- OK.
- We're on.
- This is an interview for The San Francisco Oral History program.
- It's June 11, 1992.
- We're at Congregation Beth Shalom.
- And I'm Ron Green.
- And the second interviewer is Eric Saul.
- Today we're going to be interviewing Professor Werner
- Goldsmith.
- Thank you for being here.
- And let's begin by going back to your early history.
- And I understand that you were born in Germany.
- Perhaps you can tell us something
- about those early years, where you were born,
- something about your family.
- And we'll go on from there.
- I'll be happy to do that.
- I was born in the town of Dusseldorf,
- which is in the Rhineland, and on the Rhine itself.
- Currently it's the capital of the state.
- In 1924, my father, Siegfried Goldschmidt, was a merchant.
- In particular, he dealt with grain that was imported.
- And he had the title of a jobber.
- He was in business with my grandfather,
- who had a firm originally by the name of Isidore and Adolph
- Goldschmidt.
- And they were originally in the town of Duisburg,
- which is about 20 kilometers north of Dusseldorf.
- Subsequently, they separated.
- I think my granduncle died.
- And my grandfather reestablished the business in Dusseldorf.
- He was very successful, from what I understand.
- Because at that time, there was a tremendous depression
- in Germany.
- A lot of people were out of work.
- But he had a mechanism whereby he had some sort of futures
- in grain as being of value.
- And there were coupons attached to this.
- This was a very unusual step that he took, a novel thing.
- And as a result, I would say that he was,
- and my parents were, a member of the middle
- to upper middle class.
- We were never rich, but we always had enough to eat.
- My mother, Margarethe Grunewald Goldschmidt,
- was born in Cologne.
- My father was born in Dortmund.
- My paternal grandfather, Adolph, was
- born in a town called [? Lintfort ?] in Westphalia.
- The reason I'm alive is because my mother
- was a very, very good friend with a woman with whom
- we stayed friends with until she died five years ago, living
- in New Orleans.
- And we're still on excellent terms and very good friends
- with her children.
- She was married to my father's cousin, at which time
- my mother met my father and there was a rapid courtship,
- in any event.
- It resulted in me about a year afterwards.
- And so this is basically the history of my family.
- They were in the business of trading.
- And my father was a soldier in World War
- I. He was on the Eastern Front.
- He was wounded.
- And that had consequences as far as I was concerned.
- Because as a result of that action,
- I was allowed to go to a gymnasium.
- I was the only Jewish student in the gymnasium.
- I will go back to an earlier time,
- but it does bear on my father's activities.
- My grandfather was also in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.
- And he fought at Verdun, which was a fairly well-known battle.
- I know relatively little about the history of that business.
- I do know that my grandfather visited,
- as part of the business, the new world,
- back in the early 1900s, perhaps 1904 or so.
- I recall distinctly his telling me
- that he visited Winnipeg and New York and Galveston.
- And I know why he visited Winnipeg, because of the grain.
- I don't know why Galveston.
- Maybe he was looking into the possibility
- of a meat subsidiary to the business that he was executing.
- So he was over here at the time when
- it was very rare for a European, especially a middle class
- European, to visit the United States.
- I do not recall when I was one or two years old.
- My earliest recollection is of moving
- to a place which was right opposite the zoo in Dusseldorf.
- It is still a place that is numbered.
- But the building is gone.
- I have been back to Dusseldorf on at least five occasions,
- six occasions.
- And in each case, I've looked for the remnants
- of the residences where I used to live.
- And there are three that I recall.
- One was opposite the zoo.
- That was the first one.
- And my parents and my grandfather
- had a business, which was close to the main railroad station.
- But then when Hitler came into power
- and shut things down more and more,
- the business delved, developed to be carried out in the home.
- And eventually, I think it disappeared completely
- because of restrictions on what could be done.
- So these three places I do recall having lived in.
- And this would be from the age of, let's say, 2
- to the age of almost 14, when I migrated to the United States.
- Now in my young days I recall being very interested
- in geography.
- In fact, at a very early age I made maps with watercolors.
- Whenever I went on a train, I recorded the times
- the train arrived and departed from the station.
- And I kept records of these.
- Just in my memory, I do recall these events.
- I don't know why I did this.
- But this is one of the things I was able to do.
- In my youth, and I mean before the time
- when I went to school at all, I was
- with a few of my Jewish friends of the same age
- whom I have completely lost track of at this point.
- I'm sure many of them did not survive the war.
- I then went to a volksschule, as it is called,
- elementary school for the first four years,
- which was very close to the home where
- we lived on the so-called [? Breidenplatz, ?]
- opposite the zoo.
- Then we moved to another place, also not too far from there.
- And so I finished this.
- And then I went to the Realgymnasium, a gymnasium
- which dealt not in the classical area,
- but presumably in modern languages.
- That was the distinction.
- Now as far as the rest of my family
- is concerned in those days, the only people living
- in Dusseldorf that were closely related to me
- was a brother of my mother, with whom I was actually very close.
- He sort of acted as a travel agent.
- And later on, particularly for Jewish groups,
- he arranged for vacation trips to various places.
- And I went with him on at least three occasions, once
- to Hungary, and at least two occasions to Switzerland.
- And these would be times like 1935 and 1936.
- I had also an aunt who died before I was born.
- My father's sister named Erna.
- I had another aunt, another sister of my father,
- who lived in Dordrecht, Holland, married to a Dutchman
- by the name of Joseph Vandenberg.
- And I've kept in touch with what is left of that family also
- since that time.
- Did you participate in Jewish life?
- Did your family participate in the synagogue?
- Or can you describe that aspect of--
- Surely.
- --those early years?
- As most Jews in Germany, there was
- more of an assimilation than a separation.
- I was bar mitzvahed.
- And I, as a result, of course, attended the ceremonies
- that were needed for me to be able to read the Torah.
- And as a matter of fact, one of the things
- that I got back from Dusseldorf as part
- of the effort of restitution is a little brochure
- in which the chief rabbi of Dusseldorf
- has been written up and given his biography.
- I'm not sure at this point whether he officiated
- or his colleague officiated my bar mitzvah.
- But he surely was in charge of the operation at the time.
- And I recall distinctly going up there and reading the Torah.
- Do you remember a time when it became clear
- that there was something different or perhaps not
- acceptable about being Jewish?
- Well, that became clear very quickly in 1933.
- '33, I was nine years old.
- I was still in the grammar school,
- just prior to transferring to the gymnasium.
- And immediately--
- How was that made known to you?
- It was made known to me by total exclusion
- from the activities of the classes and all,
- the limitation of my friends solely
- to those of Jewish nature.
- You asked me about my participation
- in the Jewish life?
- We observed the major holidays.
- We went to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
- I do not honestly recall whether we fasted or not.
- But we surely paid heed to that, and Pesach, Hanukkah,
- and Sukkos.
- But we also celebrated the Christian holidays
- as not a religious matter, but just as a festivity.
- And this was the standard for most middle class
- Jews in Germany.
- At least where we lived, there was no ghetto of any kind.
- This sort of thing, I believe, was strictly
- limited to Eastern Europe.
- And there was free communication.
- I can also tell you this.
- I've told it to my wife, so no reason to say this.
- My mother had a very, very close friend
- who was from Stuttgart who was not Jewish.
- Whenever he came to town, he visited
- her and they went out for dinner together,
- and I went along a few times.
- So that close relationship was not destroyed by the Nazis.
- My uncle, who was not married, had a very, very close
- girlfriend who was not Jewish.
- And I am sure she suffered as a result.
- Her name was [? Reinhart, ?] as I remember it.
- I don't have any pictures or any documentation for her.
- But as far as I was concerned, from the time I was nine
- until the time that I left, my parents
- were very, very far-sighted in getting me out of Europe.
- Because if I had stayed, I would not be alive.
- Like, the entire family was wiped out
- that didn't leave the continent.
- So you became aware of what was going on personally
- at the age of 9 or around that time?
- And you left Germany a few years later?
- When I was almost 14, a couple of weeks shy of 14.
- Before we go on, can you tell us a little
- about what your home was like, what it looked like--
- Surely.
- --the kinds of things that went on in the home?
- We had apartments.
- We never had a house.
- In fact, a house is a rarity, even today, in Europe.
- Mostly they were apartments in multi-story buildings.
- I think we had a 5, a 4, and a 3 story building in which we
- had these apartments.
- That I recall, we had two bedrooms, one for my parents,
- one for my grandfather.
- And then I sometimes had a bedroom.
- In one case, I know in the last place where I stayed,
- I was allowed to be in the attic.
- And that was very nice.
- Because I used to read until 4 o'clock
- in the morning with a flashlight and nobody disturbed me.
- I did have--
- I would not call it a governess, oh, an au pair,
- or something like that-- it was somebody who took care of me
- for a portion of the day to help my mother out.
- And I don't think I have any pictures of her.
- But I recall distinctly.
- And I tried to look all of these people up.
- When I went back to Germany-- just to go back to that,
- and I'll come back to my home and what it was like
- in a moment--
- I did try to look up all the people whose names I could
- memorize, or I had recalled.
- One of them was my teacher, whom I did see,
- who tried to shield me.
- This was my gymnasium teacher.
- And you know, there, they see you through.
- They stay with you rather than leaving you
- at the end of the class.
- And he shielded me from the excesses
- of some of the other students.
- I tried to find an employee of my grandfather's, whose name I
- recalled, who wouldn't see me.
- And I tried to find this lady who
- was sort of taking care of me.
- And I was also unsuccessful in that.
- Now as far as our home was concerned,
- we had a grand piano.
- And I played piano.
- I was given lessons.
- And the fact is that my piano teacher was still alive
- as of last February, because I called her and she lives
- in Providence.
- And her advertisements for her piano lessons
- are in one of the old Jewish community newspapers
- that I have an example of with me here.
- So I had piano lessons.
- We had a comfortable home, good furniture, some antiques.
- My mother enjoyed collecting Dresden China.
- Each year she had a plate from Dresden
- for the Christmas plates.
- I think they still do that.
- We had some very beautiful crystal.
- We had some nice silver.
- I don't believe we had anything of tremendous value
- in the way of art or jewelry.
- But they had standards, gold.
- And so I certainly never lacked for anything
- in the way of clothing.
- I had a bicycle, which I rode to school constantly and also
- [INAUDIBLE].
- Now going back to my home, my mother did the cooking.
- My father happened to be allergic to anything
- involving fruits.
- So even when we had ice cream, it
- had to be vanilla or chocolate.
- And that was the only quirk as far as dietary processes
- are concerned.
- We were not kosher.
- And we had good meals.
- Entertainment became more and more difficult with time
- under Hitler.
- I was allowed early on to go to movies.
- I remember seeing in 1936, '35, the movie San Francisco.
- And I saw it four times.
- It played longer than any other movie
- in Dusseldorf that I can recall.
- And what we did then later on, instead
- of being able to go out as much, there
- were some card games that were played at home,
- particularly a game called Scotch,
- which is a three-handed card game, somewhat
- lower level than bridge.
- But my father, my mother, and my aunt, my grandfather played it.
- Occasionally, somebody else came in as a visitor
- and took a hand.
- I tried my hand at it early on.
- But I am afraid I wasn't quite up to it at the time.
- That was the entertainment in the house.
- We had a radio.
- And of course, there were no televisions in those days.
- But the fact that we had a piano was a very nice thing for me.
- Did your parents talk about what was going on around Germany?
- And did you have a sense of their participation
- in the impending atrocities?
- Did they talk about Hitler?
- Do you remember any of the political conversations?
- Or, perhaps, did they have political conversations?
- They had political conversations.
- Politically speaking, my family was a Social Democrat type.
- So it's sort of a centrist type of operation.
- They were not radicals in any way, shape, or form.
- Surely, the presence of Hitler, and the presence of the rising
- anti-Semitism, and the physical acts
- that were taken against Jews were a matter of discussion.
- I was simply admonished to try to be, shall we say,
- as careful as I could be.
- When I went down to the corner to take the streetcar,
- you could not help but see these huge glass-enclosed--
- not advertisements, but notices with Der Sturmer,
- which was the anti-Semitic paper.
- And the Jews were accused of everything under the sun.
- And it was written in such large letters,
- you just simply couldn't avoid seeing it.
- Streicher, I think, was the person who put that out.
- He was the editor.
- There was also clearly remarks that my fellow students
- made to me.
- I don't want to repeat them.
- But I mean, dirty Jew was the mildest of them.
- I was only, I believe, beaten up once or twice.
- It wasn't a constant process.
- The one time I was careless and I pushed somebody
- into the pool.
- And I never saw the end of that, as far as I was concerned.
- As I say, this one teacher really tried to protect me.
- I don't think that anything my parents could
- have done to help me, shall we say,
- counter the antagonism and the hatreds.
- And I think a fair amount of that hatred was cooked up.
- I don't think it was all real.
- There was some sort of diabolic magnetism
- about Hitler's speeches.
- And you can't take away from the fact
- that he's probably one of the greatest orators of all times,
- malevolent though he was.
- He ranks with Churchill, perhaps Roosevelt.
- Can you help me understand what you mean by "cooked up?"
- What I mean by that is I don't think that my fellow students
- really basically felt that way.
- They were just sort of urged on to show
- and to participate in acts of antagonism towards me.
- Somehow I had the feeling within me
- that it wasn't all real, that it wasn't their basic nature.
- But nevertheless, it manifested itself towards me.
- One of the results of this was that I worked harder and harder
- and harder to be a good student, to learn as much as I could,
- and to get good grades.
- It was one way that I could passively, perhaps,
- show that I was not one of these heinous criminals
- that they were told Jews were.
- And this sort of metamorphosis was gradual.
- It wasn't from one day to the next.
- It occurred over a significant period of time, years perhaps.
- And at the beginning in 1933, other than the burning
- of the Reichstag, which I recall, and the consequence,
- assumption of a dictatorship by Hitler,
- it was taken without any, at that time, explicit vow
- against the Jews.
- Although during the time before he became chancellor,
- he had talked that the Jews were the cause of all the ills
- in the world, that they controlled this, that,
- and the other thing, that they raped
- and pillaged and plundered, and so on, and so forth.
- That was what he said.
- Now not everybody believed him.
- Perhaps they saw today.
- I think much of what he said in his book, Mein Kampf,
- is what he actually put into execution during the time
- that he was chancellor.
- Are you saying that many people didn't take him seriously,
- or many Jews didn't take him seriously in the beginning?
- I think what happened was that the Jews said this cannot
- happen to us.
- It might happen to the people down in the next city
- for whatever reason.
- But it doesn't happen to us.
- Now that's not true of everybody.
- But I think the vast majority of the people,
- the Jewish community that I knew, did not
- think that they would be, shall we say,
- eventually killed and put into concentration camps.
- That they might be deprived of their economic standing
- to some extent, they might be limited in what
- they could do business wise.
- And this of course, is something I was very aware of.
- There was a continual reduction of that kind of activity
- for professional or monetary purposes
- any Jewish member of the community could engage in.
- There were these laws that limited what you could do.
- Are you saying your own family, your own parents never really
- believed that they would be harmed?
- No.
- I'm not saying that.
- You asked me about the community.
- No, in my case, I think my parents were very farsighted.
- They started to make arrangements to send me out
- of the country in 1936.
- And it just was a long negotiating process.
- The man who brought me to the United States,
- a man by the name of Maurice P. Davidson,
- was a very high level politician in the city of New York.
- He was chairman of the Fusion party, which is the party that
- put LaGuardia into office.
- He was also a high level officer of the Democratic Party
- of the State of New York.
- I met many, many high level politicians
- of the Democratic Party when I first
- came to the United States.
- I'm not sure whether I met Roosevelt or not.
- I think I did.
- But I cannot recall.
- In any event, it wouldn't have made any impression on me.
- I know that Henry Wallace, when Vice President,
- was a houseguest of the man who brought me over.
- The man who brought me over first
- brought over a second cousin of mine
- who is the son of the woman that I told you
- about that was married at the time
- that my mother met my father.
- And so he brought him over.
- Then he brought me over.
- Then he placed affidavits for his parents.
- And they were able to get here, but not until after a very,
- very tortuous journey.
- They went through Peru and Cuba.
- And they got here in 1939 or '40, something like that.
- He also placed affidavits for my parents, but it was too late.
- Now in terms of my parents, they recognized this
- by trying to get me out.
- And then they emigrated from Germany to Holland.
- You see, my aunt was living in Dordrecht with my uncle
- by marriage.
- And the family there was closely knit, and I knew them all.
- And so they went to Holland.
- But they didn't live in Dordrecht.
- For some reason, they moved to Breda.
- So they left in--
- I think it was January or February of 1939.
- Anyway, before the war started.
- And then, of course, the first thing that happened
- was the invasion of Holland.
- And they went into hiding.
- And I talked to at least one of the families
- that was involved in hiding them after the war.
- And I got contradictory stories.
- But whatever the situation was, they
- were eventually discovered and taken to Auschwitz
- from Holland.
- My grandfather, who stayed with his daughter, my aunt
- and daughter, I believe, was taken to Westerbork.
- And my parents were taken to Auschwitz, which the documents.
- I have attest to.
- Now I wasn't aware of the fact until I went to the Yad Vashem
- that my grandfather had not died a natural death.
- He was 91 or 92 when he died.
- And it would have been natural to assume
- that he died a natural death.
- But no, his place of death is listed
- as Westerbork, where he may have very well died
- a natural-- that's conceivably.
- Then again, he may not.
- But we'll never find that out.
- There's no way of documenting this.
- So they did try to take this kind of an action.
- And perhaps I'm rambling a bit.
- But it is relevant to the answer to the question that you asked.
- You're doing fine.
- You don't mention any brothers or sisters.
- I have none.
- Had none.
- I'm the only child.
- And the other immediate family member I've mentioned,
- the brother of my mother, she also
- had a sister who was a spinster.
- And was sort of a somewhat poor soul.
- She was alone and never had any friends.
- And I had relatively little contact with her,
- as a young boy is likely to be.
- I was possibly, perhaps, more cruel to her
- than I should have been.
- My maternal grandmother was alive
- and died while I was still in Germany.
- I think I was eight when she died.
- Her name was Julie.
- My paternal grandmother, whose name was Annie,
- died when I was four.
- And she died while she was in some sort of a home.
- I do not know whether it was something
- like Alzheimer's or whether it was
- because of physical incapacity.
- I was too young to know at the time.
- And so I remember her death at age four,
- my maternal grandmother at age eight.
- My paternal grandfather I never knew--
- sorry, maternal grandfather I never knew.
- He died before I was born.
- And my paternal grandfather, as I say,
- we lived with him, Adolph, until I left
- and they went to Holland.
- They left for Holland before, or after, or simultaneously
- with you coming to this country?
- No, after I left.
- I came in May 1938.
- Can you tell us a little about what
- that process was like for a young boy,
- really, to leave his parents?
- Yes.
- And what that was like mechanically and emotionally?
- I'd better start with the mechanical
- before I get to the emotional aspect.
- There had been this negotiation with this gentleman Maurice P.
- Davidson in New York.
- His relationship to us was that he, I think,
- was the second cousin of my grandfather's.
- And so there was some sort of family connection.
- But it was also known that he was well-connected politically.
- And so there was this request to have
- me come to the United States.
- And because of all the kinds of rules and regulations,
- and also because of personal problems
- that he may have had at one time, there was a postponement.
- I was supposed to come earlier than I did.
- But then his wife apparently became ill.
- And he said I couldn't come at that time.
- It would have to wait.
- And my parents were concerned whether or not
- that was a complete rejection of his original offer
- to take me in.
- But it wasn't.
- But anyway, when we finally found out
- that that had been cleared up, then we had to get a visa.
- And that was not all that simple.
- Because we had to go from Dusseldorf to Stuttgart.
- And we have to remember, even though that's
- a distance of only about 200 or 300 miles, in those days
- and at that time as far as the transport is concerned,
- it was a major journey.
- People didn't move more than a few miles out of their town
- as a rule, unless it was really a long journey.
- So we went to Munich, where there
- was some distant relatives that I visited.
- And then my mother and I, my mother came with me,
- came to Stuttgart.
- And we had an American visa.
- It's a good thing that happened at that time.
- Had it happened six months later, completely aside
- from Hitler, I would have been unable to get a visa.
- Because after coming to the United States,
- within two months, I developed what
- is called osteomyelitis, which is a bone marrow infection.
- And that I'll get to later.
- But it would have barred me, I think, from entry
- into this country, even though Mickey Mantle also
- had the same thing.
- So I was able to get out.
- And in terms of being responsive to your question,
- the emotional part of it-- that was the mechanical part.
- My mother took me to Stuttgart.
- But then when I was about ready to leave,
- my mother developed a very major ear infection.
- She had to have a mastoid operation.
- And so she couldn't see me to the boat,
- which left from Hamburg.
- And so my father took me to the boat.
- I came over with a children's transport, a Jewish children's
- transport.
- There was a woman who was shepherding 20 or so people.
- And I don't know whether or not I have a photo of that or not.
- It may very well have gotten lost.
- But I did have a photo of that.
- Came over on the USS America.
- And I think it was the SS America.
- And so my father brought me there.
- So those were the mechanics.
- The emotional aspect of it, It was made clear to me
- that it was an absolute necessity from their viewpoint.
- They felt very strongly that this
- was going to end up in a complete and total destruction
- of Jews within Germany.
- And so they themselves, of course, left too.
- They couldn't have known that Holland
- would have been invaded.
- So they really wanted to just leave.
- It was sort of, in a way, unthinkable on one hand.
- And yet, not as unusual as it might be today.
- Because there had been lots of migrations from Europe
- to the United States of various kinds of people, the Irish,
- the Italians, the Germans.
- There were waves of immigrants.
- And they always came at a time when
- there was economic unrest, or poverty, or whatever.
- Since the Mayflower, I don't know
- whether any group has come strictly
- for political or religious reasons.
- Because I don't think, once we got over the Elizabethan era,
- that Europe was that unhealthy for any kind of belief,
- or political, or religious.
- But there were waves because of the famines,
- the economic poverty of various countries.
- So the removal to the United States
- was not all that unheard of.
- But the removal for this reason was.
- And so I guess I can only say I did what I was told to do.
- And yes, I will be brutally frank
- and say that when I left my father in Hamburg,
- I was reasonably sure I would never see him again.
- And that was a hell of a burden to have to bear.
- But at 13, especially in a relatively protected home
- environment at any rate, you don't have the free will
- that you would if you had been on your own for a few years.
- So then it became clearer and clearer and clearer
- to me as I came, as I spent time in this country,
- that I would indeed not see my parents again.
- Were you able to stay in contact with them when they got
- to Holland?
- Yes.
- I had some letters which got lost.
- And they were lost before this fire.
- I have some of the envelopes here, but not the letters.
- And this contact was through sometimes a Red Cross,
- through the US mail.
- But as you can probably see, even those letters
- were opened by censors.
- And so what was expressed had to be very, very
- carefully couched.
- The information that I got, I got only
- over the American radio, and that was not
- necessarily accurate.
- Although there was a time in my life
- when I believed that what was said over the radio
- was the absolute and total truth.
- I've since learned to be a bit more skeptical about that.
- But anyway, the separation from my parents was very hard.
- It was helped perhaps in two ways.
- Number one, I'd always been a relatively self-sufficient
- individual, at least psychologically.
- I had my own interests, in which I
- was encouraged, but not helped or assisted by my parents.
- I always had been a very intensive student.
- And when I came over to this country,
- I was bounced around extensively,
- which had something to do with the rest of my life.
- And I'll talk about that later.
- But as far as the transformation from Germany to the United
- States is concerned, it happened relatively smoothly.
- I still remember the journey over.
- I remember talking to one of the crew members.
- And I learned about 60 or 80 words of English.
- I have reasonable linguistic ability,
- so it wasn't too difficult for me to pick up the language.
- And I also spoke French fluently at the time.
- And I spoke Dutch fairly fluently at the time.
- So communications wise, this was fine.
- What did I do to compensate for the absence of my parents?
- Probably nothing.
- I couldn't.
- There was no compensation.
- I was taken in by this man.
- And he and his wife did their very,
- very best to make me feel comfortable and at home.
- I also had my second cousin there.
- His presence served as a counterpoint,
- because we were continually fighting.
- But it wasn't fighting in a bad way.
- It's just we disagreed as to whether the window should
- be open or not in the room in which we both slept.
- I have kept no contact with any of the people I came over with.
- I don't even know their names.
- One of the friends that I made in Germany,
- and in fact, he left the day before I did for England, when
- I left for the United States, I saw in the East Coast.
- And I knew his mother, who was actually
- living in the same town where I went to high school, Mount
- Vernon, New York, now so that I'm sure she's dead now.
- I can't even recall her name.
- I do recall the name of this boy.
- And he had married fairly early.
- He'd become an assistant manager of a Woolworth or something
- like that.
- And my last impression of him was
- that all he was interested in was jazz and baseball.
- And I felt those were fine, but there
- has to be something more to life than that.
- So we had significantly diverged in our,
- shall we say, life's paths.
- And I have not kept up with him.
- I do not know what happened to him.
- I do not know where he is.
- I do know, but through a circuitous route,
- someone who was in Germany with me at the same time.
- He's in England.
- And I also have a second cousin who is in England.
- Whom I looked up, incidentally, just on the Sunday
- before the fire.
- I was over in Liverpool, in Manchester,
- talking to these people.
- And the person in Manchester was a very famous engineer.
- Put the people in Germany who are doing a similar thing
- to what you are doing, the history of the Jews
- there, in touch with me.
- And I spent to a day and a half with a lady
- who is compiling the history.
- It may be something that you yourself might
- want to make note of later on.
- They're doing it intensively.
- And she is a trained historian and particularly
- specialized on the role of the Jews in Germany,
- not just during Hitler, but over a longer period of time.
- So she's undertaken as a project to do this.
- Share some more of your early days in the United States
- as a young man who could learn English rapidly,
- but there must have been a time where you were still struggling
- with the new culture.
- What was that like for you?
- Well, I was left pretty much to my own devices.
- There's still things, things that I'm
- thinking of in Germany, that I will go back
- to this at a later time.
- Sure.
- You can go back and forth.
- But when I first came to the United States, as I say,
- I was with my second cousin.
- Then I was put in a camp.
- This is in 1938.
- I came in May of '38.
- And in June, I went to a camp for a very well-known
- high school, private high school in New York where
- I was supposed to go, Horace Mann High School.
- And they had the camp in New Hampshire.
- And I went there.
- And within a month, I came down with this osteomyelitis.
- And I had to be taken to Hanover, New Hampshire,
- where they have the hospital, closest hospital.
- And I spent three months there.
- Partly because 1938 was a very unpleasant year for the East
- Coast.
- They had the Great Hurricane of 1938,
- which moved ships in, 10 ton tankers about two miles inland.
- They also had the Connecticut River floods.
- And Hanover was isolated from the rest of the world,
- except for one telephone line in from New York, completely
- isolated for a month.
- All the roads were cut.
- And so I had to stay there, even if I had been able to get out.
- As a result of this, going to this camp,
- I think I knew more four-letter words
- that I tried to utilize in the hospital and was promptly
- and correctly slapped down.
- But I learned that from my compatriots there.
- I went there as a waiter, meaning
- that the fee for the camp was substantially reduced.
- And I waited on the tables about one day a week.
- But otherwise, it was a camp.
- I did canoeing, so on.
- So we are talking only about something like a month
- that I was in New York City.
- And I used to take the subway down, for a nickel,
- to Times Square and just walk around and look
- at all these sights and sounds, and the $0.05 movies,
- and what was then considered to be very risque.
- And I looked at the collection of businessmen and derelicts.
- And they were all down there as you
- walked up and down 42nd Street.
- The man, as I say, who brought me to this country
- was a lawyer.
- He had an office on 42nd Street and Madison Avenue.
- And I spent quite a bit of time in his office
- doing some minor chores.
- But generally, trying to find a way to usefully kill time.
- I had met someone from my hometown.
- I was interested in stamps.
- I still am, in some respects.
- And beside the business he had, he was a stamp dealer.
- And I remember going to his house and talking to him.
- And also remember very distinctly,
- this is the very early days in New York,
- that he had another German refugee who kept telling him--
- in very loud tones so I couldn't help but overhear it--
- why did he want to bother with someone like me who
- couldn't do him any good, who couldn't even buy
- a reasonable amount of stamps?
- Why did he waste his time with me, et cetera.
- It made me feel very good.
- But this is the sort of experience
- you learn to live with.
- And so after the summer, then, when I came back,
- and when I came back, it was more or less December,
- I started going to a public school in New York.
- Instead of the Horace Mann school, I went to a PS 66,
- I think it is.
- But only for a semester which was, of course,
- in a way, good, in a way, a terrible waste.
- Because I'd had four years of French.
- I spoke fluent German.
- I had had mathematics substantially beyond anything
- they taught there.
- But I caught up on shop, though I've never been good at that.
- And I caught up on some American history and this sort of thing.
- And then when I left New York in January of 1939,
- and I was placed by this family with another family
- in Mount Vernon, New York.
- And their name was Reichert.
- And they were in their 40s and never had any children.
- And there are some very strange reminiscences
- that relate to something that has happened just
- about a year ago.
- Anyway, they were in the business
- of repairing binoculars.
- And I started going--
- not to junior high or anything else--
- I skipped a year and a half, effectively, of school.
- I went to high school in Mount Vernon, New York
- where I spent 2 and 1/2 years and graduated.
- And I took an academic program.
- And, again, I did a lot, a lot of studying.
- But I developed certain hobbies and certain friends
- at that time with whom I'm still in very close contact
- more than 50 years later.
- And the people I lived with and, again,
- this is something that's only possible to gauge
- from this point on, should never have taken someone like myself
- in.
- And a woman whom I just recently saw
- at the 50 year reunion, who was my classmate,
- had actually been consulted by them.
- How do you handle somebody coming over from Germany
- who's 14 years old?
- How do you deal with them?
- How do you treat them?
- But whatever they did, they did it wrong.
- And this woman, whom I'm now-- her husband
- is a professor-- not husband.
- Her brother is a professor at Berkeley.
- And I knew the name.
- And I said, there can't be possibly any connection.
- But it turned out it was her brother.
- And so I called him and found out,
- when I met this woman at the 50-year reunion,
- about this relationship.
- And now we're going to have periodic meetings.
- And I'm going to call her up.
- Anyway, she was consulted by these people
- as how to handle me.
- And they handled me completely incorrectly.
- I mean, it was just--
- any psychologist could have told them that the way to treat me
- was not to do it the way they did.
- As an example, they tried to hammer into me consistently
- and constantly that the one thing I wanted to do,
- which was to go to college, I should never even entertain.
- Why?
- Well, because I would have to work very, very hard
- and make money and bring my parents over.
- And that's important.
- So I shouldn't even think of going to college.
- When I, in my own mind, was reasonably sure,
- and they should have been even surer, that I would never
- see my parents again.
- I mean, they were adults.
- Here I was, a teenager.
- So this is just one of the things.
- Then they put me to work in their shop at $0.05 an hour,
- helping to ship, pack and ship the binoculars.
- And I saved the money.
- And they asked me what I wanted to do with it.
- I said, I'd like to buy a radio.
- And they ridiculed that.
- Again, that's something I should say where
- my parents are [INAUDIBLE].
- So their concepts were totally wrong.
- And the man had gone to Cambridge, England university
- for, I think, one year.
- And then he had to leave.
- So he thought he was the cat's meow as far as physics
- and mathematics is concerned.
- And he later described, talked about this
- with some acquaintances of his.
- And I made the remark, yes, I thought he knew something
- about arithmetic.
- But that's about the extent of his knowledge.
- And yet, because he was so sure of himself and what he had,
- how his life was being lived quite properly,
- that I should live the way he felt.
- I learned a great deal from that in terms
- of treating my own children totally different.
- And so my life with them was a constant battle.
- And, again, it was in a way unfortunate,
- not being able to actually take it a little easier.
- But I wasn't that ill-prepared.
- Because I'd been living that sort of life
- for the six months, or the year, or the two years prior
- to that in Germany under very similar circumstances.
- I was constantly on the defensive.
- I constantly had to defend what I wanted
- to do as being a proper thing, not be ridiculed, not be talked
- out of it, or whatever.
- It sounds like you had a lot of inner direction.
- Somehow you were strong-willed and had a mind of your own
- even then.
- I am sorry.
- I must agree with you.
- [LAUGHTER]
- Yes, I am very strong-willed.
- And in part, there is no question in my mind,
- that my experiences in Germany.
- And this that I'm now reciting to you contributed to this.
- The fact is that they forced me.
- They forced me, literally, to take shorthand and typing.
- Now typing I've never regretted.
- But shorthand was the biggest waste of time I ever had.
- I mean, what shorthand I took in college
- were formulas for which the Gregg system
- isn't particularly appropriate.
- So they did leave me to take an academic course
- other than that, for which I was grateful.
- So I at least had the necessary prerequisites
- to get into college.
- I formed strong friendships then.
- I formed strong interests then.
- I've acquired interest since.
- But the transition was somewhat abrupt,
- to go from this benign, although somewhat neglected environment
- in New York City with the man that brought me over
- to this highly regimented and prejudicial and opinionated
- environment that I found myself with these people,
- with whom I stayed until the end of the summer.
- And I was placed there, by the way,
- through the Jewish agencies.
- But I'm sure the man in New York paid a certain sum
- for my upkeep and my--
- well, of course--
- I was going to ask you how that worked,
- and if money was involved, and why these people did
- these kindnesses.
- Was it purely out of kindness, or--
- Do you mean the man in New York?
- And in the second family.
- The second family, I didn't think I
- was particularly treated kindly.
- I was paid $0.05 an hour for some fairly hard labor.
- I was packing and shipping and taking to the post office
- the binoculars that they had repaired.
- It was a job.
- And I had it during the summer only,
- I might say, not during the regular year.
- And I don't even remember whether I had an allowance
- of some sort or not.
- I must have, to be able to buy milk in school.
- But I can't say that my treatment there was kind.
- Wrong word.
- However, you did survive.
- And you did go on.
- And could you peg this to the outbreak of the war?
- Was this just before the war?
- Yes.
- Now let me say this, I was with these people I described.
- And they told my guardian, that was a better word, the man who
- brought me over, they didn't want to have me around anymore.
- So he placed me for three months,
- on a very temporary basis, with a very, very high, hoi polloi
- family, a Jewish family, who took me in strictly
- as a temporary measure.
- I was allowed to eat at their table.
- But that was about the only contact I had with them.
- And after that, he found another family that took me.
- And, again, I am sure it was partly
- for reimbursement of some sort.
- But there I stayed until the end of my high school
- career, which was June of 1941.
- And that was six months before the war broke out
- as far as the US is concerned.
- War broke out in Europe in August 1939.
- And so at that time, I was already
- living with the Reicherts, yes.
- And oh, they had some other strange habits.
- I don't know if you want to go into them.
- They insisted-- this is not particularly Polish,
- but I just wasn't used to it.
- They insisted that I go bathing nude in the presence
- of similarly nude females.
- And for someone brought up the way I was, it was just not,
- shall we say, de rigueur.
- And so we had fights about that.
- And so then I left them.
- And I went with this other family.
- And I have very little recollection.
- Except that this woman that I talked
- about who was consulted about how I should be treated
- knew the children of this family quite well.
- And she talked about how their parents were not exactly
- their favorite types.
- In fact, she called him a stuck up ass.
- So the woman was OK.
- It was her husband who was this way.
- And the children, they rubbed it into me
- they were going to Yale.
- And they were going to--
- I forget, Wellesley or something like that.
- And here I was, probably not have any chance to go anywhere.
- But then, when I went with his last family--
- and he was a vice principal of Evander Childs High
- School in the Bronx, which was the second largest
- high school in the New York City school system.
- And I was treated well there.
- The woman was crazy.
- She insisted that I didn't have a speech defect.
- And she was going to correct me.
- She fancied herself a speech therapist.
- And you see how well my accent has been corrected.
- But he was fine.
- And he encouraged me in going to school, applying to colleges,
- doing everything.
- Pursuing my hobbies, which were initially chess,
- and then I switched over with my high school friends to bridge.
- And I became almost an internationalist
- at competition.
- And I had to choose between bridge and teaching
- mechanical engineering.
- Well, I've given the game up more or less.
- I haven't played in about 10 years.
- But anyway, we did that.
- And we did it every afternoon after school.
- And all of the four people that I was with,
- I'm still in contact with all of them.
- And I've seen them periodically.
- So I had this, well, very benevolent individual
- who took care of me.
- And he saw to it that he didn't hinder me
- the way the first family did.
- Didn't put any impediments in my way.
- And, again, I excelled in school, did well.
- I wasn't the valedictorian, but I
- wasn't ashamed of my Regents [INAUDIBLE]..
- And so that brought us, then, to the fall of 1941,
- which was three months before the outbreak of the war.
- I'd arranged to have a summer job that year.
- I was a bellboy in a country club,
- a Jewish country club in Elmsford,
- New York, which is in Westchester County.
- And at the time, very well-to-do New Yorkers
- came out there to play golf.
- And I'd applied to a whole bunch of colleges for admission.
- And to make a long story short, for example, MIT--
- well, I had to apply for a scholarship
- wherever I, again, went.
- Because I had no money.
- And MIT turned me down, for which I now am very grateful.
- And Texas gave me a scholarship loan through a B'nai B'rith
- loan fund.
- And so I went to Texas with about $50
- in my pocket, and a train ticket, and good intentions,
- and an admission to the university.
- And I got down there, and I started working my way through.
- I held two jobs always besides going to school.
- And so it was the first semester that Pearl Harbor occurred.
- You asked where I was at and how I was treated
- at the outbreak of the war.
- I instantaneously became an enemy alien.
- I had to give up things like my camera and my radio.
- If I wanted to leave town more than 10 miles an hour,
- I had to get permission from the US attorney of the area.
- And all of this didn't matter so much
- because I was really rooted.
- And this is the University of Texas in Austin.
- I was rooted there because I had no money to do anything else.
- So I may have gone to a football game in Dallas
- or something like that.
- But beyond that, I certainly wasn't traveling in any way.
- So it had very little practical effect.
- How did it appear to you that all of a sudden you
- were an enemy alien?
- And I take it this was more or less automatic?
- It was automatic.
- It happened to all the other Germans at that time?
- All the Germans?
- I suppose it happened to all the Italians and all the Japanese.
- The Japanese were treated far more
- harshly, especially in California, than I.
- Well, how did it appear to me?
- Frankly, it didn't have any effect on me.
- A minor inconvenience, I regretted not having a camera.
- I enjoyed taking pictures.
- Did this last for long, or a few months?
- It lasted until I became a citizen.
- I became a citizen before the war ended.
- So once I became a citizen, all of that
- was removed and automatically restored all the rights and so
- on.
- So basically, the advent of the war had a minimal effect on me.
- The advent of the war in Europe had a much greater effect
- on me because of my parents and my family's position.
- That's what I was going to ask you about,
- to track that for us.
- As the war progressed, or as you began to, I assume,
- worry more and more about your parents,
- can you tell us how you found out?
- Or did you find out about your parents--
- All communication was cut off almost completely somewhere
- in 1940.
- Even after the war broke out, there
- was still a way of getting things out of Holland.
- I can look at those letters that are dated, not letters,
- but envelopes that are dated.
- And I can see what about the last communication
- was that I had with them.
- At some stage of the game, certainly in 1941
- when I went to Texas, I no longer
- was in contact with them.
- I see.
- And sure, I worried about it.
- But then again, what could you do?
- You were not in a position to get intelligence out of there.
- I didn't even know where they were, frankly.
- They presumably were in hiding.
- I think I had once or twice a letter from Portugal
- of Dutch people who had met my parents in hiding
- and told me that they were OK but that
- was as far as that went.
- And then I got contradictory information
- as to who had done what and who had not done what.
- So there was no way I could ascertain the truth.
- It was a terrible, terrible thing.
- But, again, on the other hand, what could you do?
- If I had let this completely devastate me,
- I would not have been able to survive.
- Because in order to survive, I had to do well in school,
- so I could hold my jobs and also stay in school.
- As far as the American army was concerned,
- I was given a draft deferment, being
- in mechanical engineering.
- But somewhere along the line, they
- caught up with me, no matter whether you were an engineer
- or not.
- And so I reported for my physical examination.
- I was rejected because of this.
- And it wasn't the fact that this was disabling.
- But if this had acted up again while I was in the military,
- they would have to pay my pension the rest of my life.
- And somehow or other, the economics of that
- didn't appeal to them, no matter what the external circumstances
- with the war were.
- I never figured that one out.
- But that's the way it was.
- So I was taken to San Antonio sometime in 1944
- and given a physical and told I was
- 4-F. That allowed me to finish.
- Although the other thing the war did,
- I took out a war loan in order to speed up my education.
- I bought some money which I paid back to the government
- with interest, low cost interest.
- And what happened was that, instead of a 4 and 1/2 year
- program, I finished it in 2 and 3/4.
- So what that meant, of course, is
- that I had to take, instead of the usual 15 or 16 units,
- I took 21.
- And for some of these units, of course, I could get credit.
- I mean, for my non-technical electives,
- I could take two years of German and get credit for that.
- I took some classes, though, that were useless.
- I took a semester of Spanish, which I decided
- I didn't want to continue with.
- We didn't have that much choice in the way of courses to take.
- There were a few technical electives.
- But the rest was pretty well prescribed.
- And the interesting thing was that the climate
- of the university was such that I really
- didn't make many friends.
- We were too busy trying to get our work done to have
- much time for socializing.
- I do recall that one of the things I did do,
- every other Saturday night, we used to play poker.
- And we played poker all night.
- We played it with silver dollars as our chips.
- And so even though I was making perhaps $66 a month
- as my salary, and I remember that was
- one of the salaries I made, I may have had $120 at home
- just as chips to be used in these biweekly poker games,
- or semi-weekly poker games.
- So that was one of the things.
- Other than that, I would say that I've got no more than
- an average of three hours sleep, three to four hours' sleep.
- I was working the rest of the time.
- I had a job at the university either as correcting papers
- or as an assistant in some form or another.
- Eventually, after I graduated, I actually taught classes.
- But then I also lived in a co-op for a year and a half.
- And this required a certain number of hours,
- either cooking, making beds, cleaning, whatever.
- And so there was perhaps a total of, oh,
- 46 hours of work a week, 46, 48 hours of work a week
- that I performed.
- I started out delivering newspapers for the local paper.
- Then they decided, a week after Pearl Harbor,
- that they were going to cut the commissions of the newspaper
- boys.
- So the newspaper boys got together
- and decided to go on strike.
- So we picked up the papers and dumped them
- in front of the girls' dormitory and into the river
- there instead of delivering to the customers.
- Well, of course, the paper picked my name
- as being the ringleader of the strike.
- And here I was, a week after the war was
- declared, as an enemy alien.
- And I was a little frightened that I might just
- be interned or whatnot.
- But that got straightened out.
- And I got a job in the library cataloging books.
- The books that come in fresh, I had
- to take cards and go to the Library of Congress catalog
- that was upstairs and see if they were there.
- But only about 25% of them were.
- The rest were specialty books from South America.
- And I had to make the preliminary entry on that.
- I had no training in library science.
- Well, I made the entry.
- And then it was reviewed by a librarian.
- But still, I did all of that.
- And I did that for about a year and a half.
- And then I became a reader.
- I read collected papers.
- And I did this in maybe three or four courses
- simultaneously so as to have enough money
- to continue living.
- And that continued until I graduated.
- I'm curious about how you chose your mechanical engineering.
- Well, again, there is a certain amount of perversity in this.
- I thought I liked mathematics very much.
- And I sort of rationalized that mathematics was not
- a very salable product per se.
- At least in those days, it's become better now.
- So I thought there would be enough
- of the mathematical aspects to engineering if I went into it.
- And it was a field in which there
- was at least a reasonable chance of landing a decent paying job.
- So you were being practical?
- I was being practical as well as, to some extent,
- wishing to pursue my areas of interest,
- which was mathematics.
- And I've gone into an area which is called applied mechanics.
- That's in the graduate area, which is
- part of mechanical engineering.
- And if I had to do it all over again today,
- I'm not sure I'd deviate very much,
- even knowing all that I have experienced.
- But what was very interesting about this
- is the fact that when I went into the University of Texas,
- they gave placement examinations of some kind, skill
- tests and whatnot.
- They were national, places like Michigan, Harvard.
- I don't know whether Berkeley was among them.
- But anyway, there were eight or 10 universities
- using exactly the same tests--
- there were about eight or nine subjects--
- to try to determine your aptitude.
- And I topped the country that year in linguistic ability.
- In fact, I had 108% of the previous year high.
- And so I was besieged by advisors
- who strongly urged me to leave engineering and go
- into something where this would be useful,
- such as political science.
- And I just shook my head.
- It wasn't as strong pressure as what I had in high school,
- but it still was pressure.
- I didn't do that badly in mathematics.
- But I was in the 98th percentile.
- But it wasn't as good as the other one.
- But in mechanical engineering, the two aptitude tests I took
- were my low points.
- They were 68 and 71 percentile, or something like that,
- no, 59 and 64, whatever, spatial visualization
- and mechanical ingenuity.
- And one of the other things I wanted to mention,
- when I expressed my interest in engineering,
- was this first American couple that I lived with,
- the childless couple.
- They discouraged me from that on the basis
- that they say you can't even hammer a nail in straight.
- How can you be an engineer?
- And I suggest to them now that engineers that can hammer nails
- in straight were very far away from where technology is today.
- But it was a somewhat similar argument
- based upon my performance in these aptitude tests that
- got these people to try to get me to change my mind.
- I didn't.
- And so I went through the mechanical engineering program.
- And that ended in June of '44.
- I had six months to go before I became a citizen.
- So I decided I would stay.
- I couldn't very easily get a job in industry, anyway.
- The war wasn't over.
- And I was an enemy alien.
- So I just wanted to stay on as a graduate student.
- And I did and started my master's degree.
- And I got that in September of '45.
- Well, in January of '45, I became a citizen.
- So all of these restrictions were lifted.
- And I was able to continue from there on out.
- I do remember that the time of my college days
- was a time of extremely hard work.
- I remember my high school days, aside
- from who I lived with, at least initially, much more pleasantly
- than my college days.
- I also recall the horrendous shock
- at the death of FDR that occurred while I was there.
- So the activities at college just were far less
- impressionable, then.
- It was routine.
- It was hard work.
- I didn't have time to think.
- Didn't have time for much recreation.
- You seem to be motivated to get through quickly.
- Am I correct?
- Yes, but in fact, this was forced.
- The government wanted us to get through
- there as quickly as possible so we could go into industry
- and help produce war material.
- Engineering was one, engineering and medicine,
- perhaps one or two other areas were
- exempted from the draft on the grounds that were needed.
- And this was indeed the case.
- It was something that the agencies,
- the military agencies since, have
- taken very good care to avoid.
- They were not prepared for the need for scientific personnel
- back in 1939.
- And when they needed it all of a sudden, they weren't there.
- It's interesting that you were an enemy alien.
- And yet you were being prepared to help the war effort.
- I think they had convinced themselves
- that I wasn't really a threat.
- And obviously, with my background,
- I should have been given an exemption from the start.
- But that may not have been possible.
- Speaking of that, it's very interesting
- that the man Mr. Davidson, who brought me to the United
- States, was at least an acquaintance of the man who
- represented Hitler in Washington as a lobbyist,
- the German lobbyist, and who eventually went to jail.
- His sons all disowned him.
- I forget his name.
- But I also remember that his wife came to me
- when I was ill with this and brought me
- six volumes of a very, very famous German story
- writer, who's also been translated into English,
- by the name of Karl May.
- And if you've heard of him, he wrote about Indians
- without ever having seen one.
- And about, I guess, what would passed for cowboys.
- He calls them West men, whatever that may mean.
- So she bought me those.
- And I had them until the fire.
- And they died here.
- So the children of this man Davidson
- also knew the children of this lobbyist.
- And as I say, the lobbyist's children disowned him.
- And so it's just one of the sidelights
- of my relationship with Germany that just crossed my mind.
- There's so many memories, and inklings, and so on.
- It takes a little while to bring them out of a corner.
- I wonder if you could--
- 10 seconds here.
- Professor Goldsmith, let's have a change of pace
- now and have Eric Saul ask you a few questions.
- Did you experience any anti-Semitism
- in the United States, in Texas?
- No, not in Texas.
- I did experience some anti-Semitism
- subsequent to that, occasional remarks that
- were made while I was a young engineer for Westinghouse
- in Pittsburgh.
- And I would go to a bar, and sometimes alone, sometimes
- with a lady companion.
- And I'd hear some rather nasty remarks about Jews.
- The goddamn Jews are ruining the economy.
- And they have too much power.
- They oughtn't be living in our neighborhood, things
- of that general nature.
- It's very unpleasant to know also
- what to do about that sort of thing when you hear it.
- You can't pretend that you didn't hear it.
- Yet on the other hand, you can't go ahead and punch that person
- in the nose, either.
- So maybe you turn around and give them a nasty look.
- But that's not very effective.
- I take it that none of these remarks were directed at you?
- No, not specifically at me.
- In fact, speaking of that sort of thing, one of the things
- that gets me upset, because I heard it when I was in college,
- I dated a non-Jewish girl.
- I went to see her parents.
- They said, but you don't look Jewish.
- I said, would you mind defining for me
- what it is to look Jewish?
- And they're, well, you know, how it
- is portrayed in the pictures.
- You mean with a hooked nose, and a yarmulke, and a shawl,
- or whatever?
- What do you mean?
- And they were generally unable to answer this.
- Unfortunately, I've encountered that same remark
- with my own small daughter.
- And I have to step on her rather hard, perhaps too hard.
- That's the sort of thing that may be
- interpreted as anti-Semitism.
- But perhaps it's just an unfortunate way
- of expressing it as it occurred 50 years ago.
- Today, with people being a bit more politically correct,
- perhaps that doesn't come up so much.
- Were you aware of the escalation of the murder in the death
- camps in the 1940s when you were going to school
- through news articles, or the media, or anything?
- No, not an escalation.
- I mean, I was aware of the fact that there were camps.
- That also was not hard knowledge.
- But it was word of mouth and stated in the papers,
- "It is rumored that," and this sort of thing.
- I never talked during those days to anyone
- who had been in a camp and somehow or other got out.
- However later, when I talked to a distant relative who
- was living with these friends in New Orleans,
- he had been in a camp.
- And because of major efforts to get him
- a visa, and which were successful in getting him out,
- he was allowed to leave.
- I believe there was a time when Hitler
- would have preferred to have Jews leave Germany
- rather than to kill them.
- At least, that's the history now.
- And so when there was the opportunity and a clear case
- of being able to get out, this was permitted, even when
- they were in the camp.
- I had a very unfortunate experience along those lines
- myself.
- It happened two weeks before my bar mitzvah.
- My uncle, my mother's brother, was living with us at the time.
- We had planned on one day to go take a bicycle
- trip through the area, just as a recreational measure, he and I.
- Three days before this, at 3 o'clock in the morning,
- the Gestapo came to our house and arrested him.
- Turned out it was a case of mistaken identity.
- And they didn't want him.
- They wanted somebody else.
- But when he then went on this trip with me three days later,
- he had a heart attack in the middle of a field and died.
- And here I was, just barely under 13,
- having to deal with a dead uncle in the middle of nowhere
- and a regime that I knew was not particularly
- sympathetic to Jews.
- So that was something I have never forgotten, either.
- So I don't know if this is, again, responsive.
- But it has something to do with my awareness
- of the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany and of the rise
- of deaths in camps.
- But there was no hard knowledge that I
- had, or hard figures that I became
- familiar with until after the war.
- But while we're on the subject of camps,
- do you now have an opinion about whether or how many Germans
- actually knew about the camps during the war?
- Well, I vacillated.
- During the war, I'm not so sure.
- I vacillated.
- Initially, I thought that they weren't perhaps the majority.
- A substantial number perhaps, but not a majority.
- Then after the war I became convinced
- that everybody knew about it, or almost everybody.
- And then I've carried this conviction with me
- until I talked to this woman who I personally
- believe has no axe to grind.
- In fact, she's as harsh on the Hitler regime and the times
- and the people as anyone I have ever seen.
- But she advised me that from her researches
- there were not as many people as perhaps some others had
- believed who were completely familiar
- with the existence of the camps and what was going on there.
- Initially, I believe the propaganda line
- was that the camps in a sense were set up
- in part for the protection of these people,
- that they didn't want the populace
- to be let at them, that this was a matter of protection.
- That was at least one propaganda item that I had heard about.
- And then, of course, that didn't last very long.
- It became evident that they were taken there.
- I am not sure that the initial intention was to kill them all.
- I think this was a later decision that was made,
- perhaps at the time of the Kristallnacht,
- or close to that period, the final solution.
- And I think camps existed before this final solution
- meeting occurred.
- So there was a shift in purpose, so to speak, for those camps.
- Yes.
- It was never a pleasant thing.
- But then, on the other hand, we interned people at Manzanar
- with not very good reasons, either.
- But I am not aware of a particular crescendo
- of the number of people who were killed.
- In fact, the ovens themselves was
- something I didn't learn about until very, very
- late in the game, perhaps even after the war,
- the method, how they were killed.
- Let's jump back, then, to your college years
- and the years just after that.
- And perhaps you can begin to tell us about your first jobs
- and how you began to form your first relationships,
- your first family relationships, and so on.
- I mentioned the fact that I graduated
- with a master's degree in 1945.
- And I went to work for Westinghouse Electric
- Corporation in Pittsburgh.
- My area of study in college, sort of specialization,
- was refrigeration and air conditioning.
- I have one story I would like to relate
- while I was a graduate student.
- Please.
- Because it made its way into the books.
- And this was now, mind you, the summer of 1945.
- The war still was going on.
- And I was doing an experiment for my thesis dealing
- with the refrigerative properties
- of refrigerative sugar-salt solutions.
- This became an issue in quick freezing
- of fruits and vegetables, which was a big business down
- in Texas.
- And I was examining various solutions.
- I froze them, and then I thawed them gradually,
- and I watched the temperature rise.
- And this was something for which I've
- been given this refrigerator, a walk-in refrigerator,
- a big one, which was kept at -40 degrees, the same thing
- in centigrade and Fahrenheit, it so happens.
- And I was supposed to be the only one
- besides the head of the laboratory that
- had a key to this place.
- Well, I was in my laboratory working.
- And I hear the door to this refrigerator
- go click, click, click, click, click.
- And I rush out because they had food in there that
- had kept for 10 or 15 years.
- And they were experimenting on its ability to survive freezing
- for that length of time.
- So I slammed the door.
- There was a lock that put a pin through and put a lock on.
- I turned out the light and walked out of the laboratory.
- Well, it turns out that what I had done
- is I had locked the chairman of the department in there, who
- had no business whatever being there without letting me know.
- And the lucky thing was this was a Saturday afternoon
- in the summertime in Texas.
- The head of the laboratory walked in five minutes later
- and heard this thing.
- And he unlocked the door and let the guy out,
- a very shaken chairman, out.
- And I never heard one word of reproval on it.
- Because as I say, he had no business being there.
- But that made its way into the history
- of the University of Texas College of Engineering.
- And it is now in book form.
- So it is just an aside, an anecdote that I like to recall.
- When I left Texas, I had interviewed several companies.
- And I decided I would like to work for Westinghouse.
- So we were brought to Pittsburgh.
- And in fact, we didn't live in Pittsburgh.
- Because the work was in East Pittsburgh.
- And you couldn't live in East Pittsburgh.
- It was just not fit for human habitation.
- So we lived in a place called Wilkinsburg.
- And almost all of the students in this course,
- and it was a student course, we were
- exposed to the various products the company made.
- They had speakers.
- They told you how they manufactured them,
- how they sell them, what the problems are or might
- be in the assembly line, what the problems might
- be in the operation, and so on.
- It's very educational if you could sit
- through all the dull lectures.
- They also had a couple of people from the University
- of Pittsburgh teaching you how to write reports.
- Because they don't believe engineers can write.
- So this was going on.
- But we got to Pittsburgh.
- And it turns out that was a general strike
- against Westinghouse.
- So the entire operation was shut down,
- with the exception of management,
- who was running the elevators and sweeping the floors
- and keeping the place open.
- But we obviously couldn't go into the manufacturing areas.
- So they kept this course, going and going and going
- for much more than the month that they originally
- had intended until finally they settled this thing.
- And so I decided I wanted to go to the research laboratories.
- Because I've always been interested in research.
- And they took me in there.
- But then, for reasons that are still not known to me,
- they decided that after the probationary period--
- and it wasn't really a probationary period,
- it was a rotational period--
- they didn't want to keep me there permanently.
- So I took another job somewhere in Philadelphia
- with their steam turbine division.
- Well, again, it was also probably
- a good thing I didn't stay there, either.
- Because when I went to Philadelphia,
- I was exposed to what turned out to be the really
- one of my loves of 30 years.
- And that is tournament bridge, which Philadelphia
- was the capital for.
- People like [? Goren, ?] whose name
- may even be familiar to you, no--
- Sorry.
- --is from that area.
- And so I played really high level bridge
- at a very young age.
- I worked in a place on the Delaware River
- and lived in a small village outside of Philadelphia.
- But it was 20 minutes by train to the downtown.
- It was right next to Swarthmore and all
- the cultural attractions of Philadelphia were available,
- the symphony.
- At the time, I thought they and Boston
- had the best symphony in the country, and Koussevitzky.
- And so Koussevitzky, I think it was-- one was in Boston,
- one was in Philadelphia.
- Anyway, so I stayed there a year.
- And I worked in this outfit, the steam turbine division.
- And I saw the people who had been there 30 years
- looked at me like they were working themselves from a rat
- into the grave.
- And I didn't want to do that.
- And also, I really wanted a PhD.
- So I wrote-- and this was now 1946--
- to some 30 colleges or universities.
- And said what I want to do is I want to teach.
- But I also wanted to be able to get a doctor's
- degree at the same time.
- Can I do this and will you hire me?
- Well, they were in desperate shape in most places.
- Because here they had the GIs coming back,
- tripling their enrollment overnight.
- And they had no qualified people to teach them.
- But Berkeley in those days, as did most universities,
- didn't have the requirement of a doctor's degree
- in order to become a member of the faculty.
- That just started coming into vogue in the late '40s,
- early '50s.
- And from there on in, it has been rigidly enforced.
- So I received a number of rejection slips,
- including those from Caltech, Stanford, and MIT again.
- And I received a lot of requests and offers,
- including Michigan--
- no, not Michigan-- Minnesota, Illinois Tech,
- Brooklyn Polytech, Johns Hopkins, and Cal.
- And I said, at age 22 and 1/2, why don't you go to California?
- You hear so much about it.
- It's a great place to be.
- Everybody wants to go there.
- If you don't like it, if the work isn't interesting,
- you can quit.
- You're not really that old.
- You can take another job.
- Well, I came out.
- The jobs that I was supposed to do, the courses
- I was supposed to teach, I didn't end up teaching.
- I taught other courses.
- And I was able to get my doctor's degree in two years.
- And I've stayed ever since.
- Two years?
- Yes.
- That sounds like--
- But I had passed the master's degree.
- But you must not forget that there are two things.
- First of all, I worked my tail off.
- I mean, at that time--
- That's what I was going to get at.
- You must have continued to work very hard.
- Yes.
- And when I first came out here, the teaching load
- was incredible.
- Right now, a member of the faculty
- teaches three courses a year.
- That is a two semester system.
- We teach two course, one year--
- one semester, one course a second semester.
- And you have graduate students who do research and so on.
- Well, teaching two courses is six contact hours.
- I had 18 contact hours when I first came out here.
- That gives you a measure of the degree of work
- that I had to perform.
- Yes, I worked very hard then, too.
- I guess my time-- well, while I was working for Westinghouse,
- I was working through the day.
- But at night, I both taught and took courses
- at the University of Pittsburgh.
- I taught math.
- I took a course in math.
- At the University of Pennsylvania,
- I took a course in thermodynamics.
- And I taught math.
- So I did more than one thing.
- Now this time the government wasn't pushing you.
- So this must have come from somewhere inside.
- That's right.
- That's correct.
- Don't ask me where.
- But that's me.
- Well, I was waiting for you to tell us.
- Well, from early on, because of my inability
- to do many things that my peers were
- able to do for which I could therefore not
- get any recognition, I felt that the recognition
- lay in the accomplishments in the academic area.
- And so I did that.
- Do you think it had anything to do
- with your early history in Germany
- and the Holocaust and the being--
- I'm sure of it.
- --the need to achieve, and somehow
- to demonstrate your abilities?
- I'm sure.
- Let's talk a little bit more.
- Can you speculate about that for us?
- Well, I had basically no responsibilities at this time.
- I did have a constraint at the University of California.
- And that may have been, perhaps, even more than 50%,
- the other being my earlier experience.
- I could not be at Berkeley for more than two years
- and be both a member of the faculty and receive a degree.
- The first two years you're an instructor.
- And you're not a voting member of the faculty.
- Once you become a voting member of the faculty,
- you can never again receive a degree from the university.
- And so I had that time pressure put on me, which also obviously
- had a great deal to do with my achieving this degree
- in that length of time.
- And well, what happened, of course, is truly ironic.
- I worked in a certain area for my PhD.
- The moment I got my PhD, I left that area.
- I've never returned to it.
- I'm in a diametrically opposite field within the context
- of mechanical engineering.
- It had something to do with the fact
- that I was arbitrarily assigned to teach in a certain group.
- And that certain group was more related
- to what I have done since than the early work, which
- was in heat transfer of thermodynamics and fluid
- mechanics.
- So it's been 40 years since I've done that sort of thing,
- 40 years, 45 years.
- Do you find many of the men of your generation
- and perhaps the women of your generation
- with a special need for achievement,
- based on their early history?
- Now you're asking me to look back
- at people who have emigrated from Germany,
- Jews who emigrated from Germany now of my age.
- The ones that I know--
- and of course, that's not necessarily relevant.
- Because the ones that I know would
- be the ones that have achieved things
- through the natural course of events being,
- shall we say, authors of papers, or presenting things
- at meetings.
- And so my confrere in England, who
- is at the University of Manchester,
- is certainly one who has achieved
- an awful lot, international reputation in his field.
- The current associate dean, although retired, is still
- the Associate Dean at Berkeley, got his PhD under my direction,
- he has achieved enormously.
- He's from Austria, also Jewish, but not German,
- but Austrian I don't know if there's a distinction or not.
- He has certainly achieved a lot.
- All the people that I've met that have been in universities
- and who are of my vintage are people
- of extraordinary distinction.
- But then, again, I don't know whether that
- is totally relevant.
- Because if they had not had extraordinary distinction,
- maybe I wouldn't know them.
- And they may still--
- This is not a scientific survey.
- I was just wondering if you'd ever
- speculated on the possibility that those early experiences
- had a profound effect on the need to achieve,
- this need to prove one's self.
- I think it did.
- I think it must have.
- But I also think there was definitely
- the usual drive of the parents to have,
- in the Jewish families, to have their children succeed
- in the educational area.
- And as I say, it was a strong surprise to me
- to come over here with this one family
- that I mentioned, to see that they wanted
- to limit rather than push you in terms of what you wanted to do.
- That wasn't a typical Jewish family as far
- as you were concerned.
- It wasn't even a typical American family.
- They were so high--
- well, I don't want to slander the dead.
- [LAUGHTER]
- The thing that I found, on the other hand,
- I've mentioned this already, my closest friend in Germany
- went into this area of being an assistant manager
- in a Woolworth's store, which I hardly think
- is an ambitious sort of outlook on life.
- So in his case, it certainly wasn't pushing education.
- Let's go back now once again to those early years.
- And perhaps you can tell us something
- about your social life and how you
- began to more or less integrate yourself
- into the larger social culture, and perhaps
- something about your marriage, and your children.
- Surely.
- And as we do this, if it's relevant, of course,
- we always want to come back to the Jewish connection, if you
- had one.
- Well, let me say this.
- I already mentioned the fact that my uncle arranged trips
- while I was still in Europe.
- These were all for Jewish groups.
- I don't think they were necessarily
- arranged through the synagogue.
- But they were definitely limited to Jewish by constraints
- of the environment.
- And so within that context, the only people I was exposed to
- were Jewish.
- And whatever influence they might have had on me
- would reflect this Jewish background.
- Now it should be important to point out
- that the number of really Orthodox Jews in Germany
- were very, very few.
- I mean, the vast, vast majority were Reform Jews.
- And quite a few of those didn't pay any attention
- to the religious aspects at all.
- At least my family observed the standard holidays.
- I cannot, in all honesty, say that I went to the synagogue
- every Saturday.
- I didn't.
- But on the high Jewish holidays, surely I did.
- And as far as the influence on me is concerned,
- I think I always feel, and I felt then,
- I feel now, that sociologically, I don't
- consider myself to be a Jew--
- culturally, yes.
- And when it is particularly important
- is when it's unpopular to be a Jew.
- Then I am a Jew, very much so.
- And my daughter, just anecdotally speaking,
- for the first time in quite a while,
- last year I went with her to Kol Nidre.
- Now this is my older daughter who is 100% Jewish.
- My younger daughter is 0% Jewish by the laws.
- So I had gone to the Kol Nidre, of course,
- also when I was on sabbatical in Israel.
- And that was a very moving experience.
- But the rest of the service, I don't know,
- it just didn't do much for me.
- You see, I've always prided myself,
- rather than being governed by a religious set of tenets,
- that I have my own code of ethics.
- And I cannot only live with it, I'm happy to live with the code
- of ethics I have.
- Which means, to be totally honest, to help when you can,
- to defend yourself when you must,
- to try to enrich your life as much as possible
- to take care of your family, and to be honest in your dealings.
- So I don't have to have an organized religion
- to teach me that.
- And I think the Jewish religion is very good in this respect.
- They sort of expect you to have that kind of a philosophy.
- And they don't constantly hammer it into you
- like the Catholic religion does, nor do
- they put obstacles in your way, the way other things are done.
- So I can't say that, specifically speaking, my being
- Jewish has had anything to do with my outlook on life.
- My being Jewish has had clearly a strong effect
- on how I lived as a child, by the constraints
- of the environment.
- And that, in turn, had an effect on my operations.
- But I don't think I can trace it to being Jewish.
- If what had happened to the Jews in Germany
- has happened to people who, let's say,
- spoke Hindu, or whatever, and if I had been one of these,
- I think it would have been the same thing.
- It wasn't being Jewish that produced this kind of a result
- in me.
- And of course, that may have to do with my genes.
- So as you walk through your adult life,
- you didn't do so as a Jew, so to speak,
- as a conscious, every day awareness.
- Emphatically not.
- Let me tell you about my history briefly sociologically, and so
- on.
- I was an assistant professor at Berkeley
- and was about to become an associate professor.
- And I got married to my first wife,
- who was from Mount Vernon, New York also.
- Her father happened to have a PhD in chemistry.
- And he was, in addition to that, an allergist, an MD,
- an allergist.
- He became an allergist, he told me once, out of self-defense.
- Because his entire family was allergic to all
- kinds of things.
- Well, this girl came out here.
- And we went, spent a week together
- doing everything I could think of, the sort of things
- I enjoyed doing, camping out of doors, going to the symphony,
- going to a play, being in a social environment
- with my colleagues, going dancing, whatever I could think
- of, and to see how she would react.
- And then I, of course, met her parents.
- And I knew about her parents.
- And I guess I had an impression in me
- that it was critically important that I should
- be able to get along with her parents
- so that we would have a successful and happy marriage.
- But it turned out I'd never been wronger in my life.
- I did get along beautifully with the parents.
- But this girl, for whatever reason, wasn't happy.
- She was the one who asked for the divorce.
- I was very upset, because I couldn't understand why
- she would want to divorce me.
- And she said, well, one of the things, that I shouldn't
- have married a scientist.
- I should just married somebody in the social sciences
- or something like that.
- Even though she had inadequate grades--
- by my connections with the people at the university,
- I got into the graduate program in anthropology.
- And she got a degree there, a master's degree.
- And I talked to somebody that she apparently
- worked for who hadn't been very happy with her.
- But that's neither here nor there.
- That's also rumor, perhaps.
- Anyway, we were married almost six years.
- And she asked for a divorce.
- And we had no children.
- She became pregnant once and had a miscarriage.
- There were other wrong--
- not wrong.
- There were other, how shall we say, things
- that strike me, in retrospect.
- My second cousin in England-- who was the only person other
- than my children who bear my name, Goldschmidt,
- he also changed it from Goldschmidt,
- which was my original name, to Goldsmith--
- he's a surgeon, a renal surgeon.
- And he recalls when he first met my first wife,
- she carried around a little suitcase with her which
- was filled with pills for and against everything
- that you could imagine.
- He was just shaking his head.
- He said, this is not the kind of way
- I would like to live as a doctor.
- And this is very personal.
- But nevertheless, she insisted, for example,
- that I take a shower before I even contemplated something
- like sex.
- Well, I thought sex was supposed to be more
- or less a spontaneous thing.
- And this was not exactly a scheduled item in the agenda.
- So we had our differences.
- She wanted you to be more emotional?
- I don't know if that was it.
- I don't know--
- She talked about-- that's what I'm
- reading into it when she talked about the social sciences.
- No.
- What she said was this.
- When we parted, she wrote me a letter saying,
- I cannot expect you to change in the mold that I would like you
- to be in because I can't change.
- Therefore, we have to part.
- And it was a very unfortunate thing, I suppose.
- But it was definitely something that affected me very strongly.
- Because I had perhaps not worked at the marriage all that hard.
- And part of the reason why was I was trying
- to become a full professor.
- I mean, you don't do this by spending
- every spare moment of your time from your family life.
- But whatever it was, my interests and her interests
- really clashed.
- And I feel that I was deceived on my initial meeting with her
- that she claimed she enjoyed the kind of things
- that I went through with her.
- At least other people felt the same way.
- So we were divorced in 1959.
- It was not a particularly bad divorce.
- I just felt badly because of the fact, not because of her.
- And I married too fast.
- I married again in 1961.
- I married somebody that even my older daughter, with whom I
- am very close, said I don't see how you and mommy ever
- got married.
- Also a nice Jewish girl from New York--
- she went to-- what is it, Hunter College,
- the companion to Columbia?
- She was an artist.
- And what she was doing, she's working on cartoons
- down in Los Angeles for the Bullwinkle show, which you
- may or may not have seen once--
- Sure.
- --and this sort of thing.
- And she thought that artiste kind of representation
- was her life.
- She came here in an Austin-Healey, a beautiful car,
- but it never worked.
- And so what happened, and I should have perhaps looked
- into this, this time I didn't check
- into the background of her family.
- And her family, she told me herself,
- were not something that she wanted to associate with.
- And yet everybody I know, the best I
- can say for her is that she's psychoneurotic.
- She was in analysis before I married her
- because of her relations with her parents.
- Then after I got married to her, she went back into analysis.
- And when we had our second child, our daughter,
- she had whatever it is that produces a crisis.
- And she had to be now with a psychiatrist an hour every day.
- And it was really--
- and she gradually backed off from that.
- But I would never know, when I came home from work,
- whether she'd throw her arms around me
- or give me a tirade beyond belief.
- It was unpredictable.
- It was no way to live a life.
- And I moved out several times for brief periods.
- And then finally, we had just a bang out,
- like, knock down, drag out fight.
- I moved out.
- And I wasn't coming back.
- And then we had an extremely bitter,
- an extremely bitter divorce which
- lasted a total of 13 years.
- That's a long time for a divorce, at which point
- I finally was able to get rid of all obligations.
- She alienated my two children from me.
- My son, who is now over 30, was very, very seriously
- affected by this.
- Because he was old enough, 3 and 1/2 to 4.
- And he has developed in a way that
- is most unfortunate from my point of view,
- I don't want my son to be anything special, particular.
- I don't want him to become a PhD, a professor or whatever.
- I want him to earn an honest living.
- What I wanted to do is to stay within the law.
- And that's all I asked.
- He has right now a daughter of which
- he is custodian, guardian.
- The mother has run off somewhere.
- And a girl with whom he lived, really,
- really took wonderful care of my granddaughter.
- Then he split up with her over absolutely nonsensical reasons.
- And that didn't bother me so much.
- But he was over at last Christmas
- at the house with my older daughter, who
- was is his direct sister and her boyfriend.
- And he acted in a way that was simply almost sociopathic.
- That's all I can say.
- And I told him he had--
- I couldn't-- he could not stay in the house.
- And what he expects at this point
- is that he can use my granddaughter
- as a mechanism for coming back.
- And now it's me and the rest of us all at fault.
- It was a ridiculous argument over People's Park.
- And I saw halfway through where we were heading.
- I said, Steve, let's change the subject.
- Let's get off of this.
- And he wouldn't.
- And then he started at the end with obscenities
- that were unbelievable.
- But he wants to hold my granddaughter hostage in terms
- of our relations with him.
- And that's not going to work anymore.
- Something tore.
- Now with my older daughter, who's 2 and 1/2 years younger,
- she was a year and a half at the time of the divorce.
- She was not affected psychologically by this.
- She and I are very, very close.
- She lives in Brooklyn.
- And as I say, she's about to get her PhD.
- And she rediscovered me at age 14 because she left her mother.
- In fact, the mother left that apartment.
- And she stayed, kept the apartment,
- got a full-time job as a waitress.
- And she never graduated from high school
- because she got bored.
- She went to college, junior college, got all A's.
- And then accompanied us to Greece
- on a sabbatical when she was 17 and stayed over there a year
- with us.
- She didn't stay with us.
- She stayed in Greece and she traveled all around.
- And so she's truly, if I say so myself, a Renaissance person.
- And she also cannot condone her brother's behavior.
- I mean, it's just incredible.
- Now her mother, she told me on several occasions,
- she doesn't understand how we ever could have gotten married.
- She's grateful, because she wouldn't be alive.
- But her mother, who was the most outrageous behavioral type
- of person, she was really a Los Angeles beatnik back
- in the early '60s, if I can call it
- that, driving this white Austin-Healey with hair flowing
- back, paint all over her face, and then talking about the most
- outrageous causes, all of a sudden
- has become an ultra-conservative Republican
- as a result of working for Lockheed for a number of years
- and taking on the coloration of the engineers that are there.
- And so she's very obviously definitively
- affected by her surroundings.
- So after telling me she couldn't live in Berkeley and moving
- back to Los Angeles, which she said is her town,
- she's now moved to Alabama, right on the border
- of Mississippi, a place I cannot understand how anyone can
- exist.
- So that was my second marriage, two children,
- lasted from 1961 to '64.
- And then I was a bachelor, or whatever you want to call it,
- for a long period of time.
- I had gotten bitten twice and I wasn't
- about to go into a relationship very quickly.
- I met a Yugoslavian girl who was absolutely beautiful, gorgeous,
- very intelligent, very highly educated,
- taught at the University of London.
- But she was crazy.
- And she reminded me in many ways of my second wife.
- And even though both my present wife and I
- have become extremely good friends with her sister,
- and before they separated, her husband,
- I just thought to myself, I can't marry this girl.
- I'll be going through the same stuff
- that I went through with my second wife.
- So then Penny, who worked at the University of California--
- I'll be happy to show you a picture, tall, blonde--
- worked in a department where I had lots--
- not my own department, but one of my colleagues
- with whom I have 40 joint papers--
- was one of her bosses.
- And I had to go over there a lot.
- And so one day, she asked me if I would take her out to coffee.
- And that was that.
- Then we will have been married 20 years next year.
- And we have a very solid, good marriage.
- Wonderful.
- Her parents weren't exactly approving of me.
- I hate to say this, somewhat in jest.
- But one thing her father, I didn't think,
- enjoyed having somebody who was a little bit
- more intelligent than he.
- I'm saying that with tongue in cheek.
- They objected to the age difference,
- which is a generation, they objected to the fact.
- He is the son of a Presbyterian minister.
- And they brought up their children as churchgoing people.
- Here I was, a Jew, 23 years older,
- I'm marrying his daughter, and et cetera,
- et cetera, et cetera.
- In fact, until we did get married,
- I was forbidden in the house.
- So we have a daughter from that issue, from that marriage.
- The girl is very, very hardworking.
- I think she's very beautiful.
- I'm prejudiced, and also tall and statuesque.
- I'll show you pictures.
- And she's 15 and 1/2 and going into the sophomore grade
- in the private school.
- Because living in Oakland, we cannot countenance the Oakland
- school system as an adequate method of preparation
- for anyone.
- So she's going to [INAUDIBLE].
- And it brought it out in her.
- She worked very hard this last year.
- So she didn't enjoy it as much.
- But she's made very good friends.
- She's got a good, nice group of girlfriends.
- Not yet dating, but that'll come in time, I'm sure.
- Can I ask you a question about your children?
- As a whole, I'm wondering if they in any way
- see themselves as children of a Holocaust survivor.
- My son certainly does.
- And in fact, that was part of this ruckus
- that we had at Christmastime.
- Because we were talking about People's Park.
- And then he's talking about police shooting people.
- And then he said they're just the same as the people who
- killed your parents.
- So I mean, that-- which, of course, is kind of nonsense.
- Because nobody got killed with those rubber bullets.
- But he felt very strongly at times about this sort of thing.
- But it's inconsistent.
- I don't think there is a rational path
- that he looks at in seeing what happened there to me, to him.
- And well, I mean, he's 30 years old.
- I would think that if he has any rational ideas on this
- he would have expressed them at this point.
- He doesn't go to synagogue.
- He doesn't ask about the religion, at least not me.
- But are you saying that his attitudes about People's Park
- are driven, at least in part, by what
- he thinks is a remembrance of the Holocaust--
- I think it's the other way.
- --and you should be more sensitive
- because you lived through it?
- Well, I think that's possible, a possible interpretation.
- But I think it's the other way around.
- He was looking as a way of hurting me.
- When we disagree with him about People's Park,
- his position was it should be declared a shrine.
- The university should get out of there, et cetera.
- And we were all saying, well, the reason
- the university went back there is because it's become
- a haven for drug dealers.
- It's dangerous to walk through there.
- And it's got to be cleaned out.
- And this then prompted him, when we disagreed with him,
- to become totally irrational, start using gutter language.
- And then with this as an added phraseology,
- just to try to hurt me.
- That's the way I interpret it.
- I see.
- I see.
- I don't think that he intended it
- as any connection to the Holocaust
- experience other than trying to tell me my parents were killed.
- And someone like police did it.
- And trying to exploit a weakness, perhaps,
- or a sensitive area.
- What about the other kids, are they not--
- well, let me ask, have they ever asked you
- about the Holocaust or your early experiences?
- Does it seem to matter?
- Yes, they both have, but not on a consistent basis.
- I must admit I feel somewhat remiss in not talking
- at least a little bit more with my younger daughter, who
- I think would be very receptive to Jewish culture
- and Jewish history.
- My older daughter has taken upon herself to do so on her own.
- She's now taking Hebrew.
- She speaks it now.
- And she's been over to Israel with us and with me
- several times.
- She has no intention of living there.
- But she's very aware of her Jewish heritage.
- And one of the things that she was going out with a boy who--
- boy-- a young man, tall man, who is also an electrical engineer,
- but he wasn't Jewish.
- He was German.
- They have a good relationship.
- He was German only second or third generation.
- But she broke up with him, I think, over emotional issues.
- And she's now going with a Jewish boy, Mexican, who
- is getting his PhD on Sunday.
- And so we're going down to Stanford to do that.
- And she's become a different person.
- She's become much more relaxed.
- She's always been extremely intense.
- She takes very much after me.
- Physically, she looks like her mother.
- But she takes after me.
- And my son, in terms of character,
- takes after my ex-wife.
- And so they're both--
- Steve, I think, given the opportunity,
- would probably want to learn something about the Holocaust
- up to a certain point.
- He doesn't have a very long attention span.
- Andrea, on the other hand, would study it from beginning to end.
- And as I say, perhaps because she is learning Hebrew,
- or has learned Hebrew, she may very well
- take up Jewish history.
- She's been to Israel several times.
- If there was a message then that you'd
- like to give them about the Holocaust,
- could you tell us what that might be?
- Yeah, don't ever let it happen again.
- I think that's the motive of the state of Israel,
- that they're not going to permit that to happen again.
- And I have no prescription on how you avoid it.
- In fact I think, although there were pogroms dating back
- hundreds of years in Poland and Eastern Europe,
- I thought that the country of Beethoven and Goethe
- would have thought of itself sufficiently well-bred
- not to fall for this kind of propaganda.
- But if it happens again, how do you anticipate it
- until it's too late?
- It is very, very difficult to foresee this.
- To be quite frank, I am very worried about this coming
- election.
- And I'm worried about Mr. Perot.
- Because I see this as a potential,
- I'm not saying it's going to happen,
- but at least as a potential for a change from our present form
- of democratic government to something less democratic.
- Without singling out Perot, are you
- saying that the process that seems to be unfolding
- is a bit scary, that somehow an unknown, relatively
- unknown person with some clever messages
- seems to be creating this mass movement?
- Well, what worries me more--
- the mass movement, I don't know.
- What worries me more is Mr. Perot.
- I'm sorry.
- I have to pick him.
- Not him as an individual, but him as a class, or character.
- Fair enough.
- A person who apparently is not used to any kind of opposition,
- who is not used to somebody saying you
- can't do it this way, and we'll stop you from doing this way.
- He'll just run roughshod over them.
- That's what I read into what he has done up to now and getting
- to where he is.
- If I may go back a few years, I mean, it's probably not
- all that dissimilar to the Kingfish, whom
- you may remember, Huey Long, who was well on his way
- to becoming a demagogue until he was assassinated.
- And certainly I don't believe in assassination.
- I'm worried about it.
- Maybe I'm wrong.
- Maybe I'm overly concerned.
- But to me, the absence of a mechanism of governance,
- which I don't see in Mr. Perot, how
- is he going to attract the loyal votes of the Congress,
- you know, which he needs?
- And what happens if the Congress stymies him?
- I'm looking back at FDR.
- When that happened, he tried to pack the Supreme Court.
- He didn't succeed, but it would have been a terrible blow
- to the basic constitutional principals of the United
- States.
- So you hope you're wrong.
- But this sort of thing brings up some chills
- or some uncomfortable feelings?
- I can see some similarities.
- And I'm certain Mr. Perot has not expressed any prejudices
- that he would proceed against Jews
- or, for that matter, any other minority,
- except homosexuals apparently.
- And he's backpedaling on that one.
- But it's something.
- To me, the country that would be least
- likely to have an experience like Hitler
- would be Great Britain.
- I think their constitutional democracy
- is stronger than ours.
- In part, I think, because the military in this country
- have had such a very strong position.
- And I can only refer you to something
- like Seven Days in May.
- I don't know if that is a book or movie that you're
- familiar with.
- But it certainly laid out the scenario
- for takeover of the government by a combination
- of some despots and the military.
- And this is an unusual situation politically.
- But I'm not sure that I can draw enough parallels between this
- and Germany to say that it is really deeply disturbing.
- The experiences that I had in Germany
- was that it was not something that happened from one day
- to the next.
- It was an insidious, gradual experience for me, at any rate.
- That all of a sudden, without realizing it,
- I was at the edge of a cliff.
- And this would be something, I think,
- that people would be extremely difficult--
- find it extremely difficult to guard against.
- If you have a confrontation, OK, you
- know where you stand right here and now.
- But as a slow erosion of your rights, of your social life,
- of your economic capabilities, you always
- say, well, this isn't all that important.
- I can live with it.
- And when does a cup become full?
- And when you look at the Holocaust, which after all,
- I don't see this.
- Some people are still denying that it existed.
- To me, I mean, how can anybody even say this?
- We had a contender for the presidency,
- Duke, down in Louisiana, who claimed it didn't exist.
- So there will be people who will deny it.
- And there will be people, when they are thinking
- of a scenario that might produce something like that,
- are going to be very careful to keep it under wraps
- until perhaps it is too late.
- And you ask what can you do?
- How do you guard against it?
- I don't know.
- I'm not that smart.
- One thing one can do, of course, if one
- recognizes that this is about to occur, you can emigrate.
- But then, of course, you may completely
- destroy economic security that you've built up.
- So it's an individual thing.
- The motivation for doing something
- depends entirely upon the temperature
- of the fire behind you.
- Said like a true engineer.
- Well.
- One of the things you said a few moments ago
- was about how it built up in Germany so slowly.
- And--
- OK.
- We need 10 seconds, and we can start.
- What I was going to ask you is about a comment
- you made a few moments ago about what
- happened in Germany and the slowness of the buildup.
- And I was going to say that I'd heard from other survivors
- how this was part of the explanation to the question
- why didn't you leave when you had a chance.
- And they often will say that it built up so slowly they really
- didn't know or couldn't believe what was going to happen.
- And I was wondering about your comments on that.
- Well, it's not necessarily that we couldn't believe
- that it couldn't happen, but the erosion of our rights,
- of our mode of living, of our economic security
- was so slow, so gradual, that you never
- had a fixed point where you could say now life is so bad.
- We've got to take a drastic step and do something about it,
- like emigrating.
- For example, I was allowed to go to the gymnasium
- simply because of the accident of my father's having
- been wounded in World War I. So my education
- wasn't interrupted.
- Other Jews had to go to a Jewish school, school
- taught by Jews, only Jews allowed to go to it, et cetera.
- And perhaps they could feel more definitively
- that there was a gulf between them and the rest of society.
- And because I was not physically abused all that much,
- I did not have a personal sense of urgency
- that I needed to get out.
- And of course, again, I was nine when it all happened.
- And I'm sure things didn't really
- get bad until I was about 11.
- So 1935, perhaps, is when there were major manifestations
- against the Jews.
- And of course, I was not there for the Kristallnacht.
- My parents were, and I think that gave them
- the impetus to get out.
- And as you pointed out earlier, they
- were among the Jews who did pick up on the early signs
- and did try at least to save you and later themselves.
- On the other hand, I know people who got out in 1934
- and '35, who saw sufficient indications
- in the policies of the Nazi party and Hitler
- that they predicted that it would be impossible
- for them to continue there.
- Einstein, for example, just to pick an individual.
- Yeah.
- There were others.
- I know some people, some of my colleagues, who left.
- And there was, at Berkeley, not a Jew,
- but a representative of the Reichstag before it
- was disbanded.
- And he was of a political stripe that was anathema to Hitler,
- so he left.
- And so he may have been Jewish at that.
- I'm not sure.
- And you know, while the Holocaust was extremely
- largely directed against Jews, there
- were others that suffered also--
- Sure.
- --Catholics and those that didn't deserve to be left
- alive, like Gypsies or whatever.
- And I have no idea--
- and this has often worried me and I've wondered about it--
- just how much influence that the availability of funds, money,
- have on the fate of people who wanted to leave.
- In other words, if there was a Jewish family that said, OK,
- even as late as 1939 before the war actually broke out,
- if I were to give you 10 million marks from funds
- that I have abroad, will you let my family go?
- These are always questions that you ask yourself.
- So I don't know if there was any single item or any series
- of events that could have foretold
- us the seriousness of the potential situation,
- namely the eradication of everything
- Jewish within the confines of Germany
- and the countries they controlled.
- Not just the death of the people,
- but the death of the philosophy, of the culture, of the history.
- I was very surprised when I was in Prague, for example,
- to find that in a city where a very large number of Czechs
- died, Lidice, for example, to find the Jewish synagogue
- intact, in the basement of this building
- to find the Jewish cemetery intact
- and to find the stones on the gravestone of Rabbi Loew.
- And I placed one there, too.
- When I was in Germany nine months ago,
- I placed a stone or two on the grave
- of my uncle and my grandmother.
- And even though I lost the photographs,
- I'm hoping that this woman will go and photograph them
- again and send them to me.
- What was that like going back?
- Had you gone back before or was--
- This is about the sixth or seventh time
- I've visited Dusseldorf.
- I had not originally intended to visit Dusseldorf this time.
- For the last seven years prior to this year, six years before,
- I'd had a contact, a search contact,
- with a French company, which required me to show up there
- once a year and present the results of my research
- in French in the vicinity of Paris.
- And so since it always was in December or January, which
- is not a very good time to go, I begged off the year before.
- And I had to go this time because it was the last year
- and the final report.
- And this woman had written to me, Dr. Barbara Sushi,
- who I will give you some documentation for.
- And she had asked me all these questions about my family.
- What were their politics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?
- What was our lifestyle?
- And I decided, rather than trying
- to respond to a questionnaire that extensive,
- that I would take the time to go through Dusseldorf
- and simply speak with her.
- And I wrote her this.
- So I came up from Zurich and spent
- two days, two nights with her, answered her questions.
- And she took me to the cemetery and showed me these graves.
- And it made a profound impression on me.
- I had not realized, for example, that my uncle had
- been a very highly thought of soldier in World War I.
- His regiment put in a big notice in the newspaper about him.
- I don't have that with me because she showed it to me.
- And so all of these memories came back to the fore.
- I have a vague memory of one funeral,
- but I don't even know where it was now.
- But anyhow, going back there awoke a lot of the memories
- that I had from my childhood days.
- And it was a cathartic experience, I think.
- So your question, however--
- I'm digressing again-- was what did my children want
- to know about the Holocaust?
- And--
- Or what would you like them to know?
- I'd like to hear both answers.
- Well, my children, of course, are primarily--
- Excuse me, I'm having a very--
- we need about 5 seconds here.
- OK, we were having a little sound trouble
- just a moment ago.
- So let me repeat the question, which
- you began to reply to having to do
- with what you'd like your kids to know
- and what they may want to know.
- I think my children certainly want
- to take the context of the Holocaust
- in its entirety, the enormity of the crimes
- that were committed, without necessarily knowing
- who individually perished and that this was the deliberate
- intent of the government of a nation to eradicate everything
- that had to do with Judaism.
- And as far as the context with regard to my family
- is concerned, they would like to know who perished, when,
- approximately at any rate, as best as we can find out.
- I have told them again and again that I am not
- in a position to supply them with grandparents because
- of what happened.
- The desire of my son to look into this, I think,
- is very spasmodic, as I already mentioned.
- I don't think he wants to look into it in any systematic way.
- But for that matter that he wants
- to have any knowledge more than it
- is the worst thing in the world to be a Nazi
- or to have been a Nazi, then anything that reinforces this
- for whatever purposes he wished to use it for
- would be useful to him.
- My daughter would probably want to know
- a bit more about why, perhaps, they were unable to escape.
- Now, in spite of the fact that my parents made
- very sensible evasive moves, they were caught.
- I do not to this date as to why they were caught.
- Maybe my father spoke incautiously somewhere.
- Maybe they were just too systematic.
- And I'm sure my daughter would like
- to know that as to what it was that caused
- them to be eventually caught.
- Beyond that, having been born in the United States
- and, in particular, in California,
- I'm not so sure that can relate directly
- to other Holocaust survivors or children of Holocaust
- survivors.
- It's very difficult. You have to be of a certain generation
- in order to know what happened, to know the pressure
- that you had on you psychologically,
- physically, mentally, whatever.
- They didn't have that.
- They never did.
- They're born too late.
- So my youngest daughter has asked me much more
- about Judaism than she has about the Holocaust.
- She liked to know the basis of Judaism
- in terms of the religious significances, what it means
- socially, what it means in terms of a code of ethics,
- a mode of life, and so on.
- She's aware of the fact, as are we all,
- that the Jews in one area are as different from the Jewish
- as another area as the Eskimos are from the Patagonians.
- So there is no uniformity in this,
- but the Jewish culture does have a very tremendous value.
- It's my hope that someday she may want to read about this.
- She has not been educated on any religious basis
- either by my wife or by myself, my wife
- being the very unrepentant Presbyterian.
- So she doesn't go to any services either.
- And so we do have the difference in terms of personality
- and in terms of the heritage, that two of them
- are fully Jewish and one of them is only half-Jewish.
- And I cannot, as yet--
- my daughter, younger daughter is 15 and 1/2.
- I cannot yet perceive the intensity of any desire to know
- about these things.
- She'd like to know what my parents were like.
- Do any of the traits that they exhibited--
- are they represented in me?
- Are they represented in her?
- Are they represented in her siblings?
- What did they do for a living?
- How did they take their free time, their spare time,
- and use it?
- When I was a child, now, in Germany--
- and again, this goes back to a different question--
- my father and I used to take the train on Saturdays
- early in the morning, 10 o'clock.
- We'd take it out of town for a ways,
- and then we'd walk in the woods for hours on end,
- take the train back, something that I recall vividly.
- This wasn't an isolated instance.
- It happened again and again and again.
- It's not something that I've done with my children,
- particularly.
- And again, it was something that could
- be done without getting out of the narrow confines
- that Jews were allowed to operate in.
- I've not been specifically asked what
- the Holocaust consisted of.
- I'm sure they know.
- Well, my younger daughter was in Jerusalem.
- She went through the Yad Vashem.
- My wife, my younger daughter, and I
- were in Paris at the Holocaust Memorial there.
- And we went through that and the Marais quarter of Paris.
- We plan to go to Dusseldorf-- and by we,
- it's probably just my wife and I.
- Because I've set up an arrangement whereby they will
- invite a former resident of Dusseldorf
- back at their expense to either participate
- in a week long group tour of the memorials
- and what has been done to make up for the Holocaust,
- to compensate, or else an individual visit.
- And we are planning on doing that perhaps next year
- if and when our house gets rebuilt. So
- I don't think my younger daughter would be coming along
- with that.
- You collected a number of documents over the years,
- and I noticed you have some here.
- Do you have anything that relates
- to the death of your parents that you'd
- be willing to share with us?
- Surely.
- I was in Holland in 1953 on my first sabbatical
- from the university with my first wife.
- We went to the Dutch Red Cross.
- At that time, there were still some people
- who had survived, or had been out of the country
- and who had come back.
- For example, I have the closest living relative
- is a first cousin once removed.
- And she was in Holland, and she went to Australia
- during the war and then came back.
- And there were other people.
- For example, it's a long distance relationship,
- but my uncle, who had married my father's sister,
- had a sister-in-law who was alive
- the first time that we came back to Holland in 1953.
- And she told us about who was survived,
- who had survived and who hadn't.
- At that time, I went to the Dutch Red Cross in The Hague
- and asked them to supply me with formal documents
- of the death of my parents.
- And I'm not sure whether I received those at the time
- or whether they were mailed to me,
- but I have them in front of me now.
- They're dated 19 January, 1954.
- And they are in German, and I'll be
- very happy to try to translate them if you'd like.
- We'd appreciate that.
- All right.
- This is from the Informations Bureau of the Dutch Red
- Cross located--
- it's the Netherlands National Tracing Bureau located
- in [? 's-Gravenhage. ?] That's The Hague.
- And I've already indicated the date.
- It said certification.
- The signatory, who is the director of the Informations
- Bureau of the Netherlands Red Cross,
- hereby documents that, according to the information
- available to him, Siegfried Goldschmidt, born 18 November,
- 1883 in Dortmund.
- Last residence, Breda [GERMAN],, which means burgermeister,
- [GERMAN] 6, was sent on the 8th of January,
- 1944 into the camp at small Westerbork and was,
- for reasons of race and particularly because of his
- Jewish heritage, sent on the 25th of January,
- 1944 [SPEAKING GERMAN] Westerbork deported
- to Auschwitz.
- This person is considered to have died on 28th January, 1944
- in Auschwitz.
- On the 2nd of August, 1951, at the City Hall
- in Breda and, in particular, the Bureau of Licenses
- and Marriages, as a result of a notification
- in the Dutch official newspaper of the same date,
- that the death has been certified
- by the appropriate authority and that this refers to the person
- indicated in the present document.
- It should still be mentioned that, as soon
- as the period prescribed by law of three months has passed,
- the execution of this death certificate has resulted
- and appropriate copies can be obtained
- by the competent authority at that residence.
- And it is signed by the director whose name is [? J. ?] Van Der
- Vosse, V-O-S-S-E. And you are welcome to make a copy of this.
- Thank you.
- The second is a very similar notification.
- If you'd like me to read it, I will.
- But it deals with my mother, whose name
- is Margarethe Goldschmidt Grunewald, Grunewald
- being her maiden name, born on 24 August, 1894 in Cologne.
- And the last residence, again, in Breda
- at this burgermeister [GERMAN] 6.
- And the dates and the comments for the rest of this
- are identical to what I just read.
- So those are the official notifications
- or death certificates and can be so considered in a legal sense.
- You received compensation?
- Do you want to talk about that?
- Yes.
- I did not want to go into this particularly because I thought
- it would bring up some unpleasant memories
- and experiences.
- I was strongly urged by a portion
- of my distant relatives, particularly those
- in New Orleans, to pursue this.
- Because they said, you don't have much.
- You might as well take advantage of what is legally yours.
- And in particular, it made it less personally unpleasant
- because I was able to hire a lawyer who
- took this case for 10% of the recovery.
- And he was in Dusseldorf and in London.
- He moved from one to the other.
- And all I had to do is get some certifications
- from the authorities here at the General Consulate.
- What this involved was some compensation
- for the loss or the, shall we say, taking of the business
- by the Nazi of my parents and, personally,
- the loss of educational rights and financial compensation
- for that.
- If I had stayed in Germany, I would presumably
- have been able to receive the education I received here
- for free.
- But, see, I had to work and do other things.
- There were additional legal actions
- that were filed that had to do with being
- an heir to the property of others.
- And there were at least two from which I
- have some documentation here--
- all of this is in German, too.
- One of them had to relate to the sister of my mother, whose
- death preceded the--
- actually, no, it succeeded the death of the person
- from whom she inherited property.
- Those are very complicated sort of things.
- But I learned at least some of the names of the people
- involved, and yet other people whose names appear on here I've
- never heard of, never had any contact with since or before.
- They were just that distant.
- So some additional sums were sent to me.
- The whole schmear didn't amount to more
- than, at the most, a couple of thousand dollars,
- a few thousand marks.
- You say this is particularly difficult to talk about.
- No, not today.
- I thought you were saying a few moments ago
- you hoped they hadn't come up here.
- Maybe I misunderstood [INAUDIBLE]..
- No, no.
- My thought was that, originally when I engaged in this--
- I see.
- --that I didn't want to do it because I thought it would
- awaken unpleasant memories.
- But we're talking about 40 years ago.
- I see now.
- I misunderstood you.
- And today, I have found my niche and a lot
- of other both very pleasant and very unpleasant things
- have happened since.
- Perhaps you can help me understand what happened to,
- perhaps maybe not your family's property,
- but property in general that Jewish families lost.
- They didn't sell before they left.
- They just left, or it was taken from them.
- Did the German government try to give that back?
- Or what happened to those titles?
- Do you know?
- No.
- As far as I know, with exceptional cases of huge firms
- where maybe the title is still up in the air,
- what happened was that the German government confiscated
- the property, whether it was a business
- or the personal properties, even,
- you know, furniture, whatever, pianos.
- They just confiscated them.
- And as best as I know, some determination
- was made as to the value of that property.
- And if the people could be found and then could
- document that they were entitled to compensation,
- then the German government did make an effort to do this.
- Did they try to give the property back
- in some instances?
- No, they tried to compensate for it.
- Pay money for it, not give it back.
- Pay money for it.
- No, there's probably no good way that the property
- could have been given back.
- In exceptional cases, of course, that's different.
- My former student had artwork that was preserved in some,
- oh, underground storage vault. That's still available,
- as it was then.
- But an antique desk probably was blown to bits
- if a bomb hit it whether it had been confiscated or not.
- But if it had been confiscated prior to that,
- the people were entitled to compensation.
- There were all kinds of compensations.
- I did not want to get into the details.
- And I'll tell you why.
- I had a relative.
- And in fact, it was a cousin of my father
- down in New Orleans, who made an absolute fetish out
- of this thing.
- I mean, it became the overriding drive
- of his life to make sure he was going
- to be compensated for every single cent to which he
- was entitled.
- Well, there's more to life than this.
- When you can think only of this one modus operandi,
- it becomes very sad for your surrounding people.
- And I didn't want to be in that position.
- So I did have reservations about engaging in it at all.
- And it was only because I was pushed
- that I did agree to this relatively limited amount
- of recovery that I obtained.
- I did not check into any way whether or not
- I was entitled to more.
- It just didn't occur to me.
- How do you feel when you think the value of both
- of your parents amounted to just a few hundred dollars?
- No, I don't think that's a fair way
- to put it even by the German government's restitution.
- They did not place a value on the life of people
- as far as I know.
- I was compensated for specific items
- that did not involve life.
- There's no way that you can possibly
- value the life of anybody in terms of dollars.
- If people were compensated by this sort of thing,
- by a mechanism that put a dollar value on life,
- I would feel very, very upset about that.
- Of course, we do it in this country
- all the time in every court when somebody is
- killed, an automobile accident.
- They put a value on that life.
- And perhaps, if we do it, we shouldn't judge others so
- harshly by it either.
- But I personally would feel that I would not feel comfortable
- with any sum that would be possibly.
- Did you ever receive a letter of apology
- from the German government?
- No, not that I recall.
- I think what I received in terms of some of these things
- were oblique references to the fact
- that they regretted the situation that occurred,
- but I certainly have no official letter of apology.
- And well, it's difficult to imagine that this can be done.
- The people who would write the letters
- now are not the people who perpetrated those crimes.
- I don't see how you can, as an outside observer,
- write and say, well, this person did wrong.
- And I'm sorry he did it, and I apologize on his behalf.
- It's something that happened that is gruesome and horrible
- and all this.
- And trying to apologize might make it worse.
- I mean, I'm sure that everybody who
- was seen what happened to people who died
- in Auschwitz and in Dachau--
- I mean, even now you can go.
- Occasionally, they show the graves
- with the millions, literally, of bodies in there
- and Eisenhower looking down at this and just not
- being able to talk.
- I mean, that speaks for itself.
- And then I don't see how you can apologize for it.
- It happened.
- It should never have happened.
- Certainly, everything has to be done to prevent it again.
- But saying I'm sorry I think is a somewhat inappropriate
- reaction to this kind of thing by somebody
- who was not directly involved.
- And you see, I, myself, had some questions on this.
- I still do.
- There was a time when I was very interested in a German girl.
- Now, she was two years old at the time the war broke out.
- Clearly, she herself could not have had any shape or influence
- on the war or whatever.
- But then as I thought about it in retrospect, we did break up.
- I thought to myself, well, what was transferred by osmosis?
- What consciously or unconsciously
- did she absorb from her parents or grandparents and so on
- or, for that matter, from even what
- was around in the way of books before they were all revised
- or whatever?
- Or when she went out and saw, let's
- say, the damage that was done to certain sections of Cologne,
- or Hamburg, or Dresden, or whatever--
- and say those damn Americans bombed the hell out of us.
- Why?
- Because we killed a few Jews, you know?
- It's an argument that might have been unconsciously transferred,
- although I hope it was never consciously transmitted.
- So this is a question in my mind.
- And I'm particularly disturbed right now
- by the renaissance of antisemitism in Germany.
- Now, I've been to Germany a number of times.
- And the people that I've talked to who are by and large some 20
- years younger or more younger than that,
- they abhor anything that has to do
- with Nazism, with the Holocaust, with antisemitism, et cetera.
- And I believe them.
- In fact, my daughter will be receiving next week
- the daughter of one of my friends and acquaintances
- in Freiburg, the same age.
- They've been corresponding by mail for the last year or so.
- And we will take her around for two weeks.
- I wouldn't do that if I had any feeling whatever
- of even the remotest sense that there was something wrong.
- These people are good people.
- They happen to be German.
- I think I'm a good person.
- I happen to be a Jew.
- And so you can't judge, I think, a generation
- that's passed the war by the same standards as the people
- that participated in the war.
- Now, I have the greatest of all possible respect
- for people who say, yes, we knew what was going on.
- Yes, we were members of the SR. If we had not been,
- we would have been killed.
- And we did not want to be killed.
- So we collaborated, participated,
- whatever you want.
- We did not do so happily.
- I can't say anything about it.
- The motive to stay alive is stronger than anything else.
- And if that is the truth, that they
- would have been either killed or very seriously maimed,
- or whatever, or incarcerated indefinitely,
- then I can understand their taking actions that
- nominally supported Hitler.
- I still don't condone killing anybody
- and certainly not any Holocaust action.
- But just being a Nazi or not being a Nazi,
- you have to look at opportunity, motivation, threats, et cetera.
- But the people that really bugged me are those that I know
- were active members of the party, enthusiastically so,
- and then deny it.
- This professor at Stanford, who's dead now,
- his wife, or scientist, was the head
- of the certain section of the aerodynamics section
- of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin
- during the time of Hitler.
- She'd never have gotten that position unless she
- was an enthusiastic Nazi.
- So for them to deny their knowledge
- of the actions and the fact that they
- contributed to this, perhaps in minor ways,
- but nevertheless contributed to the rise of Hitler
- and the consequence, resulting Holocaust,
- I mean, I could not countenance this.
- I've always felt extremely queasy
- about being even in his presence in the same room.
- So I have to judge these matters on an individual basis.
- And I know a lot of very, very nice people in Germany
- in their 50s or younger.
- You know, somebody who was born after the war,
- can you blame them for it?
- I don't see how.
- But it's an intellectual decision you have to make.
- A lot of people, including my first cousin once removed,
- will even now not travel through Germany.
- And she has hesitation about flying over it in an airplane.
- But it's because of the strength of the feeling about Germany.
- And I think this varies with each individual survivor
- of the Holocaust.
- Some of them will do exactly that what my cousin did,
- others may be even more aggressive.
- Still, others don't care, don't give Nazi schmazi, you know,
- if you ever followed Tom Lehrer's records.
- So, to me, I would say, if I knew somebody
- that was an active Nazi and who was
- doing so not under compulsion, I would-- well,
- I don't know how I would phrase it.
- I don't know if I would take an active part
- in trying to destroy him or whether I'd just ignore it.
- I certainly would have no contact at the very least.
- It's very difficult to isolate this.
- And you can't really go ahead and tell somebody,
- when they say I knew nothing about it--
- you can't just say you're a boldfaced liar because maybe he
- isn't.
- You can't be sure.
- So the things that I remember vividly
- as a child are these Nazi youth parades
- with the armbands and the swastika
- endlessly marching down with flags and martial music,
- the huge crowds in Nuremberg or in Berlin being addressed
- by Hitler from the balcony with a Heil Hitler, you know,
- and the almost mesmeric spell that he cast over the audience
- that they broke out spontaneously.
- And it is difficult to argue that someone can resist this
- unless they are really, shall we say, educated to do so.
- No.
- Many people in Germany left.
- Some tried to fight.
- Some died because they fought, not Jews.
- They died.
- There were at least two attempts to kill
- Hitler in the early time.
- There was [? Rohm. ?] And there later on the story
- during the war.
- The general staff tried to kill him.
- But in both cases, I'm not sure this
- was done out of humane motives.
- I think it was done out of the motive
- that the general staff felt that Hitler was leading them
- down the garden path, that Germany would be defeated.
- And they would be out of business.
- They would not be able to do anything again
- for another couple of generations, which
- is an entirely different reason in saying
- I want this man removed because he's a threat to humanity.
- And the question that one can raise
- is supposing Hitler had won the war in Europe,
- supposing the United States in its isolationism
- had waited another five years.
- He'd overrun England.
- And they would have drawn some sort of line in Russia
- and say, OK, that's enough on this side.
- So he would have gone from Istanbul
- all the way to Edinburgh.
- And what would we have done then, the thousand year Reich?
- It's frightening.
- You see, the idea of the Holocaust,
- as far as I'm concerned, cannot, can simply not,
- be separated from Nazism, from the political aspect of what
- Hitler was intending to do.
- I think it's all a part of it.
- I mean, the Holocaust served as a wonderful, one wonderful,
- scapegoat.
- In other words, the result, that resulted in the Holocaust--
- that the Jews were the culprits.
- And so if we get rid of them, we'll
- have rid the world of a horrible influence.
- But that was part and parcel of the superiority
- of the Aryan race, so-called.
- The Jews weren't Aryans.
- I don't think I've ever seen a definition of Aryan
- that I've agreed with, but it was
- something that became a part of you
- as you looked at what was going on in Germany.
- And for me, it was particularly so
- after I looked at it backwards, not at the time I was there,
- but after I had come to the United States.
- You see some of the things that I did as a child.
- Let's see, am I getting too far?
- Where were we going, the Holocaust?
- And--
- You're doing just fine.
- I'd like to ask you.
- You mentioned you had the opportunity
- to go to Auschwitz to visit.
- I had the opportunity.
- In fact, I was strongly urged.
- I was in Poland at a national meeting
- of my professional area, and they were very incensed
- that I refused to go.
- But why?
- They said it's a national shrine.
- You should go.
- We've gone through a great deal of trouble
- to get visitors to see what has gone on here.
- But this was before I actually went to the Yad Vashem.
- But I knew I couldn't go in there.
- It was too personal, too intimate, too--
- maybe there was the key to that box
- I was trying to keep locked that I didn't
- want to let the genie out.
- Are you ever going to let it out?
- I don't know.
- At this point, probably not to be honest.
- I've talked this over with my wife.
- There's a Jewish psychiatrist who
- told my wife he'd love to have me as his patient.
- And my wife told him, well--
- she almost slapped him.
- She said, you know, I like him just fine the way he is.
- And if there was ever anything of that nature, of course,
- this would have to be aired.
- I'm not sure it's worth it.
- I mean, I've lived my life.
- I don't have that many more years left.
- I think I've accomplished something.
- I didn't talk much about that, but that's another story.
- I've got a family.
- I've got the respect of my colleagues.
- I've got an international reputation.
- So why endanger this by starting to torment yourself about what
- might have been or how I should have perhaps reacted under
- different circumstances when I didn't?
- I see no point to it.
- So let it be locked up.
- I'm talking about all of these things
- without getting emotional.
- And so I think I've come to grips and have
- a bottom line for this situation that I accept
- that I am what I am with all the warts that exist in part
- because of my history, my heritage, and so on,
- in part because of me, the individual that's inside.
- And in looking back, I'm not dissatisfied.
- I take satisfaction in my accomplishments,
- both personally and professionally.
- And so my regrets are the things I no longer can
- do that I enjoyed, like skiing, which I learned in Europe,
- loved it, took it up here.
- And my back is so bad.
- I can't handle that anymore.
- The other thing is that, in looking back
- at Europe and the things that I've locked up, what did I do?
- I lost two first cousins and their husbands
- and their children.
- I've lost my aunt and uncle, my aunt being the one--
- my father's sister.
- I've lost my aunt on my mother's side.
- My uncle on my mother's side died a natural death.
- My grandfather, I have no idea, 91, 92,
- maybe it was natural in Westerbork, maybe not.
- He's listed in that book.
- So having been an only child, I don't
- have this broad spectrum of close relatives
- that I am mourning for.
- And yes, my parent's death hit me very, very hard.
- And when you have to not only realize that you cannot reverse
- having left Germany and never seeing them again, but you,
- at the same time, have to fight a somewhat hostile environment,
- it gets to be a fairly sizable amount of baggage that you have
- to carry around.
- So I no longer have any fears or hesitations or anything
- about going to Germany.
- I do have fears about a rise of Nazism,
- but not necessarily there alone.
- I think just as likely here.
- And as times economically get worse,
- you're going to find scapegoats.
- Not that this is relevant, but I testified in the Rodney King
- trial as an expert on facial injuries.
- And when I think about what happened down there
- as a result of economic frustrations--
- which were fused by this incident,
- but the causes are still there.
- And the same thing is true of the causes of antisemitism.
- And surely one cannot separate the Holocaust and antisemitism
- period.
- I mean, the two are inseparable.
- And yet, pogroms have been going on,
- I don't know, from time immemorial.
- We had the Inquisition in Spain, which
- certainly focused on the Jews.
- We had the problems in Poland for centuries on, the Warsaw
- ghetto.
- And so Judaism is tough.
- Thank God it's tough.
- It would have died out a long time ago.
- Because as a rule, I find that the Jews--
- along with the Chinese, by the way--
- place tremendous value on education.
- And they place tremendous value on being
- able to use the education in a profitable way.
- But they also are pretty good at commerce.
- And because they're good at commerce,
- this causes some who are not so good at it
- to cast very jaundiced eyes at the success of Jews.
- And these are things that are mixed
- in with the antisemitic feelings and the consequent Holocaust
- that we have experienced.
- It's surprising to me how many cities
- are erecting Holocaust memorials and how many
- are asking active participation by people who still remember it
- and what they had to do.
- You've learned about my family.
- You haven't learned much about my actual work,
- but I can tell you a few things about that
- if you're interested.
- I would like you to do that.
- First of all, I'd like you to pause.
- And you're going to be part of history now, another part
- history.
- This tape is going to be watched by many people over the years.
- I want you to take a few moments to see if there's anything
- else you'd like to add.
- And also, of course, I would like you to say something
- about your accomplishment.
- Well, there are lots of things I can add.
- I mean, I felt that the departure from Germany
- represented just starting from square one,
- square zero, whichever game you happen to play.
- I came out with the equivalent of $2, my clothes,
- and a few stamps.
- I've had two other occasions in my life
- when I started from similar circumstances,
- but for entirely different reasons.
- However, they were not quite so--
- there were other cases when I was very much down.
- I'll just briefly mentioned the two cases
- that I feel were equivalent.
- One was after my second divorce, which
- left me emotionally and, in every other way,
- drained, financially in a extremely precarious position,
- although I was able to survive.
- And I had gained, if you can call it
- that, the intrinsic enmity of my former wife who tried her best
- and did succeed for many years to alienate my children from me
- and prevented normal contact.
- She couldn't prevent what was legally my right.
- But in every way, shape, or form,
- I was depicted as the devil incarnate.
- And it took 20 years to correct that.
- It did correct itself.
- Anyway, that's what I mean by starting from square one.
- The other one, of course, you know about the fire
- that happened seven months ago.
- We know, but perhaps our audience
- needs to be reminded about the fire you're speaking of.
- OK.
- We had a firestorm of unprecedented proportions
- in the history of the United States
- that occurred in the East Bay Hills on October 20, 1991.
- It resulted in the destruction of more than 3,000 homes,
- making more than 10,000 people homeless, as well as over 800
- apartments.
- And the area immediately afterwards
- when we were allowed back in looked worse than Hiroshima
- did the day after the bomb, of which I have some photographs.
- My wife and I were trying to fight
- by putting water on the roof and on the verandas.
- And we had maybe an hour to do this.
- And after 40 minutes, the water pressure gave out.
- The water was gone.
- And we knew we had lost the fight.
- By that time, it was too late to get
- any significant amount of material out of the house
- and into the cars.
- I was very lucky that I was there.
- Had it happened a week earlier, I
- would have been on my way from England
- to this country in an airplane.
- In any event, we were able to save maybe 2% of the things we
- had in the house or less.
- And so that was starting from square one
- except for the fact that I have a family, a loving family.
- I have a wife and children that I adore.
- I have a career that I've completed.
- And even though I don't have the papers
- that I wrote, because they all burned up,
- I'll be able to find them somewhere and Xerox them,
- get a few of them back anyway.
- I've gotten a lot of very nice scientific care packages.
- So this was the third time that I started out from zero.
- There were many times that I changed over drastically.
- The time I left the university to go to work in industry
- was a real milestone.
- The time I left Westinghouse to come here to teach
- was a real milestone.
- So these are promontories that I will not forget.
- As far as Europe is concerned, I have
- very distinct recollections of this one teacher
- who sort of took care of me, shepherded me.
- And we looked him up.
- I'm sure he's dead now.
- Last time, his wife had just died, and he refused to see us.
- But he was 88 at the time.
- And this is 1981, so I cannot believe that he's still around.
- I have tried throughout my life to find roots.
- It's been one of my motivations.
- And it's the thing that really drives
- me to ensure that this marriage is going to last because I
- am not happy as a bachelor.
- I just am not.
- And so we are talking about some of the things
- that I experienced from Germany in terms of being Jewish.
- I can remember the synagogue, which they burned.
- And I went back there, and it's, of course, no longer there.
- They have a new one, a small one.
- They built in a modern style in a different location.
- I think there are about 5,000 Jews back in Dusseldorf now,
- something or other, Dusseldorf and immediate surroundings.
- When I was in Germany a couple of years ago with a man
- whom I--
- he's a German and I like very much.
- He took me to a synagogue down in Baden,
- which is the southern part of Germany.
- This is a place that's very strange.
- As you know, Southern Germany is mostly Catholic.
- And the Catholics had it particularly in for the Jews,
- much more so than the Protestants.
- Well, this area where this synagogue was built
- is an area of a Protestant island
- inside a Catholic domain.
- And so this had a huge membership
- even though the people didn't necessarily live there.
- The place was destroyed during the war.
- It was reconstructed by Jewish funds that were given.
- The place is now available for worship
- in this tiny little town of less than 1,000 people.
- And so I was taken there as part of the memory of reminding me
- of my Jewishness and of how other Germans may
- feel about my being Jewish.
- And they told me the history of why this flourished there
- where it couldn't have flourished anywhere
- else in Southern Germany.
- So there are very clear reminders to me
- where, now it's where I came from.
- My family must have been a resident of Germany
- for many, many years many, many generations.
- I would like to try, as I say, to establish a genealogy,
- but that may not be so easy, especially
- with the possible destruction of documents.
- The thing that I would like to say
- is I could never live in Germany, never, never ever.
- I can visit there.
- I can even vacation there, but I cannot live there.
- And it reminds me too much.
- Every once in a while, I see characteristics
- that I associate with the Nazi party--
- the [INAUDIBLE] uniform, the clear and unquestioned
- obedience to authority, the repression of ideas.
- Now, it's not true of everybody.
- It's not true of the majority, perhaps.
- But I see it here and there as the nation's potential problem.
- You see enough of it.
- Yeah.
- So when do you forgive a country?
- Is two generations enough?
- And that's just about what we have at this point.
- I guess it ought to be if we can find that the people really
- are part of civilization the way it ought to be.
- You can take a look at this country.
- Take Skokie, Illinois and what's been happening there
- with the marches.
- We have an ACLU.
- I don't know that the Germans do or not.
- But Judaism, it's precious commodity the way
- I see it as a heritage.
- I, also, was in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem.
- I'm sure you've been there.
- My wife and I were there on a Saturday.
- I had a camera on my neck.
- And I was stoned just because I had a mechanical instrument
- there.
- So I'm afraid that doesn't strike
- me any happier than when I see people walking around
- with a Nazi flag.
- So extremes are not allowing you to live in peace.
- And you're not doing anything to them, This is, to me,
- the sign of extremism that I cannot tolerate,
- whether it's Jewish or some other fascistic kind of an air.
- And I also couldn't live in Israel.
- I've been there a number of occasions.
- And the only reason that holds Israel together as far
- as I can see is this combined, shall we say,
- idea of all surrounding countries
- that they want to destroy it that unifies the country.
- And they have to defend themselves against it.
- I mean, the Arabs outnumber the Jews 100 to 3.
- So it's necessary to be unified.
- But when you see the old settlers
- versus the new immigrants, when you
- see the Ashkenazi versus the Sephardim,
- when you see parties over there like a Black Panther Party--
- and they were there.
- I saw them march.
- When you see the rich and the relatively poor,
- when you see the kibbutzim against the city settlers,
- they all are pulling and pushing.
- When you see the arch, shall we say, protagonist to invade
- another country, fight, and so on,
- as opposed to the people who want peace, people
- who want to trade territory for peace
- against those who say absolutely not,
- it's surprising that there's any kind of functional government
- over there.
- And I have lots of friends in Israel.
- I spent myself a period of three months
- as a sabbatical in Haifa.
- And I've had four PhD students who are Israeli,
- working for the Israeli military who came and worked,
- took their PhD with me.
- They're very close friends.
- And they all, more or less, think the way I do,
- but they're the minority.
- That don't believe in [INAUDIBLE]..
- So that has to do also with Judaism and the Holocaust
- because that's tied up with the history.
- Israel has said, we will not ever
- let the Holocaust happen again.
- So, OK, how do we do that?
- We have a country that will take people in regardless and as
- long as they're Jewish.
- Well, you can do that until the point
- when there's no more room.
- And then what do you do?
- Well, you conquer your neighbors?
- You know, these are questions that we'll deal with
- whether or not we'll have another war that is intended
- to wipe out Jews or an action that's
- intended to wipe out Jews because they're Jews,
- not for any other reason.
- I don't have the answer to it, but these
- are things I do worry about.
- And again, I worry about them because it was part of history
- that I-- look, I was lucky beyond belief I'm alive today.
- And I'm alive today because I guess my parents sacrificed
- themselves for me.
- I'm not sure that's a precisely correct statement,
- but they certainly took actions that ensured my safety.
- And they tried to take actions that would help them,
- but they just didn't quite manage it.
- So I don't know how to interpret this.
- Do I look back on anything that happened
- in Europe with pleasure?
- I enjoyed the trips I took with my uncle, the skiing
- that I learned to do in Switzerland, the visit
- to Budapest at the time when that was a foreign territory.
- I visited Holland for seven consecutive summers
- and spent it with my aunt in Dordrecht--
- not the entire summer, perhaps, but several weeks.
- And I actually learn to speak Dutch.
- I have to tell you this which resulted from this visit.
- My uncle by marriage is Dutch.
- His brother, also lived in the town, is Dutch.
- The two were in business together
- in this town, Dordrecht.
- And they had a son and a daughter.
- And the son-- the daughter went to Aruba
- during the war with her family and, thereby, escaped.
- The son was caught and stayed in Holland.
- The parents were killed in Auschwitz.
- And he was very dark complexion.
- And when he was questioned about his antecedents,
- he pretended to be Indonesian.
- There were a lot of Indonesians in Holland.
- And he managed somehow to convince them
- that he was in Indonesian because of his swarthiness.
- But I think that stuck with him because he was Jewish.
- When he saw his neighbors being taken off to Auschwitz
- and he was left there, I think it affected his psyche, just as
- someone I know that was affected by the Holocaust
- in this particular fashion.
- So everybody has different stories to tell.
- As a young child, I used to go canoeing and-- not
- canoeing in the present sense, but more like kayaking.
- It's not quite the same as kayaking,
- but it's not like canoeing either.
- You know, it was very enjoyable.
- I remember that.
- So these are pleasure times that I recall from Germany.
- As far as my family is concerned,
- there was never any overt expressions of
- or, shall we say, affection the way this has become normal
- in this country of late.
- I don't think this happened here 100 years ago either.
- But it is a European trait that you
- don't show affection in public even before relatives.
- So I'm sure my father and my mother
- had a good working marriage.
- My grandfather was a dean of the group.
- He was highly respected by many people.
- I think he and my mother had an entente cordiale.
- They got along.
- In the process, my father was somewhat overshadowed.
- That's my recollection.
- And I'm not sure that I can say, well, what
- his opinions were recognized.
- And I think my father was a very bright individual.
- And my mother was a very beautiful woman
- and a very talented woman.
- Neither of them were educated.
- I'm the first person ever from my family
- to have a college education.
- So these are just things I'm throwing in
- as they occur to me.
- And you know, I'm digging up an awful lot of things
- that aren't necessarily painful, but they've
- been buried under some layers.
- Keep digging.
- Yeah, I'll keep on digging.
- I recall going to Brussels in 1936
- at the time of the death of Queen Astrid.
- It made a very strong impression on me
- how this little nation of Belgium
- really mourned the loss of their queen.
- And I remember that we tried to get to Paris once,
- and we never made it.
- So I didn't get to Paris until after the war
- even though it was relatively close by.
- The area around Dusseldorf--
- oh, we used to go swimming in the Rhine.
- Today, the thing is so polluted that, if you went in there,
- you'd have to put on some sort of a diving outfit
- because you can't stand the water pollution and everything
- else that's in there.
- It was a relatively beautiful city.
- As I went back to Dusseldorf, there
- was still a lot of places there that
- were recognizable from before the war.
- They had apparently not destroyed it to the extent
- that they had, for example, Hamburg and Dresden.
- There were some parts of the old city that were still there.
- And some parts very clearly were not the--
- Of the three residences that I saw, two of them
- were bombed out.
- The other one was still standing.
- The zoo where I went as a small child was gone.
- Because during the war, they couldn't feed the animals.
- So rather than see them suffer, they destroyed them.
- They never reconstructed the zoo.
- They have, now, a university in Dusseldorf,
- which they didn't have when I was there as a child.
- In fact, the husband of this woman
- writing the history of the Jews was a professor of physics
- there.
- My second cousin in Liverpool, MD, his mother was a dentist.
- And she was very good friends with my mother
- even after she divorced my father's cousin.
- And so John and I knew each other throughout.
- And I kept seeing him whenever I went to England.
- I made a special effort to see him this time.
- And I called him once in a while.
- His mother did the dentistry on me up to a certain age,
- and then I guess she didn't want to do it anymore.
- I went to somebody else.
- I have a picture of me somewhere--
- I think it's here--
- when I was possibly one-year-old with my mother
- walking down what is now the most famous street in all
- of Germany in terms of what they call [GERMAN],,
- high society, very expensive shop.
- And it wasn't quite that [GERMAN]
- or special before the war, but it still was well-known.
- The city itself was rather beautiful,
- but this woman that I've alluded to was living there.
- When I told her that my father and I had
- gone from this particular railroad station, which
- was a small local railroad station, when we took
- our walks, she said, well, you know,
- that's where they loaded the Jews when they
- were destined for Auschwitz.
- And that ruined any chance that I ever wanted
- to take another look there.
- I tried to find my high-- well, gymnasiums, not high school,
- excuse me, gymnasium, which is gone.
- There's another school there, but it's not the same thing.
- And I tried to get some documents out
- of there, which I think I may even have in my file here,
- giving the grades that I had made for entry here.
- And it was remarked that I had emigrated to the United States.
- My memories of the school are neutral.
- The teacher helped a lot.
- The students were hostile, but perhaps that
- was to be expected.
- So there will be lots of memories.
- I spent a couple of weeks in the summer in the Baltic
- on the Baltic Sea when I was a small child.
- It's the only time I ever went through Berlin.
- I've not been back to Berlin.
- And I don't remember too much.
- This was in the early '30s.
- Switzerland is very clear.
- Hungary is very clear.
- I've been back through Europe maybe 8 or 10 times,
- each time renting a car and just going all over the place, twice
- with my wife, the other times alone
- looking for some of the places that I was when I was a child.
- So these are things that will come up again and again
- and again in my mind, the names of the towns I visited.
- Since my residency in Berkeley, I went over to Europe
- first in 1953 on a sabbatical, my first sabbatical.
- I went to Wales and spent 3 and 1/2 months there
- and one month in Cambridge in England at a time
- when you still were essentially in starvation rations.
- I mean, it was eight years after the war,
- but they were 100 years behind us in terms of recovery--
- and then London, and then a trip through a couple
- of countries in Europe, Paris, Germany, Switzerland, Holland.
- I went again in 1960 on a sabbatical.
- This time, I just took a car and drove all over Europe.
- I spent my sabbatical giving lectures in various places,
- ditto for 1967.
- But I went over in 1968 and 1970 for just a couple of months
- during the summer.
- I lectured at a couple of French institutions.
- 1973, my wife and I got married.
- We've known each other since '71.
- We went together to Hawaii in 1971, to Europe in 1972,
- to Europe again in 1973 and we got married, to Europe
- again in 1974 after marriage, and went to Greece
- and spent a year in Athens on a sabbatical.
- And we took the opportunity to go to Israel.
- And we were invited to Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, et cetera.
- Then between '74 and '81, I went a couple of times.
- But in 1981, we went back to Greece, to Patras,
- for a year of sabbatical and spent
- the whole time coming and going, touring Europe, giving
- a number of lectures and so on and so forth,
- and then again went to Israel in 1986 on a three month
- fellowship to the Technion in Haifa.
- And then in 1987, in December, I retired.
- But during 1985, '86, '87, '88, each year in December I
- had to go to Paris.
- And I would do something else besides going to Paris doing
- some more visits, going to Brussels, going to London,
- going to Freiburg.
- And then, again, I was over there two years ago.
- I'm sorry.
- I was over there in 1988 with my wife and my daughter.
- And we spent two weeks at Christmas time,
- and that was very enjoyable.
- And then I went over again in 1991.
- That was in September of last year.
- And the way I arranged that trip,
- this was my final report to this company on this research.
- I had arranged it so I could, on the way
- over, attend my 50th high school reunion where
- I met this woman that I told you about who
- was asked by these people how they
- should treat a 13-year-old coming from Germany.
- So on the way to Europe and to give my last report,
- I stopped off and visited two of my high school chums.
- And then we went to this reunion.
- And I went to Paris and gave my report.
- And then I went to Poitiers, Lyon, Val d'Isere,
- Albertville, Switzerland, Zurich went to give another talk,
- Freiburg gave a talk.
- Then I went to Dusseldorf where I met this woman.
- Amsterdam-- gave a in London, gave a talk in Cambridge,
- gave a talk in Liverpool, then came back.
- So it's been generally fairly professionally.
- Yeah.
- I wanted to tell you just a few things about what I consider
- to be the highlights of my professional career of 45
- years as a professor at the University of California.
- Please.
- The thing that I've specialized in is the subject of impact.
- I systematized the field.
- I got it started on a plane so that other people can
- work from it.
- Now, I wrote a book on that subject,
- which made me internationally known
- and which has been more important in terms
- of that than the 200 papers that I've written
- which are in various journals.
- So I'm part of that.
- I was the chair of a committee of the National Institutes
- of Health that started a formal program of head injury research
- in this country.
- And this research, which was not present before we got going,
- has blossomed into something very useful
- in terms of understanding head injury and preventing it.
- I'm very proud of having done that.
- I am proud of the graduate students
- that I've had who've made my reputation much more
- than perhaps it ought to be.
- They're in very important positions.
- I have a professor of orthopedic surgery in a couple of places.
- One of my former PhD students is a music critic
- of the San Jose Mercury News to show you the diversity.
- I was honored in 1988 by having two sessions of a joint meeting
- of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Applied
- Mechanics Division and the Society of Engineering Science
- devote two sessions of their joint meeting in my honor
- on the subject of penetration mechanics.
- And the highest honor that you can
- get in this country as an engineer
- was bestowed on me in 1989 when I was elected to the National
- Academy of Engineering, which gave me
- a tremendous amount of satisfaction.
- And so these are the things that have been meaningful to me.
- My students and I are close friends.
- That's another thing that is tremendously important to me.
- I have students all over the world.
- And many of them, most of them, it was as if we never left.
- When I go there, we're just starting off where
- we left off in our discussion.
- My family has been a tremendous amount of satisfaction to me.
- I'm proud of my older daughter beyond belief
- in her academic environments.
- I'm proud of my junior daughter for the things she does.
- She works so hard.
- And it's not quite so easy for her,
- but she gets where she needs to go.
- And I'm so happy to see her do this.
- My son has his problems.
- I hope he works himself out of them.
- I am very concerned about my granddaughter.
- And I hope for his sake that that gets to be worked out.
- On the whole, I feel I've left very little
- that I could do beyond my own capabilities left to do.
- I feel I've lived a reasonably useful life.
- I feel I have also made my contribution as a human being
- as well as a Jew.
- And the fact that I did come out of Germany at the time I did
- was a profound influence in shaping the direction
- and shaping the type of effort that I've had.
- And that's about where we are.
- Professor Goldsmith, thank you for spending this time with us
- today.
- We appreciate it.
- Well, it's my pleasure.
- For this interview, Ron Greene and Eric Saul
- is here to assist me.
- And we're going to continue on where
- we left off several months ago.
- But before we do, you've had a chance
- to look at the first half of the interview on videotape.
- So you may have some impressions you want to share with us.
- I'd be happy to.
- Yes, I did look at the tape on Sunday afternoon
- for the better part of the afternoon with my wife
- and my young daughter.
- And the biggest impression that we all three had
- was that this was a tremendously valuable document
- for my family, as well for others, who might know us
- or who would be interested in the times that existed
- at the time when I was a child.
- And my wife was absolutely fascinated with it.
- And in looking at it myself, I'm partially
- surprised I didn't repeat myself more often than I did,
- which I am likely to do because I'm
- forgetful about what I said.
- But also, in reviewing it found some areas which
- I have indicated that I thought might
- be relevant to a further interview.
- And I've so indicated these for future discussion here.
- The biggest thing that I wasn't aware of
- is the fact that I have so many wrinkles at my age, which
- showed up very clearly.
- Very becoming wrinkles.
- I think one of the things we talked
- about at the end of the interview
- was this question that comes up so frequently having
- to do with why people didn't leave sooner
- or why there wasn't more resistance, this whole issue
- of the response to the Nazi intrusion on people's lives.
- Perhaps you can comment a bit more on that.
- Surely.
- Well, first of all, as I already indicated last time,
- the German Jews felt themselves to be totally integrated
- in society.
- This had been going on certainly for at least 100 years.
- Bismarck made sure that there was a homogeneity
- and there was no differentiation or any kind of disparaging
- or hatred because of religion.
- And so the Jews felt that they were Germans first and Jews
- second with the exception of the very few Orthodox
- Jews that were dispersed throughout the country.
- But there were not very many of them.
- So what they felt then was that the German nation just
- wouldn't do this to them.
- Or any group within the German nation or the German government
- wouldn't do this to them.
- And it took a long time to finally realize
- that, yes, this is being done and it's
- being done because of definitive propaganda against the Jews
- that they're being blamed for everything under the sun,
- particularly what happened to Germany after World War I.
- And that as a result, some means had to be achieved to get out
- of the country because I do feel that there was
- insufficient sustenance in trying to resist any
- of the organizations that were doing
- the incarceration and the concentration camps
- or executions, like the SA and the SS particularly.
- Then in addition to that, there was a German army,
- which was being built up.
- I suppose some of the Jews felt that if things got too critical
- that perhaps the other European and perhaps American countries
- would intervene and at least moderate, if not stop,
- this kind of pogrom.
- But that didn't happen.
- And so it was a question of--
- not resisting.
- I don't think that there would have been an opportunity
- to resist.
- Any attempt that resistance resulted in summary execution.
- But in terms of leaving that was possible and relatively simple
- initially because, I believe--
- I said this last time--
- that the original philosophy of Hitler
- was to try to get the Jews out of Germany
- before he started realizing that,
- well, maybe not all would leave.
- And then he changed his plan and started
- to plan on executing those that were still within the country.
- And also, of course, if you left,
- you left essentially with all your means gone.
- And if you left for certain countries
- like the United States, you had to have
- a way of having your support guaranteed,
- otherwise you would not be allowed to come.
- And I'm not sure that this was true of the European countries,
- but certainly must have been true of some of them.
- And so it wasn't that easy to leave
- what was a relatively comfortable life
- and try to start over again somewhere else.
- But, of course, the fear of death
- and the fear of persecution and torture
- was getting stronger all the time.
- So at the end, I think a lot of people who wanted to leave
- would have done so if they'd had the opportunity.
- But the opportunity was gone when war started.
- Do you happen to know--
- I assume there were numbers of Jewish organizations working
- with the European Jews and advising them
- in some instances about what to do and how to do it.
- Are you aware of those organizations and how effective
- they were?
- I am not that familiar with them.
- I know that I came over with the Children's Transport.
- I am 100% certain that this had to be arranged
- by an American Jewish organization dealing
- with the reception and placement of children in the United
- States.
- But, of course, that involved also
- the legal aspects of placing an affidavit by someone to ensure
- the support of these children.
- At the time I came over in 1938, I
- believe there were 20 children in my group.
- The woman who had done this in terms
- of supervising the exodus to the United States
- had traveled back and forth on an American ship
- and brought several of these loads out.
- But at the rate of 20 per time, there
- would not have been too many in a year or so
- that they were able to move these children out.
- As far as I know, there was no similar organization
- for adults.
- And I assume that certainly one of the organizations that
- might have been involved would have been the B'nai B'rith.
- The B'nai B'rith got involved with me
- personally by giving me a scholarship
- loan when I went to the University of Texas
- as a student.
- But I am equally certain that they would have been involved
- in something of this sort.
- So my knowledge of this is extremely limited.
- Well, let's go back to--
- or let's jump ahead a little.
- You have returned-- you did return
- to Europe and to Germany.
- I'm wondering what some of your impressions were about that
- and what you might share with us about what
- it's like to go back to a country you were once
- driven from.
- Yes.
- Initially, the first time this happened was in 1953.
- My first sabbatical we spent in England
- and then did a little traveling in Europe with my first wife.
- And my first wife prevented me from going back to Düsseldorf,
- my hometown.
- She just simply didn't want me to go there
- because of the fear of evoking memories
- that would not be pleasant for both of us to share.
- So I didn't go to Düsseldorf.
- I think we did travel in part through Germany,
- but not very much.
- I had extreme battles of my conscience
- as to how I should react to going back to Germany
- and in particular how I should react to Germans of the age
- group that were sufficiently mature at the time of Hitler
- to know what they were doing.
- Clearly, intellectually, I could not
- fault anyone who was born after the war or even
- who was a small child during the war
- and had no self-control over anything that happened.
- But I was concerned about people of my age and older.
- And I was also concerned about my own feelings
- about going back.
- And I finally decided that, well, the country itself wasn't
- at fault. It was a government.
- And I've been to countries where-- other countries where
- I disapproved of the government and I wouldn't go back
- until the government was changed.
- But it wasn't the fault of the rivers, the mountains.
- And as far as the people were concerned,
- there was also always the possibility
- that certain of these depressions, persecutions
- of the Jews somehow or other by osmosis
- got into the younger children.
- But I doubted that.
- I had hoped that there was an intellectually open society
- that at least the vast majority of the people
- younger than I would feel that, well, OK,
- he's a German Jew who emigrated.
- He's now an American.
- We'll accept him for what he is, not
- for what his religion was or his country of origin.
- So I don't know whether the rationalization was just.
- But I decided that it was possible for me
- to go to Germany and not feel inhibited, not
- feel that I was doing something that was terrible
- for me or my psyche or for my family or whatnot.
- And this extended then to some of the people.
- Especially early on, I met a number
- of the older German men, the vast majority of whom
- profess that they knew nothing about the concentration
- camps, Auschwitz, et cetera.
- And it was unbelievable that this should be the case.
- And yet when I went back to Germany--
- and this may be repetitious--
- when I went back to Germany last October and talked to a woman
- who was writing the history of the Jews in Germany
- in Düsseldorf in particular, she told me that it wasn't so far
- fetched because the regime, Hitler,
- did not go out of their way to advertise the fact that they
- were killing Jews because they were afraid of adverse reaction
- abroad.
- And so this may very well have percolated
- into some of the German people.
- But it's very difficult for me to believe
- that the majority of the Germans at that time
- didn't know about the camp by word of mouth.
- So any time that I met someone, and there
- were plenty, who said that they knew nothing about this,
- was just automatically disqualified
- as far as personal relationship with the man is concerned.
- There's one individual whose family I visited,
- he and his wife, living in Southern Germany, who
- I am sure--
- I am sure as I can be deep down, even though we never talked
- about it that he was a Nazi.
- His position at the time and subsequently
- would be such that would make it extremely likely.
- I don't like him personally.
- I do like his wife.
- So it's a difficult thing to differentiate
- within the family.
- But he's-- in addition to everything else,
- he's a stuffed shirt.
- But there is one other person whom I just met relatively
- recently three or four years ago, my age,
- a retired publisher, who claims--
- and I have no reason to dispute it--
- that he was always an antifascist
- and that he worked for the Jews.
- He took me to a synagogue in this town in Southern Germany.
- He said, this is really a unique thing.
- It was restored.
- It was restored by contributions from Jews and non-Jews
- in the southern portion of Germany.
- And he said, you know, Southern Germany is a Catholic country.
- Catholics have always been much more
- at loggerheads with the Jews than the Protestants.
- But this area here was sort of an island
- within the Catholic region.
- And so consequently, Jews would come here
- to worship from hundreds of kilometers away.
- And the synagogue has been restored.
- I was able to peek inside.
- I asked them if there was still any Jews left in the vicinity.
- He said, no, but we still restored it just
- as a monument to the Holocaust and to the Jewish people
- and their contributions here.
- So if he was able to do this and show me this,
- I have some belief that he was truly
- what he said he was, namely an anti-Nazi.
- He's also anti-war.
- And I think everybody is anti-war
- unless a war is forced on you in one way or another.
- And then I suppose along with the Jewish religion,
- the first duty is to defend yourself.
- So this is why people go to war, perceive why they go to war.
- So this is my relationship in terms of Germany.
- I've had professional connections there.
- I have very good relations with some of the younger people.
- And by "young, quotation marks, I mean people 50 years
- or younger than that.
- I've had a lot of contact with them
- at several of the institutes, several of the universities.
- And I have no qualms about dealing with them.
- As we record this, it's September of 1992.
- And our papers here in San Francisco
- have been filled with stories recently about a neo-Nazi riots
- in Germany dealing with immigrants
- coming from other countries.
- And numbers of us have been seriously concerned
- about the meaning of this.
- And I'm sure you've read the papers too, about these riots.
- I'm, again, curious about your reaction.
- Do you think this is a very isolated situation in Germany?
- Or does it raise any fears of the beginnings of something
- bigger?
- It raises substantial fears in me.
- I've been reading the papers.
- I've been extremely concerned about it.
- And I noticed with interest that it
- is happening mostly in the Eastern portion of the country.
- And in part, it reminds me of a parallel
- as to what Hitler, for example, said
- during the '30s, that the Jews were responsible for.
- That was the economic status of Germany.
- Germany suffered through a depression
- before the United States did.
- I think in a way, a much more serious depression.
- And the blame for that was laid on the Jews.
- But it was a question of economic security.
- And it seems to me this is probably
- a parallel situation whereby the Eastern Germans, who
- can see their Western counterparts living much
- better than they do, in spite of what the German government is
- trying to do, are rebelling against this.
- And they pick as a scapegoat, as Hitler
- did the Jews, they pick the immigrants, the Eastern
- Europeans.
- And it won't be long before it'll be the Jews.
- And there's another parallel that I'm drawing.
- And that is the situation in Bosnia and Serbia.
- And to me, the ethnic cleansing that is being advertised there
- is no different, except possibly in degree
- with the extermination of the Jews that Hitler had planned.
- And so, yes, I'm extremely concerned.
- And I am watching very carefully to see
- what the German government and the German people
- are planning to do about it.
- I'm not going to accuse the country of Germany
- of going back to Nazism, because 10 or even 20,000 people
- riot in the town.
- I also noticed that there were counter demonstrations
- by Germans who totally disavowed the action of the skinheads
- and neo-Nazis.
- So there is an element counterbalancing
- that that was missing in the '30s in Nazi Germany.
- There were no formal organized or informal demonstrations
- against the regime, even though there was underground activity.
- So, yes, I am concerned.
- So--
- Eric, would you like to continue with some
- of your own questions.
- No, go ahead.
- You came, of course, to this country as a young man
- and went to school here and actually achieved
- an enormous amount.
- And I'd like you, if you will, for a few minutes
- to put your modesty aside and let us know something
- about your achievements.
- OK, I will try.
- I hope it will not sound too bravado
- or braggart or whatever.
- When I came to the United States courtesy of this family
- in New York who placed the affidavit,
- they placed me with three different families
- in Mount Vernon, New York, a small town,
- just at the northern tip of the Bronx.
- And the first family I think I've already talked about.
- They did most everything they could
- to dissuade me from the path that I took,
- which was to go along an academic career
- in the field of engineering.
- And they really inhibited me.
- And the people to whom I've talked recently
- who knew them when they were themselves were children
- said, if there was any family that should not have had
- a child from Germany, a male child, particularly,
- to bring up they were the first prime candidate.
- Second family-- they were Jewish.
- I lived with only three Jewish families.
- The second family, I was just a temporary guest there.
- The third family treated me more or less
- like one of their own children.
- He was a vice principal of Evander Childs High
- School in New York, the second largest
- high school in the city.
- And she was a speech therapist.
- They're both dead now.
- But I'm still very, very close to terms
- with a son, who lives in Los Angeles
- and who had a very substantial career himself
- and was the number three man in NBC TV
- until that relationship ended.
- I went to high school.
- And the people that I went to high school
- with that I was close with were the people
- who were playing initially on the chess team.
- Then we were mostly on the math team.
- And then eventually we started playing bridge,
- where I learned to play and love the game.
- And when I graduated from high school,
- I received a scholarship loan from B'nai B'rith
- to go to the University of Texas.
- And this was a small sum, perhaps $500.
- I don't even remember exactly.
- And I took a job.
- And I worked of the order of 40 hours
- a week first delivering newspapers
- early in the morning, and then becoming
- a typist in the library to catalog the new books,
- and finally becoming a grader of papers,
- and eventually while I was still at the University of Texas
- actually, lecturing in lower level mathematics courses.
- And then the war broke out and I instantaneously
- overnight became an enemy alien, which seemed ridiculous now.
- But at the time, I suppose everybody
- had to be treated the same way.
- So what that meant, of course, was I could not own a camera.
- I could not own a radio.
- I was not allowed to go out of town
- unless I got the permission of the US attorney.
- And that kept on and kept me in Austin,
- where I was going to school at the University of Texas,
- through my baccalaureate.
- I had six months more to go before I became a US citizen.
- So I decided to stay and get a master's degree,
- while at the same time become a citizen.
- And once I became a citizen, all of these things
- were instantaneously removed.
- I was able to then, after getting my master's degree
- in September or August of 1945, to go to work for Westinghouse.
- And by this time, the war had ended also.
- But that was all coincidental.
- And I went and worked for Westinghouse
- for a year in Philadelphia and for a year earlier
- in Pittsburgh.
- And both times I taught in the evening
- at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University
- of Pennsylvania concurrently And I decided at that time
- that I really did not want to work myself from a rut
- into the grave in the same company.
- So I applied to about 25 or 30 universities
- with two requests-- one, that I become a member of the faculty
- and, two, that I should be able to get my PhD concurrently.
- And there were a number of places where this was possible,
- but also a number where it was not.
- For example, Stanford and MIT and Caltech would not have me.
- And in retrospect, I think that was probably a very good thing.
- But Cal, the University of California at Berkeley,
- as it was fondly known in those days,
- did accept my application.
- And I came out here expecting to teach all the wrong courses.
- But when I got here, things were turned around,
- and I taught the right courses.
- And I have now been associated with the University
- of California since 1947, September of 1947,
- which means that in this time I will have spent a total of 47
- years with the University.
- And I'm still teaching at this point.
- I'm teaching this fall, a senior graduate course in mechanics.
- So I'm keeping up my activities under a recall status.
- Well, I came here and I have not left.
- But I did go on various sabbaticals, to Europe mostly.
- I became involved with professional organizations.
- I became more very heavily with research.
- My area of research is within the field of mechanics.
- It's the collision of solid objects.
- So I've sort of made a name for myself
- in that I published a book in 1960
- called Impact, which is still sort of a classic that has not
- been surpassed since.
- And it's long out of print.
- And if I were to do it again, I would write a much better book.
- But then a lot of time has passed since I started in 1951.
- I became well-known internationally
- as a result of this book and as a result of my research.
- And even now in my retired status,
- I still get constant requests for people
- who want to work with me.
- And I no longer have the money or the wherewithal
- to support them.
- So if they want to work with me while being
- supported by someone else, that's fine, but not otherwise.
- I have something in excess of 200 publications of an archival
- or a symposia nature, a number of reports.
- Many of these were really unique investigations
- done for the first time to get some feel for the field.
- And then after I've gotten the field,
- I left it open for other people to further exploit it.
- I've done this in a number of areas.
- I have been honored in many ways.
- I guess the first honor I received of any substance
- was that I was elected a fellow of the American
- Society of Mechanical Engineers back in 1971, which is perhaps
- 1% of the membership.
- In 1988, I was honored jointly by the American Society
- of Mechanical Engineers and the Society
- for Engineering Science.
- I guess upon the occasion of my formal retirement
- that two sessions of a Joint meeting
- were devoted to my honor in the field of penetration mechanics.
- And the next year, I was elected to the National Academy
- of Engineering, which is the highest honor an engineer can
- get in this country.
- And I've since been elected as a fellow of the American Academy
- of Mechanics.
- And these are some of the accomplishments
- that have been recognized.
- Professionally speaking, I've been
- a member of editorial boards of a number of journals.
- I have been a chairman of the committee
- for head injury model construction, which
- was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health
- between 1966 and 1970, which started a brand new,
- shall we say, phase of head injury
- research in this country.
- There was a tremendous amount of activity
- and substantial support at that time.
- In 1971, the economy collapsed, not as badly as now,
- but it collapsed.
- Money was withdrawn from the research projects.
- And the National Institutes no longer
- provided funding to various groups
- to do research in this area.
- But what had happened as a result of this national effort
- is that research was being carried out
- by individuals and by universities in this area.
- However, the quantum jump that was made between '66 and '70
- has not been anywhere near equaled in the advances
- from 1970 to 1992, which shows that if an area is not
- supported, it is generally not going to go very much.
- I've been a visiting professor in numerous institutions.
- I have been a Midwest--
- university research lecturer at about seven or eight
- institutions.
- I'm constantly asked to give seminars.
- If I want to go somewhere to see somebody or talk to somebody,
- I simply ask, well, how about scheduling a seminar for me?
- I've never been refused so--
- Frivolous or perhaps not so frivolous
- question, is there anything about your personality
- that led you to impact science?
- No.
- In going back into that, I can say the following.
- I knew that I had wanted to be an engineer.
- My talents or bents originally in high school
- were more in the mathematical line.
- Of course, there wasn't much engineering in high school.
- And I was fond of and pretty good at mathematics.
- But I also recognized the fact that in those days, at least,
- mathematicians had to stand in the bread line,
- whereas engineers had at least a chance of getting a paying job.
- So I thought I would be able to combine
- my liking and talent and mathematics with a more
- practical side.
- And that's why I went to engineering.
- That's the first step in getting to impact.
- Then I went into mechanical engineering,
- even though on my high school--
- college aptitude tests, mechanical ingenuity
- and spatial visualization, the two talents supposedly
- that direct you towards mechanical engineering,
- were the lowest of my scores.
- It was still not bad.
- But they were the lowest.
- At top the country that year in terms of the previous year's
- percentile by 108% in aptitude for foreign languages.
- It wasn't surprising to me because I spoke four
- at the time.
- And other people who were my competition
- didn't have that advantage.
- But the consequence of this was that everybody
- jumped on my throat to switch my major from engineering
- to something where these languages could
- be profitably applied, like political science or diplomacy.
- And I didn't want to have anything to do with this.
- So then I got into mechanical engineering.
- And both my master's and PhD research were in an area
- totally different from collisions or impact.
- They were in heat transfer.
- And then when I came to Berkeley,
- I was put into the peculiar situation
- that my doctoral research was in one area and my teaching
- and supposedly, quote unquote, "research"
- was in a totally different area, the area mechanics.
- Well, I had to make a decision when I got my PhD.
- And I chose mechanics rather than heat transfer
- because I had worked under a professor who
- was an acknowledged international expert.
- And I knew there wasn't room in the same department for him
- and me in the same field.
- So for practical reasons, I went into mechanics.
- And then my chairman at the time suggested, why don't you take
- a look at the field of impact?
- It seems to be a promising area.
- And so I decided to do that.
- And I spent 10 years researching what had been done
- and writing up a set of notes and then eventually a book.
- Then I decided I would like to do
- that also for my own individual research, not unnaturally.
- And that's how I got into it.
- But the consequences of this are that I also
- do a fair amount of consulting on impact,
- particularly in conjunction with accidents.
- And so I'm--
- You were involved in a rather famous court case recently.
- Perhaps you would tell us what your role was in that.
- I think others would be interested in hearing
- about that.
- Surely.
- The incident you're referring to is the Rodney King beating case
- in Los Angeles, which was held in April of this year in 1992.
- The trial was moved from Los Angeles
- County to Ventura County.
- It was held in Simi Valley.
- And I was asked by the prosecution to come down there
- and testify.
- And my testimony was supposed to be of such nature
- as to disqualify a defense expert who had been called,
- who was going to testify.
- So both her testimony and mine were only
- in front of the judge.
- The jury had been sequestered.
- And her testimony had to do, or purported
- to have to do, with the severity of the blows
- that Mr. King sustained, the fractures that
- appeared on the x-rays and in the facial area.
- And her contention was that he had sustained this by a fall,
- rather than by the blows from the batons.
- Well, the judge agreed with me that the field of biomechanics
- in which she and supposedly I were experts
- could not differentiate whether a facial fracture was
- produced by a blow or by a fall from a sufficient height.
- If you fall from high enough, obviously you
- can sustain these fractures.
- And I said this.
- But in my own mind, clearly, the viewing of the tape--
- and I looked at that Rodney King beating
- tape at least 200 times--
- the viewing of that tape convinced me absolutely
- that this was not the result of a fall,
- that it was definitely the consequence of a blow
- or a series of blows.
- And I expressed that opinion.
- The second thing that she testified on
- before I even had a chance to rebut it,
- the judge completely disqualified it
- because what she had done was she
- had taken one frame of the original tape,
- blown it up, and then positioned people
- where she thought they would be, and then put a computer program
- on this to give a three-dimensional rendering so
- as to show the jury the spatial relationship
- between the people.
- Well, there were all kinds of things
- wrong with her reconstruction, which the judge picked up the.
- Judge was very shrewd.
- So I didn't even have to get into this.
- I succeeded in keeping her from the jury.
- I did not succeed in producing the result
- that the prosecution had anticipated,
- which I had anticipated after seeing the tape.
- And the mistake that was made was
- in moving the trial to Simi Valley.
- So that was my role in this.
- I do not anticipate that I will be called in the retrial
- because the retrial deals strictly
- with the deprivation of civil rights, which
- I have some rather large personal stake.
- But it is not a question here of the severity of a blow.
- It's the fact that blows were struck at all.
- Do you want to comment on your stake in the Civil Rights
- in this matter or in civil rights in general
- as a function of what you've lived through all your life.
- Well, that's the whole thing.
- I believe that if he had had a very, very
- active German civil liberties union,
- that perhaps some of the things that
- did occur under the Nazi regimes wouldn't have.
- It strikes me as grotesque that anyone in this country,
- politician or otherwise, would accuse
- someone of being a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
- Because even when I don't agree with them--
- and I don't agree with them for personal reasons
- in their stance, for example, of the March
- of the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois,
- as an example of what I disagree with--
- I feel that they serve an absolutely vital function.
- Civil liberties in this country are
- something that is very, very precious
- and we have to guard very much to ensure
- that they will continue.
- I've seen in other countries a gradual evolution.
- I've seen also a very sudden evolution, almost
- a cataclysmic evolution.
- And so when that happens, it makes
- you feel frightened for the human race.
- And so to me, the incidents that occurred in Los Angeles
- were a civil liberties matter, yes.
- But they were also police brutality,
- the question of that, of which they have mostly
- been acquitted now.
- So my stake is that I want to see the rights that
- are guaranteed by the Constitution preserved
- for the people.
- So.
- Your life has been filled with many achievements.
- But you've also had some losses, a number of losses in fact.
- Yes.
- So I think our testimony here wouldn't really
- be complete without spending some time talking
- about those losses, if you don't mind.
- No, I don't mind.
- The two earlier losses that were severe were my two divorces.
- I had married consecutively two nice Jewish girls
- from New York believing that it was important
- that for the sake of the culture, more
- than the religion, I should be in an environment that
- was compatible.
- Both marriages were disasters for different reasons.
- My first divorce was asked for by my first wife.
- And it was a terrible blow because I didn't realize--
- I didn't recognize why.
- To be sure, in retrospect, I didn't
- work as hard at the marriage as perhaps I might have.
- Well, who does when it comes to the ultimate.
- But I also did not receive the support
- that I needed because I was trying to make tenure.
- No, not tenure, to become a full professor.
- And when you go either for tenure
- or for the full professorship, you
- have to work your tail off as far
- as productivity is concerned.
- And my first wife did not either understand
- or want to understand the kind of pressure
- that I was going through in this.
- And she was in an entirely different field.
- I managed in spite of the fact that her grades were
- inadequate, I managed to get her into graduate school
- at Berkeley by using a little personal pressure.
- And the moment that happened, she
- started asking for a divorce.
- And we were divorced.
- My question is why me?
- Why?
- When one of the things that I was looking for so desperately
- in this country were roots.
- I had been totally uprooted.
- I had been decimated psychologically
- by what my peers had done to me, by the removal
- from a known environment and my family
- to a completely new situation.
- I thought that I had built up something
- with my education, which I provided myself with,
- and with the achievement of obtaining tenure
- at the University of California, which was even then
- easier to get than now, but still,
- no mean feat, and a lack of understanding
- of my goals in life professionally speaking.
- So I could not understand.
- I gave her a good living.
- We had-- she had a miscarriage.
- I had wanted children.
- She apparently didn't.
- But I didn't know that.
- I put her in an environment for the week
- that we were very close before we got engaged--
- in every situation that I could think
- where I would want to function, going camping,
- going to the symphony, going to a drama,
- play, to dinner with friends, et cetera, et cetera.
- And she seemed to be reasonably amiable to all
- of these environments.
- It turned out then after we got married that very few of these
- were actually what she had wanted to pursue.
- And so there was a disagreement, a dichotomy of our objectives
- that must have led to this.
- But it still was a terrible blow to me
- to find that something that I'd undertaken
- and wanted to succeed very badly had failed.
- Then I was-- there were no children from that marriage.
- Then I got married again two years later,
- which was clearly a mistake to do it that quickly.
- And this time, I married a second time
- a Jewish girl from New York.
- And my daughter, my older daughter
- who is an issue from that marriage has told me over
- and over again she doesn't understand how her mother and I
- could ever have gotten married.
- She's glad we did because she's available now.
- But she said we had absolutely no elements in common.
- The marriage was a disaster.
- The initiation of the divorce was a disaster.
- It was such that when I came home
- I didn't know whether she'd threw her arms around me
- or curse me out for an hour.
- I mean I had no way of knowing.
- And this is no way to live, especially
- when you're under pressure.
- And I was still under pressure, although perhaps not quite as
- much as before.
- In any event, I moved out several times and came back.
- And then finally, we had a blowup.
- And I moved out.
- And I decided this was it.
- And she asked for the divorce because if she
- wasn't going to I would.
- In those days, it was customary to let the woman do it,
- if at all possible.
- We had two children from that marriage.
- My older daughter is now in New York for the summer only.
- She's going to get her doctorate degree
- in electrical engineering from Berkeley next year.
- She's worked for the last two summers
- at Bell Labs in New Jersey.
- She is very highly regarded.
- She's currently has taught at Laney College
- the beginning of the electrical engineering series.
- She has a very close boyfriend, who
- just got his PhD in the same area from Stanford
- in this last June.
- My wife, my present wife, not her mother,
- is going back on Friday to spend a week with them
- because they have a big apartment in Greenwich Village.
- And they wanted both of us there.
- But I'm teaching right now, and I can't go.
- So my wife is going because she enjoys New York.
- So that was my daughter.
- When my second wife had my daughter
- she had a psychotic episode.
- And she had to be constantly accompanied by somebody.
- And one hour a day for a long time,
- she had to go to a psychiatrist.
- It put a tremendous burden on me.
- This was '64, '63, '64.
- And so she was fantasizing and she
- was writing things that were just clearly literally
- out of this world.
- We had a son about 8 and 1/2, 9 months
- after we had gotten married.
- My son lives here in California.
- He was very, very strongly affected
- by the turmoil and the fights that we
- had because he was by this time something like 3 plus years
- old.
- Andrea, my younger girl, the younger of the two,
- was a year and a half.
- And so she was still not psychologically affected
- by this strife in the home.
- My son has not followed my path.
- In fact, my son is at the moment somewhat estranged from us.
- He's never been married.
- But he does have a daughter from a woman
- whose whereabouts are unknown.
- And he was given custody after some long battle.
- But he has never held a steady job.
- I don't know how he gets by.
- I think he repairs cars.
- And I told him at one time or another
- that anything he chose to do would be OK, as
- long as it wasn't illegal.
- He did some illegal things.
- And he paid the penalty for that.
- But he's still my son.
- But the last time he just acted in a way
- that was incompatible with what I
- can tolerate in the house in front of family.
- And so, I don't know, I suggested to him
- that he needs some counseling, and as everybody else has to.
- And certainly, he will always be my son.
- But he needs to make some major changes.
- And this is a terrible burden to bear.
- I'd always wanted to have my family continued on.
- And he's at the moment, the only one who can carry on the name.
- He's 30 years old now.
- My daughter Andrea is 28.
- Then, after that divorce, I stayed single
- for quite a while.
- And I finally met my present wife
- when she invited me for coffee--
- invited me to take her for coffee, which I did.
- And she was the secretary to one of my colleagues
- in a different department with whom I had very
- close professional relations.
- And we went together for a number of years,
- and then we got married and will have been
- married 20 years next year.
- We've been together for more than 20 years now.
- And I think that marriage is solid.
- And she is not Jewish.
- And she's not from New York.
- So she's a Californian, tall, blonde.
- We have a daughter, who will be 16 this coming October,
- and who's working very, very, very hard, as I said earlier.
- She's beautiful.
- She's talented.
- She's sweet.
- She has wonderful qualities now.
- We're very fond, both of us, very fond of her.
- But the nice thing as far as my family is concerned
- is that my daughter from the previous marriage
- gets along so very well with both my wife and her sister.
- And that's not always necessarily the case.
- Now then just 11 months ago, I was
- devastated in a way that is not equivalent, but somewhat
- parallel to what happened to me when I left Germany.
- We had the firestorm in the Oakland Berkeley
- Hills, October 1991.
- I had come back just a week before, the Sunday before,
- from a 3-week trip to Europe, which
- included my visit to Germany, of which I spoke earlier.
- And the day before this disastrous fire,
- I'd taken my daughter to see one of the best football
- games I've ever seen.
- It was the University of California versus Washington.
- It was a fascinating game.
- And as we came back, I noticed on top of the hill,
- there were eight fire engines just
- above the road that led down to our house.
- And I stopped and asked the fireman.
- He said, oh, yes, they had a brush fire there,
- but they'd gotten it out.
- And I said, are you sure?
- He said, absolutely.
- So then we went home.
- I had seen some smoke from the stadium.
- The next morning, our neighbor called over, 10:30, said, look,
- there's smoke over there again.
- We looked out and saw this huge cloud.
- My wife and my neighbor and I jumped into the car,
- and we drove across the freeway and saw the sheet of flame
- coming down at this apartment house, with the 800 apartments.
- And we realized we had to get back.
- We got back.
- And my wife climbed on the roof with a hose.
- And I went on the balcony with a hose.
- And we stayed there for 20, 30 minutes,
- 40 minutes trying to water this thing down.
- And then the water pressure gave out.
- And we had no more water.
- And we realized we were dead ducks.
- But by this time, it was so late that we got almost nothing
- into the cars, a few things, maybe 2%, 1% of what we owned.
- And my wife is much cooler headed than I was.
- I have a number of more or less serious ailments, mostly less,
- but one of them is a state of emphysema, occasioned
- by smoking when I was young.
- And after my wife had asked me to run up and down the house
- getting explosive and volatile material out,
- I sat down on the steps.
- I couldn't move.
- I didn't care what happened to me.
- It was just that I was totally exhausted.
- They had to literally lift me under my arms
- to get me out of the house.
- And that's one of the reasons I didn't get much out.
- My younger daughter, sweet girl, got the carpet
- from my parents' home and one of the silver chalices
- that had been sent to us.
- I don't have very many things from our parental home.
- She took them out because she knew how important they were.
- My wife got a few of the pictures out.
- I had the pictures that I brought
- with me of my early life, which I
- had taken to Germany to show to this woman as part
- of a history.
- They were on my desk.
- So I grabbed them in leaving.
- And that's why they have been saved.
- My wife took the top drawer on the left side of my desk
- and dumped it into a shopping bag.
- That's where the insurance papers and the passports
- and some ready cash, travelers checks,
- and a few other documents were.
- But the valuable things that I lost I just
- didn't even think about.
- I lost the first edition Mercator Atlas, perhaps
- the only one extant in the world today.
- And so that was a disaster in magnitude, although not perhaps
- in severity and psychological importance
- as serious as my leaving Germany.
- The loss of my family was something
- that was more gradual recognition of the fact
- that this was so, although when I left my father at the ship,
- he brought me up there because my mother was ill.
- I recognized that I would probably not see them again.
- And this recognition was reinforced as I came over here.
- I did receive some mail.
- Unfortunately, most of the--
- almost all of the letters I received are lost somehow.
- Some of the envelopes have been saved.
- So I do have handwriting samples.
- But so these are the disasters that have occurred
- to me since I left Germany.
- Everything else pales by comparison.
- But you are a survivor.
- And you must have, over the years,
- developed rather unique or special coping
- skills, something that you're doing,
- something that you're holding onto,
- some philosophy or thoughts that help you over the years move
- through these various tragedies.
- I hope you can just reflect for a moment with us
- on maybe some personal thoughts about what
- keeps you going, what's kept you going over,
- what you've gone through, one tragedy to the next.
- It's difficult to say.
- Certainly, the importance of family to me has been critical.
- The importance of what's home and so on has been very vital.
- It's been a driving motif for me.
- Recognition has certainly been a motive as well.
- In the game that I'm in, that's really the currency that you
- deal with because, financially speaking, you're not, shall
- we say, awarded anywhere near as well as you would
- if you were in private industry or if you were on your own.
- But recognition of your colleagues, accolades,
- if you like, is something that is important to me,
- as it is important to all of my colleagues.
- The will to survive, I don't know where I get it from.
- And I look at some of the things that hit me simultaneously,
- sometimes I wonder whether it's all worth it.
- And when you have four or five maladies hitting you
- at the same time, as, for example, I have right now
- I have a diabetes.
- I have emphysema.
- I have arthritis.
- I have cramps.
- And I have a post nasal drip all at the same time.
- The post nasal drip unfortunately
- is extremely debilitating because it collects down
- in my lungs, and it has to come back out.
- And I spend more time at Kaiser Hospital
- than I would like to announce.
- But you can fight these one at a time.
- And when you have success in fighting one,
- you think you've won a major victory.
- But when they all hit you at once,
- you seem to be relatively powerless to do something
- about it.
- That's very debilitating.
- And I wonder whether or not the survival spirit
- that you think I might not be substantially
- dampened by my physical environment.
- What else drives me?
- The fact that I have a wonderful marriage.
- That I have a loving family with the exception that I've cited.
- That I have a grandchild.
- My son is custodian of his daughter,
- which means a lot to me.
- I have hobbies that fascinate and interest me.
- I'm a collector, as I may have mentioned, of old maps.
- I had this Mercator Atlas, which is part of that collection.
- The other thing my daughter got out with two old volumes
- that I had on the shelf, which had maps in them,
- but they were text with maps only as illustrations.
- The important maps that were on the walls
- did not survive, expensive maps.
- So I'm a map collector.
- And that got me into collecting maps
- on stamps, which is a lot cheaper.
- And I go to the stamp fairs now looking for just that.
- And I'm looking for enough time to be
- able to catalog my collection.
- My daughter who has always accompanied me
- refuses to go because I'm lugging
- all my albums with me to see whether what
- I buy I already have.
- It would be so much simpler if I just had a list of the stamps.
- But I haven't found time to do this.
- Five years after retirement in the hopes
- of looking after my hobbies, there's more
- piled up than there was when I did full-time.
- So that's another hobby.
- And these hobbies are of importance to me
- in terms of what makes me want to survive.
- I want to do more of the same thing.
- I'm a duplicate bridge player.
- At one time, I was really almost-- almost--
- at the national level.
- But you can't do that and continue with your work
- at the University of California and research.
- So I'm just an average player now.
- And I said it--
- I stayed out for 10 years because my partner with whom
- I played for 30 years left.
- Now, when I move into the new house--
- we move into the new house in hopefully March or April,
- my older daughter, the one who's getting her PhD,
- has said that she will buy me an upright piano
- so that I can start to play again,
- as I did when I was a child.
- And it's very interesting that as far
- as playing piano is concerned, there's a woman who lives in--
- I'm not sure she's still does.
- She was 92 when I talked to her in February.
- She was my piano teacher in Düsseldorf.
- And she lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
- And I recall distinctly going to her at the time when
- Hitler was in power.
- In addition, some of the things that the city of Düsseldorf
- sent to me were copies of the Jewish newspapers.
- And I found in there advertisements by her
- for piano lessons.
- So I have those.
- And I didn't bring that with me.
- But perhaps if there is another time, I shall.
- And so I played piano then.
- I've never had a piano since that time.
- But whenever I see a piano somewhere,
- I sit down and start playing.
- So my daughter says, well, we really should get you back
- into the hobby.
- So I don't know whether I'm responsive to your question.
- But these are all things that drive me.
- And the driving force is the motivation for survival.
- You've had some low moments obviously.
- You're still having some, I take it.
- But you're managing.
- And I think you're going to have a long history yet to record.
- You may have to come back in a few years.
- So what do you look forward to since like you're still
- moving forward?
- What are the things you're going to do yet?
- Well, some of the things I was going to do
- burned up in smoke--
- two books that I was going to write.
- The material for were my cellar.
- And that all burned.
- And there's no way, no way whatever,
- to recoup it because the newspaper and magazine articles
- that I was going to clip together.
- So I was going to--
- and I may do this now in a different way.
- I'm giving thought to the idea of writing
- a semi-popular semi-technical book on impact in which there
- would be stuff for both the general population
- and for scientists.
- For example, if you have an airplane crash,
- what is the energy, the forces involved, et cetera, et cetera?
- But then you can also look at the economic damage
- that results from this sort of thing, the sociological damage.
- And this will require some research.
- If I ever get the energy and the time,
- that maybe the sort of direction that I would take.
- I hope to continue to teach at the University for a while yet.
- I'm teaching right now because the man who teaches the course
- normally is on sabbatical.
- But they don't have a backup.
- They will in the future.
- But they don't have now.
- So he wanted to go on sabbatical,
- and they asked me, whether I would replace him.
- And I've worked five months on this thing,
- harder than I ever have.
- I feel like an assistant professor because, number one,
- I haven't taught the course in 10 years.
- Number two, I have no books, no problems, no notes, no nothing.
- Three, most of the books that I want are out of print.
- So I can only get them from the library and Xerox them.
- So all of this stuff is making it very difficult
- for me to teach the course.
- But it is a challenge.
- And I enjoy challenges.
- I do hope to spend more time with my family.
- My family's been deprived of my time for many, many years.
- And in retirement, supposedly, you're
- supposed to be able to spend more time with them.
- Make up for lost time.
- As far as traveling is concerned,
- I'm not all that anxious because I've always taken sabbaticals.
- And I've always gone away, the only way
- in which I can get some peace.
- My wife and I are planning next year, if we can,
- to go to Europe for an extended period of time
- so she can look for her roots.
- I've been looking for mine ever since I came out of Germany.
- So we're going to go to Ireland and Scotland, England, Germany
- because--
- Sweden-- she's a mixture of things.
- And we'll spend some time doing her thing.
- What else am I looking forward to?
- Maybe learning to play the piano again.
- And really and truly having some peace
- and quiet where I don't have to be concerned that, A,
- where's a food coming from to be on the table next week.
- B, am I going to make full professor?
- C, is my paper going to be accepted by this journal?
- Am I going to get this contract or grant for research?
- All of these things are relatively passing.
- But there's one thing I've taken out since my retirement
- that I didn't do before.
- I want to correct some of the, well, injustices
- if I can call it that, where recognition
- for people who deserve it has not been extended.
- And so one of the things I'm doing
- is I am initiating the procedures and the paperwork
- to get people elected to positions of honor
- or at least recognition in areas where I am a member or a fellow
- or whatever.
- And I have been successful.
- And this is why I'm going back to Washington in three weeks.
- I've been successful in getting the colleague
- with whom I've worked for 20 years,
- and in whose outer office I met my wife, elected
- to the National Academy of Engineering.
- And she and I are going back to see
- him inducted into the Academy.
- I did all the work on this.
- And I'm doing this with other people.
- I have plans for several others for the near future.
- So I don't know--
- I'm actually a fairly valuable resource
- for the department in this direction.
- I have a great deal of experience.
- I still have some energy.
- Another thing that I have done is
- I've written the history of my department, the Department
- of Mechanical Engineering, which is
- contemporaneous with the history of the University of California
- because we were started at the same time in 1868.
- Now, I've written this up as part
- of an assignment by the Department
- to me when I was still active.
- The promise that it would be published.
- Well, they haven't published it.
- And the previous chairman didn't think
- that it was all that important, I guess.
- But the present chairman says he's
- going to take another look at it and see what can be done.
- It doesn't take much to get it published.
- I mean I could fund it myself, but that
- goes against my principals.
- When I'm asked to do something for the Department,
- then told I should pay for it, I think that's obscene.
- So this is something I'm looking forward to.
- I've been a participant in two other book endeavors that are
- struggling to get published.
- One because we are a very specialized group
- of people at Berkeley and want to teach a course
- a certain way.
- So the publishers don't find that the market is there
- that they would like to see.
- The book is very good, but the market isn't there.
- And the second one is one with my other close friend
- that I have back East, a neurosurgeon, with whom I've
- collaborated on this head injury business for many years.
- We were going to write a book, the definitive book,
- on the biomechanics of head and neck injury.
- And I was going to do the engineering side,
- and he's going to do the medical side.
- Well, I've done my job four years ago.
- But I had the misfortune of having
- him marry somebody 33 years younger than I.
- And that even is more than I managed
- to do with my present wife.
- So the project has been, shall we say, delayed.
- But when I go back to Washington I
- will put the needle in and see whether he
- wants to be preserved for posterity himself.
- So this is another Project.
- And I think I have been very careful throughout my life
- to try to plan for retirement so that I wouldn't suddenly
- have a job one day and then not know what to do with my time
- the next.
- I find by looking at my colleagues
- those who do this sort of thing will not last very long.
- They die off very rapidly.
- Whereas the people who have interests, who have pursuits
- that they follow, find that they can function
- very well if physical ailments or psychological ailments
- don't get them, and well into their 80s and 90s.
- So I've looked forward towards this with my stamp and map
- collections.
- And it may very well be that I will
- become more active in the World Affairs Council, which
- we're a member of.
- And I probably will lose whatever
- contact I have with my younger daughter's high school
- because, after all, she'll be going off to college.
- It is possible, although not too likely,
- I will go back to the University of Texas, which
- I will be doing also on this trip,
- and seeing about stirring up some things
- and maybe getting more involved than I
- have been as an ex-student, as an alumnus.
- I have-- my wife has several siblings.
- We're not-- we're close, but not intimate.
- They live away from here.
- Her parents, who are approximately my age,
- live down South.
- And there is some family relationship there.
- In my own case, my own family, the closest relative I
- have is a first cousin once removed.
- This woman lives in Amsterdam-- she actually
- lives near Brussels, right outside of Brussels.
- But her husband had worked in Amsterdam.
- He had lost his job.
- They took an apartment there.
- And now they have to decide whether to live
- in Amsterdam or Brussels.
- They can't afford both.
- In any event, I've seen her several times.
- She is the one who will not go through Germany.
- She won't even fly over Germany.
- She has that strong conviction.
- She fled Holland as a child, went to Australia,
- apparently had a very hard time there with her step parents,
- came back, found this young man that she married
- and been very happily married since.
- And we are in close contact.
- But again, distance does make a difference and the obstacles
- of not seeing each other for years at a time is a serious--
- I have a second cousin--
- the only person by my own name.
- I think I may have mentioned this--
- he was a renal surgeon, then became
- administrator of the largest hospital in Liverpool.
- He retired three years ago.
- And he still does surgery.
- But he is through administering.
- And I saw him also in last October I went up to see him.
- I take the opportunity when I go over there to see what
- relatives and friends I have.
- I have a set of family down in New Orleans, all
- at the level of second cousins, with whom
- I'm much closer than that relationship would imply.
- But part of this is the fact that I have no close family.
- And this is-- drives me towards seeking people
- that I'm compatible with, with whom I share some kind of root.
- And this is second cousins.
- Their mother is somebody whom I have revered
- and my wife did too.
- She died in 1986.
- She was my mother's closest friend,
- and I've talked about her already.
- But because of that, I'm going to New Orleans
- frequently to see these people, and they're
- trying to come and see us.
- And that's about all the relatives
- I have in the world, close or distant.
- So it's not exactly a plethora of people
- that I can associate with.
- I'm actually been looking over some notes
- that we have just to see if we haven't left
- some important issues or areas.
- Eric?
- You have a reference to you want to talk more
- about your family in Europe and this reference
- to how your parents felt when you left.
- Is there more that you want to elaborate on that?
- Sure.
- These I think were notes that were taken from my--
- oh, from here on down-- yes, well,
- my parents must have been very, very, very hard on them
- when I left.
- I wasn't even consulted.
- I was just told.
- And they tried to hide their feelings.
- And I also think they tried to do something constructively
- by moving to Holland, which they did in, I think,
- January or February of 1939.
- Their feelings about my leaving must have been incredible
- because I was an only child.
- And I'd been with them for all that time.
- And essentially, I think, they were
- saying that they're saving me, probably
- at their own expense, which turned out to be the case.
- So my family life was a very close knit one
- and became more and more close knit
- because of the external pressures.
- My wife mentioned to me, for example,
- that because of my unusual childhood--
- namely having friends only who were Jewish
- and I was the only Jew in my own school.
- And I was allowed to go there because my father had
- been wounded in the World War I. That's not very good reason.
- But that was the reason I was able to go to that school.
- So my wife said, my present wife,
- that the reason that I may have had a little bit of difficulty
- relating to my children is because
- of my own lack of experience as a child myself
- because my relationship to my parents
- was not very critical one.
- It wasn't critical because that's all I had.
- So I couldn't afford to be critical.
- The pressures, the external pressures, were too great.
- That was her conclusion as to what happened there.
- My family life was a very comfortable one.
- My father and mother, I don't think, were very much alike.
- But they got along.
- And my father was 11 years older than my mother,
- which I guess was usual for Europe in those days.
- And my grandfather was the scion of the family.
- He ran the household.
- But he and my mother also got along well.
- And so that made for peace and quiet in the house.
- I don't recall ever hearing any shouting
- or any strong disagreements or anything of that nature.
- We moved several times.
- I don't know the reasons for that.
- It may very well have to do with the fact
- that the owners of the apartment houses didn't want Jews.
- I can only speculate as to that.
- I know that my father and my grandfather
- were in business together.
- I mentioned that earlier.
- That was closed down largely back in 1933.
- And then the business was moved to our residence.
- And then it shrunk and shrunk and shrunk in terms
- of what they were able to do.
- I do not know what they lived on because I
- don't think the income was enough to support us.
- So I don't know if I've addressed the problem
- adequately in terms of what you say
- how I felt about my parents, how they felt.
- You make reference to the Yad Vashem.
- You found out more about your grandparents.
- Yes.
- I don't know whether I said this.
- When we went to Jerusalem, my wife and I and our daughter,
- the first time I went to the Yad Vashem,
- I did not go into the exhibit Hall
- where they have the pictures.
- I went to the museum.
- And I found out there that my grandfather
- had died in the concentration camp, Westerbork.
- I had assumed since he was 92 years old that he
- had died a natural death.
- It's still possible he died a natural death.
- But he was in a camp when it happened.
- I did not find that out until I went to Jerusalem
- and looked at their records.
- I left the records, such as what I have, with them
- as a Holocaust survivor.
- And so there's documentation for my mother and my father.
- Until I found the birth-- the death certificates from the Red
- Cross, I didn't even remember the birth dates.
- I did remember the birth places.
- Now, it turns out--
- I don't know if I mentioned this--
- the city of Düsseldorf compiled a list of all the Jews who were
- in the city or in the immediate area and who were killed
- by the Nazis.
- They compiled a list of the names, the place of birth,
- the place of death.
- And I have that book, which if there's another session,
- I should have but in case you haven't seen it.
- I can bring it over anyway.
- But this is documentation that my grandfather, my parents--
- my uncle died before.
- He died a natural death.
- And when I went to Dusseldorf, I went to his grave.
- This woman took me to his grave.
- And I took pictures of that grave, which, of course,
- I lost in the fire.
- But she went back, and so I have a copy.
- And what I want to do--
- and she strongly suggested this--
- that I put in in memory of my parents
- on the gravestone, which I will do.
- I'll send the money to have this done.
- So this is the family that I had.
- I had an aunt, a sister of my mother's, who was a spinster.
- My father had a sister who died before I was born.
- He also had a sister who married a Dutchman, moved to Dordrecht,
- where I spent many summers as a youth,
- and where my parents went to initially after they
- left Germany.
- So getting back to this pressure on the family life,
- she hypothesized that because of the unnatural form
- of my existence in those days that this carried on
- over into some of my relations.
- And I'm sure I must have been deep down--
- you must know about this as experts in the field--
- I must have been tremendously affected by what
- happened to me in those years between the ages of 7 and 13.
- So it even started before January 1933,
- because the Nazis were organizing.
- And even though they may not have
- had a majority of the power in the Reichstag,
- they were still chanting antisemitic slogans
- and making life miserable.
- So this is a rather critical time of anyone's existence
- to be pressured that way.
- It must have an effect on subsequent human dealings,
- dealings with the family and dealings with others.
- I try as hard as I can to dissociate myself from this.
- And I'm not sure how successful I am.
- Until this Project actually, I had
- locked a lot of these thoughts up in a tight box
- and wouldn't let them out for fear
- the genie would fly the bottle.
- Now that I've started, and it comes out,
- my daughter comes to me and said, why didn't you ever talk
- to me about being Jewish and what it was like over there
- and so on?
- And I said, well, if I have not done so, I've been amiss
- and we have to rectify this.
- My daughter again last night-- this
- is my younger daughter-- said, I asked mommy,
- can I go to Jewish shul when I was eight years old?
- Mommy said, no.
- Mommy said, no, that's not what I said.
- She said, oh, yes, you did.
- Well, I don't recall the incident.
- But she obviously has an interest in my family
- and my religion, my outlook.
- And this in turn must be something
- that is transferred to me from my parental home
- and into my present family life.
- You seem to be saying that there have been aspects of your life
- that you've been avoiding up until this point--
- Not aspects.
- Verbalization, things that I thought.
- In other words, I excluded, shall
- we say, the things that happened to me as a child, the fact
- that my parents were killed in Auschwitz.
- I mean I verbalized it occasionally.
- I mean when I'm asked about it.
- But I deliberately avoided thinking about it consciously--
- what it meant, what it meant to me, what it
- meant to the world, et cetera.
- And the role of Nazi Germany in the history of the world I
- also did not think about.
- There's this new book out.
- I don't know whether I want to read it.
- What would happen if Hitler had won?
- And so all of this comes back and stems from my period
- from 1932, '33, up to the time I left
- and the repressions that I was subjected to.
- Now that you start talking about it, do you find it helpful.
- I think it is important.
- I think it's very important for my present family.
- I think that there should be a documentation.
- And I talked to one of my colleagues
- who was also from Germany, although he
- left several years earlier and his entire family
- left with him.
- I told him about this project and asked him
- whether he would possibly be interested in participating.
- He said, absolutely not.
- And there are several people that I
- can ask if you are looking for additional personnel.
- One of my colleagues whom I know very--
- he's not here this semester--
- was actually in a concentration camp in Poland.
- He's Polish himself.
- But he escaped.
- And he's also now a professor at Berkeley in engineering,
- and a very nice guy.
- So people react differently to these circumstances.
- Maybe he doesn't want to think about it either.
- In his case, though, I think his family, his property,
- his financial standing was more or less intact in moving here
- from southern Germany.
- And so I don't know what difference it
- makes if you lose your entire family and come alone, as to
- whether or not you're in the cocoon of an existing family
- and start anew.
- I can look at it in New Orleans from my second Cousins.
- They, however, are extremely conscious of Judaism.
- And they're very conscious of their hometown, what
- happened there, how the people felt.
- In fact, my second cousin's son married a non-Jewish girl,
- but the non-Jewish girl converted.
- And they were married by a rabbi.
- So this is the kind of thing--
- I didn't demand this.
- My own wife is a granddaughter of, I think it's a Baptist
- a Presbyterian minister.
- And she does not hold to a religion.
- We celebrate Christmas only as a social event.
- But because of my older daughter,
- we have Hanukkah and Pesach together.
- And we have the appropriate ceremonies
- and read the English translation of the Hebrew.
- She can speak Hebrew, but I can't.
- So again, we did celebrate these things in my home,
- but only in a nominal way and not
- anyway as a religious zealot or even
- as a religious practitioner.
- But I think I'm typical of middle class
- German behavior in the Jewish circles,
- at least in the big towns.
- I don't know about the small villages.
- So that's the story on that.
- My wife, I think, would like that I should talk more
- about my early days.
- But this is why she was so fascinated with the tape.
- A lot of the things didn't register.
- I mean when I was thinking about all of this, all of a sudden,
- I don't know if I mentioned this or not, I recalled out
- of the clear blue sky the telephone number
- that we had at home before I left.
- I mean it was crazy--
- 60,044 and 60,045.
- I mean these were the numbers that of our telephone
- back in 1933 in Germany.
- You are a mathematician.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- No.
- But these little morsels come out
- when you start thinking about them,
- not consciously, but about related matters.
- And sometimes you apparently tickle
- some kind of subconscious memory that then becomes conscious.
- And Düsseldorf itself was a rather pretty town even then.
- It's not bad now.
- It was hit fairly hard during the war.
- My father and I used to, many, many Saturdays,
- go on hikes in the woods.
- And this was his quality time with me.
- We'd take the train and go somewhere,
- then walk for a couple of hours in the woods,
- and then come back.
- And my mother would take me shopping
- or she'd take me to see her friends.
- And I've had some small social circle with my Jewish friends.
- I don't remember friends prior to 1933.
- I'm sure I didn't have anyone that was very close.
- We went on vacation, courtesy of my uncle.
- I went skiing twice in Switzerland.
- I went twice in the summertime to Switzerland
- and to the Balaton Lake in Hungary, of which I
- have a picture actually here.
- I remember very early-- it must have been before all of this
- happened--
- that we-- I went to some resort on the Baltic Sea.
- But I don't recall where it was and with whom.
- I don't think I was with my family.
- I may have been with a group of other children.
- And so other than that-- and also
- there was a trip to Brussels.
- And then many times I went to visit my relatives
- both in Dordrecht, Holland--
- that's my father's sister and her family--
- and my cousins in Raden in Westphalia in Germany.
- And the two boys from there are now in New Orleans.
- And one is my age.
- The other one's 10 years younger.
- So those were virtually the only vacation trips or trips
- of any sort that I recall until the big one to New York.
- Eric, do you have any more questions?
- Yeah.
- You also mentioned you wouldn't read William Shirer's book,
- The Rise and Fall.
- That's right.
- You probably didn't see the documentaries and the movies.
- I have consciously avoided for the last 45
- years, 50 years, looking at things that deal
- with concentration camps, that deal with executions of Jews
- and so on and so forth.
- I have made it a point because I felt
- by either viewing it or earlier reading it
- that it would so much upset me that I would not
- be able to stand it.
- So I avoided the problem by just excluding it.
- And the same thing happened to me
- when I went to the Yad Vashem.
- I walked in.
- I saw the first picture.
- I walked right back out.
- I was crying.
- I couldn't take it.
- And yet I went to a Jewish Museum in Paris
- in the Marais, which is the Jewish quarter,
- and we all went in there.
- And these things weren't as graphic or gruesome.
- Anyway, I was able to accept this and go through the museum.
- I haven't been to the museum in Germany.
- My wife and I will plan on going there
- because there is an invitation, a one-time invitation, whereby
- the city pays for a great deal of the cost of the visit,
- not all of it.
- But they put you up and feed you and they pay
- for a portion of your expenses.
- And they have a memorial in Düsseldorf to the Jews,
- which I have not seen.
- They have a bureau that puts out publications.
- And I have quite a few of these.
- And they send them to me.
- And so it'll be important to me to look.
- At this point, I think I can do it.
- But 20 years ago I couldn't-- still could not have.
- And I still couldn't, today, I don't
- think I could go through the Yad Vashem.
- Maybe that's the effect it's supposed to have on you.
- But in my case, it just pushed me.
- And I don't know if I mentioned this, apropos of that.
- I was in Poland in 1967 in a southern town, resort town,
- for a meeting, technical meeting.
- And the organizing committee had organized a trip
- to Auschwitz, Oswiecim, as they call it.
- And they urged everybody to go because it
- was a national shrine.
- I refused to go.
- And they got mad at me.
- They said, how can you not go?
- It's our national shrine.
- And I said, I don't care what it is.
- I'm not going.
- And so, of course, I didn't go.
- I haven't visited any of these camps, not Dachau, not anyone.
- And when I see something like the connection,
- certain political figures occasionally, in the past,
- visiting places where Jews were killed, massacred, and whatnot,
- and there's just a fury welling up in me
- because I don't see how any decent citizen can do this
- if they're conscious of what had happened there.
- So there were a number of things I deliberately excluded
- from my life and views.
- Like the Yad Vashem are one of them.
- Some people think that some things positive
- came from the Holocaust.
- In your case, you were driven to have a wonderful career.
- Are there things in a larger sense--
- some people say perhaps Israel grew out
- of the sympathy towards the Jews.
- How do you feel about that?
- What are the things--
- Frankly, I hadn't before you raised the question considered
- this as a point.
- To me, just ad hoc and a priori, there
- was nothing that could possibly have come out
- of the Holocaust that could have been good
- because of the horrendous things that happened.
- You might say you're taking a look at Hurricane Andrew
- and you say, well, some good may come out
- of it because somebody may be better off afterwards
- than he was before.
- But what is this?
- One person out of a billion?
- We're talking about proportions here.
- To me, the state of Israel is a good thing.
- It's a very precarious existence.
- I've been over there several times.
- And I couldn't live that, frankly.
- The reasons I couldn't live there may not be irrelevant.
- But I couldn't.
- If you're interested I'll talk about it.
- But--
- It's relevant, so you can talk about it.
- OK.
- Well, when I went over there, I found
- that the one thing that held the whole country together
- was the necessity of fighting the outside world,
- the Arab world.
- And so everybody at least tolerated one another.
- But when you look more closely, what did you have?
- You had the Ashkenazi versus Sephardi.
- You had the new settlers versus the old Sabras.
- You had even a Black Panther Party over there.
- You had the professionals versus the laborers.
- Every possible antagonism between classes that you
- can imagine existed there.
- And I don't see how these people could carry out
- a common purpose unless there was
- an overriding fear, an overriding necessity, as there
- was in the defense of the country
- against the outside world.
- So I couldn't live there for that reason.
- The second reason I couldn't live there
- is because I am too much of an American
- at this point to accept the characteristics
- of the majority of the members of the Jewish state.
- To give you a silly example, they don't put stop signs
- at four corners of a highway.
- Why?
- Because they would have more accidents there
- than if they don't because everybody
- thinks they have the priority over everybody else.
- And this is exemplary of what I mean.
- I was, as a Jew, taken advantage of in the [SPEAKING HEBREW],,
- the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem, by one of the merchants who
- sold me one of these chandeliers for Hanukkah--
- Menorahs.
- Menorah.
- And told me it was pure silver and charged me appropriately.
- And it turned out, of course, to be only silver plated.
- And I thought this was kind of terrible to do that.
- But the one time I walked into the [SPEAKING HEBREW]
- with a camera on a Shabbos, I was practically stoned.
- The only reason that we escaped is
- because my wife is tall and blonde and very obviously
- not characteristically Jewish, in any event.
- And they shouted after me as to whether or not I was a Jew.
- Just carrying a camera in there was considered to be heinous.
- And so I don't think I could live there.
- I have a lot of good friends there, many students,
- former students, who got their PhDs with me.
- And they worked in the Israel Ministry
- of Defense, the research and development
- agency, which is called Rafael.
- And right now, they are at a turning point
- because while Rafael was supported by the government
- all this time and it produced super weapons.
- I mean they were able to sell them all over the world
- and make a great deal of money for the state of Israel.
- That is coming to an end.
- And so now Rafael is going to be civilian.
- And so they're going to reduce their force to maybe 20%
- of their original personnel.
- And my friends may or may not have
- a job when this gets through.
- And so some of them-- one of them I know,
- one of my former students has emigrated to Canada
- in perhaps anticipation of this move some years ago.
- Others are trying to create a connection
- with the Technion, which is the Israel Institute of Technology.
- Incidentally, apropos of that, I spent three months
- at the Technion in the fall of 1986.
- I received a fellowship from the Lady Davis Fellowship
- Trust, which is a high honor.
- And I worked there, strangely enough,
- in the Ministry of Agriculture--
- not the Ministry, the Department of Agricultural Engineering,
- excuse me.
- And the reason for that is that one
- of the worst problems in agriculture,
- particularly for Israel, which depends so much on agriculture
- for its economic survival, is the spoilage
- of fruits and vegetables as a result of impacts.
- And these impacts occur both in the harvesting,
- in the processing, and very largely in the transport
- of these fruit and vegetables.
- And so there's a lot of brainpower
- that's going into mechanisms to try
- to minimize the amount of bruising and impact.
- And I spent some time in this department in order
- to further this effort, or trying to.
- I didn't do much good.
- But what did happen is that the then director of the state
- agency for the agricultural research
- is one of my very, very closest friends.
- And we see each other whenever we can.
- So I do have lots of good friends in both Haifa
- and to a lesser extent in Tel Aviv that I'm in constant touch
- with.
- So it isn't as though I am unhappy with the Israelis.
- It's that I'm unhappy with the general turmoil that
- exists there.
- And for someone at my age, peace and quiet
- is a very important thing.
- These things are all relative.
- I mean I'm sure somebody coming out of Russia
- would find it extremely quiescent over there.
- But being used to, shall we say, not
- having been attacked or impugned or verbalized because
- of my Jewish heritage, at least the Bay Area
- is not a bad place to be.
- So that's how I feel about living in Israel.
- Now, where were we before that?
- Well, I'll ask you one more philosophical question
- about the Holocaust.
- Some people say that the Holocaust because
- of its proportions may have changed the course of history.
- It desensitized people towards that much violence.
- Do you think that may have changed history in a way?
- Change the course of history because of the image
- that's been burned in everybody's mind.
- I think in the short run It may have
- over a period of, let's say, the last generation and perhaps
- the present generation.
- My own feeling is that in terms of the course of history,
- looking 50 or 100 years ahead, that it will not
- have more than a minor blip in the, shall we say,
- behavior of people towards each other.
- And this, you see--
- look at the accidental factors involved.
- The fact that I am here speaking to you
- is a probability of 1 in a billion
- that I would have survived, lived to this age,
- under the circumstances that happened.
- Whereas had I been in New York, been born in New York,
- that probability would be maybe 1 in 2.
- So the accident of your birth is so
- critical to what's happening.
- I just read Art Harvey yesterday on the remark
- of Mr. Quayle concerning the "choice," quote unquote,
- of homosexuality.
- Mr. Harvey wrote, yes, the people in Somalia
- really choose to be there, or the Bosnians.
- He didn't say the Jews in Germany in '33,
- but he might as well have because it's
- all the same thing.
- It's a matter of where you were that matters.
- But memories are very short.
- And I think two generations is all
- that you really can expect people
- to maintain the intensity of the philosophy of--
- I mean, today we all think Genghis Khan was terrible.
- But do we really have a deep personal feeling
- about how terrible he was?
- Napoleon, the French themselves, dislike, by and large,
- Napoleon for the simple reason that they
- feel that he held back the country
- from its normal development by being so
- eager to conquer other areas.
- And while some of them, of course,
- hold him in very high reverence, I
- think the intelligentsia think he was a definite detriment
- to a society.
- So as far as the Germans are concerned,
- I don't think they will ever, by and large--
- I'm talking about the vast majority-- will
- honor Hitler or his policies.
- But at the same time, even though the Germans
- are far more honest in admitting their errors,
- their crimes really, compared to, shall we say, the Japanese,
- I don't think that they will maintain
- that for another century.
- So from that point of view, historically
- speaking, projecting to the future,
- I honestly don't think it'll make that much difference
- that it happened.
- I'm sorry.
- I have to feel that way.
- But as you say, there are these antisemitic,
- the xenophobic outbreaks in Rostock in Eastern Germany
- right now.
- And if you have a country that is
- civilized and acclimatize to what
- happened in the '30s with Hitler and what
- they did to the people, this shouldn't be done.
- It shouldn't happen it.
- And if there is a very, very, very small minority,
- there should be such that the police can certainly handle it.
- And apparently the police is up just about against the wall
- on it.
- So my own fear is this.
- I think this country, the United States of America,
- is not an impossible place for a dictator to rise.
- I am thinking back of someone like Huey Long.
- I think Britain has less of a probability,
- although it's possible in any country.
- I think Britain actually-- perhaps because it
- is more homogenized has less of a chance
- of a dictatorship occurring.
- And if you have a dictatorship, it can be benevolent
- or it can be malevolent.
- And it can go against the Jews.
- It can go against the Negroes.
- It can go against any minority and be successful,
- as is being demonstrated right now in Yugoslavia.
- So you seem to be saying we really haven't learned
- the lessons of the Holocaust?
- I think you and I have.
- I think the Jews may have.
- But-- and that, of course, is the reason
- for the existence of Israel, that they said, never again.
- But given the political reality, let us say,
- that Israel cannot survive without the United States
- support-- they can't.
- There's no question in anybody's mind that they can't.
- The Israelis have admit it freely.
- Supposing we get a president and a Congress that
- is not very favorably inclined towards Israel and all
- the money we're spending or whatever, they feel
- that Arab oil is more important, whatever the reasons may be,
- I can envision that we will sell weapons,
- as we already have to Saudi Arabia, but now to Syria,
- to Iraq.
- Maybe not during Bush's term, but sometime in the future,
- Iran.
- You take it.
- And you never know what somebody in a country that
- is considered to be stable might do to overthrow the country.
- Look at the instability of the governments
- that you have in the Middle East and in Northern Africa
- and for that matter in India and in Pakistan.
- These countries, which are Islamic in nature,
- I think would be very happy to see Israel go down the tubes.
- And if you give them the opportunity, they will do that.
- And then where's the Holocaust in this?
- We, the United States, will sit and do nothing
- as we are doing nothing with respect to Yugoslavia.
- It is incredible to me that we would
- let a genocide, as is occurring there,
- go on without doing more than just saying, well,
- Mr. Fischer, you can't play chess,
- which is what I read in the paper today.
- And yet, at the drop of a hat, when oil was involved,
- we went to Kuwait.
- So the history does not dictate the economic doctrine
- that a country follows.
- The economic doctrine being translated
- into military policy, as was in Kuwait.
- I mean, there's no other reason to go into Kuwait other
- than that we wanted the oil and we
- wanted to prevent Hussein from, shall we say,
- controlling the Middle Eastern oil, which he certainly
- would have next moved to Saudi Arabia.
- So if they had only been honest about it,
- I don't think anybody could have objected and said incidentally,
- we'll put Kuwait's rulers back in.
- But that was such an artificial division when--
- if you remember your history-- the British and the French
- pulled out of there, that the lines that were drawn
- had no historical significance of any kind.
- So I feel that the Holocaust is something
- that appears as a blip, a major blip,
- mind you, in the history of the 20th century.
- But I think that you will find that in the 21st century
- it will be perhaps not ignored, but the lessons from it
- will have been less and less heeded.
- And who is it that should heed the lessons?
- The Jews or the non-Jews?
- Or both?
- Should the Jews say, well, the moment
- we have something like that, we're going to band together
- and enacts some form of military revolt
- and make sure that the person who is threatening this
- gets removed?
- I don't know how you can do this.
- The Jews are a minority, everywhere except in Israel.
- And pretty soon, they'll be a minority there.
- So it's a difficult thing to realize
- what the Holocaust has done for humanity within my lifetime,
- yes, and within the lifetime of my peers.
- Incidentally, I wanted to tell you this.
- And this is important.
- In our paper that we get, there's
- a notice from the fire victims in Oakland
- with particular reference to Holocaust child survivors,
- asking to get together and compare experiences.
- And we're talking about 3,000 homes over in the East Bay.
- And there apparently are a number of people like me.
- And I will certainly make an effort
- to get in touch with this group and see
- what their experiences are.
- And I don't know whether or not this organization here
- would be interested in that.
- But I can certainly provide the data, telephone numbers
- and things like that, to alert you
- to who's calling for the meetings.
- My wife called this to my attention
- because we got just oodles of literature
- from [? reeple ?] in the house, you know.
- And it's just wedged in.
- A bunch of referrals, anything you have or--
- Yeah, well, I say there's Professor Jacob Lubliner
- in the Department of Civil Engineering at Berkeley
- who is the survivor that I mentioned of a concentration
- camp in Poland.
- And I do believe he's on sabbatical right now,
- but certainly is accessible.
- I can find out where he can be reached to see whether or not
- he'd want to participate.
- In my own department, there are two other people--
- I don't know whether you're interested only in Germans
- or whether you're also interested in people
- from Austria--
- In 10 seconds.
- I'll let you know when we're ready.
- OK.
- I understand that your uncle's death
- had a serious or very important impact on you.
- Yes, it was the timing and the circumstances
- that have been with me the rest of my life.
- I was 13 years old in 1937, scheduled
- to be bar mitzvahed in May, the month of my birth.
- And I forget the exact date.
- But two weeks before that, my uncle--
- this is my mother's brother, who was
- living with us at the time--
- and I was scheduled to go on a bicycle trip for the day
- out in the various parts of the neighborhood
- and also in [INAUDIBLE] to stop by some relatives in Wuppertal.
- Anyway, three days before this scheduled event,
- the Gestapo came to our house at 3:00 in the morning,
- banging on the door, demanding to be let in.
- And, of course, we were all frightened.
- Well, what was the situation?
- They wanted to take my uncle away to the concentration camp.
- And there was some discussion.
- There was some more discussion.
- And it turned out they had the wrong person.
- And so they allowed him to stay.
- So three days after this, we went on this bicycle trip.
- I imagine he must have been still terribly shaken,
- as we were all.
- Being younger, it was perhaps a little less severe for me.
- But we visited our relatives in Wuppertal and then came back.
- That's a distance of maybe 25 kilometers back to Düsseldorf.
- And halfway in between the middle of a field,
- he had a heart attack.
- And his bicycle went off the road into the field.
- And he fell off.
- And a couple of breathings and then he was still.
- And I ran screaming into the nearest house.
- People there were very kind.
- I guess they didn't ask me if I was Jewish or not.
- And they called the local constable.
- And he came by.
- And he tried to calm me down and then made effort
- to get a hold of my parents.
- And my parents apparently went across the street
- from where they lived.
- And the bakery there had a car.
- And they drove them up to this place.
- And after a couple of hours, they came took me home.
- And then we had a visit from the rabbi.
- And then there was a funeral.
- And all the relatives in the vicinity
- came, including his first cousin who
- lived in Wuppertal with whom we had just visited
- and who then moved to Los Angeles in 1939 or 1940.
- Anyway, this happening, just two weeks before my bar mitzvah,
- was a terribly traumatic event.
- And I can still see him falling off that bicycle,
- not knowing what it was.
- I can only attribute it, at least, in a significant manner
- to the visit by the Gestapo three days before.
- I can't help but associate the two in a very intimate way.
- And it's an image that I've carried
- with me for all this time.
- And it's been very, very frightening
- to me to put myself back into this position.
- So how I handle it?
- I don't know whether I handled it well or not.
- But I've never forgotten the circumstances and the meaning
- of it, as far as I'm concerned.
- So that was the situation with my uncle.
- First time I've ever seen death directly and firsthand.
- It hasn't happened very often since either.
- I've seen dead people, but they died while I wasn't there.
- So you wanted to know something more
- about my early life, some of the impression that I can recall.
- These will be some--
- I want to digress.
- If you could describe in more detail what a Gestapo raid was,
- not having never been.
- Were they in uniform?
- And were they wearing leather trench coats?
- And--
- Yes--
- Did they barge in the house and break the place up?
- If you could describe in detail exactly what time of day
- it was and--
- It was 3:00 in the morning.
- And they banged on the door with their, I guess, truncheons.
- And so loud, you could hear it all over the street
- and everything else.
- And they yelled in German, open up, open up, open up, or we'll
- break the door down.
- So I don't know who answered it, whether my father, my mother
- or who.
- It wasn't I. And they pushed everybody aside
- and went to the room of my uncle and grabbed him.
- And then there was some conversation.
- I guess somebody is trying to ascertain the identity.
- And then I found out that it was not the person they had wanted.
- But, you know, it was a terrible experience.
- And you see, or saw, the SA, the Brownshirts
- and the Blackshirts, the SS, marching around
- with their goose step and their Heil Hitler
- motions and whatnot.
- But you never seen a group actually pressing into a house.
- Maybe-- I don't even recall how many there were.
- I would imagine five, something of that order.
- And it was enough to frighten us out of our wits.
- It was apparently not that unusual.
- It happened to others who were taken to concentration camps.
- So perhaps I blocked out more of that image than I would like.
- But it did happen in our house and had the consequences
- I've described.
- I have never been personally attacked
- by one of the Hitler Youth or by an SS or SA, uniformed person.
- I don't know what I would have done.
- I mean-- but it didn't happen.
- So I can't speculate on what I might have done.
- I probably would have tried to run.
- That's the honest answer.
- There was a certain, almost morbid fascination
- to see this marching.
- I've listened occasionally because the news broadcasts
- do show this Hitler speaking in Nuremberg at a rally
- to a million people or so.
- And the guy was a aura of incredible power.
- I mean he was mesmeric--
- mes-- yeah, I guess mesmeric is the word.
- He held people spellbound.
- And he had the power or the actions
- of others that is incredible.
- Now, to some extent, I would imagine
- that the Germans with their own characteristics as a nation
- were led into this.
- They have always been the most orderly of people.
- And, of course, Hitler stood for absolute order,
- as long as it was his order--
- and the fear, respect, and obeisance
- to authority and the authority is represented by a uniform.
- I found that even after the war the first time
- I went back to Germany.
- And I was traveling from Switzerland to the Saal--
- and this was in 1968.
- No, it wasn't the first time.
- It was the second time--
- by train.
- And I got one of these officious border guards
- who started asking me all kinds of irrelevant questions.
- And unlike a typical German, I was just not
- answering him in the fashion that he wanted to.
- So he started getting nasty.
- And I got nasty, and I said, look, if you keep this up,
- in German, I said, there will be a complaint at the embassy
- tomorrow morning.
- And so then he looked at my passport.
- And he said--
- I have to translate it into English, I guess.
- He said, oh, a real, real, real American.
- I said, well, thank God, I had the opportunity.
- I mean, this is the kind of stuff
- that the Germans put on when they have a uniform on,
- at least in those days.
- And this was only a few years after the war.
- So the Germans respected the uniforms.
- And this was part and parcel of the image of the Hitler moment.
- It was the uniform, storm brigades,
- and they were going to fight to bring the country back
- to its pre-war prosperity and its pre-war status
- in terms of international respect.
- But to me, this was such a repellent thing in retrospect
- that I never joined anything where uniforms were asked, even
- if it was a voluntary matter.
- And this included the Boy Scouts.
- So I think that's the spellbinding
- of the population must have been more than Hitler's
- oratorical abilities.
- There had to be a propensity of the country
- to want to be led in that direction
- and to believe what he said to be the gospel truth.
- And that was part of the problem.
- And there were resistance to this movement, resistances.
- We know that the German army tried to execute, a putsch,
- except it didn't work.
- And this man [? Roehm, ?] I think was his name,
- was executed.
- And there was another attempt during the war with a bomb that
- didn't come off.
- And besides that, there were a lot of subterranean groups
- that were trying to get people out unofficially.
- But, by and large, I would say 98% of the German population
- was in Hitler's pocket, perhaps not actively, but at least not
- resisting it.
- So as far as other impressions of my youth--
- or is that enough in terms of the--
- Were they in uniforms, the people the Gestapo that
- broke in?
- Or were they in civilian clothes?
- The Gestapo wore black uniforms, like the SS.
- They all wore black and completely black.
- It was the Brownshirts were the common, ordinary, the drones,
- so to speak, that were just together so that they
- could say they swore their allegiance to Hitler
- in a special way.
- These were Blackshirts.
- And I don't honestly remember whether they
- were Gestapo or SS.
- They both wore black uniforms.
- And I can't recall the difference at this point.
- Did they hit anybody in the household?
- Or shove them?
- They shoved them for sure.
- Hitting, I can't--
- I can't say that.
- And you must recall I was just a very, very small boy.
- Actually, this was in an apartment on the second floor
- of this apartment house.
- There were three story apartments, bottom,
- second floor, and the third floor.
- And then there was a little attic.
- And I was sleeping in the attic.
- I think I mentioned this.
- I slept there and read until 4:00
- in the morning with a flashlight.
- So when this all happened I rushed downstairs.
- And so I didn't get in at the beginning of this.
- But I shortly was in on the whole operation.
- And God knows to how many people this sort of thing happened.
- How many resisted and were shot on the spot?
- These people weren't just wearing batons.
- They also had pieces, revolvers and whatnot.
- So they obviously didn't apologize when they left,
- right?
- No.
- They just left.
- May even have made some nasty remarks.
- But I don't remember that.
- The--
- Were the family up for the rest of the night discussing this?
- Oh, sure.
- Yes.
- And I'm surprised in retrospect that we still
- went on this bicycle trip, but we did.
- You asked how my daily operation was.
- I don't remember too terribly much of my young days.
- The last few years, I live maybe about two kilometers
- from my high school, gymnasium really.
- And I bicycled back and forth.
- I took the bicycle when it had a puncture,
- I repaired it and so on.
- And I had a bicycle path, so I didn't
- have to worry too much about traffic.
- The street we lived on was a major thoroughfare.
- And there was a fair amount of traffic,
- as well as a set of streetcar tracks.
- And so it's a good thing there was a bicycle path attached
- to the sidewalk, so I didn't have
- to counter the amount of traffic.
- However, the traffic situation in those days
- is nothing like what you find in San Francisco today.
- And so there were distinct and lengthy spaces
- between vehicles.
- And I would think that the majority of the vehicles
- were some trucks of some sort or other, or, well,
- some form of car with a loading facility.
- They weren't exactly station wagons.
- And they weren't exactly small trucks.
- It was something in between.
- My school was almost next to the railroad tracks,
- the railroad tracks from which my father and I
- used to go take the train and go hiking in the country.
- And I have some certificates that I got after the war.
- And when I had correspondence with the present director--
- also, I don't think I have the letter.
- But it wasn't a particularly friendly or apologetic
- or anything like that.
- It was just this is what happened,
- whatever you may think, this is what happened
- and you're wrong in thinking otherwise.
- So I didn't even try to establish anything
- else other than seeing this teacher
- who lived across the Rhine and whom I visited
- at least on three occasions.
- The last time when I wanted to visit him
- with my wife, who had met him once, we were in the vicinity.
- And I called up.
- And he said, no, he had just lost his wife.
- He was in deep sorrow, didn't want
- to see anybody, and so on and so forth.
- When I passed through Düsseldorf last year,
- I looked up to see whether he was in the phone book,
- and his name was not there anymore.
- So I assume he's dead.
- He would be well in this 90s at this point.
- So he was the one who tried to protect me
- against the excesses of other students.
- I remember distinctly that I did very well in French.
- And I spoke French fluently.
- And I still speak it, although not as fluently.
- My grammar is horrible.
- But when I go over there I do make
- myself understood without the aid of a dictionary usually.
- And that was one of my favorite subjects.
- And, of course, the German educational system
- at that level was far advanced of
- the corresponding American system at that age level.
- So when I came to this country, I
- was able to go through high school
- having had one quarter of it by passing a four-year examination
- in German, another 1/8 of it, a two-year examination in French.
- And the things that I had to pick up on,
- which I didn't have, was social science, English, and so on.
- But English came fairly easily to me.
- I fancy myself that I'm a reasonable writer
- and communicator, maybe not as good as Reagan.
- But in any event, the advance was in all areas,
- in science, in physics.
- Of course, history was distorted.
- And it was distorted in somewhat similar way
- to the way Russians distorted it,
- except that everything German was great and good.
- I'm not saying, however, that they
- would claim inventions that were made by others to have
- been made by Germans.
- But I do remember my high school--
- my teacher over there in music, we
- were discussing national anthems.
- We were discussing the American anthem.
- I still recall it now that we're talking about these things.
- He said it was undoubtedly the result of a prize
- contest for a few dollars that was won by somebody
- and that became our national anthem.
- So this is the kind of attitude they
- had towards things non-German.
- And it's perhaps typical.
- I think the Germans didn't know much about the United States.
- The United States was pretty isolated until World War II.
- Even World War I was a very limited expedition.
- And I don't think the European culture got back
- to the United States or America culture got to Germany
- in the same way that it did after World War II,
- or during and after World War II.
- And so they were at the same time envious.
- They were envious of the tremendous area
- of the country and, even at that time, the level
- of the population, the standard of living,
- which was very high, relatively speaking
- to many European countries.
- There were also fearful.
- I remember this that I read all the books
- by a man called Karl May, who wrote, I don't know,
- 50 or 60 books, all about--
- all but two or three about--
- foreign countries.
- And the US was one of his favorite subjects.
- The other--
- --as all mention when we're all set to start.
- I wouldn't say I had a fascination with Karl May.
- He wrote about the United States,
- and he wrote about other countries, the Balkans.
- He wrote about Middle Eastern countries, Algeria,
- and so on and so forth.
- He invented all these crazy names for his characters.
- And for example, for the German who
- had to be the principal character who became--
- but I don't know what might have been called a cowboy.
- They call it Westman, man of the West, in this.
- He had all these ridiculous English phrases that he had,
- like zounds.
- Now, who says zounds in this country?
- Who ever said zounds?
- But that was May's idea, who spent most of his life
- in prison because he was a kleptomaniac,
- as to how these people would talk.
- And the Indians would say [? oof, ?] whatever
- that may or may not mean.
- So he wrote about all of these things, and I read them.
- And then I think I may have said this.
- In this country, I was given six of these books
- when I was sick early--
- a month or so after I came to the United States
- I was put in a hospital.
- And these books stayed with me until the fire,
- but they were burned in that.
- And this was the mentality of the Germans,
- and if you can believe it or not,
- they have a Karl May Society over there now.
- And they put on what might be best
- called a rodeo or something like that,
- chasing buffaloes, or riding horses, or roping steers,
- or whatnot.
- And this is how they imagined Karl May to have depicted
- the United States, and they had to get
- all of this out of newspapers, magazines, and whatnot.
- And so this was actually as strong an influence
- on the German children as--
- a stronger influence than James Fenimore Cooper
- might have been some 60 years ago or--
- let's see who else--
- Zane Gray, and Jack London.
- And this generation had a much stronger influence--
- May had a stronger influence on the Germans
- than the literature of the US did on American children.
- So this was something that was just an aside.
- Of course, it turned out to be interesting
- when I came to the United States and found that indeed there
- were a few similarities.
- But the differences were far greater than the similarities.
- The thing I recall--
- going to school on a bicycle, and being
- very quiet, and essentially not trying
- to get anybody to notice me.
- When we were let out for lunch or whatnot,
- I was always by myself.
- Nobody would spend time with me.
- As I say, I was the only Jew in--
- I went back home afterwards and no participation
- in any kind of group sports or group activities, of which
- there weren't as many anyway.
- When I came to the United States,
- I found out there were far more so-called "play periods"
- after the actual school hours than there were in Germany
- and many more activities.
- It wasn't just sports.
- There were things like chess.
- There were things like foreign affairs, newspaper, whatever.
- These things didn't exist over there.
- My relationship to other non-Jews--
- I think I can recall only one person--
- I don't even remember his name--
- who lived in one place across the street from me
- with whom I had some sort of a regular dialogue.
- He wasn't Jewish.
- I think he was the son of a janitor--
- that's the best I can remember there--
- or whoever took care of the house.
- Maybe it wasn't a janitor.
- Maybe it was a manager.
- But anyway, for the rest they were just my friends
- from the Jewish community.
- And other than preparing for bar mitzvah,
- I did not go to a Jewish shul.
- But the bar mitzvah, of course, I
- was instructed by the rabbi or maybe the cantor
- so that I was able to read the passage from the Torah
- at the time.
- This was required.
- And when I went back to Jerusalem sometime--
- when was it, '67, '74?
- I forget-- they bound my arms.
- They asked me if I'd been bar mitzvah.
- And then they bound my arms at the wall.
- And they told me that this reaffirmed my faith
- in the Jewish religion, even though I had not said so.
- And this is just an indication of how two disparate events
- happen to you at very different times of your thinking
- and of your philosophical outlook.
- The other things that I can remember about my early life
- in Dusseldorf--
- I used to go to the zoo a lot because,
- in one of our residences--
- it was right across the street from us
- that was very accessible to me.
- The place is still there, but the animals are gone.
- When I was over there the last time,
- I went by all three locations where
- I remembered living to try to take a photograph of the house.
- None of them-- one of them does exist the way it is now,
- but the other two are rebuilt. But those
- were lost, too, in the fire.
- I did, however, salvage a map of Dusseldorf.
- I bought it when I was there.
- And the fact that it survived is very strange.
- I went to England from Dusseldorf,
- and in Cambridge, where I gave a lecture, I have a friend.
- I asked him to mail all my maps that I had acquired on this one
- trip, the road maps, not the old maps that I had bought,
- to mail them to me here so I wouldn't have
- to lug them on the airplane.
- Well, they were just late enough,
- so they missed the fire.
- And that's why I have the map of Dusseldorf
- here where I can indicate where I used to live.
- Well, one place was right across from the zoo.
- Then another place was such very near the zoo as well.
- But halfway in between there was an ice rink,
- and that ice rink is still there.
- It's been rebuilt and operating.
- Now, I used to go ice skating as a small child there.
- I used to go roller skating.
- And these were small pleasures that
- were still permitted to someone my age,
- even if they were Jewish.
- I did swim a few times in the Rhine,
- but the Rhine was a lot cleaner then than it is now.
- I wouldn't recommend anybody to go in there at this point.
- But mostly they had swimming pools,
- covered swimming pools, big ones that we
- used to go to with the school.
- Occasionally I'd go myself but not too often.
- It's very difficult for me to remember
- what happened prior to Hitler.
- True, I was seven years old at the time
- and should have recalled some other things.
- Well, some impressions-- even as a small child, I was always,
- always scared of thunder.
- And when there was a thunder storm
- I'd hide my face in the furthest corner
- of the house with my face against the wall,
- and I did outgrow that sort of thing.
- I think I mentioned that I drew maps and made timetables
- of the trains, and so on that I took.
- I carried a backpack with my schoolbooks in it.
- I would do that when I walked, which was early,
- or when I took the bicycle, which was later.
- I don't think I had a rack.
- I had a backpack.
- Shopping-- I have a picture in here.
- There's one shopping street called the Konigsallee, which
- is famous all over Europe as the most prestigious shopping
- area in the city, maybe in the country.
- And I have a picture here when I couldn't
- have been more than one and a half years old,
- my mother and I walking down the street,
- so it must have been fairly prestigious at the time.
- I recall that there were some department stores,
- and the department store--
- both of the ones that I remember were owned by Jews,
- and of course they were expropriated.
- And they're still in existence, but they're
- known under other names.
- A few of the store names I recognized going back but very,
- very few.
- The railroad station took a major hit,
- and I did bring with me a book of this, although, again, I
- can leave this here and pick it up some other time.
- The area around the central part of the city and in the west--
- the eastern portion was very hard-hit.
- The old city was practically untouched.
- I understand that they were very deliberate about bombing this
- because they wanted to use the city as a headquarters
- for an American army, so they didn't
- want to destroy too much.
- The same thing, I believe, was true for Frankfurt,
- but it was not true for places like Dresden,
- not true for Cologne.
- In Cologne, the only thing they did was to save the cathedral.
- It only got the very peripheral explosions,
- but everything around that was just flattened.
- And that's very surprising because the main railroad
- station was no more than 100 yards from the cathedral.
- And when I first went back to Germany in 1953,
- I still found a tremendous amount of war damage
- that had not been repaired, even eight
- years after the end of the war.
- When I went back, when I've gone back in '70, '74, '81, you
- can't find any places anymore that are still--
- go back to the war in terms--
- everything has been repaired.
- And at this stage of the game I'm
- more familiar with Freiburg in Germany
- than I am actually in Dusseldorf.
- I know a lot of people in Freiburg.
- I don't know anybody in Dusseldorf.
- Well, that's not quite true.
- This woman who's running this project
- for the history of the Jews that were killed I know now,
- but it didn't then.
- And I met the deputy mayor, who's
- in charge of cultural affairs, and he's just retired.
- So really and truly I only know one family there.
- But it's-- I go back there with terribly mixed feelings.
- It's not a direct and unique liking or disliking,
- and it makes me think about the horror of the death
- of my family on one hand.
- You asked, I think, one time as to whether or not
- there was anything good that came out
- of the Holocaust, which I have reflected upon.
- And I told you earlier that I don't
- think that I would consider it because
- of the enormity of the crimes that were committed
- against the Jews.
- Well, if you're saying that there
- were mitigating circumstances, they were vanishingly small.
- The existence of Israel is a positive thing, maybe.
- It's a positive thing if it can survive, as we talked about.
- The consciousness of the Jews--
- I don't think I have touched upon that enough.
- I don't think that they either want to separate themselves
- further from the non-Jews or try to integrate
- more than they have.
- I think in this country, from what I have seen,
- there's no question in my mind that integration is
- a part of natural development.
- Take me, for example.
- I married twice. .
- I married two Jews.
- I have two children who are fully Jewish.
- And the third time I married a Christian, and my daughter,
- my younger daughter, by definition,
- is not Jewish unless she converts.
- So this type of integration, I think, is quite natural.
- I have a very strongly Jewish colleague
- who is married to a non-Jew, and it just
- happens that you fall in love and you
- don't ask about religion.
- And in fact, in my case, with my present wife,
- we never even talked about whether we would have a child
- or not.
- I assumed I was so old that I would not want another child,
- but yet we did.
- I was-- let's see--
- 49 when I got married and we got married.
- But a child we did have.
- And there's a personal matter which
- I don't know whether I should bring in here,
- but I wanted to have a second child.
- And a problem arose.
- And then there won't be any-- couldn't be any more children.
- But the reflection of my older youth--
- I'm trying to recall what it is--
- what habits I had then that I carried over
- intensely to my present time.
- Studiousness, yes, there's no question.
- I remember from day one I was working, reading,
- writing schoolwork.
- Over a period of time, both while
- still in Germany and immediately afterwards
- I was a voracious reader of historical novels,
- Northwest Passage in this country, for example,
- and books of that nature.
- When I started college, that was practically wiped out simply
- because my time was so taken into use that I just
- didn't have time for recreational reading
- between working, having a full-time job,
- working part time in the co-op where I lived,
- six, eight, 10 hours a week, and taking a full-time load.
- And then when the war came on, from the normal 15 or 16
- units and 17 units that an engineer took,
- we were asked to take 20 and 23 units
- to try to get through faster so that we could
- become professional engineers and help with the war effort
- if that was still going on.
- So there just simply wasn't any time for this.
- And my present reading habits are still strictly fiction,
- and it takes me a year, practically,
- to read a book because I go into bed, and I read three pages,
- and I'm so tired I fall asleep.
- And then I'm so occupied with what
- I'm doing the rest of the time.
- I don't take a day off to do something recreational
- in terms of reading.
- I may take the day off to go to a stamp show.
- I may take a day off to go to a store in San Francisco
- to buy maps.
- But I won't take it to read some fiction.
- But I did read as a child.
- I read a great deal.
- And what other recreations did I have?
- Not much.
- The opportunities for "playing," quote, unquote,
- were much more limited then.
- I remember I was very, very interested in soccer.
- A very famous club which competes at the International
- level called Fortuna had its practice field
- right behind the house where we lived.
- But I never went to any of the games
- I just looked through the knothole in the fence
- to see what was going on.
- But I did have an interest in that.
- And in fact, when I was in any kind of soccer game
- I was always the goalie, and as a result,
- I had my hand broken several times
- from some kicks that shouldn't have been directed but were.
- And you're not supposed to touch the goal.
- It was strictly accidents.
- So this happened again in terms of my coming
- to the United States.
- I told you last time about the illness of osteomyelitis that
- struck me while I was in camp.
- But very shortly thereafter I had a tonsillectomy, which
- was relatively frightening.
- It was the second time in the hospital within a year.
- And I had generally-- still to this day I have problems
- with the back of my throat.
- It gets partly infected, even though the tonsils
- aren't there.
- Other than that, I didn't have any medical problems.
- I didn't have any medical problems
- in Germany of any major sort, the usual children's vaccine.
- I have a huge vaccination mark over here--
- this was the custom-- about the size of a silver dollar.
- And I recall distinctly going to dentists
- that used the old laughing gas when
- they started to extract teeth and things
- of that general sort.
- I don't remember anything about an internist
- or any other doctor other than the dentist that I had.
- What other recollections of my early life?
- Can you describe the Jewish community,
- the name of the rabbi, and the cantor, [INAUDIBLE]
- anybody [INAUDIBLE]?
- Yes.
- The rabbi was written up in a book
- that I have that is, in fact, a book of his--
- it's a biography of him.
- And strangely enough, I just ran into this,
- and I think I have it with me.
- He signed-- his name is Eshel [INAUDIBLE],,
- and his daughter wrote this biography.
- And he signed the prayer book that somehow or other I
- rescued out of that house which my father had from World War I.
- And it's dated, and it's still with me, which may be something
- that I want to show.
- He was the chief rabbi.
- There was another rabbi by the name of Klein.
- I regret I cannot recall the name of the cantor.
- He's probably in one of these histories that I can give.
- The synagogue was beautiful and large.
- It's destroyed now.
- They built a much, much smaller one
- because the community is much smaller.
- And it had stained-glass windows, lead,
- and I can picture still the altar and the--
- I guess it's not called an altar,
- but the pulpit from which you pray
- and where I read the Torah.
- And we went there on holidays, Rosh Hashanah.
- Now, as far as the community is concerned--
- What street was it on, by the way?
- I'm sorry?
- What street was it on?
- I would have to look.
- I do know the--
- if you're trying to draw this out of me,
- I can't, at the moment, remember it.
- But it is in there, and it's documented.
- And I can find it in the street plan of Dusseldorf,
- which I have here with me.
- How long did it take you to prepare for your bar mitzvah?
- Was it a long--
- weeks or [INAUDIBLE]?
- No, it was months, I would guess.
- It's vague now, but I would think three months
- was a very small time that I recall
- I would have prepared for it.
- Remember, I never even knew a Jewish--
- a Hebrew letter.
- So I had to be indoctrinated in the complete language,
- not that I ever learned Hebrew.
- I just learned to read the Torah at that place,
- and I learned to recognize which letter was which.
- So you could actually read it?
- I read it out of the Torah, yes, and in Hebrew.
- And I think I knew at the time what it meant,
- but I know I can't do it anymore.
- My knowledge of Hebrew is canon law and shalom, and that's it--
- and l'chaim.
- That's the most important.
- Do you remember your portion--
- your Torah portion?
- No, no, I don't.
- And I remember vaguely carrying it.
- I also remember from the synagogue--
- and this is still true in Israel--
- there was segregation between men and women.
- I remember the women were upstairs
- and the men were below, very similar to what
- they do in the mosques.
- And this is also true at the wall in Jerusalem.
- You've got a fence right, and never the twain shall meet.
- And so I recall, apropos of that being in Jerusalem,
- go into the eastern side.
- And there's a Jewish cemetery in what was Arab-occupied country
- but now was liberated.
- And I went through there, and I saw this very Hasidic Jew
- bowing to the grave of his [? ancestor ?]
- or whoever it was, and reading her the Bible.
- And I stood there and looked at him,
- and apparently it was very disconcerting
- because he looked up, and looked up, and looked up
- to see what I was doing.
- I was just watching him.
- And I decided I better get out of there.
- And so I didn't mean to disturb him in the services,
- but I was just fascinated because I
- don't see this over here.
- Maybe if I were to live in New York,
- in Brooklyn, this would occur.
- So I'm trying to--
- this was the sort of thing, precisely,
- that I didn't see in Germany.
- We all went to school, the synagogue,
- in our business suits and women's dresses.
- We had to pray in shuls for high occasions
- but not for ordinary occasions.
- And I would go three times a year, something like that.
- The Jewish community was very loose.
- Many of my mother's friends were Jewish women.
- I think I told you about this colleague in Manchester
- whose mother was one of my mother's friends.
- We had no direct relatives living in Dusseldorf
- at the time that I lived there.
- That's not quite true.
- My aunts, my mother's sister, lived in Dusseldorf
- until she died.
- My maternal grandmother lived in Dusseldorf.
- My paternal grandmother was in a home,
- and I don't even know whether that
- was in Dusseldorf or far away.
- I recall that she died when I was four.
- And my uncle lived there, so I'm quite
- wrong when I say no immediate family lived there.
- We did have that.
- But there was a far greater number of, quote, unquote,
- relatives with whom I was actually much closer.
- They lived in Holland and lived in Rahden in Westphalia.
- And then there were some more distant relatives
- that lived in another place in Westphalia
- that I don't remember the name at the moment.
- Antwerp [INAUDIBLE].
- Until some of these people just packed up and left.
- But I left earlier than they did,
- and so I did have frequent contact
- with all members of my family.
- And so I guess since I was an only child that was important.
- Were you close with them?
- I was very close with some of them.
- For a long, long time I was very close with my second cousin
- in Rahden who was here when I came.
- And we shared this room, and we used
- to fight over whether or not the window would be open or not.
- And we were close for many, many years after that.
- We had a falling out, and then we patched it up again
- the last couple of years.
- I'm now much, much closer to his brother,
- who also lives down there.
- I was very close with my uncle.
- I was not close with my maternal aunts.
- I was quite close with my paternal aunt and her husband.
- Her children were quite a bit older than I was,
- so there was no community there, and one of them
- has a child whom I mentioned that I visited in Amsterdam.
- And as far as I know, that is the entire remains
- of the family.
- I have with me several judicial papers
- that indicate the distribution of poverty of which I
- am a very small part, and I have no idea
- whether the other members that are listed in these documents
- are related to me or not.
- Some I know are, and some might be.
- But I don't recognize the name.
- There was some very distant relative in Munich, I remember,
- but then the most important relative I
- had turned out to be the second cousin of my grandfathers
- who brought me to the United States, who
- was this big-shot politician in New York.
- So I was close in the sense of seeing them often,
- but if you're talking about something like a best
- friend or an intimacy, I can only
- say that my closest friend was my mother.
- I mean, it was significantly so, not
- that I wasn't close to my father either,
- but I had more to do with my mother.
- There's more interaction.
- With my father basically I went on these walks.
- We talked once in a while.
- But I saw my mother all the time.
- She took care of me, made my lunch,
- saw me after school and whatever,
- took me to the movies, gave me pocket money,
- this kind of thing.
- I don't know if I mentioned this,
- the year or so before I left-- '36 I think it was--
- I saw a movie that played longer in Dusseldorf than any other.
- It was San Francisco, Spencer Tracy, and Clark Gable,
- and Jeanette MacDonald.
- I saw it three times.
- And I've seen it a few times since, too, on the reruns,
- but that made a tremendous impression
- on the people over there because it was very well-done,
- the impression of the earthquake.
- I don't think there was that much of an image of the fire,
- although it was alluded to, the fact
- is that the fire did far more damage than the earthquake did.
- But I remember seeing that.
- I remember seeing a number of movies with Tom Mix in them
- over there, and I used to do that.
- I used to go alone and sit for four hours of movies
- for, essentially, very little money.
- I did go to the opera once or twice.
- I remember when I was very young--
- I was maybe six or seven--
- I stood up on the top balcony and peered over the railing
- and watched Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci,
- the two that are usually combined,
- being performed in the Dusseldorf opera house.
- I have vague memories of going to the city
- departmental offices to get my passport documents,
- and I didn't have a passport.
- I had a permit, a child permit, to emigrate,
- of which I have a copy.
- And I have a copy of--
- I think I have a copy of my birth certificate,
- although I'm not sure.
- And I do remember my own bar mitzvah,
- and I have with me two invitations
- that were returned to me to people
- showing the menu for that time.
- And I recall that the rabbi came over afterwards, and shook
- my hand, and said he wished me well, all the success in life.
- I have some vague, vague, vague memories
- of being a very small child and stepping
- into a cushion of needles.
- And they had to take me to the hospital to get them extracted.
- But I don't know whether that's fantasy, or real,
- or whether it's--
- how old I was or anything of that sort.
- So there are other impressions I have,
- and one of the places I lived at the end of the block
- was an empty lot, and the empty lot went down very steeply.
- And there was water at the bottom
- like there is likely to be.
- And we used to sit out there with some of the neighborhood
- boys.
- That's where this person I have alluded
- to earlier, the son of the manager of the apartment house,
- and I used to sit and talk.
- Once in a while, one of the Hitler Youth
- would come over, and join us, and he'd show off his revolver.
- I was scared stiff of the damn thing.
- I was 22, and I [INAUDIBLE] I didn't know, for example,
- as to whether he'd point it at me and just fire.
- That's certainly something that crossed my mind.
- But I recall that.
- I recall walking all the way around the zoo alone.
- That wasn't a small task because it was pretty big.
- And I used to go up into the woods by myself
- as well, right--
- the last place we lived was very close to a small hill,
- and there were the woods there, and a race track,
- and other things.
- And I used to go and take walks in there
- often by myself, occasionally with my mother.
- With my father I used to go further than that.
- We used to take the train.
- And other than this bicycle trip, which was so disastrous,
- I don't recall going by bicycle anywhere else.
- I remember, as a young child, now going
- with my uncle on kayak trips, and we went on the Ruhr.
- And we were through the locks of the Ruhr with a kayak.
- And I used to paddle as an assistant paddle, I guess.
- And I remember those-- those are impressions that occasionally
- come back, and it's talking with you people like this
- that these are refreshed and brought out.
- I might not ever think of them, but I now
- have the image of this--
- well, it wasn't a canoe.
- It was a kayak which was covered with canvas so
- that you sit in the center.
- And so the canoe has a single paddle on one side,
- and the kayak has a double paddle.
- So I remember that.
- And I remember once or twice taking a boat along the Rhine
- south from Dusseldorf because the beautiful part of the Rhine
- begins south of Bonn and the south of Cologne,
- where my mother was born.
- Cologne is South of Dusseldorf.
- Between Dusseldorf and Cologne is big, big, heavy industry.
- And so we used to go down there once or twice, that I remember,
- on such a boat.
- And then also I remember walking in these fairy
- tale hills, the seven mountains of the seven hills and then,
- as I did after the war, visiting the ruined castles.
- I remember going to one of the castles with my first wife.
- In fact, there were two opposite.
- One was one of the Hohenzollern castles,
- where they actually lived in the 1800s,
- and the guy who was taking care of it
- was absolutely furious at the Americans
- because they were shooting from there across the Rhine.
- And the Germans were shooting back,
- and they had to destroy the castle of the emperor.
- War or no war, they were horrible people.
- Well, across the Rhine from this place
- was a place called the Marksburg,
- the most imposing fortress ruin that's still
- pretty well-intact.
- We were taken around in the middle of the winter.
- This was 1953.
- So I knew no-- my wife and I did go to Germany.
- And they showed us this chastity belt,
- and the woman was extremely reluctant to even mention
- the name of this thing because my wife was there with me.
- And, well, so when we went in those days
- and in the middle of the winter, there were no tourists.
- Believe me.
- And in most of the hotels the bathroom was one to a floor
- and at the end of the corridor.
- But if I remember correctly, in my own apartment in--
- our own apartment in Dusseldorf, when I lived there,
- we had all the plumbing and everything else.
- My father was allergic to fruit.
- Again, I may have mentioned this, but as a result,
- everything we had was without fruit that was communal,
- such as ice cream.
- My mother made the ice cream, and we only
- could make vanilla and chocolate.
- And we had a little garden in the back of the last apartment,
- and there were some chairs, lawn chairs.
- Both my mother, and my father, and I, and my grandfather
- sat there, and I have some pictures of this.
- And we used to go to the shore in Holland,
- a place called Scheveningen.
- And even though now when I try to go back there
- I find the water just impossibly cold.
- When I was young I found it was quite bearable,
- and we could go out there.
- I guess as you get older you get more used to the comforts
- and can't stand the rough weather anymore.
- So those were places for vacation in the summertime,
- Holland and Rahden for me.
- We used to go there by train.
- And then the last time that I went with my mother
- to Holland we went to buy clothes for me
- to go to the United States.
- We were stopped at the border.
- I had with me a small book of stamps which were duplicates
- and which I wanted to trade, and they seized upon this.
- The thing might have been worth all
- of 1 mark, all, a hundred stamps, [? something like-- ?]
- so they seized upon that.
- They took us off the train and subjected us to the most
- grueling cross-examination.
- as to-- that I was trying to smuggle monetary things out
- of Germany.
- And I was frightened to death.
- These were the customs officers or whatever,
- together with the SS.
- They were all one and the same.
- We missed-- four hours we spent there,
- and we finally were allowed to go on to Holland, came back.
- It was pretty frightening.
- I was 13 at the time.
- So we brought our clothes because my mother
- said you can't get decent clothes in Germany because
- of all the effort to spend money for war equipment
- and not for consumer goods.
- But in Holland it was different.
- So I remember that.
- I remember while I was in Dordrecht
- that I saw a number of Charlie Chaplin films,
- including Modern Times.
- And I don't think I saw The Great Dictator.
- That would have been nice to see, but I didn't.
- And I also recall that of my Dutch family,
- my uncle had a brother, and he was married.
- And his-- he died.
- He was killed in the war, as were my own uncle, and my aunt,
- and the children, and their husbands.
- But my uncle's brother's wife survived somehow,
- and we went to see her after the war.
- But "we" I mean my first wife and I.
- And she was just the matriarch of the family,
- just wonderful to see her.
- And she's in the pictures I have.
- And she has two children.
- One lives here in Southern Illinois-- what's--
- where's Caterpillar Peoria, that famous town of Nixon fame.
- And the other one still lives in Holland.
- There's quite a disparity in age between them.
- But I visited both of them.
- Their son died.
- He had a terrible experience in Holland during the war.
- He was quite dark-complexioned, and so he
- was trying to tell the Nazis that he was not Jewish.
- He was telling them he was an Indonesian.
- And so they had a trick question,
- asking him to say something in Indonesian, and he knew that.
- And he said it right, so they let him go.
- But I think that guilt feeling, that he escaped death
- because he faked his identity, I think, stayed with him.
- And he died, oh, maybe 15 years ago.
- His wife is still alive.
- They had no children.
- So these are things that touch you
- because in some of the pictures that I have here
- with me he and I are on the same picture.
- I remember him.
- And these are things that the Nazis did in Holland.
- In Germany, again, if you draw me out,
- I'm sure I can recall other things that, by myself, I
- would not be able to remember.
- Discussions about what was happening with the Nazis
- among your family, and the Jewish community,
- and your cousins--
- do you recall being part of those?
- Yes, I recall being part of them.
- I recall that the constant worry was how the income potential
- would be forcibly reduced by the Nazi laws as to what they would
- and would not be allowed to do.
- I think I mentioned--
- I know I mentioned in my last session
- that my grandfather was a very, very clever man.
- He found a way during the middle of the depression of trading
- grain by using coupons.
- And as a result, he built up a fairly modest business.
- But then he was reduced, and reduced,
- and reduced in being able to make deals,
- first not only by the laws, which certainly prohibited him,
- but also by people who were afraid
- to be dealing with a Jew.
- And they thought that this might reflect on them,
- they might get hurt by the Nazis and whatnot.
- So I was involved in some of these discussions concerning
- the restriction.
- I was also indirectly given a code of conduct
- to try to minimize the potential for problems
- with other children.
- This had to do with discussions with my mother.
- I know I mentioned the fact that when I took a bus or streetcar
- at the corner there were these newspapers depicting Jews
- as criminals, and, well, faggots,
- and whatever else you have.
- And so it was almost impossible not to look at them.
- It's fine for somebody to say, ignore it all,
- but you can't always do it.
- There's something inside of you, a horrible fascination
- or whatever.
- And as far as the Nazis are concerned,
- I think my parents had far, far more greater worries than they
- would let on to me, and I think, in a way,
- they were trying to protect me from the worst of this
- or all of it by not voicing the major concerns for both
- their physical, mental, and financial safety.
- So while I was part of it, I think
- much of the discussion of this sort
- happened after I was put to bed.
- What was that code of conduct you mentioned?
- Well, the code of conduct involved
- trying not to antagonize anybody,
- trying to not stand out in any way,
- just to fall into the background,
- to withdraw when provoked, never to give cause for provocation.
- I violated that once, but--
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Sorry?
- [INAUDIBLE]
- I think I may have mentioned this.
- I pushed somebody in a pool in a playful way,
- and I never had the end of it.
- Everybody put me under water to the point
- where I thought I would definitely drown.
- The teacher finally rescued me.
- But it was a serious lesson in terms of just staying away
- from everybody.
- Trying to be neat, trying to be clean, being on time.
- They never pushed me to work hard--
- I did that on my own-- but i think it was implied.
- And our home life-- it was comfortable.
- We had a baby grand piano.
- We had good linen, good China.
- My mother did all of the cooking.
- Eating out in those days was reserved
- for real festive occasions.
- When a friend came to town maybe then we'd go out.
- Well, we wouldn't go out for dinner.
- We'd go out for coffee or possibly for a beer sometime.
- But going out for dinner was something unusual,
- at least in our family.
- We'd have our meals at home.
- And my mother was a good cook.
- I recall distinctly the sort of thing
- that she cooked and I liked very much which I haven't had,
- which is pureed spinach with a hard-boiled egg on top.
- That was my favorite.
- And I don't remember too much.
- The sort of meats we ate were quite
- different from standard American fare, no such thing
- as New York or filet mignon steak.
- We had tongue, or leg of lamb, or some kind of lamb portion,
- shanks sort of thing.
- Some of the vegetables I remember detesting.
- I still can't eat sauerkraut to this day,
- and that's perhaps because of a plethora.
- Some of the vegetables I just don't like either.
- Turnips is another.
- But we didn't have the whole sequence of [? okras ?]
- that you have in this country.
- That just didn't exist over there.
- The things I loved were peas, and cauliflower, and beans,
- but that said there was no broccoli.
- And many of the things that you take for granted here
- like avocado didn't exist.
- And pineapple was an unusual delicacy.
- It was available, but it was unusual.
- And so most of the time the dessert
- consisted of a homemade ice cream.
- And you had to make it with the old salt and then ice
- around the bucket.
- And when you cool down the liquid--
- and that ice machine--
- refrigerators we didn't have.
- They brought in the ice with tongs,
- and you kept it there for a day or two.
- And then you got new ones.
- So in terms of today's conveniences, we had a radio.
- It was a truly old-fashioned radio, but it was a radio.
- We had a gramophone, a turntable and a speaker,
- but the old-fashioned time, 78, manual lifting, 78 disks.
- We had a telephone.
- We had a typewriter, manual typewriter.
- Electric ones didn't exist.
- And the typewriter was used for the business.
- I don't think I ever did anything on that.
- We had nice oriental carpets.
- We had--
- What kind of radio programs did you listen to?
- Frankly, I don't remember listening to very much.
- I guess some news programs before Hitler came.
- There was a lot of agitation concerning
- the political situation in Germany.
- We had 64 and a half parties or something like that.
- And each party had maybe one quarter
- of a deputy in the governing body,
- and so there's a lot of politics.
- There was operetta, a lot of operetta, more so than opera,
- and there was the schmaltzy music, the brass band.
- But most of the music that my mother liked
- is what they call Schlager.
- These are the popular tunes maybe of the swing era,
- only in the German setting and earlier.
- And they were very pleasant to listen to them.
- I don't think we had any programs
- like they had the Lone Ranger or anything of that sort.
- That just didn't exist.
- I don't recall too much about it,
- except I don't think we listened to it all that much.
- It was primarily there for emergencies,
- number one, and, number two, for really urgent news
- like elections.
- But then the music was most of the time
- of a very, very light nature.
- Operettas-- my mother liked operettas.
- My grandfather liked operettas, and to this day
- I am sure that my love for classical music
- was instilled in me when I listened to Beethoven, Mozart,
- Brahms, et cetera in my home.
- I have managed to transfer this to my older daughter but not
- my younger one.
- Well, there's still, hopefully, time.
- My wife is not-- she doesn't object to classical music,
- but she is not that comfortable with it.
- So it doesn't get put on that often, and now what's on much
- too often is the TV rather than the CD.
- But we had a record collection and--
- What kind of records?
- Classical, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, a few
- operettas maybe.
- I took with me from Germany two books of the piano
- music of Wagner's operas.
- They got lost in the fire.
- But as you well know, Wagner was an extreme antisemite
- and it took quite a bit of soul-searching
- to see whether or not you wanted to listen to him
- after the Holocaust started.
- And in fact, I wasn't aware of the fact
- that he was an antisemite until I came to the United States.
- My parents never told me, and I didn't find it anywhere.
- But even without knowing that, I found that most of his stuff
- was not to my taste.
- There are only two operas that I liked at all,
- The Mastersingers of Nuremberg was one,
- and The Flying Dutchman was the other.
- I didn't like any of the Nibelungen,
- even though one of the operas was
- named after my father or my father
- was named after it, Young Siegfried.
- I have this horrible, well, history.
- My grandfather's name was Adolf, so not a name
- that I like to hear too often.
- But you have to separate these items.
- We sat in the garden and read often when we had the garden.
- We only had a garden in the last place we lived.
- In other places there was no place to sit outside.
- In one place there wasn't even a balcony.
- In the other one there was.
- But balconies are not too suited for sitting outside.
- I've gone back on a number of occasions, as I mentioned,
- but I should mention something concerning
- my professional career, which I didn't mention,
- namely my sabbatical years.
- Now, each opportunity that I had, except for one year,
- I took the sabbatical, and originally I took semester
- sabbaticals because, after working, teaching six years,
- if you take a semester, you get full pay.
- If you took the year, you got 2/3 pay,
- which is a better deal.
- But I simply couldn't afford it.
- So the first semester I managed to get a Guggenheim
- Fellowship, and my first wife and I went to a lovely place
- called Aberystwyth, Wales.
- This is on the Irish Sea coast, and it's a town where
- the then-head of the campus, who subsequently became president
- and subsequently was fired and became very famous,
- [INAUDIBLE], said--
- when he read my report on my sabbatical, he said,
- you really must have had science at heart.
- Because when I went there, I found
- the beach was full of stones, and the food
- was impossible to digest, and the weather was lousy.
- So all three things were true, and my science
- didn't progress very well either.
- I made the mistake of writing my proposal for this fellowship
- to be around a certain individual that'd
- done some very good work in the field.
- And when I knew about this, he was
- at Cambridge, England, which is a very nice place
- to be to do research.
- Well, when I got the fellowship, I
- found he had just moved from Cambridge
- to take a chair in Aberystwyth.
- Well, professional, shall we say,
- integrity prevented me from saying,
- no, I want to go somewhere else.
- So I stayed, and went with this guy,
- and then spent one month in Cambridge.
- And then, after that, my first wife and I
- toured four or five countries in Europe,
- and I found out some very interesting things.
- For example, in Zurich--
- not Zurich, in Lucerne--
- I was sitting at a table, and my wife and I were talking.
- And there was only one other couple.
- It was at Christmas time.
- And the man heard me speaking English,
- and he came over to me.
- And he said, look, I'm the mayor of Lucerne.
- I see you're here alone.
- Let me introduce myself.
- Come to my office tomorrow, and I'll give you something.
- And he gave me all kinds of material,
- and then he delegated one of his people
- to show us around the city.
- On the same trip, however, a week later, we
- were in the place called Interlaken,
- and this was New Year's Eve.
- And we had been sent there by Thomas Cook
- as part of a travel itinerary.
- And there was another couple there
- who were nouveau riche Americans, not Jewish.
- That's nothing to do with this.
- And we were having food and drink, and we ordered.
- And we waited, and waited, and waited.
- And I finally called the waitress over and spoke to her,
- and she said, I'm sorry.
- I said, I'll talk to the proprietress.
- So she went there, and they spoke in German.
- But, of course, I understood German.
- And she said, you take care of everybody in this room
- first before you take care of them, the Americans.
- Well, I make it a habit when I go to Germany or to France
- to speak English, and I listen to what other people have
- to say about me or us.
- And so when that came back, I told the waitress,
- I said, look, this is not your fault.
- And I spoke to her in German at this point
- to indicate that I was aware of what was going on.
- I said, you tell your boss that this incident
- will be transmitted verbatim to Thomas Cook with a request
- that they refer no one else to this hotel.
- Well, we got our drinks fairly fast,
- but still, this is the sort of thing
- that happened in terms of how Americans were regarded.
- We're still regarded as fools when we go abroad.
- And in Germany, when I went there right
- after the war on the same trip, I'd
- go to a bakery to buy a couple of rolls or something
- like that, and people would come in, men, in their 40s,
- sometimes even 50s, and beg, and say, look, I'm out of work,
- and I'm hungry.
- And the baker would give them a roll or something
- like that to tide them over.
- So then you felt--
- I said, was all of this necessary?
- And then you think of one little man out of Braunau, Austria
- who caused all of this.
- And you're talking about the effect, the blip on history
- and all of this.
- I don't think what happened in Germany
- will prevent a repetition of this,
- and maybe some different name, some different country,
- some different target.
- But I think it'll happen, and it'll happen to this degree.
- As I look back on history, we've had this "cleansing,"
- so-called, this ethnic unity all the way along.
- It happened politically in Russia in the '30s.
- How many people died in the gulags, sent there by Stalin?
- And in the 1800s, it happened with the invasion of Africa,
- and people didn't want to be subjugated and died.
- History is a very strange mistress.
- Do you believe in a higher power or god and there's justice
- in the world?
- Well, I've pondered that question
- a very large number of times.
- I've spent a great deal of time thinking about it.
- To me, objectively, I could say that there
- is no discerning higher power because if they were,
- why would they permit something like the misery that
- happened in the Holocaust?
- But not only that, in all the other situations
- of a similar nature, like Bosnia, like Somalia,
- like Zimbabwe in a lesser extent.
- Why did we have this happen if there
- was individual power that could intervene and stop
- this injustice?
- As far as I'm concerned, injustice.
- And I know the religions say that he will not interfere.
- You have your own destiny.
- But you must accept what is the fate
- that you are presented with.
- But I don't believe that you have
- to accept the faith that you are presented with.
- Look at me.
- I'm here.
- If I had accepted the faith I have
- been presented with I would have been dead since 54 years.
- And God knows I probably would have been burned in a chimney.
- So there is the power of self-determination and the fact
- that you have the ability to change your fate, independent
- of a higher power.
- Now, I do not believe in organized religion.
- I don't believe in the Jewish religion
- except as a cultural influence.
- But I do have a code of ethics, and to me my code of ethics
- is far, far stronger than the official principals that are
- promulgated by any religion.
- I think the Jewish religion is probably
- the most sane, the least, shall we
- say, doctrinaire and the least looking down on other groups,
- in spite of what it says, that we're the chosen people.
- I don't-- I look at that as an alliteration,
- not as a scripture.
- So I think the Jewish religion is a very good religion
- if you have to have a religion.
- I think, conversely, any religion
- that invites fanaticism is bad.
- And I think, if one is left alone,
- many of the standard religions of the world,
- even Mohammedism, Confucianism, are perfectly reasonable.
- But when they say, well, if this happens to me,
- then we have to go and slaughter everybody else.
- And Mohammedism does this.
- They have a Jihad.
- I don't know enough about Confucianism to do this.
- I don't think that the Jews say that.
- They say we will defend ourselves.
- That's the most important thing in the world.
- But we won't-- it doesn't say that we will slaughter
- everybody else because they don't agree with us,
- or because they don't like us, or we don't like them,
- or because they've done us dirt.
- The only time that we will kill is
- when we are in dire danger of being killed ourselves.
- And so I think that's an acceptable--
- that gets us back to God.
- There is nature.
- There's a universal force.
- We experience it.
- We don't understand it.
- We're nowhere near understanding it.
- But every year we find out new things, especially right now
- in astronomy.
- We have all of those telescopes out there.
- We have our radio astronomy devices.
- So there is a rule that exists.
- It's so complex I don't think anybody will ever
- understand it, but it exists.
- If that rule is a God, a natural law,
- I'll accept this as a definition.
- And it is a higher power in that sense.
- But if there is-- if I'm asked to accept that there
- is a person, an object, an entity
- or whatever, a deity that can differentiate between what you
- do and what I do and direct you in a path
- according to how you think, act, do, et cetera,
- the answer is no.
- We are all on this Earth with a limited amount of power
- ourselves.
- We have some.
- We should exercise that to the best possible extent.
- My code of ethics is directed towards helping others
- trying to uncover knowledge, doing well by my family,
- doing well by my friends, not hating my enemies too much,
- although I do have some doozies there.
- But I think I can live with it, and I
- don't need a rabbi, a preacher, a mullah, or whatever
- to tell me how I should live, what I should do,
- what I shouldn't do.
- I don't know if I made myself clear as to my picture
- of the universe.
- And to me, I would be very happy to have my children be
- instructed in Jewish religion, but I
- would do it as a cultural and historical event,
- not with the idea that they need to get a code of ethics
- or a form of conduct out of this or that they should routinely
- and ritually practice a certain kind of formalism that
- has little meaning.
- We still have the so-called "kosher laws"
- that some people observe.
- The kosher laws probably had a very good reason in history
- back when they were invented in that food wasn't
- treated the way it is now.
- But from a health point of view, that's surely way outdated.
- And from a religious point of view,
- I don't see the significance.
- To deliberately deny yourself of something
- that is normal just to show that you
- have respect for something--
- this is antithetical.
- To deny yourself of something to help somebody
- else-- that's a different story.
- So as a result we--
- my wife should write the checks--
- we will write some checks for the American Red Cross,
- for the Florida disaster, and also, because
- of our personal history, for the Fountain Fire
- up in Shasta County.
- So people helped us greatly.
- Organizations helped us greatly.
- We're deeply indebted to the American Red Cross,
- psychologically more than anything else,
- although there's no question that they helped us physically.
- They helped us with money, with coupons
- to buy clothes, which we didn't have,
- bedding, which we didn't have, et cetera.
- But the fact that we knew somebody cared and somebody was
- there was perhaps more important than anything else
- when you're at the lowest ebb of your psychological being.
- And so I feel that way.
- I feel very strongly.
- I want to do something positive for Jews because I am a Jew.
- And I'm the more Jew the less it is popular to be one.
- But in my personal relationship--
- and this has been true ever since I left Germany--
- it couldn't be true in Germany because I had no choice with
- whom I could associate there and with whom I couldn't.
- But since then, I certainly never ask
- what religion somebody has before I
- entertain the possibility of a close friendship.
- To me, it's a matter of common interests, common intelligence,
- common respect for each other.
- That's the critical thing.
- So these things all bear on the religious background,
- and on the concept of a God, and my broader philosophy, if you
- like, of how my life has been spent
- and will continue to be spent until it's over,
- which is to try to do what I can for humanity.
- And that doesn't mean that I want to become a model.
- I don't intend to go that far.
- I think I've done my share for the state of California,
- giving them 800 hours of my professional time for free.
- And that was another case, a legal case
- involving a child murder case.
- When I testified for the district attorney
- in Los Angeles, I did bill them, but I sort of
- reduced the number of hours that I actually
- spent by a substantial amount.
- So they got off easy.
- But all of these things lead to my concept of life,
- of existence, how I'd like to see my children
- live without interference in terms of their personal life.
- I told my son, with whom I have problems at the moment.
- But it is certainly possible and hopefully will
- be so that at some future date we'll have a reconciliation.
- But I told him--
- I said, as far as I'm concerned, you
- can do whatever you want as long as it's legal.
- And that's the conscription that I would place on it.
- So I'm a Jew, and yet I'm not a Jew.
- I'm not a Jew if it comes to the purely religious aspect of it.
- And as far as believing in God is concerned,
- maybe as my time to go draws nearer I'll feel differently.
- It's certainly possible that I start
- believing in the hereafter and that I
- should get into the good graces with whoever
- it is that controls that.
- A lot of people have deathbed conversions.
- But I think that if there is somebody
- who does discern in spite of the evidence that I've cited,
- which, to me, points to the contrary,
- it seems to me that when you are judged, if you are judged,
- you're judged on how you lived your life,
- not in accordance with what formalism you entertained
- while you did this, and how you treated other people,
- both under normal and abnormal circumstances.
- And part of this must have been indoctrinated into me
- by my experiences in Germany, which led to the conclusion
- that so many innocent people were killed, people
- who had never hurt a fly.
- And they were killed for no reason
- other than to satisfy the egomania--
- megalomania, rather-- of an absolute [? charlatan ?]
- who turned out to be a dictator that could control the people.
- And this I carry with me as an indelible memory.
- Why did my parents have to die?
- There was no cause.
- They were Jewish.
- That's it.
- That's why they died.
- I'm sorry, but that is where justice
- that we talked about a little bit earlier comes in.
- That wasn't just.
- Now, justice is not an absolute concept.
- It's very, very subjective.
- But I think you will get a majority of people
- to agree on whether or not--
- in fact, not just a majority but a substantial majority
- do agree whether the vast majority of acts are justified
- or not.
- And if I have a rabid tiger jumping at me,
- then I think I'm justified in killing that tiger.
- I was reflecting on just this point last week--
- I don't know.
- I'm sure you're aware of what happened in Berkeley
- to the Chancellor's house.
- You're not?
- OK.
- Well, a woman, either 19 or 20-- they're not sure--
- carrying, actually, an assumed name,
- had always been a revolutionary and also
- psychiatrically disturbed, broke into the Chancellor's house
- and tripped a silent alarm.
- And the police came.
- They saw her there and ordered her out,
- and she ran up the stairs.
- And they called the Chancellor, told him to lock the door.
- And it so happens that the chancellor is a personal close
- friend of mine.
- He's a member of my department.
- I remember voting on him as to whether he
- should get tenure or not.
- He's one of the most gifted people
- I've ever known in my life.
- So this thing affected me personally
- in a very significant way.
- Well, anyway, they waited for the K-9 units,
- and the officer having the K-9 unit tried to open the door.
- And she pushed him back, and he fell into the bathtub.
- And she came at him with a machete.
- And he fired three shots and killed her,
- and the campus has been in an uproar since.
- And not only that, but my concept of what
- this has done to Chang--
- Lin Tien is his name.
- He's Chinese.
- The idea that somebody gets killed in your home is,
- in Chinese philosophy-- it's just something you almost
- cannot live with.
- So I'm talking about justification of acts.
- I wasn't there.
- I'm not saying whether it was justified to kill the person
- or just to try to disarm or whatever.
- But if I'd been there and if the officer's story is true,
- then, yes, it is justified.
- Just if somebody points a pistol at you,
- says, if you don't jump into the river I'm going to kill you
- or whatever and you have a way of getting back,
- these are things that are justifiable homicide.
- And there are others.
- But I don't have to talk about homicide.
- We can talk about other acts, theft.
- What is it during the war, for example,
- that one of the most famous professors in Holland
- had to go out in the middle of the night
- and steal potatoes from a field so he could feed his family.
- Now, that's theft.
- Is that justified, or isn't it?
- We're talking about things that came to me through thinking
- about justice.
- These are not easy questions to answer.
- Injustices-- as I say, it's not absolute.
- It's [INAUDIBLE].
- Do you think we live in a just world
- in light of your Holocaust experience
- and the loss of your parents?
- I would have to have you define what you mean by "just,"
- and then also you'd have to define "world," unfortunately.
- These are not easy--
- [INAUDIBLE]
- --terms to diagnose.
- Do you think there was justice, for example,
- to the perpetrators, the SS who killed people?
- Do you think [INAUDIBLE]?
- No, there was no justice in terms of the people
- who perpetrated this, except the most thin layer
- at the very top.
- And of course, the argument goes,
- well, I was ordered to do this, that, and the other thing.
- But that argument was supposedly demolished at Nuremberg,
- at the trials, but it may come back
- to haunt this country and some other countries in the future.
- There's no question in my mind that I
- hold nothing against the Germans who followed Hitler, even
- perhaps not enthusiastically but sort of willingly,
- because they felt that if they didn't they
- would end up in the concentration camps and the gas
- chambers.
- I cannot demand of anyone to put their life at substantial risk
- in order to save somebody that they don't know,
- that they have no community of interest with, or whatever.
- You can't demand this.
- Can demand, perhaps, that they not be enthusiastic about it.
- You can demand that those who feel that they must oppose
- should show such a sign, give you a recognition.
- But when it comes to the SS and the SA, who shot and gassed
- the Jews, I am sure that the people who executed the orders
- were not tried.
- The commanders of the camps, yes, maybe.
- Were they given justice?
- Probably not.
- But this is subjective.
- It's not an objective answer.
- How can you make up for it?
- In fact, what kind of punishments
- can you impose to make up for the murder
- of six million people?
- I think Hitler probably wiped out something close
- to 50% of the existing Jewry, so all of Europe,
- where most of the jurors were, didn't
- get to the US and Britain and anywhere else.
- So this is my feeling about justice.
- The perpetrators no, the people who ordered it in some cases.
- And I am not so sure that--
- I wasn't at Nuremberg.
- I listened to the trial tapes, but I'm not
- sure how intensively they digested the accusations
- and the evidence.
- You see things like Klaus Barbie in Lyon, the Butcher of Lyon.
- I happen to have also been in Lyon last year and all
- the things that they ascribe to him.
- And now he's old, and sick, and there's
- no point in punishing him is the argument.
- If punishment is a function of your current physical state,
- we can all go and incur leprosy or something
- like that when we're about to be caught.
- And this is not a rational way of looking at justice,
- as far as I am concerned.
- I have a great deal to do with the legal system
- in at least the state of California
- because I'm an expert witness, and I
- know that the system doesn't provide for justice.
- It provides for a hearing eventually, maybe.
- But it doesn't necessarily provide for justice.
- Virtually all of the cases that I'm involved in-- they
- never come to court.
- People can't afford to take them to court.
- It's too expensive, even cases involving hundreds of thousands
- of dollars in payments to somebody
- who claims to be injured.
- And I think what it has done--
- it is done on the basis of expediency.
- Cases are settled when it is felt that they've extracted
- the maximum in terms of what the lawyers can
- do to enrich themselves.
- There's no question in my mind.
- Some of my best friends are lawyers.
- And there are lawyers, and there are lawyers.
- I had lunch with a lawyer today.
- And if you wanted to look into this question,
- go read something called Galileo's Revenge by someone
- by the name of Peter Huber, Junk Science in the Courtroom.
- It's fascinating, although not necessarily totally true.
- Anyhow, it is clear that what we're
- doing in our current torts trial system
- is to extract the maximum amount of money
- for those with deep pockets.
- You want to quit?
- Apparently, we've gotten close to running out of time,
- so I want to thank you very much for this portion
- of the interview.
- We'll meet again, and we'll go through your photographs.
- And we'll hear some more from you.
- Thank you very much again.
- If you want to say one final thing, go ahead.
- Let me just say that each time that I come
- and you draw something out of me, I remember more and more.
- I don't know whether this asymptotically comes to a level
- or not, but it is interesting to me
- to see how this operation works, particularly
- when you have the skill of drawing things out of me.
- And I do want to thank all of you
- for this opportunity, which I think
- is wonderful for my family.
- Thank you.
- It's our pleasure.
- And thank you, John Grant, for being so wonderful
- behind the camera.
- Got you now.
- OK.
- Anytime.
- This is the Holocaust Oral History Project
- in San Francisco, California.
- Today is Wednesday, October 21, 1992,
- and we have an Oral History with Doctor and Professor Werner
- Goldsmith.
- This is part three of the oral history.
- My name is Eric Saul, and the producer is John Angell Grant.
- You mentioned that you wanted to relay some more information
- from the previous interview.
- There's one area that I don't think has been covered--
- if at all, certainly not in sufficient depth--
- and that's the area of restitution concerning
- the loss of property, the loss of the educational value,
- et cetera, in Germany.
- Now I must say this.
- I was put onto this by some second cousins in New Orleans
- who were so intent--
- at least the senior member of the family
- was so intent on doing this, that I
- think that he ruined the rest of his life,
- because it became the major and almost only focal point
- that he could concentrate on.
- And initially, seeing the intensity
- of his desire for restitution, I almost
- said, no, I don't want to be involved at all.
- And then they convinced me that I should go ahead and at least
- make some applications for these funds
- that apparently the German government put at the disposal
- for restitution purposes.
- Well, I entered this process with
- a certain sanguine feeling.
- And it turned out that the process
- started in the late '50s, and didn't
- end until the middle '60s.
- And it didn't involve only the loss of my own family's
- possessions, and the livelihood and the education,
- but it also involved certain heirs
- to whose property I was legally apparently entitled to in part.
- And so there may have been about three
- or four different processes that went on.
- And this came before the Tribunal in Germany.
- And eventually I got some few thousand dollars in response.
- But I felt very guilty about even touching the money
- because what I've lost cannot be repaid with money.
- And I felt it might have been better if I hadn't taken it.
- But this became a bone of contention later on.
- And my family split up.
- But be this as it may, I'm finished with this.
- The money went to nothing special, but it was used by me.
- And then there has been a different form of restitution
- in the last, I would say two, two and a half years,
- which manifested itself by the city of Düsseldorf undertaking
- projects to commemorate the Holocaust,
- the Jews that were killed, the exodus of the Jews--
- those who were allowed to leave.
- And they have a memorial institute in Düsseldorf that I
- have not yet visited, even though I was there about a year
- ago.
- But there wasn't time at that time.
- And the idea was that the city of Düsseldorf,
- at least last year, and the years before have offered
- to pay a substantial sum for travel expenses,
- and put up people in the good hotels with all expenses
- in Düsseldorf paid as a one-time--
- what shall I say--
- restitution offer to indicate what
- has been done to eradicate the deeds of the Hitler times,
- and to hopefully indicate that this will never happen again.
- So they have this memorial institute,
- which is sort of a smaller version of the Yad Vashem,
- I imagine.
- And these people offer a single concentrated tour-- something
- during some week for every year.
- But if you want to come individually,
- they will let you do so at a different time.
- They feel that you do not get as much out of that
- as you would from the organized version of this.
- But I plan to do this next year if we are
- able to get our act together.
- And in the process of doing this,
- I met a lady by the name of Dr. Barbara Sushi who obtained her
- doctorate degree in the area of the Jewish history in Germany,
- and in particular in the area of Düsseldorf, and who then,
- subsequently, convinced the city to allow her to have this
- research project on the history of the Jews.
- And when I went to Düsseldorf, I actually stayed with her
- and her husband for two nights while we discussed various
- phases of this.
- And I think that it would be very
- useful to be in contact with the Oral History Project
- here in San Francisco, and vice versa.
- Anyway, she has written a number of volumes
- that can be documented through Xerox or duplication.
- And she also has taken me, for example,
- to the cemetery where my maternal grandmother is buried,
- and where my uncle, the brother of my mother, is buried.
- These are the two that died of a natural death.
- And all the others cannot be found, in terms of graves,
- because they were extinguished in concentration camps.
- Anyway, the city of Düsseldorf is doing a great deal to try
- to make up in their version for what has happened to the Jews.
- And I have written not only constantly to Doctor Sushi
- but there is also a vice mayor who
- was in charge of this project.
- I think he retired last June.
- But I visited him last year as well.
- And we had a discussion about the events
- that occurred some 40, 50 years ago,
- and what has happened to the people that were there--
- and the fact that almost no one has come back.
- And there is another woman whom I did not
- meet-- she was on vacation-- who is
- arranging these trips for the memorial visits of the Jews
- abroad.
- So that is what the city of Düsseldorf is doing.
- And that's all part of the restitution aspect.
- And I hope that this aspect of my life will be terminated
- after we visit Düsseldorf, and go through the process
- of seeing what they have done, and their memorial institute,
- and compare it with what perhaps I've seen in Paris
- and in Jerusalem.
- And that's about all I have to say about the restitution
- process.
- You have been back to Düsseldorf.
- I've been back to Düsseldorf on a number of occasions.
- The first time was actually 1960.
- I was married in 1953, and my wife would not allow me,
- even though we were in Europe, to go to Düsseldorf.
- We went to Cologne, but not to Düsseldorf.
- Why?
- She felt that the turmoil of seeing the place
- would be perhaps too much for me, since we had just
- come from Holland, where I had obtained, from the Red
- Cross, the death certificates of my parents
- who were extinguished in Auschwitz.
- So we did not go to Düsseldorf at that time.
- But in every other visit--
- or almost every other visit--
- that I've made to Europe since--
- I've made a lot--
- I have, in at least half the time,
- spent in Düsseldorf or passed through Düsseldorf.
- My present wife and I passed through there in 1973.
- We were back again in 1981.
- I was in Düsseldorf last year.
- And I tried to establish contact with a former high school
- teacher that I think I may have mentioned--
- which I did, until, when we were there in 1981,
- it turned out that his wife had just died.
- And I do not believe he's alive anymore.
- So those were my visits to Düsseldorf.
- The time before, with my wife, I visited the three residences,
- or the locations of the three residences, that I recalled,
- of which only one is still standing.
- The others have been rebuilt. They were apparently destroyed.
- And I visited those three places also last year.
- I was there just two weeks before the firestorm
- that destroyed my home here.
- So that had a double meaning for me,
- to see the absence of the familiar surroundings that I
- recalled in Düsseldorf.
- What are your emotions when you visit--
- particularly the first time you visited, and subsequent times--
- you visit Düsseldorf?
- Well, my emotions are very, very mixed.
- Intellectually, I try to tell myself--
- and I succeed most of the time--
- that anyone who was, say, no more than six years old
- at the time of these terrible happenings cannot possibly be
- held responsible for them, because they had no free will.
- At the same time, you wonder whether any of this stuff
- can get transferred by osmosis in one way or another.
- And at one time I was actually somewhat
- interested in a German girl, in terms of a marriage.
- And this did come into consideration.
- And it eventually, of course, didn't occur.
- But I am extremely suspicious of dealing
- with anybody who I know, age-wise,
- would have been eligible to be in the SA or the SS
- or whatever, and especially when they tell me
- they knew nothing about the history of the Jews
- at the time of Hitler.
- Well the Doctor Sushi, who's word I have no reason to doubt,
- advises me, when I raise this issue,
- that there were probably far fewer people who
- knew about the concentration camps, the extermination camps,
- than might be supposed by people abroad.
- It seemed impossible for me to believe
- that there wouldn't be word of mouth that would get out.
- But she said, well, the people in the army
- didn't perhaps know about it, and the people
- in the concentration camps didn't
- want to advertise this, because they
- felt that the goodwill of the rest of the world--
- at least the uncommitted world-- was worth something.
- And this would be turning them against this.
- And so to get back to your question, how do I feel?
- I feel uneasy when I am with somebody of an age level that
- is, say, of 72 or so, or greater, at the present time,
- and transferred to that earlier at earlier times.
- As far as visiting Germany itself is concerned,
- I have less of an emotion when I visit places other than
- Düsseldorf because I've had dealings scientifically with
- a number of people in Freiburg, all of them substantially
- younger than I. So--
- except one, the director of the institute.
- But he was a Dutchman.
- So I couldn't in good conscience make a, well,
- a judgment about what his position was in the war.
- So I do feel uneasy.
- But it diminishes.
- Each time I go back, there's less of an emotional trauma.
- And even the first time when I was there, I mean,
- I am not sure I can even recall the conflicting emotions that I
- was subjected to at the time.
- So.
- It's often said that neighbors would
- turn in their Jewish neighbors for the SS,
- or expedite the process of deportation.
- Does that enter your mind that there was betrayal even
- by the civilian population of Düsseldorf?
- In other words, is there any anger
- that there was that kind of duplicity in German society?
- Well, I personally did not experience it at the time,
- and I wasn't particularly conscious of it
- when going back.
- I'm aware of the fact that there was
- some such duplicity, of course.
- But I wonder what the frequency of it
- was compared to those that didn't do it.
- And since I was not personally exposed to this kind of thing,
- I don't think that particular issue--
- and at my emotional or intellectual considerations
- concerning my feelings towards Germany and Düsseldorf--
- the people there.
- So you don't feel any generalized anger towards
- people in Düsseldorf?
- No, I don't.
- In thinking over the situation, how
- I deal with people over there, when I deal with somebody who
- says, well, if we had not followed
- the requirements or the laws that were laid down,
- and that we were told we had to obey,
- we would have been killed, and we didn't want to be killed,
- so we obeyed them, I can at least understand that.
- I might not respect it in the way
- some obvious fighters and counter-insurgents reacted.
- But I can understand that.
- You don't want to be killed, that the--
- if you take the risk of even dealing with or, particularly,
- helping Jewish people, it is those people
- that I was convinced were fully informed what was going on
- and then denied any complicity that I felt an anger towards.
- And of course, I have asked this question--
- why could such a thing happen in Germany?
- And I may have said this before.
- And the answers that I've gotten from psychologists
- and psychiatrists and so on in this country, and even
- historians, is that there was a mass psychosis.
- But that's no explanation.
- Here you have a country which produced
- the culture of a Goethe and the culture of a Beethoven,
- and who had a very, very enlightened government, even
- though some people might not have liked it,
- under Bismarck, who made tremendous strides
- in social progress.
- And all of a sudden this gets turned
- into a total catastrophe in a extremely short period of time.
- And you wonder what the mentality
- is that would allow this.
- And one of the things that I guess I have thought about
- is give a German a uniform and he's happy.
- You don't have to give him a salary.
- Give him the uniform and he'll be happy.
- At least I noticed that in my earlier visits to Germany.
- I don't know whether it's still true or not.
- There have been tremendous convulsions
- in the last couple of years, so I don't know whether that still
- applies.
- But this is the problem in reflecting on my relationship
- with Germans, and particularly the city of Düsseldorf,
- and the citizens, currently is I would imagine that no more than
- 10% of those still alive had any way of participating
- in the activities of the Hitler regime.
- And the rest of them, are you going
- to assume that they are equally guilty by association,
- or by being sons and daughters of those
- who perform these acts?
- I intellectually can't accept that they are equally guilty.
- So my anger, if you might call it that,
- is very much tempered by these considerations.
- You mentioned that a lot of people--
- a lot of the survivors-- are unwilling to visit Düsseldorf,
- but you are.
- What makes you different?
- [SIGHS]
- I'm not sure I can have the answer to that question.
- There are as many people who are willing to visit--
- perhaps even more-- than those who are not.
- I have a second cousin who never lived in Düsseldorf--
- actually first cousin once removed who lives in Holland;
- won't visit Germany at all because of what had happened.
- There were some of my scientific colleagues,
- most of them dead now, who were treated badly by the Nazis.
- Some of them weren't even Jewish.
- But the Jewish ones, they wouldn't visit.
- Others would.
- And I really don't know what the trigger
- is that keeps you from or actually allows
- you to visit the country.
- Perhaps it's age.
- Perhaps it's how you were brought up.
- Perhaps it's not thinking intellectually
- about what had happened-- in other words,
- not coming to the conclusion that you can't really
- blame the present citizens of Germany
- for what had happened any more than you can blame
- the present generation of Americans
- for bringing slaves into the United States.
- So perhaps people don't think about that part of it,
- and just emotionally react to the fact
- there were 6 million Jews that were exterminated,
- and this was done at the behest of a single person,
- and the people who followed his demands are guilty, and so are
- the children and their children's children.
- And I can see that that would be an emotional issue that perhaps
- any kind of logical reasoning cannot overcome.
- But I look at it differently.
- Perhaps do you see yourself as more
- of a forgiving person, or--
- No, as a matter of fact, I'm not very
- forgiving in my general dealings.
- It depends on the slight that's done.
- But here, obviously, we have an extreme action.
- I don't forget.
- And it's not a matter of convenience,
- really, either, because I haven't gotten anything
- particularly out of being associated
- with Germany, or even with the German scientists of today.
- But you see, am I going to stop listening to Beethoven, who
- had never even known of Hitler?
- Am I going to not read Thomas Mann or whatever have you
- just because they have the label German as part of their birth
- condition?
- And I don't see that.
- And it's not a matter of being forgiven.
- It's just a question of reality--
- who can you truly and justly blame for what happened?
- I think if we have a Klaus Barbie,
- Yes, execute him by all means, if he is guilty.
- And I think the Israelis have done this.
- They have no death penalty-- except for the mass murders
- that occurred in Germany.
- So I guess people look at this differently depending entirely
- on their rational and emotional makeup.
- If you were to meet a perpetrator in Germany,
- or found out that somebody had participated
- in the Nazi regime, what would you say to them?
- Can you speculate?
- Well, it's a very, very iffy question.
- My reaction would probably be that I
- would want to distance myself from them as
- quickly as possible.
- I wouldn't talk to them at all.
- And I don't think I would go up and shout "murderer"
- in their face.
- But there's a person in Freiburg who
- I feel may very well have been a active Nazi with whom
- I've had some contact.
- I've always felt very, very uneasy
- whenever I'm in his presence.
- And yet I don't know why I didn't tear it up.
- But what has happened is that I've
- made certain very definitive statements about what
- I thought the Germans had done, both socially and culturally
- with respect to the Jews.
- And not just the Jews, either--
- other countries as well at that time.
- And I made it fairly clear that I thought
- that he might very well have been one
- of the perpetrators of this.
- So I would not, with this one exception,
- talk to people like that.
- Now I've become convinced that as a man exactly
- my own age, and that would have been 13 when I left,
- which was 1939.
- So there's a possibility he might have been in the army.
- Also possibly he might not.
- He convinced me, really and truly,
- that he was not only not a Nazi, but he had done a great deal
- to try to oppose this.
- I think I may have mentioned this.
- He took me to a Jewish synagogue down
- in the southern part of Germany, and the synagogue
- had been reconstructed.
- And it was there before the war.
- Primarily, Southern Germany is inhabited by Catholics,
- and the Catholics don't get along too well with the Jews.
- And here was this little enclave where there was tolerance.
- And so people came from all over the area
- to worship in this town.
- And after the war, somebody had given them
- money to rebuild this synagogue, and he took me down.
- So I am sure that if he had some reservations,
- this would not have happened.
- I think I can see into his soul, if you might say.
- And I feel convinced that he was,
- if I may call it, a "good guy."
- Are you going to be doing any public speaking when you go
- to Düsseldorf on your memorial visit?
- I don't know.
- I doubt it.
- I will, of course, if I'm asked.
- But I do not know what this undertaking requires.
- If you were to be asked to speak to German schoolchildren
- or to a general audience, what would you
- think you would say to them?
- Speaking about my experiences?
- Or whatever you'd like.
- Well, I mean, my normal way of speaking to a group
- is on technical subjects, but I don't
- think that you're interested in that at this point.
- I would perhaps relate some of the things that
- had happened to me, and would indicate that I personally
- was a far luckier person than most people.
- And yet the total sum of everything
- that happened to my family would certainly not
- put me any more than the middle, because I think
- a number of families got out.
- I would tell them that I would hope
- that they could judge a person by their character,
- and not by the color of their skin, or their religion,
- or the economic status, or whatever.
- And I would hope that they would recognize the danger
- signs of any bigots trying to arouse
- the populace in a similar endeavor,
- and that they would resist.
- And I just read-- and we talked, I think,
- last time I was here about East Germany and the problems
- they were having.
- And I just read that the city of Cottbus
- has rebelled against the reactionary
- and neo-fascist or fascist groups that
- have tried to arrest the power and the authority
- away from the city.
- And they have put them down.
- And this is very heartening.
- You wonder, when you look at Germany,
- which was an economic miracle for 30 years,
- thanks to the, at least initially,
- to the Marshall Plan, that they would even
- consider tolerating something of this sort.
- But apparently, the economic conditions
- in at least East Germany have deteriorated
- to the point where you have this diatribe against foreigners,
- against anything that's not endemic German--
- and that includes even the religion of Judaism.
- So I would certainly warn them to try to avoid that.
- I would preach the other aspect of it,
- and that's tolerance of somebody's behavior
- that you may not understand, may not actually want for yourself.
- But that isn't damaging to you.
- And to accept that each human being is different
- and hopefully endowed with the creativity and the perseverance
- and the intellect to lead a life that
- doesn't harm other people--
- at least not deliberately.
- And so that's, in other words, tolerance on a grand scale.
- And I would preach that, and the hope
- that this would never happen again.
- So.
- Well, I hope they ask you to speak, then.
- I think you'd be a good speaker.
- Well, I won't volunteer.
- I'll tell you that.
- And I think we asked before if you had visited Auschwitz
- or any of the other concentration camps,
- and you said, no, I believe.
- Correct.
- When you go back, would you still not go to these sites?
- Yes, I would not go to the sites.
- For the same reasons.
- Same reasons.
- It's just too powerful.
- Well, not only too powerful, but I cannot see that it would
- accomplish any good for me.
- It's not an ablution or anything like that.
- I think I would--
- I would feel horrified.
- And I know what happened.
- I've seen pictures.
- I don't want to subject myself to the emotional trauma
- that I'm sure would accompany that,
- because I can't see that it would do any good.
- And as I mentioned, I mean, some people
- were not only surprised, but even
- angry at my refusal to visit these, saying
- they were national shrines.
- Well, so was that prison in the South
- where the Union soldiers were systematically murdered.
- I don't think anyone would get a kick out
- of going there, unless they were truly perverse.
- It may not be quite the same rationale here, but no,
- I cannot see going to a concentration camp.
- And I don't want to see the documents.
- I don't want to see the belongings of the prisoners
- and people who were murdered, the collection of gold teeth
- or whatever they have.
- I don't know.
- It just strikes me as being too barbaric to even consider.
- The only thing that would be of interest to me in this area
- would be to see what the mechanisms were
- that people dealt with it in terms
- of getting out of the country--
- how they managed.
- What the resources were that they had.
- Who helped them, et cetera, et cetera.
- And I'm sure there would be a lot of extremely interesting
- stories in how they meandered out of their initial residence
- in order to gain freedom in a Western country,
- or in the Western hemisphere.
- No, the reason I ask is I've interviewed a few survivors,
- and they felt it was a cathartic experience, like,
- going back to Auschwitz, having been there,
- to relive it in some way, and put it
- behind them in a final sense.
- No, I can't.
- First of all, I wasn't in any of the concentration camps.
- And secondly, I've been to where I lived.
- And while I lived in these three residences
- whose location I can recall, I was a small child.
- I was fully aware of my surroundings
- and how hostile they were to me.
- But I had the protection of my family to that extent.
- And so I had a, shall we say, acceptable childhood,
- even though it wasn't totally happy--
- happy because of the external influences.
- So I didn't have a real traumatic experience
- living there, the only traumatic experience having
- to deal with the separation for my parents and my family,
- and never seeing them again.
- So this is-- but that, I don't think
- I can overcome by any visit or by any act.
- It's just something that I have to live with.
- And I've-- don't think that, because of that,
- I would benefit from going to any of the concentration camps.
- I'm willing to look at some museums where there are some,
- shall we say, professional exhibits of the sort of things
- that I have mentioned to you.
- Now I think you, being a historian,
- would probably be able to realize that a professional can
- arrange things to be not traumatic for somebody
- who walks in.
- The Yad Vashem is deliberately the other way, and that I
- couldn't even visit either.
- So it depends on the kind of exhibit.
- When I find that my soul gets touched too deeply,
- and there's too much turmoil in it, I'll just leave.
- I'd be interested in hearing your reaction
- after you visit the Wiesenthal Museum, which
- deals with a lot of the pre-war and the early evacuations
- and deportations, how you feel how that was arranged.
- This is the first anniversary of the disaster in the Oakland
- Hills where you lost your home.
- Do you have any reflections one year after?
- Yes, I have reflections on it.
- Both my wife and I, individually and separately,
- went through the Hills yesterday,
- which is the exact anniversary.
- And also, on Sunday, we went up there
- and met with our neighbors, and shared a bottle of beer,
- and talked about the future.
- And that's about where we are.
- We're talking about the future.
- Our house is approximately 40% rebuilt.
- We have not had the trauma that we've had--
- that other people have had with the insurance companies--
- not that we're totally satisfied, but at least
- we'll be able to rebuild, and not
- have to expend every single cent of our resources
- for the process.
- The feeling is that there is a parallel--
- and I do draw this very much--
- between this loss last year in the firestorm
- and the loss of my home, my parents, my family in 1939--
- 1938, excuse me, is when I left.
- '39 is when the war broke out.
- And there has been one other disaster
- which, to me, was even--
- well, not quite of this magnitude.
- But one of my divorces left me very, very emotionally drained.
- And so these three events, plus some lesser misfortunes,
- are things that make you, I think, stronger
- in the long run.
- And if I look at the disaster that happened in the Hills
- last year, and I see the different reaction of people
- to the event, some people, I don't think,
- will ever get over it.
- I think my family and I are recovered 99.9% in terms
- of our emotional status.
- Financially, or what we had, we'll never, of course,
- recover our belongings, because some
- of the things that were lost belonged to my wife's family
- from hundreds of years ago or so.
- And I lost some of my things from my parental home also--
- not to mention the collections that we both have had.
- But [SIGHS] the way to deal with a problem,
- as far as I am concerned personally,
- is to say, OK, you had a discontinuity
- of extreme magnitude, but unless you get back to that plateau
- where you were before, you're going
- to keep sinking further and further into the morass.
- So my endeavor has been to get back to normal
- as quickly as possible by starting my collections again,
- realizing that it'll never get to the level
- that it was before.
- The stamp collection.
- Stamp collection.
- The collection of old maps, which is even more valuable.
- And I collect maps and stamps.
- I've collected some masks.
- Those were the three collections I had.
- I'm going to start trying to play the piano again,
- which I haven't done in a serious way for 55 years or so.
- And I will try to do some outside reading
- in different areas than I have done before.
- And, of course, I've immersed myself
- in activities at the university in a professional level.
- I'm teaching, which you're not supposed to do
- five years after you retire.
- And I've taught every year for at least a month.
- This semester I'm teaching a full course.
- I still have graduate students.
- I'm going to try to increase my professional activity
- in consulting.
- And it'll keep me busy, and it'll also diminish the trauma,
- such it may still reside from the firestorm
- and from any previous disaster that I've been subjected to.
- So that's how I am trying to deal with it.
- I think it's constructive.
- And we feel very fortunate in that,
- even though we have suffered the loss of our home
- and all our belongings, we weren't hurt,
- unlike other people.
- And there was something that my wife and I
- have discussed several times.
- We were there when the fire storm came at us,
- and we speculated about our emotional reaction
- if we had been out of town and never
- been exposed to the danger, and to visually observing
- the approach of this just horrendous inferno.
- And my wife said, well, if we had not been there,
- we would have lost everything.
- We managed to save a couple of things.
- But we would not have been subjected
- to this personal seizure of having an force that's
- out of control just bearing down on you,
- and forcing you to make a decision as to whether we can
- stay even one moment then to look for something else
- to take out.
- And the other alternative is if you had waited a few more
- minutes, could you have gotten out
- because of a potential traffic jam, which
- is what occurred on one of the streets where the people died.
- So these are speculations.
- But she felt that we would not have
- been subjected to the personal trauma
- if we had not been there.
- We might have ended up with less possessions,
- but that the images of the firestorm
- would not have been in our eyes and our minds the way
- they are now.
- So it was particularly appropriate yesterday,
- because the television stations almost all day long ran
- the tapes from that firestorm.
- And we looked at them.
- And last night, at my daughter's school,
- the Junior League had given some money for a dinner
- for the firestorm survivors.
- And so we talked to some of them.
- But I don't think any of them were Jewish, other than us--
- other than me.
- My wife is not Jewish.
- And so that is how we have dealt with the fire.
- And I do draw a parallel between that and my exodus
- from Germany.
- [INAUDIBLE] that you--
- Not at this particular point, although I
- am sure that the moment I leave here,
- there will be things that I recall
- that I should have mentioned.
- But that's my short-term and long-term memory problem.
- No, I can't think of anything that would specifically
- require extensive comments-- not even small ones--
- that I can think of.
- I think I've covered pretty much everything.
- I've had a very useful and hopefully productive
- life in this country, which has been very good to me.
- The University of California has been very good to me.
- My present family has been very good to me.
- And so I have all kinds of reasons to be grateful.
- There's no question in my mind that, looking
- at it coldly and intellectually, that I've had a better
- life here than I could have ever had in Germany
- if there had been no Hitler.
- So you might say, for me personally, it
- might have been a benefit.
- Do you think you still would have been an engineer had you
- been in Germany?
- I have no idea.
- And the reason I'm saying that is
- the opportunities for education in Germany
- were far fewer than there were in this country--
- for everybody, but particularly for Jews.
- And when you look at Jews in Germany,
- they stayed out of engineering.
- If they did go into some professional areas,
- it was mostly medicine and, to a lesser extent, law.
- But there were very few Jewish engineers.
- In this country there was a prejudice
- against Jewish engineers also in the '30s.
- And in fact, when I came to the University of California
- in 1947, the then-dean was the first dean
- in the entire country who had opened up
- the college to Jewish faculty.
- And if you looked around, you found very few
- in other institutions.
- But he had assembled a core of, oh, maybe six
- in the college, which was very unusual.
- And they didn't ask you your religion
- before you signed your papers to teach.
- So I can say that there was a change in the attitudes of both
- the institutionalized situation and in personal representations
- between people with regard to being Jewish and not
- being Jewish.
- In Germany, my recollection is that there were
- relatively few intermarriages.
- When I came to this country, there also
- were relatively few intermarriages,
- but it has increased enormously, to the point
- I think that more than half the marriages between one
- partner who is Jewish and someone else
- involve a non-Jewish spouse.
- And it so happened-- and it's very amusing,
- but last Friday night we had a little dinner party.
- And one of my friends from the university,
- who also was, a long time ago, my graduate student,
- but who is now an associate dean,
- and whom I'd also known at the Naval weapons center where
- I worked; and another colleague from my own department,
- with whom I collaborated, and was the only other person who
- lost his house in the firestorm--
- we all three are Jewish men who--
- I'm sorry-- were all three are men
- who married Jewish partners.
- In my case, my wife is not Jewish.
- Then there's still one other faculty member
- who we've had at the house who is also Jewish--
- married to a non-Jewish person.
- And sometimes I'm a little bit bemused
- that my children from this marriage-- my child
- from this marriage-- is not Jewish,
- and yet this friend of mine, who's
- Indian, who's married to a Jewish girl from New York,
- has two daughters who are Jewish by the Jewish law.
- Well, we don't take that so seriously anymore today.
- But still there's something that ought
- to be done about this in a formal way.
- I know it can be done by just converting.
- But I think perhaps a religion ought
- to look and not just automatically exclude people
- when there's one Jewish parent, regardless of which one it is.
- So I have not followed the Jewish religion
- in any serious way.
- In fact, I haven't gone to a synagogue for decades,
- except for a bar mitzvah.
- I did go to two Kol Nidres that were special, but in general
- I just don't observe them.
- I don't fast on Yom Kippur.
- So as I think I also mentioned before,
- I feel that my ethical standards are
- more than equivalent to what a formal religion preaches,
- and I'm satisfied with that.
- And you mentioned you really don't
- associate with other survivors of the Nazi regime.
- No, I didn't mention that.
- It's certainly not deliberate.
- But as I say, this colleague of mine,
- who was my graduate student, is a survivor.
- His father was killed in Yugoslavia.
- And he's from Austria.
- He's a survivor.
- There's one other colleague in the department
- who is a survivor.
- I associate with them some.
- It's not a matter of whether he's
- a Nazi survivor or a Holocaust survivor.
- It's a matter of whether or not our personalities match or not,
- and by the way of common interests and so on.
- And I think that's--
- I don't exclude or include anyone
- in my circle of friends automatically,
- except people that I know specifically
- who are perpetrators in the Holocaust.
- Those, I would not have even among my speaking
- acquaintances--
- much less friends.
- So some survivors do identify very strongly with the fact
- that they were survivors, belong to organizations or groups.
- And you haven't done that.
- No.
- I've-- have to thank the B'nai B'rith for helping me
- in my initial year in college with financial assistance.
- And I accepted that.
- And I was grateful for it.
- So my position-- and I think I may have mentioned this before
- also--
- my position is that I'm not a Jew
- unless it's not popular to be Jewish,
- and then I'm very much of a Jew.
- I do have a cultural affinity with people
- that have practiced the religion with the art,
- and the literature, the music, whatever you like.
- And in my visits to Israel--
- I think I've been there four times--
- I found that the people that I associate with
- feel pretty much the same way that I do,
- except they have the additional burden of defending the State
- of Israel against the Arabs.
- That's something I personally I don't have to worry about it.
- But other than that, in terms of the attitude
- towards the religion and their practice,
- they're no different than I, or many other people that I do
- know.
- One of my friends that I mentioned, the associate dean,
- says he doesn't believe in the Jewish religion,
- but he practices fasting on Yom Kippur
- just to show him he can do it.
- [LAUGHS] It's not a religious matter with him,
- but a matter of principle, to show
- that he doesn't deny the religion because
- of the inconveniences that are associated with it.
- Now you just mentioned you saved your papers from the fire.
- I saved many papers, but certainly not all.
- I have lost quite a bit.
- What I have in my papers are some documents
- which involve the legal processes of restitution.
- And these--
- Why don't you describe the collection, some of the papers.
- OK.
- You don't have to read them in detail--
- No, I won't.
- --unless there's some part that's particularly
- [INAUDIBLE].
- Well, what is at the front of the package
- is the death certificates of my parents, which
- I received from the Netherlands Red Cross in January of 1952.
- And then statements to the effect
- that my father and my mother were killed in Auschwitz.
- And they are assigned, I guess, arbitrary
- date to the assassination.
- And then they indicated that these
- are formal documents that can be used for death certificates.
- Then I have a whole series of documents here relating
- to the legal aspects of some of the--
- Why don't you describe the documents,
- and maybe the process of collecting them,
- and what you've done with them?
- Well, there were at least two lawyers in Europe
- who were acting on my behalf, and they
- took a certain commission to process these cases
- through the courts in Germany.
- And they were the ones who sent me copies of these.
- I am sure that I do not have perhaps
- even the majority of them.
- This is the restitution of the property of a distant relative
- of mine, Adolf and [? Bertha ?] [? Richard, ?] who lived
- in Munich.
- I recall them.
- I had, in fact, a picture of them at one time,
- but the picture is no longer there--
- of which I was one of perhaps eight heirs
- that could participate in this.
- And then I may have been only a part heir of one of these.
- And I am, together with my first cousin
- once I moved in Holland, that I described.
- So that is the listing of the property, and it's involved.
- And the amount of money in terms of stocks,
- and in cash, and so on that was available.
- Then we had another lawyer here.
- This is concerning another heir.
- Yeah, this is the property of [? Solomon ?] [? Stamm, ?] who
- is--
- I'm not even quite sure.
- I think he was the brother of my--
- not the brother.
- He had married the sister of my grandmother.
- Something like that.
- And again, we have here a series of--
- this happens to define who the heirs are in this case.
- This is an official document which had to do, I guess,
- with the--
- what I had to do in order to get any of the money back.
- And this is much, much later.
- I'll put that aside for the moment.
- Here is another letter which, again,
- there were many exchanges between the lawyers and me
- because I needed information that they thought
- I might be able to provide.
- In many cases I couldn't.
- But here are two legal cases that I mentioned
- concerning, well, the division of poverty of deceased.
- And these were deceased as a result of action by the Nazis.
- Here is another one of the same--
- So you received several--
- --restitution.
- --forms of restitution, but not only for your parents,
- but for other relatives.
- Yes, but these-- for other relatives.
- What they were trying to do, as I understood is, is they
- were going to take the money, or the equivalent
- sums that they had confiscated from these people
- as a result of Nazi action, and distribute it to the heirs.
- And I am, in all of these, only, like, maybe 1/16.
- So the amount of money-- and especially at the time, when
- you consider the status of the dollar then,
- didn't amount to very much.
- So it was more or less a--
- Here is a rather interesting document.
- Let's see.
- Yeah, this is again, I think.
- This is a different item.
- And this is rather crucial to me.
- What this is is a information bureau in Berlin
- that investigated the status of the business
- of my grandfather-- my grandfather and his brother
- founded, and my father participated.
- In this indicated the order in which the business was carried
- out by change of ownership or by change of location,
- and what the amount of money was--
- I know it was contained in one of these--
- that they dealt with.
- And so this is a rather interesting and important
- document.
- Here's another one from the same organization.
- In fact, all of these are from the same organization.
- So you're saying that the restitution
- was paid was for loss of property
- and not for loss of life.
- I think there was a certain sum for loss of life automatically,
- but there was certainly for poverty.
- For example, I see that this business at one time
- was of the order of 1,500,000 Marks,
- and that they, when they were in Berlin, they had 14 employees.
- And so these things were considered,
- I imagine, when they gave, provided restitution in--
- to me as a result of confiscation of this property.
- So this is all.
- And I should, I guess, all keep that in here.
- This is all from the same information bureau.
- Like a detective bureau, I guess, that's given here.
- So when they provide restitution,
- it was only in the hundreds of dollars.
- My recollection-- and it's been a long time ago--
- I think I got several thousand in the final analysis,
- in these.
- The restitution to the heirs--
- not of my family, but of these two
- other groups-- were in the hundreds of dollars.
- But for my family, and the business,
- and the loss of education--
- I do not recall whether there was--
- what it was, if there was any for the loss of life.
- This is the documents-- rather interesting.
- It is the decision of the Court of Düsseldorf,
- dealing with the matter of the--
- one of these items.
- And it gives a detailed account of the stocks, for example,
- and what the income was, and how each person was
- to be recompensated.
- And so that is in here.
- This is, essentially an inventory.
- I'll leave that for later.
- What we have here is--
- I don't know how these all got in here.
- This is a vaccination for my father.
- And it was done on--
- let's see-- 29th of May.
- And I don't think--
- I don't think they even gave--
- oh, he was five years old.
- So it must have been 19--
- 1888.
- And so this document.
- Then we have some depositions that I had to give--
- copies of depositions I had to give--
- here in the Consul General--
- German Consul General of San Francisco--
- essentially to say what my life's history was,
- what my family history was, to document the right
- to this money as an heir.
- Then I have a letter from my grandfather with a note
- for my father and my mother both,
- to a lady in-- who is distant--
- second cousin of mine who is in New Orleans.
- And I think she's 86, and she's quite ill.
- But it's very critical for me, because it's
- a copy of the writing of my mother,
- and my father, my grandfather--
- something I don't have much of.
- So that's a document in between the documentation of the--
- the documentation of the--
- yeah.
- And so I will separate all these.
- Simply further conclusions by the court.
- And I'll get those separately.
- I think the new material is 30 years later than this,
- which I am separating.
- And this has to do with the new material,
- with my present connections with Düsseldorf, and this memorial.
- So these are all documents that--
- I think this is another representation of the stocks
- and bonds and so on that were in the case of the heirs
- of [? Soli ?] [? Stamm, ?] of which I was one.
- Next, I'd like to show some letters here,
- what might amount to envelopes.
- And these were addressed to me.
- This is from one of the gentleman whose heir I have--
- I have the letter in here.
- It's almost impossible to read.
- But they were wondering why I had not
- communicated with my parents.
- But I had.
- But I guess, being under Nazi domination, this shows opened
- and censored.
- That may very well not have been transmitted.
- This is a letter from your relative.
- This is not--
- The relative, yeah.
- --by your parents.
- No.
- This is an envelope from my grandfather
- mailed to me in Mount Vernon.
- And the letter is lost.
- Do you remember what was in it?
- Do you remember what the letter had said?
- Well, they're wondering how I was doing.
- And I guess they were wondering.
- Those are so poignant because they
- have Nazi postmarks, a swastika and the German eagle.
- And this was sent from Holland under occupation, you see.
- This is a letter I actually received in Germany--
- or a postcard.
- And-- because I was a stamp collector.
- And this, I think, was sent from my father and my mother's, who
- knew that I was collecting stamps.
- So a it was generally a pleasant social letter.
- Some more of the restitution material,
- which I think the documents, in a way, speak for themselves.
- There's nothing further than the three separate cases
- that I mentioned--
- the heirs for [? Soli ?] [? Stamm, ?] the heir
- for [? Richard, ?] and then with my own parents,
- and the business of the loss of their property
- and their business.
- Yeah, this has to do, actually, with my own life.
- They decided on how much money to give me
- based upon my education in this country.
- They have made a fairly complete documentary of this.
- And they say, for example, I was pretty well educated over here,
- which is true.
- And no question about it.
- And so I probably received somewhat smaller sums of money
- than I might have if I had just been out pounding a beat
- or something of that sort.
- Here is again, in going through this--
- I'm sorry I'm not more organized.
- No, that's OK.
- I'd like to put this down and then get to that later.
- This is also an heir question of who
- gets what in the way of heirs.
- I really didn't care.
- I think that some of the people who were involved
- were very, very aggressive towards the others, who were
- perhaps entitled and did not.
- This is still part of this.
- This is an interesting document, totally different.
- This is my secondary school in the United States, which
- shows the grades that I received that I had to use
- for entrance to the university.
- Yeah, they weren't too bad.
- This is a documentation from the gymnasium
- that I had attended in Germany stating
- that I entered there at a certain time
- and left at another time.
- And that they also said that after the 2/7/1942
- no Jews were allowed to attend this gymnasium beyond that.
- So there are a couple of documents here of this sort.
- And that involved my gymnasium in Germany.
- Some more documents concerning the legal aspects
- of restitution, which I don't think
- would necessarily be of interest.
- Here you can probably, well, Xerox them and determine
- what this involves.
- This is a letter that I received after the war
- from a woman, Neva.
- She writing to me in French, and saying
- that what has happened to some of my family.
- She also bitterly complains about a fight
- that she and another--
- No.
- This is strictly from--
- I'm sorry.
- This is wrong.
- This is strictly from a relative who was married to my uncle
- by marriage.
- She was his sister-in-law.
- And she explains to me in German--
- in-- in French what has happened to my family.
- Can you read-- do you want to read part of that?
- Well, I have-- you mean translate it?
- "I would like to write to you in English,
- but it's very difficult for me to write in English.
- I have received your letter, and I immediately
- wrote to your cousin, Ilsa Vandenberg--"
- that's my first cousin, who died, I know, in Auschwitz--
- "--who lives in Amsterdam.
- I am not--" some of these I can't even read.
- "I am not certain that I know the address of your father
- and mother.
- I have again written to [PERSONAL NAME] Vandenberg--"
- who I don't know, "--who lives in The Hague in order to find
- their address.
- I am sad that I do not have any further news.
- "Your uncle, Joseph Vandenberg, does not
- live anymore in Dordrecht.
- My postcard, which I have written in there,
- was returned to Portugal--" So this
- must have come from Portugal.
- "--with the sad news that he was sent to Auschwitz.
- Louis Vandenberg--" who is the brother of my uncle
- by marriage, "--is--
- I do not know what happened to him.
- And I shall inform myself with all speed.
- But I today have had no response to my inquiries.
- But one should not lose courage.
- Perhaps everything is OK."
- So this is essentially what--
- I mean, there is more and more.
- But this is the nature of the--
- Here's another letter to me--
- only the envelope.
- I don't have the letter anymore.
- For my grandfather, who had migrated,
- together with my parents, to Holland.
- And here is a card, addressed to my mother, from--
- I don't know who.
- I'd have to look.
- Maybe is her friend.
- Maybe it was a relative.
- So this was about maybe '37 or '38.
- Here's another card.
- And this is from my mother's friend.
- I know this is from Italy.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- This was sent to me because, again,
- my collection of stamps from Paris, from the Louvre.
- And this is addressed to me.
- And this was the girlfriend of my uncle,
- who died on this bicycle trip that I described.
- I have here another letter from the address
- of my uncle in Holland.
- And this was clearly, again, opened.
- And it was either from my uncle or from my grandfather,
- who lived with him.
- This is the birth certificate--
- copy of it, for the static copy of my birth certificate--
- together with the copy.
- This is another document from the general consul here in San
- Francisco concerning the--
- let's see-- the restitution for my parents; maybe their death.
- And these are all receipts.
- OK.
- Here is something.
- This was a card.
- I don't know why I have it, but I do.
- This is my great-great uncle, who
- was in business with my grandfather.
- And it's a bill of inventory kind of thing.
- I don't know what it means.
- 1894 or something like that.
- This is the menu that was done upon the occasion
- of my grandfather's 80th birthday.
- They had a celebration.
- And this was the party I was the invitation to.
- This lady in New Orleans, who married my father's cousin,
- and who also was a very close friend of my mother.
- And that's, as I say, the reason that I'm alive
- is because of their friendship, because my mother
- went to their wedding, and my father went to their wedding.
- And that's where they met.
- So this is the menu which, again, is in German.
- There's a letter here from my great uncle who wrote this.
- And he says, "Dears--" so I don't
- to really whom this is meant.
- And there are two scripts of Hebrew in here, apparently--
- at least in handwriting.
- And this is very difficult to read.
- You have to sit down and really study it
- because of the handwriting.
- And then the rest of this material I think deals with
- my current correspondence, or relatively recent
- correspondence, with the Dr. Barbara Sushi, who I recalled,
- and before has conducted this research project on the history
- of the Jews in Düsseldorf.
- And the rest of this deals with essentially that also
- with the vice mayor who sent me this,
- because I had written to him that I wanted to meet him.
- He is in charge of this project, and all the other restitution.
- And this documentation here, of course
- concerns the letters that we have exchanged--
- personal and quasi-official.
- And they relate also to what is in this [GERMAN],,
- the memorial to the Jewish in Düsseldorf.
- I was asked to address myself to them for some information
- that I wanted.
- So all of this material here is within the last year
- or so that actually can [INAUDIBLE] the other material.
- And I think it's more of a self-explanatory.
- If you wish me to look at each of these individually, I can.
- But--
- I'd like you to describe the book of calligraphy
- by German students, to hold that up and describe
- what that is again [INAUDIBLE].
- OK.
- I'd be very happy to do that.
- Oh, incidentally, I have here an actual signature--
- I guess it's duplicated-- from the Oberbürgermeister,
- the highest mayor.
- I don't know.
- We don't have this kind of title in this country.
- It's a super-mayor of Düsseldorf inviting me to this event last
- year that I described.
- Read that letter.
- That's interesting.
- Well, I'll have to translate it.
- It'll take a few minutes.
- The Super-Mayor of the principal city Düsseldorf
- of the Rhineland, "Dear Professor Goldsmith.
- You were informed in February that the period for the usual
- invitation of a group of former Jewish citizens to come
- to Düsseldorf were postponed by reasons of--" I guess this is
- "--warlike activities in the region of the Gulf.
- And since then, fortunately, the war has been suspended.
- And I would like to invite you most heartily,
- from the period of 16th through 23 October 1991."
- If I had accepted that, I would not have been here
- for the firestorm.
- That just occurred to me.
- "Düsseldorf was formerly your home city,
- even though it was a long time ago.
- In the meantime, a great deal has changed with us,
- and I would like to help to convince you that there
- have been these changes.
- I would be very grateful to you if you
- would write no later than the 15th of August
- your consent to come.
- With your response, please give an indication
- whether you will be coming alone,
- or whether you will have a significant other
- coming with you.
- You will receive, in each case, in August, a letter from us
- in which all other still unresolved questions will
- be posed.
- Please direct your answer to Frau Renata [? Bartlett, ?]
- [GERMAN] Düsseldorf--" et cetera.
- The address.
- "As host, the city will take care,
- during the period from 16th to 23
- October, of your accommodation in a hotel,
- and will give you the support for your meals.
- "I would also like to indicate that we do not
- have any possibility to provide kosher food for you.
- We will, as far as it is possible for a group,
- make special arrangements for your normal eating habits
- and problems.
- "As far as the cost of travel is concerned from the USA,
- those guests will receive from the city in the amount
- of D-Mark 1,000 per person.
- I would appreciate it if you could advise me
- in good time of your travel bureau in order to start the--
- or initiate these-- processes.
- You will receive the additional sum for the journey
- in D-Marks after your arrival here.
- I would be very happy to greet you in Düsseldorf,
- and I remain your Bürgermeister."
- It is difficult to believe this, but I
- do think this is a form letter.
- I deduce this from the fact that there
- is a slightly different type for the address
- than there is for the remainder of the letter.
- But it is difficult to believe that this
- would apply to everybody that they would write this stuff.
- OK.
- Then this is my correspondence with Frau
- [? Bartlett, ?] the lady who was mentioned in here.
- This is a correspondence with the Memorial Institute
- in Düsseldorf.
- Most of the rest of this concerns the correspondence
- with Dr. Sushi about my visit there,
- the questions that she had.
- I lost some of this document in --
- Here is another letter from the mayor,
- which I guess involves the same sort of thing.
- The earlier letter to the one that I just read,
- which was the initial invitation, that
- was the postponement.
- So that corresponds to my writing.
- Kept it all together with the responses of this lady,
- and of the Institute for--
- that's the memorial responsibilities.
- So that's where we are with regard to this documentary.
- So tell me about the archive, and their projects,
- and what you think about it, in Düsseldorf.
- I haven't seen them yet.
- I have talked to--
- I spent two nights with Dr. Sushi and her husband.
- And we talked a little bit.
- But she said she is in contact with the official bureaus
- trying to verify deaths, trying to verify family relationships,
- burial grounds.
- She has a list, for example, of all the Jewish graves that are
- still existing in Düsseldorf, and who is where and what.
- We tried to find my aunt's grave, who I had never knew
- she died before I was born.
- And we weren't sure that we found it or not.
- So I have no answer directly to your question about what
- I think of the memorial.
- I haven't seen it.
- Regarding the projects.
- Oh, I think the projects are fantastic.
- What I've gotten here, and you asked for a response
- to this book.
- I think this has touched almost more than anything else has--
- not quite as much as a fire, but pretty close.
- What this is is a book which was put out by the city
- of Düsseldorf, and involved a writing down of all the Jewish
- people who died as a result of Hitler and his actions from
- the city of Düsseldorf and the immediate surroundings.
- And each page was put in calligraphy by a student
- from one of the schools.
- And they made three copies of each of these pages.
- One was put in the Yad Vashem in book form.
- One was put in the local Memorial Institute.
- And the third copy, I think, went to the institute
- for the country.
- There is also a Memorial Institute for Germany.
- I think it's in Bonn.
- I'm not sure.
- And then the city decided to reproduce
- these for those who would have an interest,
- or had one of their relatives in here.
- And I have my father, my mother, and my grandfather
- listed in here.
- My father is listed here, Goldschmidt, Siegfried,
- born 18/11/1883 in Dortmund and died in Auschwitz,
- with no dates, although the Red Cross had given me a date.
- My mother is also in here.
- Goldschmidt, Margarethe, geborne Grunewald,
- born on 24/8/1924 in Cologne.
- Died in Auschwitz.
- And my grandfather is in here.
- Goldschmidt, Adolph, born 29/9/1851 in Lemförde and died
- in Westerbork.
- Now I must say this.
- My name was Goldschmidt.
- When I became a citizen in this country
- I changed it officially to Goldsmith--
- simply to Goldsmith, to simply anglicize it.
- So that's what you wanted to ask me about--
- This book was also sent to me.
- Many things have been sent to me that I didn't bring which deal
- with a city of Düsseldorf and its cultural activities.
- But we're not specifically directed
- to this project concerning the history of the Jews there.
- This was gathered, and collected,
- and commentary made by Barbara Sushi, the woman
- that I mentioned.
- And this is Düsseldorf, Thursday, the 10th of November,
- 1938.
- And this is, I guess, the day she concentrated on,
- because probably it was Kristallnacht, or very close
- to it.
- And so there are various sections
- in here, which deal with an introduction.
- And this are documents, the first series,
- a series of articles from the local Jewish paper--
- community newspaper-- of the region of the synagogue
- of Düsseldorf.
- And in here there are some extremely interesting items.
- For example, there's an advertisement
- of my piano teacher in here, by the name
- of Alice [? Liffman. ?] Right over here.
- This lady was still alive in February at age 92 or 93
- in Providence, Rhode Island.
- And I did talk to her on the phone.
- But she was not in such great shape.
- So there are a series of newspapers here.
- There are also, although it is not in here,
- Dr. Sushi showed me an advertisement
- from a newspaper from the comrades of my uncle in World
- War I, when he died with me.
- They had taken out a big notice--
- death notice.
- And I'd ask her for a copy of that.
- I haven't received it.
- But I hope to get this.
- Then, after that, there are a series of descriptions
- of the pogrom of the actual--
- of what happened.
- And they say in the letters here as though nothing had happened.
- And all Jews have to give immediately up all
- weapons of any kind.
- And this is the paper, the newspaper articles,
- concerning the--
- kind of death in Paris that was used as, apparently,
- a pretext for the Kristallnacht.
- Then there are a series of statements
- of your own experiences.
- And the first is by the chief rabbi, by Dr. Max Eschelbacher.
- Apparently these people were interviewed by Dr. Sushi
- and they gave these written comments of their experiences.
- And together with some photographs,
- which can be copied.
- Then there is a series here on the documentation
- of the arrests of people, and the order for the arrest, as--
- and these are, for example, I guess what the police took when
- they arrested these people.
- And then there are some statements about what
- happened to children's groups.
- The first one is to a youth transport to Palestine.
- I myself was on a youth transport to the United States.
- And I am not sure just how that was arranged.
- There must have been some sort of group taking care of this.
- There are two more to England.
- And I guess the documents were written
- by the people who were the leaders of these groups--
- the adult leaders.
- Then there is the question of immigration,
- and where can you go, and how did it look in 1938.
- And then there are these documents concerning
- applications to leave.
- Here's one to the SS, the [INAUDIBLE],,
- asking for permission.
- And then there are some--
- these are all to the secret police.
- But also there are some letters to consulates requesting visas.
- And there are also in here some refusals for these requests.
- So this is a rather extensive documentary of what happened
- in Düsseldorf.
- What goes through your mind when you see how well they've
- documented that?
- You must be very happy with this Doctor Sushi.
- Oh, I think she's done a fantastic job.
- And I do think that she's sincerely and honestly trying
- to bring out all the facts--
- good, bad, or indifferent-- as to what happened.
- She's not making an apology for Germany.
- She's just setting down, here is what happened.
- You make up your own mind.
- And we had a wonderfully--
- a elegant, informative conversation,
- in which her husband joined.
- Her husband is a just-retired professor of physics
- at the University of Düsseldorf--
- which didn't exist when I lived there.
- That's been created since.
- But she's obviously interested in the subject,
- and trying to do much to get as complete a record as she can.
- She'd probably like a copy of this tape for her archive.
- She certainly would.
- I've asked her if she would, and she
- said she would be delighted.
- I'm wondering if you might be able to provide that.
- Well, we'll ask Lenny.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- No, I think she would be more than happy.
- And here is a third document.
- This-- the book with the names, and--
- well, mean this, I mean what I've just talked about--
- book with the names.
- And this third document, which says "History in the West,"
- which is a special edition dealing with the chief rabbi
- of Düsseldorf, Dr. Max Eschelbacher.
- And it's his history.
- And she gave me an addendum to all
- of that when I visited her, because I certainly was
- very, very curious about it.
- And the reason this is so critical
- is because I found something I would never
- have believed I still had.
- And what that is the prayer book that was given to my father
- at the time he entered World War I.
- And it was signed by the Chief Rabbi of Düsseldorf,
- about whom this biography, I guess, was written.
- And the date on this is 1917, and it's an abbreviated prayer
- book.
- And he wrote that also in German.
- So that's a treasure.
- And you grandfather was killed at Westerbork.
- Yeah.
- My grandfather.
- My father was killed in Auschwitz.
- My father fought in World War I in the Eastern Front.
- He was in the Battle of Tannenberg,
- which is rather well known.
- My grandfather fought in the Franco-Prussian War.
- And since he was born in 1851, that was 1871 to '72.
- He was just 20 years old.
- And he fought at Verdun, among other things.
- He told me a lot of things about this,
- but I've forgotten most of it.
- While I was home, they never really dwelled
- on either of the wars or their service in them.
- But he told me individual incidents,
- as something occurred, in the process of something else.
- But there was never any formal description of what they did,
- what they didn't do, or how it went, and so on.
- Were they officers, or--
- No.
- No.
- I have a picture of my father in uniform.
- Not of my grandfather.
- So those are the documents that I have here.
- Then some other documents that may or may not be of interest.
- This is not in any particular order.
- This is my high school annual.
- I went to high school in Mount Vernon, New York.
- And somehow or other, the banner that I bought 50-odd years ago
- is still there.
- The high school doesn't exist anymore.
- It's been torn down.
- But I did go to the 50-year reunion
- last year in the end of September.
- And I met a lot of people that I used to know.
- And here is the list of addresses of the people
- that were there.
- I'll take this picture later on.
- My own picture in here is somewhat small.
- I was involved in a lot of activities.
- I played chess.
- I was a member of the math team.
- I was a martial, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
- And you had to write down here where
- you expected to go to college.
- So not knowing any better, I put down
- Columbia, which would have been a disaster.
- And I did go, in fact, as you know,
- to the University of Texas.
- So my favorite American institution at the time,
- again, not knowing any better, but it wasn't that bad,
- was football, which, of course, existed only here.
- So I have saved this from the debacle that
- happened last year, just because it was lying on top of the desk
- as I was rushing out of my study.
- So I don't know if that's worth looking at further.
- But--
- Absolutely.
- Then would you like me to go through the rest
- of this material, or--
- Are there pictures or archives?
- Well, there are some archival material.
- Let me--
- Maybe you just briefly describe it,
- and then we'll start doing the pictures.
- OK.
- Here is my high school graduation certificate,
- which is from this high school whose annual I just showed.
- And indicates that I graduated in June 1941.
- And also, for some reason-- well,
- because I had just come back from this trip, it was saved.
- And this is a replica of the commencement of the people who
- participated, the people who spoke,
- et cetera, et cetera, which was reproduced
- for the 50th anniversary and could find that.
- So these are three documents.
- I had three of them, because I was going to send them
- to friends who did not come.
- I lived with a family first after leaving New York
- City in this town of Mount Vernon, New York,
- by the name of Reicherts.
- And they were interested--
- there business was repairing of binoculars.
- My actual residence there was somewhat of a disaster for me,
- because there were in their 40s.
- They had never had any children.
- And at this reunion, I found out that a woman, who
- was my classmate, had been asked by these people
- before I arrived there how you deal with a German refugee boy.
- And she thought that was very strange to ask
- somebody of the same age--
- 14-- how you would handle them.
- Well, I'm afraid they really mishandled me,
- and this woman agreed.
- I couldn't have gotten into a worse environment.
- However, what it did is one of these semi-minor disasters--
- semi-major disaster.
- It just strengthened my resolve.
- I don't know if I've mentioned this or not before.
- Possible I did.
- I have--
- Yeah, this abusive family.
- Yeah, then I won't pursue that.
- But this is something that I apparently
- had in my file at the office to remind me of my residence
- with them.
- And I don't know what else there is in the way of documents.
- I think almost everything else involves [MUMBLES]
- Well, I treat that as a photograph also.
- That's the genealogy of my family compiled by my daughter.
- That falls more in the category of a photograph than of a--
- And that's all I brought.
- There was a lot more, but I felt there
- should be a limit to what I should be presenting here.
- And I cannot give you the documentation for every year
- of my life.
- A lot did survive.
- Are we going to do the pictures now?
- Yes, I think that--
- What about you, John.
- --would be a very useful thing to do.
- John, ready to do pictures.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Before we can talk, I'll let you know.
- And basically, I'm going to ask you
- who it is, the year it was taken--
- to the best of your estimate, and the city that it was taken
- in, and then any other material you'd like to talk about,
- either of you.
- So can you tell us who this is, please?
- Yes, I believe that this is my paternal aunt,
- by the name of Greta, who later married a Dutchman by the name
- of Joseph Vandenberg.
- And this was taken in the city of Duisburg,
- which is where my grandfather lived
- when she was a young woman.
- And I had a great deal of interchange
- with her, because I went to Holland
- and visited her and her husband.
- And they were killed in Auschwitz.
- And I can't give the exact year.
- My best guess that would be of the order of 1918 to '20--
- something of that order.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- All right.
- That is a photograph of my mother in the lawn chair
- in the backyard of our house in Grafenberger Allee
- in Düsseldorf-- the last residence where I lived before
- coming to the United States.
- And this would have been taken in something like 1937.
- I'll let you know, Tell us about this photo, please.
- All right.
- This is a photograph also of my mother.
- And it was taken in a garden somewhere in Düsseldorf.
- I don't know the exact place.
- And my best estimate of the time this was taken
- would have been about 1932 or '33.
- Tell us about this, please.
- All right and that is yours truly
- standing in front of my governess
- if that's what you want to call her.
- And it was taken right outside our house, next to the zoo,
- in Düsseldorf.
- And there's a little, oh, place with flowers
- in the front that precedes the entrance to the zoo.
- And it looks to me like I was about maybe three years old.
- So this would have been about 1927.
- OK.
- Tell us about the governess.
- You were--
- Oh, the governess was--
- I remember her name was Annie.
- And she wasn't a full-time governess.
- She just took care of me now and then.
- She was very nice I tried to find out
- what her last name was, but I couldn't recover that.
- And so therefore all I remember is the name "Annie."
- And she was very sweet to me--
- as much as I can remember, in the few flashes
- that I have of her.
- You look like a happy child.
- I was quite happy.
- I was an only child.
- And I wouldn't say my parents spoiled me,
- but they let me go in the directions
- of my own tendencies.
- | example, I was a great one for drawing maps of countries.
- Is that why you collect maps now?
- That is quite possibly a connection.
- I did them in watercolor, with rivers and towns and everything
- else.
- I wrote down the times when the trains left
- and when they arrived.
- And I looked at atlases.
- I did a lot of reading even then.
- And so I would say I was certainly not inhibited.
- Tell us about this, please.
- All right.
- This is, again, a picture of my mother on skis in Switzerland.
- And I was with her on this trip.
- It's in a tiny town, or near a tiny town,
- called [NON-ENGLISH],, which is close to a larger town called
- Chur in a canton called Graubünden.
- And we spent, I think, 10 days there
- as a courtesy of my uncle, or my mother's brother,
- who was a travel arranger and travel agent,
- and took groups there.
- And then my mother and I usually got along to go along for free.
- And she was skiing there.
- I think that's her first time in that time that I was on skis.
- And I skied, I think, two years, and then I
- had to lay off as a result of an injury--
- actually, an illness.
- And I started again in 1948 here in the Sierras,
- which then led to my skiing until my back no
- longer permitted it, about two years ago.
- One of my very favorite hobbies.
- OK.
- And tell us about this one.
- Oh, that's another one of these travel journeys,
- by arranged by my uncle.
- My uncle is the tall man standing at the middle.
- He's the tallest of the group.
- I see my aunt, who is from New Orleans, who
- died a few years ago, just to the right of the harmonica
- player.
- The harmonica player was the driver of the bus.
- My mother is standing next to my uncle.
- And my--
- So this is your aunt right here?
- Yeah, that's my aunt there.
- And your mother is here?
- That's my mother and that's my uncle.
- And my father is the man with the hat right next to my aunt
- to the right of the harmonica player there.
- So this is your--
- That's my father.
- Your father right there.
- Yes.
- And you're in there?
- No, I don't think so.
- I probably took this picture myself.
- That's--
- That's a typical family outing.
- Well, it's not a family outing.
- It's an outing of the group that was this travel group being
- taken from Düsseldorf to Hungary to Balatonalmádi [INAUDIBLE]..
- And this was en route somewhere.
- The buses weren't so quick in those days.
- So this is actually in Hungary.
- Six seconds.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- To the left is my mother, in the bathing suit.
- And to the right was a visitor from Brussels
- by the name of Anna Bolle--
- B-O-L-L-E.
- I did look her up when I went through Brussels,
- oh, maybe 20 years ago.
- And she was, well, in her 60s at the time.
- So this was taken at approximately 1934, '35.
- And it was taken near the Rhine.
- As you can see there is a--
- not a canoe, but a kayak, which is the favorite mode
- of German water sporting.
- And I did some of that on the Rhine and on the Ruhr
- and on some of the tributaries.
- And this was taken.
- The Miss Bolle-- that's not her married name;
- that was her maiden name--
- stayed with us as a guest for, I don't know,
- a period of maybe a month or so--
- sufficiently long for me to become fairly well acquainted
- with her.
- And some of my relatives in Holland
- whom I visited some years ago were
- able to direct me to her in Brussels
- when I went there at the time.
- And tell us about this, please.
- Yeah.
- Well, that, again, is my aunts, who I will identify now
- by the name of Herta Oppenheim.
- She was in the previous picture in Hungary--
- not the immediately previous one,
- but the one prior to that-- together
- with my mother in front of her.
- And that was our--
- So this is your mother in front, and that's your aunt.
- That's my mother.
- And that's my aunt, Herta Oppenheim.
- And this was on the beach, if you can call it that,
- in Balatonalmádi, 1936, in the summer.
- And this was, again, part of this group that you had
- seen an earlier photograph of.
- My mother and my aunt were there,
- and I took this photograph.
- I think the lady to the right, whose name I don't know,
- was also a member of that group.
- But the background people were not.
- They were just from somewhere else.
- OK.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- Now that photograph is my mother on the right,
- and my grandfather.
- When I talk about my grandfather,
- it's my father's father.
- I never knew my mother's father.
- He died before I was born.
- I don't know where it was taken.
- Apparently there's some snow there.
- My father was a very stately--
- grandfather was a very stately gentleman; very much,
- I would say--
- no, how could I call it--
- courtly, and very impressive individual,
- both in terms of his character, in terms
- of his business acumen.
- And my mother and my grandfather got along very well,
- which is not always the case.
- And the date for this, I would place about 19--
- well, let's see.
- 1928 maybe.
- So your grandfather would be almost 80
- if he was born in 1851.
- That's correct.
- And he was a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War.
- Correct.
- And he also-- he lived to be 92, and he died in Westerbork.
- OK.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- Yeah.
- This photograph, it has the background.
- I'm sorry.
- The back of it says Dordrecht.
- And Dordrecht means that it is the family of my aunt--
- my paternal sister.
- And that must be her, and her mother,
- and her grandmother, and her daughter--
- at a very young age, since this daughter
- would be the older one, Ilsa.
- By the way, her daughter is the only closest living relative
- that I have.
- I guess I have two first cousins once removed.
- I have one by the name of John Goldsmith, who
- lives in Liverpool.
- And the other one, Vera DeYoung, who
- is the daughter of this child that is being held on her lap.
- So this is the series of maternal pictures.
- And where would this photo have been taken?
- This was in Dordrecht, Holland.
- It said so on the photographer.
- It was there.
- So from this--
- From what year, roughly?
- My best guess would be that this would have been about 1910,
- perhaps.
- Something of that order.
- OK.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- Now that is my mother.
- And that was my mother before she was married.
- So I don't know the people that are with her.
- There are obviously some companions
- in the woods and my mother.
- I guess maybe there might have been some soldiers.
- And my best guess, that this was taken about 1922.
- Again, the exact dates are very difficult to describe.
- And it might not have been in Düsseldorf.
- It might have been in Essen, where
- she worked, or anyplace she might have taken a vacation.
- --let you know.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK, this photo is a mountain in Switzerland,
- in the vicinity of a town called Lenzerheide.
- And that's snow.
- That's not a glacier.
- And we were on a summer walk.
- And again, this was a group which
- was conducted by my uncle.
- And I don't know the people around him.
- But obviously, I am in the very center of it.
- And this would have been 1936, possibly '35.
- We were there two years.
- I don't think my uncle is in this picture.
- At least I did not find him when I examined it.
- OK.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- OK, now that photo was on a very fateful journey for me.
- That's Munich in front of the so-called Feldherrnhalle
- in the central square.
- I had bought-- or my mother had bought-- these knickers for me
- to go to the United States.
- And we'd gone from Düsseldorf to Munich to visit this relative
- that I had discussed with you earlier,
- from whom I obtained a small inheritance.
- And we had gone there to go to Stuttgart,
- which is where the American consulate was,
- because I was getting my visa to come to the United States.
- And my mother took this picture, I think.
- And that is me and the pigeons.
- 1938.
- OK, tell us about this photo, please.
- OK, that photograph gets us back into Hungary.
- It's at a gas station in 1936.
- The bus in which we were traveling is on the far right.
- My aunt is in that picture, I know.
- And I think I took it.
- My aunt is standing sort of next to the--
- next to the gas pump.
- And--
- You mean right there?
- No.
- Next to-- next to us.
- Oh, I see.
- This person here?
- Yeah, right.
- OK.
- And so this was on the way to Balatonalmádi.
- I don't know whether it was the town of Gyár,
- but somewhere in that vicinity in Hungary; again, 1936.
- All right.
- Tell us about this photo.
- OK.
- And this photo is above the Danube in Budapest.
- It's on the Pest side, on the right side
- of the river as it flows down towards the Black Sea.
- I myself am in front.
- And I don't know any of the other people at this point.
- But obviously, people were having a good time
- and enjoying their vacation.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- This photo was also taken in Munich.
- And that is the castle of the Bavarian emperor.
- And at this time, I had the long pants.
- That's the other suit I bought in Holland to go to the United
- States-- on my way to Stuttgart to get the American visa
- at the consulate.
- OK, and tell us about this photo, please.
- And that date is dated 1932.
- I would suspect it was Düsseldorf,
- but I cannot be sure.
- My grandfather is in the center, seated.
- And next to him, on the left, is his sister,
- whose name is Ida Oppenheim.
- And her son is the husband of Herta Oppenheim, whom
- I had pointed out earlier, that went with us to Hungary,
- and with whom we will have several other encounters
- in other pictures.
- I do not know who the other two people are.
- I cannot place them.
- OK.
- And please tell us about this photo.
- All right.
- That is my mother.
- And that is at a swimming pool in the city
- of Dordrecht in Holland.
- And the swimming pool was, as was often
- the case in those days, arranged in such a way
- that the main river, which was the Maas, actually
- that was diverted to flow through it.
- And so there was--
- of course, they had barriers, so it
- didn't go with the full force of the current.
- But you had fresh water dumped in there
- by this diversion process.
- And I would think that was about 1930.
- That was a big part of German culture,
- wasn't it, the water cures, and the water resorts and spas.
- Oh, definitely.
- This was a question of the Kur, as they call it--
- K-U-R. You still can get up to eight weeks of sick
- leave, as it might be called, in order to take the cure.
- And when you go to one of these towns that calls themselves
- a cure city, you pay a special tax to be allowed to be there.
- Did you ever go to one of these spas?
- Not myself.
- Well, I did pass through just to look at them.
- But I certainly never went, that I
- recall, to stay there any length of time.
- And whether or not they do any good, we don't know.
- I mean, we're talking in this country
- about taking the waters.
- And this is the equivalent of it.
- Perhaps the most famous of these places
- is called Baden-Baden in Germany.
- And there, in order to get into the main hall
- of this little town, you have to pay a fantastic amount
- of money-- just about getting into the gambling
- halls in Monte Carlo.
- So you would drink water, and take hot and cold baths,
- and showers, and massages.
- Sounds like fun--
- Well, I--
- --actually.
- Well, I think the hot and cold baths are more than just
- the drinking water.
- I think that part of it was not--
- we have sort of this sort of thing up in Banff,
- in terms of the various pools--
- natural pools-- with their minerals and the sulfur
- content.
- And people believe in them.
- I guess a hot tub is a take-off from that.
- Tell us about this, please.
- Well that is my father.
- And--
- Yes?
- --my father was 41 when I was born.
- And so I would guess that this was about when I was, perhaps,
- seven or eight years old.
- So it would make it about 1931, '32.
- But that's an estimate.
- I really don't know.
- And this, please?
- And that is the same chair that we had in one of the earlier
- pictures, in the same backyard.
- And that is the interviewee enjoying a moment of sun.
- And as you can see, I think I was reading something there.
- That would be the normal situation.
- And the house on Grafenberger Allee, Düsseldorf, circa 1937.
- OK.
- And this is similar to an earlier photo that we had.
- Yes.
- And this is the ladies, although they weren't all named
- that way, or what I would call the Vandenberg
- branch of my family.
- Grandmother, mother, daughter, and granddaughter.
- Not grandmother.
- Great-grandmother of the child.
- And these are the Vandenbergs.
- Of course, Jewish.
- Jewish.
- OK.
- And can you tell us about this photo, please?
- Yes.
- And that brings us back to Switzerland.
- And this was on one of the hikes,
- in 1935 or '6, out of the city, the town of Lenzerheide,
- in the Graubünden canton of Switzerland.
- And that's myself.
- I don't know any of the other people,
- including that probably very adorable young girl.
- But I was too young to be interested at the time.
- Nor were the cultures right.
- And let's see.
- Can you tell us about this photo, please?
- Yes.
- That photograph was undoubtedly taken at our home
- in Düsseldorf, on [? Breidenplatz ?] 2.
- In front is, in the center, is--
- I guess I'm a little bit embarrassed there or something.
- My grandfather is next to me on the right.
- My mother is immediately to the left of me in back.
- And the head that's sticking out is my governess.
- And my best guess is that was about 1930, '31.
- Something of that time.
- OK.
- This is going to be a little tiny one here.
- Yes.
- Can you tell us about that?
- Yes.
- As best as I could tell on that, there's myself, again
- on another rock in Switzerland, with another part of the group
- that my uncle had conducted.
- And we were on a walking tour through the hills.
- They were not really mountains.
- And that was part of the same tour
- that we had seen two pictures ago.
- OK.
- And this is a sort of a duplicate of one
- we had earlier.
- Is that right?
- That's right, except a slightly different pose.
- And that is my mother in the backyard in a lawn chair,
- and our address in Grafenberger Allee, of Düsseldorf,
- about 1937.
- OK.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- And that is my paternal aunt on the left,
- and her husband, Joseph Vandenberg.
- Her name was Greta.
- This was my mother's.
- So this was taken in Dordrecht.
- And my best guess was that this was about 1928.
- Again, to try to date some of these at this time
- is very difficult. But they were living in Holland
- in the town of Dordrecht, and I assume
- that is where it was taken.
- And what happened to them in the Holocaust?
- Oh, they were killed.
- They were killed.
- Their two daughters, who were married, were killed.
- And one of the daughters had a baby that was killed.
- The other daughter had a baby who got out to Australia.
- And this woman I know.
- She lives in Amsterdam, and she won't go to Germany.
- They were very nice to me.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- Now that's a very strange photo.
- That is the shop of Daniel Oppenheim-- and his son, later,
- Hugo Oppenheim.
- They were in the wholesale for a little town,
- in retail business of cloth and clothing--
- especially men's clothing.
- And this was in the town of Rahden--
- R-A-H-D-E-N, I believe.
- I'm not sure now.
- No.
- No, I'm sorry.
- That is incorrect.
- And I don't know who that is.
- I thought it looked familiar, like that door.
- But it is not.
- It's not that town.
- I don't know what that picture is, I regret.
- So you're not sure what the picture is.
- I'm not sure what that is.
- No, I just--
- Yes.
- Yes I do too.
- There is the name Oppenheim, who's a successor to S. Frank.
- You see the D. Oppenheim at the bottom, and son?
- Right.
- Yeah, so this is the town of Rahden, and that is their shop.
- So this is correct.
- It's a shop of cloth and clothing--
- especially for men.
- And this is the couple-- the previous couple--
- that we saw in--
- No you haven't seen--
- Daniel Oppenheim I don't think I have shown.
- I may or may not have a photograph of him.
- I know I have some photographs of Hugo, his son, who
- is mentioned there.
- And Hugo's marriage to Herta Oppenheim
- was the occasion for producing the marriage of my parents,
- as I mentioned earlier.
- And their sons of Hugo live in New Orleans,
- and we're still very close.
- OK.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- OK, that brings us back to Hungary.
- And this is at a wine cellar in the mountains around the town
- of Balatonalmádi, somewhere between the Lake Balaton
- and Budapest.
- And who you can see there is my mother and Herta Oppenheim,
- whom I call my aunt.
- She's not quite my aunt, but it's close enough.
- My mother is next to the vintner there on the right.
- The vintner is standing.
- And my aunt is sitting next to her.
- I don't know the other people that are part of this group.
- But the gentleman with the slightly protruding midsection
- was also in one of the other photographs in Budapest.
- So this is the vintner here on the left.
- Yes.
- This is your mother, you said.
- Right.
- OK.
- That's your mother.
- Well, you haven't pointed the pencil there yet exactly.
- That's your mother right there.
- That's my mother.
- And this is your aunt right here.
- Yes, Berta.
- Right.
- Very good.
- A wine and cheese party.
- Yeah.
- And I probably took the picture, although I probably-- well, I
- don't know.
- I may have taken some wine because my parents were
- very liberal about allowing me moderate amounts of alcohol.
- I remember as a young child to drink beer.
- And so a glass of wine now and then
- would probably have been allowed.
- You're holding the camera very steady.
- Well, I have never been affected by alcohol
- at any time in my life.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- That photo was at the same location
- where we had another photo with my uncle and my aunt,
- and my mother and father and the harmonica player.
- And this is my uncle, who is standing on the left,
- in a somewhat S shape, supporting
- the rather portly gentleman we've seen before.
- And underneath, having fun, is the bus driver,
- sticking his tongue out.
- And this would have been in Hungary, in, again,
- 1935 or '36.
- Tell us about this, please.
- OK, now that is during the war.
- That is in Breda, Holland.
- On my left is my mother.
- To the right is the lady who took my mother and father
- in-- secretly--
- and hid them for a number of years.
- I did speak to her daughter when we visited Holland immediately
- after the war.
- I've lost track of them, unfortunately.
- I don't even remember their name.
- But I owe a deep debt of gratitude
- to them, except that, in the final analysis,
- they did get caught.
- Were they punished for having been caught?
- I don't think so.
- I think what happened was that my father and my mother
- were accosted on the street by the Nazis.
- And I did get, through various hands,
- a carpet from my parental home, and a silver ship,
- and a silver ornament, where we put the herbs and that--
- what is it?
- Not Hanukkah or Pesach.
- Or is it Pesach?
- I don't even know.
- It's a Jewish religious device.
- And I got them through her.
- I guess she sent them out.
- And I've kept my--
- my daughter got the carpet and the two silver things
- out of the house.
- So I have that from my parental home.
- What was the name of the family that hid them, again?
- I wish I knew.
- I don't.
- I have lost track.
- I need to ask you that--
- I'm sorry.
- [INAUDIBLE] the chair there.
- So these were Righteous Among Nations.
- These are people who were the risk-takers.
- And of course, they could have been killed if they
- were found harboring Jews.
- Absolutely, without any question.
- I do not know exactly when this picture was taken.
- My parents left in February of 1939 from Düsseldorf and went
- to Holland.
- So it could have been taken any time after '39.
- It could even be that this was taken
- before the outbreak of the war itself, which was in,
- I think, August '39.
- So that may have been the last picture
- of your parents of that series.
- It's possible, yes.
- I have no way of knowing, except I know it was taken in Breda.
- And I got them--
- a number of photographs were sent to me after the war.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- This photo is a same location as one of the earlier ones,
- on our trip to Stuttgart to get my visa, in front
- of the castle of the Bavarian king.
- And it's my mother and myself, and my long pants,
- which were not so unusual.
- Tell us about this, please?
- OK.
- This is in the little town of [NON-ENGLISH] in 1935.
- And I am in front in the middle.
- And I did not see my mother in there,
- but she certainly was along on this trip.
- You have a picture of her on skis--
- an earlier photograph.
- And in those days, there were no such things as chairlifts
- or anything of that sort.
- If you had a rope, you were lucky.
- Most of the time, you ski down and hiked back up
- the hill on skins.
- And when you went on a cross-country trip,
- that's how you did it-- by skins.
- You mean snowshoes?
- No, not snowshoes.
- She wore skis.
- And on the skis she put skins of--
- I don't skin--
- Oh, animal skin.
- Animal skin.
- Here we need six seconds.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- Probably [INAUDIBLE]
- OK, this is a repeat of the shot that
- was on the previous tape just for safety here.
- Yes, and this was taken in Lenzerheide in 1935 or '36,
- and I'm in the center.
- And this was a group which was led by my uncle and a travel
- guide and travel agents.
- And tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- That is in Frankfurt in 1937 or '38.
- And that's my mother at the lower end and me
- at the upper end, and that's a friend
- of my mother's in the middle.
- And nobody thought anything of combining
- in this way at the time.
- So it was in Frankfurt, Germany, and that was a good friend
- of my mother's.
- OK.
- And tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- Now, that was taken in Holland, and that's
- my mother with two children of the lady that
- was seen earlier and the cows in the countryside there.
- I don't know the exact location of that.
- And this one?
- That's my mother and I on our trip to Stuttgart,
- and I think that was taken in Frankfurt or near Frankfurt
- but in the woods there.
- There were woods everywhere.
- And again, this is the trip that went to Frankfurt, to Munich,
- and to Stuttgart on the visa trip just prior to my coming.
- And this is more of--
- This is the same, my mother with her two friends.
- One of those ladies was in the other photograph that
- was taken in bed, and that was the second friend
- of my mother's taken there.
- And tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- That is my mother, and this was again on that same trip
- to Stuttgart.
- And that happens to be the castle in Heidelberg,
- a rather famous University town with a ruined castle.
- We're visiting that.
- And that was in 1938.
- OK.
- And this, please?
- Oh that was on the Hungarian trip, and that, I believe,
- is the Hungarian--
- I think it's in Hungary.
- I'm not sure.
- It could be in Czechoslovakia.
- But it was a rather--
- a walled city with that watchtower and the gate.
- And I don't remember the name of the town,
- but it was a picture that stuck in my mind
- as being pretty and different.
- That I do remember.
- That is the bus that took us to Balatonalmádi,
- and it was at a church in Gyor, in Hungary.
- And the I guess the troop had gone out for lunch or something
- like that.
- It was a long bus trip.
- Something that you do today in a day
- you'd have to spend two days in those days.
- The roads weren't that good.
- And this, please?
- I think, although I am not absolutely sure--
- I think that is probably in Prague, which I also visited,
- and it's one of the musical clocks
- with a figure that runs around the center when
- it strikes the hour.
- And I believe that's where it was.
- And this, please?
- That is my mother again on this to Frankfurt
- with that same wooden, I guess, logs for burning.
- We had several other pictures of that type,
- and I guess I took that picture.
- My mother was a very elegant dresser.
- My wife says this all the time.
- And I think for her time that really was the case.
- She worked in a dressmaker shop in Essen for a while,
- and I think she had a real, real good sense of clothing.
- And this, please?
- That was on the trip to Switzerland,
- the town of Lenzerheide, and this was a side excursion
- to Saint Moritz.
- I know my uncle is in that picture, and I'm next to him.
- And I don't know the others.
- My uncle is one, two, three--
- the fifth from the right, sitting on the ledge,
- and I'm next to him, on the right.
- 1936 or '35.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- That is my mother and friend, and Herta Oppenheim, her very,
- very good friend, in back.
- I think this was taken before my mother was married,
- and so this would probably or possibly be Essen.
- My guess would be that the year would be 1922 or '23.
- I cannot be sure because I was certainly not there.
- And tell us about this.
- OK, this is the daughters of my maternal aunt.
- I'm sorry, my paternal aunt, Greta Vandenberg,
- and they're called Honey and Ilsa.
- And Honey would be the one on the left and Ilsa the one
- on the right.
- I do not know who the driver is.
- But Honey and her husband and child were killed--
- Ilsa's parents were killed, but Ilsa's daughter
- survived by going to Australia, as I mentioned earlier.
- This says [NON-ENGLISH] In Holland, which is--
- I don't know the town.
- My best guess is that this was about 1918,
- something of that order.
- Can you tell us about this photo?
- Yes, well the only person I recognize
- there is my-- well, the only persons I recognize--
- that's my mother and Herta Oppenheim just to her left.
- My mother is in the center-front.
- And I don't know the rest of the people,
- and I don't know where this was taken.
- And a number of these photographs
- were sent to me without identification,
- and there would be no way for me to reconstruct that.
- I also wanted to mention that, in one
- of the other photographs, I said that the trip to Lenzerheide
- was taken either '35 or 1936.
- The reason I cannot be sure which the pictures refer to is
- because we went there both years,
- and I cannot separate one year from the other.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- That house is a house of the family Oppenheim,
- and on the left, if it were to be extended,
- was the store that we saw in one of the previous picture.
- And this is in the town of Rodden in Westphalia, Germany.
- I do not know what year this was taken.
- My suspicion is it was in the '20s sometime,
- but I cannot be sure.
- And I went there on a number of occasions
- and stayed with my cousin.
- One of them, second cousin, was one year older than I was,
- but as I say, his mother and my mother
- were very close friends, besides our relationship to our father.
- We used to play in the center there, in front of that house.
- There was a church, and this was a church plaza.
- And they did have a lightning rod,
- but I was always scared to death of lightning.
- And so the church was hit a number of times
- while I was there, and I really got frightened.
- I recall that.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- Now, in that photo I recognize only a few people.
- My grandfather is in the front-center with the bow
- tie and the watch chain.
- So that's--
- That's my grandfather.
- And I believe immediately on his right
- is Hugo Oppenheim, a very young Hugo Oppenheim.
- This fellow?
- Yes.
- And on the very far right standing is Herman Behrens.
- This gentleman.
- That gentleman.
- And I do not recognize any of the rest of the people.
- I would not know when it was taken.
- My best guess would be in about the early '30s
- or the late '20s, and I don't know where.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- OK.
- That is Hugo Oppenheim on the left, a young Hugo Oppenheim,
- and Herta Oppenheim below him, his wife.
- To the right is Herta's mother, and below, I imagine,
- is her first-born, who was called Heinz, Henry in English,
- who is now in New Orleans.
- I think the lady to the right of Hugo Oppenheim
- is Elsa Behren, as best as I can tell from this picture.
- Elsa Behren is related to the Oppenheims
- in the following way.
- The Oppenheims took in-- there was six Behren children.
- Elsa Behren was one of them.
- They took in--
- I'm sorry.
- Did I say Elsa Behren?
- I'm sorry.
- I meant Elsa Jellin, Edith Jellin, Edith Jellin
- to the right.
- Now, the Jellins had six children, six siblings,
- of which Edith is one, and she's living in New Orleans now.
- She's 86 and not in good health.
- The Oppenheims, Hugo and Herta, took in her brother, Kurt,
- and treated them as their son.
- Kurt is not in this picture, but he's
- in one of the other pictures that I've seen.
- And the older lady is Herta's mother.
- I don't recall her first name at the moment.
- She came from the little town of Bunde
- in Westphalia also, which is where Herta was born.
- And this photo?
- OK.
- To the left is Herman Behren, who
- was a cousin of Hugo Oppenheim and a second cousin, I believe,
- of my father.
- To the right of him I believe is Herta Oppenheim,
- although I cannot be absolutely sure.
- Button in the center certainly is Kurt Jellin
- and to the far right is Edith Jellin
- And I think the lady in the middle--
- I'm not sure, but I think that the lady in the middle
- is Hannah.
- I don't know where this was taken.
- Judging by the age, my guess would
- be it was about the late '20s or early '30s.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- This is a photograph of what I would call the Oppenheim
- Branch, and I would say that this, along with many,
- many of the other photographs of the Oppenheims,
- were sent to me by my relatives from New Orleans
- to replenish my collection.
- Herta, whom my wife called the Grand Lady of the clan,
- is in the back.
- Her mother is to the right, in front,
- and her grandmother is to the left.
- Herta's child is being held on her grandmother's lap,
- and that's Heinz again.
- And I think, if I'm not mistaken--
- I can verify this, but I'm-- now think that Herta's maiden name
- was Lilienfeld.
- It's coming back.
- OK, and tell us about this photo.
- OK.
- Now, that picture was taken in New Orleans,
- and that would have been in the '60s sometime.
- This is Hugo and Herta Oppenheim,
- and Hugo, who had this business of selling cloth,
- established a very, very successful baby clothing
- business, manufacturing business, in New Orleans.
- He started out-- he had a very long history.
- The family came via either Peru and Ecuador and then Cuba,
- and in Cuba they were told, if they went to the United States,
- they could live in either Nashville or New Orleans.
- They didn't know anything about either one of them,
- so therefore they decided on New Orleans.
- And they just settled there.
- When they got there at the beginning,
- they started out with nothing, so he
- went from home to home selling uniforms for maids and butlers.
- Then when he got orders, he and his wife made them in the home.
- She took in boarders in the house,
- and this is all to make ends meet.
- And they scraped and saved their money,
- and he started a factory of baby clothing.
- And it was very successful as long as he was alive.
- It's gone way downhill at the end, but at least he saw it--
- some pretty good times.
- I wouldn't say they were wealthy,
- and they were perhaps not even overly well-to-do.
- But they were comfortable.
- And these are some of the products on the right.
- OK, tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- And this is back in Balatonalmádi in Hungary
- in 1936, and my mother is the third person from the left.
- I see Mr. Beer Belly here there again.
- No, that's my mother, and my aunt, Herta,
- is just to the left of her standing up.
- And Mr. Beer Belly is here.
- And the others were members of the group,
- and I don't recall their names.
- It's been too long ago.
- And this, please?
- And I think that it's my aunt, Herta,
- and I don't know the other two ladies.
- Herta is on the right, Balatonalmádi, 1936.
- And this, please?
- And that is the shop again of my, well, cousin, Hugo
- Oppenheim, and his father, Daniel Oppenheim,
- and I think we'd seen a picture like that earlier.
- So this was a cloth and clothing store and Rodden, Westphalia.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- All right.
- That's a photo of yours truly on the crossing from Germany
- to the United States, when I left my family, on the USS
- Manhattan.
- I was in a group of about 20 children in a children's
- transport with somebody who shuffled
- such groups from Germany to the United States.
- You only could go if you had a visa,
- and I did have a visa at the time.
- I remember many things here and there about that trip.
- I found a quarter on the boat, and I
- thought I was a millionaire because all of us allowed to do
- is take $2 out of Germany.
- And I took the quarter and put it
- on a small horse race arranged by the purser, which I lost,
- so I didn't feel so much of a millionaire anymore.
- I remember distinctly the beds, the bunks that we were in.
- Of course, we came steerage.
- And the journey was sort of a very difficult thing
- because I realized, even at the time,
- that I would probably never see my parents again.
- And so it was an extremely mixed emotion.
- I realized, probably, that I needed to leave,
- but it was not that easy.
- OK, and who is this?
- That's my first cousin.
- That is the older daughter of Joseph
- and Greta Vandenberg of Dordrecht.
- Her name is Ilsa, and her daughter I'm in touch with,
- who lives in Amsterdam now.
- Her daughter is Vera DeYoung, who lives in Amsterdam.
- She and her husband were killed in Auschwitz,
- and the daughter somehow or other got to Australia.
- I mentioned that before.
- So that's my first cousin.
- I have two first cousins.
- OK, and this, please?
- This is again this now repetitious trip
- to Hungary, the bus, the gas station, my aunt in front,
- my mother in back, and me on the far right next
- to the driver, who has his foot on the oil drum.
- That's me.
- And I don't remember whether that was the town Gyor or not,
- but anyway, it was in Hungary.
- OK.
- And this photo, please?
- I think that may be a repetition,
- but that's my mother and my aunt in Balatonalmádi in 1936,
- the same trip as the previous picture.
- OK.
- And this one?
- And that is quite different.
- That is on the lawn in front of the house of the Oppenheim's
- in the Rodden, and the frontal person in yours truly
- playing soccer or trying to play soccer.
- And that's next to the church.
- I do not know who the other people in the picture are,
- but that's definitely me.
- I can't quite identify who is standing
- up there in the background.
- It could have been [PERSONAL NAME]
- but it might not have been.
- And this, please?
- And there I know only my grandfather on the far left
- and my mother next to him.
- And I think next to my mother is Louis Vandenberg, who
- was the brother of Joseph Vandenberg, who
- married my aunt.
- And next to him would be his wife, whose name is Jiet,
- and I visited her in 1953, my first trip to Europe.
- She was still alive.
- She was in her 80s.
- She had survived the war.
- And she had two children, one, Ida,
- who's now in her 80s and living in Holland and--
- I don't know exactly where she's living.
- The other one is a son, David, who was much younger than Ida.
- And David was a little bit younger than myself.
- I think there's a picture of them.
- And this would be on Oranjelaan in Dordrecht, Holland.
- My best guess would be that this is about 1930.
- I do not know.
- I don't think that on the right is Joseph Vandenberg,
- but it could be.
- It could be an optical illusion.
- If it is, then there would be two brothers there
- in front of the house of the middle gentleman.
- OK, and this one is?
- And that is my other cousin and her husband.
- Her name is Honey, and I cannot at the moment recall--
- I think Barents was her last name.
- That's her husband's name.
- It's Honey Vandenberg.
- It's the day of their wedding.
- And I went to that wedding, and I played on the piano
- at the reception for them.
- This would have been about 1936, I guess, or '35.
- I don't remember exactly.
- That was in Dordrecht, Holland, and they were a happy couple.
- Honey worked for a chocolate factory in Dordrecht.
- She had sort of a technical job.
- I don't know whether it was as a chemist or not.
- I do recall, however, she was driving
- when I was up there several times, going to the beach
- further north.
- And I was amazed and kind of shocked
- she was doing 110 kilometers an hour, which in those days
- was really express speed.
- She was a very capable person and also very beautiful.
- Tell us about this, please.
- Well, that is the year I started what
- is called high school in Germany, and that was my class.
- And so this would correspond to the fifth grade in the United
- States.
- It was at a gymnasium at the [? Radelstrasse. ?]
- And I am in there in the middle, and actually, you
- will find an enlargement of me later on.
- Are you in there?
- Yes, I am the third person on the right.
- There's a kid standing up, but the third person from the left
- edge-- no, no, I'm sorry.
- It's from the left to right, in that row.
- I'm the one with the unruly hair.
- This one?
- That one.
- And there is an enlargement of that
- that we will see later on, which was made.
- This photograph was turned over to me
- by my teacher, whom I visited several times
- after the war, who's on the far right of this picture.
- You have to move the picture to the right.
- There he is, you see, in the second row on the far right.
- Is this him?
- His name is Otto Landau, and as I say, he's dead now.
- But I did visit him maybe three or four times in Dusseldorf,
- where he lived in a little suburb of Oberkassel,
- and my wife met him, too.
- He was in his 80s when we last saw him.
- He was an artist, and he tried to protect me
- as much as he could from the excesses of the other students.
- I was the only Jew in the entire school.
- So this would have been 1935, I think.
- Are there any kids in this photo that you remember as being
- particularly a problem for you?
- None.
- None at this point.
- The only thing-- he told me--
- I remember this.
- It was a kid by the name of [? Cavallo, ?]
- but I couldn't associate it with any picture that I can see.
- I wouldn't recognize him.
- But it's rather significant that I
- had a picture from my fifth grade that survived.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- That is the house in which I last
- lived in Dusseldorf, 398 Grafenberger Allee,
- and our apartment was on what amounts to the second floor.
- There was a basement-- not a basement
- but a ground-level apartment that isn't too clearly
- identified in this photograph.
- So the first set of pictures that you see is where we lived.
- First set of windows.
- The first set of windows.
- We lived on the left, the left two windows, that one
- and the next one.
- And then there was a little room in the attic, which I slept in
- towards the end, and that's where
- I used to take my flashlight and books.
- And I would read until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning,
- and I'd do that so nobody would see me
- by turning on the main light.
- And I recall that I did that because I was curious
- about the world, and I was also interested in some of the books
- coming out of the United States.
- I read James Fenimore Cooper as a child in German,
- and I remember reading The Pathfinder
- and The Last of the Mohicans.
- That's coming back now, although I don't remember the stories
- anymore, I'm afraid.
- OK, and this photo?
- And that photo is in front of that house that you just saw,
- and that's my grandfather, and my mother, and my father.
- And I would guess that was taken in either late 1937
- or in early 1938.
- And again, Dusseldorf, Grafenberger Allee.
- --seconds.
- Would you like to tell us about this photo, please?
- OK.
- That is the home that we had on Brehm Platz 2,
- the next to the last place I lived in Dusseldorf.
- That's in front of the zoo, in the zoo circle
- with the flowers.
- There is my father, and my grandfather,
- and myself holding my very, very dear gorilla.
- That gorilla went with me everywhere I could take him.
- And I would guess I was somewhere of the order of four
- at that time, so that would make it 1928 or thereabouts.
- What was the gorilla's name?
- I don't recall.
- I don't know if I even had a name for him.
- He was just The Gorilla.
- And this, please?
- And that is on the Lendzerheide, Switzerland about 1935, '36.
- That's a [NON-ENGLISH],, which is a pass,
- with the name of [NON-ENGLISH],, the [NON-ENGLISH]..
- And I am the second from the left,
- and, again, I do not know who these lovely ladies were.
- But there obviously were children along
- with the adults on these journeys
- that my uncle arranged.
- And this, please?
- And that is a picture of my mother
- and my maternal grandmother, whose name is Julie.
- And I do have a stone, her gravestone.
- I have a picture of that with me.
- I obtained it through Dr. Sushi in Dusseldorf,
- showed me the location.
- My grandmother died, I believe, in 1934,
- and I have some hazy recollections about her,
- not very much.
- But she lived alone.
- My mother saw to her.
- And then I had a maternal aunt, too,
- by the name of Agatha, who was a spinster.
- And she took care of her otherwise,
- so my mother's family consisted of a brother, Max,
- and a sister, Agatha, and Julie Grunewald.
- And I haven't even been able to discover
- the name of her husband, and I will
- go on, dig into that genealogically
- by writing to the authorities in Cologne, where they lived,
- where my mother was born.
- And I do not know my grandmother's maiden name
- either, but all of that I can find out,
- if I have the time, by writing to the authorities,
- provided that these records did not get destroyed.
- Cologne was very heavily hit.
- --about six seconds.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- That's my mother, and I think that was before--
- taken before she was married.
- I am not sure of the date.
- My guess would be 1921, '22 sometime.
- And I don't know the locale either.
- It was just one of the pictures that was sent to me in a batch
- by these friends from Europe right after the war.
- So I have no further specifics on that.
- OK, and this one, please?
- That's my mother at a much, much later time.
- This probably was in 1940, '39 or '40, in Holland.
- And this was sent to me by the Dutch people, too.
- I think she had a lot more gray in her hair
- than when I left in 1938, so that's
- why I would deduce that it was 1940
- and that it was, indeed, in Holland.
- OK.
- And this photo, please?
- That's my grandmother, Julie, again.
- My guess would be that would be 1932 in Dusseldorf,
- somewhere along those lines.
- It's my mother's mother.
- All right.
- And this--
- And that's my father.
- I think we may have had a picture very similar to that.
- And my best guess would be in the early '30s sometime,
- Dusseldorf.
- All right.
- And this--
- That's my grandfather, Adolf--
- my father's name is Siegfried--
- Adolf, approximately, perhaps, 84, 85,
- which make it somewhere on the order of 1936,
- very difficult to tell because he didn't change much
- in a period of 10 years prior to my departure.
- OK, tell us about this photo, please.
- Yes, this photograph is one of my enlarged family,
- and it was sent to me by Mr. Kurt
- Jellin, who is one of the Jellin siblings from New York.
- He, unfortunately, died about two months after he
- this was sent to me, leaving everybody in shock.
- And the identification of these people
- were made by my second cousin, Kurt Jellin.
- Tell me first, are you in this photo?
- No, I am not in the photo.
- So what I can do is I can go from left
- to right in the rear row and identify what I have here.
- And so what you have are-- the lady and the gentleman
- on the far left and the rear are Mr. And Mrs. [? Heilbrunner, ?]
- who are friends of the Oppenheims.
- And the person next to them is Ernst Goldschmidt,
- who is the son of Isidore Goldschmidt, who
- was my grand uncle.
- So he's one of the other sons.
- And next to them, the couple, is Mr. And Mrs. Rubin,
- who are the daughter of [? Rosalie ?] [? Wolfstein ?]
- and the sister of your grandfather.
- Then six and seven, the next two people over, is my aunt.
- The one that is split by that is my aunt and my uncle, Joseph
- and Greta Vandenberg.
- And then again, going further on,
- is Kurt's mother, Clara Jellin next to Joseph Vandenberg.
- And next to him is Herman Behrens, who is there alone.
- And then there's my mother and my father.
- So just to reaffirm, this is your mother.
- My mother and my father.
- --and this is your father.
- And it must have been very shortly after the wedding
- because I don't have a date on this.
- And then the--
- 12 are the daughters of the [? Heilbrunners ?] that
- were the first two people in the photograph, not otherwise
- identified.
- I'm sorry, just the daughter, the first one.
- And 13 is Mrs. [? Schlagenheimer ?]
- from Hanover, whom I don't know.
- So that would be her?
- That's Mrs. Schlagenheimer.
- And the lady next to my father must
- have been a Ms. Heilbrunner.
- OK.
- And now we'll go back to the left
- again and look at the lower row.
- Can you hold on a sec?
- All right.
- The couple on what looks like the third row--
- but it's actually only the second--
- is Herman and Ilsa Behren.
- OK, so this person--
- That's Herman and Ilsa Behren.
- They lived in Ludenscheid.
- And they moved to New York in, I guess, 1939,
- have a son by the name of Fred.
- And next to them is Hugo and Herta Oppenheim,
- and that'll give me some idea as to when that was taken.
- Herta looks quite young, and Hugo looks quite young, too.
- My guess would be--
- Is this Herta?
- That's Herta.
- So it must have been very shortly
- after my mother's marriage in maybe 1925, even possibly '24.
- Next is my grandfather, who is split in half.
- Could be a tear.
- OK.
- And next is the couple of Ida and Daniel Oppenheim,
- and Ida, on the right of my grandfather, is his sister.
- And Daniel Oppenheim is the father of Hugo.
- He's the one who started that business in the Rodden.
- Very good.
- And next is the brother of Daniel Oppenheim,
- whom I don't know.
- He is an in-law.
- Let's see.
- This gentleman here?
- Yes.
- OK.
- And next, Irina and Otto Oppenheim, who are the sons--
- who is the son of Daniel Oppenheim.
- So that's father and son with the lady in the middle.
- Now we switched back to the left.
- OK.
- All the way to the left?
- No.
- OK.
- We're going to get some people in the middle there?
- Yes.
- The lady who was split is--
- This woman here?
- Yes.
- That is Edith Jellin.
- I can see enough of the face to verify that.
- And the next two children are Ruth and Walter,
- who are the children of Otto Oppenheim, identified earlier.
- And then there's one more--
- One more on the far right, yes.
- Let's see.
- This child here?
- Yes, and that is Hannah Oppenheim, who is also
- the wife of Kurt Jellin.
- They were first cousins, and they married.
- OK.
- And then the front row?
- Yes.
- The children-- the first one is Fred Behren on the left.
- The next one is Fred Jellin, who was adopted by Hugo and Herta
- Oppenheim.
- Next is Henry Oppenheim.
- Next is Ilsa Jellin, Then is Kurt Jellin
- the one who sent me this photograph,
- and last is Robert Jellin, who is now Roberto Jellin
- because he moved to Argentina and has lived there
- for 50 years or so.
- And that's the rest of that.
- Wow.
- And what was the event that this photo--
- I have no idea.
- I can't even locate the place.
- The only thing I know is that my full family
- is in there, except for my Holland relatives,
- relatives in Holland.
- They're not in there.
- Or were they?
- What was the thing about the Holland relatives?
- My Holland relatives are included.
- My aunt and uncle are included.
- The one person who is not in there-- well,
- the two persons who are not in there
- it's my paternal uncle, Max, and my maternal aunt, Agatha,
- are not in this picture.
- And on my father's side, the person
- who's not in there is Erna Goldschmidt, who
- died before this was taken I never knew her.
- --seconds here.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- This is Herman Goldschmidt, who is
- the son of Isidore Goldschmidt, my great grand uncle.
- This was taken during the war, and he
- was a Lieutenant, which I think was fairly unusual for the time
- to have a Jew as an officer in the army.
- So this is taken from World War I, and on some of these
- he has written an actual message in the back of the photograph.
- He is the father of John Goldsmith, my second cousin who
- lives in Liverpool.
- He just retired as the head of the largest
- hospital in that town a year or two ago,
- and who was a renal surgeon.
- And I've known John all my life.
- His wife, Malli, divorced him and married somebody
- by the name of Meyer who died within a year or two after they
- got married.
- She lived in Cambridge, England, and I visited them--
- we visited them in 1982.
- And then I wanted to see her again,
- and she let on through her son that she
- would prefer not to see me.
- She was afraid.
- She didn't want to, and so I didn't.
- Go I would have made the trip to see her,
- but she expressed a very strong desire not to have guests
- or see any members of the family.
- I have not any recollection of him.
- The pictures for-- most of these pictures about him
- were sent to me by relatives.
- OK.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- That is my aunt, Erna, whom I never knew,
- and she died before I was ever born.
- And I only have a number of pictures of her.
- I don't know what she died from.
- I don't even know whether she died
- in Dusseldorf or her previous residence, Duisburg.
- My suspicion is it was Dusseldorf,
- but I can't be sure, so Erna Goldschmidt.
- OK.
- And this photo, please?
- That is again of my father's cousin, Ernest--
- sorry, Herman Goldschmidt-- who was
- a lieutenant in the war, father of John Goldsmith, Herman
- Goldsmith, Goldschmidt.
- And tell us about this photo, please.
- Well, that is my father in the center
- and my mother on the right, and that
- is Herman Goldschmidt on the left in some kind of carriage.
- I don't know where and when.
- It's perhaps on some sort of an excursion.
- And it would have been very shortly
- after my parents' marriage, just from the appearance.
- There's no date available for that.
- So that's all I can say about it.
- My father had spotted baldness at a fairly early age.
- It took me a few years longer, but I have about as much
- of my scalp showing as he has.
- What year were they married?
- 1923.
- I was born in '24.
- And there again is Herman Goldschmidt in the middle.
- I do not know the other two.
- They were compatriots of his in the army.
- These would be 1917 date-wise.
- One of the pictures had 1917 on it as a date,
- and here, one of the photographs that I've just shown you does
- have writing on the back, if that is relevant to a copy.
- OK, tell us about this, please.
- This is a repetition of Herman Goldschmidt.
- All right.
- So who's this again?
- These are both pictures of Herman Goldschmidt,
- on the left as a Lieutenant in the army, on the right
- is a civilian.
- I can't even tell you what his occupation in civilian life
- was.
- I don't know.
- I know very little about him, actually.
- In fact, to add to this, my mother
- kept a much, much closer touch with his former wife
- whom I knew.
- And, of course, she had the boy, the son,
- so that's why we stayed in touch then.
- He may have died in the '30s sometime of a natural death.
- I suppose we can look in the book
- and see whether or not he's listed as being a casualty.
- OK.
- And this, please?
- And that is my grandfather sitting
- in the backyard of our house on Grafenberger Allee
- in that now-infamous lawn chair reading,
- and this would be probably 1937, Dusseldorf.
- And this one, please.
- OK.
- That is taken on the beach in Scheveningen, Holland.
- And it looks to me like I'm on the left there,
- and David Vandenberg is on the right, the boy, with his father
- just to the left of him.
- And I think that's my mother. next to me, sitting down.
- I know that Louis Vandenberg, who
- is next to his son, his wife, Jiet, is just behind him.
- And I think that's my uncle, Joseph Vandenberg,
- on the far left standing and his wife, Margarita.
- I do recognize that pier, and I think
- that pier is still standing, in spite of war,
- in spite of the ravages of time.
- All right.
- So this is a copy of Herman again.
- That's Herman Goldschmidt, standing ramrod straight.
- The officer cast is characterized by the sword.
- And this photo?
- And that is my grandfather in the center with his wife,
- Henrietta, on the left, or Henni, and my aunt, Erna,
- and the best guess would be that this is about 1918,
- 1920, something like that.
- I don't have a date.
- That is another picture of the same group, my grandfather
- and his wife on the left and Erna on the right.
- [INAUDIBLE] and this is the same group again?
- It's the same group, yes, my grandfather, grandmother,
- and aunt.
- OK.
- And this, please?
- I do not know that gentleman.
- I have no idea who he is.
- I don't know.
- I kept all these photographs together hoping somebody
- might point it out to me, but I don't know who he is
- or where he's located.
- And that is my grandmother, my paternal grandmother,
- and Erna Goldschmidt again, Henni and Erna.
- My paternal grandmother died, I believe, in 1928,
- and I recall very dimly going to see her in a rushed home.
- And I don't remember her funeral.
- OK?
- No, not yet.
- Yeah, go ahead.
- OK.
- My grandfather is standing on the far left,
- and Daniel Oppenheim is just sitting to the right of him.
- And I believe that is Ida, his wife, and my grandfather's
- sister sitting to the left.
- I do not know the other three ladies or four ladies.
- I don't know where or when.
- And this one, please.
- That is my paternal grandmother, Henrietta, or Henni.
- Best guess would be about 1918, 1920,
- and that's a strict guess, Dusseldorf.
- OK.
- Tell us about this, please.
- That is yours truly at what must have been a fairly
- young age on my rocking horse.
- My guess would be about two, possibly three.
- I don't know.
- I don't look much like that anymore, I'm afraid.
- I don't know where but somewhere in Dusseldorf.
- OK, and this one?
- OK, that is my aunt--
- I mean my grandmother, Henni.
- And next to her is Daniel Oppenheim,
- and I do not know the three other ladies.
- It's possible that they're related to me,
- but it's too indistinct to tell.
- I couldn't tell even when I looked
- at the photograph earlier.
- I'm sorry.
- It's clearly Daniel.
- And that's my grandfather, Adolf Goldschmidt, circa 1926, '8,
- something like that, '30 maybe.
- He was a very imposing individual.
- A lot of people who knew him have told me
- that he made a distinct impression on everyone.
- --seconds, please.
- Tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- On the left, you find my aunt, Erna Goldschmidt,
- and next to her is her uncle, Isidore Goldschmidt, who
- is my grandfather's brother.
- And he and my grandfather started the business
- that involved jobbing grain primarily from the United
- States to various places in Germany.
- They started the business, I believe, in Berlin, then
- moved to Duisburg and then moved to Dusseldorf upon the death
- of my great-uncle.
- So the dates are given in the documents
- that I've turn it over to you.
- OK.
- And this, please?
- And that is my grandmother, Henrietta, again, Dusseldorf.
- My guess would be the 1918 to '20 period.
- She looks younger than in the latter photographs,
- but I can't identify the date better than that.
- There's Erna Goldschmidt again on the right,
- but I do not know who is on the left.
- And I'll have to let it go with that.
- Could have been a friend.
- Tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- This is Ida Oppenheim and her daughter,
- Ilse, married to Fred--
- not Fred.
- To Behren anyway, Herman Behren.
- And so this lady on the left is my grand-aunt.
- And I think that's a duplicate of the same photograph.
- I don't know where it was taken.
- And this one, please?
- That's my grandfather, and it looked
- like he was a bit younger.
- And I don't know.
- I can't recognize location.
- Again, I would say this is probably
- in the mid-to-late '20s, and he looks
- like he's being bothered by something there on the left.
- But I don't recognize the room.
- And tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- That's my father, Siegfried Goldschmidt,
- who was a soldier in World War I and on the Eastern Front.
- And this is how they did it in those days, I guess.
- They took a photograph and then used it as a postcard.
- So this was addressed, I think, back to his wife.
- No, not to his wife.
- He wasn't married then, to his family.
- There's some writing down there, and there's
- some writing on the other side.
- Yeah, it's to, obviously, his sister
- because the bottom says "your brother, Siegfried."
- And--
- I'm sorry?
- No, I was going to say the letter
- starts on the other side.
- The postcard starts on the other side.
- OK.
- I'll flip it over here quickly, but we
- will make a Xerox of this, take a quick shot.
- And it's addressed to my grandfather, Adolf Goldschmidt,
- and to--
- it says specifically, "intended for Erna Goldschmidt, who
- was his sister.
- The date on that is 5/10/17, I think, 1917.
- So this is written in German and simply says
- that he's sending his thoughts to them
- and talks a little bit about what he's doing, how
- they're eating and so on, how--
- it would have to take a while to translate this.
- I'll make a Xerox for the file.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- I'm sorry.
- I did not identify that appropriately.
- If you'll-- I think my father is in this,
- and I think what this is is a picture of my father and his
- two sisters.
- My father, I think, is on the left,
- and I would imagine that just to the right of him is Greta
- and to the right of her is Erna, although it
- might be the other way around.
- But I'm pretty sure this is a picture
- of the siblings of the marriage of Adolf and Henrietta
- Goldschmidt.
- If this is the case, it would have
- been taken in the late 1800s, perhaps something like 1888
- or even 1885.
- That is yours truly, and I think this
- is on one of the main roads in Dusseldorf,
- and I couldn't have been more than a year
- and a half old at the time.
- So there's some other pictures of me in a similar position.
- OK, there's my grandfather on the far right,
- my mother in the middle, my father to the left of her.
- And I do not-- cannot identify the person on the far left. .
- Again, this would have to be taken
- in the middle-to-late 20s, Dusseldorf.
- Well, that is yours truly.
- And I don't know where or when this was,
- but it looks like I might have been about maybe 12 or so, 10.
- I don't know.
- I don't know.
- I can't identify where this was.
- It certainly was some time ago.
- Now, that I can identify.
- That is yours truly leaning out the window at 101st Street
- and Riverside Drive in New York City
- within half a year of arriving in the United States,
- probably in--
- if I'm not wearing a sling on my arm,
- it would have been before June--
- a cast of my arm, it would have been before June 1938.
- If there is a cast in there--
- I think there is the cast.
- --then it would have been in 1939,
- after I came back from the hospital in Hanover, New
- Hampshire.
- And I had an osteomyelitis, and it kept me there
- for three months.
- This is apartment of Maurice P. Davidson, who was
- a very big political hotshot.
- He was a lawyer by profession.
- He had five sons, for four went to Harvard Law School.
- The fourth one married the heiress to a jewelry store
- in New York and probably was worth more than all the rest
- of them together.
- He didn't have any college.
- And I've been in touch with all the brothers
- that are still alive because I owe my life to them,
- to their family.
- So at the time--
- I said he was a political-- he put LaGuardia
- into office as head of the Fusion
- Party of the city of New York.
- And later on, he became Commissioner
- of Gas and Electricity of the city of New York
- and of the state of New York as a reward
- for his political activities.
- I roomed in that place for quite a while
- with Henry Oppenheim, whom I've identified before.
- He's the son of Hugo Oppenheim, now living in New Orleans.
- And this?
- That is back in Germany, at Brehm Platz 2
- in front of the zoo.
- That is my mother on the left, me down below,
- and my uncle, Max, on the right with that infamous gorilla
- showing up again.
- So I would guess about 1929, maybe '28, '29.
- OK And this is--
- That is my father, Siegfried Goldschmidt,
- at a very tender age.
- That would have been Dortmund, Germany, where he was born.
- I guess he's not more than--
- no, I would guess he's between one and two years, somewhere.
- And you can tell the resemblance between that and one earlier
- photograph, where he was with his siblings.
- I need about a few more seconds on this [INAUDIBLE]..
- OK.
- Well, that's my mother, and I think,
- just judging by the photograph, that it
- is a time before her marriage.
- My mother was 29 when she got married,
- and so perhaps this was maybe like middle 20s.
- So this would be 1920, 1919, 1918.
- And that is the undersigned in his sailor's uniform.
- It was a favorite of boys in my day, the high socks
- and that slightly forced smile.
- And even then I seem to have had rather outstanding ears,
- somewhat in the [? parole man outfit, ?]
- Dusseldorf, I would guess.
- I probably was of the order of eight years old, meaning 1932.
- That's my father and my mother in Holland
- after they left Germany, in Breda.
- And again, this was probably taken perhaps
- before the invasion of Holland, in late 1939.
- So they look a little less stressed there at that point.
- That may very well have been the case before the invasion.
- And that's that same window that the other couple
- was leaning out.
- Right.
- OK.
- Not OK.
- Go ahead.
- That is myself, and what that is an enlargement of the earlier
- picture that was taken with my class,
- the so-called [? sechste ?] of 1934, '35, sorry.
- And this was done for me by my teacher, Otto Landau,
- who sent me the original and then
- also sent me that enlargement.
- Your fifth grade equivalent?
- My fifth grade equivalent, yes.
- And this one?
- And that one is my mother, who is the third from the left,
- with friends but no relatives that I can recognize.
- And I don't know-- it was obviously on a beach somewhere,
- but I don't know where.
- Again, almost certainly before she was married,
- but I can't identify the locale.
- I don't know the other people.
- Tell us about this, please.
- Well, there's Erna Goldschmidt on the far right,
- and I think that's her mother, Henni, in the middle.
- And I cannot identify who the people are on the left.
- The picture is too small.
- I would again imagine that this was
- Dusseldorf and probably in era of 1918 to 1920 somewhere.
- And this one, please.
- And that is my mother and I. This was very shortly before I
- left for--
- for the United States, either in late 1937 or in 1938.
- Perhaps it was on the occasion shortly after my bar mitzvah,
- which you'll have a picture of shortly.
- And tell us about this photo.
- OK.
- Again, that's another photograph of my grandmother, Julie,
- who died in 1934.
- This was out of doors, so it must
- have been somewhere around 1930, perhaps, at least.
- In the last years she was a little bit
- confined to her apartment.
- And this, please.
- And that is the Vandenbergs of Dordrecht, Holland.
- On the far left is my uncle by marriage, Joseph, his wife,
- my aunt, Greta, then Jiet Vandenberg,
- and Louis Vandenberg.
- The two brothers so on the extremes.
- They had a business in oil, and I
- recall when I was visiting them in the 1930s
- that Joseph kept complaining to me about the fiscal policies
- of one Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
- in particular about his policy concerning oil
- imports into the United States.
- I think this is a duplicate of the one we just saw, perhaps.
- That's right, my mother and father in Breda,
- Holland in 1939.
- That's my grandfather, Adolf Goldschmidt,
- at a somewhat younger age.
- Perhaps he was maybe about 70, which
- would make that about 1920, something of that order.
- And that could very well not have been in Dusseldorf.
- That might have been in Duisburg, a town
- about 15 miles to the north of Dusseldorf, also on the Rhine,
- in fact, the town where the Ruhr goes into the Rhine.
- And tell us about this, please.
- That's Ida Oppenheim, who was the sister of my grandfather--
- so she's my grand-aunt--
- in a obviously early age.
- That would have been in the early 1900s or maybe even
- in the 1800s.
- I do not know what the age differential was
- between my grandfather and my--
- and between her.
- That is my mother dressed, as usual, to the hilt.
- And again, I would guess that this
- was before she got married, meaning
- in the late 1910s or early 1920s, location unknown.
- And this?
- That is also my mother, perhaps a little bit later--
- again, I have no idea as to the location--
- but it's Greta Grunewald.
- Her real name, of course, is Margarita,
- but everybody calls her Greta.
- I might add that my younger daughter has her first name
- as her middle name.
- My wife insisted on that.
- And tell about this, please.
- I think that's something we have also already seen.
- That's my mother and three friends,
- and I'm sure it was before she was married.
- But I think we have-- that's a duplicate of something
- we have seen already.
- And this photo?
- That is a picture of my grandfather,
- Adolf Goldschmidt, and my cousin, John Goldsmith,
- who lives now in Liverpool.
- This would be his grand-nephew.
- That's the relationship because John is the grandson
- of his brother, Isidore.
- John is my age.
- So it looks like he's about six, perhaps, or something
- of that sort, so this would be 1930, Dusseldorf.
- And the only person I know there is the lady on the right,
- and that's [PERSONAL NAME] who visited us from Brussels
- and about whom I spoke earlier.
- I cannot really, truly identify the others.
- I've looked at them through a magnifying glass,
- and I cannot be sure if I even know them.
- That is the sister of my grandfather
- who married Daniel Oppenheim, and her name is Ida.
- We've seen her before, location unknown.
- But I see the surroundings are similar to other pictures I
- had.
- And that is my aunt, Erna Goldschmidt,
- who, as I've indicated several times, died before my birth.
- And this one?
- That's my father, Siegfried Goldschmidt,
- looking a bit younger, perhaps even before he was married.
- It looks like he might be in his early 40s.
- Well, it still probably was after the marriage,
- so that would be about 1924, '25, something of that sort.
- Tell us about this, please.
- That is my grandmother, Henrietta Goldschmidt,
- and this would have been substantially earlier than some
- of the other pictures.
- I think this must have been before I was born,
- so possibly 1918, 1920.
- She looked much younger there and in reasonable health.
- I don't know where it was taken.
- And a beautiful photograph with the wicker furniture
- and the light flooding in.
- Well, I suppose when you had a slower film the contrast wasn't
- so terribly important.
- I think if I took this with a 400 ASA
- right now I would get nothing.
- That is a similar picture to what we have seen in Holland,
- my father and my mother in the home of the family that
- took them in, circa 1939, I would guess.
- That's an interesting photograph.
- That was taken the day before I left for the United States.
- We're in front of the main railroad station of Dusseldorf.
- On the left is my closest friend at the time.
- His name was Hans Werner Rosenbaum.
- I think I've talked about him before.
- I met him-- he went to England first and then came
- to the United States.
- His mother divorced his father and came to the United States,
- remarried and settled in the same town
- where I went to high school, Mount Vernon, New York.
- And Hans Werner Rosenbaum went to England on that day.
- I was seeing him off.
- We met again in Mount Vernon when
- he was visiting his mother, and we
- found that we had absolutely nothing in common.
- The only thing that he could talk about
- was jazz and baseball.
- Well, I liked jazz, and I liked baseball.
- But I think there's more in life than that.
- And so we just completely lost contact,
- even though we were very, very close in Dusseldorf,
- for a period of at least eight years,
- and that's a long time in the life of a 13-year-old.
- That is my mother and I in front of our, I
- guess, apartment house at Brehm-Platz]
- 2 in front of the zoo in Dusseldorf.
- My best guess was about 1932 or thereabouts.
- I would have to be eight years old for that to be true,
- and that's perhaps a reasonable guess.
- And that is a picture of myself, perhaps a little
- bit younger than that, a year or so, together with my cousin
- John Goldschmidt, the doctor from Liverpool, England.
- And I have a pout on that people tell me is characteristic of me
- when I am not too comfortable.
- I have disputed it, however.
- My first cousin, Honey Vandenberg [? Behrens, ?] who--
- I think it is [? Behrens. ?] I can't be absolutely sure--
- who died in Auschwitz, the daughter of Joseph and Greta
- Vandenberg.
- And that is the complement of the photograph
- two over or two earlier, which is
- in front of our house in Dusseldorf, approximately 1932,
- and that's my mother.
- That is my mother and I on the most prominent street
- in Dusseldorf called the Konigsallee
- or, shortened, Ko, K-O-umlaut.
- It's a shopping street of fantastic elegance today
- and even then, which would have been 1926 or 1927,
- must have been a very famous locale.
- And my mother, again, was dressed in a proper fashion
- and she saw to it that I was dressed appropriately.
- So I never had any complaints about my wardrobe.
- That is my friend, Hans Werner Rosenbaum, playing the banjo,
- and I think that was taken, actually, in the United States
- somewhere after he came over, but I don't know where.
- Difficult to say.
- Yes, that was my bar mitzvah photo,
- and eventually I think it may have even
- been my passport photo.
- So this would have been when I was just 12 and 1/2,
- about 1936, '37.
- And I was posing with a book just for effect, I guess.
- And that is another picture of my mother
- in Holland with these pigs and the rural people.
- And this was sent to me.
- I guess it would be 1939.
- I do not know the young man in the foreground.
- That is yours truly, Werner Goldsmith,
- sitting on the lowest step of the apartment
- house at Brehm-Platz 2, entrance that
- was shown in several of the other photographs.
- I don't know who's standing behind me.
- I'm not even sure whether it's a man or a woman.
- I can only see one shoe.
- About 1932, I guess.
- And this one?
- And that's my governess and myself, perhaps
- a little bit earlier age, perhaps 1929, 1930.
- And that's Annie [INAUDIBLE] Goldsmith.
- I don't know where, some park bench, I guess.
- And this?
- That is my uncle, Max, my mother's brother,
- the travel guide, travel arranger, in his apartment.
- And my best guess that would be about 1932.
- I think he's quite a bit younger than some
- of the little photographs I have of him.
- I do not know the exact date.
- And this is a damaged photo.
- You said that's your mother in there?
- There's my mother and my father--
- my father's face has been eradicated--
- in Holland.
- And this?
- That is yours truly, Werner Goldsmith, together
- with David Vandenberg, who was the son of Louis and Jiet
- Vandenberg.
- Jiet is the Dutch shortening of Henrietta.
- And this is taken in front of the house of my uncle, Joseph
- Vandenberg, and Margarita Vandenberg in Holland.
- The best timing that I can give for that looks like about 1930.
- Looks like I'm 6 to seven years old.
- And that, as you can see, is Ida Oppenheim,
- and they were kind enough to put the date on it, 1880.
- And we've identified her before.
- She's the sister of my grandfather, Adolf.
- And that is my mother, Greta Goldschmidt, I think again
- before she was married, so I'd place it in 1920,
- '21, 22, thereabout.
- I don't know the locale.
- I should say something--
- very few of these pictures were taken by myself.
- I think it is evident what was taken by me.
- Some of these pictures came to me via Europe
- from people that my parents had lived with.
- Many others were supplied by the Oppenheim family.
- Still others were supplied by Vera DeYoung, the daughter
- of my cousin, Ilsa Vandenberg.
- And so the collection is random.
- Some were sent to me after the war.
- So I can't identify everything.
- That first photograph there on the left
- is the shop of Daniel and Hugo Oppenheim,
- and the people in font are so small, I can't identify them.
- I think that is Herta there on the left.
- It certainly looks like her.
- I'm trying to identify Hugo, but the faces are too small.
- The sign is different than it was in the earlier shot
- where the son seemed to be featured.
- Right.
- But this still would be--
- if that is Herta--
- well, it doesn't follow that Hugo had to be a partner.
- So this would be--
- would be photographed earlier than the one
- that we saw previously.
- I believe so.
- But I can't-- it is possible.
- I don't think the three men on the left are Hugo.
- It's possible that the man with the hat is Hugo,
- but I can't be sure.
- I cannot be sure.
- Now, here we have a few people I can identify.
- First, on the far right is my grandfather, Adolf Goldschmidt.
- The man on the far left standing is Herman Behren.
- In front of him is his wife, Ilse.
- And the boy is his son, Fred.
- The woman on the right is, I think, my mother.
- It certainly looks like her.
- Below is Daniel Oppenheim and his wife, Ida,
- and so this would have been taken somewhere around 19--
- oh, 1932, '30 to '32.
- Fred Jellin-- or Fred Behren is younger than I but not much.
- It looks like he's about six or so,
- so '32 is a good guess, location unknown.
- That's my grandfather and his sister, Ida Oppenheim.
- They were apparently very close, although I didn't realize it
- at the time, because I see a lot of pictures of them together.
- Well, that's my father, Siegfried Goldschmidt,
- while he was in the army.
- So this is very clearly either 1917 or 1918.
- You can't tell how much hair he has at this stage of the game.
- My grandfather in the park where another photo
- showed him and my cousin, John Goldsmith, together
- at that time.
- And from the age of my cousin I would
- say this was taken about 1930, Dusseldorf.
- That's his wife, Henrietta, looks
- like she's a bit younger than in the later photographs,
- so this might have been the early '20s, maybe even
- the teens.
- My father was born in 1883, which
- meant my grandfather would have had to be married no
- later than 1882, I would guess.
- And so if you're looking at a projection here--
- and I don't know the age differential
- between her and my grandfather, but if 1882, the earliest,
- would have been something like 22.
- So 1940-- be 70 if it were 1930.
- No, it would have to be earlier than that.
- I don't think she's 70 years old in this picture.
- I think it would have to be 1920, maybe 19--
- 1910 to 1920, between 50 and 60, I would think.
- That is apparently the main station in the either Essen
- or Dusseldorf.
- That's my mother on the right saying hello
- to some friends who are departing whom I don't know.
- And I don't know the lady on the left either,
- but you can see the eagle, the German eagle, down below
- and the Federal Railroad.
- Whether she was married at that time or not, I don't know.
- I can't tell for sure.
- The picture is not distinct enough.
- And that is my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, Henni.
- No, no, no, no, no.
- I'm sorry.
- That is Ida Oppenheim at a substantially advanced age,
- about 70, 75.
- And this would make her about--
- the late '20s.
- I think she was younger than my grandfather.
- Well, that is the official invitation
- for the dinner following my bar mitzvah,
- and it was in 1937, as you can see, just
- about a week before my birthday.
- And that same picture was shown in another view.
- And this invitation in particular,
- which has the menu of the dinner on the back,
- was given Frau Herta Oppenheim, who turned it over to me.
- And as I say, the menu's on the back of that.
- Let's see.
- Let's see what's for dinner.
- Would you like me to translate that from the German?
- Oxtail soup, then a filet of fish, ragout of crab,
- mushrooms, lobster sauce, and a certain type
- of potato that I can't identify otherwise,
- then goose from Hamburg, young, with a apple and mixed fruit,
- then certain ice cream, and then mocha with little cakes.
- I'm getting hungry.
- In that picture, I am on the far right below.
- This was taken again at Scheveningen in Holland.
- And David Vandenberg is on the left below.
- I can detect Honey as the second woman from the left.
- There is Louis Vandenberg in the center, behind.
- I think that's Greta Vandenberg, my aunt, next to him,
- my grandfather, Adolf Goldschmidt, and Joseph
- Vandenberg on the right.
- I cannot-- well, yes, the lady on the far left is Jiet
- Vandenberg, the wife of Louis Vandenberg in the center.
- And I don't know who is the other lady.
- It could be Ilse, but I'm not sure.
- And this one?
- And that is my mother, Margarita Goldschmidt, obviously
- before she was married.
- I don't think she would dress that way
- or be alone that way after the marriage.
- They just don't do that.
- And she has a swimsuit on, a type of swimsuit or play suit.
- I think that's a duplicate of my uncle.
- Oh, yes, I guess we did get this shot earlier on.
- That's great.
- Do you want me to comment on it?
- This is my uncle, Max Grunewald, in his apartment house,
- and I think that's a duplicate of one we've already shown.
- That's my maternal grandmother, Henni Goldschmidt,
- and her daughter, Erna, my aunt, seen
- in several other photographs.
- These photographs were sent to me by Dr. Barbara Sushi.
- I had taken these photographs when in Germany,
- but I lost them as a result of the fire.
- So she was kind enough to go back and repeat them.
- This is my maternal grandmother, Julie Gruenwald,
- who died in 1934, and I'm authorizing
- Dr. Sushi to find a stonemason to put
- an inscription in the memory of my father and mother
- to her, which will be done.
- And hopefully the stone will be polished in some way.
- But considering the fact that this is well over 50 years
- since this stone was erected, it's not in bad shape.
- It must be in very good condition.
- This is in the Jewish cemetery.
- I'm sorry.
- This is in the Jewish portion of the city cemetery.
- There are some very interesting stories to be said.
- There's an old Jewish cemetery, which
- I have a gravestone from earlier, and the new portion
- of the Jewish cemetery.
- And the Nazis wanted to come into both cemeteries
- and destroy the graves and desecrate
- the stones and everything, and the cemetery keeper
- stood at the gate and said, you're not allowed in here.
- And they went away, and the cemeteries
- were preserved, especially the old Jewish one, which
- was definitely in their sights.
- I'm not so sure about this one because that was a combined
- Jewish and non-Jewish one, but the other
- was solely for the Jews.
- So there are some stories about that.
- And this one?
- This is my uncle, Max Grunewald, and he died in 1937,
- as you know, a week or so before my bar mitzvah
- while we were on a trip with bicycles.
- And the thing that really fascinated me--
- I may have said this before--
- is that Dr. Sushi looked through the Jewish newspaper
- in Dusseldorf for that date, and she
- found a death announcement signed by his comrades in World
- War I.
- I didn't even know he had been in World War I.
- But the entire company that he was with
- sent a goodbye statement on the occasion of his death.
- He, as you can see, was not all that old, 48.
- What is the word?
- "Unser--"
- That's "Our dear Max Gruenwald," and the date below
- are his birth and death.
- I am not sure, but I think that is my grandmother's
- stone and the grave--
- if you wanted to make it down, it was too indistinct.
- I couldn't tell whether it was my aunt, my--
- That's Julie Grunewald.
- Julie Grunewald is my maternal grandmother.
- So this is the same as the tomb--
- The same one from a different direction, yes.
- And that, I think--
- no, that's not related to me, but--
- Is that maybe Max in the middle?
- I think that's probably Max in the middle.
- It also gives an idea of what the Jewish cemetery looked like
- and the condition it was in, which is rather--
- it was neglected a little bit, but not too badly.
- Yes, I'm sure it's Max in the middle.
- There's one last one.
- Now, that one is in the old Jewish cemetery.
- We hunted, and hunted, and hunted
- for the grave of Erna Goldschmidt, my aunt,
- and that, we think, may have the name Erna on it.
- We're not absolutely sure.
- So she is going to--
- Dr. Sushi is going to do some more research
- to see whether or not this is indeed the grave of my aunt,
- but might as well assume it is, the absence of evidence
- to the contrary.
- That is the gravestone of my second cousin John Goldsmith's
- mother, whom I talked about.
- She lived in Dusseldorf, and she was a dentist.
- And she divorced her husband, Herman,
- and then moved to Cambridge, England,
- where she continued to practice dentistry.
- I saw her first there in 1953, my first sabbatical from here.
- And I kept in touch with her until she
- became perhaps Alzheimer's, perhaps senile.
- I don't know.
- She didn't want to see me.
- Anyway, I asked for this picture from her son,
- and he photographed it and sent it to me.
- And she had a very successful dental practice.
- She practiced on all the Nobel Prize winners in Cambridge.
- And she was, as I say, unfortunate
- in that her second marriage--
- her husband died very shortly after the marriage.
- But she totally loved him, and John accepted that.
- John stayed there until he went off to medical school,
- and then for his--
- he spent the rest of his time in Liverpool, where he is now.
- These are the children for my second marriage.
- I believe I've indicated that there were
- no issue for my first marriage.
- On the left is my son, Stephen.
- On the right is my daughter, Andrea.
- This would have been about a time when she was perhaps
- between a year and a half and two,
- so that would make it in 1965, '66, '67,
- somewhere around then.
- My daughter and I are very, very close.
- She's my senior daughter now.
- I have a younger one that will be on another photograph
- in another session perhaps.
- My son has, unfortunately, distanced himself from me
- because I could not accept his behavior.
- I think I've spoken about that before.
- He does have a daughter that he is the guardian of,
- and this it's very unfortunate that we don't
- get to see her at this time.
- At the moment he is 30.
- My daughter is-- my other daughter, Andrea, is 28.
- And this is taken at a time, I guess,
- when I was still married to my second wife,
- and so this would have been 1964.
- Well, you have a light in there.
- This is a picture of my parents, and their presence
- was obtained in these photographs
- from some other photographs that were shown earlier.
- That's my father, Siegfried Goldschmidt,
- and I would guess that he's about,
- perhaps, 43, 44 at that time, shortly after their marriage.
- And my father did sport a mustache,
- I guess to counteract the absence of hair
- on the top of his head.
- And that's my mother, probably at age 30 or so, 31.
- And I have to say something about these two photographs.
- These were created for me for a birthday or Christmas present--
- I forget which-- by my second wife.
- And I deduce from that at least at one time
- she must have loved me because I don't think
- she would have gone to that trouble
- without some sort of fairly strong emotion.
- It's all the more the pity that we parted in such combative
- state and we are still, after 25 years or more, not reconciled.
- So, in fact, we can hardly be civil in each other's company.
- I don't know why that should be, but it is.
- My present wife acts as a very, very good intermediary
- in this case.
- So these pictures, together with one of my two other children,
- hang in my bedroom.
- And of course, we have a picture of my present wife,
- and our daughter, and myself in the woman as well.
- But she's still in the house, so therefore we
- have a constant reminder of her.
- That's about all I have to say about that.
- 10 seconds.
- OK.
- Why don't you tell us about this photo, please?
- OK.
- That is myself in the annual of the AB Davis High School
- in Mount Vernon, New York, where I graduated in 1941
- and were I had gone to from New York City in 1938
- and spent about two and a half years
- completing my high school curriculum.
- I was very active in that school, and I had many friends.
- It was a much more memorable time than, for example,
- my university experience.
- And while I have no friends, really,
- left from the university period, the people
- that I met there, the clique that I grew up with,
- I'm still very close to, and we see each other
- even after these 50 years.
- Last October we celebrated our 50th high school reunion
- in Tarrytown, New York, which is a few miles away from where
- this school was originally located.
- And I'm afraid in those days I had hair, which is something
- that I'm missing now.
- And I see your nickname was Goldie.
- Yes, well, I think--
- Was that about your hair?
- No, that was somewhat contrived.
- I don't know who told that.
- I got another name here at the university
- that was bestowed upon me by a very, very famous chemist who
- is now dead.
- I was called NG.
- I don't know whether that's short for engineer
- or whether that means No Good.
- I was active in a number of different clubs.
- I was a marshal.
- I played chess.
- I was in the math team.
- I was in the international discussion groups.
- I don't even remember all the things I was on.
- They're listed in my annual, and you can perhaps focus on that.
- And you see I was president of the Math Club,
- and the Math Team, and School Interests Committee,
- International Relations, Radio Discussion group, and Science
- Club.
- But all of us played chess after class,
- and we did that every day.
- And then in my senior year we got tired of playing chess,
- and we started to play bridge.
- And I took up bridge with a vengeance and, in fact,
- at one time I was relatively very good.
- But then the ravages of academia got to me,
- and I couldn't continue it.
- Again, it was a happy time, relatively speaking,
- with the sole thought in the back of my head
- that my parents were in Europe, that I would almost certainly
- never see them again.
- And this weighed on me.
- Give me a few seconds here.
- Tell us about this photo, please.
- That is a photograph of my mother.
- This was this trip again to Munich and Stuttgart,
- where I received the visa to come to the United States.
- This would have been in early 1938, probably something
- like February.
- This is in the forest not too far from Frankfurt.
- OK, five seconds.
- Tell us about this, please.
- This is a photograph of three of us.
- I am on the far right at an age approximately six or seven,
- in Hans Werner Rosenbaum is just to the left of me,
- and I have my arm around him.
- And I do not know who the boy was on the far left.
- This is in the vicinity of my home
- at the time of Grunerstrasse in Dusseldorf,
- and the year would be something like 1931, '32.
- OK, tell us about this, please.
- This is a fellow by the name of Norman Perl.
- He died a long time ago.
- He was a friend of mine in high school in Mount Vernon, New
- York, and this would have been taken about 1940 or '41.
- He lived right around the corner from me.
- Cedar Street is where I lived.
- I don't remember the address where he was located.
- And tell us about this, please.
- This is a photograph of my father
- and my mother sitting down with the daughter of the family
- where they lived in Breda, Holland.
- I met that daughter sometime in 1953, after the war,
- and she told me about my parents having been taken away.
- But I think that they were very, very wonderful to hide them
- as long as they did before the inevitable apparently
- occurred, very lovely young lady,
- but I've lost track of her now.
- I do not know her name or her address.
- Tell us about this one, please.
- This is one of my very, very close friends
- from high school days.
- He entered from high school into the Naval Academy.
- His name is Harry Doyle.
- He lived in Mount Vernon, New York.
- I've kept in touch with him till now.
- He lives in Denver, and he was the manager
- of a part of McGraw-Hill that deals with technical trade
- publications since he had the entire Western area.
- I've seen him two or three times,
- and I talked to him on the telephone.
- As I say, it's been well over 50 years,
- but we're still in touch.
- He was one of this clique that I mentioned that I belonged to
- and was very happy with.
- 1941, I would guess, '42 would be the year that photo.
- Tell us about this, please.
- This is the same person you saw two pictures ago,
- Norman Pearl, Mount Vernon, New York,
- a friend of mine who was not a member of the clique,
- but I had other friends.
- And we had an intellectual, good relationship.
- He lived around the corner from me.
- All right.
- Tell us about this, please.
- This photo was taken in 1941, and it
- was in one of the beaches near New York City.
- And there were three of my friends from this group.
- On the left is Jack Irwin, who is a gynecologist,
- currently lives in North Dakota, and he's located permanently
- in Connecticut.
- He retired from his practice and tried to do some research.
- But there were a number of obstacles,
- and he's going to have to leave there at the end of the year.
- The person to the right of him was Harry Doyle,
- whom we had seen in just the previous photograph of the one
- before that, and the third person just peeking
- into the photograph is Ralph Carreta,
- who is an attorney, retired.
- He lived in Mount Vernon and had this practice.
- I believe he actually is resident in either Scarsdale
- or Bronxville.
- I'm not sure.
- --seconds.
- Tell us about this, please.
- That is again my mother and my paternal grandfather, Adolf.
- This is in Holland.
- I think it is in Breda.
- I'm not sure.
- It could be in Dordrecht.
- But in any event, it would have been 1939 for them
- to be out there in that open fashion,
- before Holland was invaded.
- And this was after, however, I left them,
- and it was sent to me.
- And tell us about this, please.
- Well, this is my closest friend in Germany, Hans Werner
- Rosenbaum, playing a banjo, and this would have
- been after he had left Germany.
- We left one day apart in May of 1938.
- And I don't know whether he went to England immediately,
- but from there he eventually came to the United States.
- As I said in an earlier interview,
- we sort of lost touch with each other.
- And this, please?
- Well, that's our mafia here.
- This is the group of us that were very close to each other--
- they've all been shown individually--
- Harry Doyle on the left, the retired manager of circulation
- for technical magazines in the West for McGraw-Hill.
- In the center standing is myself.
- To the right is Jack Irwin, MD, currently in Dakota and soon
- to return to Connecticut.
- Incidentally, his daughter was married in my house
- some 16 years ago, and the whole family came out for that event.
- Unfortunately, she's going to have
- to get married again this coming January, but that seems
- to be the pattern--
- the normal pattern in this country anyway.
- Ralph Carreta, the lawyer down below on the left,
- and Jerry Vreens on the right down below.
- Jerry got his PhD in chemical engineering
- from Purdue University.
- He worked in New Jersey for one of the major chemical
- companies.
- I can't recall right now which one.
- He retired several years ago.
- He's an ornithologist.
- He's very much into the determination of his ancestry,
- and he's tried to get me interested in this.
- And I've promised to try to pursue it,
- but I've been too busy to make any inroads on it.
- And yet, for me, it's even more important than for him.
- The genealogy that he's compiled that
- dates back to 300 or 400 years, and I can't possibly
- hope to do that.
- But it would be nice if I could at least complete the set
- for my grandparents and perhaps for some
- of my great-grandparents.
- So that was taken in Mount Vernon, New York, 1941,
- just before we all separated to go to college.
- Did you find yourself associating with Jewish friends
- more than anybody else or just everybody?
- Well, I certainly never made any selection, but in that group
- I'm the only Jew.
- So I don't recall that I ever had a very, very close friend
- who was Jewish.
- In fact, my closest friends here in the Bay Area
- with whom I associated for over 30 years
- before he moved to Reno was an Irishman and not Jewish.
- And so it's never been a habit with me
- except, apparently, for my first two wives.
- Did you discuss what was going on in Germany with them?
- Oh, yes, but not to the degree of intensity
- that I would today.
- It was, A, too close, B, we were too young,
- and C, we were actually too busy.
- But as you get older and get more perspective, of course,
- you start thinking about these things.
- I'm still in touch with all of these except for Ralph,
- and I know where he is.
- And I'd hoped to see him at the reunion, but he didn't show up.
- I stayed with Jerry Vreens down on the lower right a year ago
- when I attended the reunion.
- I was also supposed to stay with Jack Irwin, the upper right.
- But he had an emergency operation the day
- before the reunion, and so he couldn't attend.
- And I didn't see him.
- But he just called me a couple of weeks ago, and we chatted.
- We chat every couple of months on the phone.
- This-- excuse me.
- This group, in addition to being interested in chess--
- all of us play chess except Ralph,
- but we all played bridge together, too.
- And then we just had a nice social relationship.
- Ralph fitted in even though he was not
- a member of the competitive sports.
- I think he was a member of the Math Team,
- and so that fitted in.
- Of course, Jerry and Jack were also members of the Math Team.
- Harry was not.
- And tell us about this, please.
- Well, this is my grandfather, Adolf, and my mother.
- And so this was taken in Germany and probably somewhere
- around 1930.
- I do not know where.
- I do not know who took it.
- But I gauge that from the appearance of both of them.
- And I don't know whether or not that
- is snow in front of them or not, but I have no details
- as to the location.
- But it's again, an illustration of the really very
- well-tailored appearance of my mother.
- My grandfather was no slouch either.
- He was very properly dressed.
- And this, please.
- This is another photograph of my group
- with the exception of Ralph Carreta, who is not there,
- Harry Doyle on the left, then myself, Jerry Vreens, and Jack
- Irwin.
- And this is actually taken in front of the apartment house
- where Harry Doyle lived.
- And I didn't live very far from there, and neither did Jack.
- Jerry lived in a comparable apartment house just right
- across the street from there, Mount Vernon, New York, 1941.
- And tell us about this, please.
- OK.
- This was taken in Dordrecht, Holland,
- and my guess would be that it would be about 1933 or '34.
- The man in the picture sitting down
- is my uncle, the husband of my aunt,
- Greta, who is my father's sister.
- On his lap is his daughter.
- Behind him is his sister-in-law, the wife of Louis Vandenberg.
- My aunt, Greta, is behind the woman in front,
- and she's holding me on the far right on my shoulder.
- I do not know the lady in front.
- She's one of the relatives of Joseph Vandenberg.
- It may very well be the daughter of the lady in back,
- Jiet Vandenberg, so she would be the niece of Joseph
- Vandenberg, Holland, 1938--
- '33 or '4.
- And that is my mother in the little town of Tschiertschen
- in Switzerland, where we had all gone to go skiing,
- and she was just posing on the roof of one of the cottages.
- And this would have been 1935 or '36.
- OK, tell us about this, please.
- Well, this is my younger daughter, Remy,
- graduating from middle school of the [? Head-Royce ?] school
- system, and this would have been a year--
- a year and three or four months ago.
- She's now a sophomore in high school.
- And she looks very grown-up when I look at her.
- I'm very, very fond of her.
- I'm very fond of my entire family.
- I should add something here in the discussion
- of this entire collection of pictures.
- Because of the fact that I lost some 16,000 photographs
- in the fire, what I have is only present material that I've
- taken since the fire or the few photographs that were returned
- to me from people to whom I had given duplicates
- that have sent them back so they could stay in the collection.
- Therefore the pictures are completely
- random in terms of time, and it's not
- complete in any way, shape, or form.
- However, the pictures that you're showing now
- are the pictures that I had in my office
- because they're in front of me on my desk in my office,
- and so that clearly was saved.
- Otherwise, this picture would not have been available.
- And tell us about this, please.
- Yes, this photograph is myself and the present chancellor
- of the university, Chang-Lin Tien,
- who was a member of my department
- of mechanical engineering there.
- In fact, at one stage of the game
- I recall voting on him for tenure in the department.
- And we have been very good friends.
- I wouldn't say we are close friends,
- but we are good friends.
- And this was taken at the faculty club
- on the occasion of a wine tasting in 198--
- in '91.
- He's always been very gracious about allowing someone
- to photograph us together.
- I have several photographs in different circumstances
- with him.
- He's an absolutely fantastic person,
- gets a gold star in every category that you can imagine.
- It's just a pity that he's forced
- to govern the university at Berkeley
- under the present financial circumstances
- as well as under the other very serious problems
- that he's faced.
- His first year tenure was just filled with murder, and riots,
- and everything else.
- I feel very, very sorry for his family also.
- A month or so ago some crazy woman
- broke into the Chancellor's house wielding a knife,
- and she was shot to death by a policeman when
- she tried to attack him.
- And I'm sure this has made an indelible impression on him.
- Particularly Orientals are extremely concerned with death,
- and any death that occurs in their home
- is reflecting on them personally.
- But Chang is very Westernized.
- He's much more Westerner than Oriental.
- And the other thing that Chang and I have in common
- is that my third graduate student, who
- had to start his degree with me, is possibly
- one of my very favorite graduate students.
- He's a professor at the University of Texas.
- We're very close socially.
- In fact, I've just come back from visiting him.
- And he and the Chancellor were classmates in Taiwan.
- And not only were they classmates,
- but they played on the same basketball team together.
- They were also in the Navy together,
- and their wives were also close friends over there.
- They were also in the same--
- different class but together.
- And so we have a lot of things bonding us to each other.
- Tell us about this, please.
- Yes, this was a very, very happy occasion in my life.
- Just as the departure from Europe was ambivalent
- and the fire was horrible, this was the occasion
- of the initiation-- my initiation
- into the National Academy of Engineering.
- And for that occasion, because it
- was the 25th anniversary of the academy,
- we were required to appear in a tuxedo.
- And we were coming down--
- I think it's one of the big hotels in Washington
- and we were coming and going to a dance there preceded
- by a dinner for the Academy members,
- and it's one of the better pictures of the two of us
- that I've seen.
- The atmosphere was also equally happy, 1989.
- Tell us about this one, please.
- Well, this is a picture in the kitchen of our house
- that burned down, and you see my wife, Penelope,
- on the left, my granddaughter, Michelle, in the middle
- and my daughter, Remy, the younger daughter, on the right.
- And this would have been about 1988,
- perhaps '87, just judging by the age of Michelle, who is now--
- no, it couldn't be '87.
- It would have had to be '88, at the time when
- the house was still standing.
- And your map collection.
- No, it's--
- Tell us about this, please?
- Yes.
- This was in the living room of our former house
- before it burned down.
- I've always been interested in symphonies,
- and occasionally I used to take my slide rule
- and start conducting with it.
- Well, they thought better of that
- and gave me a conducting stick, and So I
- was conducting the record player, which was on the right.
- I might mention that visible in this picture, when it's
- a little bit larger, is the rather extensive set of masks
- that I had on the wall.
- The wall hanging itself was from Vienna,
- which I bought in 1960, a brocade reproduction of a world
- map of the two globe hemispheres.
- But it was a comfortable place.
- It was not very fancy.
- But there's my leather chair, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
- Because of my bad back, I need good pleases to sit,
- and it gives me a certain amount of nostalgia
- to look at that picture and all the pictures of my former home.
- Tell us about this, please.
- This is a photograph of Herta Oppenheim of New Orleans.
- She was the lady who was extremely close to my mother
- as a personal friend.
- My father went to her wedding to his cousin,
- and that's where he and my mother met.
- And we have taken her-- and I have a few pictures
- of that-- to Hawaii.
- We found her wonderful and an inspiration to all of us.
- To the left of her is her grandson,
- Dan, Daniel, who was a lawyer but is currently, I believe,
- engaged in collections rather than the practice of law.
- This would have been in New Orleans.
- My best guess would be that this was about 1985.
- And this, please?
- This is my younger daughter, Remy,
- and in front of her my grandchild, Michelle,
- who must have been approximately a year and a half at that time.
- So this would have been about 1988 or '89.
- And I don't recall where the locale is,
- but it's somewhere in Berkeley, California.
- Tell us about this, please.
- This photograph is a very monumental occasion for me.
- This was the time when I turned the first heap of dirt
- with a spade in the rebuilding of our house.
- I'm on the left with a glass of champagne, and to my right
- is my contractor, John Silver, who's
- doing a fantastic job on getting us back from nothing
- into a livable home.
- The hills behind you is the hill from which the fire swept down
- on us, and all the trees on that are completely burned.
- Even though they seem to have some leaves on them,
- that's a very superficial thing.
- They're all dead, basically.
- And it marked a new beginning for us.
- The fire was, in a way, the counterpart of the Holocaust.
- There was nothing pleasant or constructive about either one
- of them, but they affected me in a different way.
- The fire was not a vicious act, whereas the Holocaust was,
- so consequently, there is some joy in rebuilding
- from an accident, an act of God or whatever
- you might want to call it, also even
- negligence on the part of the Oakland Fire Department.
- You can call it that, too.
- But the Holocaust is not an act of God,
- and so the reactions to the reconstruction from both events
- is different.
- This picture was taken in the rental home
- that we had from November 1991 until April 1992.
- It's taken to the living room there
- at 1 Lodge Court, Oakland.
- And to the far left is my son, Stephen.
- Next to him, on the right, is my daughter, Remy,
- and I am bemusedly watching whatever she is doing.
- On the right is my daughter, Andrea,
- who is now 28 holding Michelle, who is Stephen's daughter.
- And this picture must have been taken
- by my wife, no special significance except that it
- has my immediate family, blood relations that I have.
- That is my granddaughter, Michelle.
- I believe this was taken in Anderson, California, which
- is quite a ways north of here, just south of Redding.
- It was probably taken when she was two years old,
- and so that would make it 1989.
- It seems to be about it.
- She's been moved back and forth quite a bit.
- She's a very, very determined little girl.
- In spite of all the malaise that has been around her,
- I think she'll do all right.
- That is my daughter, Michelle, again,
- but this would have been in the area near Guerneville,
- and it would have been the winter of 1989, I guess.
- There's some snow there.
- And I just have a few photographs
- to show that she is my youngest acquisition as far as family
- is concerned.
- And this photograph would be my granddaughter, Michelle,
- but up in the Sierras, where somebody had built this, well,
- I guess, Mickey Mouse, and she is admiring
- the snow but not Mickey Mouse.
- This would have been 1989 or 1990.
- Well, that is an interesting photograph.
- That's Boreal Ridge, which is on the top of the summit
- of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California,
- and the two people in that is myself on the right on skis
- and my son, Stephen, on the left.
- And this would have been taken at least 1989 or 1988, even.
- I have since given up skiing.
- But that was a happy sport for me, and I enjoyed doing it,
- in spite of the fact that I broke all kinds of bones
- as a young child trying to execute it.
- And this is simply another picture of the same type,
- my son on my left and myself on the right
- on skis at Boreal Ridge.
- I had taken, I guess, the easy road down,
- and he's more adventurous.
- And he's also much younger, so he
- was able to take some of the more difficult roads.
- I guess I'm just a bunny.
- You go up in skills, and then as you get older you go down.
- And so you have to know your limitations.
- Tell us about this, please.
- Well, this is a photograph of me holding
- my granddaughter, Michelle, in my home
- before it burned at 450 Gravatt in Berkeley, California.
- I would say this is either 1987 or very early 1988.
- I'm sitting in my favorite leather
- chair in my living room.
- We both seem to be quite happy with each other.
- That is another-- sorry.
- Go ahead.
- That is another photograph of my granddaughter, Michelle,
- in a sort of a crib, I guess, or some sort
- of restraining system.
- She looks a little bit puzzled as to what's
- going on in this world, but she's a happy child, basically,
- happy in that moment.
- This is a different picture from all the rest
- because it shows something of my professional activities.
- In this photograph a helmet on a horizontal plunger
- is about to impinge on a dummy, on the chest of a dummy,
- and this was to try to simulate an impact in a football game.
- And this would also, of course--
- could be the case for some other type of sports.
- But the idea is to evaluate the quality of the helmet,
- and the way that is done is that there
- are devices that measure the force, and the stresses,
- and so on in the head that is behind the helmet
- and in the neck that supports the head.
- And this sort of thing is done to try to improve
- the design of the helmet.
- In this particular case, it was actually
- a matter of testing a helmet because it's
- been named in the lawsuit as not being very good,
- and we were trying to ascertain whether the charge was correct
- or not.
- And this was actually done--
- this photograph was taken in the laboratory of a friend of mine
- in Detroit, Michigan.
- The name of the friend is Professor Al King,
- and he'll be out here in about six or seven days.
- So we'll have a reunion.
- I have done a great deal of work with helmets, helmet testing,
- helmet analysis with head injury and neck injury,
- and this is why I thought it'd be interesting to show
- what we do or one of the things we
- do in this kind of operation.
- It makes-- it makes terrific copy when
- you talk to high school students about it.
- Was the helmet good or bad?
- [INAUDIBLE]
- I'd rather not say at this point.
- It's still a question of legality.
- And there is no such thing, really, as good or bad.
- Everything has to be referenced to a mean,
- and the standards are quite artificial.
- The claim is that this is much worse than the average.
- Well, then that is not true.
- Well, this was the occasion of the graduation of my older
- daughter, Andrea, from the College
- of Engineering, Department of Engineering Science in 1986.
- And I put the diploma into her hand.
- I displaced the dean for that one occasion.
- And I have my academic gown on with my tassel and my hood.
- Andrea, my daughter, is extremely happy,
- and on her right is her mother who, I'm afraid,
- is not my favorite person.
- But then we've been over that before.
- It's one time that I would tolerate being together
- with her because the occasion was certainly
- a very joyous one, at the Greek Theater,
- University of California in Berkeley, 1986.
- OK.
- This was taken in the dining room of our former home
- before it burned at 450 Gravatt in Berkeley,
- and the gentleman on the left--
- his name is Ivan [PERSONAL NAME] and he
- did a sort of a postdoctoral fellowship with me.
- Actually, he got a doctor's degree
- as a result of working with me.
- He's now a very high official of the Moscow Civil Engineering
- Institute in Russia.
- And he came back last year on a visit for the first time
- since he was here in 1971.
- And he was here again this year because he
- had an extremely bad heart condition,
- and he thought he needed heart surgery.
- And so there is this heart-to-heart program
- which the Oakland Children's Hospital
- has with Russia, specifically with Leningrad.
- But he is the second adult that was brought over--
- usually it's children-- to have this operation.
- Well, when he got here--
- and he was here in July and August of this year--
- the doctor examined and found that he
- could be treated with drugs and didn't need surgery.
- So he was extremely happy, and he went back.
- So we had a reunion.
- I am in the middle, and my wife, Penelope, is on the right.
- And this again shows the kitchen and the dining room
- of our former home.
- And this photograph shows the reconstruction of our house.
- The house isn't particularly visible, but what you can see
- is the I-beam which is part of the retaining wall that's
- shown on the left and goes all around the house.
- In the photograph, you will see my wife on the left, Penelope.
- Next to her, on the right, is a contractor, John Silver.
- In front, in the middle, is one of the architects, [? Greg ?]
- Albertson, and on the right is the chief architect, Max
- Jacobson, enjoying the view and the progress on the house.
- This was taken in September of 1992.
- This photograph was taken upon the occasion of my attendance
- at the National Academy of Engineering annual meeting
- in the end of September 1992 and with two
- of my colleagues, Norman Abramson,
- formerly from the Southwest Research Institute in San
- Antonio, Texas.
- The other one is Professor Crandall, the Massachusetts
- Institute of Technology.
- Steve and I, Steve Crandall and I, have been to many meetings
- where we've exchanged photographs,
- and I'll be doing that here as well.
- This is also at the 1992 National Academy of Engineering
- Meeting at a reception during the afternoon.
- I'm on the right.
- My wife, Penelope, is on the left,
- and Professor Andreas Acrivos, now of New York,
- is on the far left.
- Andy used to be at the University of California
- in Berkeley, and we used to play cards together.
- And that would have been in the middle-to-late '50s,
- so we've known each other for quite a while, too.
- He's a very famous chemical engineer and works in fluids.
- I might say that this is the first meeting of the academy
- that I've gone to since I was initiated
- three years ago, in 1989.
- Go ahead.
- This photograph is in Amalfi, Italy.
- And I'm on the right, and my very close friend, [INAUDIBLE]
- [? Obermeyer, ?] who's a very, very fabulous neurosurgeon,
- is on the left.
- This was sent to me as one of the pictures that somebody had.
- And I might say that the beach leaves a great deal
- to be desired at Amalfi.
- The meeting was sponsored by the Italian Institute
- of Traffic and Transportation, and it dealt with head injury.
- The meeting was actually held in a 12th-century Benedictine-type
- abbey.
- They weren't Benedictines but a similar sect.
- And they still had a portion of the abbey in that hotel,
- and it's reserved for the Institute whenever they needed.
- Otherwise, it does serve the general public.
- And to get there, you have to take
- an elevator which comes from the street, separate
- from anything else.
- It's like a skyscraper out of the street.
- You take It up eight floors, and then you walk horizontally
- along ramp into the hotel.
- It's the only way to get in.
- I guess I had to be afraid in those days.
- I'm built that way.
- This is from the dining room of that abbey.
- It is the Capuchini monks that had there, Capuchini, I
- think it's the correct name.
- And as you can see, you have a fabulous view
- of the cosine of the Amalfi Coast,
- and you're eight stories above ground there.
- The food was reasonable.
- The service was so-so.
- And we had a very good meeting.
- I enjoyed seeing some of my friends
- that I don't very often see normally.
- And that is yours truly just about
- to enter the elevator which is on the right.
- I'd had quite a harrowing trip to get there.
- I had taken a plane from San Francisco to New York,
- but the plane was delayed in San Francisco because of weather
- in New York.
- I got to New York.
- The plane to Rome which I had to take had also been held up,
- and I got that plane all right.
- But when I got to Rome, I found that the plane to Naples
- had departed about three and a half hours ago
- and the next free seat was 10 days on a Tuesday afternoon.
- And so of course I had to do something, so I went into town,
- and I met next to me on the seat on a bus
- was a professor who directed me to the railroad station.
- And he made very sure that I knew
- exactly what to say and be sure that I
- would get to the right place, which was to go to Salerno.
- Well, I said four or five times "rapido Salerno" and always
- si, si, si, si.
- And I bought the ticket and got on the train.
- The next thing I found myself was halfway to Bari
- before the train stopped.
- It was a rapido all right.
- And then I had to go and change and go back to Naples
- and then back to Salerno.
- And when I got to Salerno I got my bags out,
- and I had to walk six or eight blocks to the nearest bus
- station.
- When I got to the bus station, I had to wait an hour,
- and I finally got a bus to Amalfi.
- And I was dumped unceremoniously in the marketplace in Amalfi,
- and I could see the hotel only about two blocks away.
- But it also was up a substantial amount,
- and I was too old to carry my bags.
- And so I looked around.
- There was a cab driver.
- And I said, could you take me up there?
- Yes.
- And how much is it?
- Well, a totally unreasonable amount.
- 5,000 liras, $12 for one block didn't seem reasonable to me.
- Then the policeman came over and heard this,
- and he said, if you wait five minutes,
- there'll be a bus that'll drop you there.
- And that taxi driver was absolutely furious
- with the policeman, but I waited for the taxi driver.
- And I was new nine hours late getting there, but I got there.
- The people who did go to Naples by air
- decided they wanted to take a taxi from the Naples airport
- to Amalfi and ended up paying about $150 in taxi fares.
- So perhaps I did the more proper thing
- in terms of financial restraint.
- This was in the kitchen of our home before it burned.
- It's my older daughter, Andrea, on the left,
- my younger daughter, Remy, in the middle,
- and my wife, Penelope, on the right.
- And we are obviously drinking some champagne
- on some special occasion.
- It was somebody's birthday, or maybe somebody
- had graduated or accomplished something special.
- Whenever we have a very special occasion,
- we celebrate it with both caviar and champagne.
- The caviar is beluga, and it's Petrossian.
- So if we keep-- have too many things to celebrate,
- I'll end up in the poorhouse.
- This is a picture of my extended family.
- It's in the dining room of our former home.
- On the far left, closest to the camera, it's myself.
- Next to me, on my left, is my daughter, Remy.
- Next to her is my wife's sister, Victoria or Vicki.
- My wife is at the head of the table.
- My mother-in-law is hidden by my father-in-law,
- and my father-in-law is Alexander, Sidney Alexander.
- My mother-in-law's name is Ellis.
- They're only a year or three older than I am.
- My daughter, Andrea, on the right, older daughter.
- This is obviously a family reunion,
- and we didn't have champagne.
- We just had red wine.
- My best guess was that that was 1990.
- We are switching quite a bit in time.
- This is the year 1973, and this is Freiburg, Germany.
- And we were celebrating with [INAUDIBLE],, somebody
- receiving his doctor's degree, having passed the examination.
- I spent a portion of 1973 in that town before moving.
- Well, no, I spent it there for the summer.
- I worked in the institute.
- I also was there in 1975 or '76, but I believe this was 1973.
- In any event, it was one of my friends receiving his doctorate
- degree, and I think his name was [? Schultz. ?]
- This is a reception following graduation
- that the Department of Mechanical Engineering
- holds outside the building at Etcheverry Hall in Berkeley,
- and these are two of my PhD students
- that had just gone through the ceremony,
- even though, perhaps, they hadn't handed in their theses.
- On the left is [? Wang ?] [? Su ?] [? Yuan, ?]
- and on the right is [? Guaki, ?] now calls himself George, Xu.
- Both of them are working for General Motors,
- and they're both citizens of the People's Republic of China,
- even though they certainly don't want to go back.
- The one on the left has a family,
- and the one on the right got married
- while he was a student here.
- And he married a girl and then promptly
- had an automobile accident by his falling asleep at the wheel
- as he was coming across Donner Summit on Interstate 80.
- He almost got himself killed.
- Anyway, they both did very fine jobs.
- I'm very proud of their work, and they have every right
- to be proud of it.
- And I was very--
- they were very fortunate to get a job with General Motors
- because immediately after they got their job,
- General Motors would not accept any more employees.
- And now, as you well know, they're
- laying off enormous numbers.
- I hope they won't be one of them.
- This is a picture taken, I believe,
- in Lodge Court in Oakland, California
- in either late 1991 or early 1992.
- No, it would have to be late 1991.
- That's my son, Stephen, and my daughter, Andrea--
- these are both from a previous marriage-- and myself
- in the living room of that house,
- obviously enjoying and sharing some joke.
- Go ahead.
- This is a photograph from the balcony of our former House
- overlooking the Hill from which the fire came
- that destroyed it.
- It's my daughter, Remy, and myself,
- and I would say that it's probably something
- like six years ago, so it would make it 1986 or thereabouts.
- My daughter is now my height, and she was substantially
- shorter at that time.
- That's how I gauge the age.
- I should say something about one of the previous pictures,
- if I may.
- Where you had the two students that
- appeared in the doctoral gown and I appeared
- in my doctoral gown, it is my habit and privilege
- to put the hood over them when they graduate.
- This is the right and the privilege of the supervisor
- of the dissertation.
- In addition to that, every doctor student that I've ever
- had and his wife, mistress, or significant other, but only
- one, gets taken out for a very nice dinner
- after they receive their PhD.
- They're, of course, invited in the interim to the house,
- but that's random.
- The dinner afterwards is at one of the better restaurants,
- and that's been my standard practice for doctoral students.
- That is my wife, Penelope, and I at the fundraiser
- of the Bentley School.
- We don't have a daughter going there,
- but we have friends who participate
- in their activities.
- And this would have been taken some time this year, 1992--
- I don't remember the exact date--
- on the grounds of Dunsmuir House in Oakland, California.
- It's a really lovely mansion where they hold these events.
- And this is the transformation back to our old home at 450
- Gravatt Drive, the dining room showing my son, Stephen,
- Michelle, my granddaughter, and his then-girlfriend, Elizabeth
- [? Cadden, ?] from New York.
- And it was obviously at Christmas time or close to it,
- and so my guess was that this was Christmas 1988.
- This is the genuine celebration of the groundbreaking
- ceremonies at our home to be reconstructed
- with my immediate family that lives with me, my wife, Penny,
- on the right, my daughter, Remy, on the left,
- and the contractor, Frank Silver, in the middle,
- drinking champagne.
- This picture is my wife, Penelope,
- the lady in the center, with her siblings.
- She has two brothers, Philip Alexander on the far left,
- James Alexander to his right.
- And she has a sister, Victoria, who
- just got married at the end of June,
- and this would have been taken in a home--
- not a home, a ranch which was run
- by the McDonald's Corporation for handicapped children.
- And my brother-in-law, Philip, on the far left
- was the manager.
- He has a degree in animal husbandry,
- so he takes care of horses, and cows, and things like that.
- He was managing this farm, which is located--
- it's very close to Santa Ynez, where
- they have a lot of this sort of horse ranching going on.
- And this is, similarly, a photograph of that family.
- My wife is on the far left.
- My daughter, Remy, is just in front.
- I'm behind.
- My sister-in-law, Victoria, Vicki, is to my right.
- Next to her is her mother, Ellis, and next to her
- is her father, Sidney.
- And behind is her oldest brother, Phil.
- And this must have been taken by the younger brother, James.
- It was taken in this McDonald's ranch house circa 1987,
- perhaps '88.
- I don't remember.
- Well, this photograph was in my own home at Christmas time.
- My guess would be it'd be about 1987 or '88 because--
- no, it couldn't be.
- It would've had to be 1990.
- My mother-in-law is in the far left standing.
- I'm next to her.
- Next to me is my father-in-law, Sydney, next to him,
- my wife, Penelope.
- Below is my daughter, Remy, on the far left, my son, Stephen,
- my other daughter, Andrea, and my granddaughter, Michelle.
- Michelle looks to be about four years old,
- so this might have been 1990, no later than that.
- OK, go ahead.
- This is Christmas 1983.
- This would have been in our home on 450 Gravatt Drive, Berkeley,
- my wife, Penelope, my daughter, Remy, and myself
- in the living room of our home with a Christmas tree behind.
- Christian religion-- we also celebrate Hanukkah.
- This photograph was taken in the home of my parents-in-law
- in Fallbrook, California.
- I can see the swimming pool behind.
- My mother-in-law, Ellis, is on the left.
- My daughter, Remy, is in the center.
- My wife, Penelope, is on the right.
- This says, August 1982, so this is about 10 years ago.
- We periodically go down there.
- Sometimes I can go along.
- Sometimes business keeps me, but my wife
- manages to get down there at least twice a year.
- This photograph was taken in Kailua, the Island of Hawaii,
- and we are in a boat that has a glass bottom so you can
- see the bottom of the ocean.
- And this would have been probably 1981, '80 or '81.
- On the left is a man I don't know,
- but my aunt, Herta Oppenheim, whom we took on this trip
- to Hawaii, is to the left of my wife, Penelope.
- And Remy, my daughter, is on the right, looking not too terribly
- happy.
- But we enjoyed taking Herta on this trip
- because, if we hadn't taken her, she
- would never have seen Hawaii.
- And because of the esteem in which we held her,
- this was a pleasure for us.
- Well, they see [INAUDIBLE]
- No.
- No, they probably were squinting into a very strong sun.
- So that wasn't whale-watching?
- That was--
- No.
- We were looking for undersea life.
- And this is my daughter, Remy.
- This is not at our home.
- I do not know where it is.
- It looks like this might be about 1981 also,
- from '80 to '82, and I can't make out the locale
- unless there's some kind of mark on it.
- That is a photograph of my second cousins
- and their family.
- On the right is my second cousin, [? Gurd ?] Oppenheim.
- Next to him is his wife, Trudy Oppenheim.
- Next to him standing is their son, Daniel.
- In front of them is their daughter, Susan.
- Now, they live in New Orleans, and it will look to me
- like this was probably approximately 10 years ago,
- 1982 or perhaps a little earlier than that.
- And this is a bit later.
- In the center again is my wonderful-- what I call
- aunt, Herta Oppenheim, and her two sons.
- On the left is [? Gurd, ?] and on the right is Henry.
- And Henry and I, when we were children, were very close.
- We aren't so close anymore now.
- But it is [? Gurd ?] and I who are now
- much closer than with Henry.
- But those are the things that happen
- in a family relationship.
- That picture is myself attending to my first-born, Steve,
- and this was a house that we had on--
- the name will come to me in a moment.
- It's in Berkeley, California.
- This was approximately 28 years ago.
- That would make it 1964.
- Summit Road is the address, and I lived there
- while I was married to my second wife.
- And that marriage lasted about three and a half years.
- That is a photograph, fairly recently, two years ago--
- no, actually last year, 1991, in early December--
- of the Oppenheim family.
- And I and my wife, Penny, went down specifically
- to visit with them in addition to I
- going to a technical meeting in Atlanta.
- This was in a small town in Central Louisiana.
- I will identify the people in there.
- To the far left, the blonde, is Patty Oppenheim,
- who is wife of Danny.
- Danny is between--
- I'm between Danny and Patty, just sticking my nose out.
- [? Gurd, ?] was shaking his finger at something,
- is at the edge of the table.
- His wife, Trudy, is on the right.
- My wife, Penelope, is next to her,
- and Susan is at the end of the table on the right.
- That's going to go in there.
- OK, go ahead.
- This picture was taken in the rental home in Lodge Court
- at Christmas, 1991.
- My daughter, Andrea, and her boyfriend,
- [PERSONAL NAME] Mexico City.
- I am behind him, and my wife, Penny, is to the left.
- This was not Christmastime, but it was still
- in the same location, 1 Lodge Court.
- It's the one and only time we heated up the hot tub.
- My son is to the left, Stephen.
- I'm in the water.
- Andrea, my daughter, is in back.
- Her boyfriend, Artur, is on the right,
- and Michelle, my granddaughter, has just
- assayed into the water.
- It was in the wintertime, obviously.
- This picture was taken again in 1964, and I am on the left.
- My second wife, [? Eden, ?] is in the middle
- holding Stephen, our son, in the house
- on Summit Road in Berkeley, California.
- And this is a photograph at a party.
- The people I can identify are my daughter, Remy,
- on the left, myself, and my aunt, Herta Oppenheim,
- on the right.
- It must have been a good party, however.
- And this picture was taken in the apartment
- of my second cousin Henry Oppenheim, who, at the time,
- owned a boat which is visible in the background.
- So this is sort of a--
- I don't know what they call them,
- a condominium on the water.
- Marina.
- Well, that sort of thing.
- And on the far left I don't know who that is, but next to her
- is my aunt, Herta Oppenheim.
- Next to her is Dee Oppenheim, who is the wife of Henry.
- Next to them is Daniel Oppenheim,
- the grandson of Herta.
- Next to him is Henry Oppenheim, her son, and the other son,
- [? Gurd. ?] And he's holding Susan up on the chair
- or on the counter there.
- My guess is, just looking at this,
- that this was quite a long time ago, maybe 15 years or even 20
- years ago, New Orleans, Louisiana.
- You are looking at the city of Honolulu
- with my aunt, Herta, my daughter, Remy,
- on my shoulders, and I'm Werner Goldsmith.
- This would be 1981.
- We spent two weeks in the islands.
- Is that the Aloha Tower?
- I think that may have been actually the monument.
- Is that the Punchbowl?
- Punchbowl, I think.
- And this is a photograph of Herta and her husband--
- her husband died about 1973, so I would say
- this is about 1971 or 1970--
- in the home in New Orleans on Jefferson Street
- with a grand piano, which is still there, very much
- in evidence.
- So this would have been just approximately 20 years ago.
- And this is a rather interesting photograph.
- This would get us back to approximately 1971, New
- Orleans, in the home of the Oppenheims.
- It's myself and my second cousin, Henry.
- What we were doing is we were in the same old galvanized tub,
- if you can focus on that a little bit below,
- that we had bathed in jointly when we were in the Rodden
- together in the '30s in Germany.
- Somehow or other they had taken that with them,
- and we were re-enacting a communal bath.
- Was that your first beard?
- Yep, I wore a beard from 1971 to '77,
- and I wore it as a result of going
- to Israel for the second time.
- And I thought I could get acclimatized.
- But then that same Mrs. Oppenheim,
- when she saw it in 1977, she said,
- why do you want to wear the beard?
- It makes you look 10 years older.
- So I went back to a smooth-shaven chin.
- And some people didn't recognize me
- when they hadn't seen me since that period.
- They were looking for somebody with a beard.
- So that's--
- You're very distinguished.
- It's a long period of time.
- This photograph is upon a dinner which
- took place in 1988 at the University of California
- in Berkeley at the Clark Kerr campus,
- where we had a joint meeting of two national societies,
- the applied mechanics division of the American
- Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Engineering
- Sciences.
- I was the Local Arrangements Chairman,
- and the general chairman was my very, very close friend,
- Mike Carroll, who's on my left.
- He's now left and become dean at Rice.
- When he left, I felt like I lost both arms.
- And the occasion was a very joyous one for me, too.
- I had retired the previous year, and the societies
- had seen fit to dedicate two sessions
- of the meeting in my honor.
- And so I had reason to be pleased.
- And this?
- And this is my returning the favor for Mike
- by presenting him with the certificate of the fellowship
- in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
- that same year, 1988.
- And this was probably done in front of my home,
- in front of the refrigerator in my home in 450
- Gravatt, the old home.
- This was a meeting which I had arranged
- and for which I got funding from the National Science
- Foundation.
- It was held in Park City, Utah, and these were the people
- that I had invited.
- And the group was concerned with the question
- on when does microfracture in rock
- become macro or catastrophic fracture.
- And how can we tell, and how do we analyze this situation?
- And so what you had there were a bunch
- of people who worked in the field of continuum mechanics,
- in rock mechanics, in metallurgy, in ceramics,
- and they were from all over the country and even some
- from abroad.
- We had actually invited 35, for whom we paid for the trip
- and for the accommodations.
- There were maybe another half-dozen
- who came on their own expense because they
- wanted to participate.
- I believe I'm in that photograph somewhere,
- but it may be difficult, if not impossible, to find it.
- It's one of the other activities that I
- engaged in is to arrange for high-level professional
- meetings.
- This is a photograph of my friend,
- very close friend, Mike Carroll, Michael Carroll, with myself,
- now a temporary quarters at 1 Lodge
- Court in Oakland, California in December 1991,
- about six weeks after we were burned out from our own home.
- Michael is the Dean of Engineering at Rice University,
- and I have tried very hard to keep in touch with him
- by calling him at least once every four or six weeks.
- I've just visited him in person four weeks ago
- and given a seminar there, and he's very, very dear to me.
- So we were happy to have him in our home.
- This photograph is fairly significant in one respect.
- This man is Alfred Davidson, who is
- one of the five sons of Maurice P. Davidson, who
- was the man who brought me to the United States.
- I have tried to keep in touch with all the Davidson
- brothers, two of whom are dead, and I've
- tried to show my gratitude to them for saving my life.
- Alfred was one of the actual initiators
- of the idea of the Channel Project,
- and he and his brother, Frank, who
- was a lecturer at MIT for many years,
- promoted this idea for time and time.
- And then another company took over,
- and actually there was a substantial financial
- settlement because the other company took their ideas
- and exploited them.
- So Alfred still lives in New York.
- He's 81 or 82.
- I'm sorry, in Paris.
- And this is taken and one of the most famous bars
- on the Champs-Élysées cafes probably in 1988.
- And this?
- And this photograph was taken in front of our burned-down home
- before it burned, showing the garage.
- And the date on that was just about August of 1991.
- It was just about a month or two before the fire.
- The lady there is the wife of a professor
- from Poitiers in France.
- And what had happened was that I had visited them
- about the first part of October.
- Just before the fire, I had gone through Poitiers
- and spent two nights there.
- And they had visited me a month and a half before that.
- So this was significant only in terms
- of showing what the house that we had looked like and also
- the fact that it was a rather dreadful circumstance that
- brought me to Europe and then back
- to try to save the house, which I did and succeeded.
- And this?
- And that's my wife and I in our living room, Penelope
- and Werner, in the old home which shows some of the--
- I can see on the ledge of that balustrade--
- we had some tikis from Hawaii.
- You can see the base of those.
- And also there was a tapestry that's
- visible in another set of photographs,
- and one mask hangs down sufficiently
- to show the bottom of it.
- And the door to the outside is open,
- and there's another ledge out there.
- It was quite a steep drop of about 40 feet
- down to the ground.
- And this is me sitting in my favorite chair
- in the old home, the couple of masks behind me on the post
- and on the wall, that tapestry showing the two
- hemispheres, a reproduction of an earlier map, which
- was very important to me because I'm an old map collector, as I
- think I've mentioned.
- I think that's one of the better photographs of me.
- I usually have a very crooked smile.
- This is a photograph from our balcony overlooking
- downtown Oakland and the Bay, and the reason
- for showing this, I guess, is to show the kind of view we had
- and hopefully we'll have again.
- Mrs. Lagarde on the left is the wife
- of the Professor Lagarde from Poitiers,
- and I was showing them around the area.
- I've always been very sociable and taking people on trips
- around to show them what the area looked like.
- So this is the case here.
- And tell us about this, please.
- Yes.
- This was the occasion of the Third International Fulbright
- Alumni Association Convention, which I was the chairman of,
- and that's why I'm showing this.
- And that's my wife.
- And this was 1981, and it was at the Faculty
- Club of the University of California
- in Berkeley for the reception.
- This is my wife and I with Senator Fulbright, who
- I managed to arrange to get him a Berkeley
- citation at the time.
- Berkeley no longer gives honorary degrees,
- but he got an honorary degree from the University
- in 1961, when they still gave them.
- And the time he got in '61 was when his daughter
- got a master's degree in business administration
- from the university or something.
- I don't know whether business administration-- anyway, this
- was a nice meeting.
- I have done my duty for the association, I feel,
- with arranging this, and I did this at a time
- when I was in extreme physical distress,
- except for that instant you see me there.
- I was wearing a collar around my neck because I had just--
- about to undergo a neck operation,
- and I'd gone to Toronto just the week
- before to go to an international meeting.
- So I was in some pain, but I guess I
- don't show it, 1981, Berkeley.
- This was at the southern edge of the Island of Taiwan.
- I was over there because I was the chief lecturer on a seminar
- on collisions of impact.
- They had invited two other people completely independently
- of me.
- It turned out that both other people were also
- PhD students of mine.
- And so it was a Goldsmith type of seminar.
- We're looking out at the China Sea
- in some fairly tropical area in Southern Taiwan, 1990.
- And that?
- And the reason I wanted to show that picture
- is that you get a much better idea of the collection of masks
- that I had.
- I had them on several walls, and this
- shows a collection of some of them, as well as that tapestry.
- And I was sitting in my favorite chair,
- being curious about something, I'm sure.
- And I don't know what I was doing,
- but I thought it would be interesting to see
- the environment in which I was located
- at the time in my house, 450 Gravatt, approximately in 1988.
- This is what our property looked like the first time
- we were able to get back with a camera and take a photograph.
- This would have been in October 25 or so, 1991.
- If you can see, the appearance of the place
- is actually worse than what Hiroshima looked like the day
- after the bombing.
- After they had a cleanup there, it looked much more manicured
- and didn't give the impression of the stark disaster that
- had occurred.
- Here, the burned-out trees, the rubble and so on
- give a pretty good idea of how we all felt
- and the experiences that we had subjected to.
- And these are some more photographs.
- The area just in front seems to have been cleared,
- whereas the area in back has not.
- The contrast there is also very stark.
- It's difficult to gauge when this was.
- Again, it would have been the end of October,
- possibly the beginning of November 1991,
- the fire in the Berkeley Hills that consumed 3,800 dwellings.
- More of the same?
- Yes, but this has been cleaned up, as you can see.
- There's a total difference between the cleaned-up version
- and the initial rubble.
- And are those trees that have grown in the--
- No, no.
- No?
- They were untouched by the fire?
- No, they're dead.
- Oh, you mean-- whatever you see down there, the trees--
- they sprouted back, yes.
- And much of that foliage, however, is burnt.
- It doesn't appear that way from here, but it is burnt.
- That's an interesting photograph.
- That's my wife in front of the so-called Parkwood Apartments.
- They were a complex of 830 units built out of wood.
- The garages were made out of fire brick.
- And we only could get up there with a policeman driving
- or policewoman driving us.
- And you can see a vehicle here on the right that
- seems to be intact, but there are other vehicles that
- would totally--
- it was random whether they were intact or not.
- Anyway, the couple that was with us
- had just driven their brand-new Honda Accord
- across the country.
- They wanted to know what was left of it.
- So they talked to a fireman who was inside.
- He wasn't allowed to go inside.
- Asked them to describe the vehicle
- and then asked if he had the key.
- Yes.
- He turned it over and drove the thing out.
- It wasn't touched.
- And this is what happened to me in my home.
- The night before, a young girl, about 20,
- rang the bell at 10:00 in the evening.
- Her car had stalled.
- Could she call her boyfriend?
- Well, yes, of course.
- Boyfriend came.
- She locked the car, drove off.
- The car was a VW convertible with a vinyl roof.
- The next morning, when we left about 12:00, the car was there.
- When we came back the following Wednesday, the car was there.
- The only problem was a slight bubbling of the windshield,
- but the tires hadn't burned, and the roof was intact.
- And all the buildings around were completely
- burned to the ground.
- And what is that?
- This shows the destruction that was
- wreaked by the fire of our property
- from a different position.
- The tremendous-- the upheaval experience,
- if I can call it that--
- it completely turned us inside out.
- And what turned us inside out wasn't the fact
- that it was a fire so much as it was the fact that we
- had to flee from the fire or we would have been killed.
- It was sort of like a monster putting out its fangs,
- its claws to try to entrap us in its grip.
- That we will remember.
- These photographs were not taken by me,
- but I got copies of them.
- They were taken by a friend of mine.
- They were taken in the vicinity of the Claremont Hotel
- in Berkeley on October 20, 1991.
- And the house just to the left, the big structure,
- was in every TV clip around the nation
- because it resisted the fire for the longest time
- until it finally had to capitulate.
- The fire surrounded it, and it's amazing
- how it was able to resist.
- But in the end, it, too, was consumed.
- These pictures don't really give a complete overview
- of what had happened.
- That's just a small section, again,
- taken from the area of College and Claremont Avenues
- in Berkeley.
- Why don't we turn it there.
- It just shows-- this one shows the Claremont Hotel.
- The hotel was where the firemen made a stand.
- That's where they finally got to dumping some fluid
- onto the flames to arrest them.
- But the smoke from there blocked the sky
- for a distance of maybe a half a mile
- wide so that the sun, which was out in full force,
- couldn't get through.
- You thought you were in the middle of the night.
- And it was just a terrible experience.
- These pictures were from the workshop trip
- that I took to Taiwan in 1990.
- I'm surrounded by two of my students
- who got their PhD degrees with me.
- The workshop itself was in Tainan,
- which is the third city or the fourth city in Taipei, Taiwan.
- On the left is David [? Janke ?] who
- is an assistant professor, actually
- an associate professor, at the Institute of Aeronautics
- and Astronautics.
- He's the one who arranged for the workshop.
- I'm in the middle.
- On my right is [PERSONAL NAME} Wu,
- who is an associate professor at the National Taiwan
- University in Taipei.
- They're both in the same area of mechanics,
- and they're both doing research in more or less the same area.
- I'm glad they're-- they're not so close together.
- They're a distance of maybe four hours by train apart.
- But still, they are not totally isolated like another person
- I know in Singapore whose closest colleague in his field
- is 3,000 miles away.
- So this was a happy time for me to be with them.
- And this picture shows a lunch which
- was arranged the two [PERSONAL NAME]
- Wu and David [? Janke ?] are on the left against the wall
- just before.
- The person at the front, at the left,
- is another student from Berkeley,
- but he was not my student.
- I'm in the back.
- David-- I'm sorry, Vernal Kenner is next to me.
- He's another PhD student of mine who got his degree in 1974,
- and he's now teaching at Ohio State University.
- And I can't quite make out who sat on the far right.
- But this was, again, the occasion of the seminar.
- The real problem of the seminar is where to eat lunch.
- Or dinner.
- Or dinner, yes.
- And this was a party that was given for me in Tainan
- at a private restaurant complete with interpreter and everything
- else.
- These people-- [PERSONAL NAME] Wu
- is in the center at the far left and David [? Janke ?]
- is at the right.
- And I guess I took this photograph,
- but I can't remember the names of the other people that
- were in there.
- Anyway, there were associated with this workshop
- and probably were so-called students in that.
- Some of them were military.
- Some of them were civilian.
- This is Vernal Kenner, my student from 1974,
- now professor at Ohio State University,
- upon the occasion of the workshop in Tainan.
- This is upon the occasion of the semi-annual wine tasting
- at the Faculty Club of the University of California
- in Berkeley, in front of the Faculty Club.
- The person on my left is Richard [? Wehrey, ?]
- who is the manager of the Faculty Club.
- And I'm on the right, as usual, taking photographs.
- The wine tasting is always a very pleasant occasion for us.
- We try to make them all.
- That is at the same time the wine tasting.
- That's my colleague, Harry [? Doran, ?]
- who's perhaps professionally, in my own department,
- the closest one to me.
- We've collaborated on a number of pieces of research.
- And that's his wife, Selma, who is from New York City.
- I'm a little envious.
- His children-- he's Indian.
- His children are Jewish, and mine are not.
- At least my younger daughter is not
- by the strict law of Judaism, but I
- think we can circumvent that.
- Wine tasting at the Faculty Club, 1991, September.
- This is the occasion of my initiation
- into the National Academy of Engineering in September 1989.
- It was perhaps one of the most joyous occasions of my life
- and certainly the culmination of my professional work.
- The certificate is in front of me.
- My wife and my younger daughter, Remy, are smiling,
- and we are standing in front of the academy building,
- looking out onto the walkway.
- If the trees weren't there, what you would see
- is the Lincoln Monument in Washington, DC in September,
- early October 1989, the 25th year, the 25th anniversary
- of the academy.
- And this is at the banquet of the academy.
- My wife is on the left, Penelope, Werner.
- To my immediate right is Michael Carroll, now Dean
- of Engineering at Rice.
- He's the one who nominated me for the academy,
- and so in addition to feeling very close personal friendship,
- I'm also indebted to him.
- To his right is Patsy Mote and Dan Mote.
- At the time, Dan was Chairman of the Department
- of Mechanical Engineering, my own department, and his wife.
- He has since moved up to become Vise Chancellor in charge
- of university relations.
- And this is the group of Berkeleyites at the academy,
- that we collected ourselves together in a cocktail lounge.
- To the far left is Ian [? Finney. ?] Then above him is
- Patsy Mote and, below, her husband, Dan, my wife,
- Penelope, and I. To my right is Paul [? Nardi, ?] and below him
- is Michael Carroll.
- This was the occasion of the initiation dinner,
- which was only for the newly-initiated and the council
- members.
- And that was my wife, Penelope, and I,
- and we were both in a very happy frame of mind.
- It was held in the dome of the academy,
- and if you ever have a dinner, it
- is the most spectacular setting that you can imagine,
- everything in marble.
- You have names ranging from Archimedes
- to Einstein and from Freud to Machiavelli,
- ranging all over the walls with appropriate pictures.
- This was circa 1986, my father-in-law,
- Sidney Alexander, my mother-in-law, Ellis Alexander,
- my daughter, Remy, and my wife, Penelope.
- I don't know where it was, but clearly was down South
- somewhere, perhaps in their yard or garden.
Overview
- Interviewee
- Mr. Werner Goldsmith
- Date
-
interview:
1992 June 11
interview: 1992 September 02
interview: 1992 October 21
- 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
-
6 videocassettes (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with Werner Goldsmith on June 11, 1992, September 2, 1992, and October 21, 1992. 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.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Related Materials
- Additional Record Group Number: RG-50.477.0557
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:47:04
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn515882
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Oral history interview with Mark Malamud
Oral History
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
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
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
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
Oral history interview with Laszlo Vass
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jakob Atlas
Oral History
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Oral history interview with Floyd Dade
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Oppenheim
Oral History
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Oral history interview with Eugene Katz
Oral History
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Oral history interview with Theo Joseph
Oral History
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