Oral history interview with Arno Motulsky

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 2017.215.1 | RG Number: RG-50.977.0001

Overview

Interview Summary: Arno Motulsky, born in Ostpreussen in East Prussia, Germany (now Górowo Iławeckie, Poland), discusses his childhood; attending a gymnasium in Konigsberg which he reached by a one-hour train ride; the interactions between Jewish students and non-Jewish students; the boycott of all Jewish stores, including his parents’ store, on April 1, 1933; his parents’ decision to close their store and move to Hamburg, Germany; attending an Orthodox Jewish school in Hamburg; his uncle in Chicago and his father joining him there; joining Habonim, a Zionist youth group at his school; having rheumatic fever and not being accepted Youth Aliyah for the voyage to Palestine; leaving for Cuba on the SS St. Louis with his mother and younger brother and sister; the treatment of the Jews on the ship; arriving in Havana and not being allowed to leave the boat; seeing a Havana newspaper; the captain’s attempts to go to the US; going to Belgium; attending a French high school in Belgium until he was almost 17 years old; the German invasion and being arrested as an enemy alien; being sent to an internment camp in France; being taken to a camp near the border with Spain and the Mediterranean which had little food and a typhoid epidemic; the Vichy government allowing him to take a bus to Marseilles where he went to the American Consulate to get his visa renewed; taking a Portuguese ship to the US and living with his father in Chicago; receiving a scholarship to the Chicago Central YMCA College and obtaining a job in a Jewish hospital as an assistant helper in the research neurobiology lab; attending the University of Illinois Medical School in Chicago and the Army Specialized Training Program which paid his tuition; their Belgium friends obtaining fake papers for his mother to take a train to Vichy France and then to the Swiss border; his interests in the cultural well-being of Israel and his hopes for changes there for more peace; his belief that he survived largely due to luck and his ability to adjust, work hard, and learn well; and his thoughts on Germans and Americans.
Interviewee: Arno Motulsky
Date: interview: 2013 April
Geography: creation: Seattle (Wash.)
Credit Line: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Sammy Eppel, Daniel Benaim, and Fernando Duprat

Physical Details

Language: English
Genre/Form: Documentary films.
Extent: 1 digital file : MPEG-4.

Rights & Restrictions

Conditions on Access: There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
Conditions on Use: Restrictions on use. Restrictions may exist. Contact the Museum for further information: reference@ushmm.org

Keywords & Subjects

Topical Term: Aliens--Belgium. Anti-Jewish boycotts. Antisemitism. Holocaust survivors. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Germany--Personal narratives. Jews--Poland--Górowo Iławeckie. Jews, German--Belgium. Starvation. Typhoid fever. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--France. Men--Personal narratives.
Geographic Name: Belgium--History--German occupation, 1940-1945. Belgium. Chicago (Ill.) East Prussia (Germany) France--History--German occupation, 1940-1945. Górowo Iławeckie (Poland) Hamburg (Germany) Havana (Cuba) Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskaia oblast', Russia) United States--Emigration and immigration. Marseille (France)
Personal Name: Motulsky, Arno. Schröder, Gustav, 1885-1959.
Corporate Name: St. Louis (Ship) United States. Army. Service Forces

Administrative Notes

Legal Status: Permanent Collection
Provenance: Sammy Eppel, Daniel Benaim, and Fernando Duprat donated the interviews with St. Louis passengers and academic experts, recorded for their documentary film "Turned Away", to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on May 3, 2017.
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

Record last modified:: 2023-11-16 09:40:59
This page:: http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn561498

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Oral history interviews with St. Louis passengers and academic experts gathered for the documentary film "Turned Away"

Oral history interview with Egon J. Salmon

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Egon J. Salmon, born in 1924 in the Rheydt part of Dusseldorf, Germany, discusses his early life in Germany; the beginning of the restrictions for Jews in 1933; his family’s work in the textile business; how Kristallnacht was the deciding factor for their family to leave Germany; events on Kristallnacht, including the arrest of his father and his imprisonment in Dachau; the release of his father four weeks later; his father’s move to the United States, where he was turned away; his father’s move to Cuba; his father applying for entry visas to Cuba for the entire family; sailing on the SS St. Louis; the voyage; arriving in Havana and not being permitted to disembark; the formation of a passenger committee to relocate the passengers in different countries and Captain Schröder tried to help them; returning to Europe until he received a visa in March 1940 and left on April 15, 1940 by ship to the US; arriving in New York, NY and reuniting with his father; adjusting to the US; starting high school and being drafted before graduating; being assigned to the US Army infantry; being shipped to Spartanburg, South Carolina where he was trained for combat; becoming a citizen before he was sent overseas; being sent to North Africa; being sent in 1943 to Naples, Italy, where he remained until 1945; the antisemitism in his unit; the end of the war and being placed in a unit of occupation in Austria for nine months; returning to the US; the fates of his extended family; his feelings that having been aboard the SS St. Louis affected his life; and his belief that he survived due to his father’s actions and good luck.