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2-Bar Mitzvah in 1935

On the subject of anti-Semitism that you asked me about, there's another incident that I want to share with you. In 1935 when I was thirteen years old, and it was getting to be time for my Bar Mitzvah. You know, when the Jewish boy comes of age, religiously. A few weeks before my Bar Mitzvah, our synagogue was broken into and vandalized. I still remember that various objects - torah scrolls, prayer books, prayer shawls and so on - were taken out of the synagogue and in a muddy field just right near the synagogue the vandals set fire to them. The fire didn't completely destroy everything because it rained that night and put the fire out eventually. But still it was all desecrated. This happened just a few weeks before my Bar Mitzvah was supposed to be. Which is supposed to be a very happy event.

Interestingly enough, the man who was the burglar was caught, and at that time the Nazis still wanted to do everything by the book. They didn't want people to go and take the law in their own hands, so they tried the fellow and they gave him a jail sentence of about ten months, which apparently he served.

But here is how times changed. A mere three years later, on November 10th 1938, this same man was the principal perpetrator who set fire to our synagogue. On that day - which was called Kristallnacht, Crystal Night - practically all the synagogues in Germany were burned to the ground, including ours. The man who did most of the job was the same man who had burglarized it three years earlier. But this time he was considered a hero. About three or four years after the war, he was tried for this act of arson, and he was sent to the penitentiary for about six years.

From your experiences with Kristallnacht, what were your feelings about the anti-Semitism that was in Bühl, and what were your emotions with your synagogue being burned and vandalized? Did you witness any other beatings or any other acts of burglaries or acts of arson?

No, I didn't witness any actual physical violence. Of course remember by the time of Kristallnacht, I was already in the United States. I came in '37 and Kristallnacht happened in November '38.

But my father was arrested, along with all the Jewish men that they could find in all of Germany. He was taken to the concentration camp Dachau. He was there about two months. Since their policy at that time was to drive us out of Germany, they let him out again because by that time my family had made arrangements for both my parents and my brother to leave Germany. Those arrangements were already in the mill, so they let my father out again. About two months after he was released from Dachau, they left Germany. There's a story to that too. Do you want me to tell the story?

Not yet. How was your family affected by the Depression?

Of course, that preceded the Nazi period. Of course I was too young, really, to know too much about it. Around the time when I was born, things were very tough in Germany. It was shortly after World War I. The people were pretty much impoverished. There was a tremendous inflation, a hyper-inflation where the German money became totally worthless. For example, finally, at the height of that hyper-inflation, one gold mark - in other words, the mark was the German unit of value - if you had one gold mark - an actual gold coin - it would be exchangeable for one billion paper marks. Of course nobody had gold marks, everybody had paper marks, right, so it became totally worthless. Then, I think it was in 1923 or '24, they had a monetary reform where the government stopped the inflation.

My father had started his retail shoe business in 1920, two years before I was born. Of course he had a tough time. But I was too young to really know much about that. Despite all that and several years later he became very successful because he earned the trust of his clientele - the people who lived around there and people came and frequented his store - even after the Nazis came to power, and told everybody not to buy from Jews. What people did, they waited until Sunday morning and they came in through the back entrance to the store so that nobody would see them come in. My Dad would go to the store, on Sunday mornings, and they would buy shoes from him, on the sly, so that they wouldn't be seen.

Who were your role models?

That's pretty hard question to answer. I can't at the moment think of any specific role models. I had one, let's say. He was my mother's brother. He was a very prominent lawyer in Germany. He lived in a town not far from ours. Maybe because of him I decided to study law and become a lawyer. But you know what happened when the Nazis came to power, they prohibited people to practice their professions including doctors and lawyers. My uncle could no longer practice. In - I believe in 1936, he and his family immigrated to what is today Israel, and he lived there for the rest of his life. He became one of the founders of the city where he lived, which was Nahariya, in Israel. I would say he was a role model for me.

When and how did you learn English?

I started to learn English in Germany already, about half a year or so before I actually left. My parents arranged private lessons for me in preparation for leaving Germany. I had some private lessons. I already knew a little bit of English before I came over. I came to Kansas City, Missouri, where my father's brother lived. I lived with him and his wife until my parents later came over. My aunt arranged for me to have English lessons, private lessons, that summer. I came in June so I had the entire summer to study English before I entered high school. You know what, the book that I read, I still remember. It was A History of the United States. I read that that summer, so I was well prepared for high school.

Coming to America

I want to talk about when you came to America. Did you know much about America? What did you think of it?

I knew very little before I came here. I had read the books, novels, by a novelist named Karl May who wrote in German, and he wrote about the Wild West and the Indians and cowboys and so forth. He made it look very realistic even though he was never in the United States. But I loved reading those books. That's about all I knew about the United States before I came here.

Why didn't your parents and your brother go with you?

That's a good question. You see my father still had his business. For older people, for middle-aged people, it's a little bit harder to pull up stakes than it is for teenagers. I mean I had no responsibilities, right? I had no business to worry about. I didn't have children to worry about. I was one myself. It was easier for me to leave Germany than for my parents.

They did eventually make application for an immigration visa for the United States. But by the time that they made that application, it was much harder to come here than it was when I came. In the matter of one year it became much harder, because more and more people wanted to get out. The U.S. immigration policy at that time had an immigration quota. Which meant that only so and so many people were allowed each year from any particular country. They had to be on the waiting list to come to the United States and it would take a long time to reach their number.

My relatives in Kansas City, Missouri tried some other method to help them get out. They had a friend by the name of Senator Harry Truman, who later became president as you know. They asked him to help my family get out and he did try. He wrote to the German Consul - I mean the American Consul in Germany - and he requested that my family and several other families also, that their immigration to the United States be expedited. But the Consul was subject to our State Department policy which was pretty tough and they said "No way, it'll take two or three years on this waiting list to reach this family."

Truman advised my relatives to tell my parents to get out of Germany as quickly as possible and to go a third country, wherever they could go, and stay temporarily. They did. It was possible for them to go to Cuba. They lived in Cuba for thirteen months. They went to Cuba in April '39, just a few months before World War II started. They lived there for thirteen months, until their number came up and they came to the United States.

Now, I know about this correspondence with Truman's office because this entire correspondence is in the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri. A second cousin of mine - who is a federal district court judge in Kansas City - happened to find the correspondence while he was doing some research in the Truman Library. He told me to write and request copies. I have the entire correspondence, I have it right here. You can see it afterwards.

They were lucky. They got to Cuba by the skin of their teeth. Because a month after they got to Cuba, Cuba closed its doors, and wouldn't let any more German refugees come in. They were very lucky. Then they came to Kansas City in May 1940. That's the story about my family.

How did you feel about leaving your family?

I realized it was the best thing that I could do. I was certainly hoping and praying that they would follow very soon. But as I say they didn't come to this country until three years after I did. By that time I had graduated from high school and I was working in a bank and going to night school at the same time, trying to accumulate some college credit.