- --going on.
- I've been watching Shoah.
- I've seen it.
- You've seen it.
- Which is very moving.
- But we suspected, but didn't know--
- or certainly the extent of what was going on was not known.
- And you look at it through your own perspective, as you say.
- I saw Shoah when it first came out
- in two installments of 4 to 4.5 hours a piece.
- That's pretty powerful and pretty draining.
- Yeah, it is.
- The one super thing about that, it's such an interesting piece
- because there's not one stick of archival footage.
- Yes.
- And that really-- and still achieves the power.
- You're born and raised in Rochester?
- No, I'm a New Yorker born and raised, born in the city,
- born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island.
- But I've lived all over the country
- chasing my jobs all over.
- I'm only in Rochester about two years now.
- Let me ask you about the early 1940s
- before you knew about Oswego.
- Tell me briefly what you went through.
- Were you running from the Nazis?
- Were you in concentration camps?
- Well, let's see if I can keep this brief.
- I was born in a small town in Germany
- on the Baltic Sea, maybe 25,000 people.
- And my family was German, had been German
- for at least six generations.
- They came from the lost provinces, Silesia
- and Pomerania, both Prussia's, and had pretty well integrated.
- Probably in another generation or two,
- they would have been fully integrated.
- We lived-- my dad had a printing shop, small newspaper,
- and worked very hard.
- I think was on his way of becoming a fairly
- well-to-do man.
- In one of the first memories that I
- have as a child of political events
- was that the Hindenburg died.
- We happened to be on a beach.
- And the cannons shot.
- And everybody said, what's going on?
- It was Hindenburg's death.
- And I perceived in the reaction of my parents
- that was not a very good thing to have happened.
- Shortly after that, my dad's place of business
- was boycotted first.
- Customers were kept from coming in.
- And then laws were changed in Germany.
- And he was expropriated.
- We moved to Danzig in '36, which was then a free city and a very
- interesting place.
- As a matter of fact, I've been trying
- to do some research on the political structure
- of the free city because I think it was a unicameral type
- government and very well to do.
- We moved there from one place to another
- as circumstances got harder.
- When we moved to the free city, it
- was essentially a trade center.
- Population was, I'd say, 2/3 German, 1/3 Polish.
- And there was a balance because everybody lived well.
- Between '36 and '39, the character of the city
- changed dramatically as the Nazi party gained power.
- And on the morning of the 1st of September, we woke up,
- I think, it was 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning to gunfire.
- And that was the first day of the war.
- We were not surprised.
- The change was in the air.
- And I remember walking down one of the main streets with my dad
- weeks before and seeing heavy trucks rumble
- through the streets.
- And flaps would open up.
- I'd look inside, and there were tanks on the inside.
- And soldierly looking people had arrived
- for weeks with violin cases.
- So when the war broke out, Danzig wasn't occupied.
- It had been occupied weeks before.
- The Polish resistance in some places
- was remarkable, very heroic, particularly on an island
- in the middle of the river.
- They had established a munitions unloading place.
- And they had nothing.
- They had pop guns.
- We'd go out on a hill and watch the Stukas dive in.
- And it was one of the last places that
- surrendered to the Germans.
- And that was September.
- We had been trying to come to the States for years.
- The quota system was god awful, especially the German quota.
- And--
- What were you told when you applied for a visa?
- We were-- I wasn't there.
- This was my dad doing it.
- That the German quota was full for several years.
- And I had the feeling, listening to my father
- and the other friends, that difficulties
- were put in their way--
- misspellings, commas missing, you know.
- It would return the document for one more pass.
- It was a delaying action.
- My dad was able to get one visa.
- And he decided that the one person that should go
- would be my older brother, who's 11 years older.
- Because he was of military age, he
- felt he was in the most danger.
- So my brother went off and settled in Ohio
- and promptly was drafted--
- In the US Army?
- Oh, yeah.
- My dad became very concerned.
- He sensed things that many other people still didn't.
- And I remember he would go from embassy to embassy to embassy
- trying to get a visa for us.
- And finally, one day, he came back full of hope
- saying that the Danish had accepted us.
- And indeed, there was a letter that started, [NON-ENGLISH],,
- which if you transliterate it into German, it says,
- we can agree.
- Unfortunately, in Danish, it means we cannot agree.
- So that was a disappointment.
- He walked into an Italian embassy not really
- intending to go to Italy, but was granted a visa.
- So November, one day, we packed up
- what we could in a couple of suitcases.
- And we left by air.
- We flew Lufthansa, an old Junker 99 I
- think it was with a corrugated washboard outside.
- Went to Berlin, where my grandmother
- lived, the rest of my family.
- And from there, we took an Alitalia to Venice.
- And we stayed there a few days, went down to Trieste.
- Now, Trieste was a key location for going further
- because from there you could ship to Tangiers and then
- to the United States or to Cuba, which then was another haven.
- My dad's plan was to get closer and closer and closer.
- So the next step was Tangiers.
- And he got a permit for us to go as far as that on a ship
- that I think left late in June of 1940.
- But Italy went to war in June, early June.
- And that cut that route off.
- When you had to say goodbye to your grandmother,
- was that an emotional farewell?
- Did you ever think you would see her again?
- I remember I was 10 years old.
- And to me, the enormity of what was happening,
- was going to happen, certainly wasn't evident,
- nor was it to them.
- Prejudice is one thing.
- But murder is another.
- You don't expect to be murdered ordinarily.
- Anything else?
- So after the-- yeah.
- Before he starts, just let me switch your chair so you're
- a little closer to the camera.
- OK.
- And lean.
- After-- we rolling?
- Yeah.
- OK, good.
- After the Italians went to war, were you
- in internment camps in Italy?
- My dad was sent to a camp.
- And my mother and I, or my mother
- petitioned the Italian government
- to be reunited with him.
- And the Italians had a system called
- Confino Libero, which is the Italian Gulag Archipelago,
- much modified.
- The locations were an undesirable-- out
- of the way places.
- And we were permitted to go to Calabria, which is the toe
- part of the Italian boot.
- Little town, 3,000 people, of whom
- 700 were in the United States, Albanians.
- They had come over when the Ottomans occupied Albania.
- They were Greek Orthodox.
- So here were three enclaves of Greek Orthodox Albanians
- living in Italy, had lived there for hundreds of years.
- They spoke Albanian.
- And as a matter of fact, the other day,
- I saw a movie, Yugoslav movie, called, Do You
- Remember Dolly Bell?
- And it takes place in the Albanian part of Yugoslavia.
- Very reminiscent situation.
- Great people, very simple.
- It's like stepping into a time machine,
- being transported back 300 years.
- Comparatively, though, I mean certainly you had to run,
- your family had to run.
- You ran in time though.
- Just in time.
- And avoided any real horror, except for the family
- you left behind, I would assume.
- That's right.
- And when did you hear about any family
- and what was happening back in Germany?
- Well, we kept getting letters and postcards.
- And one by one, contact was lost.
- The people back in Germany knew that there were disappearances,
- people being shipped off.
- And they felt their turn would come.
- One of my uncles, Uncle Adolf in Cologne, I think
- was the first to be shipped off.
- We heard from his old housekeeper.
- And my grandmother and aunts in Berlin left.
- We heard from them twice more from camp and then no more.
- So in the absence of information,
- you have a mixture of feelings, both hope and despair.
- But the exact fate of what was happening was not known.
- How did your family decide to take the gamble
- and get on a ship called the Henry Gibbins
- and come to the US in '44?
- Well, that was easy.
- First of all, we had always tried to come to the States.
- Of course, in Italy, we had long run out of money.
- We survived by selling everything
- we had that was in the suitcases and borrowing money.
- And after liberation in late '43,
- I believe, by the British Eighth Army,
- we moved to a little camp, a concentration camp
- in southern Italy called Ferramonti,
- and from there to Bari.
- And when the news came through of the transport,
- we never hesitated.
- We said yes.
- Despite the uncertainty?
- That was less uncertainty than staying.
- You were already in liberated Italy, basically pretty safe.
- Is the word rescue applicable?
- Or saved?
- No, I don't think so.
- It was one of many unidentified alternatives.
- But because of our--
- desire is too weak--
- drive to come to the America, that was the first, best route.
- We took it.
- Your parents signed a paper in Italy
- accepting the terms of the transport, which
- were that you would be in the United States
- for the duration of the war.
- After the war, you would have to be
- repatriated to your homelands.
- Mhm.
- They signed that paper.
- Mhm.
- Was there any confusion about it?
- Taken seriously?
- Ignored?
- No, it certainly was taken seriously.
- But remember, my brother was in the United States Army.
- And we felt that that alone would lead to our staying here.
- And what would be the worst that could happen
- is that we would be taken back and then come over again.
- What condition were you in physically, emotionally,
- by the time you boarded?
- [Technical words] change it back.
- Oh, OK.
- I have two Cousins in England--
- had.
- One of them is dead.
- A cousin in Germany went back, lived in Hamburg,
- until he died five years ago.
- OK, what condition were you in physically,
- emotionally, you with a capital Y,
- with the rest of your family and the other refugees
- when you boarded the Henry Gibbins?
- You said you had already run out of money.
- Well, physically, we had been hungry a long time.
- There are pictures in Life magazine
- of my parents and myself.
- I look back to it now and I say, gee, you know,
- I could stand some of that.
- But physically, we were in fairly good shape.
- We were permitted to walk 1 kilometer outside the center
- of the village in Italy.
- We did that very regularly.
- We kept up our strength.
- My parents had a very happy marriage,
- a very close marriage.
- And even though there wasn't any food, we were in good spirits.
- During that two-week voyage, it wasn't exactly a cruise liner.
- You had some close scrapes with planes and subs.
- Do you remember that?
- Tell me about it.
- Well, we left Naples after sitting around, swinging
- in the tide for several days.
- And then went, I believe, between Sardinia and Corsica
- to Oran.
- And that night, there was a raid on Oran.
- And protective cover was established,
- which crept down the portholes and breathing spaces
- and had kind of a choking effect.
- It must have been frightening for a 14-year-old boy.
- Yeah, we didn't know what was going on.
- To be honest, I didn't hear any shots or gunfire.
- And to this day, I don't know if it was a real raid or a patrol
- or imaginary.
- There was considerable fighting among the various nationality
- groups.
- 18 countries were represented, a dozen more languages than that.
- The Yugoslavs hated the Germans.
- Poles, everybody at each other all the time.
- Tell me about that, especially the Germans.
- On the ship?
- Yeah.
- And it extended into the camp, I guess.
- Well, on the ship, people were jammed together.
- There were many conflicts set up.
- Some of them were national.
- Others were human.
- The bunks where we slept were stacked, I believe, four deep.
- And if you were in the middle, which I was as a little kid,
- got unpleasant sometime.
- I remember there was a fat lady on top of me.
- And her rear end came down so far,
- I had trouble turning my head, which I remember vividly.
- Because we had been starved for such a long time,
- we all trooped to the mess.
- And as we became seasick, we still trooped to the mess
- just because there was food.
- There were a lot of people all of a sudden after 3 and 1/2
- years of hardly anyone with whom we had that in common,
- so it opened up a brand new world, new people,
- new young people, my age, people from the different,
- not necessarily by nationality, but by background.
- Like we had film directors.
- We had musical writers.
- We had physicians.
- We had prostitutes.
- We had the range of humanity.
- So it's a learning process of people.
- Ruth Gruber taught some English classes on board.
- Do you remember that?
- No, I don't.
- OK.
- We should change the tape.
- We're about--
- OK.
- Ruth's good storyteller.
- Yes, she is.
- All right?
- Yeah.
- Describe for me what it was like to come
- past the Statue of Liberty that August morning in 1944.
- Well, we had been at sea for many days.
- And it was a pretty rough passage,
- a lot of waves, convoy-type situation.
- I think the submarine warfare had pretty much calmed down
- at the time.
- But there was that concern.
- And all of a sudden, they came when
- we were approaching the coast.
- And the Statue of Liberty is a dramatic sight in any event.
- People crowded up on deck.
- People prayed, sang.
- Most of us just stood and stared I think.
- As soon as we got into the harbor,
- the Red Cross ship came up, pulled alongside.
- And between our deck and the Red Cross ship,
- there was perhaps 1 or 2 feet difference.
- And people jumped over like pirates in the olden days.
- The Red Cross workers who ordinarily
- served GIs coming back from the war were terrified.
- Here was this mass of unkempt humanity advancing on them.
- And after the food was consumed, people
- started passing the goodies back, chairs, tables,
- back on board.
- And I remember the sight of the male Red Cross workers
- shielding the female Red Cross workers
- in a corner of the boat.
- Next stop was one of the docks in New York for delousing.
- And all men went on one side and all the women on the other.
- And everything got sterilized by steam and everything shrank.
- So when we came out, nothing fit.
- I remember I had a little leather
- wallet, which became a miniature wallet
- with all the stuff wrinkled up.
- The stuff they used for spraying, for delousing,
- stung in some very sensitive bodies spots.
- And all the men were crouched over coming back.
- And then we were put on a train to go to Fort Ontario.
- And I don't remember how long it took.
- It seemed like a long time.
- Can you recall your emotions those first hours?
- I mean docked finally at the United States.
- This is where you had been striving
- to get to for all those years.
- And you had to run.
- And finally, here you are.
- All I remember is mostly curiosity looking over.
- In Italy, I had known a few Americans.
- And they were gods, you know, looked up to.
- I remember a conversation with a Black GI in Italy.
- And he explained to me how the US government basically
- worked--
- the legislative, judicial, executive bodies.
- And that's where I got my first training
- about the American process.
- So when we arrived, we were docked alongside for some time.
- And time, I don't remember how long.
- But you looked down and you saw Americans en masse unloading.
- So the overriding feeling was curiosity and good
- anticipation.
- Was that train ride to Oswego difficult for you?
- Or did you notice it was difficult for anyone who--
- train rides had had a pretty terrible symbolism
- to a lot of folks in Europe.
- Remember, most of that information came later.
- So to me, the train was a way to get there, wherever there was.
- And that, we didn't know.
- Were you able to inform your brother that you were coming?
- No.
- When we moved to Bari, I started searching for my brother
- because we'd lost touch with him for several years also.
- As a matter of fact, I didn't know he was in the army.
- And I walked into an American military establishment
- and said, I have a brother.
- I think he's in the American army.
- Can you help me find him?
- And they were very kind, very courteous.
- And about 10 days later, exactly 10 days later,
- we received a telegram from my brother.
- And that's how we found out where he was.
- And he was in England at the time.
- So did he get to you in Oswego at any time?
- No.
- He came out of the Army in, oh, gosh, must have been '45.
- OK.
- No, later than that, '47, '48.
- The camp was in quarantine for a month.
- Mhm.
- And you first got to the camp, you come off the train.
- And you see this old army camp surrounded by a fence topped
- by barbed wire.
- What was the reaction then?
- Well, we were still--
- we never had doubt about the hospitality
- and welcome that we would receive.
- I was not afraid.
- My parents certainly weren't.
- The mood was happiness.
- The fence was there.
- The barbed wire was there.
- But the fence was the main thing that you saw.
- It was a tall, cyclone fence.
- I've been back to Fort Ontario fairly recently.
- And I've taken some pictures of the fence.
- That's still there.
- It's still a tall fence.
- On the other side of the fence were the locals of Oswego,
- most of them curious, staring, talking to us.
- I remember being singled out particularly
- by people of Italian descent because I spoke Italian.
- They gave us money, not much, dimes, quarters,
- which were wonderful.
- And throughout the war whenever things got tough
- and there was no food, my parents
- would dream about something.
- And one of the things they seemed to dream about a lot
- was mayonnaise.
- So a barber, an Italian barber, gave me a quarter.
- And I found a kid on a bicycle.
- And I said, could you go get us some mayonnaise?
- And the kid never came back.
- That kid owes me a jar of mayonnaise.
- If I ever find him.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Do you remember when they lifted the quarantine?
- There was a big open house at the camp.
- Several thousand people from town finally came in.
- What I remember is getting little blue passes.
- And we were told, one, that the kids would
- be permitted to go to school.
- That was a big break for you.
- Oh, yeah, that was wonderful.
- How long had it been since you had been in a school room?
- Well, I had gone through second grade, which would make it 8.
- By that time I was 14.
- So-- I went to school briefly in Italy, but not much.
- So you were happy to get back to school?
- Yeah, sure.
- There was also a day when the entire population was permitted
- to go to town, four hours.
- I remember the gate opening up and this Oklahoma land rush
- of people walking down the long street heading for town
- and then assaulting the stores.
- Now, remember, this was still rationing time.
- And I remember people going into the grocery store
- and bargaining with the clerks for fruit, apples.
- And the clerks utterly bewildered, never having
- had anybody bargain with them.
- They spent quite a bit of money in town.
- And then when the time came, they
- streamed back in, laden down with whatever they bought.
- It was a wonderful sight.
- It was funny, even then.
- When you first walked into an American school,
- what was your reaction there?
- What did you think?
- You saw the classrooms.
- I think you probably took a tour of the day
- before school opened.
- Do you remember that?
- How important was that?
- Well, I remember Ralph Faust, the principal of the school.
- And Ralph is one of those people who
- I think understood both emotionally
- and intellectually what the situation was,
- what the need was.
- He was not only a very good educator,
- but from a social point of view, I think a very great man.
- He must have talked to the teachers.
- And the teachers at Oswego high school
- were a very fortunate combination
- of sympathetic people, especially the ladies who
- taught English and history.
- To this day, my foundation of history and language
- is based on what they taught.
- And I think of it very often.
- Ms. Baker, who is long dead, was one of my heroes.
- And so is Miss Schulke, who taught history.
- There were many other teachers, very, very fine.
- As I mentioned you before, Paul, I
- keep comparing the education I got in high school
- with that my children got in public school.
- And it doesn't compare.
- You refugee students did pretty well as a group.
- Yeah, I think so.
- You excelled.
- Why do you think that was?
- Well, desire.
- I graduated I think 10th in my class.
- Of all the refugee children, I had the highest grades.
- I finished high school in a year and a half.
- I wanted to because to me that was the key
- to success in the new country.
- What was being taught was interesting.
- Throughout the stay in Italy I was a frantic searcher
- for new books.
- I would walk literally miles and miles
- to find a new book to read.
- So reading became a necessity.
- It still is.
- So the opportunity to learn, being taught by somebody
- was just fantastic.
- At the camp, there was a really active cultural life.
- Mhm.
- You created a whole world for yourselves.
- Mhm.
- Do you remember the plays that were on all the time--
- Sure.
- --things like that?
- Did you feel any antisemitism or anti-refugee feeling in town?
- No.
- Was it more difficult do you think for older folks?
- The young ones could go to school.
- And it was pretty close to a normal life,
- but not for your parents.
- Your dad couldn't work.
- Well, of course, that had been a very deep concern of mine
- for years.
- My dad's living was based on, first of all,
- having capital to invest, and, second,
- being intimately familiar with the language and culture
- in which he did business.
- And they were all gone.
- So I kept thinking, you know, what will my dad do?
- And that was a continuing worry in camp.
- We had no idea.
- Matter of fact, we didn't know where we would
- go when the camp opened up.
- Was your father upset about having
- to basically sit around all day and not
- go to work for 18 months?
- Well, remember, he'd done that for four years.
- It's better to sit around in the United States
- than sit around in southern Italy.
- What do you remember of Eleanor Roosevelt's visit?
- Not much.
- I remember she was there.
- I remember I stood outside to see her.
- We did not--
- I didn't crowd to shake her hand or get her autograph.
- Was there in the camp a continual resentment
- of you for being German and for the other German groups--
- the other Germans in the group?
- It seems some of the others, despite the fact
- that you had been persecuted and victimized
- more than, at least as much as anyone else,
- it seems that I hear stories of continual resentment
- simply because you were German.
- Oh, I think that's true.
- I think that existed.
- On the personal level, you still form friendships
- because you like people, or they like you.
- I don't know if there were any other German kids in the camp.
- There must have been.
- But I just can't remember one.
- And I formed some close friendships.
- My best friend was a Yugoslav.
- And the other very good friend was a Russian.
- To this day I see two or maybe three people
- who were in camp with we, the same age.
- The winter of '44, '45 was pretty rough in Oswego.
- Yeah, it was.
- That kind of complicated things with-- it
- brought on almost a group depression
- evidently with the suicide and the coal
- accident that happened.
- Were you aware of the dynamics of the group
- being a young teenager?
- No.
- Our building, army barrack, in which we lived
- was directly on the lake.
- And the wind would howl in from Canada.
- Snow would pile up.
- And by some sadistic design, the shower room faced the lake.
- Being up first to go to school was a wakening up experience,
- until the water got hot enough.
- And I remember that somebody had given us a small radio.
- And I listened to "Happy Hank and The Breakfast Club."
- That was the time to get up.
- And it was a walk to school, gosh, maybe a mile and a half
- through deep snowdrifts, taller than myself.
- And it was an adventure.
- It was great.
- In December, when Truman finally agreed to let in the refugees,
- it must have been some heck of a party that night, huh?
- Well, that I don't remember.
- Actually, my most anxious time started at that time
- because then you had to make a decision what to do,
- where to go.
- And all of a sudden, the fear that we had for so many years
- was right in front of us.
- No money, no language, where do we go?
- And what do we do?
- Here's this big country.
- And where did you go?
- And what did you do?
- Well, after walking across the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara
- Falls, we went to Toledo, Ohio, because the physician that
- had been active in my native town in Germany
- had moved there.
- He was a friend of my father's.
- 40 years later, you folks have all
- made tremendous successes of yourselves, for the most part
- anyway, doctors, lawyers, engineers, musicians, teachers,
- made a significant contribution to American society.
- What message does that send?
- Gosh, I don't know what the message is.
- I think as a group, we acted out the continuation of the life
- that we started with.
- Does it make you bitter or angry when you put it in perspective
- and realize that you were such a token gesture of 1,000 people
- and so much more could have been done?
- No, I'm not bitter.
- I'm grateful, which is perhaps very selfish.
- But for us, the war ended early.
- We survived.
- We came over, and we survived here.
- I know that when we did get to Toledo, my dad said,
- what do you want to do?
- And I had been encouraged by the grades I got in Oswego.
- And I said, I'd like to go on to college.
- My dad said, well, tell you what, my gift to you
- is that you don't have to work and give your money to me.
- My gift to you is that you're free to go to school.
- But I can't help you.
- And that truly was a gift.
- He worked at fairly menial jobs.
- He worked in a shoe store.
- He worked in a paper factory.
- And to me, that was heroism.
- He never regained his middle class status that he--
- No.
- --enjoyed in Germany?
- But he worked.
- He was happy to bring the pay home.
- And he and my mother made a decent, you know,
- modestly furnished home and were happy.
- OK.
- Tape change?
- Yeah, we should--
- A lot of mistakes, where you're afraid of making mistakes,
- and then, of course, moving.
- But I noticed that after maybe a couple of weeks,
- I longed to leave again.
- And it has nothing to do with this history.
- It has to do with the fact that in a different country,
- my first thing is I try to come back to the United States.
- Yeah.
- Let me ask you this.
- You are a chemical engineer.
- You spent a lot of years designing missile systems.
- That was a real contribution to the United States in that way.
- And you recently turned your back on that.
- Tell me about that.
- Well, I worked for a company called Aerojet in Sacramento,
- went there as a chemical engineer
- and eventually became Director of Advanced Technology.
- It was a thrilling time.
- We were trying to catch up with the Russians.
- And by working very, very hard, we did it.
- But also as you worked, you could see success growing
- under your fingers.
- I remember I had a cot in my office,
- and very often we slept there.
- I remember a period of seven weeks
- when I went home for one day.
- But it was thrilling.
- It was wonderful.
- It was an interesting field, and provided a good living,
- and permitted my family to go to California,
- which we dreamed about as much as coming to America.
- In '76, the rocket industry had declined tremendously,
- and it really was no longer fun.
- For one thing, the same problem started to come around
- for the 10th time.
- Morale was low.
- The company I worked for it had 22,000 employees in Sacramento.
- By that time, we were down to 3,000,
- and you can imagine what that does
- to the feeling of the place.
- I was also getting divorced, and decided that that
- was a good time to change.
- What missile systems were you involved with?
- Polaris, Minuteman, Sprint, Hawk, Sidewinder.
- And you were one of the lead engineers on this?
- I was one of the--
- I was the formulator of the propellant for one
- of the Polaris stages.
- And as Director of Advanced Technology,
- led the charge in the research and development area cases,
- and metal parts, and nozzles, igniters, propellants.
- You're leaving the industry was more for personal reasons
- than political commitment or anything?
- Yes, I think so.
- I think it's fascinating that people
- have come over and your group of your peers,
- OK, that age group have made such contributions.
- OK.
- No one will deny that your work on the missiles
- was important for the United States.
- How many more engineers might have come over
- if there were more Oswegos.
- Do you feel that?
- Do you think about that at times?
- Oh, I don't know how to answer that hypothetical question.
- Undoubtedly, if more professionals had come over,
- they would have contributed more.
- On the other hand, not on the other hand
- but remember there were quite a few engineers that did
- come over.
- Think of all the people who contributed
- to the building of the A-bomb.
- Yeah, but you were a 14-year-old.
- It they had brought over more 14-year-olds who knows what
- they might have done, right?
- Oh, sure.
- OK.
- Well, super.
- Thanks very much.
- I've got a couple of cutaways.
- We will be-- that's very good.
- Thank you very much for your time.
- Steve's going to--
- Thank you.
- But also a lot of boredom.
- How has the Oswego experience, or has it
- shaped other parts of your life, other than the educational
- commitments you've got?
- What else has it done for you?
- Well, a year and a half in an adolescent's life
- will shape you anyway.
- That's where I first really became interested in girls.
- I had my first girlfriend.
- And you go through.
- I don't know about you, Paul.
- But as a teenager, I was fairly shy.
- And you go through a painful stage,
- where you're very self-conscious.
- And, gee, I don't know how to dance.
- You get out on the floor, and you
- think everybody is looking at you and laughing.
- Most people don't know how to dance any better,
- but you don't find that out.
- And you worked through that during that time?
- We all do.
- We all do.
- Has it shaped your worldview, the kindness
- you received from the Ralph Fausts of the world?
- Oh, undoubtedly.
- In English, for instance, Miss Baker took us.
- I remember the map of the United States.
- And she had picked regional authors.
- Authors that wrote about the South, and the Midwest,
- and the West, and actually I think of that quite often.
- And Miss [PERSONAL NAME] teaching us
- the basics of American history, and the rise of the unions.
- You have such a smile on your face
- when you are recalling all these things.
- It was great.
- They were great teachers.
- What did the Oswego experience in being
- in a camp with virtually everyone who was Jewish,
- 90%, what effect did that have, if any?
- And the whole experience of having
- come through a war where your experience was shaped
- because of your religious--
- I think it was a stage, a stage to go through.
- And it was a stage we had to go through
- to be permitted to be here.
- Now the change going from Germany to Italy
- was much larger, because we had not intended to stay there,
- and certainly had not intended to learn the language.
- Background was fairly provincial, my background.
- And to be in a country that was Mediterranean
- by nature and emotions had a very deep influence.
- To this day, when I get back to Italy, I relax.
- Yeah.
- It is my heart's country.
- That's interesting.
- I have made many friends in Italy.
- I had made a point of establishing good relations
- with the Italian utility industry.
- And friendship has come very easily.
- It's quite deep--
- Especially because you speak the language.
- That's a real barrier breaker.
- Yeah, but because I wanted to.
- And so anyway, going to Italy had a profound effect.
- And I think I've found in everybody
- that I've talked to, all the former refugees for lack
- of a better word.
- I know a lot of people don't like that word at all.
- But there's this you probably have every right
- to be mad as hell at the world, and bitter at the way the world
- treated you.
- And yet, everybody seems to have come to grips,
- and is warm and open, and allows me to come into their lives,
- and invade their privacy for a couple of hours,
- or a couple of days.
- Well, I'm not angry.
- I never have been.
- And I think of Andy Warhol's statement very often.
- This is a chance to be famous for 15 minutes.
- I think most people feel that way about it.
- Only a very few would not consent
- to talk with me on camera, didn't want to dredge up
- the memories, or something of that sort.
- Well, that's the way they feel.
- But I think it's remarkable how warm as a group,
- I've done a lot of stories with a lot of people.
- And sometimes you meet you nice people.
- But these people are, as a whole, warm.
- And I think it's interesting that many of you
- are still in contact.
- Yeah, well, it was--
- I don't know it was a typical refugee group.
- Look at the waves that have come over recently--
- Vietnamese, Haitians.
- I think the circumstances were bitter also,
- and their start in the United States
- was at a lower economic level.
- The people who did come over, although they had lost time,
- worked themselves up again to a level which they were familiar.
- So why should they be unhappy?
- That's interesting.
- The unhappiness I don't think is with the United States.
- I read the book, and I've talked to people,
- and I hear this bitterness described
- at being kept in a camp.
- And if that's the way people feel, fine.
- But to my mind, that is not reasonable.
- We were received.
- We were brought over.
- We were housed and fed.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Rolf Manfred
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of WXXI-TV
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Genre/Form
- Documentary films.
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Excerpts of the interviews may be used for all on-site not-for-profit purposes to the extent of fair-use. Permission must be granted by the interviewees for any uses beyond fair-use including, but not limited to, performance in a public program, an off-site exhibition; transmission, display, or performance on the internet; and any reproduction or distribution for third party use.
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States.
- Personal Name
- Manfred, Rolf.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The interview with Rolf Manfred was conducted by Paul Lewis for WXXI's documentary Safe Haven. The film documents the stories of some of the 982 Holocaust survivors, from 18 countries, who were interned at the Fort Ontario Army Camp in Oswego, NY for 18 months from August 1944 to December 1946. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the extant copies of the interview in July 1991.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:09:18
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn512578
Additional Resources
Transcripts (3)
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