of her husband's, sister's, and parents' deaths in Auschwitz; her return to Martin with her children; her life after the war; how she studied dermatology; her remarriage; and her family's immigration to the United States in 1968.

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral History

    Joseph Welgreen, born in 1918 in Sosnowiec, Poland, discusses his childhood in Sosnowiec; his family life and education; the work he performed; the antisemitism he experienced; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Poland in 1939; being deported to Annaburg in late 1940, and his subsequent transfers to several other labor camps, including Breslau and Klettendorf (both subcamps of Gross-Rosen); the conditions in these camps, his experiences there, the work he performed in highway construction, and his experiences with the guards and Kapos; being transferred to Bunzlau in 1943; the work he performed as a machinist and the conditions there; his experiences on a death march to Dora in February 1945; the work he performed there and the conditions; his liberation at Bergen-Belsen; his journey to Hannover, Germany; the business he established there; and his immigration to the United States in 1947.

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Frank Weinman, born on July 9, 1914 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna and Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia); the introduction of restrictive anti-Jewish laws in Vienna after the Anschluss in March 1938; the family's definitive move to Bratislava soon after; his marriage; his and his wife's forced move to a ghetto camp after Nazis took control of Czechoslovakia; their experiences there doing manual labor; their fortunate escape through a German baggage firm, HAPAG, to Budapest, Cuba, and finally the United States; his parents' escape to Cuba where his father died; his reunion with his mother in October 1942; the assistance he received from his brother who had immigrated to Chicago, IL in 1938; and the success and prosperity he experienced in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral History

    Morris Rosnow (né Moishe Raznov), born on January 7, 1927 in Zdzieciol, Poland (now Dzyatlava, Belarus) discusses his experiences during World War II while hiding in the woods as a member of a Jewish partisan group operating under the organization of the Russian partisans; liberation in 1944 by the Soviet Army; his return to his hometown in Poland, where he remained with his sister until the death of their father; moving to Munich, Germany; earning a degree in engineering; immigrating with his sister to join their other sister in the United States; and earning a degree in pharmacy and raising a family.

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

    Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.

    Oral history interview with Ilse Eden

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva K. Breyer

    Oral History

    Eva Breyer, born on August 18, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, describes her parents, who converted from Judaism to Catholicism after the death of her grandfather; being christened Catholic; her brother, who was born Jewish and converted when he was about a year old; attending Catholic religious classes; antisemitism in Hungary before the Germans invaded; the laws passed against Jews in the 1930s; the bombings after the war started; the drafting of non-Jewish men for the military and Jewish men for labor service; her father being called up for labor service near Budapest; how her mother was able to keep her father from being sent to the front in 1943; the German occupation, at which time the Jewish laws grew worse; having to move to Jewish houses with other families; the round ups led by the Arrow Cross and police in the summer of 1944; her aunt saving her mother from deportation; moving into an apartment building that was under the protection of the Vatican; her brother, who was sent to a monastery for extra protection; being sent to the hospital where a doctor diagnosed her as sick so she could hide with terminally sick children; going to a convent outside Buda; seeing people being shot into the Danube; going to a Swedish house and finding it empty; the arrival of the Russians; her family, who went to the ghetto while she was in hiding; her father’s death from pneumonia in March after the liberation; the mistreatment of the Hungarians by the Russian soldiers; life under the communists; escaping to Austria and then the United States in 1956; and how she identifies as Catholic.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Levi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

    Paul Nebenzahl discusses his childhood in Long Island, NY; his career in advertising; enlisting in the United States Army in 1942; his experiences as a sergeant in the Signal Corps; being part of a secret OSS “operational group” working with the French underground movement in southwestern France to hinder the German retreat in 1944; his military service in India and China for the remainder of the war; his life after the war; marrying; having children; and his leisure activities.

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral History

    Ellen Van Creveld, born in 1933 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Amsterdam; her assimilated family life; her lack of awareness of her Jewish heritage; the changes she experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940, including the new restrictions and her transfer to a Jewish school; her relationships with her non-Jewish friends during this period; the fear of arrest and deportation; her family's decision to go into hiding in November 1943; her experiences while living in hiding; her family's move to Brussels, Belgium with the help of the underground; the false identities they acquired; her experiences in Brussels under false papers, her education; the betrayal of the family and their arrest; her reprieve from deportation due to illness; her experiences in the Jewish hospital and orphanage; her subsequent time spent living in hiding on a farm and in an abandoned castle during the winter of 1944-1945; her reunion with one of her brothers after the end of the war and the fates of her other family members; her postwar life in the United States and Holland; the challenges she faced; her marriage and family; her permanent immigration to the United States in 1956; and her life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshtein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

    Sara Gelender discusses her childhood in Warsaw, Poland; her memories of the bombing and burning of Warsaw in September 1939; her family's flight to a farm near the Russian border; hiding there for several months; being part of a group of Jewish refugees sent to Siberia in June 1940; the primitive conditions in the labor camp; the work she performed in the camp; marrying in the camp; leaving the camp with her husband for a small town; her continual state of hunger during those years; moving with her husband to the Ukraine in 1944; returning to Poland in 1946; the antisemitism they encountered in Poland; escaping to Czechoslovakia, Vienna, and then to a displaced persons camp in Germany; moving to Paris, where they lived until 1951; their emigration first to Canada, and finally to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

    Ilse Sternberger (née Naumann), born in 1914, discusses her childhood in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland); her assimilated family life; her education; her marriage and her decision to move to Belgium with her husband in 1933; her life in Belgium; her husband's success as a photographer; their decision to move to London, England in 1936; returning to Germany in 1939 in an attempt to help Jewish children leave the country, and being stymied by the bureaucracy; immigrating to the United States with her husband and children in July 1940; her life in the US; her work as a teacher and writer; and her curation of books and exhibits of her husband's work.

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral History

    Leonid Bobrovsky, born on May 4, 1937 in Odessa, Ukraine, describes being only three years old when the war began; his father who fought with the partisans during the war; the Nazi invasion of Odessa, at which time he and his family were in an underground hiding place (“Kotokloomba”) reserved for partisans and their families; hiding with his mother while his older brother and father helped the partisans; getting sick because the hiding place was very wet; the Nazis discovering various entrances to the hiding place and using poisonous gas to force the people out; escaping from the hiding place along with his mother and older brother; getting caught by the Nazis and taken away to the city jail where there were many other Jewish residents; being separated from his mother, who was later murdered by the Nazis; being moved with his brother to a different jail; his brother’s attempted escape and then suicide; being taken to camp Ombarova where he remained until liberation; working even though he was so young; attributing his survival in the ghetto to the women who protected and took care of him; liberation; being taken to an orphanage where he stayed until his father’s return; his father, who remarried after the war; attending school and studying construction at a college; being married twice and having two daughters; and naming his younger daughter, Polina Bobrovskaya, after his mother.

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

    Joseph Schein discusses his childhood is Sosnowiec, Poland; his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany; being sent to his mother’s hometown Brzostowica-Wielka, Poland (now Vialikaia Berastavitsa, Belarus); avoiding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec; being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940; his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiesau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, and Buchenwald; the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform; being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld; enduring a death march from Buchenwald; being liberated by American troops; being hospitalized; his marriage to his childhood sweetheart and their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany; immigrating to the United States in June 1946; being the only member of his family that survived the Holocaust; immigrating with an accordion, which was his only possession at the time; and his experiences in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagi-Talavera

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral History

    Edith Eger (née Elefant), born on September 29, 1927 in Kosice, Hungary (now Slovakia), describes her father (Lajos), who was a tailor, and her mother (Helen Klein), who worked for the Hungarian ministry; her two sisters, Magda and Klara; her favorite memories are of her mother's cooking; her childhood, during which she trained in ballet and gymnastics; preparing to compete for the Olympics for Hungary but being disqualified because she was Jewish; her sisters, who were gifted musicians; the story of how her sister Klara was smuggled out of Hungary when the war began by one of her professors from the music academy in Budapest; the German occupation of Hungary; being taken to a brick factory; being deported with her sister, parents, aunts, and uncles to Auschwitz in May 1944; being separated from her parents, and thus spared the gas chambers; being selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele; using her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz; conditions in the barracks; how she helped Magda survive in the camp; being liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945, at which time she had five types of typhoid fever, pneumonia, and no hair left; going to a displaced persons camp, where she met her husband and became pregnant; immigrating to the United States in 1949, going first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory; moving to Texas, where she had two more children and attended the University of Texas at Austin; earning her doctorate; moving to San Diego, CA and working as a family therapist; and how her grandchildren are her world and how she lives every day for them. Ms. Eger, her parents, aunts and uncles, and her eldest sister Magda, were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. Ms. Eger was separated from her parents; she and her sister Magda were spared the gas chambers. Because of her talent for ballet, Ms. Eger was selected to dance for Dr. Josef Mengele. She was able to use her talent for gymnastics and dancing to help survive in Auschwitz. Ms. Eger was liberated from Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945. While in a displaced persons camp, she met her husband and became pregnant. She emigrated to the United States in 1949; first to New York, and then to Baltimore, where she worked in a factory. She, her husband and her daughter Marianne moved to Texas, where Ms. Eger had two more children, and attended the University of Texas at Austin where she ultimately received her doctorate. She settled in San Diego and works as a family therapist and with battered wives and abused teenagers.

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral History

    Otto Springer discusses his German upbringing in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic); his education; his family life; the antisemitism he witnessed in Prague in the early 1930s; his marriage to his Jewish wife and the discrimination he experienced as a result; his arrest in 1941; his sentence of forced labor; the help he received from a Gestapo officer; his activities in the Czech underground including the rescue of Jews, aided by two members of the Gestapo; his experiences in another labor camp near Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) beginning in October 1944; the work he performed; a forced march he underwent in January 1945; acts of vengeance by Czechs that he witnessed after the war ended; the suspicion he fell under because of his German heritage; the assistance he received from a Czech military commander; and his immigration with his wife and children in September 1948.

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral History

    Magda Silberman, born on August 17, 1928, discusses her childhood in Pavlovo, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine); the occupation of her town by the Hungarians; antisemitism that she and her family experienced; the occupation of her town by Nazi troops; the gathering of the Jewish citizens and their deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944; her arrival, the selections, and her experiences while at Auschwitz; the death march she endured in January 1945 to Ravensbrück and Leipzig; her liberation in May 1945; and her immigration to the United States in 1948.

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral History

    Eric Willgott, born on February 12, 1925 in Vienna, Austria, discusses his childhood in Vienna; his family life; his Orthodox religious upbringing; his involvement with a Zionist youth organization; his education; the increased antisemitism he experienced after the German annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in March 1938; his experiences during Kristallnacht in November; his family's decision to send him to Great Britain with the Kindertransport in December 1938; his experiences in London during the Blitz; his work with the United States government in Germany after the war; his immigration to the United States in 1948; his marriage; his life in the US; and his work.

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral History

    Cecilia Kornbluth (née Cilli Mehlman), born on October 11, 1920, discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; her early experiences with antisemitism in elementary school and gymnasium; her memories of the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria, by Austrian Nazis in 1934; the Anschluss in March 1938; the changes that occurred for Jewish Austrians afterward; her two older brothers fleeing to France and to Switzerland; the arrests of her younger brother, father, and mother; her father's eventual deportation to Auschwitz; her brother's incarceration in Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps for 11 months, and his release and move to England; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; being sent for by her brother in Switzerland; her illegal crossing into Switzerland; hiding because she lacked legal papers; being questioned and released; living and working in a refugee camp for single Jewish girls in Basel; living there throughout the war; marrying another refugee who was living in a single man's camp in 1942; having a son; being supported by the Jewish community during this period; her immigration to the United States in 1947; and her family and work life in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral History

    Ruth Steiner discusses her childhood in Dresden, Germany; her well-integrated family life; her education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power in 1933; the necessity of attending a university outside of Germany due to her Jewish heritage; her studies in Geneva; her family's decision to leave Europe in 1939; their immigration to Brazil; their move to the United States in 1940; her life in the US; the work she performed as a librarian; and her husband and family.

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral History

    Trudy Lyons discusses her childhood in Vienna, Austria; the family's assimilated life; the changes that occurred after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938; having to leave school, and witnessing abuses against Jews. Ms. Lyons describes the family's flight to Czechoslovakia, and their successful immigration to the United States in November 1938; the family's adjustment to life in the US, eventually settling in Indiana; and her education, marriage, and family life in Detroit, MI and San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral History

    Margrit Schurman, born on April 1, 1925 in Essen, Germany, discusses her childhood in Essen; her memories of antisemitism; the flight of her sister to Switzerland and her brother to England; the events of Kristallnacht; being sent with her sisters to a Catholic school in England; their conversion to Catholicism; her life and experiences in England during the war, including her brother's deportation as an enemy alien to Canada; her separation from her mother, who had married an Italian and spent the war years in Italy; her immigration to the United States; her marriage and life in Berkeley, California; being reunited with her family in California; and her return trip to Germany.

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral History

    Edith Deutsch, born on January 21, 1925 in Arnswalde, Germany (now Choszczno, Poland), discusses her childhood in Arnswalde; her father, Fritz Abrahamowsky, and her mother, Lotte Gradnauer; living in a large home and being raised as a young child by servants, rarely seeing her mother or father; her family's move to Berlin, Germany in 1933; the difficulties experienced by her family when Hitler rose to power; going to the Olympic Stadium with her class and seeing the No Jews Allowed signs; having to leave public school after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; fleeing Germany with her family in April 1939 for Thailand; traveling by ship to Singapore; abandoning their plans to travel to Bangkok and instead opting to go to Shanghai, China; staying in a camp in Shanghai for a week; her experiences in Shanghai; working as a sales girl and as a beautician; her marriage in 1946 and the birth of her son in 1948; immigrating to Australia in 1949; living in a boarding house; moving to the United States in 1951; living in Oregon and then San Francisco, CA; and her efforts to socialize with other refugees over the years.

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral History

    Francis Cappel (né Franz Erwin Cappel), born on June 2, 1916 in Cologne, Germany, discusses his childhood in Cologne, Germany;his parents, Dr. Paul H. and Meta Cappel (née Braunschweig); growing up in an apartment flat near a synagogue in a mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) neighborhood; antisemitism in Germany; the beating of his lawyer father by Nazi storm troopers (Sturmabteilung) in April 1933; the boycott of Jewish business; moving in October 1933 to France, where he worked in the textile business; concealing his Jewish origins as best he could, always carrying French or English newspapers with him; befriending a man who brought him to the German Reich secret headquarters where he got to see rare German stamps (Mr. Cappel was an avid stamp collector); moving to Hamburg, Germany in 1935; immigrating to England in 1937; serving as a corporal in the British Army; his success in obtaining transit visas for his father and mother, thus rescuing his father from Dachau concentration camp; getting married to his wife Margo in 1944; leaving the Army in April 1946 and returning to London; immigrating with his wife, children, and parents to the United States; and settling in San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral History

    Thomas Trier, born December 27, 1930 in Frankfurt, Germany, discusses his childhood in Frankfurt; his family's roots in the city; his integrated family life; his education in a Jewish school; his experiences in Nazi-era Germany; the economic difficulties his family faced; their decision to immigrate to the United States; the journey to New York, NY and then Chicago, IL; his experiences as a young immigrant in America; his feeling of isolation among his peers as a boy; his education through graduate school; his life after school; the work he performed; his feelings about his German and Jewish identity; and his marriage and family.

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral History

    Rita Grunbaum (née Rita van Leeuwen), born on April 9, 1910 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses her childhood in Holland; her career as a social worker in the Hague; her marriage in 1936;the onset of World War II in September 1939; the bombing of Holland; the German occupation beginning in 1940; the birth of her daughter in 1942; the family's arrest in September 1943; their transport to Westerbork concentration camp; her experiences in Westerbork; receiving papers for Palestine from her in-laws who had fled to Mexico; being selected as part of an exchange program with German prisoners-of-war held in Palestine; being sent with her family to Bergen-Belsen in February 1944; being transported from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 on the Lost Train (also called Lost Transport); her liberation in Troebtiz, Germany; the deaths of her family members during the Holocaust; and her post-war experiences.

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral History

    Lily Robinson (née Lily Solomon Leibovitch), born on June 29, 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria, discusses her childhood with her mother and sister who had been deported to Haskovo, Bulgaria from Sofia in 1940; her experiences there as a young child; her family's return to Sofia in 1945; immigrating to the United States in December 1946; her life in California; and the emotional aftermath of the Holocaust that she witnessed in her brother.

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral History

    Herman Apteker, born on October 9, 1915 in Dresden, Germany, discusses his childhood in Dresden; his Ukrainian parents; his father (Elieser), who was in business and died when Herman was only four years old; his mother, who started a wholesale business selling clothing out of the family's six or seven room flat; his four older siblings (three brothers and one sister); his male "guardian" (this was a German requirement for children whose fathers had died) Dr. Avraham Borg, who took Herman to synagogue and was the primary source of Herman's religious education; his experiences with antisemitism at public school; his strong desire to leave Germany once Hitler rose to power; his trip to Czechoslovakia in 1933 as part of the Young Macabees, in preparation for immigration to Palestine; spending 10 or 11 months in Slovakia, taking part in agricultural training; his arrival in Palestine in April 1933; becoming very ill with dysentery and malaria; his experiences in Palestine; the immigration of his mother and brothers to Palestine; his work in Haifa; riots that occurred in 1936; becoming a temporary policeman before a British officer offered him a job in the immigration office; his marriage in 1938; the beginning of WWII and his work for the British army (in an office) until he was conscripted into the Israeli Army; working as a commission officer at the Lebanese border; his unique relationship with an Arab officer on the Lebanese side; his divorce and remarriage; his immigration with his second wife to the United States in 1953; and settling in San Francisco, CA.

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral History

    Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, born on February 14, 1929 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses his childhood in Budapest; his time in a Transylvanian ghetto in 1944; his subsequent deportation to Auschwitz; the work he performed in Josef Mengele's medical complex; the experiments he witnessed; his impressions of Mengele; and his subsequent experiences at Mauthausen, Gusen II, and Ebensee.

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral History

    Semyon Veyber, born on December 20, 1927 in Tomashpil, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Tomashpil; his religious upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German Army invaded in June 1941; his family's attempt to evacuate, their capture by the Germans, and the help given to the Germans by the local Ukrainian people; his escape from an Einsatzgruppen action; being deported with his family to a ghetto in July 1941, and his experiences there; the work he performed and the conditions; the fear he felt as the German Army retreated that he and his family would be killed before they were liberated; the arrival of the Soviet Army in March 1944; the charges of collaboration that he faced; his life after the end of the war; and his immigration to the United States in 1989.

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral History

    Chaya Ash-Furhman (née Averbuch), born March 19,1920 in Kishinev (now Chisinau), Moldova, describes her childhood; her parents’ involvement in Yiddish theater; her own involvement in theater at a young age; the outbreak of war in June 1941; hiding with her family in the basement of a theater in the Russian section of Tiraspol, Moldova; being transported to cooperative farms in Ukraine and Uzbekistan; being underfed; her father, who suffered from mental distress and dysentery and was taken to a courtyard and shot; how the people who were murdered were then covered in lime, so as not to spread disease; the hardships she and her family endured working on these farms; becoming sick with malaria; working as a seamstress in a nearby town where conditions were better; meeting her first husband; antisemitism that was rampant after the end of the war; her leaving for Poland with her mother and husband, who was Polish by birth; their decision to leave Poland in 1947 while she was pregnant; the family's experiences in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria; and their immigration to Israel, where she continued her involvement in Yiddish Theater.

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral History

    Peter Mueller, born on December 30, 1926 in Hannover, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hannover; his family's decision to leave Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938; his life with his father in England; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1943; his service in the US Army with the medical corps as an instructor in Texas; and his life after military service.

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral History

    Eva Cohn (née Eva Maria Rhee), born in 1923 in Dortmund, Germany, describes her parents, Max Rhee and Else Heinemann; experiencing a warm family life and peace in her early childhood; not experiencing antisemitism until 1934 when her friend shunned her, teachers began to treat her unfairly, and Aryan students were being separated and taught antisemitism; being prohibited from attending public schools around 1935; moving to Cologne, Germany, where she attended a Jewish school while staying with a Jewish family; her family’s experience during an anti-Jewish “Aktion” in 1938, during which German soldiers threw rocks at their windows and burned their synagogue; returning to live with the family in Cologne, while her parents moved to Baudin and stayed with a friend; leaving Germany with her family circa 1938 and going to England just before the ill treatment of the Jews became worse; a law in England that prohibited immigrants from working, which meant her family could not make any money; spending one year in England, before being allowed to immigrate to the United States; settling in Los Angeles, CA; attending Whittier College and majoring in English; working at a school as an instructional supervisor; her father’s death in 1941 from a heart condition; meeting and marrying Hans in Salinas, CA in 1949; having three children and moving quite frequently; and her life in Palo Alto, teaching German, participating in the German association, and leading the Bridge to Understanding, which takes a group to Germany each summer.

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Fred Baum (né Efriam Dovid Boymelgreen), born in Slupaianowa, Poland (possibly Nowa Słupia, Poland), on October 1, 1921, describes his childhood; his one younger brother; his parents, Majlech and Miriam Nhuna, whom he lived with until 1930 when their mother died; being raised religious, and studying before the war at a yeshiva in Otwock, Poland; returning home from school after the war started, and seeing Jews being rounded up for forced labor; working in various government factories, and how the situation got worse and worse; his memories of shootings, confiscations, and deportations; how Jews were not allowed to go to school or to religious services and there was no electricity; his memories of several events including a memory of the rabbi of his town being tied to a horse and forced to run after it until he died; being put into Starachowice with his father and brother in August 1942; suffering from typhus and his father’s efforts to keep him out of the "hospital" so he wouldn't be shot; their transfer in July 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his father’s death in Birkenau around January of 1945; being sent with his brother to Buna (Monowitz), where they were given striped uniforms; being transferred with his brother to Lara Hut; being moved in early 1945 to Mauthausen and then to Gusen in Austria; spending a week there and then four days without food in an open train to Hannora, where they worked on an unfinished concentration camp; being separated from his brother on April 5, 1945 and sent to Bergen-Belsen; being liberated by the British on April 15, 1945; spending six months in a hospital unit recuperating, and then staying in Bergen-Belsen for five years; meeting his wife, Helen Wiesel, there; getting married in 1946; never returning to Poland; reuniting with his brother, who was his only surviving family member; immigrating in 1950 with his wife and young daughter to the United States; having two more children; and his brother, who also immigrated to the United States and started a family.

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral History

    Cantor Hans Cohn, born in Berlin, Germany on May 31, 1926, discusses his childhood in Berlin; being forced to leave his public school after the passage of the Nuremberg laws in 1935; antisemitic propaganda; his feelings of exclusion from social and athletic activities; the 1936 Olympic games; the events of Kristallnacht; the long wait for a visa to the United States; the family's decision to leave Germany for Shanghai, China; his impressions upon arrival in Shanghai; the life of his family and the Jewish community in Shanghai; his mother's death; the difficulties and illnesses he endured; moving into the Hongkew ghetto when the Japanese took control of Shanghai in 1942; his experiences there; the Allied bombings of Shanghai that took place in the spring of 1945; his life in post-war Shanghai; stowing aboard a ship to Australia in 1946; living as an illegal immigrant in Australia; his immigration to the United States in 1948; being drafted into the military; volunteering as a cantor in a San Francisco synagogue; returning to school and obtaining a cantorial diploma; working as a singing waiter in the Borscht Belt in New York while he was attending Hebrew Union College in New York; being reunited with his father in 1952; and his later experiences.

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral History

    Gilbert L. van Mourik, born June 27, 1930 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, discusses his childhood in Rotterdam; his family life; his Protestant upbringing; the changes he experienced after the German invasion of Holland in May 1940; his experiences during the bombing of Rotterdam; his father's efforts to gather and store food; his parents' decision to become part of the resistance; his family's activities, which included hiding a Jewish child in their home for the duration of the war; and the dangers his family experienced and their efforts at self-preservation as well as the moral challenges they faced.

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral History

    Sam Zelver, born in 1935 in Kalisz, Poland, discusses his childhood in Kalisz; fleeing with his family to the Soviet Union after the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the attempts of his father, who was in the Polish Army, to join them; the family's journey across Russia to Siberia; his mother doing hard labor in return for housing and food; the hardships they endured for a year and a half; the journeys the family took, which ended in Kazakhstan, where they lived with other Jewish refugees; discovering a relative nearby with whom they stayed from 1942 until the end of the war; the family's post-war journey to Germany, where they lived in a DP (displaced persons) camp; his immigration with his sister in 1947 to San Francisco, CA, sponsored by an uncle who died before they arrived; their stay in the Jewish children's home, Homewood Terrace; his reunion with his mother and stepfather, who emigrated in 1952; his education and service in the United States Army; his work as a salesman; his marriage; family; and religious life.

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral History

    Asya Grunkina, born on March 2, 1936 in Odesa, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Odesa; her memories of the occupation of Odessa by Nazi troops on October 16, 1941; the orders for Jewish families to identify themselves in preparation for deportation; hiding with her family in their home to escape deportation; the family fleeing with the assistance of a local Russian man in January 1942; hiding in the catacombs and caves nearby; the assistance of their rescuer and his family who brought them food at great risk; the terrible conditions and privations they endured; and leaving their hiding place in April 1944.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral History

    Kurt Mostny, born on March 3, 1919 in Linz, Austria, discusses his childhood in Linz; the antisemitism he experienced growing up; enlisting in the Austrian army and being posted in Vienna; the Anschluss in March 1938; serving as part of the honor guard surrounding Adolf Hitler when he arrived in Vienna to oversee the transfer of power; evading the roundup of Jews in Linz; escaping from Austria; going to Egypt to join his sister, who was pursuing a doctorate in Egyptology; their subsequent move to Belgium; his mother's friendship with a woman from Chile; her success in obtaining visas for Mr. Mostny, his sister, and herself; the entire family's immigration to Chile in 1939; his experiences in Chile; his work and family; his immigration to the United States with his wife and five children in 1964.

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Hanna Cassel, born on December 6, 1914, in Berlin, Germany, describes her father Arthur, who owned a shoe store and her mother Rebecca, who helped run the store; her one brother, Werner, who was six years younger than her; her mother's parents, who were very religious, and spending during many holidays going to the temple with them; her parents, who were not religious; attending a private elementary school and then a girls' high school, which she was not able to finish because about a year and a half before she would have graduated, she lost her scholarship (because she was Jewish); her father's business ending because he was Jewish; not experiencing much antisemitism when she was younger, and how at first most people thought Hitler was crazy and he would never amount to anything; her very good non-Jewish friends, especially at school; her family home and her childhood and her love for reading; not having many options after she dropped out of school; her desire to go to Palestine with some of her friends, which her parents did not want her to do; moving to Rome, Italy and working as a nanny for several different families; how by 1939, Hitler had influenced Mussolini's policies and foreign Jews were required to leave Italy; the popular sentiment in Italy about Germany; the government-sponsored persecution growing worse; being arrested in December 1940 and put into a women’s concentration camp (she had avoided the first roundups); living with about 65 other Jews, Roma, and Yugoslavian partisans; conditions in the camp, the people there, and the flourishing black market; the German occupation of Italy and how the villagers in the town around the concentration camp helped free the prisoners because they knew the women of the camp would be killed or deported immediately by the Germans; hiding in the fields and then walking back to Rome, which took her about ten days; eating vegetables she took from nearby fields during her journey; being given fake papers by the police in the concentration camp’s town (the papers identified her as Anna Castelli; she told anyone who asked that she was an Italian fleeing the Allies); hiding with various friends in Rome; how most people at this time were surviving on the black market; the destruction of the synagogue in Rome right after she returned and the liquidation of the ghetto; the deportation of thousands of people; how several years earlier her parents and brother had gone to Shanghai, China, where her brother and father both died; having very little correspondence with her family while she was in Rome; getting some information from listening to the radio, which was illegal; living in hiding on the outskirts of the city when Rome was liberated on June 5, 1944; the euphoria at that moment and the difficulty of life after the liberation; how food was hard to come by; getting a job at the American Joint Distribution Committee; getting a visa to the United States and arriving in the US in December of 1948; her mother’s death and Hanna’s depression; working nights while taking classes at San Francisco State College; earning a BA and wanting to become a librarian; becoming a teacher after earning her Master’s degree; returning to Italy almost every summer once she was a teacher and visiting friends; returning to Germany for the first time in 1972 to visit a cousin; her hesitation to return to Germany; having a Bat-Mitzvah in 1983; experiencing antisemitism in the US, especially at the high school where she worked; and never marrying or having children.

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral History

    Vera Korkus, born in 1928 in Vienna, Austria, discusses her childhood in Vienna; the onset of World War II, and the opportunity that she and her sister had to go a Kindertransport, which they both refused; the forced move she and her family made in 1940 to Jewish ghetto in Vienna; their transport in October 1942 to an unnamed camp, where her father died of lung cancer; being sent with her mother to Auschwitz two years later; being separated from her mother; her reunion with her sister; the terrible conditions at Auschwitz; her encounter with Dr. Josef Mengele; being transported to Kurzbach, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, where she endured forced labor and a 3-day march to Bergen Belsen; her escape from the march; finding protection from the Germans with Russian soldiers; the sexual assaults that occurred; her life after the war; moving to Bohemia (Czech Republic) then Vienna; and her immigration in 1949 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral History

    Steffi Black, born on October 17, 1920 in Berlin, Germany, describes her childhood; her Polish parents Charlotte Pink and Felix Israel; her father’s factory in Berlin and his work with his brother, Leo, installing electricity in the city; her complex family dynamic; her lack of a Jewish identity; her parents' divorce; her mother's remarriage to Otto Goetz in Switzerland; her separation from her father; her father's involvement in the Spanish Civil War; spending the summers of 1932 and 1933 in Poland with her grandparents; attending a Jewish school for about nine months, but feeling left out since she was not Jewish; her reunion with her father and their immigration first to Cuba and then to the United States; her father's death in 1946 in Nevada; her marriage and life in the US; visiting Germany in 1980; and her three children.

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral History

    Ann Burger (née Anni Rosalie Rautenberg), born in 1920 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), discusses her childhood; her father Arthur Rautenberg, who was the manager of department stores; being raised religious but not Orthodox; attending private school and then public schools; her experiences with antisemitism in school after Hitler's rise to power in 1933; her Jewish friends at school; the loss of her father's business; the family's move to Berlin, while she remained in school; her move to Berlin after her graduation in 1936; her cousin's immigration to Palestine; the family's decision to flee Germany; the efforts of their American family members to obtain visas for them; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; training as a nurse; a job opportunity for work in Sweden, where she remained during the war years; her parents’ journey to Spain, Cuba, and then to the United States; her reunion with them in the US in 1946; and settling in San Francisco, CA, where she married and had a family.

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral History

    Klara Garmel (née Pleshivaya), born on February 17, 1926, discusses her childhood in Yarun’, Ukraine; her parents' work on a collective farm; her memories of Jewish school as well as participating in a pioneer Ukrainian youth organization; the onset of war with Nazi Germany in 1941; the confusion that ensued; the enforcement of anti-Jewish laws; hiding from a roundup; witnessing brutal acts perpetrated against her grandfather; escaping, with the assistance of non-Jewish friends, to Poland; encountering her mother and sister, who returned to Ukraine; her experiences moving, hiding, and passing for a non-Jew; her conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith; marrying a widower far older than she; the advance of Soviet liberating forces; reclaiming her Jewish identity; leaving her marriage; working until she had sufficient funds to return to her home; learning that all but a sister and brother had perished; remarrying and having a daughter; and immigrating to the United States in 1992 due to the antisemitism she experienced in Ukraine.

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral History

    Polina Sorkin (née Britavskaya), born on November 25, 1931 in Krutye, Ukraine, discusses her childhood in Ukraine; her brother and father's service in Soviet Army; the German invasion and seeing troops in her town; her family's unsuccessful attempt to flee; an incident in which all the Jews were rounded up and marched to a barracks where they were imprisoned; escaping the barracks; traveling from village to village; being sheltered by relatives and strangers; her reunion with family members in a ghetto; traveling to an orphanage in Balta, Ukraine, where she remained until the end of the war; reuniting with her family; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral History

    Mikhail Blank, born on April 22, 1930 in Bershad, Ukraine, discusses his childhood in Bershad; the family's experiences on a collective farm; his memories of antisemitism; the family's move from Bershad to a nearby camp after the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; an incident in which his father and brother with other men were locked in a stable from which they escaped and returned to Bershad; the occupation of the area by Romanian troops and the establishment of a ghetto in September 1941 in Bershad, where he and his family lived until the end of the war; his escape attempts; illnesses he endured; the forced labor his father and brother performed; his father's death; the liberation of Bershad in March 1944 by Soviet troops; his brother joining the fight against the Nazis and his death in battle in July 1944; his life in Bershad after the war; his military service; and his immigration to the United States in 1991.

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral History

    Kurt Gronowski, born on July 16, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, discusses his childhood in Berlin; the antisemitism he experienced; the destruction of his family's business during Kristallnacht, November 1938; the family's escape to Shanghai, China; his experiences while on board the ship from Italy; the family's arrival in Shanghai and the assistance they received from the Jewish community; life in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai; conditions during the Japanese occupation; the improvement of conditions after the war ended; immigrating to the United States; the difficulties he encountered while living in Indiana; and settling in San Francisco, where he became a successful businessman.

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral History

    Rosa Wigmore (née Adler), born September 8, 1923 in Ulic, Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia), discusses her childhood in Ulic; her family life; the changes she experienced in 1939 following the Hungarian annexation of the region; her experiences during her deportation with her family in 1944 to a ghetto in Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhhorod, Ukraine); their deportation to Auschwitz; the selection she survived with her sister; her illness; her experiences in the infirmary and the help she received from a doctor who arranged to transfer her to another camp; the work she performed; the assistance she received; her lingering health issues; being liberated in May 1945 by Czechoslovakian partisans; her postwar experiences in Prague; her reunion with her sister; their immigration to the United States; and the fates of her other family members.

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

    Gerta Wingerd (née Alper), born on September 23, 1923 in Bеrhomet, Romania (now Berehomet, Ukraine), discusses her childhood in Czernowicz, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine); the increase in antisemitism in 1938 after fascist rule was established; the occupation of her town by Soviet forces in 1939; the retreat of the Soviet forces; her two brothers' escape toward Russia; the occupation of the area by Nazi troops; the establishment of a ghetto; her family's release; their eventual internment in a ghetto camp in Transnistria until 1944; the conditions, difficulties, and disease that were prevalent there; the family's liberation by Soviet troops; her return to Czernowicz; her escape from Romania to Vienna, Austria, where she worked for the United States Army; being sponsored by the Joint Distribution Committee to immigrate to the United States in 1949; and her experiences in New York, Minneapolis, and Great Falls, Montana before marrying and settling in Mill Valley, California.

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral History

    Evelyn Lowen Apte (née Eveline Loewenberg), born in 1929 in Goerlitz, Germany, describes her brother Gerald; her father Herman Alexander Lowen, who was a cavalry officer during the First World War; her mother Else (Gradnauer) Lowen, who had a great interest in art and attended an art school in Berlin; how her family did not consider themselves religious but when the war began the Jewish holidays became more culturally significant to the family; having a happy childhood; her father’s desire to emigrate as soon as Hitler came to power; getting around the quota system by becoming property owners in the United States; traveling through Paris, France in 1937 and taking a ship to New York, NY, arriving on February 22, 1937; the fate of her extended family; settling in Portland, Oregon; learning English; the difficult transition to American life, especially for her mother; feeling like an outsider in high school, but beginning to feel American in college; visiting Germany in 1966; how she does not enjoy speaking German with people her age, but is willing to speak German with the younger generation; attending Reed College in Oregon for two years, and then transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, where she did her undergraduate and some graduate work, finishing her education in London; becoming a social worker; considering herself an atheist, but still feeling close to the Jewish culture and traditions; the large community of Jewish refugees in Portland; and her reflections on her experiences as a refugee.

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral History

    Annette Herskovits discusses her experiences as a young child during the Holocaust, including her infancy in Paris, France; the occupation of Paris by Nazi troops; her father's decision that the family should go into hiding; hiding with her older siblings with occasional visits from their parents; the arrest and deportation of her parents in June 1943; her brother's efforts to find a safe place for her outside of Paris; being fostered with a couple in an unidentified location; being visited by her siblings during this period; and understanding that she would never see her parents again.

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral History

    Alfred Cotton (né Baumwollspinner), born on December 29, 1925 in Hamburg, Germany, discusses his childhood in Hamburg; his Polish parents; his father’s wholesale wine distribution business; his memories of the antisemitism after the Nazis rose to power; his parents' selling their business because of the anti-Jewish boycotts; the expulsion of his father to Poland in 1938; the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938; the arrests of the teachers at the Jewish school he attended; his parents' decision to place him on a Kindertransport; leaving Germany for a boy's camp in Suffolk, England; the arrest and internment of all boys over age 16; being moved to Sheffield, England and living in a camp run by refugee women; attending a public school; learning that his parents and grandparents were deported in 1942 from Poland where they were living; his immigration to the United States in the early 1950s; and his involvement in Kindertransport reunions.

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral History

    Marion Mostny, born on May 22, 1927 in Berlin, Germany, discusses her childhood in Berlin; the changes she experienced during the 1930s; her parents' decision to leave Germany; her family's immigration to Santiago, Chile in April 1939; the community of Jewish refugees there; the fates of family members left behind in Germany; her life in Chile; her and her husband's decision to immigrate to the United States in 1963; their life in San Francisco, CA; her decision to write her memoirs; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance. [See her memoir titles, Conversations with my grandchildren : a journey through three continents.]

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral History

    Roy Calder describes his early life in an assimilated family in Berlin and Dresden; his invovlement in Jewish youth groups; his awareness of increased antisemitism after the Nazi rise to power; his parents' decision to send him to school in Switzerland in 1935; his attempts to convince his family to leave Germany; his regret that they did not; his decision to immigrate to Great Britain; the jobs he held in Birmingham, England; the beginning of World War II in 1939; his internment as an enemy alien in Sherbrooke, Canada; his return to England in late 1940; why he volunteered for the British army; his six year service in Scotland, Nigeria, India, and Burma; his marriage to another Holocaust survivor; his decision to immigrate to the United States in 1953; his Jewish identity; and the effects the events of the Holocaust had on him and his wife.

    Oral history interview with Alfred Batzdorff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Felberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral History

    Abraham Jaeger, born on March 13, 1916 in Vel'ký Bočkov, Czechoslovakia (now Velykyi Bychkiv, Ukraine), discusses his childhood; his career as a salesman; his escape in October 1939 to Palestine, where he was imprisoned for six months; his experiences serving in the British Army in Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus; joining the Israeli Army in 1948; his career and life in Israel, where he lived until 1958; his immigration to the United States; and the death of his parents and three of sisters in the Holocaust.

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Kuhn

    Oral History

    The interviews describe Ms. Kuhn's childhood in Berlin, Germany, her life as the daughter of a Jewish father and non-Jewish German mother as the Nazi regime rose to power, and her growing awareness of antisemitism and change. Ms. Kuhn describes the dismay she felt after the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, and the privations her family suffered as a consequence of the Nuremberg Laws and her father's unemployment, living with meager ration allotments, detainments, and forced labor. She discusses life trapped in Berlin during the war years, bombings, and forced labor in a small factory. Ms. Kuhn remembers the round-up of Jews in Berlin in February 1943 and her release, because her mother was German. Of particular note, Ms. Kuhn discusses the Rosenstrasse Protest of 1943, when a group of Aryan women protested the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands and children, in which her mother participated. Ms. Kuhn describes the occupation of Berlin by Russian troops, and her family being asked to identify Nazis to them. She recalls her first exposure to information about the concentration camps and the Holocaust, the time she spent in a displaced persons camp, her desire to leave Germany and her immigration to the United States in 1948. Ms. Kuhn describes her return to Berlin for the 50th year memorial of Kristallnacht, when she participated in a silent march from the a synagogue to Rosenstrasse in commemoration of the protest there.

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral History

    Greta Reisman, born on January 6, 1927 in Mattersdorf (Mattersburg), Austria, discusses her childhood in Nuremberg, Germany; her religious upbringing and assimilated education; the changes she experienced after the Nazis came to power; the increasing antisemitism as well as her family's decision to relocate to Yugoslavia and Hungary; her experiences in Yugoslavia; the actions her grandmother took to allow them to remain there; her decision to join the rest of the family in Hungary; and immigrating to the United States in 1940.

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

    The interviews describe Mr. Schein's childhood is Sosnowiec, his experiences with antisemitism, and how his plans to immigrate to the United States were disrupted by the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. Mr. Schein describes being sent to his mother’s hometown, Brzostowica-Wielka, near Volkovisk, in Russian Poland, and eluding forced labor in Russia by returning to Sosnowiec. He discusses being conscripted for forced labor by the Germans in October 1940, and his experiences in several forced labor and concentration camps throughout the war years, which included Geppersdorf, Gross Sarne, Kleinmangersdorf, Wiessau, Waldau, Casper Bowder, Gintersdorf, Rostitz, Hundsfeld, Hirschberg, Gross-Rosen, Dachau, Buchenwald, and possibly others. Mr. Schein describes the conditions in these camps and the various labors he was forced to perform, being witness to medical experiments at Hundsfeld, and enduring a death march from Buchenwald. He discusses his liberation by American troops, his hospitalization, his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, their stay in a displaced persons camp in Ainring, Germany, and their immigration to the United States in June 1946. Mr. Schein relates that he was the member of his family that survived the Holocaust and his only possession when he emigrated was an accordion. He also describes his experiences in the United States.

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral History

    Dan Dougherty, born May 30, 1925 in Austin, Minnesota, describes being drafted into the United States Army 17 days after his high school graduation; transferring from the 44th Division to the 45th Division; seeing combat on the Sigfried Line and experiencing a slight injury; returning after his recovery and fighting at Aschaffenburg, Germany; the surrender of Germany seven days later; taking part in the liberation of Bavarian US prisoner of war camps and concentration camps; going towards Nuremberg, which had already fallen to the Allies; arriving in Dachau, where they found thousands of emaciated corpselike inmates; coming upon Allach concentration camp; and going to Munich, which they occupied on May 1, 1945.

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral History

    Max Erlichman, born in November 1931 in Caracas, Venezuela, describes his parents Tobias Erlichman and Bella Galinskaja; spending his childhood years in Amsterdam, Holland until he was taken to Westerbork with his brother and father in mid-November 1942; the deportation of his mother to Auschwitz in September of 1942; the deportation of his older brother Zacharias to Auschwitz in October of 1942; never seeing either Zacharias nor his mother again, and finding out after the war that they were both killed in the camps; being sent with his brother and father to Bergen-Belsen, where they stayed for nine weeks; being sent to a camp in Wülzburg, Germany and remaining there until they were liberated in March or April of 1945 by the American Army; recuperating along with his father and brother in a house provided to them by civilians in the town of Weissenburg in Bayern, Germany; being sent to a displaced persons camp in Würzburg for a week before being sent back to Holland; his father’s travels between Holland and the United States for a few years after the war; and immigrating to the US with his brother.

    Oral history interview with Marianne Gerhart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eugene Katz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral History

    Tillie Molho, born on December 25, 1926 in Salonika, Greece, discusses her childhood in Salonika and Athens, Greece; her experience of the Italian and German invasions of Athens; living in hiding for two years with a Christian family; the scarcity of food and the fear of discovery; her reunion with her family after the liberation of Athens; her family's attempt to reclaim their home from German collaborators; her life after the war; and her immigration to the United States in 1951.

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral History

    Agnes Allison (née Agnes Suzannah Halàsz), born on October 28, 1926 in Budapest, Hungary, discusses her childhood; her younger sister, Judy; her mother, Ilona Gero and her father, Robert Halász; attending a private German school established for the children of diplomats; the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, and the arrival of Polish refugees; the Hitler Youth movement at her school; her family’s conversion to Catholicism in 1939 and her awareness of the anti-Jewish laws in Hungary; the German occupation of Hungary beginning in March 1944 and the increased restrictions imposed on the Jewish community; her family being forced out of their home; working for the Germans for a short time in exchange for protection; becoming friendly with a German officer's chauffeur, Fritz, who told her that the German soldiers kept watch at night to protect everyone in the apartment from the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross; going into hiding in December 1944 with the help of a priest, Father Reile; remaining in hiding until the liberation of Budapest in April 1945; learning the fates of family members; and her belief that the Arrow Cross was responsible for the deaths of Budapest Jews.

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral History

    Ann Gabor Arancio, born on September 2, 1926 in Gyula, Hungary, discusses her childhood in Gyula; her childhood experiences with antisemitism; her experiences passing as a Christian with false identity papers; being captured in November 1944 by Nazi troops; doing forced labor in a brick factory; her escape with her mother and sister; going into hiding in several locations; the liberation of Hungary; studying in Holland; immigrating to the United States with her husband in 1950; and her divorce, remarriage, and family life in the United States. [Ms. Arancio was featured in the book, A Time to Flee: Unseen Women of Courage.]

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Yanina Cywinska, born on October 28, 1929, describes growing up with her Ukrainian family, including her parents, Wladyslaw and Ludwika, and her older brother, Theodor; traveling a lot as a child; living mostly in and around Warsaw, Poland; attending ballet classes; being raised Catholic; her father’s Jewish friends; being taught by her parents to not look down on Jews or ever make an antisemitic comment; her father, who was a doctor and was asked by the Nazis, once they had invaded Poland, to perform some medical experiments on Jewish twins; his refusal to conduct the experiments and his subsequent imprisonment in jail for a short period; the Warsaw Ghetto, which was constructed in 1939; her father’s realization that he had a moral obligation to help the Jews and his failed attempts to get the local priest to help; her family’s participation in the underground movement; making several trips a day through tunnels and sewer lines into and out of the ghetto; carrying ammunition, jewelry, furs, medicine, and poison for the black market; witnessing executions and other violence; the various tunnels that they used to get in and out of the ghetto; being arrested and sent to a detention center; being taken out in the middle of the night with other people into the forest, where they dug ditches and then were lined up and shot; surviving the massacre because she was behind another woman, and she fell into the pit and pretended to be dead; climbing out of the pit and hiding in a haystack, where a farmer found her; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; her aunt, Stasha, paying the Gestapo to get Yanina and her brother out of the detention center; returning to her aunt’s house; being beaten and abused by her aunt for being a “Jew-lover”; her brother, who ran away; working as a servant for her aunt; ending up homeless and wandering around the streets of Warsaw for a while; staying for a few weeks with a couple she met at the detention center; reuniting with her parents at the detention center; being sent with the other prisoners to Auschwitz in cattle cars; the journey; arriving at Auschwitz; surviving a gas chamber after being revived by another inmate; being given a uniform; the shaving of her hair; being tattooed with a number; working in various places, including a factory, a kitchen, in the labs, and at the crematorium (note that it is generally thought that only men worked in the Sonderkommando doing the jobs that Yanina said she did); her methods for survival; being forced on a death march to Dachau; being liberated by American soldiers; staying in a displaced persons camp for a while, where she was sexually assaulted and impregnated by a soldier; her two abusive marriages after the war; meeting her third husband; the effects of the war on her emotionally; giving up on God; and her long recovery from her traumatic experiences.

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral History

    Ilse Lewy, born on February 26, 1920 in Wuppertal, Germany, discusses her childhood in Wuppertal (now part of Elberfeld); her memories of the increase in antisemitism after Hitler rose to power 1933; being forced to leave school and move with her family; working at a factory until 1936; her move to a children's school in Sweden that prepared students for immigration to Palestine; her travels there by train and her experiences in the school for the next two years; being summoned back to Germany to immigrate with her parents and sister to the United States; the voyage on a ship through the Panama Canal; arriving in San Francisco, CA; returning to school; her attempts at and final success in being admitted to nurse training; her experiences with antisemitism in the United States; volunteering for the United States Army; being stationed in the Philippines where she met her future husband; and their marriage and family life.

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral History

    Esther Kemeny, born on August 19, 1912 in Michalovce, Slovakia, discusses her childhood in Michalovce; attending law school and graduating 1936; incidents of antisemitism; her disbarment in 1939 because she was Jewish; meeting her husband and their marriage; the escape of her brothers and father to the United States in 1940; being deported with her husband to Auschwitz in 1944; the deplorable conditions at Auschwitz; the birth and tragic loss of her son in Auschwitz; her work in the hospital at Auschwitz; the death march she endured; her experiences at Ravensbrück concentration camp; being liberated by Russian soldiers; the assistance she received from the Red Cross; her return to Slovakia and her reunion with her husband who was in the hospital in Bratislava; their immigration to the United States in 1949; their move to New York and then Ohio; her husband's medical practices; and the birth of her daughter in 1952.

    Oral history interview with Ray Redel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral History

    Roma Barnes (née Rosenmann), born on March 15, 1930 in Demblin (Deblin), Poland, describes being subjected to a lot of antisemitism in school when she was growing up; the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939; the roundup of Jews; fleeing the roundups several times; her parents, who were caught in the first roundup and sent to Sobibor, where they were killed immediately upon arrival; returning to her town, where she met up with her uncle and stayed with him; her uncle’s preparation of fake passports for all of them to go to Switzerland; watching as her uncle was captured by the Nazis and shot; being caught and sent to a work camp, where she witnessed such atrocities as watching the hanging of her friend; being sent to Chesokova, where she was liberated; and staying in Egland after the war before going to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral History

    Margot Braun (née Feibush), born January 28, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, describes growing up in a suburb of Berlin, where there were very few Jews; being forced to go to a Jewish school in Berlin when Hitler came to power in 1933; her family’s experience of a "pre-Kristallnacht" in June of 1938, at which time she and her family were awakened and forced to leave their businesses and move in with their relatives; her father’s many siblings, including his brother who was an extremely wealthy businessman in San Francisco, CA; leaving with her family for England in March 1939; the arrest of her parents at the beginning of the war; living with her cousin in a foster home in England; her parents’ eventual release; and her family’s immigration in October 1948 to the United States.

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral History

    Theodore “Ted” Ellington, born in February 1928 in Vienna, Austria, describes being an only child; growing up around antisemitism and being defensive of his Jewish identity; the religious nature of Vienna schools and having to attend Christian educational activities; being also required to go to Jewish education sessions; how there were about eight Jewish students in his elementary school class of 35 children; his father, who made a living selling foodstuffs for livestock; the economic inequality in Vienna and his family’s practice to provide lunch for an unemployed family once a week; the violence that erupted in Vienna in 1934; the Anschluss in 1938; seeing tanks in the streets and army planes flying overhead daily; the Nazi flags and swastikas all over Vienna and the pro-Nazi sentiment of many Austrians; the Nuremberg laws; being forced to attend an all-Jewish school, where Nazi children would gather outside and taunt the Jewish students; the burning of synagogues and the destruction of his grandfather's store; his memories of Nazis entering their family home and beating his father after he asked the officers for paperwork stating that they were allowed to conduct the search; how the officers took virtually everything the family owned, including his cherished stamp collection; his parents’ desire to relocate to the United States; his parents’ decision to enroll Ted in a program that was run by the Quakers that took children from Austria and placed them temporarily with a family in England; going to Belgium in April 1939 to live with his uncle; going to England in May 1939 and staying with a family there until 1946; being treated well by the English family; attending school in London; his parents’ migration to San Francisco, CA in 1940; traveling to New York, NY in 1946 and a train to San Francisco, where he reunited with his parents in May 1946; attending San Francisco City College for one year and then UC Berkeley; earning his degree in accounting in 1950; joining the US Army for two years and then becoming a CPA; getting married in 1965; and his two daughters.

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral History

    Elisabeth Katz (née Rosenthal), born on April 23, 1920 in Fürth, Germany, discusses her childhood in an assimilated Jewish family; her mother's conversion to Judaism and reversion to Lutheranism; the ambivalent position that she felt placed in because of this difference; having to change schools once Hitler rose to power in 1933; attending a Jewish boarding school; entering nursing school in Frankfurt in 1938; her memories of the events surrounding Kristallnacht in November 1938, including the arrest of her father; immigrating to London in late 1938 to work in a hospital; being interned as an enemy alien; returning to London and working as a nurse during the Blitz; visiting her parents in 1947 in Germany, where they had remained throughout the war; her father being one of the three Jews in Furth who survived the Holocaust; immigrating to the United States in 1949; moving to San Francisco, CA; and marrying a fellow refugee.

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral History

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