Dorothea edited to page 11. 10-2009

Audrey Au listened to transcript and edited. June 2006.
Interview: November 10, 1998

Q: I realized that today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

No, that was on the ninth. Yes, yesterday.

Q: All right. Yesterday.  I'm sorry I'm getting the dates wrong, I get confused.  I said to my son, the older son, who went with me to Flanders, to see Verdun and the World War I cemeteries when we were in Belgium, which is the heart of the trench warfare, and he was very moved by it. He's studying German language and history and after we saw the American and the Allied graves, he wanted to see the cemetery where the German soldiers were buried.  There is just one cemetery – not like the Allied cemeteries -- and we had a hard time finding anyone who spoke French or German to give us directions. Finally, a truck driver gave us non-verbal directions. The cemetery was beautiful, surrounded by huge oaks, which probably were planted around 1920 and have now grown. (This was in the 1990s when we went.) There was no one else there. Alex wouldn't leave.  He said, "Mother, I can't leave. This is place is unbelievable."  So, this year, I mentioned something about the 11th of November, how on the eleventh hour they made the peace, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and how people were killed because of that, even though the war was effectively over. He's very pleased that they are celebrating Armistice Day again on the eleventh, not moving it to a Monday so people can shop-- especially after you see all those young men who died.

Yes, Armistice Day is tomorrow, isn't it.

Q: Yes.  Do you remember Kristallnacht?

Let me tell you, for one thing, I wasn't in Germany anymore. In fact, I left quite early.

Q: I did not know that. Why don’t you tell me when were you born, where were you born and tell me about your family.

I’ll tell you all that but, my cousin, who is the closest family I have, wrote a book about her memories. That might also be very helpful. I mean, very interesting for you.

Q: Yes, I'd like, it would be very interesting to talk with her.

It’s not a professional writer's book, but it is very evocative. She also writes about her experiences of immigration, refugee status and all that. So I was born in 1914, in a little town called Mercha Gladeach. What comes before, it's now called Mercha Gladeach, which is monk.  Mercha is Monk.

Q: Now, where is that in Germany?

Its in the West, West of Cologne, it’s very close to the Belgian border.

Q: So it far west. What were your parents’ names?

Kaufmann. That's my father's name,  Otto Kaufmann.  And my mother's name was Mata Lilienthal. That’s  sort of a family name. My cousin whom I mentioned is also called Mata.

Q: Now, what did your parents do? What were they, by occupation?

My father was a banker. He was for years the director of the Deutschebank, the German bank. First, he sort of apprenticed in London, went to the London School of Economics. He almost got his PhD but then his father died and my father had to come home and take care of the family. But then he must have done quite well at the bank as they sent him to Barcelona to open a branch and he was the director of that for eight years.  Then he transferred to what was then Constantinople.

Q: That's right.  I remember, Istanbul not Constantinople, as the song goes ["Istanbul (Not Constantinopole)" by The Thought They Were Giants].

That was before World War one and throughout WW1 they were in Constantinople.  They moved in very international circles, my parents.

Q: So your parents were married when he was in Constantinople?

I mean my father was there before but he went back to Germany and met my mother.

Q:  How did he meet your mom?

Through some family person. I think a cousin of her's who knew someone in my father's family. And my father came from Aachen.

My mother was from Mercha Gladeach. Her parents lived there.  My grandfather, on my mother's side, he had a cotton cloth manufactory.  I remember big balls of cotton.

Q: Do you remember your grandparents?  

Oh, yes. I remember my grandmother very well. She got to be 94 and finally came to the United States.

Q: So she came with you to the United States?

Oh, no. That's another story.  She and her oldest son, my mother's brother, I think they escaped to England finally, and were in England during the war.

Q: And your Grandfather had died by that time?

Oh, yes, my grandfather died when my mother was four years old. It was sort of a family tragedy.  Imagine, he had appendicitis which at that time, one didn't diagnose early enough. He died so unnecessarily and my grandmother had to run the factory.

Q: Things that generation went through, the life was so different then what ours is like now...

Right, any illness was such a catastrophe.

Q: I look at the difference just in-between  my children and that of my childhood.  I mean I had mumps, and both kinds of measles, and scarlet fever and Chicken pox, and my children have had none of that.

Right, Now we have more serious illnesses with which to cope.

Q:  Right. Yes, that’s right. That’s true. What about your father's family, had they also been in banking before that?

No, no, as a matter of fact I don't know, my father's father was some kind of small manufacturer.  But my grandmother's father was a rabbi, and certainly a very respected rabbi in Trier, which is Tri-er, you know where that is also Western Germany. Most families have been in Germany, they almost could trace it back to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the 15th century. I mean they were more historically German than many Germans who became the great Aryans.

Q: So they came from Spain.  

Well that’s part of the family memory, which is much more than the family of Jefferson, is just that old history, my cousin Mata's mother, she always said that her mother always told her that they originally came from Spain.

Q: So then your father and your mother met, and they went to Constantinople.

Yes. That was a very interesting period because he represented the German Reich, almost, I mean that was an economic representative of German affairs in Turkey.  

Q: What time period is this, how long before WWI is this?

Well, he got there in I think 1908 or 1910 and they stayed until 1919.

Q: So he stayed through the war.

Yeas, but Turkey was on Germany’s side. So they were safe then.

Q: Were you born in Turkey?

I wasn't born in Constantinople because my mother went back for the event to Mecha Gladeach because she wanted to be near her mother. I didn't meet my father until I was half a year old, when he came to pick us up and brought us back to Constantinople. So then, when the war ended Turkey went through a revolution. With Ataturk all the Germans were kicked out.  My mother and I, my father sent my mother and me ahead alone. Talk about travel difficulties, that is also one of the family histories that my mother always said that they had to travel third class without windows in November and it took three weeks to get from Constantinople to Berlin.

Q: They were on a train?

On a train! There's no other way to go then.

Q: And no windows.

No windows, I mean, they were, the train, was, I think, attached to various troop trains that were moving west.  You know, the Germans had been all over, and the troops had to miss war? So they gradually made their way back.  But I remember my mother, who was a very elegant lady, begging for food for her little girl, from whatever soldiers they met up with.

Q: You were five when this happened?

I was four.

Q: Four. Can you actually remember it though?

Yes, that I remember. I remember little episodes of that trip but [not] my mother.  Then we got into the influenza winter in Berlin. You know, right out of the war, there was a tremendous outbreak of flu all over Europe and especially in Germany where people were terribly emaciated from the war.

Q: Then in 1919, there still wasn't the blockade. Was there a blockade still on? Had they signed the peace treaty yet?

You mean the reparations and the blockade?

Q: There was a blockade after the armistice in order to force the Germans to sign. Was that still going on then?  

I don't know. I imagine the blockade sounds more like it was during the war.  What happened afterward was the that Germans had to pay enormous reparations. So the Germans couldn't get back on their feet.

Q:  You said you remember some things from that trip. What do you actually remember?

I don't know but very peculiar things.  One stop was in Bucharest and my mother stayed in some little hotel where she was thoroughly appalled by the conditions. I remember her lifting up the mattress and finding  insects underneath. Also, I remember late 1918, it was my fourth birthday, and she somehow found a little car as a present. That was a very treasured item. But, I don't remember anything of international significance.  

Q: Yeah, it’s interesting.  I think sometimes if you don't have a lot of toys, getting something means so much more to you.

Well, I'm sure I was terribly spoiled, you know, in my former existence, but we had to leave everything.  

Q: Was your father able to get out with no difficulty?.

I don't know if some things must have been shipped but my father was instrumental in having the Baghdad railroad built.  You know, it’s the railroad from Berlin to Baghdad through Syria all through Europe.

Q: He was one of the people that helped get that built?

He was the German representative. It was financed by the Germans and that was my father's responsibility.  From that time, saved a collection of Syrian glass or Roman glass that he somehow collected while that railroad was being built they found these remnants of Roman artifacts. I have a corner cabinet full of these things; they were identical with the vases in the glass museum in Tel Aviv.

Q: Have you ever had any of them looked at by a curator?

Well I should. It’s just terrible. If I did, I would have to pay insurance on it. I'm looking for a museum actually that specializes in Byzantine pieces, or art of that period. There is a new director of the Stanford museum and they have an East or Asian wing apparently.

Q: The oriental art museum at the University of Chicago had some nice things I remember, I don't know if they're on the major, but that's fairly interesting. I would think they would want to see it. Of course, you know, they are as valuable as they are whether or not you know it, so that really doesn't matter. You can still not insure them even if you know...

I should do it before the next earthquake. That’s one relic from that period.

Q: So how soon after that did your father join you in Berlin, you went to Berlin I gather?

Yes. He went to Berlin to negotiate with the central branch, the central office of the Deutschebank.  And everything was in such chaos, that  they gave him an office but there wasn't enough to do for him and so we stayed in Berlin for two years.  For one thing the Rhineland was still occupied, partly by Belgian, and partly by British troops.  We couldn't get back.  My mother wanted to get back to her family home and, apparently, I don't know how long that lasted that they couldn't get back to the Rhineland, but all I know is that my father joined a very old, private banking firm in Cologne in 1920 or ’21 and that's where we finally settled in Cologne.

Q: How far was that from Mercha Gladeach?

It was about an hour.

Q: So that was nice for your mother.

Yes, she was back in home territory. Maybe an hour and half from Achen, where my father came from.

Q: Do you remember anything from the period in Constantinople? Not really I suppose? 

No, I just remember that I had a room that looked out on the Bosporous. It was very blue. Oh, I remember one scene, but that doesn't belong in a story of the German. I remember playing with, you know, various little friends under the eyes of a nurse in a beautiful garden. We were playing with pebbles and suddenly-- it turns out-- a Muslim, must have been a priest, appeared and scolded us terribly. We were desecrating a holy ground there.

Q: Now was your first language German? Did they speak German?

My first language was German, yes, although the international language at that time, in Constantinople, was French.

Q: Did you speak French? I ask because a lot of the people I interviewed had a Governess who spoke French, and a lot of them were more comfortable in French originally than in German even.

I think I always had German.

Q: Do you remember anything about the time period in Berlin?  You must remember some things.

It was a very uncomfortable time, although, we had a large apartment on the ------.  But I don't remember a thing about that period.  All that I remember is that when we arrived my mother got deadly sick, you know with that flu. I was parked with some very distant relatives who I didn't know and who didn't know anything about children. It was terribly uncomfortable.

Q: Now, you had no siblings at that point?

No, I still don't.

Q. You still don't.  So then you went to Cologne. What was that like? Were things nicer for you then?

Yes, that was when things looked up. We first lived in rented quarters and then my mother must have been terribly depressed during that whole period.  For her it was a terrible come down from the position they held in Constantinople.  I think she tended to depression anyway.  Her sister encouraged my father to build a house, to give my mother something to focus on. She was terribly interested in art and architecture and such things.  They built a house right on the Rhine, designed by a man who was at that time one of the foremost architects in Germany.  My whole conscious growing-up period was really in that house.

Q: Was it a nice house?  Did it work for your mother? Did it pull her out of the depression or not?

Yes. It took about I think at least two years in the designing and building stage. So that kept her busy for quite awhile.

Q: So then you start school in Cologne, and what kind of school were you in?

My first years at that time in Germany, you know, Germany became a republic from having been an Empire. And one of the democratic features was that all children were supposed to go to Volskshooen to public school, whereas before, wealthier people sent their children to private school, and the private schools at that time were still better than the early years in the public school. My mother sort of stood on her head to see that I got into a good private school.  I remember being put in tutoring to work the system. They were dismantling the private school system, one grade after another. First, they took down first grade, then second grade.  Well the first grade they had already discontinued, so I had to be tutored to pass the exam and be able to manage in second grade. I was already very young even to have been put in first grade, so I was always a year and a half too young. I thought I was sheltered all through my childhood. I was more immature than the rest of the class.

Q: It must be difficult at that age.

Well, I just wasn't quite as mature, I had a terrible time with the German script and writing between the lines, which all the other children knew how to do, you know, in first grade. It’s that sort of thing that I remember, but eventually I adjusted.

Q: There are all kinds of issues that go on at that age, aren’t there? From physical development to emotional kinds of things other than the intellectual.  They wanted to skip one of our children and in third grade and I just said no 'cause I thought he would have problems later. He is pretty large for his age but still, there are maturity issues. In your case, you are not a huge woman now, but size can matter a lot when you are a child. There is a little girl in Nicky's class and she is about a foot shorter than he is, and the two of them together are very cute but I think she must feel a little awkward around him sometimes cause he is just so big in contrast to her. This kind of thing must be hard for kids, but that’s interesting to know how your parents dealt with this issue and how you adjusted.

I always felt very inadequate in sports. I think that is where my age difference really showed.
But I never really caught up with that. ntellectually, I did catch up.

Q: Maybe I'm jumping ahead too far, but you spent most of your professional life dealing with children and focusing on child development and teaching, thinking a lot about different types of education?

Right, I guess I was catching up from not having played with children as a child very much.

Q: Now, do you think any of that interest was sparked from that early period in your own life?

That interest started when I visited an Aunt in Aachen who had a pre-school child. In fact, there were two aunts who each had a little boy at pre-school age and they went to a Montessori school. She took me to observe them for a whole morning.

Q: And those were new in those days.

Yeah, those were new and very different from, you know, the usual German school system. I just got entranced with that whole process of Montessori.

Q: So you weren't very old, when you got interested? 

No. I was ten years old. I've wanted to work with children ever since.  Even when I came to this country, I told everyone I wanted to work with children, but I didn't want to teach.

Q: So you started school, when you were five, but you were in with seven year olds or six.

No, most of the others were seven.

Q: So you were a year and a half younger than your classmates.

Right. Fortunately, I found a friend, who was a very distant relative, who lived in Cologne and we went to the same school and class and she was only half a year older than I.

Q:  So how long were you at that school then?

At that school, I was three or four years and then I went to...don't know if you are at all familiar with the German school system?

Q: Not really.

I went to the gymnasium, that is a classical education. 

Q: I see. And how does that differ from the non-gymnasium public school?. Is this is more for an educated person?

The difference was we learned Latin and Greek, in addition to math and science and what not, and the way our Gymnasium emphasized the sciences and math. Ours was a terribly ambitious school and we had to cover the same math and science as the other school in addition to Latin and Greek.

Q: I see. Then would you also be expected to learn a modern language in addition to...

Well the first language, even in that younger school was French, and then after a while we got English... I think at one time we had 13 subjects that everybody carried.

Q: So you have five languages that you know?

Yeah, well after a while, I think after the first year of gymnasium, we were allowed to drop English.   Which, of course, would have been the most useful language.

Q: So, how good is your Greek?  How many years of Greek did you have?

Four.

Q: And four years of Latin?

Six years of Latin. Yes and the boys—we started in—well it would have been the freshman year of high school with the Greek, and two or three years before with the Latin.  But the boys started right in fourth grade with Latin. We had to catch up with them too.

Q: Boys were given a different education, still?

Yes.

Q: Did you go to a coed school?

All of these schools were girls schools.

Q: Girls only.  Yes, I was wondering if that were the case. So even up through what we would call high school you were still just with girls?

Yes. Of course, much smaller classes.

Q: How many kids would be in a class?  How many students in a class?

What I know is that in our graduating class there were twenty-three people, with us, you know, girls.
And they kept some kind of cohesion.  But I left shortly after the end of the final exam, but the girls stayed in contact with each other.  And fifty years after the final exam, they invited the three Jewish girls who had been in the class to come back to Cologne. All expenses paid and it was a great reunion.

Q: Did you go? 
 
Yes.

Q: What was it like?

It was a very moving experience.  Of course, you know, in a way, all these women had suffered so much more than I had personally. I mean I consider myself very fortunate.  What they went through in the war, and most of them had lost their husbands in the army and various ways. They were rather, well, they were quite a sturdy lot, but rather sad. You had the feeling they had atoned for all the sins that they had laid on the Jewish girls. They were atoning also in the way they greeted us.  In the way they went out to make it nice for us: the best hotel, wonderful meals, and very cordial, the reception.

Q:  Did you keep in touch with any of them before this, and after that?

Well there was one woman who kept this class together, who stayed in Cologne all the time and kept in touch. She must have written to us after the war.  I don't know how we got back in touch.  But she was the one who arranged all these things.

Q: Did your husband and children go over with you?

Yes, my daughter went with me. They put her up, too. She was very impressed.  I mean we had been back to Germany before.  By that time she had, my daughter, studied in Stryborg for a year, her junior year abroad so it was coming home for her.

Q: Did you have any problem going back to Germany after the war?  Was it difficult emotionally?

We went back the first time in '54.....Well, first of all, I should tell you that when we got married-- we got married in '37-- in Chicago, my husband, parents and I were still in Germany. They couldn't come to the wedding and I wouldn't go back to Germany, unless I was already married.  It was very risky to go back.  

Q: When did you actually leave Germany?  Shortly after Hitler came into office? 1934 or 1934ish?

I came to this country in 1934.

Q: Did you go someplace else before that?

I had a brief period in England, which was not a very happy one, but I had heard that Maria Montessori was giving a course in London and I wanted to learn English before. I had a short period with a family in England.

Q: So you had your abitur?

I had my abitur.  You know, I wanted to study education in some way but I knew I couldn't go to a German university.

Q:  This was '34 so you were restricted at that point.  So you went to London to study English?

Actually, in 1934 we were invited by an uncle and aunt who lived in New Jersey to come on a vacation and I went with my parents for six weeks to zoomerbie.  And this aunt and uncle invited me to stay and come on a trip with them while my parents went back home since they weren’t ready to leave yet.  I had permission to stay and study for half a year at Columbia.  I made it sound like I was going to stay only briefly.  My mother insisted that I go somewhere in Europe.  She knew I couldn't stay in Germany, but she didn't want to give me up, as the only child, to go to the United States.  But then, in that half a year became a whole year, and I went back in 1935 with great trepidations to emigrate on a regular visa.

Q: During this period, what is your sense of what is going on? I know we've jumped around a little bit, but since you have brought it up, I wonder when did you start to first become aware of things that were starting to happen politically? What are your first sort of political memories?

That is subject to a whole lot of interview because my experiences, even though I knew all these Aryan laws were passed, there was some effect on my parents. They had to give up their female household help, because that was not permitted anymore in a Jewish household.  They had to give up various positions and [pause]. It wasn't simple or clear cut. The time before the Kristallnacht was threatening but not life threatening. We were in the Rhineland, which was a Catholic area, a very anti-Nazi in general. I was surrounded by friends who were very loyal, so I will have to tell you about my school experiences, and other experiences that were very positive in spite of the brewing disaster. But I’ll just, to give you one example, I belonged to a youth movement that was called Deutchfrascha.  It was a non-political non-religious youth group, but it was a national organization of which we were a small part.  And when the Hitler edict became enforced, that all youth organizations had to join the Hitler youth, we resigned in a body. And nothing dire happened apparently.  We formed our own hiking group and rented a little farm house in the country where we met every week because we couldn't use the German youth hogties anymore. We had this feeling, you know, of upcoming dread period...We were never meant to feel Jewish in any way or any different from the other kids.

Q: So it’s a little bit as if, I suppose the way a lot of liberals feel when the conservative period kind of takes over in this country.  That there's a change but it hasn’t yet affected them...

Right.

Q: If you live in Orange County and you live in Irvine on the university campus it's like, “Well the rest of the world is kind of crazy, but the people that you know, it doesn't really affect you very much”.

Well, I had the same feeling. For instance, the people in my mother's circle, my mother and father's circle, who were sort of the elite of Cologne society, they withdrew much more physically from social contact with my parents.  But I sort of scorned that layer of society anyway. I thought my friends were much more educated and democratic.

Q: Your father was running in some pretty fancy circles, if he was the German representative who was involved in this railroad.  This railroad was a big thing. I mean, I can remember. He was high in the government.

In social circles, internationally in that concept in that period.

Q: But I'm just thinking in terms of how your father viewed himself...was he... were they...?

Well he was a sort of centrist on the nationalist side. You know he always felt very strongly he was a German and that was entered in the German Government and it was a terrible blow for him. It took him years to comprehend that all of this might mean he too would be affected personally.

Q: Yes, I have the impression from what you are saying that this was a very well educated family, he was particularly well educated in a well educated kind of cosmopolitan family. He was even more well educated and cosmopolitan, um… it’s a little bit the way one kind of feels now if you encounter a racist, I mean, you don't meet people like that. Was being Jewish part of his identity particularly?
 
No, he had more of a Jewish memory than my mothers family, but eh...

Q: Cause his grandfather...

Very assimilated, his mother. I think she still kept a Kosher house.

Q: And his grandfather had been the Rabbi.

Right.

Q: Your mother's family was even more assimilated..

Right.

Q: How did—do you remember any family conversations or Hitler, or talking about Hitler or this kind of thing?

Sure, talking about Hitler. The intelligentsia just couldn't believe that he [Hitler] has come up and he'll come down very soon. You know? Something as crazy as that can't last but, you see, I wasn't there after '34 when things became really tense and serious.  So I don't remember conversations like they took place, you know I'm reading this book, this biography of Anne Frank, I think I told you...There I think you get the real picture of how the noose was tightened.

Q: But I'm interested because it sounds as if, in your own family, you were the one who was very prescient and saw the handwriting on the wall that other people were not able to either see nor read nor interpret.

It was more my generation of people in my generation who were and knew they were Jewish, even though they weren't practicing in any way. We had an uncle who moved to Hamburg in Holland in 1929.  He was even more prescient. He was an art historian, and for some reason or another, I kept visiting him and his wife, and he kept hammering away at me that I mustn’t stay in Germany, there was no future for me in Germany, there was no sense even trying to get to take any classes at a university, and that had a great influence on me.

Q:  So it was not just the fact that you’re at a point where you are bright, you’re— the normal route for you would be to be educated and go on to the University, and now its closed.

Yes.

Q: Did you have discussions with your parents because I'm, the impression that I'm getting is that your parents weren't at that point, partly because maybe that hadn't had as much contact with this uncle, but also...

Oh no, this wasn't an uncle, it was sort of a name uncle. He wasn't related to my parents. He was related to this friend of mine with who I went to school, and uh it was her uncle really. 

Q: What happened to him during the war, I'm curious?

I think they went to England and I lost touch with them because I stayed in the United States.

Q: When you are having the conversations with your parents, you leave, you go to England, then you go to the United States for a year.

I had a terrible time with them.  To go to England first. They didn't see any point. In fact as I told you it was a bad period for me, because I really, I think it was sort of a depression, knowing that I, I didn't know anyone in England, but I couldn't go back to Germany, really, It was silly to go back to Germany, It wasn't my country anymore.  ... And as a matter of a fact my parents came and picked me up, when I was a, hit bottom, and brought me back to Germany for a half a year. That was in '33, just the year that Hitler came to power.

Q:So where were you living when Hitler actually came to power? (RP)

That was the year I got my abitur, that was the year I graduated. The abitur is sort of the equivalent of two years of college.

Q: So you did this, you got this degree in '33, then you went to…?

I went to England, briefly, and then back to Germany, but then in May '34 we went to the United States for vacation and then just stayed for a year and then went back.

Q: And they want you to go back to Germany, its now '35, and you meet Gabriel.

In the summer of '35, I went back, and I went back on a boat, you know at that time you still traveled by boat, and I met E. Spier... I don't know if you knew Hanz Spier?

Q: No.

He was a very famous sociologist.  Anyway, I met her with her little girl and she was going back to see her parents in Berlin.  We both got very close because we were both terribly worried about going back to Germany—were we going to make it back to the States safely?  And she said, well, if you get safely back to the States give us a call, which I did.  She invited me to a party at their house, and at that party I met Gabriel in 1935.  It must have been June of '35 that I went on the boat back to Germany and it was still perfectly all right and my friends were still very close, very friendly.

Q: So you were there for the summer and then you went back and you met Gabriel in the fall. And you were studying at Columbia then, is that what you were? Studying psychology?  How long did you know Gabriel before you got married?

Yes. We got married in April of '37.

Q: So you knew each other for a couple of years and your parents. But now you said you went back to visit but you wouldn't go back unless you were married, is that right?

Right!  

Q: Were you afraid your parents would make you stay?

My parents wanted me to come back and get married in Germany in their house. I said no way!  They wanted us to come for the summer and I said 'no way.' I wanted to be safely married.  So we got married in… during I think Easter vacation or something.

Q: What were you afraid of? That your parents wouldn't let you get married to him or that...

No, I was afraid we would be persecuted. As a Jew, I would be caught and imprisoned and sent to a concentration camp.  The concentration camps were in full bloom already by '37. Well, if I was married to an American that would protect me. That made the difference.  I had applied for American citizenship.

Subject:  D. A.  001
Kristen R. Monroe, Interviewer
December 4th, 1998
Second Interview

Side A

[Investigator Labels Interview and places call]

Counter 006

KM-  You just got married to Gabriel...

Well I told you that we didn't get married in the summer, you know, with a honeymoon.  We got married on a weekend in Spring because we were planning to go back to Germany and visit my parents, believe it or not, in 1937.  So I didn't want to go.  I told you that.

KM - Eh Huh... Yes you said you didn’t want to go because you were afraid something would happen.

001- I wanted to be married to an American but that's also unessential.
Q.Im sure thats not why you married him, though.

001- No, I offended my New Jersey relatives terribly because they had a lovely garden, and they were going to give us a lovely wedding. They were very offended that we got married in Chicago quickly over the weekend.  

KM- No you, were you in grad—weren't in graduate school there, you were at Columbia, right?

001- Well, by that time, I was in, let’s see, the School of Social Services Administration at the University of Chicago.

KM- Oh I didn't realize you had gone there.  But you met Gabriel in New York.

001- Yeah, right.

KM- Now, he taught at Chicago for a while didn't he?

001- No I think during a summer.  He went from Chicago to a Brooklyn college, his first job.

KM- So what was Gabriel doing in Chicago? He just came out to visit you and then you got married?

001- No, no, no.  By that time it was 1937. We met in 1935 in New York. He just spent a year in New York.  

KM- I see. Was he living in Chicago?

001-  What?

KM- Was he living in Chicago?  Both of you were living in Chicago?

001- [Pause abruptly]  Yeah.  I had transferred to Chicago in the meantime.

KM- So you were at the School of Social Work. What was Gabriel doing?

001-  Well, he was finishing up his dissertation.

KM- I see.  Okay. So then, you just went down to the justice of the peace kind of thing and got married?

001-  Well in fact we got married twice: a justice of the peace and Gabriel's father married us.

KM- Was he a Rabbi?

001- Eh huh.

KM- I thought so.  Yeah okay.  So that was--

001 - So that was very small, in-house family wedding.  You know it was in one of his sister's apartments.

KM- Eh huh, that’s nice. This was in Hyde Park?

001- Yeah.

KM- Yeah, that's great. So then you wrote and told your parents were married.  So what was the actual date of the marriage?

001- April 29, 1937.

KM- Okay. So you wrote and told them you were married. So were they upset?

001- No. Well they knew we were planning to get married.

KM- When did you leave to go to Germany that summer?

001- I guess it was June, you know, after class was finished.

KM- So what was it like?

001-  It was a strange interlude, as you can imagine. 1937. But, you know, we still had a lot of good friends who stuck by the family, and I wanted to... mention a particular family, you know, sort of as a case study of people who were really very courageous in keeping contact with their Jewish friends.  Eh hmm. My voice isn't doing very well this morning.

KM- Do you want to get some water or something?

001- I should have had a glass of water.  

KM-Don't. That's alright, take your time. Go get a glass of water.

001- Okay.  [Counter 118  Leaves. There is a long silence.]  

Counter 133

001- Hello.

KM- Hi. That better?

001- Could we stop for a minute and could I ask you…

KM- Sure.

001- I forgo what the focus of your study is?

Q Partly, I'm trying to find out several different things. I'm trying to find out what it was like for people who lived through this experience. I’m curious as someone who studied it historically, try to get a feel for it, for, for what it was like.  And I can imagine, you know, just as we're talking, for example, and you’re talking about going back, you haven't been there for three years or four years?

001- No, I'd been there in '35.

KM- You'd been there in '35. But I know if I go back some place, particularly when things are changing so much, you know I can't imagine what it must have been like for you to go back there, you know, what kind of feelings were you being bombarded with?

001- Well it was probably very atypical [laughs] of other people who had any Jewish connection.

KM- That's alright. It doesn't matter. I'm just interested in what your's were— what were your feelings like?  Did you take a boat over?

001- Yea.

KM- Yea, uh huh.  So where did you dock?

001-We took— we took a boat over and back.  It was very nice.

KM- Yeah, it was nice. Yeah.  Did you go to Hamburg? Or where did you…

001- Uh, yeah. We arrived in Hamburg and my parents met us. My father had reserved a bridal suite at the Four Seasons hotel.  [Laughter]

KM- Oh, that's nice! 

 001- It was sort of a different world.  Stepping back into that kind of a world.  As I remember, my activities were focused on getting sort of a trusoe together.  I went with my mother to pick out furniture and glassware.  It sounds crazy now but the idea was, at that time, people were still allowed to ship things out of the country, but not money.

KM- Right, not money.

001- And my parents were very anxious to get as much out as possible.

KM- Sure.

001- In a very materialistic way, I was the beneficiary of that.

KM- Yeah. Well it was a very sensible thing to do, actually. Yeah. Absolutely.

001- Yeah. Right.

KM- But when you were actually coming into the harbor, you know, what is it like when you’re standing there?You’re a young person, newly married and starting a new life. You’re going back in some sense to the old life…

001- Yeah.

KM -  To introduce your husband to this new world. What do you tell him? What do you say about what it’s like? How do you feel...

001- You know, with great trepidation, but uh.

KM- Yeah.

001- The whole family, the extended family, wanted to meet him; we were wined and dined all over the place, but it seemed so terribly incongruous to what was really go on...

KM- Well, no I don't think it's that. I don't see that in some sense it's that incongruous in the sense that you didn't know what was coming. Obviously, if you knew what was coming, it would have been different by I think there is yeah...

001- Yeah, it had already hit, in that, uh, Jewish households were not allowed to have female helpers..

KM- Aryans.

001- I think I told you that. So uh…

KM- Yes.   Yeah, yeah.  Is there the feeling, though, that this was just a temporary thing? It will get better?

001- It it...

KM- life will return to...

001- Well, I still had hopes that this wouldn't last.

KM- See one of the things...

001-  But people in my parents’ circle had withdrawn from them, people, whom I knew and was still friends with, were very warm and welcoming.

KM- Uh huh.

001- And this is what I wanted to mention, I mentioned the Fuchs family.

KM- What was? You didn't tell me their name. What was their name?

001- Fuchs - F-U-C-H-S.

KM- Eh huh.

001- The father was a prominent lawyer and the mother was a Quaker. It was probably because of the Quaker influence that they were deeply involved in the peace movement and eh they eh did the eh.

KM- They stood by your family and were very close to them.

001- Yeah, including each one of the children with whom I was very close friends.

KM- Now, what happened to them after the war or during the war?

001- Well they had all kinds of terrible events during the war.
The son of the family was caught on the Russian front.  You know everybody had to enlist or was drafted and he spent time in a Russian prison.  

KM- He made it through?

001 - And caught tuberculosis and suffered from it for years.  The youngest daughter, as a matter of fact, was living in Chicago at that time. When we got back, a year later, when Rick was born, she came to help me for half a year in the United States. At the time, I didn't even realize how courageous that was, you know, to visit a Jewish family, you know, outside of Germany...

KM- And she went back?

001- ...in 1938, 39, you know, [it] was almost unheard of.

KM- And she went back?

001- Yes, she went back because it looked as though there would be war and she didn't want to be totally separated from her family. She was going to study medicine and she couldn't afford to study in the United States so she went back.

KM- You said they were involved in the peace movement. Were they involved in the resistance during the war? 

001- They were involved in the resistance movement like a lot of people.

KM- Yeah.

001- Did I mention a pamphlet I found? It's a series, it's called called Information for politi-en berdedt.  Political Education.  And the special issue is called Deutsche leaderstan?  1930-1945.  Maybe I should send it to you.

KM- I'd love to see it, yes.

001- It is unbelievable, you know, how many really valuable people were caught in this net of, you know, denunciation.  The German people.

KM- Yeah, I'd like to see that. That was one of the things I wanted to get at because you and I spoke after the panel, the Goldhagen panel a couple of years ago, and I had the impression from reading the Goldhagen book, that there was relatively little resistance in Germany...

001- Well there the tragedy of it was that as soon as anything was mentioned people were removed and placed into the concentration camps.  This publication is just full of people from the clergy to the military who tried to resist.  Very little is known is about that. Gabe wrote this book called "The Struggle for Democracy in Germany," in which he had interviewed a lot of the resistance people and there was no interest in this country. It was much more convenient to dump all the Germans into one pot, you know, with the end result being the Goldhagen book.  [chuckle]

KM-Yeah, this, Gabriel...

001- You know, there were military circles, there were intellectual circles, there were you know, former peacenik circles, just lots of decent people, but they didn't have a chance.

KM- Did Gabriel?

001- I was just reading a book by a German, I think I may of mentioned that to you, who lived through the whole war, as a German.

KM- Is this Victor Klemperer's?

001- What?

KM- Victor Klemperer? I've forgotten whose book this was. 

001 - This was a book by Johan Valsgood Verlit, who is a true, true blooded German.

KM- How do you spell his last name?

001- V-E-R-L-I-T.

KM- What's the book called?

001- There's a friend of mine who sent it to me this year because he was so impressed by it.  Do you know any German?

KM- I don't, I'm afraid. I'm sorry.  

001- Because it is a play on words, the title "How I let myself be led by Hitler" and then in parenthesis "Mis." So it's "misled." 'Cause, you know, he saw at some point in the middle of the war, so terribly, what a terrible thing Hitler had done to Germany.

KM- Right. Right, well...

001- But you know, it comes out in this book. By 1943, most Germans were convinced that they were losing the war.  But the Allies' policy was so destructive, by saying that there has to be total surrender and everybody was a Nazi, they figured 'what's the use of working for an early peace?'

KM- I've heard several... several people have mentioned that to me.  One of the rescuers I interviewed was involved peripherally in the July 20th plot and he claims there actually was a link between Hitler and Churchill. Also, that the plotters and Churchill had agreed to Von Stofenberg's demand that they allow Germany to have some conditions, if they would surrender and he would kill Hitler.  I don't know if this is historically accurate or not, but the man had a lot of documents that are now in his daughter's basement. I hope that some historian will dig them up and go through them.  But they also said the same thing that if they had been able to find someone to negotiate on the allied side that it might have ended things a year earlier, he thought.

001- Yeah. One of the famous ones was Trot? A very charming man. I guess he was a diplomat and he tried both in the United States and Britain just to drum up some response to a conditional surrender.

KM- He was um, killed in the aftermath...

001-  Yeah, he was.  He was in the Kriser circle. Now, you’re familiar with Helmutmen mark?

KM- Yeah, yes.  There is a wonderful book by Kristabelle Bielenburg.  Have you ever read it?

001- No.

KM- She--her husband was a lawyer from Hamburg--she was an Englishwomen who went over to study opera in the ’20s and fell in love, and stayed there.  At one point, came back when they thought there was going to be war and then really couldn't live without her husband and so she went back?

001- What's the name?

KM- Bielenburg.  B-I-E-L-E-N-B-U-R-G.

001- Oh, I see. This is the woman who was married to a German.

KM- Yes, a German lawyer and he went into government because Von Trot convinced him to do it. They worked in the resistance and she wrote her biography.  Her husband was arrested and she managed to get him out of prison because one of her uncles had been in the British cabinet and was Irish, and so she convinced them that they would need friends and that she had friends in high places after the war, so they let her husband go and he hid out the last days of the war.  It’s a very interesting book and it’s one of the best books that I have read that explains why people would give their lives for the resistance, fighting against it.

001- Right.

KM- Its out of print but I'll see if I can find a, I have a copy of it around someplace.

001- I wonder It would be the same book, was it paper back?

KM- Yes,

001- Yeah, that I did read, but, the name doesn't sound quite right but it was exactly the same situation.

KM- Yeah, I think it had two names: One was Kristabell and the other was something else, I don't remember, but one of her children actually married one of the Von Trot's, I think, and another one married um… I forgot someone else who, Shulenberg?

001- The one I remember had a son and they ended up in the United States.

KM- They ended up in Ireland after the war was over. They didn't want to go to Germany nor to England, they went to Ireland and I think became farmers.  They just...

001- Well this family they ended up in… 

KM- Different one, different one yeah.  That was one...

001- Anyway, but you know as far as the resistance is concerned, I had a very interesting contact as a teenager with a place in Bavaria that had paying guests and a friend of mine went just because we were fascinated by the people. There were a lot of artists. Very international, it was a very stimulating setting.  After the war, I visited the woman who owned the place.  She was married to a Munich publisher.  He had died in the meantime.  But she told us that there were secret meetings of the Kriser people at their house, and she knew some of the high military personages, and eh intellectuals, and artists.  in fact I remember her mentioning a gynecologist friend who managed to have some of these people meet in her office.

KM- Oh, that's interesting.

001- Yeah, there was much more of that sort of thing going on than we ever knew.

KM- Well that was one of the questions I wanted to ask you, as someone who was there, who lived through it.  One of the claims that Goldhagen made in his book, was that there was something particularly virulent in the German anti-semitism, and he…

001- Yeah well, Yeah, I took eh great, what do you call it, uh, I was very offended by that remark, in that story.

KM- Okay. What?

001- If there was any, for one thing, you know the German, not liberation but, the time when the German Jews became accepted.

KM- When they got the franch[ise], yeah, the end of the 19th century.

001-  Even earlier.

KM- Yeah. Well all throughout the 19th century the Jews, generally got more and more rights.

001- It was much earlier say then the French.  And you know, I don't think he would make that kind of a statement about the French anti-semitism, I mean the Wye? Dreyfus affair and...yea.

KM- Well, I got the impression...

001- I don't think German.  There wasn't any German anti-semitism.  There were people who were anti-semitic, here and there, but I don't think there was anything genetic about the German anti-semitism.

[Counter, 507]

KM- That was what I was, what I wanted to ask you about, because I had spoken to so many people who worked in the resistance, and risked their lives to save people, that I thought there were actually a fair number, I didn't think that the, you know, ten or so that I talked with are the only ones, but um, Danny [Goldhagen] tended to discount that and say, no they were abberrations.  And I didn't, I didn't, that wasn't the impression I had when you and I spoke about it before.  I had the impression that you felt when you were growing up, well, that you didn't feel a lot of anti-semitism.

001- Right, especially in the eh, two Catholic areas, but eh.
 
KM- Mmhmm, so you did not...

001- But also you know, among intellectuals.  You know, but, the fact that a lot of a professors lost their jobs during the Hitler period, you know, that probably was a lot of academic competitiveness. You know, for any German intellectual who left, any Jewish intellectual who left, could be replaced by German, in that sense.

KM- But that's one of the questions I wanted to ask you.  When we talk about identity now, if someone asked me, what is my identity? There would probably be fifty things I would mention before I got to my religion.  I don't think of myself as religious one way or the other. I don't think before this panel, when you came up, I don't, actually, I didn't even realize you were German, but I certainly didn't know if you were Jewish, and I didn't know Gabriel was Jewish. I didn't. It wasn't something that I even thought about.  It wasn't relevant.  It would be kind of like, well, is this the kind of person who drinks orange juice for breakfast.  You know? It wouldn't be relevant to our relations in any way.  And when you say things like, a Jewish intellectual who left, there would be a German that would replace them, is that the way people thought about it at the time, or did they think, or did they think of intellectuals as being German or Jewish or just German?

001- Somehow all these claims by Goebbels, who was the intellectual interpreter of these ideas, it must have resonated somehow with people.  As you say, people weren't even aware that their colleagues were Jewish before.

KM- So then, why do you think it came out, do you think it was just that this is the kind of...eh.

001- Well, suddenly, you know people were made aware of it, and people looked into it, and 

KM- Is this the kind of question..?

001- I don't know because, um you talk about religion, I mean, the assimilated German Jews, most of them weren't religious anymore, or many of them were, had become Christian, but, that didn't help at all.  And in the Hitler period it was the racial connection.  You know people knew, in there collective unconscious that they were Jewish, but eh, that’s what mattered in the Hitler period.

KM- Well what, that’s one of the things I'm interested in, how is it that something that is umm, kind of an incoherent, never articulated very nebulous I suppose is the word I'm looking for, very nebulous kind of aspect of the myriad parts of a person or a groups identity.  What is the process by which that suddenly becomes salient, politically.  So that all of a sudden, people in this country for example, I'm sorry I'm taking, I'm having a hard time understanding, explaining because I don't understand it well myself, but when they started talking about the umm, the homosexuals in the Army and the military, and it was don't ask don't tell kind of thing, policy that was evolved, umm, I, eh, then when the black power movement talked about they wanted to be you know able to be black, It took me awhile to understand that because, I came about from a very much a kind of liberal sort of background where it doesn't matter what color someone is or what their sexual preference is and I thought well why do these people, you know, their not black or white, their just people, I didn't really understand why it was important sometimes for people to feel that they were black and be able to identify as being black as a salient part of their identity until I had children and then I realized that I was a little unsure as to whether or not women could be professionals and have families.  I knew you could be married and have a family, and be a professional, but having children, being a mother, and being a professional was something that was going to be, not exactly easy for me and I think for a lot of women my age, and I wanted to be able to use examples of my family when I talked about power and authority and things in class.  I wanted to be able to use familial kinds of examples and I think that was what helped me understand why the kind of don't tell don't ask kind of policy is wrong, because your saying to people that they, that a part of their identity that may be important to them, can't be discussed publicly, and what I'm interested in is what is the process that that the, I mean that thats kind of one aspect of it that you have an individual or a group who says this part of my identity is important and I want to be able to talk about it. The reverse phenomenon is what it seems is what happened in Germany that you had a large group of people, some of whom, Jew for Jew, some of whom, Jewish, being Jewish as a culture or religion was important but for many of whom, it was not an important part of their identity.  But all of a sudden the society says that its important… 

001- Yeah.

KM- And, then, how does that affect the person who’s in that, does that then make you more Jewish? Or feel this aspect more?  I mean does it suddenly click into play or, what is the process that happens there?

001- Well you know,  how does it affect the Jewish person?

KM- Yeah.

001- Uh, I think that it differed.  I don't think you can generalize.  Certainly not from my experience.  I mean, I went from a sort of protected childhood, to an almost protected American existence, this was before I married.  You know, I had an uncle who gave us affidavits, and he had a lovely home, and we, we had sort of a home away from in New Jersey and I was studying at Columbia, eh so it didn't make me feel any more Jewish than before.

KM- Right.

001- But I don't think that was typical.

KM- But well…

001- There’s a lot, I don't know whether people were um, really became more Jewish aware, because they had to wear a yellow star.

KM- But during the war, you’re living in the United States, you know what’s happening, you’re hearing vague reports from the press, and you must have heard some things from friends.  Did you hear any about what the situation for Jews, is for Jews like is like for Jews in Germany. 

001- Well you know, we certainly weren't aware of the concentration camps and the horror, that went on, when all communication was cut off, you know when America entered the war. Even, even when America wasn't in the war yet, we didn't get too much direct German information.  But…

KM- Did you have the impression...What kind of…

001-  It was my cousin, whom I mentioned, who was a musician, and married to a musician, came as, they were more aware of it.  Because they were trying to get their parents out.  And eh, had some horrible experiences.  But even they only discovered what had happened after the war because it was so, communication was cut off. They didn't hear from their parents.  They got a card from their sister, from a concentration camp, her husband was a doctor and she was a nurse, and that they were working in their field.  But eh, I guess they had to be very careful what they put on a postcard.  

KM- Sure.

001- But that was the last they heard.

KM- That was it.

001- Yeah, they were, you know, they were gone by the time the war was over.  But it didn't make my cousin feel any more Jewish.

KM- No.  So during the war then, umm.  I mean I want to go back a couple things.  One is, you know, bringing your brand new husband to your country. And a country, that you feel, in some ways, did you feel ambivalent about it?

001- What?

KM- Did you feel ambivalent about Germany?

001- Yeah, very.  You know, it was still my home country, it was still a beautiful country.  

KM- Yeah, so that’s what I was wondering, what do— what do you say to Gabriel when you explain what’s going on? I mean he did, you said he did a book called Struggle for Democracy in Germany?

001- Well that was after the war, you know, he wrote I think it came out in '48.

KM- I'll have to get it.

001- No, as a matter of a fact in came out in '65.  But, I don't know why it took so long to come out.  He interviewed people, who had been through it all.  Both, victims of concentration camps, and other, just plain Germans.

KM- Eh huh. Yeah.  I'll have to get it. It looks— it sounds like it’s interesting.

001- Well, I'm sure it’s out of print now.

KM- Well, maybe it’s in the library.

001- Yeah, it should be.

KM- I'll see if it’s in the library, if not I may ask to to borrow a copy.

001- New York, Russel and Russel,

KM- Russel and Russel, boy thats an old one. 

001- In 1965.

KM- But what…

001-  Oh, wait a minute.  Copyright 1949, by the University of North Carolina Press, because thats what I remember, and it was reissued in ’65. So it did come out in '49.  So it must have been written in '47, '48.

KM- Right, right. That was fast. It was early after the war. Now um, but what is it that you say to him, I mean I'm just, you know, how do you explain it, do you at that time when you’re arriving, about what’s happening.
  
001-  Well again, you know I don't think I'm typical.  We we umm, you know, had reunions with many friends.

KM- Right.

001-  So there wasn't that much to explain.

KM- So it’s basically, well...

001- You know, it came very slowly, and it only really came to a head in November of '38 with the Kristallnacht.

KM- So when Kristallnacht...

001-  In '37 on the surface, I think what, you asked how I felt, I think I sort of made the excuses, and explained that no, not all Germans were, were Hitler, and a lot of my friends were terribly opposed to Hitler.

KM- Right, I see, yeah.

001- I think you have to really interview people who've had a different experience.  Again, I think it does point out that it wasn't as awfully racist as the Goldhagen makes it out to be...

KM- Right.  Uh now, if Danny were listening to this interview, I would think what he would say is eh, well maybe you’re still making excuses now, because you’re, you’re still thinking of yourself as German, and that there really was...

001- Well so what?

KM- Yeah.

001- It's not that I still think of myself as German, Its more that I— I've had contact with people who have been very protective of Jews.  This family the Fuchs, whom I mentioned, they hid a Jewish family in their basement, eh, I don't know for a year and a half, I think.

KM- Yeah, it’s a long time.

001- Fortunately, he had a wine cellar so when anybody looked, you know, he could hide them.  Heh, heh  Hold on,  Gabriel says time and half for overtime!  

KM- Okay, time and a half...

001- I think I'll have to stop because he's hungry and wants his lunch.

KM- Okay, well… What if I give you a call again next week, or is that getting— I don't want to push you on this…  

001- I have to look at my calendar again next week. You know, we’re getting close to Christmas.

KM- Do you want to wait and talk in January? You've been so nice. I don't want to push you in any way.  

001- You want to get on with it, I'm sure.

KM-  Well, no.

001- Why don't you give me the times and places where I can reach you, and if I find time, and you happen to be in your office I'll give you a call.

KM-  Ok my phone is 949 .......  (Makes arrangements for Dorthea to call back, suggests she will try following Wednesday).

001- I don't know if I contributed very much today.

KM- No, no, that's not true. 

001- I'll think of more salient points.

KM- No no, its ok, no no no.  No I'm really not trying to write the book to counteract Goldenhagen. partly I'm writing it to try to understand things myself a bit better.

001- Mm hmm, you know, there are things that are, still, just incomprehensible.

KM- I guess that’s really where I am, There are just so many things I don't understand.

001- You know, the Germans now are just like I remember them, You know: a democratic people, even handed, and they know how to run a government.

KM- I think that...

001- How to tell how was it possible that could be turned, but…

KM- My sense was that there is a lot of anti-semitism in other countries too, and that its very easy to say well it was just German, and we don't have to look at what may be in everybody, and thats a much more frightening kind of thing.  

001- Well it was also that you know, Hitler was paranoid on that subject and eh, the question is how did he reach so many people…

KM- Yeah.  Well we'll talk about that next time...

001- And that, can also be explained really by the terrible conditions, economic conditions Germany was in.  Sometimes its convenient to have a ( in German belejljg

KM - Scapegoat?

001 - Scapegoat, that's right.