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1-Introductions & Family Life

My name is Jack, my name is Sophie, my name is Camilla, and we are interviewing Freda Reider on May 15, 2003, in the city of San Francisco, California.

Can you describe your life before the Anschluss?

Well, I was pretty young. When the Anschluss happened I was eight years old. So, I would only remember - I really remember everything from the night it happened, prior to that particular day, the only thing I recalled was that my parents would sit very close to a radio, especially my father. It seemed like his ear was pasted to the radio, I guess the reception wasn't that good, but they were listening to speeches of Hitler and the progress of the development of what was to happen was being announced on the radio every single day by the special speeches and news reports.

Could you describe your neighborhood before the Anschluss happened?

We lived in a compound and in the compound - the owners of the compound ran a furniture factory, which was very far away from where we were living and interestingly enough, that factory - when the Anschluss happened and the Nazi's came in, they took over that factory and it became a munitions factory. When the war was in full process, the Allies bombed it and so the whole compound disappeared.

But back to the compound, when I was a little girl, I just remember that there were many little houses and a big wall around the compound and you had to go through a special door to get out into the street. I spent most of my time as a little girl close to home, played with friends around there. There was a little brook that ran by the house and we used to send ships down the brook, little leaves, turned them into ships. It was a very idyllic place to live, beautiful weather, gorgeous trees and flowers.

Do you remember your parents being pretty friendly with other families in the neighborhood as well, or was it just you and your sister?

Well, they were friendly - I shouldn't say "they", because my father was not home a lot of the time, he worked as a shochet, that's someone who does ritual slaughtering of animals, that's an ordained position. So, he worked for two major hotels, one in the Alps of Vienna and one in Italy. So there would be a summer season or a winter season and in between he would come home for certain months. But, at this time the hotels had closed down, just about a year before the Anschluss. So that's how come I remember him sitting by the radio, constantly looking very worried and both parents being very worried.

But, I think you asked about friends, did they have friends in the neighborhood. My mother was friendly with the most immediate neighbor, like next door. I don't believe that there were any Jews living in the compound, actually. We were the only Jews, and that became a real problem, very soon, after the Anschluss of course.

Before the Anschluss happened, do you remember other children being mean to you?

Not at all, I never experienced meanness, no. Running home and crying that someone hit me or anything, nothing like that. I've been told that I went to school everyday. I stopped in the third grade; I don't remember a thing about it. Just to give you the idea of how safe life was, I understand that I went to an elementary school which was twenty minutes walking distance from my house and I would just go out of the compound and walk with other children. It was like a long trail, through a park. Just children went, they all went together, no adults.

I mean this is what I've been told, I don't remember this. In fact I don't remember going to school. But I know I did because when I came to the United States, I could speak and read and write German, so I did. But I haven't uncovered the secret of that little piece of amnesia.

What other pastimes did you have as a little girl?

Yes, it's a good question, as an American I understand you completely, because as a Mom I did the same thing in America. Where you take children for all sorts of enrichment classes, piano classes or ballet dancing. There was none of that. We just went to school came home, had snacks, played with the children near by. I actually had, I think, just one close friend, and that was it, and went to the Kurpark, every single say. Yeah, that was the big moment of the day.

You talked about not having any toys as a little girl. Why was that?

No toys. That's because I came from a very religious family and they considered that nonsense - that you shouldn't waste your time, it's like giving strong messages right away. "Playing, what is that for? Is it going to make you a better person? You have to study and you have to learn and you have to be religious and obey the laws." That was the message every day, but as you know children are full of imagination, so that's why I played very intensely with the little brook that went by the house. It was a major ocean and I could send ocean liners down the, you know, I had whole fantasies built up about that.

What was a typical dinner like with your family?

Well, the food was certainly not very interesting like it is here. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my parents were very religious, again, and really there wasn't very much money in the family. So there wasn't much of a variety with the food. Every single day of the week, you could expect a certain dish to be served. The best food was served usually for the Sabbath, Friday night and Saturday. If my mom could save anything from those two meals, it would show up in some other configuration during the week.

They were not interesting meals, hamburgers. They're not like hamburgers here, which can be very interesting, where they're barbequed and all that. There they were called, "kokletan," and they were meat patties that were fried in a skillet and served with mashed potatoes typically. You know, when you're a child, that's what the world is all about, you don't think about, "I wish I had a barbeque," you don't even know about that, and we didn't read books about that. I wasn't brought up with little secular books. The only thing I learned was religion. If stories were told, they were stories from the Bible, nothing secular. Of course, when I went to school, there I had secular studied, but as I said, I don't remember.

What do you remember of some of these bible stories or books that were being read in your house?

Actually, there was another thing, my mother used to love - and more of that happened when we came to the United States. She came from Poland and typically if you come from Poland from a very religious background, you receive no education, because it wasn't meant for women and girls. The only thing that was available was that you learnt how to write Yiddish and not Hebrew. You learned enough to read certain books that were available for women only. They were very simple little stories, usually about housekeeping and the care of children. They didn't say "do obedience to husbands," but it was all that it was women's place really to take care of her family and nothing else. The stories had to do with that primarily.

Back when I was a little child, my mother would read from those little books. So she was already beginning to kind of train us as a little girl. Sometimes, my father would make up stories. He was a very imaginative man, but mainly he stuck to the seriousness of life, which had to do with following The Law, Halacha, The Law. So he would tell Bible stories, but sometimes we would act them out a little a bit, you know, talking about the parting of The Red Sea. He understood to make a story dramatic so that it would appeal to a child. Did that answer the question?

In your last interview, you went into great detail about your Friday nights. I was wondering if you had any other ceremonies or traditions as a little girl?

In terms of other traditions, no big fuss was made of birthdays. Again, it's like useless showering of attention, what for? It leads to swelling of the head. The holidays were the main source of celebrations. The holidays were big "to-dos," we all looked forward to the holidays, just like we looked forward to Friday nights. It was full of good food and everybody got dressed nicely and for Passover, we all expected new shoes and new clothes. That sticks very strongly in my memory of getting paten leather red shoes or black shoes. I thought that was just the most remarkable thing in the world.

When we would go to the Kurpark, sometimes we would stop at a candy store that would be a treat. But, mainly it seems to me that my total memory is of being extremely happy as a child. So you don't really need a TV, or all these things that our children have now and our grandchildren. I think if you are giving safety and love, that's probably the most important thing, and space to roam around where a child can express herself, in my case.

What was your relationship with your sisters like?

There was no relationship actually. The baby, we were five and half years apart. So there was the baby always being taken care of by the mother, and there was my older sister who would have nothing to do with me, I was just this little, younger kid - brat. She was always with her, you know, contemporaries. So there was no relationship, but again, I didn't know that it could be better and I happened to like being alone or just having one friend, that seemed fine for me.