Susanne Goldfarb: Oral History Transcript www.wisconsinhistory.org/HolocaustSurvivors/Goldfarb.asp
Name: Susanne Hafner Goldfarb (1933–1987)
Arrived in Wisconsin: 1969, Madison
Project Name: Oral Histories: Wisconsin Survivors Susanne Goldfarb of the Holocaust
Biography: Susanne Hafner Goldfarb was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 17, 1933. She was the only child of a middle-class Jewish family. Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. Rising anti-Semitism and the threat of war prompted her family to flee their homeland in early 1939.
Six-year-old Susanne and her family left Europe on a luxury liner bound for Shanghai, China. They found refuge with more than 20,000 other European Jewish exiles in the Japanese-occupied sector of that city. The refugees were able to create a multifaceted Jewish community in Shanghai. It included commercial, religious, cultural, and educational institutions. Susanne attended synagogue, studied in Jewish schools, and belonged to a Zionist social club.
The Hafners eked out a living by delivering bread in their neighborhood, the Hongkew district. In May 1943, Japanese authorities introduced anti-Semitic measures. The Hongkew district turned into a Jewish ghetto and all Shanghai Jews were restricted to this area.
As World War II unfolded, Shanghai came under increased assault from U.S. warplanes. Susanne's family worked as air raid wardens and suffered the terror of heavy bombing attacks. In August 1945, the U.S. liberated the Hongkew Ghetto. Soon after, China descended into civil war. In 1949 the Chinese Communists came to power. The Hafners, fearing persecution under the communist regime, immigrated to Israel in January 1949.
In 1953, the Hafners immigrated to New York City. They lived in an insulated community of Jewish refugees until 1969. In New York Susanne met Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, whom she married in 1963. The Goldfarbs moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1969. Susanne worked with the University of Wisconsin's Office of Foreign Students and Faculty until her death in June 1987.
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Susanne Goldfarb: Oral History Transcript www.wisconsinhistory.org/HolocaustSurvivors/Goldfarb.asp
Audio Summary: Below are the highlights of each tape. This is not a complete list of all topics discussed. Tape 1, Side 1 • Susanne's family and childhood in Vienna • German Anschluss, March 1938 • Decision to go to China • The voyage to Shanghai
Tape 1, Side 2 • The Shanghai Jewish community • Difficult living conditions • Relations with Japanese occupiers • School life
Tape 2, Side 1 • Synagogues in Shanghai • Secular education • A typical morning routine • Involvement in Betar (Zionist youth group)
Tape 2, Side 2 • Refugee life in Shanghai • Poverty, crime, and black market activities • Emotional life as a child living through these conditions • Japanese authorities and Nazi propaganda
Tape 3, Side 1 • Her family in Austria, memories of Vienna • Arriving in Shanghai • Establishment of the Shanghai Ghetto, 1943 • Typical day in the Shanghai Ghetto
Tape 3, Side 2 • Life under Allied bombings, 1945 • The end of the war • Arrival of U.S. troops, August 1945 • Postwar conditions
Tape 4, Side 1 • Her last years in China • Voyage to Israel, Jan-Feb 1949 • Life in the new state of Israel • Decision to leave Israel for the U.S.
Tape 4, Side 2 • Immigrating to New York, 1953 • Side trip to Vienna • Life in New York and marriage • Moving to Wisconsin, 1969, working with foreign students in Madison
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Tape 5, Side 1 • Reflections on immigrating to the U.S. • Relations among American Jews • The role of religion in her life in 1980 • Reading habits and social life in Madison
Tape 5, Side 2 • Public attitudes toward the Holocaust • American politics and government • Anti-Semitism in Wisconsin and the U.S. • Her sense of ethnic and national identity
About the
Interview Process: The recordings were made during two sessions on February 7 and October 8, 1980. The first conversation was held in Susanne’s Madison home, where she was visibly shaken by the memories evoked in telling her story. The second took place at the Wisconsin Historical Society. The researcher noted Susanne’s conscious effort to make the second session less emotional than the first.
Susanne describes her Holocaust experience through a child’s eyes. She has clear memories of Jewish life as a child in Vienna and the anti-Semitism that followed the German Anschluss in March 1938. Susanne’s interview is valuable because it reveals the fate of thousands of European Jews who fled to China in the face of Nazi persecution.
Audio and
Transcript Details: Interview Dates • Feb 7, 1980; Oct 8, 1980 Interview Location • Goldfarb home and Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin Interviewer • Archivist Jean Loeb Lettofsky Original Sound Recording Format • 5 qty. 60-minute audio cassette tapes Length of Interviews • 2 interviews, total approximately 5 hours Transcript Length • 108 pages Rights and Permissions • Any document may be printed or downloaded to a computer or portable device at no cost for nonprofit educational use by teachers, students and researchers. Nothing may be reproduced in any format for commercial purposes without prior permission.
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Pictures:
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WHI Image ID 56764 WHI Image ID 56768 WHI Image ID 56767
WHI Image ID 56766 WHI Image ID 56762 WHI Image ID 56769
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Transcript
The following transcript is from the collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives. It is an unedited, firsthand account of the Nazi persecution of the Jews before and during World War II. Portions of this interview may not be suitable for younger or more sensitive audiences. It is unlawful to republish this text without written permission from the Wisconsin Historical Society, except for nonprofit educational use.
Key
JL Jean Loeb Lettofsky, Wisconsin Historical Society archivist SG Susanne Goldfarb, Holocaust survivor
TAPE 1, SIDE 1
JL: Okay Susanne would you tell me something about your family background, your date and place of birth,
and the names of your parents and grandparents and if possible their dates and places of birth?
SG: Well, I was an only child in a middle-class family in Vienna, Austria, and both my parents and
grandparents came from Poland. I only knew my maternal grandparents. We lived very close to them in
adjoining apartments in Vienna. Their names were Meisel1 and I practically grew up with them, second
parents, up until the age of five. That's when we left Vienna.
JL: Do you know any dates, birthdates?
SG: I think my grandmother was born in 1879, or at least that's what they thought she was born in. I don't
know about my grandfather, no.
JL: And for your parents?
SG: My father was born in 1891 and my mother 1901.
JL: Do you have any special recollections of your grandparents, any special things that might have
happened with them, could you tell me a little…?
SG: Close relationship, close relationship. My close relationship with my grandparents and my parents' close
relation. It was very close, my family. We lived next door to each other. Actually, all my recollections
1 Before the war, the family name was Meiseles. Mrs. Goldfarb refers to all members of the family by the shortened form, Meisel, which some adopted after the war.
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start at the age of three or four, and that's when Hitler was in Austria already, so I just don't remember
all the — I remember them, but I don't remember that much interaction with them in Vienna. Later on
my grandmother came to Shanghai alone and that's where I was old already and where the interaction
was, yeah.
JL: Is there anything special that you can remember, any nice things that might have happened with your
father and mother? What type of people they were?
SG: They were very hard working and very devoted, very family-loving and very giving. But again, my earliest
recollections all were in Hitler's time. The anxieties. It seems very difficult to remember anything
playful in Vienna. There were more the traumatic things that I remember. Although I'm sure there were
other things, it's hard to think of them now. Because my first recollections were when I was four, three
or four. They were very loving and very good and very wonderful. They are the true heroes of all of this.
JL: Would you care to tell me why?
SG: Well, because when I was three or four, and when we gave up, when we left Vienna and went to another
place, I wasn't giving up anything personally. There were no deprivations as far as I was concerned. But
they are the ones who — for them it was the second time that they were leaving things behind and my
mother left her parents behind. And they were older of course, and they knew what they were losing.
JL: What were your father's and mother's occupations?
SG: My father was a baker, my mother was a housewife in Vienna. Although my mother always told me that
when she was single, she used to work for my uncle in his business. Her hard work started in Shanghai
when she and my father really worked hard, very, very hard. They were the most hard-working people
just to put food on the table. It's difficult for me to talk about all this.
JL: You can talk further about it later if you like. You mentioned that the family came from Poland. Do you
have any other memories of your father's or mother's side of the family?
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SG: No. No, only stories that I heard afterwards which were funny stories about the little shtetls and things
like that. And the fact that my father's mother died on Yom Kippur, when there was a false alarm of a
fire and she was trampled to death because were running from the synagogue. Everybody thought it was
a fire in their house [inaudible]. But these are just stories, I don't have any recollections. I certainly
don't know anything about this, just talk.
JL: So, in Vienna now were there any other family members in the nearby areas?
SG: Yes. One of my mother's brother's family. Just cousins. Somebody I just remember by name, but nobody
— and one sister in Vienna. They all came with us. The two brothers and one sister came with us to
Shanghai.
JL: Did you interact with them at all in Vienna, have a close relationship?
SG: Oh yes, yes. But again, I was five at the time I left, so whatever interaction I had was as a child.
JL: Do you have any family members or close friends in the United States before the war?
SG: No, not that I know of. Well, I think there was but we didn't know where they were and we didn't know
whether they came before the war or after or during the war. But not that we knew of anyway. We were
told later on that somebody from the family lived on the Lower East Side but we could never trace them
down. By the time we came here they were gone, and nobody could tell us where they were.
JL: Could you describe your home and your immediate community surroundings in Vienna?
SG: We lived in an apartment and I remember the street. I even went back to see it in 1953. My memories
— I have to say this again and again — my memories were of when Nazis were. I don't remember
anything that much before that. I remember hearing things being said behind closed doors and standing
at the window and looking out and seeing if the neighbors were taken away and things like that.
JL: But besides those rather negative memories, is there anything about the physical surroundings that
sticks in your mind?
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SG: Oh, I remember the place well. I do remember the apartment, I remember the street, I remember the
kindergarten that I visited — I didn't go to kindergarten at that time yet. It was a very middle-class
Jewish neighborhood, very Jewish neighborhood and very middle-class. I don't remember all that much.
JL: Do you remember anything about the city of Vienna itself although as you say you left when you were
quite young and you have some rather negative memories, the romantic image of the city is quite well
known. Do you have any memories like that?
SG: No, no. No, I think I was too young for any romantic memories of Vienna, no. I think they were rather
negative now that I speak it, most of the things. I just don't remember anything — no, I have no
romantic memories.
JL: Okay let’s change the subject a bit, and could you tell me bout your family's religious observances,
synagogue attendance, and home traditions, just generally?
SG: They were very traditional. My grandmother wore a shaytl2 and my grandfather was religious. We always
kept a kosher home. And again my mother, all the way in Shanghai, kept a kosher home, although the
meat was three times as expensive, not always available, but we always kept a kosher home. My mother
never ate anything non-kosher till the day she died. I mean, even in the hospital here, they always knew
whenever my mother came in — "It's the lady who eats kosher food." Well, whatever much they could
help her with kosher. And I remember Rosh Hashanah and I remember Yom Kippur. I remember there
was a very traditional home, very traditional. The yahrzeit,3 candles, I remember Shabbes4 candles.
JL: So your mother set the standard for the observance?
SG: Yeah, my grandmother and my mother.
JL: Were any of the members of the extended family non-religious?
2 Yiddish for the wig worn by Orthodox women after marriage. 3 Anniversary of the death of a family member, on which prayers are offered. 4 Sabbath.
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SG: Yeah, yeah.
JL: To what extent?
SG: I think because my mother lived with my grandmother, or rather that our apartment was next door, and
my uncle lived away and he was in another apartment and they were not religious. They were Jewish,
but they were not religious in the same way, no.
JL: No traditions at all?
SG: Oh yeah, yeah, going to synagogue. But I don't think he thought much of the traditions. I'm not sure.
But it didn't seem as religious to me.
JL: Again, I think from the child’s vantage point you do seem to remember something about the changing
social and political scene and the rise of anti-Semitism, could you talk about that, in Austria, in
Vienna?
SG: It's painful because when I think of it, why do I remember all these things? Because they’ve affected
me. I get mad because I was personally afraid because I didn't know what to be afraid of but the
general atmosphere was one of fear and anxiety.
JL: Did any conversations come up with your little friends, among the children, did they deal with it in any
way as a group?
SG: Well I had a neighbor who once said, "Your mother's a [inaudible]. But these things didn't affect me in
that sense because I didn't know what all that meant. I think I was just affected by the fear, by the —
just feeling that danger was imminent.
JL: Do you remember the Anschluss, on March 13, 1938?
SG: Yes. I remember the stories that were told us — not told us but that — when the Anschluss — in the
evenings. Right away, the neighbor came. They wanted our apartment. My mother's best friend wanted
the apartment. Yes, sure I remember the Anschluss things that were happening out in the streets and
everything was — nothing was kept secret. I mean, I was a child, but I was exposed to everything.
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JL: What happened on the streets?
SG: They started marching, the Austrians were very pro-Hitler. Anybody says they weren't is a lie. And they
immediately were pro-Hitler. I don't think — I'm sure there were those who weren't, but — and they
were burning synagogues. It didn't affect me personally in the sense because I didn't know what all this
meant. But it affected me obviously. Otherwise, why would I be crying like this?
JL: Do you remember when your parents now, were first fearful of a life-threatening situation and made the
decision to leave?
SG: Yes, I remember. I remember, I remember all the things that went on. All the conversations that went
on and the decisions and what to do and where to hide and when to go and should we take the
grandparents, shouldn’t we take the grandparents. And I think I was only involved in it in the sense that
I heard it and I —
JL: Were you consulted at all?
SG: No. I mean, I remember. I remember taking leave of my grandparents. They moved into my uncle's
house. He had an apartment house and we thought, "Well..." They were left money and the Juedische
Kultusgemeinde5 was there and they would take care of them and nothing would happen to them.
Whoever thought things like that would happen. And I remember walking down the spiral staircase in
the building and, in fact, one of my aunts, lives there now and whenever I go there now I remember
exactly my grandparents standing at the top of the staircase, and I'm walking down.
JL: And that was the last time you saw them?
SG: My grandfather. [He later died in Buchenwald.]
JL: So you took leave of the grandparents, and what were the circumstances surrounding the final departure
from Vienna?
5 Yiddish? for Jewish religious community, in the sense of an organizing body for the population.
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SG: Very, very tense, because my uncle had already left over the border to Italy because he would have
been arrested. He had been doing business with Germans and that's all you needed was to do
business with Germans. My father had been working in a Jewish bakery so things weren't that bad. He
was out of a job but that was not — but my uncle was doing business, and so that's all you needed is to
have friends who were Christians who automatically became your enemy. So he had to leave on
November 10. He went across the border. We had one aunt living in Milan, and my aunt and her son,
my cousin, and we all — I don't remember how we came to Shanghai. I mean I don't remember why
we chose Shanghai except that we weren't permitted to go to South America. We didn't have anybody in
the States. Shanghai was the only place that sold tickets. If you had money you could buy them, and so
we did it. I think my mother never forgave herself. She said it, and she never did forgive herself that she
didn't take my grandparents along at that time. She always used to say that when she came on the ship
and she saw Mrs. so and so who had been our neighbor and her parents were along. And I frankly at
this point don't know the reasoning except that they probably didn't think that anything would happen
and another thing, which of course I didn't mention, was that we were going into a war zone. We were
going into Shanghai — that was a war zone. It was the Sino-Japanese war. And so I guess the family
decided why take old people along to a place we would probably stay there a couple of months and
come back.
JL: So you knew that you were going into a war zone?
SG: Yes.
JL: Was there other things that you knew about Shanghai, the family?
SG: No, I don't think so. I don't think they knew anything, no. Who knew much, anyhow? I mean, it was the
Orient, the mysterious Orient. I don't think anybody knew about it. It was a place of refuge.
JL: When, what was the exact date on which you left?
SG: I'm not sure. I think it was in January. I'm not sure of the exact date — it was January 1939.
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JL: So it was sort of a birthday present for you?
SG: Arriving in Shanghai, everything happened on my birthday.
JL: When did you arrive?
SG: February 22.
JL: And your birthday is?
SG: February 17.
JL: So then when you arrived in 1939 you were six years old?
SG: Six years, yeah.
JL: Could you describe your voyage?
SG: Yes, I remember a lot of that. It was a luxury liner. It was an Italian luxury liner, one of those that keeps
cruising back and forth between the far east and Shanghai, and I remember sending letters to my
grandmother by writing on scraps of paper and throwing them into the water. I feel I’m being analyzed.
And I remember the places we stopped, that was very interesting. We stopped at Port Said and I have
memories of being picked up by some Jewish community members who took us to yeshiva6 and also in
Aden and then in Bombay I remember getting off the ship and in Singapore and in Hong Kong and in
Manila. I don't remember the arrival in Shanghai, the day, but I remember the camp we went to, the
people and the fear and the Chinese and the noise and the fear and the noise and the fear and…so I
remember.
JL: Did your parents do anything to help you with the fear or was it just a frenzy?
SG: I don't think I ever verbalized my fear. I wasn't old enough to verbalize. It was just everybody was so
concerned with dealing with their own fear and I think that's why I say my fear and anxiety was from
what I saw; their fear and anxiety was a more realistic one because they knew what they were getting
into. I mean, here they were — I didn't worry about getting a job.
6 A traditional Jewish school.
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JL: Knew what they were getting into in what way, before you said that they didn’t know…?
SG: They were arriving in Shanghai, and you had to have an apartment, you had to have a job, you had to
start living, and you had to start providing for the family. That wasn't my problem. My problem was just
I was afraid. I guess the age of six is probably a fearful age anyway in a child. I'm not sure how it is in
the developmental stage. Certainly at my stage it was very, very fearful. I wouldn't let my mother go to
the bathroom alone for fear that I was losing her in the crowd of people. We were right downtown in
Shanghai. And then a very, very vivid memory of getting scarlet fever and starting an epidemic.
JL: You did?
SG: Yeah, yeah.
JL: This was in the camps in which you first stayed?
SG: Yes, it was not a camp, really, it was — I guess the Jewish community was taking care of us, took it
over as a transition camp, so I guess from that point, but afterwards it was just office building. In fact, I
went — there was a business school there in 1946 and 1947 — no, later than that — where I took
courses in that same building. And they whisked me away — I remember — see, that's the problem. I
remember all these things very vividly. Having this high fever and being dragged around. We were going
to look for an apartment. When I say dragged around, it was obviously nobody knew that I had a high
fever, but I remember that high fever. We came back to the camp that evening, and I was just burning
up. That I remember very well. They whisked me away to a hospital, it was called isolation hospital. I
have such vivid memories of that, my memories of that hospital. First of all, they put me in a room
alone. I know exactly what it looks like. That's why my memories I tell you are pretty strong, they are
always frightening me. And that room, there was no one else there as I started the epidemic, and I
remember crying. I have to laugh about it now because I told Stanley about it. I was six years old, and I
couldn't speak English. Well, I remember lying there with a very high fever and all of the nurses and
doctors around me, and all I remember it's almost as though I spoke English, but I didn't obviously
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because I wasn't there that long. And I remember crying and saying, "My father is a doctor. Please let
me go home. He'll treat me."
JL: What did they say?
SG: I don't think they understood me. I probably said it in German, but in retrospect what I remember was
that I communicated it to them somehow. So I must have said it in German. There was one German
nurse and I remember that my mother was hysterical, obviously, I mean I was taken away from her and
she couldn't see me. I was there for four weeks and I remember — that's my problem, it's too damn
sensitive — reading faces. I remember the nurses bathing me in the adjoining bathroom and one nurse
coming in, not saying a word, just pointing to the door and saying my mother was downstairs. She didn't
say a word and I started yelling and screaming and the — I think that's the way I am. I just pick up all
these things, which are not for my benefit.
JL: You recovered after how long?
SG: About a month. By that time we had an apartment already, I remember. Then I remember some happy
times. I came home and I had a big homecoming. All my dolls were sitting around and everybody.
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1
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TAPE 1, SIDE 2
JL: You were talking about your big homecoming from the hospital.
SG: Yeah, we were all living in the same house, and there were four rooms on that floor and everybody was
together, and I think, again, it was sort of a stability regained at that point, which had been lost. I just
remember this as a fairly happy time. Going to school and starting school and being very eager to learn.
I was always very interested in learning, always very good in school, and that's what I remember. That
was the beginning of school and learning English, struggling with the th's, coming from a German —
really. I remember walking on the street, I had a private tutor, and I couldn't pronounce” th, th.” And
these are the things I remember — being taken care of. It was an extended family. Very much at that
point it was an extended family. That was the first few months. And then we moved to another room but
all in the same lane. These were kind of complexes where people lived in Shanghai. They called the
lanes.
JL: Is this in Hongkew?
SG: Hongkew, yes. The next thing was, when we got the cable from my grandmother that my grandfather
was in Buchenwald, and we weren't in time anymore to send him the visa. And then my grandmother
came along.
JL: When was that?
SG: End of ‘39, September ‘39. Just six months after — it happened very fast from the time we came.
JL: So she just made it before the restrictions?
SG: Yes. Hers was the last boat that left. Other people came by land then.
JL: I’d like to go back to your apartment in the lane, or so-called apartment. Could you describe where you
lived?
SG: I wasn't an apartment, it was a room. It was a tiny room and the beds were in there and the table was in
there and the orange crate was there to take the place of a chair and the orange crate was there to take
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the place of a night table. There was nothing there, I mean, it was just a room. But everybody was living
together, we were way… — I never felt a deprivation of material things because I didn't — it's not that I
didn't have them, because we had them in Vienna, but that was never the thing that — none of us
children felt any material deprivation, those who were young, because we didn't know of anything
better. I think we were struggling with other things. And of course, the people who really suffered were
— again I'm saying — were the grown-ups, my parents. I mean I don't think I could do this, what they
did. I mean, leave Poland first, be refugees in Austria, then be refugees again, and then be refugees to
Israel, and be refugees to the United States, wow. And my father was a very, very happy man.
JL: And he find himself employment in the same field?
SG: My father always found employment. Not in the same field, no. He was carrying bread. He was a bread
deliverer. He and my mother got up at two o'clock in the morning and delivered bread. They were both
hard working, there was never any question. There were a lot of people who didn't work in Shanghai.
Some because they couldn't find work, others because they found — well, I guess they were given aid
by the Jewish societies. But it wasn't the same amount or the same way as you would if you were
working. I mean, you didn't get as much money. And some people lived in camps.
JL: Are you referring to the Heime, were those euphemistically called Heime?7
SG: No, that's what they were called, Heime. Shafrom Heim and Wayside Heim.8 In fact my girlfriend, the
one I spoke to on the phone yesterday, lived in one of those where families were separated. There were
bunk beds and families were separated by curtains, but we never had that. My mother and my father
worked very, very, very hard. I don't know anybody who worked as hard, ever. My uncle and my aunt
lived in Shanghai, and of course if you listen to her, my aunt worked hard, too. My mother did physical
work.
7 German for homes. 8 The names of two of the different "homes" for refugee Jews.
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JL: You mean delivering the bread?
SG: Yes.
JL: And then at home too, I assume.
SG: In Shanghai.
JL: At home in that so-called apartment?
SG: Yes, yes. In that room, not apartment. She delivered bread to people and the profits were pennies but
they always managed. And when bread was rationed, we had the advantage that my father was working
for a bakery, so we always had something. So there were always advantages. And they worked hard,
very, very hard.
JL: What was the name of the bakery?
SG: I don't remember. It was Russian owners, White Russians, and Chinese workers and some Russian
workers. I don't remember. I know where it was I remember, but I don't remember…
JL: Do you remember, or did they ever tell you how they got to that bakery? Did the relief societies help
them find…?
SG: No, no. My father was very enterprising. I mean he went to the baker, just like he did in New York, just
applied. And he was a hard worker and nobody ever fired him because there's no reason to. Certainly
this was all on commission, so the bakery just had an advantage. They weren't paying him any salary,
but he made maybe a penny off the bread. And the same thing with my mother.
JL: So your father found this job by himself, did they also find the apartment, the room in the lane by
themselves?
SG: I think so, yes. I don't think they were helped. I'm not sure, because I was in the hospital at that time.
I'm not sure, I think so.
JL: Could you tell me a little bit about the shopping, the way it was to do shopping?
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SG: In the beginning, I don't remember, but later on I remember there were little stores, grocery stores, that
were opened by refugees — it really became its own little community — and that's where we shopped.
We would buy an ounce of milk and a half an ounce of salami and a half a glass of cold water that was
distilled. You could walk in there when you were thirsty because you couldn't drink anything. There was
no plumbing. There was no plumbing in anywhere where we lived, and you couldn't drink the water
unless it was boiled. My, that's a lifetime in Shanghai. That's not something that's so easy to explain.
But we would go in and buy half a glass of water — water!
JL: You would bring your own glass?
SG: No, no, they had free glasses. These are already European places that opened up in time. And later on
there were even nightclubs and stores. It became a regular community.
JL: What about the medical facilities? Of course you mentioned the hospital.
SG: Well, that was an isolation hospital. It was run by foreign doctors and Chinese doctors and Chinese
nurses. As far as the refugees were concerned, they, again, made hospitals in the Heime and in the
surrounding areas. Provisional hospitals, I mean, they weren't hospitals to start out with. I had all the
children's diseases and I ended up in all of these hospitals with dysentery and whooping cough and
mumps and chicken pox and some of the diseases that were native to China. Dysentery was more —
there were some refugee doctors who were very good, who were the old-fashioned type. But I don't think
that they were superb, but they did the best they could and people got well, people died like everywhere
else. I mean there were medical facilities.
JL: What do you remember about the cultural opportunities, more for your parents then for you, although
you did go into your teenage years there, did you…?
SG: Well, in the sense of cultural opportunities the way one talks about in the United States — of course we
lived in a very secluded, separated, community. There were theaters and there were things in greater
Shanghai, but I don't think any of us had the money or opportunity to go. And later some of the people
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who lived in Shanghai were actors and singers, and they themselves started a Jewish theater, I think. I
remember going to some cabaret kind of performances and I remember it was a Russian troupe that,
Russian troupe? — no, it probably wasn't Russian, but there was a Russian actress and they played
operettas. And I remember that. I don’t know why, in a way, I think of it it's very depressing. I don't
want to think about the depressing thoughts. I don't know. On the other hand there are some things —
I'm jumping now — there's something that’s came out of Shanghai which was very good. The
friendships. Tremendous friendships. Kinship, friendship, which is probably true of people who have
gone through a lifetime — which ten years is — together. Sometimes I just want to forget about
everything. Right now I'm sitting here and I just want to forget about everything, and not have to think
about the past and make excuses of the present or the past, but the past was there. It was.
JL: Let's talk about some of the good things. You seem to feel good about the friendships.
SG: Yes.
JL: Could you tell me a little bit about your friends?
SG: We have very good friends. We're a group of people — some of them, especially in New York, I mean
I'm not there now — they're very close, very close. And they get together and they are in touch. But I
mean friends that I have who are in Israel now who are from Shanghai and in New York. They're just
close friends. They're the kind of friend, it's not that you don't make those friends during a lifetime, but
there's something else that you have with these people. We keep in touch. We write. I don't think there
are too many Americans who keep in touch that way. For instance, yesterday I called Ruth because I
was really getting upset about this and she said, "Why can't you detach yourself from all this and think
of it just as an experience?" She says, "I have very happy memories." Well, I don't believe she does, but
this is what she's telling herself. She says, and yet at the same time I can look at this little girl who was
very scared and unhappy, which was her, talking about herself. So, we can say, "Oh, it was great, fine,
and it was a very enriching experience and it was a very — " I think it was enriching in many ways and I
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think in many ways it made us assume responsibilities for which we were not prepared. And I think that
this was the biggest, we were not going thought, a lot of the people, and maybe I shouldn't generalize,
were not going through the regularly developmental stages that they would if they lived a "normal" life.
And I think that's probably true of people who went to concentration camps. You just don't go through
the normal stages. There's no way that you can go through the normal stages because you're exposed to
everything. There's no room to go to. There's no room of one's own, physically and mentally. I mean this
is really a very strong statement but it's very true. There was no way I could find out what do I feel
about things.
JL: Are you saying there was actually no opportunity for friends to go off somewhere and just play as little
children do?
SG: Oh, well, yes, yes. We played, we went to school. The schools were very good. And we had the
opportunity. I'm talking about at home, having a room of one's own and I'm repeating this, physically
and mentally, where you can close the door and you'd say, "Now I've got to find out how I feel about
something. We didn't have that. We were always exposed to the anxieties around us and that was
probably true in ghetto areas. I'm talking about local ghetto areas, well anywhere where people live in
crowded areas. I don't think Shanghai was very unique about that. When I'm saying this, I'm saying this
in comparison to modern-day life in the United States where we expect to have a room of our own. This
is not so.
JL: So then your friends were all in the same situation?
SG: All in the same situation.
JL: So the friends were all from the district?
SG: Yes, yes. Most of them were only daughters, or they had an older brother or sister. Except for this friend
Ruth, I don't know anybody who had a younger sister or brother.
JL: So not more than two children per family in general?
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SG: I would say one was the average, two was above average.
JL: You were telling me about your friends and the crowdedness, can you tell me something about your
neighbors, you must have known an awful lot about them?
SG: Yes. Living with our neighbors on the same floor was like living in the same apartment, really, because
that's essentially what it was. I think originally, no they weren't apartments, they were just one tiny little
hallway and four rooms and we were four neighbors. I remember the ones we had well. Two were from
Vienna, one had been our across-the-street neighbor in Vienna and another one was from Vienna and
another one was from Danzig. And downstairs, they were from Berlin and from Poland and different
places, one big gemish.9 And my girlfriend lived across the lane, and the way we would communicate —
we didn't have a telephone — was scream across, she would come. That's how we would compare
answers to mathematical questions. If I came to pick her up to go to work in the morning, they had to
close all the beds so that I can go in, you know, things like that. Pretty bad.
JL: How did the adult neighbors get along?
SG: Fine. I don't remember any — see that's why, in thinking about all this, I wonder how they survived it.
How so many people, maybe they didn't survive it as well as I think they did but in looking at it, they
coped, they managed. But I don't know how my parents did it. And they came here. And so my father
and my mother were very, they had a little apartment in New York, and they were very satisfied, and I
could see it. I just need four walls to be secure. You wouldn't believe it if you come into this house, that
this is all I need. But it's true, emotionally. It's just the chaos outside is very distracting, because I
think our lives in Shanghai were always very chaotic inside. Inside and outside. And it was difficult,
difficult, a lot of fear. I'm talking about myself. I don't know, perhaps other people didn't have the fear.
Obviously, I did.
9 Yiddish for a mixture.
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JL: I’d like to go back for a moment, you started talking about your education, schooling. Could you tell me
a bit about the type of education that you had and how many years…?
SG: I remember going to school until the age of 16. I graduated in ‘48 at 15, almost 16. It was a very good
school, I thought, because when we graduated, we were ready to take the overseas Cambridge
examinations and pass it — qualify and pass it. So I think that speaks for itself. I thought we had a
good education. There was obviously no delinquency or things like that going on at all, at all. Who had
time for that? Who even thought about these things? That probably was true of other schools in America
too at that time. There was no crime among the — well I don’t know, maybe there was. Yes, there may
have been crime among the refugees because they needed food, they would steal. But I remember
once, I had a girlfriend and she was rather poor. Well, we were all poor. I shouldn't say she was rather
poor. I remember during break I asked her to hold my sandwich while I went into the bathroom. I came
out, she'd finished it. And not because she, you know, she was hungry!
JL: Were you very angry or did you understand?
SG: No, I don't think so. I don't think I was angry. I don't remember.
JL: What was the name of the school?
SG: It was called SJYA, Shanghai Jewish Youth Association, and it was built by funds from Sir Eli Kadoori
and Horace Kadoori — Horace Kadoori really. I have him in my autograph, Horace Kadoori. Yes, they
are a big family. They have a place in Israel, too, the Kadoori school. It's the same family, from
Baghdad.
JL: They aren’t in Shanghai anymore are they?
SG: No, they're in Hong Kong. The last I read about them, they were in Hong Kong. They were written up in
Time magazine when they were really very wealthy, yeah. Actually the Shanghai years, I went to a
different school first. I went to SJS, Shanghai Jewish School, which was part of the Sephardic and the
old-time community. And then when the war broke out and we had to go into the restricted areas — no,
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even before that, when the Kadoori school was built — we switched to Kadoori school. We called it
Kadoori school, SJYA.
JL: When was that, the year, do you remember?
SG: I think it was right in the beginning, ‘41. I think the school may have been in temporary quarters
earlier, probably in ‘40, and then they built a big school. I have pictures of it, with all my teachers. I
have a precious thing because I was very good in school. Like everything else, I was crazy. I had to be
first. If I was second; I don't think that's good, but anyway that's how I was. And of course I was very
well known in school and when the teachers… I think it was a birthday party or something. I have it in
my album. I have a picture with all the teachers, which is… how can you go up to teachers and say
you'd like a picture with all of them? So I have it, and that may be something you might want to use. In
fact, any of the people who are writing books about Shanghai, that would have been something too.
JL: So they’re really unique pictures?
SG: Yeah, yeah.
JL: We’ve talked about your secular education, what kind of religious education did you have?
SG: In that same school — it was a Jewish school. I remember we had a teacher and that was the basis of
my Hebrew. I mean, when I came to Israel I had a basis, because we learned the alphabet, we learned
to read, we learned to write. While I knew the word bocher meant yeshiva bocher,10 but still it laid the
basis so that I could read Hebrew. At least I didn't have to start the alphabet in Israel. And it was, we
took bible lessons, in school, and we were made to come Friday evening to the services and we had
Purim parties and we had Chanukah parties. It was a very, in our school, other than that you could go to
10 Yiddish for a student at a Jewish talmudical academy.
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Beit Yacov11 and Talmud Torah12 and yeshiva,13 and there were a lot of large yeshivas, large religious
community. Oh definitely, it was all there.
JL: Was there any specific religious orientation in terms of Orthodox or less Orthodox?
SG: Orthodox.
JL: It was Orthodox?
SG: Yes, there was some that were Conservative — which was from the German community — less so, but
also not Reform. The Reform did not exist at that time. And during the big holidays they would hire
theaters, movie houses, cinemas, okay that’s they call them, and they were used for everything. They
were used for services. During the bombings they were used as air-raid shelters with the antiaircraft
guns up on the roof garden and we were sitting downstairs. Our seats, I mean, we weren't really
protected, but; are we running out? But certainly more than in our houses, because our houses were
paper, not paper houses, but they didn't protect us from anything. Yes, so there was a very — I
remember Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur very, very fondly — very fondly. I remember what my
grandmother wore, I remember what my mother wore. I remember them being home for the holidays,
not having to go. I remember the cake that was baked, the very warm feeling. We always could bake a
cake because we could bring it down to the bakery to have it put in the oven. See, we had no oven, we
had nothing, no running water, no plumbing. And I remember my grandmother. I have the pearls. These
pearls I have. It's the only thing I have left. But sitting in the synagogue or where she was praying.
Some of them looked like Hillel,14 you know, which were sort of rooms converted into — not regular
synagogues. Then we had one regular synagogue, that I would, what was it called…?
END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2
11 A parochial school for girls. 12 Yiddish for a Hebrew school for children. 13 Yiddish for a traditional Jewish higher school. 14 The Jewish student centers on many U.S. university campuses operated by B'nai B'rith.
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TAPE 2, SIDE 1
JL: On the other tape we were talking about services, and you were trying to remember the name of the
synagogue?
SG: Something Moishe, Moishe, I can’t remember.
JL: Ohel Moishe?
SG: Ohel Moishe it was. I just drew a blank now obviously because… and that was not far from us, and I
remember going there and standing in front of the synagogue, all dressed up, the boys were standing
and the girls were standing — the usual thing. We spilled over into the street, and one of the things
that was nice, in comparison to someone whom I spoke to whose memories of going to the synagogue in
Germany, even during the best of times, was not to concentrate in front of the synagogue, not to draw
any attention. I couldn't understand that, because we were there and we didn't have to worry about
being there or not being there. There was a certain freedom in Shanghai, with everything, with the fact
that we were under — one of the things I probably didn't mention was that we were under Japanese
control. We were in a peculiar situation because we came with stateless passports. I don't think the
Japanese knew too much about Jews or non-Jews. It's only that I think with Hitler's influence that we
were put in these. But I’m saying that it was a very Jewish upbringing, and I think that's another thing
— make that a big jump to Madison. Because that is the thing I initially missed, because from
Shanghai, to Israel, to New York, and then to the Midwest. And okay, but I won’t touch on that.
JL: Yeah I do want to get into that much more once we get through this. You mentioned before that you
remembered what your grandmother wore and what your mother wore. Could you tell me a little more
about that? Could you describe it?
SG: I remember my grandmother's shaytl. I remember her dress.
JL: What was it like?
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SG: I have a picture here, it’s on the mantelpiece, and that's the why I remember her best. I remember
my grandmother very well. I grew up with my grandmother. I mean we grew up, okay, that part of
Shanghai from 1939 to 1946 when she died, ’46 or ’47 I’m not sure now. My grandmother lived in
the same room with us, so we had to put up a cot at night — my mother, my father, I, my grandmother.
My father and mother were gone by the time I got up to go to school. My grandmother would get up
before I did to put wood in the stove. It was like living in a little shtetl. And my way of finding out what
the weather was — there was a hole in the window — I'd stick my hand out. I swear, that's what I
remember, sticking my hand through, finding out how cold it is outside. It's riotous, when you think of
it. We couldn't even fix the windowpane. And then having to get hot water. We'd get hot water, boiling
water, to make coffee. I had to go across the street and get it with little wooden chopsticks that were
used instead of money. It was across the street, which was out of the ghetto, so many times somebody
would see a child they'd say, "Why don't you go across?" Because they would never do anything to the
children, the Japanese. They were very good about that.
JL: You didn’t need a pass, did you?
SG: Our school didn't need a pass even though it was outside. I don't know — no, I didn't need a pass. But
other children if they — my cousin went to another school and he did need a pass, as children, yes. But
they came to our plays and I remember one time they came and there was a Purim play and they of
course were always guests of honor, the Japanese. They were sitting in the first row and there was a
Purim play where they were carrying Haman off the stage and he walked out and everybody was afraid
to say anything or even turn around look while he was walking out, one of the top officials. Because
probably he saw his end, too.
JL: You think he identified himself with Haman?
SG: Oh, it must have been. I mean why at the point where they carried Haman off. At least that's what they
said at that time. I remember that, yeah.
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JL: I’d like to just get a little description in here; you mentioned that cake would seem to be a special thing
that you had on Rosh Hashanah, could you describe that?
SG: Yes, like a — out of yeast.
JL: Did it rise?
SG: Yes, and we had to put it under the pillow until it rose, under the [sounds like; parameth15].
JL: What is a [sounds like; parameth?]?
SG: That's a Yiddish word for [sounds like: duchen]. Do you know what a [sounds like: duchen] is? It's a
goose down cover, a down cover. In German it's [duchend?], at least that's what we called it, and in
Yiddish it's [sounds like: parameth]. You don't know the expression? That’s the word, in fact I heard it
on the radio, it’s a funny story, which I don’t know if I should go into this now. But we used to put it
under that until it rose, and then take it down to the bakery. Yes I remember that cake very well, very
well.
JL: Did you frost it?
SG: No, no. No, but I think there was cinnamon and sugar inside.
JL: You talked a bit about services and the things that you did in school, religious observances, could you
tell me a little bit about the Gemeinde16 in Shanghai? Was your family involved in that, or were you just
involved by virtue of being Jewish?
SG: When you say Gemeinde, you mean socially?
JL: No, the Yiddish Gemeinde
SG: Oh no, just by virtue, just by virtue of being part there. There were those people who worked for the
Gemeinde and they're always those people who are politicians and work and get involved. No, no.
JL: Was your family at all aware of the activities?
15 Yiddish and German here and below, no time track. 16 Yiddish or German for community, the organization that governed the Jewish community.
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SG: Oh yeah.
JL: What kinds of things?
SG: The Yiddish theater.
JL: That was under the Gemeinde also?
SG: No, it wasn't under the Gemeinde. But it was such a small area so that if there was a Yiddish theater
people would go. It was in primitive surroundings, at least the ones I remember. I don't remember
anything fancy. I'm talking about Hongkew now, talking about Hongkew. There was another part of
Shanghai that only became known to me after ‘46, which I became involved in.
JL: In what way?
SG: Well I started, the last year of my school, I went back to SJS.
JL: Which is?
SG: Shanghai Jewish School, the other one. Because most of the teachers in our school had left by that
time, those who had German quota had left. And also I belonged to Betar,17 which was very big in
Shanghai, in Hongkew, and there was an even bigger Betar in Frenchtown — that's what they called it,
the French concession — and after the war the two would very often get together, merge, and some of
the students who were in my other school, I knew them through Betar, there was a lot more interaction
between them. These were the Russian Jewish girls and boys and the Sephardic. You could go out of
the ghetto. I mean, you could go into Frenchtown or with the Bund, or — I took courses in the building
which is what used to be the camp.
JL: Business courses?
SG: Yeah. I remember once our teacher took us — from the other school — took us to the Lyceum Theater
to see Julius Caesar and Pride and Prejudice. Now, these were big events. Little things that others take
for granted.
17 A Zionist youth group.
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JL: Besides the theatre and the Zionist club that you belonged to are there any other clubs that you
belonged to?
SG: No, the theatre, we didn’t…
JL: No, in terms of cultural things, did you belong to any cultural clubs besides the…?
SG: No, there weren't any in the sense when you talk about cultural clubs. Betar was the biggest thing.
JL: Strong Zionistic push?
SG: Yeah, yeah. But it was mostly, I mean, we didn't know — looking back, I didn't know what it was all
about. It was a social thing for us. Everybody belonged to Betar, it was down the street, and that's what
you did. And when the war — we used to march in the street when the war — was it after Israel
proclaimed — even before that, we used to have rallies. They were allowed. I mean, nobody said
anything, nobody restricted us. There was Hashomer Hatzair, but I don't think that was as much. Betar
was the biggest.
JL: But did you meet together with the other Zionist groups?
SG: Other than Betar?
JL: Yeah, did they all maintain their…?
SG: The others weren't that big. There weren't even anything to speak of, I don't know.
JL: Do you happen to remember Yosef Tekoah18? Was he a friend of yours?
SG: Tukaczynski, yes. No, but I know the name because I used to work for a Shanghai organization in New
York, so I met — and these were all Russian Jews from Shanghai and Sephardic Jews and so that's
where we met the other part of them.
JL: What languages did you speak at home?
SG: German and Yiddish.
JL: And at school?
18 The former Israeli Representative to the United Nations
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SG: English. Oh, and well we learned a little bit of — we learned some Japanese. We had Japanese and we
had Hebrew and we had French.
JL: But you spoke, you interacted in English?
SG: English, yes. I'm sure that we interacted partially in German. No, we were Jews; German words, I guess,
is part of it because — but mostly English, yes.
JL: What language did you use with your friends away from school?
SG: English.
JL: Also?
SG: Yes. Now when I think of it, the English wasn't probably that good. I don't know. I don't know — it was
English.
JL: So the base of your English comes from Shanghai?
SG: Oh yeah, yeah.
JL: What did you do during school vacations?
SG: I used to lie on the bed in the house during the very warm summers and fantasize that I was at a
swimming pool and able to drink a cold glass of beer. Sounds like I'm a drunkard. Yeah. And read a lot.
Hot summers. Hot, hot, terrible summers; crowded conditions. Sometimes we had summer school, I
remember. Vacation!
JL: So there were, besides the summer, there were no vacations or holidays? For Jewish holidays yes.
SG: Yes. So what did you do? You stayed home and slept late if you could. I don't know, I don't remember
vacations as such. Who thought of vacations?
JL: There was no such things as travel then I guess?
SG: No.
JL: Your family just stayed and worked hard?
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SG: Worked, ten years of no vacation for my parents. It took me a long time to convince them to go
somewhere in New York.
JL: Okay you mentioned earlier that the Sephardian, Russian, and later Polish Jews did meet with the
refugees.
SG: The children —
JL: The children did.
SG: Well no, not generally. We just got to know more. I was in the graduating class by that time, and so I
was among the older of my generation and we met in Betar, but I wouldn't say that everybody knows
them. In fact most of my friends don't even know these people.
JL: But alright, so you did, in general did you have any perception…?
SG: No, they didn't, they didn't. That's one thing, generally no, definitely not. There was very little
interaction between them.
JL: And what there was, was it good?
SG: I don't remember it being anything.
JL: At all?
SG: There was no social, I mean, these were all very wealthy people who had been in China much longer,
and just socially they were on a different level and different culturally, socially. They were Russians,
these were.
JL: Now, we haven’t talked, well we started talking about the Japanese and the Chinese, but I’d like to ask
you, what was the reaction of the Japanese and Chinese civilians to the lack of living space and tough
business competition brought about by this refugee influx?
SG: I personally think that the refugees were the ones who built up Hongkew, and I think they did a lot of
good for the community. I don't think that the Japanese had any bad feelings about it. I don't know. I
don't think that was — they were at war, don't forget. They were at war with the United States. This was
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an occupying force. It was not Japan. We didn't move into Japan. They themselves were an occupying
force in China, and we were in a very small area in comparison to the entire country. I don't remember
anything.
JL: The refugees arrived before the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, and the Japanese were there
occupying.
SG: Yeah but the Japanese were also at war with China. So they themselves were in a, I don’t think that… Is
your question whether the refugees became a threat to them economically?
JL: Yes
SG: I don't think so, no. Not that I know of, unless you've come across something.
JL: No, I just wanted to know what your perception was?
SG: I don't think so. I don't think so. If anything, I think we built up the area.
JL: Even though you were crowded into Hongkew?
SG: Yes. I don't think that the Chinese live any differently now. It was just for European standards that it
was very crowded. In fact when I speak to some people who were traveling on mainland China —
somebody just came back, one of the professors, and he had visited a professor, and he said this family
lives in a one room, whitewashed-wall kind of a room. That's very familiar to me — so this is how they
live, many of them. And of course it was a capitalistic society, too, so there were places that were
terribly, terribly wealthy. But most of the people, many of the people, lived the way we did. So as far as
they were concerned, no, I don't remember anything. Maybe, but I don't remember.
JL: Do you remember anything about the reaction of the refugee to the Japanese restrictions on further
immigration in August, ‘39?
SG: No.
JL: You were fortunate enough to have your grandmother come.
SG: Yeah.
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JL: How about the reactions of the established Sephardian and Russians to the restrictions?
SG: They were helpful I think in the, oh on the restrictions?
JL: Was there any joy on their part, or nothing, or…?
SG: You mean that we were — again, we were a threat to them? No.
JL: Was there any perception that the already established Sephardian merchants didn't want more
competition?
SG: I don't know whether they wanted any more or not, but they were very helpful in the beginning, all the
community. For example, I mean, Kadoori, the Hardoons, the Sassoons, they all — I think they all gave
money to help the refugees. I don't know how much. We were certainly not a threat to their world
empire there. I mean these were millionaires, and some of the refugees, the businesses they had were
selling old rags on the street — literally, literally. Putting out a blanket on the street and putting old
things there. My uncle did that.
JL: And he subsisted on that?
SG: Yes.
JL: I assume not too well.
SG: No, my aunt worked a little. Not too well. Nobody did too well.
JL: Let me ask you about your passport, you did have a J in it didn’t you, in your passport?
SG: Probably. I don't know where it is. I was statenlos.19 We all were when we came to Shanghai, we all
were statenlos.
JL: We started before talking about the Heime, and you would describe them a bit, did you know, did the
people in the lanes know of the conditions at all?
SG: Oh yes. Yes, I mean the lane was next to the Heime and the Heime was next to the lane. It was all in
one. And my friend who is here now from Israel, she lived in what they called a [inaudible] and what it
19 German for stateless.
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was in a similar type of building — most of the buildings were like where we lived — it was a half-step
sort of, and there was the [inaudible] and the room was no bigger than half this size, which is how
much, I don't know. Only there was the bed and if you went in there, there was nothing else. And she's
really suffering these days, and I know that has something to do with her childhood. I just spoke to her
last week. She's very wealthy now, or at least very well established and all that. She's always depressed,
suffers a lot from depressions and I said, "Doris," tried to talk to her rationally, although there was
nothing that I could say. And she said, "You can't change a person." She's always like that, always very
— now, I know why with her, but I don't want to go on record with that. I don't know where that — I
shouldn't have mentioned names.
JL: You didn't mention last names.
SG: Yeah, but okay.
JL: Could you talk a little bit about the reaction of the German and Austrian community to the arrival of the
Polish Jews? Did that traditional enmity and animosity come up again?
SG: Probably. I don't think they are ever too far from it. Yeah, but I think we were all too much involved in
surviving at that point. I'm sure in the privacy of a room or something, something was said. But I'm sure
that was derogatory, you know "She's Polish," or something like that, which is, I think, the nature of
human beings. But people were too concerned with survival. It was too much of a struggle. It was a
struggle. I don't care what anybody says — it was a struggle.
JL: Even though there was some Polish background in your family, do you think there might have been
some identification with them?
SG: Who, I?
JL: Not you, the family being from Poland.
SG: Oh that there was something against…?
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JL: No, the fact that your family had originally came from Poland, that there might have been some more
identification on their part.
SG: With the Polish?
JL: Yeah.
SG: Yeah, well don't forget, most Viennese, originally come from Poland, very very few — at least, very many
of the Viennese that I know are originally, and very many of the Germans that I know from my friends,
originally Poland, the parents. And my friend I was just talking about, the other friend.
JL: Well sometimes there is more than one or two generations removed.
SG: No, they all came in the First World War.
JL: Oh.
SG: This is the First World War group. Yeah, my parents identified with the Polish, and I did. Yeah, I had no
trouble identifying with any of the groups. We lived in very close proximity, so it was not a question of
Germans and Viennese and Polish. No, we had friends from all over.
JL: We talked about your friendships, do you recall having discussions with your friends about your refugee
states at a child level?
SG: No, no. No, I think we spoke about all the things that children speak about, concerned with everything
from that point of view, as far as children go. Not about refugees. No, because I think most of us didn't
realize what we — we didn't think we were any different from anybody else.
JL: So you had no [inaudible] with each other to gripe about?
SG: No, no. It was only after the war when immigration to the United States started that people — nobody
wanted to go back to Austria again or Germany. So that's when the immigration started and everybody
was concerned about getting there first and there was a very big — the occupation force of the
American armed forces, was very big and their influx into Shanghai, and many girls married Americans,
dated Americans. A lot of them became prostitutes, prostitutes for money simply to survive. A lot of
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prostitution, lot of prostitution from the White Russians but a lot from the Jewish community — people
who had to do it to survive.
JL: You know this tape is going to end pretty soon, but I’d like to make a comment. We’ve been discussing
some pretty profound reactions on your and your parent’s part for what was happening in Shanghai.
You’ve tried to give me, for the most part, am I not right, the child’s perspective with some adult
hindsight. Could you talk a bit about, a bit more about how your child’s mind and sensitivities
responded to the conditions around you? You did say some things about just lying in your bed…
SG: Oh yes, very much so. I think that the worst part of that was the reaction as a child to this and knowing
— to all the turmoil, the tremendous turmoil. I've just memories of turmoil, of anxieties, of worrying, of
being thrown into the midst of war and without intentionally having had — maybe it was just my own
sensitivity that I responded this way to it. And worrying about everything and constantly being tense
about it and taking responsibility where responsibility wasn't even dished out. But taking it, and I think
that was something that I've — maybe I wish it hadn't been. Nobody gave them to me. I just was there
and I heard and I felt the turmoil, and I think all of us who grew up in this kind of a situation — and
this is something that I've spoken to my friend to now, we discuss this — have many times taken on a
parent role even then, when we weren't ready for it. Because in order to instill, in order to quiet our own
fears, we had to verbalize them and say, "Don't worry. It will be okay."
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 1
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TAPE 2, SIDE 2
SG: I think it's important, for the record, people should know that people who have survived, whatever
traumatic experiences, be the concentration camps or this, have in many ways built up certain defense
mechanisms to survive. Everybody does that anyway, but we have to do that, and it's cathartic to cry.
It's okay. My mother always used to say, "Let me weinen.20 Let me cry. It's good." And it's true. I think
we come to a stage in life where we feel we're responsible for our own feelings and if we were afraid at
that time, that's perfectly justified. I have something here that I… I'm talking about defense
mechanisms, some people — we were talking about that too — come out hardened, get away from their
past completely, break with it, and they don't even know why. They just, that's it. I feel very attached to
my past still. It's important for me to stay in touch with the past. I just hate it all. I hate all the fears. I
keep on talking about fears, because they must have been there. Leaving Shanghai, having to worry
again. How did my parents do it? That's what I'd like to know. And survive?
JL: Did they ever talk about that in the later years?
SG: Well, yeah. I guess they survived by being — I know my mother was always close to her brothers and
her mother and everybody was close. It's the extended family that lived there, and they gave each other
emotional support. That's what it was. I remember, definitely that was a big factor, the extended family.
As a child, sometimes you can't verbalize all that you feel, so you were more alone than a grown-up who
can. Yes, extended family was very helpful. I think if my mother would have been there alone she might
not have made it as well. I'm sure of that. I am positive of that. She became even stronger when we
came to the States because the family then split up. My uncles went back to Vienna, and she had to by
virtue of that. Yes, that’s how they survived. They wouldn't have made it alone. I think that's why my
grandfather died so soon after he was taken into the camp. My mother said that he wouldn't survive it
20 German for “to cry”.
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because he was used to the family, also. Probably that's true of a lot of people who were taken away
and destroyed.
JL: Well, thus far we’ve talked a lot about life in Shanghai and before the [inaudible] refugees were into the
so-called, I guess, euphemistically designated area which was the ghetto and you have mentioned some
things about being in the ghetto. I'd like now to discuss what it was like to be in the ghetto. Do you
remember when and under what circumstances you were moved there?
SG: Yes, but I don't remember any difference from before the ghetto, after the ghetto, because we lived in
the area which became the ghetto so it was no — there was people who lived outside of it who had to
move a few streets or from one part of Shanghai to another. That didn't happen to us, so as far as I was
concerned, there was no difference.
JL: Can you tell me something about your memories of people coming in and you know what kinds of
activities took place with people coming in?
SG: It wasn't anymore than it was. It was crowded to start out with. It was restricted area. It was not a
ghetto with barbed wire. So life went on very much the way it had. If somebody had a job outside, that
became a problem. They had to go through getting passes and so on. But our family was not so affected
by it. We lived there and we stayed there and so there was no —
JL: When did, do you remember the time, the date when people started coming?
SG: I think it was in ’43? I have no idea because there was no transition, I can’t remember the transition.
JL: So it didn’t, am I understanding you correctly that it didn’t make that much of an impression on you?
The crowded atmosphere, and flurry of activity…
SG: It was the same. It was the same, yes. I don't think it was much different.
JL: Could you tell me about the passes that you used, that the adults used?
SG: They had to go to the police station, to the Japanese head of the — I don't know what he was head of,
not the police, maybe he was head of the police. His name was Ghoya, and he called himself the king
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of the Jews. People were very frightened of him. There were a lot of people who suffered from this, from
the ghetto area. There was no doubt about that. It's just that I, as a child, don't remember that, and life
went on.
JL: Were there any instances that you might be able to recall about Ghoya, and things that he did to
people?
SG: Yeah, he was hitting people, he slapped them, he would get on the table and scream, "I'm king of the
Jews." And you know for those people who — if there was a tall refugee, and he had to go, that was the
most frightening thing because [Ghoya] hated tall people and anybody who was tall was in danger of —
he could just say, "Well, I won't give you a pass" and that's it. So he couldn't go out and do his work or
— I remember the air raids. That was later, in ‘45.
JL: When your parents had to go out to work, now am I correct, they went out of the, they worked inside?
SG: Yes. It was rather big, it was rather big. Every once in a while they had — I remember there was one
customer they had, a Russian, who lived across the street, and they would send me to deliver that one
bread because they knew that children, they wouldn't do anything to children, the Japanese. They never
did.
JL: As I understand it, the residence certificates that you needed for the ghetto had yellow stripes across.
What kind of effect did that yellow stripe have on people, in recalling the yellow star?
SG: I am giving you a child’s perspective and it had none to me.
JL: Could you perceive the effect around you?
SG: Yeah, again the ghetto that some came from Poland probably, the shtetl where all the pogroms or things
like that probably had some effect.
JL: What can you tell me if you remember anything about the badges that people had to wear red and little
badges that they had to wear out to work in addition to the pass?
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SG: Yeah, I remember them but I forgot about it already because again because it wasn’t a significant thing
in my life. I wish I could help you more on that.
JL: Do you remember, I feel like picking your memory, can you tell me something about the Japanese
[inaudible] do you remember how they acted?
SG: Yeah. They would yell, command, and so on. Mainly they were taking care of, in the blackouts, so they
had to walk around and you'd hear. We had blackouts, our windows had to be taped and had to be
blacked out, and that part I remember. And then they'd walk around the streets yelling that, you know,
you could see a spot of light. In the summer people would lie outside on the street because it was too
hot, the Chinese. Roll out their straw mats and lie on the streets and we'd walk right over them. I
remember dead bodies in the street of children people couldn't take care of, the Chinese.
JL: And no one offered to bury them?
SG: Yes after a week or so, they wouldn't be there anymore, so I guess they picked them up. I remember the
beggars —
JL: Chinese and Jewish?
SG: No, I'm talking about Chinese now. Grabbing bread from your hand because they were so hungry. You
didn't do anything to them because they were hungry. This very often happened to my mother and my
father. What could you do if somebody grabs bread from you because they're hungry? What are you
going to do? But that often happened.
JL: Was there any difference, I’m sure there must have, between the way that the Chinese took care of their
dead and how the Jews, do you recall at all seeing any dead Jews on the street?
SG: No.
JL: What do you remember about the sentinels at the ghetto entrance, the Pao Chia?21
21 Chinese for protect the home.
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SG: They were not sentinels at the entrance — that makes it sound as though there was a gate. The Pao
Chia were people who enforced the passes, but they were from the Jewish community. They were not
working with the Japanese against the Jews. The Jews did not look at them as traitors, that was not
what they were. None of them hurt us or none of them were against the other. One Jew was not against
the other Jew just simply because one was a Pao Chia, no. Pao Chia were just air-raid wardens and they
helped in that and they were involved in — but there was no gate, it was open.
JL: We have talked about the relationship between the Sephardim and the Russians and the refugees, after
the ghetto was established and people moved into Hongkew, did the ghetto experience at all effect the
interaction, was there any more?
SG: No, less probably.
JL: And, is there a perception of the resentment, any resentment toward the Russian Jews who were
excluded from the ghetto?
SG: No, I don't think so.
JL: Even though they didn’t have to live in there?
SG: This was an older community the Russian Jews.
JL: So there’s just no contact?
SG: I don't remember any resentment of one against the other, no. Again, maybe on a higher level, maybe
on the political level of the Jewish community there may have been, but certainly nothing that I, as a
child, could remember.
JL: You mentioned before that there were some affluent refugees, could you tell me something about they
way they functioned and how they fared among the desperately poor majority, resentment or envy or
anything?
SG: I don't know. I mean, I'm looking at myself and seeing some — all my friends were in the same boat.
Nobody was rich, and some people had their own businesses. No, I really do not recall anything like
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that. No, I don't recall any. There was a black market and maybe among the people from the black
market there was something — which was after the war, I think, the black market. It must have been
after. No, no, the black market was during the war, because I remember my mother walking in the
street and finding a U.S. hundred-dollar bill, all crumpled up and not knowing what to do with it. I
think it was death sentence if they found you with American money and not knowing — what do you do
with the money? I think everybody had U.S. dollars anyway, but on the street you didn't know whether
somebody watched you, whether it was — I remember that she came home and said she found a $100
bill, and where do you go with it, what do you do with it?
JL: What did she eventually do with it?
SG: I don't know, I don't know. I think she asked my uncle. My uncle was involved in the black market. That
was his way of surviving, among other things.
JL: What else do you know about it?
SG: All black marketing was dealing in dollars, I guess, among the Jews. There was a street, Chusan Road
— this is where Blumenthal lived — and Chusan Road was no bigger than maybe this block of Regent
Street, narrow, very narrow. And that's where the black marketeering — that's where she found it. That's
what happened.
JL: What else do you know about the black market, anything else?
SG: People made money on it. And then after the war people were dealing with dollars more openly, and
some became quite wealthy transferring dollars from Shanghai to the States and things like that.
JL: In what kind of way were the children involved in the black market, not at all?
SG: No.
JL: Before we started talking about the relief societies, can you tell me anything about the types of relief
societies there were and what kinds of things they did?
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SG: They had kitchens where people went to get food. I don't recall ever getting that. I remember my friend,
I used to go with her. I used to get the soup, soup kitchens.
JL: How many times a day?
SG: Maybe three times, I'm not sure. Maybe only twice. I remember my girlfriend, going with her to pick up
— we never did, we never did. My father always worked, my mother always worked, and food was
cooked.
JL: What else from the relief societies do you know, besides food and money what else did they provide?
SG: I'm sure part of the hospital was subsidized. I mean, the hospitals were subsidized. All the functions —
there was a Joint, the HIAS, Juedische Gemeinde. If people couldn't afford to pay schools, which was a
nominal fee, they would help with the money. They were helpful. When they had money, they were
helpful.
JL: You said that you didn’t receive any assistance as a family. Did you have any perception at all, or what
kind of perception did you have about the way that your friends families accepted the relief, was that
ever discussed?
SG: No, nobody looked down on that. That was just a fact of life.
JL: And was there any kind of expression on their part?
SG: No, no. Nobody felt ashamed about it. This girl, my friend in New York, she lived in a Heime and I think
she received a lot more and I don't know how she feels about it. Why, this is draining.
JL: Pardon?
SG: This is draining.
JL: Would you like to stop?
SG: For a few minutes.
JL: Okay, for a few minutes? Okay.
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JL: Earlier we talked about vacations or lack thereof, is they anything at all that you did for fun, as a kid, in
Shanghai?
SG: We went to school in the afternoon. We played in plays in school, we played volleyball, things like that,
yeah, yeah. We would create our own — this is a funny story about, did I tell you the story about, well,
we had no toys you know, so we'd stuff our own dolls and make dolls and make our own houses,
dollhouses, and once my friend, Doris, this one came over and she still talks about this, she thought it
was so funny, and she looked in this crate which I had made as a dollhouse, my own little private
dollhouse, and there was a cockroach and she said, "What's that?" and "That's my doll's dog." And it
was the most natural — now she laughs about it. We created our own fantasies — we had to. There was
nothing — the world outside was — for myself, I created my own semblance of order. There was too
much disorder in the physical, so that you had to create that. That's still part of me, very much a part of
me. Our world was very fragile.
JL: I’d like to talk a little bit about the Nazis and the war. How successful, would you say, Nazi propaganda
was in Japan? Did you or you friends feel any overt anti-Semitism?
SG: Not overtly, no. I think there was a lot going on covertly. There are books written about that I think and
they're only now coming out. One of them is The Fugu Plan,22 which I've only skimmed through.
JL: Could you talk a little bit about your child perception…
SG: Of Nazism? I had none, we left…
JL: Within Shanghai.
SG: None, no.
JL: Neither before the war, nor during the occupation?
SG: Right.
22 Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews in World War II (New York: Paddington Press, 1979).
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JL: Now generally, how much awareness was there among the refugees, that Japan was trying to use what it
considered to be the so-called Jewish power and wealth to effect political and military purpose in the
United States?
SG: I don’t know how much there was, again the books afterwards say that there was something going on.
But I don’t think the general public knew about it, or if they did, I didn’t know, I was totally unaware of
it.
JL: And your family, was there any indication of it?
SG: No, no.
JL: How would you characterize the treatment accorded the refugees by the Japanese throughout the ten
years you were there? You mentioned a bit about that before.
SG: From my point of view, it wasn't bad, especially in comparison to how people had been treated in
Europe by the Nazis. Some of their behavior was a little irrational, of the Japanese. They would yell and
they would scream and they would kick and something like that. That was in individual cases, but I do
not recall anything terrible. They facilitated our being in school. My memories are not bad of that.
JL: And from your parents' viewpoint, is there anything?
SG: No, I think they would, once in a while, one would talk about Ghoya. Everybody was afraid of him
because he was so crazy. One never knew what he would do. You were totally — those people who
worked outside, they were totally dependent on him. Again, he didn't affect my parents' life to that
extent, and ah…
JL: There was another fellow —
SG: Harada? There was Harada. Some of them were said to have been spies for the Americans. Even Ghoya
was supposed to have been pro-American at one point and supposedly saved our lives and they were
planning to do something with us, some concentration camp. But I don't know whether that's a rumor or
not. I don't know. The Fugu Plan is more explicit on that.
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JL: How much were you able to learn of the, you and I mean generally the refugees, able to learn of the
atrocities in Europe?
SG: After the war.
JL: While you were in Shanghai?
SG: No. I remember that our neighbor had a radio. It was the only radio in the house, and every time,
whenever the news went on, everybody rushed there and they were all standing. And that was a German
station, was controlled by the Germans, so whatever came through was obviously biased, and it's only
after the war that we came and I remember seeing books about Treblinka and Auschwitz and these little
books that came out from Europe. No, nothing. No, I don't think anybody knew anything.
JL: Now after the war, you mean when you were still in Shanghai?
SG: Yeah, well we stayed from ‘45 to ‘49, until ‘48, end of ‘48.
JL: What about your recollections of the news that the war broke out in Europe, in September ’39? Did that
come through the radio?
SG: Yes. I don't remember so much of that as I remember the war breaking out with Pearl Harbor. That
more affected us. Either I was older and I remember that we — you know, Shanghai is on the waterfront
— lying in bed and hearing detonations. I don't know what was detonated but there was something on
the harbor and the next morning we woke up and the war had begun. I remember that day. Cold, crisp,
December, sunny. Yes, that I remember.
JL: I have to turn the tape over, but I’d like you to talk a bit more about Pearl Harbor if you could.
END OF TAPE 2, SIDE 2
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TAPE 3, SIDE 1
JL: Okay now before we continue from the point at which we left off at our last sessions I would just like to
fill in some gaps. What was your date of birth?
SG: February 17, ‘33.
JL: Okay, the cities in which your parents and grandparents were born in Poland?
SG: I don't know where my grandparents were born. My mother was born in Cholojew, my father in
Maniewicze. I don’t know where my grandparents were born.
JL: What were the names of your grandparents.
SG: Leah and Barash Meisel.
JL: Okay and that was, those were the parents of?
SG: My mother's parents. I didn't know my father's parents.
JL: Okay and the dates of birth of your grandparents?
SG: I don't know.
JL: When did they come from Poland?
SG: I'm sure it was during the First World War when they fled from Poland.
JL: Now, you said your mother worked in your uncle's business in Vienna. What was that business?
SG: I think they were just trading. It wasn't really an official business. It was just making a living more than
a business.
JL: You mentioned, in our other sessions, some funny stories that you said that you had heard regarding the
shtetl. Do you remember any?
SG: Did I? I don't know. They were funny to me because they were different and something that I wasn't
relating to. I guess it's the way the names that my parents used for the people who lived there, because
they never had a first or a second name. They were always identified by their business. That was true. I
guess that was the funny part. I don't know, whatever. "The herring [sounds like; Soykhe]" and "this one
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the milkman" and "this one," you know. Just identifiable by profession, as "Tevye the milkman." Nothing
that I can really remember. I wish I knew more about it, but that was about it.
JL: Okay, what were the names of your mother's brothers?
SG: Max and Julius Meisel. And only one of them is alive, Max. And everybody else — he's the only
surviving child of my grandmother.
JL: And what happened to Julius?
SG: He died in ‘71.
JL: Which brother had the family, Max or Julius?
SG: Max.
JL: And Julius didn't?
SG: No.
JL: And your mother had one sister, is that correct?
SG: Two half sisters, and they're both dead. One of them as a matter of fact committed suicide when she
went back from Shanghai to Vienna and, I guess, didn't find what she thought she would find and felt
very trapped there. It was right after the war and so she committed suicide. The other one died just a
year ago in Italy where she's been living all her life.
JL: What were their names?
SG: Rosa was the one who committed suicide and Yetti was the one who lived in Italy.
JL: Now which one had the family?
SG: Neither of them had children. It's strange, because in our family there were very few children, as you
can see. That's why I have no cousins.
JL: Now you mentioned the neighbor in Vienna who wanted your apartment as soon as the Anschluss23 took
place.
23 The annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938.
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SG: Yeah.
JL: You also said there was a best friend who wanted the apartment. Were these the same people?
SG: Yes, yes. Good friends. I wouldn't say they were best friends. Pretty good friends. But obviously they
didn't turn out to be good friends.
JL: You mentioned an aunt which lived in the house with the spiral staircase.
SG: She still lives there.
JL: Which aunt is that?
SG: That's my uncle's widow who has since remarried and she still lives in Vienna in that house.
JL: And who is that?
SG: My Aunt Ruth Meisel. She's now remarried to another ex-Shanghai person. Somebody who lived in
Shanghai whom I didn't know there but who lived in Shanghai.
JL: And this is the place where the grandparents lived?
SG: Where we left them, right.
JL: Then you mentioned the aunt and, maybe I misunderstood, an aunt and a son who went to Shanghai.
And also, was this the wife of the man who went to Milano?
SG: Yes. Well he's the cousin who is in the United States. He is my Uncle Max's son, yes. I would say he's
probably the only close living blood relative other than my uncle who is still alive.
JL: What is his name?
SG: Henry Meisel.
JL: He was the one who went to Shanghai with you?
SG: Yes.
JL: And his mother?
SG: And his father. Yes, the father went from Italy. He ran away to Italy on November 10, and then
everybody followed. And he was the one, the driving force in getting us out in time, really.
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JL: This was November 10, ’39?
SG: Right. He went and then we followed later. But he was the one.
JL: You said you had an aunt in Milano?
SG: Right. She's the one who died recently. She's the half sister of my mother.
JL: And what was her name?
SG: Yeti.
JL: You also said, "Everything happens on my birthday."
SG: Oh, yeah, very significantly.
JL: What did you mean by that?
SG: We arrived in Shanghai, maybe not on my birthday but a few days before my birthday. We arrived in
Israel on my birthday, got married on my birthday. That's significant.
JL: It certainly is. You also said that you all lived in the same house in Shanghai. Who was all?
SG: Well, my parents, my uncle, my other uncle, my other aunt. Everybody who went to Shanghai lived in
the same building for a while, and then we started separating into different buildings. But originally we
all lived in the same building.
JL: You mentioned that cinemas were hired for services and air raids. Was this for the entire community or
just for your school?
SG: No, for the entire community, because we had some synagogues there, but they had been built
originally for the Russian Jewish community, which came there at the turn of the century and after the
Russian revolution, and they weren't quite enough, so they had to have other synagogues. Which, they
converted cinemas and they converted storefronts for little shuls,24 which of course all were temporary.
JL: Do you recall the date that the ghetto was established?
SG: It was shortly after the war broke out, when Japan was getting very involved in the —
24 Yiddish for synagogues.
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JL: When America entered the war?
SG: Yes, it must have been after America entered the war. I think it was after America entered the war.
Right.
JL: Could you describe the intermediate camp you were in before the, you went to the room in the lane?
SG: It was a big, official office building that I don't know how they did that, and I don't recall, but they
converted that into huge dormitories where people would just — it was just a transit camp. We didn't
stay there very long, so — I know where it is, and I have pictures of it, because these were official
buildings. In fact, many years later, I went to business school there. It was a big office building. I don't
know why at that time they were able to convert it. I don't think it was the whole building that was
converted — some of the floors.
JL: There were bunks?
SG: Just cots, just cots. It was a huge room, and everybody slept in the same room. That was the frightening
part for me, because it was coming to Shanghai the first time and seeing everything and the Chinese,
and everything was just strange to me. And the fear of being left alone and then my illness — but that
was the — it was just big rooms. It was not a tent city or anything like that, and it was right in the heart
of the city, downtown Shanghai.
JL: Could you describe how the street looked to you, teeming with people and the kinds of people that were
there?
SG: Teeming is the word. And it was fearful. It was crowded, it was noisy. That's it. I mean there was just a
huge city that was overwhelming because it was strange. There was nothing dangerous. I guess the
danger that I perceived was all within me, obviously. Just teeming, huge city with no order to it.
JL: What did the people look like to you as a child?
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SG: I wasn't afraid of the people. I think it was just the whole thing that was happening was frightening but
it wasn't — people looked Chinese but I didn't think of them as being any strange. It really was just the
whole atmosphere.
JL: You mentioned that you had gone to two different schools.
SG: Right. We had the Shanghai Jewish School, which was the one that had existed. They had all the rich
Russian Jews and the Iraqi Jews and the Iranian Jews and all the Sephardic Jews. This is one of the old
established schools, and that was the first school. Then when they built the other one, the Kadoori
school, SJYA, that was later. First we had temporary housing for that, and then we had the regular
school. That's the one that I really attended, you know, all through.
JL: How far was home from each of these schools?
SG: The first one was quite far. We had busses. Well, they weren't busses, they were trucks, really. They
were lorries where we were sitting in the back. We'd have a meeting place where to meet and they
would take us there. The other one was within walking distance, but not comfortable walking distance.
Not what Americans would call comfortable walking distance, let's put it this way.
JL: How far do you think it was?
SG: It was probably more than a mile, which seemed a lot at that time, and at the same time it didn't seem
a lot because we did it one way, two ways. It was quite far, but there was nothing to compare it with, so
we walked. We walked in groups because we always had people. We all lived around the same area, so
we'd pick each other up and we'd walk. About a mile, maybe more. I don't know, maybe more.
JL: The one to which you got a lorry must have been quite far.
SG: Oh, that was far. That was in a different part of town. That could not have been walked.
JL: How far do you think that was?
SG: Oh several miles — five, six miles, maybe even more than that. And again, as a child, you know, I have
no conception of how far. It took a long time, let's put it that way.
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JL: Okay now you said that two of your girlfriends worked, you told me that you had two girlfriends that
worked.
SG: Yes. One of them is the one who's visiting now. She worked because she had to leave school to support
her parents.
JL: Where did she work?
SG: At the Joint.25
JL: And the other one?
SG: Who was the other one? There was another one who dropped out of school and who never finished high
school and she worked somewhere in town. When I say "town," we lived in Hongkew.26 It was also town,
but the other one was in the real business section. I don't know where she worked, but I always used to
envy her independence because she used to come home in a rickshaw. Like any other child: there was
nothing unusual about being in Shanghai and envying somebody who has become independent.
JL: How many hours did they both work?
SG: Oh, probably the regular eight hours or whatever. I don't know.
JL: Okay, now you did talk in the last session about the feelings that people had that there was no room, no
one had room for themselves
SG: Yes, I think a lot of people thought that, but I know I'm the kind of person who needs a lot of privacy,
and I think I felt that a lot as a personal feeling. But I'm sure that there were others, too. I'm sure that
everybody needs privacy, and none of us had any. None of us had any privacy. There was no way
because we didn't have large enough places.
JL: Was it possible?
25 The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which served refugees and immigrants. 26 A district of Shanghai.
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SG: Yeah, we fantasized rooms of our own in our mind. Again that's nothing unusual. We had to get away, a
room of our own, sort of. Whether you do it psychologically or physically.
JL: Where did communication take place then, among people, you know if there were…
SG: Communication? In one room.
JL: Need for discussing things privately?
SG: That was one of the problems. Nothing was discussed too privately, and that's why I think one of the
things that happened was that we were all involved in the worries and everything that was going on. We
were very much aware — there was no such a thing as guarding a child from the worries, because you
couldn't. You were all in one room. You were all exposed to it.
JL: Well were you able to support each other psychologically?
SG: Well I was too small, I needed psychological support more than anyone.
JL: When you were a teenager already.
SG: When I was a teenager we had left.
JL: Well, when in the later, in the last years.
SG: I don’t think I ever went through, in the last years, what do you call last years?
JL: Of Shanghai, the last years of your staying in Shanghai.
SG: I don't ever recall going through a regular teenage adolescence or the way it is known here, where the
adolescence is involved with things such as dating and sex education. We just didn't have that. These
were not our concerns. Everything was hush hush about sex, and again I don't think that's that unusual
no matter where you were.
JL: But were you able as teenagers, need to do sometimes, to support each other psychologically, or did
that not exist?
SG: Teenagers among teenagers? Oh yeah, well we had friends, sure, sure.
JL: So you were indeed then able to…
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SG: Well we had friendships, yeah, yeah.
JL: You’ve talked, especially in the last session, about several aspects of life in Shanghai. Could you now,
perhaps, give me a description of a typical day?
SG: A typical day the way I remember it? Going to school, okay that will be a typical day. In winter — I have
to describe it in winter. My husband doesn't believe that that was the way it was. He said I'm
exaggerating. Get up in the morning, it was freezing. That's the first thing I remember, the cold, and I
don't know whether the temperatures were that low, but we were cold. The icicles on the widow and my
parents had left already because they would get up at 2:00 in the morning or 2:30 to go. My
grandmother would get up before I did and she would heat the wooden stove. And then in order to make
coffee or tea or whatever we had, I don't remember. I had to go and get water from the water man. I
don't know why we didn't do it at home, but that was the thing. So I had to walk across the street
somewhere and pick up hot water. There was a business — hot water. And I'd get hot water, then I'd
have my breakfast, my grandmother would prepare it.
JL: What did you have?
SG: I don't know. What did we have? Maybe a sandwich. Sandwich, what could we have? There was no milk
or anything like that. And then I'd pick up my girlfriend and we'd go to school. And I loved school, I
always did. School was fun, competitive, for me at least. I always felt competitive. About three o'clock
I'd be home, first thing on order, we did our homework. By that time my parents would be home and
then we ate dinner, whatever that was. I just don't remember all the details. And then if I had more
homework, I'd do my homework. If I had less I'd go to Betar. That was our meeting place. The social
club was Betar, and that was on the same street. And we'd be there. We'd have our [sounds like;
asiphot] and our military training, which I remember. That's really funny. We'd have military training.
JL: How did that work?
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SG: The regular military training that you have in these places — who knows? I don't know what they
expected us to do.
JL: Did you have one person who did these drills?
SG: We had the madrich.27 I forget all these things already. We had ping-pong there. It was a social club.
And then we'd come home at probably nine o'clock or so, and that was the end of the day.
JL: How many times a week did you go to Betar?
SG: I think it was about twice a week. I'm not sure. A lot of it I really forget. I don't know the time we went.
JL: How did you and your parents follow what was going on in the world?
SG: Radio. That was the only thing. There was one station that gave German news, and I guess that was all
during the war and so I remember our neighbor — we didn't even have a radio but our neighbor had a
radio — and at five or whatever time the news were on, people from all over would come to gather
around the radio. That was interesting that you mention that, because I had forgotten that. All the doors
of our rooms were open, and there was sort of a central hall, the neighbor would have a radio and then
come five o'clock, or whatever time it was, you'd have people from, even from other houses who didn't
have radios, come there and listen to the radio. It was like people would be coming first to watch
television, right?
JL: What kinds of news did you hear?
SG: Well, I don't ever remember. I knew nothing what was going on in the world. That was another thing
which was interesting. As children I don't think that any of us really were aware of what was going on in
the world, as teenagers might nowadays — or at least I didn't. I don't think any of us did. It was people
were concerned, the news that came on were all how far the Allies had gone — you know, war news.
JL: Where was this news coming from, you said German, but was it from Germany?
SG: No, no, it wasn't from Germany. I think it was a local station in Shanghai.
27 Hebrew for leader.
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JL: In German?
SG: In German, right.
JL: So you had no way of knowing then whether it was filtered, or how true…?
SG: I am sure that it was, but I wouldn't want to comment on that because it's just conjecturing. I have no
idea what they were — and we had newspapers. We had local newspapers. I think we had a Shanghai
— I'm sure we had the Shanghai paper, but we also had a refugee paper. It was called the Shanghai
Echo, and that gave local news and world news, I'm sure.
JL: Are you translating that title, or was it the Shanghai Echo?
SG: No, it was called the Shanghai Echo, Shanghai Echo. Didn’t it say so in the book? I’m sure that it must
have been mentioned, yeah, I’m sure it was the Shanghai Echo, where else would I get that name?
JL: Can you reconstruct how you felt during blackouts?
SG: Fun. Part of it was fun, I mean, until 1945, when the real bombings began, then we knew that — yes, I
mean up until a certain point it was all prophylactic, so to speak. We'd hear the bombing in the
outskirts and even that was very faint. I don't think we ever really appreciated the danger. But the last
year was bad. That's when the real bombings began, and that's when they started bombing the city. And
when they came regularly we knew — for instance, around noon, we'd hear the B-52s, B-29s, and
that's when we ran to the theaters. Also that became the air-raid shelter. But up until that time, I don't
think that we really thought of it as — now, I'm talking about my own view of it. I don't recall too much
emotion put into that.
JL: Later as things got worse, what thoughts did you have during these air raids?
SG: Fear, because we knew that if we heard the planes they could bomb us anywhere and we had really no
place to run to. We'd just run down into the — we were on the second floor and we'd run down to the
first floor and sit on the stoop, and what could you do? And there were some people there. Sometimes it
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was funny, because there were people there and somebody would scream "Oh Shema Yisrael,"28 and
there were people with senses of humor and who would laugh and then when we heard them really
overhead we would be scared for a little while. The thing that scared me later on was after the first
bomb that fell really within the residential area was that I always knew that my father and my mother
were out in the field, so to speak, and I never knew where they were and that's when it happened. It
frightened me. Sure it was frightening. I mean it would be frightening to anyone at times. I don't think
that made too much of an impact. I'm trying not to be very emotional. I can, I can get into those
moments when I felt fear, you know which I did, I'm sure. I was always very nervous to know where my
parents were, and that's always stayed with me. That was the time I started getting very protective and
taking on the parental role, as though I could help anyone. Rather than being the child and being
taken care of, I was the one who worried.
END OF TAPE 3, SIDE 1
28 The opening line of a Jewish prayer, literally "Hear o Israel."
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TAPE 3, SIDE 2
JL: We did talk, begin to talk a bit about Pearl Harbor in the last session, could you tell me now a bit more
about what you remember?
SG: The thing that I remember about Pearl Harbor, the two things that I remember was lying in bed and
hearing detonations and I think they were from the ships. At that time we didn't know that, but they
were from the ships in the harbor. And what happened, really I don't know. But the next morning we
knew that war had broken out. The other thing that was an impact was that my uncle had just bought a
store, a business, from people who had a store right down the street, and these people were getting
ready to leave to the United States.
JL: Were they Jews?
SG: Yeah, refugees. I think they were Viennese, too. And the next day, I think they had put a down payment.
It was just a matter of closing the deal and then the next morning — it's funny because I remember the
weather. It was a crisp day like today, blue sky, very crisp, very cold, in December and my uncle being
very upset because what is he going to do with the store? Now, number one, the people were upset
because they couldn't leave to the United States and the deal was off and they stayed and they had the
store till the very end.
JL: What kind of store was it?
SG: It was, the kind of store that, very similar to the perfume store. It was a perfumery and they had little
leather things. Very similar, but I remember it even being prettier. But that kind of a store. So that deal
was off, and that's what I remember about Pearl Harbor. That's about it, nothing else. The war broke
out. I didn't know what it meant. Of course I didn't know what Pearl Harbor was, I didn't know what was
going on, but these are the things I remember. I was only, lets see, what year was it ’41, eight years.
JL: What do you recall of the reactions to other major war events such as D-Day and June ‘45?
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SG: Nothing, nothing. I don't even remember the war being over in Europe. Well, I remember it was over,
but there was no big celebration as such. I don't recall that. You know, there was no dancing in the
streets because we were still at war. It was only after Hiroshima and when the war was over with Japan.
There was another thing. When the war was over with Japan, there was a rumor a few days before that
that the war was over. And the Betar — in their naïveté, the minute that rumor came out they rushed to
the local Japanese station and took over the station. I mean it's very, very naive, but that's what
happened. And then the next morning, that was only a rumor. Now that I think back on it, I think it may
have been after the first atom bomb that they thought the war was over. There was Nagasaki and then
Hiroshima, or the other way around.
JL: But there was the surrender of Germany also before.
SG: No, but that was in May. But I'm talking about in August when the Japanese — because as far as May
was concerned, there was no big celebration. None that I remember, because we were still at war.
JL: What did the Betar propose to do?
SG: I don't know. You know, we were all young kids. I mean, who were our madrikhim?29 They were two
years older than we. They were naive. Nothing, they're kids.
JL: What did the Japanese do to them when they came there?
SG: Well, nothing. I think the Japanese at this point knew already that the war would be over sooner or later,
so I don't think they did anything. But I remember they said, "Oh, the Betar is around the corner" — the
police station was not far from us — "they've taken over." They were standing guard outside. I don’t
know, they were silly, but that's what happened.
JL: What did you hear in the ghetto in November ’43 about the proposal to exchange all the refugees for
Japanese-Americans interned in the U.S.?
29 Hebrew for guides or instructors.
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SG: Personally, I knew nothing about anything that was going on like that. Nothing. Anything that I learned
was afterwards from the books. Completely. I was completely oblivious to all of this, personally. I'm sure
that the older people did know. Or maybe not. I think news started trickling in about the concentration
camps at that time. I remember seeing little booklets about Treblinka.
JL: In ‘43?
SG: No, not ‘43. After the war. After the Americans had liberated the camps. Even then I didn't appreciate
what it was. I just remember hearing about it. No I didn't. I think my own little, in my own world.
JL: Well I will ask you this, was there any awareness, or what kind of awareness might there have been of
refugee or Russian Jewish cooperation with the Allied underground?
SG: If there was, I knew nothing. There may have been among the people who were in higher positions, but
certainly I don't think the average person in Shanghai on the street knew about it, I mean the average
person of the Jewish community knew about it.
JL: What was the general feeling in the ghetto about the turn the war would take, for example; fear of allied
landing in Shanghai, or that Germany might be victorious and take over, and, you know, the thoughts of
getting out.
SG: Well everybody considers, I think we all considered Shanghai a temporary refuge. Nobody thought of
staying. Nobody thought of it as a permanent home. As far as Allied taking over, all that, I think that
was adult. That was out of my world. I think as children we were really very much concerned like
everywhere else with our own problems, our own fears, our own anxieties. We weren't that concerned
with it. It was our immediate safety, I think. Each and everyone of us was. And then, we had our own
lives. I mean the dating part went on with the boys and the girls and who's going with whom. I mean
that part very much went on. And then, life in Shanghai during the war, as you probably read in the
book, took a turn of almost normalcy in some respects. It was very normal for me. I mean I had no basis
of comparison. I had no milk, so I had no milk. I didn't know at anytime that I didn't have milk. Nobody
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had milk. It wasn't saying, "I don't have it and somebody else does." Again, I'm saying for my parents
and for the older people, I think it was very difficult. In talking about all this and thinking about all this,
I really think that if I had to go through this today as an adult, I don't know what would happen. And yet
they did. They survived it. Only yesterday I was telling a friend of mine, we were talking and saying, "I'm
so tired, I can't walk and I can't do this." I said, "Look at this, in 1944, 1945, my mother was forty-four
— the way she worked.” And then she worked so hard, my mother and my father. Then in ‘49, we went
to Israel. She was my age now. She started working, but hard labor. I mean hard labor. Yes, hard.
Washing clothes for other people. Today I feel like an old woman compared to what — they are the ones
who really were the ones who suffered. We have our marks; we carry something with us. But they
actually went through it, and they must have been very strong, my mother and my father, to have
survived even to the age they did considering the way they worked and everything. And that’s…
JL: The spectacular bombing raid of July 17, 1945, what do you remember about that?
SG: Yes, that was a big one. That was the turning point. I remember very distinctly. I remember being in
school. Our school was next to a Japanese school. Every time we went to school we would see the
Japanese kids. It was just, actually, from where I lived we'd hit the Japanese school first and then
around the corner is our school. And there was nothing. Just because they were Japanese, I never
considered them as enemies. They were kids just like we were. Just before the 17th of July they started
coming more regularly around noon — 11:30, 12:00. And the air raids went on and next to the
school there was some kind of a radio station with an antenna. I remember seeing it even. And they
would send us home during the air raids because our school was not set up for air raid shelters or
anything like that. We'd run home, run, and that was more than a mile. Now this part about July 17,
how that happened, I was on Chusan Road. I have to mention that street because that's the famous
street, and that's where my uncle also lived and that's where Blumenthal lived. That's not why it's
famous. It's famous because it was the black market, it was everything of the Jews. I was running along
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and the air raids were on. I mean, there were several alarms. There were the precautionary alarm and
then there was the regular alarm, which meant that they were there. And I was running and I ran into a
house and it was just luck and I met my mother in there. She was delivering bread but she had run in,
had to get off the street, and all of a sudden we heard the bombs fall. That bomb I will never forget
because that was so close, it felt like it was right on top of us and the minute it fell and we walked to
the front, people were running already and people were carrying the wounded. And my only thought was
where was my father because here again — and then, of course, that same day we found out that it had
hit the Jewish quarters by mistake and that several Jewish people were killed. In fact one of the boys
who went to school with me, his mother was. So this is a personal one I know. And then there was a lot
of looting after that because the houses were — and after that, whenever there was an air raid, I mean,
we knew that it could hit anywhere, and that was frightening. But that started July 17, and don't forget
the war was over in August. So it was the last three weeks.
JL: Now you started saying the people were beginning to deal with those that had been stuck, stricken.
What can you tell me about the work that the refugees and Chinese did to help each other to clean up?
SG: Oh, they were very cooperative, yes, yes. I mean, they worked as a unit. The cleaning up and, yes,
people worked together. Even the Japanese worked together with us. I mean, the air-raid wardens and
so on, this was all done in conjunction with the Japanese. We actually had to be on their side, I mean
we were — these were the last three weeks, and that was a frightening time, obviously, because it could
happen any minute. And then that was the funny part. Many times after that they would come at night
and we'd run into the theater, the Broadway Theater. There were three: Eastern, Broadway, and
Wayside. The one next to us was the Broadway Theater. We lived on Wayside Road, but it was called the
Broadway Theater and that was the one where we had the air-raid shelter. We'd sit in the rows and up
on top they had the antiaircraft and we had some religious people living from the Lubavitcher yeshiva30
30 A school run by and for members of a particular sect of Hasidic (ultra-orthodox) Jews.
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in our lane, so of course they would also be there, and you'd hear the prayers, "Shema Yisrael . . ." And
they would be sitting under the benches, as though that would help.
JL: What were people feeling when Russia entered the Pacific war theater in August 1945?
SG: That was already the last thing. I think they were going to intern the Russians, too. Sure, because they
entered. But just as they were making preparations to intern the Russians, the war was over. Yes, the
Russians became scared because they were the ones — see, all the rich Russian Jews lived in
Frenchtown31 and they were the ones who were moving around freely. But there wasn't enough time to
really appreciate what was going to happen, because it was over so soon.
JL: Could you describe the mood in the ghetto on August 22, 1945, when the end of the pass system was
announced and the American rescuers entered?
SG: I don't remember. All I remember was, as a child, and this is very childish kind of a response, but they
were saying that the Americans would come soon, and then I suppose that it was either from movies or
from what people were saying that they were going to parade through the streets and we'd throw flowers
at them. That was sort of a fancy kind of thing. It never happened this way. All of a sudden the
Americans were there. All of a sudden you would see American soldiers in the streets, but there was no
marching in. The mood was good, but there was no overt rejoicing on the street. Again, there was no, as
you would have seen in Paris when soldiers moved in. For us of course it meant food, because they
brought the rations, the K-rations and the surplus army food. Then the good period started in a way
because the Americans, there would be people coming to schools and some of the soldiers would bring
chewing gum and candy and they'd have special parties for us, Chanukah parties and Simchas Torah
parties, and I remember the soldiers being very involved. And to see, it was all so strange, to see an
American — "Oh, he's Jewish," this kind of thing. One funny scene I have to tell you is I remember it
was Pesach, and this was already quite a while after the war, and there were four rooms on the floor
31 The zone of Shanghai that France controlled.
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where we lived and one man had left because he had a son in Scotland so he was immediately — as
soon as the war was over, he could go to Scotland. So right into that apartment there was a Chinese
lady moved in. I call her lady but she was a prostitute, a real prostitute. She worked in a bar and she
had an amah, an amah is a maid. Whenever she brought somebody home, which was every night after
her work in the bar, her amah had to go up and sleep in the attic. Now, the attic was not like an attic
we have here but was going up a ladder and there was a crawl space. And [the prostitute's] name was
Josephine, and I'll never forget Josephine because Josephine used to come home at night, we'd hear
her come home drunk, couldn't walk, arrive either in a petty cab or a in a rickshaw and bring a soldier
along. And the next morning the soldier would get up, you'd see him, and here we were kids — we
would go, "Hush, hush, hush," and we knew she was a prostitute. And one — this is funny — it was
Pesach we had the doors open, and there was matzo on the table and one of the soldiers came in with
her. And he woke up, I think, the next morning, what happened was, he looked and he saw the matzo,
and he was Jewish, and he forgot about Josephine and he just walked in with this feeling of being
among Jewish people. So I just remember that because it was funny. And poor Josephine was left
without him. But she was a nice — she was a good prostitute, she was really very nice. From her I got
my first nylon stockings, because she would bring home nylons, so she'd give me a pair of nylon
stockings. That's why I remember that. And when I left I had a collection of movie stars, as we all
collected at that time, and Josephine was the recipient of my collection of movie stars. And I'm
thinking that one of these days when I go back if I find Josephine I'll get my movie stars back. But she
cried when we left. She was a very nice person. She had to make a living somehow. She was very pretty,
too, I used to think. I really remember her. She was a nice friend.
JL: What was your last day in the ghetto like?
SG: Well, towards the end, the end was a bad. The ghetto lasted, you mean when the war was over?
JL: When it was opened, when the ghetto was opened.
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SG: I have to clarify this, because when you say the ghetto was open it sounded like the gates were opened.
We lived there before the war, we lived there during the war, we lived there after the war. Ghetto was
open, we could walk across the street and were free. But before that you could just look across the
street. As children I always walked across. So it wasn't as though — it was free, that's all. The war was
over. How much of this is relevant, I don't know — about Josephine, the prostitute.
JL: You told me that you left in January 1949, what happened in the intervening three and a half years
before you left, what was life like?
SG: Good and bad. The inflation started, there were a lot of things and I don't want to get emotional about
them because that was a very emotional part for me. My grandmother died, a lot of my anxieties
developed. The anxieties of where to go, what to do. You couldn't have any American dollars in the
house because that was a death penalty and there was all black marketeering. No, was that during the
war? I'm not even sure. Yeah, it was after the war, I think. And that where shall we go, what shall we
do? We didn't have — we just had relatives in the States. We couldn't get the affidavit. It was a quota
system. Some people left. That was another thing, there was a lot of people on the German quota left.
We were the Polish quota. We had to wait, we didn't know when, we didn't know what. It was a lot of —
I was older already, and I remember that as a more turbulent time than during the war, even.
JL: What did your parents do during that time?
SG: Oh, they worked.
JL: The bakery continued?
SG: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, that was their line of work, but that continued. I think that was a more — a lot of
people were leaving. I think that was the time when you realized that some people were leaving, some
people couldn't leave, where should one leave, what should one do? That was when the real worries
came up. Then my uncle and my aunt thought they'd go back to Vienna — we didn't want to go —
because my aunt's father was in Italy, and he had visions of getting back his house, which he did,
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which he did eventually. But we didn't want to go to Vienna. One of my aunts, the one who committed
suicide, had left earlier. We knew that things were not good there, it was still under occupation. We had
no reason to go back because we didn't have any property. My uncle wanted to go back to get the
property. My mother didn't want to be separated from her brother. So that's when the real things
started, the real anxieties. And then when the Communists were close, there was no choice. We all had
to be evacuated to Israel. That was my last year in school and I didn't want to go on to school. That was
a bad time, was a bad time for me. I mean, other than the little fears, it was a turbulent time in
Shanghai, because the community was being broken up.
JL: Did you know people who wanted to stay?
SG: No, nobody wanted to stay. It was no question of people staying. Everybody wanted to leave.
JL: After ten formative years of your life had passed in Shanghai, did you and your friends consider
yourselves European or did you identify with the Far East?
SG: Shanghai.
JL: You did consider yourselves Far Easterners?
SG: Yeah, yeah.
JL: How about your family and the adults you know? What identification had they established?
SG: Refugees. Refugees.
JL: But you didn't have that mentality?
SG: No. We had a lot of friends.
JL: Did you have non-Jewish friends, too?
SG: No.
JL: So there was a definite cut-between…?
SG: Definite Shanghai mentality, which continues until now with the people. Sometimes I get very annoyed
because my friends in New York — this was this last thing that they went to, the reunion, which was
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okay. But I have a friend in New York who, still her mentality is Shanghai. It bothers me. It's too long
after that. It's still Shanghai, it's still that mentality.
JL: What do you mean, more specifically, by a Shanghai mentality?
SG: "Everybody who comes from Shanghai, you have something in common with." I don't know. "He comes
from Shanghai, therefore — ." People we didn't even know. I mean, they, for instance, went to the
reunion. People that they didn't know in Shanghai, all of a sudden, they were in Shanghai, therefore,
"It's good to see you." Well, I don't feel that way. It's nice to know what happened to them and so on.
But if I wasn't friends with them in Shanghai why would I — ? But some of them still have that. That
goes back a little. I'm jumping ahead of my time, because I think I still had that to a certain extent in
New York. But since I came here, I have changed and that's the broadening aspect of it.
JL: I’ll be asking you about that then shortly. Now you did mention people having gone back to Austria.
After the war did you have any contact with surviving family members anywhere in the world, people
perhaps who had not gone to Shanghai?
SG: Yes, the ones who were here, two cousins. We didn't have anybody else. Everybody else stayed in
Vienna and didn't survive. Oh, and in Israel, sure, in Israel.
JL: People that had gone from, managed to go from Austria to Israel?
SG: Yes.
END OF TAPE 3, SIDE 2
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TAPE 4, SIDE 1
SG: The last taping I went one level deeper into my sub consciousness. I really dredged up all the fearful
times. Even during the time that I'm talking about now, and talking very lightly, I'm not letting myself
get that emotional. I mean this is a conscious effort not to. Whatever I said the other time was very
true, but I don't want to get into that.
JL: I’d like to go on to ask you…
SG: Could I have the ashtray please? Now they’ll know I smoke, a hundred years from now they’ll know I
smoked.
JL: Under what circumstances did you leave Shanghai?
SG: That was a very anxious time for me, very anxious time. There were several things that were happening.
First of all, a year-and-a-half before that my grandmother died, which became, which was an anxious
time to start off with, because she had lived with us, I had seen her practically die except the last year.
Then the class that I was in many, many people had left. All those with German quotas had left. We
were left six people in the class. A lot of the teachers who had German quota had left. But the last year
was the year that we were preparing for the Cambridge Overseas so it was a very crucial year. As good a
student as I was — and I was "A" student throughout my school career, with first prizes. I was known in
the community. That sounds like bragging, but all right, I have to say this, because it's very important. I
got first prizes for essays on Judaism, all kinds of things, but in school, too. And that last year, it was
almost as though something clicked and I did not want to continue. I was too anxious, I did not want to
continue. Before that, I wanted to work. I started going to that business college which was the former
camp, in that building. It was called the Embankment Building. I went to school there in the summer
and that wasn't interfering with anything. And the last year I was supposed, they were supposed…
Okay, I had gone the spring semester. We were on a two semester. Not like here. Here you start in the
fall and you end in the spring. Over there you start in the spring and you end in the winter, the fall
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semester. I went to spring semester but I didn't want to pay the money to take the overseas exam. The
head mistress and my science teacher, whom I remember very fondly because she was one of the very
good teachers, Mrs. Zeguresh, came to my mother — now that's unusual — to say, "Susie should take
it. She's the only one who will pass it." It turned out that I was the only one of the girls, the only one,
and they were counting on me and this was something. And I said, "I'm not going." And they said,
"Look, we'll pay the money. If it's the money, we'll pay."
JL: The parents said this?
SG: No, the teachers…
JL: The teachers would pay?
SG: Well, not personally. It would come from the Joint. It wasn't a question of the paying at all, and I said,
"No." Then the whole class was transferred to the other Jewish school, which was the more stable
school, because our school was being slowly but surely dissolved. A lot of the people had left for the
States.
JL: The Kadoori school?
SG: The Kadoori school. This was already towards at the end. So the whole school was transferred in the fall
semester, for one semester only, because in December we were going to take the exam. And I said. "I'm
not going." There was a girl in the business school who had graduated the year before, who had taken
the Cambridge, who was taking business classes. She saw me there. It was interesting. She saw me
there in the beginning the first week in September. She said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I'm not
going back to school." She went to Mrs. Laidlow, who was the headmistress of this business school, and
she told her that what I had done. Mrs. Laidlow called me in and she said, "You know, Susie" — it's
very clear in my mind — "I want students. I want pupils. This is very unusual for me to do, but I will
have to ask you to leave and go back to school, because you have one more semester, and you will
regret it all your life." I went back to school one week after classes had started, and the last semester I
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went to SJS and the exams were going to be given at the end of December. In the meantime the
Communists were outside of Shanghai already and refugees were beginning to trickle in from outside.
And they were…
JL: This was in the fall of ‘48?
SG: Yes. They had said that they would be sending ships from Israel to evacuate us. So here we were, we
were a whole class plus the other people from the other class. At this point, already the Russian Jews
were involved in the evacuation. It wasn't anymore the Austrian and the German. It was all the Jews.
And we had, well what are we going to do? The exams are at the end of December. We were going to be
evacuated the beginning of December. I remember the head master of the other school, Mr. Holland —
it was a big problem. The whole school, their school plus our school, what are we going to do? Another
thing is, you couldn't have that exam sooner because these were exams, these were closed envelopes
that came from England that had to be opened for all of Shanghai. It wasn't only our school. It was a
public school, the British school, all the schools. Not only Jews were taking those exams. So there's
nothing they could do. If we were evacuated, it's the end of that. Luckily, the ship we were supposed to
go on ran into trouble in Australia and had to be repaired — I don't know if you read about that — and
was delayed. Meanwhile, we were packing. Everything had to be dismantled. In the midst of all of this,
we could take the exam. But can you imagine in the midst of all of this, the ship was not in and any day
— the ship could come in the middle of exam. Luckily, we finished our exam. Three or four days after
the exam, the boats came in and we were evacuated. So in the midst, this is a very, very…
JL: Was it several exams in different subjects?
SG: Oh, there were, yes. It was like the Regents32 except it was an entrance exam to Cambridge University.
In Israel, I got my result. I remember in the camp it came that I passed. Of course, that was the
gateway. I could go to Brooklyn colleges. That started, that gave me the opportunity to go to college,
32 School proficiency examinations in New York State.
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because if I would not have done it, where would I have gone to finish my high school equivalence? I
would have had a lot of trouble with that.
JL: Now you left for Israel in January ‘49?
SG: January 1. We celebrated.
JL: Who put together all of the arrangements for you?
SG: The [sounds like; Shelief], I don't know, the Joint, whoever.
JL: Through the Jewish agency?
SG: Oh yeah, the Jewish agency.
JL: Before we leave the subject of Shanghai completely, I’d like to ask you some miscellaneous questions.
Did you know of intermarriages of Jews in Shanghai, what I mean by that is with other ethnic groups,
and, or religious groups meaning among Russian and Sephardic Jews?
SG: Yes, yes. There were several. One I told you about, a very religious Jewish girl who married an Indian. A
Sikh wedding from the very Orthodox Jewish home where the brothers went to the yeshivah. She
married. There were two others.
JL: The Sikh was not Jewish?
SG: No. They went to Sikh temple. We all went to the temple, it was a big, the highlight of — the parents
sat shiveh33 after that. They went to the wedding but they sat shiveh. Then there were some others.
Maybe two or three Jewish women who married Indians, but who were not from religious homes, so
there was no major thing. This was the big major thing. Everybody knew the Bengshens. A big thing that
she married a Sikh and it was a big wedding. You know, they made a social event out of it and she's
still married to him. She's still married. She lives in Hong Kong. Her brothers are in Israel.
JL: How were the children brought up?
33 The traditional Jewish period of mourning, in this context indicating that the daughter was "dead" in her parents' eyes because she had intermarried.
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SG: She had a baby when she was still in Shanghai, I remember. Oh, I'm sure Sikh. A beautiful girl, herself.
She looked Indian and she wore Indian clothes and the girl was beautiful and sometimes I think that
one of the students walking in here might be her granddaughter for all I know at this point. Yes, and
Chinese, maybe one or two. Not too many. No, there was no big intermarriage. There was not a wave of
intermarriage.
JL: And marriages among refugees from different countries of origin?
SG: Yeah, there was big — at one point when the very Orthodox Jews could leave, because they left as
students. That's what's interesting. You know about that. A lot of the girls. That was a big thing. When
you come here, you marry a college graduate. Over there you marry a yeshiva bokher34 to get out. Not
only to get out, but this was the big social thing. A lot of girls married yeshiva bokhers. It's like marrying
a Jewish doctor. Clark was saying that! No, but I mean in a sense, the Jewish princess type of thing. So
they married yeshiva bokhers. And we had big weddings outside. Oh, yes. All the kids went because we
knew everybody.
JL: Did any of your close friends get married there?
SG: No, because we were just a few years younger than the marriageable age. A lot of them had boyfriends
when they finally did marry. They married their boyfriends.
JL: When they left Shanghai?
SG: Yes, under different…
JL: You started talking before, and you told me when we met recently about the reunion of
Shanghailanders35 that took place in California.
SG: Yeah.
JL: Are you active in any Shanghai organization yourself?
34 A young bachelor student from the yeshiva. 35 Yiddish for Jews who lived in Shanghai.
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SG: There is no Shanghai organization. They decided to make this reunion and I was very ambivalent. I
wanted to go. I wanted to go, on one hand I was afraid it was going to be depressing. It would have
upset me in many ways. I don't know in what and I don't know why but it would have. I didn't think the
whole thing was worth it. Now that I hear who else was there, a lot of people found each other, and a lot
of people are living in San Francisco I didn't even know they were there. But we'll go to San Francisco
again, you know. I prefer to see them on an individual basis than running into a big place and seeing
this one, "Oh, oh it's you! What did you — ?" The whole thing, I think it would just be too heavy for me.
JL: Are you active in any refugee organizations?
SG: No.
JL: Let's go back to the voyage between Shanghai and Israel. What was that like?
SG: Fun. It was my first. I was out of school. All the young people were on the boat. We had dances every
afternoon; we had parties. It was a social thing. It was a very social thing. It was in the Indian Ocean
and it was summer in southern hemisphere. It was fun. We came to South Africa, we had this big
reception in South Africa. It was a very pleasant. It was pleasant, it was fun.
JL: Did the Jewish community of South Africa receive you?
SG: Oh, yes. In fact, to this day I'm still corresponding with somebody. Not only corresponding — he was
here and we met and now he lives in California. Just called me a year ago that they moved to California,
from that pen pal. Yes, big reception in South Africa, because they heard about Chinese Jews. And we
were one of the ships. There was a ship right before us, two days before us. They came to each boat
after that.
JL: What was the name of your boat?
SG: Castelbianco.
JL: Was it an Italian boat?
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SG: I have, yeah, I have, do you need any, you don’t need things in the… It's interesting because this fellow
whom I met sent me in Israel a hand-painted, for me, with the artist's signature and all, a scarf
depicting my life. I have that. On one corner is a beautiful picture. I mean this is an artist, this is not
just somebody doing this — a pagoda, and a Chinese thing saying Shanghai. Then there's the port of
Cape Town with our ship with the name on it. Then there is the port of Naples and then there's a map
of Israel. Yes, that's historical — well, I don't know if it's historic. I want to do something with it. I
always thought I'd frame it, but it really is too big. It's a huge thing.
JL: Out of silk?
SG: Yeah.
JL: Could you compare your trip to Shanghai with the, the original trip to Shanghai with the trip to Israel?
SG: On one I was a child. Both had its frightening times obviously. I don't remember too much about the
ship to Shanghai except the different ports we stopped at.
JL: What about the treatment by the crew?
SG: Oh, that was fine.
JL: Both times?
SG: Yeah, well the first time was not an evacuation. We just went on a luxury liner, and the second time on
an Italian boat. You know, Italians are always fun. A lot of the girls went out with the Italian crew
members and they joined us and they would sing. We had kumsitses36 in the evening, and it was fun.
JL: How long did the trip take?
SG: From January 1 to February 17.
JL: And who else was on it besides the refugees?
SG: Only refugees. We took four stowaways in Singapore. Three of them were black Jews and one was a
white Jew who didn't want to go to the Army and that was an exciting part of it. It was very exciting
36 Yiddish for picnics.
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because the white Jew could mix with us, the black Jews we had to keep them under cover and only in
the evening come out. We'd bring them food. The strange thing was that all along from Singapore to
Naples, we thought that no one knew. Two days before Naples, one of the crew members said they
know about it and if each of us gave one dollar they would let them come through and they did. They
did a search. They found them. It was easy to find. I mean, what are you going to do with three black
Jews?
JL: That dollar was for the Italian crew, for a bribe?
SG: Yes, it was a bribe, and they went through and they were in Israel with us. I don't know what happened
to them. One of them came to visit. A lot of the people straight off the boat went into the army, were
taken right into the army, including my cousin. These boys, I don't know if they volunteered or they had
to go into the army, they didn't have anybody, so. Then I think one of those came to visit us and we saw
them.
JL: Now, we could I’m sure go on and talk…
SG: Oh, there’s no end to this. We’ll never get to the present time.
JL: Okay well, that’s what I’d like to say now, we could talk about Israel and New York forever, but I would
just like to ask some very simple, sort of passing-over questions. Where did you live in Israel?
SG: First in a ma'barah37, in a tent ma’barah.
JL: Where was this?
SG: Oh, Ra'ananah. Then in a [sounds like; trif] ma'barah and then in a shikun Amidar,38 also in Ra'ananah.
JL: hikun Amidar?
SG: That's prefabricated.
JL: All in the same area?
37 Hebrew for transitional camp for immigrants. 38 A public housing project of Israel's national immigrant housing company.
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SG: All in the same area, yeah.
JL: With other refugees?
SG: Oh yes. And Ra'ananah became a small Shanghai. There were little coffee shops but I don't think any of
these really thrived until — not only the Shanghai people, but this was the big influx. So people started
going to coffee houses, we went dancing at night, it became a very European type of atmosphere. And
Ra'ananah started thriving, all these places. The coffee shops I'm sure before that never made any
business till the influx of people.
JL: Did you mix with the Israelis?
SG: Yeah, I started mixing very quickly. I was just at the right age. I was sixteen years old. That's how I
learned Hebrew very fast. Right away, there were many more fellows than girls, if you remember, in
Israel, at that time especially. And it became very, yeah, we mixed very much. At least I did. Very
much. I went right into the chevra,39 right away, within three months.
JL: What was your job?
SG: I worked for an insurance company in Tel Aviv.
JL: Doing business?
SG: Typist. I couldn't find a job in English. That was one of the few ones I found. It was all in Hebrew.
JL: And your parent's jobs?
SG: Well, my father was a baker so he worked for a bakery, but delivering bread again. My mother really
worked hard. She started going to people's houses, as many others did, to wash clothes. Israel was a
good time and a bad time. I think I became more aware of what's going on when I got into my
adolescence, you know. Then really, where people usually have rough times anyway, it was rough. It was
rough. Rough and good.
JL: Did you do anything about continuing your education there?
39 Hebrew for society.
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SG: Who ever thought of college? I never even heard of college. College was university and whoever dreamt
of going to a university? You got a job, you made money and you survived. It's only when I came to New
York.
JL: Well, before we leave for New York, you said that you mixed right away in the chevra, in the Israeli
chevra. How much of your social life was spent with former Shanghailanders?
SG: You mean going out?
JL: Yes.
SG: We had friends and girlfriends and so on. But dating was not with Shanghai, no. It was all with Israelis.
I did. Again, I don't know for others.
JL: And you managed all this in Hebrew?
SG: I don't know how I managed, but I managed. First in English — we used a lot of English — and then in
Hebrew, yeah.
JL: How long did you stay in Israel?
SG: Four-and-a-half years.
JL: So that brings us to ’53?
SG: Yeah.
JL: When did you leave?
SG: In August ‘53.
JL: What were the circumstances which caused you to leave?
SG: Well, I think it was, I often think that I could have been happy in Israel. I think my parents would
probably have stayed in Israel. I think it was sort of a mass hysteria because we lived among the
Shanghai people, a lot of the Shanghai people were getting ready to leave, and we could leave, and we
made the arrangements and that's when it became really difficult. It was difficult for my mother to pick
up again and go — and New York! Her vision always of New York was these big houses, were going to
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fall on top of her. Not really fall on top of her but, you know, where is she going to stand? You heard
stories about New York, and I think we were caught up in the community that left. Our neighbors. In the
meantime, both my uncles had gone back to Vienna and it was rough. I mean it was a [sounds like;
tena] time. It was very rough in Israel. But I think it could have been done, we could have stayed there
and probably been like the rest of the people. Not done as well as we did here. We could easily have
stayed and it was a line between going and — but that was a rough time because that's when I felt that
the responsibility fell on my shoulders. What are we going to do in New York? I never worried about
doing anything in New York, because I knew I wanted to work in an office. This was my big ambition I
wanted. And what was I going to be afraid of working in New York? But for my parents, it was, and it
was rough. Again, you know, I notice that I say it was rough, but it was rough because in my own mind I
had to — my parents didn't speak English and a lot of things.
JL: Why did you choose New York?
SG: Well, coming from Israel, that was the port of entry and we had cousins there.
JL: And they gave you the visa?
SG: The affidavit. And we had nobody in San Francisco. Had we gone from Shanghai, I also don't think we
would have stayed in San Francisco, as many did. Because having somebody in New York, there would
have been a place to go to.
JL: Now who were those cousins?
SG: My mother's cousins. My mother's and my father's, because he had cousins, too.
JL: These were people who had gotten out from where?
SG: From Vienna.
END OF TAPE 4, SIDE 1
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TAPE 4, SIDE 2
JL: Okay, now how did the voyage to the U.S. compare with the one to Israel?
SG: Oh, more anxiety-provoking.
JL: Why?
SG: I was older. I was twenty years old. It had to be.
JL: What kind of, what was your mode of transportation to the U.S.?
SG: On S.S. Jerusalem. We came via Vienna. We stayed three months in Vienna with my uncles.
JL: And how did you feel about that, about being back in Vienna?
SG: Because of the Nazis and all that?
JL: Because of the memories.
SG: Nothing. Nothing. The only thing I remember about that is remembering there was a kindergarten that
my cousin went to, because I had been too young, but I think my mother had taken me there to one of
the parties. It was a fashion party, or I don't know, and I remember that kindergarten. When we were
there, I said, "I have to go and find out if it's a figment of my imagination" — the place. I knew the
kindergarten existed. And I walked there and all of a sudden I come right in front of it and there it says,
"Kindergarten Stadt Wien."40 You know, so it even gives me the chills to think that all these years. Then
I went back to the house with my mother where we had lived and the neighbor saw us and she says,
"Yes, this is Maria, es ist dei Frau Hafner,"41 you know, that in German I can say that. "Yes, we
survived."
JL: And what else did she say?
SG: Well, she said that she had protected my grandfather, which wasn't true, because she forgot that he
hadn't lived there anymore. But we weren’t going to argue with her. That's when I met that girl who had
40 Vienna City Kindergarten. 41 German for "It is Mrs. Hafner."
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told me as a child that my mother was a [inaudible] and she didn't even know who I was. I mean to her
I was somebody who walked in off the streets, I suppose.
JL: So you didn't bring it up again?
SG: No. I mean, she didn't even know who I was, so why even mention what she said?
JL: And with whom did you stay?
SG: With my uncle.
JL: You stayed with him in his apartment?
SG: With my uncle?
JL: Yeah.
SG: Both my uncles lived in Vienna at that time. We stayed there for three months. It was a nice time,
actually, because I met some of the Shanghai people and we went out together and we met some of the
others. There were Israelis. Of course, then we started going out with the Israelis. There were a lot of
Israeli students there. It was a nice time. But then the trip was — because then it became real.
JL: How long was the trip?
SG: Eight days, or maybe less.
JL: From Vienna?
SG: From Genoa, yes. Maybe less. That was anxiety-provoking. I remember the night before we arrived in
New York, I really was upset, and I had a dream about the subway which turned out to be exactly what
the subway looked like. It was a little frightening. And arriving in New York was frightening. Things
became real then.
JL: How did you feel when you saw the Statue of Liberty?
SG: I don't remember seeing it, or any significance. I gave David a picture arriving in New York that I took
— my first vision, my first impact of what New York looked like. I guess when we arrived, November 10.
It was a grey, miserable New York day in November. Do you know what it looks like? Rainy, drizzly, and
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then being taken to the HIAS.42 Do you know where that is? In the downtown with the drunks lying
around. It was not a pleasant picture.
JL: Were other refugees on the ship with you?
SG: Oh yeah, there were. But it was not particularly a refugee ship. There were tourists.
JL: Was it a pleasure ship or a cruise ship?
SG: Well, not a cruise ship as such. Yes, I suppose it was a cruise ship. A cruise, I think of people being,
you know, the cruises to the Caribbean. It wasn't that kind. It was a regular route from Haifa.
JL: So you changed ships??
SG: No. The first part was the [sounds like; Negeba] and then we went to Vienna. Then from Vienna, we
went back to Genoa and then we took the Jerusalem.
JL: You told me earlier that you spent about sixteen years in New York, from ‘53 to ‘69?
SG: Yeah.
JL: Could you just tell me a little bit about your life there and then we’ll go on to talk about Wisconsin, for
example; jobs, school, marriage, friends.
SG: When we came there, just by coincidence I met somebody at my cousin's house who had also been in
Shanghai, who had heard that my cousin's relatives were coming from Israel who had been in Shanghai,
who had been in Israel, who was working for Rabbi Ashkenazi, import-export firm. This was two days
after we arrived, and she said, "We might be looking for somebody." The day later, she called me up,
and I stayed there for fourteen years. There was a coincidence, because it was my second home, and
even today when I think of it, it's not like it anymore, because when I go back the place is smaller.
Things change. After all, it's since ‘53. But my boss is still like my relative. I know to this day, and I
must mention it, Mr. [Victor] Capelluto. I think he should go down in posterity because not only is he a
42 The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an international organization providing services to Jewish refugees and immigrants.
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good boss — he was a good boss to me — but he's very well known in the Sephardic community. He's
from Rhodes, and a very philanthropic man and a very generous, just unbelievably generous person.
And when I compare jobs with something, then I think, "Well, I can't compare." I mean, this is like
family. If today if I asked him, and this is not an exaggeration, "Mr. Capelluto, I need five thousand
dollars," he will send me a check for five thousand dollars, no questions asked. And to work for such a
place at a time when — he told me, I think, after three or four weeks there he said, "Don't ever worry
about a job," and I never did, never.
JL: Now you did office work there?
SG: Yes. I started off as a typist and I ended up administrative secretary. It was a very responsible job. I
loved it. I really did. And they were lovely to me and to this day I have a very good relationship with
him.
JL: What did you do about studying there?
SG: I always liked school. Then I met again a friend who had been to school with me, a fellow. He wanted to
study. He lived near me in Brooklyn. He was one of the few boys who you could be friends with, and
always had been. He had a crush on me in school still, and when he found me again he influenced me
to go to Brooklyn College. I didn't even know how to start and so I started in the evening. That's how I
got into it, with no intention of getting a degree or anything because I had to work. You know, college or
university was never in my program. And afterwards, I went to City College in the evening, too, and I
took courses. In the beginning, I had a lot of Shanghai friends. Remember the New World Club? I went
there. When I think of it now, I think it's all very depressing because it still had the refugee mentality. A
lot of the people I met there, even the young people — not the very young but the very young broke
away, I think — but the ones of my age, there was still this clinging. Now, you know, we're getting to
the nitty gritty of this. There was still this clinging that "what is familiar is good." We all did that to a
certain extent, and it's unavoidable. Because going through all these experiences, you have to find
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something that you feel familiar with, and that's where I spent a lot of social life. When I think of the
people, I'm not at all happy about that. In my mind they seemed like losers. You know the expression,
losers? There was something, they were clinging. It's okay for the older generation, but I think the
younger generation has to make an effort to get into the mainstream of things. Which I did afterwards.
JL: What kinds of friends did you have besides the people at the New World Club?
SG: Well, this was the first few years. Then, when I worked at Oriental Exporters, there were other Shanghai
people, but a lot of them were from the Russian group, and they were a different mentality. They also
clung together, but it was a different mentality. And then there were some Americans my age who
started working there. I have a very close friend to this day. I started going out with them and then
through her friends and then got into more of an American group. And I really didn't want to associate, I
just wanted to get away from that, and yet it was all still Jewish.
JL: How helpful was the language of Chinese in the Oriental Exporters, did you know any Chinese?
SG: Oh, we didn't need it, no. It was English. It was run by Russian Jews.
JL: You told me you met your husband in New York?
SG: Yeah.
JL: How did you meet?
SG: At a party, an American party. That's when, I told you, I had broken away from this — and I'm one of
the very few, I think, who married an American, in New York, of the refugees. Most of them married
other Germans, other refugees, other — but this is interesting, too, because although Stanley is
American-born, his family is still the old country. I mean I needed that.
JL: Where are they from?
SG: From Romania. I needed that. I mean, I couldn't break away completely. That's not what I wanted
either. There had to be — but he was not a German.
JL: What is his full name?
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SG: Stanley Goldfarb.
JL: What is his date and place of birth?
SG: The Bronx.
JL: When?
SG: March 20, 1931, the Bronx.
JL: What does he do?
SG: He's a physician. Now, I guess what you call him is a research scholar. Well, he's still a physician,
primarily in research at the moment.
JL: In what field?
SG: Cancer research.
JL: What is the date of your marriage?
SG: February 17, 1963.
JL: I understand that your husband brought you to Wisconsin?
SG: Yes, he brought me!
JL: I think you put it that way when we talked earlier.
SG: June 25, 1969. And before we went to Wisconsin, I thought I was going to the hinterlands. You know,
there's nothing between New York and L.A., right?
JL: Do you still feel that way?
SG: No.
JL: Why has your feeling changed?
SG: Well, another thing which is interesting is, I gravitated to a group of people where I found an identity
again, which is the foreign students. So I guess basically if you want to analyze it psychologically, if I
lived in a place where there wasn't anything like it, I might not feel as comfortable. I think that's a very
interesting thing.
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JL: Have you been there with the foreign students since you came?
SG: Since I came.
JL: Could you explain a bit more what you mean by foreign students?
SG: When we came here we were only coming here for a year. Then after a few months, we realized that this
would be it, and since I had always worked since I was sixteen, starting in Israel and then all through,
this is really what I wanted to do. By this time, I was over thirty anyway. I wasn't going to be a full-time
student. So after a year of full-time student, I knew this was not my life, because I wanted to work. So I
applied and one on the list of jobs were available was foreign students. Down the list somewhere, but it
caught my eye, I called up and I've been there ten years.
JL: But before that you did spend a year studying?
SG: Yes, full time.
JL: At UW?
SG: Yes.
JL: Did you have a goal in mind then?
SG: Well, I knew I was coming to the university, and I always wanted to continue Hebrew because I like
languages. And so I found out there was a good department and so I started. I had no academic goal,
no career goal as such. But I started and then I accumulated more and more credits and I realized I
could get a degree. That's really what happened. In retrospect, I probably should have had a career
goal. I don't know. That's my own miskhers.43
JL: When did you get your degree?
SG: Seventy-five. Yeah, I did that. Yeah, I think a lot of things. Now, this is really my personal feeling about
this and this is— as though the other isn't — sometimes I feel that if I would have put more thought
into career and so on I would have had more of a goal. Maybe the part of feminism is coming out now,
43 Yiddish for business.
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you know, where I really don't have a career. But is it necessary? I don't know. I'm happy, what I'm
doing is necessary, but that's…
JL: What specifically are you doing at your job?
SG: It's working with foreign students. It's helping them in their adjustments. It's helping them with all sorts
of questions that they have, and lately I've even become involved more than in the beginning, because I
was very busy in the beginning, with the social aspects. I don't know if you know that I'm also teaching.
JL: What are you teaching?
SG: English to foreign wives. And that is a lot of fun. Not only is it fun, but it also made me think that, had
I really thought about all of this, I might have gone into teaching in the first place. Too late. I feel it's
too late. I feel it's too late for a lot of things. I don't know, maybe it's not. Today I feel it's too late,
maybe tomorrow I'll feel different.
JL: Now, you mentioned foreign students, who else became your friends?
SG: More foreigners than none. A lot of Israelis. Yes, so in a way we tend to do the same things. We tend to
go back. It is difficult, I must say. That may be a generalization. When I first came to Wisconsin, that's
another important point. I was completely out of my element. The people I met were Midwesterners,
number one. They couldn't relate to my experiences, I couldn't relate to their experiences. The office I
started working in had all people in no way — they didn't even know what Jewish meant. I couldn't
relate, they couldn't relate. I was very unhappy. The people I was working with — I could relate a lot
more to the foreign students, and I think that's what attracted me. I remember in the first time, okay
this is what I wanted to say before, in the beginning I used to go back quite often to New York, because
my mother stayed there, and I once met this one cousin of my mother's who is in his seventies, my
mother's age, I mean my mother's generation. He's a strange character. He's very educated. He got his
third degree, he got his doctorate in something at the age of fifty. He's a physicist. He was written up in
New York Times many times.
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JL: What was his name?
SG: Hafner, Theodore Hafner. I feel very close to him, because I feel he's — of all the relatives — well, in
contrast to his sister, who I don't believe a word she says, he's very open. He's just the opposite. He'll
tell you things that may hurt you, but you know he's honest about it. I remember one of the things that,
when we first came to New York and I was really, everything was frightening and he said to me,
[Inaudible phrase in German44] The fact that they would not be living was to me very frightening at that
time, but he was being very honest, and he's that kind of a person, he's very honest. And anyway, so
after I had moved here and he said, "How do you like it here?" At that time I didn't like it here that
much. And he says, "Yes, well, we have a lot of difficulty because" — he's very philosophical, very. He
said, "We have been exposed to so many different experiences that it's like the skin" — I always
remember that — "that is touched by different impulses and each impulse has an effect on us. If we're
only living in one place, we're subjected to only one. But if in significant parts of our life we're in
different places, there are different things that touch us and we respond to them, and it's very difficult,
therefore, to be completely at ease because something always reminds us." For instance, for many
years, even now, he has a home in Vienna. I think they just sold the apartment. He has an apartment on
Riverside Drive. He's been mugged every time he goes to New York but he still goes. There's something
that keeps pulling him back. There's something that keeps pulling him to Vienna, and he can't find
peace. So he said, "We just have to contend with that. It's very understandable that the Midwest is not
a comfortable place, because we're touched by too many other things and we respond." I don't know if
I'm making myself clear. But it did, it made a lot of sense to me at that time. And I just said, "Well, I'll
just have to live with that." I'm brought up in a Jewish community and here I come to the Midwest and
values are different, life is different. Rosh Hashanah came, they didn't know — I left the office. Nobody
44 Translates as "As long as your parents live, they will have a better life here than there."
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said, "Happy new year." In New York, in my office, we closed down in the morning of Erev Rosh
Hashanah45 already. So that was a difficulty in Madison.
JL: What kind of peace have you made with being here?
SG: I feel, I guess part of me needed — and this is not unique — a community to identify with and I think
the community, this is small enough a place, large enough not to be suffocating and small enough to be
able to feel that there is a community here, whether it's working in the office and knowing all of these
people and when I walk out of the office I go to Kohl's, and there is a community that I know and it's
very much like living in Shanghai, where you walk in the street. I walked with Stanley last week in the
[student] union before the movie. In five minutes, without exaggeration, in five minutes there were
three people who walked up to me and said, "Hi, Susanne," and very personable. And he said, "My God,
I can't walk around with you." But they're not good friends but it's something that I probably needed
from Shanghai, something. It's a root, it's something that is a continuation of a community life.
JL: So you do feel that this is home?
SG: To a certain extent. Because it's not completely. When I go back to New York, there's another thing
that's there. I think we just have to live with it. Is it any different from anybody else in this mobile
society? People move from New York to California; they keep on coming back to visit. I think I've just
had more places in significant parts of my life. I've had it in Shanghai, you know.
JL: Now when you came did you establish, what kind of contact did you establish with the Jewish
community?
SG: More with the students, not with the townspeople, Jewish community.
JL: Jewish students or students in general?
SG: General, yes.
JL: Did anyone in the Jewish community make an attempt to establish contact with you?
45 The evening before the Jewish new year.
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SG: Yes, yes. There were people we met but we never got that intimate. As you know, there are people who
always make an effort, but we didn't belong to Beth Israel and part of it has — after a while you form
your own friendships and just because, again, just because they're Jews you don't always establish the
— and what was surprising to me was that I could establish very close relationships with people who are
not Jewish, which was a revelation to me since I had never, even living in New York were you exposed to
non-Jewish people. In the beginning when I spoke to people I had to think, if I use a Jewish expression
will they understand it. Now I don't even use it.
JL: Where did you live when you came to Madison?
SG: Colonial Heights, university housing.
JL: And after that?
SG: And then we bought the house.
JL: When did you buy that house, what year?
SG: ‘72. It's home. It's home; I feel very good here; I love it here. Somehow there's a root in New York, and
this I can't explain very well. I have some roots in New York. I don't want to live there but I have some
roots.
END OF TAPE 4, SIDE 2
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TAPE 5, SIDE 1
SG: I would say about Wisconsin, I had a rough time in the beginning.
JL: In what way?
SG: Well, in adjusting. It took me a long time to adjust. Part of it was my mother was there, she needed my
support, I probably needed her support, I was away from very close friends. I could have made very
close friends in the beginning, but I wasn't open to them at that time. And that's why it was difficult. I
think a lot of people have that. I wouldn't want to go through that experience again.
JL: When you got here, did you experience any anti-Semitism?
SG: No.
JL: And then on the other hand, were there any special acts of kindness that you experienced?
SG: Yes, I found people were very polite, were very nice and I found that after a long time, I found myself
being more tolerant and reacting to the kindness. Which in New York I always felt pressured. This may
be my problem, that I felt pressured. Nobody was pressuring me, but I felt less of this, I feel less of this
here. That may be part of my own growing up and feeling that — I'm sure that is a part of it, yes.
JL: When were you naturalized?
SG: In ‘58.
JL: In New York?
SG: Yeah.
JL: How did you feel at that moment?
SG: I never felt any nationalism as far as being American now. In fact, I find myself often saying, "Well,
really I'm Austrian." Which I'm not. I'm in no way Austrian. Or I'm this and that. I don't feel myself
American, but I don't know what I feel as far as nationality. I really feel I'm from different parts. I can
relate to a lot of different backgrounds.
JL: Do you speak English in your home now?
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SG: Yeah.
JL: And with your parents?
SG: German.
JL: What languages does your husband speak?
SG: English, that's about it.
JL: In comparison to other families, do you think your family is closer to one another than other American
families?
SG: They're very close.
JL: Do you think you're closer than other American families because of your experience?
SG: You mean that I'm closer to them? No. Just I feel the same way. I feel closer to friends and aunts and
uncles of mine whom I grew up with than other families would because — when my uncle was visiting
here a year ago, they spent ten days here. For ten days we were talking and talking and talking of all the
experiences we had, which I don't think usually you sit down with your aunt and uncle and you talk
about these things.
JL: What about with you and Stanley, do you think that you have a closer relationship than other American
couples because of your particular experience?
SG: It's hard to say, because you can't judge other American couples. When you ask me about "because of
the experiences," well, I can identify with a lot of his background. I mean were he somebody from
Oshkosh and American-born and not — I don't know. It's hard. He's really like of a refugee background,
which he is. I mean, they came to the United States. His parents are refugees from the same place. So
they skipped Shanghai and Israel, but they were refugees here.
JL: When did they get here?
SG: I think his mother came in the 1920’s. His father was here earlier and then he went back to get
married, bring home a bride. It's interesting, his family, his sister-in-law, his brother is married to a girl
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whose parents are from Vienna and are very much like my parents so that it was very easy. My mother
when she heard that I was marrying an American, to her it was very strange, right. But when she met
Mickey's parents and my in-laws, it was like being from the same background, so they didn't have this.
There was no class barrier, there was no — they could speak Yiddish and it was very heymish.46
JL: Do they speak with an accent?
SG: Sally's mother? Yeah. Yeah, they all speak. But that was very important, because when I met his sister-
in-law and her parents, it was just like being back in — I remember one day, we were driving back from
the Catskills with Freida (that's Mickey's mother) and her aunt and so on, they were singing Viennese
operettas on the way. It was almost like being — it was very heymish. I felt very much at home and that
has a lot to do with it.
JL: Now besides the cousins that you mentioned, what contact do you have with other surviving family
members?
SG: My aunts, my two aunts and my uncle, and then I have a cousin in Israel I have contact with. We write
to each other. And although we didn't grow up together, in our letters it comes out — you know, I'm her
surviving cousin. Her brother died recently of a heart attack, and in the letters, we mention that we're
the only surviving. And yet she's only a half-cousin. I guess because of our kinship, I don't know.
JL: We’ve talked about your friends earlier, when you arrived in Wisconsin is it still true that your close
friends are foreign?
SG: You mean here? Yeah.
JL: And are they mostly Jewish or non-Jewish now?
SG: We have mostly Jewish, but we have some close friends who are non-Jewish, particularly one couple.
They're not in Madison anymore. They just visited us last month and we feel very close to them even
though they are not Jewish. They are from the West Coast. But there's something else that binds us.
46 Yiddish for warm and homey.
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JL: How many of your friends are survivors?
SG: Here? Survivors of?
JL: Generally, who through one way or another were touched by Nazi activity?
SG: Well, they're either Israelis. In one way or another, a lot.
JL: There's been a traditional animosity among Eastern and Western European Jews. Have you felt it and do
you feel it now?
SG: Here?
JL: Generally since you’ve been in this country.
SG: Between what?
JL: Eastern and Western European Jews.
SG: It makes me very angry when talking to you when the German Jews say they're Germans or — I felt it
once here and it made me very angry.
JL: Here meaning in Madison?
SG: Yeah.
JL: For example…?
SG: When a German Jew mentioned to me, "Well, we don't speak Yiddish," or this kind of thing. There's a
superiority that made me angry. But I did not feel it other than that, no.
JL: Even now you’re all Americans, all of you are now Americans, you feel it still exists, the superiority?
SG: I've only felt but it exists in that one time, yeah.
JL: What contact do you have with American-born Jews and do you think they understand what you went
through?
SG: Not too many contacts. Whether they understand, I don't know. I don't have that much contact with
American-born Jews here.
JL: How about earlier in New York?
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SG: I started this scarf the wrong way. I don't harp on what I went through, so I don't know.
JL: What do you think are the feelings of American-born Jews toward the Holocaust?
SG: I think they're becoming more aware of it.
JL: How do you think they feel about it?
SG: I don't know. Those who are involved in Jewish affairs feel — well I can, from my husband, he feels very
strongly about it and very sad about it. And if he hears something with that happening now, very
conscious of it. I don't know, I don't talk to that many people about it. It's not one of the subjects.
JL: What do you think most non-Jews feel about the Holocaust, you just said that you don’t talk to many
people about it, so do you have any feelings regarding the…?
SG: I think many of them don't believe it or shrug it off or something. I know I had one experience here: a
good friend of ours was in Poland. He attended a meeting there and he went to Auschwitz and when he
came back, I spoke to him on the phone. I never spoke to him in the phone that long. But he was
telling me the things that he saw. He couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. I said, "What do you
mean, you couldn't believe it?" Well, it's as though he hadn't believed it until he saw it.
JL: Besides this experience with this man, what have you told non-Jews about your experiences in general?
SG: Well, they know I was in Shanghai, but no, I tend to — the thing that often comes is, "Where did you
grow up?" or something. So, "Shanghai." "Shanghai? Who? What? Where?" You know, it's like you're
coming from the moon. I'm tired of it. I'm sincerely tired of it and I think that's what annoys me about
some of my friends. This particular friend in New York whom I'm very close to but she still harps on
Shanghai as though her life revolves around it and I'm tired of it.
JL: No, but you’re talking of this woman who was actually in Shanghai?
SG: Which one, yeah this is a woman, sure, sure.
JL: So you don't want to even discuss it with people who were not there?
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SG: Not any more, not really. It's too far away already. In a way, I like to hear about the people who were
there. I'd like to visit it. I don't know what I would feel about it. I don't know. I don't know. How long
can you talk about your background?
JL: What do you think of the phenomenon of survivors' children marrying non-Jews?
SG: I couldn't, and I don't — my own opinion is, do what you want. I had an interesting experience. A friend
of mine from New York who went to school with me, wrote me that she had heard that at this reunion
was this girl who brought her daughter, who was black. I knew that that girl had married a black doctor.
She said Robert told her that Karen's daughter was "black as the ace of spades," and, "What do you
think about intermarriage?" That was the question in the letter. So I wrote her a long letter. And I said,
this just happened two weeks ago. I said, "Intermarriage?" I said, "I don't feel the way about blacks" — I
didn't say "as you do." I don't know exactly the way I explained it. But I said, "Working in this
community, which makes a difference, I don't look at them as black and white. I can't. And I have met
a lot of people that you know you have so much, that you can talk to about so many things." I was trying
to, in a way, explain that it's all right. I mean if that's what she wanted to — I can see it more now. Now
this I'm saying to you, but in the letter I didn't say not that it wasn't for me. Obviously it wasn't for me,
but I can see, I would not be critical. But I also said in the letter that I can see her point of view,
because she lives in New York. They meet different kinds of people and it's more of an economic thing.
So she accused me of accusing her of being a racist and I haven't answered that letter yet. That's a
problem in a letter, you can only put so much. But if I talk to her, I think she would understand it. If
somebody's background doesn't demand being Jewish, being white, being all that, that's okay, you
know? I'm not saying just because you're black, you're bad. And she didn't understand it in the letter.
So for those who want to, if they can find things, values in common, that's okay. It's not for me.
JL: Have you had any unpleasant experiences with non-Jews?
SG: Here?
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JL: In general.
SG: I can't think of it offhand.
JL: What political and social clubs do you belong to if any?
SG: None, I mean social clubs. I'm not a joiner. Even though I was in Betar, but that was a different thing. I
go to the International Wives but that's…
JL: Are you at all active in political organizations?
SG: No.
JL: Something about your religious life, generally could you tell me now about your synagogue attendance
and what traditions you keep?
SG: Traditions. More traditional than anything, and only because I have to have some continuation. I light
candles on Shabbes. But it's not as a religious thing.
JL: How have your feelings about your religion been affected since your experiences?
SG: None, not affected.
JL: Have you made any conscious comparisons between the kind of suffering Shanghailanders underwent
and European war experiences?
SG: No.
JL: What are your hobbies and, or special interests?
SG: I love to read. I like to sew. I like being with people. Theater, music.
JL: What type of interaction do you have with your neighbors?
SG: Friendly, distant.
JL: How did you celebrate last Pesach?47
SG: That was a bad experience, because we were invited to a seder, and that evening I came home and I
was getting ready to go and Stanley called me. He said, "Guess what? There's a paper due the following
47 Hebrew for Passover.
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day," which was the first of April, I think. He said, "Would you very much mind not going to the seder?"
What could I say? So he worked till two in the morning or three in the morning and I spent it at home.
But I wasn't that upset.
JL: You couldn't go alone?
SG: I could have, but it wouldn't be the same, and I wasn't that upset.
JL: How about last July Fourth, how did you celebrate that?
SG: Oh, we were in Colorado. Stanley was giving a course there. That was the day we were coming back.
Nothing. July 4 doesn't do anything to me, if that's what you wanted to know. I told you I'm not a
national American.
JL: What do you enjoy doing most?
SG: There's a lot of things I enjoy. But I value very much, I like to read; we like to go to the theater; we like
to go on picnics. I value time I can reflect; I value time alone. But that's not what I enjoy most.
JL: What kind of things do you like to read?
SG: Autobiographies, biographies. Not so much fiction. And if it's fiction, it's fiction that I can relate to. You
see? It's coming back. Well, don't we all? Obviously. I can't relate to murder mysteries or science
fiction. Things that I can relate to and things that I can apply. I feel I'm learning still. But again, that
very universal. We're all still learning about ourselves. We're all still putting things together. Putting
things together is really a — again, all that's very universal. We're still putting things together, and we'll
be putting things together for the rest of our lives and getting insights. See, I knew that if I would come
to this interview, that if I would get emotional, it would be very upsetting to me, so I had to put it
together and say, "Don't get emotional." I've finished my scarf.
JL: Let me just ask you, in what languages do you read?
SG: English.
JL: Any others?
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SG: Well, I can read in Hebrew. I don't like to read in German. I don't find the enjoyment. I don't think in
German, so I don't. I express myself best in English. English is my mother tongue in that sense.
JL: What newspapers and magazines do you receive?
SG: The New York Times, Capital Times, New Woman. Do you read New Woman?
JL: I've seen it.
SG: It's very good. I read magazines from the library and then the Hadassah magazine, the Jewish. I like to
read about the Jewish community here. That's not unusual, again.
JL: By "here," meaning America?
SG: Madison.
JL: Have you read any books or articles on the Holocaust?
SG: I've read Children of the Holocaust,48 which I didn't care for. I don't know why I didn't care for it but I
didn't. No, not other than that. I mean particularly the Holocaust. I've read all the Mila 18.49
JL: What was your reaction to Mila 18?
SG: I loved it. I don't know whether I was — I read it a long time ago. I liked the way it was written. I try not
to get involved emotionally in these books.
JL: Did you watch the Holocaust television program?
SG: For about half an hour. I had enough of it.
JL: Did people become more interested in your personal experiences because of the show?
SG: No, I don't think they associate me with the Holocaust particularly. And I really don't associate myself.
With all that, I don't associate myself that much with the Holocaust. It's sort of on the periphery more.
But I guess I am a part of it, it's just that I don't. The Holocaust always, when I think of the Holocaust,
I think more of the concentration camps.
48 By Helen Epstein. 49 By Leon Uris.
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JL: Did you happen to watch Playing for Time?
SG: No. What was that?
JL: It was on TV last week with Venessa Redgrave.
SG: Oh, yes, yes.
JL: You watched that?
SG: Yes. Half an hour. Oh, you meant the Holocaust before! No, the Holocaust before I watched, but
Playing for Time I didn't watch very long.
JL: What was your reaction to both of them?
SG: The original Holocaust I thought was too Hollywoodish and Playing For Time was too depressing and too
— I don't know, I just — just as well, who needs it. That's a bad thing to say but I just didn't want to
watch that. Three hours especially. It was too long.
END OF TAPE 5, SIDE 1
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TAPE 5, SIDE 2
JL: Now these next questions will be basically about Wisconsin and the United States. Where have you
traveled in Wisconsin?
SG: Quite a bit — east, west, a little bit north. I've seen quite a bit of the state, Door County and so on.
JL: What part have you liked most?
SG: I like the state. I just like driving along here. Everything's pretty, I mean I can't say "most." I enjoy it
here.
JL: How much does Wisconsin remind you of Vienna?
SG: Not at all.
JL: How satisfied are you with the cultural climate in Madison?
SG: Very. I think anybody who complains that there is not enough to do here is just not taking advantage of
it. I know we aren't even.
JL: Do you think it offers you more or less than what you had in Shanghai or New York or Israel, or is there
any comparison?
SG: Well, it offers less than in New York but then, of course, what New York has to offer the general public
is not something that we took advantage of. Whereas I think we take more advantage of here.
JL: So you're quite satisfied with it?
SG: Yeah, I am.
JL: How much happier do you think you were living in an area of greater Jewish population, such as New
York and Israel?
SG: Because of the greater Jewish population? I don't think it makes that much difference to me anymore. I
think we have Jewish friends and there is enough here at this point. I said it before: that if I do go back
to New York and I find myself surrounded by all of this, then I see the difference. But it's not a
conscious thing that I think of, that I have to be surrounded by it.
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JL: Now we did talk about this earlier, but I have to ask you this. Have you ever considered yourself at all a
Midwesterner?
SG: No. [laughs] No.
JL: How do you feel about living in Wisconsin with it's high percentage of ethnic Germans?
SG: It doesn't bother me because I don't associate with them. And those who are German — I just found out
that the guy I work for, his parents are from Germany. Well, I don't think of him as German, you know,
what can I…? He's American.
JL: How did you react when you found that out?
SG: Nothing. We were laughing because he said, "I know you don't like Germans." I said, "I don't." He said.
"Well, I am." I said, "You are?" I don't think of him as such.
JL: Given the choice, if you had an opportunity to leave Wisconsin, where would you go?
SG: There are only two places that. I'd probably could get back into living into New York, if necessary. Not
that I would want to. But I think San Francisco would be one place that I would like to live in, if I could
live in San Francisco, period. Just from what I heard, I would not want to live in L.A. That's too
suburban-like for me and it's not the kind of life that I would like. It's too big to be community. Since
I've never been to L.A., I don't know. Maybe it is a community. I don't know any other place that I
would want to be.
JL: Why San Francisco?
SG: I don't know, I love it. I think there's something European about it, it's a city and it's pretty. Why not?
JL: What effort have you made to acquaint yourself with Wisconsin history?
SG: Not much. I have all the books at home but I haven't.
JL: Now you have to be immodest, how do you feel you've contributed to the Wisconsin community?
SG: The community as such?
JL: To specifically Madison and if you have anything, feel anything about Wisconsin.
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SG: I feel I've contributed to the foreign student population. I feel that a lot of the foreign students who
have been here for many years know me. I feel that they have a place to come into if they need
something. I know I get calls at home. So in that sense, it's a feeling of being needed in a certain area.
Obviously, I'm not contributing in any other ways that would be meaningful.
JL: Do you feel an obligation to New York or Israel or even Madison for giving you an opportunity to start a
new life?
SG: An obligation?
JL: Indebted.
SG: I think I feel lucky at times to have been afforded the opportunity to experience Wisconsin. I don't know
whether I am indebted to Wisconsin or whether I’m indebted to, or whether it's because of my life with
Stanley. I don't think it's particularly Wisconsin. I think it's a nice place to experience, but it's not as
Wisconsin gave me the opportunity; it's rather that my life has given.
JL: What was your reaction when the American Nazi Party planned to march in Milwaukee?
SG: That's horrifying. I wouldn't want to see that.
JL: Were you at all involved in reacting to that at the time?
SG: Not overtly, no. Emotionally I was involved. I think that's, yeah.
JL: Wisconsin has a tradition as a progressive state. How true have you find that to be?
SG: Historically it has, and in Madison, certainly you feel that. I don't know in the rest of the smaller
communities; I wouldn't know. I don't feel that I'm living in a conservative Midwest being in Madison.
JL: How satisfactory do you find the American system of government to be?
SG: Let's put it this way, I'm not one to overthrow it. I think it's given people the freedom of expressing
themselves. I'm frightened of what might happen if Reagan comes in, because this morning I heard the
news and he said something, and I told Stanley I said, "He sounds like a preacher." He really sounds
like a religious preacher. He'll want to bring religion back in. That's frightening to me, because then it
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will consolidate again the — well, bringing church into it automatically makes us the minority. That part
of it is frightening. But so far I think it's —
JL: How do you feel about the prominence of Jews in American society, in politics, the arts, and other
fields?
SG: I'm very proud of that. I think that if I read that somebody's Jewish, I think it's exciting.
JL: What do you see are the most important issues facing America today?
SG: I think economic. I think we should not strive for military power, because it's frightening. And I'm
frightened — this is really what frightens me, this religious uprising. I don't think it's healthy, especially
for the Jews. I don't think it's healthy for anyone. I think the religious resurgence would cause a lot of
problems. Economic is one of the biggest ones at the moment, I think, and if it gets very bad, I think
Jews may be scapegoats again.
JL: How do you feel about the influx of refugees into the United States?
SG: That angers me when people say there shouldn't be any refugees, because I think they were all
refugees. That is the most ridiculous thing. Of course Stanley says I'm always for the underdog, which I
am. I am! I always find myself fighting for the underdog. I think they should come in. Why shouldn't
they? I mean they came — the people who are objecting to it came. We came, everybody came. No,
they should come in. Definitely.
JL: To what extent do you believe there is anti-Semitism in the United States?
SG: To the extent that people are ignorant and afraid and there are quite a number of places that they are.
And that's true with anti-Semitism anywhere, I think.
JL: Okay and connected with that, how do you feel about the recent outburst of anti-Semitism in France?
SG: It's frightening. It's frightening because it's all over again.
JL: How secure do you feel as a Jew in America?
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SG: Well, I've been saying, "It's frightening, it's frightening," and yet I don't feel insecure. I don't really think
anything could happen here. As much as I say it's frightening, I don't think it could happen.
JL: So then, I understand you don't foresee a situation arising in which you personally might again be
threatened?
SG: No, I don't foresee it.
JL: What are your feelings about Germany and present-day Germans in Germany?
SG: I just don't like the Germans. But that's a generalization because all the German people I've never met.
I don't know. I don't know. I think it could happen in Germany again, and I can't see people going back
and living there, either in Germany or in Austria. I think it could happen over there, because they're too
dogmatic, and I think they follow the leader, and they can easily follow the leader again.
JL: Did your family ever receive restitution?
SG: No. Or very little. It was through the Austrian government. It was not the restitution that the Germans
got. We just got a bulk sum of nothing.
JL: How did your family and you then feel about accepting it?
SG: Why not?
JL: You told me that you returned to Vienna on your way to the United States. Have you ever returned any
other time?
SG: Yeah. When we were on our honeymoon, we visited my uncle and aunt. I really didn't return to Vienna; I
returned to them, so Vienna didn't affect me.
JL: Were there any adverse reactions or any reactions at all to the country at that time?
SG: No. The only funny part was, was once we had a funny experience. We were sitting in the tram, my aunt
and my uncle and everything, and we were very loud like we would be in New York. We said something,
and my uncle says, "Shh, shh! Don't talk, don’t use a Yiddish word," or something. Who needs that?
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That was my only reaction, the rest of it, no. Stanley reacted more than I did because this was his first
experience being in a country that had been Nazi-occupied.
JL: And to China… you haven't returned. You said you would like to?
SG: Why not, yes. It wouldn't be the same under any circumstances.
JL: Do you think it's easier now for you to talk about your experiences than it was closer to when they
happened?
SG: No. Easier in what way, emotionally? Well, I have a better view. Yeah, I can look back and analyze it,
whereas when it happened, there was nothing to analyze: it happened.
JL: Does it get harder now emotionally or is it easier now?
SG: Sometimes. It depends.
JL: How do you feel about the increasing awareness in America concerning the Holocaust?
SG: I think it's important. It's important.
JL: When we first met I explained to you that part of the funding for this project has come from the federal
government, how do you feel about that?
SG: Well, it should. It's part of the history of the United States because a lot of the survivors are here.
JL: Why do you feel it's important to participate in an oral history Holocaust documentation project?
SG: Well, for all the reasons. It's important to know who are the people who make up part of the American,
people who live in America. It's important for those people who really want to study it. It's hard for me
to say what they can get out of what I am saying. Fifty years from now, if none of us are alive anymore,
it just will be dead and it will become something that people will say, "Oh, it never happened," as there
are even people who say now it never happened. I think it's important to know that it did happen. Who
is this guy in France who escaped to Spain, just recently when this thing with the French bombing
happened? He says, "Oh, they're making it up." As did the guy in Chicago. Well, we went through it; we
didn't make it up. It's not made up. I think it should go on record and it's important. It's important for
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the state of Israel, too. It's important to know that there's a reason for it's existence, other than the
historical reason for it's existence, but that the Jews need a place. I think it's very important.
JL: Okay, I am finished with my formal questions to you, is there anything that you would like to add?
SG: Now is the time I would get emotional. When I thought about all this, the reason I want to put it down
on paper, I guess is a lot of reasons. For the reasons I said now. I think it is important as a living
memorial to those who didn't survive it and those who survived it. Particularly I mean thinking of
myself, when I think of my parents, who survived it and who struggled and struggled and struggled and
worked the way I could never work. I don't think I have the energy to do it and yet they did it. It was a
survival. The working, working that hard to get bread, to get just the subsistence, day to day
subsistence, and to come out of it. I saw my father, after he retired, he was a happy man. It's amazing
— my uncle saw him after many years, and he said he's never seen my father that way. All through the
years that he's know him, he was hard-working, then he had to retire, and he appreciated everything. He
appreciated just sit and listen to the Jewish radio in New York, listening to the Jewish station or the
Yidishe Filosof.50 This was his enjoyment and I think, I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know
how else to — I guess any kind of, all refugees, coming from Norway they struggled here, and wherever
they came from they had their own struggle. I think these people should be appreciated. We have an
easy life. I mean what are we doing? We really don't have a difficult life. I think it's a memorial to those
people who went through it, who struggled, who survived, who came out of it. Who came out of it and
were not bitter about it. I saw that in my father and I saw that in my mother. It's important to know that
these things can pass and it doesn't always leave a bitter effect on them, that they become bad. On the
contrary. Do you know what I mean? That they don't say, "The world was bad, and that's why I have to
be bad, and I have to take advantage of things, and to get as much out of life as I can, and to hell with
everybody else." In my own parents, I saw it just the other way. My father was happy with every little
50 Mrs. Goldfarb seems to be referring to a radio show. The title is Yiddish for Jewish Philosopher.
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thing and my mother, too. They were happy with every little thing and this was their own and they built
their life around it. My mother didn't want a bigger apartment. And anything that happened after that, if
they went on vacation — I don't recall ever, ever going on vacation, for them to go. And when they did,
it was such a pleasure to see that they came out of all of this and they were charitable and there was no
bitterness to anybody. It was always my father and my mother, both of them — if I said anything bad, if
anybody said anything bad, they would always look for the better side of things. I'm sure there are
people who came out of it who took advantage of others, but I think in my own experience, it was just
the opposite — that they appreciated life more. They appreciated things more and their goodness when
they're done. I think it's important to know that, in spite of all of that, this can still happen. For me this
is very important, too. Now I'm getting you all [inaudible]. That's all right; it's toward the end, I can say
that. I suppose that's it. I just wish they had lived longer to experience more of the good. To reap some
of that satisfaction that they had been struggling for and…
JL: Thank you very much.
END OF TAPE 5, SIDE 2
END OF TRANSCRIPT
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