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RG-50.549.05.0012

Oh, I would think they would have been longer than that. I’m sure they were there longer than that, because first half of °44... Oh, I’m sorry, forty, yeah it would have been about a year and a half, a little over. Yeah, that’s about right, I would think. No, I don’t remember, other than I knew they were there, and... End of Tape 1, Side A 8 Tape 1, Side B

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RG-50.549.05.0012

Tape one, side B of an interview with Alexander Rosenberg. So you want to just repeat what you had just said?

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Yeah, later on they brought in women from Auschwitz. And I have to back up here a minute. There was an area where they had a huge circus tent, was set up. That’s where they had the shoes. Apparently, I don’t know over how long or what, the Germans had collected shoes for recycling or for donations or whatever the reason they gave to collect them. And then also there were a lot of military boots in there since many of them had bullet holes in them or shrapnel holes apparently from either wounded or dead soldiers. And what one of the big, quote, “industries” was, was separating the upper leather from the soles and heels and then separate the leather from the rubber heels and/or soles. And that was done in that big tent. And then there was a... the leather soles, I guess, was what they couldn’t reuse. And so they were stacked up in a humongous pile that was on the main drag and kept getting higher and higher. People, that was my first assignment was working on that. You had a wheelbarrow hauling those, and then you had to stack them so the whole thing wouldn’t just fall over. And they emptied that, emptied that tent of all the shoes, and they started to bring in women and they established a separate woman’s camp. And it turned out that one of the first groups in there included the wife, who had been with us, of a fellow. She had worked in the kitchen and she got caught taking some food to try to give to her husband. And first they shipped her to, I guess to Luneburg, to jail. And she was there in jail for a while and the police apparently were trying to protect her from the Gestapo, but couldn’t. And ultimately she was shipped to Auschwitz. But the police had warned her about Auschwitz and so as she arrived she managed to walk from the incoming group to an outgoing group which happened to come to Belsen. And so she was back and she was in that group. And she went to the fence and hollered at somebody to tell her husband that she was back by way of Auschwitz. That’s how we knew that group had come from Auschwitz. You could talk to them usually across the fence as long as you didn’t get too close to the fence.

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Were you mostly speaking in German while you lived in Belsen?

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Dutch.

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Did you use your German in speaking with any of the camp guards?

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No, you never spoke to the camp guards. And I’m not so sure I still could speak German back then. But no. They may give you an order, but that was it. You never talked to them. There was no conversation at all.

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RG-50.549.05.0012

Okay, moving to the time when you were, when you were shipped out of Belsen again, you described that time in the first interview and how you had kind of gone on a two-week tour of Germany. And seen Berlin completely destroyed.

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Beautiful sight. 9

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I thought maybe we could just pick up with that time. And I wondered if you could tell a little bit more about, well the time of liberation, encountering the Russian soldiers. And you mentioned how they were sharing bread and so forth. Were they, the Russians have... had a reputation for being sometimes vicious even with the people that they liberated. Did you witness any of that?

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No. Initially we woke up because of... we were on the train still and the train was stopped. And all kinds of noises, and here were the Russian Cossacks just the way they were pictured, you know, in their furs and horseback and rifles slung over their shoulders. And we had learned, like you said, the one word in Russian, chleb (ph), which is bread. And they let us off, and so we went on into town. Then there must have been some discussion about where to go and whoever, they told us just to go and if you need to, throw the Germans out. And we happened to go into a fairly large house along with some others, who... the woman claimed they were in the Nazis, but her husband was a minister. And he sure was in the SS. And so we didn’t have any compunction about bullying them. Somebody, apparently there must have been some people who spoke Yiddish or either the Russian soldiers spoke Yiddish or they spoke Russian. I remember somebody said something about food, and so one of the Russians just pulled out a gun and shot a cow and said help yourself. One of the French women recognized the opportunity and went with the frontline unit. And of course, that morning crossed the Elbe River into the American part of Germany and managed to get back to Paris, which of course had been liberated the year before. And put an ad in the Paris paper, those who were looking for their wives, and I don’t know whether she mentioned names or it was a specific group. And they responded. Many of them were of course in the French Army. And so they got the American Army to send two of those two and a half ton trucks over to come and get them. And of course, everybody wanted to go. And they promised they’d be back and they did. I guess in the euphoria, you know, the war was over by that time. I think we were in Tribitz (ph) for about six weeks. All of the people that were still alive from that train, there were about a thousand of them, were evacuated by the Americans and taken to Leipzig, where they had a DP camp. And the Russians let the trucks come in and get them.

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What kind of condition were you in at the time of liberation?

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Barely alive if you can even count that. We had to be very careful. Many people died because they ate things that they couldn’t digest. Their digestive system was so severely weakened or disturbed that a glass of milk would kill you. You just couldn’t tolerate that sort of thing. You had to be very careful that you ate only a little bit and a little bit. And of course a little bit was always more than what we had had for a long time. So that was important that you didn’t... I remember getting a hold, we heard that nearby was a Army depot, food depot, and we went there. And sure enough there was. And I got some... I’m not sure I got cans or an open bucket of condensed milk, you know, had a lot of sugar in it. And we just couldn’t eat it, not for a while. Because we couldn’t digest it, it was that rich.

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But you were able to walk?

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Oh yeah, yeah. 10

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I think you mentioned how much you weighed, did you?

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Well when I got back to Amsterdam I weighed 78 pounds. So I don’t know how much I weighed then, maybe fifty or sixty, strictly skin over bones. If I would have gotten a haircut, I would have taken a pound off. (Laughing. )

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They didn’t shave your head while you were in Belsen?

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Yes, of course.

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Were you with your entire family at that point while you were riding the train?

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Yes. Yes. We were all together.

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Was that moment of encountering the Cossack unit, were you aware this 1s it, 1t’s over?

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Yes, yes. Absolutely, absolutely.

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Was that a particularly emotionally charged...’

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Oh sure. Oh absolutely, joyous. Now you had an opportunity, you might live. Might actually see 1946. Definitely. Yeah, everybody... I’m digressing, but I didn’t know anybody on that train. I had never run into anybody who was, for that matter, never ran into anybody who was at Belsen. And I guess it’s three years ago now. We were, we took a trip, first grand circle tour we ever took. It was a river cruise from Vienna to Amsterdam. It was the first time that I was back in Germany and I wasn’t sure whether I could tolerate it or not. We decided on this trip because I could just stay on the boat. Didn’t have to go on land where I would have to be in contact with any Germans. But one night we’re having dinner with two ladies. One of whom, very interesting woman—she was the one who introduced the Lamaze method to the United States— and her cousin. And somehow the other woman was telling us that her daughter was taking her daughter, the woman’s grandchild, to Europe, Amsterdam. They had discussed Anne Frank in class and she wanted to see the Anne Frank house. And she said, “I told my daughter there’s always long lines at the Anne Frank house and if you can’t get in, go next door, that’s where your father was hidden during the war.” And I said to her, “Oh, were you in Amsterdam during the war?” And she said yes she was, but her two sisters both got found out. They all had gone into hiding. And they ended up in Belsen. I said, “Oh, that’s where I was. I never met anybody from Belsen.” I said, “Are they still alive?” And she said yeah, the one sister was. But the other sister and her husband died after they were liberated. They were hauled by train. “Oh,” I said, “to Tribitz?” And she said “Yes, how do you know?” And I said, “I was on that train also.” And so that’s as close as I ever came to meeting anybody or knowing anybody. But the irony, irony, small world: the sister who was still alive lived next door to my mother’s closest friend in New York. So you never know. But no, I didn’t know anybody and outside of that incident I have never talked to anybody who was there. As a matter of fact, my brother is very active. He’s on the Board of Directors of the Anne Frank house. And I happened to be talking to him about a year or so ago and he told me, and I didn’t realize, I went to school with Anne Frank. I was in the same class, but I don’t remember her at all. And I got to wondering if there is a class 11 picture that exists. I’ll have to ask him of the grade school. Because we both should be in it. Just curious.

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There is another woman that we interviewed last year or so, who went to school with Anne Frank as well. I don’t recall her maiden name, but her married name was Barbara Rodbell.

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There is somebody and my brother knows about it, her, that 1s apparently active in the Anne Frank House Foundation and goes around speaking. I’m not sure if it’s the same woman or not. But somebody that was either a friend of Anne Frank or knew her.

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And actually I might be mistaken, she might not have been in school, she was a friend of hers. Her sister especially. But they might have lived nearby. So, you’re with your family and you’re returning to Amsterdam, and you described some, in the first interview, some of that... you were housed first in the DP camp in Leipzig?

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First in Leipzig. Essentially what it was, was a military barracks that was used. We could come and go. We were not prisoners. They let us come and go. Matter of fact, very grateful about many things. De-lousing with DDT. They sprayed us from head to toe with DDT. Think how environmentally unacceptable that is today. And I’m still alive in spite of it. But it got rid of the fleas and in particular the lice which was so important. But we could come and go as we pleased. And I don’t remember it was with my brother or some other boys, anyway, young men, we would get on the trolley and the conductor trying to collect money from us and we told him what he could do, or what we would do. We were pretty nasty. So they left us pretty much alone. And then we weren’t there all that long. And then when they were told, they’re going to take us back to Holland, it was on a Red Cross train. We wouldn’t go onto the beds because they were absolutely starched, bleached, perfectly white sheets. And here we were, in spite of getting regular baths, pretty filthy. We only had one set of clothes and shoes. I’m sure we had shoes. I had a woman’s blouse, because I remember it, Army blouse, because it buttoned the wrong way. But they weren’t even able to fit, not small enough. They insisted we get in the beds and don’t worry about getting them dirty. And then they brought us bread that was as white as the sheets were. Couldn’t believe that. But anyway they took us back to Holland and they put us in a convent in southern Holland, where the Dutch then sorted things out. And you had to have a place to stay before they’d send you back to Amsterdam. And that was taken care of.

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While you were still in Germany did you witness anybody, any of the former prisoners taking revenge on Germans or did you desire that yourself?

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No. Well, I suppose if you would have known somebody or run into somebody that you knew had been a, recognized a prison guard, I don’t think he would have survived. But that would have been such a chance encounter. No. Well, for one thing we were wearing what looked like American Army uniforms because that’s the only clothing, I guess, that we were given. I’m not sure what else the Red Cross had that they gave us. So that the Germans gave us a pretty wide berth. Because they didn’t have anything to do anyway. Things were pretty chaotic.

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Do you recall how you felt at the time? Angry or happy or any hopes? 12

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Hopeful is probably the best. No, I don’t think anger set in until later. At that point you’re just trying to revive, was probably the closest word to describe it. You’re still fairly weak. You’re beginning to get a little better. You can eat a little bit more. Beginning to feel a little better all the time. And at this point you’re just trying to survive. You’re really not thinking about the future, what you want to do, or what you have to do or what you’re going to do. You’re still preoccupied with eating, primarily.

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And getting enough to eat?

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And getting, yeah, yeah, sure. And we did.

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What about your, when you returned to Amsterdam and just adjusting to daily life again?

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Well, initially of course, I think we were all spread out. I stayed with one family who was a friend of my parents. My brother stayed with a friend of his. His closest friend was an American. His father was the distributor for Holland and Belgium of RKO, the movies. And I think he stayed with them. And my parents stayed with, I don’t even remember who it was. Somebody. So we were in different locations. We weren’t really, and this was like, talking the summer of ‘45. There really wasn’t much going on. Trying to see about getting back into school. My high school class had graduated. I think we may have actually been back in Amsterdam when the graduation was, but of course they wouldn’t give me my diploma. Hadn’t been there in four years. Four out of six wasn’t good enough. And so my mother was making arrangements to see what the school about me trying out, well both of us, trying to get back into school in the Fall. What the requirements would be, and trying to line up a tutor and a place to live. And I think, somebody... the Dutch did things fairly reasonably. The person that was living in our house had gotten there in good faith. He did not know, or they did not know that was the property or the residence of deported Jews. And so what they did, if the person had something in good faith, so you don’t have, just transfer the victim from one person to another. They could stay there. So my parents found a place to live. And I don’t know where the furniture came from, whether that was, whether those were donations or purchases or whether they had given some of that furniture to somebody to hide. But anyway we ultimately had an apartment where we lived. And then school started pretty soon. We had a tutor trying to get us up to speed, because I was allowed into the senior class on the condition that if I didn’t measure up, that the school would have the right not to let me take the comprehensive exams at the end of the year. Well that’s the deal they made with my parents, obviously. Apparently I did all right because... and I do remember having to go to a couple of teachers after classes for additional instruction. It’s kind of tough to pick up solid geometry if you haven’t had trigonometry. So, trying to catch up.

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Was it easy for you to focus on studies after what you had been through? Was that a challenge at all?

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I never thought of it in those terms, but I suppose so because that’s the only thing we did, was to go to school. And you come home, and you may have had to stay after class for additional instruction. And depending on—I’m not sure whether you’re familiar with the European system—it’s not ten minutes worth of homework. You spent every night doing homework, and 13 we went to school on Saturdays half a day. And so maybe we were allowed to go and play for ten minutes before dinner. Or if we happened to get done by eight o’clock, the homework, we could play for a half hour before going to bed. But it, it was all-consuming, essentially, except maybe for the weekends.

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So you didn’t, you weren’t necessarily ever... was there a point were you remember you started really reflecting on what had happened to you?

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No, not really. It really would have been pointless anyway. The Dutch had been exceedingly helpful, and trying to shield people. And not personally, but from others that they tried to hide an awful lot of Jews. The population as a whole, with minor exceptions, had always been very supportive. And now you're back after the war and you’re no longer wearing the star, you’re no longer distinguishable from the rest of the population. And so there was no need for anybody to either bend over backwards or kick you in the shins. So, no, I don’t think, as a matter of fact, I really haven’t dwelled on it much all my life. I have a cousin who was a professional Holocaust survivor and I always detested that. It was one of those things that happened, nothing you can do about it. I’m not ashamed of it certainly. I’m not proud of it. I mean, nothing you can do about it. I suppose like most unpleasant things, you try and put them out of your mind.

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This maybe is kind of a digression, going out of the chronology, but was there a point where you really felt compelled personally to talk about your experiences to anyone? Like that would help you or help other people to...?

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No, never did. I’ve never been much for psychologists. (Laughing.) No, I never, and I suppose a lot of the reason I don’t remember a lot of things because they’re probably suppressed memory, and why bring it up? What purpose does it serve? I know a friend of mine keeps after me to try and write a book. And I don’t, I say absolutely not. One, there’s not enough to fill a page, but aside from that, no, I don’t... matter of fact, there’s somebody come from the Holocaust Museum this month. Did you see that?

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I heard something about it.

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I think it’s, Goldfarb, is that his name?

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Marvin, Martin Goldfarb.

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Yeah, whatever. It 1s Goldfarb, isn’t it?

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I’m pretty sure. I’m blanking on his name right now, but I know him.

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Yeah, okay. That’s okay. Okay, that’s all right. I got invitation, I don’t know where it came from. It was an invitation to the Holocaust survivors in the second generation. And I was debating whether to go or not. Because one thing, I don’t know any of them that are here. And I’m not so sure whether I care to or not. I haven’t made up my mind. I may decide on the last minute whether I will or not. 14

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Okay, we have another minute or so on this tape. Well, that’s interesting. Your brother has, it sounds like, taken kind of an active role in something that’s related to being a Holocaust SUIVIVOT.

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Yeah. And that came about because he saw an article in a paper about the Anne Frank Foundation and somebody’s name who was, I guess the Chairman of the Board, who lived near where he lived in Vermont. And he had never heard of the man before and he called him to meet him, just out of curiosity. And apparently they got friendly and he got him involved in the Anne Frank Foundation and he’s on the Board of Directors now, has been for a few years. And he goes around the country every so often making speeches and fundraising and that sort of thing. And I’m not sure whether he knew, because looking at his tape, I’m not sure whether he mentioned the name of the school that we went to or not. Anyway I don’t remember what it is. But it was obviously the same school that Anne Frank went to. The only thing I remember about that school is we made honey in the Fall. They had bee hives on the roof. I was thinking about that earlier, I don’t know why. Whenever it was ready we would go upstairs and they would take the hives, the honeycombs out and put them in a centrifuge and we made honey. And I guess carved up the combs and sold it with the wax and the honey. That’s about the only thing I remember. (Laughing.) There was something else, too, animal-related about that grade school. Can’t think of it.

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Let’s go ahead and change the tape. End of Tape 1, Side B 15 Tape 2, Side A

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This is tape number two, side A. And would you say a little bit more about that? I was wondering about, continuing in this same vein of digression, I was wondering about your feeling as a Holocaust survivor, whether you feel that there’s any benefit to be derived from identifying yourself that way? With the work that your brother... (Rosenberg bursts out laughing) ...it’s a strange way of putting the question, isn’t it?

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No, I tell you reason I am laughing 1s I suppose if you look for sympathy it would be. But no, I don’t. I’ve never found any benefit to either, occasionally if I get pushed I will mention it. I normally don’t as a matter of conversation. We were in Spain and there was a couple in that group that we were with, who were Germans, who had retired. He had worked for General Motors and they lived in Windsor, across in Canada. And they had invited a friend of theirs from Germany to come down and join us. We were on the trip up to Granada to see the Alhambra. And on the way back we were sitting at a table and this man came wandering in by himself. I said to him in German, “How are you doing?” He complained, “Not very well.” He didn’t speak English, and so unless his friends were around... blah, blah, blah. And then on a stop on the way back, we were standing in line together and he said, “How come you speak German so well?” And I was debating what to say. I just said, “I was in a concentration camp.” And I totally devastated that man. And that evening he sought me out in the bar and came to apologize. I said, “Hey, it’s not your fault, you were too young.” This man was in his fifties, he may have been a child at the time. “Oh, please come to Germany,” he would host us, et cetera, et cetera. So I’m always very careful because there’s no need to upset people that have no, you know, no responsibility. I’m not looking for an advantage. So no, I rarely volunteer the information.

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What about, you’re doing this interview today. You did one other interview. What has made you agree to do those?

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Well, it’s the neo-Nazism that says it never happened. And I think there needs to be as much evidence as possible to show that it really did happen. And that those many of us who survived are perfectly normal people. Or what passes for normal, at least I think so. (Laughing.) And don’t all go around looking, “Hey, you owe me a favor because I survived.” But it’s not a bias free society. Until whatever it is, say five years ago... I’ve been wanting to go and visit my grandparent’s grave. I just couldn’t bring myself the thought of going to Germany. One, because it’s Germany; and two, that I wasn’t sure whether I could control my temper if somebody were to say something to me that would set me off. And so we decided on a trial and that was we went to Switzerland for a week with day trips out of Lucerne. And the first trip was to the Black Forest. You get out of it for lunch and you get back on the bus. The bus was the safe haven. And then another day for a couple of hours. And it went all right. I didn’t feel particularly bad or tense. But on that boat trip, after Cologne it got to me suddenly, and I had to get out of there. And I actually during dinner, got up, went up on top of the boat, on the top deck, to make sure we passed that border back into Holland. Because I just got obsessed all of a sudden, panicky. And haven’t been back since. 16

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What about your children? Have you... people who are as far as can be from Neo-Nazis: do you feel like it’s important to you to leave them some kind of information or some kind of knowledge about your life and your experiences?

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Well, they know about it, of course. At least one daughter, I think has... no, I think they all have copies of the tape of the interview. The tape that one of my... it’s really my father’s cousin that was much more informative than mine or, for that matter, my brother’s. This fellow got to Belsen the day before the liberation or two days before the liberation. The Swedes took him out, sent him to Sweden. He was in a Swedish hospital for a year. But he decided to use that year to write down everything he could remember. And then spend the rest of his life filling in the details that he didn’t remember, and try and get the... and he wrote a book. The original was published in German and just before he died, supposedly it was published, finally got published in English. And I never did get a copy of it. I'll have to ask my cousin for it. But I got a copy of his tape. But he remembers names and dates and... and he went from one labor camp to another labor camp, and the name of the commander of the camp and all that kind of stuff that I have no idea about and really, don’t really care. And yeah, my kids know, but they also really have no relation to it. My youngest daughter couldn’t, when I said something to her about the Vietnam War, she says, “But Dad I was only six then.” You know, so it’s all ancient history. Just like World War One is ancient history to me. I know about it. I’m a bit of a history buff and I wanted to see the Bosporus. That’s a World War One site. The British took one hell of a beating there. That was Churchill’s doing. And went to Yalta, wanted to see that. But no, they’re not really interested.

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Did you intentionally at some point start telling your children about...?

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No, no.

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...your history? It just kind of gradually...?

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I’m not sure. My wife may have told them something or my mother may have. It may have come out, a comment here or there or something that occurred that made me bring it up or a program that I watched. Spielberg had a program, was it last week or week before last, it was on HBO. I was going to tape it, but I don’t have HBO. When there’s something on the Holocaust I usually tape it. More for my information than to show others.

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And I’m curious about what you mentioned a little earlier about someone who you know who’s a professional Holocaust survivor.

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That was my cousin.

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Your cousin?

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Well, my father’s cousin.

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And is that something... and you mentioned that it bothers you. Can you say more about what bothers you about that or what you think the danger of that 1s? 17

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Oh, I don’t think there’s danger in it, it may bore people to death, but you can do that with other things, too. That was the singular defining incident of his life. And everything is being related to that. I... that may have been the most important event in my life, even though I don’t think so. I think there are much more important things, I mean it’s part of my history. I was fortunate that I survived it, and I moved on. I don’t particularly dwell on it. Or try and say, “Now wait a minute, I married that woman because I didn’t see that woman...” or you know, and relate it to the Holocaust. It has nothing to do with it. Well, in his case everything was. It came up in every conversation.

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And have you had the experience as somebody who has survived the Holocaust, of people maybe assuming that because you are a Holocaust survivor that was the defining event of your life and therefore kind of maybe not seeing you clearly?

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No, because I doubt whether anybody that would know me or that I would know, would find out that I am a Holocaust survivor until they really have known me for a long time. Because it’s, see I don’t normally bring it up. Not unless something happens to make it pop up for some reason or another, inadvertently, but no, I wouldn’t think so. They just see the lack of hair. (Laughing. )

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Is being Jewish important to you?

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Yeah, definitely. I am the only Jew in my family.

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Is that right?

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Yes. (Laughing.) And I am proud of it.

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So, what does that mean to you, to be the only Jew in your family?

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Oh, I am saying it jokingly and seriously. My wife is Episcopalian. Our children were baptized in the Episcopalian church, but are not particularly religious. My youngest daughter was married in the Catholic church and now her children were just baptized in the last month, because they want... the older one now is going to first grade. And with the public schools here in Louisville in such a mess, they want to put the boy into parochial school. And they belong to a parish and apparently they are now going to church regularly, which 1s fine. I have no problem with it one way or the other. Our oldest daughter was married for the first time in the Episcopal cathedral in Lexington, which as you may know is so orthodox that the mass was in Latin.

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They don’t even do that in Catholic church.

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I know. (Laughing.) That marriage didn’t last and her current husband is a Baptist. I’m not sure that they are going to church, but their son goes to Bible school. He was in, going to public school, not this Fall, but he was in a Baptist kindergarten and preschool. And the other one doesn’t have any children and as far as I know, they were married by a minister who was, whom they knew. So that’s why I’m saying that. 18

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So, what does it mean to you, can you say what it means to you to be Jewish?

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No, not really. No more so than what it means being a chemist or of German extraction or married or grandfather or anything else. You better not say anything anti-Semitic or Ill blow your head off. (Laughing.) But other than that, no.

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It doesn’t necessarily mean keeping certain traditions or going to synagogue?

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Not really, no, no. Keep certain traditions, but I... bit of a pragmatist, and I’m not all that tradition-bound. I think the dietary laws make good sense from a health perspective, but I don’t particularly find the need to avoid eating shrimp.

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What about, do you think of Judaism as a... when you say it’s important to you to be Jewish, is it as a religion?

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Well it’s really more ethnic than a religion. Did you by chance see that program on trying to find the lost tribes a few weeks ago on PBS? Fascinating program. To some people being Jewish is a religion, obviously, Sammy Davis Jr. is probably the... Elizabeth Taylor. But to... I would think most Jews, it’s more ethnic than religious. You can’t help whatever your racial or ethnic background is. I’m not hiding it and I’m not flaunting it. So, I don’t care. You know, whether somebody knows or doesn’t know. It’s not that I don’t care personally, what I mean is I’m not concerned about it.

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So you’re not a particularly religious person?

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No, I’m not.

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Okay. Let’s go pick up the timeline again.

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Okay.

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We left off in Amsterdam just after the war. You’re going back to school, you’re working hard at being a student. And as far as, you were talking about being hopeful at the time. What were you, do you recall what you were hopeful for, what you really wanted for the rest of your life?

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Well, initially to graduate from high school, you know, trying to pass the exams or get far enough along that I would be allowed to take the exams. And then once they decided that I could, then of course sweating like everybody else to pass them. But I did. I wanted to become a chemist or a chemical engineer. And after I graduated from high school I went to Delft, Technical Institute in Delft for one year, ‘46, ‘47, to study chemical engineering. Then much to my dismay, my parents decided to come to the United States and I didn’t want to go. Well for one thing, you had to leave your friends, just getting into the swing of things having done my freshman year in college. But they didn’t give me a choice, and so then of course the logical thing was... a lot of my mother’s family and some of my dad’s family were over here, had been over here for years, so we came over here in ‘47, Memorial Day, ‘47. 19

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Did you consider not coming and staying? By then you were an adult.

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Oh yeah, yeah. Not coming, I said, I wasn’t given that option. I said, “Okay, Ill go with you, but I’m going to go back.” You get used to... it’s a changed situation, and I probably didn’t really give it much serious thought after some months or some years to go back. Go ahead.

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Did you have any... what were your notions about the U.S. at that time?

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Well, you know the only notions you have are the cowboys, and the skyscrapers of New York. And since it was Memorial Day when we got here, the night before traveling along the South shore of Long Island you saw the fireworks. Of course, you didn’t know what was going on. Memorial Day didn’t mean anything to us. Then it was hot. I’m not sure if it was hot for Memorial Day, but like it is right now. It was one of these early hot spells. Our, my mother’s brothers came and picked us up, met us at the boat, and took us over to my mother’s sister’s apartment.

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Where was that?

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In New York, New York City. My mother was one of 13 brothers and sisters. And one, two, three... four sisters were in the United States, and three of her brothers. And the three, three sisters and the three brothers lived in New York City. And my dad’s sister, I think she may still have been in Rochester at the time. I’m not sure. And matter of fact, they had written, my mother’s brothers had gotten an apartment for us, which was across the street from one and next- door to one of the other ones. In Queens, in New York City. And so we lived there. I guess, but I’m not sure, we stayed with my aunt for a while until our furniture arrived, because I’m not sure it was on the same boat. It came later. I don’t remember, it’s been a long time.

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So, you came by ship?

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Oh Yeah, yeah. The Veyndam (ph) was the name of the ship.

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Dutch?

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It was a Holland-America Line freighter built in 1914. I looked it up recently, that’s why I can spout that stuff. (Laughing.) It was requisitioned during World War Two and was used as a troop ship. And then this was the last trip across the Atlantic to the States to be reconverted, to have all of the bunks and all that stuff taken out and be converted back to a freighter and was retired in 1954. I couldn’t remember the name of the ship. I looked it up in the New York Times a year or two ago. They had the comings and goings of all the ships and they listed them in the New York Times. Listed as May 30", Memorial, May 30" with 112 passengers.

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