My name is Irene Dansky. The date is August 20, 1996. We are in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania,
near Philadelphia. We are interviewing Liesl Joseph Loeb, and the language is English. Can you tell us your name please? Liesl Joseph Loeb. Would you spell it for us? L-I-E-S-L, Joseph J-O-S-E-P-H,
Loeb L-O-E-B. Okay. What was your name at birth? Liesl Joseph. Have you had any other names? During World War II, I dropped the Liesl
and became Elizabeth. Any other nicknames
or Hebrew or Yiddish names? My Hebrew name is Esther,
<i>Esther bat Josef.</i> And your birthday? My birthday is June 17, 1928. - And your age now?
- Sixty-eight. I do have another nickname. My husband called me that
and my grandchildren call me that. It’s Schatzi. - Does it have any special meaning?
- Yes, it means “little treasure.” Because my husband used to call me that,
the grandchildren are continuing it. Can you tell us where you were born? I was born in a small city in West Germany,
in the Rhineland, called Rheydt. It’s spelled R-H-E-Y-D-T. During your childhood,
who lived in your household? My mother, my father and myself. In my early childhood, also a nanny. Can you tell us a little bit
about your father? Yes. My father married late in his life. He was 45 when he married. My mother was 26
when she married, or 27. My father was my buddy. He was my friend. There was never any generation gap. He was my hero. He was a lawyer. He had a firm in our city. He represented industrial concerns as well as the usual things lawyers do,
such as divorce. One of the cases that really brought him
to the attention of the public was an abortion case with two doctors. I think, after that, his practice
really began to flourish. He had a partner. He was very active with B’nai B’rith. He was, politically, a Social Democrat, which did not become very popular
as time went on. He was a wonderful,
wonderful husband and father. What was your father’s full name? Josef Joseph.
Josef with an “f” and Joseph with a “ph.” Was he always an attorney? Yes. Actually, right before World War I, he sat as a justice in the courts, I believe in Cologne. That, actually, was the reason why, after the Nuremberg Laws stopped Jews
from practicing their professions, he was eventually reinstated, because he was already in that field
before World War I. When did he start practicing law? I believe he was accepted
to the bar in 1911. And when did he have to stop? 1938. Can you tell us the reason? Because he was a Jew. I found in our papers a letter
where he requests that he be permitted to represent
at least Jews only until the end of 1938. That was denied. The order for him to– to cease practicing
came right after Crystal Night, which was in November of ’38. That was the end of that. What was your mother like? My mother was
the youngest of three sisters. I think she was
the most beautiful of the three. She was a trained
coloratura soprano singer. She used to entertain
in Jewish circles sometimes, singing and playing the guitar. Her father did not permit her to study. She wanted to study medicine,
or she wanted to study art. He just wanted her to stay home,
look pretty and play the piano, so that’s what she did. She enjoyed traveling. Basically, she had
no particular career of any kind. She got married at, I think– They got married in 1927,
so she was 26 years old. She ran a big household. She was a wonderful wife to my father and a very caring mother. She was, in times of crisis, a Goliath,
and then, afterwards, she’d break down. There were many times when her strength
was called upon in her lifetime. In your childhood,
were there specific moments you can think of that that happened? Well, yes. For instance, when I was six, I had a very difficult middle ear infection and consequent operation,
mastoid operation. She stayed with me
in the hospital for six weeks. She stayed with me in the same room,
took care of me. I would say when things
more seriously happened when political situations changed– For instance, during Crystal Night,
my mother and myself, a visitor and a young domestic
were in our house. She kept her head and took us to the apartment of tenants
that we had in the house to save us. My father was in jail at the time. After the house was destroyed,
the next day, she had the presence of mind
to have pictures taken of the house. She boarded it up,
and she took me to friends who were Dutch nationals
and where she felt I would be safe. Then she went back to my hometown
to try and get my father out of jail. Eventually, she was able to accomplish
that, too, by meeting with a policeman who called her one night
to meet her in some dark alley. He had news of my father. Even though she was scared,
she went to meet him. She gave the policeman money. She gave him medicine
and fresh clothes for my father. Eventually, through this liaison,
my father was released. Again, in London, when we were
in England, much further– Let’s wait and do that
when we get to London. Okay. But she showed her strength
numerous times. Never, ever forgetting who she was. That was one of the points
that I admired her for so much. She was really an inspiration to me. Let’s go back to before the war. What was life like in your town?
What was the town like? The first 10 years, first of all,
of my childhood were really very happy. Very secure.
I was an only child. I didn’t have any problems
of sibling rivalry. I knew I was loved. I enjoyed being wherever children were. Our town was, actually, also the birthplace
of Joseph Goebbels, who became the propaganda minister
in the Hitler regime. Our town, everybody knew everybody else. Everybody knew my father, first of all,
because he had a well-known law firm. I would say, probably,
one of the most successful. Perhaps raising envy
on the part of some colleagues, especially non-Jewish colleagues. Life was good.
We lived in a big house. I went to a Jewish day school,
so that I did not suffer some of the early anti-Semitic situations that other children experienced
who did not go to Jewish day schools, and who were eventually
thrown out of their schools. My playmates, naturally,
were also from school. With the exception
of neighborhood children who started to call me all kinds of names
when I was four or five years old, I didn’t really have too many
negative experiences as a child. How big a town was Rheydt? At that time, approximately 70,000. We were very close to the next town, which was Mönchengladbach. Today, that’s all one municipality. At that time, these were separate towns
with separate Jewish congregations and separate synagogues and so on. For instance, there was
a Jewish athletic club that I belonged to. I would travel once a week
to Mönchengladbach to do athletic activities and meet other Jewish children. There was a Jewish community center there
where that took place. I think it was a close-knit community,
Jewish community specifically, but my father had also, in the beginning,
many non-Jewish clients. He was well-known. Was he active politically in the town? As I said, he was a known Social Democrat. I’m not quite sure
what these activities entailed. But it was a known fact,
and he was on a blacklist once the Nazis came into power. When Chamberlain
came to Germany to– before the Czechoslovakian takeover, in case the conference
would not have resulted in supposed peace, there was a blacklist of people who would
have been hanged in the public square. My father was on top of the list
as a Social Democrat. And a Jew. This is what my mother told me. I really think, perhaps,
he wrote articles in periodicals, Social Democratic periodicals, but I really have no other knowledge
of what his activities entailed. Politically, that is. Did he know Goebbels? Yes, he did know Goebbels very well. When Goebbels
first graduated university, he wanted to be a playwright. He wrote a play
which was declared a plagiarized plot. So he was discouraged and often didn’t have
financial means for his next meal. Very often, my father
would have him at his table and perhaps steer him
into a direction that would be feasible for himself. Goebbels was a cripple, you know. He had a clubfoot.
He was of very small stature. Even though he was quite brilliant
and a brilliant speaker, I think that gave him
some kind of a complex. Once the Nazis came to power,
they took advantage of his mind and he was able
to further himself in the party. That’s, I think, how that happened, that he became what he was. But in his student and post-student years, it was a whole different story. About when was that,
do you have any idea? It must have been in the early ’20s. Was there any contact with him later on? No. No, there was not, but when my father,
here in Philadelphia, was translating editor
for a German newspaper, which appeared daily here
in Philadelphia, the <i>Philadelphia Gazette Democrat,</i> he wrote an open letter
to Joseph Goebbels at that time. That was the only other indication
of the relationship. You said that you had a nanny
in the household. Yes. She was like my second mother. - What was her name?
- Her name was Otti Hagedorn. Actually that was her married name. Her maiden name was Otti Loiter. Her parents were like my grandparents. Her father used to take me to ride
on the carousel when it came around. Her mother used to spoil me with all kinds of knitted things
that she made for me. I had a grandmother, but these two people
were something like grandparents. When I started school, she no longer stayed my nanny. She got married
just before I started school. She insisted that I carry her veil
in her church wedding. This was already during the Hitler time and my mother felt
that it might not be advisable, both for her and for us. She said she wouldn’t get married
in church unless I would carry her veil, so I carried her veil. She used to come and see me afterwards. She didn’t live in our town anymore. She moved to Essen with her husband. Whenever she came home to visit
her parents, she’d come and visit me. The party asked her not to do that anymore, the Nazi party. She told them she was going
to do whatever she wants. They said, “Well, could you
visit them at night?” She said, “No. I’m going
to visit whenever I want.” And so she did. She probably lost track of us
once we left Germany, because not knowing what happened
to the passengers of the <i>St. Louis.</i> Finally, when the war was over, I wrote to the same address
where I knew she lived before, and we resumed our relationship
until she died. She came to see me in this country,
and it was like before. I was her kid. She used to call me “the kid” in German. Did you have much contact
with your own grandparents? I only had a grandmother, and, of course,
my grandmother lived with my mother’s oldest sister
in her own house. It was my grandmother’s house and my mother’s oldest sister
lived in the same house. It was a big house,
but it was in the next little town, where my mother was actually born. My grandmother came usually
every Saturday afternoon. My mother would invite some
of her friends over for coffee. Sometimes she’d stay overnight
and sometimes she didn’t. Later on, when my mother’s oldest sister
left Germany, my grandmother moved into our house. She stayed with us. Now there was another sister
who lived in Berlin. She was a doctor and my grandmother
would visit there occasionally for a period of maybe a couple of months
and then come back to us again. During Crystal Night, she happened
to be in Berlin and that saved her life, because the Nazis came in–
the vandals came in through her room and ripped open the mattress
with a knife in her room. - She was luckily, at the time, in Berlin.
- What was your grandmother’s name? Her name was Mathilda Salmon,
and her maiden name was Hyman. She came from Kaiserslautern. - Want me to spell that?
- Sure. It’s K-A-I-S-E-R-S-L-A-U-T-E-R-N. I think it’s in southern Germany. She was one of 12 children. What were your aunts’ names? My mother’s sisters? Johanna was the oldest, and Elsa was the middle one, the doctor. - Did they survive?
- No, they did not. Johanna and her husband, Ulrich–
U-L-R-I-C-H, last name Heidelberger
H-E-I-D-E-L-B-E-R-G-E-R– they emigrated to Holland. My uncle ran my grandfather’s factory. My grandfather had a clothing factory, and my uncle took it over
when my grandfather died. He was warned that the Nazis were coming
to confiscate the factory, and the night before, my uncle
walked across the border into Holland. Later on, my aunt followed. Unfortunately, they were caught
by the invasion of the Nazis. They were sent to Sobibor
and did not survive. They had one daughter, Ilsa. She came to this country alone in 1936 or ’37. My mother’s other sister lived in Berlin. Her husband was a musician. She had one child, Gunther,
a boy, very gifted. They had very high quota numbers. They never made it. They were deported to the Lodz ghetto. From there, I have documentation
that they were deported further. There is a word in the book
that the Germans have published regarding all the deportations
from Germany, you know, and in that book is a word
that says <i>verschollen</i> and <i>verschollen</i>
means “disappeared.” Unfortunately, we have
no further knowledge of how they perished, but they perished. When did you leave Rheydt? We left in May of 1939. - Why?
- What what? - Why?
- Why? Well, it was past Crystal Night. My father, I think, up until 1938, I think he thought that, like so many other Jewish intelligentsia, that this folly could not last. That it had to– It had to stop. I think he was– I don’t know
what convinced him– at what point he was convinced. I know it was before Crystal Night because of the correspondence
I’m finding regarding our emigration. There was, for instance, the dismissal or the deportation
of all aliens, Jewish aliens, out of Germany
in approximately October of 1938 to no-man’s-land
between Germany and Poland. I don’t know
if it happened before that, but at some point, I think in 1938, he was convinced it was time to go. It was time to get out. I found all kinds of correspondence
to that effect. Where did you go? Well, first of all, there was <i>Kristallnacht.</i> After <i>Kristallnacht,</i> my mother took me to Bonn to friends who were Dutch nationals and, therefore,
the house was Dutch property. She felt I would be safe there. Through these friends, my parents met
a Cuban family by the name of Stuetzel. S-T-U-E-T-Z-E-L. He was German but had become
a Cuban citizen, and his wife was Cuban. Through their efforts, my parents got these immigration permits
into Cuba. They were visiting Cuba,
and they heard about it, that the immigration official in Havana was issuing immigration permits. They bought them for my parents
and brought them back. Then, the next step was
to find a way of leaving Germany. Meanwhile, our relatives
in the United States, who, up until Crystal Night,
had felt my father was too old to emigrate into the United States, considering his occupation and his age, had issued us affidavits,
which is a guarantee that they would support us
in case it was necessary and so on. All we needed now was somewhere to go
and some way to get there. The <i>St. Louis</i> was like a godsend. When the Germans declared
they were preparing a ship that would leave for Cuba in May of 1939, and that it would be specifically
for Jewish refugees who wanted to leave Germany. So my father immediately
got in touch with a travel agency and booked passage. That’s how we came
to be on the <i>St. Louis.</i> Tell us about the <i>St. Louis.</i> How you heard about the <i>St. Louis</i>
just through– I don’t know how they heard about it. Perhaps it was publicized in the paper or perhaps it was
through these Cuban friends. I don’t know how they heard about it,
but there it was. The minute they heard– Sometimes these things
go by word of mouth, when somebody hears
about something like that, because there were such few ships
that took Jews altogether. In my papers, for instance, I found out that most ships which left Germany
at that time in history had only a limited amount of space
that they reserved for Jews. So that, even if you had
all the necessary papers to leave, finding a ship to take you, a means
of getting out, was still a problem. And here was a ship
that was entirely for Jewish refugees. So that was quite something. Of course, there was an ulterior motive
for the Germans. This motive really is one
that we didn’t find out until the authors of the book
<i>Voyage of the Damned</i> found evidence that this was to be a trip for an espionage situation. The Germans figured,
let the Jews pay for it. That was something
none of us knew at the time. How did people ordinarily–
How did Jews ordinarily go about getting affidavits, documentation,
permission to leave the country? It was a very complicated matter
to do this. First of all, the American consulates
had been instructed, as we now know, not to make it too easy for people– for Jews to enter the United States. Since the German quota for emigration into the States
at that time was 25,000 per year,
25,000 people per year. The government made no allowances, borrowing from other quotas. That was it. We now also have found out
that those quotas were never even filled. Even though at that time, we didn’t know it. There was such an onslaught for requests that then the consulates issued numbers, first come, first served numbers,
like in a delicatessen store. This was never an official announcement. It spread over Germany by word of mouth. I know my parents had friends–
excuse me– with whom they got together regularly, who, by a very casual conversation, said, “Well, there is now a quota system. You have to get numbers
before you can go to the consulate.” Our consulate was in Stuttgard. “You have to apply for a number.” Immediately, my mother
would call up her sister in Berlin and say, “Listen, you’ve got
to get a number.” My parents had a fairly low number. It was–
I have the documentation. It was in the 14,000’s.
That was considered a low number. By the time her sister was able
to get to a consulate and get a number, they were in the 70,000’s. That was like a condemnation to death. You could not– You could not do anything
without that number in so far as coming
into the United States. Was that true for other countries too? Yes. My parents had an affidavit by the beginning of 1939. They had a visa and all they needed
was the passage, the money to pay for it. They were going to wait
for their quota number in another country. That’s what most of the passengers
on the <i>St. Louis</i> were doing. They did not intend to stay in Cuba,
but simply wait, far away from Germany, outside of Germany,
until their quota numbers would come up. ...tape 2 of Liesl Loeb’s interview. Liesl, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go
back to your childhood in Rheydt to bring up something. What was your religious life there? You said that you went
to the Jewish school. Yes, it was a one-room school, because we only had about a hundred
Jewish families living in Rheydt. As I said, the other city nearby,
Mönchengladbach, had its own congregation,
its own Jewish schools. That was a much larger city. We had a teacher
who was not an ordained rabbi, nor was he an official cantor. I would compare his title to a reverend. He conducted services,
he conducted weddings and funerals, and visited the sick
and was the shepherd of his flock, so to speak, of the congregation. The persuasion was
what we would call Liberal, comparative to Conservatism
here in the United States. However, women did sit
separate from the men. The women sat upstairs. Children, both male and female,
sat downstairs with the men. Boys on one side of the beamer,
girls on the other side and men in the rest of the synagogue. Because it was a Jewish day school, my father took me to services
every Shabbat, and, of course, all holidays. My mother would come on all holidays. Sometimes when I talked too much,
he would lead me out. That was very embarrassing to me,
but I don’t think it stopped me from talking. The reverend, his name was Max Hyman. His wife used to teach embroidery
as a part of our curriculum. We already had embroidery
in second grade. That was customary in Germany. I still have some of my productions,
as a matter of fact. He had two children, a son and a daughter,
who were both older than myself. They were very nice children. The only time I got very annoyed
was on Simchat Torah, when we had flags to carry around. These flags had been made
by the women of the congregation. Some of them were really beautiful. Always those two kids got the best flags
because they lived right there. The school and the teacher’s home
and the synagogue was in one complex. So naturally, they were there first,
and they always got the best flags. But they were really very nice children. Their names were Edith and Walter. One other thing about them, when I came to Rheydt,
the last days of my stay in Germany, to say good-bye to my friends,
because I had been living in Bonn, I went to visit them also. We were playing cards. Walter, the older of the two children– Perhaps at that time, he might have been
already 13 or 14 years old, and I guess his sister was 12. He showed me how to shuffle
cards the way they do in a casino. You know? You kind of flip them. While he was doing that, he said,
“You know, Hitler said, by 1941, there wouldn’t be
a Jew alive in Germany.” I still flip the cards that way, and every time I do it,
I think of him and what he said. When we were invited back to Germany
in 1989 to Rheydt, there was a display in the museum of the history of the Jews of the area
and their contribution to the area, and there was a picture
of the teacher, of Max Hyman. The caption underneath
read something like this: He had a chance with his family
to emigrate out of Germany, and that he chose to stay
with his congregation. That he was deported to the– I believe they were all deported
to the ghetto of Riga. From there, deported further,
and he and his family perished. I felt that that was a heroic thing. On the last day
of our visit in Rheydt in 1989, I called attention to that fact. I asked those present,
both Jewish and otherwise, for a moment of silence
for the memory of this very brave man. Do you have memories
of other religious holiday celebrations with your family and so on? Well, Hanukkah and Purim
were always times that we put on plays in this little schoolroom. Somebody built a stage,
and we rehearsed plays. You know, it was as much fun
as you could have in a German school. You didn’t– I had a lot more fun
in American schools than I did in European schools. But as much fun as you could have
over there, we had it. As I said, we had plays, and we had celebrations,
and we had a sukkah. There were some private people
who had Sukkoth and so on. I was particularly lucky because Hanukkah,
of course, we celebrated in my house, and then my father had some Christian
clients that weren’t paying too well, but they gave me lots of presents
at Christmastime. I had the best of both worlds. When you moved to Bonn,
what was life like there? Well, the people, our friends in Bonn– The friendship went back, first of all,
to my father’s college days. The family name was Steinfeld.
S-T-E-I-N-F-E-L-D. The Steinfeld family held
lots of real estate in Bonn. They also had a men’s clothing store. The senior Mr. Steinfeld had an early death. My father was not only
his friend from college– they were friends from college,
from university days– but he was also the legal representative
of the business and of their holdings, so to speak. There was one daughter, Anita, and my father became her guardian
when her father died. So it was a very close relationship,
very close friendship. The widow of this Mr. Steinfeld
was our guest at the time of Crystal Night. She immediately said, “You bring Liesl
to my house in Bonn. She’ll be safe there.” That’s what my mother did. So I came to Bonn. This was a household of women. Mrs. Steinfeld had a maiden sister
who lived there in the apartment. Her daughter, at the time, was living there. The son-in-law had already
emigrated to Holland. He was a Dutch national.
The daughter soon followed. There were no kids there. The people weren’t really used
to a little girl anymore. They were wonderful to me. Also, the Jewish school in Bonn
was still in session after Crystal Night, which was unusual. Probably the reason was because you didn’t know it was a school
when you went by there. The school was in some kind of a building that looked like an office building
from the street. The playground wasn’t visible. There were venetian blinds
on the windows. So the vandals didn’t know. It wasn’t on the same property,
for instance, as the synagogue. So the school was not destroyed,
and it was still in session. I enrolled in the school,
in the Jewish school. I became friendly
with the daughter of the cantor in Bonn. Cantor Winterberg.
W-I-N-T-E-R-B-E-R-G. He had one daughter. He and his wife were so kind to me. They used to invite me on weekends, and they would treat me
like their own child. I was just a member of the family there. I hung out there at least as much as I did
with the people I was staying with, because there was another child there. To this day, we’re friends, by the way. She only lives five minutes away from me,
even though she went to Auschwitz. We have a very long bonded friendship. Her name is now Annalee Nussbaum. She’s probably in your files as well. The days in Bonn were quite tolerable. We went to school.
We went on hikes. At one point, I had to have
my tonsils clipped because of the requirements
of the American consulate for my emigration into the United States. My parents came to visit me. Once my father was out of jail again, my parents would come to visit me
perhaps once a month or so. So I was able to see them. Everybody was very kind to me
and all that. Still, it was my first time away
from my home and from my parents. The Winterberg family really understood
that and my needs, somehow or other. I could never forget that,
how understanding they were, in treating me like their kid
and being part of the family and having another child
to play with and so on. Tell us a little bit
about your father’s visits to jail. Well, the day before– Crystal Night occurred
in our town on November 10. I imagine the reason for Crystal Night
is not necessary here to pursue. Let it be said that ours was one
of only two houses in the city that were vandalized. There were Jewish businesses
that were vandalized, but private homes, only two,
both were on our street. Who the vandals were,
my mother never found out. However, we know that
they were not locals. They were people from out of town. We had a large house,
about a 20-room house. We had tenants on the third floor,
non-Jewish tenants. They took my mother, our visitor, our domestic help, which was also
a Jewish girl, and me in, and they hid us. The man went downstairs
and told the vandals that they must stay on the first floor
because he occupies the rest of the house. They didn’t know from anything else. There was enough
for them to do down there. I was very frightened. My mother told me that, at one point, I wanted to run downstairs
and beg them to stop because the noise was so frightening. My mother had a time to hold me back. I don’t remember that,
but she told me that. Of course, if my father
had been in the house or they would have found him,
they would have killed him. They were ready to kill him. The Christian gentleman
who lived in our house told them that my father was not
in the house, that he was not in town. The house looked, in the morning
when they left– They had pulled, literally pulled,
the gas range out of the wall, so that gas was leaking
throughout the house. However, they also smashed
all the windows, luckily. Nobody lit a cigarette. We were lucky in that respect. Somebody stood guard
in front of the house all night long. When they finally left in the morning,
and we came downstairs– I’ve seen houses bombed out in London,
and it didn’t look any different. There was, strewn about, the legs of tables and chairs and the shards of glass and china
and books that had been torn apart. A piano that had been turned upside down
and hacked to bits with an ax. Eggs had been thrown into this melee
and food and– You cannot imagine what it looked like. You cannot imagine. My mother had the house boarded up. She went to the police
and reported the vandalism. The police said,
“Well, why didn’t you call us?” Yes, of course. After she had that all done,
we left and went to Bonn. Your father was not there.
Where was he? On November 9, was my father’s birthday. On November 9, the attaché
at the German Embassy in Paris was shot and killed
by this young Jewish boy and that precipitated the pogrom. It was just an excuse.
They would have found another excuse. They came the day after, the morning
of the tenth, the Blackshirts came. They knocked on the door of our house. They came to arrest my father. They had rounded up
all the Jewish men that morning. They riffled through all kinds of papers,
and they said the B’nai B’rith was a subversive organization
as far as they were concerned and so on. They dragged him off to jail. I think all the men in town
were first brought to the local jail. From there, most of them were shipped
to concentration camps. Either Dachau–
I think for most of our area, it was Dachau, which was near Munich,
not close by at all. However, my father was known at the jail because, as an attorney, he often
had clients in jail whom he visited. So they kept him
and they treated him kindly. Thank God.
They kept him in jail. There were a handful of others as well, but most of the men and boys,
from age 14 on, were shipped to concentration camps. Eventually, a policeman, as I had said
before, called my mother. I’m not quite sure
how long he was in jail. It might have been as much as six weeks. He finally came out. My mother had begged him
not to go to the house, but to come directly to the house
where she was staying. She was staying with friends, about a couple of blocks away
from where we lived, but he did go to the house first. I think he was just absolutely devastated
with what he saw. Then he came to my mother. From then on, the only thing was
to get ready to get out of Germany. When did your parents
come to Bonn to stay? They didn’t stay.
They’d come for a visit. Come Saturdays, leave Sundays,
to visit with me. When did you leave
for the <i>St. Louis?</i> The <i>St. Louis</i> was to sail
on May 13, 1939. My parents had me come back to Rheydt
about a week, a week and a half earlier, so I could say good-bye to my friends
who were still there. Meanwhile, quite a few had left already. And so that we would then be together. The plan was to go to Berlin to say good-bye to my mother’s sister
and her family and my grandmother,
who was then living in Berlin. She had stayed in Berlin permanently
after our house had been vandalized. That’s what we did. We took the train to Berlin,
and we stayed in the house. I never saw the city. We were there for about three days. I have an autograph book
in which everybody wrote. Whenever I want to cry, I look at that. From there, we took the train to Hamburg. We arrived in Hamburg, probably the day
before embarkation, on the twelfth. My mother’s sister came with us. The other sister had already
emigrated to Holland. She was no longer in Germany. By the way, the Nazis were agreeable that all those Orthodox Jews were allowed to embark already on Fridays, because of the religious law
of not being allowed to ride on Shabbat. If they were ensconced on the ship
before Shabbat, that was okay, and they were allowed. We embarked on Saturday. We stayed in a hotel, in a nice hotel, but we weren’t allowed to eat
in the dining room there. There was a sign, “Jews are not–”
<i>nicht erwünscht–</i> which means “Jews are not–”
I wouldn’t even say “permitted.” We do not <i>wish</i> Jews to come here. So we ate somewhere else. I remember we spent–
My father had a few marks left. We were allowed to take, per person,
10 marks with us. Ten marks translated into dollars,
I think about $4.50. Plus our clothes on our back,
the steamer trunk, and we had sent furniture
to the United States as well as to Cuba. That was it. I think they got some scrip so they could
spend some money on board ship. And that was it. I remember having a 50-pfennig piece
in my pocket. I gave it to the– the guy who was letting us through,
the customs man, who kind of was supposed to examine us
that we don’t smuggle anything, but he really was very kind. I said, “Well, I have
this 50-cent piece here.” He says, “Well, go buy yourself something.” Other people complained that they
were mistreated by the customs people. We didn’t have such an experience. We had a cabin
right across from the purser. There were two classes,
first and second class. We traveled first class, and we had a cabin,
just the three of us, to ourselves. The <i>St. Louis</i> was a luxury liner. This was quite a revelation
to a 10-year-old. That was an adventure for me. We embarked and the ship left
on Saturday, the 13th of May. The band played a song that they
usually played when the cruise left. This is a cruise ship
between New York and Havana. Since it was a German ship, they always
played this little song, a little folk song, “Must I Leave My Little Town?” Wasn’t the right thing to do. Wasn’t the right thing to do. So we left. My aunt stood on the platform. I was only a kid, but I had a feeling
I wouldn’t see her again. It was a luxury liner,
and you said you had a cabin. Was it a luxurious life
while you were at sea? Yes, it was. First of all, in Germany,
we already had ersatz coffee and ersatz white bread
and ersatz this and ersatz that. “Ersatz” means “substitute.” For whatever reason–
Hitler was arming for war and there were things
that weren’t available. But, on the ship, they were available. The meals were sumptuous.
I have a menu. There was afternoon tea with dance. There were the usual games
that were played on board, such as shuffleboard
and the horse races. There were people who played bridge,
and there were movies. Most of all, my mother didn’t sit on me. I roamed the ship.
I couldn’t get lost, right? We had close to 300 children
out of the 937 passengers, close to 300 children on board. They had all kinds of entertainment
for the children. There was always something to do. There was a gym and I would go and play around
with the apparatus in the gym. I got friendly with the elevator man. I used to run the elevator
and let him have a cigarette. I got friendly with the steward
who rang the gong for mealtimes, and he let me do that. I had a great time on board. Meanwhile, they also
were teaching Spanish. I think, after a few days,
as the weather improved and we got into more tropical weather,
everybody relaxed a whole lot. <i>But</i> the captain heard news
that made him worry. He heard that the ship
that was ahead of us had difficulties
about unloading the passengers. The Cuban government was making noises about not allowing the people
to get off the ship, so he decided
that perhaps it would be– As a German officer in a German uniform, he might intimidate his passengers. So he decided to call a few of the men
among the passengers together to form a committee as a liaison,
in case there’s going to be a problem. This was a very Renaissance man. The captain was really a Renaissance man. We learned much more about him
when we had our 50th anniversary in Miami. His nephew came over
to tell us about him. He was an artist, he was a poet,
he was a writer, and he was a very smart man. He was small of stature,
but he ran that ship with an iron hand. He had told his crew that the people
whom they were going to serve on this trip were supposed to be treated
like any other passengers that usually go on this–
are passengers on that liner. They were Jews,
but they were to be treated with respect just like any other passengers. How long did the trip take? I believe it took us 10 days, 10 days to reach Havana. We left– Perhaps a little longer,
perhaps close to two weeks. I have the exact figures. Somewhere short of two weeks
to reach Havana. What happened at that point? I remember it was early
in the morning as we saw land
and came close to the port. We saw the palm– My father woke me,
and we went up on deck. We saw the palm trees–
I had never seen palm trees– and the pastel-colored houses
along the shore, and the capitol of Havana, which looked
a lot like our capitol in Washington, DC. The harbor patrol came on board. Passengers had been ordered to get
their luggage ready the day before. They were handed
all kinds of forms to fill out. I have some of them in my collection. Everything was prepared
to disembark in Havana, but then the order came
that the ship was not to enter the port, but to throw anchor about a mile or two
out of the harbor. Everybody got very excited. They kept asking the harbor patrol
that was on board, “When can we get off?” They would say, <i>“Maņana.”</i> That went on for a whole week. A whole week, we were in the harbor. After a while–
You know, there were lots of families who already had somebody over here. Families where the father had
already left for the United States and came down to Havana
to greet his family. Or relatives who were in Havana waiting. After a while, these people started
to rent these little boats. They came out
and surrounded the ship and were yelling and shouting
and calling for their relatives. This went on all day long.
It was like a circus out there. I had cousins on board, whose father
was here in this country already. He was in Havana to receive them. I felt so badly for them, because they couldn’t touch
their father’s hand or hug him. They just could kind of shout
at each other. He was down there in this little boat and they would be either on deck
or in their porthole, trying to holler back at him. So was everybody else doing that. Then all kinds of entrepreneurs came out. Kids that would dive for pennies, or they would sell oranges
or pineapples for pennies and throw them up on deck
with a little bag attached to the fruit. Then you’d put your little bit of money
in there and throw it back down. It was a circus all day long. Eventually–
There were negotiations going on. The committee, which had been formed
by the captain, of course, was in session
24 hours a day by this time. My father was chosen
as chairman of this committee. The initial committee were five gentlemen,
and eventually two others joined. Most of them were doctors and lawyers, and I think there were two businessmen
on the committee. They were sitting with the captain, sending out telegrams to New York,
to the Jewish agencies, because the Cuban government decided they would ask
for an additional $500 per head, and then they would consider
perhaps letting us off, and perhaps putting us
in some kind of a camp somewhere in Cuba. Somebody came from New York and had the money with him, but argued about the amount
with the president of Cuba, and this argument did not
turn out in a favorable way. ...about the American coming
and trying to bargain for a lower price
with the president of Cuba. Right. The president of Cuba–
his name was President Brú– had set a deadline
for the presentation of the demanded funds. This gentleman from New York
had the funds with him, but he thought he could perhaps
argue him down a bit per capita. The president wasn’t having any. Several days passed, and he declared
that the time limit had elapsed, and there was no further conversation
about this matter, and the ship was to leave. Meanwhile, there was correspondence. Somebody suggested that the <i>St. Louis</i>
come and bring us to an island off the coast of New York. There were all kinds of negotiations
going on with New York, with other countries in the hemisphere,
specifically the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, the captain needed
at least 24 hours to load provisions because, obviously, we had been
under way for close to two weeks. We were in the harbor for a week,
and now we were supposed to leave. He did go to get the permission
from the Cubans. He went on land himself to load provisions
for another 24 hours. What we haven’t touched upon is– Why did the <i>St. Louis</i>
sail in the first place? Certainly, the Germans
were not interested in transporting out
a thousand or so Jews. The Germans needed
to send a spy to Havana to pick up information from their agents who had been deported
out of the United States after having secured secrets
about submarines here in this country. The Secret Service got after them, and they were expelled
through the efforts of, I think, Mr. Hoover, at least through the Secret Service,
and they escaped to Havana. Havana was the breeding ground
for all kinds of distasteful political activities. This agent was dispatched
by way of the ship. The Germans had in mind, first of all,
the Jews will pay for the trip. Secondly, this was
kind of a test run to see what the world’s reaction would be to whatever outcome
this particular trip would have. My personal opinion,
my very personal opinion, is everything was already prearranged
with the Cubans way ahead of time. That, no matter what,
the Cubans would not allow us to land and send us back
to no-man’s-land or wherever, and to see whether the world would open up its countries
and take these few people in, who were all skilled people, either in the professions
or in the trades, and see what kind of world reaction
there would be. Were any people at all allowed into Cuba? There were a handful,
perhaps six or eight passengers who had absolutely legal
immigration permits who were allowed to disembark, including two children
whose father was in Cuba, whose Aryan mother didn’t want
her Jewish children anymore and shipped them out of Germany
to their father in Cuba. I don’t know who the other people were. Some of them
may have been Cuban citizens. Whoever they were,
they must have had very legal papers, and they were able to get off the ship. But I don’t think there were 10. I think it was
less than 10 people who got off. We had connections in Cuba
through these Cuban friends that my parents had made in Bonn,
who could have gotten us off. My father, as the chairman
of the committee, said he cannot do that. He cannot leave the committee. He cannot leave everybody in the lurch,
and he will not do it. So we stayed on the ship. He also felt he would endanger our lives
if we would try to get off the ship. That was just a moot point. The next day, after loading provisions,
the ship left. Meanwhile, getting back to the espionage agent once more, when we arrived in Cuba,
he demanded to be allowed to go on land. The captain thought
that he would pressure him and say, “If our passengers can’t get off,
you can’t get off.” We had Gestapo on board too. Wherever there was German,
there was Gestapo. They posed as firemen among the crew,
but they were Gestapo. The Gestapo said to the captain, “If you don’t let him off,
we have your family in Germany.” They threatened him,
and he had to let the spy go on land. He did his business there
with the agents, and that was that,
mission accomplished. Meanwhile, we were the pawns. How did you find out about the spy? In the book that was written. But not while it was going on. No, we had no idea about that. I guess the captain felt it best not to say
anything to the committee about that either. Only when the facts came out when
the book was written, did we find that out. After loading provisions,
the day after, the ship left Havana. While we were still in the harbor,
one afternoon after lunch, a gentleman, who had been
very despondent, jumped overboard. A sailor jumped after him
and he cut his– the man cut his wrists. The sailor did save him. The man was taken to a hospital
in Havana, but his wife and daughter
were not allowed to join him. They went back with the ship. Eventually, when his physical wounds
were healed, the Cubans sent him back to England
to join his family. It was in full view of the passengers. I think my mother
kind of whisked me away. I was on deck at the time also,
but she took me away. People were crowding around the rails,
and she took me away. The passengers collected
from their meager coinage and gave the sailor a reward
for saving this man. The Gestapo took note of the fact that a German sailor bothered
to jump into the water to save a Jew. We left Havana with the accompaniment
of the harbor patrol and a whole procession of cars that drove along the beach street,
the ocean drive. I guess it was one of the saddest days
in people’s lives when we left Havana. From there on in,
there were always notices posted on the bulletin boards
near the elevators which gave encouraging information. Even if there was nothing to encourage, there was encouraging information. “We’re in touch with this one
and that one and with this committee
and that committee and we will keep you informed.”
And so on. All these documents were
in my possession because of my father and are in the archives in Washington, DC,
at the Holocaust Museum. I have copies
of almost everything that I gave them, but they have the originals. The committee not only
was meeting with the captain, but they also organized patrols so there
wouldn’t be another suicide attempt, because people were very desperate. Most of the men on board had been incarcerated as a result
of the November pogrom. Upon their release, they had to sign that they would leave Germany
within a very short period of time and that they would never divulge what they experienced
in their incarceration, nor would they return to the Third Reich upon punishment of death. So you can imagine
that there was panic on board. There were a group of teenage boys
who were planning– What do you call it
when somebody takes over a ship? - Mutiny.
- A mutiny. It came to the ears of the committee,
and they went to talk to these boys. They were maybe
18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. “What will you do with the ship
if you do this? You don’t know anything about handling
a ship or sailing a ship or anything else.” They were able to discourage them
from pursuing this idea. There were patrols organized,
24 hours a day, from among the young men to make sure that everybody was safe
and so on and so forth. The telegrams kept coming and going. As we neared Germany, there’s a telegram in my father’s handwriting
to the Hamburg-America Line, which is the company
to which the ship belonged, the Hapag, asking them to substitute
another ship for us, to transfer us onto another ship,
but not to let us come back to Germany. In other words, if the <i>St. Louis</i>
has to go back to its cruising schedule, get us on another ship. Meanwhile, the captain
had confided in my father that, if nothing else,
he would take the <i>St. Louis</i> off the coast of Sussex and set it on fire. He felt the way he was planning to do it,
nobody would be endangered, and the British would be forced
to take us in. He writes this in a little book that he, himself, wrote
about the trip of the <i>St. Louis,</i> that that was his intention
because he felt it was his duty. It was his job to deliver passengers
to where they wanted to go. The captain was very much
in sympathy to us. He was very cooperative. Again, he was
on the bad list of the Gestapo. Where did you go from Cuba? Where was the next port
they tried to disembark? On June 13,
a telegram came through, saying that the American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee, headquarters in Paris, under the direction
of a Mr. Morris Troper, had managed to get four countries
to agree to take us in. I mean, this was
like five minutes of midnight. England, Holland, Belgium and France would each take in one-quarter
of the passengers. England made certain special requests that only people with papers
to continue on to the United States, they wanted to have,
and, if possible, professional people. No other country made any such demands. The ship steered toward Antwerp, Belgium. We arrived in Belgium.
We embarked on May 13, and we arrived in Antwerp, Belgium,
on June 17. How do I remember that?
That’s my birthday. My eleventh birthday. Mr. Troper and his entourage
came on board in Antwerp to meet the committee with whom
he had been in close communication and to see for himself the passengers and to talk to them
and encourage them and so on. Because it was my birthday, and because of the work of my father, I was selected to greet Mr. Troper in the name
of the children on board. All the children
stood around in a semicircle. My father wrote me a little speech. Among other things in that speech, it said that we would have liked
to greet Mr. Troper with flowers, but after 40 days at sea, the flower shop was depleted
of its merchandise. The next day, I got two dozen red roses
from Mr. Troper. That’s what that little photograph
in the book is all about. When they came on board,
the next activity was to divide up the passengers
into the various countries. That again was like playing God,
in a way. They didn’t know it at the time,
but it was. Some passengers– Everyone was asked
where they would like to go. Most people wanted to go to England. It puts a little distance
between Germany and them with a little bit of water in between. Of course, that wasn’t possible. Whenever possible,
they complied to the requests. Some people had families
in Holland or Belgium or France. Or maybe they had some money there
or whatever. But mostly, it was up to Mr. Troper’s people
and the committee to decide where people are going to go. The committee itself
was allowed to choose. Even so, several members
did not choose England. Unfortunately, one of the members
of the committee chose to go to France and he perished. He didn’t survive the war. He was among the youngest
of the gentlemen actually. That’s a very unfortunate thing. When we arrived in Antwep,
everybody came off the ship. The people in Belgium were sent– from Antwerp, were sent to Brussels,
probably by train. People to Holland and France, also,
were sent by train to their destinations. The people to Holland were
first assembled in Westerbork, which was a camp. Because, all of a sudden,
here come several hundred people. What are we going to do with them? I think, after a while,
people were probably able to find some means of finding a home
or even finding a job. In the case of the people
who went to England, we first ended up in a hotel. For my family, my mother
had a very close girlfriend who lived in York, England. As soon as she heard
that we were coming to England, my mother got in touch with her via the telegraph communication system
on board, and she requested us to come to York. She was friendly
with the Rowntree family– Rowntree Chocolates, which is
equal to Hershey Chocolates, and we were guests of the Rowntree family
in York for several months. Let’s back up for a minute.
How did you get to England? We had to embark on a small German
merchant ship, the SS <i>Rakotis.</i> R-A-K-O-T-I-S. This was not a luxury ship. Most of the people, about 250 people,
were in mass quarters. Only the committee people had cabins. We had a steady stream of visitors, using our bath and our shower
and shaving in our bathroom and so on. All the other committee people as well. My father and I were taking a walk on deck, and I noticed rolled up rolls, lying along the deck against the wall. It looked like rolled up carpets. I said to my dad, “Are they going
to put new carpets on this ship?” He said, “No.”
He says, “Those are cannon.” You see, Hitler was ready.
Hitler was ready. We crossed the Channel.
I don’t know how long it took, but we arrived in Southampton,
from there by train to London. From the train station in London,
per horse and buggy to the hotel. England was a quaint, quaint country
when we got there in 1939. I guess, after a day or two at the hotel, we took the train to York. We lived on the Rowntree estate
for three months. In the meantime, the people
who came to England were guests. They were– Very special arrangements
had been made for them. They were to be supported
by a Jewish agency with headquarters
in the Bloomsbury House in London. Each family got a small amount of money
for its sustenance. They weren’t allowed to work
because, at the time, I guess there wasn’t enough work
for British people. Besides, we weren’t supposed to be
staying there for any length of time. This was June 1939, okay? After three months in York, my father
felt that nothing’s happening in York. We wanted to get out of England. Our papers, meanwhile,
were on their way via Switzerland. He felt that we’ve got to be closer
to where things are happening in London. We thanked the Rowntree family
very kindly. They were wonderful people.
They were Quakers. They were so generous to us. We left for London. In London, we got a room
with a family in Stamford Hill, a Jewish quarter of London. A lot of Orthodox Jews
lived in that neighborhood. I think we arrived in London,
perhaps, the end of August. It was the end of August. September 1, the Germans
invaded Poland. All the schoolchildren in London were ordered to their schools,
to their schoolyards. They wanted to evacuate all the children
with their schools out of London. We had just gotten there. The neighborhood school was
the Jewish Secondary School of London, a very fine school,
a very Orthodox school. We were supposed to pack up clothes
for several days. Nice ladies along the way
gave us food packages and snacks. The older kids– I was then 11– the older teenagers kept us entertained
in the schoolyard. This went on for three days. On September 3,
England declared war on Germany. All the schools moved out of London. We ended up in Bedfordshire. Now England isn’t a very big country
to begin with, and on the map, it doesn’t look
very far away from London. There we were billeted
with the village folk who had volunteered
to take in evacuees. I think the government subsidized
each evacuee. I ended up, together with a little boy whose family also lived in the same house
where my parents were living at that time, with the village shoemaker,
Mr. and Mrs. Whittington. They had never seen a Jew.
They had never seen a German Jew. My English was still not the most fluent,
but I got along with it, except that– There were a lot of German
and Austrian kids in this school because it seemed to be
a neighborhood, Stamford Hill, where refugees found places to live. Amongst ourselves,
we would talk German, and we were told,
“You may not talk German on the streets.” We were going to be punished. I know I got a smack in the face
from a teacher one day because he overheard me
talking German in the street. I changed my name
from Liesl to Elizabeth because Liesl was too German a name. We had classes in the local church. We had a kosher canteen
where we ate the main meal. It was kind of like a Camp Ramah situation
in a way, except it wasn’t. But the <i>ruah</i> was there.
The spirit was there. All of a sudden,
I was living an Orthodox Jewish life. I was only allowed to eat breakfast and high tea
with my foster family. Our main meal was a kosher meal
in our canteen. We all had KP.
We all had to share serving. There was such a spirit about all this. Everybody was in the same boat. I became very friendly with a lovely girl
who was about a year older than myself. I had other friends, too,
but she was my confidante because, again, I was separated
from my parents. I had been in Bonn separated,
now, under other circumstances, in a strange country
with a strange language, I was again separated from my parents. Do you know the girl’s name? Yes. The girl’s name at the time
was Rita Hauser. She came from Essen. We were best friends. We lost touch with each other around the time
that I got married here in 1947. After the reunion in Miami in 1989, one day I got a letter from England. I opened it and out flutters
this little piece of xeroxed paper. It was a copy of something
I had written into her autograph book when we all went to school together. Through friends who also went
to Miami for the reunion, she found me again,
and now we’re back in touch. She was here and we’re communicating. Just a little side vignette. Rita was my best friend. I remember, the first months of the war,
there wasn’t really any evidence of war. Everybody carried this
little gas mask box around with them. They had air raid rehearsals. I know one night, even in this little village,
the sirens went. The little boy and I, who were living
with our foster family, we were sleeping in a double bed together. I said to him– his name was Eddie– I said, “Eddie, put on your gas mask.” We put on our gas masks
and went back to sleep. In the morning, when the landlady came
to wake us up, she screeched because there are these two little monsters
in the bed with their gas masks on. But we really didn’t notice there was much of a war going on
that first year. I went to London twice to visit my parents, once at Hanukkah time
and once at Pesach time. In May, I think,
things turned around completely. There was the Battle of Dunkirk, when the British officers
were all at the Ascot races, and Hitler could have taken England
at that time without batting an eyelash. I think only because his astrologers
advised him against it, this didn’t happen, but all of a sudden– First of all,
all the German and Austrian males were rounded up and interned. They were interned
mostly on the Isle of Man, in camps. The British claimed
that there were German spies posing as Jewish refugees
amongst them, and they just put the whole lot–
interned them, isolated them. They didn’t mistreat them,
but they were not free. At that time, it was
almost the end of the school year, and I went back to London
to join my mother. She was all by herself. I had earned myself some extra money
by helping the farmers. All of us did that. We were asked to help the farmers
when it got to be spring. We would be on the fields by 5:00, picking peas and picking berries
and whatever. They paid us a few pence
per bushel or whatever. My landlord, also, let me–
He was a shoemaker, and he had me carrying out shoes
that he fixed for people, and he paid me a few pennies
for each pair of shoes. So I was able to give my mother money,
so she could use it for carfare to go to various offices downtown to get my father ready
for our immigration because, meanwhile,
our number had come up. Our papers were in England. We could leave if we would know
how to get out of there. There was also a question
of paying the fare. You see, we didn’t have any money. We wanted to get out of England. There’s correspondence
that I found in my mother’s papers about the monies that people paid for the immigration certificates
issued by the Cuban government, which were declared not legal. I didn’t touch upon that before. The Cuban immigration officer, his name was Gonzalez, had simply printed these immigration
permits on official-looking stationery, and he sold them for whatever– He sold them through another party. Many of them were refugees living
in Cuba. He probably sold them to these people
for a set sum of money, and then these people
were selling them to us for whatever they could get. What happened, after we got to England, was that a lot of people
wrote to my father and said, couldn’t he in some way
try to get that money back because we never used the permits. Some people wrote,
and I have those letters. I have some of those letters.
They came from all over. Some people paid 150–
it was all dollars– $150 per permit, some paid 200. Various sums of money were paid. People figured that,
maybe with that money, they would be able to pay their passage
to get out of England. Your father was asked to try to get
the money from the Cuban visas. The Cuban immigration permits actually. I have some of these letters. I found them only recently, maybe a couple of years ago,
among my mother’s papers. My mother only passed away
about two and a half years ago. I didn’t know all the material
that she still had, besides what I already had. These people– Everybody
seemed to have paid a different price for these papers. I have correspondence
that I went over last night where my father addressed
Cuban authorities, and there was absolutely no way that anybody was willing
to give any kind of money back. First of all, Mr. Gonzales,
he didn’t sell them to the people, right? He sold them to somebody else. All these other people
might have disappeared, or the Cuban government
pocketed the money, if nothing else. It was a moot point.
There was nothing to be had unfortunately. He couldn’t do anything for the people. Somehow or other,
people were able to scrape together, perhaps through Jewish organizations,
perhaps through private contributions, the monies to pay for the passage
to the United States. I’m not quite sure where
our passage money came from. However, we left London
the end of August. Our ship was leaving
from Glasgow, Scotland. While my father was interned,
the Blitz of London had begun. I had returned to London
to be with my mother. We had raids every day
and, specifically, every night. For the next three months,
June, July, August, my mother and I ended up
in an air raid shelter every single night. We lived, at that time, in a rooming house
in Willesden Green, which is in the NW2 area of London,
a nice neighborhood. The house belonged to a couple
of teachers who made it a rooming house. They didn’t live there. Each room held a family of refugees. There were two <i>St. Louis</i> families
in this house. There was a Polish opera singer. There were Belgian refugees. It was quite a mixture. For everything,
you had to put money in a slot. If you wanted a bath,
you put some pennies in. If you wanted heat,
if you wanted to cook. Everything had to be– were little automats to put money in. I know my parents told me
to hang out a lot in the library because it was warm in the winter
and cool in the summer. They got together with a lot
of <i>St. Louis</i> people socially. That was their only entertainment. They surely didn’t have money
to go to a movie. They bought yesterday bread
and yesterday cake for a few pennies. Everybody brought
their own cups and saucers because everything was counted out
where they lived. They got together, and, in spite
of everything, they had a good time– until my father was interned. The men were interned,
and things got very serious. So every night we had raids.
The city was bombed. Each house had what was called
an Anderson shelter. An Anderson shelter consisted
of a hole in the ground with a corrugated metal arc cover
over it, which was then covered
with a lot of dirt. From the air, you couldn’t see
there was anything there. There were a few wooden slats
along the walls of this– this dugout area, on some bricks. That’s where we sat. We were dressed for winter because the nights were cool
even in August and in July. We had about 12 hours’ worth
of food with us. Every night, this was going on. We went to bed,
after a while, the sirens rang. Some people went into the subways because London’s Underground
was very low below the ground, but we just went into the shelter. Mostly the men stayed outside, unless it got serious,
and the bombing got close. Then they would all jump
into the shelter also. So we never slept in a bed for three months
for a whole night, my mother and I. Do you remember the names of any
of the people in the house with you? Yeah, I remember a family Hyman
from Cologne, across the hall from us. They had a daughter, Susan. Of course, the other family
from the <i>St. Louis</i> was actually one of the committee
gentlemen with his family, a lawyer by the name of Housdorfer,
with his wife and daughter. They lived downstairs. Then there was a Hungarian lady.
Her first name was Birgitte. I don’t remember the Polish opera singer’s
name or the Irish ladies upstairs. Those are the names I do remember. Also, one of the more humorous aspects was that the opera singer
never paid his rent on time. So regularly, the landlady came and threw his belongings
in a suitcase down the steps. He would call the police, and they wouldn’t come
because they were tired of it. It was a comic situation
among some very serious business. Meanwhile, my mother ran down the doors
of the various offices of the government to try and get my father processed,
so we could leave. She managed it,
and he was brought to London, under guard of Scotland Yard,
like a criminal. They saw each other
from across the street. I think he managed to slip her a note. And then we– I don’t remember the exact date
when we entrained for Glasgow, but it was an overnight ride. We were stopped by air raids
several times during the night. The train stopped. The rumor was that the men
from the internment camps who were scheduled to board with us were in a sealed car
at the end of the train, again under Scotland Yard guard. We got to Glasgow,
and they brought us to the ship. The SS <i>Cameronia</i>
was the name of the ship. C-A-M-E-R-O-N-I-A. Who wasn’t there was my father
and the other men who were expected. We waited and we waited. I think we were supposed
to sail toward evening. Finally, maybe an hour before sailing time,
the men came on board. What had happened was
that they put them on another ship to go to Australia. You see, the British had shipped many young single men
of military age, who were among those internees, had shipped them off
to Australia and New Zealand. Somebody thought that this batch of men
were also supposed to be destined, and I think they mutinied. So finally they appeared on the ship. That was quite a reunion. The ship left. We had on board with us the entire– There was only two classes,
second class and third class in this case. Second class was entirely British children who were being sent to this hemisphere
for the duration, to the States and to Canada. We had a convoy that crossed with us. Luckily, we made it. We were pursued by German submarines. The ships before and after us
were torpedoed. We got through, luckily. So we arrived in New York
on September 10, 1940. We hadn’t seen a city in lights for years because even when we still lived
in Germany, there were demi-blackouts. There were air raid practices
long before Germany was in the war. Everybody had to have
an air raid shelter in their house. We hadn’t seen a city lit up– Well, when we first arrived in London,
I suppose, but in this whole year. Here was New York City. Our relatives who had provided
the affidavit for us, Mr. and Mrs. Kurt Blum of Philadelphia, picked us up at the ship. Mr. Blum’s father-in-law,
his name was Moses Lieberman, and at the time a vice-president
of Snellenburg’s Department Store here, was an additional sponsor,
since Mr. Blum’s sponsorship was not enough financially to sustain us. The relationship officially was that my parents were
Mr. Blum’s aunt and uncle. Basically, not quite. My mother’s sister had married
into the family of Mr. Blum’s mother. They were really just in-laws indirectly,
<i>mekhutonim,</i> as we would say. However, when Mr. Blum was still young, and his father passed away
in Germany in the ’20s, my mother spent a whole year
in his house to help his mother get ready
to emigrate to the States. At that time already,
she had several brothers here who wanted her to come over,
since she was widowed. This was the Heidelberger family, who for a long period of time had
a chocolate factory here in Philadelphia. Brothers Heidelberger Chocolates. It was perhaps a favor repaid, and perhaps it was simply
because they wanted to help, but I will never stop being grateful
to the Blums for helping us to come to this country. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here,
and my children wouldn’t be here. Where did you settle? When we first came here,
we came to Philadelphia right away. I lived with the Blums for a whole year because my parents, at the time, had no means of keeping me. My mother was a domestic in a household. My father, as a lawyer, certainly
couldn’t pursue his profession here. At the time we arrived here,
my father was 58 years old. He was not in good health. He started out by peddling
European-made candy from door-to-door. He developed all kinds
of contacts that way. Eventually, he got a job
as a translating editor with a German newspaper
here in Philadelphia. That was a very good job for those days. The newspaper was called
the <i>Philadelphia Gazette Democrat.</i> It actually had published here, already,
through World War I and through World War II, until the ’50s. I think it then became a weekly,
and eventually it merged with a New York German newspaper
called the <i>New York Staats-Zeitung.</i> I don’t know if that’s still in existence, but, at any rate, my father worked there until he became too ill to work. My father had a problem that nobody
seemed to know what it was. He was treated for gall bladder. He was treated for all kinds of theories. He saw big doctors in Europe. He saw big doctors right here
in the United States. Nobody could figure out what was wrong. After he died, we had an autopsy taken, simply because we felt
he would have wanted that. It turns out that he had a hiatal hernia
that pressed on the heart. For years, he would have terrible pains
like a heart attack. He would be able, sometimes,
to stop them by pressure. Therefore, he never wanted to have
any exploratory surgery. We think that this originated
in a toboggan accident that he had in Italy as a bachelor. He used to go to Italy tobagganing
as a bachelor. Ever since that accident that he had,
he had this problem. They treated him
for gall bladder at the end. He lost– That was a fatless diet and he lost whatever little strength
he had left. Unfortunately, I was only 17
when my father passed away. That was in 1945.
I was still in high school. He told me one day, while we were sitting
at breakfast before I was going to school, that he didn’t think
he could last much longer, and I should look after my mother. That’s how he sent me to school that day. Thanksgiving of 1945, he passed away.
Much too early. What did you and your mother do? My mother had a job. I was still in high school
when my father died. I was a junior in high school. I had a job after school. I worked as a salesperson in Gimbels
Wednesday nights and Saturdays all day. I gave all my money to my mother,
except, I think, two dollars. That was my allowance. My mother worked in a jewelry store
for a long time. After that first year
when she was a domestic, and my father was peddling candy,
after that, she got a job in a factory. Then once my father got this job
with the newspaper, they were able to get an apartment,
and I moved back with them. I had lived with the Blums for one year. After three years,
I was finally back with my parents. Where did you go to school
after high school? I went to Philadelphia High School for Girls. Then I got married,
right out of high school. How did you meet your husband? There was a German Jewish club here
in Philadelphia called the Central Club. It was a club for Jews
from Central Europe. My husband had been one of the founders,
his brother as well. It was, at the time that I joined, it was
on North Broad Street near Susquehanna. We lived on Park Avenue,
in that neighborhood, near the old Adath Jeshurun synagogue. There was a youth group,
and once I was 16 or so, I was of age to join the youth group. I was one of the younger ones. This was during the war.
There were– The only young men around were 4-Fs. Everybody else was in the service. Nevertheless, there was a place to go to. There was Ping-Pong to play. There were records to listen to. Letters to write to the boys
who were in the service. When somebody came home on leave,
they always came to the club. It was within walking
distance of where we lived, and my mother didn’t have to worry
where I was hanging out. There was a restaurant in the clubhouse where you could have
very good and reasonable meals. Often, my family used to eat there
Friday nights. Friday was my father’s day off, so sometimes he would treat
for dinner to go out there. It was a good place,
and I met young people there. And people who had
the same background as myself. My American classmates
didn’t have a clue. Nobody ever asked, and I never told. I wanted to fit in. But these were all people
who had a similar background. The experience of persecution in Germany
and of losing family. Family, whom we later found out
after the war was over, who perished in concentration camps
in the most dire circumstances. People who had to start life from scratch,
who came here with nothing. Many of the young people didn’t have
the privilege of going to school anymore. They were teenagers,
which included my husband. He was 18 when he came over here. He came in 1937. He brought over his parents
and his two brothers and supported them
until he went into the service. - His name was?
- His name was Hans Loeb. He was a wonderful person. I met him after he came out
of the service. He was with the American Army Air Force. He was stationed in Europe. He was in Europe still during the war. He was in the European theater still
during the war, toward the end of the war. He came back,
and I met him in the fall of 1946. In the club. We went on a hike. I came with one guy,
and I left with him. That started a two-month courtship,
and then we got engaged. I was still in high school. My mother had gone visiting my cousin
in Connecticut, and she said, “You see, I can’t ever leave you alone.
You’re going to do something.” I graduated in January of ’47,
and we got married June 1 of ’47. We were married
two weeks short of 40 years. - All that time you lived in Philadelphia?
- Philadelphia, yes. We had two children, Joan and Joel. Those children
are all grown up by now. My daughter, Joan, is married. She is a very versatile person, having been a television producer
and director at Channel 29, an art director at a newspaper
in Missoula, Montana, and finally a teacher
at Quakertown Friends School. She has a son, Asha, my oldest grandson, who is my sunshine. I have a son, Joel. Joel lives in Virginia with his wife, Susan. By the way, Joanie is married
to Robert Mitchner, a TV person, a completely well-rounded
TV person and engineer. My son is married to Susan Halsey. They both work for Marriott Corporation. My son is Director of Projects
for Human Resources, and my daughter-in-law
is in charge of menus. They work at the international headquarters
in Bethesda, Maryland, for Marriott. They have two children. The oldest one will be six soon.
His name is Benjamin Hans. The little girl is going to be three
in a couple of weeks. Her name is Lexis Halsey Loeb. That’s my family. Is there anything else you would like
to tell us about your life here? Your adult life here. My adult life here.
I went to art school after high school. I went to Philadelphia College of Art
for a short time. I worked at Temple University library
for a while. Then I got into the art field,
which was my goal. Eventually, after about five years
of marriage, I had children. We moved into a house, and I stayed home
and raised my children. I was very active in PTA. I was very active on the Jewish scene
here in Philadelphia. I was president of my Sisterhood. We belonged
to Congregation Tikvoh Chadoshoh, which was a German-Jewish congregation. My husband was one of the founders. At the same time,
we belonged to Adath Jeshurun, which was where I was confirmed,
where I was married. After Tikvoh Chadoshoh closed its doors
because of attrition, we were solely at A.J. My children were confirmed there.
My son was bar mitzvahed there. I’m still there. I was active with the Women’s Movement
for Conservative Judaism, Philadelphia branch. I went back to work
when my children were about 11 and 13. Again, went back into the art field. I went to school, to night school again. Worked, first for– I was art director
for a manufacturing concern for 10 years. I worked as a graphic artist and German correspondent
for an electronic firm. My last job was another ten-year stint
with a printing house as graphic designer. My husband passed away, unfortunately,
over nine years ago. We were just two weeks short
of our 40th anniversary. He had a bad heart.
He had two open-heart surgeries. He didn’t make it
out of the second one unfortunately. It was my sadness that–
he was already retired at that time– that being ten years younger,
I wasn’t entitled to be retired yet, and we couldn’t play together. That’s something
that I’ve always regretted very much. He busied himself
with part-time work in real estate. After he passed away, that was
a very difficult adjustment for me. I think more than any other
that I’ve had to make in my life, including the emigration
and resettling in various countries. But you learn to cope. You cope with everything else,
and you learn to cope with that too. My children were extremely supportive. My daughter, at the time, lived in Montana,
so that wasn’t too close, but my son was close by
and a tremendous support for me. After about two years, I met an old friend,
whom I had known 40-some years ago. Meantime, he had lived here.
He had lived in Israel. He’s a survivor of Auschwitz. He has his own story to tell. We started to see each other, and we’ve been together now
over seven years. At the moment, I’m recovering from surgery,
and he is a caretaker beyond description. - And his name is?
- His name is Max Percal. Did you ever go back to your home? Yes, I did. Our first visit back to Germany was in 1963, when we had the opportunity of joining
a charter trip to Düsseldorf for a printing convention,
which takes place there every year, with friends of ours
who are in the business. We were the only non-printers
on the plane. At that time, I have to tell you, I was very nervous
about returning to Germany. My nanny came to meet us at the plane. The whole plane knew about this reunion. Everybody watched this, when she stood there with a bunch
of flowers, and we saw each other again. At that time, my husband took me
to his hometown, which was Andernach, a small town on the Rhine near Koblenz. That was a very tearful experience. It was a very small town. At the time he lived there,
there were just 10,000 people. The Loeb family was very well known. They were in the distilling business,
wine and distilling business, liquor distilling business. They were well-known. He had been there as a G.I. and arrested a few Nazis,
which meanwhile got out again. As I said,
it was rather a tearful experience. I met a cousin again in Andernach,
who had been an Auschwitz survivor and was on business in Germany
from South Africa. I met the daughter of the Steinfeld family
on that occasion also. We talked about them being
our benefactors during the pre-war days. She had survived a concentration camp. What was her name? Her name was then Anita van Gelder. What was the name of your cousin? My cousin was Heinz Hessdorfer. He was my father’s sister’s son
who survived Auschwitz, who wrote his memoirs. That’s how we found out
what was going on in the camps. He had a brother and his mother, both,
who didn’t survive. At that occasion, I went back
to my hometown with my husband. My nanny and her husband
accompanied us. I boldly rang the bell at my house. I said, “My name is Liesl Joseph Loeb.
I used to live here. Would you allow me to come in
and show my husband the house?” The woman who had bought the house
from my mother was a schoolmate of my mother. She bought the house,
at the time, for peanuts. Later on, she had to pay restitution
to my mother. I think she was– I mean, she was as pale
as a ghost when I told her who I was. She let us in and look at the house. I realized that was really not nice of me. It was a bombshell,
but I didn’t want anything from her. I just wanted to see my house again. Somehow or other, that house was the embodiment of the security
of my childhood. I don’t know how else to explain that. It was always in my mind. I had to go back
and see if it was really there. That was the first occasion. On a later visit, we took our children. They were then of college age. My husband, his two brothers,
their children, we and our children agreed to meet in Germany,
in Andernach, to have an experience with our children. You were talking about your trip
back to Germany with your children. Yes. It was always in my dream that, someday, I would take my children
back to my hometown and to the house where I was raised
to show them their roots. It became a reality in 1979. No, it was 1975.
I’m sorry. 1975. I think both children were still in college. Joanie was two years ahead of Joel. As a matter of fact, it was arranged
so that the two of them would have a taste of Europe
by themselves by going to England for a week together. We then met up with them in Germany. Meanwhile, my husband had two brothers. Each brother had one
of his children along. We all met eventually
in their hometown of Andernach. We stayed in a small hotel
right on the Rhine embankment. We kind of took over
the whole floor of the hotel. Also, my nanny joined us there
with her husband. We visited the home
where my husband was born and raised. That house, by the way,
had a date on it from the 1600s. It was a very old house,
and Andernach was a very old town. - Where is it near?
- Pardon? - Where is it near?
- It’s near Koblenz. It’s on the Rhine.
It was founded by the Romans. As a matter of fact, they had
their 1000th anniversary a few years ago. The town of Andernach. There were Jews there already,
I think, in the 10th century. After meeting in Andernach,
I took my children to Rheydt, but this time I didn’t do
what I did the last time. I had written to the owner of the house, and I explained to her that I was coming
to Germany with my children. I would very much appreciate
if she would allow me, one more time, to show my children the house
where I was born and raised. She wrote back to me that by now
she wasn’t living there herself anymore. She had converted the house
into two apartments, but that she would instruct her tenants to allow us to come in
and see the house. When we came to Rheydt– By the way, in Andernach,
we also went to the cemetery. The Jewish cemetery in Andernach was beautifully kept by the township,
by the town. The children could see
the Loeb family burial grounds and have a reality of their heritage,
of their roots. We did the same thing in Rheydt. Actually, my mother’s family was buried
in the next little town, Odenkirchen, which is where my mother was born. That cemetery was not
in such a great condition, unfortunately, but we were able again to show them
the family name. Salmon family and Simon family
are the family names that were of the parents and grandparents
and great-grandparents and so on. My mother’s family was in that town
for several generations, whereas my father had moved
into the area from southern Germany. I took the children into the house. We took some pictures. The house had undergone some changes in inside decorating and architecture
since it was now a two-family house. It is in beautiful condition. It is a house
of a particular architectural style. They really put it into pristine condition. Also, the garden was again very nice. We had a big garden at one time,
but I think a bomb had killed every plant and every fruit tree
during the war. At that time, it started to look
a little bit like it was before. After we left the house, my children said, “You know, Mom, it was like
we were visiting Opa Zep.” Opa Zep was my father.
His nickname was Zep. I always talked a great deal
about him to my children. Whatever came up,
because I had many fond memories of things that we did together
or things that we talked about. My children were–
It was as though they knew him, and they felt they had had
a visit with him by visiting the house. That gave me
such a warm and good feeling. Another thing that happened on that trip,
and I remember exactly where it was. We were on a small funicular going up
some mountain along the Rhine. The kids–
We had not really talked about how we felt
about going back to Germany. We didn’t want them to have
any preconceived notions actually. The kids said to me, “You know, Mom, it’s nice to meet some
of the young people we’re meeting, but we always feel a little funny
when we meet people of Omi’s age.” Omi was my mother.
That’s what they called her. That was a revelation to me,
that they got this feeling because, naturally, those were the people
who were our persecutors, my mother’s generation. We were children, but our parents were the ones who were persecuted
by their peers. Somehow, the children got this feeling. I just felt this was
a complete success, this trip. It was very pleasant to be there
with the cousins. My husband took them to all the places
that he cherished as a youngster. We went on top of a mountain
near Andernach where he used to go with his friends and places where he rode his bike. To small towns along the Rhine
that are still very picturesque. We’d stop in restaurants and enjoy the view of the boats going
up and down the river and so on. It was a most pleasant experience. Could you just tell us the names
of your brothers-in-law and their children who were with you? Yes. My oldest brother-in-law
was Dr. Ernst Loeb. He was a professor at the Queens College
in Kingston, Ontario. Professor of Germanics. His wife, Margo, was not along on that trip,
but his daughter Karen was. She was actually married to a German boy
and living at the time near Frankfurt. Karen, today, lives in the Seattle area,
where her brother Dennis also lives. Part of the Loeb family lives in Seattle. My younger brother, Kurt Loeb,
was along with his wife, Lucille, who lives five minutes away from here. We’re very good friends. He had his son Mark along.
Mark has a brother, Bart. The two of them are in business together,
and they live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My brother-in-law now lives in Sarasota. He’s divorced from Lucille. We see him in the wintertime,
and I see Lucille often. Tell us about your next trip. My next trip to Germany was in 1982, when the city of Bonn invited me, since I had been living there
for a short time. We had heard about these get-togethers, and the City of Bonn paid for me and for my husband, the fare. When we arrived there,
our hotel arrangements had been made in one of the first-class hotels,
the Königshof on the Rhine. We also got 200 marks of spending money. The whole week had been programmed
with, not only entertainment, such as boat trips on the Rhine and a concert for the Beethoven festival
that was there and a wonderful party by the chancellor, a spring festival
at the chancellor’s house. We were also invited to attend the government institutions. What was the reason for the invitation? The reason for the invitations
that are still happening and were, at that time, in full swing, was to extend a hand of reconciliation, to build a bridge with their expatriates
that are still alive and to have some communication
with them. These invitations were made,
at the same time, with feelings of trepidation by the hosts, as to how they would be received,
these invitations, and how we would react to them
when we come there. As it turns out, the visits all turned out
very well, especially in the city of Bonn. First of all, because they seem
to have the financial means and the facilities to organize
a week of programs. As I said, not just entertainment, but also, for instance,
conversations with young people and inter-religious conversations
between Jews and non-Jews. We were hosted
by private families on occasion. We had much contact
with interested citizens. Naturally, there were also
disinterested citizens for these visits. This happened all over. Almost all the major cities in Germany
and many small towns have organized these visits. It happens that the city of Bonn
is still doing it. There are many people who– Many of the people surviving
live in Europe and want to meet each other
in their hometown every year. Each year, the city invites anybody
who’s ever been there and anybody who hasn’t been there yet. The people who’ve been there before
come at their own expense, both transportation-wise and hotel-wise, but the city organizes a week
full of programs that they provide. I don’t think any other city
does that but Bonn. Each year, I get an invitation,
but I haven’t gone back since. I have a friend who does go back
once in a while who– The daughter of the cantor
whom I mentioned before. She has gone back once or twice. That was in 1982, and in 1989, I received an invitation
from my hometown of Rheydt. I was invited to bring
an accompanist, husbands. In my case, it was one of my children. My mother received an invitation,
and she was very loath to go. She really never wanted
to go back to Germany. I convinced her she must go because she’s the one
who remembers the most. She’s of the generation
that knows so much, so much more,
because we were children. I convinced her. The two of us took
both Joanie and Joel along. Again, our fare was provided,
our hotel arrangements were provided. We did not get additional spending money,
but that wasn’t important anyway. What I was so excited about this time was that I was going to meet
some of my school friends whom I hadn’t seen
since we were ten years old. Let me tell you, that’s a culture shock. You remember this little boy, this tow-haired little kid
that you grew up with. In this case,
it was my father’s partner’s son. Being an only child, I was
so much at their house because they had four children
and each child had friends over all the time. I loved being over there. We were together almost every day. So we traveled and– First of all, we saw
people we knew in the hotel already. The first event was a get-together
to meet each other in the town hall in Mönchengladbach. This time, Rheydt is no longer
a separate community. Mönchengladbach has three towns
combined into one municipality now, the town where my mother was born,
Odenkirchen, Rheydt and Mönchengladbach. Some of the assemblies took place
in Mönchengladbach, and some of them took place in Rheydt. We also had a team along
from the <i>20/20</i> television show because somebody was
related to somebody who was connected with that show. They filmed the whole thing. My daughter also filmed the whole thing. I think her film is just as good
as the other one. There we were in a big hall
with some familiar faces, with some faintly familiar faces. Somebody pointed out a portly man to me with glasses and gray hair
and a mustache. He wore a hat. They said, “There he is.” His sisters, to be exact. And there was this little tow-haired kid
50 years later. Culture shock. Not only that, I fell around his neck
and kissed him and hugged him, and he looked at me like,
“Who’s this crazy woman?” He’s very Orthodox,
and this was strictly taboo. What is his name? I’d rather not say. He lives in Brazil. He didn’t see fit to communicate
with me, whatsoever. I do see one of his sisters
every year when I go to Israel. She lives in Israel. We commiserate about old times. As I said, her father
was my father’s partner. It’s a touch of home for both of us
when we get together. There’s another friend who lives in Atlanta.
Her name is Erica Hecht. Her father or her uncle was the controller
in my grandfather’s factory. We were in the same school,
but she’s not of the same age, but there, also, is a touch of home. Even though we were thrown out– we were thrown out of our homes,
we were kicked out– but there is this feeling
for home and roots that doesn’t leave you,
no matter what. Some people can’t understand that. They can’t understand why we would
want to go back to Germany, why we would want to be the guests
of the nation that didn’t want us in the first place. They don’t understand. First of all, because we wanted
to see each other again. See who’s coming. Secondly, because that’s
where our roots are. In those cemeteries are buried our
grandparents and our great-grandparents. Our communities were built up
by some of our contributions and our families’ contributions. Most of all, we had the chance
to talk to the young people there. That was one of my big reasons for going. When the invitation arrived,
first of all, we got a letter from a family who said they were going to be our hosts. A husband and wife, each one a teacher, each one born in the ’40s,
so they were not of the Hitler generation. They had two daughters,
and they invited us to their home. They came to see us and there were flowers
in our rooms from them. They are the loveliest people.
I’m still in touch with them. They were very gracious to us
and joined the program. This was voluntary. There were people there that didn’t come
out of the walls while we were there. But it was important. I spoke in several schools, in a Catholic school, an elementary school
and in a high school. Many of the children had been prepared
by reading literature about the Holocaust or reading stories. They asked intelligent questions. They were very concerned
whether we blamed them. That was a universal question.
“Do you blame us?” We can’t tell young people
that we blame them. I think they felt relieved. Since this was the one and only invitation
that our town extended, simply because they just invited
everybody who survived because it was a small Jewish community
in the first place, they, too, had their trepidations
about how we would receive them and how they would receive us and whether there would be animosity
or whatever, and it doesn’t happen. It really doesn’t happen. I’ve heard from so many people who’ve
gone over with a chip on their shoulder, or who go over and say,
“Well, we’ll take what we can get from them, but we don’t really want to go.” Or as somebody expressed in our group, “My heart said yes, and my brain said no.” And you come away feeling better. You definitely come away feeling better. I think these visits are important, because some of these young people
don’t know what is a Jew. They have no clue. Are we people with horns? Are we murderers with blood
on our hands of Christian babies? Who the heck knows what they think. What was the reason
for your trip to Miami? The trip to Miami took place
the same year in 1989, which was the 50th anniversary,
from 1939, of the voyage of the <i>St. Louis.</i> One of the survivors was a man
by the name of Herbert Karliner, who lives in Miami. Herbert Karliner was a 13-year-old boy
on the <i>St. Louis</i> when it passed the beachfront of Miami. The captain had tried to land us in Miami. He came very close and the American
government sent military planes to make sure that we would keep moving
and the shore patrol. The Congress sent those planes down
to make sure we kept on moving. We were that close.
We could see the hotels on the beach. We were that close. He thought to himself, “If I ever have
the chance, that’s where I want to live.” Herbert Karliner ended up in France. His parents took him and his brother
to an orphanage. He had two sisters. The two sisters and his parents
did not survive. The boys who were hidden
in an orphanage did. He came to the States after the war. He went to Miami to live. He opened a bakery. He did well for himself. He, eventually, wanted to give back
to the orphanage something, so he wrote to them that he would like
to support a child in that orphanage. After a while, he started getting letters
from a teenage girl. To make a long story short,
after three years, he went over there and he married her. He lives in Miami now.
He’s retired. He’s very active
with the Miami Holocaust Memorial. He was the one who organized
a reunion of <i>St. Louis</i> survivors on the occasion of the 50th anniversary
of our passing Miami Beach. He had the help of a local politician,
also a survivor actually. I can’t think of his name right now. They got in touch with– I don’t know
how they found various people, but we were 29 actual survivors in Miami, plus entourage– husbands, wives,
friends and whatever. We were lodged
at the Fontainebleau Hotel. I was rooming with a young woman
that I had met in the interim through my appearance
on <i>Good Morning, America</i> with my mother, when the film came out,
<i>Voyage of the Damned.</i> She lives in Boston,
and we’re still very much in touch. We were roommates together. We arrived at the Fontainebleau,
and I wanted to check in. The person says,
“Mr. So-and-so paid for your room.” I thought, “What do they think of me?
Mr. So-and-so is paying for my room?” But apparently, this politician
had decided to do that. He footed the bill
for our hotel stay in Miami. This was actually a weekend occasion. We had again a meeting, a get-together. Most of us didn’t recognize each other. We were children on board.
There was– The oldest person who came
was a 90-some-year-old lady who was remarkable
in her presence of mind. She was, of course,
of my mother’s generation. My mother didn’t make the trip.
She didn’t feel up to it. She was still alive at that time,
but she didn’t feel up to it. The youngest was a 51-year-old,
very beautiful woman, who was a baby in the arms
of her parents on the ship. Somebody had brought photographs. We were looking at photographs
from the ship. She said, “Oh, that’s me and my parents.” She saw herself
in the arms of her parents. They had ended up in France. When the Germans invaded,
her parents had given her to a farmer. Had informed relatives here in this country
that they had given the child to this farmer. The parents perished. After the war, the uncle and aunt
came to France and found her and took her back to the States
and raised her. Can you tell us the name of this family? I can’t. I don’t remember.
I’m sorry. That’s all right. But it was one of the outstanding things
of our visit to Miami. One of the unpleasant things that happened
was that this politician somehow had found what was supposed to be
Adolf Hitler’s yacht. It was a wreck. They wanted to blow it up in front of us. We really did not like
this particular part of our visit. He also arranged for a private yacht
to take us to the spot where the <i>St. Louis</i> passed
out to sea a little bit. It was just as I remembered– How close we were to the beach
and to Collins Avenue and to the hotels. Of course, now there are many more
than there were then, but it was such a friendly scene
that we saw as we passed by and were followed by the military planes
so many years ago. We had on board some of this politician’s
supporters as well. Otherwise, just the <i>St. Louis</i> survivors, none of their accompanying people
were on board. We had a rabbi and a priest and a minister
on board as well, who all said prayers. We threw flowers into the water
for the people who didn’t survive. Then afterwards, there were
many parties and so on. We got the key to the city
and all that sort of thing. We came away with good feelings,
but to my regret, we haven’t been able to stay in touch much
with each other. The next contact with <i>St. Louis</i> people was the one that was in Skokie, Illinois, to make a documentary,
the one that I showed you a tape to. When was that? I can’t think of the name right now.
It’s over there. Nine of us got together. Some of us had been together in Miami. We made this documentary. One more time,
a documentary was made in 1993. That was made
by a Canadian film company for a television presentation. The producer was an Iranian Christian man. The director, rather. The producer was a French Jew.
The cameraman was Dutch. It was a very international crew. There were, I think,
again nine of us who were together. Some of us had met before
in Miami or in Illinois. Some of us hadn’t met before. We did a film on board a cruise ship to get the feeling
of being on high seas. That film is called
<i>The Voyage of the</i> St. Louis. As a matter of fact, has been shown in France, in Finland,
in Canada, in Britain and Ireland. It will be shown here on August 29, 1996,
on the Discovery Channel. That experience was
a very interesting experience as well. At that time, my daughter, Joan,
accompanied me at the invitation of the director. Do you have some statement
that you would like to make in closing? To leave with your children, with the world. I think that everything
really goes back to a few things. The choices and the decisions
of my parents as to our emigration. The kindness and generosity
of the Blum family to bring us to this country. And our good fortune of getting away
with our lives by the skin of our teeth. I thank God for all that. Thank you. Liesl, can you tell us
who this gentleman is? That’s my father, Josef Joseph. The picture was taken
before our immigration out of Germany. He looks very grim on that picture. Oddly enough, my children
have made the remark that on almost all the pictures that they’ve
seen of my father, he doesn’t smile. I never realized that,
but he sure smiled a lot for me. Ready? All right. Can you tell us
who this lady and child are? This is my mother with me. I’m three years old.
My mother is 30 years old. I always felt that I had
the most beautiful mommy of anybody. Looking at her in that picture,
I can see why my father waited for her. He knew her when she was 11, but he
didn’t marry her until several years later. That’s my mother. The small picture is also, a picture
that was taken for immigration identification. She looks very serious on there. She’s 38 years old
and faces a very uncertain future. The larger picture was taken
on our trip to Rheydt in 1989. My mother was 88 years old. You can see she was radiant.
She was alert. She was a lady, and she was full of life. This is the house where I was raised
and lived for the first 10 years of my life. To me, it represented
all that was good in my childhood and the security and safety
that I felt in those first 10 years. It has been restored
by the present owners. This is a picture of the passenger
committee of the <i>St. Louis</i> that was formed when the captain decided he might need some help
in negotiating with whoever. Also as a liaison group
between himself and the passengers. From left to right in the background
is Dr. Max Weiss. Next to him is Mr. Herbert Menasse, the gentleman
who chose to go to France, and the only member of the committee
who perished when the Nazis invaded France. Next to him is Dr. Housdorfer, who lived in the same house with us
in London with his family. Next to him is Dr. Max Zellner. He was an attorney from– I can’t remember
just exactly from where. He was an attorney. He was there with his wife
and his two daughters on board. In front of these gentlemen, the chairman of the committee,
Josef Joseph, my father, who seems to be in a very good mood
on this photograph. I believe it was taken
when the committee was first formed because two other gentlemen joined
some time after that, a Mr. Gottmann from Berlin,
a businessman, and a Dr. Wendig, a medical doctor
who chose to go to Belgium and who did indeed survive
and come to the United States. We’re looking at my picture at age 10. It was taken for a German-Jewish
identification card. My hair’s stuck behind my ear
against my principles, because Hitler said that all Jews had
some recognizing mark on their left ear. This is pure legend. I really hated that picture at the time. This is a picture of the steamship
<i>St. Louis</i> of the Hamburg-America Line. It was a luxury liner that mostly sailed between New York and Havana
for pleasure cruises. This is a picture of Captain Gustav
Schroeder, the captain of the <i>St. Louis.</i> He was most sympathetic
to his Jewish passengers. He allowed Hitler’s picture
to be removed from the public rooms while Shabbat services were going on. He is the only righteous Gentile
honored by Yad Vashem who helped Jews before the war. All other righteous Christians were people who helped Jews
during the war. We’re hoping to have
an official ceremony for him in the near future in Israel at Yad Vashem. Ready? That’s a picture of me holding the roses
that were sent to me by Mr. Troper in response to my having apologized that the flower shop was empty
on the <i>St. Louis</i> after being at sea for 40 days. It was my first presentation of roses
by a gentleman. This is a picture that presented itself
as we entered the harbor of Havana, Cuba. I was enchanted with the palm trees, the pastel houses
that lined the coast area and the beautiful dome of the capitol. This is my husband, Hans Loeb,
whom I married at age 18 and stayed married
for two weeks short of 40 years. He was one of the most noble characters
I have ever met in my life. This is the weeding picture of my son
Joel Loeb and his wife Sue Halsey. They’re a very happily married couple. It’s a wonderful remembrance
of their wedding day. Do you like this picture? Yeah. Yeah, fine. There’s one of the two of them together
that’s nice too. Okay. This is the wedding picture
of my daughter Joan to her husband Robert Mitchner. The wedding took place in our garden and was
an especially memorable occasion because it was shared
with ours and their closest friends. These are my children, Joanie and Joel. The occasion is our visit to Rheydt
on invitation of my hometown. This is a boat ride on the Rhine River. They both look pretty happy. We all had a very lovely time together. This also is a picture of the trip
on the Rhine River. This time with my mother,
my children and myself. A trip on the Rhine
on one of the beautiful tour boats is always a treat, and I look forward to them. This is my oldest grandchild, my daughter
Joan’s son, Asha Loeb Reese Mitchner. Besides having such an auspicious name,
he loves sports. Here he is with his baseball equipment. And hockey and football
and whatever else there is, he loves it all. He is sunshine in my life. Liesl, what shall we do here? The one you’re holding in your hand
is the most recent. The others are also quite recent. They were done in–
Just do the two of those as they are. Too bad we can’t get the last one. These are
our two Washington grandchildren. They are Joel’s and Sue’s children. On the left is Benjamin Hans Loeb. He’s a mischievous,
sweet-natured blond munchkin. I enjoy his visits to me
and my visits to him each time. On the right side is my granddaughter
and our little princess. Her name is Lexis.
She’s named for my mother, Lilly. Her full name is Lexis Halsey Loeb. She is a very bright youngster
of close to three years old and gets into all kinds of mischief. Unfortunately, the fourth grandchild
is on the way and, at the present time,
we do not have pictures. This is Max Percal. He is chronologically an old friend, and, at the present time,
my loving companion. We are able to enjoy
our so-called Golden Years together by traveling together and enjoying each
other’s company and each other’s families.
