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How did you feel about leaving your family?
I
realized it was the best thing that I could do. I was certainly hoping
and praying that they would follow very soon. But as I say they didn't
come to this country until three years after I did. By that time
I had graduated from high school and I was working in a bank and going
to night school at the same time, trying to accumulate some college
credit.
Did you want to come to the United States initially?
Yes.
Actually, it was not too much of a choice. I had relatives here.
I had an uncle here who was able to receive me and with whom I was
able to live. I didn't have relatives in other safe countries.
I could have perhaps gone to Switzerland - I had relatives in Switzerland
- but that was never really discussed.
I
could have gone to what is now Israel, but I would have been alone
there. There was nobody there. Yes there was. My uncle who
was a lawyer in Germany, went to -at that time - Palestine I think
in 1936, thereabouts. But he had his own problems. He went there
with his wife and two sons and he had to start making a living. You
know what he did there? He had a chicken farm! He was a prominent
lawyer and became a chicken farmer! He had his own family to
worry about, he probably couldn't have taken care of me. I would
have been
alone there. That's why it was decided in the family that I should
go to America.
How did they decide to send you first?
It
was discussed in the family and we had correspondence with our American
family and they made out the necessary papers so that I could get an
immigration visa. When I got my visa, there was not so much of a waiting
period as there was later. Later, before my parents were able to leave
Germany, the waiting list for an American immigration visa was very
very long. But just a year or so before, it was not so long and I was
able to get my visa fairly quickly. I don't remember just how long
it took.
What were your feelings on emigration from Germany?
I
was very happy to get out of there. I was very happy to get out of
there.
You did feel it was necessary to leave?
I
knew it was necessary and I decided that I was going to do my best
to become an American. I learned English very quickly. I think at the
last interview, I mentioned that the first book that I read after I
arrived here was a history of the United States before I started going
to high school.
As
an example of how quickly I learned English - when I was in high school,
in the English class - we once had a spelling test and we had to spell
two hundred words. I was the only one in that class who got two hundred
words right. All the other kids made some mistakes. That's how much
I was determined to learn the language.
Did you ever feel guilty when you left your parents
and went onto the boat?
I
wouldn't say I felt guilty. I felt very much concerned about their
safety and I was hoping that they would get out as soon as possible.
Eventually, they were lucky to be able to do so. I had three aunts
left in Germany - as I told you, my father gave them money - and they
were not as lucky as we were.
One
aunt was taken to a concentration camp in Southern France in 1942 together
with all the remaining Jews in the state of Baden. Along with her,
my grandmother - actually step-grandmother because she was the mother
of my second mother - she also was taken to Camp de Gurs in Southern
France, on the slope of the Pyrenees.
She
and my aunt were there for four years and they were liberated in 1944.
They were both were pretty elderly and they both died a year later
- 1945 - in Southern France. Another aunt was taken by the Germans
to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. We
think - but we're not sure - she was probably taken to Auschwitz from
there
and that's where she lost her life.
The
third aunt - just before they came to arrest her - took her own life.
By the way, my grandmother, after she was liberated in 1944,
sat down and wrote a journal about her four years in the concentration
camp in great detail. Hand-written. It's a fifteen thousand-word journal
about "My Time in the Camp." In great detail, she describes
people and events. Marvelous memory.
You
can really get an appreciation of what life was like in the camp. We
had that journal - I still have a copy of it - but the original, after
my mother passed away a few years ago, we took the original of
the journal to Washington D.C. and donated it to the Holocaust Memorial
Museum and that's where it is now, because it's quite a historic document.
Do you remember any incidents when you were with
your family before you got onto the boat?
I
remember when my parents took me to Hamburg - to the ship - and one
specific little episode: they were able to come onto the ship with
me and we had lunch there in that beautiful, big dining room. As is
the custom in American restaurants, they had water on the table, right?
Now,
that was not the custom in Germany at that time. In Germany, if you
had wine you drank wine. If you didn't, you didn't drink anything,
or maybe coffee or tea or something. But you didn't have a glass of
water - particularly ice water - on the table. You didn't. Here
we were on this American ship having lunch and everybody had a glass
of ice water in front of them!
I remember my father commenting on that because it was so unusual for
us to see that. He commented: "I suppose they're serving
water because they don't have any wine." That's the only particular
little episode I remember.
When you traveled to America in 1953, do you remember
what the journey was like on the ship?
The
journey was very pleasant. You see, it was an American ship, so as
soon as I got onboard ship in Hamburg, I was no longer on German soil
and I heaved a sigh of relief. I was on American soil. It was the S.S.
Washington of the United States Lines. She was a beautiful passenger
ship - a very pleasant trip.
I
was a fifteen year old boy and we first stopped in Le Havre, France,
we went ashore and I have a snapshot of myself sitting on a bench in
a park near in Le Havre. Then we stopped also in Southampton, England
- we didn't go ashore there - I think Southampton came first and then
Le Havre and then we stopped in Cork, Ireland.
We
didn't go ashore there either, and from there across the ocean to New
York and at the harbor and there was the Statue of Liberty which made
a tremendous impression on me, of course. We docked on the west side
of Manhattan in the Hudson River and I was received by the American
family of mine. My father had three sisters living in New York - in
Brooklyn. They received me and I stayed with them for a couple of
weeks. Then they put me on the train to go to Kansas City, Missouri
where my father had a brother, my uncle, and with whom I then lived
until my own family came over.
How many people were on the ship?
Several
hundred, of course. It was a fairly good-sized ship. I still have the
menu of the gala dinner. You know, the last dinner during a voyage
is usually a big deal. They had a big gala dinner with a beautiful
fancy menu with a picture on the front. I still have it.
In
fact, we took a cruise a few years ago from here to Hawaii. The ship
belonged to the United States Lines - the same shipping lines on which
I came over to this country. I took that menu with me on the trip
and I showed it to the captain. This was a menu of a gala dinner of
1937, over sixty years ago. It was a very nice dinner.
When and how did you learn English?
I
started to learn English in Germany already, about half a year or so
before I actually left. My parents arranged private lessons for me
in preparation for leaving Germany. I had some private lessons.
I already knew a little bit of English before I came over. I came to
Kansas City, Missouri, where my father's brother lived. I lived with
him and his wife until my parents later came over. My aunt arranged
for me to have English lessons, private lessons, that summer. I came
in June so I had the entire summer to study English before I entered
high school. You know what, the book that I read, I still remember.
It was A History of the United States. I read that that summer,
so I was well prepared for high school.
Did you know much about America? What did you think
of it?
I
knew very little before I came here. I had read the books, novels,
by a novelist named Karl May who wrote in German,
and he wrote about the Wild West and the Indians and cowboys and so
forth. He made it look very realistic even though he was never in the
United States. But I loved reading those books. That's about all I
knew about the United States before I came here.
Why didn't your parents and your brother go with you?
That's
a good question. You see my father still had his business. For older
people, for middle-aged people, it's a little bit harder to pull up
stakes than it is for teenagers. I mean I had no responsibilities,
right? I had no business to worry about. I didn't have children to
worry about. I was one myself. It was easier for me to leave Germany
than for my parents.
They
did eventually make application for an immigration visa for the United
States. But by the time that they made that application, it was much
harder to come here than it was when I came. In the matter of one year
it became much harder, because more and more people wanted to get out.
The U.S. immigration policy at that time had an immigration quota.
Which meant that only so and so many people were allowed each year
from any particular country. They had to be on the waiting list
to come to the United States and it would take a long time to reach
their number.
My
relatives in Kansas City, Missouri tried some other method to help
them get out. They had a friend by the name of Senator Harry Truman,
who later became president as you know. They asked him to help
my family get out and he did try. He wrote to the German Consul - I
mean the American Consul in Germany - and he requested that my family
and several other families also, that their immigration to the United
States be expedited. But the Consul was subject to our State Department
policy which was pretty tough and they said "No way, it'll take
two or three years on this waiting list to reach this family."
Truman
advised my relatives to tell my parents to get out of Germany as quickly
as possible and to go a third country, wherever they could
go, and stay temporarily. They did. It was possible for them to
go to Cuba. They lived in Cuba for thirteen months. They went to
Cuba in April '39, just a few months before World War II started. They
lived there for thirteen months, until their number came up and they
came to the United States.
Now,
I know about this correspondence with Truman's office because this
entire correspondence is in the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri.
A second cousin of mine - who is a federal district court judge
in Kansas City - happened to find the correspondence while he was doing
some research in the Truman Library. He told me to write and request
copies. I have the entire correspondence, I have it right here.
You can see it afterwards.
They
were lucky. They got to Cuba by the skin of their teeth. Because a
month after they got to Cuba, Cuba closed its doors, and wouldn't
let any more German refugees come in. They were very lucky. Then they
came to Kansas City in May 1940. That's the story about my family.
When
my parents left Germany they were still able to bring household furniture
- which was shipped directly to Kansas City and awaited them when they
got there. But people who got out after that weren't able to do that.
You see, the restrictions were progressive. What you could do at
one time, two months later you weren't able to do it anymore. When
my parents came, they were still able to bring furniture out, but no
money to speak of.
When
my father sold his business, he was not able to sell it by himself.
The authorities appointed a trustee, who found a buyer and sold the
buyer the business for a relatively small amount. My parents weren't
able to bring that money out. What my father did was to distribute
the money they still had and couldn't bring out among his three sisters
- he had three sisters still living in Germany - and he gave them that
money, and it helped them to live. Those three sisters, that's another
story too.
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