Oral history interview with Eleanor Weile
Transcript
- Did you lose any?
- I don't think so.
- OK.
- I actually don't know.
- I lost my train of thought there.
- I do that.
- With like the Gestapo and stuff like that, you said that they--
- you had the people ratting on each other, essentially,
- in order--
- you said that you had noticed that?
- Notice what now?
- Like people turning in--
- like you said about--
- if they had a neighbor who was hiding
- a Jew or something like that.
- You think that was one of the--
- I don't know-- something that could be to blame?
- It happened everywhere, and it happened in every country
- because there were Nazis everywhere.
- There were Nazis in Holland.
- Do you think--
- It wasn't very strong, but it was there,
- and it was in every other country, too.
- In Norway they called them the Quislings.
- You might have heard that word.
- And he was a Nazi, and whoever followed
- him was a Quisling, so.
- And that happened everywhere, but it wasn't predominant.
- The Germans would find people much more often
- than would the people that actually lived in the country.
- So you think it's more Nazi-motivated or economics?
- At that time it was more Nazism.
- [INAUDIBLE] I'll give you an idea.
- I was on my bicycle right in the middle-- in the center of town,
- and I was trying to get home.
- And in Holland, you have a license
- to ride a bike like you have a car license here.
- You also had one for your bicycle.
- And a policeman stopped me and wanted to see my license,
- but it's fastened onto the bike.
- And I showed it to him, and he said to me,
- may I see your identification card?
- Well, the Germans had given out identification cards.
- Everybody had a nice white card.
- We had a white card, too, but it had
- a big red J stamped on it, which identified us immediately
- as a Jew.
- He took one look and saw that red J.
- He said, get out of here right now.
- Make it home the fast way you can
- because they're going to start picking up people again.
- That was a Dutch policeman.
- See?
- They were still on our side, too, and I got home all right.
- But that's the way we defended ourselves.
- People were everywhere.
- Wherever they could help you they would.
- I have a girlfriend.
- She still lives in Amsterdam.
- She's not Jewish, but the whole family was in the underground.
- She was 17 years old and took, one
- by one, 75 Jewish babies out of Amsterdam
- and distributed those babies up in the northern part of Holland
- to farmers and people that lived there that would
- take a child in their home.
- And they kept them until the war was over,
- and those children were saved.
- She ran munition.
- They delivered underground newspapers.
- Her home-- at least 20 people every night were hiding there.
- Her father made a hiding place just like the Franks did,
- but he did it in the bathroom.
- He had a place there that he opened up,
- and 17 people could slip in in that space,
- and then he would close it off.
- And they would have to stay there, no coughing,
- no sneezing, no nothing until the Gestapo had
- left the house again.
- It was pretty tight and pretty dangerous
- because that would have been killed if they
- found them, all of them.
- And that's just the way the Dutch were.
- Everybody tried to help as much as they could,
- except the ones that became Nazis,
- and there weren't that many of them,
- considering the population.
- And that's all before camp.
- So have you-- have you seen Schindler's List?
- Yes.
- Did you see it?
- What did you think of it?
- I haven't seen it yet.
- You haven't?
- I can't believe that.
- Well, what the kids usually ask me is, did you
- see Schindler's List?
- Yes, I did.
- Did you?
- Yes, ma'am.
- And then they want to know, was it real?
- And I say, did you see it in black and white?
- Yes, ma'am.
- I said, well, it was so real I saw it in glorious color.
- And that's not a lie either.
- I've been there, and the camps I was in were worse.
- Of course, a regular concentration camp
- was certainly worse as what Schindler had,
- and it was pretty bad.
- It wasn't a place where you really want it to be.
- Yes, it was very real.
- Did it bring back negative feelings or--
- Well--
- Since you-- you talk about this stuff a lot, so I don't--
- I wouldn't think it would.
- Yes.
- Yes, it did.
- And then, again, well, I've seen all of this before.
- It is 50 years later.
- It was not a fun movie to watch, but it was a very realistic
- movie to watch.
- And I'm glad I did see it.
- Because I have family and friends--
- my husband would not have gone.
- Bless his heart, he was so tender-hearted.
- It would have absolutely done him in.
- See, I was wondering because I know--
- I'm surprised you said you haven't seen it,
- as a history buff.
- Well, I'm-- my time--
- I'm not very good with my time.
- No, you have to learn.
- Well, my friend's dad--
- You can get it on tape now, can't you?
- I believe what I'm going to do-- see, the thing is, I have a--
- I want to watch it on my LaserDisc player, which--
- you get real good sound and everything,
- but we don't have a LaserDisc place down in Starkville
- because it's in the middle of nowhere.
- So I haven't rented--
- because I don't want to rent it on video because the sound--
- the sound really-- it can-- especially with the type
- of system I have--
- I have like a home theater system,
- so I would like to get it on LaserDisc so I can get the--
- I'll get the theater wide, and I'll get the pure--
- you get a different movie because some people say--
- I can show you a movie on a video
- and then show it on my system, and you'll
- get a totally different effect in order to do it justice.
- You know, I have a hearing aid on, so it's a little bit better
- now.
- But I just got it.
- Stereo didn't mean a thing to me with one ear.
- You do have two.
- See?
- You can be in this apartment and holler, Dickie,
- and I'll say, where are you, and you'll say, here.
- It means nothing, absolutely--
- I can't tell where the sound came from.
- It's a bit better now, but stereo sound
- wouldn't mean a thing to me, not now.
- Did you see?
- Yeah.
- But the reason I ask about the movie is because I have--
- a friend of mine's dad--
- he was in the Vietnam War, and a couple of the movies--
- he went to see one of them, and it was so realistic to him
- that he ended up having a lot of problems with it afterwards
- because he hadn't really been having the nightmares
- and stuff like that in a long time
- or waking up in cold sweats or whatever.
- And he started having them again after he had seen
- a movie that was that real.
- OK, let me say it to you this way.
- Don't worry about the laser thing.
- It's so realistic.
- You have plenty of it on a video.
- The one that you might be too real for you.
- Well, I like that--
- the thing is, especially with movies like that,
- Spielberg in particular with this orchestra and stuff
- like that, it really, really comes through real well
- because I have my five speakers, so you get the pure--
- it's like you are--
- --in it.
- --in-- and it's definitely a difference.
- I'm sure.
- And I can just imagine when--
- the next step in watching movies as far as being there--
- because it's really amazing.
- My friends-- I've kind of impressed them with some movies
- because you have this-- it sounds like the guy's
- behind you.
- And if you are watching on video,
- you don't get the same effect.
- And you really get some--
- and I'm sure Schindler's List does this, which--
- it's not really a good thing, but it gets the effect across.
- In movies where there's a beating or something like that,
- you feel it, really.
- I mean that's--
- And that's what I'm trying to--
- that might be a little bit much--
- Well--
- --because it is very realistic already.
- I guess there's a-- you have to draw the line somewhere
- because it's--
- I don't know.
- It's like you get to a certain point
- where it's kind of like how they were
- training a lot of the guards--
- Oh, there were [BOTH TALKING] of guards shooting and so on.
- --to practice to where they got numb to what
- they were doing and seeing.
- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.
- And that's-- I don't know.
- I'm sure-- you said you saw a lot of stuff go on, so was it
- hard for you to--
- you have part of you wanting to become
- numb to it and part of you--
- Well, I told you this before.
- And you have to learn it.
- You have to learn to do it.
- You have to turn off your mind.
- It's important really have to do that.
- And if you don't, you succumb to it.
- You just can't take it anymore.
- And that's exactly what we didn't want to do.
- We were going to prove we could make it, and we did make it.
- There was only one time when my friend and I
- hung on each other, literally.
- You have to realize we weighed at that point--
- it was near the end, but it wasn't the end yet.
- We all weighed 88 pounds.
- That was it.
- We didn't get to eat hardly anything.
- And we said to each other, I don't want any more,
- just leaning, and then within that next second
- we said, uh-uh.
- And we drew enough strength again to continue again.
- We were going to make it.
- We didn't know that, if we would or not.
- But we sure thought positive at most times.
- So it's almost like trying to not let them get--
- Yeah, kind of in a dream world anyway.
- Keep them from getting--
- --to you.
- --and letting them-- give in to what they--
- Felt they were--
- --what they wanted anyway.
- That's right.
- See, we were-- we were making--
- as I say, near the end, we were in Hamburg at that time,
- in the camp, and they wanted us to dig tank traps.
- What are tank traps?
- OK.
- They wanted to dig 3-meter-deep--
- from the top, 3 meters down, coming to a point,
- and 3 meter wide.
- So you can see this tank comes, and it gets to the edge.
- There's nothing there.
- It topples down, and it stands straight up.
- And there's no way to get out that way.
- Well, first of all, we didn't want
- to build that because it was for the Americans.
- Let's face it.
- They weren't our enemy.
- But we were so weak--
- imagine that you barely have any strength anymore to start with.
- You have shovels that--
- a good-sized shovel.
- And it has a handle, and it was one and a half time as tall
- as I am.
- And you stand in the bottom, and you
- tried to get some dirt up and throw it up 3 meters,
- 3 yards high.
- Uh-uh.
- You haven't got the strength.
- Besides, it was raining.
- That dirt was so heavy, you have no idea.
- That was hard, hard, hard work.
- And that's when we came to conclusion
- we didn't want to live any longer
- and this was not worth it anymore.
- And then within the next second, yes, we're
- going to do it anyway.
- Tough, yes.
- It was tough.
- Did you know-- towards the end, did you know what was--
- or did you kind of gather what was going on as far as the war?
- We never had any radios or anything like that.
- I can tell you, however, that we arrived in Auschwitz on D-Day.
- Did you know in history when D-Day was?
- Switched-- I'm trying to make sure I don't get--
- It's my most important day.
- It's not June 6.
- Yes, it is.
- June 6?
- It's my birthday.
- June 6 is my birthday, and in June 6, 1944
- I arrived in Auschwitz.
- What a present.
- I got a number stamped in my arm.
- That was my present from the Germans.
- That's not a pleasant affair either.
- The pen that they used looked much like a ballpoint pen,
- and what they did-- they grabbed your arm,
- and they had that number in front of them.
- That was the next one up.
- There's a sharp pin here, and they just
- made in dots until they have the whole number.
- So you-- each time you feel this,
- it goes right into your skin.
- Didn't any of us cry.
- We weren't going to cry in front of a German in the first place,
- so certainly not then.
- It is painful, yes, but it is not that painful
- that you need to cry over it if you don't want to.
- But you get weak in the stomach.
- It kind of makes you nauseated.
- And then you look at it, and it's
- pitch-black ink and blood all coming out at the same time.
- It looks awful.
- And then they wipe it off and you can see partial number,
- but it swells up so that you really can't
- tell until several days later.
- And it's a weird feeling, very weird.
- And you know you can't get rid of it.
- It's in there for good.
- And the doctor took mine out--
- I was in Atlanta--
- after I arrived in the United States.
- And he had looked at it long enough as far
- as he was concerned.
- He was a neighbor.
- He was a surgeon.
- And he was a POW in Manila.
- He was taken by the Japanese and was one of their prisoners.
- He knew what I felt over that number.
- And you come to the United States,
- and it's nice and smooth.
- And you can see that whole number.
- And I worked in my aunt's store, and it was a men's store.
- So there are a lot of young men that
- came in wanting to buy something or another,
- and they'd see that number, and, hey, what you got?
- Is that your phone number?
- It gets pretty tiring.
- And this doctor just decided that I should have that out,
- and he took it out, didn't charge me.
- I told him I had only been here two months at that time.
- And he said, don't you want that out?
- I said, yes, I certainly do.
- But I said, I haven't got the money to pay.
- I haven't got that much money together yet.
- I've only been here two months.
- He said, did I ask you for money?
- No.
- He says, well, OK.
- I'll pick you up at 9:00 tomorrow morning.
- And he did and took me to the hospital,
- got himself a nurse in there in the operating room
- and took it out.
- And he brought me back home.
- So he got even with me.
- He took my appendix out six months later.
- Right.
- And he got his money another way.
- Yeah.
- He must-- he probably knew you're were probably going
- to have [INAUDIBLE].
- Right.
- When everybody kind of-- when it was over,
- what type of reactions were going around from--
- It's a really hard to describe the feeling
- because you really don't believe it yet.
- It's--
- --too good to be true.
- --it's so unreal.
- Yeah, it's so unreal.
- It is so unreal.
- And I remember arriving in Sweden.
- We were liberated by the Swedish Red Cross.
- And the head of the Swedish Red Cross was Count Bernadotte,
- and he stood at the water's edge as we arrived on our ferry
- from Copenhagen to Malmo, Sweden.
- He was standing there at the pier, and he spoke to us.
- We didn't understand anything he said.
- After all, that was Swedish.
- We hadn't heard that before.
- But we knew he was saying some very kind things just
- from facial expressions and from the tone of the voice.
- And we applauded like never before.
- We were so happy to be there.
- And you have no idea what we looked like.
- But there was a Dutch ligation that was in Malmo,
- all came to the pier, too, where they had been informed
- that we were all Dutchmen.
- At this particular point, we were by around 250 of us,
- and we were all transported to Sweden.
- And we were still on the ferry.
- Now, you have seen some homeless people,
- I'm sure, here and there.
- They're dressed well next to what we looked like.
- We were in shreds, literally.
- I mean we looked awful.
- And it said in the paper that night
- that the Dutch ligation was there, watching us come in.
- They didn't think these were their Dutchmen.
- What are they?
- A bunch of gypsies?
- They were absolutely amazed.
- They couldn't imagine that we were just
- ordinary Dutch people.
- And the way we looked-- and we were all so skinny and looked
- just--
- walking skeletons kind of.
- And you just couldn't imagine.
- And the questions that we hammered at them--
- suddenly heard somebody speak Dutch..
- Oh, wow, you know, oh.
- Then they identified themselves.
- They were on the pier.
- We were still on the ferry.
- And the first question we had--
- what are they going to do with us?
- Oh, they're going to take you to a public bathhouse.
- That was still common in Europe.
- And I'd never been in the bathhouse.
- We always had all the right facilities when we lived there.
- But anyway, and that was most amazing.
- To a bathhouse?
- We're going to get-- oh, yes, you're going to have showers.
- By golly, we went to the bathhouse,
- and there stood the tallest, blondest nurses,
- Swedish nurses, that you've ever seen,
- each with a bath soap in their hand and a brush this big.
- And we were brushed from top to bottom with soap and water,
- and we all looked like nice, little, young, pink pigs.
- All the dirt came off and the lice.
- We were full of lice.
- We never had lice until toward the end.
- They decided one day to turn the water off on us, not a drop.
- That went on for an entire month.
- We couldn't wash or keep clean or anything.
- That's when we got lice, and that's
- the most unpleasant feeling.
- They crawl, you know?
- Everywhere had lice.
- Awful.
- They start right behind the ear.
- As far as your relatives and stuff, did a lot of them--
- did they move at the same time as y'all did, or did they--
- Nobody left.
- Just--
- We were the only ones.
- We were there-- see, we left so early, in 1933.
- Most of my relatives left in '38 through '39.
- See, because that was about the--
- The end.
- I mean that was it.
- It was-- because back then or towards that time,
- that was when it was--
- it was being just shut off.
- It was cut off, and it certainly was cut off
- to the United States.
- The United States closed their doors.
- My family that still got out got as far as Cuba,
- and they had to stay in Cuba for a year
- before their quota numbers came up
- and they opened up the doors again.
- That's a little late.
- So most of your relatives got out of Germany itself?
- Or did they--
- Not most.
- Or just--
- On my father's side alone we lost 53 members,
- and I could not exactly find out how many on my mother's side.
- But they were of equal amounts.
- Like my father was one of six.
- My mother was one of six, and you multiply them.
- I don't know, but there must have been at least that many
- also on my mother's side.
- But I couldn't ask anybody because they weren't where
- I was.
- Up until what point did you did your family still have contact
- with those within Germany?
- As far as stuff going on like the pogroms and stuff--
- the Nuremberg laws--
- We got--
- --what type of reaction did you--
- We got some news, more than they did in Germany
- before they came to Holland.
- But we had better news, in other words,
- than they did have in Germany, and none of it was very good.
- And it became extremely more difficult to leave
- and to get out of Germany.
- But I'll tell you this-- my aunt got out, and she--
- with two boys, went to Cuba.
- When she came to the United States she had $25.
- That's all she could take out.
- And she came to Atlanta.
- The oldest boy was already there.
- He got out a little earlier.
- His number was up earlier.
- So he came to Atlanta, and we had some family there.
- Anyway, he went to work for a company that made slacks,
- men's slacks, and he got $12.50 a week,
- and then when my aunt came-- and they lived off that and could.
- Chicken was a quarter.
- Things were very cheap in our eyes now.
- And they saved money off of that, off that $12.50.
- They were tight with it.
- And one day she had saved off of that--
- had $75, and she went to a wholesale house in Atlanta.
- And the man heard her story and what they had been through,
- and then living in Cuba, and starting something there,
- and coming here, trying to start something in Atlanta, too.
- He extended her $750 worth of merchandise,
- and that set her up in a men's store.
- And when I came--
- I came in 1948--
- she had three men's stores.
- It was possible.
- And no welfare, uh-uh.
- We didn't do that.
- Do you think that some of your relatives waited a little
- longer because in '35--
- They still thought it was not going to happen.
- Because I know a lot of--
- from what I've been taught and what I've read,
- that it seems like a lot of people felt,
- once the Nuremberg laws were there,
- that Jews knew where they were not supposed to-- what they
- weren't supposed to do, so it kind of--
- it seems like [BOTH TALKING]
- You see, they felt they were Germans
- and that Hitler could not possibly succeed.
- They were wrong.
- And I'll say that to you this day.
- Don't ever, ever say it can't happen here.
- We already did that, and it did.
- It did happen.
- It started so small.
- Because they just-- like a lot of people said that some people
- felt that when they were--
- the laws were in effect that it's almost
- like they've been told where their place was, so some people
- felt safe since they--
- Oh, well, they told us--
- Since they were keeping--
- if they kept in their place, they felt like, well,
- then they were safe.
- Yeah, well--
- Was that-- you think that was--
- You weren't.
- You weren't safe, and they found that out, too.
- There was no way to be safe, not as a Jew, no way.
- It just wasn't there.
- But they had lived all their lives in that country,
- and they were a part of that country
- just like I'm a part of the country here.
- And it just-- that just couldn't be.
- But they found out, definitely.
- What do you think then?
- You don't think it happens here?
- Think what happens?
- I was denied buying a house twice in this country.
- If you didn't think that didn't hurt, I cried like a baby.
- I just couldn't believe it couldn't believe it.
- I was beside myself.
- It was so hard to take.
- I had come here because, and because wasn't there.
- Twice my mailbox was painted.
- If you had lit a cross in the middle of my lawn
- it couldn't have hurt any more.
- It does happen.
- And it was tough to take.
- Where-- was that in Atlanta?
- Mm-hm.
- What do you think--
- where did you think it came from, stuff like that?
- Was it the people or--
- OK.
- Let's see.
- Do you think that-- one thing that--
- like we learned with Hitler, his use of what
- was considered a race.
- Like Jews being a--
- The Aryan race.
- Well, I mean, on the other end, that there
- was such a thing as a Jewish race, and it wasn't a religion.
- Do you think that stuff like we've studied with--
- they played on scientific stuff like social Darwinism?
- They were playing on stuff that was not unusual.
- It wasn't just a German thing.
- They were using stuff that--
- studies from prominent scientists
- worldwide but applying it to the Jewish and Aryan--
- that concept.
- Do you think that-- you think--
- because one thing that the Nazis, I think,
- liked or one thing that--
- I wouldn't say-- like that you could, like the Orthodox
- Jews agreed that the Jews were a race, as we've read
- and stuff like that, that they were--
- that there was an actual Jewish race
- and that it wasn't a religion.
- And the Nazis kind of played upon that, like, well,
- if they think they're a race, then they must be at race.
- Do you think that was really--
- I can only really give you my opinion,
- and that's the way I think.
- I am an American, but I'm Jewish.
- Jewish is my religion.
- That's my thought.
- I never thought of it as a race.
- It always was a religion as far as I was concerned,
- as far as I knew.
- Do you think that the Orthodox say--
- Excuse me, but they are a little bit odd.
- Do you think that that hurt, though?
- Or do you think that was just a minor--
- or do you think that helped the Nazi cause in a sense?
- There is an old negative, and I cannot identify it as of right
- now.
- It must have fallen out--
- it must have fallen out of that book
- that I had out when my daughter was here.
- Just put it on there.
- I can possibly not lose it.
- OK, talking about race.
- I know I don't--
- of course, I don't see--
- it's a religion, but the way they played upon that--
- Oh, honey, they played on anything they could.
- Do you think that the fact that the Orthodox accepted that
- as being true, the race part-- do you think that--
- I have truly no idea.
- I don't know So much of it, with me,
- got lost because I couldn't go to school.
- Yeah, I couldn't be any blonder.
- I was almost white.
- I was two years old.
- If you don't think there's an Aryan picture,
- you haven't seen one.
- And one of the thing our teacher kind of--
- he was mocking or laughing about was the fact that Himmler was--
- I've met Mr. Himmler.
- --was big--
- I've seen him.
- --was big on that stuff, and he was--
- What about Hitler?
- He was so dark.
- Well, I mean as far as size and stature,
- it's peculiar that there was a--
- Goering was even smaller.
- Not Goering, Goebbels.
- Which one was the air guy, the air force?
- Goebbels.
- Goebbels was public-- like the PR man.
- Yeah, that's it.
- He was this big [INAUDIBLE].
- Because we were talking about--
- we've been discussing Himmler, and our teacher
- was showing the--
- and he paused it when they got the picture on the video
- and was showing how he seemed like he was about the guards
- you were talking about.
- Yeah.
- But--
- But he was so adamant in believing in the--
- Oh, God, and he could talk mile a minute.
- Everything was propaganda, and he was going.
- The way he said it was, in German, [SPEAKING GERMAN],,
- we will erase them all.
- And the way he said it, you could see
- the eraser go and erase us all.
- And that's the way he talked.
- Because to think that it's-- it's odd in the sense that
- people would almost would follow someone talking about such
- a thing--
- it's kind of like me saying that I believe that dark complexion,
- black hair, brown eyes--
- that's the supreme people, and me rounding people up
- for that cause.
- And yet look at me.
- That's right.
- Well, my husband--
- The tall--
- --had a better way of doing it--
- an election would come up, and he says, well,
- the Blacks all vote en bloc.
- I'm gonna get me a party together.
- I'm going to cover all the Mikes.
- At that time, every boy was named Mike.
- Mikes were all over the place.
- He says, I'm going to get me a party of Mikes, and we can win.
- That's just as stupid.
- Just this kind of like-- me promoting an ideal,
- as far as physique and everything,
- and yet I'm the total opposite.
- It's odd that people would--
- And with this dark hair, how could he be a good Aryan?
- Hm, um
- And just the [BOTH TALKING] and one thing I think--
- I love the Three Stooges, and I don't
- know if you watched them much.
- But you know how they--
- In this time I watched them.
- --how they do-- how they do their parody on Hitler.
- I think that's-- he does the best--
- I bought the videotape.
- I found one that had three of them, and it's funny because--
- I don't remember that one.
- --because they-- of course they were Jewish,
- and he does the best--
- you can kind of see it.
- But it was just so funny that--
- because they're always talking about the
- I think the nation of hypocrisy.
- They really play-- it was--
- I bought that videotape, and I still haven't watched it all.
- But I've seen probably every Three Stooges short.
- But it's so funny to see--
- because he plays on it perfectly.
- I don't know if they did the writing themselves on this
- particular-- because you would think that they probably had
- a lot to do with it to do it so well because--
- It could be.
- I don't remember that at all.
- I don't remember-- might have not seen it.
- It wasn't really-- it was a mockery of--
- --the whole thing.
- --Nazi Germany, but it was just a made-up country.
- We must hypocrisize this thing.
- Then he came.
- He used to do a pretty good German, too.
- He was so funny.
- But they were--
- I don't know.
- It's kind of funny.
- And I think that's a good thing to say.
- I think, to me, if you were on that mindset
- to see something like Moe doing Hitler shows you how
- ridiculous the whole thing--
- Yeah.
- You know, I mean, I guess you don't see so much
- the-- because I always thought it was kind of weird myself,
- and, of course, I hadn't been--
- I still don't a good deal about World War II and this and that.
- But I always thought it was so weird.
- Ever since I, I guess, first grasped
- the concept of World War II, and this and that, and Hitler,
- and knew his Aryan ideal, and all that, I was always puzzled.
- I was like, why is he promoting blond hair and blue eyes when
- he doesn't--
- Absolutely, yeah.
- It's like-- that was puzzling to me in my head.
- I was like, that makes no sense.
- He comes from Austria, and that already makes him a Catholic
- because the most Catholics were in Austria.
- Like in Germany, the top part is Lutheran and very Protestant.
- When you get down to Bavaria, it all gets Catholic.
- And in Holland it's the same way more or less.
- Catholics were in the South.
- The Protestants were in the North.
- I don't know why that is, but--
- Well, that's--
- Like this is the Baptist belt. What can I say?
- Well, I think a lot of it has to do
- with just the way the Catholic Church was
- and with their power, and people had
- to move farther away in order to practice
- what was considered heresy by the Catholic Church, anyway.
- I think that's the reason why that came into play.
- But it's--
- I read a book.
- I read a book, and it is called God, Jews, and History
- by Max Dimont.
- See, I wasn't allowed to go to Sunday school anymore either.
- So I had-- in that respect, I had very little religion
- taught.
- But my son-in-law is a Lutheran and called me
- on the telephone one day asked me, very old-fashionedly,
- could he get the hand of my daughter in marriage.
- I almost fainted.
- I didn't expect that anymore.
- But that's the way he was.
- And I said, well, Mike, I've been expecting this.
- It's no news to me.
- I just didn't know when.
- And by the way, he said, I'm going to change my religion.
- I said, hold it just a minute, please.
- You're not going to do that on the spur of the moment.
- I made up my mind.
- I said, hold it.
- I said, you're graduating, and I know you're
- going into the Air Force.
- That's what you've been trying to do.
- He graduated cum laude at Bradley University
- in Peoria, Illinois, top of his class in ROTC, Air Force.
- And going into the Air Force, I said,
- Mike you better start thinking a little bit.
- See, I've been Jewish from birth,
- and ever since I was nine, well, I consciously
- knew I was different.
- And I was pointed at, and shouted at,
- and picked at, and thrown at, and
- --that speaker.
- First of all, you have to imagine, we were young,
- and we didn't see things as serious as they really were.
- And so this is just a for-instance.
- So we had this one guard.
- She was a woman.
- Imagine she was maybe 4'10'', little, bitty, tiny thing,
- in this gray Nazi uniform, the big black boots.
- And on her head she also had that great cap.
- But when you looked at her and when she talked
- you could see her teeth, and they were kind of pointed.
- All this gray uniform, the black boots,
- and those tiny little teeth, we called her The Mouse.
- She looked like one.
- I mean she did.
- And she was so small that they had to build her a bench.
- Three times a day, at least, we had roll call,
- sometimes more than that, but she wasn't tall enough --
- Well, you see that I'm not very tall.
- But she was smaller than I was, and that's kind of hard to do.
- And the entire place where we had roll
- call they had her a bench that she
- had to climb upon to count us.
- Now, I've always said that the Germans can only
- count by fives.
- Everything was by fives.
- We had to stand in a row of five, five, 10, 15, 20.
- That they could do.
- If they had been six, they couldn't have counted.
- So she would go along and count us that way
- but always had to use the bench because she was so little.
- So one Sunday morning she came in madder than a hornet.
- Oh, she was so aggravated.
- They had told her that she had to guard Sunday afternoon.
- She felt she was the head guard and that
- shouldn't be up to her.
- And she wanted something else to do
- besides guarding us on the Saturday-- on the Sunday
- afternoon.
- We were never off on Sunday.
- That was the only time we ever knew that we got off.
- We still don't know why, but we got off
- that day, that afternoon.
- So she was going to get even with them, them.
- "Them" were her own people, all Germans and mostly Nazis,
- and she was going to get even with them.
- And she knew what she was going to do.
- She was going to bring her radio--
- big deal.
- She's going to bring her radio and let
- us listen to the music on Sunday afternoon.
- Well, I have to say, especially in the wintertime
- through spring, I would think, they
- had beautiful music going on Sunday afternoon,
- and of course, she wanted to listen to it, too.
- So here she came in the afternoon, radio under her arm,
- proud as a peacock.
- She was doing in her own folk.
- So she told the girl to plug it in in the window sill,
- and she did.
- And this beautiful music comes out.
- And I'm sitting right underneath that window,
- and that music just flowed right over my head.
- And Madame sat herself upon her bench, and when she did
- she was directly across from me.
- She was such a foul mouth.
- She could curse better than any sailor I've ever heard,
- and I understood German.
- So it was pretty bad, this very common human being.
- So at one point she has to sneeze.
- Now, here's this little, bitty body that looks like a mouse.
- It starts off with a sneeze you could
- hear three blocks, amazing.
- She just exploded.
- And she was all through, and I put
- on the prettiest face I had, a big, old smile, looked her
- straight in the face and said, in Dutch,
- drop dead, with that big smile, and she said,
- danke schoen, thank you.
- So we had a ball.
- We had an-- that lasted for at least three weeks.
- We had done something that, oh, boy, we weren't supposed to do.
- And I was just lucky that she couldn't understand Dutch.
- I would have had it right there.
- But that's what I mean.
- You have to keep a sense of humor
- and to live in the circumstance that we were living in,
- and that's so hard for people to understand.
- We were told what to do 24 hours a day, every day.
- You had to turn off your mind.
- Think about it.
- Can you do that?
- It's not easy.
- These are things you have to prepare yourself
- while you're there.
- I always say that was some learning experience
- that we had.
- So that's one of the things.
- You might want to turn that off for the time being.
- You might want to ask me something else.
- Well, I saw in an article that y'all had moved to Holland.
- So your father kind of--
- did he see what was going on?
- My dad traveled.
- His territory was part of Switzerland, Holland, Denmark,
- Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
- So while he traveled outside Germany,
- he could kind of see from the outside even what was going on.
- And he came back in 19--
- at the very end of April 1933, and that's
- when they had the first boycott.
- And he made up his mind right then.
- Since he knew all these other countries, we were moving.
- And that must have been the 30th of April
- that he made up his mind, and on the 18th of May, 18 days later,
- we were living in Amsterdam.
- What do you--
- And it's the same year.
- You've heard the Anne Frank story, haven't you?
- Only--
- You never read that book yet?
- --bits and pieces.
- I've never-- I've never read it, just hearing bits and pieces,
- but I really don't know much about it.
- Anyway, the Franks moved the very same year.
- They came from Frankfurt to Amsterdam.
- We came from Berlin to Amsterdam, also
- in the same year, and then turned out to be neighbors.
- That was real strange.
- So I knew the entire family there.
- What all-- like your dad seeing that-- what did he tell y'all?
- Or did--
- It was time to move out.
- Or was it-- he didn't really give any--
- what did you gather?
- Did you kind of grasp what was going on?
- Well, to me it was kind of adventurous yet.
- I was between 10 and 11.
- That was something brand-new that you looked forward to.
- But could you kind of--
- how aware of what was going on around you did you--
- how much of it did you--
- Well, Hitler was getting bigger and bigger,
- and I had a little friend.
- She lived in the same building we did.
- And one day she came home with a brown vest.
- Ooh, I want a brown vest, too.
- Well, I was told good and proper, absolutely not.
- And that was kind of weird in a young mind.
- Why can she have it and I can't?
- And so she knew then that I wasn't
- going to get a brown vest, but she provided me
- with a swastika, and this one was the real thing.
- That was party member.
- And boy, I put that on my coat, and the next day we
- marched off to school, she with the brown vest
- and her swastika.
- And I just had my coat on, and I also had the swastika.
- And at one moment it so happened my teacher was outside.
- She knew who I was, and her hand just
- came over my shoulder, just nice and easy,
- and off came the swastika.
- She had it in her hand.
- She says, you don't have to wear that.
- She was one of the good ones, but there
- weren't too many of those.
- She was a-- she was a social democrat,
- and she was the total opposite, of course,
- of what the Nazis wanted.
- And in the end, I don't know what happened to her,
- but she was pretty outspoken.
- And they had a certain type of clothes that they would wear,
- and you could recognize them as such.
- You knew always they were social democrats.
- So something must have happened to her, too,
- because she could have not lived through it, opening her mouth.
- I know that.
- Being in Berlin, how much of the parades and all
- that type of stuff was--
- I went to the parades with my little girl friend, of course,
- and it wasn't very--
- I didn't have to go very far to be
- in the great, big, wide street.
- And they would parade through, and I did see Hitler there,
- too.
- I was nine then.
- And everybody held up their arms for a heil,
- and I stood there, at nine years old--
- I did exactly like everybody else.
- And then we got home.
- She went to her house, and I went to mine.
- And I came in singing.
- And what was I singing?
- I was singing one of the Nazi songs,
- and it was an awful song.
- But I didn't understand that at that time.
- My mother heard me sing that.
- Boy, I got one across my cheek you wouldn't believe.
- You could see all five fingers.
- You never sing that, my mother said.
- Well, I went I went to my room crying because I
- thought that was so bad.
- She slapped me because I was singing
- a song, still not knowing exactly what it all meant.
- But we grew up pretty fast after all that.
- But then we went to Holland, and that was something else,
- having to learn a whole new language.
- You didn't know one word, and the kids--
- at that age, you don't want to be different.
- That's out of the question.
- You don't want to be different.
- And I was different.
- I couldn't speak.
- That was terrible.
- But I learned.
- In nine months flat, I had a decent vocabulary for that age.
- And I spoke like a Dutchman, and nobody could ever say again
- that I was from Germany.
- I've mastered that.
- What I would do is I go to bed at night, lie on my pillow,
- and I would make a shell out of my ear, like this.
- I made a shell.
- You have to try that some time.
- You have a totally different voice, totally different
- when you speak directly in your ear.
- And I would repeat every word that I
- had heard during the day, and it was Pete and Repeat, Pete
- and Repeat until I had the sound right.
- I knew what it was supposed to sound like.
- And that's how I learned it.
- When I came to the United States I
- had the same problem again, another language.
- I think I got it pretty good.
- So most people expect to hear me speak
- with a big, old, thick accent.
- Uh-uh.
- [CHUCKLES] I learned when I was a child
- I didn't want to be different from anybody else,
- so I put effort into it.
- I think I did OK.
- OK.
- When you were in Amsterdam, how much did you realize--
- I mean was your dad gradually letting
- you know what was going on?
- Or was it--
- We could hear it on the radio.
- We could hear it on the radio every day, and we listened.
- And we also listened to the BBC.
- and got the news from there.
- But as-- after the Germans came in, of course,
- we weren't supposed to look listen to the BBC.
- That was absolutely forbidden.
- And everybody still had a radio, but it
- didn't take too long before the Germans put up
- big posters on the walls of houses and stuff
- that, as a Jew, you had to give up your radio,
- and it would go alphabetically.
- So my last name then started with a W,
- so we got pretty lucky.
- We could keep it for a lot longer time
- the people were the name of A. So we had to give them up,
- but other people didn't have to do that yet.
- And our neighbors built the radio right below--
- into the sofa.
- You couldn't find it.
- You couldn't see it anywhere.
- And we would go to their house, and then we all listened.
- We all laughed on the floor, on our stomachs, listening to it,
- to the radio that was built into the sofa.
- But they went-- outside they ran cars
- with a kind of loop antenna.
- My husband runs a ham radio, so I know how that was done.
- And they could find, locate, where
- the radio was from that outside and definitely which house,
- and then they found out what apartment.
- They just knocked the doors in, and came in,
- and started looking, and tore the house apart
- till they found it.
- Same thing happened with our bicycles.
- We had to give them up, too, alphabetically.
- And we couldn't use the street car, and of course, in the end,
- I was not allowed to go to school anymore.
- I just happened to have the wrong religion,
- according to them.
- I wrote some stuff down, but.
- Read it.
- Well, they're pretty just--
- I was just writing some basic stuff as I was studying.
- How much a racial attacks or--
- as they considered racial attacks--
- did you observe or were you--
- in the beginning--
- It was all over, yeah.
- In the beginning?
- Yeah, it was all over.
- [INAUDIBLE] stars, the Jewish star,
- star of David on our houses, and on businesses.
- And it was an ongoing thing all the time,
- and you never knew ahead of time what was
- going to face you the next day.
- I got a letter from the Gestapo one day--
- that was in August of 1942--
- that I was to be at Gestapo headquarters in Amsterdam.
- the 25th of August, I had to have a backpack--
- and they told you what you could have--
- loaded up, and I had to be there voluntarily,
- in capital letters.
- I had to be there at 9:00 in the morning.
- Well, it didn't take too long before the 25th came around,
- and on the night of the 24th we were at dinner.
- I was an only child.
- You can imagine how my parents felt.
- They knew I had to go to the Gestapo the next morning,
- 9:00, voluntarily.
- They felt pretty bad.
- And suddenly, I said--
- it was close to 7:00 at night, and mind you,
- we had curfew from 8:00 at night till 6:00
- in the morning every day.
- And I said, I am going to the hospital.
- My dad looked at me and said, what are you
- doing in the hospital?
- I said, I'm going to have my tonsils out.
- You know how bad they are.
- And he slammed his hand on the table, and he said,
- couldn't you have thought of that before?
- I said, no, I just thought of it.
- I said, we have exactly one hour to get you there.
- I said, but you can't come with me because you can't be back
- by 8:00.
- So I left on my bike--
- I still had that at the time--
- and pedaled all the way to the middle--
- to the center of Amsterdam, where
- this particular hospital was.
- And I was lucky to know that there
- was the doctor that did ear, nose, and throat, the most
- well-known in Amsterdam.
- And he was in that particular hospital.
- And so I parked my bike and went in.
- And they wanted to know what I was doing there.
- I said, I have a bad throat.
- Well, do you have an--
- no, I don't have an appointment.
- Well, we can't help you then.
- And I started screaming.
- I did like I was going out of my mind.
- I screamed so loud and stamped my foot,
- and I did it on purpose.
- I knew exactly what I was doing.
- And I demanded to see Dr. Fernandez.
- He was the one that was the big doctor.
- Well, he apparently heard me screaming out in the hallway.
- I was pretty loud at that time because I made up my mind.
- I was not going back home.
- And he finally came out, and he said, what's going on here?
- And all I did was look him straight in the face.
- I said, all I want you to do is look in my throat.
- He did.
- And he did.
- He said, oh my God, she's got a little illegal meat
- market in there.
- That's how bad they were.
- Yes, indeed.
- And that's another thing that I'm alive today.
- They kept me, and they did operate on me the next day.
- But those tonsils were so big, and the operation
- itself took so long.
- Mind you, now, I didn't--
- I wasn't put in a regular operating room.
- This was the thing that you could do like outpatient,
- more or less.
- But anyway, they put me on a chair,
- and he told me to hold on to the bottom.
- And they put an apron on me, a rubber apron and a white sheet.
- And then I got a local anesthetic into my tonsils.
- I wouldn't recommend it.
- It is awful.
- Great, big, long needles went in there,
- and they worked on me you know, clipping of tonsils,
- didn't take any time.
- They worked on me over 45 minutes
- to get all this gook out.
- And then I had to hold my mouth open for all this time,
- and then they told me to shut my mouth.
- And I did, and it wouldn't open.
- I was in the hospital--
- it used to be, you stayed maybe overnight in the hospital
- for tonsils.
- Now you go home, but then you still had
- to stay in the hospital, and they gave you
- ice cream and 7UP afterwards.
- And I couldn't open up my mouth.
- I guess that the muscles had been
- stretched so that when they were released wouldn't work anymore.
- It took me 21 days before I could open up my mouth far
- enough to get a spoon through.
- I was totally on liquid diet before.
- I couldn't even open it far enough to let a straw through.
- They were shut and wouldn't open again.
- But that, too, saved my life because I didn't show up
- on the 25th of August.
- And I didn't know where I was, and nobody
- came looking for me either.
- So that postponed it again.
- And it took some kind of guts.
- [LAUGHS] I had to--
- 21 days in the hospital just to take the tonsils out.
- I guess it was meant to be.
- Right.
- Right.
- You had to be gutsy.
- That's the best way I can say it.
- You had to dare and double-dare if you could.
- But then it took another nine times
- that the Gestapo came to our house,
- and somehow we always did all right.
- And they'd go without us, eight times.
- On the ninth time--
- I always opened the door.
- I happened to hear it.
- The ninth time I didn't hear.
- I was sleeping so hard I didn't hear the doorbell,
- and my dad opened up.
- And when I woke up, Nazis were standing by my bed
- and tear me out of bed.
- And that's when we had to go and put on trucks
- and transported it to a place where--
- it used to be a theater but now it was a place where--
- a gathering place, let's say.
- And when I went to the theater was full,
- we were being transported to a camp.
- So that y'all were all on the same bus?
- Bus?
- Freight train.
- Well, I mean from your house.
- Oh, that?
- No.
- A bus?
- You kidding?
- Truck.
- Truck, yeah.
- It wasn't that-- and I wasn't that easy to get in a truck.
- That's pretty high.
- Then you got pushed in if you couldn't make it on your own.
- So what did your parents say?
- Or did they say anything to you?
- Anything you say--
- Was everybody quiet?
- At that point, you couldn't say anything
- when they were right there.
- They slapped you across the face.
- I mean when y'all were being transported,
- was somebody in the back with you or--
- Oh, sure, always a guard, and he had a rifle.
- And it could fire.
- Believe me, it could fire.
- And if you said something or asked something,
- they slapped you right across the face.
- That many, many times.
- It was pretty hard, believe me.
- Your whole life was upset.
- You didn't say goodbye to anybody.
- But what was the last time you saw your parents?
- I saw them in camp, but I couldn't be with them.
- The men always were in another part.
- They split us up and made my mother the head
- of a children's barrack.
- And I wasn't supposed to go there either because I
- was no longer-- as far as they were concerned,
- I was no longer a child.
- And so I couldn't go there.
- But I sneaked in there occasionally.
- You had to know exactly what you were doing.
- You found a notepad somewhere.
- Somebody had one.
- I said, I need that for a minute,
- and then you had the pencil already in your hand.
- And you marched up and down the little roads
- that we had from barrack to barrack,
- and you walked right by them, the guards, with it.
- [INAUDIBLE]
- The people that-- the guards were up in a tower.
- You walked right by there, pencil behind your ear,
- notepad in hand, and you marched.
- They knew you were going somewhere
- or you must be doing something.
- I did that many a time.
- They never knew I was going to visit my mother.
- But as I say, you had to be gutsy.
- Did you ever-- did you--
- being able to, I guess, do stuff like that,
- were you involved in kind of relaying messages
- since-- like to some of the other kids?
- Oh, we did that all the time.
- We did that all the time.
- And we also learned to speak like this.
- Like later on, when we were in various camps,
- we weren't allowed--
- not only weren't we allowed to speak to each other
- unless it was something about what we were doing--
- and we certainly couldn't speak to the Germans,
- even if they were civilians when we would be in a factory.
- We learned to speak without moving lips,
- and that worked pretty good as long as they couldn't see it,
- that the guards couldn't see that we were actually talking.
- Oh, you find all kind of ways.
- And you can get caught, too, after all.
- So you said you went through 10--
- Nine.
- --nine, nine concentration camps.
- Where were most?
- Were most of them in the--
- they were all over.
- I mean the ones that you were--
- Well, I went from Holland straight to Auschwitz.
- This is in Poland.
- We were released from there because they found out
- we were specialized laborers, we had to--
- that's a long story.
- But I have that.
- Matter of fact, I have a tape also.
- We were specialized labor.
- We made radio tubes, radio tubes were for the V-1 and V-2.
- The Rockets that they sent to England--
- well, if you look back, most of them fell into the North Sea.
- They didn't reach London like they were-- some did.
- But those little tubes were so tiny,
- and the materials inside them, like in the light--
- the filament--
- the filament was finer than a hair, if you can imagine.
- And it had to all be built.
- But there were several pieces that
- were metal that went over some of the pieces that were already
- in there.
- So that, in fact, you couldn't look in anymore.
- So we had needles, and we destroyed the inside.
- We put it all in, but we had destroyed the inside
- and then put the metal pieces over.
- And nobody could ever tell somebody did anything to them.
- So we destroyed about 60%.
- So they just kind of thought they just had bad weapons?
- Yeah.
- Well, what you do if you are a slave laborer.
- Let's face it.
- And we had to make at least 100 a day, seven days a week,
- 12 hours every day.
- We worked, believe me.
- And we all had loupes.
- You see jewelers sometimes have a loupe.
- That's how we worked every day.
- So they thought they just had some--
- they were probably blaming the guy punching the button.
- You got that right.
- I guess that's a good--
- I'm mighty proud of that.
- That's why I say we weren't always so good.
- Well, it depends on what perspective--
- It was the dumb Dutch, the dumb Dutch,
- couldn't stand the dumb Dutch.
- They told us to whistle when we marched.
- We always had to march.
- And that's the way they lived.
- You got to march, left, two, three, four.
- And then they told us to whistle.
- When they said whistle, we sang.
- When they say sing, we whistled.
- We always did the opposite what they would tell us, [INAUDIBLE]
- much what about that.
- We just made like we didn't understand anything.
- I spoke German fluently, so--
- stupid.
- I don't know.
- I couldn't understand.
- And the next time I asked a question
- and said in perfect German, that's it,
- and he realized that the last time they saw me I
- couldn't speak German.
- It was a mess.
- It was a big mess.
- So each time you got moved, what was really
- going through your mind?
- When is it going to end?
- And it didn't, and it didn't, and it didn't.
- And each time we thought, well, maybe this time.
- It lasted for us five years.
- They invaded us in 1940, and then
- the war wasn't over-- that was in May,
- and it wasn't over until May 1945.
- And think about that.
- These are supposed to be the best years of your life.
- That's when you are growing up.
- And you're what?
- 20?
- You're 20 now?
- Well, it lasted for me from the time I was 18 until I was 23.
- And when we got out of this when it was over,
- we had lost five years, and then we tried to make up that time.
- Don't ever try that.
- You can't make up for time.
- There's no way.
- But we would go out.
- We-- still.
- 23, you're not that old.
- But we would go out and go dancing.
- We would meet somewhere, have a party, all of those things,
- trying to make up time.
- After six months, we understood it wasn't possible.
- We'd stay out until maybe 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning
- and then had to be at work the next morning at 8:00.
- Well, we couldn't keep that up, and we
- realized you couldn't do that.
- You had to do the best you--
- the best you can.
- But we sure did try hard.
- Did you have a lot of--
- like what you said, you were wondering
- when it was going to end.
- I know you might have kind of gathered from what was going on
- around and heard rumors.
- Did negative thoughts really come into play or--
- We tried not to, and I guess being still young
- helped on that score.
- Escape we couldn't.
- In Poland, in Auschwitz, they had the barbed wire,
- had 25,000 volts on it.
- All you had to do a touch it.
- You fried.
- That was it.
- And where the heck would you go to?
- And in Germany, where would you go to?
- You couldn't go to ask a German to hide you.
- You couldn't do that his neighbor might turn him in,
- or he might turn you in himself.
- There was really no way for us to go.
- And besides that, we all had these tattoos on our arms.
- How could you hide those?
- Maybe in the beginning you put some tape on it.
- How can you keep the tape on?
- And they would ask, what's wrong with your arm?
- Anything like that, they'd take it off,
- and they'd see that big, old, black number on your arm.
- No way.
- There was really no way we could escape that.
- And they always ask us, too.
- Couldn't you defend yourself?
- With what?
- We had two fists.
- That was it.
- There wasn't anything else.
- How far would you get?
- They had a thing going, the Germans,
- and that was in every camp.
- And I can't think of the name of it now.
- What do you call the things that--
- triangular like that?
- You put the table on top of it, and you can saw with a saw.
- That not a saw horse but a--
- Yeah, saw horse.
- Saw horse?
- OK, similar to a saw horse they would put out on the place
- where we had roll call, and if somebody had done something,
- that person would be called out, put his body
- over the saw horse, legs still on the ground but lean over,
- and then they would hit you 25 times with a thing that
- was close to a baseball bat.
- And they also made you count it yourself, one, two.
- That's how-- and hard.
- That really gets you.
- And they usually did that with a man.
- I never did see a woman get that.
- But I saw my father get it.
- Well, and they've asked me, well, how did you feel?
- I said, I had two clenched fists.
- That's all I had.
- And I stood there and had to watch it because we were all
- standing on a roll call.
- That's when they did that, so you could all
- see how good they were at hurting you.
- And it was mostly 25 licks that you would get.
- And when they were through, then you had to do--
- another name I can't think of right now.
- Get down-- not on your knees.
- Push-ups?
- Not push-ups, that--
- Squats or--
- Yeah, yeah.
- Also, at least.
- And what that was for was to get your circulation
- started again because it was pretty upset back there.
- And you had to stand there, and watch it, and take it.
- And what went through your mind--
- you can't-- you can't even imagine what you would like
- to do at that point.
- There's nothing, nothing.
- There's a "g-nat."
- So what else is "g-new"?
- Do you think that your dad--
- when he moved y'all away to Amsterdam,
- do you think he probably thought he was--
- --safe?
- Well, it get's back into history.
- The reason he chose Holland was simply because Holland
- had not been in a war in 100 years.
- They always were neutral.
- The Germans walked in and walked all over us.
- They had some 60 million people.
- We were 7--
- Needed to get to France and--
- they needed to make their way to France and England.
- That's right.
- Well, the funniest thing is that during this time,
- when they invaded--
- and we were out in the streets to see all this--
- the soldiers would come up to us and say,
- where's the bridge to England?
- This is how stupid they were.
- They were told there was a bridge in Holland that
- went straight to England.
- That's what they told them.
- My mother scared--
- How many people said, that way?
- Oh, no, we did better things than that.
- There was a blackout in Amsterdam,
- like in all the countries that were involved, and a blackout.
- And that didn't mean that people had to be in.
- We had to be in.
- That was the rule.
- Us Jews didn't have to be out on the streets after 8:00.
- But anyway, they-- and of course,
- the German soldiers were out in the streets.
- They roamed around, and they went to the pubs, and cafes,
- and to all Dutch places.
- And sometimes they got lost in the dark.
- It's only natural, especially when
- you're not familiar with the city
- and it's in total darkness.
- You know how many canals we have in Amsterdam?
- Hundreds of them.
- And they would ask, could you tell
- me to get to-- whatever they wanted to go to.
- And there wasn't a Dutchman that said, no, I don't know.
- They always knew.
- And what they would do is they'd kind of take him
- by the elbow a little bit like that, to lead them
- because it was so dark.
- They led them to the nearest canal,
- and when they knew the canal was right there,
- they held in that step.
- And he was still going, fell in the canal.
- We lost more Germans that way.
- In the canal they went.
- We did crazy things.
- This was before I was in camp, of course.
- We celebrated all the royal birthdays
- because we were used to that.
- Those were national holidays.
- On this particular day, it was going
- to be Prince Bernhard's birthday.
- He had married Juliana.
- She was the mother of the--
- she was the daughter of the queen.
- Wilhelmina was still the queen.
- And Prince Bernhard was known to wear a white carnation,
- a fresh, white carnation every day in his buttonhole,
- and everybody knew that.
- So being in Holland, you have flower stands
- all around the city.
- And flowers were very inexpensive, too.
- So we all went to the flower stands
- and got us a white carnation and pinned them
- on, everybody, men, women, children, everybody.
- Suddenly, that was very strange to the Germans.
- Why are these people all wearing white carnations?
- And so somebody must have told them what it was.
- So they would come after us, and grab that carnation,
- and tore it up, and pitched it.
- Well, we weren't discouraged over that at all.
- We went back to the flower stand, got us a new one,
- went home, got us a razor blade.
- We put the stem of the carnation into the metal hole
- and then pinned it, back out in the street.
- And here came the German, and they would grab that carnation.
- Only their hand was cut to pieces.
- But did we run.
- Oh, and did we run.
- But these are the things we did, crazy things like that.
- And then we had the--
- the first day that we had to wear
- the stars, the yellow stars, we had to go to a certain place
- to obtain them.
- What they didn't know was the Dutch
- all got them, everybody, not just Jewish people.
- Everybody went after stars.
- That got confusing.
- They ran out of stars, and it had to be made again.
- They didn't have as many as people that asked for them
- and wore them, and they couldn't tell Jew from Gentile.
- There was no way.
- Everybody was wearing the store.
- And if you came late and couldn't get one anymore--
- like a man would walk in the street,
- and you had your star on, and he didn't have one,
- he'd tip your hat--
- he'd tip his hat as recognition.
- The Dutch were that way.
- The Dutch also struck.
- They had a strike of 24 hours--
- this wasn't-- it didn't take that long,
- but it showed the Germans that the Dutch didn't like it.
- We had no light.
- We had no gas.
- We had no bus.
- We had no train.
- Everything closed up.
- There was not a factory working.
- There was no street car, nothing.
- The town stood still.
- And then during the evening time here
- came the big posters again.
- If you participate in the strike tomorrow,
- after these 24 hours were over you were shot.
- So there was really no more strike,
- but they showed they didn't like this,
- this was not their way of living.
- We never had any in Holland, whether you
- were Jewish, or Gentile, or Catholic, or whatever you were.
- To them it didn't make a bit of difference.
- Nobody cared.
- That never-- we never had that.
- And so the Dutch were not very well-pleased with the idea
- of what the Germans were doing.
- What-- were y'all Orthodox?
- No, Reform, and the word is a Reform, not Reformed.
- reform means you can't keep on doing that.
- Once you're
- So what part of--
- Israel?
- [TECHNICAL ADJUSTMENT] [INAUDIBLE]
- You have to test it out first?
- I just tested it a minute ago.
- Oh, you did?
- I'm just trying to make sure it's halfway picking up.
- OK.
- Are you in the same class with him or--
- Not, not history class, no.
- I have an English class with him.
- I see.
- Well, see, that's funny kind of because I
- go to so many schools and universities and so
- many different grades, too.
- And then I find out later that wasn't history at all.
- It was the English class.
- And it's all-- everybody has something different.
- OK.
- You've got some new questions for me?
- It's still some of the same questions.
- I'm still pretty much leaving it the same informal manner.
- Does your teacher know about it yet?
- He knows about it.
- He was asking me if I was taking notes or questions, stuff
- like that.
- And I told him I was trying to leave it more informal,
- but I had [background noise]noise][INAUDIBLE]..
- I was just wondering-- we are talking this week basically
- about the role that-- like some people--
- in Palestine they tried some Jewish people
- who participated in the sense that in the ghettos, where
- they tried to, I guess--
- the Nazis wanted them and had them in charge
- within the ghetto.
- And they were the ones who were picking who went and who
- didn't.
- What are your feelings on the blame on that?
- Or do you feel that's more or less--
- Well, first of all, they wanted them all together.
- That was the main thing is to have them
- all together because they could get to them real easy,
- and they did, especially in the ghettos.
- What I wanted to ask you was whether you had ever
- read Mila 18.
- I'm going to have to give it to you
- because that gives you a good description, and a fairly
- true one.
- And the other one was-- it was made into a movie.
- Gee.
- I have to get it out.
- That book deals altogether after it was over with
- and how they got to Israel, and what they did there,
- and how they did, and with the Palestinian bombing, and all
- of those things that they did right after the war.
- And it's fascinating.
- And, well, I have to tell you, by 3:00 AM
- in the morning I was cross-eyed, and I finally
- had to put the book down.
- I was reading the same paragraph three times,
- and then you have to just quit.
- But they're very, very interesting books,
- and they're kind of easy to read.
- In the beginning, as you start reading,
- you meet each person that is within the book,
- and by the time you get further down in, you know that person.
- You know his personality, and what he does,
- and what he likes, and what he doesn't like,
- and so on, and it's very descriptive.
- And I'd love for you to read it.
- But I ask you at the same time to bring them back to me.
- I have-- did you read them?
- I've heard of the first one, but I haven't read it before.
- Fabulous.
- It really gives you an insight, and maybe you
- can have some time and read it.
- I found it fascinating.
- I really did.
- There's a lot of books I haven't--
- I've got a lot of books that I haven't read that--
- Yeah, you hadn't even read Anne Frank, did you?
- I haven't read it yet.
- I have that, too, and I also have it in Dutch, if you care.
- That might take a little longer.
- Yeah, I think it would.
- And there are quite a few books that are very, very interesting
- on that subject and how young those kids were
- at the time, about your age, and the things
- that they went through, and how they got out.
- It was something else, especially Mila 18
- because that takes place in Poland, in the ghetto,
- in the Warsaw Ghetto.
- And crazy enough, these are novels,
- but he has put all the facts together
- and made books out of them so that they're
- true in the way of history.
- And you can recognize them from one book to the other,
- would be the same personalities.
- Do you think that those who were put
- in charge, that had to do the picking--
- do you think that they were so much responsible?
- Or do you think they were trying to-- because a lot of times
- I've gotten the perspective that the people felt that,
- by having to pick out--
- if they didn't pick out the 1,000
- that they had to, that the Nazis would have come in and just
- picked any 2,000.
- Oh, yeah.
- Do you think that--
- you think that kind of--
- does that make sense?
- Yes, that does make sense.
- It definitely does.
- And of course, it wasn't very easy to pick them
- because so many of them were friends of yours, maybe related
- to you, and so on, and it was very hard to do that.
- But they had it to do, and there were conflicts because of it.
- They were all Jewish, and then you really
- don't want to pick your friends if something is
- up like a transport and such.
- No, it wasn't easy.
- And they would have picked.
- And they would.
- The Germans would have picked, and they would
- have picked more just because.
- Sometimes in Amsterdam, too--
- let's say they would find somebody a underground person,
- and he, of course, was never politically correct.
- He was on the opposite end, and if they found them,
- they would take him to any square.
- And it might be in the middle of the town.
- And they round up maybe 250 to 500 people and shot them,
- and they had to watch it.
- And you talk about that being hard.
- It was terrible.
- But they had no conscience, never bothered them.
- I was told to do that, always the same excuse.
- And even now, 50 years later, if you go to Germany
- and you find somebody my age, they still
- say either they didn't know it, didn't know what was going on--
- it was all over.
- They couldn't help but see.
- Or they said, well, I just did what I was told to do,
- big, innocent eyes.
- And that's the way it came across.
- Were most of the political prisoners
- that were there that you came across-- were they
- pretty much mostly older?
- Or were they--
- No, they were young then.
- So was I. The war was--
- I was 18 when it started, and I was 23 when it was over.
- That's five years.
- We learned to grow up very fast.
- Were the people that mostly spoke out
- like from different denominations and stuff--
- weren't people like that-- were they more like in their 20s,
- 30s, 40s that you came across or--
- Yeah, most of them were.
- But we did have some older people, too.
- I think I told you last week we brought back
- a young lady of 73.
- That's what I am now.
- And she made it all the way through with our help.
- That was fantastic.
- And there are other little things that haven't even
- come about to talk about.
- There were a lot of people that had diabetes.
- Never ever did they get a shot of insulin.
- And to this day I am wondering what happened after the war.
- Did diabetes come back?
- Was it gone for good?
- Are they back on insulin?
- What actually happened?
- The food was so lousy, and we never did have anything sweet.
- As far as I know, all the diabetics
- that we had in our compound came back, never
- had any medication of any kind.
- The only medication they ever had was aspirin,
- and they had to ask for it or beg for it.
- And you weren't sick until you had 104 degrees.
- It was totally not counted if it was under 104,
- and you could be pretty sick by the time you hit 104 degrees.
- But that has always stood in my mind
- how they just didn't collapse or just
- died without the medication that they
- had to have at least once or twice a day.
- It never occurred-- never came--
- never paid attention.
- The Germans sure didn't.
- It's kind of weird.
- And after the war, I never saw any of the ones
- that were diabetics.
- This is just an example--
- people have other diseases besides just diabetes--
- but that was one.
- And I've never totally understood.
- God was with us somewhere around there,
- not to get any medication whatsoever.
- I lost my train of thought there, typical thing.
- Well, I do that.
- Why should you be different?
- With most of the people that were in the camps, what would
- you say was--
- the people that survived or the people
- that lasted the longest-- what do you think carried them most?
- Was it-- as far as their minds, was it--
- because it couldn't have been-- it wasn't--
- I know it wasn't obedience that did it.
- What carried their sanity?
- Their sanity?
- Or your own.
- Willing, wanting to live, to show you could do it.
- And it took a tremendous amount of strength
- to keep your mind on that.
- And I think I told you last week, too,
- that there were times--
- and things were so bad you kind of had to turn your mind off
- because that wasn't normal.
- That was no normal living that we did.
- And it's hard to imagine that you have to turn off your mind,
- make like it's not there, and just accept as-is at that point
- to make it through.
- And to have a good sense of humor--
- that helped greatly.
- We made fun of things.
- They weren't always funny, but you know.
- And we would do things that the Germans didn't like.
- You were always marching, and march we could, believe me.
- We learned.
- And it's like I--
- I said before that they ask us to whistle.
- Well, when they said whistle, we sang.
- When they told us to sing, we whistled.
- We never did the thing exactly as they wanted it,
- and it just gave you a little strength,
- knowing that you did that against them.
- We had no weapons.
- All you have are your two fists.
- Now, there were not going to do you any good against guns,
- and rifles, and all this lovely stuff that they did, sticks.
- They beat you to a pulp at any time, so you had to--
- you got to have a strong mind.
- What was it like dealing with--
- when people that you knew were getting--
- you said sent one way, sent the wrong ways?
- That mostly happened when I was in Auschwitz,
- which was the worst, of course.
- The feelings that go inside you are incredible.
- This one goes to the left.
- Goes to the left--
- that means you'll be gassed and put in the crematorium to burn.
- And we saw our friends, some of them relatives,
- mothers, fathers--
- small children that couldn't work yet were sent there.
- And they did it--
- they were so mean.
- Sometimes they'd say, everybody in the first row,
- two steps forward.
- Everybody went up to the gas chamber.
- Next time, they did it on the back row or out of the middle.
- You never, never knew.
- What you didn't knew--
- what you did know was the fact that if you were sick
- and you were--
- you have seen pictures of the skeletons walking around.
- If you were at that stage that you were walking skeleton,
- off to the gas chamber.
- This happened to my father.
- He go so thin that he was just a walking skeleton,
- and he happened to stand in line with a neighbor from Amsterdam.
- And he's the one that-- when he saw me back in Amsterdam
- later, after the war, tapped me on the shoulder and said,
- by the way, if you care to know, your father
- died on October 1, 1944.
- I was standing next to him.
- That's a shocker.
- I didn't know yet.
- Well, it wasn't a shocker.
- It was, and it wasn't.
- I hadn't heard from the Red Cross or anywhere
- that he was still alive.
- And that was my mother's birthday, October 1.
- Do you think--
- I read a little bit about you mom.
- Do you think that might have been
- a good way for your mom or--
- I know--
- My mother was spared.
- Yes, she died.
- She died in the camp in Holland.
- But it was, I guess, the 15th of November.
- She died on the seventh, which was my grandmother's birthday.
- Anyway, there was a transport supposed
- to go of a minimum of 2,000 on the 15th of November.
- Now, I got there on June 6, on D-day.
- I arrived in Auschwitz.
- There were two left of the 2,000 that
- had left on November 15, so I feel that she was spared this,
- really.
- But they were tough days, and I never did see my dad again
- after he had the--
- he left a few days after that because he
- went to see one of the higher-up Germans who happened
- to be in the camp on a certain day, and he went to him
- and told him that he was supposed to go
- on that transport on the 15th.
- And he said he had just lost his wife, which he did,
- and I was still sick.
- I had pleurisy bad, real bad.
- And he talked him into letting him stay, not to go on the 15th
- but go a few days later.
- And right now I can't remember the exact date.
- I might have it written down somewhere.
- But he was allowed to go on a different transport you
- see he had been a soldier in World War I,
- and if you could prove that you had been in World War I,
- which, of course, he could, you had the privilege,
- if you can call it that, to go to Theresienstadt.
- Terezin it is called now.
- And that's where they had people that had
- been involved in World War I.
- But both my grandparents, my father's parents--
- both were sent there.
- They had six children.
- Five of them were boys and one girl, and all five of them
- were in the war, in the First World War.
- So he was sent there.
- He was-- well, I can't say spared.
- He wasn't because, in the end, they sent him to Auschwitz,
- too.
- So you could never rely on what they were telling you.
- It happened anyway.
- They did exactly what they wanted to do.
- Do you think that the role of the Polish railroad workers
- and stuff like that-- do you think that them going along
- with it, like the workers--
- and I know there's always excuse-- the economics excuse,
- my family--
- at what point do you think the blame is cast?
- The Poles?
- I don't like to say it.
- There was a great amount of Poles that helped the Germans.
- They were still from the old school, mostly Catholic.
- We were called Christ-killers.
- That was almost inborn.
- Everybody was told that.
- So we didn't take too kindly to them at that point,
- and they know that, they and the Lithuanian.
- And we also-- in camp we had prisoners
- that were from Russia.
- Many of them were for the Germans.
- So we had to look out in every direction.
- You never knew where it was going to come from.
- Now, at Auschwitz we were not bothered much by the Poles
- because they were outside the camp, actually.
- They weren't inside the camp.
- Jewish prisoners were, Polish ones.
- But Lithuania was full of Lithuanians
- that backed Hitler and did tremendous damage,
- and even now you can find it in some of the magazines that
- go around.
- They're still finding Lithuanians, Poles, too, that
- participated in war crimes.
- They're still trying to get them.
- And it's getting harder and harder
- because it's been so long.
- The last time, you spoke of your friend and--
- when you were a little girl and how you had gotten her pin.
- Oh, my girl friend, yeah.
- Did you ever speak to her later?
- No, we moved, see?
- So you never--
- No, no.
- I don't know what happened to her.
- I have no idea.
- And at this point I couldn't have cared less
- because they were super-Nazis.
- They really were.
- I just didn't know if you--
- Yeah.
- No, never seen or heard from her.
- You spoke of some of the things that you
- had done at the camp like with the little transistors.
- Transistors weren't-- I don't believe they were out yet.
- Well, the--
- The radio tubes.
- Yeah, the tubes, the radio tubes.
- Yes.
- You sort of were doing stuff like that.
- What other things did you do to kind of--
- I don't-- mess with their--
- Well we did.
- It wasn't really too much we could do,
- but what we destroyed there and materials--
- it's unbelievable.
- Those tubes-- we made as many as we
- had to, which was 100 per day, seven days a week,
- including Sundays, yeah.
- We made lots of them.
- That used up a lot of material.
- And then when the tube didn't work,
- we had destroyed some more.
- And then-- don't forget--
- this was just my department where we actually
- build the little tubes.
- Department before us is where they stamped out
- all the materials.
- Well, they did their thing, too, there, offset the thing,
- and then it wasn't round enough or not oval enough for it.
- It couldn't be used.
- And my friend and I--
- we suddenly were made electricians.
- I think I told you I didn't a positive from a negative,
- so I was a real good electrician.
- We were made to fix the welding machine.
- This was all spot-welding that we had to do.
- And we had to take care of the electrodes, the pure copper.
- And it came-- oh, they must have been about an 1/8
- of an inch round, long pieces, and they
- had to be cut to the size for the machine.
- And then copper is very soft, and we had to hammer it.
- The front part of the electrode had
- to be hammered till it was hard enough to be used
- and had to be square.
- They came round.
- What did we do?
- We started hammering exactly at 12:00, midnight.
- We had midnight shift for eight months solid.
- And why did we do that at midnight?
- We had these big stainless steel, squared pieces of-- oh,
- there must have been 3 inches thick square.
- And you put the electrode on there, and you hammer it.
- Now, can you imagine the noise that made?
- At 12:00 they would play the German national anthem.
- While we were there, they never heard it.
- We hammered until 12:00.
- And it never occurred to them that we did that on purpose.
- Nobody ever asked, and we just hammered away.
- I have hammered a piece of copper, paper-thin.
- I mean you could roll it it was so thin.
- Well, we did that a few times, and that was ruined.
- Matter of fact, we sometimes made little pins
- out of the copper, out of the copper where we just nailed it
- down and hammered and hammered.
- And then you could cut it with a knife.
- And if you could find a safety pin,
- you could solder it in the back.
- And we'd make little pins, made elephants,
- and all kind of things.
- And then it never occurred to them it was their own material.
- We ruined a lot.
- That was the best defense we had, really.
- You didn't have any weapons that you could defend yourself
- with, only with your mouth.
- And then you hoped that they wouldn't understand what
- you were saying, like I did.
- But I was just lucky.
- She didn't know what I was saying to her,
- and I told her to drop dead.
- She thanked me for it.
- What else you got?
- Well, as far as like your friends
- that you met through the camps, how many have you--
- have you been able to track down many of them or--
- In Amsterdam after the war, yes.
- But I left three years later, and so then, of course,
- I couldn't.
- But one of my friends came to Canada and then
- to the United States, and she is in California.
- I don't hear much about her now, but a few years ago we
- had a reunion at the Philips factory.
- And I happened to hear it before she did, and I called her.
- I have her address and phone number.
- And she got herself in motion, and we both met again.
- And we got back to Amsterdam, and then we went to Eindhoven.
- That's where the factory is.
- And there were still over a hundred of us
- that had made that trip, and there were, of course,
- quite a few that didn't make it, weren't able to come.
- As we are getting older, it's a little bit harder.
- But there were over 100, and all of us had name tags.
- And 50 years-- or, well, then it was maybe 45 years later--
- to see each other again took a little doing.
- We did look different than the last time we saw each other.
- That's for sure.
- That was a fun, fun trip, rehashed a lot of things
- and trying to recognize each other.
- And we had one--
- the name was familiar, but it was not.
- And I looked, and I looked, and I looked,
- and I tried, and racked my brain to find out who she was.
- And I recognized her face, but the name
- didn't mean a thing with her face.
- It didn't correspond.
- And she said, you're still trying to find out who I am.
- I said, I most certainly am.
- And then she gave this other name,
- and I knew immediately who she was.
- She had been a Spanish dancer.
- Matter of fact, she had brought some of her costumes--
- how she ever did that I will not know or why she did it
- I will not know--
- brought them to camp, and she performed for us occasionally
- in our own barrack.
- And I knew her as the Spanish dancer,
- and that was her stage name that she gave me.
- She had her real name on her tag, had a tough time.
- And she was in her 90s, looked maybe not older
- than maybe 65 or 70.
- It's amazing.
- But we all-- in the end, we all knew who we were.
- But to meet again after that long a time was something else.
- It was fantastic.
- It really was.
- Is it recording?
- That popped loose, I think.
- When?
- I'm not sure.
- Well, try and find it out.
- Do you have to rewind?
- Well, I still got plenty of tape.
- I've got another tape, too, so I can always--
- yeah, I've got a couple of weeks.
- They go by-- you won't be surprised-- you'll be surprised
- how fast they go by.
- At the last minute you're stuck with something,
- and I've been trying to avoid that.
- I try to-- what I can't remember I can always call you and find
- out, get all this.
- Because I know I only have so much I can--
- --put together.
- Yeah.
- And I'm more or less--
- I guess I'm going to try to get a basic overview mixed
- in with--
- Did you get to read that article that-- yeah, that one.
- I read this one.
- I think I read this one.
- This one I read the other--
- It starts there in the front.
- Yeah, that's where it starts.
- I believe I read this one last week, and this one I started--
- I just got a chance to read the first couple of pages.
- It's just been-- that's the way it's been recently.
- That's why I--
- That's a good thing you have that because it describes
- quite a bit and that one.
- It was a newspaper article in the Sunday magazine,
- and it's the longest article I've ever seen from one person,
- actually, that they printed as much as they did.
- They always get shrunk.
- Oh, we got to liberation.
- What else you want to know?
- OK.
- I know you do a lot of lecturing and stuff like that.
- Do you think that some people that went through the same
- thing-- do you think-- and I know there's some people who
- want to completely forget it that they've--
- Can't forget it.
- I mean like a lot of people won't--
- Want to shut it off.
- --don't even want to--
- --talk about it.
- I think that's been my best solution for me.
- I was always able to talk about it,
- and that way I got it off my chest.
- And that makes a big difference, whether you hold it in--
- and you really suffer from it the entire time.
- Some people are still doing it 50 years later.
- And I knew my parents well enough
- to know that they didn't want me to live that way, to hold it
- all in.
- Get it out and over with, and start living again.
- And basically that's what I've done.
- That he's going to start those lectures this week.
- Those lectures from my Holocaust teacher.
- Yeah?
- He's going to start this start this week.
- If they ever want me over there, I'd be glad to come.
- Well, I shouldn't say it that way.
- Somebody has to come and get me.
- I don't drive, and my car is gone.
- I shed a few tears the other day as it left.
- I don't drive.
- But they came here from Mississippi before,
- so if I ever want that, I'll be glad to do it.
- I'll have to let them know.
- I don't know how long he's been working
- on getting this together.
- But it takes--
- Did you mention to him that you're interviewing somebody
- that--
- I told him I was interviewing you.
- He's trying to make sure I was write-- he asked whether I
- was taking notes or what.
- How long does it take you to the school from here?
- It's two and a half, three hours.
- It's not too bad.
- Just it depends on how many cops you have to deal with.
- You got to find someone.
- You try to look for that little cord, and the little lights,
- the radar detector.
- Yeah, right.
- You don't-- I'll tell you this now.
- You don't do that in North Carolina.
- You drive 55-- that's it--
- 65 at the most on the open road.
- Don't drive at 66.
- It is not worth it.
- Sounds like Germany.
- Nah, they fall out of the sky.
- You don't know where they come from.
- It is unbelievable.
- Have you been through there?
- I lived in Raleigh.
- Oh, well, I was in Durham.
- They're all over there.
- You know exactly what I'm talking about.
- A friend of mine was caught between Durham and whatever,
- as long as North Carolina goes.
- Her husband had passed away, and they had two run home,
- literally.
- And they got caught at that point.
- And that wasn't easy to explain.
- We got ticketed anyway.
- You don't do it in North Carolina.
- You don't.
- Have you lived there long, in Raleigh?
- That's where I'm co-oping at, in--
- In that triangle?
- Yeah.
- I was there this summer, and then I was there five months
- last fall, so.
- Is that still home to you?
- No, I'm actually from South Mississippi, from Picayune.
- From where?
- Picayune, Mississippi.
- It's down toward the coast.
- Well, they got me to [INAUDIBLE]..
- And I told--
- I know your name.
- Why can't I say it?
- What's your name?
- Corey?
- Corey, Corey.
- I told Corey last week, I think, they got me the afternoon
- before, so I had spent the night there.
- But that night they took me out, and they
- had 50 other teachers, or teachers aides,
- or anything that had to do with education there.
- And I spoke to them.
- We had a nice dinner, and I spoke to them.
- The next day, they pulled three high schools together
- within that vicinity.
- I spoke to 600 in the morning and 400 in the afternoon.
- This is incredible--
- I have pictures of that, too--
- big article in the paper.
- And I've got more paper clippings.
- You wouldn't believe.
- It's awful.
- But that was quite a meeting.
- I went in Arkansas.
- I spoke there.
- And in Munford--
- I got to Munford the other day, and Sunday night I'll
- be here in--
- let's see-- Idlewild Presbyterian Church.
- I used to play basketball against them.
- Huh?
- I used to--
- Play basketball against them?
- Yeah.
- This time it's a youth group, and they we're
- going to have one class.
- And I told him--
- I said, you get those kids in there.
- Why don't you get them all?
- So we're going to have them all.
- They're going to pull them all together into one meeting.
- You know I think it's from either seventh or eighth grade
- through 12th.
- So that way, you reach more, and if you have more,
- more questions come, things they want to know.
- It's really something.
- I'm surprised.
- I don't know if you caught the Million Man March stuff.
- I recorded that just so I could have--
- of course, old Farrakhan stayed away
- from some of his typical stuff.
- Yes, I heard.
- But it was funny.
- I recorded it so I would have a little example
- because they said some of--
- Jackson and Sharpton-- they all said
- a little bit of their stuff, but they didn't really get into it.
- They did.
- They couldn't.
- I wish I would have been recording Rush
- this week because they kind of went over a little bit of it
- every day.
- And then he'd show-- he would show some of their--
- because they were claiming they never said this.
- And then Rush would turn around, and he showed people saying it.
- I now.
- I heard it all.
- I need to-- there's that place in Connecticut that handles all
- the transcripts and this and that and have all--
- I want to write to them and try to get video because they're
- the ones that have--
- --have it all.
- There's huge archives and stuff.
- And I want to get those clips, especially
- if I plan on teaching, because I want to show people
- that their speeches are as bad as some the Nazis made as far
- as--
- Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
- Because I've seen some on Rush that--
- I was just like, this is--
- You were too young to listen to that.
- You probably were still in the beginning of high school
- or something like that and not yet quite interested in all
- that when he spoke like that.
- I have heard them all.
- He came to down to state--
- I don't know if this was freshman year or the year
- before.
- Was it the year before that he came, that Farrakhan?
- He came to state--
- I don't remember.
- If it was my--
- I don't think it was my freshman year
- because I think I would have been aware of it.
- But I had heard that there was a whole lot of trouble.
- You know how after the OJ verdict--
- I heard that the police--
- the university police had to go there and watch over
- a lot of things and stuff like that.
- You bet your life.
- Oh, it caused a tremendous--
- he's a tremendous rabble-rouser.
- Rush poked fun at his--
- he was using a lot of numerology type stuff,
- messing around with all this, and Rush said--
- he said, yeah, if you take Farrakhan's name as letters
- being in the alphabet, one through 26,
- he said, his name comes to the number 78.
- And when did he come to power? '78, 1978.
- Because he kept saying stuff like--
- I mean, Rush was making fun of--
- and then Rush took apart his own name.
- He said, take apart my name.
- You have-- first off, you start off, R-U. He said, well,
- if you take those as words, R-U, and then you take the last--
- --two.
- --of the first name and then the first name, you get slim.
- He said, you take that R-U slim-- are you slim?
- Yes, I have been losing weight.
- He can make something out of everything.
- It's funny.
- He was poking so much fun at all that stuff.
- But he-- the thing I--
- I don't know if Saturday Night Live or any of those
- are going to poke fun at, but during the whole speech his son
- and I guess a couple others behind him
- but, in particular, his son--
- all you heard was, go ahead, go ahead.
- I've got it on tape.
- I'm going to go back through, and I'm
- going to count how many times he says--
- And you wished you had it on video, didn't you?
- Oh, I've got it on video.
- Oh, you did.
- Oh, that's good.
- It stopped-- at one point the power went out.
- I've been-- it's a couple of times it's happened recently.
- They don't even tell you.
- They don't say if they shut off--
- I guess all the complex--
- they've been doing stuff with the telephone line.
- Oh, God.
- You'd think they would tell people, hey,
- we're going to be shutting off power, or whatever.
- So I missed--
- It's all right.
- --probably about 10 minutes of it.
- It funny.
- The whole time-- and you can see him--
- go ahead-- he had his sunglasses on-- go ahead.
- It's just so funny.
- Now, he is in Chicago, right?
- Farrakhan.
- I'm not sure.
- Clinton, he got out of that city so he
- wouldn't have to deal with it.
- But old Colin Powell knew-- he knows what's
- politically smart for him.
- He's--
- He knows.
- No, he's not stupid.
- But some-- it's pretty bad.
- They were talking about, well, is it
- a good thing, the way he's bringing out
- this type of unity?
- But you look at the Nazis, he brought out unity,
- but it wasn't positive.
- Not really.
- [LAUGHS] It's no biggie one way or the other.
- I've got to search through it anyway.
- That's pretty bad that they--
- in the news, I've only seen one time
- on the regular news or those type moves
- from where they mentioned him being racist or whatever.
- No.
- And only once--
- I mean, they hardly ever talk about it.
- They'll say, do we consider his past or whatever?
- Oh, you have no idea of the things he says.
- I mean, it's--
- Or has said, and he's very careful now.
- It didn't go over, you see.
- It didn't go over, the Blacks that are against him.
- Yeah, the NAACP wouldn't sponsor it.
- I'm really surprised.
- No, I'm not.
- They usually have gotten into a lot of this.
- I've seen some stuff where they, I
- guess because it was so nationally covered,
- there was so much controversy about it,
- they stayed out of it.
- They couldn't afford to do it.
- They really couldn't.
- But that's a rare time when they have it.
- He's the perfect dictator.
- And so is Jesse Jackson.
- He's real bad.
- I couldn't believe David Letterman had him
- on the other night.
- He had him on.
- I didn't want to listen to it.
- Did you hear it?
- Jesse Jackson on David Letterman?
- Yeah.
- I saw he was saying his typical stuff.
- And then what's funny is afterwards, oh,
- who was it, Shannon Doherty or whatever.
- She was on Our House.
- But she's this actress.
- She was on afterwards.
- And Dave, he was like, what did you think of Jesse Jackson
- and whatever?
- And she said, well, you wouldn't want me to comment on that.
- And she said, I'm a Republican.
- If you remember about it, you know.
- She's like, in '92, I led the pledge
- at the Republican Convention.
- Oh.
- So of course, you know she knew she would have gone off on him.
- But oh, he's bad.
- I hate when people compare Rush with--
- I said something about Farrakhan.
- Someone said something about Rush.
- But I've never found anything.
- I've never heard Rush say anything racist.
- No.
- I've never heard anything.
- I don't see him that often.
- I usually fall asleep at that time.
- [LAUGHS]
- I've listened to his radio and everything.
- You know, I mean, if someone will show it to me
- or play it for me--
- Yeah.
- --it's fine.
- But I mean, I have seen Farrakhan, Sharpton,
- and Jesse Jackson.
- I've seen all three of them, on more than one occasion, say--
- I mean, we're not talking implied,
- we're talking flat-out said stuff.
- Yeah.
- I've heard it.
- And then he really went at it bad.
- And that's what really gave him such a bad name.
- And like Jesse Jackson--
- you'll have to take that off the tape.
- I mean, you can't do that in class or anything,
- what we are saying there.
- But Jesse Jackson, I think he, too, has calmed his voice some.
- My version was-- and I told my husband that when he was
- living--
- I said, honey, I have never heard this man speak.
- All he does is bark.
- He barks-- at least, he did.
- I mean, it was--
- Like a bulldog.
- --bow-ow-ow-ow-ow.
- And it sounded terrible.
- Well, that's what Hitler did a lot.
- In a lot of speeches, you see him.
- Tirades, three hours long--
- you know, Castro used to do that,
- those long-winded speeches.
- And Hitler did that, hours and hours,
- and where he found all the words, that I'll never know.
- Good grief.
- As I said.
- Well, you just keep rambling.
- I mean, that's what Jesse Jackson used to do.
- Yeah, well, Hitler said the same thing over, and over, and over,
- and over till everybody believed him, you know.
- And the best way to get somebody is
- if you want to be the superior one, you pick on a minority.
- And he picked on a minority.
- You can always win.
- He picked on the Jews.
- It certainly was the minority in Germany.
- Well, one thing I've never said is with Jesse Jackson,
- he's always talking about this and that
- with Martin Luther King.
- But if what I've been taught's correct
- that some of the leaders in the Civil Rights
- were Jewish people, they were instrumental.
- Helped him.
- Helped him, yeah.
- What happened, yeah.
- It's weird.
- And in Montgomery, too, in Montgomery, Alabama,
- you know, when they had that riot there,
- there were quite a few Jewish young men that were there.
- Some were killed in Montgomery.
- Have you ever heard of Southern Poverty Law
- Center, it is called?
- Morris Dees is the head of it.
- Morris Dees is a lawyer.
- He's not Jewish.
- And he grew up in an environment,
- where his father was--
- talk about the niggers.
- His father was.
- He might not have been with the Ku Klux,
- but he could have been.
- I'm not too sure on that.
- And he has an organization that goes
- after all these Klan militia, all those kind of organizations
- that are trying to create problems against everybody,
- the Aryan Nation, and all these various groups that have.
- And they're violent.
- And they go.
- Now, he was in on the one--
- what's the one that they are investigating so much now?
- The Hill?
- What's the guy's name?
- They shot his wife and his son.
- Oh, yeah.
- And there's some of that.
- Yeah.
- They were in.
- They found them and that organization.
- And they published everything they've done.
- I wished I had a copy here of it.
- I had a list of every one of those militia groups
- that he published.
- I bet Farrakhan would have been really confused
- and had your trouble if Sammy Davis Jr.
- would have been aware.
- [LAUGHS] He would make a good subject.
- Good grief.
- Could cause them some trouble there.
- Yeah, indeedy.
- They really confused him.
- Oh, boy.
- He had everything against him.
- He was Black and Jewish now, you really.
- That's bad news.
- Farrakhan would have some trouble talking to him.
- He would have.
- Of course, he would've claimed he had been brainwashed.
- Brian, you have any questions?
- Not really.
- I don't know everything Cory's asked last week.
- So I don't want that.
- Well, I was wondering whether you had some of your own.
- Do you have a copy of your speech?
- Mm-hmm.
- Did you say you had a video--
- I have a video too.
- --that I could, I guess, borrow or something sometime.
- It's right there.
- You have to get it.
- I'm nailed down.
- OK.
- Take the one underneath that.
- This one?
- I think so.
- Let me see that.
- This is the interview.
- The interview?
- Let me see it.
- Yeah.
- That's the original.
- Now, these are the copies.
- This is the one they sent you, right?
- This is the interview.
- Still alive, I have to be careful.
- Yeah, this is the original.
- I'm not going to let you have that one.
- But either one of those, you can have.
- A neighbor of mine did them.
- Let me explain that.
- Or if you know how to put it in, I can't work this thing.
- Well, I mean, can--
- And put it on.
- --he had a copy of the speech or something so I can borrow while
- I'm taking this for the tape--
- It's on there.
- It's on there.
- --at school?
- It's on here, whole speech is.
- You've got about an hour and a half on that.
- I got the whole thing.
- Was not supposed to have it.
- But they messed up with me.
- And just because they messed up, they told me be on on Friday.
- They put it on on Thursday, and everybody missed it.
- I knew the segment was for three days, Wednesday, Thursday,
- and Friday.
- And I was supposed to be on on Friday.
- And they did it on Thursday.
- It so happens, I turned it on.
- It was just a few minutes past 10:00, you know, in the news.
- I said, oh, let me see what they're going to have on today
- because that was the next segment.
- And I turned it on.
- And I looked at myself.
- And I was gone.
- Huh, what happened?
- I was so mad because everybody here knew about it.
- And everybody turned it on.
- And it never did happen.
- And so I called them, I said, what do you mean,
- preserving my past?
- They didn't preserve anything.
- It went on about two minutes.
- You know, they shrink it.
- They were here over an hour and a half,
- and not just interviewing, but they wanted to hear the speech.
- So the speech is on there.
- Then they're explaining preserving your past on TV
- also.
- And then I have the segment that I am on
- and the other two days too.
- So you got a lot there.
- You might want to watch it all.
- But that starts off with a speech.
- So you can get an idea.
- And it's funny.
- One day, I was watching Andy Rooney.
- Do you ever watch him on, what is it, 60 Minutes?
- Yeah.
- And he says, they do a video of you.
- And you're sitting there.
- And you're being interviewed.
- And you talk.
- And there's something wrong with my nose.
- And my ear itches.
- And I'm rubbing my chin.
- But I did all of it.
- [LAUGHS] Mostly my nose was always something
- itching or doing that.
- You don't know you're doing it.
- And then you see yourself, says oh, gee, god, this is awful.
- So anyway, I need that back too.
- That's no problem.
- Just going to try to--
- well, I guess I can look at the schedules, my main schedule.
- See here on my--
- I'll probably be back--
- Oh-oh, he'll be back.
- --not the next weekend, but--
- You better be because that's her tape, huh?
- --either the first or second week of November, weekend.
- It just depends.
- Because this weekend, the only reason
- I'm afraid I might not come home is--
- By the game?
- --is because I have this paper due that Tuesday.
- And then I've got a test in the class Thursday.
- So I have a feeling I'll need to stay there
- because if I come home, I probably
- won't work on my paper.
- No.
- Procrastinate and it's caught.
- [LAUGHS]
- Well, I usually get my stuff done early.
- I try to get my stuff I have to get done.
- Well, you're lucky if you can do it.
- I used to procrastinate too--
- So this is what my schedule is like.
- --and then mad at myself.
- I do that, but that's why I've got--
- see, I went ahead and done up most of my homework
- for the rest of the semester in computer class.
- I went ahead, since I had not really an easy week.
- It ended up being a--
- It wasn't a tough one, yeah.
- --frustrating week.
- But I mean, I didn't have a lot of stuff.
- I just had the paper because I did the paper Monday once.
- And then I had to, of course, redo it about 500 times.
- You'd better be glad you all have
- the equipment you now have.
- We didn't have that.
- Everything went by hand.
- Oh, boy.
- He's got the equipment.
- I have the car.
- I have to drive over to his place.
- Where do you live?
- Well, I live in Starkville, an apartment
- that's a couple of miles from his place.
- I've been typing a lot of my stuff.
- You don't live in Memphis normally speaking?
- No, ma'am.
- I'm from South Mississippi.
- I'm just here visiting for it.
- He couldn't take being the star.
- Huh?
- He couldn't take being in start before the--
- it's a suitcase college, as they say.
- Are most colleges that way?
- If I went to school--
- even if it wasn't for Memphis, if I
- was going to school in a place like Memphis,
- I don't think I would be coming home, even
- if it wasn't that far away.
- I mean, if I was probably going to school way off,
- and it was a bigger place, I probably wouldn't.
- We're not recording, are we?
- Well, we are, but it--
- Well.
- --he can end here.
- All right.
Overview
- Interview Summary
- Eleanor “Dicky” Ehrlich (née Weile), born June 6, 1922 in Berlin, Germany, discusses being an only child; her mother (Tilla Froehlich), who owned a store; her father (Julius Weile), who was a traveling manufacturer’s representative; witnessing Nazi parades; her friend whose parents were Nazi supporters; a major boycott in 1933 and her parents’ decision to move to Amsterdam; the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940; the civilian response to the German occupiers; the Dutch view towards religion; the deportations of Jews; receiving a letter in August 1942 to report to Gestapo headquarters; being detained along with her parents; being sent on March 23, 1943 to Herzogenbusch (Vught), where she made radio tubes for V-1 and V-2 rockets; her mother’s death from sickness on November 7; being sent to Auschwitz and arriving on June 6, 1944; being tattooed with her camp number; being transferred to Reichenbach (Langenbielau) on June 10, 1944; being requested by the Philips Factory because of her ability as a worker and how she believes that this saved her life; the acts of disobedience performed by the prisoners; damaging components of the radio tubes they were producing; her memories of the inmates and camp guards; her German friend in the camp, Gerda Witteck, who shared food with her; being moved to Langenbielau on February 20, 1945 and then forced to march to Trautenau, Czechoslovakia (Trutnov, Czech Republic); being transported by train in coal cars to Minden, Westphalia (arrived March 26, 1945); being transported to Beensdorf (arrived April 2, 1945) and remaining there for two weeks; being sent to Bergen-Belsen, which was full and would not let them in; going to Ludwigslust; going on an 11 night trip to Hamburg in a railway car, moving along much of the same tracks over and over; being forced to dig trenches; being liberated by the Swedish Red Cross on May 4, 1945; immigrating to the United States in 1948; and her reflections on the methods she used to survive the camps.
- Interviewee
- Eleanor Ehrlich
- Interviewer
- Corey Ray
- Date
-
interview:
1995 October 04
interview: 1995 October 13
interview: 1995 October 27
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Corey Ray
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
2 sound cassettes (90 min.).
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Concentration camp guards. Concentration camp tattoos. Concentration camps--Psychological aspects. Death march survivors. Death marches. Forced labor. Holocaust survivors. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives. Jewish women in the Holocaust. Jews--Germany--Berlin. Jews, German--Netherlands--Amsterdam. Roll calls. Sabotage. Women concentration camp guards. Women concentration camp inmates. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Liberation. Women--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Amsterdam (Netherlands) Beendorf (Germany) Berlin (Germany) Bielawa (Walbrzych, Poland) Celle (Germany) Germany--Social conditions--1918-1933. Hamburg (Germany) Netherlands--History--German occupation, 1940-1945. Poland. Trutnov (Czech Republic) United States--Emigration and immigration.
- Personal Name
- Ehrlich, Eleanor Weile, 1922-
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Corey Ray donated the oral history interview with Eleanor "Dicky" Weile to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in January 2018.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:21:18
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn594392
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