Stories Survive: Remembering Kristallnacht with Ruth Zimbler

hi everyone i want to welcome you today um to today's program this afternoon we have the honor of having um ruth zimbler here my name is gia pace i'm public programs coordinator at the museum of jewish heritage a living memorial to the holocaust and ruth is a survivor and she um is going to share with us her experiences today about kristallnacht so i'm going to hand over the floor to ruth if you have any questions if you could please put them in the chat and ruth will be answering questions at the end of her at the end of her talk so thank you good morning everyone oh good afternoon actually um i am ruth sandler's word i was born on february 27 1928 in indiana austria the picture that you see on the screen right now is there because it's my third grade class and it was the last time that i actually had a normal life because on march 12 1938 hitler marched into austria and from then on every day was another injustice and another indignity let me give you an example my mother-in-law took me to the library every two weeks and i used to take two books out and bring two books back and um i went to a library a few days after the angelus after march 12th with mama and i was returning two books and i wanted to take two out in the library and wouldn't give me any and i asked her why she wouldn't give me any and she said because you're a jew i said you know i was a jew two weeks ago when you gave me the books and she said don't ask questions just go home so that was a blow to me because i liked the books but then mama and i were going home and little two boys who were in my school not in my class because we have girls classes and voice classes and they walked behind mama and me and i said loudly enough for us to hear don't let the jews get ahead of you and they've gotten ahead of us and they spit on the ground well you know that had never happened to me before and i really couldn't understand it at age 10 i guess you just understand so much and not many more that was the first thing the second thing was happened to my mother my mother used to um shop like every housewife and you know did cooking and ran a home um she used to go back shopping every morning because you know we had no refrigeration at that time and um we um and to use and the farmers who brought their goods on every day didn't have refrigeration either no ice so if you didn't shop early in the day you got the dregs you got the wilted vegetables and fruits and stuff like that well jewish women could not uh go shopping before four o'clock in the afternoon so you can imagine what we got but we did the best recording that's what we have the third thing was my father my father used to go to the office at eight o'clock in the morning and come home at one o'clock for lunch and then have a couple of hours rest and then go back to the christopher about seven in the evening so they had scrubbing parties now that's explained those two um before the march into australia had an election campaign and since there was no television and very little radio actually what they did was they painted in the street in the garage they planted slogans and and stuff you know that that did you do during an election campaign uh they these nazis these brown shirts who were really hooligans um used to go to the better neighborhoods where you have educated people and people who were somewhat money we used to go to neighborhoods and they used to scrub i gave them a pail in soapy water and a scrub brush and made them get down on their hands and knees and scrub those slogans off well it's it was an indignity of course but my father was such a positive man and had such a good sense of humor he made nothing of it but mama who was standing at the window waiting for him to come home for lunch was very very upset of course she really was so frightened because they used to grab them in the street and sometimes take them to concentration camps dachau was the first one that was not necessarily built for jews but that's what it's in jews we my father worked for the jewish community in vienna we therefore lived in the biggest synagogue complex in vienna and we just show that slide please it was um the synagogue seat it's 20 240 people and um that's the one right there and on either side of it you see an apartment building where we lived in the one on the left and i could see the western wall of the synagogue for my room we were on the ground floor there were two four other families in this in the building they were all connected with the jewish community there were two kansas the chief counter of rihanna who trained all the kansas his assistant and two um families whose um husbands were deceased but they had works for the jewish community in very large capacities um is that that's all right i mean that next slide was good the synagogue was gorgeous as you can see that was the old encoders and it was magnificently built in 1852 so it had years behind it and it was beautifully constructed it was like a piece of art so next one please and it was uh it was such a pity such a pity when it was destroyed as you can see but let's see what comes in between and finally the next injustice to me personally was that they uh expelled me from school i could not go to to the public school that i went to around the corner anymore and they had designated a school that was three trolley rides away from us and took about an hour and a half into it my parents said no that's not for us and they enrolled me in a jewish school which was closer just monitoring a car right over and i started to go to the school in may and finished out the term and then um later on of course went back in september we uh we lived day to day and as i said one dignity after the other some of which i don't even remember but um the ones that really hurt me like the library is something that i shall never forget well if we didn't go i don't don't think we went on vacation that summer which we had done every year before that and we lived through the summer and everything went along just that way with injustices and with indignities and then of course to november 10th now the way november 10th came about was that a young man named hershel greenspan who lived in paris and was going to school in paris had parents in germany and he they suddenly deported them to poland which they did in many many many cases so he went to the german embassy in paris to find out how to get in touch with them and there was absolutely no way that they would tell they told him to go work and disappear he went back the next day and he got the same guy and the same answer and the third day he came back with a gun and he shot him and he shot him fatally but he didn't die immediately now hitler had been trying to think of some something like a big thing that we could do to the jews and um he just needed an excuse and this was perfect so as they were willing for him to die they planted this this uh christina as we called it the night of the broken glass and they were waiting the the brown shirts this is sa which it was called was um waiting for a signal to start mayhem and it came on the morning of the month of september of november 9th and 10th in our building as i told you the four other apartments all the people came to our apartment to be together because they were so frightened and it was dawn early early morning with me when the signal came at that point the caretaker of the synagogue who was not jewish came into our part when we said to mama take the children out of here and she packed the bag and she took us out to the suburbs to unarmed of my fathers who was an elderly baby um not by today's standards but then and they were going to mama was going to leave us and go back into the city which she did and when she got back into the city my father and our housekeeper marie was not in the apartment and the apartment had a german seal across the um entrance and it said keep out and don't come in so i'm sorry i'm trying to leave that oh damn i'm sad don't listen to that anyway so so anyway um they um they went out in the apartment and the apartment was locked up they do not enter had um swastika on it and german seal and so we could not we could not get in my mother couldn't get in she didn't know where my father was what had happened was when she was on her way back um the nazis came and took my father and marie to the police station and they interrogated them and they let marie go of course and they took my father to daho and we came we we were still at the apartment out in the suburbs when a big fat nazi came in and he said get out you jewish cow no you wish you go and get out of this apartment because it's now mine she started to cry she said i can't go i have to take care of your children i don't give a damn about the kids get go go go go it's my apartment so she packed us up and she took us back by the time she took us back it was like 4 30 in the afternoon or five o'clock and it was dark it was november like now and she tried to go into the apartment and couldn't so we came out into the street and in the street there was a lineup of all of the um fire equipment that you could possibly think of and the firefighters one after the other all along the block the synagogue complex took off most of the blocks so they were all in front of it and there was a nice fireman standing there and tanta went over to him and he said can't get into your apartment what should i do with the children he said well i think their parents are proudly deported and you'll have to find a way to take care of them and she's in the synagogue is burning the whole insider's burning burning burning and the flames are going up and my brother who was four years younger than i he was six um was scared to death when we saw this and you know i asked the students that i usually speak to to imagine this but you know you don't have to imagine it because about a year ago also i remember all the pictures we saw of the notre dame cathedral and for influence and how frightening that was but that's the way this was the flame spurted out out of the top of the buildings and it was the stained glass windows were broken and they were crunching under my feet which i feel every day for the rest of my life which is a horror power of that crunch cornish punch well we were walking along the street slowly because we just didn't know what to do when some neighbors and and friends from across the street waved us up to their apartment and we went up and they were so kind the fellas put us to bed and tanzan wanted to go back to to her home to see if she could get some things out or be there and so she um when she um she they wouldn't let her go that night so she went the next morning and as it was it was a miracle really because um that nazi had no legal right to her for her place and they let her live that louder life there through the war and everything so now we are upstairs with the wieners and we're looking out the window the next morning and mama's wandering around in the same clothes she would have said the day before and we don't know what's going on called her up she came upstairs she was surprised to see us because she really thought we were safe out there and um she said i don't know where your father is i don't know i can't find them and you remember no telephone the telephone was not no cell phone the telephone was in the house the house was like so it took a couple of days before she found him what happened was they sent him to dachau as i mentioned and um he um and he had a talent and at that time there would they were still trying to get rid of the jews they wanted to to get out so anybody who could get papers to any place to go had to fill out a myriad of documents and my father was an excellent interpreter of documents and used to help people to to get through all that red tape so they needed him so the nazis came and got him out and they um set him up in his office he had a couch in his office so let him sleep a few hours every day the rest of the time they brought them food and they made him stay there they had no way of getting in touch with anyone but she found it he was only in induction for 36 hours which was plenty anyway so um it took a lot of um protection as they call it um influence from a lot of people to get us back into our apartment took ten days so i'm gonna give you dates here's november 10th we're back in the apartment november 20th and the apartment is cleaned out they had broken the door and they had it had four panels and they it one panel out from the bottom and apparently a skinny person got in there and they took everything that was not nailed down and by that i mean everything stripped everything like bedding and clothing and certainly all the jewelry and the and all of the judaica all of those things everything was gone so we'll have to start and um we had to start from the beginning because november would go to sleep without a blanket it's cold in there so with friends help and was buying a few things and so on we got back from the apartment and it's now december 20th i go back to school and i'd come home my mother's sick and dead she has some strep stuff and she um has friends there and the friends have boxes of chocolate must and they leave and i say to my mother mama why what's this business uh nobody's first day last week or this week or next week and she said it's okay they just bought me the candy because i'm sick and they wanted to see me and that was it didn't it didn't sound right it didn't sound right to me and i said mama tell me the tools what is really going on and she said um tomorrow you go to hound i said no come on what are you talking about i'm not going anywhere without you and papa but my mother was one of those who you just couldn't say no to because she didn't accept it and she wanted to um and what what mama said you did you know it was one of those people and she had strengths such a strength of character which came in handy afterwards but then it was we got two cases out here and walked a little one in me a little one and we took some clothing and necessities the things that we needed and um packed the next day was saturday and the next day was yes was saturday so after the sabbath we needed to go to the um to the railroad station to get on a train mama was sick so my aunt lucia my f my father's brother's wife took us and as we walked through the um the courtyard which would have been my playground um we um she said to me the walls for the synagogue was still standing the whole inside was burned out but but the walls were still standing she said to me you better kiss that wall because you'll never see it again well up for now i've been keeping my cool but when she said that i fell apart that was the end and i started to cry and sob and yell and my brother who was a little kid and very cute he said ruthie you better stop crying because if you don't i'm gonna cry too and then there'll be real trouble so i had to stop crying got to the railroad station papa was already there because he through his job was taking off the kids and you can imagine what the feeling was on this railroad station because the parents always had to say goodbye to their kids and they didn't know when they were whether they would ever see them again and many many many of them did not we were 400 kids we were the first in the transport out of vienna on december 12 19 38. of the 400 kids by the way it was called the kinder transform of 400 kids 300 approximately went to england and we went to honda went to holland how that can the transport come about in england there was this wonderful wonderful woman who was a quaker and she had a friend in the house of lords and she went to him and she said look we've got to do something for these kids because the parents we can't do anything for but we can take the children for at least the length of this craziness at that time they didn't think it was going to end the way it did they thought it was going to be a short stint there with with those nazis so um they they um he went to the house of lords and he got a law passed that they would take ten thousand children over a period uh to england and they would take care of them and they would pay a small amount some for each child and so the law as the law passed they started these transports our whole train was devoted to children and we came from a big um a big um cities and small cities and teeny weeny villages from um austria germany and czechoslovakia and as i said ours was the first and it was the largest actual that went for at one time those the um uh training started after the sabbath and uh we started to pick up kids on the way as well uh so that we crossed many borders and every border we crossed the germans the nazis came on and harassed us so we couldn't even get a good night's sleep on the train but finally we got to holland in the morning and uh the lovely dutch ladies were there with hot chocolate and donuts and sweets and dulled them out to all of us now we who were staying in holland were separated from the almost 300 kids who were going to england and they it was the hook of holland as it was called and they got a ferry that went to harwich in england now next slide please yes and um that is the building that we went to it was a converted school it was in the hague and it had been set up to be a dormitory and fill all our needs we were sent to the school for six weeks for quarantine they didn't know our medical histories and they wanted us to be well and they didn't want us to bring any uh illnesses to the country so they gave us all the shots that kids have from they get it from the beginning from when they were babies until the the most recent shots and um and they installed us into beds and they uh had a kitchen there they fed us there and they um they tried to have us keep up with our schoolwork so they sent teachers in and people to take care of us they were really very very concerned and very very good after the six weeks oh and they tried to show us uh you know dutch life and dutch culture so we would get acculturated for a little bit and we after the six weeks we moved to and we were separated into three groups girls group a boys group and a mixed group and of course i had the brother so i was with the books group and they um put us into a wonderful wonderful building next slide please and there it is in a gorgeous park on the outskirts of the lake you see the three windows up on the second floor the only thing that's different from the way it is now to the way it is it was then was there was a big yellow slide that came out of those three windows it was a fire slide but um we used it as a as a as a toilet not a bubble toilet as um an entertainment we used to take a piece of carpet we used to sit three across you just slide out and run up again because most of us didn't have a toy that we bought from home because you know that that wasn't on our parents mind so but it was a beautiful setting and it happened that belonged to a wealthy family that went um to asia and gave it to the government to use and they'd use it for various things and um we were about um under a hundred kids there i had thought we were more but when i saw it again 1955 when my uh my husband took us on a trip it was the first time back and um i saw that couldn't possibly accommodate a hundred about maybe 60 or 80. but um we were from all over the place um as a matter of fact next slide we'll show you you see i as you know came from vienna which um austria was a landlord country so we had lots of lakes but we had no seashore and you can see me on the right of the a nurse and my brother the littlest one in front of the nurse and the other kids were from various places the one next to my brother to a boy and girl were um twins and uh they they were the only ones who left before us they went to australia their parents were able to go and they went to australia um the older girls were like and boys were 15 16 and um they came from berlin from other places in austria so for the first time we saw um this ocean and it was forever water and it was so interesting to us it was so exciting that um we really were impressed with with the immensity of this water and this was near the beach at scavenging and um it was a beautiful beautiful sight so after that we when we lived in in scheveningen we had um actually it was called taco creme work and it and we had chores to do with the beds and we cooked and we were we learned how to plan things and it was really very and and the teachers came they kept coming all the time and um we really really had um a safe environment and they were very very good to us and took us to many places one of the places that i'll never forget and that you should do if you cannot possibly do it go to holland in april because that's when the tools come out and oh what a sight to see they took us to the tube fields and between the two fields there were little canals and used to get into a row boat and we used to go uh it was rowing through the fields now the fields were what was so fantastically stunning each field was one color there was not one two group in the whole field that um was a different color from the whole field and it was so beautiful so so beautiful and you can't forget that that's something that sticks in your head forever well we were there from um january until the end of august the end of august suddenly they moved us into a city also in a beautiful mansion and we started to go to school and it it came about that that my father was able to get the um visa to the united states took him a year and a half he applied the day after hitler monster and so we were supposed to go back to vienna to be examined physically by the american council and um it got to be september first and of course that was the end of it because we had um ship splits for the 5th of september and that was forfeiting so we were we were in this beautiful building um in the hague and i started to go to school because the kids were left in my accent but i came home again on a friday afternoon on october 15th and uh they were whispering about us and i said what's happening what's going on and they finally told me that the next day october 16th i was going to um we were the two of us were going to the united states and again i said what are you talking about i'm not going further away from my parents this is ridiculous i'm not going but of course like my mother had made the arrangements and i told you nobody's actually to my mother even though at first when she called to tell them to put us on this ship it's called the old brotherhood um they said you're crazy we're not going to send them anywhere but nobody says no to my mother call them every hour on the hour for honorable and their family said we gotta get credit rid of this crazy lady and so she told you said yes on the saturday morning they sent a private car with a representative from the from the um dutch government to pick us up and he picked us up and he took us to amsterdam first to the german country or embassy and got us a passport would you put that on for me please uh there's the passport got us a passport and as you can see the red j for jew and the signature ruth sarah among china i mean my name is not sarah so um but all jews had to sign their names sarah and all men israel happens to be a member of this hebrew name so that was okay there anyway so he took us there first and then he took us to the american um embassy and they gave us a green card and he gave us some of what you know um permission to come into the united states the ship sailed at midnight on saturday night october 16th and we um i woke up the following morning sunday morning and i was seasick and i would see a whole way through and um we got into the english channel and there was a huge huge storm and it was the sea was yellow and the sky was yellow and i thought it was my last hour so i went into the library and i wrote a letter to my parents and i said i'm gonna die and this is the end um it's been nice knowing you but that's the way it is and of course i was going to send that better but it didn't happen so as i said i was seasick all the way over but you know what happened before was someone i don't know whether it was from an organization or how it happened but everyone who who boarded the ship uh in our situation got two dollars and forty cents and um since i was so sick and couldn't eat anything i wanted to um i wanted uh to drink mineral water which wasn't part of the deal with the ship so i had to pay for it but the first thing i did was to send a telegram to my parents that we were aboard i thought that was pretty good for attending i was only 11 about that if one loved me or anyway so and the two dollars from voice voices that that uh walter got my brother i pull aside he didn't touch so um we we uh had damage to the ship during that storm that i mentioned we lost part of the propeller and so it took us three or four extra days to get to the united states took us 10 days we arrived in new york in hoboken on the 26th of october and we were picked up at the ship by an armed of my mother's whom she didn't know none of us knew and she um and she picked this aunt picked us up and took us home she had a brown stone in the bedside at that time but she also had a pee green pontiac in which she picked us up and oh i never saw people in the car before because it's all about maybe maybe and i sat there in the car like a princess you know i was big shot and she took us home and you know my parents and i corresponded all the time that we were in time uh and papa always said everywhere he said i'll see you in six weeks i'll see you in six weeks because i used to be able to put my head around that you know we used to go to the country for six weeks every summer and um without him and and and we'd saw him again in six weeks so i figured that's all right well it didn't happen that way but when we got here to the united states it only took three weeks and they came they were on on one of the italian ships and they came to new york um up in the 60s i guess to the peers and my aunt took me there again they came on a friday and um my my father was literally literally famous because they had two huge crates built because they brought everything that they owned that could be portable because they didn't know where the next island was coming from so they had two of those and the um stevedores in genoa uh where they left from um took advantage and made them um give bribes and so he gave him the last the last cent and when i was able to give him the 2040 cents that i'd say from walter he felt like a millionaire because suddenly he had some money in his pocket and don't forget 1939 you could buy three rolls for a nickel so it was money so it took a few weeks before they got an apartment and in early january they had an apartment here two sticks of furniture did some place sydney uh and we moved in with them and started to go to school and since then you know that a real good life my father was a great american patriarch he loved his country we all did and we were so busy becoming americans as quickly as we possibly could it was wonderful and they have one ups and downs like everybody has and both my brother and i were beautifully educated and beautifully married and happily married and we've got each one of us has two children and i have six grandchildren my old brother only has three but what a wonderful life in his skin and there's a message that i give to everyone that i speak with and that is love one another support one another if you see an injustice do something don't be a by standard be an upstander and if you see an injustice grab somebody in the family who thinks like you or at school or a friend or whatever and go and do something to see something do something and you know some years ago when they left the massacre in golf they um wrote a song one of them was michael jackson i believe and they performed it for charity for a downfall charity and the song goes let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me so let there be peace on earth and begin with you you are the future you can make the future a better place than you found thank you all thank you ruth um we have a couple of questions from the audience um so i'd like to start with um chris peterson and she is saying that her class is wondering if you're still able to speak in your original language do you have any friends from your childhood you're still in contact with and what were your thoughts and how are you able to survive your time in hiding i wasn't in hiding ever i was out there in front of all the people but it was at home and it was without my parents but can i do my i can do my native uh language but you know i was 10 years old so it's a 10 year old vocabulary and it's it's not what it should be at age 92 so that is one what was the other part of the question i forgot um are you still in contact with any friends from your childhood so i have to tell you a little story if you if you don't mind two years ago was the 80th commemoration of christiana and um someone wrote an article about me and about what i just told you um in the new york post the day the next day there was a phone call to the museum to find out if she could get in touch with me because it sounded very very much like her life and they asked me and i said sure because i knew who it was and she called me immediately i just hadn't even hung up the telephone and after 80 years we were real nice uh she's in that picture in the school and um the first one that you saw and we love each other because we think american we are so very much alright she's fantastic and i'm so lucky to find she found me actually and now we we're in touch every week for sure and we need to see each other for the year before the lockdown so when we would love to see each other now but it's not so easy a cheese precious precious woman and i'm i'm really excited about that i meant i had a best friend sylvia but she um we grew apart here in the united states we really we were different from another very different uh so i think that answers your question thank you um what did your father do professionally in vienna that provided him with access to the visas oh my father was educated as a mechanical engineer but when the depression came and it came there as well as it came here uh dave short didn't need anybody to help him build more locomotives so he he lost his job and he started to work at the um jewish community in vienna which was a huge one and it was um the way it was run was that every jew was registered there from birth to death and he was in the um what you call it in the department that helped people and um and as i told you you knew how interpretive documents came to the united states and of course didn't have the language but with the help of of family um that we had not known he was able to get a job making iron duels he was making 23 a week and our rent was 23 dollars a month so you can imagine uh he worked there for it was a night shift job she worked there for a while and then got a job with the circle wiring cable company which is out in queens i think mass booth and um he worked there the rest of his life he repaired all the machinery and at that time you know it was almost war time it was more time actual but um and and you couldn't get parts for machines and if you didn't even it wasn't available he made them and he worked there for the rest of his life and he was able to give us a good life and mama mama was a superb seamstress and what you would almost call a dress designer and she made dresses the first dresses she made when she first came with four dollars a dress and if it had a jacket it was full it took her a week tonight but and she worked properly for to the end of the month and um was able to give us an educational though we went to brooklyn college which gave us a superb education and only cost us books and registration which i earned with afternoon jobs uh after i was 14 or 15 years old so that's what papa did thank you so somebody wants to know if you experienced um anti-semitism while you were in holland well i did not experience it there because until the hitler came in i didn't feel it if i'm sure it was there i'm sure that if you talk to my parents and ask them they will tell you yeah it was there but i didn't feel it the kids who used to come to play with me now for in courtyard were both uh christian and jewish and um that i didn't feel it here in the united states i really haven't felt it either but i know it's there i know it's there i know it's in the colleges i know it's in the streets uh so i really really didn't experience it as such not none of the research did you ever return to austria yes i did i um the first time my husband took us we went to europe as i mentioned to you before um he took me to uh no we didn't go to vienna no to looking to um he took me to um hound 1955 my brother was stationed in germany um and he um and i had been working for five years saving my pennies and i went to europe for six weeks and among them worked several days in vienna and it happened to be in september of 1955 and the russians were moving out remember there were districts um in indiana and that were each of the major uh powers of the penalties and our neighborhood was russian and um they moved out first and second of secular and i happened to be here at that time the second time i was there for any length of time was with my daughter and my daughter-in-law who my daughter wanted to see where i came from and i was there i think in 86 96 i can't remember anyways it was 20 some odd years ago and um they were the the synagogue had flattened and it was a parking lot for a while and then when we were there they were building a multi-use tall building but still belong to the jewish community but my building is standing and it's it's it's a working building there are several apartments now and there is a school in our apartment which is run by a google esl which is a very ridiculous school and that's kind of a revenge as my daughter called it that will show up this school growing in our apartment uh somebody asked what the name of the synagogue was that we showed earlier exactly what was that the name of the synagogue synagogue it was the area was a very jewish commun um neighborhood and uh the synagogue was called the leopold temple what was it like to move around so much as a child well it wasn't that much really i mean it was to holland and to america and then in the united states you know with several places but not that many and um you know you just go with the flow what can you do you can't you can't um you can't fight it it's that's that's it you know he's ago or you're miserable but then we refuse to be miserable and we just weren't wherever we needed to be ruth is there anything else you want to add in closing um how much time do we have we have about about four or four or five minutes okay let me tell you one story that i think you will find interesting and that nobody else will tell you above our apartment in vienna was the jewish theological seminary for the state of austria and we trained the rabbis for the whole state and we had a library that was outstanding there had been jews in vienna for 400 years and those the library reflected that and had fantastic thinkers seminal thinkers write books um sermons uh philosophy you name the most highly valued teachings that were in that library so where a few days after hitler marched into austria i was home in the afternoon after school with my friend sylvia who by the way was an american because her father was an american and they were going to america in a few weeks and my brother walter and our housekeeper marie and the knock came on the door and this man in seven enclosed but with that long black leather coat that the nazis wore the top ones anyway and he asked for the keys to the library and ma and marie asked for the identification and he gave it to her and so she gave him the keys and he went upstairs and he was up there for it was directly above us he was up there for a couple of hours and then he came down and he asked to see the children so we came into the room where we played and i don't know uh sylvia smelled something she didn't like she just didn't like him and she started to howl um he was patting my brother on the head and my brother was blonde and blood and he was um asking questions and they asked me and um marie said to him you better get out of here because these kids you are frightening the children so he gave her back the keys and he said to her i took what i wanted and i'm taking it out and tomorrow the trucks are coming for the rest and you know what happened to the rest they burned them but um he took these books and they were meant for a museum that was going to be built after there were no jews in the world to show that there have been such people and that there had been such a culture he left i didn't know anything about him when they caught this man in argentina and brought him to israel the newspaper started to carry the story and there was picture of several high level nazis and he was in it and i said oh my god that's the guy so that's when heisman was in my apartment and that's what it was like and i don't think you'll hear that from anyone else because it happened to me i think that's it thank you so much ruth um we have so much gratitude for you sharing your story today and um the chat it was a great privilege to be able to share this with you and i want you to tell everyone that you heard please and um we have so many people in the chat saying thank you to you and um uh have a wonderful day everyone and we're going to end our program here be safe everybody be safe everyone take care now

Channel: Museum of Jewish Heritage

Views: 4,712

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Id: Rlh4Jb49KPM

Length: 60min 6sec (3606 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020