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What was your first experience with anti-Semitism?
It
started in summer of 1933, and the word anti-Semitism was dropped which
I did not understand.
When do you think you first began to understand
what anti-Semitism meant?
I
had an idea between '35 and '38 that we were unwanted, that we were
not fit to be socialized with. My uncle's picture appeared in the Der
Stuermer which was an anti-Jewish publication that was hung out in
neighborhoods in
a glass case. I really understood fully what it meant when I walked
to school on November 10th and I saw the burning synagogue and the
uniformed Germans laughing. Then I think, for the first time it really – the
word had a meaning, the word had a face, before it didn't.
And how did it feel to finally confront it's face?
It
was very frightening, to see a synagogue burning, to see people laughing
and to see books burning, is very frightening. That was 1938, I was
13 years old and it was a feeling that is not to be described.
Was there a sense of feeling threatened?
Very
much threatened. We did not dare continue our walk to school, we did
not dare go any closer, we did not dare asking what's going on, we
just turned around and ran home. We knew that something was terribly
wrong, but we didn't know what or why.
What were your friends and family's reaction to Hitler
becoming Chancellor?
They
believed that it was a passing phase. That it would blow over. That
things would normalize. And rather naively, they thought it would not
be as bad as it turned out to be.
Was your father's business directly affected by the
boycott?
No.
We were foreign nationals. We were not affected.
What do you remember on the day that the Nazis became
a state party?
I
think it was January 30th, 1933. I remember a great upheaval. A lot
of people marching in uniforms. The neighborhood - where my father
had his offices and the wine cellars - was normally on a holiday. The
flags were red with a hammer and sickle. After Hitler took power they
were torn down. And I couldn't quite understand why. I really don't
remember anything. It did not have much significance for an eight-year
old. That came later.
Was your family friends with any other families—the
gentile families—that eventually joined?
No,
we had no Gentile friends. Just neighbors.
How did the Nuremberg laws personally affect your
lifestyle?
In
the beginning they did not affect us at all because we didn't hold
German nationality. In later years they began to affect us. But we
were excluded from the Nuremberg Laws.
What did your parents say when you asked them about
what was going on in Germany?
My
parents answered, more or less, that this was a passing phase, and
not to worry, and that things would turn normal again. But going to school
and seeing that children left for abroad and never came back – some
teachers left – and seeing really no improvement in the atmosphere – being
told to be quiet on the streetcar, or being told not going to the park
and sitting down on a bench – it did not seem to us like a passing
phase. From '33 to '38, that's five years, and for a child that is
just too long. So the children, more or less, asked: "Why can't
we leave?" or "Why can't we go to England, or the United
States." It was, more or less, a feeling that you wanted to leave.
You didn't realize the difficulties of leaving, you didn't know the
economics that you would have to build up a new life, you did not realize
that you might have to speak a different language. It was just the
wish to leave.
Did you talk about the desire to leave with Karin
often?
No,
no, she was five years younger, and it did not make the same impression.
How was she dealing with the increasing anti-Semitism?
She
grew up with it. By the time she got to school it was 1935, so she
really did not remember anything else. She was born in 1930, and to
her this was the way it was. There was no before, no after.
So contrasting with how you coped with it, since
you had seen life beforehand and she really hadn't, was it challenging
to deal with it in the same respect, because your experiences were so
different?
I
don't know whether I dealt with the circumstances very well, but there
always was an inch of optimism, "Maybe, maybe." We still
thought at that time, that somehow there would be a change, whether
there would be a change by going across a border to France, or by
having a new government or having the population change their opinions.
I'm really not sure what a child thought because children in those
years were not as articulate as children are now.
Why do you think your family was so hopeful?
Because
they held foreign passport. They had the protection of an embassy.
And they thought, in a sense, that they were untouchable, which they were
up to a point. Why they were so hopeful? Maybe they believed it, or
maybe it was just for our sake, I do not know, I never got a chance
to ask.
I remember from your book that your father
offered you the chance to take the transport to England. Could you describe
that further?
I
was in 1939 – in January – a very frightened child. I would
not have gone to England by myself. My cousin went, but he had an uncle
in England. I had no family in England, and I just couldn't conceive
of the idea of leaving the family and going by myself. What would I
have gained had I gone? I would have had a somewhat easier life. The
English did not send the children to school, they made maids or apprentices
out of them. At age 14 they had to leave school. Most of them did not
have an easy life, but they had a life. Most of them didn't see their
parents again. And as you have seen probably last night on KQED – the Kindertransport – you hear now that these children – which
are close to 80 now – have a trauma and resentment and they are
beginning to cope with the past now. They demand compensation from
the German government for having gone to England. They state that they
suffered as much as anybody else, but they retained their lives.
The children that remained in Europe did not, a million children disappeared.
So, why didn't I go to England. I just couldn't go by myself, I was
afraid.
The Nuremberg Laws started on September 15, 1935.
What was your reaction when you first heard of their existence?
I
really didn't quite understand. I had friends whose parents were not
both Jewish, one part was Jewish, one was not. I know we had a maid
who was not Jewish and she was maybe 25 years old, and she had to leave.
The word "Nuremberg Laws" did not enter my mind until much,
much later. What I didn't know, that mixed marriages had advantages
and disadvantages. What I knew is that my friend had an uncle who had
a non-Jewish girlfriend, and he was in prison for four years. So it
was a state of knowing, but not knowing the entire implication. We
were too young, too protected, and too politically ignorant to fully
comprehend.
Do you think your parents protected you from knowing?
I
think parents during that time or during that period protected their
children much more than children are protected today, than my children
were. And it was just – the 30's, the 20's the 30's, it was just – you
didn't speak at the dinner table unless you were spoken to. There was
a saying, "Children are to be seen, but not to be heard." It
was totally different, it is very hard to put it into words. If an
elderly person came into the subway you stood up. I can go onto BART
and no one will stand up. It is a different culture, it is a different
way of thinking. The world has changed a great deal in 50 years.
Was it also not only a part of the time, maybe
a part of the German culture?
No,
I think it was the same all over Europe. It wasn't just Germany. It
was the same in Poland, it was the same in Denmark. It was very restrictive,
very proper. I mean a child was not really considered a person yet.
You had to be considerably older to have an opinion and to be a person.
During that time of the rise of Nazism, did you
hear any conversations from the Jewish community or people in general
when the community started to change?
The
Jewish community was headed by Dr. Max Plaut. I believe he had a law
degree. Any access that he had to a visa, or to any kind of immigration
papers, went to people that he personally selected, or that brought or payed
for the favors. The Jewish Committee was in disarray, people came,
people left. Dr. Plaut remained in Germany until 1943 or 1944, which
was unheard of. He was exchanged against a German, I believe he came
from Yugoslavia, and he made it to Palestine in 1944 or '45. He was
in some ways respected as the head of the Jewish Community, in other
ways he was very much detested. I never had a chance to see him again
or to speak to him, and I don’t think I would have spoken to
him. Because when we pleaded for one visa for my father, his answers
were rather nasty and I would have retaliated somehow.
Do you remember what his answers were?
I
don't remember, because I went with my mother, my mother did the talking – I
was a "window dressing" so to speak. It was something to
the effect, "Pay me for it", which could have meant a great
many things in those days. For that I never forgave him.
Do you remember if you had any teachers, or neighbors
or close friends that were Hitler supporters?
All
the neighbors were Hitler supporters. All the children that used to
play with us were Hitler supporters. So from that point on from 1933,
they didn't even say good morning, nothing.
So with your friend...
My
only friends were Jewish, there was no other possibility for anything
else.
When do you think you first started really realizing
what the Nuremberg Laws were all about?
Probably
'38, '39, because at that point there were sufficient people who went
to prison because their behavior was not "in accordance with the
law," as the Germans called it. We knew a couple, she was Jewish,
he was not, and they had a summer house in the country. And very early
on, I think it must have been '39 or '40, he hid his wife in the forest
near the summer house, and she survived the war. And I knew about it,
or I heard about it in '39 or '40, and it was very strange because
they had kids my age, they had been married for ages. It was still,
for a teenager, it was difficult to really put into focus, to comprehend.
Leading up to 1938, what were some specific memories
you have of anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic acts leading up to Kristallnacht?
Being
beaten on the street, having stones thrown at us, somebody was even
spitting at us, calling us horrible names. The Jewish cemetery was
closed, at least one or two of them, and the dead supposedly reburied
but not entirely, and on its place is a shopping center or whatever.
The memories were those of being very restricted, having to give up
the apartment, moving to another apartment, moving to a furnished room,
moving to another furnished room. It was like, like a wall that was
closing in, and you didn't really know what you had done to deserve
this.
Can you recount one of those moves that you made?
Well,
by then we had very little furniture, we had packed most of it in containers,
and shipped it to Italy to go to Palestine. The moves were really,
more or less, personal belongings because the rooms were furnished.
They were designated by the German authorities. It was a room half
this size for four people. We had to use a kitchen with everybody in
the apartment, it had one bathroom. And the more we moved, every time
a new rule came out, people in number 5 had to move to a different
street. It was not an improvement. It was an older house, it had no
heat, it had nothing personal in it that used to belong to us. The
moves themselves were fairly simple but the adjustment was not. Some
people kept a very kosher kitchen, some people did not, the conflicts
were constant, "You can't use these dishes, you can't use this
spoon." When you used the bathroom people would bang on the door
if you didn't come out in 30 seconds. It was an existence that was
totally changed except for the streets and the outside of the houses
and the trees and the gardens, those didn't change, but we had not
access to them, we couldn't go into park, we couldn't sit on a bench.
So, it was an existence that had two colors, or two pictures, and they
differed a great deal. One was very familiar, very accustomed, very
normal. And then you came home and you looked at this little room and you
couldn't understand how the two fit together because they didn't.
What do you remember of Kristallnacht?
I
remember walking to school. I was fourteen years old. I saw the Great
Synagogue burning inside and out. I saw Germans in uniform laughing
and burning books. We turned around. We walked home and the phone began
to ring. We were informed that men between the ages of sixteen and
sixty-five are being arrested.
What else do you remember about that day?
I
remember broken store windows, merchandise on the street. I remember
being very frightened. And I really had no idea what this meant.
Do you remember how you felt when you saw what
was happening? Did feel a sense of danger or threat?
I
was very much afraid, because if a building is burning and people stand
around it and laugh, it doesn't make sense. I could have seen water
or fire brigade, but not laughter, because it wasn't funny. So it was
very, very frightening. It was frightening to see mountains of books
being burned, and in those days, I did not know the saying by Heinrich
Heine, "When they start burning books, it won't be long before
they start burning human beings," and that was written 200 years prior.
So, it is very hard to tell you what fear is like, fear is when you
turn
around and walk along a wall and don't look back, and try to go
as fast as possible without drawing attention to yourself. That is
fear.
That was an everyday part of your life?
Yeah,
more or less.
Did your family, the community, or you believe
that it would ever get better?
I
don't know. What they told us was one story, what they really believed
themselves was the second story. We just wanted to leave, all the kids.
Whether it was the adventure of leaving a country, or moving, or whether
it was just wanting to get away from the world outside, I do not know,
but all of us wanted to leave.
During this time period how did you manage to maintain
some honor and pride in your daily life?
I
think honor and pride did not enter the daily life. It was a daily
existence, probably without honor and without pride. I took a job in
a department store, sewing clothing so we could have a little bit more
money, because our accounts were blocked, we had no funds, we got a
hundred dollars a month. Honor and pride didn't matter anymore, it
was way beyond that. It was a matter of surviving a day at a time,
whether honor played a role, or pride, I doubt very much.
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