Oral history interview with Charles R. Lorant
Transcript
- Hello.
- I'm Dr. Jack Porter.
- This Thursday, May 28.
- Stay impersonal.
- OK.
- All right.
- Fine.
- OK.
- One, two, three, four.
- Hello.
- I'm Dr. Jack Porter.
- I'm the director of the Holocaust Survivors Project.
- Today is Thursday, May 28, 1992, in Newton Massachusetts.
- We're at the Jewish Community Center,
- Board of Jewish Education.
- And the purpose of this project is
- to interview not only survivors, but child survivors,
- children of survivors, liberators, rescuers, non-Jews,
- and other groups often overlooked, such as Sephardic
- Jews.
- My guest today is Charles Lorant--
- I call him Charlie--
- from Yugoslavia.
- Welcome.
- Thank you.
- Let's start off, Charlie, with some questions about the pre-war
- conditions before the Holocaust.
- Why don't you just start off in what year
- and when and where you were born, probably
- just as simple as that.
- Well, my start was kind of slightly complicated.
- My mother was born in Czechoslovakia
- in what's been referred as Sudetenland.
- And, of course, at that time that
- was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
- My father, on the other hand, came
- from Slovenia, which at that time was part of Austria too.
- And they got married in Yugoslavia.
- However, because my mother wanted to be home,
- I was then born in her home town,
- which is Zatec, Czechoslovakia.
- And as soon as I could manage the trip, I went to Belgrade.
- So it's kind of meaningless the fact
- that I was born in Czechoslovakia.
- My early years, my formative years--
- well, really not my formative years,
- but my youth up to the age nine was
- spent in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
- And what year were you born?
- And I was born in Zatec, Czechoslovakia, in 1932.
- 1932.
- Describe those who comprised your household before the war.
- Well, before the war my house-- well, I was the only son.
- So I had no brothers and sisters.
- So it was a small house, household, in Belgrade,
- my mother and my father.
- And we had also part of the household a woman,
- Josephine, who was both cook and my caretaker and so on.
- So she was really as part of my family.
- I might mention that the fact that
- since both my mother and my father
- came from an Austro-Hungarian environment,
- their common language was German.
- So I grew up speaking German, not Yiddish, by the way,
- because Yiddish was really not part of my family's tradition,
- if you will.
- Because they both, my father's and my mother's family,
- were what you would call Middle European part of--
- I don't know the early history.
- But somehow by 1850 or thereabouts,
- they were really assimilated.
- They spoke the native--
- the languages of the country, mostly Germany, but some
- spoke the local languages, but no Yiddish.
- No Yiddish.
- Of course, they were Ashkenazi.
- And I think they were primarily influenced already at that time
- by the reformed community, I think Rabbi Mendelssohn.
- I don't know when he started.
- But I think-- they certainly were not--
- Moses Mendelssohn?
- Moses Mendelssohn, which started the reform movement.
- And he must have spread through Austria,
- certainly in the communities that my family grew up.
- Would you say your social status was middle class, upper class?
- Oh, definitely, middle class.
- In fact, I have an old lithograph
- of my father's grandmother and the whole family.
- And, you know, you can see that--
- and that was taken--
- they came from Brno, Czechoslovakia.
- And you can see that they were really
- middle class family from the dressing, the very fact
- that they took the family picture, which, you know,
- that was in the early days of photography.
- You know, the whole family, the father, mother,
- and seven brothers-- and seven offspring,
- one of them being my grandmother's
- on my father's side.
- The mere fact that they could afford a photographer
- meant that they were of the middle class.
- Yeah.
- I might explain about my name.
- Now, my grandfather--
- Yes.
- My grandfather originally came, I
- believe, from Temesvár, which is Hungary,
- though I think right now it's part of Romania.
- Temesvár I think it's called.
- And--
- You mean that your name is spelled L-O-R-A-N-T--
- Right.
- Today.
- Right.
- And he as a--
- I don't really know for what reason and how come,
- but at an early age, he moved to Ljubljana, Slovenia,
- Yugoslavia up to recently.
- And so he settled in this town, which really had
- a very small Jewish community.
- But apparently-- and his name was Levi.
- And apparently, there was another Levi in the community.
- And now I don't know whether he was a crook or just
- careless with his accounting, but apparently he
- bounced a lot of checks.
- And somehow my grandfather got blamed or at least
- he got some of some of the letters or communication
- from the banks or whatever.
- So he got tired of that situation, you know.
- And as I remember my grandfather was, of course, very proper,
- proper gentleman.
- So he decided to change the name to Lorant.
- Back then?
- Yeah.
- Back then we were calling it Lorant.
- Over here, just because it makes it easier,
- I change to Lorant because people naturally
- came to that pronunciation.
- So what was your Hebrew name complete?
- It wasn't Charles.
- I guess they-- we really didn't--
- I don't think that--
- I probably got it when I was circumcised.
- But I really don't remember the name.
- I think I was told it's Caliph is--
- Caliph.
- So your name originally was Caliph Levi?
- Oh, you mean how originally in Yugoslavia?
- Yeah, Yugoslavia.
- Well, as I was told, by the time I was born in 1932,
- there were already the--
- you could see the storm brewing up.
- I mean my mother and father, speaking German and so on,
- were certainly aware of what was going on in Germany.
- And there were relatives in Germany and Austria.
- And there was already fear that something bad might come.
- And so my mother told me that they
- wanted to choose a name that was usable in most countries
- in the world, that there was a direct translation.
- And so that's what I got the name Charles.
- But originally, I guess I was referred to as Karli.
- Karli?
- Yeah, Karl or Karli.
- In Serbian was Drago.
- Drago?
- You're called Karli Levi originally?
- No, no.
- I was never called Levi.
- Never Levi?
- No, no, my grandfather changed his name.
- No, I was born Lorant.
- No.
- So it was Karli Lorant.
- Karli or Drago.
- Drago.
- That's the Serbian name.
- And then when, as we will see later on when I went to Italy,
- it was Carlo.
- And over here it was Charles.
- You have a grandson Carlos, which is interesting,
- your grandson Carlos.
- What about your family's level of religious observation
- or cultural observation, assimilation and relationship?
- Well, my normal family life really lasted from 1932 to 1941
- when the war started in Yugoslavia.
- And there were two synagogues in Belgrade.
- There was the Sephardic synagogue and the Ashkenazi
- synagogue.
- And we were part of the Ashkenazi synagogue.
- So I remember going to High Holidays and religious school.
- And at home, we were observing Jewish holidays
- and certainly fasting on Yom Kippur and so on.
- But I don't really recall any major observation of the Sabbath
- and so on.
- And my father was in business there.
- He had a bottling company for wine and seltzer water
- and so on.
- And, you know, he was integrated in the community.
- He was a musician and my mother as well.
- And with friends, their spare time, they played chamber music
- and had a busy life.
- But it was not a very--
- it wasn't heavily oriented, I would say--
- Did you go to Hebrew school or any--
- As I recall, yes, I must have started in--
- I mean, if I went to the temple, which I remember,
- I must have also studied some Hebrew.
- But I--
- But you were not bar mitzvahed, were you?
- The war--
- I was not bar mitzvah because--
- The war came, didn't it?
- I was not my mitzvahed simply because things
- happened before age 13.
- And as we will see, at age 13, it was no time for bar mitzvah.
- But--
- Did you ever have a bar mitzvah--
- It's an interesting question because--
- Were you ever bar mitzvahed now?
- No.
- And which-- I still think about it sometimes that maybe it's
- not too late.
- No, no, it's not.
- We can work on that later.
- Yeah, it might be something to talk about.
- To have a-- did you encounter any antisemitic experiences
- before the war?
- In Yugoslavia?
- Before the war?
- Yeah, when you were growing up, you
- were a young boy, eight, nine, seven, eight, 11, or whatever.
- No, I don't recall.
- I mean, as I said, we were integrated in the society.
- But from all I know--
- and I may as well mention that my wife
- happens to be Yugoslav too.
- And her family stem out of--
- I was going to ask about that.
- Your wife--
- --Belgrade, except they weren't--
- They were Sephardic.
- Yeah, your wife was Sephardic.
- Did you know each other when you were growing up?
- We are told that we might have met in the park.
- At what age?
- Well, you know, I was then at age--
- in park, I don't know, anywhere from age three to age--
- In Belgrade.
- --nine when I left.
- And, you know, OK, she's two years younger.
- So I don't know.
- And my mother might have known--
- well, actually knew my wife's aunt
- because they apparently went to the same physical education
- classes or something.
- Well, that's-- but the families didn't know each other.
- And the two communities were reasonably separate.
- I mean, you know, there were two different temples or synagogues.
- So your mother did not know her mother--
- My wife's mother, I don't think so.
- They were two separate communities.
- Essentially.
- But going back to the question of antisemitism or anything,
- from what I hear both on my mother's side
- and from my wife's family, the Jewish community there
- was an old community, which--
- well, of course, going back to history, they came from Spain
- and settled there.
- I don't know whether they settled
- in Yugoslavia directly, but certainly around Eastern
- Mediterranean region.
- And the Jewish community in Belgrade and Sarajevo and so on
- were long-standing community.
- And they were prominent in business and medicine and so on.
- And they had a very good relationship with whatever
- the ruling classes were, you know,
- the kings of Serbia and so on.
- And so they had a very good relationship.
- And I'm not aware of any antisemitism.
- And even going further on when the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia,
- at least on the Serbian side, they certainly helped the Jews
- as much as they could.
- And then we go to the Croatia, that's another story.
- That's the Croatians were another-- you're
- talking about the Serbians.
- I'm talking about Serbia.
- Slovenia-- all right, Slovenia, actually also,
- there was no overt antisemitism that I ever heard of and not
- during the war either.
- They were helpful.
- But, of course, they were part of Italy,
- in the Italian occupation zone.
- So that's--
- Slovenia?
- Slovenia, yeah.
- So they were really in a different environment
- than Serbia, which was under Nazi control and Croatia which
- had its own Quisling government that essentially out Nazi'd
- the Nazis in what they did to the Jews as well as to Gypsies
- and other Serb minorities there.
- Before we get into the heavy part of the war time,
- is there any one light, little story
- you remember from childhood before the deluge came?
- Is there any thing that--
- That I remember in particular?
- Happy times before the war.
- I think I just--
- no, I can't remember, say, any specific event.
- I had a very happy childhood.
- But do you feel--
- I traveled to see my grandparents in Ljubljana
- and on my father's side my grandfather in Czechoslovakia
- and went on vacations.
- And we had essentially a very normal, middle class life.
- And I enjoy playing piano, which I was taught.
- And in retrospect, I wish it would
- have been a violin, which was my father's instrument because that
- could have been lugged around during the war,
- rather than a piano, which then I had to discontinue.
- And you still play a little?
- No, not really.
- I mean I enjoy music.
- But I given up the piano.
- It's been interrupted too much.
- And I got too critical of what it should
- be like to try to learn it.
- As the prospects of war became imminent,
- what options were open to you and your family?
- Did you see the war coming?
- Did you make any decisions, any plans
- about as you saw the war coming?
- Personally, obviously, I was too small to make any decisions
- or even participate in the decision making.
- But I know there was a lot of agonizing about what to do.
- The war already started in '39, or for practical purposes,
- I guess already in '38 when the Germans invaded Austria.
- And the situation there got in Yugoslavia, you know,
- it felt very threatening.
- But I think like in many places, Jews
- felt that their country was safe and there
- was no outright reason at that time for Germans
- to occupy Yugoslavia.
- But as we will see, that certainly changed.
- But--
- You were only six or seven when the war broke out.
- Well, yes, six or seven when the war broke out, right.
- And how did you first hear about the war?
- Through the radios?
- Newspapers?
- Well, at home, I got an old Serbian newspaper
- which declares.
- I think we got it--
- I just knew it from the news.
- I mean, obviously the events in France, first Austria, then
- France, and Poland, and so on were known at that time.
- And I think the invasion of Russia
- started still while we were in Belgrade, and there was no war.
- But there was a lot of political turmoil.
- There was a regent.
- The king of Yugoslavia was too young.
- And there was a regent, Paul, that apparently was pro-German.
- And eventually, there lots of there
- was a lot of agitation against him.
- And I think that was actually fueled by the fact
- that the Germans demanded the right
- to go through Yugoslavia in order
- to help the Italians in the war effort against Greece.
- And so there was a question whether to let
- the Germans come through.
- And--
- Well, that leads to--
- That's what really led to the war.
- Right.
- When did-- now we get into the heavy part.
- When the war started, you went into hiding, I understand.
- Is that right?
- Well, let me--
- Why don't you--
- --say how it started.
- Let you say how it--
- As I said, there was a lot of agitation.
- And the Yugoslav, or at least the Serbs,
- did not want to grant Germans any right-- you know,
- they felt very strongly about their independence.
- And the regent government was overturned.
- And there was a government came in that was opposed to Germany--
- to giving carte blanche to the Germans to go through.
- And indeed, things started getting very uncertain.
- And one nice day-- well, I shouldn't say nice day.
- What year was--
- --one day in April, and I'm not sure exactly what the date was.
- It was sometimes in April 1941.
- At 6 o'clock in the morning, we were
- woken by what seemed like an earthquake.
- But, in fact, it was the Germans bombarding the city.
- And this is the way the war started.
- Most people didn't even know about it.
- And as I understand it, Hitler declared war on Yugoslavia
- sometimes like 6 o'clock or 5:30 in the morning.
- And no sooner did he say that that the German planes were
- all over Belgrade bombarding.
- Wow.
- And that's how the war started.
- We were kind of ready.
- As I said, because of all the agitation,
- people did expect the worse.
- And I remember we had some rucksacks
- already packed and ready to do something if an air raid came.
- And we went down in the basement where there was a shelter.
- My father, by the way, was a reserve officer
- in the Yugoslav army.
- So he'd donned his uniform.
- And after making sure that we were all right,
- I guess he started finding out where--
- starting deciding whether to join his regiment.
- My mother, of course, said, no, it's useless.
- Just stay with us.
- Did he join the regiment?
- Well, he did.
- But before that, we left the house during a lull
- in the bombardment.
- And I remember buildings burning all around.
- Our house did not get hit.
- But everywhere else, it was burning.
- And by chance, my father saw that there
- was a horse drawn cart from his company that was going out.
- That was what they used to transport wines and seltzer
- bottles to distribute.
- And apparently, one of the men had the cart.
- And I guess he, himself, was trying to escape.
- And so he hailed him and put us on it.
- And then he joined his regiment, that's the last time I ever--
- we ever saw him or even heard from him.
- You mean on April--
- what was the date?
- Or whatever you said, April '41, in the morning, that
- was the last time you saw him.
- That's the last time.
- We never--
- You never had a chance to say goodbye to him?
- Well, no, we said goodbye then and there, you know.
- And he decided-- he was a very idealistic man.
- He felt that he had to join his regiment and do his duty.
- And he joined.
- And, of course, the war only lasted two weeks.
- But he said goodbye?
- I mean he said--
- Well, he said goodbye to us.
- We will see each other.
- And we will come back, or whatever.
- And that was the last thing we ever heard or--
- we really had very scant news even after the war
- to find out where--
- from the Red Cross and so on-- where he might have died.
- But he died in battle somewhere?
- Presumably died in battle.
- And the body was lost.
- And he was missing in action.
- Missing and never recovered.
- That's right.
- Because it was a chaotic situation.
- And your mother and you are left to do what now?
- Well, at this point, the main concern
- was to get out of the bombardment.
- I mean, everybody was abandoning the city.
- And as I said, I remember the chaos
- on the streets and roads outside Belgrade
- because everybody was trying to get out.
- And cars ran out of gasoline.
- And Germans came strafing down, strafing the populations that--
- I mean, it was like an apocalypse.
- You know, it was really a--
- Apocalypse.
- And somehow we ended up after one or two
- days in a small town outside Belgrade
- and stayed there until things subsided of course.
- And then eventually, we were forced--
- well, we were told by the police that we
- had to go back to Belgrade.
- And in Belgrade, we had to then wear the yellow star.
- You wore the Jewish star?
- Sure.
- Sure.
- On your clothes, you as a child too?
- Of course.
- Every Jew, mm, hmm.
- We went back to our apartment.
- And it was requisitioned by German officers.
- So there was a German officer there,
- who actually was relatively innocuous.
- I mean he was getting drunk a lot, as even I remember.
- But personally, he was not abusive.
- Well, there was an aunt of mine too,
- who now lives in New York, who happened
- to be visiting in Belgrade, who lived in Ljubljana.
- And we soon realized--
- I mean we knew that things would be just--
- that you had to run-- that you had to go away.
- Did you feel that the Jews were a target--
- Oh, of course--
- --next in terms of the Holocaust or--
- Well, no, I don't think at that time--
- --in terms of just--
- No, just in the fact that they were abused.
- And I think they already were situation there
- where they rounded up Jews when some Germans got killed.
- And so they rounded up many Jews and shot them and put them
- on a work details.
- I mean the final solution part was not known.
- Did you personally see Jews beards being cut off
- or Jews being humiliated?
- That I haven't seen simply because there was no--
- in Belgrade, there was no Hasidic type community.
- No.
- But I mean, you just knew and heard and so on the thing.
- So everybody was trying to consider a route of escape.
- I'm sure some already made some arrangements before the war.
- Like my father-in-law, I think intended to go to England.
- And he had some money transferred there.
- But--
- Were you able to--
- That was too late.
- --when you say escape, I know that you were in hiding.
- But were there Jews ready to escape possibly the country
- or to go to England?
- Of course.
- You still had a--
- Well, no, no, those were arrangements
- made before the war was soon--
- Where would you escape to?
- Which country?
- Well, in our case, the clear path was clearly
- was to try to go to Slovenia.
- We were in communication with our grandparents.
- And Slovenia was under Italian occupation.
- And things were relatively normal for the Jewish community.
- So we made arrangement.
- And that was our objective, to go Slovenia.
- And there were some specialists that
- were forging false documents coming out
- of Ljubljana to go to Belgrade and take people by train.
- And Ljubljana is in Slovenia?
- Ljubljana is in Slovenia.
- OK.
- So they would go into Belgrade and take them back
- into Ljubljana.
- That's right.
- And you had to go through German--
- of course, there was all kinds of controls.
- And you had to go through Croatia.
- That's what I was going to ask.
- You had to go through Croatia.
- So they had to provide false documents.
- And at some times, rip your yellow symbol, badge,
- the Magen David, because you're obviously not--
- Sure.
- And the greatest fear, as I recall,
- for us and I'm sure for anybody else,
- was to be recognized on the street
- by somebody because it was, I think,
- under the threat of death penalty
- then, not to wear the yellow star.
- So that was the greatest fear.
- What if you were caught?
- You might have been caught by Croatian guards
- too on the border crossing.
- That was also a possibility.
- I don't know, just be transported to Germany,
- if not killed or--
- I mean they have an extermination camps themselves
- there.
- So--
- Did you make it to Slovenia?
- Yeah.
- You got through.
- We got--
- It was quite a miracle.
- My mother, I, and my father's sister, my aunt.
- So there's the three of you.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- I don't even recall whether we made it together or separately.
- I mean certainly I was with my mother.
- But so--
- That was a liberating experience just to get into Slovenia.
- As I said, at that time, I was nine years old.
- So I did not have the full understanding
- of what's going on.
- But you can imagine.
- And I've talked to my mother about it.
- You can imagine her concern.
- And I must say that my mother acted--
- there's decisions, life threatening decisions
- that you have to make from day to day in those situation.
- And she had to make all these decisions.
- And, you know, of course, she was,
- as I said, aware of what was going on.
- So psychologically, that must have been quite a burden on her.
- And in retrospect, when you think later,
- she developed nervous conditions and so on and depressions
- and so on probably as a result of those days.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Let's talk about now you're now you're in hiding so to speak
- or is--
- No.
- No.
- Well, after making--
- Now, you're in Slovenia.
- You're in Italian jurisdiction.
- Now, we're Ljubljana.
- Now in my grandparents' home.
- No, we're not in hiding at all.
- And--
- What would you call it?
- Matter of fact--
- It's not hiding.
- But you have false papers.
- Well, we had false papers to make the trip.
- But after that, now we were in Ljubljana.
- And the Italians, even though they started racial laws
- in Italy, and I don't know, I suppose
- there were also when Ljubljana actually
- became a province of Italy or Slovenia,
- they probably had the same laws.
- But these laws had nothing to do with extermination or even
- putting people in prison.
- Those were laws that said, well, you can't work for the state.
- Or you can't teach at a university.
- And you can't have a non-Jewish servant, things like that.
- But there was no overt threat to the life-- as a matter of fact,
- I started going to the schools.
- I was going to ask you, did you pass as Christians?
- Or--
- No, no, in Ljubljana, we were members of the Jewish community.
- And you had a-- what kind of life--
- But, you know, we certainly didn't have to wear any stars.
- We were just going about our own business.
- And my grandfather, he had a business
- there of soft drinks and bottling and distribution
- and so on.
- And my uncle was part of the business.
- They were still working at the factory in those times.
- So you had--
- So it was a normal life--
- Until when?
- --while all these things-- but that's
- because this was not now under Nazi occupation.
- How long did that last?
- Until when?
- Well, unfortunately, it did not last too long
- because the Italians kind of--
- I guess they were considering the Jewish situation.
- And they decided that for political reasons
- they did not trust the Jewish community politically there
- because they might oppose--
- and, in fact, they did that also to non-Jewish intellectuals
- and so on.
- And they decided on a policy of transporting or deporting Jews
- and other ones into Italy and to have them under surveillance.
- And so sometimes towards end of October or early November,
- I'm not exact, in '41.
- And I don't know whether that was everybody
- in the Jewish community there.
- But certainly my family was told that they have to move to Italy
- and you know where to go and so on.
- Were you fearful of that?
- No?
- Well--
- It turned out it might have saved your life.
- Well, eventually, it definitely saved our lives.
- And in fact, if I may say at this point,
- this is really a motivation for me
- to appear here because I really want
- to talk a little bit about the flip side of the Holocaust,
- if you can put it that way, that it wasn't just
- a situation of cruelty when we talk about concentration camps.
- That there were other people that helped and risked
- their lives to save Jews.
- And we are the beneficiaries of this other side.
- And there were many people involved,
- as we will talk about it I imagine a little later.
- For the sake of the archives, why don't you
- mention a few of them?
- Well, let me first talk about trip first.
- But--
- Yeah, let's go into Italy now, right, yeah.
- So anyway, we were--
- my family, you know, we had what you call lasci passare,
- a kind of safe conduct--
- Lassay passay?
- To appear-- to appear--
- Lassay passay?
- No.
- Well, I guess it's a lasci passare, it's a let you pass.
- Let you pass.
- That's a literal translation.
- To go to Trieste and then to a town
- called Vicenza, which is between Padua and Verona.
- And at least part of my family--
- there was my mother, myself, same aunt
- that I talked about it that happened to be in Belgrade when
- the war started, with her husband,
- and my uncle, a brother of my father's, the younger brother,
- with his wife and daughter, my cousin Kitty.
- And we were-- so with other people,
- we were assigned to go to Vicenza.
- And I recall, at least I was told,
- because I don't think at that time
- I knew enough Italian, that the chief of police when
- he had all his people collected in front of him, he said, well--
- and he was a fascist I assume, to be in position of leadership
- there.
- He said, well, I'm sorry that I have to do this.
- I'm under order.
- And I have to assign you to places.
- And I wish I didn't have to do this.
- But I'll assign you to the nicest towns
- that I can think of under my jurisdiction.
- And what this whole thing consisted of
- was that we were really under--
- House arrest?
- --restricted-- well, not house arrest-- restricted residence.
- In other words, we can only reside--
- we could reside in whatever towns we were assigned to.
- And only through police permission
- could we go outside of town.
- And I think the stipulation was you had to report in the morning
- and in the evenings and so on.
- Did you live in a house or houses?
- Well, we actually lived in this little town.
- Well, it was that little a town.
- Which town?
- Called Breganze, which is in the province of Vicenza.
- And we lived in a hotel in there.
- A hotel.
- And the Italian government actually
- paid a stipend, which was not enough.
- It's ironic.
- But just to tell you that while the Nazis at that time
- were already committing unspeakable atrocities
- in their zones of controls, the Italians
- were in fact trying to save Jews.
- Yeah.
- Do you have any names of people that you want
- to place into the archives?
- Names--
- Yes, I do.
- In fact, I am in the process of doing that with,
- yeah, in Jerusalem.
- In Jerusalem, yeah.
- I know later we'll show some photos.
- And maybe we can also mention then--
- Let me just say, at that time things were still very normal.
- So we spent our enforced residence in this little town.
- And there were other Jews in other towns.
- My grandparents and another aunt and uncle with their two
- children, my other two cousins, who unfortunately perished
- eventually in the Holocaust, they
- were in an other town in the Dolomites,
- another beautiful town.
- And every so often we visited and so on.
- So we had a relatively normal life
- and with people that were kind to us and helpful to us.
- And we were kind of hoping to just--
- Now how long did that last till?
- Well, that lasted until '43.
- In '43, if you recall, Mussolini--
- after Rommel got defeated and I think
- it was already Sicily got invaded,
- Mussolini was overthrown.
- And they formed a new government now with Marshal Badoglio.
- And for a while, of course, all the fascist--
- or I shouldn't say all the fascists,
- but fascist law dealing with political prisoners--
- and we were actually considered at that time more
- like political than Jewish.
- Than Jewish.
- We just were apparently you know--
- since we were Jewish, we were not
- politically trustworthy in Ljubljana
- and in other parts I suppose because there
- were lots of other people in the same situation.
- And that's the reason we ended up in Italy.
- But whatever laws--
- Yeah, just to backtrack, what were you
- allowed to do during that time when you stayed in the hotel?
- Could you work?
- No, you couldn't work.
- No, I don't think-- well, I think
- people with professions like doctors
- would just volunteer their services.
- My uncle who was in the wine--
- or was certainly interested in wine production
- and so on helped, volunteered with local growers
- because that was in wine growing area.
- And--
- Where did you get food?
- How did you--
- Well, food was served at the hotel.
- I mean the food was all right.
- So you were like guests, like Guests
- of the Italian government.
- We were like guest, in a sense, right.
- I mean, as I said, you know, not everybody was in the hotel.
- And the stipend was not sufficient.
- So people that managed to bring savings and so on had to do it--
- I'm sure there were other people maybe not such good shape.
- And there was in fact, as a matter of fact,
- there was a concentration camp in Southern Italy
- where some of the not so lucky ones ended into.
- Where was that?
- But that was not--
- What was the name of that concentration camp?
- Oh, gosh, the name escapes me now.
- But it was certainly not an extermination camp.
- I mean it was not as pleasant to be in--
- was really more like a prisoners of war camp, but--
- Did the Italians all know that you were
- Jews, the people of the town?
- Yes.
- They didn't know much about Jews.
- And they just felt sympathetic to us
- because what kind of a stupid government, you know.
- Why are these people here?
- You know, why?
- They had no-- they're just people like us, you know.
- Why are they treated differently.
- As I said--
- That's refreshing to hear that during the Holocaust--
- So they had no feelings of ill will, not even the fascist ones.
- Of course, there were a lot of-- the antifascists,
- of course, were sympathizing simply
- because that's another bad things that the fascists were
- doing.
- So automatically we were considered nice people
- from that standpoint.
- So getting now, we're in the final--
- the last phase before liberation.
- Could you go into that a little bit?
- Well, now, OK, as I mentioned, after Mussolini got overthrown,
- for a while some of the laws that
- were enacted under Mussolini's government
- were overthrown and particularly those
- that had to do with political prisoners and so on.
- So we were really free at that point.
- Except unfortunately, the Germans were--
- they were already in Italy because they were
- fighting the Allies down south.
- But now they were just pouring pulling their troops down
- into Italy.
- And when Italy actually signed the armistice,
- or Badoglio signed the armistice with the Allies, in fact
- the state of war came about between Italy and Germany.
- And Italy now became an occupied country, or at least
- northern and central Italy because the Allies had already
- were in Sicily.
- And so the situation was no different--
- or would be no different than in Yugoslavia
- or in Poland or in France.
- It became very serious then.
- And now that side that I refer to,
- the fact that there were so many people in Italy that
- were willing to help Jews or other people in need,
- and we fell into this protective shield.
- So if I want to now backtrack what really happened
- is that in this little town, which was really Breganze, which
- was really a tourist town as well, in that town
- there happened to be two friends, two lady friends.
- And they became friends of my mother.
- And these two lady friends, one was called Maria Zanarotti.
- And the other one was Yole Giandoso.
- They were kind of the spurs of two extended families that
- eventually helped.
- And not just-- the two person kind of-- the two people kind
- of--
- we kind of lost contact, direct contact, as far as the help.
- But the rest of the family got more and more involved.
- And--
- The names were?
- The names?
- Once again.
- Yole Giandoso.
- Giandoso.
- And Maria Zanarotti.
- Zanarotti.
- Now, Maria Zanarotti was from Vicenza,
- which was the provincial headquarters, the town that I
- mentioned earlier.
- And Yole Giandoso was from Padua nearby.
- But Yole Giandoso, through her husband, it was--
- her extended family included people in Milan.
- So to recount the chain of events,
- as soon as the Germans were taking control,
- everybody had to make some decision.
- You couldn't obviously stay in the town
- that you were at because even though the majority of people
- would have not harmed you, surely
- there were a few fascists in there that
- would have denounced you to the police as being Jewish.
- So you had to leave.
- So there were three alternatives essentially.
- One alternative is to start going south because that's
- where the Allies were.
- So that's--
- American troop.
- You wanted to somehow find your way down and cross the cross
- the lines, cross the war zone.
- And in fact that's the that's the line
- that my wife's family, who had a very parallel history,
- undertook.
- I want you to tell us later how you met too.
- Well--
- That's also interesting.
- --I'd love too.
- Yeah.
- The other avenue was going into Switzerland.
- The third one was essentially just live underground or somehow
- in Italy, which is the path that we chose.
- Now, none of these were sure ways.
- You couldn't really say one was better than the other one.
- I think some people made it either way.
- I would say most people in Italy somehow managed to survive,
- most foreign Jews in Italy.
- But, you know, there were some that got caught on their way
- down to the south.
- There were people that got turned away at the Swiss border
- or got caught.
- And in fact, my aunt and uncle with the two cousins
- that I mentioned earlier, they got caught in Milan somehow.
- They were trying to make it to Switzerland, which
- other parts of the family that I mentioned,
- my grandparents and my uncle, aunt and my cousin Kitty
- made it to Switzerland.
- My other cousin and their parents got caught.
- And as far as we know, they were shipped to Germany
- and perished there.
- You never saw them again?
- No, I saw them last in Italy when we visited them.
- The name was Eva and Peter.
- They both were slightly younger than I.
- And you know of other people that got caught
- trying to cross the border.
- So now what happened in my case is--
- and you know there are so many people involved,
- which makes it a little difficult to keep
- an orderly story.
- So many people to thank--
- But on the other hand, illustrates my point
- that a lot of people were involved for no other reason
- than humanity.
- They just felt that people were in need of help.
- And you have to realize that these people risked their lives.
- If they got caught, they very well
- might have been shot or sent to Germany.
- And a lot of these people had a lot
- to lose because we're talking in this case people that
- were middle class, as a matter of fact, some were in the high--
- Upper class.
- Upper class.
- Well, anyway I started mentioning--
- Who were some of the them?
- --the two ladies, Maria and Yole.
- Now, Yole's husband, Yole Giandoso's husband
- was prisoner of war somewhere.
- But she had a brother-in-law, whose name is Lugino,
- Lugino Giandoso--
- or Luigi Giandoso.
- Actually, you should call him Dr. Luigi Giandoso, who
- at that time was a young man.
- And he was refusing to go to the draft.
- He was getting, you know, by going to medical school
- was trying to avoid the draft.
- And he came to visit there a few times.
- And he became actually my teacher for a while later on.
- But anyway, when he got involved when
- we decided that we had to leave and decided that for a while
- the adults, like you know my mother
- to go and hide in the mountain, and I
- was taken care by with Maria Zanarotti's brother.
- Well, first of all, they took me by bicycle to Vicenza.
- And first, I think I was put in a hospital,
- I remember, deciding what to do with me.
- And I was put in a hospital as a false sick person.
- And the doctors knew it--
- That's a good way to hide you.
- And the nuns who were the nurses in the hospital knew it.
- And I was there being protected in hospital.
- And then this Yole Giandoso first
- made arrangement with her parents,
- who lived in Vicenza, to take me in,
- which happened after the getting out of the hospital.
- But they were very uneasy.
- They were very scared.
- They were older people.
- So the next thing is that Maria Zanarotti's brother, who
- was Sergio Zanarotti, who was the principal
- in the local technical institute and had his living
- quarters right next to the institute,
- decided to take me in.
- And he had seven children, essentially one year apart,
- except there was a two-year span, and I fit exactly into it.
- And I was taken in as the cousin from Milan.
- Cousin from Milan.
- So I stayed in there with the Zanarotti family.
- And the mother in the family, her name
- was Mary, actually Mary Zanarotti,
- and the seven children.
- And it was really the first time that I grew up
- in a family having really--
- That's right--
- --brothers and sisters.
- And that was the feeling.
- And to this day, we are like cousins.
- And now you've gone back there?
- Of course.
- Several times.
- And we have visited.
- They are like brothers and sisters.
- They are like brother and sister.
- And I was calling the mother, Zia Mary, you know,
- my Aunt Mary.
- And Zio Sergio, my aunt Sergio.
- So anyway, it seemed like a long time that I stayed there.
- And it was really a wonderful experience,
- you know really living a true family life.
- But, of course, you can imagine the risk he took to have me.
- Where was your mother at this time?
- Well, my mother is now in the mountains kind of hiding away
- with another group of people.
- And now Maria Zanarotti is apparently already
- part of the resistance at that time.
- So she is arranging documents and so on.
- And you needed also like food coupons
- because at that time everything was rationed.
- And so she was arranging some place to go, documents to go.
- In the meantime, Yole Giandoso, the original contact,
- she had an apartment in a town near Milan,
- called Milanino, little Milan, which was like a suburb
- actually.
- It was the first experiment in suburbia in Italy.
- So she had an apartment there.
- And she urged us to go to that apartment
- after we get documents.
- And that's what we did.
- And Luigi, Dr. Luigi Giandoso, came with us, took us by train.
- And we ended up to go to Milan and then to Milanino.
- Now in this Milanino now, we got other people
- because now you had the third brother.
- This Giandoso, there were three brothers, Aldo, Luigi, or we
- refer to Luigino, and Riccardo, who at that time
- was in Switzerland because he was also an officer.
- And somehow he managed to escape German imprisonment
- by going to Switzerland, where Aldo actually got imprisoned
- as an Italian prisoner of war.
- I think he was located in Greece at that time.
- Was your son Richard named after Riccardo?
- No.
- No.
- Richard was named after my father.
- Oh, interesting.
- Same name.
- OK.
- So there's this third brother, who
- was married in the Bassetti family in this little town,
- in Milanino.
- So now, Mrs. Bassetti became our protector, if you will,
- in Milanino.
- And so was Luigi.
- And through her, we got to know the whole extended family,
- and we became friends with them.
- And they procured us whenever we needed documents and alimentary
- cards and so on.
- Who made those documents?
- The underground?
- Partisans?
- Yeah.
- So there was a whole group of people that knew our identity.
- In this case, it was just Mother and I. And we kind of just
- sat out the war.
- Nobody denounced us.
- As a matter of fact, we were traveling to Milan a few times.
- I remember going to the opera, of all thing,
- sitting next to German officers and so on.
- But, you know, you laugh about this time.
- We try to conduct a normal life.
- We were not in a cellar.
- We had forged documents and so on.
- It was no problem for me.
- I could pass for an Italian.
- By then, I spoke not just Italian, but the dialect.
- You know nobody would question that I wasn't Italian.
- It was a little more difficult for my mother.
- Her document stated that we came from a place
- in Istria, which then was Italy, Italian controlled.
- But it was already sort out of the control
- of the Italian because of partisans
- and Yugoslav partisans.
- So it was hard to trace.
- So presumably she was not born in Italy proper.
- But she had an accent and so on.
- And from time to time, there were German or fascist,
- what would you say, they took group of people
- and checked identities and so on.
- Could be picked off--
- You know, we were once at a movie.
- And that's what happened.
- And those were difficult times.
- And of course, there was also the war,
- you know, bombings and so on.
- But in case of my mother, she was always
- wondering whether the next day something could happen.
- And--
- You know there was a movie the garden of the Finzi-Continis,
- which resonated with that same theme--
- Yes, to some extent.
- That was more to do with the Italians and the false sense
- of security that they had during that period
- because there was never any history
- of outright Holocaust in Italy.
- And of course, that went--
- and it wasn't really made too clear in the movie either.
- I mean the reason they got caught at the end
- is because Germans were in control.
- It would have never happened under the fascists,
- except that during that period the fascists were cooperating
- with the Germans.
- So there were some fascists in Italy
- that if they found out that you were Jewish would denounce you.
- Or the militia would take you and hand you over
- to the Germans.
- But the population as a general was trying everything
- to save people that were in trouble, including members
- of the Catholic clergy, certainly in our case,
- lent their hands and so on.
- Yeah.
- Before we go into the next phase, the post-war experience,
- is there any names of priests or nuns or anyone else
- you want to put on record right now.
- No, I don't recall the names of all the priests that--
- I remember there was a Don Egidio in--
- Don Egidio.
- --that was in Breganze, the town that I told you
- because he invited me.
- There were always two competing groups, the fascist,
- you know, like the Hitlerjugend.
- There was the equivalent there, the--
- From the Italian jugend--
- Yeah, well called Balillas, Balillas.
- And so there was fascist youth group.
- And the Church was trying to compete with them,
- with some Catholic groups.
- And I remember that Don Egidio invited me to be
- with the Catholic group, kids.
- And I went on sightseeing trips and so on.
- So you have a very warm and loving relationship
- to the Italian people, don't you, to this day?
- Of course.
- And I get very upset whenever I hear in any way having Italians
- mentioned in the same vein as the Germans.
- Germans.
- They should be separated.
- They should be separated.
- And as a matter of fact, you hear a lot about the Danes.
- You hear a lot about the Dutch and so on.
- And the Italians should be right in there.
- Right up there.
- Because they certainly-- as a matter of fact,
- before the Germans even took control,
- other parts of my family, or my wife's family in Yugoslavia,
- were saved by Italians who actually
- tried try to keep Croatians and the Nazis
- from taking Jews or repatriating Jews.
- There was something on TV about the--
- something--
- The saving of Italian Jewry?
- Well, not about Italian Jewry.
- But the action that even the fascist government took
- to safeguard the life of Jews.
- I mean in spite of the racial laws that they had,
- they could not accept the treatment
- that they knew the Germans applied to the Jews.
- And they did everything, including
- as I understand, representation in Germany itself.
- But in their zone of control, they adamantly
- refused to hand any of the Jews to German authorities
- or local authorities because they were born wherever
- they were born and so on.
- They accepted the refugees.
- And eventually, most of them ended up in Italy.
- Some eventually got-- there were other ones in Greece
- and other islands around there that
- got caught during the events.
- But those that went into Italy or ended up
- in Italy, most of them managed to save themselves
- through the help of the Italian population.
- OK, let's go now to the concluding part,
- this post-war experience.
- What day, or if you remember the day exactly,
- when were you liberated?
- And with who are you with on that day?
- Well, everything seems to happen in April, again in April,
- April '45--
- April '45.
- --the Allies made it all the way up to northern Italy.
- But in fact, already a week before the partisans
- were all over the place.
- And that area, northern Italy, Milan was already essentially,
- as I said, they were liberated by the partisans.
- And the Germans and the remaining hardline fascists
- were in flight.
- So I remember we were all wondering,
- when are the Americans, when are the British coming?
- I mean the Germans are gone and so on.
- So anyway, it happened in April of '45.
- So this experience that I recounted
- lasted from essentially September '43 to April '45.
- Thus being saved by the Italians.
- Being saved by the Italians and living under false pretenses.
- Were you suffering any illnesses, physical, emotional,
- or mental after the liberation?
- Was anyone--
- No.
- I mean the--
- I guess one of the less normal things
- for me was that all this time I was really not permitted
- to go to public schools.
- But I had private instruction.
- So in a way that made me slightly
- different from the local people because I probably didn't follow
- much of a regular curriculum.
- And my teachers just instructed me
- and including Lugino Giandoso.
- And after the war, we decided to go to Milan.
- My mother found employment with the occupation forces
- because she spoke some English, and then
- eventually with the American Jewish Distribution--
- The Joint Distribution--
- --Committee.
- So we moved to an apartment in Milan
- and essentially started leading a more or less normal life.
- And I passed my exam.
- So my instruction must have been pretty reasonable.
- And because--
- You were a 13 at that time when the war ended approximately?
- That's right.
- But you had to pass the exam to go to the--
- well, this would be a junior high school.
- You have to graduate-- you have to have taken an exam that
- shows that you passed all the requirements
- of elementary school.
- And I did that.
- So in spite of not having formal schooling--
- You did well.
- --I did well.
- How long did you stay in Italy before you came to America?
- Until 1949.
- '49.
- And you came to America in '49.
- And what town did you first come to?
- We actually settled first in White Plains, New York,
- because my mother had a distant cousin there
- who provided the affidavit.
- I see.
- And then you moved where?
- Well, after that, I went to college.
- Where was that?
- To University of Colorado.
- I had a scholarship there from the Institute
- of Foreign Students, or something.
- I forgot the exact organization.
- But it happens to be that one of the director of the Joint, David
- Wallinger, who recently died, became head of this organization
- over here.
- And he managed to provide a scholarship to go to college.
- And I was fortunate.
- You probably ran into a lot of soldiers on the GI Bill too.
- Oh, of course.
- Yeah.
- That must have been an interesting experience.
- That was practically-- not quite a few, at least half
- of the class was GI.
- And some of them might have even been in Italy.
- That might have been an interesting way to--
- your perspective was very different.
- And so you went and became an engineer.
- I became an engineer.
- And then was kind of at that time in strange situations
- about getting a job, kind of a Catch-22.
- I was not a citizen.
- And yet, most-- at least in Colorado,
- which was not industrialized, most of the outside jobs
- had to do with government contracts, where
- you needed to be a citizen.
- And so I decided to volunteer for the army
- after graduating in '54.
- So I served two years in the United States Army.
- And after that--
- Where did you serve?
- Well, I actually served in Germany.
- Oh.
- That's a whole area that I want to get into another time.
- Very strange.
- Very strange with soldiers going back to Germany or survivors
- even or whatever, very interesting topic.
- I know two or three people like you
- who served in the American army.
- Well, it was an ambivalent feeling that I had there.
- And--
- Then I want to get wen you married your wife.
- --got out of the army.
- We got to get to that before we conclude.
- --settled in the Boston area because my mother meantime
- remarried.
- And my stepfather's business brought him to the Boston area.
- Connie.
- Right.
- Connie.
- Connie, yep.
- And so they settled in Brookline, 1720--
- no, 1768--
- Right next to 1724 Beacon Street, yes.
- And so after I was through with my army obligation,
- I settled in Boston, eventually got a job on Route 128
- with Sylvania, then Sylvania, now GTE.
- GTE as an engineer.
- As an engineer.
- And that's my start of my life over here.
- Now, where did you meet your wife?
- That's the big question.
- That is a funny thing.
- While I was in the army, my mother
- was working at the Beth Israel Hospital.
- And this aunt of my wife's that I told you
- that they went to gymnastic classes back in Belgrade
- before the war was also working on one of--
- Mutual Insurance Company or something in Boston.
- And they happened to have pretty much the same working hours
- and used take the Green Line into Boston.
- And from what I'm told, several times
- they happen to be in the same streetcar.
- And they were kind of eyeing each other--
- Now who is they now?
- This is my mother and Leah Almuly--
- OK, Leah Almuly and your mother--
- --which is--
- Your mother's first name is?
- My mother's Nelly.
- Nelly.
- OK.
- Nelly.
- And so they were eyeing each other and saying,
- gee, I know this person.
- But they didn't dare talk to each other.
- But eventually, they did.
- And so they determined that, sure enough, somehow,
- you know that they came from Belgrade.
- And so they must have met.
- And they finally registered that they
- didn't go to the same synagogue and so on, that they
- met at this gymnastic classes.
- What a coincidence.
- Unbelievable.
- And I remember my mother kind of mentioning
- that she met this family from Belgrade
- and they even two daughters and so on and so forth.
- So you got interested.
- So, well, no, I just said that that's interesting.
- When I came back, I think one of the first few days
- that I came back from the army decided to go and have
- supper at the window shop.
- There used to be a restaurant-- it doesn't exist anymore--
- in Cambridge on Brattle Street.
- And my wife was going to Simmons College at that time.
- And she was actually waitressing at this window
- shop, which was in--
- Ena Almuly.
- OK.
- So we went to supper.
- And sure enough, you know, here's Ena waitressing.
- And I think my mother said, oh, you know,
- this is the daughter of these people from Belgrade that we met
- and I told you about.
- And I guess she met her at that time and said hello.
- And so it turned out that Ena did not have a car.
- And it's a long ride from Brookline.
- And so we gave her a lift because they
- lived at 1724 Beacon Street.
- And that's the beginning of our relationship.
- And so you met and you went you went on a date.
- Well, eventually we dated.
- And eventually, we decided--
- How much later-- how long later did you get married?
- It wasn't-- it was only two years later.
- Two years later, wow.
- And I want to mention that you have
- three beautiful children, Richard, Lisa,
- and Michael, all very talented.
- And you have a daughter-in-law, Shoshana from Spain,
- and a grandson Carlos.
- And it's kind of like come full circle, your whole life.
- I also want to add that we are brothers-in-law for the record.
- Your wife, Ena, and my wife, Miriam, are sisters.
- So there must be something from God's hand,
- I don't know what it is, some kind of momentous thing that
- brings children of survivors together,
- Ashkenazic and Sephardic together.
- And anyway, I want to thank you for a very beautiful story
- and very well put.
- And we're going to stop so we can get pictures
- of your family, et cetera.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for giving me the opportunity because I think
- it's not so much my story, but the story of the people
- that helped us that I really wanted to focus on.
- Yeah.
- It's a worthwhile story in that respect.
- Thank you very, very much.
- Thank you.
- Oh, wow.
- Why don't you take your pictures and--
- I don't even know which picture to start with.
- I've got hundreds of them.
- Oops.
- Well, start with the ones you mentioned in the story.
- You can walk around.
- You want me to--
- You can leave it on.
- That's fine.
- You have a picture of you as a child.
- You have that--
- Well, I got them.
- I just got to get them, you know.
- I feel like Jay Leno, you know, his first appearance
- on the Today-- that's hard work.
- Where do you want to put them?
- Here?
- Just set them down.
- OK.
- Let's get some lunch.
- You have to get out of here at 11:30--
- 11:20.
- I have another appointment.
- You have a meeting?
- Yeah.
- Can I help you in some way?
- All right.
- Who is this person?
- This was my grandmother.
- But--
- Is that your father?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, your father and mother are very important to see.
- Your father-- should I-- how are you going to do that?
- Hold it up here.
- Sit down in the chair and hold it.
- Why don't you sit down in the chair, Charlie.
- The camera's low.
- And just show them--
- Do you want to show the map?
- Or you don't need the map?
- All right, well, go ahead.
- I'll get the map.
- I'll show the map.
- All right, well, tell me where--
- well, wait-- I don't know whether.
- Well, all right, so just get people just
- get some idea of where--
- here, why don't you hold that in here.
- Well, first of all, I wanted to start with this picture
- here because that's the one--
- so you want me to recount this thing?
- Pardon?
- Talk about them?
- Yeah.
- Tape this running.
- Well, just to very quickly, this lithograph
- that I was talking about, this is my grandmother--
- Charlie, you have to turn around and face it to me.
- Thank you.
- This is my grandmother over here and her mother and her father.
- So these are my great grandparents.
- And this picture was taken, as I said, in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
- And now this is my grandmother, as I said,
- she made it actually to the United States after the war.
- And this is a picture here of her in Savannah, Georgia,
- shortly before she died.
- So she saved herself by going to Switzerland.
- And then another aunt of mine from Austria
- that settled in Savannah took her home.
- This is my grandfather, again, on my father's side.
- And this was actually taken at a time I was in Ljubljana when
- we escaped from the Germans.
- And I remember-- his name is Adolph, of all names.
- And he was always every day walking to the park
- and feeding the pigeons and squirrels.
- And I remember that.
- This picture over here is my father.
- Richard.
- Of my father Richard.
- And as I mentioned, he just left for the war and never to return.
- And this is a picture of my mother from those days.
- Of course, I have more recent ones.
- But that's how she looked at the time that the war started.
- And that's how she looked during the days that we together were--
- she took care of me escaping.
- Why don't you show them the map a little bit.
- Well, from the map, you can see this is Belgrade.
- And I have traced this map because I made a trip back.
- And this is-- but essentially, when we escaped Belgrade,
- we went this way, and Pozarevac is the town
- that we kind of were refugees.
- And then we managed--
- after coming surviving the air attack
- and then not getting caught by the Germans in Belgrade,
- we went to Ljubljana, which is down here, through Croatia
- to Ljubljana.
- And then, of course, when we went to Italy,
- we went by way of Trieste into Italy.
- I should say, by the way, that a lot of people
- ended up in Dalmatia and managed to somehow go
- to Italy from there.
- So that was the other escape route was through Albania.
- But in our case, we went to Ljubljana
- because our family connection.
- If you look at the map of Italy here,
- again, it's marked because our trip, but here is--
- here is--
- I'm going to try to help you hold it this way.
- Here is Vicenza.
- Vicenza is over here, now this circle over here.
- And Breganze, the little town, is really not shown.
- But it's essentially north of Vicenza.
- And this is where we--
- Near Venice.
- It's between--
- Milano.
- Any part--
- Rome is here.
- And then after Germans moved to control of Italy,
- after my stay in Vicenza that I mentioned with the Zanarotti
- family, we ended up again north of Milan, Milanino,
- which again is not shown.
- But it was just a 10 kilometer out by streetcar.
- So that's another.
- Thank you once again.
- Well, I-- welcome, I got other things.
- You want to see a picture of when I was small at that time?
- Or is it too late?
- I just turned--
Overview
- Interviewee
- Charles R. Lorant
- Date
-
interview:
1993 May 28
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Lorant, Charles R.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Charles R. Lorant was conducted on May 28, 1993 by the Holocaust Survivors Project of Newton, MA as part of a project to document the testimonies of Holocaust survivors in the Newton, MA area. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview from Dr. Jack Porter.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:16:39
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn512562
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