I realize how absolutely essential memories are, you know.
We are who we are because of what we learn and what we remember
it's essential to identity
is our identity
Up until 1938 we had a comparative comparative freedom
In other words we were able to go to restaurants we were able to go to the movies
We were able to go to the theater
We had German and I should say Jewish and non-Jewish friends
and for many many years I was not aware that I was different
I was an enthusiastic Boy Scout and a student and interested in playing football
that's about it
privately I took French lessons and piano not with great success, but...
I had a wonderful childhood, I had a grandmother all to myself
I had 13 dolls, I had Scala skates.
I went to a private school from 1930 to 33 called
[foreign language] and where the teachers were called aunt and uncle and
it was a mixed school. Boys and girls and non-Jews and Jews.
I was proud to be a Jew and when we had to wear a stud Jewish star
I would never would hide it.
I was proud. I said everybody knows I'm Jewish.
Then they came a day. I don't remember any discussion beforehand
when I was told that I could no longer go to that school.
Teachers only in the corridors for instance we had to greet
them by raising our hands and say, "Hail Hitler"
I had a German girlfriend whom I adored
She was everything I was not. She was slim she had long hair.
She wore glasses and one day my mother picked us up someplace and
she raised her elegant thin arm and said "Heil Hitler"
There was a billboard so in the center of town ironically it was placed right across the street from
the synagogue in town
and honored every week were placed pages from a Nazi
newspaper called Estherma and of course the pages of a show always showed
caricatures of, in addition to articles, caricatures of Jews, which were for
worn of a better word at this time comic because it was so exaggerated
Everything they took away from us. So my father would say let them have everything.
The life they would live up they give us life they wouldn't take it from us
We didn't really think that would happen in Austria.
Hitler invaded on the 12th of March 38.
And the next thing I remember very vividly is the stormtroopers
marching down the narrow street that was at the side of our apartment building
that Nazi March, the sound of the boots on the ground
can put the fear.
And we heard on the radio which we listened to it there with the earphones
how in two hundred thousand people in hail and applause, welcomed
Hitler with the most amazing enthusiasm you could imagine
and after the Anschluss everybody was soon aware of a wave of arrests that
took place if anyone could conceivably oppose the Nazis
and all of a sudden
they fired all the Jewish assistant associate professors.
There's a chance for you to move up
so this was fantastic for the non-jewish academics and they've
took full advantage of it
the difference of feeling now to my last period in
Vienna when you couldn't walk on the street without dread of something
you know this total insecurity of the surrounding population that proved
themselves untrustworthy
she said let me write to the cousins so he said "alright"
she wrote to the cousins in by return mail
we had the affidavit for five or four people and that's what saved us our lives
I mean America did not exactly make it easy. That's a myth – they're open
arms of the Statue of Liberty. I think that's unfortunately not true.
wasn't true then and is not true now.
I recall that when we want to leave
people said to my mother, "this is most time, this is not really goodbye.
It's just temporary we know you're gonna be back within six months or so.
when all this blows over
And then of course came Kristallnachat and
that changed everything.
I climb through the window
to see inside and it was horrible it was a sight I will never forget
Everything was burned. The Torah scrolls were just thrown into building. They were half-burned.
the altar was burned.
and I stood there and I took off a little piece of the Torah
which was against the rules and a little piece of the altar and
I paste it into my cedar
and I hadn't realized how many stores had been
Jewish stores but then you knew which ones were and they just ransacked them
and that had happened during the night when we were sleeping
That morning after the night of broken glass, the Nazis came to the apartment where there was no hiding.
I do remember their big black boots.
They told my father to get dressed and to go with him
and I do remember my grandmother in those days
they had long skirts. I remember my grandmother taking out some money from
the seem of a skirt give it to the Nazi and say take good care of my son.
My father then went outside and mounted a truck in front of the house.
I couldn't see what was in the truck but I could see him turning around giving me a smile
and a wave and that was the last time I ever saw my father.
I was selected to the last Kindertransport to Sweden in August of 1939
the Swedes saved my life by
taking me in because if I hadn't gone to Sweden ultimately I really would
would have ended in the gas chamber
somebody had the bright idea of having all the kids in the train sing a certain
Austrian folk songs. Folk song [foreign language], which means
Must I, must I, leave my little town
and I see the comfortable demeanor of the people
who are sitting there. They're enjoying life they feel they feel
connected they feel, this is what they where they come from, this is what they are,
this is where they want to be and this kind of feeling has been taken away from me.
I think people never learn. It's still going on in the world but
shouldn't be.
Truth is that the greedy power-crazy people have to be watched early-on
The fact is that under the right circumstances you can
make people believe in anything because there is a tribal instinct in us
We want to belong, belong to a group. We want to be suspicious of people
who are different or come from a different place and that can be
exploited by political parties by demagogues of any kind
The only protection is to have a very strong democratic tradition