Millie Singer

Audrey Au listened to tapes and edited. 6-06
Q: Where were you born?

I was born in Stocksburg, it was 		 that time.

Q: When were you born?

June 28, 1910.

Q: Did you grow up speaking German or French?

German.  I grew up in Germany.  We lived in Stockberg that time, my parents. When I was growing up, my father past away when I was eleven months old, he past away.

Q: What did he die of?

He was in the hospital just with a, what do you call that in your throat?

Q: Tonsils?

Tonsillectomy and they didn’t have the medications for it. Today you didn’t die of everything any more.  That’s 89 years ago, you see.  My mother went back with me as a baby to Germany where her family lived always.

Q: And where was that?

Otherwise she would have been self with me in Stockberg.  It is a small town.  		 population there was 300 Jewish people, 1200 all together. and the Jewish people.  I grew up in that area, it was called Haigerloch.

Q: Was that in Germany?

That’s in Germany.  Have you hear of 		? That’s not far from 			, and then I go up to the school.  That was during the  First World War and then after that went to live in 			, yeah, and then to Business School and things like that.  Then I left…

Q: Did your mother marry again?

My mother married when I became engaged.

Q: Was it just the two of you, you and your mother? 

She was not interested.  She always said you will never have a father again the way your father was and she kept her word and she said I don’t want to get married unless you get married or you get engaged.  And that’s what she did.  I became engaged.
Q: So was it just the two of you?  You and your mother?  Or did you have other brothers and sisters before you?

No.

Q: You must have been very close to your mother?

Oh yes, close family.
 
Q: Did your grandparents live in 		?

My grandparents, aunt and uncles, 	 and most everybody in the family all lived in 		.

Did you live with your grandparents?

Yes.  After my father past away, my mother lived in 		 and she had a wonderful position there, you know, she was in one of the 		 department stores and because she was married and naturally when she was re		, she went back to her own shop in 		.  And that’s why I lived in Haigerlock with my grandparents.

Q: So, did you see your mom…

I cried so hard at times.

But she…

Q: She had to stay in 			?

Yeah, we 		, well she had a sister.

Q: And she stayed there during the week and then saw you on the weekends?

Yeah.			

Q: Oh that’s 		

Q: So you were close to your maternal grandparents also?

Yeah, very much so. 

Q: I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
I became engaged and then my mother remarried.

Q:		. Do you remember the date of your engagement?

I got married when I was 24 and engaged maybe three years before that.

Q: So it was around 1930?

Yes. It’s so long, it’s hard to believe. 

Q: So where did you meet your husband?
				
In Stuckgarden.  He was from Vienna. The Nazi’s were a lot worse than the German were.

Q:Is that right?

Yeah, so and he wanted to study to become a lawyer, but that was no possibility anymore as a Jew he could not go to law school.

Q:This is already in ’30 and ’31?

Oh yeah, 		.  As I said in Vienna I was worse than in German. We moved to Germany to 			 and he worked there and we met at a concert in 			.  One Sunday afternoon my mother and I used to go to a concert that was always Sunday afternoon, beautiful concert with 		 and all that, so that’s where I met him.

Q: How did you strike up an aquaintanence, just chatting?

No.  I was with a girlfriend and he came with a friend of his who also came from Vienna, so they met there.  		 these two young men were sitting a few tables away from us.  It was in the afternoon, a Sunday afternoon, and then they came over and asked if you mind that he would sit, you know, we were two girls and they were two guys.  And from there on, that’s it.

Q: That’s it.  Love at first sight?

Yeah, we became engaged and then my husband he had two positions in his life, smart and well educated and all that.  But then one day he was supposed to go to a meeting of the company he worked for with a 		

Q: This was after you were married?

Yeah, after.  Then he got a telecom or a letter, I don’t know any more, that to appear for a meeting, it was in another village, because you are not employed Jewish people any more.  He was suppose to go to a meeting, he was a, how should I say, a lot of business in the company, and they liked him and all that.  But they were not going to employ Jewish people.

Q: How do you feel when something like this happened?

Oh well, that’s hard to explain, I tell you.  And yet we didn’t take it that seriously yet.  We thought well it’s just temporary thing and it will past.  But it did not past, it got worse and worse.

Q: This must be after 1934 because you were married in 1933, right? 

Yeah.

Q: So Hitler has already been elected.
 
Oh yes, yes.

Q: What did you think of Hitler when he came in? 

Well, as I said, we did not take it that seriously and so he looked for another job, which he got, and then we moved.  Sooner or later you have to move.  You have to go away.  But my grandparents and the rest of the family they didn’t want to go.  They thought those people they don’t harm the older people, they leave them alone.  Which wasn’t true.  So anyhow, my husband was taken, he was one of the first ones in that small town, in Haigerloch, who was picked up by the Nazi’s in two o’clock in the morning and taken to, they said he would be taken to the City Hall, or like that, they have, what you call it?

Q: Police station.

Yeah, exactly.  		 for the time being. So my husband was one of the first ones because he was a young man.

Q: When was this?  Do you remember?

My little daughter was a year and a half old.  And that night when he was picked up, he said I have a feeling, he had said of another man who already was picked up, also a young man.  So he said I don’t 		 thing, I don’t go to bed tonight.  I have a feeling they will come and pick me up too.  You know, because it was a small town.  So everybody knew where everybody was living, you know.  So he went to bed with his clothes on, completely dressed, and sure enough by two o’clock, it was November, just probably before his birthday, they came and 		

Q: Is this 			, 1938?

Yeah. And then she saw these two guys, Nazi’s, you know, in uniform coming into the apart ament, she started crying.  She had never seen anything like that in the middle of the night.  It was ice cold.

Q: How did they come in?

They knocked at the door.

Q: Did they break the door down?  Were they yelling?

No they did not and my husband had a feeling it was for him sure enough.

Q: There is a young couple, you are not very old.  You are about 28 and he can’t be much older, I assume.

He was four years older.

Q: He was four years older, so he is 32, and you have this young child.  Peter hasn’t been born yet, right?

No, oh no.  He was born, just arrived here, we were very lucky.  We arrived here from within a year, we had to be waiting for our Visa. We had to wait a whole year in London.

Q: I see.  But I’m  just trying to go back and imagine this young couple and you are talking between the two of you, your husband is a lawyer, he has lost his…

No, he didn’t go, he was not permitted to go anymore.

Q: Okay, so your husband is someone who has some kind of political awareness, anyway?  Partly because of training, most lawyers are aware of laws and things like this kind, but also because he himself has just a couple of years earlier, was told he can’t work in his job anymore.  So, 

We knew we had to leave.

Q: But you are sitting there and you are thinking…

Some people had left already.  They were smarter than we were actually.  But the earlier you left, then off you were.

Q: Why didn’t you leave earlier?  Was it because of the grandparents?

Well that had something to do with it and then we always thought well, it’s a passing thing, you know.  And we hadn’t heard of many people who were, you know, take to, we didn’t even know anything about the concentration camps yet.  And then they pick my husband up, that’s where he was taken, to Munich, in that area.  That’s a very, very cold area, you know, in November.

Q : Now you are sitting there talking that night and he said they picked up someone else, they will probably come for me.  Did you consider just having him pack a bag and get on a train and leave or have him hide out someplace at that point?

No, my husband couldn’t risk anything 		.

Q: He couldn’t escape?

No.  If we would have thought of leaving earlier, we would have just, you don’t want to leave grandparents, and my mother and stepfather and our family.  It’s hard to pack up and go.  If you left, you were only aloud to take so much pound, that you know, you couldn’t take anything else anymore.  No money, of course.

Q: What kind of dreams do you have about it?

Well, remembering when I saw my, I still see my grandparents, they are elderly, of course.  And leaving, you know my husband left earlier because we got all the 			 
ready for my uncle who lives in San Francisco.  He was father of my grandmother and he took care this one for that.  You know you had to have the funds or otherwise there was no way to get to United States.

Q: So they put your husband in a camp.  Do you know where in Munich?  

Yes, I heard about it.  I didn’t know where they were taking him.  And then a few days later I heard from another man who knew where they were taken and he said he’s in the 		.  You know the 		.

Q: You had no idea if you would see him again even.

No, we did not know.  No.  And I was there with my little girl and hoping for the best because we had all the paper that you needed.  Only we had to leave and stay, uh, we had to wait a year to be allowed to come to the United States.  My uncle took care of all the paperwork and all also to pay for everything.  We couldn’t take any money.  We each got ten mark, at that time it was $2.00, and that’s how we left.  So, when I heard he was in the house, and it still didn’t mean that much 			 let him go and he is home again, but it was not like that.

Q: What happened instead?

He was gone three and one half weeks and that man that I met in town then said I think your husband is coming home soon because he could prove that we had all the papers, everything that I need to go to the United States or to leave Germany.  And sure enough, my husband, two days later, a few nights later, I heard, you know, I slept in my grandparents house, naturally, with my little girl, somebody knocked at the door.  It was my husband in the middle of the night.  He wouldn’t come home during the daytime, so he wasn’t seen.  

Q: What did he look like when he got out of prison?

He had no hair.  He had a little small mustache that was the style at that time for the young men, all shaven off.  Yes.

Q: Had he been mistreated and beaten?

Yeah, they were beaten and mistreated.  At that time they didn’t even taken them to the gas chambers yet.  But soon afterwards, after he was back, that we heard they go to the gas chambers, and they, you know, you know that they, you know what happened then, they kill.  Yeah, that’s it.

Q: What was it like when they came home?  

I was not, naturally, expecting him so soon.  He was gone three and one half weeks, and I still didn’t think how bad it was.  But when he came he said that night there was a theft when they arrived in the house without clothes, they had pajamas like a prisoner has, pajamas, and there were a lot of young boys like 18, 16 years, and then very old ones, and my husband was just in between them.  They were lined up and they were beaten, you know, in the snow.

Q: You knew how bad it was before.  You were preparing to leave, but this wasn’t, this arrest of your husband, was a big 	 for it. Wen he was arrested you decided to try and leave earlier or?

Well then I still had the automobile and my apartment with furniture and all that.  I tried to sell it because I hoped sooner or later we can leave because we had all the necessary paperwork done. So some neighbors of ours, when my husband and I had an apartment in that area, they bought our furniture and somebody else bought our car, so 		 in my grandparents house with my little girl, 	 came and then he had to leave and he went to London…

Q: And he left before you did?

And I waited, I had to wait another three months, I think it was.  

Q: Why was he able to leave earlier?

Otherwise they told him they let him go home, but he, if he doesn’t leave the country immediately, they may take him and his family.  Because at that time they didn’t take women and children yet, only men.  And if we get to a 		 it will be with your family.  Then of course he left.

Q: So he just went to London on a regular tourist Visa.

				 and of course my uncle from San Francisco, he had to send us the money, but we had no money.  He had to pay for the rent, he had to arrange to stay in an apartment, and one huge room.  Anything was good enough just to be out of Germany.  In the meantime, in the three months before I arrived, he went to night school to learn a little English and then he also was helping with volunteer work, filling sand bags, you know, the war is coming in London and all that – Germans.  So, 

Q: So when did you actually leave Germany then?

Three months after he had left.

Q: When did he leave?

He waited in London.  He already spoke some English and when we came, well, it was all new.  		 didn’t speak any English yet.   I don’t speak so good yet either.  At that time, yeah.

Q: He came back and he left right away in December of 1938?

Yes.

Q:And then you left three months later.

I left in March when I left there.  I had to take care of everything else.  

Q: Were people in Germany aware that a war was coming?  Were you …

They didn’t think the war was coming so soon, you know. But when they heard that the Jews had, you know, had to leave somehow, they couldn’t stay there no longer.

Q: You didn’t leave because of the war, you left because of the situation for the Jews?

Yeah, because that’s why we left. That was the only way, otherwise, we would have never left.

Q: And then what happened after that?

After I arrived with my little girl…

Q: What was her name?

Biata. In the meantime, she changed adventure into college here, I mean in the States.  She wanted to be called Bee because nobody knew how to pronounce her name.  So she made it legally Bee now.  You know.  And so the main thing was we are together again.  My husband and my daughter and I.  And then after a while my husband did some volunteer work for the war effort in London, we had to do something, because he was not allowed to work.  He couldn’t make any living there.  So he worked for the war effort and then until December of that year then we had our 	 to United States.

Q: By that time Britain is in the war with Germany.

Oh yes.  Very much so.

Q: All of your family is back in Germany?

They were all in the camps and they were all killed.   Everyone of them.  I heard that through somebody who escaped, and they were all killed.

Q: Did they try to leave?

No, my grandparents didn’t.  It would have been too late for them.  They did not want to go in the first place.  				 Any how, we may come back and all that.  So by the time they may have left, there was no place 		 anymore, you know.

Q: Did you think it was a temporary thing?

Not really, no, no.  We were not of the first able to leave.  A lot of them had left already.  They didn’t 			 we were to evacuate, you know. We were in London, my husband 		 or he was told that through the organization he was 		 because, you know, 		 to have me and my daughter who was one and a half year old, to have, what do you call it, taken to more safer place than London.  But he could not leave, he had to stay in London.  So the organization got 		 a lot of women with children to have them all leave London to an area where they were safe.

Q: Where did you go?

It was called Redwood in uh, they called it the English living 		. We didn’t know where we are going.  We were not told we are going.  So after they arrived, we got on a plane, after our arrival.  There were a lot of people waiting already by train of course to pick 		 they were all mothers and children.  They no fathers, no male.  To pick somebody who do not want to take home for the time being.  So, another women who had a little boy the age of my daughter and myself.  It was a young doctor’s family.  They picked us to go home with them because well we just one 			 did not know where we were going.  We had no idea. We were there about three or four months and then the rest is history.

Q: Do you remember them?  Did you keep in touch with them?

No, no.  We didn’t even write to them because my husband felt we were, you know, they may not get our mail and you never know what the Nazi’s would do.  No they were going to get the mail whether they could receive.

Q: But these were people in England.

In England, yeah.

Q: But he was afraid that …

Yeah.  He said something may come, you know.

Q: So you were really concerned to protect them.

Yeah, just concerned right, yeah.  But, I don’t know.  It was something else.  Hard to believe though.

Q: Some of the things that intrigues me that some people, I mean, really what we are trying to understand here is why is it that some people can comprehend and grasp, but is really incomprehensible – the idea if you think of it today what one human being would do to another human being what the Nazis did, it really is not something that I can understand. And yet you are in a situation where that is what is happening to you. Why is it that you think you were able to wrap your mind around this and comprehend that this was going on when other people were not able to?

Well, little by little, you know, the word get around, you try to get out of here, or something.  But it wasn’t easy.  You had to have the funds in the United States.  Most people wanted to go to the States and we have a lot of relatives in Germany who were related to this particular uncle who had to come over here, but they were maybe 20-25 people and he couldn’t have them all come to San Francisco.  But he sponsored them and gave accepted in South America sometimes.  In 		 along with a few 			 okay.  And so they all went over there and they all did well, but it took them weeks and weeks to go over there. Oh yeah.  				 to go to the United States.  But that would have been very hard for so many people to 		.  My youngest 		 of them all and he had to depart with a lot of money, a lot of dollars, for each one of them.

Q: Was he a wealthy man?

He happened to be. After the crash in 1929, he lost everything, but little by little he made it back again, like most of the people at that time.  So he had enough to take care of all that.

Q: Did you know him before the war?

Yeah, 			 he used to come to 		 to come to visit every few years and I was a child then.  

Q: Was this your mother’s brother?

My grandmother’s brother.

Q: What was his name?

Albert Bernheim.

Q: He must have been an extraordinary person to do all this.

Yes, he absolutely was.  And his wife was born here, and my uncle was born back there in Germany where my grandmother lived.  So, it was extraordinary, that’s right.	

Q:  When you were growing up in Germany, when you were telling me about your husband, you said that things were worse in Vienna than they were in Germany.  

Yeah, the Nazis were worse.

Q: When you were growing up in Germany, you know as a child, between 1910 during World War I to 1920’s, did you see any anti-Semitism?  

Yeah, there was a little.  But you didn’t pay any attention to it.  		 In school.  We had, 		 was a small town of 1,200 people and the Jewish children had their own children.

Q:They did?

And the 		 had their own teachers and all that, so they got along and then if they grew up, you know they would sometimes say something.

Q: So you actually went to a school which was just for Jewish children.

Yeah, they were all in the same school house, you know.  There were maybe Jewish children, but there were more of the others.

Q: Could you have gone to the other school?

No that was the way it was.

Q: Was it segregated?

It was 		 yeah.

Q: So what kind of anti-Semitic things did you find that you noticed when you were a child?

Really nothing much to speak of.  No.  Maybe they shield us as a child.  There were two or something like that and that’s all.  We didn’t realize it.  		.

Q: You didn’t?

No.

Q: Did you have any kind of feeling for whether or not the anti-Semitism that was in Germany was worst than it was in other countries?

I don’t think so.  

Q: Did you travel much as a child?

No, no.  Not much at all.

Q: So you stayed pretty much in Germany.  I see.  So then after you got married, when you were beginning, did you notice any, what were the first kinds of things that you noticed?  Do you remember what kind of reaction did you have when Hitler was elected?  Were you concerned about him?

Well I began to get, to be concerned, naturally.  And then the type of wedding we had, you know, we got married during the beginning of Hitler, see.  

Q: When did you get married?  When 			

We Stugard (Sp?)

Q: What was the date?

I have more on 			 

Q: Well it was after Hitler came in, of course he came in early in ’33, so, yeah.

Because we had some relatives that we wanted to come to the so-called wedding.  I did not wear a bridal gown and we did twelve people.  That was the whole wedding. 

Q: Why did you not wear a bridal gown?

Well, I tell you now, because we got married in the Synagogue, okay?  On a Sunday when we did not want to be seen as Jews, but we had a wedding that day and we were married in the back room of the building so we shouldn’t be seen.  We were afraid already.

Q: Most little girls, they kind of dream about their wedding.  They are going to have a white dress with flowers and all that stuff.  Was that hard for you not to have?

Yes, that’s right.  Then after we were married in the Temple house, but not in the form that it should be actually.  But in the back room so nobody should see us.  

Q:Because you were afraid already?

We were afraid to be seen.  

Q: So this is early?  This is very early then.  Yeah, I see.

It was in ‘30s.  It would have been in ’34 or whatever.  Yeah.

Q: You said you got married in ’33.

Millie:	’33 or ’34.

Q: Your impression as a young adult was that there was some anti-Semitism in Germany, but…

Oh yeah, there sure was.  In summer and play in the park, you had the bench 			 no Jew can occupy the park bench.  And when you saw this, you became afraid, you know.

Q: Did it make you angry or just afraid?

		 things are not going right.

Did you have a sense that things were worse in other countries or better in other countries?  It was just Germany that this stuff was happening?

Well, that’s were it originated, Germany and Austria.

I see.

But 		.

Q: So when you say that things were, there wasn’t any more anti-Semitism in Germany than there was in other countries, it’s not that there wasn’t more anti-Semitism …

No, it originated there.

Q: It originated there.

Oh yes.

Q: Do you think it was better in France or Italy?

Anywhere, yeah.  You would go anywhere you had the possibility to go just to get out of Germany.  You just wanted to leave Germany no matter where to, just to leave.

Q: How about to the East?  To Poland and places like that.

No, no.  No, no, no, because they had there own problems, you know, many years before, and they had to free their own.

Q: So your sense was that things were bad in Germany and Austria.

Well, that’s right.

Q: But just as bad in the east and Poland and Russia and places like that?

Yeah, but much before that time.  Long before that time.

Q: So things had been worst longer in those countries.

There was no Hitler then, you know.  It came from Russian and from Poland, but there was, and then he 		.

Q: So that there was more anti-Semitism in the Eastern countries than in Germany early on?

Germany and Austria.

Q: I thought those people were very interesting and I got interested in the whole war period because of them.  One of the things that I was curious about was how other people responded.  Did your neighbors, where there any Christian or non-Jewish neighbors who helped you in any way?

Well we lived up, when we were married, my husband and I and our little girl, we lived in a house, excuse me.  Oh I thought somebody was at the door.  Um, that belonged to non-Jews and they were particularly nice and concerned about us and we rented our apartment in the building and my husband, 		, my husband’s father happened to be visiting us from Vienna.  He was an elderly man then, and he wanted to visit, you know, and so we were having him in our apartment, he would sleep there and all that, and that day the lady of the house, who owned the house, she and her husband, she said to my husband, 		 I don’t want your father to stay in your apartment tonight, I have a bad feeling that the Nazis come.  She had heard, feeling bad about it, and they pick up your father too, see.  I have an attic in the house and he could sleep in the attic upstairs, which we did.  Sure enough that was the night when they came to pick up my husband.  Now if his father would have slept in our apartment downstairs, they would have taken him too.  So he slept in the attic and they were non Jewish and they were very, very nice.  

Q: Now did you think of asking if your husband could sleep up in the attic too, or were you afraid that they would look?

No, no, he said I won’t take my clothes off tonight, I sleep on top of the bed, I have a bad feeling that they come, because he heard of one other person.  The first person who was picked up before him.

Q: And even with his bad feeling, he didn’t think of trying to hide from them.

No, because he would have had to leave us alone, and my daughter, the little girl and myself.  With him gone, he didn’t want that.  He wanted to be with us.		 to live, yeah.

Q: What I am hearing you say is that the, there was 		 ties to their loved ones that kept people there doing things.

Yes, yes.

Q: It was just very hard to walk away from people that you loved.

Exactly, yes, right, yeah.  And whatever happened afterwards, you usually read about, you know, you know, of what happened.  In the camps and all that, you know.  It is hard to believe, but it’s the truth.  It’s the truth.