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Interview with Lucie Rosenberg April 16, 2004 Beginning Tape One, Side A

Q: This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jeff and Toby Herr collection. This is an interview with Lucie Rosenberg, conducted by Neenah Ellis on April 16", 2004, in Washington, D.C.. This interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's post Holocaust interview project, and it's a follow up interview to a USHMM videotaped interview conducted with Lucie Rosenberg within the last five years.

A: Yes.

Q: Not sure of the date. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gratefully acknowledges Jeff and Toby Herr for making this interview possible. This is tape number one, side A. When your video interview ended, you summarized a little bit about what happened to you after your family came to New York. But I'd like to go back and talk a little bit more specifically about some of the things that happened to you and your parents and -- when you first arrived there. And y-you mentioned in the -- in your interview that your father went into the mustard business in Brooklyn.

A: Yes.

Q: And tell me a little more about that, how did that come about?

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A: Well, he and two other people, one, a man from Belgrade who was actually an electrical engineer, and a man by the name of Rolf, who was a Polish refugee, decided that they had to do something and this was apparently available. At one time my father had a -- wa-was in something -- I won't say -- s-say [indecipherable] but in the alcohol business --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- and in a vineg -- he had a vinegar factory in Liubljana. So, he had some notion of -- of this -- of a very little. And so they were there, I think my father -- "m not quite sure what year my father sold it out, but it was very traumatic for him, I must say. And particularly negotiations with the union was quite funny.

Q: So these three men pooled their money and bought an existing business?

A: They bought an existing business, yes.

Q: What did they call the mustard?

A: They actually made mustard for various well-known mustard firms, I -- I -- I can't tell you -- I mean, there were various brands and so on. The thing was called Old Dutch mustard company. And as I said, they -- they -- th-they -- I guess they got the labels and the -- and the -- the -- the -- what would you call them, the containers and so on and they did it for various companies that I don't remember the name of, but they were certainly better known than the Old Dutch mustard, right?

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Q: Mm-hm. And they did that for roughly how many years?

A: Sic -- I'm trying to think. Maybe five, maybe s-six, and -- I mean, my father bailed out very soon afterward, he couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand it, he also couldn't stand driving to Brooklyn daily, and so it was --

Q: Did he go into another business after that?

A: No, I think he mostly invested in real estate and by that time we had already gotten -- he -- he'd started working on -- on this project of getting -- getting the compensation from the Yugoslav government and so on, so --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- no.

Q: Can you explain that a little bit, the compensation?

A: Yes. The royal Yugoslav government had deposited in the United States a serious sum -- I mean a serious amount of gold, I guess it must have been ingots, or whatever you called gold. And after awhile the Tito government wanted to -- wanted to get this gold back to Yugoslavia and United States said yes, after you have compensated United States businesses that were there pre-war, and s-some of our -- an-and our citizens, American citizens whose -- whose property was nationalized. And, as they had nationalized a number of things, number of buildings, number of factories and so on [indecipherable] Yugoslavia after the war.

We -- we were within this particular group of people. And this went on for several http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 5 years and finally -- finally a lump sum came, and then I guess mostly he -- he -- he traveled a great deal, he -- actually he did the trip around the world with some friends, and --

Q: And you were in this group of people because of the businesses that he had?

A: Also my -- no --

Q: No?

A: -- no. Simply because, for instance my -- my -- my mother's house, which is right in the center of Zagreb, supposedly very historic, it was built by her great- grandfather. In fact, this was built -- when this house was being built, Jews were still not allowed to have property, real estate property in Zagreb. But by the time it was finished -- so it star -- it was built under the name of the architect, was a very famous architect by the name of Felbinger. And by the time it had been -- so this was known for years it was a Felbinger house. But by the time the house was completed, this law had been passed in Austria-Hungary an-and they could, you know --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- own the property.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So this was extremely valuable property because it's in the very center of the main square in Zagreb, and there's a great deal of -- of -- of -- I mean, this is a http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 6 small, this is a two story, very old pa -- I mean, house. But the back is very valuable, let's say like something on Times Square, it -- just the main square in town and so --

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: -- just the land itself is extremely valuable and there was another house in the back and so -- so that was one of the things and also my father had -- had some -- ano -- some more real estate property in Zagreb and other odds and ends, and --

Q: So he got involved in this compensation negotiation?

A: Yes, ye -- well, not really. I mean, yes, he -- he did, I mean, he and a lawyer and so on, it took a great deal of time and cu -- and he had to travel to Washington a great deal and so on. But this was done through a lawyer here who -- who -- whose name I don't re-recall right now, but was an American lawyer who dealt with this and with numerous oth -- not too many, but other people who had arrived about the same time we did, and some a little earlier. Not many who arrived later, because first of all there was this cut-up -- cut off date and secondly we arrived just -- we crossed the border from --from Austria to Switzerland on the day that the -- the -- the -- Belgrade was bombed, so you know, if we had been caught we would have been obviously in bad shape.

Q: An-And was your father successful in that? Did he get his money?

A: Yes.

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Q: Mm-hm.

A: It was serious money at the time. I don't -- I -- I don't remember what -- what the amount was, but it was a lot of money.

Q: Mm-hm. And when -- when you were first in New York, you mentioned that you were doing some translating and some research at the library --

A: Yes.

Q: -- when you met someone who was affiliated with broadcasting. It was the precursor to the VOA. But can you talk a little bit about your life when you first came as a young person and -- and who were your friends and what did you do and -- and were you happy to be there, were you -- you know, what -- what were your prospects? What did you --

A: Yes -- yes -- yes, I was very happy to be there because -- in a way, of course I was sad, because as soon as we started getting news of what was going on, it was very painful. But -- but there was a lot of hope still going on. There was a government in exile which was [indecipherable] that was in -- in -- in London and then came back into the United States. We th -- both my brother and I thought this was really fun. We arrived in New York and we stayed in a -- in a -- a what do you call it, an apartment hotel, it was da -- it was on 57" and Sixth. It was called The Salisbury, it was like two or three rooms and a little kitchen in a closet, and a -- and of course, you know, they cleaned up and gave you the -- and gave you fresh http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 8 laundry and so on and there were pa -- I think there were two bedrooms and some kind of a living room and so on. And I remember going to a five and 10 cents store and we bought all of this crazy china, very cheap stuff, and like four plates and four spoons and so on. And it was sort of like playacting almost. Nobody was aware of really what was going on and how it was going to happen. There was -- we knew, of course, that there were Jews being taken to concentration camps in Austria and Germany, but there was no talk of death camps, and there were none at that time, I don't believe. And so, we were there. Also, at the same time, this gentleman who was in the mustard business with my father, who was from Belgrade, he -- they came -- no, they may have arrived just a little earlier than we did. There was a girl who was about, I don't know, two, three ye -- two years younger than I am, and a boy who was maybe a year or two younger than my brother. And it was fun. My mother didn't have the faintest notion about cooking. This very nice Mrs. Shanser taught her to cook. By that time we had moved to a nice furnished place in river -- in Riverdale in New York. Do you know where that is, across from [indecipherable]

Q: No, I -- mm-hm.

A: -- but anyhow, it's -- it's almost on the border of Scarsdale and well, Westchester county, or whatever. And they had this very nice apartment building that had a bus taking you to the -- to the subway if you wanted it, several times a day, and to the little grocery, to -- to shopping [indecipherable] was where my http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 9 mother used to go with this friend who was teaching her how to cook. And however, when we got there, we discovered that there really -- we didn't have enough knives and forks and we couldn't function very well with whatever we had, these four spoons and so on. And that place did not have any tablecloth or any -- it - - it -- it -- it was the -- it -- actually, the furniture was quite nice, and it was large and quite pleasant. So then my father went to an auction in New York. And this was a extremely sad thing that I'm still -- that is still terribly painful to me. He went to the New York docks, wi -- where there were numerous cra -- not crates, what you call the -- what do you call these things that you send large amounts of furniture, household goods?

Q: Containers?

A: Contains.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Okay. And for non-payment of fees at the dock, these things were auctioned off.

So he didn't really know what -- what was in it, but they would say, I don't know, china and silverware and odds and ends and so on. And he bought this almost sight unseen -- in fact, sight unseen stuff, which then was brought home and I still have it, but this -- now it's going to go [indecipherable]. Very, very elaborate -- if you want I'1l show you the thing because it's kind of amusing -- china, which was obviously bought by a family that was moving to the States with you know, what http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 10 can we buy that -- that -- of German goods that I -- we're permitted to take out and so on.

Q: Mm.

A: So this is just a lot of gold and a lot -- "ll show it to you -- thing, which we used for everyday use. I think we were cutting things and so on. I mean, our -- our china at home was very nice china, but it wasn't elaborate, I mean was -- it was okay, it was --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- it was a -- we -- we thought this was really fun, both my brother and I. And then one day -- there's all sorts of stories about it -- one day somebody said, do you know how much this stuff is worth? I said, absolutely no idea, I mean, this is what - - yeah, this is what we use. Although we thought it was quite funny that it was as -- as -- as elaborate as it was. So finally we decided okay, we need to do -- put this aside. However, later on we did use for slightly better stuff, slightly better occasions, this china. And one day -- by that time the government in exile had -- from Yugoslavia, had left London or some parts of it and were in London -- were in New York. And as ours was really just about the only family --

Q: Intact.

A: -- intact, and you know, we didn't live in a -- in a hotel, all of these guys whose wives were left either in Zagreb or in Belgrade and whatever, would congregate and http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 11 come and have coffee with us and -- and kugelhupf and things like that. And by -- I don't know, this wasn't at the time, yet maybe it was, that Albina Padovan had come from -- no, I'd -- I'm -- I don't think so. Anyhow, we were having, I remember as today, there were about five or six various ministers of one kind or another. One of them was the minister of -- of the post office, who was a -- who -- who -- who had gone to the -- to a -- to a Franciscan seminary, but who became the minister of, as I said, of the post -- of post offices in th -- and was a friend, very close friend of my father's from childhood days. So he was there, and then there was a guy by the name of Gavrilovic who was a -- who was the Minister of Finance.

He hadn't a been, but I'm -- I think he was pre-war, pre -- pre-war, I think he was the -- a congressman in Belgrade. That was Gavrilovic. And there were several others. And then there were some people, some refugees who had meanwhile come from Belgrade and -- via Cuba, which was another way that people were coming in.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: And they got into -- and I had -- this was at the time when there was a particularly horrible story going on with Draza MihailovicC/ and -- and -- and -- and - - and Tito. And it was at the time when the Germans were killing every 10" child or every 10" male in one of the cities. And I remember coming back from work and they're s-standing there and suddenly they got into a horrible fight. One was with a cake knife and the other had his -- had the -- a chair, trying to ward off -- I -- I don't http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 12 remember who was doing what. One of them fainted, and my mother and I just disappeared into the maid's room and locked ourselves up because we didn't want to be part of this whole story. And in the process one -- one of the cups got broken.

So it's not an absolute --

Q: Perfect set.

A: -- [indecipherable] set. So -- so, you know, we must have been -- this wasn't an unusual thing, they were there a lot of the time and so that necklace, one of the things. And then when we opened this -- this case with the set -- with -- with -- they had between it, and I may still have some, little flannel dividers with embroidery, hand embroidery around it.

Q: Wow.

A: You know, it -- it was just --

Q: Heartbreaking.

A: -- heartbreaking. It was awful.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

A: But I don't even think -- this became heartbreaking later to me, th-this -- this was still all in the process, okay --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- so you know, maybe they're somewhere else. We didn't know yet what really was going on.

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Q: Yeah, and did -- these men were coming -- you knew what was going on, because you were in touch with these people whose lives and livelihoods were very tied up with what was happening there.

A: Sure.

Q: So you were on the edge of --

A: Yes.

Q: -- knowledge.

A: Yes.

Q: Was it the assumption at that moment in time that you were gonna go back? Was this a temporary situation for you?

A: It was a temporary situation.

Q: Yeah?

A: It was so much a temporary situation that I actually thought when I was -- married Morris, that he was going back on his job and I was going with him. And then he had to resign and [indecipherable]

Q: Well, you're jumping ahead a little bit.

A: Yeah.

Q: So your -- your -- your mother and father were assuming that we will maybe stay here --

A: Yes.

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Q: -- til things blew over and --

A: Yes.

Q: -- maybe -- maybe a fe -- years, but --

A: Yes.

Q: -- we're going to go back.

A: Yes.

Q: Yeah, yeah. Tell me about your job, this job that you got.

A: The job was the -- the organization at that time was called coordinator of information, and Elmer Davis was the head, the director and whatever you would call it.

Q: Right.

A: And at that time I guess there was some broadcasting going on, but I had very little to do with it. What I did was, I was in something called the media analysis section and with me it mostly consisted of sitting in the public library in New York doing research on the number of speakers of [indecipherable] or -- or -- or -- or Serbian or whatever. But I remember mostly it was African and -- and -- and -- and Asian languages. I wasn't terribly good at it, but anyhow I did do it. And then this mo -- merfed -- morphed, is the word, morphed into a -- into the -- first it was called -- this was only called va -- as I said, coordinator -- coordinator of information and then it became -- it wasn't still Voice of America, forget what it was called. It was - http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 15 - that was an in between thing. My husband was in the same building and I didn't know him at all.

Q: And this was in New York?

A: This was in New York, yeah.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: There wa -- there -- there was broadcasting going on mostly from London, and there was a man who was a Serb who had lived -- a Yugoslav, but he was a Serb, who had lived in Paris and had been doing broadcasting in a very interesting way.

We always listened to him in Zagreb, pro-allies and so on. And as the French -- he finally got evacuated and left -- and ended up in New York and continued broadcasting from -- not Voice of America, but what was the pla -- I'm trying to think of what it was called, it wasn't -- it was - it was not yet Voice of America, it was coordinator of information. Office of War Information --

Q: Uh-huh, of course, right.

A: -- was what it was called, yeah, okay. So within the Office of War Information, then we got Voice of America. Morris was in a totally different thing and I didn't even know he -- he existed. So this Serbian broadcaster ended up in New York.

Q: Was this Petrovich?

A: Yes, it was Peter Petrovich. How did you know that?

Q: From your other interview.

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A: Aha.

Q: You me -- you mentioned his name, yeah.

A: Okay. So s -- Peter Petrovich, who was quite -- I mean, he was very royalist and so on, but at that time there was nothing else. I mean, they a -- we just had started hearing slowly that there were two movements going on in Yugoslavia. So anyhow, I at -- I was -- my job was translating -- I think he -- I don't know whether it was a 15 minute broadcast or longer, half hour, it seemed endless, I'll tell you that. I was given -- he would -- he would provide a script. And I had to translate that script and this all went into broadcast control or whatever it was called.

Q: From Croatian to English?

A: From Serbian to English, right.

Q: He didn't speak English, or he didn't -- he would read it --

A: First of all he didn't speak English, but certainly he wouldn't have bothered translating. I mean he was -- he was something of a -- of a star. And he probably would have been bad anyhow. I was -- I was employed there, okay, what are we going to let her do? At that time I think I was working for something called the Balkan section that was being run by a -- first by an Albanian, and then by a Greek, there were no Yugoslavs in left or right, except for me. And I translate at -- at the -- get this material and -- and in -- I would get it maybe the night before, I'm not quite sure. Come in in the morning, I would trans -- I would read it and then I'd translate http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 17 it and I would -- this was then submitted and then he would do his thing. So one day he got very sick, he got pneumonia, but they didn't want to stop the broadcasts and he didn't want to stop the broadcasts. And he wrote the fine scripts and I translated them and I voiced them, saying that I was doing this, you know, in the name of, and it always ended with long live his highness, kin -- King Peter of Yugoslavia, along with the -- Draza Mihailovic, I mean, that whole event. So --

Q: I'm going to see how we're doing. Okay, we have a couple more minutes.

A: So this -- this -- this was it. So then finally a section, a Serbo-Croatian section was se-set up and a very nice person by the name of Milan Hatzuk, who was a -- originally from Zagreb, but who had worked as a journalist in Belgrade for awhile.

And I don't know when he came to the States, I think before we did -- who was there and got the job. He was not an American citizen yet, but almost. All of us were, you know, sort of -- nobody knew what was going to go, we were we -- some of us were -- of course, I mean, I -- I was about to become an American citizen, I had, you know, first papers and the works --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- and so on, so I had very little problems, but we had to be supervised by an American and that was it.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And there were -- yeah, yeah, which I thought was fine.

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Q: Yeah. Was it -- w-was it fun work? Did i -- did you really -- did you like it?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you feel a sense of --

A: Yes.

Q: -- importance in -- in it?

A: Yes, yes, yes. Then they had a women's program finally.

Q: Really?

A: Which was kind of fun, which I th -- which I actually heard from friends who had heard that I was [indecipherable]. I always felt that it was pretty stupid stuff because -- because, you know, people really did expose themselves. They could have been killed for listening. This -- this was -- this was a very funny thing. This was done -- some of them I did, but they weren't very interesting. I mean, some suggestions they had, fairly boring. [indecipherable] I used supposedly for interest for women. It was very hard to find any -- whoever was at that time I think was a secretary of -- of labor, a woman in the States [indecipherable]

Q: Perkins.

A: Perkins.

Q: Yeah.

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A: And a number of things of that kind. You know, you tried to do something that wasn't really just stupid, and did it. And this was -- this was beamed to BBC. And then BBC several hours later would -- would beam it --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- to Yugoslavia. And as I said I heard from friends who had heard me and so on, although I didn't go by my name.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And --

Q: What name did you use?

A: Sorell.

Q: Right.

A: S-o-r-e-l-1. So then -- which is the name that my brother then --

Q: Right.

A: -- [indecipherable] And this was kind of fun. It was am-amusing because I would come to me -- I would come home and then I would turn on the BBC, I could hear myself several hours later, but at that ti -- you know, and then we had these things of -- of -- of dictation speed because of sunspots.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: You couldn't broadcast --

Q: Yeah.

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A: -- at anormal speed.

Q: Very slow, yeah.

A: [indecipherable] very slowly and then there were things that had to be in -- there were some things that were worthwhile. You would -- you would broadcast, you would hear, for instance, when there was some kind of important action back, or whatever.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And you would have reference to it so that they would know that one knows here that this is going on [indecipherable] business.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Let me turn this tape over.

A: Sure.

End of Tape One, Side A Beginning Tape One, Side B

Q: So the na -- the nature of these broadcasts that you were doing, even though they were women's programs --

A: Mm-hm.

Q: -- you would somehow weave into them war news?

A: Yes, yes.

Q: Because you weren't allowed to directly broadcast war news? Can you explain that situation, or what -- ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 21

A: Not really, because I -- I think it was mostly intimations of -- you would say the -- the brave fighters in such and such a place, that so on, so on, one is aware of it, or something like that.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Th-There were intima -- there wa -- there was no direct stuff.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So finally tha -- I mean, this was part of the stuff that I was doing. Meanwhile there was a very nice Yugoslav desk that was set up that had a Slovene, a -- the -- the head of the desk, who was this very nice guy from Bel -- originally from Zagreb, but then later in -- who was a journalist in Belgrade, his name was Hatzuk.

And then there was a very old lady and she seemed even much older than that. She was the mother of a very famous ballerina here, by the name of Pasha Mira. And -- a Yugoslav, bu -- good, I mean, well-known. And she had been the wife of what originally was the [speaks foreign language here] which would be the director of the main Zagreb theater -- well [indecipherable] let's say th-the equivalent of the director of -- of the Kennedy Center, because everything took place there, drama and comedy and -- and everything. So, very old lady, who had been in the States for awhile, and she was supposed to be translating and she was not very good. And then we did future stories of unbelievable boredom to me. And then other things and y- you used to have -- of course you -- you had a headline thing, and then you had a http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 22 feature and then you had another feature and so on. So for awhile I was -- I was the announcer of, you know, I was the in-between person, you know, you have ju -- you have heard Voice of America, huh?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Okay, that kind of business. And -- and I was translating. I was doing a little bit of writing and I was doing a lot of translating because whatever we did -- this was on ditto paper, have you ever seen ditto paper? It was ab -- obnoxious stuff that was blue, here. And you would type on that and then this was taken to some kind of a machine and that was --

Q: Oh right, yes.

A: Yeah.

Q: Mm-hm. Copy paper.

A: And all my pants and everything that I wore was blue. Underwear, everything was -- you couldn't get -- nails. Terrible. Then a very nice woman -- okay, excuse me. [tape break] What can I tell you? [indecipherable] Okay, so then a very nice woman by the name of Mary Vucedic came in. Mary Vucedic had been working for whom I had met in Zagreb, who was a few years older than me -- not quite a few years older than me, who died recently in New York, who was married to a Croat, who worked as [indecipherable] a Croat aristocrat, Lemaniti Vucedic, who [indecipherable] her to the n" degree and finally she got divorced. And then we -- ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 23 you know, we went through all of these terrible things. Her father was killed in a -- in Rome in one of the prisons in Rome, in [indecipherable] was that big -- can you imagine giving that name to a -- to -- to a prison? Okay. So that's where he was killed. He's an older gentleman. Her mother survived and I don't know how, she was a very unpleasant and very demanding German Jewish person. Then there was - - finally we got somebody by -- by the name of Robert Rosenberg, who had been in the U.S. Army. How he got there, from Tusili in Bosnia, he ended up in the United States Army and was -- I think he got TB or whatever, he was demobilized. And he appeared in our midst and we were told, this is a veteran, you give him a job whatever he does. And I will not say that he was -- he was illiterate, but he wasn't very good either. He was no intellectual. And he -- but, he spoke absolutely classical, beautiful Croatian, which he spoke [indecipherable]

Q: Yeah.

A: All of those nice places in Bosnia, I mean, gorgeous. And all of us sort of had -- Zagreb does not have a very nice dialect. And although you spoke standard Serbo- Croatian, it comes through, you can tell where people are from. Then there was a th -- this -- our boss spoke Serbian, although he wasn't a Serb, but he had lived in Belgrade for many times. Then there was a Slovene who had his own broadcast and he tried to keep as far away from us as he could, and -- and --

Q: S-Some things never change.

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A: Some things never change. And -- but he -- he was okay. But as I said, wa -- then there was somebody, a middle aged Croat, he seemed very old to me at that time, by the name of Gospodin Katosic. And he later became the head of the desk because Herzog decided to join Encyclopedia Britannica films, and did that. Which was very smart. And this went on for awhile, and always the same stuff and so on. Very -- not interesting at all, but very hard. And then later there were various young men that took me out. One, you know -- and I'm just thinking of what -- there was somebody by the name of Duncan McDougal junior from the -- from way up in the mountains of North Carolina, whose a great, great -- actually, he was th -- my first boss when - - in the media analysis section. And he knew a great deal about jazz, so he would take me to the village [indecipherable] and all of these nice things and taught me a lot of stuff like that. And I'm just thinking now, two o'clock in the morning he would put me -- and I never thought anything about it, nor did my parents, on the subway in New York, I would go all the way to almost the Bronx there, and then I would take a shuttle bus to the house and it would be three o'clock in the morning when I came to work, and i -- nobody even thought that this might not be very good.

Q: Mm. Mm.

A: That's how safe New York was.

Q: Yeah. Hm.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 25

A: And then I had a very wonderful friend there whose husband -- whose second husband ma -- later became the Polish ambassador to the United States, and he was in the U.N. with a very high job, and he was am-ambassador in London and so on.

And she and I would walk through Central Park West at 11 o0'clock at -- I mean, through Central Park at the -- in the middle of the night, from 47 -- I mean from -- what was the address on Broadway and a -- and -- and 57" Street to her place, she was somewhere near, I don't know, 72(tm) Street and who knows where on the West Side.

Q: Is that where the OWI offices were?

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: 57 and Broadway.

A: Right.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Right.

Q: And you met your husband there?

A: Yes, in a strange way. He had come on leave and he came to tell us he was working for -- well, it wasn't e -- it wasn't Voice of America, and wasn't -- well, i-it was OWI in a way, but it -- they were attached to OSS, I believe, and so they were in uniform, these guys. And he --

Q: OSS, a precursor to CIA.

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A: Yeah.

Q: Yeah.

A: Yeah.

Q: They were doing Intelligence work in the --

A: Yeah. I don't think he wa -- at least he never told me, maybe he was. I'm not asking.

Q: Yeah.

A: Anyhow, and he --

Q: Don't ask him, don't --

A: No, no. And he came to tell us how w -- how our broadcast works -- were -- were -- were deemed by the Serbs, by the locals one way or another, what we should do one way or another and so on. By that time I was engaged to somebody very funny by the name of Raven McDavid, junior, whose father at the time was the -- what was he -- was -- he was -- he wasn't the governor of South Carolina, but the first one under, what was the name of it?

Q: Lieutenant governor?

A: Yeah, Lieutenant governor. And I had gone there to visit and -- and I was taken to [indecipherable] to meet the governor and so on, I was very embarrassed [indecipherable] was terrible. Anyhow, I was enga -- I was -- I was --

Q: You were engaged.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 27

A: I was engaged. I had gone there with my uncle, officially, to Greenville, South Carolina and so on and I didn't even [indecipherable] the assembled guests at this -- it wasn't a banquet, it was serious dinner with the na -- with the guys ex-nanny serving with white gloves still, around, and then after the dinner he drove her home to her place. It was a very strange thing. He was a very good scholar, he was an excellent scholar and he married somebody at the University of Chicago and "m sure this was much better than anything he could have had with me. Plus, my mother couldn't stand him. Okay, and anyhow I was -- I was going to marry this guy, and then, you know, Morris turned up and we -- we were both thinking we were going to go back together to Belgrade, he knew a bunch of people, you know, he kept mentioning, that I had known there. And told us what we did right, what we did wrong and then we started going out and we thought we were going back, and then of course it was impossible. I couldn't and he -- he quit because I couldn't go back and then he started working -- or no -- or -- or -- or trying to find jobs in various other places. But he was there -- he -- he had gone to Bari, that's where he was mostly -- no, that's where he-he was in Bar -- fi-first he was in Algiers. He had flown to Algiers and then they bought up these various broadcast stations and did leaflets and stuff [indecipherable]. And God, when you think how young they were.

Q: What year did you get married?

A: 1946, I believe it is.

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 28

Q: deg46.

A: Mm-hm.

Q: And -- and what -- wha-what did he settle on? What work did he finally take up?

A: He couldn't find a job. It was very, very difficult to find a job. He was told by several people to change his name. This was a very difficult time for -- there was a lot of social discrimination. We had one of the most awful things that he kept blaming himself and [indecipherable] just awful. About a year or so, I mean a year and a half, my mother was still in mourning and so [indecipherable] had been sick and friends of ours, non-Jews had told us why don't you go t -- so and so in Tennessee, there was a very nice country hotel in the -- and by that time I was married already -- go up there.

Q: In mourning for your brother?

A: Yeah.

Q: Yes.

A: Then we got there and when we signed in they said they didn't have any room.

And I -- we had to restrain Morris, he wanted to go and, you know, strangle this poor pe -- person at the desk.

Q: Yeah.

A: But we didn't, and finally, you know we left.

Q: Yeah.

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A: But that was that and then you know, there were -- there were -- there were ads in the papers for -- that weren't o-o -- I mean, they were obvious to who wanted to know, people that -- we at first didn't understand what this was about and if it -- it would say, I don't know, apartment for rent, so and so, close to Protestant church or close to such and such a place, or close -- you know, that kind of stuff. And some were more obvious, you know, Christians only, or whatever.

Q: Even in New York?

A: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But I -- you know, it wasn't very hard to find a place in New York where -- where it was okay to live.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And -- but this is something I had never, never, never in my life experienced, ever, ever --

Q: I know, it's so amazing, actually.

A: -- ever.

Q: Yeah.

A: Yeah.

Q: It was so interesting to me in your last interview --

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: -- Joan asked you time and time again --

A: Never.

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Q: -- had you felt discrimination.

A: Never.

Q: It's so interesting.

A: Never. This was completely integrated, school, social life, whatever you want.

There was always -- the odd thing, the only person that I had ever heard of anything happening like that was a cousin of ma -- not a cousin, a second cousin of mine, we -- you know, I guess one heard there were things going on, possibly because this was such an old family, totally integrated, both on my mother's and my father's side and -- and maybe I don't like the -- the -- the word, you know, it's none -- the word is not important, but the powerful. I hate to say it but these were people who could probably -- no-nobody would have dared to do it directly to me.

Q: Right, right.

A: Maybe that's the reason.

Q: [indecipherable]

A: 1 -- 1 -- I don't know, I -- I -- but it wasn't, I mean I have other friends and -- and th-these are people, non-Jewish friends whom I've had from the word from when I was three years old, and never occurred to them, to me, to anybody that anything might be different. That -- also I had been to -- and -- and my parents also, so it's not my generation.

Q: Right, right.

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A: So this was very, very unusual --

Q: Right.

A: -- to us.

Q: And when -- when you and Morris first got married and your parents were still living in New York, what was your -- did you know -- did you socialize with a lot of Jewish people, did you go to synagogue? Was it -- was it --

A: Never.

Q: No, never? Really?

A: No, never, never.

Q: Really?

A: Never.

Q: Hm.

A: I think it was important -- I'm sure it was important to Morris's family that he married a Jewish person, but they didn't quite know. They -- they -- they didn't understand really, who we were. I mean, we lived in very integrated society. And I - - there was recently at the museum a very nice guy from Israel who had -- he must have had a very, very high position in Israel now because everybody was running around him like he was really somebody important. And he -- we found out that he had been in Zagreb the -- this is another thing that has very little to do with me, but in a way maybe it's interesting. He came from a place called Gradisca originally, ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 32 which is in the Burgenland, which is on the border of Slovenia and Austria. And it is populated mostly by people who were -- who came, I don't know in which century, probably in the 17" or 18" century from a very poor part of Croatia to this area. It's on the border, sort of Austria, Slovenia, Hungary.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Okay. And they're always -- they kept their national costume and they kept their songs and they used to go around all over the -- all over cro -- Yugoslavia and in other places to sing. These were well known minorities who, after I don't know how many centuries still kept their language and everything else. So this gentleman from Israel tells me that he originally came from there. His father had a factory in this Burgenland and he told me the name of the town, I think is Firestaat, I'm not quite sure what it was. And he was a refugee with his family in Zagreb and they were very Orthodox and he told me about -- they had a separate synagogue, they had the separate -- it wasn't a synagogue, it was a separate place where they went to pray or they had that -- I had no idea these people existed. I had absolutely no idea. In the Jewish school where I went, my grade school was the Jewish school in Zagreb, there were a few Sephardim, very few. And there were -- I suspect from the same family --

Q: From Bosnia?

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Q: Yeah, okay.

A: -- originally, I'm sure. I can't imagine any other place. But some Orthodox Jews, because I know that the boys were -- wore pants and I think they wore a hat, or a -- or a -- or a [indecipherable] or whatever. They were very, very poor. These were from around Zagreb somewhere and they were dressed -- I will not say that they -- they weren't -- you know, they were wearing jackets, what kids would wear, lederhosen, God forbid. They would wear some jackets and so on and now when I look at these pictures I see how they're really quite distinct. And apparently these people had a -- had a -- not a synagogue, certainly a place where they gathered and so on. So this gentleman now from -- from -- who came from Israel was telling me about that. By the way, the museum was fantastically helpful to him. They found some books that -- about stuff that his father had told him originally, and he never could check it out and he saw it, tears were going down his face, I mean, it was just unbelievable. But this gentleman told me that he had class and that they were very religious, although not wearing any kind of garb, and that he -- he had the different rabbi. I mean, he didn't know about our rabbis, and so -- he was a child there and so on. Now what I found out later about these peoples -- about this -- this place, Gradisca, which now is Austria, is that they had parallel city governments, they had a parallel Jewish and non-Jewish police, a parallel Jewish and non-Jewish fire

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 34 brigade and various other things like that. So during various holidays they would spell each other.

Q: Wow.

A: So an -- [had no idea about that --

Q: I've not heard of such a thing.

A: -- he told me that.

Q: Huh.

A: Yeah.

Q: Huh. Now, this is --

A: Lalso didn't even know that there were that many Jews there. I remember --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- you know, I can think of Croats and singing and folk costumes, but apparently there was a very, very large Jewish community in that place.

Q: Hm.

A: Strange.

Q: Yeah. It's interesting that you were in New York at that time, where so many Jews had come from eastern Europe.

A: Yes.

Q: And you know, starting life all over. And -- and you didn't know that many Jews, and you didn't -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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A: No.

Q: It's interesting.

A: On the other hand, there was a very nice auth -- actually, I -- I did know, I mean, this guy, this Polish person who -- who was a -- who -- who was a partner of my father, they had come -- but I think they had come earlier.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And they were not -- they were not Orthodox or anything like that. In fact, the daughter married somebody, a very, very Conservative person, whose name I can't remember now, who I think is either at Harvard or Princeton who -- who you hear every once in awhile, I -- I'll think of the name. But no, they -- yeah, then in New York there was a wonderful pastry shop called Elite. Th -- I think it -- yeah, Elite.

The -- Elite was on 72(tm) Street between, I think Broadway and whatever the next street was, and that's where everybody got together from various parts of -- these were central Europeans, they were not eastern Europeans.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: They were Germans, Austrians, Yugoslavs, maybe Czechs. And that Austro- Hungarian pastry was what was --

Q: Attracted them.

A: -- trac -- was there, and I guess maybe the owners were there and large coffees with heaps of whipped cream and so on. They have disappeared. And they all read, http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 36 including my father and so on, was a -- an -- a newspaper called The Aufbau. Have you heard about that? It's a very interesting -- it was a paper people were looking -- first of all it was political, it was very interesting politically. And secondly you would find ads. People looking and looking for so and so from such and such a place, anybody know whether this person survived or not. This went on for years --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- years. And lots of very liberal editorials and so on. I don't know whether it still exists, but it was called The Aufbau. And as I said, they all sat around waiting for better times, yeah. I'm not quite sure when we started hearing about -- about -- really. We knew about concentration camps, but we didn't know about killing camps until fairly late.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Later than we should.

Q: deg45 -- deg44 --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- deg44.

A: Yeah, yeah. And there weren't any, as a matter of fact. I mean, maybe there were, but they were -- they were -- it was --

Q: Yeah. You got married in "46?

A: Yeah.

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Q: And what [indecipherable]

A: Do you?

Q: No, I don't, mm-mm.

A: One of my daughters doesn't want. Didn't want and doesn't.

Q: Yeah.

A: The other one has two.

Q: Yeah. So what was your early -- the early years of your marriage? What did your husband end up doing and where did you live?

A: We first lived with my parents for a very short time. Then we moved one house fur -- one apartment building further on, in a studio on Riverside Drive. We were there, I'm not quite sure h-how long. My husband was trying to find a job, didn't find a job, he -- my father was, I think, hoping that he would be maybe a businessman, which was the -- the -- the mo -- two times that he -- he tried, it was disastrous, and he was very unhappy, and so that never -- one of them, unbelievably, was with a guy who -- who made Desenex, if you know what that is.

Q: Oh [indecipherable]

A: Okay, you can imagine what fun that was. But at that time it was just beginning, they're probably making millions now.

Q: That's right.

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A: Okay. That wasn't quite his thing. Then my uncle got involved -- do you remember L'il Abner?

Q: Yeah.

A: Do you remember the shmoos? Shmoos were little fat things that would -- that would swoon and fall on the st -- on -- on -- just to please you and you could eat them, and that made them very happy, or whatever. So my uncle started -- I don't know how he got -- I think he got connected with Al Capp somehow, and Al C -- my uncle who was a lawyer, who by that time had come from Cuba -- via Cuba, let's put it. He started the shmoo business and they had little boxes with shmoos on it and a tiny little, you know, s -- s -- candy in the little boxes, and I don't know, you know, these little rings, or little -- little charms, or whatever, were stuck in there. And this went for awhile, and they didn't do very well, can you well -- you can well imagine it. Then this fell apart and one of the people who had meanwhile come from Yugoslavia, via I'm not sure how, not easily, had come -- who -- who was an extremely well-off person. If I tell you that he owned the salt monopoly in Yugoslavia --

Q: Oh.

A: -- and various other odds and ends like that. And he had two sons, one of them was a year, maybe two -- no, two years older than me, who -- one time I think the families may have thought we'd get married, but neither he ever wanted to, or I -- I http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 39 mean wa -- not even. And we were constantly having -- we were -- we were always trying to outdo each other in one thing or another and th-this started when we were quite small and we were both riding, and we were supposed to -- to have a -- have a -- I don't know, a trial for a -- for a horse show. And, I think I was maybe 11 then and we had -- my mother was in Vienna at the time and I had gone with a man na -- not with a man, he was the governors by that time, to this place where -- where we - - we were supposed -- supposed to practice by jump -- not jumping, but various other odds and ends. And there was this very beautiful horse that was very unpleasant, very obstreperous and very -- not very good. And this -- he said he wouldn't -- he wasn't even thinking of riding this horse, and I was -- and I was going to do some up -- one-upsmanship, I said I would. And I did, and I had an absolutely horrible fall, they thought I would have had broken everything, I had a -- I had a problem. In -- in fact, I think I ha -- since that time I have problems with my -- not with memory, but with other things. It took -- nothing was broken. It was an unbelievable thing, but nothing did. And then this -- his father, the salt monopoly person, who I think by that time had changed his religion, decided to -- to go to the synagogue because it hadn't -- it was me and not his son who had gotten that fall.

And -- and -- and what else did he do? Yeah, and he didn't eat on Saturday until noon, or some other kind of thing like that. But we've always been friends. So anyhow, this guy arrived with a lot of money and he eventually got a -- not a lot, USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 40 well, back some money. Not quite as well as we did, because he -- they were much, much better off than we were. In fact, their house in Zagreb now is the German embassy residence. No, Austrian, Austrian.

Q: Wow.

A: Austrian. And the guy lives in New York and is in not very good shape. But anyhow, my father s -- decided this is such a wonderful businessman, that Morris, who is such a miserable businessman, but does speak English and does have connections and so on, and certainly knows the south, we went to Athens, Georgia, and they bought -- End of Tape One, Side B USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 41 Beginning Tape Two, Side A

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg. This is tape number two, side A. Okay, so you -- you went with this fellow who came --

A: Yeah --

Q: -- to Athens --

A: -- his name was [indecipherable] and there were -- there were quotas that were available for -- I think it was peanut oil, mostly peanut oil. There were great shortages in the States and these people had this oil at -- what you would call it?

Not a factory, it was -- it was a plant. And then they would homogenize some and then he would buy futures, you know, like -- like huge con -- railroad containers worth of stuff. And then if you were smart you made a lot of money, but they lost a lot of money. Drove my husband up the wall and my father was absolutely convinced that this very smart businessman would do it and this very nice person who could, you know, talk to other people, could do anything, fell apart. Morris felt awful. We lived in Atlanta for about a year and a half, I believe, at the time.

Q: Hm. Hm.

A: I believe then we came back to New York and I became pregnant. Were -- we were -- we lived in a -- a project -- my mother said it was a project, it's supposedly very sheik, you know, it was a -- was something called Fresh Meadows, somewhere http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 42 in a -- not too far, let's say, from LaGuardia airport, I would think that [indecipherable] and so on. And still he couldn't find a job and so on. And then we - - by that time my family in Venezuela said to Morris -- oh, and then there were several, again, suggestions, want you to change your name. And he refused to do that and my -- up -- people at various places made this suggestion. Well meaning, you know, nobody unpleasant. He said no, he wouldn't, his father had come with his -- this name and, no. And he didn't want to find himself in a position where he would, you know, not represent himself [indecipherable]

Q: Mm-hm.

A: He is -- he is so scrupulously honest it's unbelievable, my husband. I -- I -- I can sometimes tell a lie if it's necessary. Not a lie, but a, you know, a social lie, so -- but he can't, he is straight arrow. And -- as, by the way, are both my daughters. I don't know that I'm devious, but under circumstances I guess I could tell a lie. You know, not -- not -- not for everyday use --

Q: Right.

A: -- but I could. So then -- my cousins by that time were in Venezuela. They had come via concentration camps in Italy, and for about a year or so. I don't know how long they were in Spain and my father got them visas. They were going to go on further, I think, I'm not quite sure where in South America, but they stayed there and they did very, very well, extremely well. And at the time the place was really ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 43 starting to move, and they asked my husband to come and see if there's anything he would like to do there. He did and we -- I came over and then he -- the AP person was kicked out because he wrote something about the -- the person who was the dictator then. And then they asked my husband to take his place, which he did and then later he turned, he -- he was running a -- he and another guy, whose husband was -- whose son was just recently with Bremer, asked for him and he was in -- in [indecipherable]. A very nice guy by the name of Horand. He and Morris then were running an English language page in one of the local papers.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And then a -- he was doing, he was working for a fee and --

Q: Was this Caracas?

A: It was in Caracas.

Q: Mm-hm. And you had a baby by then?

A: By -- we -- [had gone with a baby.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: With a, I think, nine months old baby, with Jane. And my aunt was there and my cousin who is the nearest relative I now have, she's two and a half years younger than I am, who had married a guy from Belgrade. A sephard -- Sephardi -- but, oddly enough he was told by at -- it's a very interesting thing with -- his name is Pinkas and when we -- when he got -- you know, when -- when his sons started -- USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 44 went to the Jewish schooling -- where, by the way, my Jane also went for awhile, was a very good school. He -- the director of the school said, listen, nobody called Pinkas is a s -- originally a Sephardi, how did this happen? So what probably happened was that the mother was Sephardic and the father married into the family so all the --

Q: Kids.

A: -- not all the ki -- all the -- all the customs and the food and everything was Sephardic and he considered himself Sephardic. I mean, he had [indecipherable] I guess. But he also said that when he came from the concentration camp to Madrid -- I think they came [indecipherable] to Madrid, that it was incredible. That it smelled like in his mother's kitchen, that the food had the same names as in his mother's kitchen, that it all tasted like that, it was totally familiar. They did very well, and he is su -- they're very charitable, they've given money left and right and he has now paid for the publication of an extremely interesting [indecipherable] now it's the second volume, a book -- a book called "Mismo Prezimali," "We Survived." And it's a -- it's a collection of stories of people from all over, from Croatia, from serv -- Serbia, from everywhere, who survived various camps and so on.

Q: And what's their family name?

A: Pinkas.

Q: Pinkas.

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A: P-i-n-k-a-s. His name is -- his -- his real name is Haim, but he was never known as anything but Milat. And her name is Mia, Maria. So -- and her -- her maiden name was Mueller. And -- which, by the way was the name of one of our archbishops in Zagreb. And she -- so they -- they had first once and then the second son and I -- my -- my second daughter was born while we were in Caracas, Mary.

Partly in -- called Mary for Maria my cousin, Mia and my brother, who was Mario, and a very good friend, a Serbian friend who was there, who was Mara Sajonski, was also Maria, so --

Q: What year was the second one born?

A: deg56.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: In Caracas.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I love her birth certificate, which is in Spanish. And it starts off by saying, this day of so and so presented himself before me Morris Rosenberg, a -- a citizen of the United States who claims to be the father of --

Q: Claims to be.

A: Yes. [reads Spanish] and so on.

Q: Right, right, who says he is the father.

A: Yes.

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Q: Great. How long did you stay then, in -- in Venezuela? He was working as a journalist.

A: He was working -- I'm trying to think exactly how many years we were there, quite a few. By that time my mother had died. You know, I don't know exactly the date, I wil -- forget. We were in New York when there was some -- oh, then what I didn't say was that my husband then -- there w -- there was a weekly English language paper, a weekly, called the "Caracas Daily Journal," which he turned into a daily. And it's not the paper th-that -- page that I told you the English page, that was in a place called [indecipherable] I believe. And we were in New York and there was -- on vacation visiting my father, to -- getting ready to go to New York, to -- to Europe, I believe, when there was some kind of business manipulation and he found out that it wa -- he didn't want to stay there any more. They didn't really oust him, but practically. There was a reason. I'm f -- I'm not quite sure how -- how it went, but anyhow, he never went back. He didn't ba -- go back for various other reasons, and so on. And meanwhile, a very good friend of ours who had previously worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey, I believer it was, had been working -- I think he was already in the Ford Foundation and he -- he asked him to join as a director for east we -- east -- for -- it wasn't east west [indecipherable] I'm not quite sure how. They started at the -- the Institute of International Education, and he was just started and they started exchanges with the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 47 they were bringing in scholars and students and so on. And then he took a group of U.S. governors through a very extensive trip through the Soviet Union, and there was a lot of, you know, brotherhood and such going on. And then he found that this really bored him terribly because of the director of -- of -- of the Institute of International Education said Morris, why don't you present -- you know, do a paper on that or give a suggestion on that and he would do it within 48 hours, and the man said you're supposed to take two months to do that. You -- you're making life very hard for the rest of us. And this went on and on and on like that til finally he -- he wasn't very happy about that. I mean, it was extremely interesting, but -- and by that time students were coming in and graduate students mostly from -- from Yugoslavia to Russian, so I was -- I thought it was interesting, but it wasn't fast enough for him. So meanwhile, a friend of his at the Associated Press said, wouldn't you please join our [indecipherable] services? [indecipherable] time and he said yes. And then we were in New York til -- again, I can't tell you everything, we were there for about two years, two and a half years. They -- and then he had all sorts of, you know, reporting trips all over the world, you know, mostly Latin America. And after that -- let me quickly think how that would -- okay, they asked him to go to Mexico as bureau chief. And again, don't ask me for dates. Where we were on and off for, I think six or eight years, something like that.

Q: So, sounds like early 60's you were in the -- ontectrefeeanne@aushariarg er hither atrmedortabeattfiexaliaton USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 48

A: Yeah --

Q: In Mexico.

A: -- yeah, yeah.

Q: Mm-hm. Mm. Your mother's -- when -- before you -- when you were going out with this English fellow --

A: Yes.

Q: Your mother was afraid that you were going to go off to the colonies and she was going to lose you.

A: I think maybe England more than anything. The poor guy was, you know [indecipherable]

Q: But you -- but you ended up traveling all over the world.

A: Yeah, of course.

Q: Yeah.

A: But the thing was -- no, no, she thought -- she thought I would be happy in England.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: My -- all my things that I had left -- I had been in school in England, I had left there wearing that disguise, Mother's house. And I got them after the war.

Q: Right.

A: But he was killed, poor soul -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: Yeah.

A: -- in Burma, and it was -- it was pretty sad.

Q: Yeah.

A: I'm sure it wouldn't have been successful in any way [indecipherable]

Q: Yeah, yeah. So we're up to the early 60's, let's take a break, okay.

A: Yes.

Q: Let's do that. [tape break] Okay, we're back. We're going to make a little correction here to some of the dates that we've been talking about, so go ahead, Lucie.

A: Okay. We arrived in Venezuela in 1950 because Morris couldn't find any kind of job in New York and I had family there that had just, a few years earlier re -- gotten to Venezuela via camps in Italy, via Spain and then arrived there, I think their destination was somewhere else, but they stopped there and it seemed to have been a very good environment for them in every way. And Venezuela was really thriving at the time in spite of a very unpleasant dictatorship and -- okay. It -- it worked. And as I say, I -- I was some -- not some, but I was quite depressed. I di -- didn't speak Spanish. I helped myself with a little bit of Italian, but there we were and Morris then found a job with -- with Associated Press eventually, and we stayed in Venezuela until 1958. This was the time when I was teaching English in various places. It started out the suggestion of a friend of ours who worked for the U.S.

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 50 government, was at the embassy. At that time United States was setting up so called bi-national centers throughout Latin America [speaks foreign language here] this [indecipherable] that. And this particular one at the time was in downtown Caracas in an old, very beautiful colonial house, but obviously not meant for a school. There was a huge patio with a lovely huge tree in which there was a sloth that would turn up every so often. And also a Hungarian emigre opened a barba -- opened a steakhouse there. It was very nice, on one end of it. And the rest of it around this patio were classes. And I started giving classes to all Venezuelans of one kind or another. Also Spaniards who came, who worked, it was very strange, you would have -- for instance you would have Venezuelans who were -- who hardly had an education at all who were very, very talented and learned the language very fast, whereas you had Spaniards who were -- with -- with university degrees who were really having problems in --

Q: Hm, with English.

A: -- with English.

Q: Hm.

A: And this was going on for awhile among -- there were various American companies that sent their -- their -- their employees that needed to learn the language --

Q: Mm-hm.

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A: -- over to the center. So after awhile, a large hotel opened up, a -- belonging to an American company, I believe it was Pan American who owned it, but there was a hotel called Tamana -- the hotel was called Tamana Cuentos, the large new hotel in Venezuela. So these people were coming from the site to this center, which was in the center of town. And then they decided that this was not good for them and they offered me a contract to simply go to the hotel and sit there and ask the employees, got enough time, they would come and get a class. So then I invented some kind of very unscientific way of teaching them hotel English. Because you had to teach a chambermaid something else than you would have to teach a -- I don't know, a bellboy or something like that, or a waiter, etcetera.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So I made up a lil -- little -- little classes and little phrasebooks for each one of them and they would come, and was wonderful, in the middle of a patio with lovely flowers around and so on and they just wait for them. And we found, you know, that if they needed to work, they worked, if they could come, they could come and I kept -- and I had a flat salary and it was really very nice doing it. This went on for quite awhile, I don't really remember exactly how -- for how long. And the rest of the time I had a very nice time with -- my cousins were there, there was a large Yugoslav community of one kind or another there. Mostly refugees, mostly Jews, but not exclusive -- actually, not at all exclusively, there was a very successful http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 52 Dalmatian entrepreneur who was building bridges and who was importing cement and so on. They're -- they're still there, they're very successful still. He's in his 80's, but he still travels back and forth to Yugoslavia [indecipherable] to Croatia, let's say, probably -- I --I -- he is from southern Dalmatia, I'm almost certain. And then his sister came, an absolutely gorgeous woman. And --

Q: Let me -- let me interrupt you, you had this community, some of whom had a -- so-some of them were relatives, and -- and this is now, we're talking 10 years or so, after the end of World War II.

A: Yeah.

Q: You know, a lot of people that I talk to say that they -- they didn't talk much about what they'd been through during the war, that these were years when people were just making every effort to starting over and building a new life and that what was past was past and there really wasn't much talk about it. Was that your experience? I mean, you --

A: To a certain extent, not -- not 100 percent.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I think they talked among each other quite a bit. This was a very heterogeneous group. I'm just thinking, for instance, my -- my aunt's very closest relative was a woman, a Serbian woman from Novi Sad, who lost her son, actually, who drowned in Lake Geneva when there were refugees there. And then her husband died very ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 53 fast, so you know, she was absorbed into the community. Some of them had been in the same camps in Italy. There -- there was only one woman that I know who had actually been to a very unpleasant, very -- I mean, in the actual killing camp in -- in Germany. No, I don't think so. I -- I think they talked. They didn't talk -- yeah, th- they -- they -- they talked among each other the most of.

Q: Yeah. But your experience was quite different from most of them.

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: Because you'd gotten out.

A: Yes, I -- I didn't experience any of that, and I -- truly I -- I -- there was a guilt feeling.

Q: You did?

A: Oh yeah.

Q: Hm.

A: Oh yeah.

Q: Did your parents have that feeling too?

A: I don't think so.

Q: Really?

A: I don't think so. I think they thought [indecipherable] may -- maybe to an extent, you know, because my brother was killed, and he was a U.S. soldier, but I -- I -- I don't think so.

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Q: Talk about that Lucie, how?

A: Well, he -- he --

Q: No, I mean, talk about your feeling, about guilt.

A: You know that you have so many of your friends, huge numbers on all sides, I mean, Jews, Catholics, communists, Croatian Nationalists of one kind or another, even UstaSas, that you know th-th-they were -- they -- they there were very ambivalent feelings there. But I don't think I was ever embittered. I don't think even my -- my parents were. I've heard a lot of people who were, I don't want to hear about these people any more, don't talk to me about it, I don't care. But I -- I -- I -- [never had that feeling. I was always very much connected to it.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Possibly because I wasn't there, possibly because there was -- you know, whatever I remembered was very nice.

Q: Mm-hm. Were you in, during those years after the war, a-after you came to the U.S., were you in touch with people who stayed?

A: Oh yes, oh yes. People who sort of started trickling back.

Q: What do you mean, going back? Going back in --

A: No, people -- well, some -- some went back, and jus -- in a very -- well, this was -- some very sad things happened. For instance, my -- not my -- my -- my cousin, Mia Bauer Pinkas, she had the large family on her father's side, th-the Bauers. And http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 55 among them was Hanitsa Bauer, who -- whose father was a -- not a member of the communist party, but very left leaning and -- and actually had all kinds of trouble with -- he -- he had to be very careful about it. One member of that family, a nephew, this was a guy who was a communist who was actually in jail at the age of, I don't know, maybe 18 - 19, pre-war Yugoslavia and who was killed in -- it was a national hero and was killed in -- in the jail. His name was [indecipherable] Friedman. So, okay, this was a left leaning family. Dr. Bauer and Anitsa, after being an -- in ital -- in an Italian camp went to London and spent the blitz in England.

They were the first ones to go back. Not with the government in exile, but with -- I don't know, [indecipherable] was liberated and there was a government. I don't know whether it was really a government, but yeah, it was, formed, he went back.

He was a -- he was a x-ray specialist, a radiologist. And he, I think he was [indecipherable] in uniform as a colonel to the Yugoslav army, Tito's army and so on and he was on the on the [indecipherable] for awhile. And his daughter Anitsa also went, I don't know what happened to the wife, I think -- I guess she must have gone, too. And after awhile they went to Zagreb. This was not a good thing. They were, after awhile very disappointed that -- what was going on. I believe one of the sayings were -- were -- were you -- you were conveniently in London during the war while we were in the mountains. And I think there may have even been some http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 56 intimations of anti-Semitism, but I will not swear, I will not say that. They ended up by going to Israel.

Q: Hm.

A: And then from Israel to Venezuela.

Q: Mm-hm. Did a lot of Jews from Croatia go to Israel?

A: Yes.

Q: Yeah.

A: Not immediately.

Q: Right.

A: Not immediately, but after awhile many did.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And there had been a group already there of -- of real Zionists before -- you know, before there was actually an Israel [indecipherable] during the mandate, there was a -- a kibbutz of Jews from -- from Yugoslavia, from that -- maybe early 30's, maybe --

Q: In Croatia someplace?

A: No, no, in Israel they went --

Q: Oh, in Israel?

A: Yeah, mm-hm.

Q: Mm-hm.

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A: They -- that was one of the most horrible things that I re -- read now when I was working in the museum, in the Holocaust Museum. There was an attempt [phone rings] during -- maybe in 1941 -- "40 -- "41 or "42 to bring a -- the group of Jewish children to Israel via Turkey -- via -- from hung -- yeah, via Hungary and to Turkey, and then from Turkey to Palestine. [tape break] I was talking about this group of Jewish children that were being evacuated, supposedly, via Turkey --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- to Israel. And I saw, in the museum now, lists -- and I don't know how this came, this was probably st -- came with all th -- all -- all the papers, all the -- all the documents that were photographed in -- I mean, not photographed, whatever you do, copied in -- in Zagreb from -- from the archives.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Endless lists of what these children have to bring along as clothing, and I mean, most of them are -- were killed. But the list consisted of two pair of pajamas, gym clothes, shoes --that means special slippers for gym. For a little girl such and such, so many pair of socks, for little boys that many underwear. This was absolutely -- you know, and that they were changing them, they were not the same. And the terrible story about this is that one of the woman, who by the way is part of that Bauer family. A woman -- a woman who was an entrepreneur by herself in Istanbul in the lumber business. I think she was a widow and she was -- she was in the ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 58 lumber business in Istanbul. And one of the people who was supposed to come was her grandson, whose name was Fayja, I forget the surname. He's a boy of maybe eight, 10, not sure how -- and -- and I saw him on the list, by the way. And -- and the list kept changing, too, you know. I don't know whether these children have been -- since then some were -- been taken away, some -- th-there -- there was all kinds of [indecipherable] going on there. And finally this group arrived in Istanbul, and -- which was known by the way, Croatia society [indecipherable]

A: Oh, I didn't know that.

Q: Yeah. And it was met, among other people, by this lady. And this lady was running around and calling this Fayjus" name. And the local boy presented himself, but it was not Fayja. And you can imagine what kind of a scene that -- End of Tape Two, Side A Beginning Tape Two, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg. This is tape number two, side B. But you were saying that when this group of children arrived in Istanbul --

A: Yes.

Q: -- this woman met the group and this -- a boy answered to her grandson's name -

A: A boy son -- a boy ans -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: -- but it wasn't him.

A: -- but it wasn't him. But what had happened, this boy died in Zagreb of an infectious disease while these lists were, you know, still [indecipherable]. And the - - inserted into the group of I don't know, there had to be that many that were permitted to go, was a child from Hungary, who was told to say he was Fayja so and so.

Q: Wow.

A: And you can imagine that grandmother who thought this child had been saved.

And i -- it --

Q: Jeez, she must have been frantic.

A: She was totally frantic. By the way, there's a relative of this person in New York who's a -- who came on a totally different -- who came with some kind of child transport from France, and boy -- and -- and to some foster parents in New Jersey.

And he is a very well-known scientist at NYU, and he's working on that famous accelerator in -- in -- in Geneva, or in -- on the -- on the border with France.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And this was a --

Q: And he was on one of those trains.

A: But not this transport, this was a totally different, this was a --

Q: You know what -- roughly what year this would have been?

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A: I think this must have been 41 - deg42.

Q: Yeah. And were there many groups of children that went out of Croatia like that?

A: L only know of this one, there may have been others. I'm -- there were various ways of kids being pulled out, but this was an official group and this was going through -- through the -- I guess the Germans and the -- the Croatian authorities and their -- I'm telling you, there was more paperwork on -- on -- on what they were allowed to bring with them, including gym clothes. This was very important. And --

Q: And did they make it to Israel?

A: They made it to Israel.

Q: Yeah?

A: Yeah. From Istanbul. Amazingly, one person who actually I -- I don't -- he -- he is not rela -- related to them. There's a man here who was working at the Institute of Peace, who is married to this -- let's see, she's not a relative of mine, but she is -- sh-sh-she is a -- a close relative of a -- of -- of my cousins, I mean, she's -- she's a -- my cousin -- they have the same grandmother, let's put it that way, or great- grandmother, some -- anyhow, she -- she's a blood relative. She's not my blood relative, she's a relative who went to -- who spent the war -- I know I -- probably in Italy. Her -- her mother was the sister of this guy, Browning that I told you who was the -- the famous leftist and -- and -- and a national hero and -- in -- in -- in Croatia.

This m-ma -- this person whose name is Tuval, who was this professor and -- lately, USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 61 but he was at Harvard and he's also at -- at the university in Jerusalem and who worked here at the Institute of Peace, and this is -- is -- is a very wonderful scholar.

His father -- they -- they had emi -- immigrated very much earlier from Novi Sad.

They were well known Zionists and his father went to Israel. I think they lived -- they lived in Jerusalem. And he went through grade school and unive -- and then -- and high school and university in -- in Israel or m -- and then came to the States and studied and then went back. There's a big tragedy in that family, too, but I won't tell you about. He was working with a Jewish a -- Jewish agency, I believe, the father. This person was w-working with a Jewish agency in Istanbul. And the Papal Nuncio in Jerusalem was the wonderful pope, you know, the -- John the whatever, the -- the -- the super pope. He was nice, wonderful pope was --

Q: What -- hang on a second. [tape break]

A: Yeah, well by then already -- but he was Pope John.

Q: Yeah, 24".

A: Yeah.

Q: Yeah.

A: Who helped out with -- wi-wi -- with all kinds of -- of immigration things and helped out with the Germans and so on, was absolutely wonderful in every way.

Q: Mm.

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A: So, you know, th-ther -- there was stuff going on, there were undergrounds, there were -- there were official ways, there -- and, you know, there's that -- this was the time of the mandate, there was no Israel [indecipherable]

Q: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do -- was there any -- did your father ever consider going to Israel instead of the United States?

A: I -- I don't think so. He was very touched when he first came to Israel, when he visited, he -- he actually felt at home. I -- I -- I did not.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I did not.

Q: In those years after you all came to New York and -- and then when you went to Venezuela, were you -- did you keep an active involvement in a synagogue, were you -- did you consider yourself active Jews?

A: Yes, I -- you know, you are what you are.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: This -- this was never a re -- a religious community, but for instance, my daughter Jane went to Jewish grade school in -- in Caracas.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: It was a very excellent school and ya -- she -- actually she learned to write Hebrew and -- and -- and Spanish at the same time, because this was bilingual and this -- it was span -- it was called -- what was it called? Escuela [indecipherable] my http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 63 God, how is this, how am I forgetting that? [speaks foreign language here] it was called. And one of her first teachers [indecipherable] was a -- brought from Israel and she was of Bosnian descent.

Q: [indecipherable]

A: Yeah. A very nice woman. The other one was, I guess, either Russian Jewish or Polish Jewish or whatever. It was a very, very good school, and it had the regular curriculum of the Venezuelan government, you know, whatever the Ministry of Education had, plus a Jewish curriculum. So, you know, there wa -- there was never any -- any doubt in any of that. All --

Q: What do you -- what do you mean, any doubt about what?

A: I mean, you know, I was Jewish, I was Jewish. It was --

Q: Right.

A: -- it was --

Q: You weren't going to turn away from it for any reason.

A: No.

Q: Many people did.

A: No, I didn't

Q: Yeah.

A: Imean, how could I when -- no. Also, when we got back to New York, about which we will speak later, my father insisted that Jane go to a Sunday school in http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 64 New York, a Jewish Sunday school. And num -- and -- and when we were in -- in Mexico, I had -- Mary went off to a Jewish Sunday school. Not for long, but she did go. And Jane did, and so on. But neither of them are religious in any way.

Q: Really?

A: No.

Q: Hm.

A: That was not a very religious family.

Q: Your -- your parents?

A: Yeah. No, no. I mean, there were certain customs that were kept and that was it.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I mean if -- it was like you had dark hair or light hair or whatever, it was part of your -- your being and that was it. And that had a feeling, you know, that it didn't really require any -- any -- any nurturing. I -- maybe that was a mistake, I mean, they -- they're well aware of everything and then, in fact, Jane married a non-Jewish person who then, at his own behest became a -- a -- converted to Judaism and in his second marria -- marriage, married another Jewish woman. I thought that was quite interesting.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: And the other one, I mean, considers himself -- he was born a Protestant, but -- but he's totally irreligious and -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: When your daughters -- your daughters both knew your father and mother.

A: Yes.

Q: And I'm wondering how it was explained to them how your -- they came to be in the United States, how you came to be. Did -- did they know the whole story about -

A: Yes --

Q: -- your leaving and --

A: -- yes.

Q: -- and the Holocaust in general --

A: Absolutely.

Q: -- from the beginning?

A: From the very beginning.

Q: It's been an -- it's an issue with a lot of people --

A: Yes.

Q: -- how to tell the young people.

A: No, we -- this -- this was very straightforward.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And they were among people i -- i -- i -- who -- who talked about it one way or another. I mean th-this was very fresh in my cousin's memory, for instance in -- in - http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 66 - in Caracas. She was surrounded by people who had been in this camp and that camp and it was -- it was daily conversations.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: And some of it was even fun.

Q: How so?

A: For instance, my cousin met her husband in -- in -- in -- actually, near Dubrovnik, but they were -- they were all -- both sent to a camp in Albania and the romance developed then -- then, and then they were sent to a camp in -- in Italy and it continued. And when they finally -- this -- this is another thing that very few people talk about and has -- has nothing to do with my families, but I do want to come back to that. You know, they -- they -- they had their own social life and they tried to cook and so on together. There was memories that they talked about.

Q: Mm-hm. The camps that your cousin were in were more like detention camps than [indecipherable] what we think of --

A: They were concentration camps, but they were not -- they were not killing camps of any kind.

Q: Right. They were forced labor camps?

A: No.

Q: No.

A: No. Maybe detention is more that -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: Yeah.

A: Yeah. One of them I for -- one of them was in -- in -- under Italian -- this was obviously by -- at that time Albania was under Italian occupation, had been for some time and they were brought from the Dalmatian coast to -- to Albania and I don't know exactly how long they were there, but they -- they were then taken to -- by the Italian army, or Italian authorities to another camp which was called ferra -- Ferramonti di Tarsia in -- I forget where -- where exactly in Italy it was. [tape break] Think we was talking about the groups and -- no, I don't remember. [tape break] -- went over that they -- they -- they came to Spain and from -- and Spain, they sent this telegram to us and then my father was going around to find out who would give them visas and affidavits and -- and obviously deposits at the consulates for money and then that's how it -- how they got there, they're all doing very well now.

Q: Hm.

A: And they were -- Dr. Bauer actually was a Zionist, was an active Zionist. My aunt's husband.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: My cousin Mia's husband.

Q: Mm-hm. But that's the only one?

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A: There -- there were some who were maybe more -- yeah. But on the other hand, my cousin didn't go to Jewish school in Zagreb and I did. I did go to the Jewish school where obviously you had the regular Yugoslav curriculum for -- for grade school, it went from one to four. And -- plus Hebrew.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And actu -- and Biblical history. And at that time already, there w -- and ""m talking in the early 30's -- late 20's, early 30's, there were, in Croatian, Zionist children's magazines with beautiful woodblocks in it. And I still remember the name of one of them -- an -- of the main one, it was ca-called [indecipherable]. And I think it -- they were monthlies. Had stories about children, about Israel. About Palestine, not about Israel, about Palestine. And there -- there were people who were leaving. There was, in my class in grade school, the son of the big Zionist leader, whose name was Dr. Alexander Leite, who -- whose son was in my class and sadly the -- he died at the -- I think the age of nine, maybe even 10, from scarlet fever. And that was a horrible loss. And Dr. Leite then went and -- and -- and was very, very active in -- in Israel. I think he -- I th -- I think he survived. Yeah, I think he did. He went over there. And there was a younger daughter by the name of Tamara who may still be alive in -- in Israel.

Q: Let me ask you about the 50's.

A: Mm-hm?

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Q: It was -- so Tito had taken power and there was so much repression there --

A: Yes.

Q: -- in the 50's and people were jailed and --

A: Yes.

Q: -- still terrible things going on there.

A: Yes.

Q: Did you have -- were you in touch with people who were there, who had survived in Zagreb and -- Jews or relatives who had survived and stayed on, and did you have any correspondence or connection with them during those first 10 years or so after the war?

A: Yes, we did, but those that survived were mostly leftists and those were people who would have been -- who would have been partisans.

Q: And come to power.

A: And come to power.

Q: Uh-huh, okay.

A: And then somewhere, of course, I mean, as I said, Dr. Richard Bauer decided this was not for him and he went --he went to Israel. I know a lot of people who finally did. The person that I mentioned to you before, aga -- who -- who lives here now, she was a little girl, her uncle -- and she -- she -- most of her -- the war she spent with her grandmother, she tried to go -- they tried to get visas to go to Israel http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 70 and they could not get a visa and they could not get a visa. And finally they appealed the -- the -- the grandmother appealed to one of the politburo members who had been in the same -- I don't know whether cell, but certainly in the same jail as her husband -- I mean as her -- as her son, Branimir. And there was no letter, but they suddenly got a permission to leave for Israel.

Q: Hm.

A: So.

Q: Mm-hm. Let's go back to you and Morris are, in the late 50's, you are in --

A: We are in --

Q: -- Venezuela.

A: -- Venezuela. We're still in Venezuela.

Q: You go back to New York in 1958.

A: Right.

Q: For a couple more years?

A: Yeah. This -- this was sort of unexpected, we were supposed to be on vacation and then something happened with Morris's job, which I don't want to go into right now, it just got to be complicated, and -- and -- and Jane developed the measles, I believe, or something and we could -- we were supposed to have gone to Europe and we did not. And so he started working for first -- the Institute for International Education for east west exchange. But he found that it was going mu -- it was very http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 71 slow. I mean, he was given a project that was a -- that he finished within, I don't know, three, four days and this was supposed to take several weeks. And he just couldn't stand it and then he quit. And meanwhile, at the same time, the Associated Press asked him to please come back and he did. There was -- he was on a night shift or on -- on -- on -- on an awful shift and at we -- that was pretty stressful I must say. He hardly ever saw the children and so on. And -- but he had some very interesting [indecipherable] etcetera. And we were there from "58 to "61. The amusing thing was I, having gone to -- going to a private high school in Yugoslavia pre-war, there must have been something wrong with you. This was, you know, you -- th-that was -- it was looked down upon in a very serious manner. And I remember my poor brother who had been in England and had lost a year's worth of national history in the croa -- and the national language. He, in order not to lose a year in high school, went to a private school and it -- that was the most dramat -- I mean the most horrible thing for him, he absolutely hated it, yeah.

Q: I think that -- yeah, you told this story before.

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: Yeah.

A: So, you know, you went to a public school.

Q: Mm-hm.

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A: And as we came -- as I said, as we ca -- as -- as -- when we came to New York I insisted that Jane go to a public school. And we bought this -- and what was supposed to be a very good public school was P.S. six and P.S. six was in an extremely expensive neighborhood and the only wa-way she could have gone, we had to buy a con -- no, not condo, what you call, the -- these other things.

Q: Co-op?

A: Co-op. And finally as we, you know, after a year we saw that she was way ahead, and so she was taken out and she went to the United Nations school.

Q: Oh.

A: Which was very good at that time. The amazing thing was, you know, she would go there, changing buses twice with a friend. And there was, you know, she was about 10. It was very nice, that wa -- that was good. The same time I ran into somebody who had been a very intimate friend of mine for years of -- when we were both at Voice of America, and her name was Mira Mihalofska and her husband was the Polish U.N. ambassador there. We ran into -- into each other at the cocktail party. I had no idea that's where she was. And we'd been in touch ever since. So one of the boys was in Jane's class at the U.N. school, the ol-older one was also at the U.N., but -- so that was good.

Q: So you had three nice years there.

A: Very nice.

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Q: Yeah.

A: And also my father was there and there were -- and -- and an aunt of my mother's who was still alive, who had survived in the most horrifying manner. She was in Italy with her husband, who was a -- she was born in Hungary and she was -- she grew up in Osiek, her mar -- her -- her mother married a second time, a widower. And they were in something that was known as the con -- a confino libero. Confino libero consisted of you were in a small town in Italy and you reported to the police, I guess once a w -- day that you were there. And they were staying in a room or two rooms or whatever, in -- in some pensionne or wherever they were billeted. And that was it. And her husband apparently was -- had gotten some gold pieces that he must have been counting, or somebody was aware of the fact that he had them, and they -- some -- th-this had nothing to do with the Holocaust or anything, these were plain old robbers, had killed him and hit her on the head and buried them both. And she woke up when she came to and she was buried on top of her husband, and she crawled out.

Q: Oh my.

A: And saw the dead husband there. And there was a big -- do I have, and I promised the museum that I would get all of these newspaper clippings in Italian and give it to them. Things like beautiful Jewess, you know, resurrected from the grave, so to speak. She wasn't beautiful at all, bu-but she was a younger person, so http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 74 anyhow Italians were being very complimentary. And she stayed there and finally was permitted to go to Switzerland where she worked as a maid. The Swiss were, you know, the Swiss were the way they were. And they permitted her to stay there.

Again, she had to go, I think once a week or so or maybe even more often with a -- with a little I.D. with her picture on it to present herself to the police that she was there and she worked as a maid, or cleaning woman, I'm not quite sure what.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And finally we were able to get her visa and she came to New York and she stayed with us for awhile.

Q: Your father brought her.

A: My mother. This was on my mother's side. Her name was Clara Frankel.

Q: Mm-hm. You mentioned here in the late 50's that your father was still alive. Had your mother passed away?

A: My mother passed away yes, in her fi -- and we were still in Venezuela, somewhere like deg57 or so.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Yup, but my father was fir -- he came to us and then he went wi -- he went on a trip around the world. And of course he'd been going back and forth to Yugoslavia a great deal.

Q: Oh, he had?

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A: Yeah.

Q: In the 50's?

A: Yeah.

Q: Hm.

A: Yeah.

Q: What was he -- was he doing business?

A: No, he was seeing friends. He was working on -- on this restitution that we were supposed to get and getting papers together and so on. I still keep finding bits and pieces of paper that he was working on. And seeing friends. He would go on vacation in the north, on -- do you know where Opatija is?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Okay, to Opatija for weeks at a time. And seeing friends.

Q: When did you finally go back for the first time?

A: ["m trying to think -- have -- I went -- I truly -- I do -- I'm trying to remember whether I went with Morris and my uncle or whether I went with my father. I think I went with my father. Somewhere in the 50's.

Q: In the 50's?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: You had been gone ma -- no, 10 years?

A: Yeah. Even less maybe, I'm -- you know, probably 10 years.

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Q: Mm-hm. And what was it like?

A: It was sad. It was sad but it was nice too, because I saw friends. I went so see the house in the country, which was -- which was a ruin then, which didn't, you know, was a ruin, it was a ruin, I me -- | -- I started getting sad and nostalgic when they started rebuilding it, unnecessarily. But that -- it was -- it was just the way I had been sent photographs.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I saw various friends, some who had gotten married. Male friends, boy friends, whatever, people like that who I'd been in correspondence with all the time, and -- and a few girlfriends. Then -- and -- and my father st -- oddly enough, quite a few people that he knew were still alive, he was seeing them and so on. And by that t- time -- by that time I think quite a few of the -- whoever was Jewish had left, unless that had been really very rabid leftists. My father's very intimate friend for years pre-war was the Yugoslav or Croatian, whatever you want to call it, sculptor, Antun AugustineiC/. And they had been in contact pretty much the -- forever, and he was a very close friend of Tito's and he was very high up in the government. And I think when they were -- Yugoslavia gave as a present to the United Nations this equestrian statue which is still standing there. When that was being put up my -- I don't know whether AugustinC/eiC/e stayed with -- I was not, I was in probably -- Iam -- [am not sure where I was, probably in Caracas at the time. He saw my father and USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 77 then when the statue was actually brought, he also brought the st -- this statue which was given to us, which was -- which is part of a -- one of those partisan monuments that are all over Yugoslavia and which -- which stood in our garden in -- in Caracas and to which Mary referred to as la nifia boomboom, because she has a -- she has a - - a--a gun in her hand, a -- a -- what is known as a [indecipherable] in Croatian, but it's -- it's a submachine gun, as you can see. And there are many photographs of Mary standing holding on to the nifia boomboom in the garden. And that's going to her, now I mean I've been dragging her arou -- around the world long enough, so -- End of Tape Two, Side B USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 78 Beginning Tape Three, Side A

Q: -- the holoco -- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg. This is tape number three, side A. You were telling me that your father - - before we get back to the -- the chronology --

A: Mm-hm.

Q: -- that your father was going back to Yugoslavia in the 50's, and that you went back for a visit. It's so interesting to hear this, because you rarely hear it from Holocaust survivors --

A: Right.

Q: -- who were going back --

A: Right, right.

Q: -- to see friends and -- and --

A: Yes.

Q: -- what a unique experience for you.

A: It was --

Q: Among survivors anyway.

A: Yes.

Q: Yeah.

A: The sad part of course was that you kept getting details of who did what to whom, and that was very prevalent.

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Q: Mm-hm.

A: And one of the strangest -- I don't know whether I told this story at all, maybe I did, if it's -- came back and I started visiting people around the place and among oth -- and then, you know, Zagreb is a very small town and was a much smaller town and suddenly the word was aha, she's here. And people started inviting me back and forth. So one of the peop -- two people remain in my memory, that was first time I went back. One was -- were the parents of a childhood friend of mine by the name of Zlatan Blinavich. Zlatan Blinavich I knew when he was 10 years -- when I was 10 years old and he was 11 years old and we were sort of -- not childhood sweethearts, but anyhow, an interest. And we were -- the family was very Croatian nationalist, although I would have never thought of them as UstaSa by any means.

The mother, I believe, was Austrian, but I'm not sure. Maybe German. Austrian, I believe. And he and I -- I mean, he went all to -- to, say the equivalent of my school, the [indecipherable] gymnasia, which was in another part of town. But we played tennis together and we -- we were very close friends. That sort of -- held hands maybe, stuff like that. And he apparently collaborated like crazy. If not more than collaborated and immediately after the war, took off for Argentina. And I had heard that. You heard all sorts of things because there was -- in particul -- I -- you know, it was a very key generation. People who were between say 18 and 22 - 25 when the war started. [coughs] Excuse me. So this lady heard that [indecipherable] http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 80 and her husband that I was back and she asked me to come and visit her. It was a big story about you know, he hasn't been -- he really never collaborated, he was called into the army and he was part of the -- he was -- he was not an UstaSa, he was just a foot soldier and so on. But that's not true because if he had been he would have stayed and he went to Argentina and never came back. And I really don't know why -- why they called me, but maybe -- you know, they knew me from childhood on and I felt they probably wanted to -- they weren't -- were they apologizing? Maybe. Maybe.

Q: Mm-hm. Mm-hm. In their gesture.

A: In their gesture.

Q: Yeah.

A: Yeah.

Q: Yeah.

A: And, you know, they -- they knew me from when I was nine years old, so maybe that was -- they wanted to see who was a -- they were --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- maybe pleased to see that somebody had survived. And I never heard from him, but I heard via others that he was in Argentina and died fairly young, as far as I know. The other person I visited was the mother of a friend of mine who became a great -- he wasn't a friend of mine, he -- he was a friend of my brother's, he went to http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 81 school with my brother. Her -- his father was a -- one of the few psychiatrists in the country and he ran a psychiatric hospital near Zagreb and then after the war he was accused of some malfeasance by the communists and he committed suicide. That was a horrible story. He was completely innocent, but they kept pushing and pushing and finally -- and his son was a very, very prominent newspaperman in Belgrade later on. He's a friend of ours. And this lady heard that I was in Zagreb and insisted that I come and see her, which I did. And this -- this is a si -- this is one of those things that I never will get over with, how are you -- how are you, and you know, about the son, who at that time was in Belgrade, married for the second time.

And by the way, we were friends in Mexico, he -- he ba -- he ba [indecipherable] the corresponding [indecipherable] in Mexico. The lady -- I-I walk in and she's oh, how nice to see you, keeps looking at my clothes, and this, that and the other, and says, you know, I remember exactly what you wore to the opera and tel -- to Pacival. And describes this dress to me, I had completely forgotten. I mean, here her son had gone through partisanship, her husband was -- committed suicide because of -- because of pressures. Her life is nothing. By the way, one son is a very prominent physician somewhere in -- in -- I don't know, in the -- in the s -- you know, the United States, in -- in the middle west, I believe. And she's describing my -- the dress I wore, for Pete's sakes. You know, wha-what remain -- what goes on in people's minds? I couldn't te -- I don't know, maybe this is some kind of a http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 82 defense mechanism because th -- fa -- you know, I remembered eventually, I mean, this was -- as it was I hated all of this getting dressed and dressed up and so on, and I hated it. But apparently this was what you did, so --

Q: Hm. Hm.

A: And why was I forced to si-sit through Pacival at age maybe 17 or 18, whatever, I can't imagine either.

Q: You mentioned that your father was friends with a famous sculptor, Au- Augustincie.

A: Yes.

Q: And that Augustincie was close with Tito in the mountains.

A: Very close.

Q: Did your father ever meet Tito?

A: No.

Q: No. Did you?

A: No.

Q: No.

A: Yes, I did.

Q: You did?

A: Yes, I did. He came on a state visit to Mexico and I met him there and I met Jovanka there and it was -- I was actually -- and you know, he was a big hunter and http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 83 he was really a tough person. But I saw something that was extremely interesting at the time. They put up a bullfight for Tito. Tito was a very good shot and a very good hunter and so on. And in fact there was a lot of stuff go -- you know, that -- there's -- there was a -- a state owned -- large estate where there were -- there -- there were -- I don't even know what -- or how I would go th -- I -- I think there were -- an agricultural estate called Bainya, and they had [indecipherable] went there for a hunting, and he did too, and he killed a bunch of things, and there were remarks about how this was brought there for him to be able to cab -- it's not true, he was a good shot, and a good hunter, anyhow. But he went to this -- I saw this -- to this bullfight in Mexico, and there was a very unusual incident where the bull jumped and got caught, you know, where this -- this blind where the -- where -- where -- where the bullfighter hides?

Q: Comes out? Yes, mm-hm, there's like a wall.

A: It's like a wall.

Q: And he can hide behind it.

A: Yes. Well, this bull got caught between the wall and was sort of straddling this and -- and he -- Tito walked away, he couldn't look at that.

Q: Hm.

A: I mean, I wasn't that close to him to have -- to have known the remarks, but I was told later on by the ambassador, who was a very nice Macedonian, at the time http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 84 married to a Viennese woman, and also this person that I just mentioned before, who became a well-known American jour -- I mean, Yugoslav journalist, that -- that he got so shocked by the brutality of it, he collected himself and left.

Q: Hm, that's interesting.

A: It was very unusual to me, I was --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- I was, you know, this happens.

Q: Yeah. And he was there for a bullfight, after all.

A: He was there for a bullfight.

Q: Yeah. Huh.

A: That was a a very strange thing, I mean --

Q: So you met him at that time?

A: I met him at that --

Q: You said hello?

A: -- at that -- some kind of a reception --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- that the ma -- the Mexican government gave and -- and Jovanka was there and this was a very sad thing because Ambassador Vlahov's wife, who was this Viennese lady -- it's a funny combination of th-the Macedonian and the -- and the Viennese. She had a hard time ad -- adjusting to Mexico, I remember very well.

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Q: Mm-hm.

A: She developed that week, a terrible urinary tract infection, and she had to go by car with Jovanka. The men went fr -- went -- I don't know whether they went by plane or whether they went by a special [indecipherable] group, but she was attached up to Mrs. Tito. And they stopped halfway, I think maybe even overnight, I'm not sure, in a town between Mexico and Acapulco. And, poor woman, not only did this happen to her, but then they were presented by the governor of this state with a beautiful carved box. And in the box was a very fine rebosa. But it was such a fine silk rebosa that it was -- it was folded into this box, which I saw, which was no bigger than this.

Q: Say what that is.

A: A rebosa is one of those shawls that Mexican women wear.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: But there are -- of course there are plain ones that are used every day and this was a super gala one, but it was Mexican, it was not liba -- I'm not quite sure. This was a -- a Specific place where this came from, a very famous, very beautiful, terribly thin. Almost like -- like -- like an Indian shawl, it was. I mean Indian from India.

Q: Mm-hm.

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A: And Mrs. Vlohov, the ambassador's wife goes to pick up hers, luckily it was she and not Jovanka, and she gets bitten by a scorpion. Oh my. So --

Q: Poor thing.

A: -- it was not only poor thing with this urinary tract infection --

Q: And she's trying to entertain --

A: -- and -- and she's trying to --

Q: -- as the head of state.

A: -- entertain that s -- head of s -- I mean, this -- this was really awful. So then they went -- finally then went to -- then there was a huge state reception, with lots of music and lots of singing and he -- Tito didn't like -- there was a -- there's a very famous Mexican female singer of folk songs and there's a song called Cu cu ru cu cu Paloma.

Q: I know that song.

A: Okay. There's a great deal of Cu cu ru cu cu Paloma going on and Tito liked that very well, and there were a lot of speeches and so on, so okay, we were all part of this business, not because, you know, Lucie Rosenberg of Yugoslavia, but because of Morris Rosenberg, the [indecipherable]

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: So -- or maybe not. Maybe a little bit of both, because we were -- we were fairly close with the Mahoffs, and they lived very near us.

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Q: Mm-hm. Lucie, would you have considered yourself a Tito supporter at that time?

A: Yeah, mm-hm, yeah. I mean, at the beginning -- at -- at -- at-at that time it was starting to look a little less terrific, but I -- we all knew what was going on, more or less.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But maybe by that time no longer. But I -- we're -- who were you looking for?

Q: Yeah.

A: There was nobody on the horizon. You could get some very unpleasant Serb nationalists or very unpleasant Croatian nationalists. And were very few moderates that you could even think about.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Yeah.

Q: Yeah. So you're in Mexico in the -- this is the early 60's.

A: Early 60's. I think we got there in "61.

Q: Right. And -- and where would -- where did you go after that?

A: We went to Paris in 66.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And stayed til 77.

Q: Oh my. 11 years.

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A: All together. No, but we returned to Mexico -- no, we returned to Mexico in "77 and then "77 to "79 we were in Mexico again.

Q: But those were pretty volatile years in Paris.

A: They were very volatile. We were there during the "68 revolution. It was terribly exciting. My older daughter got -- well, I think Mary got gassed, too, coming from school. Jane was in -- during this year abroad, doing the [indecipherable] Frangaise.

It's the year abroad. This was called, yeah, it was called the year abroad, but what was it? Sen -- not senior, was it fa -- it was a particular year abroad that universities counted actually as a -- as a class -- as -- as a -- you -- you got credit for it. And it was -- she stayed -- I mean, she lived at home, but she went to the Sorbonne and various other places for classes, French classes and I hardly saw Morris at all because he was [indecipherable]. For awhile my father was with us, too.

Q: What was Morris covering at that time?

A: He was covering that and then the -- the -- and -- and the Peace talks, the -- the Vietnam Peace talks were on --

Q: In Paris. Mm-hm.

A: -- at the same time in Paris. But he was bureau chief.

Q: Uh-huh.

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Q: Wow.

A: I mean, the Francophone part. And I was unfortunate -- I don't know whether I should say unfortunately -- yes, unfortunately, I was the bureau chief's wife and we had V.I.P.s coming in from all of Latin America, from the States and so on and I was the taker around and [indecipherable] the old-fashioned show, six times of the same show. And taking people shopping and all sorts of unpleasant things like that, it went on forever, and everything I don't want to have. I was happy when I could sit at home and have a meal to -- by myself with the kids, it was very, very demanding. After awhile I got a little tired of all of that and I took an -- it -- I -- I -- I took several courses. I too -- first I took a course at the -- at -- in anthropology, but what kind of anthropology? I did one with Levi-Strauss who was doing stuff about that time at the -- oh, what is it called, that -- they call it the [indecipherable] which was you didn't get any kind of degrees or any kind of anything for it, but you sat there and this was anthropology and what this was mostly on was -- was northwest Canadian Indians, and was wonderful, about the Inuits, and I had always been interested in that. It was a super class, except in a -- when you think how classes are taught nowadays and the way this was taught it was just incredible. Thank [indecipherable] was -- the building was, I don't know, probably 17" century and nothing functioned at all. We started out by seeing nobody is permitted to use any kind of -- of recording device and someone actually went around to see what was http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 90 going on. Then, as it was open and free, all sorts of hobos would come in and just sleep in the back there, because -- because you know, it was free, it was warm. And then they had strange old windows that they always had problems getting the blinds down and he had a assistant and they would do projections on the screen. And they were invariably upside down. I mean, I don't know one time when this was straight.

I mean, this is the leading anthropologist at that time, Claude Levi-Strauss and it w - - it w -- had a -- can't remember exactly how long the course started, who -- I was terribly interested in the material, I actually had Morris take me to -- to where -- where this was take -- taking place. I mean, where these Indians were, and so on that's [indecipherable]

Q: The northwest.

A: -- Canadian me -- Canadian northwest was fairly fantastic. I was doing that.

Then I took a course that was being given by an -- that was some kind of branch of - - I don't whether it was NYU, I'm not quite sure -- that was given by the very famous, and this is shameful on me, cultural anthropologist.

Q: Lewis? Lewis?

A: It's American, I should know it.

Q: Yeah.

A: Shame on me. He did a wonderful thing on five Mexican families or maybe three Mexican families at this point. I took that with a friend of mine. Then I decided to http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 91 do a class to teach -- to teach French. And this was mostly given by fre -- four French secondary school teachers from Les Colonie deut la mer. Colonies from across th -- I mean, from the other side -- from across the oceans, let's say. And they consisted fi -- of a number of high school teachers from Martinique, from very -- from African high schools and so on. And you know, their -- their curriculum is exactly, exactly the same in all of those countries as it is in France, and you can count on it that on the same day the same thing, | -- I think it's still that way. The same thing is being taught in -- in -- in Guadalupe, and who knows where in Africa, as it is in France. And the beginning of these classes when th -- st -- I mean the history classes, the history books start out by [indecipherable] our ancestors [indecipherable]. And I mean, you see these black ladies teaching this to these black children over there, it's quite funny. But it's a very rigorous program and -- and this was taught as the special sk -- a special course for -- I guess maybe they got a little more money for th -- from -- from the Ministry of Education, and they came for this specialization in English. And it was -- this was really fun, and I actually got a -- a certificate of that. It was super.

Q: Did you end up teaching?

A: I taught, but privately.

Q: Uh-huh.

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A: Not -- not -- no. By that time the problem became that if you were not European, and the union just started, if you were English you could get permission to teach, but not in -- in big schools. I mean, in actual classes.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Was there much -- you're in Europe now in the -- in the 70's.

A: Mm-hm.

Q: At this time -- in the late 70's in the United States anyway was kind of a -- in the very late 70's there was a kind of a -- a reawakening --

A: Mm-hm.

Q: -- in this country about the Holocaust. It was -- you know, there started to be television programs.

A: Yes.

Q: Among that young generation -- I know I was in college at that time, a lot of my Jewish friends were learning about the Holocaust for the first time.

A: It's amazing to me.

Q: There had been, you know, 25 years there --

A: Yes.

Q: -- when it wasn't much discussed publicly.

A: That's true.

Q: Even the most learned academics weren't always given a -- a -- a warm reception in many places in this country.

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A: Right, right.

Q: People who were studying the --

A: Right.

Q: -- the Holocaust. What was the situation where you were? I mean, it was a much different cultural environment there, and --

A: In -- in -- in France, there were two wonderful little museums. It -- in -- one was in a townhouse, really touching. Little bits and pieces of artifacts. A book. I don't think there was an entrance fee, but -- but one was expected. A few notebooks, a few photographs, a few books, this, that and the other. Than there was an extremely interesting --

Q: You mean memorabilia from the Jewish community there.

A: Ah -- y-yes.

Q: Is that what it was?

A: Yes.

Q: Yeah.

A: We did go. The Marais at that time was an actual Jewish district in Paris. And I - - I don't like the idea of -- of saying it was a -- it was a ghetto, it was not a ghetto.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But there was a wonderful Jewish delicatessen, so that was the only place where you could get rye bread. And we would go get rye bread and pickles and stuff like http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 94 that every once in awhile. And in the back of these various medieval houses were Jewish butchers and people were going around with -- with -- in -- in sort of Jewish garb, with hats on and so on. And the famous one is this golden bird where there was [indecipherable]. By this time we were already in the States, but sa -- it was bombed one day, and I don't know who was hurt, but there were a few people hurt and it was very bad.

Q: Hm. A terrorist kind of thing?

A: A terrorist type of thing.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Meanwhile, this was becoming terribly gentrified. Mary actually did a paper on it that's quite interesting in somewhere that she -- probably in the 70's, I remember.

I don't know what she used it for but it was a paper she had to do. And people were buying a -- these houses and renovating them, the apartments. There were some absolutely wonderful, wonderful palaces there from early French history. But I mean, super-elegant places. One of them has since become the Jewish museum to which I had never -- have never been. And the place is totally gentrified and I just -- well, when I saw it I was quite shocked. There's a nice Picasso museum there.

There was a wonderful museum which is still there in -- in the same way as it was, of the city of Paris which -- with, you know, signs, butcher stores and so on, various guilds and everything. Beautifully done. That -- that's still there. But they now have http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 95 all kinds of super luxury stores and this is a medieval, you know, district. And I -- just as I said I saw a story where people absolutely shocked and horrified and as I st -- as they started buying up these -- these places and turning them into condos and turning in -- into fancy s -- modern stores, these people were being pushed out. So you saw much less of that in -- in Paris.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. And what about a -- were you members of a Jewish community there?

A: No.

Q: No. Because you just never got around to it, or you didn't want to be, or there wasn't --

A: I really didn't want to be because you know, I had very little in common with French people, that experience wasn't the same. They're very exclusive. The French are very exclusive people whether -- whether they're Jewish or not. We knew of a couple of Jewish families. One of them was a family that Morris had met, a French family who had interests in north Africa and he knew them from Algiers, I believe.

They were very upper upper middle class. Nice people, that died since, both of them. And -- I-I -- I'm trying to think. Yes, my -- one of -- I found out that for instance, our physician who we got by recommendation of somebody was -- I think he was a Moroccan Jew. My ophthalmologist was a woman and from what I can see http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 96 her name is something something bennyshu, I think she was probably Algerian or Moroccan Jew, so-somebody like that, so some part of that part of the world.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But really not. We -- we -- we were not members of the --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- of the Jewish community.

Q: Mm-hm. And did the war -- did World War II seem closer in time to you there than it did --

A: Yes --

Q: -- when you were here --

A: -- much closer.

Q: -- in eastern --

A: Much closer --

Q: -- in the States --

A: -- much closer.

Q: -- or Mexico, yeah.

A: First of all, I would go to -- to -- t-to Yugoslavia, I mean, you'd hop on the train and you were there, there was no problem. Also, I had a very good friend from Yugoslavia, an interesting thing, from Zagreb, she used to be practically a beauty queen, and she was from a mixed marriage. And I don't know exactly when she USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 97 came to Paris, but she did and she -- her name was Baccichin, but I don't know whether this was a -- a name that had been changed at one time or another, but she is a hugely tall blonde woma -- End of Tape Three, Side A Beginning Tape Three, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg. This is tape number three, side B. She was?

A: She was from Zagreb. She was -- I knew her family pre-war, my father -- she was that much older that she wasn't a friend of mine in Zagreb, she's just a -- well, she was maybe three years older, maybe even four, and she was th -- one of the glamour girls. And she was working -- this is another interesting thing -- she was working for a manufacturer, clothing manufacturer who produced knock-offs of Chanel clothes. And she would buy the ma-material and she would, you know, get this kind of extra trimming on it and that kind of short or long or whatever it was.

Beautiful stuff. This was then sent -- this -- they had lots of American buyers, among others, for Sachs Fifth Avenue, where the -- at that time the things were sold for 700 - 900 bucks, stuff like that. And they were produced in one of -- were in -- in where I saw the workshop in -- in the center of Paris, but not in a -- some kind of elegant district. How this was done was incredible. They would bring -- she would go every once in awhile to Yugoslavia and she would recruit one or two tailors and USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 98 they would bring half the village along. Now this was -- they were all working, you know, illegally, and every so often the f -- the -- the -- the French government would -- would simply raid these places, and they would go -- they would go back.

And then after awhile another village

Q: [indecipherable]

A: -- yeah. They were somewhere, they were actually like sweatshops, I think, they were put up in -- and yet they were very anxious to come. This was beautiful stuff, you know, silk lined with -- fantastically finished and so on. I mean, I can't imagine that there were that many wonderful Serbian tailors, most of them were Serbs.

Whole villages would come, and in connection with this there was a very funny -- funny, sad incident, what can I say? There were very many Roma at the time, many Gypsies in -- in Paris, and they had an extremely bad reputation because what really happened was a number of Yugoslav or other Gypsies la -- ended up in Rome or in Italy, and they -- they were trained by -- I gu -- guys who turned them into, you know, pickpockets and this, that and the other. They lived at the end of the town and they really were pretty obvious everywhere, on every street. And wi -- the French police is not terribly kind so they, you know, everybody felt sorry for them until they were -- somebody stole something from them, lots of kids that were pulling at your clothes and so on, and they was -- actually trained to do it. They would be in Italy and that -- they -- obviously it was so easy to get somebody on a ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 99 train, either from Yugoslavia or Italy or whatever and they'd end up in -- in Paris and they were on the streets and they slept anywhere, you know, like that. And one day, very close to my house is this person, this Roma woman with a small child in her arms, and she hands me a piece of paper written on the letterhead of a convent on the outskirts of Paris, saying so and so has been -- has a very sick husband, or has been abandoned by -- by her -- by her husband and we beg of you, whoever sees this to please help her and so on. This was -- you know, a little suspicious, anyhow, looking, although the tone was right and the -- this was tha -- so I read this in French and she says the husband -- that she came, that she was a refugee from Yugoslavia and so on. But I read that, I start talking Croatian to her, and she practically faints on the street. And I said, look, I'm not going to give you any kind of money, I don't like the way this is going on, I mean, normally I would, but I really felt badly about this whole thing. So -- as this was just across the street from my house, I went and I got her clothes for her, I got masses of food, I -- you know, thank you, thank you very much, this is fine. So then two weeks later I get a call from my friend whose husband was, I think the ABC or CBS correspondent, guy by the name of Bernard Redmont, who lived at another part of Paris, totally different.

And h-he -- they -- you know, they were -- Redmont was in a very bad situation and actually had to leave the -- the States because he was implicated -- I don't know whether implicated, but he was in those McCarthy trials -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: Mm-hm, in the 50's.

A: -- in the 50's and they left and they lived in France, and so on. And we were very good friends with both of them, they're in Boston now. In fact, he was -- he was the dean of the journalism school, and -- at B.U. for awhile. So Joan, who is the naivete personified and very kind says to me, Lucie, there i -- there's a compatriot of yours on my doorst -- and I said yeah. She [indecipherable] her husband, and she reads me this letter from a French nun. I se -- I said, this is very nice, give her whatever you want. She was inviting her in. Then another day this same friend calls me and she said she had a wonderful bargain. There was three ladies, Romas, but they were called Gypsies at that time still, who had come from Czechoslovakia and they had these most wonderful silks. Joan had -- used to have her clothes made still, and she bought these I don't know how many cuts for suits and dresses and so on, all of which, you know, had been smuggled in to -- it's fine, I don't care, it's just not a problem for me. But this -- thi-this she was -- she was very naive about stuff like that.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

A: So the -- this was still around there.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

A: Listen, stop we -- stop me when I start digressing like that.

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Q: Okay. No more talking about Paris and those days. So you were in Paris until -- I see by your notes --

A: Yes.

Q: You were in until -- you went back to Mexico --

A: We went back to Mexico --

Q: -- in the late 70's.

A: In "77, yes.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And this was the time when Morris was named, very [indecipherable] Director General, or -- for Latin America, for the AP.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Which meant that he was supposed to run the Mexico City bureau, more or less.

It was a lot of work. And travel a great deal to --

Q: Still reporting?

A: No.

Q: No.

A: If he had --

Q: [indecipherable]

A: Yeah, if he had -- it had been all at -- you -- you always report when you're with the AP whether you do or not, but I mean, if there had been anything very important http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 102 he would have. But collecting money and doing all sorts of -- you know, work like that, meeting with publishers, getting new contracts, that kind of stuff.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. So you were back in Mexico.

A: So I was back in Mexico. By that time my granddaughter was born, they came to visit. Mary was still in school, I guess, I mean at -- at Yale, and we still had a lot of good friends in Mexico at the time. One of my very intimate friends was a woman from Zagreb who -- who is a refugee. She had gone again, via Italy to Cuba, to Mexico. And her husband, her ex-husband had been in the watch business in Yugoslavia. And she had opened a boutique for women's clothes, and had stayed in Mexico, she's still there. She's a few years older than I am. Her name is Sophia Condon. And she got divorced from her Yugoslav husband and I think he died just very recently in Geneva. Remarried, and I saw her pretty much daily, because -- well maybe not daily, but certainly twice a week, maybe twice a week, yeah.

Q: So with -- you went back and you -- just the two of you then, your girls were both -- one was married --

A: One was married with a small child and --

Q: -- and one was in college.

A: -- one was in college, yeah.

Q: Right.

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A: The person who was with us was Celia Sadna, who was the housekeeper who'd been with us since the children were very small, and she went to Paris with us, she was with us all this time and she came to Mexico with us.

Q: Hm. She Yugoslav?

A: Basque.

Q: Basque?

A: Basque.

Q: Uh-huh. Celia, I thought maybe --

A: No.

Q: Huh. Interesting.

A: Basque.

Q: It's so interesting to me to hear you -- to put together this picture that from the time you left Zagreb, you lived in so many different places, but you kept your connections. And I -- and your identity as a Yugoslav --

A: Yes.

Q: -- all throughout that time --

A: Yes.

Q: -- which so many people did not do. And, you know, people -- others -- Holocaust survivors that I've talked to, they -- they didn't more around as much as you did. And you also were brought up in kind of a cosmopolitan atmosphere.

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A: Yes.

Q: So that was some -- second nature to you in a way to be moving around.

A: That's true too, but I -- there was another great plus and that was that Morris was connected to Yugoslavia. He had been there during World War II. He opened the -- what was known as the American library in Belgrade and in Zagreb and he had many Yugoslav friends. Very many. And that was part of it. He was interested in that culture. He -- he was very fond of -- of -- of these Yugslav that he had met.

And he never really learned to speak, but he understands quite well and h-he -- h-he can get along there. Not grammatically very caref -- ver-ver-very, let's say correctly, but he can make himself understood.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And he's very attached to the whole place.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: It's a strange thing, isn't it?

Q: That's nice for you, yeah.

A: Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't, you know, keep away from these old stories.

Q: Right, right. So it never really disappeared from your life, that --

A: No.

Q: -- that world.

A: No.

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Q: You were in touch with it all along.

A: No. And there are people, including my cou -- my cousin, who thinks that "m too heavily immersed in it. And for awhile, you know, there are -- there are periods when -- I mean, obviously I'll visit my friends that I was in touch with and whom I called in Zagreb, and some were schoolmates and some were friends and so on. But I never, never lost th -- and my cousin says that I'm over involved. And I think I got specially involved when I started working in the museum --

Q: Sure.

A: -- because all of the stuff started sort of floating to the surface, and -- and -- and I felt as long as I can contribute at least the language and some background to this, that I wanted to. And that's when I started reading more and more of the stuff, and that's -- I won't say I speak contemporary Croatian. I mean, I -- I do, but they -- they've been changing things around unnecessarily lately, I mean they -- there's a very interesting book that Morris just read, a-about the manipulation of language in Yugoslavia, and -- as politics.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: They suddenly, for instance in -- in -- in -- during the UstaSa regime and then during Tudjman, they were inventing words from that yid -- not even inventing, let's say adapting medieval words to the m-modern language, so you know, this -- this was a forced thing -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: To make a political point --

A: -- to make a political point.

Q: And the point was --

A: And the point was --

Q: [indecipherable]

A: -- we have a thousand now.

Q: Now.

A: Now. Croats have a very exclusive culture that goes back [speaks Croatian here] a thousand years culture, and -- which was to say, you know, forget the others, we had it. That is [indecipherable] in a way. Or -- or -- or as a cousin of mine, as an uncle of mine once said, what are you talking about? Everybody had an ancestor, you kn -- when somebody was bragging about something like that. But there is a di -- th-there -- there is again -- they're coming back to this, I mean, after Tudjman immediately there was -- there was a little bit of a -- of a lull, but they're doing it again. They're -- they're -- they're inventing words, ad -- you know, adapting medieval words to the modern language.

Q: Mm. Let me -- let's talk about how you -- you came back to Washington in 1979 I see?

A: Right.

Q: And you've been here ever since?

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A: [ve been here ever since.

Q: At that time, 1979 - 1980, as I mentioned before, there was this very, you know, what I call a reawakening of --

A: Mm-hm.

Q: -- growth, of interest and knowledge about the Holocaust in this country --

A: Yes.

Q: -- among Americans.

A: Yes.

Q: And did you -- did you notice that?

A: Yes, yes. In fact, I was at some sort of meeting when it was -- when -- when there were -- was talk of will this Holocaust museum be built or not. Elie Wiesel spoke. I didn't know whether I liked the idea or not. I think there probably was something in me still that said low profile is better.

Q: As a Jew?

A: As a Jew.

Q: Self defense, then.

A: Yes.

Q: Instinct.

A: Yes, yes. Is it necessary to put up a huge museum like that? Hoo, you know, we all know what it is, let's write books about it. Is this necessary? I think it was http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 108 extremely necessary. I think it's very good. It's very good not -- not so much the presence, but the -- the scholarship that's going on, which would not exist without it. | mean, there would be people doing little bits and pieces without rhyme or reason, | th -- I'm no -- rhyme or reason is not the word, but I mean it would be --

Q: Without focus, wi -- yeah.

A: -- without focus. I think it's extremely important. And I d -- I didn't think so at the beginning, but I think it's really evolved very beautifully.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Yeah, that -- that --

Q: So at what point did -- do you remember when the museum opened? Did you --

A: [remember when the museum opened. Yes, very soon afterwards, I went to -- to -- to see it. | went with my cousin and I remember using the computers upstairs and I mean, whatever it was that we -- we dredged up, Jasenovac, which I believe was either misspelled or something was wrong, and we were kind of put off. And then I went, obviously through them -- through the permanent exhibit and everything else, and it was horrifying. I was also, at that time very much upset that there was hardly anything on Yugoslavia, very little. But then, it really isn't surprising because, you know, how many Yugoslav Jews, or how many Yugoslavs really survived who went through it, and there was very little left. Now, I did not mention that at the very beginning, when -- when Yugoslav Jews started coming to New York er -- in http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 109 the 40's, they bought a plot in the -- in -- in -- in New Jersey where they formed a ci -- acemetery, which is now quite full. And this apparently is very much what happens, because there were groups from Germany, from Austria, from who knows, the Bukovina and so on, who had plots of their own. And that's where it is, in New Jersey, in fair -- fair -- Fairview mew -- New Jersey. And there was an association of Yugoslav Jews in the United States, which worked on A, helping people who -- who were totally, you know, bereft of everything and try -- got visas, worked with the State department, worked with various other governments, helped with this restitution business that I told you about. And then there was this terrible incident of Oswego, which I don't know whether you know anything about.

Q: I don't.

A: Okay. It was a group of people who were saved in Italy, mostly Yugoslav Jews who were brought here. Roosevelt promised, I don't know, a thousand people to be able to come in and they came and they were put behind barbed wire in Oswego.

Q: New York?

A: New York.

Q: Detained for what reason?

A: They weren't detained, they were brought here and -- but they were, I guess, enemy aliens or whatever they were, and they all -- thi-this was one of the my -- one http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 110 of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I don't know whether I spoke about that, or I ca --

Q: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

A: -- not to you, but maybe in the --

Q: Not in the video interview.

A: No?

Q: No. I don't -- I saw that --

A: Okay.

Q: -- I -- I don't remember this --

A: Well, this was a terrible story. One day we were told by Voice of America that I should go with a -- with a -- somebody with a recorder to the docks in New York because a ship was arriving with --

Q: What year was this, roughly?

A: deg47, maybe? "46 - "47 -- bringing refugees who were being given shelter in the United States and most of them were Yugoslavs. So I was sent by Voice of America with some, as | said -- was about to say cameramen. There were some cameramen as a matter of fact, too, but mostly sound people. And we got there and this group of people started coming out and they recognized me, a bunch of them, and they started asking about my brother, who -- so this was very shortly after the end of war, maybe the war was still on. Yeah, the war was still -- and -- and I had to yell ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 111 over, you know, hundreds of people to tell them there was no Mario any more. And then another somebody came and so on. And they looked like absolute hell. These were people who had been living in Italy and doing quite well. Had already, you know, gotten things from the various Jewish organizations and had sort of pulled themselves together, but here was the possibility of going to the United States, so wow, great. And it was great, in the end. But they came and they were not allowed - - we were behind -- we had barricades, this was yelling through barricades. First thing that happened when they arrived, they made -- before they arrived, they made them give all the clothes, which these people had bought with whatever was left over, let's, you know, do a bella figura when you arrive here. And they were thrown into i -- 1 -- it's -- 1-it to be a -- deloused and [indecipherable]. So you got rags.

Everything lost its color. They sprayed them with DDT, all these people, I don't know whether it -- probably DDT, it was awful, they were delousing them and so on. So these were people who had been living a more or less normal life in Italy, who suddenly came. So then it was this big committee, they took them to Oswego into an ex-army camp and put them behind wires -- I mean, behind -- behind -- I think there was even, if I'm not mistaken a -- a -- you know, wire. And was a big scandal. And I remember my father, who at that time I think was the vice-president or whatever, secretary of this association of Yugoslav Jews that were going there to try to calm these people down, who were ju -- a great many were Yugoslav Jews, http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 112 not all, but a great many as this -- you know, they -- they picked them up in Italy, these -- these people had already been saved, I mean, you know. They were in no danger. And so first, you know, this -- this was a whole [indecipherable] and I don't know exactly how -- well, they fe -- it got to be where the point where Mrs.

Roosevelt went there to intervene and one day one of these people turned themselves up -- turned up at our door, one of the women who knew where I was, about maybe two or three years younger than I am. Friend of my brothers. Suddenly she was at our front door in New York on Riverside Drive, and she spent the night we -- my father and sister, she had to go back because otherwise she would have been, I don't know, I guess a criminal or whatever.

Q: [indecipherable]

A: And finally with -- I don't know exactly how long they stayed there -- but there was a film about them, about this ship coming over. Maybe Ruth Grube or someone like that worked on it and they -- as I said quo -- many many of -- there -- there's some of them still here, one of them is a woman who lives in -- in Baltimore, who -- who was a -- a child then, a little girl and so on. I don't remember how long it took.

So that kind of stuff the Yugoslav di -- association did.

Q: And I'd -- I would think that would be so traumatic for you, only because here these were people you knew, who knew you --

A: Yes, yes.

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Q: -- and you were on the other side of the fence.

A: Yes, completely.

Q: Metaphorically speaking.

A: I was, I was.

Q: And literally.

A: Iwas.

Q: You -- you could have been them.

A: Oh, absolutely --

Q: It must have --

A: -- absolutely.

Q: -- must have been very clear to you --

A: Abso --

Q: -- at that point.

A: It was. I mean, this was th-the -- the people who were practically -- some my age, some a little younger. Maybe a little younger than me. I don't know what -- I told you this was the -- my generation that just went.

Q: You know, since I've seen your interview, the first interview when you told the story about how your father got you out and -- and how he must have been planning this.

A: Yes.

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Q: And you must have given a lot of thought over the years to what a remarkable thing that was, and [indecipherable] --

A: Yes, yes.

Q: -- and you know, wondering if you would have survived if you hadn't got out.

A: knew I wouldn't have. I -- obviously I was sturdier than I am now and I would have probably tried to get into the mountains and so on. But, you know, I -- I was well known. No-Not well, I mean this is ridiculous. If anybody had been after me, they would have known how to get me. I mean, I -- I was not anonymous.

Q: You would have been on lists.

A: Yes, yes.

Q: [indecipherable] the whole family.

A: Yes, yes, yes.

Q: So, how do -- after all these years, how do you think about that, how do you --

A: I think that my father was extremely determined and courageous, and I think of him, you know, as a man in the best years of his life, I guess, just deciding so, okay, wi -- nevermind, if things work out, we'll come back. And I think this was really behind his thinking most of the time. And if not -- and you know, he was terribly hurt -- I can't [indecipherable] I can't describe the trauma of a father losing an only son, although I was extremely close to my father, it wasn't that I felt, you know, in any way because I was a girl that -- that I counted for any less. But there da -- I

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 115 guess there was planning what was going to be with -- with -- with a -- a son and so on.

Q: And a business and so on.

A: And the businesses and so on. They must have been. And he was -- he never carried on, he -- possibly because he had been in a war, possibly because so many of -- others of our friends on all sides were killed. I -- I don't know.

Q: What do you mean he never carried on? He never --

A: He -- he was -- he -- he was consoling us. He wasn't sitting there, you know, shedding tears constantly, constantly, constantly.

Q: And not bitter?

A: He was not bitter.

Q: That's pretty amazing.

A: He was not bitter.

Q: Given what he left behind.

A: Yes.

Q: And the life he left behind.

A: Yes. No, I don't think he ever really worried about that too much. It -- it was a -- you know, it was a paternalistic st -- society altogether, and I felt strange echoes of this much later. I came, for instance, to Belgrade and we saw Morris's secretary, who was an old lady, and who recently died -- I think she may have been a hun -- USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 116 just under a hundred. She was the oldest person born in Belgrade who died. So she was probably 98 or so. She had been evacuated during World War I, to England. So anyhow, he go -- he -- Morris, when they opened this reading room there, this lady Vera Wynik was one of the secretaries and they -- she had a terrible time because of the communists wanted -- were -- were threatening her in a horrible way. They -- they wanted whatever secrets, there were no secrets, but they wanted all kinds of information, which she refused to give. And they were harassing her to an awful -- in an awful way, and Morris -- Morris felt -- heard about it later, and he didn't know, I mean, she was about to commit suicide, and it's a very sad story. So he was very close to her and he -- he was constantly in touch here and we -- she gave me some of those icons that were there, and -- so, a wonderful woman, whom we visited in Belgrade all -- the first time we went back. And she said to me, do -- I-"m going back to the paternalistic societies that were going on then -- she said to me, you know, when your father came to visit me, he -- because my father went back to Yugoslavia way before we did and Morris said, would you please visit Vera Wynik, giver her my love, see what she needs and so on. Do that. Fine.

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 117 Beginning Tape Four, Side A

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg. This is tape number four, side A.

A: Apparently, before my father came to visit, they already knew -- somebody from the secret service came to see her and said -- or maybe -- maybe he had just either phoned her or they got together at the very beginning, and said I understand that Manfred Sternberg has come to visit you. What have you got with Manfred Sternberg? And apparently she said, he is the broth -- he is the -- the father-in-law of an old friend of ours and so on, who was so and so. They knew anyhow. And this ke -- person kept insisting and insisting and insisting, a very high up person in the -- in -- in the Secret Service, the OZNA, which was the scary thing, I mean that was the secret police in spades. Turns out that this was a boy who my father had given scholarships to. He was -- I knew nothing about this, absolutely nothing. He was the son of the workman in -- outside, where the factory was, outside Zagreb, and he was apparently a talented kid, whom his parents, I think after, I mean, four years or fi -- of -- of -- or whatever it was, I think maybe it was six years of -- of -- of elementary school, pulled out of school and he would have probably been, you know, working on the fi -- in the fields or whatever. And my father knew that this was a very smart kid, and he apparently gave him a scholar -- gave -- gave the parents, I don't know, the money for this kid to go -- go through high school. And this was then some http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 118 great big -- I mean, he went through the partisans and so on. And he kept asking Vera Wynik about me, and that if ever I ca -- and the next time, when we came, he knew exactly when that we were coming and he asked Vera to -- for me to get in tou -- I -- I had no idea who this was. I mean, when I heard the name I knew he was somebody from -- from -- from the village. I mean, where would I be interested for a little boy who was three or four years younger than I was, you know? He knew about my brother. He knew absolutely everything. And I found out that my father had sent him through school, you know, forever. And I know we were never permitted to be near anything like that with the -- the -- you know, they had these Christmas things where kids got dressed for winter and you know, and clothes and books, and this, that and the other, which we weren't -- had no idea about them. We were totally excluded because these were kids, you know, some of them were in school with us at the same time, some were younger.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: These were kids that I knew around.

Q: Right.

A: Never a word about that. So I'm saying this -- this paternalism had two sides to it, I guess.

Q: Mm-hm. And he was -- he was just questioning her, or interrogating her for some -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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A: I thi -- she was terrified --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- because this was the secret police.

Q: Well, but she --

A: Why do they know that Manfred Sternberg is visiting her --

Q: Right.

A: -- and who is this --

Q: But he really had --

A: -- and he was interrogating me, and then finally I met him. Finally I met him, the second time I came back and she was saying something to me that, you know, I was a very young woman then. She said -- Vera said, you know he's got some kind of a notion about you and he is sure to be disappointed. I don't know whether you need to see him. He is not -- I don't know, I guess maybe he's still alive. He finally -- when I came back the first time to the village, one of the village women told me that, you know so and so? He's got a big estate up in -- she showed me up the road and that's when I -- when I realized that, you know.

Q: Yeah. What was it like -- I want to ask you a couple things, I -- I have left here.

What was it like for you in the early 90's when war started again in Yugoslavia, when Yugoslavia started to break up?

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A: I was heartbroken. I thought it was terrible. First of all the violence that, you know, the thought that you can't go through two generations without having a war. I knew it was going to be awful for everybody around.

Q: Were you surprised? You -- you couldn't have been too surprised at --

A: No.

Q: No.

A: No.

Q: You'd been going back and forth --

A: Yes.

Q: -- and you had a sense of --

A: Yes, yes, yes.

Q: -- the tension there after Tito died, especially.

A: Yes, yes, yes. No, I -- I wasn't surprised. What I was surprised at was the horrible violence, all that.

Q: Yeah, the political breaking apart wasn't a surprise.

A: N-No, because -- yeah, I -- I was reading papers, I w -- I was in touch with people. Every once in awhile I would -- I would hear from friends and there would be snide remarks, wherever I was there were snide remarks about Croats. In Belgrade there were more than snide remarks, in Zagreb about people in Belgrade.

Not to mention that I guess whatever was a communist party that at one time may http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 121 have been very idealistic or certainly, you know, that had deteriorated into all sorts of unpleasant things. And there was some really unpleasant consumption goi -- you gop -- you know, there -- there was money being spent on -- on -- on these huge hotels that were being built in -- in -- in -- say in Dubrovnik was importing bathroom fixtures instead of trying to, you know, bring your own. I mean he -- they were spending millions of dinars or whatev -- yeah, dinars by importing stuff from - - from Italy and so on and it -- well, you could see that it was going to start falling apart and there were constantly intrigues left and right. It had --

Q: Yeah.

A: What I was doing here though, for awhile, was teaching English to various people who were going for the State department, for the Commerce department and so on. No, the Commerce didn't, most of them were State department people. There were these various language schools, commercial language schools which had -- it was a [indecipherable] thing. You would be hired, and you would go there for six weeks or -- or -- or three months or whatever and then somebody said you don't need to come tomorrow any more. And you know, I -- I could survive, but there were people who were doing this who could not survive, and they were all over the place. And I taught maybe in three or four of them anywhere in Arlington, some were even further out.

Q: You were teaching English?

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A: It was taught -- teaching English to people who were going to go for it, mostly the State department to Yugoslavia. And there were a couple of [indecipherable]

Q: You were teaching it to -- English to who --

A: I mean I was teaching Croatian to English --

Q: Okay, okay.

A: -- speakers, obviously.

Q: Right.

A: And that was very interesting. Then there were a couple of women from -- and there the -- the Croatian Serbian, they also exploded very often in a very strange way, because [indecipherable] people who were teaching who wa -- who was teaching along with me was this -- they were teaching Croatian and they were teaching Serbian, you had both things. Everybody was politically involved one way or another and there was a young Serbian priest who harassed some smart American women who were working in the Defense department. He harassed them to the point where they were weeping, and -- and then went to somebody and said wasn't work -- couldn't quite work out what -- what I was, I mean, you're not a Croatian, you're not na -- you know, like that. And very unpleasant things were -- were going on. But for awhile I -- I didn't feel like, you know, bothering with this. And then I worked for Voice of America again.

Q: Oh you did?

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A: Yeah.

Q: Here?

A: Yeah.

Q: During what years, roughly?

A: Might be 80's, early 80's? Started off a very nice guy who became head of the -- when it was still a Yugoslav desk, but then it became divided into Croatian, and the Slovenian desk was always apart, but suddenly we had a -- a Croatian desk and a Serbian desk and a this and a that and speakers from all over. And I was doing translations there. No, it started out as follows, one [indecipherable] this guy, this friend of ours had just retired and turned over -- he's a Serb from Belgrade who Morris also gave his first job. He was a prisoner of war in Germany and Morris gave him a first job. And then it turned out he was one of the best friends of my cousin's husband. He -- he was, for quite awhile handled the Yugoslav desk. And he retired and then I started working --

Q: Do you remember his name?

A: Yes, Slavko Tutorovich. He's alive, he's -- he's in -- here. His wife was my best friend for a long time here, she died unfortunately of cancer and I miss her terribly.

He -- very conservative person, but nevermind, was -- both of them, and now has turned out to be really a Serb Nationalist who -- I won't go into that, we don't talk about that because when we go talk about that, that's the end. But -- and -- and ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 124 there's a lot of conspi -- conspiracy theory about America really, I mean, is in cahoots with everybody against the Serbs. So, that's -- I -- I -- I don't want to -- but, we said, the problem is, you know, talking about something else. But he's very nice otherwise. Anyhow, at first I was doing -- I was given the scripts and I was doing translations here and just turning them over to the [indecipherable] just -- I hate to say what kind of garbage lot -- I mean, what kind of -- of -- of -- you know, waste of time, money, whatever you want, these things were. It was just awful, especially the [indecipherable]. They're filled with nothing. Like for instance -- trying to think. A feature [coughs] excuse me -- about that movie "Old Yeller." [coughs]

Q: Do you want to get a drink?

A: Mm-hm. [tape break]. You know, 10 minute, 15 -- 10 -- 10 minute feature, I think. Very boring. But they were in Croatian and I was the Croatian voice, okay?

So then after awhile some of the women, and I think they -- they were right, one of the Serbian woman decided that my voice was too old. I can't agree more. A -- you -- you can tell. Although this was maybe 10 years ago. But yes, if you listen to it you can tell this is not a young person. Okay, doesn't matter. It wasn't -- it wasn't anything that was -- you know, about rock and roll.

Q: Yeah.

A: And -- although probably that should have been done. Then -- then I did a -- a -- a few newscasts and so on. And then the whole thing started exploding and one day http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 125 the guy who -- who succeeded Slavka Tutoravich, who's still alive now and so on, in fact, we're about the same age, said again from one day to the next, you know we don't have a budget, you don't have to come tomorrow. Was hugely furious because | think I was -- you know, at least should have had, you know, two days notice or something like that.

Q: And this was during the war?

A: This -- no, I do-don't know --

Q: No?

A: -- when, no, not necessarily. But during very tense times, yes.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: Very, very tense times. You could tell that Yugoslavia was falling apart, and this was very evident on that desk, I mean, they were in each other's hair in the most awful way. Although the head of, I guess what's known as the Yugoslav desk, is a woman by the name of Mya, I forget the surname now, who was a Croat. And she still is. But obviously with an American citizenship [indecipherable] and so on. So -

Q: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to ask you also a little bit in more detail about your work at the museum and when did you -- when did you start -- it's volunteering that you were doing down there, translating and --

A: Yes.

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Q: Tell me about how yo -- how did you get involved, why did you get involved?

A: Well, I received one of the bulletins and I saw that they had a grant for a year for a young man -- a young scholar, Canadian scholar who had just come -- who -- who was just doing translations and make -- no, not doing translations, sorting and arranging and trying to get under this huge material that they had gotten from Zagreb, from the archives of Zagreb, and this -- I don't know exactly how this worked, but they had sent over somebody who -- who had microfilmed or whatever all of this material which was then there and it was there and nobody did anything with it. I don't know how long this had been going on. And this young man was in the process of publishing a book on the Croatian peasant party, which he eventually did in English, and was very good. I think it was very good. And who then went back for the museum, I [indecipherable] but I'm no -- yeah, I guess for the museum to partly -- to Zagreb, three years ago [indecipherable] three years ago.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And was trying to get more stuff and so on from the archives. I -- this is a scholar and he really doesn't know how to push and penetrate. And when he came back to Zagreb the second time they suddenly, the -- the -- the [indecipherable] whoever was in charge of -- of -- of permitting you to have paper, to have -- to microwave, or -- not microwave, I mean --

Q: Microfilm.

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A: -- microfilm, or -- or make copies or -- of any kind of m-material that you found, only permitted them, I don't know, like eight a day or something crazy like that.

And he is a ver -- not shy, but he is a retiring young man, and he didn't know how to say listen, I am doing so and so, this is the book I have written now, and so on, I want this. He just didn't do it. And I met him on a couple of occasions, I think there were other distractions there, but I don't know what they were. And he -- he didn't finish everything that needed to be done there, I don't think, for his --

Q: Research.

A: -- for hi -- for -- for -- for -- not for the museum, but for his own sake. And he had met both Goldsteins, and Ivo Goldstein is also a historian and he told them, listen, you just simply have to go there and -- and push and say and get in touch with so and so. He didn't do it. He is working for the Canadian government now and trying to get another academic job and I hope he gets it. This is a nice young man but -- but -- but not sufficiently, let's say aggressive in that way. Also, he asked me several times did I know Dr. Mirjana Gross. A-And Mirjana Gross is my friend Faya's childhood friend. I didn't know her, but I knew who she was. She is the professor of history and I think mostly 18" and 19" cr -- century Croatian history.

So exactly the -- the -- the -- that era that he was writing on and so on, and a great expert on the Croatian peasant party and so on. And I got them together and I practically -- and Mirjana Gross had to pull it out of him, she wanted a book, both USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 128 for the -- for the department -- or for the -- for the library, and for herself. I mean, he had been asking me for -- and he kept, you know, oh, I don't know, do I have enough, [indecipherable] you know, and sh -- did -- he did. And then she said, well I hope you're going to ini -- to initiate it -- yeah, to -- to initial it for me and he did, finally. He's just not aggressive enough, but he's a good scholar. He says he's an excellent scholar of Croatian stuff.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: Anyhow, I saw that he was here and that the stuff was there and I called him because I saw he was Canadian and I had my doubts about cron -- Canadian Croatian scholars, I didn't know what this was.

Q: Can you say his name?

A: Ah, wait a minute. This is -- really should be [indecipherable], I'll get it in a second.

Q: Okay.

A: Can you -- can you -- [tape break] his book here.

Q: Okay.

A: His name was Mark Biondich. He's a very talented young man and did really excellent scholarly work on the -- on -- on this particular part of Croatian history.

And he was a scholar in residence for a year there, and -- although this -- this really wasn't -- wasn't his -- his -- his -- let's say his branch of -- he knew very little about http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 129 Jewish history. He knew a lot about -- about what the Usta8a did and so on, that he was well informed.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But on the other hand, he couldn't put a face to any of that.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And he and I together went through these documents, through these microfiches and ran into absolutely the most unbelievable stuff. I mean the -- whole classes of people I knew and friends and schoolmates of my brother's. And people -- I mean, the most unbelievable things. This was done mostly alphabetically.

Q: These were records of Jews that had been rounded up?

A: Yes.

Q: Yes.

A: Were killed. And in connection with this, for instance, later on, we -- [indecipherable] who was working on the project kept getting these -- these requests from people to see whether they knew what happened to their brothers, to their parents and so on. And we got a request from a woman in California looking for her father and her uncles and so on. And we immediately found the various uncles and so on. And then we found her name listed as perished at the [indecipherable] place, which we sent her.

Q: Wow.

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A: [indecipherable] person. And she had been -- she had come to Austria, sh -- her mother had smuggled her out with the help of a German officer and so on. I mean, she was -- she came finally to the museum and it was -- she gave all sorts of mater - - of pictures and so on and so forth. She grew up in Vienna without knowing what her background was, although her mother was there and she went through -- she was in a Catholic school and she went through communion and everything.

Q: Yeah. It must have been --

A: The mother recently died.

Q: Oh. It must have been quite a bittersweet kind of experience for you to go through this material --

A: Yes, it was, yes it was.

Q: -- to relive those days.

A: Yes.

Q: And yet, to be able to contribute something.

A: It was extremely -- I really, I tell you, honored is not quite the word to say, but I felt it was -- I could contribute some way. I mean, there are not that many Serbo -- Serbo-Croat speakers in -- in -- who have the time to do it in -- in Washington. So I was extremely happy. And of course, the material had just arrived. I mean, this -- not just arrived, just been sorted out up to a certain point.

Q: And for you personally too, I would think it filled in a picture -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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A: Oh [indecipherable]

Q: -- you know, around the edges, that --

A: -- extremely so. There were a number of things that I didn't know about. I also found, through some of the recordings, which I don't know who paid for, I believe the museum must have paid for it -- for this. There were some eyewitness stories and so on done by a guy who lives in London who's a Sephardic Jew. And I can't remember his name right now, but he did it for the museum. And he told the story of a young man who was my boyfriend, so to speak. I mean, he -- he wasn't, but he was, okay [indecipherable] a very nice young man who was a law student, who perished in the most incredible, dreadful, complicated way that one can only imagine. He was a law student, he had been in the Yugoslav army, yo- you know, you had to do your year. Sometimes it was postponed by a year if you happened to be a student, but no, in fact, when we left he had just finished his one year, he -- swaggering around in a very elegant uniform, with boots and so on. Very, very good looking. And -- although, I really wa -- you know, he was decorative, I wasn't in love or anything like that, but maybe he was, I really don't know. I don't know, but you know, he -- we went out a few -- we went out, you know, f -- we went out from here to there together. It's the going out that was going on and -- and he accompanied me under the guidance of everybody else to balls and there's a thing when you were 18. Until you were 18 you didn't count as a human being. And ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 132 when you were 18 you went to the journalists ball, and then you were launched.

[indecipherable]

Q: Yeah, you mentioned that in your other interview, then you hated that.

A: -- it's a parade, oh, I hated that. Absolutely hated it. But anyhow, he -- this young man was a law student, just finishing, I guess, not even that. And he was caught with the first group of people, the first group of young Jewish -- and then I guess whatever pro [indecipherable] boys who were there, but mostly Jewish, I believe. And they were taken to a -- to two camps. But anyhow, he was -- finally he ended up in a camp in the Velebit mountains. And he came -- and this was told to somebody who was -- who wa -- who was there, he -- this is told by a guy who --

Q: Saw.

A: -- saw it. Who, by the way was a big -- became a career Yugoslav officer, he was a colonel. And he was a sports person in Zagreb, I think he was a skiing champion or whatever, something like that. So, this group was taken to this camp. And as he had just pre -- previously been in the Yugoslav army, he knew that area and he was telling these guys, oh I know where this is, this is not bad, lik -- well -- we'll -- we'll try and get, you know, get together and all of these things, and maybe it will work out and so on. And as he was taken to this prison, a fr -- somebody from the same year of law school, not a friend but somebody he knew, who became a UstaSa officer, I believe, or maybe n -- anyhow, he was there and saw him. And being a http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 133 nice person, he wrote his parents say -- saying I saw Dragon today at such and such a place. He didn't say he's alive, but that was obvious. They were a fairly prominent family and -- and the parents took a postcard and wrote him a postcard saying, we're in Zagreb, hope you're okay, that's it. The commander of the camp saw this, this was intercepted and brought to the commander of the camp, the UstaSa, who said, how come your parents know where you are? This guy had absolutely --

Q: No idea.

A: -- mean this had been -- this had been intercepted. He never got the card from the parents. He said, what are you talking about? He says, you told your parents, you wrote your parents to say where you were. He said, no I did not [indecipherable]. And -- and -- and he executed him right there on the spot, he cut his head off. I mean, this guy knows, who told this story. This kind of material I was running into.

Q: Yeah.

A: I mean, this -- this is somebody with -- I was photographed with, you know, standing behind me and I guess doing waltzes and stuff.

Q: Geez.

A: It -- it was just, you know. And some of it -- y -- all of it was pretty devastating, but when this was some -- and the horrible part about this guy was that he begged my father the way we -- the day before we left, why don't you take [indecipherable] http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 134 we all going to get messed up, you are bu -- you know who you are, you -- you -- you know, you -- I can't. I would love to, I can't do it, out of the question. My mother was very fond of him, and I -- I was totally uninterested. But I -- obviously, if I -- we -- we could have --

Q: Saved his life, sure.

A: -- helped him and saved, I mean, every -- everything would have done. And it looked menacing, but it didn't look quite as menacing as all that.

Q: As that, right.

A: Yeah.

Q: So --

A: And another friend like that, the German friend.

Q: Yeah. So here you are, you know, 50 years later --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- re -- 60 years later, reading all these -- finding out things --

A: Yes.

Q: -- about people you knew and --

A: Yes.

Q: -- putting together this picture, more -- in more detail, because you already knew a lot.

A: [knew a lot.

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Q: Because you'd been going back and forth all those years.

A: Yes, I knew a lot, but I certainly didn't know what I found out in the museum.

Q: Yeah.

A: And not even vaguely. Not even vaguely. We knew that people were starving, but we didn't know to what extent this went. We knew that people were rounded up. One of the touching stories that -- that came from the museum was a woman from a village -- End of Tape Four, Side A Beginning Tape Four, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg. This is tape four, side B.

A: This woman tells the story. She was -- I don't know whether she was -- she -- she mu -- she was probably a peasant. She says, we were standing there, and women -- and then later I think she wa -- she says Jewish women, but I don't think she -- this was her first thought. This must have been what [indecipherable] I mean suggested to her, maybe. She said these women were coming in and they were obviously from town because they were walking with their pocket -- they had pocketbooks. They had never s -- you know, this was not common in [indecipherable] where you had things in pockets, hidden pockets, or in -- in bandanas or whatever, like that. But she said these were women from town and they http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 136 were -- they were dressed with hats and -- and some had -- this came up later in the story, they -- some came with -- with children in -- in prams, you know, in -- what do you call those, strollers? No, they didn't have strollers, but whatever. They wer - - had babies in th -- in baby carriages. And -- and dressed with hats, maybe even gloves, who knows? It's just -- it's --

Q: She had never seen that. Or sh -- or that's how she identif --

A: This -- this is how she identified these were people from town.

Q: Yeah.

A: The [indecipherable] not at all. I mean, she would have been --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- she may not have been wearing a -- a full costume, but she was --

Q: Right. And what was the story she was telling about?

A: She was staring -- telling the story about women being rounded -- had been --

Q: Oh.

A: -- that had been rounded up, being marched into a camp.

Q: I see.

A: Or maybe were already in a camp and she saw them marching them off to a -- to wherever the -- you know, whatever their quarters would have been.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: And they would have, you know, people didn't know, they got dressed.

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Q: They didn't know where they were going.

A: No. Pe-People had very little imagination at that --

Q: You know, it's so interesting, I keep coming back to this, about your father having this foresight --

A: Yes.

Q: -- to get out and in some ways that, you know, it's because of the circles that he moved in. He knew things.

A: Yes, he knew.

Q: But these other people couldn't have known, or -- or would not have known first hand and perhaps wouldn't have been as ready to believe as he was, since he knew these people and he --

A: Yes, yes.

Q: -- sort of --

A: Yes.

Q: -- probably had information that other people --

A: Yes, he -- yes.

Q: -- wouldn't be as likely to believe as he was.

A: And would not have been -- and you know, one of his very close friends, and this is a very strange story, for years, was the Count Joseph Bombale. And Joseph http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 138 Bombale was his hunting com -- they were hunting companions. And Bombale was a much better shot than my father, but they kind of --

Q: A count from where?

A: From Croatia.

Q: Oh, there were counts there?

A: There were counts --

Q: Yes.

A: -- galore.

Q: It was a kingdom, I g -- I for --

A: No, no, but this was -- they -- they -- th-this is a Napoleonic one.

Q: Okay.

A: And -- and -- and there were counts -- Austro-Hungarian, Hungarian, Croatian, I mean, counts, barons, plemeniti, what, I mean, there was -- there was a hierarchy of -- of --

Q: How do you say count in Croatian?

A: Grof.

Q: Grof.

A: Grof. So this was Grof Joseph Bombale, who was a very close friend of my father's. And one of the things, of course, was that he was part of that consti -- it wasn't a concern, it wa -- th -- this group of -- of agricultural manufacturers of ontectnetonancedjusietneey for ther biormatberabouttfisotecion USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 139 alcohol that were -- that -- that was a -- what should I say, I -- it was a thi -- wi -- I - - I will say a -- you know, an organization that got together and so on. And he -- he was part of it and he was absolutely a miserable businessman and my father tried to teach him what business was and so on. And he had a particular significance for me because I'd known him from, you know, childhood on. That point I was maybe 15 and came in and we shook hands and he kissed my hand and I knew I'd grown up. I -- I -- maybe I had just come back from England, maybe I was 16. Boy, I really had it. And I thought he was a bachelor the rest -- for all my life, I was very -- we were close, I mean, Father was with him all the time. Not all the time, but often. When I'm here at a Slovistics conference, sitting and listening to something, and I had my tooth pulled just a couple of days earlier and I was still under all kinds of -- had been taking all kinds of -- of -- of -- of painkillers and I thought I wasn't in my right mind. I come to this one room and presenting is a Slovistics professor called Joseph Bombale. So I said, have I gone out of my mind? This was a bachelor when I left.

He was -- he was killed in Jasenovac also, by the way. And rightly so. And I went to him, I said, what's going on? And I said, is your aunt so and so? Countess Nun- Nundine? Married a swi -- a -- a Dutch what would you call it, a dut -- a Dutch diplomat. He said yes. I said, is your aunt so and so, Josephine? He said yes. I said, my God, I thought Joseph Bombale was a bachelor. And he said, that does not mean http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 140 anything. And then I talked some more to him. He knew exactly where, what and so on.

Q: Hm.

A: And there's a very nice picture of the place where they lived, it was the most beautiful park in all of Croatia, is a nav -- a natura -- a park with fantastic things that had been done by his -- planted by his grandfather, great grandfather, and so -- so anyhow, this man, first of all he was taken to jail because he was a Freemason, and he was killed. But also, I think, in fact I'm sure, he was being extra smart and the UstaSa were smarter. He had been a hunting companion of Count Charno, who was Mussolini's brother-in-law. And -- which my father knew, that they'd been there. But what my father didn't know is that they had sort of worked it out that -- and in fact this went on for a little while, that some Italian prince was going to be declared the king of Croatia -- and this went on for a very short while and then this was somehow eliminated. I would have to look it up exactly how to say -- how it worked out. And this good friend of ours was playing two sides.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And maybe less than a week before we were to leave, he said to my father, you have nothing to fear, I'm here to protect you from everything there is. He ended up dead. But he was playing two sides.

Q: Mm-hm.

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A: And --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- he was one of the Croats who -- who was killed in Jasenovac.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And put in because he was a Freemason, was the story --

Q: Yeah, but obviously there was a --

A: -- but them not looking at anything.

Q: -- [indecipherable] other stuff.

A: But there was a lot more.

Q: Right.

A: There was much more to it than that.

Q: Right.

A: And, you know, this was maybe I don't know, two weeks, a week before. And my father said listen --

Q: Before you left?

A: Before we left.

Q: Yeah.

A: My father I know said to him at the time, so if everything is fine, we'll return.

Q: Hm.

A: And he meant it -- http://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: Yeah. [indecipherable]

A: -- that -- you know, that wasn't a -- he meant it, he thought that he was going to outsmart somebody and he was going to be doing this and doing that. And later on, maybe -- maybe -- I don't know, six months ago, I read a story in one of the -- somebody was doing a reminiscence in one of the things p-put out by the Croatian - -by the -- by the -- what is it called, by the -- by the Jewish Community Center in Zagreb, where this man's sister, who was married by that -- that [indecipherable] Count Ansenberg -- was it Ansenberg? I believe so -- had been shielding some Jewish women somewhere in the house in Zagreb.

Q: There -- I guess there was never any thought that you would go into hiding, since you had a chance to get out.

A: At that moment there was not.

Q: Yeah.

A: At that moment. But, you know, I -- people did go out and I -- the first thought for everybody that I know of who could and who had the imagination to know what was going to happen is to go down to Dalmatia. First of all it was under Italian occupation and it was a different population.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Well, in first place you would not have been known.

Q: Yeah.

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A: I mean, in Zagreb everybody knew who you were.

Q: Right.

A: Probably we would have gone down to the south. Probably.

Q: If you'd done something sooner, you mean?

A: No, if we'd done something late, if we had been caught.

Q: Later, I see.

A: If we had been caught there --

Q: I see.

A: -- but -- but I don't think that would -- would have --

Q: Mm-hm, uh-huh --

A: -- been able to do it.

Q: Uh-huh, I see what you're saying. Let me -- let me -- the -- you have grandchildren now?

A: Yes.

Q: And how will, when the time comes, how -- what -- what about -- what is there about your story that you would want them to understand and -- and remember?

A: Tolerance is what I would like them to know and I think they probably are quite tolerant, both of them. I -- I don't -- I don't know. The boy is a engineer -- you know, I keep talking. I think they think this is -- no, they don't think it's an old wives" tale. He was Bar Mitzvahed and -- but I don't think he's particularly Jewish http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 144 oriented, although he's well aware that he is Jewish. Mya was Bat Mitzvahed also, and is a very assiduous member of a -- of a synagogue in Boston with a female rabbi. She goes to all services and so on. Good about it. Their name is Lindley.

They had their father's name. Jane was Lindley for awhile too, then she reverted to Rosenberg. And hi -- she's much more Jewish oriented than I am, Mya, and she knows what happened, I mean, I keep telling them and -- when I get a chance, I don't want to overdo it. I keep showing them pictures of one thing or another. I was thinking of taking -- I mean, you know, taking them to Zagreb. And I probably will eventually, the girl, because I think they need to see where this is from. I -- I don't know, I don't -- I -- I -- I really don't know what about that. You know, it doesn't pain me in any way. I would like them to know -- to know their history, whichever way it is. On their father's side it's a very interesting -- there's part American Indian there, which I think is very nice, very interesting. Part Swiss, a great -- a grandmother who came, and I believe she was with one of those she di -- the family must have been one of those sects, religious sects from around Bern who came to Pennsylvania and then went on to Ohio. And the other part was Scotch, English and they're -- for instance, bo -- I think has -- Joey has -- is a particular kind of -- of way one's back teeth look, if you have any Indian background and his are like that and there's some kind of a story about a great-grandmother who was an Indian princess who has been -- who had -- who wa -- who -- no, who was a settler's child http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 145 who had been taken by the -- by an Indian tribe in Ohio and ther-there where these mounds are, near -- near -- in Ohio.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And then returned as -- there's a book about her, I don't know what the name is.

And she -- she ret -- she was finally brought back to her family, I guess. I -- I -- I like these stories.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I -- I -- I don't know -- I d -- I don't know when they will be aware of, you know, who I really am. I'm Granny. I do have to say that -- that -- that I used to sing wonderf -- in a very bad voice, but some wonderful Croatian songs to both of them as -- as -- you know, lullabies. And my favorite one is [speaks Croatian here], did you see my sli -- son Janko? And it's a wonderful story about this mother asks people in the village or on the road or whatever, did you see my son, Janko? And everybody said no, we haven't seen him, but we have heard rumors that he was accosted by three young Turks. And he said -- one of Turks said to him, Janko, if -- an-an-anyhow, it ends up by -- by -- by saying how courageous Janko is and so on.

This is -- this is -- this -- these were their nursery rhymes, I --

Q: Mm-hm, but I mean, they're still pretty young, I mean --

A: Not that young, no. Joe is --

Q: Mi -- teenagers?

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A: Oh, no.

Q: No?

A: No, Joey just graduated, he's an engineer, he's what, 24.

Q: Oh, graduated from college?

A: And Mya is 27.

Q: Oh, oh, they're -- they're adults.

A: They're adults.

Q: But do you feel satisfied that you have done your part to tell them your story and to impart whatever lessons you've -- you would like them to have from -- from your experience and --

A: Yes, I collar them every once in awhile, and -- and try to tell them. And when, for instance, when a picture comes around, you know, I -- I try to say listen, this is so and so, this is a -- yeah, I do -- I don't want to overdo it. It's not that I'm reluctant by any means.

Q: Right.

A: But usually the-they're not la -- not around long enough. I have to find the right moment to do it. But I do it. I mean, they know exactly who was what in the family and how I grew up and -- and how we left and about my brother and all of that, sure.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm.

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A: They know, they know. She is -- I mean, not only is she politically correct, I mean, to an extent, you can imagine. She's very much so. And -- and he's -- he's a nice boy.

Q: Good. Obviously, you had such an amazing variety of experiences and -- is there anything you want to bring up and talk about that I haven't touched on?

A: I don't think so. I think we're -- you've been fantastically good at eliciting whatever there was --

Q: Good.

A: -- and really not --

Q: There's a lot.

A: -- and very, very patient.

Q: There's a lot --

A: Thanks a lot.

Q: -- and it's hard to -- you know, I don't know what I don't know, so --

A: Ah, you know very much. I do want to say that Morris has been somebody extraordinarily wonderful and very patient. I -- this wasn't very easy for him, I was -- he was constantly surrounded by -- by my family. And you know, we stayed with his family and all -- that -- that was all wonderful and -- and -- and great, but I think we were more with my part of the family and I think I've always felt like they were -- they were -- they were surrounding him and telling him and so on. He knew http://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.02*0078 148 exactly what was going on, I mean, he was there, among the very first people who came to Yugoslavia after the war, because he was in Bari and he was waiting to go, I believe to Germany and -- and -- and a friend came by and said, why don't you go to Yugoslavia? We don't know what's going to happen there, so first he went to Albania and then he went to Yugoslavia. So, he went to Belgrade right away, so -- he wa -- he was taken by the people in that country, and everything else, and -- and so, he was -- but I -- you know, I d -- I do live in the past to a certain extent. I try not to, but I do. And specially now that I was so -- so -- not now, I mean, now obviously, where you had the patience to listen to me, but in the museum --

Q: Yes.

A: -- when all of the stuff started coming by --

Q: Well there's -- so much was unresolved.

A: Yes, yes.

Q: Yeah. It's hard to break away.

A: Imean, you know what so and so was killed, but you don't know until you see it on a piece of paper where it says the date, or -- or -- or whatever.

Q: Yeah, yeah. Good. Thank you.

A: I thank you very much.

Q: This has been a pleasure.

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A: It was wonderful being with you and I thank you ever so much, and what a wonderful program the museum has.

Q: Oh --

A: I really think it's --

Q: -- I think so too, yeah.

A: -- very, very good. Ah, yeah.

Q: Good. This concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Lucie Rosenberg.

End of Tape Four, Side B

Conclusion of Interview