- My parents were-- my father was told to stay.
- By who?
- I would say, by the Mossad by that time, wasn't it?
- Yeah, we were-- without a passport.
- We were without nationality after my parents got together
- again in '45.
- And my parents got, even I got the,
- first Israeli passports which was something
- you could move in Europe.
- You needed this to move.
- This was at what year or--
- This was pretty soon.
- What was that?
- Well, not--
- '48.
- Before my time.
- '48.
- '48.
- Yeah.
- And then--
- Sorry, you were-- because I think
- you were born in '47 as well, weren't you?
- No, '46.
- '46.
- OK.
- And then it came up for renewal.
- And my parents wanted to emigrate to Israel.
- And then they were told, my father was told no.
- By the Israelis?
- By the Israelis.
- Presumably.
- You stay-- you stay and continue with the work.
- Now did you, I mean, this has also
- come up in a couple of places.
- That in those early days, was he working directly
- for the Mossad or not?
- Do you have any knowledge of that?
- I have no knowledge.
- But Tom Segev explored it in depth.
- That's the--
- Yes, I have that biography.
- I have it.
- I haven't read all of that one.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- That you looked up to the people here,
- and they will tell you maybe.
- Maybe.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I started pretty soon.
- And they had an interest.
- Obviously, they had an interest that he would stay and do
- the work.
- Yeah.
- Before your time.
- Before your time.
- And that was a difference with Tuviah Friedman, who
- I can't remember when he left.
- Yes.
- It was-- I think sometime around '49, '50, I think.
- Yeah.
- So, Yeah I mean, your father, in one of his memoirs
- writes that Friedman, yes, I worked with him.
- But Friedman left, and makes it sound like he basically
- removed himself from a lot of that,
- although Friedman says he continued doing it here
- in various things on the Eichmann case, in particular.
- The thing was that my father was absolutely
- convinced he could only do the work there in Europe.
- Yes.
- You were close to the sources, and also he used to say,
- I feel all this antisemitism.
- I realize why I have to be here.
- And did he talk to you a lot about--
- did you feel when he talked about the rivalries,
- particularly, for instance during the Waldheim business,
- did you discuss?
- I was already living in Holland.
- I do remember obviously I know about the Waldheim business.
- I think that my father had his ideas about Waldheim.
- But there was definitely a gap between the way
- Waldheim was perceived in the States,
- and in Austria and Europe.
- It was a very unpleasant time.
- Yes, yeah.
- Very, very unpleasant time.
- And after he established or he was
- instrumental in establishing the commission of historians--
- Yes.
- --to sort things out, which actually
- confirmed what he had thought.
- That it confirmed in the sense that he was--
- That he was not involved, but he must have known.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I mean, you could not pin direct responsibility but he
- certainly--
- But there was definitely a discrepancy between he
- was perceived outside let's say particularly in the States.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Well, I think having looked at it from both-- at the time,
- I was in Europe.
- So I was going to be in, and I actually
- interviewed Waldheim too a couple of times,
- and then he would no longer speak to me,
- as did most Western journalists.
- But then now, also getting the other side of the story,
- it's clear.
- I think your father was surprised by the World Jewish
- Congress and the way they rolled this out.
- And there obviously had not been consultation or anything,
- and he resented a lot of the way it was handled.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Also it backfired in Austria, as you may know.
- Yeah.
- It was not too long before the elections.
- Right, right.
- And it simply backfired.
- And also which is a minor point, another minor point,
- the Austrian Jewry suffered from this worldwide campaign.
- It was a lot of tension.
- Yes.
- It was in Austria regarding the Jews.
- Yes.
- Yes, and well I remember.
- But yeah, and then you got this nasty back and forth
- where the World Jewish Congress was saying,
- oh Wiesenthal is blaming us for the antisemitism in Austria.
- It was a pretty nasty, uncomfortable thing.
- But apart from the blaming game, it was unpleasant.
- It was very unpleasant.
- Right, right.
- And getting to the Eichmann case, where also, I think,
- as a result of the Waldheim affair
- and sort of the bad feelings, it seems like some of the people
- revisited the Eichmann case, and were
- claiming that your father over-claimed
- his role for finding Eichmann.
- I don't think that it was any way connected
- time wise with the Waldheim.
- Only in the sense that later, as more--
- I've just heard people.
- I think some of the same people who
- were involved from the American side in the Waldheim
- [INAUDIBLE] case, have been also very critical and got critical
- and started attacking your father
- for all sorts of other things, including the Eichmann case.
- That is true.
- But the Eichmann case did the honor of finding,
- capturing Eichmann, was always a bone of contention.
- Yes.
- Because my father always, always this I remember,
- and you do certainly as well, that he was instrumental,
- that he was one of who helped.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- He never claimed that he actually--
- You said you mentioned the word over-claiming.
- I think that if you read now, of course
- I'm the son-in-law so I may not be completely
- neutral, although I think I am.
- If you read the book [NON-ENGLISH],,
- I don't think that you will find anything in there that you
- could look that's over-claiming.
- Yeah.
- And then there is this famous telegram that when
- they captured Eichmann that--
- Yes.
- The state congratulated my father.
- I mean he must have had something to do with it.
- Otherwise why would they--
- Yeah, the Yad Vashem I think sent a telegram, right?
- But it was more.
- I think the whole thing was not caused so much by you,
- but by Isser Harel.
- You father said to me explicitly I
- do not understand what they, especially Isser Harel,
- what he says.
- I don't know I have never claimed more.
- I could never have done what they could.
- How can I compare myself to a country, like Israel?
- Of course.
- And he said to me, I don't know what he has against me.
- And then he says, I would like to have a talk with him.
- Then we talked about the--
- chancellor, so after--
- But our daughter, Isser Harel's grandson, they got together.
- Oh really.
- That's interesting.
- That's interesting.
- Because Harel, boy he produced this manuscript,
- which is never--
- I don't think it's ever been published.
- But I've seen a copy which is all,
- it goes on and on with documents and so forth,
- all about this business.
- And he clearly was almost obsessed with the subject.
- I think so.
- Yeah.
- He wanted to part of the publicity
- and he couldn't get it, because he was nameless as it were.
- He was--
- At the time, yes.
- At the time, it just when his time came,
- then it was kind of old hat.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Well, yes, it was very--
- I knew about Harel's and your father's dispute.
- But until I saw this, and just how much time
- he must have spent just trying to weave and examine
- various parts of your father's biography and so forth.
- And to clearly trying to discredit anything he could.
- That's right.
- But that's, I guess, I mean do you know your father traces it.
- He makes an allusion in I think Justice Not Vengeance,
- about saying that since he had sent that message to Israel
- in 1953, I believe about Eichmann being in Argentina,
- and he felt that was ignored.
- That Harel resented that, the implication that somehow he--
- the Mossad had not--
- It was a miss.
- It was a miss.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I mean the people who I know
- Harel claimed that this was just very general information,
- somewhere in Argentina, that it wasn't useful information.
- I think your father's claim, I think
- he wrote that it was he did say Buenos Aires.
- I don't know.
- But--
- Neither do I. But I think there was an additional conflict.
- Basically, this work should have been done by Israel.
- Yes.
- There was definitely an obligation.
- Maybe it was also the relatively familiar conflict
- between an Israeli and a Jew from abroad.
- Absolutely.
- Remember, Israelis they didn't like that.
- That could also play a role.
- Absolutely.
- Absolutely.
- They had also a problem with Goldman, didn't they?
- Yes.
- Of course.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- They did and didn't like it.
- Basically they felt that they should have made a go at it.
- After all, there was a problem here
- in Israel regarding the Holocaust,
- the Holocaust survivors.
- This was a topic, that was a non-topic for many years,
- and also the hunting of the perpetrators was not something.
- IT was on the back burner, if at all.
- And then when it came to afore, then they
- would have liked the idea that they did it.
- You know about the LL, that the Serbs in a certain period, LL
- demanded that people should--
- I don't know how you pronounce that in English.
- Hebrewize.
- Hebrewize the names?
- Yes, their names.
- Nowadays not anymore.
- They went back already.
- You mean who should Hebrewize their names?
- The passengers?
- No, no, no.
- Everybody.
- The pilots.
- The pilots.
- The pilots.
- Yeah, they are the most important.
- Workers.
- And if your name is Janko Ipskovich, that wasn't good.
- You have to make something Ivrit.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it was the new Israeli.
- There was this new Israeli being born.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- No, they were against that.
- That's right.
- Who was the pilot that were--
- Yeah, I forgot.
- The pilot who flew Eichmann--
- Out of Argentina, yeah.
- We met him.
- Yeah.
- Oh, you met him, the pilot?
- Yes?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- He described it.
- Actually, it was quite fascinating--
- Yes.
- --how they did it.
- Oh yeah, I mean it's a fascinating tactical operation.
- The pieces of it.
- And he didn't know anything about it.
- Yeah, the crew did.
- The pilot?
- No, it was fascinating.
- They told him what to do.
- But he didn't know.
- He didn't know Eichmann, nothing.
- And I think that [CROSS TALK] alone as it were.
- There was something.
- They used [NON-ENGLISH] as a kind of a cover.
- That's right.
- Yes, because--
- I don't know whether [NON-ENGLISH] knew about it.
- Also--
- I don't think he knew until he flew out.
- I don't think-- I mean this is in some of the accounts of that
- later.
- But they had this official Israeli delegation coming in,
- and that was the pretext to have the plane there to fly out.
- Yes, indeed.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, Yeah.
- No that's fascinating.
- But I think your interesting point about Israel
- and their attitude towards Jews outside of Israel,
- because that would apply equally to Fritz Bauer, because let
- us say if the pieces of the puzzle, pieces
- from your father, pieces from Fritz Bauer,
- and maybe from someone else--
- but those are all outside of Israel, those leads initially.
- That's right.
- Yeah.
- It's I'm not aware for animosity towards Fritz Bauer.
- I do not--
- Yes or no?
- No, I'm not aware.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I've never heard of Fritz Bauer in all the different sort
- of currents anyone criticizing Fritz Bauer in any way.
- He seemed to be a very straightforward individual.
- That's right.
- And very--
- But he had to be very careful, because of his position.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Well of course, he himself I think
- told the Israelis that the reason
- why he was giving them the information not in Germany,
- because he felt that that wouldn't leak to Eichmann,
- and he would escape again.
- Indeed.
- Yeah.
- That he did not trust his own countrymen in the embassy.
- That's right.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, it's an amazing series of steps.
- What about and in your father's--
- one of the things which I found frankly
- in some of the more the severest critics of your father
- would somehow claim that parts of his early biography
- in the camps and so forth that he would appropriate stories
- from other people.
- Did you see that as see those kinds of criticisms
- which have come up?
- I discussed it with Tom Segev, if I'm not mistaken.
- It was the number of concentration camps
- that he said he went to.
- Whereas part of them were work camps.
- Did he aggrandize?
- Did he exaggerate?
- I think that it's very difficult to judge,
- because sometimes people say certain things because they
- have different aims.
- The aim can very much influence what we say.
- So here, your father, we talked about this.
- Your father had the most excellent memory
- that I've ever seen, excellent.
- So I find it very difficult to believe
- that he made mistakes there.
- He didn't make mistakes.
- So maybe the only thing that I can think of
- is that he said something in order to score certain points,
- but not in order to get more honor or things like that,
- definitely not.
- I don't believe it.
- And then we were talking about early--
- Yeah.
- Yeah, these are early.
- I mean I think even things like the story of which are almost
- seem like parables, the story of the mother of the heavily
- wounded German soldier.
- Yeah, I think it was the sunflower, was it?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that those, some people have questioned,
- did that really happened that way?
- That's right.
- Is that important?
- Is that important?
- It's a book.
- Yeah, it's a book.
- Oh, I know.
- Yes, I know it's--
- I mean it's a book in the sense that it's not
- a historical dissertation.
- It's not-- there's a message.
- I think the main issue was the message.
- It got a certain message across.
- What had happened, what had didn't happen, it was not--
- I think it's quite irrelevant.
- --was indeed, not relevant.
- It was the message.
- It was a bee in the sunflower, a very fundamental question
- was raised.
- Now, you can write it like this.
- Like that.
- I don't think that my father ever claimed--
- No.
- Did he ever claim that it really happened?
- I do not recall that.
- We never asked him.
- Well, well, it's written in the first person,
- as if it happened.
- That's right.
- That's right.
- And also that he visited-- wasn't in Munich the mother?
- I can't remember where.
- Something like that.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But I think there are many books,
- you have the feeling that we are trying to justify--
- No, no.
- No, no, no.
- No, of course not.
- But there are many books written in the I,
- that we don't think that it's absolutely
- necessarily historically true.
- Correct.
- Yeah, well maybe partially because your father
- became such a bigger than life figure, in many ways,
- that people really zero in on every--
- That is true.
- --every story.
- That is true.
- And as you say, I mean, some may have been for the message,
- and so forth.
- But for those who are looking for things to--
- to pick.
- They will find.
- They will find.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Definitely.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But did you have the feeling later on,
- and as he was in his last period of life-- oh, by the way,
- I think I have my last interview with your father.
- I thought I brought it.
- Yes.
- I brought a copy along.
- That's nice.
- From '98, I think those photos I sent you were from that time
- too.
- OK.
- Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- Did you have the impression that he
- was content with his life work at the end,
- and felt that he had done as much as was humanly
- possible in this regard?
- I think so.
- On the other hand, in his very last years,
- he acknowledged that he missed out on coming to Israel,
- living in Israel.
- Oh, really?
- With the family.
- Yeah.
- There was a price to be paid.
- He became nostalgic, when in the last year.
- But you know I'm not quite sure that this is really
- the answer to your question.
- Basically, as a whole, I would say, yes.
- The answer is yes.
- He felt that he had done something.
- Some justice was done.
- Yeah.
- Because this was the man.
- This was really what motivated him.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Did he have any family in Israel?
- No.
- No one?
- My mother and I were his only family.
- Yes, yeah.
- Yeah.
- My mother was yearning for a normal life.
- And they wanted to come to Israel, particularly after we
- had left for Israel and settled down here with the children.
- Yeah.
- And--
- When did you come to Israel?
- '77, but I left home in '65.
- Yes.
- Got married and moved to Holland.
- And you have children?
- Three.
- Three children.
- Yeah.
- So your mother would have liked to have come to Israel,
- you think?
- Oh definitely, definitely.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Because whatever life my father led
- he had also the satisfaction of doing something
- and accomplishing something, whereas my mother only
- saw the downside of it-- the tensions, and the scares,
- and the absent husband.
- Yes.
- But I could summarize this up in one sentence
- like we did in Vienna.
- The house of my parents was sold.
- And the people who bought it, they
- were very appreciative of my parents, of my father.
- And they asked permission even, so the house was theirs,
- to put up a plaque on the house.
- And they asked me to write the text.
- And it goes like in here lived Simon Wiesenthal who
- dedicated his life to justice, and his wife who
- made it possible.
- That's very nice.
- This is his-- their apartment in Vienna?
- It was a house.
- It was a house, an actual house?
- Yeah.
- I think this is more or less the text.
- Here lived Simon Wiesenthal who dedicated his life to justice--
- And his wife.
- And his wife who made it possible.
- And to his wife who made it possible.
- And--
- Not to his--
- And his wife who made it possible.
- I assume that if you want, Paulinka
- can send you the original.
- The plaque.
- Oh, yes.
- I would love to.
- That's very nice.
- That's very nice.
- Oh, I'll remember.
- OK.
- Just a photo of it.
- And I assume these Austrians who bought the house?
- Yes, yes.
- Yeah.
- Well, it's nice to see him also getting that kind of tribute
- in Austria.
- Lately they got to love him, just as the Poles.
- Yes.
- Oh, yes.
- Yes.
- When my father passed away, I remember
- in the Polish newspaper, Poland lost a son.
- Oh, yes.
- They were very proud of him.
- Suddenly, they were very proud of him.
- Yeah.
- Well, you know it was, I mean I remember your father telling me
- about how the Polish communist regime would
- try to plant disinformation about him and so forth.
- But they did that to any number of people.
- But that did not represent as you know, necessarily the view
- of Poland.
- No.
- No, no.
- But also, the Austrians got very proud
- of my father in later years, when
- he was more or less harmless.
- There was a letter to the editor.
- I remember.
- I liked it.
- And who said Waldheim affair, then Paulinka's father
- told me there was a letter in the newspapers there.
- There was a letter to the editor published
- in which an Austrian said suggested
- that Simon Wiesenthal should become
- the next president of Austria.
- During the Waldheim affair?
- He found it very funny.
- He said, no.
- Thank you very much.
- But silly.
- That's a nice sentiment.
- Nice sentiment.
- But also, it was good for the Austrians.
- I mean it gave them a good feeling
- to have somebody like my father.
- I mean we talk about later years.
- Yes.
- Because everybody blamed the Austrians
- of not doing anything, or at least very, very little.
- And then they could say, but look--
- Yeah.
- Although your father was very tough
- on the Austrians when he wanted--
- He was?
- And deservedly so on a number of things, but--
- but I think given the battle, over for instance Waldheim,
- he was trying to put it in some sort of perspective,
- which as you say on the American side.
- There was often no understanding of it.
- He kept this integrity.
- He said, explicitly, Waldheim, an extremely unpleasant liar.
- Yeah.
- But he never did any war crimes.
- Or he cannot prove--
- I cannot say that.
- And the Americans, of course, they knew that also.
- But they wanted something like what I said before.
- Sometimes you use words in order-- you've
- got a totally different aim.
- And they used it against him.
- That's something else.
- But to put him on the list of unwanted persons,
- I mean to bar him from entering the States was already
- something very dramatic.
- Oh, yes.
- Before even proving whether he was a war criminal or not.
- Yes.
- They made him a war criminal before--
- before they had the information.
- Yeah.
- Before the end?
- Before they had any information, whether he was or he wasn't.
- That's almost not enough information to say so,
- and it was never confirmed.
- No, no.
- I mean there is certainly enough information
- to confirm that Waldheim, as your father put it,
- was an opportunist, a liar, concealed a huge amount,
- and it was his claims that he knew nothing
- about what was happening in the Balkans
- and in Salonika were of course absurd.
- He was an intelligence officer.
- I think that in later years, I assume
- Mr. Waldheim was very upset with himself that he
- had been so stupid to handle this affair in this way.
- If he would have come out and said, yes, I was there.
- Of course, I'm 40 years.
- I knew certain-- but I never did that.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And everything even the little bit he admitted,
- you had to drag--
- there had to be headlines.
- You had to drag it from him.
- We had the same story in Holland also.
- One of the politicians, same thing happened.
- No.
- I wasn't there.
- No, I didn't know anything.
- Right.
- Ah, they find out and you're lost.
- Yeah.
- Totally lost.
- Yeah, yeah.
- An idiot.
- Yeah.
- Well also your father, I think, I
- mean he had before that a relatively good relationship,
- I think, of Waldheim.
- Of course--
- I don't think he had any relationship with Waldheim.
- Didn't he, when he was Secretary General, didn't he
- some contacts?
- No, no.
- But I know, of course, he had his reasons
- he despised Kreisky, which was understandable,
- for all the things he did.
- But so I think his instinct was also
- not to be certainly cheering for the socialists.
- I think he had no--
- he wasn't in touch with Waldheim.
- I don't think there was any connection that I know of.
- Well, I think they did meet on a couple of occasions.
- There are a couple of records.
- But I don't think they were close in any way
- as far as I know.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Never heard of it.
- By the way, I was just getting back to the Klarsfelds,
- I was going to say it was interesting.
- I also asked them about your father.
- And they were very--
- they said, look.
- We had a difference in tactics, a different approach.
- And of course on Waldheim, Wiesenthal
- was in a very different situation in Austria.
- But he did a tremendous amount, and they were very--
- they did not--
- I'm sure there were tensions.
- But they seemed-- they were generally
- very positive about his role.
- But you see, this is the key word, the tactics.
- My father had very set ideas what
- the tactic was going to be, and how to score success.
- What was the way to get to the goal.
- Right, right.
- And in that respect, I think he was
- very like he only saw his way.
- Right.
- This was his way.
- And he--
- Which proved excellently.
- Which proved in an excellent way, but--
- anyway, people are different.
- And the approach is different.
- And it can be argued, I think, that both approaches had
- their roles.
- For instance, Beate Klarsfeld was incredibly confrontational.
- She was a little crazy at times, frankly,
- in some of the things she did, and some of the risks she took.
- And there was a backlash.
- But it also, in Germany, particularly
- stirred things up in a way--
- Absolutely.
- Absolutely.
- Because if not, everything will go to sleep.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Because this is such an ugly topic, such an ugly issue.
- Yes.
- You know, nobody wants to touch this.
- Right.
- So unless you really they put your nose into,
- you're really confronted with it, why deal with it at all?
- And then you know, she also had her hand in it and making them
- smell--
- Oh, yeah.
- The stink.
- Yes.
- Oh, she did.
- And even Serge, who as you say is
- the one sort of the more in the background and so forth.
- But he had that one case where I don't
- know if you remember in Frankfurt where he actually
- pulled a gun on--
- I can't remember whether it was Haugen or one of the Gestapo
- people from France.
- And he said, well, it wasn't loaded.
- And I said, well, weren't you worried
- that he might have a gun.
- He said, well it was cold.
- We both had gloves on.
- None of us would--
- neither of us would have been able to pull the trigger.
- Oh, my God.
- Yeah, this was Serge, who was just much more academic.
- Yeah.
- So yeah.
- But that's, yeah, that's a very different style
- to say the least.
- I think that also another difference
- between the Klarsfelds and your father
- is they had completely different reservoirs.
- Your father had those were all those well-known and famous
- criminals, the superior.
- Klarsfled, I know Barbie, but more--
- I would say--
- Yeah, but it was very important for France.
- Yes, it was definitely.
- It was very, very important.
- It was a local--
- But you automatically the fame of the world
- with all those people.
- Yeah, but it was a local operation.
- It was extremely important.
- Yes, Yes.
- The Barbie case.
- Yeah.
- It was extremely important.
- But you're right.
- I mean the-- it was actually one of the American historians
- of the Holocaust who I talked to made exactly the same point.
- He said the Klarsfelds had a very important role in terms
- of-- but focus primarily on France, and the occupation,
- and those who were responsible for what happened in France.
- Well, while Wiesenthal had a much more global role
- in this the whole pursuit of justice.
- But yeah, I think that's the division.
- They chose to focus on that, and did quite a lot there.
- Absolutely.
- They were very successful.
- Yeah.
- I'm just trying to think.
- Also any other stories not necessarily
- related exactly to the work, to these tensions,
- about your father.
- I'm just trying in terms of his personality,
- in terms of the dynamic at home, or anything
- that you think that comes to mind, particularly
- in terms of it's always nice to have
- a few glimpses from the inside of a family,
- not just the narrative of the public face.
- I was approached-- this I can tell you.
- I was approached by two schoolgirls
- from 17 years old or whatever, who
- decided to do some work about my father for their--
- School project.
- Here?
- In Israel.
- Yes.
- And they send me a list of questions.
- I think they were, before going to Poland,
- the Israeli groups in Israel school go to Poland.
- And then they have preparing in advance.
- And they need to--
- Right.
- So they sent me a list of questions.
- And what they really wanted to know who was the man.
- I mean you can read a lot and.
- You can google him up as long as you want.
- Right, right.
- And who was the man?
- And what did he do, and how did you feel, and so on, and so on?
- And I do remember.
- I wrote to them.
- I gave them a few illustrations.
- And I said to them, he was a man who was absolutely convinced
- that there needs to be justice, the absolute concept of justice
- was for him something that was foremost.
- He was also a man who did not spare himself.
- He would do things for somebody else.
- He was a good man.
- He was an emotional man.
- A generous man.
- He was a generous man.
- I mean is was poverty, things like that.
- He would go out of his way for doing things for other people.
- And yeah.
- He was totally dedicated to what he was doing.
- Yes.
- And I gave them an example my husband was
- studying in Utrecht, and he couldn't get a book.
- The book was out of print, and the library had
- only one or two copies, it was.
- And I don't know how it got to my father.
- But my father heard this in Vienna.
- And he went to the University library
- got out the book, 400 pages.
- Took the book.
- Went to the office, and stayed there
- and copied because this was the way they
- did it, page after page, after page, after page.
- And sent this all.
- The whole manuscript.
- He would do.
- He would do things.
- He would do things for other people.
- Yes.
- Did you ever have the sense that he--
- in every one of these cases, where whichever group you
- investigate, there were a few miss-identifications,
- for instance, that the US Justice Department had.
- You know of course, about Demjanjuk originally
- being the wrong--
- I mean he was guilty, but not of what he was accused
- of originally, and so forth.
- Did you ever hear your father say
- that he felt that anything had any accusation--
- anyone he identified somewhere and somehow
- been wrong on anything?
- It was definitely about Mengele.
- Yes.
- Oh yes, well yes.
- Yes, he was wrong on Mengele, yes, as so many people were.
- Yeah.
- Paulinka's father had-- was a man--
- we are both psychologists.
- So maybe that influences what we say.
- Are you both psychologists?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- I said to a week ago, I don't know.
- We were talking.
- And I said, he had the most fantastic self-confidence.
- You could say to him, what is 2 times 3.
- And he would say 7.
- No problem.
- But, there's a big but--
- if you could prove to him, no 6, you said.
- Oh, OK.
- He had no problem--
- Admitting.
- Admitting.
- Yeah.
- A mistake, yeah?
- Yeah, in that respect he was a great man, definitely.
- I don't also know whether he was fed wrong information.
- I mean he had a network of informants all over the place.
- And I don't know who fed him what information.
- And I think that whether the information was right or wrong,
- he kept the things alive.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Every time it hit the newspapers,
- whether he was in Honolulu, or he was in China,
- or he was in Argentina-- it doesn't matter.
- It kept it alive.
- Yeah.
- And every time then in the newspapers
- it was repeated who Mengele was, and what he did, and so on.
- Right.
- The interest, this also helped not
- to let the interest die down.
- Yeah.
- But I also think that it's quite infantile
- to blame the man for mistakes that he made.
- I mean he was a model, at least did these things.
- So can you make mistakes, what do you do?
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Did he talk to you about his work
- when you were a child, what he was doing?
- No.
- Never.
- Never.
- Really?
- Never, until the Eichmann trial, nothing, absolutely nothing.
- And what did he-- do you remember what he
- said about the Eichmann trial?
- I saw him on television.
- Oh really?
- I saw him on television.
- I remember this.
- By the way, when you mentioned Demjanjuk,
- about Demjanjuk he said to me, I'm
- convinced that the man is the criminal.
- Yeah.
- Definitely.
- We can't prove it.
- That they should not hang him.
- They should not.
- No, because we can't prove it.
- Yes.
- But he--
- And he got a retrial.
- Himself, he was convinced that he was Ivan.
- Yes.
- He was convinced that he was.
- Yeah, well a lot of people were.
- Yes.
- But there were so many people manipulating.
- Look, the Russians was the card, was the [NON-ENGLISH] card,
- and God knows what was behind.
- We saw Oliver was on the outside.
- And-- right.
- Well of course, a lot of these cases
- did originate in what became Soviet territory.
- So that was a frequent complaint of the Baltic community
- in the United States, saying when the Justice Department
- began chasing some of the Lithuanians, Latvians,
- and others.
- They're saying, oh, you're operating
- with Soviet information.
- Yeah.
- But a lot of that information though were original records.
- But it did raise doubts.
- And that also was one of the reasons some judges would not
- accept that evidence.
- You asked Paulinka whether her father talked to her,
- he couldn't.
- Because when we married, Paulinka was 19 years old.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- So before that, she was actually a child.
- To the mother, he couldn't talk, because the mother was
- an extremely anxious person.
- It was-- to me--
- She was scared.
- She was scared.
- She was scared.
- I did know obviously, after Eichmann, didn't know.
- Yes, of course.
- But we didn't share.
- I understand.
- Why not?
- Yeah.
- Did he do anything fun with you, for fun, like going to--
- I don't know amusement parks?
- I definitely did.
- We definitely did.
- He was an avid collector.
- He liked to collect anything.
- So we used to go to the woods.
- And he would collect, we would collect strawberries.
- We would go here.
- He loved, loved going places, and took me along collecting.
- You know that he was a very famous stamp collector.
- Yes.
- That I-- yeah.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- And he was, if you want something personal,
- I mean I'm also stamp collector.
- I collect this and that, et cetera.
- About he collected almost the whole world.
- Really?
- It was simply unbelievable.
- He was global.
- He was unbelievable.
- In every sense.
- It was unbelievable what that man did.
- Yes.
- And you know, so he collected among other things,
- Sicily, Sicily very interesting stamps,
- were only used for a couple of years.
- And he said, of course, Sicily, they were rare.
- After all, who could read and write to Sicily?
- So that was one of the reasons why I started to collect it.
- And besides that, Rothschild, he also collected Sicily.
- Yeah, really?
- Even Russians.
- Yeah.
- And you see, when I started talking to--
- Excuse me, and then I applaud for that.
- That is self-confidence.
- Yes, nice.
- Yeah.
- I'm not less than Rothschild.
- Right, right.
- He was and wasn't like that.
- But they say this little man out of Galicia,
- this little nobody with no background, with no money,
- with no nothing--
- look what this man achieved.
- And this he did because there were no--
- like [NON-ENGLISH] says.
- And he did what actually almost no one of us did,
- and what had to be done.
- He had this feeling, if I want, you can do it,
- and I will do it, irrespective of, despite of.
- When you mentioned picking up strawberries,
- did he ever go mushroom picking?
- Mushrooms?
- No.
- That's so--
- That we do.
- That's so Polish.
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- But he did not do that?
- He didn't do that.
- He, they don't dare.
- Because he was very careful.
- Mushrooms, in let's say, in Europe, are edible,
- can be poisonous.
- Oh, yes.
- Yes.
- So even we go mushroom picking.
- Oh, yeah, you do?
- So what did he do with his wife, with your mother?
- Did they go to the movies, theaters?
- What did they do for fun?
- I mean not for fun, just for pleasure?
- What did they do for fun?
- They had a few friends, not much.
- Very little, of watching TV, and then her mother
- usually did not want to participate in things.
- So when he was invited by someone whom he liked
- very much, Cardinal Cooney.
- Yes.
- Yes?
- Yes.
- He liked him very much, appreciated it.
- But the mother--
- Did not go.
- My mother didn't like the limelight.
- No.
- So in the beginning, in the first years when I was a kid,
- my mother said we have to go on a holiday.
- A holiday?
- After all, everybody goes on holiday.
- So my father said, yeah, that's a good idea.
- That's a good idea.
- What about we'll rent some thing.
- You go with the child.
- And I'll go up in the weekends.
- So this was the idea of holiday.
- And I remember later, when he actually came,
- I don't know where they went to the first time,
- that he was going to stay there for a week, which was a lot.
- And after three days, he said, and that's
- the famous saying of him.
- I'm so terribly rested now already.
- That's a good one.
- Well, it sounds like my father was the same way in some ways.
- He would-- if you went away for a week,
- I remember after a couple of days
- he would be pacing, saying what do we have to do?
- It's like, yeah.
- That's right.
- You know, what's on the schedule today?
- But the stamps, it's interesting.
- Of course, you probably know the story of the Baron in 1953
- who told him about Eichmann in Argentina.
- That this was apparently started over his stamp collection.
- I forget.
- There was something about a Baron had a stamp collection.
- Oh, but that was not Eichmann.
- That was about-- wasn't from [NON-ENGLISH]..
- No, no this was about Eichmann.
- This was Eichmann, because there was
- a Baron who told your father.
- He was showing him some stamps, as I recall.
- And
- No, there was a cover, and then he saw the actors.
- But I may be wrong.
- Apparently, as you see, I haven't
- got the same kind of self-confidence
- as Paulinka's father had.
- But I don't think it was Eichmann.
- I remember.
- He saw the cover.
- And he-- he memorized the address.
- It was the one--
- the one who was--
- the one who was living at that time in Italy.
- Who was that?
- Oh, in Italy that was not [NON-ENGLISH]..
- No.
- No, but
- He got [INAUDIBLE] 0-0-4-6.
- [GERMAN] I don't know.
- 4-6?
- Excuse me one moment.
- Sure.
- [NON-ENGLISH]
- Iapovich.
- Iapovich.
- If I'm not mistaken, this was about Iapovich.
- No, no, no, no.
- That's why I say if I'm not mistaken.
- So and not about Eichmann, according to me.
- According to me, it was Eichmann.
- Yeah, I'm--
- To me it was Eichmann, he was from Austria.
- But I've never heard of any covers with Eichmann's address.
- No, he didn't have his address at the time.
- He only got the report that Eichmann
- was in Argentina, or Buenos Aires, depending which--
- Wasn't it somewhere in [NON-ENGLISH]??
- Well, [NON-ENGLISH],, that was another report earlier.
- Yes.
- But at that time, because it became such a source
- of controversy when did the Israelis
- first hear about Eichmann in Argentina.
- And your father certainly told them Argentina.
- How much detail there was beyond that, I don't know.
- But that became part of Harel's whole argument saying, oh no.
- It wasn't useful information.
- Wasn't it?
- Yeah.
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- What was the connection between Rayakovich and Holland?
- Why do I think of Holland also?
- I don't know.
- I don't remember.
- Then again, it's easy to find.
- That's easy.
- It's very simple.
- Yeah, it's easy.
- Written in the book.
- Yeah.
- Not in [NON-ENGLISH],, but the murderers among us.
- Yes, Yeah, I have those books.
- I don't have [NON-ENGLISH] Eichmann.
- I just have a couple of excerpts from it.
- But--
- Is it still available?
- It seems to be very hard to get it.
- But the antiquarian can--
- Yeah, I'm sure probably you can dig it up somewhere.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- No, that will not happen to [NON-ENGLISH]..
- Of course, I can get it.
- Yes.
- Yes, I know.
- I know.
- I know.
- These days--
- I thought when I was growing up, my father was omnipotent.
- I absolutely was convinced.
- He would pull me out of every block of every problem.
- He could find a solution for everything.
- I had this holy conviction.
- He was ingenious man.
- I had the holy conviction that this man could do anything.
- Did he know how to swim?
- Did he know how to swim?
- No.
- You see?
- He tried.
- Well--
- He was Jewish.
- No, because so many men who grew up in Poland
- before the war did not swim.
- No.
- Could not swim.
- They could do a lot of wonderful, brave things.
- But like you said that he would do anything
- to pick you up from any danger.
- But if you-- this swimming.
- I would have drowned convinced that he still could do it.
- That's funny.
- Well, listen, Thank you so much.
- This is wonderful to meet you, and to--
- You're most welcome.
- And I still don't understand what,
- because I'm also trying to--
- [INTERPOSING VOICES]
- What can you do with this?
- It's like pieces of a puzzle.
- I will have my own interviews with your father.
- I have the various other statements he made, his books.
- I have other comments from people talking about him.
- Now yours gives him more a little bit more
- of a personal dimension.
- And through a couple of those stories
- I think there are some, as you say,
- a little bit of a psychological portrait which
- which is terribly helpful.
- But I can't tell you exactly how all these pieces
- will be put together.
- Do you have a publisher already?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- It's the same one as for this book, Simon and Schuster,
- who's been my publisher now for four books.
- And they are interested?
- They are.
- In spite of everything that has already been written.
- It's still [INAUDIBLE] out there.
- It's interesting.
- Well, also I think it also is in part this previous book.
- When I started, you say something about the Nazi era,
- in the '20s and '30s, what else can you do?
- Because there was so much.
- But I think-- and I wasn't sure at the beginning.
- And then I found that by looking at it
- through a different angle, through the stories
- of these Americans, it looks quite different.
- And the book did for me quite well.
- That was what you say for one very simple reason, when
- I look at the TV programs--
- Yes.
- --the unbelievable quantity of films about the war,
- and again, you see the Germans with their helmets.
- Helmets.
- Helmets, yeah, and with their boots, et cetera.
- And I say to Paulinka, look what they have brought over
- themselves.
- So many years.
- It keeps coming back and back.
- You can't get-- the world cannot get rid of it anymore.
- Yeah.
- There was this German TV series.
- What was it called?
- Father--
- [NON-ENGLISH].
- Did you see this?
- It was a miniseries in German.
- And it's a story of five young people in Germany
- at the beginning of the war.
- Actually it starts in '41.
- Historically, it is really not well done.
- It's dramatically well done.
- But historically it's so inaccurate.
- One of the five is a Jewish young man.
- Then there are two brothers, both who go into the Wehrmacht.
- And then two women, one who is a singer, one who
- becomes a nurse on the front.
- But it's supposed to show a more human dimension.
- But you begin to feel--
- you clearly because they are the main characters,
- you see the story through their eyes.
- But they do some terrible things.
- But they're always, the Germans in this movie,
- are the main characters are always their conscience
- is bothering them.
- They are very conflicted, and it's only
- the people on the sidelines who are doing really bad things.
- And--
- But not the Germans.
- Not the Germans.
- And at one point they have the Polish partisans
- being horrible with the Jews.
- You know?
- And while the Germans are left off the hook.
- And it's interesting.
- I mean it's just also the Jewish character in 1941
- is still having conversations with his parents
- who are in total denial in 1941.
- I can see that in the '30s.
- But by 1941 in Berlin.
- You need to be blind.
- They'd be blind.
- So it was interesting psychologically
- I think what this was trying to do.
- But I think the Germans, as you know,
- I think have been very good in confronting
- a lot of their history better than most people have been.
- But--
- And it was a very popular series.
- But I think it's a very misleading bit popular culture.
- At the very end, you feel really sorry for the Germans
- that they really went through so much.
- They didn't want to be involved.
- It just happened to them.
- But really, you feel very sorry that--
- I pity the children.
- Well, children and grandchildren, you're right.
- To have to live with that past.
- You haven't done anything yourself.
- Yes, yeah.
- For those I do.
- This is on your back.
- I studied in Vienna together with somebody,
- and then I got married and left.
- And he went back to Germany.
- He was from Germany.
- And many years later, they came to Israel, he
- and his wife and son came to Israel.
- And they did the rounds, and they looked at the country.
- And every night they came to us to tell us
- what he had been doing.
- And once they came back and they were
- so terribly down and depressed.
- And I said, what was up today?
- He said we went to Yad Vashem.
- They took this organized tour.
- They were on the bus, with the Americans, the Canadians,
- the French, and so on.
- And they said, we were so uptight.
- We didn't dare to speak.
- Because-- and then we came there to Yad Vashem.
- This was still the old Yad Vashem.
- He said, I wanted to sink into the ground.
- Yes.
- We felt so bad.
- It was so terrible.
- Yeah.
- No, I always remember I met the son of Hans Frank, Nicholas
- Frank, who was a journalist about 10 years older than me.
- But I met him in the '90s.
- And he told me, of course, Hans Frank was hung at Nuremberg.
- He said, and he remembers at age eight going into visit
- his father for the last time.
- And he said, my father still pretended nothing had happened
- and everything is OK.
- And I really have always resented that.
- Because I could have understood at least
- to learn a lesson from his life.
- And he said, I am a liberal European.
- I do not believe in the death penalty.
- But for one person it was justified for my father.
- Yeah.
- That's the same.
- God forbid.
- God forbid.
- And that has nothing to do with who you are.
- But it becomes part of you.
- Yeah.
- Anyway, well thank you, again.
- My pleasure.
- I hope we didn't take too much--
- Can we take a picture of you?
Overview
- Interviewee
- Paulinka Kreisberg
Gerard Kreisberg - Interviewer
- Andrew Nagorski
- Date
-
interview:
2014
- Credit Line
- Permanent Collection. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Gift of Andrew Nagorski
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 digital file : MP3.
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Personal Name
- Kreisberg, Paulinka.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Andrew Nagorski donated the interview with Paulinka Kreisberg (née Wiesenthal) and Gerard Kreisberg to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016. Nagorski recorded the interview during his research for his book "The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi."
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:40:10
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn562479
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Also in Andrew Nagorski collection
Materials related to research conducted by Nagorski into topics related to the history of the Holocaust and World War II. Includes the extended draft of an article about Auschwitz written by Nagorski, 1995, and published version of same as it appeared in Newsweek, 16 January 1995, sound recordings of interviews of historical eyewitnesses, historians, and others interviewed by Nagorski during his career at Newsweek, and while writing his books “Hitlerland” and “The Nazi Hunters,” transcripts of interviews, and other related research (and other) materials.
Andrew Nagorski papers
Document
Collection consists of transcripts of interviews conducted by Nagorski, primarily in preparation for a cover story on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, written for publication in Newsweek magazine in January 1995. The collection consists of a typescript of the full version of the article; the shortened, public version as it appeared in Newsweek; and transcripts of related interviews that Nagorski conducted in the years following this article. In addition to interviews with Polish and Russian former prisoners of Auschwitz, mostly conducted in the early 1990s, the collection of transcripts also includes interviews with German president Richard von Weizsäcker; Manfred Rommel, the son of General Erwin Rommel; and Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, the Nazi administrator of occupied Poland who was tried and executed by the Allies at the International Criminal Tribunal in Nuremberg.
Oral history interview with Richard Hottelet
Oral History
Oral history interview with Angus Thuermer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Richard Staar
Oral History
Oral history interview with Władysław Bartoszewski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Henryk Mandelbaum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Chaya Kroin
Oral History
Oral history interview with Zygmunt Zins
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rafal Molski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Stella Madej
Oral History
Oral history interview with Adam Dobrzanski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Yisrael Gutman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Albert Grinholtz
Oral History
Albert Grinholtz, born on December 4, 1920 in Opoczno, Poland, discusses his family’s move to Paris, France in 1922 (he went with his father first and then his mother and little brother arrived later); being summoned along with his younger brother to register at the commissariat de police on May 14, 1941; being taken to the Gare d’Austerlitz and sent to Pithiviers, where he stayed for 13 months; being deported on June 25, 1942 to Auschwitz-Birkenau by cattle car, while his parents remained behind in Paris; the conditions of deportation and arrival in Birkenau; how the camp was not yet completed and the men were housed in the women’s barracks; the daily routine, brutality, and construction work brigade; being selected as one of 22 barbers to shave daily both the Germans and prisoners, about 450 men a day, and this work providing him with a bit more food; working on the construction of an Olympic pool in Birkenau, which was used for Nazi propaganda; his work cutting fuelwood for the mines nearby; the situation in January 1945 as the Germans began their retreat and the evacuation and murder of Jewish prisoners; hiding in the kitchen, unseen in the chaos, and being liberated later; being evacuated to Marseille, France on June 18, 1945; going to Budapest, Hungary and Bucharest, Romania, where he was taken care of by the Joint; and returning to Paris.
Oral history interview with Helena Wrona
Oral History
Oral history interview with Kazimierz Smolen
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jerzy Tabeau
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marek Edelman
Oral History
Marek Edelman discusses his participation in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Oral history interview with Manfred Rommel
Oral History
Manfred Rommel discusses his father Erwin Rommel's plot against Hitler.
Oral history interview with Martin Walser
Oral History
Oral history interview with Jan Karski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Helena Slezynska
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gabriel Bach
Oral History
Oral history interview with Deidre Berger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Black
Oral History
Oral history interview with Monika Boll
Oral History
Oral history interview with Harold Burson
Oral History
Oral history interview with Allan Ryan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Piotr Cywinski
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sam Donaldson
Oral History
Oral history interview with Rafi Eitan
Oral History
Oral history interview with Benjamin Ferencz
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Heidenberger
Oral History
Oral history interview with Marvin Hier
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elizabeth Holtzman
Oral History
Oral history interview with Joseph Lelyveld
Oral History
Oral history interview with David Marwell
Oral History
Oral history interview with Martin Mendelsohn
Oral History
Oral history interview with Herman Obermayer
Oral History
Oral history interview with Krzysztof Persak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Harry Phillips
Oral History
Oral history interview with Eli Rosenbaum
Oral History
Oral history interview with Avraham Shalom
Oral History
Oral history interview with Bernhard Schlink
Oral History
Oral history interview with Efraim Zuroff
Oral History
Oral history interview with Elizabeth White
Oral History
Genocide panel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Gerald Schwab
Oral History
Oral history interview with Ilona Ziok
Oral History
Oral history interview with Irmtrud Wojak
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Schneider
Oral History
Oral history interview with Peter Sichel
Oral History
Oral history interview with Sandra Schulberg
Oral History
Sehn Institute
Oral History
Oral history interview with Thomas Will
Oral History