Charlotte Wollheim Full Testimony

when and where you were born okay because every every testimony we have we have the survivors introduced himself that way so that's okay my name is Charlotte Walheim I was born as Lutter levy I changed my name to Charlotte when I became an American citizen I was born in Aschaffenburg which is a town near Frankfurt in Germany my family I was born November 11th 1928 my name is Charlotte Walheim I was born lahter LaVey on November 11th 1928 in aschaffenburg Germany we lived in a chef's Burgas I said my family consisted of my mother my father my sister who was three years older than I and my dad's mother who lived with us she was widowed and I had a grandfather on my mother's side who lived in Coblentz in Aschaffenburg as well as Swee my dad's one of my dad's brothers Paul lived there with his wife and her daughter from a previous marriage and their son who was my age and actually my partner in crime we committed all sorts of mischief no we we belong to a congregation my grandmother and another relative took turns being in charge being the president of the welfare organization connected with our synagogue we were we observed some of the holidays but certainly we're not Orthodox we my dad worked in a the only department store in Aschaffenburg which was owned by members of the family and he held some type of position I don't remember exactly what and we had a very we lived a very comfortable life we had help in the house and it was I mean looking back I can judge but the age that I was I really had no idea how other people lived or any comparison how we lived to judge whether we were rich poor or anything in between I remember a very happy childhood and that all came to a screeching halt in 1934 in 1936 I'm sorry when my dad was arrested he was the treasurer of our synagogue and the Nazi Party sent out a notice that funds from synagogues were to be confiscated and they indicated the time that members of the Nazi Party would be in a shovin burg and to take possession of whatever funds and at from what I understand much later there was an emergency meeting and it was decided that the funds would be distributed among the poorest members of the congregation my dad burnt the books and when the emissaries arrived to claim the funds that were now part of the Nazi regime the offices of the synagogue were arrested I don't I was very young and I don't remember how long my a dad was incarcerated but he felt that it was an undeniable signal that the time for Jews to live in Germany had ended and my mother's younger sister was married to an attorney in Spain a German attorney who had emigrated to Spain and my parents decided that they would go to Spain and establish a new household there they sent my sister and me to a vison house which means orphanage it was a Jewish orphanage in esslingen which when the public schools were closed to Jews in Germany they also admit a children who had parents and my parents were their closest friends where the daughter of the director of the vison house Kyodo horrid and so my sister and I were sent there in 1936 what I remember is my parents listening very intently to the radio I didn't really grasp exactly what was going on but I certainly sense the tension in the house and when I came of school-age this as I say the public schools no longer were an option and I went to Jewish school and it was not unusual for children Jewish children coming home are on their way to school to either be derided or actually beaten up and I also remember parades of Hitler Youth marching along singing songs that were in line with the politics at that time I was I was never I personally was never beaten up nor was my sister my sister had started public school as I said she was three years older but also could no longer attend public school and went with me to s Ling and before that I had started Jewish school in a chef Anne Borg esta Chi my parents there was never a question that they were German Jews my father though he was born with cataract on both eyes served in the military in the First World War he was a radio operator his because his eyesight was so diminished his hearing was very acute so which didn't always serve me well as a kid but so being a radio operator I guess was a natural for him my parents always wear Joe's first and Germans second and my father as long as I can remember was a news junkie so he was very sensitive to what was going on not only in Germany but what led to the rise of Hitler I don't I can't answer how many Jews they were in aschaffenburg I was much too young to be aware of that I have the only memory I have of neighbors is there was a Gentile lady her first name was Keita I don't remember her last name and she was the only one of our neighbors I strongly remember her friend friendship for us did not diminish with Hitler's coming to power yes my parents had Jewish friends and their closest friends where this couple I mentioned before who's a Bettles father was the head of the orphanage and they were other friends in NASH effenberg tell us about we in our house we observed Shabbat in the sense that we usually had company on Friday nights and observed the Jewish holidays not in Orthodox fashion but in a reformed fashion we belong obviously to synagogue which we attended and we were what I think would translate here in America to Reform Jews we never you know again there was a much greater distinction between children and parents and their discussions than there is in this country so I have no idea whether the idea of immigrating to Palestine now Israel ever entered the conversation all right so let's go back to 1936 your father was arrested the money of the Jewish organization is confiscated why don't you continue on from there just freely tell and feel free to speak just freely you don't need to be answering my questions after the event of my dad's arrest my parents were convinced that the time for Jewish life normal life in Germany had come to an end and as I previously said my mother's younger sister and her husband lived in Spain where he was an attorney and my parents dissolved the household my grandmother went to Munich where her sister lived and Marian and I went were sent to a sling in the bison house in esslingen and all our furniture was created and sent to Spain my father my mother enrolled in a school to learn Dietetics and I don't remember in what city but I know my dad I think she went to Cohn and my or my dad went to Cohn I know they were in different cities and of course Marian and I were sent to esslingen arriving there was very traumatic for me again as I see with my grandchildren and I've volunteered in schools as long as my children we're going to school and now with my grandchildren so I'm well aware of the difference in sophistication between American children and European children or at least this European child coming to esslingen was a total shock because I had never been away from my parents and I sensed that they were things going on that they had no control over and they were my world it was very frightening and I remember distinctly one day very shortly after Marian that was my sister and I came to esslingen and I was walking up the steps to the second floor and there was a closet on the second floor in Europe there was no such thing as built-in closets it was they were freestanding closets and this closet stood about oh maybe a foot away from the wall and I was a very tiny kid for my age obviously I haven't grown that much since only expanded but I scrunched into the corner into that space and i sat there and i realized i was quite miserable i was lonely that what was happening in the world not even my parents could control that i I had to learn to really take care of myself that I was the only person who would always be with me and that was a very it was a sobering thought and a frightening thought at the time but looking back at age 88 I realize that it was a thought and a philosophy that has sustained me know we my parents definitely wanted to go to Spain but had plans to go to Spain and establish our family there but the events of the world dictated differently because in 1930 in 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out and after we had sent all our furniture there with the war the borders were closed and so different plants had to be made and it took two more years for my mother actually to find a cousin in America who was in a position in a financial position to be able to give us an affidavit you could not leave you could not come to America unless you had a sponsor who would guarantee that you your family would never be a burden for the American government so so many times over the years people have asked me you know why didn't your family came here why didn't more jews german jews or european jews take the same way of saving themselves it was absolutely impossible you had to be sponsored otherwise you were unable to enter the United States in my family there was a cousin of my mother's who was quite an adventurous young man and from what I understand most of the family members considered him a bit of a wild one and sort of shook their heads in despair but my grandfather on my mother's side had affection for this young man and when he came to my grandfather and asked him for money so he could go to America my grandfather indeed gave him the money and he interned repaid my grandfather by extending the his willingness to given every David's not only for my parents my sister and me but also for my grandfather but my grandfather who was quite deaf and old felt that he had lived in Germany all his life he felt he knew the German character and that this was sort of a pogrom that would pass unfortunately he was proven wrong he was sent to Terezin to a cinch that where he died Marian and I stayed in esslingen for two years the two years it took my parents to find a sponsor here in America Oh my parents visited us regularly and during vacation time we would either visit my grandmother in Munich and her sister or my grandfather in Koblenz or our relatives in Arshavin burg and my mother regularly sent packages I particularly remember the marzipan being a nestling and of course it was very confusing because I had never known anyone I mean among my friends who had lived away from parents and I had certainly never imagined it but the orphanage itself had a terrific school it was very progressive it was observant and we had activities such as gymnastics and things that I enjoyed met new friends and it was I don't think I was unhappy there I first of all I had my sister and then particularly the head of the school whose name was ter doclet a Touhou child was a an incredibly wise man I want to add here that he had the opportunity to come to America because his children has two daughters and Families we're here but he refused to leave because of his commitment to the youngsters at the Bison house who had no family and he ended up being sent to Terezin tutor a cinch dot with the children and he died there well I wasn't esslingen well we were a nestling in it was a reprieve from life outside of esslingen we like most children we were busy with our activities I had one friend in particular her name was Bella and we were the bane of our teacher because we weren't as quiet as he would have liked us to be and not infrequently were punished for that so I think oh and was the first time that I was able to participate in gymnastics which I adored and I mean there were so many opportunities some of which I didn't take advantage of for instance when I came there all the children were invited to play an instrument and those who couldn't or wouldn't had gymnastics during that time and the minute I heard that the alternative to music was gymnastics I devised a way that I could get out of the music portion and when I was asked what instrument I wanted to learn to play I looked for the biggest heaviest one which was harmonica accordion an accordion and the accordions were huge and I was little and whoever was in charge tried to dissuade me and offered the advantages of other more manageable instruments but I insisted that if it couldn't be the accordion it would be nothing and so I had gymnastics my sister and I throughout our lives we're very close she my mother had said to her before we left now you're in charge for the care of your sister and I guess older siblings are by nature caring and nurturing but that only intensified that aspect of Marian and she was she was a great gift no no since we were three years apart I was with the young younger group and with kids as far as in the classroom age appropriate know that there were aspects of my personal insights that they were important to me but I questioned how important they would be to anyone else so you were two years at esslingen so let's go forward now to 1938 and the events of 1938 why don't you tell the story of what happened to your family and how you actually and if I could also I'm curious what happened to the parents during that 36 38 36 to 38 their parents and then bring us up did you parents have an awareness or what was your awareness of what your parents were going through in as much as my sister and I were living on this island so to speak removed from the activities excuse me that my parents were engaged in the only time we saw my parents was on vacation and that was a time of joy and I mean there was a an undertone of uncertainty and discomfort I don't know whether I'm viewing that now from the age I am now or whether that was actually I sensed that at the time but I was not aware of what was going on the politics the what was happening in the world I lived in the world of esslingen and the vacation world in of Munich or Coblentz when during vacation times when my parents came to pick us up and we went to see family my parents were not living in the same city because my dad kept working and my mother was going to school in another town in 1938 I sure the adults such as the head of the school and possibly even to some extend my sister was made aware that we the ramifications of leaving Germany and going to America I don't really remember what preceded Marian and me leaving slingin and my parents picked us up we first went back to ash effenberg where as I said my uncle my dad's brother and his family lived and then we went to Coblentz to say goodbye to my graphics Cuse me my grandfather my mother's father he lived in an apartment on the Greta it was a garden apartment on the ground floor of a building his front door was glass painted green so that you couldn't look in on the night of November 10th was the day before my birthday we were all asleep when there was a loud crash later I found out that members of the Nazi Party had broken in to the apartment and I just heard the tremendous noise because they to the right was the kitchen and they went into the kitchen and literally pulled out every single glass and dish and threw them on the ground so to be awoken from deep sleep and hear all this horrible noise none of us knew well of course I didn't know but did the adults didn't know either what was coming down there and my mother who had put on a robe told my sister and me to climb out the window and hide in the garden which we did my grandfather my grandfather didn't hear anything he was quite deaf and my father got dressed and went to police to the closest police station to report what he thought was an act of vandalism and of course he didn't come back my mother who was born in Coblentz she and my sister went we're going to the police station when they met a former schoolmate of my mother's who was a member of the Nazi Party in uniform but there was still a some semblance of relationship there and he told my mother that all the Jewish men had been arrested that this was an organized act not a individual act of vandalism but something that was state organised and that my dad had been arrested I don't remember how long my father was in jail he was released because he had proof that we were leaving the country and so we went I mean I I was totally terrorized and we went back to aschaffenburg to bid my relatives their goodbye and then my mother dad sister and I when it took the train to France because my mother's sister and brother-in-law and their two young children this is the same brother-in-law they had lived in Spain had flew Eva was told he was a lawyer that he was going to be arrested by the Franco government and they literally with the two little infants that their sons are ten months apart in a wash basket is escaped to France where my uncle again established a law firm and we went to visit them on the Spanish coat desert the Spanish Riviera where the Sun was shining it was beautiful and I don't quite remember how long we stayed there but it was to say goodbye and on our way to Lahav from where we bought at the boat to America but I cried bitterly when we had to leave France this was something new but familiar somehow and the weather and the relatives and the idea of an adventure did not appeal to me and I must say crossing the Atlantic in December was I'm not prone to seasickness or air sickness but I was retching it was terrible crossing and we landed in America on Christmas Day 1938 the on November 11th November 10th rather crystal night Cristal neft I think did quite a number to my nervous system to this day very loud noises just terrify me I mean now it's much less so but for a long time I also have to add that the Hitler Youth in aschaffenburg used to march whistling the songs that were part of the Hitler movement and to this day I hate the sound of whistling that stayed with me the events on November 10th to a child to Jewish child with all that had preceded again their prowess that don't leave you they leave scars and it's the unknown and I think what is the worst thing for it at least for me and I suspect for all children it's when bad things happen and you sense that your parents can't or can't be in charge that they are as much buffeted by those winds as you are that's a very scary thing i we came to America as I said on Christmas Day my father's cousin they had come here few years earlier and we're living in New York on a hundred and sixty third Street and they had rented an apartment for us across the hall from theirs and on New Year's Eve my sister and I were already had been put to bed and we're asleep my parents were across the hall with his cousin and family when the usual New Year's Eve celebrations in New York to place I heard the whistles and the car honking and I was sure the Nazis were coming and I had a total breakdown and we had strangely enough the family doctor we had had in a shovin burg had immigrated to New York quite a number of years before and he again became our family doctor and he was exceedingly cautious and I was supposed to have a tonsillectomy and he convinced my parents that I had to build myself up for this bit of surgery and that I should go to school only in the morning between needing the tonsillectomy and the breakdown that I had had that I should rest in the afternoon I don't know that there's a doctor here in America oh who would endorse that a treatment today but that was his recommendation he was a lovely man I was hysterical it was diagnosed as a nervous breakdown I was just totally inconsolable I was a weight I was sure that any minute now the Nazis would break through the door and take my parents I don't train them ever one detail we I was unclear about how long was your father in prison after my dad was went to the police and handed himself over I think it was a matter of get my mother getting the papers together that would prove his allegations that we were on our way to America I don't recall exactly how long he was in jail yeah saying goodbye to my grandparents was very painful my grandmother had left with us the first let's see well as long as I could remember as a matter of fact my grandmother had four sons she obviously felt it was alright for my mother to have a daughter the first time around when the second child was born and again was a girl my mother wanted to name me Susan but as a consolation to my grandmother for having failed to give her grandson she was allowed to name me and that's how I got to be named Lutter instead of Susan so it was she had been a part of my life always and my grandfather and I had a very special relationship he had an extensive wine cellar this is my mother's father in Coblentz and when I was still in the highchair he would pour a little either Moselle wine or Rhine wine on a spoon and see whether I liked it and indeed I liked it very much and to this day that is my drink of choice so and plus he and I played cards and he he had been a really horrible father but he was a wonderful grandfather and I was exceedingly fond of him we had a lovely relationship so tell us about more about here some of your family was able to escape and some of them the my mother had two brothers and a sister the eldest brother died in the first world war the second brother her mother died when she was quite young my grandfather who was wealthy felt that it was superfluous to hire someone to take care of the two younger children when he had a perfectly capable daughter she was taken out of school though she wanted to study to be a doctor and she basically took care of the house and raised her younger siblings the brother who indeed became a doctor and he and his wife and young daughter emigrated to palace news my Palestine in the early 30s my her the youngest my aunt was quite adventurous she worked for a newspaper and was sent on assignment to Spain where she met her husband and they married and lived in Spain they as I said escaped when Franco came to power and lift in France and then when the second world war broke out and Hitler invaded France they wanted to come to America were unable to find a sponsor and we were economically in no position to get sponsor anyone so they emigrated to Chile my father's other brother he had one brother who was married and they they had no children he emigrated to Ecuador with his wife and then one brother Paul had married a Gentile widow with a daughter by first marriage and they then had a son when Hitler came to power Inga my cousin by Kiedis first marriage could not could no longer live in her father in her stepfathers house because no Gentile child was permitted to live in a Jewish home so she went to Gentile relatives Inga and I really had no close relationship she was about six he is at least six years older than I and so there was no area that we had in common but my cousin and second child with Keita and I was same age and as I said we played together ansed was hidden in a monastery Keita stayed with my uncle Ernst and my uncle Paul rather and he was hidden of course had no it was not given a ration book but Keita shared her racing's with him she unfortunately was killed in a in an air raid yeah I have to take some water he remarried after the war his first wife's sister and they had another boy he survived the war being hidden no no no my cousin was hidden in the monastery I don't know where my uncle was hidden my it's really the soul family died tragically my aunt as I said my for his first wife died in an air raid his second son was he was a newsboy and he was killed in an automobile he was run over his first son I was hidden in a monastery converted to Catholicism married a Catholic young woman he became a doctor and he and my mother were in [Music] contact because my mother both wrote and read German I can read it not that well but I certainly can't write it and he noticed that he had what he thought was a ward earth some growth of some kind and after being on duty one night he decided to go and have that removed at the hospital where he worked and he died on the operating table it turned out that this was a very deep-rooted cancer very malignant cancer that so he did not survive nopal was dad's brother oh and then france france they lived in ecuador and she died of cancer and he after the war if they had first lived in switzerland and then they emigrated to ecuador and he went back to switzerland and remarried and i visited him in switzerland and by that time he was already showing signs of mild Alzheimer's and he eventually passed away she wasn't Swiss either she also had originated in Germany she had they had met an Ecuador they were both widowed and she hadn't had children by her first marriage nor had france and they you know by the time they married that train had left well my grandfather as I mentioned even though he had an affidavit felt confident he had confidence in the people he had known all his life in Copeland's and he was deported to Terezin to a cinch that my grandmother had no opportunity to leave and she and her sister who lived in Munich were also deported to Terezin and through a friend in Switzerland I don't quite know how or maybe through the Red Cross my dad knew that she was there and he was running all over trying to find someone who could sponsor her finally found a sponsor who was willing to give her an affidavit but then through a notice from this person in Switzerland he was notified that she had died it was the only time in my life I ever saw my father cry it was impossible you couldn't there was no communication possible you could only hear through someone in a European country and I don't know how my mother found out well she found out that the date on which the deportations in Koblenz took place and then I can only surmise that it was through the Red Cross that she found out that was before he was I have a letter from my grandfather after we arrived in America before he was deported then he that there may have been correspondence I'm sure there was but Queen my parents and their parent but you know I was for two years I was in esslingen and then by the time we came to America when I was when I started going to school first of all because I didn't understand a word of English I was put into a grade two years below where I should have been and bad as my memory has gotten I remember the name of mrs. Appel my first teacher in America who made my life hell she I think was five minutes before retirement age and felt put upon to have this little refugee kid who was two years older than every other kid in her class didn't understand a word of English hoisted on her and in that class the only child my only classmate who had the courage to befriend me was a little african-american girl this was the first time I had ever seen an african-american and I'm grateful to say that it colored my view of African Americans I will forever be grateful to her so you lived in New York during and after the war can you describe what it was like what you were hearing about the war and your family's reaction well the war years living in New York in those days you still had civics that's no longer a subject isolated in today's school civics Wow that's the first I've heard usually it's part of history or and part of our daily assignment in that class was to report back on an article we had read about the war the only kids in that class who came fully prepared not exclusively because of the assignment with the German refugees the American kids and normally generalizations are foolish but somehow in this case it applied America had always been an island unto itself they really felt no connection to the war it was a subject that was unending in our house my father the eternal optimist when America entered the war of course we were all vastly relieved felt no matter what happened that day America what be the victor and on days when the news was bad this was really annoying but his optimism never wavered his faith in the Justice of America winning the war never wavered it we were totally immersed in reading the paper listening to the radio it was as much part of our daily lives as food and sleep both Maren and I belong to Jewish youth groups that who's burning mission was to get the Allies and particularly America involved in rescue and particularly after the Kindertransport which by the way my second husband knowbut wilheim organized in berlin and our i mean on the one hand we were all Democrats of course and behind Roosevelt but more so between behind Eleanor Roosevelt who we felt had a real feel for what was happening to European jewelry but we were also aware of the Congress which was dominated by the sudden solid south Southern Democrats who were reactionary and as and as word began to filter out from Europe as to what was happening there with the Jews of Europe do you recall hearing about that during and after especially well during the war not so much other than guest rabbis at our synagogue some of whom were involved in leadership positions in organizations that try to send help food clothing etc etc but for the most part that news only came out after the end of the war the Jewish as far as I knew certainly the circles that I was part of we had no idea the extent of what was happening she starved to death I mean that's no one was a Terezin was not a killing camp people just starved no no no that only came out afterward my grandmother had no opportunity there was no sponsor for her Mike indeed tried to convince my grandfather her father but he wasn't to be moved the the German Jews for the most part were left in today's doubt in Terezin the Polish Jews and Jews from some of the other countries were sent to the the death camps I think quite some time after the end of the war the Red Cross was very active in getting information out I don't know exactly when or from whom my mother found out that her father had perished so let's continue in your story to get should start talking about your your husband's tell us first about your first husband just father I met my husband Henry sprung who had he was the only son of a family enlight sick both his parents had emigrated to Leipzig from Poland they were born in Poland I suspect that they were brought to Germany possibly by their parents anyway they had come to had lived in Germany for a very long time his father was one of ten children the sons and the grandfather my late husband's grandfather had a haberdashery business they both manufactured and sold menswear the sisters husbands there were four sons and six daughters the sisters husbands were hired by the brothers and the father in other words there was a social distinction between the bosses and the employees and they all lived in Leipzig I don't know whether my in-laws died when they died I don't know with whether either or both died before deportation I don't think I think they must have because my father in law there was a law promulgated in I'm not quite sure when that all Polish Jews living in Germany were deported back really dumped back into Poland and Henry and his family were among those however by that time yeah his father must have been dead because when the time came for the Germans to take over the sprung business they brought back that sprung family my in-laws so that the transfer would be legal my father-in-law was brought back so he could sign over his business to the Nazis Henry and his father and one of the uncles was were deported together and they first went to Dachau and on the day I don't know whether they were already in Auschwitz on the day that the German official in Poland was shot by a Polish Jewish man and as a revenge for that act both my father-in-law and his brother were shot Henry came back from a work detail and he said they had to line up I mean if there's one thing that Germans were notorious for it was order and counting and counting and counting and when he came back from work detail he noticed that his father and uncle we're in a different line than the one he was ordered to get into and he went over to be with his father and his uncle and one of the Nazi guards cuffed him in the ear and said are you crazy do you want to get killed to get back into your line that's the last time he saw his father and it was one of the two times that a German saved my husband's life he the second time that his life was saved he was actually in the hospital and the way that I forget what it was that his life was saved was the way the Nazis always had room in the hospital is that they killed off the present patients to make room for the others and a doctor hit him he actually met the man I would marry many many years later in buna where they both worked for IG farm and when that camp was being cleared as the Americans or the Russians were coming the Nazis marched the inmates further west and Henry and nobbut and one other man heard guns in the distance one night and they ran and that's how they saved themselves Henry smothers uncle the Americans oh maybe the Russians I don't know the Henry's uncle on his mother's side had early on moved to Denmark and when the war started the he was ferried into Norway many Danish Jews were saved that way by Danish citizens to Sweden I'm sorry and then he went back to Denmark and one night a you know he had shared his story with friends and one of his friends heard Henry's name being read off of a list from the Red Cross of survivors of that particular area and that's how he learned that his nephew had survived he got in touch with the Red Cross and arranged for Henry to come to Denmark he was a single man and he really wanted Henry to stay with him Henry stayed for about a year but he was anxious to leave Europe and so he came to America he had relatives here by then and he and I actually met because he was going out with a friend of mine and he broke off with her and then we met on a ski trip and he called me for a date and I knew that she had been going out with him and she wasn't happy that he had broken off with her so I called her and I said he called me for a date I you know he doesn't mean anything to me you're my friend and if that's going to create a problem you know I just won't go out with him and she said well obviously he's not going out with me so he might as well go out with you it's not it didn't work out that well Henry and I did well but our friendship kind of went down the tubes and he when we became engaged we were engaged and unengaged about three times and finally my sister was married in Milwaukee that same year and we went to Milwaukee and while I was listening to the ceremony I decided that this yo-yo engagement just was not going to work and I came back I had said to Henry from the get-go that he needed some therapy and being the German macho he's you know that was not for him but when I told him that I'd had it that I was no longer willing to participate in this situation he said to me that he had found the family doctor who had been his family's doctor and he had talked to him and he said to him you have to go and talk to someone and get some help and he did and we did unfortunately we had three sons had a really lovely life and then he was diagnosed with lymphoma lymphoma he lived two more years and a week before our oldest son's permits that he died and then the three of us the four of us go together and went on as best we could and my oldest son was very mature but three years later he was killed in a automobile accident at Camp and I remember on the day of his funeral I went into his room and I sat down in his bed and I thought to myself I can't do this anymore and I had always been a student of history particularly Jewish history and I thought of all those who had come before me and what they had had to endure over the centuries and that I had inherited some of their strengths and that helped and we went on before oh I had determined that you know I was quite I was eight years younger than my husband my first husband thank you and I thank you very much I determined that whatever time and energy I had had to go into making sure that not only my sons would grow up but would grow up with a sense of hope and be able to maximize the gifts given to them so I really I had very close friends and said you know it was like a family and I was not interested in dating and that just was not on my list of important things particularly my older son was really having a much such a hard time you know Jeff is the youngest and it's so he's the youngest really has a great advantage and I met I met Norbit when Henry and I were first married because they had been in camp together and then both Henry and I did not like living in New York so we moved to Milwaukee when we were married less than a year and our sons were born in Milwaukee and then later on we moved to Saginaw Michigan but I maintained a relationship with a couple who had whom Henry had met after he was liberated and when I they lived in New York and I told them that I was coming to New York one of my friends a social worker was going to a social worker meeting in New York and she said why don't you come along we'll have a weekend of it and I said okay and I notified these friends and they said we're having a get-together and you and Sharon come and I came and that's when I met no but again oh I should say years before that when I was visiting my parents who lived in Santa Barbara I was sleeping through the Aufbau a German Jewish newspaper and I saw where there was the obituary for nobles wife whom I had also known so I sent him a note of condolence and he wrote back you know let's stay in touch and I we really didn't stay in touch but we met again that evening and he took us back to our hotel and Sharon went upstairs and he and I sat till all hours of the night catching up and then we established a telephone conversation relationship and [Music] sometime after that he proposed and I accepted nobbut was in law school in Berlin when Hitler came to power he was married he had one child is second on the way and he left law school before he was thrown out because that the handwriting was on the wall and he and his father had been very active in the Jewish community and the powers that be there came to him when England made the offer of taking Jewish children after Kristallnacht and said that he they wanted him to organize that in Berlin and he said well I'm trying to find a way to get my wife my child and myself out and they said if you do this for us we will in turn then help get you out and he did and he organized it he went on a number of transports with kids and of course before the quota was met the war broke out the borders were closed and he his wife and child were deported to Auschwitz the day they landed there his wife and child went to one side he to the other never saw them again and he was in a somewhat privileged position because he knew how to speak and write English and he had was I don't know he ended up working for IG Farben and that's where he met Henry he when the war ended he and another man they were in the British sector were named by the British Army of Occupation to be in charge of the survivors in the British zone and he met his second wife who had been in a camp and they married and actually had two children while they were still in Germany and it took a while he there had been one man whom I don't know what type of illegal actions he was taking a Jew who had been who had survived but he was caught by the British and he blamed no but for the fact that he had gotten caught and he emigrated to America and and norbit's application to come to this country during the McCarthy era he said that nobody was involved with the Communist Party Germany so that took setback the plans for his being able to emigrate to America but eventually he did as a matter of fact he was on tour for bonds for Palestine or what I forget I mean he's always been politically active and was a very committed man very wise man as I said my first husband was 8 years older than I my second a 16 years older than I I figured I better stop but he was a very active in the American gathering of Jewish Holocaust survivors in New York did a lot of speaking on behalf of Israel bonds tell us about after the did you ever go back to a shop every five years the city extends an invitation to its former Jewish citizens and for the longest time I just was not ready and then 13 years ago I asked Peter my older son if he was interested in seeing coming with me to a chef and work Oh before that when nobody was still alive he and I had four of our friends met in Europe and we went to a chef Berg we went to Berlin we went to Budapest where my closest girlfriend is Hungarian so that was I think that was my first no the first time I went back to Germany was I was in Copenhagen visiting my husband's uncle the one who by that time Henry had already died and my uncle my mother's brother in law they're the ones who weren't Spain and by now they had emigrated to Israel and evil what as I said was a lawyer with incredible language skills and he was working for the Israeli government in on restitution cases and he also was bringing a restitution case on behalf of his wife and my mother so he said to me that he needed me to give it that position I was in Copenhagen and I said okay he said meet you at the front foot Airport and then we'll go on to Koblenz where this deposition would take place and just as an aside I arrived in Frankfurt way before he did we never did catch up in front foot and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm so uncomfortable so finally I decide to go into a telephone booth and call he had given me the name and phone number of the law firm with which he used to be associated where he still had a friend and I thought maybe this man would know where my uncle is and I'm trying to figure out the telephone system and a very irate German opens the phone booth and says to me in German something to the effect you know are you going to get come out of there or OHS I mean he was irritated and voiced his displeasure at the length of time I was in the telephone booth and I thought to myself well I won't voice what I thought to myself but I smiled and I opened my purse and I took out a quarter and I smiled at him and I said I'm sorry I don't understand your language I hope this will be of help handed him the quarter and close the door again he probably thought I was some crazy person in there so and I thought I feel I don't want to be in this country I'm unhappy here anyway my angry that you know the first time I was done wrong by Germans I was a little kid a helpless little kid now I'm an American I'm visiting your country and dammit you owe me courtesy that's how I finally caught up with my uncle or he caught up with me and it was too late there were no more trains to Koblenz so he said to me he was born in London and he said let's take the train there I'd like to go to the cemetery there so we went to learned off and what was interesting about the Catholic Church in Germany is that they had records of all the citizens not just Catholics but all the citizens of that town so Abel and I went to the Catholic Church it was a tiny little town and he wanted to look at the records of the Jews from that and we did Oh to the cemetery and then we went to a boarding house to rent rooms for the night now this was my first night back in Germany I went to sleep and I woke up I was terrified it was as if every murdered Jew was in the room with me I was beside myself I got dressed I waited for my uncle to get up and we went to Coblentz I gave my deposition and he we were supposed to go on to Switzerland to a resort where his wife was waiting for us and Abel said it's too late for us to go tonight today we'll stay overnight in Koblenz and leave in the morning I said no I'm not staying another night here he said where are you going to go I said I'm going to the airport and I'm going to fly to Zurich and if I can find a room there that's fine if not I'll sleep at the airport I am NOT spending another night in Germany but since then I've been back to Germany three times and I admire the mayor of a shovin burg enormous Lee because he has made a crusade of seeing to it that the lessons of the Holocaust are taught in the schools there is a commemoration including the Boy Scouts every November 10th and he's really changed has changed the atmosphere is so much so the first time I went with Peter the second time hava Jeff's daughter was here when the invitation came and I was telling her about it and she said oh can I go and I said that's up to your father I said to Jeff there's always an invitation for two so I said if you want to come with me however will be my guest and the three of us went and we at lunch we went to a restaurant next to the hotel where we're staying and a look into the new Germany our waitress was an African young woman beautiful young woman speaking perfect German so things have changed is your old apartment as luck would have it the hotel where we were put up was exactly across the street from where the apartment was but I did not go and I wouldn't have remembered anything as a matter of fact the first time we came back to our shuffle book and my cousin the daughter of my aunt who wasn't actually my cousin and my uncle married her mother we reunited which was lovely and she said to me do you realize that that's your apartment does it really and she was pointing to the rooms and she said and that was the music room I said music room what kind of music room she said that's where the piano was I said who played piano so I really I didn't obviously that was something that had been erased Marian went back to book once and she oh no no no that was when we came back from s from Coblentz after Kristallnacht and my dad was back with us we came back to our shop and work as the final farewell and walked to where the synagogue had been which was in total totally destroyed and they kind of my parents and my sister kind of walked around I was always the coward of the family I stayed as far removed from anything that frightened me as I could and that was a very scary sight and under the rubble Marian bent down and she found a kiddush cup that had belonged to the temple and we Oh was that I'm not sure whether it was then or it must have been then but she took it we took it home and then she took it with her when she married and the first time she went back to ash effenberg she brought the kiddush cup back and now the plaza where the a synagogue used to stand of course you can't see any traces of it but the rabbi's house has been converted into a museum and she turned it over to them and when we were there I saw the kiddush cup on display and I said to the young woman who was our guide I said you know the story of this kiddush cup and she didn't so i regaled her with it it also undisplaced class and my sister and I are of course on that picture so I'm a museum piece before my time I was the night before there was going to be a mass deportation there was a an organized a leaders of the community came together and committed suicide and [Music] they now have graves in the Jewish cemetery as does as do the tourists that were destroyed it was a mixed bag it was you know that there are no Jews in aschaffenburg they're just remnants of what was and will never be again I have the daughter of this cousin of mine lip lifts continues to live outside of her seven book she married an American GI from Alabama she talks English with a combination German American southern accent and she and I formed an instant bond so I have I feel I have family there and she was very very close with my uncle she viewed him as her grandfather and since mothers and daughters not infrequently butt heads he was her go-to guy and that I'm sure has also impacted our relationship [Music] you know Germans who are older than I or dead and the young this slate is clean so I don't you know I have an unending sorrow for what happened and a fear of echoes that are happening in this country but as far as going to our chef Berg I must say go being there with hava and Jeff was heartwarming and the the people who are involved in the commemorations are so devoted and serious in their efforts to make sure that history is remembered and learned from that I'm enormously impressed Norbit was invited to this program that lucky' Mead had she of ladka Mead was a Polish woman born and was so highly intelligent who when the Germans invaded Poland her it was she her mother father and a younger brother and after the Germans as I say invaded Warsaw and freed the Polish Nazis because the Germans didn't have to teach anti-semitism to the poles her father went out one day to get bread and he was speaking up and that totally destroyed his spirit and after that vodka was the one who went doubt who did ants own and so forth her father died before the war so Jews were put into the ghetto so he actually had a decent burial her mother brother and Blanca were taken into the warsaw ghetto and vladka spoke polish without a Jewish accent which was very rare because the Polish Jews spoke Yiddish primarily and so their Polish reflected that vladka neither looked Jewish nor sounded Jewish and she joined the underground she had a very adventurous life she came back from one of her missions and her mother and brother were gone but the food was still on the table so she realized it must have happened very very recently she ran out to the gathering street and to try to find them and she was held back mercifully but she never forgave herself because she had promised her mother that she would they would be together she continued in the underground and survived and she she actually met her Ben who was also in the underground during all this and they lived together and married and then when they came they went to South America I think Ben had family there and I don't know what business they were in but evidently doing very well and Ben who was a very shrewd businessman also did very well and they then emigrated to America and Ben and some other survivors organized the American gathering of Jewish Holocaust survivors in New York vladka worked for the Jewish Labor Committee and had a radio program she decided that she wanted to start a program to incorporate the study of the Holocaust into American public schools she got backing and the American Federation of Teachers in New York were very strong supporters and her office was at the Jewish Labor Committee Jewish Labor Committee had been active during the war trying to make contacts with Jews in camps and doing a lot as much as they could at least she started this program and they had a reunion which was co-sponsored by the Holocaust Museum in Washington for teachers who had gone on this program and nobody was invited to be one of the guest speakers I went with him of course I was blown away by the commitment of these teachers from places I had never even heard of here in the United States the program was exceedingly well organized and when we got back to New York I wrote vodka and thanked her for the opportunity to be there and told her that it's my firm belief that if there's any hope at all for our planet it can only be through education and if there's ever anything I can do to assist I she should call on me the next day I started out as a volunteer and then went to work with her and actually went with her on the trips to Poland in Israel each summer we would go to Warsaw and then take the bus to Auschwitz and to Treblinka and to my donek it's devastating each year it got harder because you know you read about it and you see the undeniable capacity of man's and humanity and it is devastating it's it's a life-changing experience vodka had tremendous courage she was very I mean she could be a firebrand but very self-effacing she you know anyone with a PhD you would have thought that person could walk on water and here she was this poor little person I think she was as bright if not brighter as most of them fiercely devoted to the teachers they adored her but was scared to death of her anything that came up that they didn't want her to know they called me she was an amazing amazing woman they it is such a privilege to have been in her orbit for the years that I worked with her just a remarkable person unfortunately she became afflicted with Alzheimer's I had promised her that I would not retire before she did she was older than I and then how I was born and I said to her you know this is really hard I waited a long time for a grandchild and a year and a half later leave I was born I said have a vodka I can't do it gotta go there and I would call her every week that was my treat for the week to myself and not all that long after she know who I was so I think we're gonna wrap things up do you have any any thoughts well I would like to add that Ben Meade was a tremendous supporter of this program he traveled with us and made a very large contribution to the program and it's ongoing [Music] I think Holocaust education is important because we have to be aware of both the potential for good as well as evil in even the common man and to be aware and to be active in teaching and really helping each other the message for children is the same as for adults each of us has an obligation to educate ourselves to recognize that it really doesn't make any difference what church you go to or if you don't go to church what color of your skin we're all on the same journey our beginnings are the same our ends are the same we it makes it so much more pleasant if instead of turning our backs we extend a hand and you can only do that when we learn about each other this rather raggedy looking document is the affidavit the affidavit meaning it is a guarantee by a cousin of my mother's who was well established in America and could prove that if necessary he could be our support our means of support so that at no time we would be a burden to this country and it is a document that was required before any one at that time could enter this country it's really a document that spelled our lives this is my citizenship paper it was a wonderful day when I became an American citizen I was able to legally change my name from Lottie to Charlotte and now had the rights and privileges of calling myself an American that's it thank you so much really

Channel: Holocaust Center for Humanity

Views: 4,115

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Id: iN7uIJs-onY

Length: 124min 20sec (7460 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020