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Oral history interview with John Brunn

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0122.801 | RG Number: RG-50.477.0801

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    Oral history interview with John Brunn
    Transcript
    Go ahead.
    I'm Nancy Magidson and I'm interviewing John Brunn.
    Also interviewing with me is Julie Rosenberg.
    And the videographer is Sean Simplicio.
    Today is May 9, 1996.
    We were at the Holocaust Oral History
    Project in San Francisco.
    I wanted to start by asking you to tell us
    a little bit about your childhood.
    OK.
    I was born in Vienna in January 19, 1927.
    And I grew up in a middle-class home.
    My grandfather was still Orthodox,
    but my father was completely assimilated.
    And so my mother wanted to keep the Sabbath,
    but my father didn't want to.
    So the compromised by not doing it.
    And I remember my grandfather pretty well,
    even though I didn't seem all that often because we lived
    in different parts of the city.
    And he had a big house with a big stable.
    He was in the horse business, would be the trucking business
    today.
    And he was a very solid Burgher.
    He had a medal from the Kaiser.
    And his family had been in Vienna
    for many, many generations, as far back
    as my mother could remember.
    And he had a large family.
    He had 11 kids, nine of which lived past infancy.
    And he sent all the boys to college,
    the ones who wanted to go, but none of the girls.
    That was pretty typical in those days.
    And almost all the sons were in the First World War
    and my father was also.
    And it's ironic that of all the ethnic groups in the empire,
    the Jews were the only ones who were loyal to the emperor.
    And all the other ones wanted to secede,
    have their own language, their own nationality,
    so I was thinking about that afterwards.
    And the only really religious one of the brothers
    was the one who got arrested.
    It seems ironic.
    This happened on Kristallnacht.
    They were burning his temple and he went out
    and he muttered something under his breath.
    And somebody overheard it and they sent him to Dachau.
    He survived.
    His wife got a visa to England, so they finally released him.
    But his health was damaged.
    He died in New York.
    And let's see, I went to school in Vienna.
    And I really liked the public school teachers.
    I think-- I think they were all socialists at that time
    and very dedicated to teaching.
    And so they were very encouraging.
    And then at age 11.
    I went to the gymnasium, which is the classical high school.
    And the reason I went there is because my father went there.
    So actually, it was a good choice.
    I didn't know anything about it.
    So I think he made the right choice for me.
    I happened to luck out.
    Let's see, I should mention maybe a bit about antisemitism
    in Vienna.
    It was always there below the surface,
    but you could live pretty well without being attacked.
    I heard stories about people in the family who
    couldn't get certain positions because they were Jewish,
    so there was discrimination.
    And I remember once on the street car
    my brother told me not to talk too loud,
    otherwise people would say something.
    So there was a consciousness of it then.
    And I think it's ironic that my grandfather,
    he thought himself as Viennese.
    And I think my family too.
    But Viennese thought of us as Jews,
    so we were never really accepted.
    And I really became aware of this in religious studies.
    It was compulsory religion in Austria,
    no separation of church and state.
    And once a week we had Bible study.
    And all the Christian kids stayed
    in the seats and all the Jewish kids,
    I think all four or five of us were marched off
    into some separate room.
    So immediately, we were marked as being different.
    And I think once you view somebody as different,
    then it's easy to persecute him or her.
    And let's see, I remember very much the Nazis marching in.
    There was-- weeks before there was a lot of speculation
    whether or not Schuschnigg could save Austria.
    He made a lot of brave speeches on the radio,
    but of course, he eventually capitulated.
    And the day before the Nazis marched in,
    there were airplanes flying overhead all day.
    It was kind of ominous, this constant roar of airplanes.
    And then they marched in the next day.
    And I remember, all the churches rang the bells
    in celebration of this wonderful event.
    But really, the thing that shocked me most
    was that one day I was friends with all the kids,
    and the next day there were swastikas written on my desk.
    So this overnight change--
    I couldn't understand how people could change so much overnight.
    Of course, now I realize it's probably the parents changing,
    and the kids just following the parents.
    And I continued to go to school for a while.
    It was starting-- becoming more and more dangerous.
    I was beaten up a couple of times.
    And so finally then, they were going
    to send it to a separate school, and finally, I just
    stopped going to school.
    The day the Nazis marched in, my mother started writing letters.
    I think she had a lot of foresight.
    She wasn't-- she wasn't fooled by what's happening.
    So she wrote a lot of letters.
    She wrote-- we had family in Czechoslovakia.
    She wrote to them.
    And fortunately, they didn't want us, otherwise,
    I wouldn't be here.
    And then she wrote to an uncle in New York, who had been there
    for quite a while.
    And eventually, he sent affidavits.
    But it was a long wait to get them.
    So we waited from September--
    from March till December with the Nazis.
    And what finally got us admitted was that we
    came under the German quota.
    Because Austria officially became part of Germany,
    so we were Germans.
    And the German quota is much bigger than the Austrian quota,
    so we got in under that.
    And getting out was a difficult process.
    You needed all kinds of papers.
    And my brother stood in lines for the various--
    this kind of permit and that kind of permit.
    And it was a long, long process.
    But he finally got all the papers together.
    And we could take possessions, but only a grand total
    of $10 and that was it.
    But I remember being on the train and going to Switzerland,
    it was such a feeling of relief.
    Finally, not to have to worry what
    would happen if the conductor disliked you or things
    like that.
    And under Hitler, life was very chancy
    because you had no protection at all.
    If a neighbor had a grudge against you,
    he could do anything he wanted to.
    So we were lucky in that, that nothing happened to us.
    We had a close call.
    On Kristallnacht they came and searched our apartment.
    And mother showed them the keys.
    And then he asked my mother if she had any more keys.
    And she said, oh, yes, a whole drawer full
    and she opened the drawer.
    And then she remembered that my father's service revolver
    was underneath the tablecloth there.
    So that was a close call.
    In Austria, you could keep your revolver
    after you were discharged.
    And let me think.
    And my father's family came from Czechoslovakia, from Moravia,
    a place called--
    they call Uherské-- it's Hradiste-- now--
    Uherské Hradiste.
    And they lived in a small town.
    And my grandmother was a very good businesswoman.
    Unfortunately, I didn't inherit that gene.
    And she had a foreign customs shop,
    which she sold all over Czechoslovakia.
    And she became very wealthy.
    She was a millionaire in krona, according to the family story.
    But being a big patriot, she invented the whole thing
    in war bonds.
    And when inflation came, you couldn't even
    buy a loaf of bread with that.
    So she was completely wiped out by that.
    And so she lived with us for a while in Vienna.
    And many members of the family were killed.
    My grandmother and some aunts and uncles and next generation,
    they were all sent to Theresienstadt, where they--
    that was supposed to be the model
    camp for the Germans, their Potemkin Village, show how
    wonderful they treated people.
    So I don't know all the details of what happened to them.
    I knew my grandmother starved to death.
    I heard that.
    And one aunt was saved because she worked at camp headquarters
    and she was able to save her daughter.
    But the other ones were all killed in some way or another.
    And my mother's family, almost everybody got out.
    One uncle fled to Italy and he was jailed there.
    And he died under mysterious circumstances.
    I don't really know what happened.
    And one of the uncles committed suicide in Vienna.
    He couldn't face the idea.
    But the rest of them got out--
    England or America.
    Anything else I could recollect for you?
    Sure.
    I'd like to go back and ask you some more childhood questions.
    Oh, sure.
    So what were your parents' names?
    They were Elizabeth, Lily, and Ludwig, L-U-D-W-I-G.
    What was your mother's last name?
    Greenwalt.
    And did you have siblings?
    I have an older brother.
    He's about 2 and 1/2 years older.
    He did a lot of standing in line for us.
    He was old enough to do that.
    I should mention that my father died very young.
    He died in 1936 of cancer.
    He had stomach cancer.
    And they couldn't diagnose it.
    The doctors kept saying he had [INAUDIBLE],, which
    was kind of like psychosomatic illnesses.
    But of course, it was all nonsense.
    And tried different diets and this and that.
    But when they finally operated, it was too late.
    It had already spread.
    So it left my mother in a lurch.
    But in Vienna, she got a pension from the place
    where my father worked.
    He worked in the Landerbank, which
    was a combination of bank and export-import company.
    And he headed up one of the divisions of the bank.
    It was considered a good job, but my father hated it.
    It was a dull job.
    It's interesting, he had first studied physics--
    that's my field-- and at the last moment,
    he switched over to law because he had an uncle in mining law
    and he was going to take over the practice.
    And then his uncle died and the whole thing collapsed.
    So ended up in this more or less clerical
    job, which he didn't like.
    But in those days, you couldn't change jobs.
    You were lucky to have a job.
    It was permanent depression.
    But it was interesting that my brother and I took up
    his likes.
    My brother went into law and I went into physics.
    I have no idea how that happens.
    Because I actually didn't know about this until long after.
    So I wasn't influenced by the knowledge, it just--
    I don't know how you get influenced by people.
    So looking back, I think I have many of the traits of my mother
    and my father, and also my grandfather.
    I was very much impressed by my grandfather.
    He lived in a big way.
    He bought wine by the barrel full.
    He's the only person I ever knew who did that.
    And he had a huge household.
    And he was very hospitable and generous.
    So for me, he's kind of a model on how to live.
    And both my parents were big readers.
    And my mother read to me a lot.
    And I became a big reader.
    In fact, I don't remember how I learned to read.
    I remember going to the library with my father
    and picking out books that seemed interesting
    and reading them.
    But it seemed very easy and natural.
    And I remember my mother once read a whole thick book to me
    when I was sick, just in order to keep me
    from becoming restless.
    A book by Selma Lagerlof.
    I still remember that book.
    Anything else you'd like to know?
    What was the name of the book?
    Nils Holgersson und die Wildganse.
    That's a Swedish name.
    Nils Holgerssons the name and the wild geese.
    The story was about some kind of magic.
    He became small and he rode on the back of this wild goose
    all over Sweden.
    He had all kinds of adventures.
    It was a book--
    I see that book on different levels,
    although I probably just got it on the story level.
    Yeah, she was a famous writer.
    She got the Nobel Prize for literature.
    But I don't think anybody reads anymore,
    except maybe in Sweden.
    Could you say more about what your parents were like?
    OK, let's see.
    My father was somewhat moody and withdrawn,
    perhaps because of his stomach problems.
    So he-- so a lot of times, my mother told us, he's resting,
    don't make any noise, which was a little hard for us kids.
    But I have good memories about him.
    The time he was available, it was a good relationship,
    even though he died when I was still about nine.
    So I never really knew him.
    And I remember a long time afterwards,
    I kept looking for a surrogate father.
    But, of course, nobody wanted to play that role.
    And I finally got over that when I
    married and was my own father.
    So he was very--
    I guess, he was a big reader and very bright.
    I think he was--
    somewhat acerbic sense of humor.
    And my mother was quite different.
    She was more outgoing.
    She came from this big family in a big city.
    And I remember she always felt that he
    was a provincial, growing up in this small village.
    So they were very different.
    And I think it created some conflicts.
    What was your house like?
    It was actually just an apartment,
    a small apartment we had.
    I think-- just I think there's two bedrooms.
    My parents had one and my brother
    and I had the other one.
    And my grandmother slept in the same room with us.
    So it was fairly crowded.
    And it had-- there were big, heavy furniture,
    as was customary then.
    And we had one servant.
    Almost everybody had servants over there,
    even if they didn't have much money.
    That was customary for the middle class.
    And she became-- she was kind of a household friend.
    And she did-- she did most of the cooking,
    although my mother liked to make some special dishes.
    All the members of the family-- mother's family,
    were great cooks.
    And they had competitive cooking.
    They each made things slightly different
    and you had to praise them for whatever way they
    did the cooking.
    And they were very insulted if you didn't eat enough.
    I remember once my wife and I were invited
    and we had this special dish.
    And they offered some more to my wife, Sally.
    She said, I've already had three helpings.
    They said, ah, but they were small ones.
    So I think people had a pretty good life in Vienna.
    There wasn't too much money around
    in the '30s, but a very close family life.
    What else can I--
    Was the woman who worked for you, the servant,
    was she Jewish?
    No, she was not Jewish.
    So she stayed in Vienna and we gave her a lot of our things,
    that we-- we couldn't take out very much, so we gave her
    a lot of them.
    And then she finally retired and she went to some old age home.
    Old age homes in Austria are very nice.
    They were usually by some lake, or some mountain lake,
    and wonderful scenery.
    They had socialized medicine in the '30s already.
    Do you remember what your house-- what
    your apartment smelled like?
    Let's see, I remember it was a second or third story
    you walked up.
    When I went back--
    I went back to Vienna in 1960 and visited
    the house and the same concierge was still there.
    This was surprising.
    And he showed me where my brother had carved his initials
    on the banister.
    So he remembered us.
    He was very decent--
    a very nice person.
    The house hadn't changed, except the houses on the street
    were much smaller than I remembered.
    So it was interesting going back.
    And across the street was a theater,
    a [NON-ENGLISH] And also, further up the block there was
    a delicatessen.
    And my father liked to stop in and buy special dishes.
    And further down the street was the city hall.
    And next to the city hall was a little park, the Rathauspark.
    And I remember once I was arrested
    and my mother had to come and get me,
    because I stepped in the grass.
    I was running after ball and I stepped in the grass
    and that was a big offense.
    People don't realize how lucky the kids are over here.
    They have so many things that are made for the kids.
    And over there, the parks were really for the old people.
    They had chairs where they sat.
    In your neighborhood, what was the ethnic makeup?
    Let's see, the neighborhood-- in that neighborhood,
    it was mostly just the Austrians, the Catholic
    Austrians.
    There were-- the Ashkenazi Jews were scattered over the city,
    but there was a Jewish section.
    Leopoldstadt was a strong concentration of Jews.
    Most of the Jews who immigrate to Austria
    relatively recently, they were from Eastern Europe.
    But the rest of the Jews were scattered throughout the city,
    a bit like San Francisco now.
    Did you practice Judaism in your home?
    We didn't at home, but we did celebrate the holidays.
    And I particularly remember Passover
    at my grandfather's house.
    That was always very festive, a very large number of people
    over, all the families, the children.
    So usually, a huge table.
    And I can't remember how many children--
    how many people were there.
    And I remember drinking up the wine from the leftover cups
    and I got a little drunk on that.
    My parents had to call a taxi to get me home.
    So very pleasant memories of that, a really warm family
    holiday.
    How long would you stay there when you went for the Seder?
    Just the evening, just the evening.
    And then we went back home.
    What was your parents' education?
    Let's see, my father went to the gymnasium and the university,
    so he had a degree in law.
    And my mother had studied French.
    She had a certificate in French.
    She would have probably liked a university education,
    but my grandfather didn't believe
    that was necessary for girls.
    They should marry and have kids.
    So I think it was a real shame, because my mother was
    a very bright woman, a really good mind.
    And she read in both English and French, and was a big reader.
    When we came to America, it was very hard for her
    because she didn't have any real marketable skill
    and she couldn't do much with the French.
    She didn't have any other skill.
    And leaving Vienna, she had to renounce the pension in order
    to get out.
    So we came over here with essentially no money, $10.
    And in the beginning my uncle helped out a bit,
    but after that she was really on her own.
    So she had all kinds of jobs.
    She worked in factories and in the garment industry
    for sweatshops at that time.
    And then eventually, she went to the civil service.
    And I remember I also worked when I went to school here
    at various kinds of jobs--
    an education in itself.
    My favorite job was working in a print shop.
    So I was kind of doing all kinds of things, kind of a boy Friday
    for them.
    And they were very pleasant people to work for.
    I think they were all slightly alcoholic, but very pleasant
    alcoholics.
    Would you like to hear some more about Vienna?
    Let's see, on Sundays we usually took the streetcar
    to the end of the line and then we
    did some hiking in the Wienerwald and other places.
    And I remember I thought it was pretty boring, because we
    went to the same place over and over again.
    But my parents enjoyed it.
    Vienna had a green belt around it.
    And if you took the streetcar to the end of the line,
    then you were out in the country already.
    It's probably changed a lot now.
    It's gotten bigger.
    And my grandfather lived on the edge of town.
    And so it was a very pleasant area.
    I can remember walking around there.
    There was a Beethoven monument there
    and I remember with a little park.
    And I remember I did some bicycle riding around that,
    my first bicycle riding.
    So overall, I think I had a very happy childhood,
    until the Nazis came.
    I was happy in school.
    I think I was a good student.
    And I read a lot and I had friends.
    I always had a few friends.
    So it was-- so memories are very good about that.
    Anything else?
    Was the Jewish community in Vienna very cohesive?
    Very?
    Cohesive?
    Yes, interestingly enough.
    There was a famous rabbi--
    I read about this later, who kept the Jewish community
    from splitting, at least the Ashkenazi community
    from splitting.
    Unlike here, where you have a reformed conservative Orthodox
    reconstructionist they all held together.
    So I thought really remarkable achievement.
    So that was the main-- then there
    were separate Jewish communities.
    There was a Sephardic Jewish community.
    And there were some other ones too, a Hasidic community.
    But these were all much smaller.
    Most of the Jews in Vienna were more or less assimilated.
    They tried to become Viennese.
    And the Viennese always thought of them as Jews.
    It was a kind of a futile effort.
    Were there community wide celebrations?
    I don't remember any, no.
    They had synagogue services, of course.
    There was a synagogue in my neighborhood
    and I went occasionally.
    When I went back to Vienna, I looked for the synagogue,
    but it was gone.
    I think it had been burned down on Kristallnacht.
    A lot of synagogues were burnt down.
    My schools are still there, but not the synagogue.
    I visited my old school.
    It looked just the same, except it had been
    whitewashed, a new paint job.
    And it was part--
    it was part of a cloister.
    Because the public schools and private school--
    there was no separation between public schools
    and private schools in those days, probably still.
    And I can remember in the summer,
    you could smell the wine coming up from the basement.
    And occasionally, you saw a little mouse
    running around the classroom.
    And the gymnasium, I enjoyed the gymnasium.
    Our classical education started with Latin,
    and you go on to Greek, and mathematics, and history,
    and other things.
    But I was only there for part of a year.
    I remember my mother was telling me
    the teacher thought I was very dreamy.
    I was looking out the window a lot.
    But apparently, I always did well on the test.
    Somehow I picked it up.
    What else would you--
    can I tell you?
    Do you know how many synagogues there were in Vienna?
    I don't.
    Did you go to any one other than yours?
    I think I just went to my own.
    You said that the Viennese thought of Jews as Jews
    and you thought of yourselves as Viennese.
    Tried to think of ourselves as Viennese,
    but they wouldn't let us.
    Can you tell-- can you think of stories
    about that, how you knew that?
    Yes, we knew that with this relative who was with a doctor.
    And he was apparently a brilliant diagnostician.
    He was the only one who was able to diagnose
    my father correctly.
    And I think he converted to Catholicism,
    but they still looked at him as a Jew.
    So even if you are a convert, you still weren't accepted.
    So I heard a lot of stories about him and his struggles.
    I think eventually he committed suicide.
    And there were positions Jews could have,
    but it was very difficult to get the academic life.
    And many of the professions were closed, not officially,
    but just wouldn't hire you.
    So that was generally known.
    But the spirit is very different-- here in America,
    if that happened I think the Jewish community would
    unite and fight that, and have protests and letters
    to the newspaper and all that.
    But over there, it was accepted that's the way
    it is, which I think in retrospect was a big mistake.
    And also, let's see my father was a socialist.
    And the only two parties in Vienna, the Socialist Party
    and the--
    kind of a church party, a pretty clear cut division.
    And my father belonged to a social party.
    My grandfather, being a businessman,
    had to belong to the other one.
    But politics didn't play a big role in family life.
    I remember when they had the big putsch in 1936,
    when Dollfuss took over, they had barricades up
    in the streets.
    And I remember it took my father a long time to get home.
    So I was aware of what was happening.
    So I think people are much more politically aware over there,
    because politics intruded into more different areas.
    They had-- the government in Vienna, at that time,
    it was socialist.
    I think it still is.
    And they did a lot of things for the city.
    They had a big housing project.
    It was called the Karl-Marx-Hof.
    And that was a scene of some bitter fighting, when
    they had the putsch in 1934.
    I remember seeing-- afterwards, seeing all the bullet
    holes in it.
    So they tried to--
    they tried to fight it, but they were outnumbered.
    And so, it was sad, when Hitler marched in,
    Austria was already fascist, but more
    of a Mussolini kind of fascism.
    And I think that took a lot of resistance away from the--
    away from the country.
    The people who would have fought them, the socialists,
    were already disbanded, in jail, and dispirited.
    So there was little--
    there was very little organized opposition.
    Although, there was an underground.
    And a good friend of my mother, the husband of my mother's
    childhood friend was in the underground,
    in the Catholic underground.
    So he was-- so there were people who were resisting,
    but they were a pretty small number.
    He was-- eventually, he was arrested.
    He was betrayed by somebody.
    And he was arrested and jailed a long time.
    And he finally got out, but his health was ruined.
    And he died not too long afterwards.
    And I visited him when I went back to Vienna,
    and he was very bitter that the people who went along
    came out much better than he did.
    He felt the injustice of this.
    So my mother's acquaintances were both Jewish
    and not Jewish.
    She had a big circle of friends, a big circle of bridge players
    and other friends.
    And my father was less social.
    He was more introverted.
    Be more happy just being by himself, I think.
    What else can I tell you?
    You said that in retrospect you think
    that it was a bad thing to accept that Jews can only
    achieve certain ranks.
    Right.
    --in society, but that Jews thought of themselves
    as Viennese.
    Or they tried to, yes.
    It seems like such an obvious contradiction.
    How did people bridge that?
    That contradiction.
    Yeah, if they thought they were Viennese,
    but they knew that there were these limits set upon them.
    I think probably by selective vision,
    shutting out the things that were contradictory.
    I was reading about Germany, in the middle--
    when Hitler was already in power,
    with respect to the Jews, there was a big debate in Germany
    whether the Jews should be part of German culture,
    the German kultur, or whether should be Zionists.
    It seems incredible.
    That was already when was with murdering Jews.
    And many Germans delayed getting out,
    because they thought Hitler was just a passing thing.
    It's understandable, the way they were there in Germany
    for thousands of years.
    So I think they were right to think of themselves as Germans.
    And they were probably the carriers of the German culture.
    And I think a similar thing was in Vienna.
    A large part of the Viennese intellectual life
    was conducted by Jews.
    So many of the newspaper people were Jewish and many
    of the people in various kinds of advanced movements
    were Jewish.
    So I think it's understandable why they thought themselves
    as Viennese.
    Because they were the carriers of elitist culture.
    So there was a lot of consciousness of the culture,
    but not of being Jewish.
    The only exception I can think of
    is my cousin in Czechoslovakia.
    He was an early Zionist, way back in the '20s.
    And everybody thought he was crazy.
    But he's the one who got out and survived.
    And he was-- at first he was with a kibbutz
    and then he was in a moshav.
    And he was a member of the Haganah in the early days.
    So there were some Zionists, but some people who
    were really conscious of being Jewish
    and wanted to express that, but I would say the minority.
    I imagine it was probably strong among the Hasidic Jews.
    But the Viennese Jews, like my grandfather
    had been there for how many hundreds of years, generation
    after generation.
    And there were periods when the Jews were well accepted
    and then it varied.
    And I remember reading, one time Freud thought
    of a career in government.
    And then around 1880s there were a lot of antisemitism.
    And he realized that was close to him
    and then he went into medicine.
    So I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the Viennese Jews.
    It looks different, looking at them
    from over here, than it does looking
    at them from inside Vienna.
    Actually, one of the things that the Nazi period did,
    it made me more interested in Judaism again.
    So I read a lot about Judaism.
    And then when Nancy had a bat mitzvah, I went with her
    and I studied with her.
    And she stopped going and I kept on going.
    So I've been involved in temple for me a dozen years or so.
    I think the exodus made a big impression on me.
    And one of the things I realized that you
    can't escape from politics, whether you want to or not.
    It won't let you.
    So I thought it was better to be actively involved
    than just being a victim, carried along by the tides.
    So I've been involved in politics ever since then.
    And I remember, I joined the American Civil Liberties Union
    very early.
    I had some job difficulties because of that,
    but still believe it was worthwhile.
    One job required clearance and they
    wouldn't give me the clearance.
    And they never tell you why they don't give you the clearance,
    so you can't really defend yourself
    because you don't have the charges, sort of Kafkaesque.
    And then finally, the officer there, a nice person,
    took me aside and told me what was happening.
    There were two things against me.
    One, that I was foreign born--
    that's suspicious.
    And the second is a member of the American Civil Liberties
    Union.
    Eventually, clearance came through.
    But I got out of that-- got out of the work.
    It was 75% defense related and I didn't want to do that.
    And I realized also to get in the company,
    you had to be a company man.
    And I didn't want to do that either.
    But I'm getting away from Vienna.
    Is there more things I can tell you about Vienna?
    Did Viennese Jews, do you remember,
    see themselves as similar to Austrian Jews
    or different, similar to German Jews?
    Austrian Jews were mainly Viennese Jews.
    There were a few Jewish communities scattered,
    but they were very small.
    So the big Jewish community was in Vienna.
    In fact, that was the only really big city
    left after the breakup of the empire.
    This huge city of people in a country
    of six or seven million--
    unbalanced.
    And a lot of Jews migrated to Vienna.
    The persecution in Eastern Europe, and they
    came to Vienna to escape that.
    Let's see, and there was also a Spanish Jewish community,
    who spoke Ladino in Vienna.
    And my mother had a friend who belonged to that.
    She had a wide circle of people, friends, both Christian
    and Jewish.
    But when she came to America, most of her friends
    were fellow Austrians or Germans.
    She knew a few Americans, but not very many.
    Her social circle was mainly Austrian and German Jews.
    So I think the emigration left its marks on her,
    and also my aunts and uncles.
    And I noticed there were kind of two reactions.
    Let's see, the older ones thought everything was better
    in Vienna.
    No matter what happened in America, it's better in Vienna.
    And the younger ones had the opposite reaction-- everything
    was great in America and they didn't want
    to hear about what's the past.
    So they were really unbalanced in their judgment.
    So I feel--
    I still feel that I have some ties there, particularly
    with the language, and I try to read in German
    to try to keep it up, and speak it,
    but I don't have much practice anymore.
    So I feel you shouldn't blame the language for the Nazis.
    There were good things happening there too.
    But I remember coming over here, there
    were some kids about my age who refused to speak German
    and families hadn't learned English yet,
    so there was no communication between the two generations.
    And those kids forgot German completely
    and then they became completely Americans.
    So I feel I'll never be an American, the way my kids are
    Americans, being born here.
    So part of my memories are still in Austria,
    because my formative years were spent there from, 0 to 11.
    And I don't want to forget those years or all the good things
    about the culture.
    But I couldn't go back there.
    I know some people who went back after the war.
    But I wouldn't be able to do that.
    I think if I went back and met people,
    I'd always worry, what was this person like during the war?
    Was he or she a Nazi or not?
    And how did they behave?
    And I think that I would get in the way of all
    my relationships.
    And, of course, I can't forget what the Austrians did.
    They were very enthusiastic Nazis for the most part.
    At first-- well, they portrayed themselves as a victim,
    but they were a very willing victim, let's say.
    And the Austrians probably are more
    antisemitic than the Germans.
    And of course, Hitler came from Austria.
    And he had a big following in Austria too.
    They were the so-called illegal--
    the illegal Nazis.
    They wore the swastika on the inside of the collars,
    where you couldn't see it.
    It turned out there were a lot of them.
    Some of them were fascists out of idealism.
    They thought things would be better under the Germans.
    And they were very disillusioned.
    And sometimes some of these were more
    decent than the opportunists who became Nazis overnight.
    And I remember once after Hitler,
    going hiking with a friend of mine
    and walking in an underpass, and the kids
    above throwing rocks at us.
    So I think it'd be impossible for me to go back.
    Too many memories.
    And one of the things it did too,
    it made me realize that it's better
    to be an active Jew than a passive Jew, at least,
    and to fight for what you believe,
    rather than just going along, as the Viennese Jews did.
    What else can I tell?
    Those kids throwing rocks at you,
    how did they know you were Jewish?
    I don't know.
    Now, in Vienna Jews actually did look different.
    We're darker skinned, darker hair.
    It was wonderful coming to America
    where there are so many minorities.
    I was just one other minority out of a dozen or so.
    And some people thought I was Spanish.
    So it's a lot easier to be a minority here
    than it was over there.
    I guess in America, the Jews aren't even
    considered a minority in terms of affirmative action.
    So it made life a lot easier.
    Although, when I started school in New York,
    I had a difficult time.
    My clothing were different.
    My mother-- we brought things over from Europe, and nobody
    wore those things in America.
    And so I stood out.
    And I got in a lot of fights with other kids.
    So I often came home with a bloody nose, a black eye,
    and I guess I really didn't know how to handle those situations.
    I haven't got into fights since then.
    But it was pretty rough.
    And also, I think one of the teachers said, look at him,
    look how well he's doing and he doesn't even
    speak the language well.
    And of course, all the other kids hated me after that.
    That was a really dumb thing for the teacher to say.
    But it became a lot easier as I got older.
    I went to the Bronx High School of Science
    and it was just starting.
    I didn't realize that they were such a good school.
    I just applied for it and I went there.
    And that was a good experience.
    So there I was part of the crowd.
    And that school actually--
    I think at that time, was largely Jewish, probably.
    I don't know if it still is-- probably.
    The only bad thing, it was all male, no women allowed.
    And that has changed, of course.
    And it was more formal.
    We had to wear coats and ties--
    very different.
    And I remember when I came to Berkeley,
    I wore a suit and tie and everybody looked at me funny.
    And I couldn't understand what I'd done wrong.
    I kept looking, did I leave my fly open, what did I do?
    And then pretty quickly, shifted over.
    Informal clothing is a lot more comfortable.
    Would you like to hear some more about America, or Europe,
    or Vienna.
    I wanted to ask you a little more about the incident
    where those boys were throwing rocks at you.
    Yes.
    Do you remember how you felt?
    I don't remember.
    But I do remember the physical things were not
    as bad as having the kids turn overnight.
    I think that really affected me.
    Having rocks throw at me, didn't really matter much.
    I could handle that.
    But it was a real shock realizing that the kids could
    switch overnight like that.
    And I think it left its mark on me.
    I think I've been a little bit afraid of people since then.
    I've overcome most of it, but I still catch myself.
    So I think that was the biggest impact, that incident.
    And also, I remember-- oh, one other incident I remember.
    They had a big parade, a big Nazi meet, I guess--
    how shall I put it, kind of a big assembly of people.
    And there were some German speakers.
    And I was curious what it was like.
    And then the whole crowd went Heil Hitler
    and I was the only one who didn't do that.
    And I felt very isolated, very vulnerable.
    Now I know enough not to go to places like that.
    So there were-- and I remember looking out the window once
    and they were arresting some Jews.
    And the Nazis were taking them away.
    They were bending their arms behind their back.
    A pretty brutal scene.
    And everybody's pretty much aware
    of what is happening in Vienna, except we didn't
    know about the death camps.
    But I think those happened later.
    But we knew about the concentration camps
    and all these things.
    There was a lot of word of mouth communication.
    And I also remember there's a book out called The Gelber
    Fleck, The Yellow Spot, where they
    documented all the atrocities that the Nazis committed.
    So pretty much, I think there was a lot known.
    It was really pretty difficult to fool yourself at that time,
    that maybe it's just a passing thing.
    So I think all these incidents left a little mark
    on me, kind of a shock.
    And the realization that the police
    are no longer your friends.
    If something goes wrong, you can't go to the police.
    You're just on your own.
    And survival depended on little circumstances.
    It's very, very chancy.
    Some people survive and some people, something happened,
    some small incident happened and they were killed.
    And I think that left an impact on me,
    how chancy life is, how much depends
    on the small circumstances.
    Some people survive and get out and others, just as good
    or maybe better, get killed.
    So I think that's stayed with me a long time too.
    And then there were a lot of small incidents too.
    We weren't allowed to play in the park anymore.
    The Boy Scouts became illegal.
    It seems amazing.
    I was a Cub Scout at that time, but they were banned.
    In fact, Hitler banned just about every organization
    that was around.
    So if you were a non-Jew, you belonged to the Hitler Jugend.
    And that was it.
    So I've got a good idea what it's
    like to live in a dictatorship.
    I think that really made me appreciate
    America and the freedom here.
    And it makes me upset when the Christian right
    wants to weaken the separation of church and state.
    I think that is what a great things about America, that they
    have been able to do that, unlike Austria, most
    of European countries, would certainly
    hate to have that taken away.
    I think living in a secular culture is wonderful.
    In Vienna, everybody had to pay a special tax, and litmus tax.
    So if you were a Catholic, you went to one place.
    If you were Jewish, it went to the Jewish community.
    So we were pretty well marked.
    There were some people who wrote down [NON-ENGLISH],,
    meaning no belief, so you could that too.
    A way of avoiding the tax. .
    Let's see what else you would be interested in.
    Before '38, what organizations-- what were you involved in?
    Sports or clubs-- you said you were a Boy Scout.
    A Boy Scout, yes, Cub Scout.
    I think that was the only one.
    But I had a circle of neighborhood friends
    and we played together.
    So I think it was too young to be involved in many groups.
    Although, there were many different groups around.
    There were Zionist groups around.
    And I think there were people training to go
    to what was then Palestine.
    But I didn't belong to them.
    So the kids in your neighborhood were
    both Jewish and non-Jewish.
    And you all played together?
    Although, my two closest friends were Jewish, but I did
    have non-Jewish friends too.
    It didn't affect the social life that much.
    But I think amongst the adults mainly it was mainly Jews.
    For my family, mainly Jews.
    Except for this one very close friend
    of my mother's, whose husband was in the underground.
    So she stayed friends with them.
    Even when she was in America, they corresponded.
    So that there were--
    social lives, there weren't any rigid boundaries.
    Of course, after Nazis, it was a lot different.
    Do you think that was typical, that your closest friends would
    be Jewish?
    I don't know.
    I suspect it might be, but I don't really know.
    .
    When you were a kid, before the war,
    did you have any idea of what you
    wanted to be when you grew up?
    Let's see, yes.
    I had a-- let's see, I think I wanted to be a lion tamer.
    I was very much impressed by the circus.
    And then later on, I read a lot of Jules Verne stories and that
    really--
    I think it probably got me interested in science,
    reading those stories.
    I didn't have much idea of what science was about,
    but it sounded like good adventures.
    But I didn't--
    I didn't think much about having a career
    until I came over to this country.
    It's interesting, my brother had a very different kind of mind.
    He liked to-- it was more of a organizational mind.
    He knew where all the streetcars went
    and he made a map showing where all of these go.
    So he had a very good mind for details.
    And I think that came in very handy when he studied law.
    He also had a photographic memory for--
    I think he was a very good student.
    He said he never had to study until he went to law school.
    And so, of course, he was a very good student.
    I remember I was always being compared to him,
    and I really resented that.
    And as kids we didn't get along well,
    but we do get along well now.
    My viewpoint changed when we went to the same college
    together and made me realize that we had a lot in common.
    Whereas before, it had always had been completely different.
    So even though we are very different, we now get along
    and I see him fairly frequently, maybe once a month or so.
    Anything else?
    What else would you--
    What else did you read when you were a kid?
    I read a lot of fairy tales.
    My father had a big collection of fairy tales in his library.
    Apparently, he liked them.
    And I liked them.
    So it's strange how we can have common interests
    and I don't know how that came about.
    Because I know he never talked about this.
    I just saw them in the bookcase and I liked them,
    so I read my way through them.
    And I think my father also had a bit of a mystic touch.
    He liked-- I noticed some books--
    I remember now some books being in there.
    He liked Edgar Allen Poe, those fantasies.
    So I remember reading those stories too.
    And then a big book of German ballads,
    kind of romantic ballads, and I remember
    I loved those as a kid.
    So I read all of those.
    So it's hard for me to understand
    how kids can have such difficulty reading
    because it came so easily to me.
    But then I grew up in a very literate household, where
    both parents were bilingual.
    My father spoke Czech and German and my mother
    German and French.
    Both great readers, so I guess it isn't a big surprise.
    And my brother turned out to be a big reader too.
    I think it's strange how we get to become our own parents.
    I can see part of my father in me and part of my mother.
    Well, anything--
    So do you have any pets?
    Oh, I didn't have any pets--
    oh, yes, a little turtle.
    I had a turtle in Vienna.
    And here, I've inherited cats from--
    first from Nancy, then from my students.
    It was one of those things--
    is it OK if we leave them here for a few months.
    And then you know how that goes.
    So that's about it.
    Did you have to leave your turtle in Vienna?
    I think somebody took it away.
    I remember it got me very upset.
    Some lady thought I was mistreating that turtle
    and took it away.
    I remember I cried over that.
    It was pretty hard to have pets in an apartment house, pretty
    limited.
    Generally, people didn't have many pets.
    And, let' see-- let's see, would you like to hear about my wife?
    Or rather just about myself?
    Yeah.
    Yes.
    Yeah.
    I met my wife through politics actually.
    We both belong to the same club together,
    Democratic Club, which is commonly known
    as a [INAUDIBLE].
    And there was a party of a--
    actually, my wife said she knew me
    before I knew her because she called me up
    to do some kind of precinct work, some kind of work.
    And I went and did it.
    But I don't remember her phone call.
    So anyhow, we went--
    it was a party given by a common friend.
    And that's when I met her.
    And so I still remember our conversation way back then.
    So I think that was my great love.
    Yeah, she unfortunately died a few years ago of cancer.
    But we did a lot of things together.
    And she came to my math conferences
    and I went to her political meetings,
    so it was a good exchange.
    I took up some of her interests and she took up
    some of my interests.
    And she was very active in libraries, and schools,
    and community things.
    And the local library in my neighborhood
    is now the Sally Brunn--
    Sally Brunn Noe Valley Branch Library.
    So, I'm very proud of that.
    She was one of the people who was able to save the library.
    They were going to close the library
    and she organized the troops.
    And several people turned out.
    And the mayor came, of course, then.
    Then it would have been politically
    impossible to close it.
    So I think, in a sense, she really saved the building,
    saved the library.
    Because I think once they close it and remove the books,
    then it's pretty hard to ever bring it back.
    And she was really remarkable.
    She was such a strong activist, but she
    didn't make any enemies.
    I think that's a really wonderful thing.
    In fact, she's the only person I know who can do that,
    or could do that.
    And I think it was because she wasn't in for anything
    personal.
    She wasn't in it for power or money
    and I think people realized that.
    And she also had a nice manner of approaching people.
    She didn't attack people.
    She stuck to the issues.
    So even when people disagreed, it wasn't a personal thing.
    So I'll try to do some of the things that she did,
    but I can't live up to that example.
    Let's see, anything further?
    Yes.
    OK.
    I wanted to ask you another Vienna question.
    Sure.
    Did Viennese Jews see themselves as similar to German Jews
    or different?
    Different.
    There was a lot of animosity between Austrian and Germans.
    I think they irritated us just by speaking German.
    Because the Austrian Germans had a soft dialect and the Germans
    had a very harsh dialect.
    And they used different words for the same thing.
    So a bit like Britain and America,
    separated by common language.
    And also I guess the personalities,
    the national personalities were a lot different.
    The Germans thought the Austrians
    were lazy and shiftless.
    And the Austrians thought the Germans
    were rigid and authoritarian.
    So each had these stereotypes.
    Of course, in America, that all disappeared.
    I think Freud called it the narcissism
    of minor differences.
    So the Jewish community is pretty much
    reflected, the differences, the non-Jewish Austrian
    and German perceptions of each other?
    Yeah, we consider them German and I guess
    they consider us Austrians.
    So there was at least a surface friction.
    And the Austrian Jews thought it was so strange that the Germans
    didn't emigrate sooner.
    A lot of Germans got caught.
    I mean, they stayed too long.
    And then it was impossible to get out.
    Of course, the circumstances were very different.
    In Austria, it happened overnight
    and in Germany it happened gradually.
    And I think, as I mentioned before, a lot of people
    in Germany fooled themselves.
    They thought it was just another pogrom that would blow over,
    their life would go on.
    What else can I tell you?
    Did the German Jews go to Austria after '33?
    Did you notice any change in Vienna?
    No.
    They didn't.
    Those who were aware tried to get out,
    go to France, or Switzerland, or Spain, or Italy,
    to try to get away.
    How far before the Germans came in did
    you have a sense in Austria that that would happen?
    Well, there was a lot of turmoil, and a lot of worry
    about things happening, a lot of feeling of uncertainty.
    I think there were people, particularly
    were people saw it coming.
    So I don't know if my family did or not.
    But I know immediately afterwards they
    started writing letters.
    My mother was very levelheaded.
    I think she saw the world with few illusions.
    So most the Viennese Jews try to get out very quickly.
    And some decided to go to America.
    Some ended up in Shanghai.
    That was a country where people could--
    kind of a last resort country, where you
    could get a visa fairly easily.
    I think you could buy a visa.
    And some ended up in South America.
    So I have some distant relatives who went to Shanghai and then
    from Shanghai to San Francisco-- to New York.
    So a lot of different stories.
    So each family had its own story.
    Some Jews survived the war in Italy.
    And they said the Italian people were very decent.
    So they were able to survive there.
    And some Jews went to France and they were then
    caught by the Nazis there, by the Vichy government.
    Lots of different stories.
    So I'm trying to collect all the family stories from my family.
    They're getting very old, so I want
    to get that before they die.
    There are only two cousins left on my father's side, one
    in New York and one in Israel.
    Each time I visit the one in New York,
    I hear a few more stories about that side of the family,
    father's side of the family, and the extended family.
    But on my mother's side there's really
    nobody left that I can ask, just my generation
    and the next generation.
    And in the whole family--
    I was thinking about it--
    I'm the only one who's consciously Jewish,
    the only one in the whole family.
    So I try to keep up the tradition.
    And Nancy really, my daughter, Nancy, does a lot too.
    She believes in the family holidays
    and in keeping the Passover.
    So I think--
    I think she and I are the only ones.
    So I don't know why that should be.
    I suppose everybody-- even people
    that have similar experience, they view the experience
    very differently.
    So I guess-- so in some ways, all the other ones kept
    the kind of Viennese pattern.
    They were Jewish, but they weren't practicing Jews.
    They were Americans more than they were Jewish.
    They wouldn't deny their Jewishness,
    but they wouldn't celebrate it either.
    So I think-- so perhaps they would carry on--
    perhaps that Viennese pattern got built in somehow.
    One example is Freud, who also was--
    he would never deny that he was a Jew and he got into row--
    I think the story I heard, in a railway compartment,
    when somebody made a remark, he was able to--
    he was willing to take on the whole compartment.
    But he was not practicing.
    And he wouldn't allow his wife, who came from an Orthodox home,
    to practice.
    So he was very ambivalent about being Jewish.
    I think he wanted to be Viennese.
    It was a one-sided love affair.
    He wanted to be Viennese, but the Viennese
    thought of him as a Jew and they never accepted him.
    So I think that's fairly typical.
    There was a strong, I think, drive towards assimilation,
    but it didn't work.
    And actually, quite a few people converted too.
    And they meant well, but that didn't work either.
    And I think it probably caused a lot of internal conflict
    when that happened.
    So you hear about some more famous people doing that.
    Of course, a lot of ordinary people did it too.
    Like Heinrich Heine, the poet, converted.
    And afterwards, he was sorry he converted.
    It hadn't made any difference in his acceptance.
    So I see that as a big difference
    between the Jewish community there
    and the Jewish community here.
    The Jewish community here is much more
    aware of being Jewish and look at Judaism
    as something positive, rather than something get away from.
    And they're much more active, having
    classes of various kinds.
    And I go to a class myself, a Torah study class
    at my synagogue.
    So I will, I guess, slowly become more Jewish.
    It's kind of a reverse trend.
    I think most people become less Jewish.
    I become more Jewish.
    And maybe more radical as I get older.
    Let's see, anything that we didn't cover?
    Anything else?
    I think a few things.
    OK.
    Other than voting, do your parents--
    you said your father was a socialist,
    did he do anything political other than that?
    No, he didn't.
    It was just their party affiliation.
    His party affiliation, yes.
    OK.
    A question, I was wondering, you mentioned--
    were there any other relatives other than your grandfather
    and the grandmother who lived with you in Vienna?
    Just a lot of uncles and aunts and their children.
    Were you close to them?
    Not too close.
    Some of them-- some cousins, went to England,
    and they went to Wales where they opened a small factory.
    And Wales is like Appalachia, a lot of unemployment.
    And so the British government tried to interest people
    to open up some industry there.
    So two cousins went over there and they
    opened this small factory.
    And I went and visited them twice.
    So I became very close to the cousins.
    But in Britain, it seems different.
    It seems like the divisions are much sharper.
    Like, they only socialized with other Germans or Austrians.
    They didn't have any British friends.
    And they have two daughters.
    And the two daughters became completely British.
    So in one generation, they completely assimilated.
    And both daughters married Christians.
    So they are, for all purposes, they are English and very proud
    of it.
    I was really struck by the contrast
    between a social life there and a social life in America.
    And also struck-- I visited the factory
    and the first time all the factory,
    girls were singing a beautiful Welsh harmony,
    and the second time, they were all
    listening to transistor radios.
    I thought it was a big loss.
    Perhaps American influence.
    So, I'm trying to think if there are other cousins.
    And of course, my cousin in Israel, I visited him.
    I took a trip around the world where
    I tried to see all the family.
    And he has three daughters.
    And he gave them the choice of a trip to Europe or big weddings.
    And they all wanted big weddings.
    So now they have children, and grandchildren--
    I think great grandchildren.
    I can't keep track of them all.
    So he's a real-- became a real patriarch.
    I think he's trying to repopulate Israel
    all by himself.
    He was originally--
    From Czechoslovakia, he was from Czechoslovakia, yeah.
    He was the one who was a young Zionist and everybody
    thought he was crazy.
    So he got out.
    He was lucky, he got out.
    And then, let's see, in the '30s,
    he came back in late '30s, and he couldn't
    stand the climate over there.
    He came back.
    But then when the Nazis came, the climate all of a sudden
    got much better.
    So he went back.
    And he-- I think he's very happy there.
    So it's interesting, he's not very Jewish either,
    even though he's in Israel.
    He thinks being in Israel is enough.
    You don't have to do anything else.
    You don't have to bother going to synagogue or anything else.
    And the big Jewish holidays are just long weekends for him.
    He doesn't have any feeling for them.
    So in a way, I think that's too bad.
    So he's part of the secular Zionist movement.
    But if he's happy, I think that's the main thing.
    I was wondering if you could describe your grandmother who
    lived with you.
    Let's see, my grandmother was very--
    kind of a--
    I want to say stony faced.
    She was almost like a Buddha, just sitting there.
    She barely talked.
    She didn't talk.
    And when she did talk, she disapproved.
    She was hard to have around.
    And I think particularly she was a strain of my mother.
    And then eventually, she went b to Czechoslovakia.
    So I don't know what happened, why she became like that.
    I'm sure she couldn't have been like that as a businesswoman,
    so I don't know what happened.
    And I was too young to think about those things.
    It's a pity now, a missed opportunity to find out.
    So as I mentioned before, she was killed,
    and many of the others were also killed,
    almost that whole-- almost that whole side of the family
    was wiped out.
    Of course, in Czechoslovakia, it was
    almost impossible to get out.
    It happened there so quickly.
    And I think most of the Czech students perished.
    And I think it's ironic that the cousin who
    everybody thought was crazy was the one who survived.
    So he went-- he did go back to Israel.
    And then he was in a moshav.
    And actually, the climate did get better in Israel.
    Because they planted all those trees,
    the climate became much more temperate.
    When he was there, it was pretty humid
    and there was a lot of malaria around still.
    And all that has changed.
    I was wondering if you could describe
    a little bit more the relationship between yourself
    and the Jewish students and the Christian students,
    just as you were growing up.
    I know you had to leave for religion classes.
    Was there any other?
    Just in playing, I mostly played with the Jewish kids,
    although I did have one or two Gentile friends.
    I think it just happened maybe through parents association.
    These were kids of parents--
    of friends of my parents.
    So we kind of became part of that circle, essentially
    that circle.
    Well, I should mention too, my cousin in Israel
    was very sociable.
    He said, once a week all the German Jews
    got together for a coffee.
    And then once a week, some other day, all the Czech Jews
    got together.
    And he said he went to both.
    He was very outgoing.
    In religious school, when you said
    you were taken out, that Jewish kids were taken out,
    was that the first time that you noticed antisemitism?
    No, no, I think I noticed before,
    but that was very striking.
    I think that was the first time--
    it was obvious that I was different.
    And we were looked at as being different.
    The other times there were smaller things
    that you could overlook.
    But you couldn't overlook that.
    I think in retrospect, that was a terrible thing
    to do, to mark people like that.
    You are one thing and you are somebody else.
    Particularly for kids who tend to be
    clannish anyhow and dislike anything that's different.
    But that was the law.
    And as far as I know, nobody tried to change it.
    So that was accepted.
    And I think in most European countries, it's like that,
    or it was like that.
    I think the separation of church and state, that's
    really a great American invention, I think.
    And I think most people don't value it enough.
    I think you have to live in some other system
    to really appreciate that.
    What were those small things?
    Well, small things, like my mother
    hushing me on the streetcar.
    So that I think in a way, that kind of dampened
    my self-confidence.
    Realizing I couldn't act like other people could act
    and being marked as somebody potentially persecuted.
    They're worried that somebody would say something, you know.
    I think probably overreaction on the part of my mother.
    Oh, the other thing I noticed the antisemitism,
    or really didn't understand it until much later, was
    that all the traits that the Gentiles said the Jews had,
    the Jews said these were Polish Jews.
    So I think they internalized antisemitism
    and then directed against these other Jews
    who were different from the good Viennese Jews.
    So I think I really couldn't understand it then,
    but it's a pretty common pattern.
    And I think it was really unfortunate, because in a way
    it created friction between these two communities.
    And they really had a lot more in common than they differed.
    So they differed on superficial things,
    but not on essential things.
    Or language, they spoke Yiddish, and all my family
    looked down on Yiddish.
    They thought it was kind of a corrupt German.
    They didn't see it as a separate language at all.
    So I think that was really unfortunate.
    So I believe they should have had a united front.
    What did your mother say to you about--
    she said to be quiet, but what did she tell you about what
    would happen if you didn't?
    She didn't say anything.
    But I did hear a lot of derogatory remarks
    about Polish Jews in the house.
    And I thought that was kind of strange.
    But I'd say I was too young to really understand
    the mechanism there.
    And I think some of that still goes on here.
    Like the two big congregations in San Francisco,
    Temple Emanu-El and Sherith Israel--
    Temple Emanu-El was the German Jews and Sherith Israel
    were the more Eastern Jews.
    And for a long time they didn't get along at all.
    In fact, they wouldn't even agree
    to be buried in the same cemetery.
    They each had a separate cemetery.
    And just a few years ago, we got together and asked the rabbi
    how this happened.
    He said, oh, we were always willing to do that,
    but they weren't.
    And when they got a new rabbi, then it happened.
    I'll have to ask Temple Emanu-El to get their version.
    So I think those differences are finally being overcome.
    And now they have often joint speakers and joint programs,
    often together with Sha'ar Zahav, the gay community--
    the gay synagogue.
    They work together.
    So I see that as a very positive sign.
    The unfortunate thing in America,
    you have this big split between reform, conservative,
    and Orthodox.
    I think reform and conservative are pretty close.
    Conservatives usually do the same things
    that the reform do a few years later,
    like women cantors and women rabbis.
    But I can't imagine an Orthodox shul having a woman rabbi,
    I think.
    So as I mentioned before, in Vienna
    they avoided this terrible split.
    Now, once you've had that big split for 100 years,
    it's hard to undo that.
    I think it'd probably take a long time.
    Although, there's some efforts being made to do that.
    Can you think of other instances that you witnessed
    as a kid about antisemitism?
    Other stories?
    Let's see, nothing specific.
    A lot of it's in the air and you felt it.
    And then there were the few incidents.
    But before Hitler, you could pretty much ignore it.
    But after Hitler, of course, impossible.
    What when you first aware of Hitler's name?
    I heard him speak on the radio.
    In those days, everybody had a little radio,
    and I listened to all the news.
    And I remember listening to one of his speeches.
    And he was ranting and raving.
    And I couldn't understand why people liked him so much.
    It sounded incoherent to me and very bombastic too.
    So I think we were pretty aware of Hitler, and Mussolini too,
    and the Spanish Civil War.
    I think my family talked about the Spanish Civil War.
    Of course, they sided with the loyalists.
    And I think some people were aware
    already of this being kind of the beginning--
    the beginning of fascism taking over.
    I don't know how much my parents were aware, because I
    didn't know enough about it.
    But I suspect they probably were.
    So people who were politically aware saw
    this cloud on the horizon, kind of
    saw this thing coming closer and closer.
    But they couldn't do much about it.
    And emigration is such a big thing.
    Mother really worried about coming to America with two kids
    and not having any real skills.
    She realized it'd be a tough life.
    So there were some people who got out pretty early.
    I think Einstein got out at '33, got out very early.
    And there were a few others.
    But most of the Germans waited.
    So I think all the signs were there.
    If you-- those people who read Mein Kampf
    certainly would be aware of what Hitler was up to.
    He spelled it out pretty well in there.
    But I think it was--
    I think it was traumatic for many people emigrating.
    Like my mother, she lived in Vienna her whole life,
    and her parents had lived there, and her grandparents,
    and the great grandparents, and the great, great, great
    grandparents.
    So really giving up a lot in leaving.
    She realized it, but she never hesitated.
    For her, it was an easy choice.
    But she was aware of what she was doing.
    And she was--
    I think she was one of the few of my relatives on her side
    who was able to look at America in a balanced way,
    to think this was better in America
    and this thing is better here.
    So she was able to make fine judgments.
    And most of my other ones were not.
    They either went-- as I mentioned, either went
    everything is better over there or everything's
    better over here.
    I think somehow the emigration has kind of unbalanced them.
    I think they--
    I think they lost their equilibrium.
    And even though I think they all managed pretty well over here,
    in terms of jobs and things, yet they really
    had a hard time coming to grips with America.
    So I think-- and as I mentioned before,
    I don't think I'll ever be completely American.
    Because some part of me is still European.
    So I think emigration is a kind of melancholy thing in a way.
    It's really hard to be completely
    happy in a new country.
    Because part of you is till back there.
    I've met a lot of Russian immigrants,
    and some new immigrants coming over here.
    And we had-- usually have two of the families
    over at the Passover.
    And seemed to me I saw this film about one family,
    and it mentioned when things weren't going well,
    then they thought back on Russia.
    When things were going well, then they
    could forget about it.
    So it's in there, deeply in there.
    And most of them, I think they're glad to be here,
    but they're not happy in America.
    It's too big a change, particularly
    for the older generation.
    Although, I must say, we're all learning English,
    unlike other immigrants.
    And even the grandparents can speak it fairly well now,
    can understand things.
    And the granddaughter is being brought up bilingual, Russian
    and English.
    So they see the value of keeping the language, the literature.
    I think that generation has such wonderful linguists,
    they speak so many different languages.
    And so many speak different Russian languages,
    a number of them in Polish, and some German, and English.
    And I'm glad that the granddaughter is learning still
    to speak German--
    speak Russian.
    I think when you give up your mother tongue,
    you really give up a lot.
    I think it really cuts you off on the culture.
    So part of me is still back there,
    but of course, I could never live back there.
    I'd be totally unhappy.
    There's a kind of bilingual joke about that.
    So these two immigrants are talking.
    One of them says to the other, are you happy in America?
    And he says, yes, I'm happy, but not [NON-ENGLISH]..
    So he's happy, sort of superficial,
    but not really happy.
    And then it's hard for the ones who go back.
    In addition to the memories, also they
    get used to American culture and European culture
    becomes strange to them.
    So they're half here and half there.
    It's not a good situation.
    Let's take a pause and change tapes.
    OK.
    Maybe I'll stop in--
    The head and shoulders?
    Right here.
    OK, so I can wave my arms and--
    Yeah.
    OK.
    I want to ask you, when you were listening to your radio
    about Hitler, how old were you?
    I must have been around 9 or 10 listening.
    Everybody was listening.
    The radio was the big thing in those days.
    I mean, all the latest news was on the radio.
    Did you talk with other kids about what you heard?
    Not too much, I don't think so.
    But I was aware of all these things happening.
    Although I didn't understand them.
    You said the day before, I think,
    that the Germans came in, their planes
    were flying overhead all day?
    All day long, yes, yes, kind of a constant roar.
    It was a bit intimidating, I think.
    Or maybe that's what they were trying to do.
    And then after was some--
    So afterwards, they had this plebiscite election.
    "Do you want Austria to be part of Germany?"
    If you do, you vote here.
    If you don't, then you go over there and vote.
    So 99% were in favor--
    surprise, surprise.
    Did your parents vote on it?
    I don't-- I don't think so, because they were Jewish.
    I don't think--
    So could Jews vote in it?
    I don't think so, but I'm not really sure.
    So the day-- the day went on.
    The planes were flying overhead the day before.
    Did you pretty much know the Germans were coming tomorrow?
    Well, those were tense situations.
    Schuschnigg was on the radio appealing
    to Austrian nationalism.
    "We all must stand firm" and sounding very patriotic.
    But in reality, everything is lost already.
    He was just trying to put on a brave front.
    And so it was kind of a hope against hope
    that somehow he'd be able to pull this off.
    But it was--
    So everybody was hoping, but they really
    knew that it was hopeless.
    What kinds of conversations did you
    have, in your family, that day?
    Gee, I don't remember.
    I should have kept a diary.
    Do you remember what you did?
    Did you go to school?
    Were you at home?
    Where were you when you heard the planes?
    I was at home when I heard the planes.
    And the church bells, you could hear all over the city.
    That was very discouraging, hearing them,
    because you knew then you wouldn't get
    any protection from the clergy.
    Do you remember anything different in your house
    that day, your mother doing anything or saying anything?
    No, I just remember letter writing.
    She wrote a lot of letters.
    And she started immediately writing letters.
    You know.
    She made some comments that we have to get out.
    We can't stay here.
    So I thought it was very impressive that she
    saw the future so clearly.
    Because even in Austria, some people dawdled a bit.
    And it was a matter of life and death.
    So if a visa hadn't come through at that time,
    we might not have been able to get out, because the war was
    coming so quickly.
    Yeah.
    Can you describe the next day, the day the Germans came in?
    See, I really don't remember those details.
    When-- so did you-- do you remember seeing many soldiers?
    Not really.
    How did you know that it had happened?
    How it had happened?
    On the radio.
    The radio said, yeah.
    And Schuschnigg capitulated and read a sad speech.
    And I think everybody cried, right then.
    We knew that was the end.
    That was the end.
    So it was the end of Austria and also the end
    of the Jewish life in Austria, so it
    was kind of a double loss.
    Before that, well, they knew Hitler was on the march.
    But the previous prime minister had some kind of treaty
    with Mussolini.
    He was an Italian-style fascist.
    So there was a hope that Mussolini would not
    allow this to happen, because Austria was kind
    of under his wing at that time.
    But he didn't do anything.
    What do you remember of the Nazis in Vienna
    before Germany came in?
    Were there many?
    Did you see them?
    After, there were a lot of what they called
    illegal illegal Nazis, who joined the Nazi party, probably
    out of hope there'd be more jobs because
    of the terrible unemployment.
    As I mentioned earlier, those turned out
    to be the more decent ones, because they
    had some principals and some idealism.
    Even though it was misplaced idealism,
    it still was some idealism.
    The worst ones were the opportunists
    who joined overnight.
    And imagine, the parents of those kids
    that wrote the swastikas were of that type.
    So what changes did you see overnight?
    Well, the kids that were my friends
    were no longer my friends.
    That was a big, big shock.
    Can you talk more about that?
    I don't-- unfortunately, I don't have a good memory.
    I just remember the events and how I felt about them.
    What happened in the school?
    I thought you were talking about that kids
    that were in your class and how they treated you differently.
    Yes.
    Right.
    See, and then all the Jewish kids
    were supposed to go to some other schools,
    some special schools.
    And I remember, once, there were other kids waiting outside,
    and they beat up the older students.
    And I remember my mother saying, well,
    you should always remember this, this thing what happened here.
    And then she thought it was too dangerous for my brother and me
    to go to school.
    And she was probably right.
    So I spent a lot of time at home, not going out too much.
    How soon after they came in did you stop going to school?
    I think all this happened pretty quickly.
    I can't know how many weeks or it happened, but very quickly.
    And all these other things happened very quickly--
    the ban against Boy Scouts.
    And all other organizations, all of a sudden, became illegal.
    It was a really, really a very monolithic dictatorship, only.
    Only the Nazi party, that was the only thing.
    Everything else was verboten.
    Oh, I think I heard some Zionists met,
    kind of clandestinely, in secret, in Vienna.
    I knew about that.
    So there was some people preparing
    to go to Palestine, Israel.
    And there was some training going on.
    But we had to be very careful.
    And then I remember hearing a lot
    of stories, what happened to this person, what
    happened to that person.
    So there were all these stories going around.
    And it all seems bizarre to me, because it
    seems so chancy, though, just some neighbor,
    someone who didn't like them and turned them in.
    I mean, it could be any, so you never knew.
    Maybe you've offended somebody, unwittingly or somebody
    has a grudge against you.
    And that was often enough to get you killed.
    So you can feel the uncertainty of living,
    kind of living from day to day, because you
    didn't know what would happen.
    Although, I remember there was a lot
    of camaraderie among the Jews.
    There were endless jokes about the Germans,
    about Hitler and Goring and things.
    So I think people were in very good spirits, at least,
    even though they knew what was happening.
    And then, even in New York, people
    still told us wonderful stories and jokes.
    And then as people became more successful,
    that disappeared, which I thought was a shame.
    And also, that kind of bonding that took place among people.
    Like in New York, people would meet over
    a nickel cup of coffee, and they'd sit around
    and talk and socialize.
    And then gradually that stopped.
    These wonderful cafeterias where people
    met, the kind that Singer writes about, a little cafeteria.
    And coffee was really cheap even for immigrants.
    A nickel a cup of coffee, and you could sit a long time.
    Guess those cafeterias are all gone.
    I hope somebody write down all those wonderful stories
    and jokes.
    Did your maid stay with you up until you left?
    Yeah.
    She stayed.
    She was very decent.
    Yes.
    She was a devout Catholic.
    And Nazism didn't fit into that.
    So there were some people who objected.
    It's hard to know how many, because they were invisible.
    So, but there were some.
    Do you remember hearing about the Gestapo?
    Yes.
    Everybody knew about that.
    Yes.
    Do you know when you heard it ?
    I think we might have heard, actually, before Hitler
    marched in, already.
    Because it was happening in Germany.
    And those stories stories got out.
    And as I mentioned, the book that was being circulated,
    so they mentioned it.
    And there's a wonderful story about Freud.
    So Freud was in trouble with the Gestapo.
    They arrested his daughter.
    And they finally released her because all the pressure
    from America.
    And then finally, they asked him, before leaving,
    to write some kind of a disclaimer before leaving.
    And he wrote, I can highly recommend the Gestapo
    to everyone.
    Lucky, the Germans didn't catch that.
    So a lot was known.
    Did you see the SA?
    Yes, I saw them on the street, SA and the SS.
    How did you feel when you saw them?
    I think I stayed away from them.
    But it was pretty common knowledge about.
    Did--
    And people knew about the struggle
    between the SS and the SA, and Hitler wiping out
    a good part of the SA.
    All of that was known.
    So people were, I guess, pretty aware of what was happening.
    And everybody read the newspapers a lot.
    And they were wondering what the other countries would do.
    Would England or France or America do anything?
    Of course, they didn't.
    Did you know other people, besides the person
    that you mentioned, who committed suicide?
    Just my uncle, this one uncle, and then one uncle
    in Italy, he might have committed suicide.
    One of those cases where you hear different stories
    from different people, and you don't really know what
    happened.
    He was supposed to be involved with some woman over there
    or something.
    And there was a lot of stories about these things.
    But everybody had a different story.
    In mentioned earlier in the conversation,
    people tried to cover up and hide unpleasant things.
    So nobody want to have a black sheep in the family,
    so all these things tended to be hidden.
    And I think that's a shame, because, at least for me,
    those are the most interesting people.
    But I mention this uncle, who committed suicide,
    and he was an alcoholic.
    And the family said, well, it's all
    because he had bad companions.
    So we blamed it on somebody else.
    But the thing what really happened?
    He was the second son.
    And the first son got all the attention.
    So in a large family, I think he fell between the cracks.
    Nobody paid much attention to him.
    So, some people think large families are wonderful.
    But in that family, not much attention
    was placed on any kids, so they had to raise themselves.
    They played by themselves.
    They formed little groups by themselves.
    That's my mother told me about that.
    She had a favorite brother.
    And he was very imaginative.
    And he invented games for them.
    He was a very creative person.
    He was a very creative chemist.
    And in Austria, he was able to live
    on the royalties of his inventions.
    And when he came over here, he worked for various companies.
    And he was a brilliant inventor but a terrible businessman.
    So at first, he thought, oh, this company is wonderful.
    This is going to be different.
    And then, of course, they just always took his inventions,
    and he quit, and he started over again.
    I don't think he was really ready for American life.
    Probably wasn't tough enough.
    But he was a wonderful person.
    Really, I think he was the most creative person I've ever met.
    I remember, my wife and I stayed with him on a trip to Europe.
    And every morning, he made coffee in a different way.
    So even in small things, he had all this creativity, ingenuity.
    So I think the Austrians lost a lot of talent
    when they expelled the Jews.
    And let's see, when I was back in New York a few years ago,
    they had a special memorial for all the talent that was lost.
    They had kind of a moving band on the floor with names
    of the people on them.
    And there was also a book given out of all the artists
    and writers and other people.
    It had a wonderful title, too, something [YIDDISH]
    or something, "The Driving Out of Reason,"
    something like that.
    So I'm glad there was some recognition among the Austrians
    about what they lost.
    So I think, at least among government circles,
    there is some awareness and some attempt to really give justice
    to the contributions of others.
    I get the an Austrian magazine called
    RotWeissRot, RedWhiteRed.
    And they have articles about Austria.
    And they also have articles about immigrants,
    including some who came to America and made good.
    So pleased to see that.
    Although from what I hear, there's
    still an awful lot of antisemitism among the people.
    What did you know about the concentration camps?
    Let's see.
    Well, the one uncle, who was arrested, was sent to Dachau.
    So, we didn't know much detail, but, after he got out,
    he told us all these stories.
    But it was generally known what was going on but not in detail.
    Did you know other people who were taken away?
    Let's see.
    No, he was the only one I knew about.
    But we knew, in general, that there were massive arrests.
    And I'm not sure if we knew all the concentration camps.
    There were so many, I'm not sure we knew all of those.
    But we knew about Dachau, which was fairly close.
    It's near Munich, which is very close to Austria.
    Why was he picked up and taken away?
    Oh, yes, this was on Kristallnacht, when
    they were burning a synagogue.
    He muttered something under his breath,
    and somebody overheard him.
    And that was it.
    So, you say the wrong things or look at someone the wrong way
    or somebody dislikes you, it would be trouble.
    What do you remember about Kristallnacht?
    Well, I remember that we--
    see, I remember, that was the incident
    when they came and searched the apartment.
    That was really frightening and such a close call, almost
    finding my father's service revolver, I think.
    I think if they found that, I wouldn't be here.
    For a Jew, having a weapon, that was really terrible.
    Do you remember hearing a lot of noise?
    I think I heard stories about what's
    happening from other people.
    They really did a lot of damage in the Jewish section
    that I mentioned earlier, Leopoldstadt, that I
    think we concentrated there.
    So they smashed a lot of windows and arrested people.
    They burned synagogues, so I think they really
    bore the brunt of it.
    And then they went around.
    I don't know, they must have a list of all the Jews,
    because yeah, they went around all the Jewish homes.
    And again, it's a matter of luck if the people searching were
    a good mood, you were OK.
    If they were in a bad mood, then they
    might find something they disliked.
    And we also had a lot of copies of the Fackel.
    This was kind of a radical newspaper put out
    by Karl Kraus.
    And if the people searching had been a bad mood
    or had known about it, that might
    have gotten us into trouble.
    So a lot of little chances, a lot of things
    you don't think about, too.
    I mean, something may seem very harmless to us,
    may seem dangerous to the Nazis or forbidden.
    Do you remember what it was like in your neighborhood
    the next day?
    Let's see.
    I remember they burnt my synagogue.
    I remember that and hearing all these stories.
    That was really the beginning of the more, massive persecution
    of the Jews.
    That was really the incident that set it off
    or that they used as an excuse.
    Did you talk about it in your family?
    Oh, yes, we talked about it.
    But I don't remember the details though.
    Remember, it's a little over 50 years now.
    I remember when they celebrated the 50th anniversary.
    Do you remember being afraid to go outside after that?
    I don't remember No, I don't remember that.
    No.
    As a kid, I was pretty foolhardy.
    I think I didn't worry about these things.
    I think all kids think they're immortal,
    nothing can happen to you.
    And we do foolish things.
    Certainly, I wouldn't do go to a Nazi rally now.
    That certainly was a foolish thing to do.
    You talked about your mom starting to write letters.
    Right.
    But how did your other Jewish friends' families react?
    I think they all tried to get out.
    I'm not sure they were quite as energetic as my mother.
    She started immediately, to write letters immediately.
    They might have procrastinated more.
    So, a hard thing to face up to, plus it was so hard to do, too.
    You had to go through all that terrible paperwork.
    You have to get this paper from this bureau and that paper
    from some other bureau.
    They made it very difficult to get out.
    Do you remember how neighbors and former friends and business
    associates reacted responded to the new German laws?
    I don't really, know.
    I think I was too young to pay too much attention to that.
    I just knew how my family reacted.
    You talked about one incident where you saw German soldiers
    in the street.
    Yeah, they were dragging some Jews off somewhere.
    Did you see that on more than one occasion?
    I just remember that one occasion.
    And it was a real, real shock to see that.
    I'm not sure they were soldiers.
    I don't remember what kind of uniforms they had on.
    How did you feel?
    Well, it was terrible, of course, yes.
    And of course, you heard all these stories
    that they made Jews scrub the street with toothbrushes
    and things like that.
    So they really harass people--
    torture them, actually.
    And look, potentially, they just grabbed whoever they wanted.
    So everybody knew about that.
    Then once they arrested people, and they
    made them stand in the cold for long hours,
    and I think things of that kind.
    Some people got very sick afterwards.
    How did your friends and neighbors
    respond to your mother's plans to emigrate?
    I don't really know.
    I don't know.
    I can imagine, but I don't really know.
    Everybody was talking about that.
    They were talking about what to do, where to go,
    how best to do it.
    So there were a lot of different escape possibilities.
    Did you know non-Jews as well as Jews
    who were planning to leave?
    No, I didn't.
    Do you remember talking about it with an other family
    than your immediate family?
    No.
    I just remember when my immediate family
    talked about it.
    In the long afterwards, here, were all the different sagas
    of how we got out, people got out,
    and what countries they went through.
    And each family had an interesting story to tell,
    some happy--
    happier than others.
    The ones who went to Italy did pretty well.
    The ones that went through France
    or had to go through France did not as well,
    because the French were more antisemitic and less helpful.
    Did your family ever think of going to Palestine?
    They didn't, no.
    Yeah.
    I don't know why, but they--
    I thought afterwards, suddenly, what
    would have happened if we'd gone on to emigrate to Palestine
    and been part of that movement.
    Because I was certainly very strongly in favor of that.
    But that time, I didn't think about it.
    My family didn't even think about it.
    My impression was that there weren't very many Zionists,
    there, at that time.
    We just heard about a few.
    And we heard about these groups meeting and stories
    about my cousin.
    He was considered sort of a misfit.
    He was a tailor's apprentice.
    And the story was he played cards with the tailor
    instead of studying his training.
    So, but he turned out to be the smart one.
    How did your mother go about selling your possessions?
    Let's see.
    I think she gave most of it away to people.
    Like the very loyal servant, she gave a lot of things--
    whatever she wanted.
    Did she thinks she would ever get them back?
    No.
    It was a gift.
    Oh, no, she was too sensible to think that.
    And so we could take some things,
    but the furniture, of course, was too heavy,
    so we gave all that away and took some clothes along.
    But of course, most of it turned out to be useless,
    because people wore different style.
    So we really had to start over when we came over here.
    Did your mother ever think that she would return to Vienna?
    Never.
    Never.
    I think-- I know that she said, when
    she saw Jewish students being beaten up, I think she said,
    if you ever get homesick for Vienna, think about this.
    I think it would be hard for her to go back to Vienna,
    maybe harder even than for me, because she knew
    more about what's happening.
    And she knew more about her friends being killed
    and family being killed.
    So you were saying that your brother
    stood in line to get papers?
    Various kind of papers--
    you had to get clearance from different bureaus.
    Did your--
    And each one had a separate line,
    so it took days and days and weeks to do that.
    Did your mother stand in line, also?
    She didn't, no, mainly my brother.
    And there was some professional line-standers, too,
    people who did it for money.
    So that was a real ordeal.
    I heard a lot about that, you know, waiting and waiting
    and waiting in line.
    They made it as difficult as they could.
    Did she think that you could get out or doubt
    that you couldn't get out?
    Oh, she was--
    I think she's always hopeful.
    At least, she always put on a good front.
    Yeah, I think she was optimistic.
    And I remember, when we were over here,
    following the war in Europe and when
    Hitler was making all these advances,
    and she was always sure that he would be defeated.
    So she had generally an optimistic temperament.
    Were there other people who were standing
    in line who wouldn't get their papers at that time?
    I don't know about that.
    I think it's probably a good thing that my mother thought
    we could get out, otherwise she wouldn't have worked so hard.
    If she had thought it was hopeless,
    then she wouldn't have written all the letters
    and done all those things.
    So she's a very strong person.
    And she told me, one of the friends of my father's,
    at the bank, talked to her and said, my dear, Mrs. Brunn,
    what are you going to do in America with two
    kids and no money?
    So he tried to talk her out of going,
    because he saw the difficulties and losing
    the pension, of course.
    So she was aware of what was facing her,
    but she went anyhow.
    I think she didn't really think there was any choice--
    either get out or be killed.
    Did she ever consider splitting up the family?
    This was suggested to her by, I think,
    one of the Jewish agencies.
    And she absolutely refused.
    Good for her.
    She was very strong.
    I mean, the family was her main thing in life,
    keeping the family together, seeing
    that we got an education.
    So, I remember growing up, it was always
    assumed that my brother and I would
    go to college, to university.
    In fact, I didn't know that I had any choice.
    It was just sort of understood.
    The only problem was how to do without any money.
    But she was certain we'd go to college.
    Did she have plans for how she would support you
    once she got to America?
    Not really, no.
    So, I think that was very hard.
    The first few years were very difficult.
    Those jobs were pretty miserable.
    And I think she got some kind of allergy
    from some of the dust and things.
    So I think, when she lived in New York,
    she was never completely well.
    And I remember she thought of going into the diamond cutting
    business, which was a well-paying profession.
    But it turned out she was allergic to the diamond dust,
    so.
    Did she tried to bring any other relatives with you?
    No.
    None of them.
    They were all pretty independent.
    And they all kind of went their separate ways.
    Some went to England, some went to Italy.
    I had an aunt who had gone to America earlier.
    And it was fairly typical, at that time,
    to send one or two of the kids to America,
    because there were so few jobs in Austria.
    So it was lucky for us.
    We had an uncle who had lived here a long time.
    He, I think, emigrated in the '20s.
    And my aunt, the next--
    my mother was the youngest.
    And the next youngest also came to America before Hitler.
    And so we heard stories about America.
    But really, they were just-- we really didn't know
    what it was like and all this.
    Heard kind of extreme stories about America, you know?
    What did you hear?
    The Goldene Medina, on one hand you know,
    and then it was such a terrible country, with no culture
    and so forth.
    And so these wide-ranging viewpoints--
    all wrong.
    And really, it feels they generally underestimated
    America in Europe.
    But you didn't realize that until much later.
    So I think she had a very good eye and understanding,
    of what's going on and seeing things, and kind
    of a large view of things.
    Even though most of our time was spent
    in just making a living in this terrible job,
    she still had a kind of a bigger outlook.
    How did you feel when you knew you were leaving?
    I don't remember that.
    But I do remember when I crossed the Swiss border.
    That was so wonderful.
    It was really such a great feeling of relief.
    So you took the train?
    Took a train?
    Yes, through Switzerland and then through France.
    I think we spent a day in Paris, then
    we switched trains and went to Cherbourg.
    And then we took a British boat, from there, to New York.
    I remember the boat ride.
    It was strange.
    It was White Star Line-- a very, very nice boat.
    And they served us grapefruit for breakfast.
    I had no idea how to eat that.
    So that was a real--
    didn't see that in Vienna.
    So a lot of details that were strange.
    Details that were strange?
    I thought that was strange, yes.
    What other details were strange to you?
    Let's see, strange?
    Try to-- Of course, how people dressed, it was so different.
    What were they wearing on the ship?
    I don't remember now about that.
    I think I used to wear knickerbockers.
    And nobody wore knickerbockers.
    What class did you travel?
    I think just tourist class, I think.
    I think so.
    We had enough money to buy tickets,
    but we just couldn't take any money with us.
    So, we were just as glad to spend the money rather
    than giving it to the Germans.
    How long was the trip?
    It was about a week, and pretty stormy--
    hit some winter storms.
    This was December.
    I remember being seasick on the ship.
    It was too bad, because they were
    showing all these new movies coming over to America.
    So that was--
    And every night, there was a movie.
    They were showing some Hitchcock films.
    I remember The Lady Vanishes.
    But I never found out how it ended, because I get seasick.
    So that was a very pleasant ride.
    And I remember, it was very elegant ship.
    What else did you do besides watch movies?
    Movies?
    Walk around the deck and look at the ocean.
    And then seeing the Statue of Liberty,
    that was also a thrill coming into New York Harbor.
    And then we had to go through immigration.
    But it wasn't too bad, because we had all the papers.
    And my uncle was there waiting for us,
    so he could smooth things over.
    Who were the passengers?
    Was it mostly Jews or was it mixed?
    See, I don't remember.
    Did you make friends with other kids?
    I don't know.
    No.
    Did the staff treat you well?
    Yes.
    Very well.
    Did you know if they were German?
    No, it was a British ship. so they were--
    British ship, White Star Line there.
    They were very professional.
    They were.
    And the passengers?
    I don't think they cared what kind of passengers we were.
    How long were you on Ellis Island ?
    Oh, not at all.
    We just walked through it, because we had
    all the papers, legal papers.
    That went very quickly.
    So then did you go with your uncle?
    No, we stayed in some special housing.
    One of the Jewish agencies had some special houses
    for immigrants.
    So we stayed there, I don't know,
    a couple of nights, two or three.
    Then my mother found an apartment pretty soon.
    How did she have the money to rent the apartment?
    I think she got some money from my uncle in the beginning.
    Although-- so he supported, but in the beginning,
    but not afterwards.
    She was independent when she started working.
    How did she decide where to live or how
    did she find an apartment?
    Let's see?
    Well, the Manhattan West Side was where everybody went.
    So I don't know how they figured that out.
    But everybody-- it seemed to be the neighborhood
    for the new immigrants.
    So where did you live on the West Side?
    On the West Side?
    Eventually, 101st Street and Manhattan Avenue--
    a very interesting neighborhood.
    It was very mixed.
    There were Italians and Irish and Spanish and not too many
    Blacks.
    Blacks were a little bit over in Harlem.
    And people talk a lot about the good old days,
    but they had street gangs in those days in New York.
    And they were along ethnic lines.
    That was each nationality had their own different street
    gang.
    But it wasn't as violent as now.
    People didn't have guns.
    But it was a rough city.
    I remember, I got held up once at knifepoint.
    I think it was in Central Park, so these things were happening.
    I don't think I paid much attention to that.
    I thought that was a part of city life.
    And then I had a laundry route in the neighborhood.
    I forgot what it was.
    I forgot, was it nickel or package or $0.25
    a package, something.
    Anyhow, I saved up a little money.
    And going to Harlem was dangerous at that time,
    too, already.
    I think I got--
    I got roughed up there once, too.
    So I think New York has always been a tough city, particularly
    for the poor.
    Some things I think were better.
    The subway was only a nickel, I remember,
    and you could ride all over the city for a nickel.
    And nobody was afraid of going on the subway.
    It was safe.
    It was hot and crowded but safe.
    And then gradually, as people became more prosperous,
    they moved away from Manhattan, from Midtown Manhattan
    to Washington Heights, and then eventually to Long Island
    and other places.
    So it was a gradual moving outward.
    So the community lost its cohesiveness,
    people spread apart.
    It was difficult to visit.
    And so generally, people lost touch with each other.
    As I mentioned earlier, there was wonderful cohesiveness
    at the beginning.
    People met at the cafeteria and chatted and told
    jokes and shared stories.
    I mean, gradually, as people became more prosperous,
    that disappeared.
    I think if I'd been a little older,
    I think I would have written down some of those stories
    and some of the jokes.
    I remember, as a kid, I thought they were really great,
    particularly the jokes.
    So people didn't have much money,
    but they had good spirits.
    And so it was kind of a lot of exuberance there.
    And when we got more prosperous, that disappeared.
    And I think we got more caught up
    with the everyday problems and our own personal lives.
    So I thought it was a big loss.
    And see, we read.
    There was a German-Jewish newspaper, which everybody
    read, called the Aufbau.
    And I think, at one time, it was a pretty good paper.
    It's still being put out, but there are hardly any readers
    left, so papers decline.
    So that was kind of a common bond, too.
    Everybody read that paper.
    And I think I think one of my cousins still takes the paper.
    Yes, maybe.
    I'm not sure she reads much, but maybe out of sentimental
    value she still takes it.
    Did you talk, in your family, about what had happened?
    We talked more about the ongoing war, what's going on.
    We followed the battle zones.
    And we did that very, very closely.
    Hitler's advances, we kept track of that.
    And there was a lot of discussion about that.
    People didn't talk much about the past.
    They were worried about whether Hitler would win.
    I remember different people had different views.
    I had one aunt who thought Hitler would win.
    And she would argue with my mother.
    And my mother would argue with her.
    But my mother was always certain that Hitler would be defeated.
    And then she would quote some German proverb or something
    like that.
    And let's see.
    We spoke German at home.
    And then when she got more profession,
    she wanted to speak English.
    But I wanted to speak German so as not to forget the language.
    But she learned.
    She learned English.
    And she read in English, a lot--
    mostly in English-- and with a bit of an accent,
    but very, very proficient.
    And then I think she read, probably,
    more English book than German books, and a lot--
    and a lot of French books, too.
    So she had a really lively intellectual life,
    even though she worked at these crummy factory jobs.
    She was also a big music fan.
    She loved classical music.
    And I think she was a great Mahler fan.
    I mean Mahler was still very new and strange.
    What did you know about what was happening to Jews in Europe?
    Let's see.
    We knew about the concentration camps.
    But we didn't know about the death camps.
    But we knew my grandmother was in Theresienstadt.
    And I remember getting a letter from her.
    I wrote her, and she wrote back.
    But of course, she couldn't say anything.
    They were all censored.
    So we knew that they were over there.
    And that was pretty grim.
    But death camp, we didn't know about that.
    I remember afterwards, there was a Pole,
    who escaped from Auschwitz, who went over here.
    And he tried to tell people about it.
    And I think he talked to Rabbi Weiss and to Frankfurter,
    but they either didn't believe him
    or they didn't want to do anything.
    But we didn't know about it personally until much later.
    How did your mother find her job?
    I don't really know.
    But one thing better than now, there were jobs available.
    They weren't great jobs, but there were jobs available--
    unskilled jobs available.
    I mean, I think that has probably changed a lot.
    Why did--
    And the other thing was there was no welfare
    in those days, then, either.
    You had to make it on your own.
    I think the person who sent the affidavit had
    to make a statement that he or she is responsible for us.
    But my mother was too proud and that.
    So she made it on her own.
    When did you start going to school in New York?
    Almost immediately.
    And it was a big mishmosh because, first, they
    put me in a lower grade, because I didn't know English.
    And then they jumped me up to another grade,
    so I sort of was moved around a lot.
    But school seemed very easy compared to the gymnasium.
    Only, the social life was difficult,
    but the academic life was easy.
    Were there other kids, that you went to school with,
    who had come from Europe?
    I didn't know any, no.
    How were you treated by the other kids?
    Well, in the elementary school, as I mentioned,
    I got into a lot of fights because I looked different,
    I think.
    But later on, when I went to Bronx Science,
    it was no problem.
    And of course, in college, there was no problem.
    Of course, by then, I spoke pretty good English.
    I was able to dress like a native.
    It's surprising how big a difference those little things
    make, particularly for, I think, young kids
    who are very conscious of wanting to look like everybody
    else.
    If someone looks different, then something's wrong.
    And of course, I didn't know about that.
    How long did it take you to learn English?
    Well, actually, I learned to read very fast.
    But I remember-- let's see, I read--
    I think through reading Mark Twain, reading
    Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, that was my English teacher.
    But pronunciation was very difficult for me.
    Took me a long time, because there are no real rules.
    So you have to learn each word by itself.
    So that took me a long time.
    And especially, there's some sounds
    which are very hard, very different, like the T-H sound.
    And the Rs are very different.
    Instead of rolling them in the back,
    you pronounce them in the front of the mouth.
    So I had to work on that long time.
    And it took--
    I think, in school, I took special speech classes
    to practice that.
    I worked with a teacher on that.
    So I was very conscious of that.
    But reading came very-- it was easy.
    And reading the newspapers was very easy.
    So I was a big reader.
    And I used the public library a lot, because, of course,
    we didn't have any money to buy books.
    So I checked out a lot of books from the library.
    So I read Mark Twain.
    And then I also read a lot of adventure stories.
    I think, gradually, my taste changed,
    I think, to science fiction, and then to detective stories,
    and eventually to literature.
    So I always feel my students, I don't
    care what they read as long as they read something.
    Because once you read something, then you
    can always change to read something different.
    But if you don't read, then it's very hard to students to read.
    So I'm a big fan of the public library.
    That was a large part of my education
    So we're glad that Sally, my wife, Sally,
    put in so much effort.
    That was one her major efforts.
    And she worked a lot on building the new main library, too.
    She was much involved with that.
    And a new book that came out about the library,
    there's a side column, sidebar with her picture in it.
    So I was very pleased with that.
    Although, one thing I should mention that
    seems kind of strange.
    When I was going with Sally, I was a bit worried
    about marriage.
    Because she came from such an American family.
    She could have been a Daughter of the American Revolution
    if she had wanted to.
    But she-- So I said, you should join them and subvert them.
    So I wonder.
    I was kind of a little bit worried how it would
    be received in the family.
    But it turned out, it didn't make any difference.
    Because my mother and her mother got along really well.
    Even though they grew up in different continents,
    they had the same values.
    They both had kind of Victorian views.
    So that was really nice.
    That was a happy experience.
    So there never was any problem.
    And we got along really well with my mother-in-law.
    Despite all those mother-in-law jokes,
    I think she was a wonderful person.
    And she was a big reader, too.
    So some of these are cultural things.
    Maybe, there may be superficial difference.
    But I think probably values are the real important things, what
    things are important.
    So Sally and I, we never had many things.
    But she didn't have to work, so she
    could do what you wanted to do.
    So I think--
    So I was glad that we could live on one income,
    you know, and do well.
    How long could you stay in that first apartment?
    In New York?
    Yeah.
    Not-- I don't remember, not too long.
    Maybe-- And what happened, every fall, there
    was a moving season in New York.
    And you wouldn't believe that, there was a surplus of--
    a surplus of housing.
    And in order to get tenants, the landlords
    offered a first month rent-free and a new paint job.
    It was wonderful.
    So we moved around a lot.
    And then she finally found this apartment that she liked.
    And where was that?
    20 West 101st Street.
    See, I remember.
    And I went back and visited a few times.
    And it first it turned into a slum,
    was a dangerous, dangerous slum, and then it
    became fancy apartments.
    So, we wouldn't be able to live there now.
    How long did your mother stay there?
    Let's see.
    It was quite a few years she was there.
    And then, see, my brother and I, after the army,
    both went out to California.
    And then she followed us out.
    She wanted to be where we were.
    And it turned out to be very good thing for her,
    because the climate was so much better.
    And she was, as I mentioned earlier,
    she always was sick in New York.
    She could never get really well.
    Those were the days with no air conditioning,
    so people went to all night movies to get cool
    or slept out in the park.
    And I think she was really happy living in San Francisco.
    We had a big circle of friends.
    And she did volunteer work for the Sierra Club.
    You know, very independent, she lived by herself
    until she died.
    She didn't want to be a burden to anybody.
    I have a lot of fond memories of her.
    And she got along well with Sally, too,
    so that worked out surprisingly well.
    After Bronx Science, did you join the army?
    I went to St John's College, Annapolis, which
    is kind of a great book school.
    And the main reason I went there is because my brother had
    gone there.
    And he'd told me about it.
    And also, I got a full scholarship.
    so I could manage to go, with a scholarship,
    with a certain amount of work.
    And then I was drafted from there.
    So I stayed in the army.
    It was duration plus six.
    So just before the end of the war, in April 1945,
    I was drafted.
    Just a couple of days before Roosevelt died,
    I remember that.
    And then I wanted to go overseas,
    but they army didn't send me, wouldn't send me.
    Probably, if I'd said, above all, don't send me overseas,
    they would have sent me.
    And then, after the army, I went out and I went to Berkeley.
    I heard a lot about the physics department.
    And although, I'm not sure, I think
    their reputation is undeserved.
    They were good at building things and doing research,
    but they didn't pay much attention to undergraduates.
    So I was very disappointed in that,
    especially having been in a small school, which was
    small class and very personal.
    But by the time I realized what it was really like,
    it was too late.
    I was established at Berkeley for the jobs and things,
    and I knew the system.
    And I liked the students a lot.
    They're really great students.
    And I lived in a student co-operative,
    which I really enjoyed.
    And one thing, I was struggling.
    Very different, the idea of cooperation with other students
    is really very strong in Europe but not strong over.
    Here, the emphasis is on individual achievement.
    And also there was more working together.
    So like the co-op people, people lived together--
    very egalitarian arrangement.
    And also, they had no discrimination
    against Jews or Blacks.
    At that time, a lot of fraternities
    still discriminated.
    So that has really changed.
    And I also remember, back East, the school--
    in New England, there was a lot of discrimination.
    They had a special code, like church is nearby.
    And everybody knew what that meant.
    But that, I think that all changed, I think, in the '50s.
    So I think some things have gotten better.
    So, I haven't felt much antisemitism in America.
    There was one job, which I lost, because I think I was Jewish.
    But that was about the only thing I can remember.
    You know, even my regular work in the job--
    so I've worked for the radiation lab--
    it didn't make any difference in the work.
    And the industry didn't care.
    They're teaching this, certainly.
    They don't care.
    How did your brother pick St John's?
    I don't really know.
    I don't know how he heard about it.
    So I'll have to ask him.
    And as I mentioned, at St John's, I really
    got to know him better.
    And I was so surprised that we had things in common.
    I always thought I was being completely different.
    Plus, of course, we were a little older, you know?
    When you were drafted, where did you go
    I was in the infantry, Fort Blanding, Florida, and then
    various other places.
    That was a time when we were drafting everybody.
    We were drafting people with punctured eardrums
    and poor eyesight, heart troubles.
    If you could walk past the doctor, they took you.
    So I guess I was probably one of the healthiest ones who
    was drafted.
    I was in really good shape then.
    What was it-- what was it like being in the army?
    I really hated it.
    I thought it was kind like a prison, I thought.
    So.
    And there was some antisemitism in the army, I think.
    Yeah, I noticed it there.
    So I think there are pockets of antisemitism in this country.
    And I think, I know some people talk a lot about it,
    and they're worried about this.
    But I think it's not a big worry here.
    If you could have gone overseas, would you
    have felt differently being in the army?
    The front line?
    If you could have gone?
    You asked to go overseas.
    Yes, yes.
    If you had gone overseas, would you
    have felt different about being in the army?
    I think so.
    I would have felt useful.
    Yeah.
    And I did want to fight the Germans, so.
    Kind of the last of the good wars,
    so I felt very different about that war than the Vietnam War.
    I wouldn't have gone in the army.
    The Vietnam War, I would have been a conscientious objector
    or gone to Canada, something like that.
    But the Second World War, I didn't really
    mind very much being drafted.
    I think, originally, I wanted to enlist in the navy,
    but they wouldn't take me, because I'm colorblind.
    I don't know why it makes any difference,
    but apparently felt that was important.
    Of course, the army didn't care.
    How did your father deal with coming to America?
    Let's see.
    I think he probably did really well.
    He was a wonderful student, as I mentioned.
    They were always comparing me to him.
    I could never quite live up to that.
    And then he had a harder time in the army.
    He was at Anzio, in the invasion at Anzio, in Italy.
    And he got very sick.
    He got some kind of dysentery that
    was very hard to get rid of.
    But I think he got out of his hospital bed
    to be part of the invasion of France, then.
    And then, when he got back, he was in the special GI
    Bill, disability GI Bill.
    And that was enough to enable him to go to Stanford,
    which probably nobody--
    probably couldn't afford now.
    He applied to both Berkeley and Stanford,
    and Stanford took him first, so he went to Stanford.
    And as I mentioned, he did really well in school.
    He was in the student paper.
    And he never had to study until he went to law school.
    And then he said he worked very hard.
    And then later, he lost.
    He lost the memory.
    It was too bad.
    Because I think a lot of doing well in school
    depends upon memory.
    Except places where you have to--
    it wouldn't help in mathematics or in law.
    So he did pretty well.
    Then after law school, let's see?
    Well, before this, I think he wanted to be a journalist.
    And he tried it out.
    And it wasn't like the movies.
    And then I think he worked as a statistician,
    and then he went back.
    He went back to law school.
    And he worked private practice for a while.
    And he did a lot of work for the consumers,
    setting up the consumer program for Brown, for Jerry Brown.
    And then he was appointed a judge in--
    for Berkeley/Albany.
    And he worked there maybe about 20 years or so,
    and then he retired.
    When you first came to America-- did you
    have much Jewish identity when you first came here?
    Did you become--
    I felt more like a--
    people treat me more like an Austrian than a Jew.
    I didn't really have much Jewish identity.
    And we didn't belong to any synagogue in New York.
    And my mother was really mad at this one Jewish Agency,
    because they wanted to separate us.
    I forgot which one it is now.
    So we didn't have much contact with the Jewish community--
    pretty much.
    Though, I think we had kind of the feeling that the Russian
    Jews, they resented us.
    And In particular my uncle's second wife, I think,
    felt that way.
    Why didn't we work as hard as she did, that sort of stuff.
    I think so, there was a--
    I think it was a clash between these generations
    of immigrants.
    When did you meet your wife-to-be?
    It was in 1963.
    And did you court for a long time?
    Not very long, because, see, I was willing to just go along.
    And I remember my mother saying, what are your plans?
    So I don't know.
    And Sally doesn't care.
    And then she said, oh, women think differently about this.
    And then it turned out, we got together on, I think,
    March 31st/ and then she started to cry and wanted to know what
    my intentions were.
    So then we decided to get married on the first Sunday
    after school was out.
    Because it really didn't make much difference to me,
    but it made a big difference to her.
    The thing is it probably made a big difference to her family,
    too, and my family.
    I think both the mothers were pretty conventional.
    So they were very happy.
    My mother was very happy, because she had given up
    on me ever getting married.
    So she was thrilled.
    And Sally was pretty old, too.
    I think she was 34, which is getting on.
    So that worked out really well.
    So after Berkeley, then what did you do?
    Then I worked in industry, in electronics,
    for about eight years.
    And then I got out.
    I was unhappy there, partly because we were
    doing so much defense work.
    And I was an early peacenik, already, in the '50s.
    So I felt this terrible conflict doing one thing in the daytime
    and doing something else at nighttime
    and being pulled apart.
    So I had to resolve it in some way.
    And also, I didn't get along.
    I didn't get ahead in the company.
    Because I wasn't willing to be a company man.
    To get ahead, you had to do things which I really
    didn't want to do.
    So eventually then, I quit.
    Also, the work I was doing there wasn't
    really what I wanted to do.
    I wanted to do research.
    And I was in the design branch.
    Well, anyhow, I quit.
    And then I decided to take a trip around the world.
    I didn't know what I was going to do.
    And I thought somehow I'd get this great inspiration
    when I was traveling.
    And of course, I didn't and had to make up
    my mind when I came back.
    But one thing it did for me, it made engineering seem pretty
    irrelevant after seeing the what goes on in the world,
    seeing the poverty and the problems.
    So doing this fancy, high-tech stuff really
    had no relevance to the lives of most people.
    So I decided not to go back in engineering.
    And then I had a--
    Funny, when I was growing up, I never
    thought about teaching, because I didn't know any teachers.
    So I never had any role model.
    I didn't know what a teacher was like or what a teacher did.
    And all my uncles were all engineers and chemists,
    so those were my role models.
    So I thought I'd go into engineering or physics.
    But I met a lot of teachers along the way.
    And I think they had a big influence on me.
    I was really impressed by the dedication
    of some of these teachers.
    So then I decided to go into teaching,
    but I really didn't know what that was like.
    I'd done a little bit of tutoring,
    but I'd never actually done any teaching.
    So I remember my first day in the classroom.
    I looked at the students.
    And the students looked back at me.
    And nobody knew what to expect.
    That was, looking back, a really funny moment.
    But it worked out really well.
    I got to really enjoy it.
    The students said I paced a lot before I was married.
    Paced up and down, up and down.
    But then I got over that.
    And I really feel useful as a teacher.
    I didn't feel useful as an engineer.
    I think I mentioned, I've been teaching now for 35 years.
    It is very satisfying.
    Also, we have a lot of immigrants,
    new immigrants in Hayward.
    And being an immigrant myself, I can understand what
    they're thinking and feeling.
    So the immigration experience has been helpful for me
    in that respect.
    So I think it's one thing to understand something
    intellectually and quite another thing
    to actually have lived it.
    So I think that has worked out really well.
    And I have a good relationship with the students
    and with the other faculty.
    I hope to keep on doing it.
    I am now the teacher who has been there the longest.
    Only one other person in classroom staff
    has been there as long as I have been.
    Where do you teach?
    Chabot College.
    Anyway, I hope they don't see me as an old fogey.
    When were your kids born?
    Let's see, Nancy was born in '69 and David in '71.
    Sally had a lot of difficulty.
    She had a--
    She, at first, couldn't get pregnant.
    And she had a lot of miscarriages,
    so it was a real struggle.
    And between Nancy and David, we lost one child.
    It died in the 7 month.
    So I think it was very hard for Sally,
    almost like losing a child.
    But we kept on trying.
    Eventually got a son.
    Did you talk about raising the kids Jewish or not?
    Yes, we did.
    And Sally converted, actually, before we even married,
    because she felt it would be simpler.
    So she was very, very sensible, I think.
    And religion didn't matter very much to her, I think.
    She was Jewish more in the sense of the Jewish prophets.
    She was out trying to fix the world, [HEBREW]..
    And actually, as a student, she had read.
    She had read Buber in part one of her classes.
    So she was familiar with Judaism at least
    on an intellectual level.
    So I think that was very foresighted on her part.
    Because I don't think I could have asked her to convert.
    it's such a personal matter, I don't
    think it would have been right for me to ask her.
    So it was very pleasant that she did on her own will.
    And I think it does make raising the kids easier, although, no
    guarantees.
    Nancy, became very Jewish, and David is a Buddhist.
    And we brought them up pretty much the same
    but very different kids.
    And as I mentioned earlier, Nancy really
    believes in keeping up the family tradition.
    So she has this strong, strong feeling, family feeling.
    How did you decide on their names?
    Well, let's see?
    Nancy?
    There were a lot of Nancys in Sally's family.
    She had a sister named Nancy, so she liked that name.
    And I think I liked David from the biblical character.
    I like David.
    So we named her Nancy, after her sister, Elizabeth
    after my mother.
    And the second name, David George?
    There were a lot of Georges in Sally's family.
    And also, my brother is George.
    The kids don't use their middle names.
    What did you tell your kids growing up
    about your experiences in Europe?
    Well, can I just stop a minute.
    I need to go to the bathroom.
    Yes.
    So I didn't make any systematic attempt to tell them about it.
    But just every now and then, it came up.
    And also, my mother told stories.
    David felt I talked too much about it.
    But I don't think I talked very much about it.
    I didn't want to burden the kids.
    So they know a little bit about the family from Vienna
    and coming over here.
    So they know in outline.
    But I didn't tell any of my experiences with the Nazis,
    anyway.
    I didn't want it to be a burden for them.
    I told them enough so they know about it.
    And so the know a bit of where they came from.
    And neither one of them was particularly interested.
    Are they interested now?
    Not too much, no.
    Nancy is interested in the family--
    more in the family.
    I was wondering when you found out
    about the death camps and everything that
    was happening in Europe?
    I guess we didn't find out until it hit the newspapers.
    It must have been in the middle '40s, at the end of the war.
    We found out about the family in Czechoslovakia.
    It turned out even worse than we thought it was.
    Is this it?
    Couple more.
    OK.
    I wanted to ask, what are your kids doing now?
    Let's see.
    Nancy, as you know, is still going to state.
    And she's working, taking care of-- what do they call it--
    emotionally handicapped adults.
    And she loves that work.
    And she's finishing a degree in women's studies.
    So I think she has found something
    that she really likes to do.
    So she seems very happy.
    And David is in New York working on a computer programming.
    And he's not as happy as Nancy.
    I wanted to ask you, when you found out
    Nancy was a lesbian, how was that for you?
    Oh, well, didn't bother me much.
    What really bothered me was that she didn't tell me
    for such a long time.
    She said, she didn't know how I would take it.
    So I felt really disappointed that she
    didn't trust me on that.
    And she told Sally, but she didn't tell me.
    So I felt that was disappointing.
    But the fact that she's a lesbian is beyond control,
    I think.
    So, I believe strongly that you are born with that,
    and all the evidence seems to indicate
    that it's a genetic thing.
    And I have a little bit of regret about grandchildren.
    I think I would liked to have grandchildren.
    But other than that, I mean I support her and that.
    How does the Holocaust affect you now in a way?
    Let's see.
    Well, I think it still colors my feelings towards people.
    I'm still a bit afraid of people and I
    try to avoid confrontational settings.
    So I find that those situations are still difficult.
    So I'm consciously aware of that.
    So in that sense, I can deal with it.
    It's not some unconscious thing that's driving me.
    But I'm aware of it.
    But it's still there.
    So I think it left some scars.
    Do you think it can happen again?
    The Holocaust?
    What's up with that?
    Well, certainly not in that form.
    I mean there could be other catastrophes.
    I think there could be famines and wars and epidemics.
    But at least maybe not against the Jews,
    maybe to other people.
    Like we've seen some of that in Vietnam and other places,
    so I think, to that extent, it could happen again.
    But I'm not worried as a Jew.
    I feel secure in that.
    I'm worried about the state of the world,
    but not about being Jewish.
    And even though there's some news about some antisemitism,
    you read about the militiamen and other people,
    but I don't see it as a big threat in America.
    Pat Buchanan, people who advocate it
    seem pretty much on the fringe.
    They have little respectability.
    And it was actually worse when I first came to America.
    There was more antisemitism.
    There was Father Coughlin around and other people like that.
    so much more conscious of it then.
    So I'm really not conscious of it,
    only when we read the temple bulletin
    and hear some lurid debate about what's happening.
    But it's not-- certainly not visible and not on the horizon.
    The other thing, affect it had, I
    guess it's really made me want to be more Jewish, I think.
    And I wanted to be more political,
    although it didn't have that effect on anybody
    else in my family, this result.
    So I don't know why that happened.
    But I think that I definitely felt very strongly about that.
    Whether you were active or you were not active,
    you were persecuted.
    Whether you wanted to be a good German
    or not want to be a good German, it didn't make any difference.
    I feel, if they're going to persecute me,
    at least they should persecute for something real.
    So I think those are the two things I think of.
    There may be some other, subtle things I'm not aware of, but.
    Is there anything else that you'd like
    to add that hasn't come up?
    Let's see.
    Let me think a moment.
    Let me think about it.
    No, I think pretty much that's it.
    Thank you.
    OK, these are my grandfather's candlesticks.
    I think he used them for Shabbat.
    And it's really the only memorabilia
    that I have from my grandfather's family.
    So I look at these as kind of a symbol of continuity,
    my grandfather, my grandparents, my parents.
    Eventually, they'll go to Nancy.

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    John Brunn discusses his childhood in Vienna, Austria; his memories of the Anschluss in March 1938; his widowed mother contacting her brother in the United States to arrange for their emigration; traveling to New York City; the challenges of adapting to a new life in the US; the financial difficulties his mother faced; his enlistment and service in the United States Army; his move to California to study at the University of California at Berkeley; his career as a physics teacher; and his marriage and family life.
    Interviewee
    John Brunn
    Interviewer
    Nancy Magidson
    Julie Rosenberg
    Date
    interview:  1996 May 09
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

    Physical Details

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

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Brunn, John.

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with John Brunn on May 9, 1996. The interview was received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives Branch in December 2003.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:46:56
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn515809

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    Oral history interview with Gerda Cohn

    Oral History

    Gerda Cohn, born on September 29, 1914 in Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland), describes her parents, Alfred Fischer and Margarete Riesenfeld; her two siblings, Klaus Peter and Lori; growing up in a well-off family; attending school; having blonde hair and light complexion and was often mistaken for an Aryan woman; her first experience of Nazi violence around 1934 when a Nazi officer confused her for an Aryan woman and shoved her and spit in her face because she was walking around with her Jewish fiancée; pleading unsuccessfully with her father to flee to America; getting married in June of 1935 at the age of 20; convincing her new husband to flee to the US; obtaining visas in November of 1936; receiving a telegram from her mother in 1938 notifying her that her father and brother had been arrested and sent to a concentration camp; the release of her father and brother when she obtained visas for them; her parents fleeing to England, while her younger siblings going to the US and living with her; and her life in the US.

    Oral history interview with Ileana Farkas

    Oral history interview with Ileana Farkas

    Oral History

    Ileana Farkas (née Marmustein), born in 1929, discusses her childhood in Satu Mare, Transylvania, Romania; her memories of antisemitic incidents after the Hungarian invasion in 1940; her brother's flight to Budapest, Hungary, where he lived using false identity papers; the increase in harassment of Jews in 1943; her brother's return from Budapest to encourage his family to flee; fleeing with her sister to Budapest in 1944; her brother's capture, arrest, and deportation to Auschwitz; the deportation of her other sister and parents from Satu Mare to Auschwitz; her life with her sister in Budapest using false papers; hiding in basements during the bombing of Budapest; the liberation of Budapest by Soviet troops in January 1945; returning with her sister to Satu Mare to find their brother and sister; learning about their parents' deaths in Auschwitz; meeting and marrying her husband in 1946; her life in Romania; immigrating with her husband and family in 1962 to the United States; and her adjustment to life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Oral history interview with Sol Farkas

    Oral history interview with Sol Farkas

    Oral History

    Sol Farkas describes his childhood in Satu Mare, Romania; joining the Hungarian Army in December 1940 and working on a labor brigade with his brother Morris; returning to his town in January 1944, where it was turned into a ghetto in April 1944; being transported to Auschwitz with his family, where his parents were selected and perished in the gas chambers; the terrible conditions he endured, working in grain fields and being moved to Austria to work in an underground laboratory; being liberated by the American Army; the family's attempts to emigrate from Romania; his brother’s illegal escape to Hungary, Austria, and finally to the United States; remaining in Romania for 14 more years; and immigrating to the US.

    Oral history interview with Adda Gerstel

    Oral history interview with Adda Gerstel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Clara Markovits

    Oral history interview with Clara Markovits

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Laurence Moitozo

    Oral history interview with Laurence Moitozo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Samuel

    Oral history interview with Leo Samuel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral history interview with Lily Spitz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral history interview with Melvin Suhd

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral history interview with Bernard Benjamin Broclawski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral history interview with Julius Drabkin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral history interview with Renee L. Duering

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral history interview with Werner Epstein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral history interview with Lore Gilbert

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral history interview with Rita Goldman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral history interview with Mala Holcberg

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral history interview with Kate Kaiser

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral history interview with Tatjana Khepoyan-Viner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Vera J. Lieban-Kalmar

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral history interview with Nadine Lieberman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral history interview with Bernard Offen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral history interview with William Pels

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral history interview with Ruth Plainfield

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral history interview with Thomas Schneider

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Shlyapochnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral history interview with Gisela Spigel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Erika Weingarten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral history interview with Max Weingarten

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral history interview with Herman D. Wiener

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral history interview with Liza Avrutin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral history interview with Aleksandr Belfor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshteyn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral history interview with Lev Dumer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral history interview with Anisim Dworkin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral history interview with Ernest Feld

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lya Galperin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral history interview with Mae Lopatin Herman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral history interview with Inna Kagan

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral history interview with J. Daniel Khazzoom

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral history interview with Vilem Kriz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Lapan

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral history interview with Sofiya Manoylo

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral history interview with Shaya Neys

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Sieradzki

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral history interview with Rahilia Sirota

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral history interview with Tom Szelenyi

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral history interview with Irving Zale

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral history interview with Tamara Albukh

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral history interview with Audrey Doughty

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral history interview with Sofia Ginzbursky

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral history interview with Genia Likwornik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral history interview with Mark Malamud

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral history interview with Annemarie Roeper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral history interview with Irina Rozhanskaya

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral history interview with Clara Tsukerman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral history interview with Sam Weiss

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral history interview with Edith Wertheimer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Laszlo Vass

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral history interview with Isaac Silber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral history interview with Lotte Grunwald

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Roeper

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Janina Swift

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral history interview with Polya Liza Pekker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral history interview with Meier Lichtenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral history interview with Janice Auerbach

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral history interview with Helmut Kobler

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral history interview with Ellen Leeser

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral history interview with Anne Marie Yellin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral history interview with Adele Silber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral history interview with Sylvie Marshall

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral history interview with Elena H. Javor

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Denes

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Joseph Welgreen

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral history interview with Morris Rosnow

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral history interview with Gary Schoofs

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ilse Eden

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eva K. Breyer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kurt Levi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Paul Nebenzahl

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Frank Weinman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral history interview with Olga Nepomyashy

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral history interview with Floyd Dade

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral history interview with Ellen Van Creveld

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral history interview with Lola Welgreen

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Semyon Berenshtein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sara Gelender

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral history interview with Ilse Sternberger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral history interview with Jenny Friedlander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral history interview with Leonid Bobrovsky

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Sam Genirberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagi-Talavera

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral history interview with Otto Springer

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral history interview with Greta Stuehler

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral history interview with Magda Silberman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral history interview with Eric Willgott

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral history interview with Cecilia Kornbluth

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral history interview with Ruth Steiner

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral history interview with Trudy Lyons

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral history interview with Margrit Schurman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral history interview with Edith Deutsch

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral history interview with Francis E. Cappel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral history interview with George Wittenstein

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral history interview with Thomas Trier

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral history interview with Rita Grunbaum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral history interview with Lily Robinson

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral history interview with Herman Apteker

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral history interview with Nicholas Nagy-Talavera

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral history interview with Semyon Veyber

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral history interview with Chaya Fuhrman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral history interview with Peter Mueller

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral history interview with Eva Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Fred Baum

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral history interview with Cantor Hans Cohn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral history interview with Gilbert L. van Mourik

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Bernard Broclawski

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral history interview with Sam Zelver

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral history interview with Asya Grunkina

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral history interview with Kurt Mostny

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral history interview with Hanna Cassel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral history interview with Vera Korkus

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral history interview with Steffi Black

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Parket

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral history interview with Ann Burger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral history interview with Volf Gershaft

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral history interview with Klara Garmel

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral history interview with Polina Sorkin

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Blank

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral history interview with Kurt Gronowski

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral history interview with Rosa Wigmore

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral history interview with Gerta Wingerd

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral history interview with Evelyn Lowen Apte

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral history interview with Annette Herskovits

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral history interview with Guta Zlotlow

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral history interview with Alfred Cotton

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral history interview with Marion Mostny

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral history interview with Roy Calder

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Alfred Batzdorff

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Mikhail Felberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral history interview with Sandor Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral history interview with Abraham Jaeger

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral history interview with Judy Kirkham

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rita Kuhn

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral history interview with Greta Reisman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Joseph Schein

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral history interview with Dan Dougherty

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral history interview with Max Erlichman

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Marianne Gerhart

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral history interview with Rose Herskovic

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Eugene Katz

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral history interview with Tillie Molho

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral history interview with Edith Newman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral history interview with Agnes Allison

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral history interview with Ann Gabor Arancio

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral history interview with Valerie Balint

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Yanina Cywinska

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral history interview with Ilse Lewy

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral history interview with Esther Kemeny

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ray Redel

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral history interview with Roma Barnes

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral history interview with Margot Braun

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral history interview with Ted Ellington

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral history interview with Anna Hollander

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral history interview with Theo Joseph

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral history interview with Elisabeth Katz

    Oral History

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

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral history interview with Jim Sanders

    Oral History

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