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RG-50.549.05.0012

Oh yeah, I have a number of hobbies. For one thing, I like to cook and obviously like to eat. (Laughing.) And gardening, although my garden right now doesn’t show that. And I always like to travel, but of course, with a family and work that isn’t always possible. So we made up for it since I retired. And I enjoy history, learning about it, learned more about it since I retired, I guess. Now I have time to watch television and the History channel and A&E and of course, KET to some extent. So that... a lot more exposure and therefore an ability to learn a lot more. And then too, when we travel, we do it with the intent, not always the same. I don’t go for these Caribbean cruises, you know, “Show me, feed me, entertain me.” I like cruises because they are a lazy man’s way of traveling—you only pack and unpack once—but there has to be a reason for it. And sometimes they are real eye-openers. A couple of years we went on an Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea cruise and we were in Constanta, Romania, which is the major port of Romania on the Black Sea. Ovid was exiled there for seven years or whatever. Well, never even thought that the Romans as well as the Greeks, both came up the west coast of the Black Sea, east coast of the Balkan Peninsula. And that they had gone that far North into what is now Odessa and to the Crimea. I’m sure it’s of no importance right now, but in terms of historical event, just didn’t think about that or heard about it. A lot of things like that. But as we talked earlier about the famine, and what complicity the British had. The other day there was a fascinating program on the Vikings. They were the kings of Kiev in Russia. They went east. Nobody... I never heard that before.

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What about Holocaust-era history? Have you done much reading about that or taken an interest in finding out what happened on a broader scale?

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Oh yes, yes, definitely. As you know there are a lot of programs, bits and pieces. There is a lot... new things, but also things that are being, I think, being hidden from view that never show again. The... well of course, in addition to Spielberg’s movie, I’m not sure what the show was the other day, but there are a number of programs that deal with the Holocaust or deal with certain aspects of the Holocaust. Or for that matter, not necessarily in that context, but primarily in the context of Nazis or Hitlerism and their henchmen and how they got involved and what they did. And the Holocaust in the broadest sense, in terms of the enslaving of particularly the Slavs, the eastern Europeans and the murder, genocide of them, not necessarily just the Jews. But then one thing, and I have a video of it, it was on PBS maybe twenty-five years ago, about 31 Fort Ticonderoga, and I have never seen it again. I mentioned to you earlier the anti-Semitism of the State Department. In 1943, when the Holocaust became pretty well-known in government circles, but was being hidden from the American population, a number of Henry Morgenthau’s employees went to him and said, “You go to FDR and tell him he does something or else we’re going to go public that the U.S. government knows about this and isn’t doing anything.” And as a consequence of that, they brought some six, 800, what was then called DPs, displaced persons, to this country. They had to sign a statement, which of course anybody in his right mind would have, that after the war they would go back to their country of origin. And they put them into Fort Ticonderoga. And after the war was over with, they tried to ship them back. Well, you know, you signed this thing. But a number of couples had had children here. They were born at Fort Ticonderoga and therefore they were native-born citizens, and therefore their parents were entitled to stay here as the parents of minor American citizens. The State Department declared Fort Ticonderoga was not American soil and therefore they were not American citizens. Can you imagine a place that is so historically important in the American Revolution being declared not being a part of America? I mean that’s the kind of convoluting, convolutions, unfortunately, our government went through. As I said, that was a PBS show, 25 years ago, I have never seen it again. I guess too many toes were being stepped on. But... and of course, I went to the Holocaust museum, but I couldn’t take it, make it past the Saint Louis, because I remember that one vividly. Another black mark in our history.

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So, it was too painful to be going through and reminded?

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RG-50.549.05.0012

Yeah, I mean the thing is, painful and the thing is that the Saint Louis had roughly nine hundred passengers and I don’t think two dozen survived. It’s incredible that the things that the U.S. government could have done, should have done and never did do. It’s that kind of malfeasance that really upset me, particularly in that context.

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Related to that, I’m interested in something you said in your last interview, which was a piece of advice that you were giving to other Holocaust survivors. That many have met with very good fortune in their post-war lives and that they ought to do what they can to give something back to the community. And so on the one hand you have that compulsion or that desire and on the other hand, you have this knowledge of the shortcomings of this government and the ways that they have, have really not served the... and in particular in the couple of instances you just brought up, Holocaust survivors. How do you reconcile those two?

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RG-50.549.05.0012

Well, those are, in my opinion, two totally separate issues. Maybe they are related, and that is by giving back to the community, by helping people that are in need of help. Maybe because the government should and isn’t, that you’re overcoming the shortcomings of our government. Even though I don’t take that into consideration. There are two ways that one can give back, one is financially and that’s the easy way out that most of us take, is to make contributions to a variety of charitable organizations, or non-profit organizations. But then the more important one is to give of your time and help people. I’m sure the same thing holds true for Lexington, in Louisville there is a shortage, an incredible shortage of volunteers. And all of us retirees who have spare time, and we should have spare time, should donate some of that time to some of these organizations. Whether it’s Dare to Care to sort out cans of food, or work at the Wayside Christian Mission as an example, any of these shelters, and dish out food for people in need. Or 32 I work in the tax program, in fact I have somebody come in who needs help with their taxes. One of the great organizations in general of a variety of needs is Catholic Charities. And they’re desperate for volunteers. Obviously: they asked me to help. (Laughing.) And I have. But the thing 1s, that is one way that you can give back. And whether it’s in your own expertise or if it’s just plain labor. Some people are unwilling to become raw labor, drive for Meals on Wheels or drive for Dare to Care and pick up bread at Kroger or whatever. But that’s the kind of jobs that need to be done. And that’s the kind of things that makes many of these non-profit organizations click. Newt Gingrich, who is so maligned, some four or five years ago, for his reasons felt that the public radio should no longer be funded by the U.S. government. And I completely agree with him. But that doesn’t mean that today they give them big hunk of money and tomorrow it’s zilch. Cut it back. I work for the public radio stations here as a volunteer. And they used that withdrawal of government funds to encourage the public to contribute and they did tremendous, the biggest drive they ever had. And rightly so. I’m a firm believer in putting the public back into public radio and public television, but it requires a commitment on the part of the people to make financial donations. And that’s just one, that’s not nearly as, I suppose, important as helping somebody who’s hungry or reading for the blind, but it’s one of the large variety of volunteer jobs that needs to be done. It’s amazing, I don’t do that much. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back. But one of the people that used to work for me professionally now actually works for me in a volunteer, one of his volunteer activities, got the GE volunteer award of the year, he and his wife, jointly, this past year. Between the two of them they put in three thousand hours a year, that’s a hell of a lot of hours. That’s almost a fulltime job. If we could get half the people to do half that or for that matter, ten percent of the people to do ten percent of that, it would be a lot of help. And that’s what I mean by that.

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Have you traveled much within Kentucky?

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RG-50.549.05.0012

Not that much. I mean we’ve been all over. Been both west and east, and south. Essentially covered the whole state more or less, but not extensively.

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Does the culture or the history of the state interest you particularly or are you more kind of limited...?

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Oh yes, well, no I think or it appears at least that more recently that the antagonism toward Louisville, Louisville versus the rest of Kentucky, seems to be diminishing. But that is, you know the large city versus the rest of the state. Look at New York and New York City, Georgia and Atlanta and you know, you can go on. I think it’s probably true of most states that the large cities are thought to be representative and they’re not. Even though they contain most of the population. And I can understand that. And the interests of Kentucky in particularly are so diverse, from Appalachia with its problems, and Western Kentucky with some of the same problems and some totally different problems. And Louisville, of course, for painfully obvious reasons having totally different problems that people in Appalachia couldn’t care less about. But that’s true everywhere. And it’s amazing, the thing that I thought that the United States was unique, unfortunately, in its race relations problems. They’re not. It’s the same everywhere. It doesn’t matter what country you go to, it may not be like we have, black and white. But we were in New Zealand and there was a big ruckus and the Royal Commission on Race Relations or whatever it was, got involved, refused to get involved in it. Well, the mere fact that they have a 33 Royal Commission on Race Relations says there’s a problem there. And it’s the Maoris, which are no longer in existence. The purest Maori is one-eighth Maori and seven-eighths white. And in Australia it’s the indigenous people versus the settlers. And then of course among the settlers you get the same ethnic divisions that you get everywhere else. Look right now, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, the whole world is erupting in ethnic and race problems. Africa is just a terrible situation.

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Were you... was that something that you were particularly aware of in your early years 1n the U.S., segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, any of those?

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No, not really. I read about it and I heard about it and was only peripherally affected by it. But in the early fifties, while I was in Durham, the mayor of Durham was Jewish. Why I don’t know. There’s a fairly good sized, there was a—there may still be—a good-sized Jewish community in Durham because of the tobacco industry. Apparently they brought the Jews down in order to make cigars, like they did in Tampa with the Cubans. And then, I still remember the man’s name, Bishop Waters was the Catholic Bishop for North Carolina. The little town of Washington, North Carolina was two parishes, a black and a white. Neither one of them could support a priest, and he ordered them integrated. Boy was there ever a stink, but it worked. Wasn’t... no more than two months and they essentially had ninety percent attendance of the two parishes in one church building. It was unheard of. Of course the press would claim race relations are only bad in the South. Well, they’re probably a lot better in the South than they were elsewhere. But yeah, I certainly was keenly aware of it, and cautious. Before I bought a house in Houston, this was in the late fifties, I consulted with a local friend to say “Hey, so that I don’t stub my toe, 1s there anyplace that I cannot go? Where I would be refused because I am Jewish?” And he said, “Yes. Don’t go to Oak Forest,” or Forest Oaks, whatever it was called, which I couldn’t anyway, that was the rich neighborhood. But you learned to do those things.

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Is there something else that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about today?

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No, I can’t really think of much. I don’t know whether this gets perpetuated or not, but I certainly would urge, not just Holocaust survivors, but all retirees to think about give something back to the community.

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This is something that’s very important to you, 1t seems. I mean, you brought it up last time, too.

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Yeah, I think so. There’s such a terrible need. And what makes me particularly, actually angry... I have two or three acquaintances who are retired, who went back to work on a part-time basis, because they don’t know what to do with themselves. They’re bored. This is utterly ridiculous. And I keep trying to get them enrolled in some activity and they just won’t do it. But there’s just too many people that need help, who cannot help themselves. And throwing money at the problem is not necessarily the solution. It isn’t that it can’t be done without money, but it’s the personal help that’s required. And here in Louisville, we are blessed with a number of things. We have here three groups that make recordings for the blind. The Recordings for the Blind, the Audio Studio, and there’s a third one. There isn’t another city in this country that does that. We have three public radio stations. There is not, even New York only has one. There are 34 a lot of things that are good things, matter of fact I don’t brag about Louisville, keep down the population influx. (Laughing.) Selfish.

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So, you’re pretty much of a Louisville patriot, huh?

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We have it very good here in Kentucky, and particularly in Louisville, and of course, Lexington in many ways, much more dynamic than Louisville is, for one thing they’ve got the city-county government, which we won’t get. It’s up for voting on election day, you can bet money on it, it won’t happen. The race relations right now are just so terrible. All you have to do is look at other communities and other cities and that’s not just... take this house here as an example, which you can buy similar house here for depending on the condition and age, but let’s say 150 to 250. Go to Silicon Valley you couldn’t touch it for two and a half million dollars. In other areas, yeah you may be able to get for less, but most areas you can’t touch it for twice the amount of money. Matter of fact, most retirees moving out of California, sell their houses and live happily ever after, because they can buy another house somewhere else in Arizona or in Florida for a fraction of what it’s worth in California. Our food prices are reasonable, with the exception of gasoline in Jefferson County. I went to Shelbyville last night and paid 40 cents a gallon less than what it is in Louisville. I mean that’s ridiculous. Could have gone as far as Simpsonville, that’s only ten miles, 25 cents a gallon. But outside of these temporary distortions, Louisville has grown up a lot in the last 15, 20 years. I used to get all my bread from Chicago, now there’s a grocery store over on Taylorsville Road that carries it and I can go get it there. We used to go to Cincinnati to get a three month supply of cold cuts, now I can buy almost all of it here. And so on and so forth. We’re blessed here with, within two miles or three, excellent bakeries and different bakeries. If you want a certain thing you get it here. How many communities can you say that? In 20 minutes I’m at the airport.

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You feel welcome here, comfortable here as a Jew?

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Oh yes, absolutely. That is not an issue at all in this community. I’m sure there’s always, well like the Ku Klux Klan exists here, but you can ignore that. No, I have never had anybody make a disparaging remark to me or denied me something because I’m Jewish. Absolutely. Until the present mayor, the Mayor of Louisville was Jewish, Jerry Abramson, one of the most popular mayors that the city of Louisville has had. I think he was in there for thirteen years, the longest that anybody ever has. And he was quite, I mean it was not anything that was hidden. He was quite open about it. No, I don’t think there’s a problem at all here.

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Anything else you’d like to say?

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No, nothing in particular. Keep the good works up.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you. Conclusion of interview 35

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...So that I can get the levels right.

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My voice is pretty good, it carries. I can assure you of that.

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Yeah, it does. Are you traveling at all this summer?

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Yeah, as a matter of fact on the Fourth of July, we’re going to Tennessee. That is where my wife is from.

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Is that right?

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We’re going to visit her family.

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Whereabouts?

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Her brother. Bristol.

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Bristol? I don’t know, I don’t know where that is.

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Bristol, tri-cities, Johnson City...

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Okay.

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Kingsport. One side of the street is Tennessee, the other side is Virginia. [Laughing. ]

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Okay. Over there in the east. Okay, it’s June the 26", 2000 and this is an interview with Paul Schlisser. We’re in his home that’s in Jefferson County, Kentucky, just outside of Louisville. My name is Arwen Donahue. This interview is being done for the Holocaust Survivors in Kentucky Interview project that is supported by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Kentucky Oral History Commission. Mr. Schlisser has been interviewed before by Yad Vashem in Israel as well as by the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation, however the Shoah Foundation interview, there’s plans in the works for it to be redone because the video part of it didn’t come out. So, we are going to be talking some about his wartime experiences, but primarily focusing on his life after the war. So, Mr. Schlisser, if we could start just with your date of birth and where you were born. 1

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I was born on 17 November, 1935, in a little town called Almozd in Hungary. It’s not far from the Romanian border.

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And what was your name at birth?

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It was Paul, but in Hungarian it is Pali, PA LI. [Laughing.] So, it’s pronounced a little different, but basically it’s the same name, but Hungarian style.

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And your last name was Schlisser?

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Yes, I was born Schlisser.

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Is that, was your family German originally?

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I don’t know, but at one time Hungary and Austria were one under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So it could have been that my family originally lived in Austria or somewhere. I don’t know. But the name is German, yes. But I do not know what the original, what the source of it IS.

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Do you know anything about your family’s history in the area? How long they had been in Almozd?

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No, I really don’t. I know that we had an extended family. Almozd, my mother’s family lived there. My grandparents lived there in the village and a couple of her, my uncles, a couple of her brothers lived there. And in the region around there we had a whole lot of, she had about eleven brothers and sisters and they were all basically somewhere in the region. So, a big family there. My father’s parents, they lived, in his family they were in a different village, near the Tisza River, in a place called Butszentmihal', but we were born in Almozd.

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What was your mother’s maiden name?

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Spitz. Her first name was Rose, Spitz.

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And your father’s name?

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My father’s name was Schlisser.

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First name?

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Oh, Morris, Morris.

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What about your parents’ profession? What did your father do?

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My father was a merchant in leather. In other words he used to buy skin, cattle skin or skin of pigs and then process them. He was like a middle man. He bought them, plus down and that ' Now known as Tiszavaswarda. 2 kind of stuff and he sold it on to people who used them to actually make shoes and you know, leather products. That was his, and my mother was a seamstress.

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Did she have a, just, how did she do her business? Did she have people come and...

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I don’t know. [Laughter.] I just know because my sisters told me that she was a seamstress, but I couldn’t tell you how. I assume that she was working from the, from our house, so I assume that the people would bring, you know, stuff for her to, either to measure them or making dresses and stuff. In those days there wasn’t too many ready-made off-the-shelf dresses. Most of it you had to make. So, I assume that’s the way it worked, but I really, out of my own knowledge I really don’t know. I have no idea.

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How many brothers and sisters did you have?

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We were four, two sisters and two brothers and I was the youngest.

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Do you want to go ahead and state your brother’s and your sisters’ names?

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My oldest brother’s name was Mickey or Mike in English. He passed away. And my second one was Ilona, she’s in Sweden. She has two daughters and six, eight grandchildren. My other sister, her name is Miriam, Maria was her Hungarian name, Mani (ph), and she is in Israel. And she had four children, three daughters and one son and she got thirteen grandchildren. And me, and my wife’s name is Helen and we have one son, Anthony.

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Did all of your brothers and sisters survive the war?

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My two sisters did and my brother did, but he got killed in Israel during one of the altercations over there between the Arabs and them. He fought during the Independence war, my oldest brother.

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So he was in Israel relatively early.

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Yeah, he went to Cyprus. He was in the prison camp by the British in Cyprus. And from there went to Israel in ‘48 when they declared independence. He fought there with the Palmach (ph).

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Was your family very religious?

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My grandparents were very religious. They were very, very religious. My parents, my father, he was religious, but not to the extreme. In other words, he went on, on the Sabbath he went to the Temple and on holidays he went to the Temple. But he didn’t, you know, during the week, every day prayer and all that stuff like my grandparents, he didn’t. But we kept all the, you know, the holidays and everything, Friday night and Saturday, went to the Temple and all that stuff.

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Do you have any other memories about your early childhood? Do you remember friendships? Did you have Jewish friends or non-Jewish friends in the town? 3

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A lot of friends, but I remember basically one, his name was Peter, Christian boy. In Debrecen. We moved, we didn’t stay. I was born in Almozd, but we didn’t live in Almozd. We moved from there to Debrecen, which is about the third largest city in Hungary. That was the center for the Protestant section of Hungary, because basically Hungary is a Catholic country. Only the northern part of Hungary was basically Protestant, and their center was in Debrecen and that’s where we lived.

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Why did your family move?

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When? I don’t know.

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Or why’?

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I guess it was better for business for my father, was more central, as far as selling or transferring goods. I’m just guessing. I have no idea why. I guess it was just better for the family, you know, more centrally located. I would assume that because the village where we were born, didn’t even have a train come through there. You had to go with a horse and buggy from that town to the train station, which was, you know, about ten klicks (ph), which was about five miles away. So there was absolutely nothing there. It was strictly agriculture, you know, and so my grandparents had some land there and all that. But I would assume that’s the main reason. He still traveled down to all the villages and bought the skins and all that stuff, but basically his warehouse and all that was in the city, and, you know, where they process the stuff. That’s as far as I can remember.

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Did you go to public school in Debrecen?

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Ah, I don’t know what the problem... I only went to one grade, okay, before the war started. And so it was, I would assume it was considered a public school, but it was a Jewish, ran by the Jewish community. And basically all the children in the school were Jewish kids. But whether it was, you know, sanctioned, whether the Hungarian educational system was part of it or not, I... but it wasn’t religious. It was secular and did basically, read, write, arithmetic, you know, geography, all that other stuff you learn in a normal school. That’s what we learned, but it was basically, all Jewish children went there.

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So was that sanctioned by the state at that point? That the Jewish...

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That’s what I’m saying, I really don’t know. I assume that it was, but there’s no way for me to know.

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So, that was around what year, that you moved from Almozd to Debrecen?

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I don’t know, I could not tell you, from the time that I remember we were already in Debrecen. I was about five or something like that. We were already living in Debrecen, so I could not tell you when we actually moved there. I just know that I was born in ‘35 and I know we were in Almozd then, that’s where I was born. So, somewhere between ‘35 and, you know... 4

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44.

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‘44. Oh no, long before then. I was five, so that would be ‘40, 1940, so somewhere between ‘35 and ‘40 is when the family moved from Almozd to Debrecen.

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What language did your family speak at home?

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Hungarian.

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Did you speak Yiddish at all?

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My grandparents spoke and I guess my father knew Yiddish, but we, you know the children, with my mother and father we only spoke Hungarian. And when we went to the Temple, we prayed in Hebrew. Because it was basically memorized rote, you know. I went to school, separate religious school to learn to read in Hebrew from the Bible. But at home we only spoke Hungarian, no other language.

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But you mentioned you had a friend who was a Christian boy. Was he a neighbor or how did you know him?

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He was a neighbor. We used to play soccer together and all that kind of stuff.

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When did you start to notice, well the Germans didn’t occupy until 1944, did you notice any anti...

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Oh yes, it started, it started in actually about ‘43. What they called, the Hungarian Nazis, which were called the Nilosh, which is the Arrow, Arrow...

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Cross.

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... something like that. Nilosh is basically somebody who shoots arrows. And you started wearing then already yellow stars and all that. At the time you just had to wear, you didn’t have to, 1t wasn’t until the Germans came in that they moved us into ghettos. But by then you already had to sew on the yellow stars and all that stuff. And the Christian friends all of a sudden disappeared [laughing]. They didn’t know you anymore. Even if they wanted to probably their parents told them, you know, “Stay away from them, don’t play with them,” and such and such. So, yeah. It started actually in °43, but it really didn’t get serious until ‘44, then when the Germans... and that I remember vividly, because it was Passover. We went down to my mother’s parents. We were going to spend Passover with them. And so we all traveled down there. I remember it was Passover night or the night thereafter, I’m not sure which, but the policeman from the village came in from Almozd. He came in and said that all Jews must go back to where they lived. “So, your daughter,” he told my grandfather, “your daughter and her children must return immediately to Debrecen.” And so in the middle of the night we had to get a buggy and horses and go back to the train station and catch a train back to Debrecen. From there they told us that we have to move into the ghetto. And so they set aside a square, I don’t know, about two or three square blocks, which they put wooden gates up on each end of the 5 street, blocked it off. And then windows that were looking outside from the ghetto, they bricked them in, so basically you had an enclosed area of so many houses. A couple of streets, basically is what it amounted to. And they herded everybody in there.

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Do you remember being herded in there?

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Well basically they told us you have so much time to, you know, to gather whatever you could carry, belongings, whatever you could carry and, you know, and move in there. So, we moved in. And they allocated, you know, for each family a room or whatever. I don’t remember now. Space. And stayed there and from there they took the men to work. I don’t know whatever kind of work they were doing. And they would come and take them off in the morning with shovels and stuff and then come back at night. My dad wasn’t there, because he was already taken to labor camp where, they called it... for the Army, basically they were in the service, but they were labor battalions for the Hungarian Army which was already fighting the Russians. And I guess they were digging trenches for them and that kind of stuff. So he was already taken. Back in ‘43 he was already gone. He wasn’t at home. So, he wasn’t there when we were moved into the ghetto, just my mother and us four children.

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RG-50.549.05.0014

Did your older brother, was he old enough to work?

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RG-50.549.05.0014

He was there. Yeah. He was already fourteen or fifteen at the time. He was apprentice in a shop, they were making bristles. All kind of... have to think about how to say it... brooms and for...

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RG-50.549.05.0014

Brushes?

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RG-50.549.05.0014

Brushes, yeah, that’s it. All kinds of brushes they were making in that place. He worked there as an apprentice. And my mother kept on sewing. That’s basically what we were supported on.

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RG-50.549.05.0014

Did you stay home with your mother during the day?

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RG-50.549.05.0014

During the time that... no, I went to the first grade, but after when we moved into the ghetto, nobody, I mean there was no work in the ghetto. Basically the Jewish Community was divvying up food, whatever... I really don’t know where the food was coming from. How the allocation went and all that kind of stuff. But we had food to eat, I mean, during that time anyway, we didn’t, I don’t remember being hungry or anything like that. So I guess there was sufficient amount of food available, you know, when in the ghetto.

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RG-50.549.05.0014

Do you remember anything you ate? Any of the food?

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