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What were your experiences with anti-Semitism in America?
Relatively
little. I don't remember any anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.
I was very happy to be here. As a matter of fact, one example of that,
is that once I came here I didn't want to speak German, anymore, at
all. When my parents came three years after I did, I said to them, "Now
look, you're in the United States now, I'm not going to speak German
to you. I'm only going to speak English to you, so that you will learn
English."
In the past interview, you talked about how you
were able to speak German but you didn't feel like you wanted to. Why
didn't you want to speak the language?
Because
I didn't regard myself as German anymore. I wanted to get away from
anything German at that time. I wanted to learn English quickly. In
fact, when somebody describes me - "What are you? You were a German
Jew, right?" - I made it a point to call myself something different.
I called myself a "Jew from Germany." But I didn’t
describe myself as a German Jew. That tells you how I felt.
What did the US seem like compared to Germany?
Quite
different. I just remembered something. I still had the effects of
the worrying and fear and apprehension in me from Germany when I
arrived in Kansas City. I remember very specifically a summer night
- warm, dark - we were sitting on the porch on the side of the house.
There was a little porch in Kansas City. Just talking and I was telling
them about Germany and about the family and so forth.
I
remember looking around at the bushes around the porch, being concerned
that nobody would be listening. See? That was a holdover from the attitudes
in Germany. But I got over it.
Did you have to adopt any new customs?
Oh,
sure! I adopted American customs pretty quickly.
What are some examples?
For
example, every Sunday we had lunch at my uncle's house. We always
had the same thing - southern fried chicken - and I got to like
it. I adapted to American life pretty quickly. I got active in school,
of course. When I started high school, they put me in tenth grade.
I should have been in eleventh, but just because I was not very fluent
yet in English, they put me in tenth grade - sophomore.
But
then, at the end of the sophomore year, I became a senior right away.
I jumped from the tenth to the twelfth grade. I got quite active
in school activities. I belonged to a literary club and I entered a
poetry contest. I still remember the title of the poem that I submitted
which was "Let Us Have Peace." I was very much concerned
with world peace at that time. I didn't win the contest, but I represented
my literary society in the school-wide contest.
I
became a member of the student council and then they elected me to
the National Honor Society. I was also active in Jewish organizations.
There is a major fundraising organization which - we have it here too
in San Francisco. Here it's the Jewish Community Federation. We had
a similar organization in Kansas City, which raised funds for various
Jewish causes. I was active in the junior division of that. In other
words, the teenagers formed their own organization to raise money for
charitable purposes.
I was also active in the youth organization of the B'nai Brith is a
Jewish fraternal organization and it also had a youth group nationwide
and it has different chapters. I became president of my chapter. I
participated once in a speaking contest, oratory contest, and I represented
my particular group and we went to the national convention of this
youth organization which is called the AZA and that convention was
in Cleveland Ohio.
I
went there and I don't think I did too well in giving my speech but,
anyway we had fun going there. I remember we drove there - somebody
had a car - and on the way - oh yes - we took several extra tires along
and tied them to the car - on top, in the back, in the front, whatever
- and it was a good thing because we had three blowouts of the tires
on the way between Kansas City and Cleveland, Ohio. Those were some
of the things that I remember.
Did you hide your Judaism in America?
No.
There was no reason to.
You were never embarrassed by the fact that you were
Jewish?
No.
I was quite proud to be Jewish. The Jewish religion, the Jewish culture,
the Jewish ethnicity is one that has contributed very much to civilization,
especially western civilization. I felt very attached to the principles
of my religion. As you know, the Jewish religion became the mother
religion to Christianity, and Islam to some extent. The principles
of the Torah - the Five Books of Moses - the basic of which is "love
thy neighbor as thyself," became one of the principles that Jesus
pronounced in his Sermon on the Mount. Of course, he was Jewish himself.
I felt quite proud to be Jewish, and in the United States there
was no reason to hide it.
How much did people in America know of what was going
on in Europe?
Different
at different times. At the beginning, when Germany was making life
miserable and impossible for us, economically and socially, this
became fairly well known in the United States, and people protested
here. But at that time the United States was fairly isolationist. The
American people didn't want to get involved in Europe's problems. Later,
when the actual Holocaust occurred, it took a while for the news to
leak out.
Of
course that was war time. The was started in September 1939, and they
[the Nazis] overran Poland where there were more Jews than there were
ever in Germany. From that time on there was no - they did not
permit Jews even to leave. Nobody could get out. That is when they
instituted their policy of mass murder, to get ride of the Jews that
way. Now, the news about that leaked out very slowly. But there were
indications that the Germans were committing mass murder of Jews in
the eastern areas in Poland, later on in Western Europe - Russia, the
Soviet Union - and other areas in Europe.
Did you talk about your experiences in Germany with
Americans?
Yes,
I think so, yes. When you were in high school? When
I was in high school. What did you say? I had long
discussions about, about experiences in Germany with schoolmates. I
quite often compared it to how things were in the United States.
Did you meet any other Jewish Refugees at your
high school? Did you know of any?
I
don't remember any other Jewish refugees from Germany in the high school
in Kansas City. I may have been the only one. I was sort of a curiosity
when I was there.
How did people react to you?
Yes,
well people were curious about me. But everybody was always friendly
and there was no discrimination that I could feel. People always reacted
very positively.
Were you worried on the way to America that you
were going to experience Anti-Semitism?
No,
I don't think I was worried about that. I was looking forward to being
in America. I didn't know much about the discrimination against blacks
in America until I got here. Kansas City, Missouri, is
right on the edge between the North and the South. In fact, during
the Civil War, it was on the side of the South. It was a slave state.
But then the Union army fought a battle against the Confederate army
and they beat them and so Missouri became part of the North.
Even
though it was originally a slave state. There was quite a bit of
segregation in Missouri. In Kansas City, there were pretty much segregated
areas of the city. Blacks lived in one area, whites lived in another
area. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my high school was mostly white.
Probably practically all white, because it was in a white area.
I didn't become acquainted with that aspect of American life until
I got here.
Of
course, Kansas City, Missouri was part of the old south before the
Civil War, at the time of the Civil War, so there was much more segregation
in Kansas City than there was in northern cities. In fact I think
that the high school that I went to was practically all white - I'm
pretty sure, yes. But I could empathize with the problems of the black
children, particularly, because, just as the blacks had to sit in the
back of the bus in the south, I had to sit in the back of the school
room in Germany.
How did you feel knowing that there was another
type of discrimination going on in America that could possibly relate
to your experience with discrimination?
You
mean now?
When you were there. When you became aware
of the segregation.
I'll
tell you one ironic aspect of it - I may not be answering your question
- but one ironic aspect is this: When our older son was a
doctor, he graduated from the University of California in Berkeley
in Physiology. He graduated with good grades and he tried to get into
a medical school. He was unable to get into any medical school in this
country.
Two
reasons: One, there was a tremendous competition at that time - this
was in the middle 70's - tremendous competition to enter medical school.
A particular medical school would receive five thousand applications
but had only one hundred places for freshmen. That's how tremendous
the competition was.
Second
reason was: Most of the medical schools in those days had a quota system,
where they allocated a certain number of entrance spots to black students.
That, by the way, became the subject of a US Supreme Court case
called the Bakke Case, which was brought by a medical applicant at
UC Davis. He was turned down from medical school at UC Davis and some
black applicants were admitted even though they had lower scores on
the entrance examination than he did.
So
he sued. The Supreme Court held that to have a quota system is
unconstitutional. After that most of the medical schools
and law schools and other schools changed their system. The Supreme
Court held that the matter of race - of color - could be taken into
consideration but along with all other factors in admitting students.
But to have a quota system - to have only certain types of students
to be admitted - that was unconstitutional.
The
time when our son tried to apply for medical school was just before
the Bakke decision with the Supreme Court. He couldn't get into
any medical school in this country because here he was considered part
of the majority. He was white, right? He didn't fit into the quota
system. He had the opportunity to go to Italy and go to medical
school in Rome - at the University of Rome - and the first thing he
did was he spent about four months at a university there learning the
language.
He
didn't speak Italian. Then he went right into medical school and
he succeeded and he finished medical school in Rome. Now the ironic
thing is, his parents - Gloria and I - had to get out of Europe because
of discrimination, right? Our son had to go back to Europe because
of discrimination. It was reverse discrimination here, in the United
States. I see a great bit of irony in this.
Were you aware of what was happening in Germany
during the time you were in high school and living in America?
Yes,
to some extent. Not in detail. The Germans didn't publicize this. I
remember we were instrumental in making protests against what the Germans
were doing. In my scrapbook, I still have the text of a petition, which
the Jewish Community publicized as a protest against what was happening
in Germany.
I
knew that the Germans were doing their best to eliminate us from all
facets of life - of economic, social, political life - in Germany.
But I didn't know any details. You see?
How did you feel about America's reluctance to
enter the war?
I
knew what we [Americans] were fighting for. That's how I felt about
my own army service. I felt that this was necessary. That the German
government and the Nazi party were evil. That they were bent on dominating
- certainly dominating Europe - and they did dominate practically all
of Western and Central Europe and far into Eastern Europe. If they
had had their way, they would have dominated the United States too,
even though we were far away from them.
But
England was lucky that they were never able to invade England. Then,
after we got into the war, we used England as the staging area for
the invasion of Europe. No, I felt very strongly that our side
was just, that we were doing a service for humanity.
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