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RG-50.549.05.0007 | 59 | I think there were a lot of, I mean it was a large congregation. Now the other, that was uh... that diary that I was telling you about when we went back to Magdeburg and they had the exhibit of all the Jewish artifacts? There was an open diary by, the rabbi’s name was Wilde, WI LD E, Professor Wilde. He was a PhD. It was a large congregation. He had a very prominent role in the community, I think. He started this diary, saying “There we were. We had all been arrested by the police, a banker and a baker and a rabbi and a Rosenberg. And here we were sitting in the police station, all expecting to go home that night.” And I mean, all I could read... it was ina glass case, so it just went that far. He ended up going to England. He also got out safely, but he was even older than my father. I don’t know what, I think he just lived out his life in England, in London somewhere. So, there were a lot of people arrested after Kristallnacht. And how many of them... there was a family, there was actually a family living upstairs above us in the synagogue, in this building, like it was just an apartment building, there may have been some offices downstairs, but it was perpendicular to the Temple itself, and then there was this courtyard. There was another family upstairs that was Jewish and they were from Poland. And they came and arrested them about, several weeks earlier. And I think that Hitler, that they were arresting Jews from Poland and shipping them out. I think that was sort of the event probably, although I’ll never know, you know, that got my father to thinking it was time to get out. And he had thirty days to get out of the country and I always, what I’m going to tell you now 1s I always thought he did that after he got out of the concentration camp. But I was reading some notes my wife had made, which I suspect happened right after they arrested the Poles, that he said, “Well how am I going to get out of this country? Or how can we do it at this late date?” And he was told to go to the American Consulate and to get a visa and to go to Hamburg. Why don’t I just get those notes? I was just looking at them, and I’ll read them. It made a little bit of sense, in that it also had and interest... these were actually from some notes that Jean made when we were on a plane with my mother a few years ago. And let’s see... yeah, Daddy then, said Opa was safe... he was, let’s see, a teacher in synagogue housing. They, if I have this right, one of the reasons Sammy and his mother were there is that they realized that it was getting to be a dangerous time and they might have to try to still get out of the country. And so mother said she thought that was why their stay was being extended, that they had started realizing they were going to try to get to the United States. And she said he was on a... they were taking a walk with the family when they ran into an acquaintance, who said to them that if they were going to get out it was necessary to go to the U.S. Consulate in Berlin. And my father asked him how to do that and he said, “You should go to Hamburg in the morning and get in line and book four passages to this country. Then when you get those passages, you need to go to Berlin to the Consulate to let them know you’ve got your tickets.”” So my father, she said, cashed in his life insurance policy and bought the tickets and got the papers together to get a visa to come to the United States. He sent the visa application, he said, by registered mail to Berlin. Then he went to Berlin and stayed there with his sister Ola and her husband, who was... remember her husband was not Jewish, which was another very... they’re the ones who went to Argentina. So, 12 he went there. So he went there, he went on to the office, but they did not find his papers. He showed them the registered mail stub, which was copied and he was told that he would then get the confirmation of the fact that he would be approved to go to this country. He got a letter, eventually he got a letter with the number on a piece of paper, which he kept on his person. And it said, he gave that piece of paper to Sammy, his brother, when the Gestapo picked him up after Kristallnacht and took him to the concentration camp. Sammy in turn gave it to his mother, who took me and went to Mary in Frankfurt. So his mother then... what isn’t clear to me, is what happened to Sammy. I suppose they must have arrested him after my father, but I just didn’t pay any attention to him because I just wasn’t focused. Because they took him off. Because she said, it was actually his mother, who took me off to... Mom said, you know, that she took Harry, who was only four at the time and waited around and went from house, lived with different friends in the community while they were waiting for my father. But he had this little registration number, which as you know, probably from other stories, people were selling their souls and lives for, because they were, it was the quota system that determined whether you were going to make it to this country or not. And we were, we then went, during this thirty-day period they got all their belongings together and filled it in one of these things they call...what’s the name of this thing? Where you put everything in a big box that’s going to go to the other country. And they packed up all their furniture and it was sent to Rotterdam. And they made their way to Rotterdam, Holland, where we were in this sort of an internment camp. It was actually... I think we went on the train and it was a large, overnight hostelry for people who would otherwise have taken, say, the Holland America Line ship. The boat to this country on a normal, as a tourist trip. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 60 | Before we leave Germany I want to, I had another question. First about Kristallnacht. You described being taken out of your house in the middle of the night by the Storm Troopers and then watching them burn all the Torah scrolls. Was that the first... what do you remember, personally, about that? Was that the first time that you had realized the danger of the situation? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 61 | I want to believe that I remember the signs on the, some of the signs that said No Jews Allowed, which you know popped up on stores. And we... the family... but I don’t remember, as a six or seven year old having any, you know you just learn what the rules are. Don’t go into this store or you stay with your parents or you go to school. I don’t remember children other than my cousin. So I don’t know that I ever was afraid. And I don’t think my parents ever gave me any reason to be afraid. I mean we lived a very normal life. And I didn’t know, I do remember that we, I played with the kids of that Polish family. They had two children. I think their name might have been Finkelsteiner. They had two children and I remember them. But I don’t... and so they were gone. I don’t remember, you know, that we were living in fear, or... until these Storm Troopers showed up at the house that I had any conscious feeling about even knowing that things were bad. As I say, in our town there was not a lot of sympathy for him. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 62 | So, do you remember that moment of watching the Torah scrolls be burned and being pulled out of your house in the middle of the night? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 63 | I do remember the fire. I mean I do remember going, I do remember, probably because it was so vivid. And when I told this story before or talked about it, that it stays a little bit in front of your mind, so it’s probably hard to separate. But I have this very strong recollection about this fire in 13 the courtyard. And my father being arrested and running after him. And I just... so those are the, I guess, the vignettes that I remember. I remember them coming to the apartment and my mother giving me the sandwich. And I remember that one of them, this fellow who was in uniform, who said that she could go ahead and make a sandwich, seemed to be very friendly, or was a very, he said okay and he wasn’t... they didn’t beat any of us, I mean, we... I’m sure the adults were very fearful, because they were forced out there. I was just a little kid and everybody said, “Go outside in the yard.” I mean as I said, my mother certainly was very afraid and they didn’t know what they were going to do. And they did it all over Germany. She told me that, Mom said at one point that they had heard that was going to happen that night, something like that, that people, that this was... if I, you might know this. I think that they had an excuse for doing it, some official, some German official had been killed and this was an act of retribution. It was the way they got at it. And so, I don’t know that word had spread that this was the night that they said we’re going to synagogues and arrest... blow them up and arrest everybody. But they just, they knew something was going to happen. But they went to bed. They didn’t know what. I don’t know whether anybody was awake, because we were rousted out. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 64 | So do you remember being particularly afraid? No. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 65 | No. I really don’t have any, any recollection. And all I remember is that I do remember a little bit of going to Frankfurt, only because somehow at one point, I remember we were eight years old, and my cousin and I were under the table, playing under the table and seeing the knees of all these adults sitting around. I mean, it’s just sort of a goofy thing, but they were also killed. I mean almost everybody, this family and this cousin were gassed. Sammy and his mother, we stayed... well you wanted to go ahead about Germany. When we get into Holland, [Pll tell you what I remember about Sammy and his mother. But that’s really about all I remember of those days in Germany. It’s not a... I remember going sometime, vaguely, going back to Idar- Oberstein as a kid, but not much. I was just too young. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 66 | Okay, one more question about Germany, then... you had mentioned, did you mention that your father was involved in some way with helping Jews, who wanted to emigrate to Palestine? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 67 | Yeah. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 68 | Can you say something about that? And also did he have any interest, did your parents have any interest in trying to emigrate to Palestine at that time? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 69 | Well I said my dad, I think, wanted to go and my mother did not. She wanted to go to America. If they were going to leave, she wanted to go to this country, where her family lived. But his sister had gone to Israel and I think he... Lina and her husband, whose name was Ivan Van der Wyck, another Van der Wyck... de Vries. I’m sorry de Vries. And I just actually had sent a little note to my cousin, when we were... I visited them when I was in the Air Force first, in 1956, when I was still single and was stationed in England and went to Israel. I stayed with them and toured the country. And then when Jean was pregnant with our Michael, we went over. And so, we’ve had some connection over the years. And they have a son, Moshe, and his wife, Nurit, have a son, who came to this country and was married a few years ago. And my dad and mom 14 did go to Israel afterwards. In fact Sammy’s widow... Sammy got married in the concentration camp, which we will... can get to or just say, and his wife... | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 70 | Yeah, you can go ahead and say what camp he was in. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 71 | Well, he went, I think he and his mother... I mean, we got out. We went to Holland and they did not. Whether he went back to Leer, I’Il have to ask my mom whether... where they went. Whether they went to Holland or back to Leer. Because they went to... I think they did eventually get to Holland and he was supposed to leave on the next boat. I don’t think he was in the camp with us. [ll have to... I might just see where Sammy went, just a minute. Okay, my father had a sister in Frankfurt, was named Elly’. The sister in Rotterdam was named Mary. She was married to a stock broker named Herman Mescher, who spoke a number of languages. They had something like five children. And we would be able to visit with them... End of Tape 1, Side B 7 Elly de Levie 15 Tape 2, Side A | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 72 | ...sorry, let me just quickly say, this is tape number two, side A of an interview with John Rosenberg. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 73 | I think that it was simply a train trip from Germany to Holland. And they had arranged, it was a legal, they had the papers. They had to be out by thirty days and they had packed everything up, except a few little, except their day-to-day living clothes and put everything in this big lift is what they called them, I think. And they expected eventually to send that to this country. As it was, it went to Holland and sat there while they were in the internment camp. And... | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 74 | Did you all enter Holland illegally? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 75 | No, I think it was just, my recollection is it was just a train trip and that he had his passport or the proper papers to go to Holland. And had been directed to be out of the country in thirty days from the time he was out of the concentration camp. That’s why I had originally thought he went... that’s when he... I had always remembered that he went to Berlin or that he stood in line in Hamburg and in Berlin. This little thing I had read from my wife’s notes, that mother had recalled the other part of it, that he, I think he ended up standing in line for at least a day in Berlin at the Consulate to get this number, which was so precious, which ended up being the key to allowing us to get out of Holland and coming to this country. But the train, I don’t think there was anything particularly noteworthy about the trip to Holland. They went to Holland. Mother, I think, did a lot of the arranging of that while my father was in the concentration camp. Or friends of hers helped her do that, with... and when he got out... I mean, they knew they were going to have to leave. And they were able to keep this number. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 76 | Did they know that they would be staying in this transit camp? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 77 | Yeah, I think so. I mean they must have... I think that the immigration authorities, the Jewish welfare agencies... I mean they had their... for one thing, he had his tickets. He had purchased the tickets to come to this country, so it was the logical place to go. It was also a place full of immigrants. I don’t know if they put people there who did not have their papers in order or had booked their passage. People had their passages, but they couldn’t leave until they had an approval from the authorities in the United States. You had to...you know, they had a quota. So, that was the other part of the... the problem was getting a sponsor in this country. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 78 | So everyone in the camp was waiting to come to the United States? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 79 | Yeah, as far as I know. I mean, whether they were waiting... they were also taking boats to other parts of the world, I’m not sure. But that’s what they were waiting to do, was to leave on the boat. And I’m not, don’t conscious, have no real recollection of people going ahead of us. We ended up being there for a year. And, large building like a hotel, and on each floor the furnishings and the layout sort of was equivalent to the class of the boat that you would be going on. So if you were a first-class passenger you’d have a little... each of these floors, as I remember them, had a series of compartments where people would stay, normally for a day or two before leaving on the boat. So, the first-class cabins would have a little fancier 16 compartment. I mean these compartments weren’t very big. They were like twelve by twelve, at least, small. And then we had, the one that my family had was a very austere, it was, I don’t know if it was equivalent to Daddy’s class, but it was sort of, it was just a very small enclosure with two double beds, with bunk beds. And my brother and I were on an upper and lower and my mom and dad were across from us on an upper and lower and there wasn’t anything else, that I can remember, other than maybe a little thing, cabinet to put your clothes in. And then people congregated in other parts of that facility. They had a library, reading room. They had a large cafeteria or a large dining room. Huge dining room, where everyone ate at the same, together. I always tell people I remember the sign on the wall said, in five languages, “Don’t spit on the floor.” That was the sign. They had this huge sign. Don’t spit on the floor. My father, so it was pretty, you know, it wasn’t a great living conditions. But my father’s sister and her husband and their children lived in Rotterdam. They were Dutch residents. I don’t know where she met him. His name was Herman. I think I mentioned that. And he was a stock broker and they were fairly well-to-do and we could go to see them or they could come to see us. I mean we weren’t, it wasn’t any concentration camp. It was just, I think that it was an internment camp and you could go away, go out on weekends. But no one had any vehicles, and unless you had a lot of money, which they had hardly any money, you basically stayed where you were. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 80 | Did they have to, did your family have to pay to stay there and have their meals? Or how did that work? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 81 | I think it was all, I mean they had a little, they didn’t... now my father... I don’t recall that anybody had to work. I can ask Mom. I don’t think so. I mean I think it was run by the Jewish Welfare Agency. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 82 | The whole camp? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 83 | Yeah, I mean I think there was a relationship there. Maybe it was a relationship to the Holland- America Line. It might have been that it was, someone or the immigration authorities people. I don’t recall, but I can ask. I don’t think that Mother worked in the kitchen, for example. It would be nice to know. We’ve never talked very much about that. But my father decided to organize a school for the children in the camp and he did that. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 84 | Completely on his own? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 85 | On his own, yeah. He said, I want to do that for the kids. And so he started a school and gave instruction for a year, while we were there. We had to, he or the people, his sisters who were here and some others set about trying to find a sponsor in this country. And they ultimately found someone who was a fairly well-to-do person, ‘cause none of his family had any money to speak of and they couldn’t vouch for... they were not citizens, so they couldn’t vouch for him. So during that year they found a sponsor for him, a fellow who was either an architect or a builder in New York, who my father went to see after we got here and said thank you, and that was the last contact, except that in later years, my brother has met the son of that person, who lives in Washington, also. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 86 | Do you know his name? The name of the father and the son? 17 | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 87 | I think his name is Meyer, Andrew Meyer. Does that ring a bell? | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 88 | No, I started to chuckle, because I said the name of the father and the son, and just almost said the Holy Ghost. (Laughter.) | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 89 | Oh, oh. No, but it turns out... his name is Meyer and it turns out that, that...that his father, that this Meyer, who was our sponsor, that his family and our family come together in the seventeen hundreds with a family connection named Budenweiser, which led me to think they actually identified someone who was very distantly related. There are some Meyers in our family. And my brother ultimately figured out and I think that David, this fellow, Meyer, the son, that there was a family connection, a couple of hundred years back. So there is a relationship. Probably somebody said, why don’t you go see so-and-so, we don’t have very much to do with him, but maybe he’d sponsor your father. That someone contacted him, Hans Meyer. They knew that he was there. He was well-off, but very distant family. And he agreed to sponsor my family. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 90 | Was this part of the hold-up, that you didn’t have a sponsor in the U.S. ? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 91 | I don’t know why we were there a year. I think part of it, no we were not... I think part of it was that we were not very high up on the list. That there were others in front of us by a long way. In fact my father was, we went in that camp probably in... Kristallnacht was November and Dad was there until the end of November, and then December. We probably went to Holland in December-January. And we came over on the boat in February 1940. That was just before the war broke out with Holland. In fact, we were either on the last boat or the next to last boat. And my dad had already been told that he was going to be the school teacher either in Theresienstadt or in the camp that Anne Frank was sent to, the first, the concentration camp. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 92 | Westerbork? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 93 | Westerbork, right. He was going to be the teacher. They wanted him to start that school. And he said, I’m... want to go to America. And he then, there was a fellow... that’s in these notes as well, ‘cause I keep forgetting the name. He said that as time was growing short, he went to the Jewish Immigration Agency to find out whether, the hold-up. Because he was not near the top. And when he got there, he met a fellow named Doctor Moses, who was one of the interview, committee interviewing people. And he and Doctor Moses... in Germany, he had helped Doctor Moses solicit money for Israel. And Moses recognized my father. And my dad... and then he arranged for us to be on one of the next boats. So, it was a little “good old boy”. And, but I mean we had been there a year. I think there were a lot of those stories that also... that 1t was a numbering system from the top to the bottom, but that if you paid someone, or you always heard of, there were probably people moving up that had some influence with whoever. And so, my father said, managed to get this connection or lucked into this connection. Whether he was moved up or he would have been on that boat, I don’t know. But because they were apparently, what they were doing was interviewing family... they had a committee on which this Doctor Moses sat, and he... they determined who was going to go. Because there were probably all sorts of priorities. Are they elderly? Do they have... how do you... we’ve got a whole building of people who need to go to the United States and the boats only hold so many and somebody 18 can go and somebody can’t. This is my number. And we have a lot of little children. So I think he was able to, that’s what happened. Whether he pulled some strings or whether he just was in the normal course of things and said, you can go. But whatever it was, that’s how we got here. So his number, he still had that little piece of paper and they’d found a sponsor. And so we were on that last boat, I suspect. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 94 | So it was very, very fortunate. If you hadn’t gotten onto that boat, you wouldn’t have gotten out. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 95 | Well, that’s for sure. Yeah, that’s for sure, we would not have gotten... no there wouldn’t have been any other way. And I don’t think there was any chance of going anywhere else. My uncle and his mother, again, I’m not sure why I don’t remember that they are there. But apparently they were on another boat. They came, they were in fact on a boat that was then turned... I think that you go through England. I have some recollection as a young boy, you know, you’re playing on the boat. People, everybody’s always looking for mines. There were all sorts of mines floating out in the English Channel, because the war was about to start. And there was a route that you could make and we went. And I remember looking for the mines or looking and people say, there’s something out there. I believe they were in fact on a boat and that the boat was turned around and they got off. Now, whether they were in this same camp or somewhere else, I’m not sure. I don’t know why I would not have remembered them being there, but I’ Il have to ask. I’m just not sure. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 96 | And they both did not survive the war? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 97 | No, what happened was they went from there to Theresienstadt. You have the right word for Holland, it was Westerbork. I always forget that. Theresienstadt. And they were there. My uncle Sammy apparently was in charge of the leather-working shop. They made boots and repaired leather stuff. And they were there into, they were there in 1944. And apparently my uncle became a little outspoken. The war was turning and they knew that. And he made some untoward remarks about the Nazis, about these shoes are too good for them or something. And someone told on him and he was sent to Auschwitz. And he was in the line to go, to be exterminated and he ran to the electrified fence and they shot him. We heard that from, I think, his wife. During those four years, three years that he and his mother were in Theresienstadt, he met his wife and they were married. And when I was with mom last weekend, we have pictures of their wedding, of them getting married on the day they got married. I mean of their wedding or they’re being married. She wasn’t wearing... she was an adult. They were in their thirties. He was probably born in 1900, so he was forty years old. They were both forty. She was a lovely person. And they were married. You know they all had coat... he had a coat and a tie on. And some of their friends are around them in a picture. This was the end of *44. And his, Daddy’s mother died, I think, must have died right after he was moved to Auschwitz. I looked it up, I mean it’s like a couple, a few months apart. She was, hadn’t been doing well, but she was born in the eighteen... I mean she was probably in her seventies, I think. I’ve got that in the other room. We looked up the book, the Gedenk® book where she’s listed. But she had survived into the late forties and he, with, being with her son. And so, she was there when he got married, which was nice. And... but then when they moved him to Auschwitz, she died. And then we... ® Gedenk bukh: memorial book (Yiddish) 19 his widow lived, and went to Israel. And Jean and I visited her in Israel. And that’s where this sort of, I mean that’s what she was told happened to Sammy. She knew that he had been taken. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 98 | I had a couple of questions about your time in the camp, at least one question. So when you were staying in the camp in Rotterdam, you were presumably one of your father’s students. Do you remember what the school...? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 99 | Well, it was just he brought these kids together of varying ages around a big table. It was just a little sectioned-away room, for I don’t know how many hours. And you’d do your math tables, and he’d tell you some stories. He was just teaching. My father had a habit when he, in Germany I always remember that when he was teaching Bible stories, he would always tell you three-fourths of the story and leave the ending for the next week, so that you were anxious to find out what was coming. I don’t really remember very much about school, except where it was, and I remember there was, I was, one of the people who was there had a violin that he played and gave violin lessons. And I think my parents thought that would be a good idea. So he loaned me the violin for a lesson, but I remember that I was not very good. And he got his violin back. I think he thought it was going to... might be untuned or leaving it with an eight- year-old was not the right thing to do. And I don’t really remember very much about the camp. I remember a little bit about the library and where the books were. And the older people would sit down. They had a radio. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 100 | How many students were in the school together? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 101 | There were probably forty or fifty with us. And whether he did it in shifts or not, I’m not sure. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 102 | Did you all have to share bathrooms with a bunch of other people? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 103 | Well there were no, yeah, I mean you had communal bathrooms on each floor, because there were no... I don’t know if the first-class facilities had private baths. This room where we were they had a little sink, I think, with running water, but they didn’t... the bathroom as such was down the hall. It was pretty spartan. I mean it wasn’t terrible because it wasn’t... you weren’t under a guard. But it was, it was very plain. And then when they found, when they got ready to leave, they learned that they could not... there was a limit on what they could take out. It was like twenty-five or fifty dollars. And so all the stuff that they were going to take... my mother really doesn’t remember what happened to it. It stayed. She was able to bring over some linens, some crystal, which she still has, and some mementos, several boxes of stuff, things that they could pack up. But no furniture, which they had brought from Germany and things like that. They just either sold them for a very, for a song... | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 104 | Did your dad teach all the lessons in German? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 105 | I think he did, yeah. German and perhaps some Hebrew. Of course, I don’t know why anybody would have just spoken...But it would have been... I don’t know that he knew any Dutch. When he came to this country really the only other language that he knew was German. He knew some broken English that he had learned. Mother didn’t know any English. I remember when we were on the boat, I remember, I told people I saw the Wizard of Oz was playing. Was the first 20 American color movie, you know, technicolor movie, sound, Judy Garland. I couldn’t understand the English, but I saw the... they showed the Wizard of Oz on the boat. I’m sure it was a nice boat trip. I mean for us, that was kind of fun, just a little kid running all over the place. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 106 | What happened to your uncle and family in Rotterdam? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 107 | They were... they didn’t get out. They were also killed. I don’t know if they went to Westerbork. I tried to, Mother and I looked for his name in that book. We were in, when we were in Magdeburg... after we went to Magdeburg on that trip I was telling you about, we went to Berlin for sightseeing and to look around, and we found a Jewish library there in connection with the synagogue or with the agency and they had one of these Gedenk Books where all the Holocaust victims were listed alphabetically. So, that’s where I saw my uncle and my mother. I looked for some of... | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 108 | Your uncle and your grandmother? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 109 | My grandmother. And I don’t remember that I... I think we looked for some of the others and couldn’t find them. Hermann... they were, all of that family was killed, the one in Rotterdam. The family in Frankfurt was killed. The sister that was living actually in Berlin, went to Argentina and then up here. And as I say, mother’s, I mean my father’s mother, because my mother’s family had come, already come to this country. When we came to the United States, they were there to greet us. Her two sisters, one of whom I think... well neither of them were married at that point. But they were all living on, with my grand, with mother’s parents. Mother’s parents had come over and my grandfather who owned a butcher shop was working as a butcher in a large restaurant in New York. And he had gotten a job and was maintaining the family. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 110 | Was he a kosher butcher? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 111 | No, he, no. And it was not a... it was called, I think the restaurant was called Zimmerman’s Hungaria. I think it was a Hungarian restaurant. I think he could be, I mean he knew what there was to know, but he wasn’t a kosher butcher in Germany. Then he went, they went to the synagogue, this was 803 West 180" Street, right across from the George Washington Bridge. Big neighborhood of German immigrants in those days. It’s changed a lot. A lot of Spanish- speaking people living there now, along with a few of the... some have actually... well, I was with Mother... one of her friends, who lived downstairs, is still in that same building, called her to wish her a happy birthday. At 803 180" Street. Her sisters came to the boat and we moved in with them initially. Just squeezing into an apartment. It was a fairly good-sized apartment. But we lived with them. And at that time, there was not a very good, for some reason, there was no one that really told my dad what he ought to do is get his teaching degree for this country and learn to speak English and to go on with what he was doing. Or if they told him, he didn’t think he could quickly take care of his family. And there was very little work in New York. Most of the jobs were cleaning for women or people were doing stuff at home. There was an enormous, what do you call it, craft kind of stuff, they give you... my mother and her sisters would sit around sewing slippers together, the bottoms and tops of bedroom slippers, piecework, to make 21 money. Mom was actually a maid. She’d go out and was cleaning apartments, cleaning houses, doing a little bit of nannies. My father after a very short time, heard that there were jobs in the South and he went to Spartanburg, South Carolina and started sweeping floors in a textile mill, so he could take care of his family. So he went to Spartanburg and got a job, through... I mean he got a job, he knew where he was going. Somebody had said, contact this man when you get there. So, it was a very menial job initially and then he... he swept floors and he did manual stuff and pretty quickly learned how to... he became a shift manager at one point and he brought us, he had saved his money and got a small apartment, and about six months later we moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 112 | Before we go on, do you remember anything else about your journey to the U.S.? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 113 | I don’t, I mean the boat, just that it was a boat trip and we were... it was a big ship. And a little kid could run all over the boat. And I remember the Wizard of Oz. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 114 | What about arriving? Did you arrive at New York harbor? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 115 | We came through New York. We did not, for some reason, go to Ellis Island. I’m not sure, because I think... because our family came to meet us and we went on. Recently I asked my mom if we went to Ellis Island, ‘cause I didn’t remember that, us doing that. And I think my father was... we all went off and the name change must have actually taken place while he wasn’t around. Because he might have... even when the paper stuff was done, he had already gone to Spartanburg. It said Hans is no longer Hans. Your son’s name is John. But the flags were out when we came. We landed on February 22"! when we passed the Statue of Liberty. And so we thought this is really nice, they’ve got all the flags out for us, but it was Washington’s birthday. So I mean, and I remember my aunt giving me a quarter and telling me that was a lot of money and I should hang on to it, very, very carefully. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 116 | Do you remember how you felt at the time? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 117 | No. I mean I think you’re kind of, you’re in wonderment. I mean all of sudden you take a boat trip and there’s the Statue of Liberty and then you come up with your family. You’re glad to see your family, because you’ve known them. It’s been a few years since... they had been over since ‘36, I think, ‘37. So they were, let’s see, Mother was born in 1908 and she’s the oldest. So Irma and Ruth’ were just eighty, so they were, I think they were born, that would make it about 1920. So they were in their early twenties when we met them. I think Ruth became, went through dental hygiene school and I don’t know that Irma was just working in various places. They both met their husbands in the next few years. One of, Irma’s husband was Jewish and then they both went into the service, I think. John and Walter. Walter was a baker and the... John was a salesman. And I went... they enrolled me in a school called P.S. 132 and they put me in a class with kids from other countries. All the early... End of Tape 2, Side A ? Irma Haas and Ruth Neumeyer 22 Tape 2, Side B | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 118 | ...the children from other countries and I don’t know how one teacher handled them. I think they taught you some basic English. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 119 | You didn’t speak any English. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 120 | I spoke no English. You pick it up pretty quickly on the street playing with other kids. And I stayed in that room. It’s funny, because now, you know, they have the dress code that’s going on. At least one day, on Thursdays you had to wear red, white and blue. It was red, white and blue day. And that was all new to me. But they had some codes. But I think I did pretty well and adjusted with these other kids. I walked to the school, it was probably three-quarters of a mile, every day, from where we lived to the school. And after, I remember after maybe a couple of months, I was sort of mainstreamed into another, into the regular... what would that have been, probably the third grade, second or third grade and I was there. And then we moved to Spartanburg. My father had rented a small walk-up, in a poor... 1t was not a very well-to-do neighborhood. But a little apartment that he could afford. Actually he had saved enough money, he said, to have bought a car, but they decided to buy furniture or something. But he worked in the shirt factory doing fairly menial work initially, as I said. Then unfortunately after a few months, he had an... he fell off a ladder, which was interesting, because in this apartment where we lived, we had just a couple of rooms, two or three rooms. My mother did the laundry on a potbellied stove. So, she had relied on him to always pick up this big vat of clothes and laundry and put it on. We had this little wood burning stove and burned corn cobs and I suppose coal. And she’d boil the clothes and wash them the old-fashioned way. And when he broke his foot, he couldn’t do that. As a result of that, he went downtown and we had the first Bendix automatic washer. This little immigrant family in Spartanburg, South Carolina had one of the very first automatic washing machines in 1941. Neighbors would come in to look at it and see the clothes spinning round and round and round. And Daddy bought it on time, you know, you could buy... I mean he was making not a lot of money. But we used that washing machine for many years. Until even when we went to Gastonia, it just kept on working. It was called, I remember it was a Bendix. But my father also then, 1t was very interesting in our little apartment, ‘cause he... there was no rabbi in Spartanburg and so he... I don’t know if they ever had one before the war, whether they just got... I mean the Jewish community learned right away about his vast knowledge of Jewish culture and religion and that he could actually officiate at a service. And so he began officiating in Spartanburg and started writing sermons in English. And did the whole thing, I mean he was quite remarkable. And as a result of that, the Jewish soldiers... there was a military base in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Camp Croft. And so the soldiers, the Jewish soldiers who would sometimes come to the synagogue and see Daddy, would come to our little, poor apartment on weekends. And on the porch... and we have little pictures with a Brownie, black and white that were taken of all these soldiers sitting out on the porch or out front on a Saturday afternoon, because it was a place to go. Because they didn’t know anybody. They were away from home. It was just kind of ironic, right, that you’ve got... and I’m sure the rest of the Jewish community was also very fond of them, but they came to Mom and Dad because they were new in the community and very warm. I don’t know whether they realized that this immigrant family had come to Spartanburg, South Carolina and were totally in a new environment. I mean it’s always been, I’ve always thought it’s been very remarkable when you 23 think about it. I mean, they didn’t stay in New York, where people spoke German. I mean my mother and her sisters sort of still speak German. She has an accent. But they came South and here’s my dad, writing sermons and officiating when he’s not in his fairly menial job at the factory. Then somehow the congregation in Gastonia, North Carolina, which was about seventy- five miles away, I think, also had no rabbi. And he got to Gastonia, because there was a family named Heilbronn, who were in Magdeburg, who were... that they knew in Germany. And that family, the Heilbronns, had owned a textile mill. They were very well off. And they had brought their whole, their manufacturing facility over and they were living near Gastonia. So, I think they contacted Dad to see if he couldn’t start helping them with services. And so my dad started commuting between Spartanburg and Gastonia and officiating at services in Gastonia. And so after a couple of years, Daddy in the shirt factory, let’s see, in Spartanburg the place he worked was called, yeah... Dixie Shirt Factory is the mill where he went to work. He started moving up a little bit and became a shift manager and a foreman. And learned essentially how, the textile knitting business, totally something he’d never done in his life. Never knew anything about it. And became very good at it. And so, several years later, the family in Gastonia asked Dad or Mr. Heilbronn asked him if he wouldn’t come to work for him as a, I think as a shift manager. And then he also, when he got to Gastonia... and he invented, made some innovations on the machinery in their dye house. But after Spartanburg... so we lived in Spartanburg about three years. And it was, you know, people were, of course, very nice to us, but... and I started really a public school in Spartanburg, both my brother... and my brother, let’s see, I was then, I would have been, let’s see in 1940 I would have been nine. So we were in, I was like in the fourth, fifth and sixth grade. And I was kind of a novelty, obviously, immigrant son. And people would ask questions about how it was on the boat. So, the classrooms would start scheduling me around as a speaker to other schools, because they had this little ten-year-old, who could talk about life in Germany and coming over on a boat and being Jewish. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 121 | So, did you talk about the plight of the Jews in Europe? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 122 | I’m sure I did. I mean, I essentially told, I think, told much of this story from the perspective of a ten-year-old. If somebody had taped it, I’m sure there were more details that I don’t even remember, but it was, you know, it was sort of novel having somebody... there was nobody else there. And I was still probably speaking, well in Spartanburg certainly, spoke broken English. I always remember when the first report card came out with all these numbers. I said, well, what are these numbers? When my parents wanted to find out what is this report card, with very good grades. They were like nineties and things like that. you know. And they didn’t know the first thing about socialization. They didn’t know that when kids had parties, or you go to somebody else’s house. Everything was different. The conventional things that you grow up with, the books, the stories, the Alice in Wonderland. The children’s books in this country are totally different. So some of that was lost, but I thought they did remarkably well and we had a lot of very nice friends. And I thought the teachers were very welcoming. I still remember some of those teachers. And the community was very accepting. The Jewish community was pretty wealthy by and large, because most of them were store owners, as they tended to be. By that time, all lot of them all, like so many others in these smaller Southern towns, their fathers and mothers had come to the South, to these communities, selling rags or generally as salespeople. And then a lot of them decided to stay and built, opened stores. And the war years were fairly recent, so most of them were retail merchants. And some of them were like Heilbronn... there 24 were several factory owners, who were very well-to-do. So, there really... people, most of the kids were from much more well-to-do homes and I think to some extent, that’s why so many of our own associations, we were always very comfortable with working people, who were not necessarily Jewish. When you’re living really in a Protestant environment in the South. So, I don’t know that we were ever conscious, for example, to the same degree of anti-Semitism to the extent that it existed even then. It was never a problem. We never, my parents were not in the country club set, so they didn’t have to worry about whether they could get in to the country club. But... | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 123 | Was your lack of socialization a problem at all or did you, were you, did you really feel confident enough that it didn’t affect you? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 124 | Oh, I think it went very well. I mean, my folks were very permissive about... and I think I tended to... the friends that you made in those years, tended to be either in your neighborhood directly, and there were a few kids that were in the neighborhood that you played with, and then children, your friends were also, friends who did well, if you were making good grades. The kids you hang out with or that you learn and then their parents hear about you. So I spent some time in those years, it was a little more... probably it was more middle-classy than my parents were. Kids whose homes were a little better. But I think it went pretty well. I didn’t play any ball really until I was really... we played marbles, we played capture the flag. I got into scouting in a big way. And when we went to Gastonia, we moved to Gastonia then and I went into the seventh grade and my brother was in the third grade. And in the, I think in the seventh, in the junior high school I developed a lot more confidence. And I think by the time I was in the eighth grade I was president of the class. In high school I was president of the class in my, I think my sophomore and my senior years. I became pretty Americanized. I was very involved in scouting, which was a great help, and in some other civic stuff. And I worked after school. I think what gets you off the ground... when I was twelve, I think, you could start at twelve, I had my first newspaper route. And started delivering papers for the... actually I think I may have delivered papers in Spartanburg. I think I delivered the Spartanburg paper just the last few months before we left, on a bicycle. My parents bought me a bike and that was a big deal to get a bicycle. It’s interesting it was a big deal to buy... I got a fountain, the first fountain pen. They bought me a fountain pen, when I was in fourth or fifth grade. That was a big thing. They really never... they spent all their money, I mean to the extent that they had any money left it was always for the kids, either little gifts like that, I mean we’d... and you didn’t have television in those days, and you didn’t have... you had a radio. Dad didn’t get a car. We actually, the family, there was another family living in our building, that had a son, who was our age, who, and I remember we drove to Tryon, North Carolina and saw Sergeant York, you know, the movie? Did you ever see the movie? Gary Cooper. It’s a wonderful picture. He was a war hero in the First World War or Second? He was from Kentucky, from Tennessee. It was a Gary Cooper movie. It’s a marvelous picture. He was a pacifist, who enlisted and became the Congressional Medal of Honor winner and then came back home. He was a marksman from shooting wild turkeys, is where he learned to shoot. But then one week it was on, and when we returned it was Pearl Harbor Day, it was December seventh, 1941, when we went with the Carver family to that movie in Tryon. But it was, you know, I think that’s part of our heritage. As some people would say, we were poor and didn’t know it. There was always plenty of food 25 and my dad was very involved in the Jewish community there and subsequently in Gastonia. But those early years, when you think about it, we had such an enormous adjustment to make. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 125 | I was going to ask you about that. It seems that, well I’ve heard other people talk about arriving in New York and there being a lot of encouragement for Jews who were immigrating to go to various other parts of the country. And so many people just didn’t want to do that and felt so strongly about that, that they stayed in New York even though there was no economic opportunity at all. And I guess this is more of an observation than a question, but your dad seems to have been somebody who was very open-minded and aware of opportunities, and that probably shaped your life a lot, too. I mean, being a child in a situation where you experienced this extreme disadvantage through having your childhood interrupted so much, and then having your family really be broken apart, and many of them killed. But for you to be able to arrive in this new place and be kind of honored for who you are and what your history is... it’s kind of different than what Jewish kids in New York, who were immigrating were experiencing for the most part, it seems to me. There were so many immigrants, and so many survivors and people who weren’t really overall encouraged to talk about what had happened to them. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 126 | Well yeah, I mean, I suppose that going... I don’t know why my Dad did not explore a little more about the teaching. I don’t know that, whether, how he felt New York... we were living in a very crowded place and I think he wanted to get us out of there. Because that apartment, big as it was, had my mother’s parents, and her two sisters. And we sort of were just, they would just let us live there. But I don’t think he wanted to stay there. So he set about pretty early trying to figure out what he could do and how to earn a living basically and bring money home, enough. And that New York City, whether he felt too hemmed-in there, or there just really wasn’t very much for him to do, because he couldn’t be a teacher, he couldn’t be a rabbi, and he couldn’t get a job. There were so many people looking for work, as you say, and it was this immigrant situation. But it did, I’m sure, shaped my life, from the time we went South. But I think, I don’t know that he always... I mean, you know, they had a very strong work ethic. My parents have a strong work ethic. And so they encouraged me or were not opposed to seeing me have a paper route at a very young age. And then, I mean that’s a very liberating experience. I always tell people, I remember getting up at five in the morning, and going out to get the paper and then going by the coffee store and putting that nickel down on the lunch counter and saying, “I’d like a cup of coffee.” (Laughing.) I mean I was probably not much higher than the stool. But you know when you have a newspaper route and you start putting a little money in your own pocket... So I always had a job of one sort or another. I mean my parents just didn’t have any extra money to... and we knew that, because we knew how they lived. Whether there might have been small, I guess there might have been a small allowance at one point, but after that newspaper route, I delivered papers at home for a while and then I started... I was telling Reva!® here the other day, my fiscal director, I hadn’t thought about it, somebody downstairs was, some of these people sell Home Interiors, and they do lot of, sell things. I was always selling things, when I was thirteen, I started selling stationery and greeting cards around the, knocking on doors. Had a little... within a year I had a little business. Had a whole room full of stationery and greeting cards for all occasions. And then I was going to the factory owners and selling Christmas cards to businesses. Then I started working in town after school for the Jewish merchants. I was always working, doing some kind of work. And it didn’t really get in the way. '0 Reva Trusty 26 I mean, but kids...people... all of those experiences help you appreciate the way other people live, especially working people. Women you worked with back then, and their families, and money’s tight and how you make it and don’t make it, and so you have an appreciation for that. And my mom and dad, my mother was basically always worked at home. She never worked. I mean, she was a very traditional mother, in that she was a housekeeper and cooked, did the cooking. And later on, I think, when my brother and my sister is ten years... my sister was born in 1946!'. So she’s fifteen years younger than I am, eleven years younger than my brother and was not initially expected, I think. But Mom, after my sister was born, a few years later, she finally became, decided she wanted to work, and became a sales lady in one of the large department stores, where she worked for a long time. And I think it did a lot for her, she had never worked in any store. But she’s a very warm, very outgoing woman and was everybody’s buddy. And so, she was a very good salesperson, but it was a new experience for her. I think it was an enormous adjustment for her. And really for Dad. And so when I, I think... anyway, scouting, during the... we were a little, I suppose people, where else in the South, when you think about it, with this history, being, having people recognize you, elect you to be president of the class or something was quite a nice thing. But I think scouting, and scouting did a lot of that. I became an Eagle Scout, and was a counselor in a scout camp for several, in the summers for several years, very close to the scout executive. In fact, he... this 1s really kind of off the subject, but it’s interesting when we say how things affect your lives. The scout executive in Gastonia, married a woman, who was a Cherokee Indian. He was a, his name was Schiele. He was a park ranger for much of his life, and then he got into scouting. And he also, during his ranger days, learned to stuff, to make, he was a taxidermist. He amassed a large collection of animals that he had mounted. And his wife collected, and together they also collected a lot of Native American things, since she was a Cherokee Indian. And when we were, in the summer in our camp we put on a large Indian pageant every Thursday night. The pageant of Hiawatha. I was Hiawatha for several years and my brother was Minihaha. They’d put a wig on him and I would paddle a canoe in the lights at night and bring him up. But Bud Schiele, when he retired, he gave this collection to the town of Gastonia and said, I'd like to start a little museum here. So, he gave that collection and began a natural history museum, which today is about a square block. He’s no longer there, but they’ve developed this wonderful museum of natural history with outdoor walking trails and some really beautiful... 1t’s quite remarkable in the sense that it’s also twenty miles from Charlotte, which has a very large science museum. But the point I’m getting to, is that after, when I was at, later went to Duke University, I was a chemistry major before I was a lawyer. We can talk more about that if you want to. I’ve always had an interest in science and in this region here, we are behind, I mean educationally we’re still behind. We’ve caught up. But I’ve always had an interest, as much as a result of that experience and seeing Bud Schiele’s museum grow, in starting a science museum here. And so outside of my work, my major activity has been involved with this organization that we began, and in the last legislature, we finally got two and a half million dollars and we’re going to put a planetartum with a very sophisticated projection system out here at the community college. And the guy, and in fact in our little offices are next door, and we have a picture of the Schiele Museum on the wall. Because seeing that effort work and flourish in the small town of Gastonia gave me some real thought, idea about the fact that we can do it here. I think a lot of, I mean I think scouting gave me a lot in terms of values apart from the Judaism that is in my family. 'l Joan Rosenberg 27 | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 127 | Did you have a Bar Mitzvah? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 128 | Uh huh. Bar Mitzvah in Gastonia, North Carolina. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 129 | Did you prepare for that with your father? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 130 | No. Now, my father, after he did this commuting thing, we eventually, we then moved to Gastonia, where I was in the seventh grade and he... when he began working full time, actually he worked in the little community called Lowell, North Carolina, which is about seven miles away. And he assisted the rabbi. Sometimes between rabbis he would do... he often acted as the cantor during services, and he often was on the pulpit. Sometimes he was not. During the high holiday services especially, like Yom Kippur, where people pray and they stay in the synagogue all day, the rabbi needs somebody to take turns with. But he was very close to most of the rabbis that were there. The rabbi I was Bar Mitzvah was named Bill Silverman. And we had a, it was a very large group. I suspect there were as many people who were not Jewish in the synagogue as there were, a lot of friends, and my father had all of his friends from the mill that he worked with every day. He was, he became an office manager there, after, in addition to his working daily around the, as a shift manager, but he became sort of a supervisor in Mr. Heilbronn’s mill. And then by the time I was thirteen, in the seventh or eighth grade, there were school friends, and mother had friends. So, it was a very nice congregation in Gastonia. There were probably fifty Jewish families. And so I was Bar Mitzvah, and my brother was Bar Mitzvah. Can’t remember who the rabbi was when he was there. And my sister, nowadays they also have what they call Bat Mitzvahs for girls, where girls go through the same thing. Or they have what they call confirmation classes. I think she did that. We stayed pretty active, but like a lot of other kids who are in the South in high school, after that fourteen, fifteen year old, you sort of... you’re there Friday nights, but teenagers, unless they have a real tie to, unless you’re in a Conservative or an Orthodox family that is very traditional, which you get away from the Sunday school. And your next connections with other Jews are... I mean, Charlotte has a large Jewish community and there were a lot of children our age, boys and girls, men and women. Then when you get to college. But we had the Bar Mitzvah. And you know, my father, people were very aware of the Jewish community, I think, in Gastonia. I was always, in retrospect, after I worked in the Civil Rights Division and after I was in the service, I always felt a little sad that the Jewish community was not a little more assertive about desegregation. But I think the store owners were all afraid to lose their business. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 131 | You think that if they weren’t afraid to lose their business, that they would have been inclined to push for desegregation? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 132 | Oh, I think that... I mean, Judaism is founded on the theory of Justice. I mean, I think it was as bad for them to look the other way as it was for, I mean churches were segregated. It was a segregated life. Although you grow up with it, you don’t pay attention to it. I mean you just aren’t aware of it. You have, well Spartanburg and Gastonia. Well, Gastonia, as I was growing up, I think... . End of Tape 2, Side B 28 Tape 3, Side A | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 133 | This is tape number three, side A of an interview with John Rosenberg. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 134 | Yeah, we were talking about the Jewish communities in these towns and what they might have done. I think it’s always hard to look back and say, but I think the answer would have been if they had felt they could have done more, they might have done more. I think that they were in the business establishment just the way... I mean they were living in the South and they were not going to be trail blazers, because they would have been ostracized. I mean, if you look at what was going on in the South in those earlier years and even later years when I was in the service... well, I was saying in high school, I think there were some times that there were some occasions at high school with kids who were from the, from the black school... there were a few social, not social engagements, but some things were you tended to see each other. Or if you were working together, where they were stock boys—I worked in department stores for many years—you would run into them. But it just was a... accepted way of life. And I have just... it did not really, even in college, I mean you heard more about Jews not getting into the country club, and that kind of stuff. And that there were incidents from time to time, but it was never, I don’t think I was ever conscious of anti-Semitism. But it was really not until I was in the Service, working with other officers who were African-American, I mean the Service was the first major arena where there was desegregation in this country, the military. And you know, I have told the story that when I came back from... we brought an airplane back from England one year, by way of Iceland and Greenland. Came back to New York and then two of us, the radar operator on my plane, I was the navigator, was a fellow named Abe Jenkins, who was from South Carolina, who was black. And he and I got on the train in New York together to come home. And when we got to Washington, he got up all of a sudden and said, “I'll see you when we get back.” And I said, “Where are you going?” And he said, “I’m going to the back of the train, where the blacks are.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “Yeah you better, that’s where, I need to go there, otherwise we’re going to have some trouble.” And he did. And I think it was an incident that changed my life, really. Because I never... I was really outraged and aggravated and thought we’ve got to do something about that or eventually maybe I can help to do something about that or whatever the thought was. But that was... so, it was not easy for... it wasn’t going to come without court action and others, but I think that the Jews are no less, those Jewish communities are and the people who are there, are no less, maybe no more to blame than their other counterparts. But it was their economic circumstances and they were not willing to speak out or if they did, I don’t know where they did. I mean, the few people who did speak out, until there was more of a movement, couldn’t stay in their communities. I mean I worked with a man, a lawyer in the Civil Rights Division, who came from Fort Smith, Arkansas and he started trying to be, I mean he was speaking out and the next thing he knew, he had no law practice left and he was in Washington, D.C. So, it’s more easily said than done, but when you think about the history of the persecution in the, that the Jews have had, and the Holocaust and all of the things that are behind us, you... that they’ve gone through, you would have hoped that Jews would have been more sympathetic to the situation that blacks faced every day. And not quite as much of a willing participant. It’s easier said than done. It’s just something that bothers me, you know, philosophically it’s hard to defend it. 29 | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 135 | So, then was the time that you were in the Air Force the first time that you had had close personal contact with black people and formed friendships? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 136 | Yeah, right, I think so. I went to, when I went to Duke, I went to Duke on a scholarship which terminated. Because I got, the scholarship I was given through a trustee of Duke, who was from Gastonia. I can’t remember what his prominence was, but he was on the Board. And he died about six months after I went to Duke. And I had started working 1n the dining halls and they told me I made too much money and didn’t need a scholarship, which might have been all right. I didn’t have any trouble, I just worked my way through Duke. But he, but Duke had a quota on Jewish students even in those years. And it was before the years that there were any black athletes to speak of, before Duke had any. So, I was just sort of thinking back, were there any blacks in my life in those earlier years? There weren’t. And when I came out of the Service, out of Duke, I went into the ROTC. And when I was in the military, that was the first time where I have any... and growing up in this country, yeah, thinking back on it. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 137 | I wanted to ask you about, when you were talking about your experiences in Boy Scouts, and your earlier years in Gastonia. I’m wondering if there was ever a conflict between your Jewish identity and your Jewish practice and your social life? Did people expect you to be Christian and to be participating in things as a Christian? Was that ever a problem for you? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 138 | No, it was very interesting, I think. Because the Scout troop, all the Scout troops were sponsored by churches. And the Scout troop I was a member of was sponsored by the Associate Reform, ARP. They were called the Associate Reform Presbyterians. And I think they’d had two or three other Eagle Scouts from the Jewish community. And so, the answer is no. I mean I think they were cognizant of the fact that we were Jewish. And I don’t know that anybody ever tried to sort of convert anyone. But the troop, when I got to scout camp as a counselor one summer, I was sort of... I wasn’t... One of my jobs was to arrange the services and many of the scout troops had ministers along with them or they were their scout masters. And so, I found myself in the position of being, sort of the associate minister to these folks and I learned all the, many of the hymns. And as we grew up, I went to church a few times. I certainly went to that Presbyterian church. But I think it was just a healthy respect. I think people in the church appreciated, I mean were respectful of the Jewish community and that religion. And often times people came to those services. So, I don’t know that, I think, you know, we often, the Schieles encouraged me to do that actually, the scout master. To be... and I often times did the Vesper services for the campers who were there over the weekend. And there would probably be not much Jesus, but I would read from the Old and the New Testament and we would sing the hymns that they knew, and it didn’t bother me. Now it might very well have bothered many other, not... other Jewish men might have said, “Well you’re just stupid. What are you doing this for?” Or you know, “Why are you being a minister in this largely Protestant camp and sort of embracing their way of having a service?” But I didn’t have any problem with that. My parents didn’t have any problem with it. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 139 | I was going to ask you, did your, do you think your parents taught you Judaism in a way that allowed you to think of that as not being a contradiction? 30 | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 140 | I think my parents were very tolerant of other religions. I think my father... I mean my mother basically grew up in a small, country town and was Jewish, but had many more associations with non-Jewish people. Now my father had this very strong Jewish background. And there was actually a period of my life after I came out of the Service that I had given some consideration to going to Rabbinical school. And in the Reform movement, you know, the Reform Rabbinate is not so different from the minister’s life. It isn’t all prayer. It’s social work, visiting with people, around with the Jewish doctrine. So, I think my parents, when my father came South and started working in the factory and realized that it was not going to make sense to be kosher and that maybe bacon and eggs were good together. I think he essentially embraced the idea of Reform Judaism and was pretty... and since he worked almost all the time with folks who were not Jewish. I think only the factory owner was Jewish, Heilbronn. That you, you just adapt culturally, much more, which the Reform congregations have done. If you go to Israel, Saturday all the stores are closed, right? The Sabbath is Saturday. And Friday night to Saturday night. In this country, it’s all on Sunday. I mean there was never such a thing as Sunday school, but Jewish Reform congregations have Sunday school. And they basically adapted to living in a Protestant society. And I think we did that, and of course, you know, I think my father, it was a big change in our family to have me marry someone who wasn’t Jewish. Although it was probably less pronounced because we were both a little older than if... I mean, as time has gone on it has become much more common than it was. But then my sister married a young man from Eastern North Carolina, who wasn’t Jewish. They subsequently divorced, but she’s had a significant other for many years, who’s not Jewish also. So, I don’t know how, you know my father, I assume he came to grips with that. I think they both felt comfortable about their sons and then their daughter, who were, you know, were sort of achievers in the community and were happy with their lives. And everybody likes to hear good things about their kids. And so I don’t think they were going to throw up barriers. I don’t know that it was ever verbalized. I think my father had a very... you know, he was very strong with his own convictions and had some very strong ideas, but again, you know, if your kids go in a certain direction... raising children is as difficult for anybody in school. And if they pal around with, in a society where very few people are Jewish, to say, “Well, you can’t go out with them or you shouldn’t go to that camp or you shouldn’t do this or you shouldn’t do that,” it’s much harder. And I think they were always sort of adapting to where we were. I think. I mean I think it shows terrific flexibility on their part. My mother was always much more of a social person, much more than he, which more than my father. My dad was a pretty private person. And he was very... he read and he worked and he read. When he was home, did the dishes, sat down and read. And he had this enormous knowledge of Jewish history and Jewish religion. And there were very few people, other than the rabbi, that he really enjoyed having long conversations with. I mean they were just in a different world. I mean he would do his work and liked his work in a very exacting way. But this fellow, when I asked you about Mrs. Hirschfield earlier, the person who volunteered... her husband was a scientist, who came over here and became, and went into the textile work. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 141 | Was his name William? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 142 | It’s Frances, wait. Her name was Frances Hirschfield, his name was... I think it might have been William. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 143 | Yeah, now I’m remembering who they are. Yeah. I think they’re still volunteering there. 31 | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 144 | Well, she just died. But he was... he died a few years back in Gastonia. He was, lived in Huntsville, Alabama, before they moved to Gastonia. And he came to Gastonia to be, like the chief chemist for the factory, dye work and things like that. And my dad could, would, enjoyed having him to talk to. And even in his retirement, when they moved to Florida, he... one of his good friends was the rabbi for that congregation. So he was not a, he was in some ways a pretty, a very private person. And I think he didn’t either understand, not... understand may be the wrong word. He did not always appreciate what we were doing in our spare time. He didn’t grow up in scouting, but I think he really appreciated what we learned in scouting. And the people that he met, the other scout masters and the activities that we did. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 145 | Was your brother a scout, too? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 146 | My brother was a scout. And he became an Eagle Scout in that same Presbyterian church. He endured a summer with me that he says he’Il never forget, because I was the scout master in charge of the cabin when he was a few years younger and was a camper. And I induced him to be Minihaha or twisted his arm or the Schieles twisted his arm. But... so, when... my dad in that way was pretty, I think, tolerant of what we did and just let us do it. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 147 | Was being Jewish important to you at the time, from a young age? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 148 | Oh sure. I think it’s always been important to me and is important to me, today. And you know, I think it’s had a profound effect on my life. I talked about it during... I mean, Judaism has been part of me all the way through and I guess I’m pretty conscious of being Jewish. Not that I think about it every day, but it’s a very attractive religion, I think. It’s very simple. Its principles make a lot of sense to me, if one is going to believe in a higher being. And people are aware that Iam Jewish. And I spend some time talking about Judaism, sometimes in schools, sometimes to civic groups or Passover, that sort of thing. But, I mean, nothing to necessarily flout, it’s just the way itis. And then of course, I said my wife is not Jewish. But then we have a small Quaker contingent in the mountains that I participate with. So, we put those two things together, something I probably wouldn’t have predicted years ago either. I’m sure that all of this Holocaust history is very much a part of, or has contributed a great deal to what I’ve been doing in my later life, in this work that I do and the work I did in the Civil Rights Division. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 149 | And I’d really like to discuss that more and maybe it would make more sense to do that after we've really discussed your work here and with the Civil Rights Division so that it can be put more in context. Do you think? Or do you want to say something about it now? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 150 | Well, what were you thinking? What else did you want to talk about? | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 151 | Well, your later years (laughing), the rest of your life that we haven’t talked about yet. | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 152 | I see. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 153 | But I definitely am interested in hearing how your Holocaust, when you say that your Holocaust experiences that had a profound effect on your subsequent work. 32 | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 154 | Well, I think the family, I think coming to this country... I think we’ve always been grateful for the opportunity that we’re here, from the time we came. And I think my parents were always very cognizant, emphasized that. I always remember right after we, when we moved to Spartanburg in those early days, like many other immigrant families, you’d have a picture on the wall of Franklin Roosevelt and the Statue of Liberty or something else. And I remember, I think I remember this incident: when the immigration people or the FBI showed up one day on our door in Gastonia—was it Gastonia or Spartanburg?—and they came and took out... you were not allowed to have a short-wave radio and you were not allowed to have binoculars, because you might spy on somebody. And we had an old monocular, one of those things that seafaring captains go... do... use. And they took that. And they saw the picture on the wall and they were very embarrassed in what they were doing. I mean they, my parents were very nice... | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 155 | So, I’m sorry, it was just immigrants that weren’t allowed to have these things? | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 156 | Right, yeah, if you weren’t American citizens. We were aliens, foreigns, aliens. And eventually, years later they brought them back. They returned them. I don’t know if it was right after we got our citizenship papers. My parents applied to become citizens, then in 1945, after five years, took their test and got their citizenship. We went to Charlotte. Federal judges often talk about the most poignant experiences, how often or how many of them remark about the thrill they make, they have in presiding over the citizenship swearings-in. And we went to... my parents were sworn in in Charlotte. We went across the street. And I think it was... I think that the restaurant... we went to a restaurant. I think it was the first time I ever ate out in my life, that they ever went out. It was a little diner across the street, after the swearing-in ceremony. But, and I think that my work, going into the military, in part and then working in the Division and maybe the work I do here is all, in some ways... I never viewed it as a sacrifice, but I think having a life in public service, in a way, is helping to try to make this country a better place to live in and give back a little bit. I mean there are lots of ways of giving back, if that’s the right word, but at least helping to contribute to making this a better society and not necessarily being governed by the dollar sign, which, you know, we all have an opportunity to do. But in that way, I think, all of this, at least I think that whether it was my parents or my Judaism, it all kind of comes together in some way that you... I mean it’s a real privilege to do what I do and get paid for it. And it was that way in the Civil Rights Division, to have a position where you can help to provide better opportunities for African-Americans in this country, by working, by using the legal system to make, to break these barriers down. And to do the same thing in my present job or what I’ve been doing for almost thirty years for poor people, to give them a chance to be on the same playing field or to level the playing field for them, at least when they’re trying to make their way through the legal system, or when they’re in trouble. And to make the legal system work for them, which they wouldn’t be able to afford unless it was for the lawyers and staff in this program that I’ve been in charge of for a number of years. | answer |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 157 | During the early years that you were in the United States and Spartanburg and Gastonia, as the war is developing, were you aware of what was happening in Europe to the Jews? Were you able to follow that? 33 | question |
RG-50.549.05.0007 | 158 | I don’t think so. I don’t know when we found out they were all killed, that the family was killed, or what was... you know, in 1944... or even that these ships that were not allowed 1n this country, all these that were going around and around, went back to Germany, Holland. I don’t know whether there was any contact. I don’t think there was. I don’t think my... that’s a good question. Whether my father knew where his brother was, that they were alive. I don’t think they did have any contact. Because, and when we looked at those records, I think from being with Mother, that that was the first time that she knew for sure. I mean that we had heard, the thing from this... but I don’t think there was any contact. I don’t know. I was still too much in school. I mean, you know, it seems like it jumps from high school. It seems like you’ve always known the story of the Holocaust. But whether we knew that that was happening when, let’s see I was, ‘44, I would have been thirteen, in the seventh grade. What are your, what do you know about that? | answer |