Oral history interview with Frau Merz and Herr Merz

Oral history interview with Hansrudolf Hauth

Oral History

Hansrudolf Hauth, born on December 12, 1912 in Zürich, Switzerland, describes his background growing up as half Jewish (his mother was Jewish and his father Christian); having a lifelong mobility impairment as a result of rheumatic fever; his father, who went to Switzerland around 1900 to avoid military service and was a trained teacher but not allowed to teach because of his Social Democrat political activities; his father’s work as an editor for International Law in Zürich; the deportation and imprisonment of his father for one year in Mannheim, Germany for covering the bricklayers’ strike; his father’s return to Zürich in 1911 and marriage to a Jewish woman, a secretary in the Social Democrat party whose family was from Vienna and whose mother had immigrated to Zürich with her three daughters (of whom Hansrudof’s mother was the youngest) after separating from her husband; his older maternal aunt, who worked in Switzerland as a pediatrician; his other maternal aunt, who immigrated in 1937 to England where she worked as an economist; his mother’s death of kidney failure in 1914 at the age of 29 (he was 9 months old); moving with his father brother and 16-year-older sister to Stuttgart, Germany in 1915; his sister caring for his brother and him; his father exposing them to Social Democratic interests through theatre and later film; attending Karls Gymnasium in Stuttgart from 1919 to 1931; being an outsider as a Social Democrat; his interest in theology, which stemmed from his paternal grandmother who was Christian; being exposed to religious Social Democrats (Kutter, Ragatz, Eckert, Tellicht) through his father; attending the Markuskirche (a Protestant church) in Stuttgart one time; Professor Fauth, who was a liberal religious teacher at the Technical Secondary School in Stuttgart and broadened his interest in philosophy; beginning his studies in theology in 1932 in Tübingen; his father’s sudden death; being accepted into seminary; his “half-Jewishness” emerging as an issue as the political climate shifted; the book “Ich und Du” by Buber which was influential for both him and his brother; his brother’s death in 1933 from complications of asthma; finding solace and influence in theologians Blumhart and Bultman; passing his first exams in Tübingen satisfactorily; applying in 1938 to teach in Basel and his half-Jewishness and physical impairment preventing him from getting the job; working from 1938 to 1942 as an editor in Stuttgart; working briefly as a hospital orderly, and then working as a salesman for Bosch; how on November 10, 1944 70 Jews and half-Jews from Bosch were rounded up after Himmler’s decree and sent to a work camp in Wolfenbuttel; being sent back to Stuttgart to Bosch soon after; and how by the end of 1944 he had a great hope that the war would be over.

Oral history interview with Herr Ludwig

Oral History

Oral history interview with Herr Mayer-Leonhard

Oral History

Oral history interview with Frau Plettner

Oral History

Oral history interview with Reilinger

Oral History

Oral history interview with Dr. Steinthal

Oral History

Dr. Steinthal, born in 1925, discussing moving with his parents and two sisters into his grandparents’ home in Weilimdorf (near Stuttgart); his father, who was born in 1897 and converted to Christianity in 1918; growing up identifying as German and not Jewish; being the second of three children; attending grammar school in Weilimdorf and Gymnasium in Feuerbach; being classified as 1st Degree Mischling; events that happened during Kristallnacht, including the arrest and deportation of his father to Dachau; his father’s release in December 1938; his parents’ decision to not leave Germany; not being allowed to join the Hitler Youth groups that met on Saturdays; being required to spend the summer of 1941 on farms in Allgäu, Bavaria and help with the harvest; the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the response from the farmers in Allgäu; witnessing deportations from Stuttgart starting in December 1941; being forced to leave the Gymnasium after 10th grade in 1942; the separation of his family as each of siblings went to live with non-Jews elsewhere; living in a flat in Stuttgart, near Kräherwald; working in a small machine-factory, in the Rosenbergstrasse; the arrest and deportation of his father to Welzheim and then, in 1944, to Theresienstadt; being taken at the end of 1944 to Wolfenbüttel, where he was required to work repairing water pipes; liberation; reuniting with his father and sisters; and returning to school in 1946.

Oral history interview with Joseph Winker

Oral History