Inge Bernhard Part V: Meeting Carlos for the Second Time

When Inge arrived in New York from Germany, her second cousin Carlos along with a few family friends met her at the boat.

(So that’s the first time you’d seen Carlos in quite a few years.)

The next year, I came for a visit to New York and I met again Carlos and who do I meet? The family Reich (interviewer's grandparents and mother). Ruth was very small. I don’t know how old she was at that time. That was 1950, how old were you?

Ruth Reich de Alpert: Eight.

Eight. Wilma and Ernst told me, “Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah.” That means in German, “See the good things are in front of your eyes.” That is, Carlos. “Why don’t you marry him?” Well, at that time I had a boyfriend in the university, and I didn’t even think about it. I helped Carlos. Carlos was looking for a bride, and he said, “Would you help me?” He had several addresses. “If she’s terrible, I call you in the hotel and you come and save me.” And I did. (laughs)

(You did? This happened? He called you because someone was terrible?)

Yes. And then we met.

(And you came in, and what did you do in the hotel?)

Then we talked and then—

Then he was not alone with her any more, he was not supposed to kiss her or take her home. He took me home. And he was still my cousin. (laughs)

(Tell me, were you in university in New York?)

No, in Arkansas.

(OK. So you went to visit New York a second time?)

I went to visit. I wanted to visit Maria again, and I wanted to see everything. I was fascinated by New York. I couldn’t understand that my mother didn’t want to go, but she didn’t know how beautiful it was. I understood my father very much, how much he liked it.

(So during this time you were in touch with your parents and your brother? They were still in Berlin?)

Yes.

(OK.)

My parents were in Berlin, but my brother had emigrated to Berlin, and there discovered he had multiple sclerosis. He went home, and he stayed with my parents and after a few weeks he couldn’t even stand on his feet any more. And when I came home in ’51, I saw him already—I met him at the airport. In ’51 he came home, and from then on he was very, very ill. He lived almost until the age of sixty, but as a very, very sick person.

(In Brazil, or back in Germany?)

No, he was back in Berlin, and later on he went to a home for handicapped people in Hannover. My mother went to visit him every month. My father was very upset about this, but he had his own life. When he was retired from Siemens Company, finally, he had a great interest in music. He collected all kinds of albums and music on tapes. As a scientist he had a lot of interest in modern techniques. At that time the tapes were like big wheels, and he kept them for me. I could never use them later on.

After two years of studies in America, I had to go home, because my visa could not be prolonged and I had to go back to Berlin. In Berlin, I made my exam for the music school. Now I was well prepared, after having studied for two years in America music and English. I was accepted, and I started to study in the Music Academy of Berlin for music education.

It was a very difficult program. English was my second subject. So music was my main subject and English my second. So after the first two years—no, after the first year, they advanced me half a year. They gave me—for the two years that I studied in America, they gave me half a year. So at least I had half a year more. Then after two years I said, “I have to make my Examen in English and I need a year just to study English.” So I did that. I was very lucky. I got a very good grade in that, and that was already my state exam, which I would have needed as a teacher. Then I wanted to finish my music studies and I had to write a paper, a special paper about a musical subject. At that time, it was in the summer, I had already started. I went to the library and I was looking for material. Then Carlos wrote—what time, in which month did you come? July, August, I think—Carlos wrote he was coming. I said, “What can I do now? I’m studying. Right now he’s coming to visit, and I really don’t have any time. I want to finish my studies.”

What could I do? Carlos said he would go to Braunschweig first and see where he had lived, where he was born—he wasn’t born there, he was born in Berlin, but where he had lived with his parents. I loved Braunschweig, although it was completely bombed. It looked terrible. I said, “Of course I have to go. He’s my cousin and I have to go.”

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Inge Bernhard Part IV: Trying to Move Forward

After the war, Inge picked up the pieces of her life and threw her energy into studying....

When the English came, they thought that all Jews had been killed. They didn't believe us that we could survive or we could have survived the war. Our house became the mess of officers. My mother had to cook for them. A neighbor came and helped her. I became a secretary of the English organization that took care of the Olympic Stadium. I don't remember what they were really doing, but they were organizing the reconstruction of Berlin and of their own offices and all this. So I was a secretary there. I made some money, and they were very nice. They didn't like my American accent, because meanwhile, well, actually it was later, when I went to America. Anyway. But I learned a lot of English with them. They did me a great favor. They took me in one of the closed trains to West Germany, because it was almost impossible to leave Berlin.

I wanted to study, but I could not study. I could not because only soldiers who came back from the war and didn't have the possibility to study in Berlin or in other places were accepted at the university. I wasn't. So I went to West Germany to a place where there was a Jewish professor who accepted me as a student. This officer for whom I had worked took me in the train. I was very lucky I could do that. It was incredibly difficult to go
I had to walk a lot.

Later on, after I was over the border, I had to cross the American zone by foot because the place where I wanted to study, Erlangen, near Nuremberg, was in the American zone and the other was the English zone. It was very difficult to move around during those years. I mean, that was after 1945, 1946, 1947. I studied in 1946, 1947, 1948. But there was no food. There were no rations, especially for somebody who came from Berlin there was no ration card. They said, First you have to be accepted at the university, then you get the ration card. But to give me the ration card of the town, they said, First you have to be accepted at the university, the other way, then you get the ration card. And then it was the other way, also. See, they said, You have to study already and then you get the ration. So it was so difficult that I ate what I could get, which was a soy soup or something that the Americans had given to the universities, and I got this every day and some food which was not rationed in a restaurant. I made some friends.

But everything was so difficult, living experiences were incredible. I had to live in a little village a few kilometers from the university, and there was no heating. There was no electricity. So finally, I had to go home again. This was the time of the English.

(What did you study when you were studying?)

I started with German literature and then I went over to English literature. But this was only one year. I also studied some music, I went to seminars, which was very interesting. It was just an introduction for me to university studies. When I went back to Berlin, the same story as before. I couldn't study. I studied privately music. There was no music school yet. And I prepared myself for an entrance examination at the music school once they would start.

At that time, our American friends that my father met when he was in America, who came and wanted me to come to America, they offered me to come to America and study there two years. So for me this was a great temptation, and I chose America instead of finishing my studies.

In America I studied English and music and I got a degree.

(What year was this that you went to the US?)

This was in 1949.

(1949. And where?)

1949 to 1951.

(And where did you go, exactly?)

I went to Fayetteville, Arkansas.

(Fayetteville, Arkansas?)

Everybody asks this question. Where people don't wear shoes. But I wore shoes. And then I met Carlos. I took a boat in 1949 to New York and Carlos came to meet me at the boat. I had some German friends who had meanwhile emigrated to America. They had lived in El Salvador for two years, I think, and they also came. So then I stayed with them.

(What was their name?)

Their name was Hader. Actually Hamburger. This was Maria Hamburger. She was a friend of mine in the Siemens Company. We worked together, and she was Jewish, not even half-Jewish, and she had to hide her Jewishness. We had another friend like this. So we were in the Siemens Company three people who stuck together. We shared our food, the little bit we had. We had company. It gave us a very good feeling of security. With her, I survived a bomb attack where one day a bomb hit the Siemens Company. Before this happened, we knew something was going to happen. We aabove ground a shelter, which was overground. It wasn't even underground. This experience was so terrible that afterwards I was always very nervous--this is what I wanted to tell you before when I heard bombs coming down. My father's lab was completely destroyed then, and the place where I worked was not hit, for some reason. I think the English wanted to destroy the labs where the atom bombs were developed, and that's where my father worked as a scientist. They really hit it to the ground. There was not such a big building, but it was nothing. It was just rubble. And we survived somehow.

So my friend and I, we were embracing, and we thought this is the end. So we were standing there and waiting to die.

But then, all of a sudden, nothing happened. But the noise was so terrible that I couldn't forget it for a long, long time. We got out alive, and we saw a mass of bicycles that were all melted together. There were stones on trees. There was a man dead on a tree. It was just a terrible, terrible experience. This is what I remember. This was the worst experience of the war.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Guadalajara

Today's post involves an upcoming conference sponsored by the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean (UJCL). I hope to join El Salvador's delegation as they travel to Guadalajara, Mexico in January. Meetings will also serve as a way to meet leaders from Jewish communities throughout Central American and the Caribbean.

The conference's theme is "Tikkun Olam," in Hebrew meaning good deeds or mitzvhot. My investment in this theme is paramount as I am particularly interested in the organization's thoughts on community building, local AID involvement, and international monetary contributions. What is the Union's emphasis on community building in the region? Where does this fall in terms of importance? The community of Nicaragua has all but disappeared....would it be an act of Tikkun Olam to search for the remaining Nicaraguan Jews and invite them back into the Union? What is the Jewish responsibility to the State? What is the Jewish responsibility to Israel? Which takes precedence? As is the case with most acts of compassion and goodwill, identity and experience provide an individual's foundation from which to give.

For more information on the UJCL and the upcoming conference in Guadalajara, check out: www.ujcl.org

Inge Bernhard Part III: The Rest of the War and the Beginning of Life with Carlos

Inge continues to discuss her wartime experiences as well as the first encounter with Carlos Bernhard, her future husband.

All questions in (...) are mine.

The Gestapo didn’t come back. We were more afraid of the bombs that were falling nightly, almost, and we spent a lot of time in our shelter.

I got very nervous. The bombs made me very, very nervous, the terrible noise and the fear that we would all die. Once, in the—I worked in Siemens, at the Siemens Company. My father—after I finished high school, my father found work for me there, so I didn’t have to go to camp or anywhere. They spared me. I had a very nice time at work. The people were not Nazis. They were Sozis, leftists, and they helped me in every way. It was fantastic. It was just amazing how nice the people were, the workmen. I worked in the field of electricity where I had to do some measuring things and there were these leftist people. They said, “If you want to go into the darkroom, I have to develop photos, go into the darkroom and mend your socks. We won’t tell anybody.” I had a great time.

In the office, I had a book in my drawer and I took out the book and read. When some of these officials came and go through to see if everything was all right, I just closed my drawer. My boss allowed me to do that. That were all anti-Nazi somehow.

In school, actually the same thing. I had no trouble in my school. I had a very close friend who’s still my closest friend in Berlin of my youth. We spent the whole school years together, eight years. Her father was in an interrogation camp for some time because he had done something that the party didn’t like. So we were very much afraid for him, for his safety, more than for my own safety. She later collected all the letters that he wrote to his wife and that she wrote back to him, in codes and so on, she collected that and she sent me the book. So I had friends like this, which made life for me very pleasant in that respect.

Also, I had a music group. We met once a week. They were all people who were half-Jewish and couldn’t perform. And they invented programs. We had actors, we had musicians. We had teachers, violinists. I had to play a certain piece. Everybody got one part of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. I got the first piece, the first prelude, and then they went on and they were analyzed. So we had an interesting life in many ways. I met interesting people there. I also went to concerts, but always alone, because my parents couldn’t go. My mother wasn’t allowed, so I went by myself.

(Did you have to wear a yellow star?)

No, no. My mother didn’t either.

(She didn’t. Was she half-Jewish, too?)

No, my mother was Jewish.

(Now, where is her family during all this time?)

The family was in Braunschweig, where I was born. Her mother, her brother, one brother, one sister, and one of the brothers was Carlos’s stepfather. He went, when it was still possible, with his wife to Guatemala. So he survived in Guatemala. You probably never met them.

(What’s his name?)

His name was Walter Aronheim and his wife Lily. Lily was Carlos’s mother. Walter Aronheim, my uncle, became posthumously my, uh, father-in-law. So Lily was his mother. In second marriage, she married my uncle. So this is how we knew each other. We knew each other as cousins. Actually, Carlos was my cousin.

(When did you meet Carlos for the first time? How old were you?)

Ah, Carlos. I was a little girl. We have a picture where I was about two years old and I have a nightgown of Carlos on and I’m on the arms of his mother. He is six years older. He was eight, I was two. That’s how I remember, at least through the picture, I remember him.

Then I saw him when I went to Braunschweig to see my grandmother. But that was during the time until ’42. In ’42 I was eighteen and I already had finished school. Carlos left already in ’33. So I didn’t see him much. In ’33 I was nine years old, and then I didn’t see him any more, until he came back once. Carlos, when was that? In ’37 or ’38 he came to Germany. He came to Berlin also to see us. Then I saw him again. He was a cousin.

(OK. So your family, your mother’s family, do they stay together?)

My mother’s family consisted of the brother, the Jewish brother with his Christian wife, and the sister, being Jewish, with her Christian husband. But they were in great danger of being exiled to a camp, and they had somebody who would kind of—a Gestapo man who my aunt befriended, he came often to the house. She was a very beautiful Christian lady. He said, “Mrs. Aronheim, if the situation gets very serious and they will take your husband, I will let you know before.”

So one day he came and told her that they would come and get him and take him to a camp, and also my grandmother. And so then my uncle made suicide. He wanted my aunt also to do suicide together. She wanted it, actually. But he said, “You have to keep the name of Aronheim alive, although we don’t have children. But I want you to have your life and just remember me.” Then they tried to give poison to my grandmother, but didn’t work. She spit it out and then they took her to the camp. Later on we heard that she survived the camp only for four days, so we were happy about that. But the trip must have been terrible— the trip from Braunschweig to Theresienstadt. Also, staying in a kind of hotel where they collected all these—all the Jews for sending them to Theresienstadt—it was a very, very bad place. It was close to where my grandmother lived, and my aunt took buckets of soup to them every day, so at least they would have something to eat. But it was a very, very sad time.

When my uncle died, there was nobody who wanted to bury him. But finally, in the place where my aunt had lived, where she was born, they accepted to bury him in a corner somewhere. Nobody would give a speech for him, although I think he had already become Christian. I don’t really remember. But no pastor would come. Nobody would do that. So they read—the other uncle of my aunt, who was still living, because the Gestapo had not come to them yet, he read the letter that my uncle had read [sic]. It was about his love for Germany and that he had fought in the First World War for Germany, the country that he loved. That was his home, and he hoped that after Hitler Germany will be again a normal country.

It was such a moving letter, which unfortunately I didn’t get, because at that time you didn’t have photocopies and I didn’t write it. But I remember, I cried for days. I thought I would never be able to laugh again.

But then life went on, and my aunt still lived. Shortly before the war was over, she committed suicide, because she was afraid. Somebody had told her they would take her. I survived this period. Because I was young, I was still hoping that nothing would happen to my family. Meanwhile my brother was taken to a camp, but to a hard labor camp. He had a very, very difficult time. He had to work very hard. They got very little food. But they could write letters. So my mother was able to send them potatoes that he was baking on a little iron stove with the friends, or he was digging out potatoes raw from the field and eating them raw so they would have something to eat. And he survived somehow. He came home one day. He was deserting his camp when he thought that the Russians were coming already, so he deserted. He went on a train somehow, took a coat of a Russian soldier that he found, and came home with this coat.

So my father said, when he came home, he said, “You cannot do this.” He even had a weapon. He said, “The Germans are still here. You cannot do this. We have to hide you somehow.” So then he went to the organization, to the head of the organization, and said, “Here I am.” He stayed with them for some time. He even became a helper in the kitchen and he could eat there. (chuckles) My brother was very clever.

Then when the war was over, he came home. But this weapon that he had, he gave to my father. We had a little lake, and we made a kind of ceremony. We went to the lake and said, “This weapon will be thrown into the lake so nobody will find it.” The coat he still had when the Russians came, because he didn’t have anything to wear. The Russians wanted to take him. They thought he was—it was an army coat. It was not a Russian coat, it was an army coat. They thought he was an army officer. And my father— it’s a long story— my father became the helper of the Russians to install the Olympic Stadium, which had been an army camp, a German army camp. They needed an engineer who would know how to get water and electricity. They chose my father, who was very good in all these things. So we had the help of the Russians. We were very lucky. We got food from them. They recognized that we were Jews, which the English later didn’t. This went on—for three months the Russians stayed in Berlin. Then came the English.

It’s another story.

So we survived the war. We all survived, only my brother got multiple sclerosis a few years afterwards. Then the German government took charge and they accepted that it could have been from the bad experiences and the hard labor camp, and they paid all the expenses.

My grandmother died, my uncle died, my aunt died, and my mother, who wanted to stay with her family, she survived. We could have gone to America anyway.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Alder Enterprises LLC

Inge Bernhard Part II: The Real Deal

(happy thanksgiving!)

Those who have been reading the blog for some time may remember that I first wrote about Inge Bernhard after meeting her in Israel in September. Those initial reactions came from my memory bank-- now I have her transcript. Here are some excerpts directly from her interview. We'll start back in Germany, Braunschweig to be exact.

All questions in (....) are mine.

(Now, you were born in 1924. When the war started, were you still in Germany, living in Braunschweig?)

Yes. I was fifteen.

(You were fifteen.)

Yes.

(And how did your parents react when the war officially began? Do you remember?)

Well, then I should tell you the story before. Because my father, who was not Jewish, married my mother knowing very well that anything can happen to Jewish people. He was a peace-loving person. He went through the First World War and never wanted to tell us about anything, anything about it. He thought it was such a terrible experience that he wanted to blot it out from his memory and from us somehow.

So he knew about Hitler. He read Mein Kampf as soon as—when Hitler wrote it. He wrote it in ’23. My parents married in ’23. And so he only hoped that nothing would happen. But in—his aim was to emigrate to the United States. He finally had a possibility to go to America as an emissary, as a scientist from the Siemens Company, where he worked, to go for one year to see what other companies are doing. They gave him permission to stay there for one year, and he wanted to find a place where we could live and where he could get settled.

So in ’35, he left us alone, my mother and me, my brother, and he told me, “Take good care of your mother.” I was eleven years old. I felt very grown-up. I thought this is a real job that I have to do, to take care of my mother and my brother. He sent us pictures and he wrote us. He was very, very happy in America.

When he came back, it was in ’36, he knew already that war was coming. He wanted my mother to go with him, take his family, and my mother declined. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay with her family, the family that lived in Braunschweig, while we—my father had work in Berlin. We lived in Berlin. She had all kinds of excuses: she doesn’t know enough English, and the children are still small, he may not have a job. So we just got stuck. My father gave in, and we didn’t go.

So when the war started, we knew what was coming—the worst. We knew, and we were very, very depressed. I remember the day when we thought we will be in a lot of problem. So that was the story behind it.

(So then what happened? After the war started, did your father think that you should move from Germany?)

We had American friends, friends from America who came right before. They came on the Kristallnacht, the year before, and wanted to take me out of Germany. And then the Americans didn’t let me in any more. They didn’t give me a visa, because they knew the war was coming. They didn’t want to have Germans in America. So I didn’t go. I was very excited about it at first. I so much wanted to go. But then it was a big disappointment. On the other hand, later on, I was very happy, because I wouldn’t have seen my parents for five years, maybe longer. I wouldn’t have heard from them. So I was happy I stayed.

We had at the beginning quite a normal time, until food was rationed and until my mother, being Jewish, didn’t get much food—didn’t get a good ration card any more and we had to share with her. We had to—my father got food from the neighbors for repairing radios and for helping people in their gardens and so we had a little more food. We had a maid, which helped my mother. We had a house which was—that my father built, because when my mother declined, didn’t want to go to America, he said, “Then we need a house with a shelter, because nobody will let us go into the shelter.” He knew this in ’36. And in ’39, the war started. That means, three years before that, he knew what was going to happen.

So we had the house with the shelter, which we used a lot, especially from ’42. We got used to this life somehow. We lived in a place where we didn’t get too many bombs. Some bombs fell on roofs, on rooftops, and the houses were not burned. People rushed to the roof and threw water on it. So we were in a fairly good place. It was right behind the Olympic Stadium. Maybe we were just lucky, because downtown was terrible. Many, many people lost their houses and all their belongings. We were very lucky with our house. It had a garden.

So I went to school. I was very happy in school, and I always said and felt I have two lives. One is at home, that is a sad life, and one is at school, that’s a happy life. To make my life happier, I played the piano and I lived with music and I played a lot. I was pretty much alone, because I was not accepted in the youth movements.

So I had to find out what I like. I read a lot. I played games by myself. I played tennis a little bit, as long as I was allowed on the tennis courts, but after the first year of war, I wasn’t allowed any more to play tennis. They just didn’t allow any half-Jewish person to play on the ground.

(Did you ever worry that your mother would be taken to a camp? Did you worry that your mother would be picked up?)

No. I didn’t worry, because my father did everything to protect us. He went to the Gestapo and told them as a scientist in research he was doing a lot for the state, which was a white lie, but he tried not to do anything that would—he wouldn’t construct weapons or something like this or help to develop the atom bomb. He would never do that. He told the Gestapo also, “I want to do something for defense and not for attacking.” And they accepted that. And then he said, “But I need your help to protect my family.” So he came home from this very, very gruesome experience that he went into the Gestapo house where they told him, “If you had had one bit of Jewish blood, you would not have gotten out of this place again.” He told us. And he came with a little piece of paper and it said that to his family nothing should happen. He was happy about this, and he told us, and we felt somehow protected.

We also had a friend who came to our house. He was not supposed to enter our house. Nobody really was allowed to enter our house. It’s something that’s very difficult to understand. My friends came, my young friends sometimes came, but most of the time I went to them. I had one friend—my mother had one friend who came to our house to talk to her, but she felt so proud of that, that I was ashamed. She was actually for some time my piano teacher. And when she said, “Can you imagine, I cannot even be in one of the Nazi organizations because I am befriending you?”, when I heard that, I was so angry about it, I never wanted to see her any more. And then she hardly came.

There was one other friend who came, and she was the neighbor’s relative. She was a singer in the opera house, and she had the emblem, the Parteiabzeichen, I don’t know what you call it. She had to join the Party because otherwise she couldn’t have been a singer in the National Opera. But otherwise she was absolutely not interested in the Nazi Party, and she wasn’t afraid to come to our house. So she was the only one that my mother saw. She came and played chess with my mother once a week.

And then we had—one day, we had the Gestapo coming to the house. My father had a bicycle, which he took to his work every day. The work was maybe twenty minutes by bicycle away. He took his bicycle in any kind of weather, whether it was hot, whether it was snowing, anything. He needed his bicycle to come home as soon as my mother would call him. Then came the day when she called him. She said, “The Gestapo is here, and they’re going to smash the door if you don’t come soon.”

So he took his bicycle, came home, and they were at the door already. He showed them the little paper. Then they were so surprised about this that they didn’t know what to do, and they went away to discuss it with their superiors. Meanwhile, my father was really afraid that something happened. We called our friend from the Opera. She said, “Yes, your mother can come to me, there is no problem.” So my mother took the train, the underground, went to her, but it was a big house, and she couldn’t go to the shelter when the bombs came. This was in ’42.

She stayed there for two weeks. My mother was fearless. She didn’t, uh, she wasn’t afraid that something would happen to her. But first of all, she had to share the food with her friend, and that means that the friend didn’t have much to eat, because two people had to eat from one ration card. And then, she was also afraid that our friend would be denounced by some neighbors, which would have been very, very dangerous for the friend. So she called my father and said, “I’m coming home.”

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Gerda Guttfreund Part VI: Israel

Gerda now lives in Jerusalem but spends a good part of the year traveling to El Salvador and the US to visit her children, grandchildren, other family members, and friends. Here Gerda shares her feelings about her fifth home.

All questions in (....) are mine.

(You still live in Jerusalem?)

Yes.

(And you call Israel your home today?)

Yes. Very much.

(And it’s very much your emotional home as well.)

Yes, it is. I’m a person who is very connected always to the past, and with all the wonderful experiences that I partly had, not in Germany but in Brazil and in Salvador, I still did not feel Brazilian or Salvadoreña. I felt I was different, and I knew the others must have felt that I was different. And I felt it when the war with Honduras and Salvador was on. People were looking at me like, “You can’t understand us because you’re not Salvadoreña.” I was Salvadoreña, because I had become Salvadoreña and I’d been living here thirty-five years. But not even my daughter Noemi was considered Salvadoreña when she worked as a social worker in a finca in a coffee plantation. When the social workers were talking between them about the cases and she gave her opinion, they would say, “Oh, you can’t give an opinion. You are not Salvadoreña.”

So it is very important to me to live here, with all the negative things that any place has, and which hurts me maybe more because we were hoping we were different, but we are just like any other people. I meet so many people that are like me that I could have endless groups of friends, you cannot cope with so many people. But I always meet someone that I have a lot in common with.

(Wonderful. So Israel is really your home.)

Ja.

(There’s just one story I wonder if you would mind telling. It’s the story of your first trip back to Europe.)

That was very exciting. I felt with all what I was saying about Israel, the ones I feel the most in common with are the Europeans, the European Jews, of course. And I am very European in my mental makeup. There is no doubt about that. Because even if I left when I was twelve, I continued in the European culture until I was eighteen and a half, when I left the bookstore. It’s only then that I had a real encounter with Latin America, with Brazil. And they were—these youngsters knew French as well as Portuguese because they also were very much under the European influence. Even their parents were.

In Brazil, people that were well off and had big haciendas, how do you call, a big—?)

(Farm?)

Farms. They would spend six months in Brazil and six months in Paris, you know? It was very much part of Brazilian life. So when I came to Europe and I met the people, I saw the people, I went to the—

—concerts and I went to the museums. I was deeply, deeply touched, and I told you the story about when I saw the Michelangelo slave I almost fainted, because it’s one thing to see a photograph and another thing to see it really in front of you. Also, the paintings, to see the real, authentic paintings—everything was very moving.

(And you met one German girl. You told me a story about a German girl who lived—who was not Jewish and she lived in Germany during the war.)

Ah, that was part of the study group. The study group, one year I decided the theme would be—since we had so many nationalities, all ladies whose husbands were here professionally, either in embassies or United Nations, the medical profession, something. They also were very cultured and had nothing to do and were quite lost. So in the study group, they could give talks on their specialties and so on. And one year I decided I want the personal history of the different nationalities that were there between the two world wars, that is, the end of the First World War until the end of the Second World War.

Perla told about her experiences in Auschwitz. And a younger German woman said that when she was five, Berlin was bombarded and they lost their home and it was very difficult, of course. And then, when she was a teenager, she was on a trip with a friend in Scandinavia, and they met a teacher who was taking a group of young people to different countries, and he told her and her friend, “Come tonight to see a movie that I’m showing.” And the movie was about the Shoah. She was horrified. She had no idea. Nobody ever mentioned what had happened at that time. All she knew were the personal losses they had, but nothing else.

She came home and she confronted her parents. It was really a traumatic experience for her. I understand it must be very difficult. As a matter of fact, Laura (a member of the extended family) told me once, she went with a group of students studying to become teachers, Israelis, that went to Germany, and they visited the concentration camps. When she saw the sign “Gas chamber,” she stayed back while the others had gone on, and she started crying. A man came up to her (near tears) and said, “Can I get you something? Would you like to drink something?” Then he said, “You know, I am the son of a Nazi, and I come here regularly. And I feel maybe as sad as you do. One cannot measure sadness, but it is very, very hard on me.”

-------

(Thank you, Gerda, thank you.)

You’re welcome.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Gerda Guttfreund Part V: Living in El Salvador

Gerda has five children: Andre, Noemi, Miriam, Ruth, and Daniel. Despite her responsibilities at home, she remained active in the greater Salvadoran community....

All questions in (....) are mine.

The Jewish community, I was always on the board. I was also president for some of it. I did anything that was needed. And with Perla Meissner we put on plays with children for the Jewish holidays. I was part of the Hevra Kadisha (group of men/women who prepare bodies for burial) and head of the Zionist organization for some time. There were so many things I asked people to give money to that one man who was not very agreeable, when he saw me coming in, he would put his hand into his pocket: “For what is it now?” Because it could have been for widows of the soldiers who died in Israel, for anything for Israel or for here.

(Right. And you raised five children.)

Yes. But that was the advantage of Salvador, that you had help at home. You just had to be there when the children come home, and all the other time was free for you to do the things you felt like doing. Ah, I worked also for the police at the police station with children. Teaching. And I taught also how to read and write. That was general, grown-ups and those children. And later, when the children went to—the Señoras de los Abogados, the women of the lawyers, the wives of the lawyers rented a home in Santa Tecla for these children. They had real teachers, but I used to go to tell stories and acted them out with them. They loved that. And then they always told me they were bored there because it was so much more interesting to be at the police station, where there was so much more going on. And sometimes they asked me, they would like to take a drive, and I would take groups for short drives and they got a kick out of that. (chuckles)

(So all of this continued until 1979.)

Yes.

(When you left Salvador.)

Ja.

I’ll make it very short. I hate to talk about it. We had to leave because they kidnapped and killed Ernst Liebes, who was my husband’s cousin, very good friend and associate.

(You moved to Guatemala.)

Mm-hmm.

(And lived there for a little over a year.)

A year and a half, more than a year and a half. The hardest thing in the beginning was that our son wanted to stay on until his graduation in June, and we left end of March, beginning of April. We had to make conditions that we could be calm about it, but he wanted to graduate with his friends. I understood that, and after all the trauma he had been through, I thought he had a right to choose that. But he had to sleep every three nights in a different home, leave and come back at different hours from school, and not go home. He did go home once, and there was a man standing there, but he went with a car up and he told our Pilar, and she went down and looked at him furiously and he disappeared. But that showed him that he can’t do it.

(Right.)

I don’t know if maybe I told you that. I don’t know what else. Guatemala was very difficult. The people of the community were wonderful to us, but there was a lot of violence in Guatemala too, whole families killed on the street. We used to travel a lot to see our children in the United States, in Israel, our family in Brazil. And sometimes we would go to Salvador, and I was very afraid for my husband. I was feeling like a dead leaf, and I said to my husband, “I need to have roots. I cannot live like that any more.”

Then after a year and a half, he made the decision to try to live away from the business, because he had been in constant contact with the business. After five years, they named him ambassador of the Salvadoreños of El Salvador in Jerusalem. Do you want me to tell about that? We did not like it, but we were more or less forced to do it.

(I’d just like you to tell me one thing: why Quique finally said, “OK, I’ll do it.” He heard something that made him—)

He was called by our—how do you call it? business manager that they had told him that the President had said—because my husband didn’t want to accept—he said he was too old to start a new profession, that he can never count on the Jewish community, which hurt my husband, because he felt very responsible for the Jewish community and always been working in all kinds of positions for the community, and that Israel needed much more the Salvadorean embassy in Jerusalem than Salvador needed an Israeli embassy. So these two things were what made us decide, “OK, let’s hope that after two years they will find someone else.” But it was the third President that even after one year did not say that he should leave, so he was ambassador for nine years.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Gerda Guttfreund IV: El Salvador for the First Time

After a blissful honeymoon through Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Panama, the newlyweds headed north to San Salvador. In advance, Heinz "Quique" had written his friends about Gerda. In response, Andre Joseph (one of Quique's closest friends) responded jokingly; "The women of the community are already criticizing Gerda!"

All questions in (....) are mine.

We flew to Salvador from Panama. Heinz was very excited to be back. He had been away five months. He went from one side of the plane to the other saying, “Oh, look, this is Lake Coatepeque! This is this volcano! This is that volcano! This is the other lake!” And I was just sitting and thinking of all the people that were waiting for us, because everybody would go to the airports at that time in Salvador, and I didn’t know one soul. Everybody was Heinz’s acquaintance or family so I was quite afraid of it...So when my husband was so excited, he got a little upset. He said, “What is this? You’re going to live here and you’re not interested?” I said, “Heinz, do you realize how I feel?” And we talked about it and I started crying. Then he had to console me before we arrived, before the arrival. And everybody was there.

(How many people do you think, roughly? Ten?)

At least twenty. (laughs)

(Oh, my God. That would scare anyone!)

Ja! (laughs) Twenty people you don’t know and you are going to live with them.

(So what year is that, ’46, that you moved to Salvador?)

We arrived in Salvador in January.

(January of ’46.)

Ja.

(What were your immediate impressions?)

Well, it was difficult. First we were living in a hotel, and then we moved to the Liebes’s for a short time, and then we moved into the house of the aunt, of the sister of my husband whose husband had really started the business. But he had died, and she moved to Guatemala, so the house with all the old furniture and curtains from Hamburg we rented.

(I see.)

She was the sister of my mother-in-law. The house, I mean, the furniture and everything to me had a smell of old, but the garden was beautiful, very big garden. But we lived across from where the soldiers lived, how do you call it?

(Barracks?)

No, you don’t call it barrack. It’s a big place.

(Fort?)

Ja. Which was also on another side opposite the President’s house. When there was a revolution, a short revolution, they would shoot from that place to the President’s house, but some bullets went into our house, which was on the other side. (laughs) Just before my first child was born, there was such a revolution. My husband enjoyed it. He went to the street to meet others to see how the revolution was going. (laughs) And I was in the back of the house hoping, because there were even chairs with still holes from the previous revolution. We didn’t know if it would end before I would give birth to my child. So Heinz was reading in the medical books what he had to do in case the child was coming. (laughs) He would have loved to be a doctor. He enjoyed the situation, but fortunately we didn’t have to go through that. It was over.

(And you had your first child in 1946?)

Yes, in November.

(A boy.)

A boy, ja.

(And his name is—?)

André Rubén.

(How did your—how were you received by the Jewish community?)

That was difficult, because I was the first import of women, young women, after the war. Everybody else had been married for nine years, had about three children, most of them, not all of them, and were quite heavy after the three children. And here comes this young woman. It was a little awkward. In the beginning, my husband felt we had to be in touch with the whole community. And I was happy after eight o’clock at night that nobody had called to say, “Are you at home? We would like to visit.” So they would come around 8:15, and 10 sharp they would get up and leave. It was not interesting at all, with exception of some whom I had some contact with, especially the brothers of Joseph, with whom we had lived. One really became a very good friend. The other one loved to read and loved art, so we had a lot to talk about.

And the Liebeses and a French couple whom I liked very much, your grandmother, but there were very few that I really enjoyed coming, because I also wanted to be alone with my husband. We hadn’t been knowing each other for such a long time, so I was always relieved when nobody announced their visits. And little by little, he accepted that we didn’t have to see the whole community all the time.

(So you stay in Salvador and you have two more children, two girls.)

Mm-hmm.

(And eventually, those girls go off to school.)

Ja. But much before that, I had two more children. When the first child—before, when I knew already that André was going to leave for school, I wanted very much to have another boy. But it was a little girl that came, and we were very happy. She was a very lovely baby. But then I thought, “She can’t grow up alone. The others are much older.” So I wanted another child. My husband was not too convinced of that, but I convinced him.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Gerda Guttfreund Part III: Packing for El Salvador

Gerda lived and worked in Sao Paolo until she met Heinz Guttfreund.

All questions in (....) are mine.

In 1945, as soon as the war ended.

(You met your future husband, Heinz.)

Yes. At that time I was very much in love with a Brazilian poet who I knew would not be the person that I would want for a life companion, but I had a wonderful experience with him. It was a very deep understanding for many things, but not for everything. He was Catholic, very—how do you say it? very religious. He would go to Mass every morning at six. I tried, through the book of Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, through Alyosha, to understand him. We gave each other a lot, and we were friends until he died in 1980. At the time I met Heinz, I was not open to another relationship, but I appreciated him. He was a very transparent person, very fresh, very open and very handsome. We did leave a few times—we did go out a few times, but never anything deeper developed.

But then, a few months after I met him, he had come to ask me if I knew a place that he could take his sister for a vacation. I said, for me, the Jordan campus, campus du Jordan, was the most beautiful place I knew. There’s a lovely Swiss chalet where he could take his sister. I always went to a pensión which I loved very much. And he did take her. And then something happened in the bookstore that I left the bookstore, and they paid me what they had to pay me, one salary per month of the years I had worked. I invited my mother to go to that pensión, not because I thought something would develop between my husband and me, but because I loved the place and I always used to go there.

But when I was there, I thought, I’ll call him and tell him, if he wants me to show him the most beautiful places that I love so much, I will do it. And then, in a few days, walking and talking from morning to night, it developed. There was that love for nature, his love for music, about his social conscience, all the things that were also important to me. And he was a Jew. (chuckles) And in a few days, my mother and his sister left because they were feeling something was developing and they might be in the way. After ten days we really decided to get married a month later.

(Amazing.)

Ja. So this is—

(So you were married in Brazil and then you decided to go on a honeymoon?)

Ja. I wanted to get married in Brazil so that my parents could be present, and so it had to be done very quickly. I invited all the people I knew so that they would see my husband at least. I didn’t invite them for the wedding. We had no money to make such a big party as nowadays people do, but there was like a reception, without any food, after the chuppah, so that people could greet him and we could exchange a few words. I remember when I went down the aisle with Heinz, someone in the community said, “With that one I would go as far away as Central America, too!”

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Gerda Guttfreund Part II: Brazil

Gerda’s trip to Brazil did not end in Rio. The family reunited with her uncle (who lived in Sao Paolo) the next day.

The next stop was Santos. There my uncle was already waiting and took us to Sao Paulo to his house, which was in a nice neighborhood. Bedrooms, one was for my uncle’s family, one was for our family, and one was for the parents of my aunt who lived there. Downstairs was where the living and dining room were. In the living room lived the brother of my aunt. And we lived very harmoniously all together, and very soon it was Pesach and the seder was absolutely beautiful. The father of my aunt presided it and he was dressed all in white and against a big white pillow and it was a wonderful reunion for everybody.

But when they were cooking during the day, each one with a little coal stove with one pot, the old gentleman was very unhappy. He said, “Just like the gypsies!” We lived a few months with my uncle, and I was very sad when they found a small business for my father, which had two rooms in the back. It was in a different neighborhood. Because I could have gone on living that way. I just loved to be all the family together.

(So you moved out of this house and into your own house and your father then started his own business?)

Yes. He had a small business, a small grocery store. But unfortunately at that time, especially well-to-do people who were our—let’s see—

(Clients.)

Clients. They would not pay immediately. You had to write down what they owed you and then go to their offices and go through a lot of people before you got your pay. And since we had no capital, we had to close. And that was the end of my studies, too. And when one of the clients came to buy a few things and my mother said, “Would you please pay us what you owe us? We have to close,” he immediately made the check and he saw me standing there, and he said, “What about your daughter?” And my mother said, “Well, she has to start to work.” “What has she studied?” “Well, she went a few months to a school where she learned some typing and bookkeeping and so on.” So he said, “She can work for us.” He had a German bookstore. “I have an elderly secretary who could use some help.”

So I got a job. And I earned as much as my father, which was not much. (laughs) Not even the two together. And we moved to a pensión, into one room where the cooking was done and the washing of the dishes. My father had his own bed because he was working very hard physically. I had to sleep in one bed with my mother, and I was at an age where I did not like that at all.

I was already in a youth group, which was wonderful, all kids like me that were immigrants and had to work. Some worked and studied at the same time, and we helped each other. It was a wonderful support group for all of us. We went into nature and we spent, like, carnival or Christmas two, three days in some abandoned house by the lake. We cooked and we sang and we made bonfires and we read stories by Edgar Allen Poe by the bonfires. It enriched my life. It was really the most important thing of that period.

(Do you remember the name of the youth group?)

Well, we called it Kadima, which means “Forward.” But it was not so important. We were not all coming from a Zionist background like I did. Some came from socialist backgrounds, but it didn’t matter. In my work, after a short time the boss called me and said, “Gerda, you will never be a secretary.” And I agreed. I used to fall asleep sometimes, it was so boring to put things in alphabetical order and bills in alphabetical order. But now and then they would call me to the bookstore to serve, and I loved that. And he said, “We like the way you deal with people and the way you love books.” Because I used to read a lot when I could take books home, but I had to be very careful not to open them too much, put something, paper around them that they wouldn’t get dirty.

The people who worked there were very special. They were all immigrants who had been professionals with a very good cultural background. They decided to make a list for me of all the books that a cultured person must have read, of the world literature, but in German, because it was a German bookstore. So I read the Russians and the French and the Germans, (chuckles) everybody, one after the other. I could ask them questions if I didn’t understand, or they told me to look up in the encyclopedias.

We also had art books and reproductions of paintings, and there was one woman who had studied at the Reinhardt art school in Berlin, and she gave me lessons in history of art and to see the different techniques and how to recognize the different periods. It was a wonderful experience.

(So you worked there until they had to close?)

Ja, they had to close, because no German books were coming any more, not even from Sweden, where the books that were forbidden in Germany were published in German, but nothing came because of the war. So they had to close. But since my boss was really a musician and an artist, he was very broad in spending for all the friends of these immigrants that used to meet, really, every day at the bookstore, and he would invite them to eat and drink. He finished completely with all the money he had and with lots of debts, and he told me one day, “Tomorrow they will come and take everything away that we have in the bookstore. You choose what your heart most desires.” And I wanted the complete collection of Tolstoy and a—how do you call it? an engraving?

(An art book?)

No, no, a mother and child by Käthe Kollwitz.

(A print?)

It was not a print. It was even with her signature. I don’t know right now what you call it. You know, you have woodcuts and you have all kinds of things that you can do a certain number of copies. If they have this also on top of it, the signature by the artist, it is valued very much. And I loved that picture and since I was eighteen it has accompanied me.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Gerda Guttfreund I: From Romania to Brazil

Gerda Guttfreund is truly beloved in the Jewish community. The mother of five children (Andre, Noemi, Miriam "Mia", Ruth "Cuchi", and Daniel "Dani"), the wife of Heinz "Quique" Guttfreund and sister of Fanny, Gerda kept herself very busy not only as mother and wife but also as the resident co-director of community theater productions, member of Pro-Arte and various other non-profit organizations, and confidante/friend to countless individuals. Now a grandmother to nine, Gerda known by many as "Gush" or "Oma Gush", was born in what was once Romania.


I was born the 8th of June, 1922, in Chernowitz, at that time Rumania.

(And the names of your parents?)

My mother’s name was Rachel Tiger Menschenfreund, and my father’s name, Leo Schneider.

(And the name of your sister?)

My sister’s name is Fannie Weidergorn.

(How long did you live in Chernowitz?)

I left Chernowitz when I was three years old, and I came back with my son Dani, who invited me to go to the place where I was born and I went to school, which later was in Berlin, but we also went to Chernowitz, which is the Ukraine now, and I must say, I knew a lot about Chernowitz, because I grew up with all the stories from my family.

(Can you tell me a little bit about your family in Chernowitz?)

My family in Chernowitz had a little bar, I don’t know how you would call it, where people who came to bring their wares to the market would eat and drink. It was quite a good business, not very important, but enough to live on.

(And were you related to a famous rabbi in Chernowitz?)

Not in Chernowitz. My grandfather was a descendant of Levy Yitzhak of Berdichev, a Hassidic rabbi of the eighteenth century. And we loved his stories and we loved being descendants of his.

(There’s one beautiful story that you tell about Kol Nidre and this rabbi.)

The rabbi was a great defendant of the people, and he would even get angry with God if he thought He made them suffer too much. There’s a story that on Kol Nidre evening, he several times started to want to sing the Kol Nidre and he felt something was holding him back. And he looked at his community and he went up to a man and said, “Why is it that you disturb my praying?” The man said, “Oh, rabbi, I have so many worries! My wife died, and my daughter is sick, and I can’t think of anything else but them.” So Yitzrak went up to the bima and he said, “God, this is too much suffering for one man. There will be no Kol Nidre tonight.” (chuckles)

(I love that story! --So from Chernowitz you moved to Berlin. What year was that?)

We moved to Berlin 1925, which was a difficult period. Germany was a mess after the First World War. And we lived first in one room and then in two rooms that we rented from a widow. You could only rent from someone else who needed the money at that period. You were not allowed to have your own place. Neither could we afford it, I suppose.

(I remember you saying that this place didn’t even have its own bathroom.)

Well, the whole region, which was called “das Scheunenviertel”—

(Which means “the barn.”)

Ja. “The region of the barns,” which I imagine was the end of Berlin centuries ago, was a proletarian neighborhood, very old buildings, and they had a toilet, but not a bathroom.

(Tell me, you went to school during this time period, during these ten years you lived in Berlin. What was the name of your school?)

I’m sorry, I don’t know the name. I know where the school was situated. The Grundschule, the first basic years, I went to the Gartenstrasse. When we went there for a visit, I went to the house where we used to live, which now is very fancy, which it wasn’t in my time, and then I saw a small street just opposite our house, and I said, “My God, the end of this street is the Gartenstrasse where I went to school!” And we went there, and there was a school in the same place, but it wasn’t the same school.

Later, I went to the Sophien-Lyceum for one year, but it was very difficult for me because Nazism was already very strong and Jewish children could not sit with the Christian children and we were not allowed to go out to play in—how do you call it? die Pause.

(Oh, on the playground.)

Yeah, on the playground in the intermission.

(The recess.)

In the recess, yes.

(And then you finished?)

When I came home crying because—also because of the anti-Semitic remarks that the teachers always included in their teaching, my mother said, “Enough of that. You go to a Jewish school now.” My sister and I went to a Jewish school in the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. At that time the school was a hundred years old. I even recited a poem for everybody in the auditorium about this special Jubileum. When we used to come out of school, there were always children waiting to insult us.

(In 1935, your family decided to emigrate.)

Yes.

(Who was already in—?)

My uncle Hermann, one of the brothers of my father, who had lived in Berlin, like my uncle Rolf and my uncle Nathan. Uncle Nathan went to Israel and my uncle Hermann had two well-to-do friends who had left earlier for Brazil, and they sent him what was being called shamada. And as soon as he arrived, he begged us to please come, he needs his family and that we would be having a very good time, to be all together again. So he sent us the shamada, and in ’35, we left for Brazil with the help of two of my uncles that were brothers of my mother who were better off, one in Rumania and one in Italy. They helped us with the ticket for the boat, with the $50 per person that we were allowed to take out, and that’s how we emigrated.

(So you emigrated, it took you one month?)

One month, which I loved, because I had never been on a boat, and to see the sunset and the flying fishes, it was all very exciting to me.

(Tell me, what happened when you arrived in Brazil?)

When we arrived in Brazil, the first port was Rio de Janeiro. The entrance into the bay of the port was absolutely gorgeous. We were very excited. But when we stopped at the port and people from the first and second class went down to visit Rio, we thought of walking a little, because we had no money to take a tour, but the policeman stopped us from going down and said, “You are not allowed to go down. Hitler doesn’t want you. We don’t want to, either.” And my mother was terribly, terribly unhappy. She cried and said, “Where did we come to? It seems to be the same.”

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Ruth Meissner III: Onward to El Salvador

 

Erich traveled to Israel for vacation and quickly met Ruth through Perla Meissner and her sister Ruchi (amongst other friends). They were married and and quickly left for an extended honeymoon.

(....) indicate my questions.

Erich came to Israel in March. And he went in Tel Aviv to an agency to buy two tickets for Eilat. He decided, “To Eilat I’m not going on my own. I must find someone to come with me.” He came looking for a wife. That was his reason why he came. So he decided to go to Eilat. It was on the eighth of May, the ninth of May. He took the two tickets without knowing just the date. And we met. And you know, between Pesach and Shavuot you can marry only on Lag B’Omer. Only one day. And this one day was the eighth of May. So when we met, we met maybe once before—very quickly we decided. It was something we decided, that we wanted each other. I don’t know, you really can call it love. We were not so young any more. Erich was thirty-five, I was thirty. So we knew already what we know, what we want. We married. And it came out that our first honeymoon was to Eilat on the two tickets that he bought before he knew me. That was our first honeymoon. (laughs) Isn’t it a nice story?

(Well done.)

That’s well done. (laughs) It was our first honeymoon. First I had to finish my place where I worked. I had a very responsible place and they had to find someone. So we had to wait. It took a little while. Then in June we left and made our honeymoon through Europe.

(You went through Europe. Where did you go?)

We went through Europe. We decided we are going to cities. We went to first in Rome, Vienna, Brussels, it was a World Exhibition there, then Paris, London, and New York. So we made a very nice honeymoon. On this honeymoon happened many things that I didn’t foresee. When I left Israel, I wasn’t very happy to leave. I felt very good here. I felt I am home, that this is where I belong. I had no other feelings. I even never thought about it moving. This is where I am staying. This is my place where I belonged. And I left my sister. She had four children. We were very close.


When I left, she told me in the airport, she told me, “You know, my birthday is in March. So I hope I will get a notice that you have a child.” She made the connections when you marry, the time, how it comes out. And you know, it came exactly on the day. (laughs) She got a telegram—because there were no phones at that time. So I sent a telegram. In the morning they called, and the difference of time, my daughter was born on the third of March. Her birthday is the fourth. But the difference of time, in the morning they called her, “Miriam, you have a telegram.” She said, “I knew she would give me the birthday present!” (laughs) So my daughter was born exactly when she said. So there are so many nice coincidences.

(March third?)

And she had her present on the fourth. My sister was born on the fourth of March.

(Which year is this?)

It was ’59. I married in ’58. It was ’59. But when I went off the plane in Rome, I suddenly realized I am back in Europe. And I was so depressed, I started to cry. And why I left Israel—you know, I realized only at that time how wonderful I felt in Israel. Everything came back to me. I was again in Europe. Everything was again. Who is Jewish? Everything what I felt, everything—

I remember back when I was just—I didn’t know who I am. Because during the war, the only thing you were thinking was to come home. But you didn’t realize you had no home. Home is not the house. A home is the family, and the family wasn’t there any more. So I think these are things that you can’t explain. You just can talk about it, but you can’t explain it.

(And there’s no way we can understand.)

No. It’s something, really—when I’m looking now at my grandchild, my grandson, he is thirteen, and I remember, I was alone and I was already without parents. I had to take care of my grandmother. She was eighty. She was confused. She didn’t know what happened. And here I was, you know? I was thirteen years old. I’m looking at him, he’s a child! I was a grown-up, of course, because I had to be. So life itself is so strong that you adapt yourself in every—how do you say?—every situation. You just adapt. You take what you have and you go on. You just go on. That’s something that you realize only after many years. I have a diary I wrote in the ghetto, and I have it.

(You kept it!)

Ja, I kept it. This is the only thing that I really had that I took with me when I left the ghetto. Because I was lucky. I was really lucky. I stayed in the ghetto from the beginning to the end. I didn’t go to Auschwitz or the other camps. I say “only” in the ghetto, only. But it was really much better than all other places. But it was bad enough. And I have the diary and then I sometimes—very seldom. Once, it was also interesting—I came and I put it away, and I never looked at it, never. I went to Salvador. I left it with my sister here. I didn’t even take it with me. I don’t know, I just didn’t—probably I didn’t want to see how I felt, maybe—I don’t know. It wasn’t conscious. I just didn’t look.

I was sixty and I had to have an operation, a bigger one, and then I decided, maybe I won’t come out of it, so let’s go! The whole night I was reading this diary, to see, and then came back so many things that I just forgot, or I just wanted to forget, probably. The feelings, all what I felt, you don’t like to remind yourself of bad things, so you just put them aside. But you never really forget them-- they are always there.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC
Photo: From Meissner Family Collection. Ruth Meissner with children Rafi, Beni, and Tami--all born in San Salvador, El Salvador. 

Ruth Meissner II: The Early Years in Israel

Ruth and her sister boarded a ship for Israel and arrived around two weeks later. Despite their elation at finally being out of Europe, only one problem persisted: they did not know where to go next.

(....) indicate my questions.

And she [Ruth's sister] went to a kibbutz, because at that time she had no choice. Her husband went to the army. She was with one two-and-a-half-year child. The son was born two days after she arrived. So our cousin from the kibbutz came to the hospital and asked her, “Where will you go?” She said, “I have no idea.” You know, when you think about it today, Israel was very young. This was nothing here. Nobody had anything here. So he told her, “Come with your children to the kibbutz and you’ll see, when your husband comes out from the army”—he had to serve for a few months—“then you will decide what to do.” They stayed in the kibbutz, had another two children. But I never went to the kibbutz. I went to the army from the ship, directly to the hospital, because I was a nurse already. I had no idea for Hebrew. Of course I didn’t know Hebrew. But very few really knew it. Many were immigrants who didn’t know Hebrew.

I remember a very nice incident. I came to a military hospital. It was a big room with thirty-six young soldiers. One spoke French, one Arabic, all the languages, and English, but very few of them spoke Hebrew. This was the new immigrants. It’s OK. They were soldiers. Then one night the head nurse told me, “You have to stay for the night shift.” “I can’t be alone. I don’t understand them. How will I talk to them? They don’t understand me. I don’t understand them.” At that time I knew Czech and German, and it wasn’t enough. “You will manage. That’s what you have to do.” I was sitting there saying, “What am I going to do?” Then I had a brilliant idea. The whole hospital was laughing at me. I took on a tray everything what they need—an injection, a pill, a bottle. Then I went and some would call me and I would say, “Show me what you wants.” (laughs) That’s how we managed. And they were laughing, but it was the only way. But very fast I learned Hebrew, of course. I had to. I had no choice. In two or three months I was speaking Hebrew without a problem.

So I was in the army. After I left the army, I could go wherever I want. I had nothing anywhere. No money, no home, no place to live. I decided I have to see where I am going to go to work where I can also live, have a room. In a hospital, the nurses can stay. I decided I’m not going to Jerusalem. I knew the country already, because always when I had a few days off, I just looked around. I knew the country very well. I’m not going to Jerusalem. There are too many Arabs and too many Orthodox Jews. I don’t like Jerusalem. Tel Aviv? I don’t like Tel Aviv. So the only place to stay was in Haifa.

And another thing: Perla and Ruchi were in Haifa. Perla, she left the army earlier, because she’s older. So after a few months—her sister left at the same time as I, because we are the same age. So I decided I’m going to Haifa, and here I found the hospital where I could live and I started to work. I started to earn money. I started to just buy clothes and to do something. Because I really had no one who could give me something. But I managed. I managed quite well.

So I worked and made friends. I was very happy. I didn’t stay long in the hospital. I was only two years, and then I got a very nice job in a children’s home. I was a nurse there. I was responsible for everything for the children from broken homes.

We opened this place and this place and there I worked until Erich came.

(Before we move on to that—)

(laughs) It’s more or less everything.

(Did people here ask you about the war?)

Ja. That’s what happened, that I met a very young nice Israeli soldier, all soldiers then, very nice boy. We managed Hebrew. He was Israeli, of course, but I knew enough, too. He asked me, “Where are you from?” And then I told him, and he looked at me. He was shocked. He told me, “I cannot understand. How could you let yourself—how could you go and do what they told you? How could you?” I looked at him and I said, “You are asking the questions that I cannot answer. You don’t understand. It was too close. It was only a few years.” And I really didn’t understand many things, because I just didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to realize what really happened. I just put it away. I just left Europe, and for me it was a closed chapter. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to talk about it. We talked between us when we were together with friends, but never really about things that happened. It was passé. It was with me, I’ll never forget it, but it was past.

Then I looked at him and I told him, “One thing I can tell you for sure. If you want to see me again, we will never, never talk about what happened there. If you ask more questions, it was nice we met, and I’ll never see you again.” Then I realized what I told you, that they were judging us. “How can it be that you are here? You had to do something bad. How can it be that you lived and all the others died?” It was just the feeling that you did something wrong.

Of course we didn’t, but they gave me the feeling—and not only me, all of the survivors who came to Israel....

Transcript by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC 

Ruth Meissner Part I: Europe

The first quarter of Ruth's life was spent in Europe, Czechoslovakia to be exact. Below you will see an excerpt from her oral history recently taken in Israel. All questions in parentheses (...) are mine.

I lived in one place but I was born in another place. I was born where my mother was born, so she went for delivery to her town, but were living on the Austrian border. The town where I was born is called Zed-n-a-i-m. Znaim. It’s a town, a small town. But I was only born there. My mother’s family lived there. My mother is one of ten children. She was the youngest. She went, of course, home to give birth to be ___. But we lived in a place not far from there, about maybe twenty miles, probably it’s a name that I don’t think you will— (laughs) OK, so B-o-h-r-l-i-zed, Bohrliz. That’s the name of the small town in Moravia not far from the big city that you know. That’s maybe twelve miles from there. It’s not far.

(Tell me, what is your birth date?)

Twenty-four of February, ’28. There I lived until I was ten. This was Sudetenland, where Hitler took—Hitler came in—it was September ’38, and then we left home. We just ran away.

(Where did you go?)

We just really ran away, because it wasn’t for sure if they will go there or they won’t, so we stayed until the last minute. We stayed before we left. My mother was very ill, and she died when I was eight years old. She’s buried there. She didn’t go through the Holocaust. She died before because she was ill. So my sister went to Berlin, to the Jewish Gymnasium because she is four years older and she didn’t want to study at home. My father, my grandmother, and me, we stayed at home. One day my father said, “OK, we are leaving.” We had a car. He took us out to the car. We took some things, I don’t know what he took. I was ten years old, so of course I remember the day we left, but I don’t remember any details.

We went to some small place and there we stayed for maybe two or three months, and there was a school that I went to one day. I came back and I said, “I’m not going to this school because they are all stupid." All the children, all the ages were together. And I didn’t really—I just didn’t go. So my father decided, “OK, but we have to go to a place where she has to go to school.” So we went to Bruenn. But of course the Germans came there, too, in March or April, I don’t know exactly, ’39 they took all of Czechoslovakia. And here we were, we were refugees. It wasn’t very easy, because we didn’t have some— we had no income. How my father managed, I really can’t tell you. I know only—

—one thing that sometimes he said. “You see?” he said. He took out the money and said, “That’s all what we have.” But he had a very good nature. He always said that when the time is at its worst, help is nearest. Something may come up tomorrow. Something will come up. So he was very optimistic. I don’t know, I’m also a very optimistic person, maybe I got it from him. But really—and then, one day, he just wasn’t here any more. They took him away on the street and then I stayed there alone.

(Did you see them take him away?)

No.

(Someone told you?)

No, no. We decided to meet at my aunt’s for Erev Yom Kippur. I was certain—I decided maybe I will start on the fast, I’m old enough. That was my imagination. But of course I didn’t, with everything mixed up. And then, one lady that I knew her but not very well, but she knew my father, she decided to take me and my grandmother to live with her. I really don’t know how would I have managed. Because all my family, all my aunts and uncles who were all refugees, they were taken away at the same time, to Poland, Majdanek, Treblinka. I don’t know what happened that we—all the refugees left. Why we stayed, I have no idea. But we stayed. My sister wasn’t with us. She was at hachshara, you know what is hachshara?

(Mm-hmm.) [A place where young European Jews were prepared for emigration to what was then Palestine.]

So she wasn’t home. But one day we got the invitation for the transport, I called her, I sent her a telegram, “You have to come home,” and then we were sent to Theresienstadt. Even there I was just lucky. Because I was fourteen, and we came there with our grandmother. But our grandmother, we were walking and she was too old, she couldn’t—they took her on a stretcher. We stayed in the ghetto. It was because of the Zionist organization, they decided that two young girls, we have to keep them here. Because most of the people just went straight—they took everything what the people brought and then they sent them away. And we stayed.

Then I started—I came to live after a few months in a children’s home. We started to work in the garden. We were growing vegetables for the Germans. And it was good, because we could steal from the garden. It was forbidden, of course, but we always somehow managed, not like this, because it was outside and we were always watched, and of course it wasn’t so easy, but somehow we always managed to take something in and then we’d change it for bread. But the feeling you can steal it because you don’t steal it from your own people, you steal it from—it was only for the Germans. No one in the ghetto saw vegetables or something like that. It didn’t exist then.

And then I stayed for three years. One nice thing: Erich had a big brother [Kurt], the oldest, one year older than Werner. And one day before we left for the ghetto, someone knocked at the door and suddenly there was a big young man, red hair. My sister is also red hair. And he met my sister. They met and they knew each other from the Zionist organization. And he came to say goodbye. He was in Prague. He knew we are going to the transport, so he decided to come to say goodbye. So I met Erich’s brother without, of course, knowing who he was. I never knew it. But I knew him. He came of course—like all the Czech Jews, he came to the ghetto.

Their relationship you know about [see entry on Werner Meissner Part III: October 19th] and how he didn’t survive, and it is a very interesting story. One day they brought children from Poland, from all the Polish ghettos, tons of children, to Theresienstadt, to the ghetto. They put them apart and they feed them and they clean them. They just—

—then we heard—thet couldn’t get there, they were separated—they wanted to exchange for each child to get—the Germans would send them to Palestine and they would get for each child a big car, the lorries.

(The tank?)

No, no, a car, big cars. That they will change for each child. And they took of course people who will take care of the children. There had to be grown-ups there. And one of the grown-ups was Erich’s brother, because he was already a doctor. He studied and he finished already, so they took him to accompany the children to go to Palestine.

(Who was going to give them the car?)

I don’t know who did it, but someone from the Germans. The Germans were interested. It was in 1943. They were interested. They wanted—someone did it, I can’t tell you who it was. But what happened, the mufti from Jerusalem, Al Hussein, he heard of it. Somehow it came to his—he suddenly knew. He went to Hitler and told him, “You know about this project?” Hitler told him no. He said, “You know these children will one day be soldiers. Don’t allow it.” And they sent all the children with all the grown-ups directly to Auschwitz, to the gas chambers. So this is how his brother ended. And I knew him [Kurt]. I knew him in the ghetto. We met. He was much older than I was, but he was a good friend of my sister. They were friends in the Zionist organization, so that’s very interesting how we [Erich] met and we married. (chuckles) It’s a story.

I stayed three years, we stayed until the end. After the war, we left the ghetto, my sister and me, and went to Prague. And only then we realized that no one of our family survived, because we of course didn’t know it before. My sister had a boyfriend in the ghetto she married. He came back, too, and they married and left Prague for another place, and I stayed in Prague. I decided I had to see what I’m going to do. To go back to school after so many years that I had no school, it was very difficult. I started to look at the books and started to study and it was such nonsense, something that I just couldn’t—I couldn’t concentrate. It was nothing. I said, “This is nothing for me.” And I left it.

One day I met a friend, and she told me, “What are you going to do?” And I told her, “I don’t know.” And she said, “You know, maybe you always are talking you want to be—” I always wanted to be a doctor, for children, a pediatrician. But of course it was impossible. I had to study too much. So I decided I’m going to nursing school. And it was also my cousin who came from Israel to Prague, he came with the Jewish army. They were in the English army, but they were separated in Palestine. The Jews had a separate unit, and they came to look for their families. I asked him, “I would like to come to Palestine then, but I don’t want to come to go illegal. I’m not willing to go to another camp. That I had enough.” He said, “You know what? Go and learn something. You are alone, you can come to the kibbutz.” But I decided kibbutz was nothing for me, I don’t want to live in a kibbutz.

So I went to the nursing school and I finished.

(In Prague?)

In Prague.

(Where did you live?)

There.

(By yourself?)

With all the others. I was the only Jewish girl in there. There was no Jewish girl in there. I lived with the other girls. Of course I had nothing really in common with them, but I was there.

(Were they nice to you?)

They were OK.

But there was a very interesting incident. What I am telling you is true, there was always something different, and I didn’t understand really why. They were students. It was a medical school from the university, the nursing and the medical school, it was all together. And the students always went away and were studying during the weekends, and they never asked me [to come along]. We were on very good terms, friendly and nice and everything, but they never asked me to come. And one day I said, “Why they are never asking me?” It was so strange, I didn’t understand. One day I decided I had to ask one of them. “You have to tell me the truth.” He didn’t know what to say. “Why are you never inviting me? I’m not ugly.” On contrary, I was very good-looking in that time. “So why are you never asking me? Tell me, what’s the reason?” He didn’t know what to say, but he promised he would tell me the truth, and then finally he told me, “Because you are Jewish.” I said, “So what? I’m not different. I am a young girl, seventeen, eighteen years old like all the others. What’s the difference if one is Christian, one in Jewish, maybe one is Muslim, what’s the difference?” So he said, “It’s a big difference. You are something else. You’re something better.” That was something that really amazed me. They would never dare to go with a Jewish girl, just to go out and have sex. This is understood. They would never dare to do it with a Jewish girl, because they always saw that Jewish girls have some other morality, some other—that’s what was in their minds. But he finally said it. OK, at least I know. “But I can come with you without having sex. I don’t think—” “Yeah, but this is what we do.” He was very—he really said it.

You can imagine you are something different. Even before—but before I couldn’t know, because I was too young. I was too small. Of course I couldn’t know. So I decided after I this, of course, where did I get the money, because I of course had no money. The Joint [American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee] in that time gave me each month money to live on and they paid the school, so I had something to live on. And when I finished, the war in Israel, the state came, independence, and I decided I’m going to Israel. My sister married and had a daughter and she was pregnant with the other child. I told her, “I’m going to Israel. I’m not staying here.” She was shocked. She said, “But we won’t separate.” Then one day she told me, “You know, we decided we are going to Israel.” Because the communists were already in Czechoslovakia, so it was already not so—the regime was not so nice, so they decided they will go, too. She came two weeks earlier, but we came more or less together.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC

Erich Meissner Part IV: Israel

 


Erich and his family moved from a kibbutz to their new home in Tivon (about 30-45 minutes from Haifa). Erich found a job in nearby Afula where he still works today. His three children spent the majority of their childhood in Israel and the family quickly adapted to their new lives. Below you will see an excerpt from his oral history recently taken in Israel. All questions in parentheses (...) are mine.

(Your children were raised in Israel. They feel Israeli.)

Sure, of course, a hundred percent.

(But you still have your Salvadoran citizenship?)

Yes.

(That was important for you to keep?)

Yes. It’s important.

(Why is that important?)

Listen. First of all, I owe Salvador something. Salvador made us again—how I would say?

(People, happy people?)

Let’s say that. And besides that, it’s always good to have a certain citizenship. Ruth never wanted Salvadoran citizenship. She remained Israeli.

(What about your children?)

They are born Salvadorans. But they are Israeli citizens, of course.

(Your children grew up here, they went to the army.)

A hundred percent Israelis.

(Everything continues.)

Rafi never went to Salvador. Tami was once with me in Salvador .

(Beni never went?)

Beni never went.

(Life continues as normal until the first ——intifada.)

Yes, life continues normal. Well, the first intifada was a tragedy in which Beni got killed. It’s still—

(Did that make you angry at Israel? Did you want to leave at any time? No.)

No.

(How did you feel? This is such a painful thing and you accepted it?)

What can you do? When I heard—do you know how he perished?

(No.)

In Nablus, they went on a patrol. They went to the Old City. They have thrown a block of cement. He went down. He went under it, on the walkway. They have thrown this block and it hit him in the head, breaking his neck.

(He was twenty-five?)

He was twenty-five.

(Was he the only one in his company that was hit?)

He was the only one at the time that was hit. He was the first soldier who was killed during the intifada, the first intifada. It was in all the newspapers in the whole world. We have some clips from the newspapers. He was the first soldier in the first intifada.

(So at no time you felt anger at Israel, regret or anger? No.)

He was a soldier. Although he was in the reserves.

(He was in the rotation. He was not in the army at that point. He was doing—)

He was not in the army any more. He was doing his reserve duties.

(Did they ever find out who dropped—?)

Sure. They got them.

(Was it a kid? Who was it?)

Two kids. There were, I think, three. They were jailed. I don’t know if they are still incarcerated.

(Were they very young?)

Yes.

I have the names of them.

(After that, the first intifada was very difficult for everyone. It ended. How did you feel living in Israel? Life continued the same?)

The pain is there. But life is continuing.

(There’s a beautiful ritual or custom that your family does every year to honor Beni.)

We have two things. First of all, at his birthday, we are doing always a—how do you call it?

(A hike or a walk.)

A hike, yes. That is one thing. He was working in a lab, a field school. He was an instructor. And they decided in his memory to make every year archeological excavations in Eilat in memory of Beni.

(So you do that, too. People say there are two hundred people on the hike.)

They are coming. It’s an event for the youth, especially. And excavating things, you know in Israel, wherever you are starting to scratch a little bit in the earth you are finding—old things.

(Artifacts.)

It’s an old country. (chuckles)

(I’m sure Beni would love that. Did you go back to Salvador after that?)

Sure. Last time we were two years ago. I went to Salvador several times.

(And how did it feel to return?)

It’s a wonderful place. There’s no better place to spend your vacation.

(Do you have a favorite memory from Salvador, a favorite story?)

I was living the daily life in Salvador, what gave me a lot was the local volunteer choir. That gave me a lot. I was singing.

(Did you practice every week?)

Yes. Twice or three times a week.

(And where did you sing?)

In Salvador. We gave sometimes—once we gave a concert in Guatemala. But normally in Salvador.

(What kind of music?)

Choral music, Haydn, Mozart, Mozart’s Requiem, Verdi’s Requiem, Haydn’s The Creation, The Four Seasons, Carmina Burana.

(Big productions.)

It was a big choir.

(What did you sing, what voice?)

I was bass-baritone.

(Do you still sing?)

Just in the bathroom. (laughs)

(Good, as long as you sing somewhere. So that was two years ago.)

Two years ago we were the last time in Salvador. The first time when we came to Israel, I think I was in Salvador in 1972 or something like this, the first time. And then two or three years later, I took Tami with me. I went to Salvador several times.

(Do Tami or Rafi have a desire to visit Salvador?)

I don’t think so. They were kids. OK, Tami went already to the American school. But Rafi was still in kindergarten. He went to the German kindergarten in Salvador.

(Things in Israel are OK. How do you think things are going now in Israel? Do you feel positive about the status of—)

Well, Israel is now my home, will remain my home till my last day.

(Do you feel positive, though, about what’s going on?)

Definitely. I do not agree always with what is happening, but I feel a hundred percent Israeli, with all my feelings....

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC
Photo: From Meissner Family Collection, Beni Meissner in Lebanon. 

Erich Meissner Part III: A New Home?

 


After Europe, Erich and Ruth continued on to the United States making stops in New York, New Orleans, and Miami. Then came Salvador; Ruth had to be introduced to the Jewish community and to a very new way of life. Those already settled in Salvador were interested in the new arrivals…..

Below you will see an excerpt from his oral history recently taken in Israel. All questions in parentheses (...) are mine.


(Did you discuss the war amongst each other?)

Seldom. We were not speaking about the war. I never told my whole story. The first thing when I came to Salvador, Max—that was the father of Ernesto and Roberto Freund—told me, “Erich, you must sit down and write down your story.” But I never did it. I started to talk a little bit. But he said, “You must sit down and write it down.”

(It was too soon?)

I didn’t write it down till today. Werner, yes. Werner wrote it down. Werner spoke into tapes.

(Did they know? Did they understand what had happened, in Salvador? Maybe they read the papers, but did they really know?)

You know, to speak about sins [?] is one thing and to live through, to go through it is another thing. But they realized it. They knew what was going on.

(When you bring Ruth to Salvador, your parents were there. Your brother was there with Perla.)

My brother was there with Perla. Then my parents were living separately and we were living separately.

(So the whole family is together.)

Yes, we were together, the whole family.

(What did Ruth say about Salvador?)

That, you must ask her. (laughs)

(Did you think that you would stay?)

Stay forever? I knew that I will not stay in Salvador forever from the beginning. For me, Salvador was a certain period. I was educated as a Zionist and I wanted to come to Israel. Of course, Ruth wanted to come back from the beginning.

(But it was a nice life. You lived there for ten years?)

It was a very nice life, a beautiful community. We have good friends there. We were a small group of young people.

(What was it like being Jewish in this place, this small country?)

In Salvador? No problem at all.

(You never had any anti-Semitism?)

No, no problem at all. Every girl in Salvador wanted to get married with a chele [light-skinned man].

(I’m sure. So you have your first child?)

Our first child was born exactly after a year.

(Tami was first, and then—)

Then was Rafi, and then was Beni. No, ’59 Tami was born, ’61 Rafi was born, and ’64 Beni was born.

(When did you decide to move back to Israel?)

I can tell you exactly. I was on a business trip when the Six-Day War started here. I was in Miami. That was my first stop. The second stop was Puerto Rico. I went from Miami to Puerto Rico to San Juan and after that I came to New York. That was during the Six-Day War here. I saw this spontaneous enthusiasm from people about winning the war. The situation was not so rosy before that. So I came back to Salvador and I told Ruth, “We are moving.”

(What did she say?)

She was just waiting for that, always wanting to come back to Israel.

(How did the children react?)

The children were small. I don’t think that there was a reaction.

(What language did you speak at home?)

With Ruth I spoke German. With the children we spoke Spanish.

(So they didn’t speak any Hebrew when they came to Israel?)

No, no. And Rafi and Tami started to speak quite Hebrew here [in Israel]. Beni was the last one. He remained with Spanish and suddenly one day he stopped to speak Spanish and started to speak Hebrew, and no words in Spanish.

(Did he forget his Spanish?)

I don’t know if he forgot. I imagine that he forgot his Spanish. But that was a curious thing. He was the last one who started to speak Hebrew, and suddenly—puck!—and that was it.

Transcription by Sandy Adler, Adler Enterprises LLC
Photo: From Meissner Family Collection. Rafi, Tami and Beni Meissner in El Salvador.