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ANITA MAGNUS FRANK January 4, 1990

Q: Could you please state your name.

A: Anita Magnus Frank.

Q: And Magnus is your maiden name?

A: That's my maiden name, um-hum.

Q: Uh, where were you born?

A: I was born in Emmen, Holland, January 29, 1936.

Q: Where is Emmen located?

A: Emmen is located in the province of Drenthe. So it's in the north-eastern part of Holland. It's just below [Hone (ph)], if that does any good.

Q: Uh, can you tell me about any of your recollections uh from your childhood, before the war began?

A: Well, I know and that's not a recollection but I know when I was six weeks old my parents moved to the southern part of Holland, to Breda, which is where we lived when the war broke out in 19...May 10th, 1940. So I was only four when the war broke out and my recollections are being part of a - oh I have got some as a matter of fact. I uh remember being very very angry at my father, uh and I gather the story is sort of funny. When I was two, my uh father had decided that I was - oh I was one and a half - my father decided that it was time for me to sit on the pot by myself, and I was, I gather, pretty stubborn, and my mother used to hold me up and he decided I was old enough to sit by myself, and he, so he said, he told me to sit down and I refused, I gather. Now I don't remember that, and according to the story, he pushed me down and I screamed bloody murder and he walked out - and these are all, this was all reported, and my mother cried and I cried. Well, what I do remember is that I was so angry at him that when he would come home on Fridays - he traveled - he uh was a representative for a clothing firm - I remember it and I must have been only two years old - hearing the key in the door and I remember even sitting at the table and exactly what I sat, and as soon as | heard the key in the door I would take my plate and I would walk out of the dining room and I would go to the kitchen and eat with our uh our uh our maid, and I just refused I gather, I refused to talk to him for months and I I have a lot of you know respect for that little two-year old with such strong principles. Uh and then I remember uh going with my mother to visit my aunt and uncle and my cousin was exactly my age in Assen. And they owned a clothing store there and I was spending a couple of weeks with them and getting to know her which is still a memory on my part because they were sent to Auschwitz and of

course never came back and coming back and and reconciling with my father. I I decided to forgive him after all that time and I talked to him about that and and he said, I said how did you cope with that. how did you cope with this two year old just refusing to talk to you? He said, that was your choice and I respected your choice, and that's the kind of man that he is.

Uh, you know, I think he was later on very sorry he had done it but in those days that's that was appropriate discipline. I remember that I was, interestingly enough, I was my father's favorite. I was a very bright child. Uh I was very eager to learn. I have a brother who is three years older than I am and my brother got into trouble early in the game uh in school, like he was accused of stealing some stealing some crayons when he was in first grade, so I must have been three. And the teacher called my father and I remember uh, oh my father just being furious at my brother and giving him spanking and sort of feeling, my feeling very sorry for him, and sort of you know wondering how he could be quote, a bad boy. Uh we lived in a in a we lived in a big house. My grandparents lived with us. Uh I don't remember my grandmother very much. She died in "39, but my mother is German and my father had, as soon as Hitler came to power as a matter of fact in 1933 or "34, my father got my mother's parents out of Germany. They lived with us in in this house so uh it was my parents, my grandparents and then four children. My youngest sister was, my younger sister was born in 1938 and then I had another sister born who was born in 1940 but she died in 1943. And I remember her being born. She was born just before the war, in 1940, and she was born in January and thinking that that's my baby. That was my little baby sister - uh like she was my birthday present, so I have had very warm memories of that. We had a, I remember just feeling very safe in my family. It was a loving family. It was a large family. And it was a family that that cared deeply for each other uh and so you know, just just thinking back to the little two-year old who stood up stood up to her father. I have a real sense that I was aa strong, competent little girl uh who knew what she wanted. Another memory I have is we had pictures, family pictures taken, and we had good friends who were photograp...he was a photographer and so I remember just having to sit and pose and finally saying, no more of that. I didn't want any more. And I just refused to participate. So again, uh memories of a little girl who had a strong sense of self, and I think that's significant because that that really changed uh...

Q: Were there other Jews in this town that you lived in?

A: Oh yeah. Yes. The the photographer as a matter of fact uh, Alter was his name, were Jewish.

Holland I think uh before the war had about 110,000 Jews. This town we lived in, Breda, didn't, had over 200. It didn't have a large Jewish community, but it had a synagogue, an orthodox synagogue and my, as a matter of fact I remember my father and my my uh grandfather going to synagogue uh and I remember on Friday night they had services, Friday night, and we had our dinner and the candles on Friday night and uh it was it was a pretty tight Jewish community.

Q: And you family was a part of that?

A: Oh very much part of that. My parents were both raised in orthodox Jewish homes, my

mother in Germany and my father in in Holland, but uh my father rebelled very early uh against orthodox Judaism so altho...although I'm not quite sure - we kept the kosh..., my parents kept a kosher home but I'm not sure whether it was mostly for their uh sake as it was for my grandfather's sake who was raised and had lived all his live in an orthodox family.

But definitely part, strong part of the Jewish community.

Q: Uh do you have any recollections of the beginning of the war?

A: Yeah. I do. Uh I was four and the the the strongest recollection is when the Germans invaded because what happened was that we were told that they were going to bomb Breda and so all of us, and that was Jews, non-Jews, uh were told to leave Breda and my brother was hospitalized - he had a middle ear infection - and my mother was frantic because we were all told to leave. My mother was absolutely frantic, was trying to get him into a hospital and they were told that they had to keep the hospitals empty for the wounded that were expected, so all of us, uh all of us including my baby sister and my aunt - at that point my aunt, my mother's only sister and her daughter also lived with us, so it was a hugh family. My my grandfather who was oh 80 years, uh five small children - by that time my baby sister was born - five small children, uh the oldest of whom was seven, my parents, my aunt and her daughter, all had to leave Breda. I remember that. We were, we had to walk - we walked about I would say between twenty and thirty kilometers along a road uh trying to find farms where we could stay and I remember being strafed --the bombs, the Germans would bomb us. And uh there were seventy people killed just along that road and I remember uh a woman still standing over her baby carriage, protecting her baby who was killed. And every time the the airplanes would come, my aunt, my mother's sister, would pull us aside and and she was particularly fond of me and she'd literally cover me with her body. And then when the airplanes left then we'd walk again, and I remember stopping at farms and the farms would be full and finally - I think it was about 28 kilometers - we had walked 28 kilometers - uh getting to a farm where they had some room and we spent about five days there, sleeping in the hay, until the all-clear was sounded and then walking back - the having to walk back we were not strafed - I don't remember being strafed or bombed during that walk back. Uh and half way through some buses came and so mothers with children were allowed to go on the buses and so we didn't we didn't have to walk all the way back. And coming back to our town and founding, finding the town unscathed basically - so that was the first memory of the war. Uh then ...

Q: When you returned to the town, was it already occupied by the Germans?

A: Yes. You see at that point the Germans - they they overrun, they overran Holland in five days, so I mean the the Dutch put up a strong resistance but you know, they were not prepared to deal with the masses and then of course the Germans bombed Rotterdam as punishment for German, for Dutch resistance. And uh so we were immediately occupied by the Germans and nothing much happened immediately but then my memories of those early years are pretty vague because they they started rounding up Jews - oh first from the coast.

Now Breda is 50 kilometers north of Antwerp and 50 kilometers southeast of Rotterdam, and

I gather they picked up Jews initially from the coastlines, so to prevent them from fleeing.

That's why I think there were so many Dutch were murd... were massacred - they they just had no place to go. They couldn't leave. Holland was immediately occupied and all exits were basically uh closed and so you were trapped in, we were trapped in our own country.

And the first memories I have uh I have is of wearing a yellow, having to wear a yellow star and I was four, so I wasn't ready for school yet, but uh I remember that because we wore a yellow star, we weren't allowed to ride the buses. I remember we weren't allowed to have radios. Uh and then we were told that when I was ready to go to school in 1942, well really it was 1941, uh we couldn't go to school anymore and so for a while there was a little Jewish school that they had in a - I remember it was on the second floor of a of a building down town Breda, and going there and sitting in a classroom with who knows - twenty other Jewish children. And the children just disappearing. I mean one after the other these children just disappeared until that school closed and then my father tried to teach us at home and I think that was in 1942 because Jewish children were not allowed to go to school anymore.

And and then you know, getting strong messages that that something very bad was going to happen and it was scary and my parents being scared and just fear, fear enveloping the family pretty much.

Q: When you mentioned the children disappearing from the school, were were families at that point being deported?

A: Oh yes. That's when they started. They started deporting the Dutch Jews, as I said they uh they started first deporting them from the coasts. They didn't - the reason we we survived is because they didn't get to us until 1942 uh so we lived in Breda until 19...until the fall of 1942 uh but had they come had they come to us earlier we would have we would have disappeared too. Uh see I have a memory still and this this was how close that it was. My aunt lived in the same town we did but in a suburb of it, and they picked her up oh I think a couple of months before they came to us, and I can remember, I mean I have a clear memory of standing in our doorway in the house that we lived in and waving goodbye to her and her daughter, and they were off to a Polish war camp. That's what I was told. And they went with a baby carriage to the train station where they were sent to Auschwitz and of course never came back. And that was the aunt who was very very close to me, my mother's only sister and her daughter. So uh, so they were sent to Auschwitz uh where we would have gone too uh but - oh yeah, because we lived in Breda so we were just far enough from the border that we were to be picked up later. And uh it just, and these children you know, may have lived on the on the outlying areas of Breda, the children, and then of course the schools closed because there were no children really left.

Q: During this period of the of the occupation, uh how did your parents tell you how to behave when you left the house?

A: Uh, to be very very careful. I mean we wore yellow stars and and the yellow...the way it worked in Holland is that everybody had to have an ausweiss. That was like a passport, and - including us children - and uh in order for us in order for one to have rationing cards you had

to have an ausweiss, and Jews had a big J on their ausweiss. And, of course, we had to wear the yellow star. So you could be stopped at any time and asked for your ausweiss, and if you if you didn't have your ausweiss with you or and you wore a yellow star, you were shot almost you were shot immediately. So what basically happened is we, they didn't let us uh - we were young anyway - but they didn't, they they became extremely protective of us and they didn't let us be out on the street by ourselves. And when we would go out, it was with my grandfather. My grandmother had died in "39 but my grandfather would take us for walks. As a matter of fact that's one of the reasons we were saved. It's just incredible, incredible uh circumstance. When I ...

Q: Shoot. Why don't you go ahead and talk about that. We can go back.

A: Yeah. The uh uh so that that - what happened was that life became totally family-oriented, that uh they first picked up the Jewish men and I - that's another extraordinary situation - that my my mother's father uh had been very very wealthy, and lived in Zempelburg [Pol: S_polno, or S_pdlno Krai_skie] in Germany. And after the Ist World War, during the 1st World War, had contributed a lot of money to the German war effort, and after World War I when that part of Germany where he lived uh became Polish, and he opted to remain German and he moved to Berlin, and he got a Cross of Merit from the German Kaiser. Uh they picked up Dutch men first. They took them, Jewish men first and they took them to slave labor camps and my father had sort of been excused a couple of times one because he was head of the Jewish Council, or he was not perhaps not head but he was a member of the Jewish Council, because he had five children, uh and so on, but he had to, he was to report and I can remember it - my mother just being in tears. Well, the day before, the day before my father was to report, my mother, and she is an incredible woman really - she took that Cross of Merit to the Nazi commander of our town, and everybody said don't be ridiculous - it's not going to do you any good, and she said look at what my father did for you know the fatherland, and he actually acc...he actually excused my father, thanks to her. And again, that saved our lives because without my father we would not have been saved. And the next week, it turned out that was about a week before the rest of the family was going to be called out - we disappeared within that week. And the reason we survived is because a man who worked for City Hall, uh and I don't know - this this is what I was told - I mean that's not a memory I have. I remember walking with my with my grandfather of course, but what happened uh he would take us for walks and a man who worked for City Hall knew what was knew what was happening to Jews. By 1942 by the way everybody knew what was happening to Jews, so the the idea that people didn't know and America didn't know, and England didn't know is garbage. Because we knew and we had no radio. And everybody knew. Uh and uh this man had seen us because he worked for City Hall. He was familiar with what's happening. He had seen my father take us four children for a walk. My baby sister was too little. And he felt so sorry for us because he knew what was going to happen to us, that one day he came to our house, he came to my father's house and he basically said do you want to be killed. My father said no. He said well, why don't you do something about it.

My father said what can I do - I've got five small children and an elderly father-in-law. And he said if I, if I promise to help you, will you try and get out, and within a week - and I

remember a significant part of that - uh other friends, Dutch friends had given us names of people who were willing to take in Jewish children, and within a week we disappeared, and it turned out to be just in time, just before the whole family would have been deported to Auschwitz, because most Jews went to Auschwitz. Uh and what he did is he gave us false passports so the false ausweiss, so as our name was in Dutch "Magnus," uh he gave us authentic passports--because he had access to the blanks--and with new names. And our new name became "Wachness." Of course, Magnus is spelled M - A - G- N- U-S. Wachness was spelled - it sounds the same. So if we would make a mistake, it wouldn't be as noticeable. But the spelling was totally different - it was W- A- C- H-N-E-S-S. And uh and I remember one day we were playing outside and my mother calling us in and saying, children, we want you all to pick a new name. And we had, because Anita is not a common Dutch name - uh we had always pretended we had different names, and I still feel bad about this because my sister Ingrid, the young...one just below me, her her play name had been Leesha (ph), but that's the one I had coveted, and mine had been Lanie (ph) and so when we got to pick new names, I said I want to be Leesha, and I remember Ingrid saying that's my name and I said well I got to be first again. You know, I was the older girl so I got to pick so that's how we picked the new name. My brother's name was Norman. He became Jan. I became Leesha. My sister Ingrid became Lenie (ph) and my other sister Helga became Hennie. And so we got to pick new names and that's that seemed like a big lark to us and then we were called inside, and in the meantime my parents had gotten names of people who were willing to take us - we were called inside and we were told that we were all going to go away. And that we were going to go to strange people, and uh my parents didn't know who they were, but that if we didn't go we would not...we would be killed. And that we were never ever to tell anybody that we were Jewish because that would mean that we would die.

And that we would have our new names, we would live with these people, and that the story that they made up was - it's still a peculiar story that we had, we were Dutch but we had lived in a small town called Emden, which is near...it's a German town near the Dutch border, northwestern Germany, and that when the war broke out we decided we wanted to be in Holland - we didn't want to be, so we basically were refugees from Germany and my grandfather who's who's German, that he was Swiss - uh and uh and because we were refugees we couldn't live with our parents because my parents, our parents were looking for jobs someplace else. And that's why we were, that's why we had to be you know with strange people. That was the story that we were to tell people who would ask us uh you know why we weren't living with our parents. Immediately after that my brother and I were taken away and taken to a family in the same town we lived in, and we stayed there for two weeks and uh was, they lived in a house that - and again in Holland because it's so such a crowded country, several families would live in the in the same house, so we lived on the second floor of this house and there were another family living on the first floor. The family on the first floor did not know that we were on the second floor. So for two weeks we could not move. I remember we slept in the bathtub. We could not talk. We could not move. We couldn't do anything because we were told that if they, the people downstairs would find out that we were upstairs we'd be killed. And we, I remember also that sometimes they would take us out twelve o'clock at night just to give us some fresh air. So we'd we'd go outside and that was that was a very hard time because in the mean...you know, we had no idea where our parents

were. I mean there is a six-year old and a nine-year old just taken away, totally, from parents, sisters, and everything else and and, and yet we knew - you know, there was no crying.

There was no whining. There was nothing. There was just obedience. And then after two weeks we were taken by some other people to the middle of the country and we stayed for two years with a magnificent family called the Buchas (ph) in Bilthoven--uh, which is a small town north of Utrecht, which is in the middle of Holland. And they ran a very progressive school called the "Werkplatz (ph)," the "work place." She was a daughter of the Cadbury family of the British chocolates Cadbury family. And they were Quakers; and because they ran a school, they took in other children who were not Jewish and so for them to have other children there was not as obvious as it would have been for you know for an ordinary family. So that was a very safe place for us to be. Now we were told never ever ever to tell anybody we were Jewish. That nobody knew and that we were never to let it be known, and so that was a horrendous burden on us. On me particularly and it's interesting that when my brother's much older, well three years older than I am, I think I was much more conscious of the whole situation than he was and uh and my earliest memory - I think when we we went to Bilthoven in in October - no in September of 1942, and again what surprises me in retrospect is that there was no questioning - it was it was real acceptance and real understanding of what was going to happen to us. There was no question about the fact that if we were discovered we would be killed. I mean that, we lived with that throughout the war, and I also - you know, now when I think about the horror of it, it blows me away. But I'm so grateful we were children because we accepted it - there was none of the the fear of the neurosis, or the neurosis or anything else. There was none of the pathology that that could have induced really uh because we just knew it was going to happen - that that was the way, you know, being very concrete still uh we just accepted that's the way it was and it was scary. Uh my father came to visit us in October; so after months, my father appeared. And it turned out he and my mother and my grandfather had gone to uh Limburg, which is in the southeastern part of Holland. We tried to go places where nobody knew us. My two younger sisters came about a month later and uh they had gone with my parents to Limburg but that was too dangerous, so they they leaved them with another teacher of the school in the same town that my brother and I were. And my baby sitter...sist...uh sister Rita went to which is in the western part of the country; though she died of diphtheria in 1943, so I never never saw her again. Uh but my father came in October; and I'll remember his visit and it was incredible to see him. And he told us that uh he told us that uh our birthdays have been changed. That my brother, whose birthday was November 10th, was his new birthday was January 3rd. And my birthday, which is January 29th, was going to be January 21. And we accepted all that. You know, again, you didn't question - that was the way it was, because it turned out that those were the birthdays that were in our new ausweiss - our new ausweiss which didn't have a J on it. Of course, no J's on our clothes, no no stars on our on our, no yellow stars on our clothes. And uh one of the children of the family we stayed, the Bucha family, I remember saying to my brother, "Norman,"--I mean, "Jan, Jan, what's his name, Jan. You know, you have a birthday coming up pretty soon." And I said, "Oh, no, no. His birthday's not until January 3rd. We confused his birthday with a friend of his." Now unlikely story, but perfect logic to a six-year old. Uh and II that's what I remember about me - an extraordinary competence - that sounds sort of conceited but in in dealing with the

situation and making up stories and it also gives me today such enormous respect for for children - I, they're capable of infinitely more you know than we ever give them credit for, so uh because I have these strong memories still of myself when I was when I was six years old.

Then the next major trauma was Santa Claus. Now Santa Claus comes on December 5 in Holland and he is, he comes from Spain and it's a non-religious holiday. It's not like Christmas here. It's Santa Claus who comes with his black moire (ph) - his name is Peter from Spain on his white steed with his miter and and his staff. Uh Peter has a big uh bag on his back and if you've been a good kid then you get candy and if you've been a bad kid you get put in the bag and sent, taken back to Spain, so ....(laughter) and I remember being in agony because you see I believed in Santa Claus and I was quite sure that Santa Claus didn't know that my name had changed, and I couldn't tell Betty Bucha that I really wasn't Leesha Wachness - that I really was Anita Magnus - because that would let her know that I was Jewish - I mean I didn't - of course they knew, but I didn't know that they knew. So I can remember being absolutely terrified of Santa Claus coming because the way Santa Claus is in Holland, he comes in and visits and he sits down and you know he says, well, you know, have you been a good girl and stuff like that, and uh I felt totally trapped - that's, talking about terror - I was in pure terror. Uh and I'll never never forget when he came and already trying to make up stories about what I would say to him if, when he called me Anita. I would tell him that he was making a mistake. But he came in, and because I was the youngest of the family, uh he said well, Leesha, have you been a good girl, and my relief - thinking my God, he knows everything. You know, because I so firmly believed - it was, I'll never for...you know, I'll never forget that intense relief of not being betrayed, because even a Santa Claus could betray us. So uh when my father left us, and I'm back-tracking a little bit - my father left us, my brother and I had to go to bed very early - I remember seven o'clock - uh we started to cry and that's probably the most intensive crying and I, in retrospect I think we we started with pre...pretend crying, and I'm not quite sure whether we did that because we really wanted to cry ..... [Phrase missing]...a loving, caring oh unbelievably wonderful woman. When she came upstairs, I was afraid we were going to be punished, but she she of course didn't punish us. She was very very nurturing and very loving and and seemed to understand why we were crying. But I learned early in the game during the war years uh I learned early that there was something very wrong with who I was. I mean that's probably one of the major lessons. I mean when you look at our lives I mean we were among the most fortunate of all Jews in Holland because we were not, we were out in the open. We were like Dutch children except we didn't live with our parents, and sure we were in danger and it turned out that several times they were very very close to catching us. I'll get in to that in a moment, but when you compare it to most, to most other kids who were, like Anne Frank who was hidden uh for years, you know, and they could not go out and we were infinitely more fortunate. Uh we were out. We were able to go to school. We, and the school was a magnificent school, very progressive. Uh we had friends. We could play, could breathe fresh air and yet we also knew that, and I knew very intensively uh intensely, that I could be betrayed anytime, and so I learned early in the game that I was not to draw any attention to myself. That I could not, I had to be a very good girl. I could not be naughty. I could not do anything that would make anybody notice me. And so I learned not to complain and I learned not to express any feelings and I learned not to be a bad girl and I learned not to ever

disobey because anything - I didn't dare do anything that again would make people angry at me because if they were angry at me they might betray me. So it it put this this vice around me, basically, and when I compare that to the little girl who snubbed her father you know I I am aware of what a dramatic impact that war had, uh and at and it was really the most the most poignant memory I have was oh in 1943 I think it was, uh we were riding on what's a

bock... (ph)] - it's a bicycle with a big sort of uh box in front of it and that's how they would transport vegetables and stuff like that - and somebody was riding it and my brother and I were sitting in it, on the edge and I was holding on and then I noticed my brother was not holding on and I of course being you know wanting to be just as brave as he, I decided not to hold on just at the worse possible time as he was going around the corner, and I fell off the

bock... (ph)], hit my head on the on the asphalt, on the pavement. I'm sure I had a concussion, but I thought I'd done something very bad, and I had the most blinding headache that I can imagine and I I went back. I didn't say anything because I thought I'd done something very bad. I didn't say anything to Betty Bucha, but I was in such pain that I would just start crying and I'd just walk out of the room, and would come back and then I would just be in so much pain again and I would just walk out again. I remember I just was going in and out, just terrified of being noticed, so I never told her. And another time I was running and I ran into a wall, and I got a a big uh cut on my forehead. My terror was about being betrayed to the Germans. It wasn't about hurting. It wasn't about, you know, having fallen. It was that I had done something bad, and I was, this could meant the end of my life. I mean crazy associations. But basically I learned that uh I, you know, II was not to ever do anything that in anyway would make anybody mad at me or upset at me or or would draw attention to me.

Q: Were there many Germans in the this town where the school was located?

A: Oh yeah. Oh there were Germans all over the place. They were not, in Holland they were not as as obvious I mean you know that, during the war during the war itself because they they felt the Dutch were also Aryans so the Dutch except for the Jews were just fine and they really believed that the Dutch would eventually cooperate with them. And so for the first four years, except they did pick up a lot of Dutch men, they were quite quite lenient with the Dutch population itself and no where as vicious and brutal as they were for example with the with the Poles or with the uh with the Russians, particularly the Ukrainians because they were the untermenschen. The Dutch were supposedly part of the great Aryan race - the the super race, and it was just the Jews who were you know the vermin, according to their uh philosophy. So the Dutch, Holland didn't really - no, that's not true - the underground of course suffered. I mean they, when you were caught helping Jews or if you were caught working underground but the but the but the actual occupation did not become very serious until 1944 when they finally convinced uh were convinced the Dutch were not going to join them in their uh lunacy.

Q: What what happened next in in the school?

A: Well, we stayed in that school for two years. Uh and I I did well and we stayed with this

wonderful family for two years. We were again very fortunate - my two younger sisters were not as fortunate because they were shifted from one family to the next. But we stayed with the same family. We moved several times but that's because the Germans the Germans uh took over. I mean they, we lived in a house near the school and the Germans requisitioned that, and then we moved to another house and then we moved to another house, but that was because the Germans just you know, when they when they wanted houses they just kicked people out. But we just lived with the family. We would go and we visited our parents once during Christmas and uh there was there was uh and that was the first time that I had seen....I can't remember whether - that was not Christmas of "42. I think we visited them Christmas of "43. Uh I can remember in "43 I saw my mother I think for the first time because my baby sister died, uh Rita died in and she came and told us that Rita had died and I remember just crying, being incredibly unhappy.

Q: So your mother came to the school, or to the house....?

A: Yes, to the house where we were staying, yeah, to tell us that Rita had died. And then I just remember just being very sad and crying. But the the most amazing thing was that we just sort of accepted it. You know, we never whined. We never demanded. We never we never did anything I think to betray our family or or even endanger our family. The the biggest danger to us came, well there were lots - it turned out there were lots of times when my parents were very close to being discovered - and the reason we survived is because the Dutch that, who encountered us didn't betray us. It was just the unbelievable luck that all the Dutch who discovered our Jewishness were good were good people. And that included the Dutch police. And you know again most Jews were not that fortunate. But the most dangerous time for us came in 1943 when uh my sister stayed with some teachers at that school and one of them was caught with some communist books, and when she was asked who else lived in that house, uh she said well, two little girls. And they said immediately now that those are Jews. I mean they they assumed that any children who who weren't, who didn't live with their parents were Jewish children. So that was the first time that we were going to go and visit our parents so we, the first time that I must have visited them was in the summer of "40..."43. Uh and the Germans uh we were told were going to accompany us on the train and they were going to interrogate us on the train and that would have been the end of us because there is no way that we were sophisticated enough to to make up enough of a story uh particularly my younger sisters wouldn't have. They, who are one and two years younger than I am, but German thoroughness of course demanded that they could look at these Jewish children and it so happened that my younger sister and I were standing in front of the house. Now uh I was quite, much lighter and I have blue eyes and you know, I don't, I'm not typically Jewish - I don't have a semit...I don't have Semitic features and my sister, my younger sister has blonde curly hair, blue eyed. I mean, and they looked at us and said,

. You know, "They can't be Jews." So...because we didn't look Jewish. And that was one of the reasons, as a matter of fact, that we were saved is because the man who gave us, was his name, who gave us the false passports, said that he he had selected us to help because we did not have Semitic features. I mean it's just a horrifying thought when you think about it, but it allowed us or the fact that we were not

quote "typically" whatever typically Jewish is. Of course we didn't look typically Jewish - uh that's how come we survived. And again we didn't fit the German stereotype of you know typical Jews. So again we were miraculously saved. Uh I mean we miraculously not not trapped. Uh my parents had, I gather, they told me they had razor blades ready. They were not going to be caught alive. They were not. They knew what was going to happen to them and they weren't uh...and they also, they would have killed themselves because they also knew if they were caught they would betray us and so again you know there were all all these very conscious decisions were made as to trying to have as many of us survive as possible. And we were able to visit them in in the summer. I spent I think a week with them and then we visited them again in the following Christmas and there we had an accident happen to us. We were standing at a, they were they were sledding down a slope, a snowy slope, and mother and my sister and I were standing too close and a sled ran over us. My mother had high boots on but I didn't and I got a deep wound which became severely infected and I got boils all over my body. And that was on two of my legs and which which didn't heal for months until until the following spring. Again lucky that I was strong enough, we survived - you know, there wasn't any penicillin and uh so on. But basically in 19...for two years we lived as school children and we lived without our parents and we lived with fear and I can remember saying to one of the other girls, the daughter of the family, I said I have a very big secret but I can't tell you until the war is over. (Laughter) I, it was like, you know, I was like I knew the war one day would be over, so I must have a lot of hope uh and a lot a lot of optimism. I guess I must have felt that we would live. Uh and at the same time I remember my major mission was not to do anything that would betray us. And my middle, my younger sisters would sometimes really do dumb things like well, dumb things, what do you expect of a - I was six, so they were four and five. I remember Ingrid at one point, we were walking and she said oh she said oh Leesha - I was Leesha - Leesha, you know I met a I met a girl whose name was Ingrid and I told her that used to be my name. And I said don't ever say that (laughter) - I remember having to remind her that she was not to not to ever ever uh uh you know remind anyone or tell anybody that that Lanie wasn't her real name.

But what's remarkable is that we played we the game right on until the very end. Uh and again turned out that the only people knew we were Jewish was the family itself. Their children didn't know we were Jewish. And, but we made friends and we saw our parents every once in a while and uh again unbelievable fortune fell our way because uh at in 1944 my, when after the Normandy landing uh things became very tight and that's when the Germans became more vicious towards the Dutch. We had gone with the family to a farm in and there was a lot of bombing, a lot of strafing, and the family told my parents they could no longer be responsible for us. So that was, that was August of "44 and my mother came - my mother has always been very brave. My father has said if it weren't for my mother and her courage we would never have survived the war, because she again and again and again, she would be the one who who said to my father, you know, it's going to work out and she would she would take on the police who came to the house and questioned them and interrogated them, cause see from their perspective they were interrogated many times about who they were and what they were doing. Now they were out in the open too, but my father wasn't working and so their story was a more difficult one than ours, and so they had continual contact with [Pinkstrum (ph)], the one who gave us the false papers, and he again

throughout the war continued to help us make up stories supporting my parents! stories and so on so that if we had had one NSB--which was the Nazi...which was the Nazi support group in Holland. If we had had one real Nazi supporter, we would never have made it. But uh somehow, again, we...we didn't. But in 1944, my mother came to get us. She got my brother and me; and my two younger sisters already were with her. And incredibly, in September of 1944, we were liberated by the Americans. Uh they came up, they had landed in Normandy, and they came up through Belgium and just through a tiny part of Holland.

And they were supposed to meet up with the British at Arnhem. They made a movie, "The bridge...", "A Bridge Too Far." And, of course, there was a German panzer division at Armbhem; and the British were defeated there." So instead of liberating the rest of Holland, they went into Germany. Had we stayed in the middle of Holland we would not have been liberated until May of 1945. But we were liberated uh uh - as I said we we went back to Limburg in August. And in September, I'll never forget that in September of 1944, lots of bombing, lots of explosions. Was a Sunday and my mother came - we were sleeping on the attic, and we slept, we stayed in a house but my parents had rented the front room and a couple of bedrooms of a very nasty, ugly woman uh who turned out... She said, "If I had known you were Jews, you would never have lived." horrible woman. Her name was Bilders (ph)]. Anyway, we, my, there was so much bombing that my parents, my mother came to get us and we were standing in the in the front living room, and my mother was combing my hair, and there was a table here - my mother was standing here and I was standing right there - and there was the window. And a grenade exploded. And a big piece of the grenade flew right between my mother and me and scorched her nose. And it bounced against the wall, and it bounced back on the table and a pair of pajamas and the pajamas burst burst into flames, but again you know death was so close. Uh it's it's just miraculous - a few inches either direction would have killed either my mother or me. Uh so we got out of the living room and we spent the day in the cellar, and we heard all the shooting. My mother again was very brave. She would go upstairs and I'm I'll never forget at four o'clock, it was about four o'clock and she would go upstairs. At four o'clock she screamed - she said the Americans are here. And I, if there's anything that stands out in my memory it's it's those words - the Americans, the Americans were here. And the Americans coming up on the hill - uh we lived sort of on a hill, and the Amer...the Germans were retreating up the hill, and they were shooting down at the Americans. Of course we were dying to go upstairs, and uh see what was happening, uh and we were allowed to, after a while we were allowed to go up, and I cannot tell you what that meant. I, it's a memory that you know will never cease in my mind. As, I think America has always had such a close place in my heart because it meant it meant life for us, and in all sorts of ways, and that was before we had any idea we would ever come here. Uh but there were the American soldiers and they were being shot at by the Germans but it didn't seem to bother them very much. They were ducking the bullets. And then after a few days when we were allowed to go - perhaps two days I think - we were not allowed to go out because there was so much shooting going on, but after a few days we were allowed to go out - one of the best sights I remember seeing was Germans with their " This battle took place September 17-25, 1944.

arms, you know, over their head and the feeling that they no longer present the threat to us and that we no longer were in danger was just a relief and an over-whelming sense that, you know, it's hard to describe. I mean talking about freedom and I was then eight years old and I'll never forget that immense relief. What was amazing was that uh in December of course we had the Battle of the Bulge, and at that point everybody knew we were Jewish - some, everybody knew - that little town that we lived in was uh , a little town near in Holland. Of course then it was clear you know, we made it and let people know that we were Jewish. Then we had the Battle of the Bulge, and that - I remember being terrified of that because if the Germans had won that, I knew that would be the end of us again. So there was was some more fear then, but then when the Americans won, the Allies won, then I think we really felt that we had survived uh and just that we would live. And then one of the hardest things was for my poor mother to get back to our original names. (Laughter)

Q: Tell me about that.

A: Well, I mean all of a sudden instead of being Jan and Leesha and Lanie and Hennie, we had to...we were again Norman and Anita and Ingrid and Helga. And I can remember her saying Leesha, , Lanie - oh, whatever your names are, you know, come inside. We uh we uh it was it was unbelievable to go back and be with our parents again. Uh and I can remember thinking I will never ever ever leave them again. It was just like, it was like having a whole new life. Uh we had some very, some interesting times because we that's the first time that I saw black people. Uh we were liberated by the American Army; and the blacks were separated, segre...segregated. So they lived in tents in the field, and the Ameri...and the whites were uh in a hotel. And I can remember asking my mother, "Why are they so black?," you know. I couldn't understand that skin could be black, because we...the Holland didn't have any dark people. And I, I remember saying to her, you know, "Why don't they use clorox? Perhaps that would..." (Laughter) Just didn't seem... it didn't...didn't make any sense to me. And we were scared of them. But then we were fascinated by them; and they were wonderful. We would go and sort of talk to them, and they'd give us big chocolates. And uh the Americans who...the American soldiers stayed in a hotel; and I remember we would go down there. My parents had told us you never ask for anything. Now the Dutch kids, you know, I mean that had had nothing for a long time... I mean, that's the first time we saw oranges, the first time we had candy--all of that stuff. Food had been rationed. Food was mini...had the minimal. So we'd go there; and we'd stand there and look at them with our big eyes. And, of course, the soldiers just loved us because we never asked for anything. We always ended up with the most. (Laughter) And my youngest sister, Helga, would pick up soldiers, which was fine because she was six years old. And one day she came home with a chaplain - said, "Mommy, that's the best I could find." (Laughter) So we ...that was our first encounter with Americans. We met uh a Jewish soldier - a guy name from California, who became a very good friend of ours, and uh it was almost like we had to get used to being out in the open again and regaining our own identity. And it's only in retrospect that I now realize what a hugh price we paid. Because you know when you're going through this as a child that's the way life is. You don't really question it. You do what you have to do, and given those circumstances, children will follow the rules. At least all of,

we did. But uh right smack after the war you see, I mean not even after the war because the rest of Holland wasn't liberated, some very bad things started to happen. Uh the part of Holland that we lived in was all Catholic - one hundred percent Catholic - and so as soon as it became known that we were Jewish, we got things like Christ killers, dirty Jews, uh - Holland which really had not known anti-Semitism before the war, the horror of of World War II is that it awakened in Holland I think an awful lot of anti-Semitism, a tremendous amount. And we started encountering that - I mean in retrospect it just blows me away to think that uh there was no debriefing. Nobody ever ever talked to us about what had happened. There was no counseling. There was no support. It was as if we now were, we had to enter a new but it was a foreign society - it wasn't Holland the way we had known it because we became we became dirty Jews. Now not by officialdom necessarily, but the children uh I remember that soon after - because we hadn't gone to school and you know in the meantime you can imagine what our schooling must have been like, uh very interrupted, very sporadic, and the first four years if I had, if 1 went to school two years it was a lot. Uh by the time I was eight, let's see, nine - by the time I was nine I think I had been to school about two years at the most. So my father taught me a lot at home. But I remember going to school again after not having been in school for six months or so, and there was a birthday party and we were the only ones who were not invited to go to the birthday party, and my father took us on a big walk and he consoled us. But it was just, see we had to come, we had been non-people, and then we remained outsiders. Uh we stayed in that town uh we that we left the family and went and stayed with a woman whose husband had been a a Nazi, and so he was imprisoned and she was forced to take us. Now she was scared of us - she thought that we would, I don't know what she thought we would do, but uh so we lived there you know for a couple of months, because we could not go back to Breda because the Germans were still occupying so much of Holland. And even though Breda was also liberated pretty soon after we were in Limburg, uh it still wasn't safe to travel. So uh, we kept on going to - and all the schools were Catholic. I mean, that that again talking about the intense necessity for free...you know, for separation of church and state - uh I'll never forget the experience we had having to go, having no choice but to go to Catholic schools, and and being called Christ killers. Now that only intensified the feelings that the war had fostered in me - the feelings that there was something wrong with me and being a Jew was a bad thing. Uh ashamed of being Jewish. Uncomfortable being Jewish. Uh something that you wanted to hide. It wasn't OK to be who you are. You were different and you know how bad it is for children to be different - I mean how hard it is for them to be . It's bad for kids to be different. It's hard for kids to be different. Uh and so we felt that we never, we just never fitted in and as soon as we could we went back to Breda which was not until I think April of 1945, so for about four months we lived very tightly with our family but the best thing was that our family was back together.

Q: OK. We have to stop now. We have to change tapes.

Tape #2

Q: Can you tell me what happened when you returned to Breda?

A: Yeah. We we finally were able to leave, I think we went back to Breda in April of "45. We were, all of you know the war ended in May of "45, May 5, 1945 in in Europe and we went back to - we had nothing. Of course what had happened is my parents had left the house we lived in and my mo...my mother had had oh just her her dowry had been this gorgeous stuff and and of course everything was left behind and we came back with nothing. We stayed for about six weeks with a family where my aunt had stayed - the one who, my mother's sister, the one who was killed in Auschwitz. We stayed there and then uh after six weeks the woman said to us, well you can't stay here any more. And we had no place to go. So we moved into a house that had been bombed and the whole backside of the house - there was no backside of the house at all. There was one room that had windows. It was a large house but you know it was uninhabitable. It had no gas and electricity. It had no water and uh again we had no place to go so we moved in. We basically squatted into that house with the one room with the windows. And the the water just poured in and it just because it had no backside, uh just poured in. So my father just made holes in the floor so the water would run down. He boarded up some of the other uh rooms with uh planks so that we could at least sleep there. And for a couple of weeks we would go to neighbors to get water and so on. It was just, there was no place for us to go and we had absolutely nothing. My father didn't have a job. We didn't have any money, so he got a job with the British censorship in Germany so, so in 19... uh... 1940 ...I think, that was "45 I think - it was almost immediately after the war uh after we were liberated, he went off to Germany and worked for the British censorship there. So my mother was left alone with four children and her aging grandfather-- her aging father, my grandfather, who lived across the street. Some friends uh had given him aroom. And so we lived in this house, in this bombed-out house for about six months. In the meantime my mother was alone. My brother could not adjust to the school system in Breda anymore. We...the closest school to us was a Protestant school; so instead of going to a Catholic school, we went to a Protestant school. And again being the outsider was so obvious because of religion. We did not belong in a religious school, and it was uncomfortable and it made us feel uh unwanted. Now we did not encounter there any uh of the anti-Semitism. I mean nobody there called us Christ killers or any of that stuff but we were not accepted either. Well, finally my - the only way you could get a habitable house was by finding a place that people would move out of. And then you had to present it to the

Notes Commission, which is the housing need commission and then they would rule on whether you were eligible to move into that house. And several times my mother would find a place and we would never get it and it would, the situation got to be pretty desperate.

Well, finally we found a very nice house on the Juliana (ph), and it was uh next to a little office of the conservation company. And we were, and the way that it went was that you had to uh tell the tell the commission where the house was and uh then they would decide. But because they continually took, wouldn't let my mother move into the house, my mother said you know, I'm not going to tell you where it is unless you let me know that I can have it, and they would, she finally was promised that that they could have the house. And we were

assigned that house, and just before we were supposed to move in, the head of that conservation company wanted that house because it was right next to his office. And again we were, they told that, we were told we couldn't live in that house. In the meantime you know we lived in an unhabitable, uninhabitable place which was, just made the situation terrible. My mother was alone. She was close to a nervous breakdown I think. She had been so strong during the war. She was, she had crying spells and she was in agony over : It's hard for me to fathom now really she survived as well as she did under the intense kind of suffering. I mean she came back and it was very clear to us that almost our whole family had been wiped out. Her only sister and her...her daughter were wiped out. My father came from a family of seven brothers and sisters. Only he and his oldest brother survived; and my uncle's only son, Bert (ph), had been killed by the Germans. We had two cousins who survived. They escaped the concentration camp in Holland, but their parents and their...that was their sister, that was the girl that I visited before the war - the family I visited. They were killed. They were dragged out of and . They died probably en route to Auschwitz, and we, I don't know really what happened to . So after the war you know, there we were. And of the Dutch, the Jews in Breda, I think a total of twenty survived.

Two young men survived the labor, the slave labor camps - young, strong men. And the Alters, the...the photographer - he was killed and she survived with her two daughters. But for the rest, just we were alone. And so anyway so she, under those circumstances again, and then living in this this house which wasn't a house, and again being denied that denied that house uh, what in effect we did is that the school that that we had gone to became a very fashionable school after the war and the Dutch princesses went there. Juliana's daughters went there; and uh when again we were denied that house my mother went to uh the friends who where my fath...where my grandfather was staying, and he had some, he knew some people who were higher-ups and basically they, he said to that commission, he said unless Mrs. Magnus, , gets that house, this is going to go straight up to the Queen, and these, the response was oh those damn Jews - they want so much again. And I just, the anti- Semitism which really had been dormant I think, or had, I I just don't think Holland was anti- Semitic before the war. If it was anti-Semitic it was well-hidden, but the Germans - and that's one of the horrors for me - in some ways the Germans won the war, because they succeeded.

They made the Europe Judenrein; they made it Jew-free. And there is uh, I still pick it up when I go to Europe. There is an awful lot of anti-Semitism in Europe and they awakened the viciousness. So that you see, that's what we had to live with then after the war. And it was never overt - well, that's not true. It was overt. I mean you know - those damned Jews - they want so much again basically was the response to us. Uh but we did get the house. I mean the threat of using, of going straight to the queen and of using some some influence there - in effect we were assigned that house so in December of "45, it was very tragic because my grandfather died of a heart attack. My mother tried to get him in a hospital. They wouldn't take him to a hospital. And he died of a heart attack. So there was mother just with her father just dead and the horror of the war, moving... Uh, my brother had gone back to the school that we had gone... He...he could not adjust to to the school in Breda, and he went back to Bilthoven. He stayed with the Buchas. So there were just the three girls and my mother; and we moved into that house in Julianalan. And uh I gather my father just sent us some money from Germany, and we also got some reparation. We never got much but we

got probably a couple of thousand dollars, which allowed us to buy some furniture because of course everything had been stolen. We had nothing. But we had come back to some clothes. And so my, slowly but surely my mother was able to to furnish the house and to to buy some of the necessities and get us some things and uh my father came back from Germany I think in 1946. And sort of a resumed - my brother came back from Bilthoven and we resumed a normal, quote normal family life. But even right there in , [remember one day in front of our sidewalk - dirty Christ killers. I mean, there again; and it just made absolutely no sense. Now I must stress that my my parents, my father went to the school - uh we lived we lived close to a a a sort of a lower class wor...neighborhood. Our our street was very very nice and very middle, middle-class, but we lived next to a heavily Catholic uh lower class neighborhood and uh my father went to the school, and - because we knew we knew that which kids had done it - and they did reprimand those kids. I need to stress that there was no official support for this, but again, these were messages that the children had gotten from somebody, from some place and some bo...some body and I don't know who gave them those messages. But it just reinforced that whole sense of not OK-ness. Of something being wrong you know. Now there were no Jews left and there were just, as a matter of fact, only four of us plus the Alter children - I think we were the only Jewish children who survived. And we were, you know, strangers in our own land. And I felt that.

That, I don't know that my sisters felt it as much I did, but I think they did too. I think all of us felt it very very strongly. It was never the way it used to be. It was it was, Holland ceased being in a way our home. Uh now we went uh, after we moved we went to a school called the [Nutschool (ph)], the nut school. And after that I went to the gymnasium. Uh, but my learning was inhibited. This may sound crazy - uh there was something in me and I think that's perhaps the little two-year old rebel still was operating because uh even though I had always been a very very bright child, I started progressively doing worse in school. And there was something in me that that just wasn't coping well with with the Dutch school system. It just wasn't working. My youngest sister, Helga, developed a terrible thyroid condition. She...uh she got a hyper-thyroid--she had a throat like that, and her eyes were bulging from it. A very very bright little girl. She just became practically non-functional. Uh my middle sister, Ingrid, cried a lot. My my brother Norman uh flunked out of school. We all became non-functional. And yet we had loving parents, lots of support. I mean, my parents-- if it hadn't been for them, I... I cannot imagine what would have happened to us. But miraculously, my parents, notwithstanding everything that they have gone through, provided us with love and support and caring and...and a feeling of belonging. And if it hadn't...as I said if it hadn't been for them, I think we would all have gone down the drain. But there was no recognition on the part of anybody uh what the consequences were of...of our experiences, of the war experiences. It was never discussed. It was never dealt with. It was never acknowledged. And so there we were, four children who basically weren't functioning very well at all. I...I flunked the uh...I flunked uh my second year. Now the gymnasium is a college preparatory school, and it is pretty select. I mean, you learn...by the time you go to seventh grade, which is the first year of the gymnasium, then. I think that the system has changed. But I started studying Latin and uh Algebra; and by the second year of that school, the eighth grade, I added Greek and uh Chemistry and English. And by the time I was...before, just before coming to America, I was studying English, German, French, Latin,

Greek, physics, chemistry, math.... I mean, just this intense array of subjects; but I wasn't doing well. It was like I could not study. I wasn't absorbing the material, and it was like my mind was blocked. And I could never - you know, it's funny - it's only now all of a sudden while I'm talking to you I'm beginning to recognize why my mind was blocked. Because my whole life was blocked. Because we were non...we were non-people. We could not be who we were. And we never told anybody we were Jewish. That was just not acknowledged. Uh, I remember we had one Hanukkah party, I think in 1948; and it was just like sneaking. It was at night - we, I think the whole Jewish community of Breda--what little was left of it. Of course, the synagogue...there, there was no no synagogue anymore because there were no Jews left. But I think the few Jews that were left all went to the Hanukkah party; and I remember learning some songs. And that was my first exposure to Judaism, was that one Hanukkah party. And I remember still some of the songs, and there was a and that was it. That that was about the only Jewish part of me that was even acknowledged. My parents, I think, must have gotten the same message: you don't acknowledge it, you don't deal with it, you don't recognize it, you don't... it wasn't discussed. You go on with life. And uh Holland, you know, being in Holland as I even mentioned to you earlier, became like being in being in a foreign land. Uh I need to stress, though, that since we didn't mention Judaism, that didn't come up. And I had friends. It wasn't that I was an outcast. I mean, I had friends. Uh, I was invited to homes. You know, I was not...it was not at all like in Limburg.

In Breda, on the contrary, I made some very very dear friends and best friends who of course were non-Jewish. Uh, so it wasn't that I was isolated and alone. Nothing like that. But emotionally and intellectually, I think, all of us were stunted. Uh and my parents...in 1950, I think, my father changed jobs. I think he decided that just Holland...we'd had it there. And he wrote to our friend, Henry Koster (ph). Now Henry Koster uh was a movie director here in this country; and he...it seemed that he met my father before the war. In the 1920's, when Germany was suffering from this tremendous inflation before Hitler, my father was...had traveled in Germany for business, and that's how he met my mother also in Germany. And he had helped Henry Koster several times. I gather, financially; and they had stayed in touch.

And Henry Koster was Jewish. Came to America in the 1930's, and became very successful in the movie industry. He directed German pictures; and uh it was, you know, made it in the movie industry. And after the war, my father was able to contact him again, and he sent us care packages. As a matter of fact, a funny story - you know the Germans, you know the Dutch too, took everything we had but uh we were, I told you we were liberated by Americans and they went to Germany afterwards and those soldiers would send us big boxes full of clothes. In a way, I'm sure they they robbed the Germans to send us those those clothes; because we had no clothes. We had nothing. And so, for a while, we were clothed in German clothing that they sent us. We didn't...didn't go beyond that. Uh but but when when Henry Koster found out that we had survived, he they sent us care packages. So then aft...

instead of being dressed in German clothes, we were dressed in American clothes. We got lots of packages from the United States with food and clothing. It was enormously helpful; because, of course, there was nothing to be had in Holland. And uh and Holland was in very very bad shape. They not only had been terribly terribly damaged uh but the economy was wrecked. In 1944, when the Germans finally recognized that the you know the Dutch were not going to join them in their Aryan lunacy, uh uh they starved the Dutch. And about a

hundred thousand Dutch died during the starvation [winter (ph)] of 1944. Again, that was when we were in the southern part. We were liberated. Incredible when you think about it.

And uh although there was hunger there, too. I mean, there was no food there either; but nothing like the suffering that the Amsterdamers and the Rotterdamers experienced at all. So anyway, we were...we were... he contacted Henry Koster. And Henry...in those days you had to have sponsorship; and he decided...he agreed to sponsor us and became our sponsor. And our number...our number came up in 1952. Uh, our opportunity came to come to America; and we we we left Holland. Because Holland had ceased being uh our land, our country, basically. And uh we came to America; which was the best thing that could ever have happened to us. There's no no question about that. It it freed every single one of us, in in the most intense way. Uh my little sister Helga...the Dutch had no idea, the Dutch doctors; she was sent from one doctor to the next. And she was...she was just in terrible problems.

Terrible, terrible problems. Because she couldn't learn, she couldn't remember. She had a violent temper. She was just unmanageable. Uh, my parents moved to St. Louis; and in... We arrived in America December 7th, 194...1952; and in June of 1953, a Jewish hospital--a Jewish hospital in St. Louis--they operated on her for free. And they took out, thank God, a benign huge tumor out of her. And uh she just blossomed. Right now, she is uh a nurse advisor for the International Council of Nurses in Geneva, Switzerland. I mean, she has an incredible job in Geneva, Switzerland; and has just accomplished enormous things. Uh the same with...I, uh interestingly enough... Uh, we came to America; and our Henry Koster happened to be in New York when we arrived - he knew we were arriving - and he greeted greeted us in Hoboken. He was at...at the ship. Uh, and we didn't know he was going to be there, but I I recognized him from his pictures. It was amazing. I remember going up to him and saying, "Hey, are you Henry Koster?" He said, "Yes." I mean, like it was just again one of these intuitive things. Anyway, he asked one of us to come to be like a baby-sitter for him and his...uh for his children; not for him, for his children. He had a nine year old and a six year old. So because I was the oldest of the girls... uh I went with my parents to St. Louis, and after we took the bus from New York to St. Louis, and my parents...we had...my mother had some distant cousins in St. Louis. And I, I think six days later, took the bus by myself at age 16 in December all the way from St. Louis to Los Angeles. You know, we had no idea about America. I mean, I'm not sure I'd let a 16 year old go by herself now. But what did we know?

Q: Did anything happen on the bus?

A: No. People were very nice. Although a very funny thing is, we came through Albuquerque-- where I now live--we came through Albuquerque, and it was absolute desolate and barren and it was December. And I said to myself, "That's the last place I'll ever live!" And that's where I've ended up. (Laughter) Turned out to be very nice. But I went to...1 went and I moved--of all the insane places--to Beverly Hills, California. And I... they lived in this gorgeous home on Whittier Drive in North Beverly Hills; and they had a butler and a maid, and--good heavens!--a three car garage and a swimming pool. Unbelievable luxury. You know, no greater contrast than uh Holland--which was barely beginning to recover from the war for the Marshall plan was just beginning to take effect--and going to Beverly Hills,

California--which has got to be one of the extremes of American affluence. Uh it was a devastating time for me; and that sounds terrible, but I had just, you know - the only thing I had going for me was my family. There was no self there. There was very little self left after the war. And again, from that little girl who was able to dare to stand up to her father, I pretty much had learned that it was my job to be a good little girl and to please and to take care of others and not to...not to pay any attention to my needs. And basically the worst of it was I had learned not even to know what my needs were. My job was to please others. My job was to go along. My job was to be invisible. My job was to not cause any trouble. And again, I need to stress that's not what my parents told me. On the contrary. If anybody gave me support, it was my parents. But that's what I'd learned, and that's something I...my parents were not able to undo for me. I mean, again, since the war was never discussed and these issues were never dealt with, all of that was hidden. And all I knew about myself was that I was whoever I was, which was Jewish, was not OK. It was something to be ashamed of. It was something to be hidden. It was something not to talk about, and that I had no basic rights either. So this girl goes to Beverly Hills, California--of all ridiculous places. And I don't mean to be ridiculous, but you know what I'm talking about. And I enter this, and I'm fully aware that most of Beverly Hills is not the movie industry. Uh on the contrary. But I happened to enter the the movie...the movie uh life; and that's an artificial, superficial in those days uh environment. I mean, even naive as I was and ignorant as I was, I knew those people weren't real at all. As a matter of fact, I think the only real man I met was Marlon Brando. And I met a whole bunch of movie stars. And I remember the one that I really felt good about was Marlon Brando, "cause he was...he...he... I broke my leg; and he came to visit me, while he was in the house. That...that's when Henry Koster was making the movie named "Desiree", and Jean...Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando and a whole bunch of others came to the house. And he came up to see me; and I remember thinking, "Now, there. He...at least, he seems to be somebody that seems authentic." But for the rest, I entered an environment that was was fake and artificial; and I did not know about that, either. Because I thought that was real, and again I thought there was something with me. Uh so I gained fifty pounds. The only...the only the only uh the only pleasure I had was eating. And within about six months, I gained fifty pounds. And ended up, you know, a hundred and seventy-five pounds fatso. Which, in a way, was perfect; because the meant that my nothingness now was really real. Because who wanted a 175-pound, you know, "blimp" uh in this...in this environment that so prized beauty and exterior and facade? It was...in a way, it was just right; because it meant that I could hide behind that. And this feeling of nothingness and of being worthless was, sadly enough, uh reinforced by my being in in...in California. Uh, one of the most poignant for me uh circumstances was that I was very lonely. And I...I went to Beverly Hills High School, and again they were very nice to me. I am in no way blaming the kids, because in retrospect I did not encounter any unkind children...kids at Beverly Hills High School. I...I'm amazed at how how how kind they were; but I was an outsider. And I didn't belong. And they all lived at home with their parents. And they, of course, had all these material things; which didn't matter, but I didn't have my parents and I didn't belong.

And uh within about a month, I was so desperately unhappy that I remember just thinking, "God, I wish something would happen to me so I wouldn't have to go to school. So I wouldn't be so alone, and so...again, so much of an outsider." And yet, the most insane thing

was, when I went to Beverly Hills High School, I was all of a sudden--you know, because it's so heavily Jewish--all of a sudden, I was there with fellow Jews. Except I didn't belong with them either. I didn't fit in with them, either. I didn't fit in anywhere. So, I uh kept on hoping something would happen so I wouldn't have to go to school, so I wouldn't be so lonely and so miserable. And I broke my leg, and I was so happy. I played...I broke my leg playing hockey... hockey; and instead of worrying about pain, I just was so grateful that I didn't have to go to school. And that's when I met Marlon Brando. He happened to come to the house.

But...and that's also when I gained all that weight. That was a good way of hiding myself.

And I mean, I was desperately unhappy, desperately lonely; and uh something that reinforced my worthlessness--my sense of worthlessness, I should say--was I... I was promised that I would go... The first thing, the first big outing that we would have, is that Henry Koster uh had directed--I think it was "The Robe." It wasn't "Desiree." I don't know, it was one movie. And and uh he told me I could go to the premiere. And I was looking forward to that. I thought that was just going to be the greatest. Well, two days before the movie--before the premiere of the movie--uh uh Peter got sick. The little, the youngest one got sick. And I was told I had to stay home with him. And for the only time that I can remember, I went to Peggy, Henry's wife. And I said, I...I quote, I complained. I said, "Peggy, you know I have really been looking forward to this. Is there anything we can do?

Can we find anybody else to take care of Peter? Uh, you know, I would really like to go." I think that's the most that I said. Well, I was told that there was no choice; there was nobody else to take care of Peter, and I had to stay home. And I stayed home with Peter. And two days later, I was called on the carpet by Henry Koster--who told me that it was my job to take care of Peter, and I was not to make Peggy unhappy. That I had made her very unhappy with my complaining. And that absolutely devastated me. Just...it confirmed everything that I had subconsciously believed about myself, that I had absolutely no rights. That who I was, what I needed, what I felt, what I wanted, was absolutely unimportant. And that I was... was a non-person. And because I'm the kind of person that I am, uh I accepted that about myself.

I didn't fight it. I just became a worthless person. And this may sound crazy, because right now I'm the exact opposite. And and what I recognize, I've come...I'm like the topsy-turvy dolls. I, I'm one of those who you can push me down, but I won't stay down forever. I...I'm back to that little two-year old who stood up to her father. Uh, but it devastated me. And I graduated from Beverly Hills High School; and immediately went to St. Louis, went back to my parents and went to Washington University. After Washington University, I got my...

Never made friends, never. Never dated. Uh, and the only thing I had going for me was that and so the the rector of the University sent a letter to the uh to to Beverly Hills High School.

And I'll never forget it. It said, "What she may be lacking in intelligence, she'll make up through industriousness." I mean, those were the exact words. And I remember thinking, even then, "You know what? They've got me all wrong." One thing - I've never been stupid, but I've also never been particularly industrious. (Laughter) And I knew intuitively they...they knew nothing about me. But that's typical, isn't it. I'd hidden myself so well that nobody knew me. Uh and I kept myself hidden, because I was a non-person, throughout...throughout my college years. Although I became very active in organizations. I mean, I was always such a good girl - I helped and I was active. And academically I just did better and better and better and better. I mean, that was the one area where I allowed myself

to be unblocked; because I figured that's the only thing I had going for me was my intelligence. And the other thing I had going for me--and I can remember saying that to me-- "OK. Even if nobody loves me, at least my parents love me." I'm so aware [that] if it hadn't been for their love for me, if I hadn't been so sure of their love for me, I wouldn't have made it. And I often wonder how people make it who don't...who don't have that. Uh, and I... I mean, I graduated from Washington University a Phi Beta Kappa, got a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship to Harvard, got a Masters in Russian studies from Harvard--but still as a non- person. That's a crazy thing. Still a non-person. Still somebody who...who was not in touch with any of her needs, her wants, her feelings. I didn't date. Had a hard time making friends, even though every... You know, people liked me because I'm such a nice person. But there was...there was a non-person. And I started working for the Rand Corporation, after my Masters, in Santa Monica. I went back to California. My parents, in the meantime, moved to California. And I went back to California, and I worked for the Rand Corporation. And I remember my boss saying to me...he said, "Anita, you're the most non-aggressive person I have ever met." It was true. I mean, if you...if the sky was blue, and if you said to me, "Gee, the sky looks sort of grey." I said, "Yeah, you're right. The sky is grey." I didn't dare disagree with anybody. I didn't dare argue with anybody. I was afraid that if | would, you know, uh oppose something you would say that you would stop liking me. Uh or you would not, you know, you would disapprove of me. I was just...it's unbelievable in retrospect how trapped I was in my non-entity. Uh, and interesting that Becky--Betty Bucha, uh the the woman who who with whom we stayed during the war, came to visit us. And she...she knew that I had changed. I mean, even from the time she knew that that uh I had become a very different person.

Q: When did she visit you?

A: She visited us in St. Louis, so... While I was in college, so in the 19...1 graduated from Washington University in "58, so...so 1956, or so. So about ten years after the war. So I was... was about nineteen. And she she told me that I had changed, even from the little girl that she had known. Uh, and and and now in retrospect it was all cumulative. It was all cumulative, too. From being this this very strong little competent girl to becoming a...just a nothing, nothing person.

Q: OK. You were, you were telling us about your working at the Rand Corporation.

What...what happened to you after that?

A: Oh. Well, that's the wonderful thing, when things started to happen. Uh, I went to the Soviet Union as a guide in the American Exhibit. And in the Soviet Union, uh the director of that exhibit was a man named John Dixon. And I met his, his ...he had taken his wife and his children there. And, mind you, we had been in America ten years. And Elizabeth and I became very good friends. She was there with her two chil....two small children. I sort of latched on to her, and she was the very first person in America--and this may just in retrospect seem so strange...uh, this was 1960...1962--that I felt really valued me. She liked me. And I can remember my very conscious thoughts; thinking, "Well, if Elizabeth likes me,

and I value her, there's got to be some value to me." Because I truly believed there was no value to me. And so it was a very conscious process, and I was I was very dependent on her friendship. Uh when I went back to California, because I worked for Rand in California, I was able to get transferred to to the Rand Corporation here in uh in uh Washington, DC. And my friendship with her was incredibly important to me, because it was the first. As I said, the first time in ten years, since coming to America, that I felt valued by anybody outside of my parents. Even though my teachers had, you know, my my professors at Washington University had been wonderful. They valued me. But this was the first time I felt that somebody valued me as a person. And that was sort of the beginning of my recovery. I mean, I never had psychological help or anything like that. I, I--in retrospect, had I known then what I know now, I probably should have. I probably should have gotten help. But what did I know? Uh, but that was the beginning sort of my recovery; in which I began to to appreciate the fact that I was a person after all, and I had...I had some value, probably. But it's taken me years to get to the point where I am now. Where, I mean, I know I am a person of value. You don't have to tell me. And and crazy enough, it's taken me years to be comfortable with being Jewish. I am still...1 am still not totally comfortable with being Jewish. I'm almost... I'm ashamed of it. I'm...I'm comfortable with... I remember at Washington University, because it had a strong Jewish population, feeling embarrassed if any of the Jewish kids were loud or obnoxious. My immediate reaction was, "Don't do that.

Don't draw attention to yourself." Not wanting to associate with them. Not wanting to be known as one of them. So that fear of association is overwhelming. Overwhelming that if they draw attention to themselves, and they found out, you know, they'd be identi...they're identified as Jews, that that may be the end of them. And that'll be the end of me again. Uh, I can remember going to Harvard; and being so pleased, because Harvard has a huge Jewish population, but I did not pick up that--uh this sounds terrible on my part, but there is uh, you know, what what will be...what might be stereotypically interpreted as as some loudness and some obnoxiousness. Which just - I didn't notice it at all. Harvard was a more sophisticated situation. I had never noticed Beverly Hills, either, by the way. But it was...I felt that it was present at Washington University; so at Harvard I was more comfortable. I fitted in a little bit better. But there, that whole - I'm so aware of that whole fear still that if Jews do something bad, it's going to be the end of us. That if...and if I'm identified as a Jew, then I'm going to be. And if Jews do something negative, then I'm going to be bad. And that, you know, I'm 53 years old. I still am not at peace with it. I'm still not comfortable with it. And that's sort of scary, isn't it? Because you know rationally, intellectually, I know this has nothing to do with me. I mean, we had a terrible thing happen in Albuquerque. We had a Jewish man who killed...he killed two... He went into a bagel shop, and he killed the the owner and his son-in-law. He was just crazy. And then he went to California. I don't know whether you've read about it. He went to California, and he killed one of the guards at the Warner...at uh the Universal Studios. I mean, this was an insane man; and he was Jewish.

My immediate reaction was, "Oh, my God. What is that going to mean?" Not only the horror of the poor people who were his victims, but are they going to make an issue out of this. Is this going to give rise to anti-Semitism. Uh, you know, what is that going to mean to the rest of us? I still have that fear. And I know it's irrational, because nobody made anything out of it. It was never ever an issue. Not in Albuquerque, not in California. But it was an issue with

the movie "The Last Temptation of Christ," you know. When some ministers, uh--they later recanted; but basically said, "Well, don't...you know, you're the cause of anti-Semitism." Because some Jews--I gather uh it was the the head of the studio in which the movie was made--and they there that anti-Semitis..anti-Semitism did raise its ugly head. But I'm still aware of those, that fear of association and fear that that association is going to bring disaster. And the other thing that I'm also aware of, and that's still something that's staying with me, is I don't take anything for granted. Uh, when our son--we have a seventeen year old--uh when he was little, | wanted to make absolutely sure that nobody would ever do him any harm. I...I guess I still don't really trust the outside world not to not to harm the innocent.

And so I like to think I'm not too over-protective a mother or so - he might argue with me.

But I would not play, let him play out alone by himself when he was little. Uh he's always gone to private schools, so I never had to worry about him walking on the streets alone. I couldn't, I don't think I could have stood the thought of my little boy potentially being accosted or or hurt by by any outsiders or being hurt by a car, so there is an intense feeling of my wanting to protect him from any harm that might come his way. Not so much - I mean he could climb trees and he could do all sorts of wonderful things and my husband is magnificent and he he just has encouraged him to do all sorts of wild things, so it's not that he's a protected, smothered little boy. On the contrary, not at all. But I know that in my own behavior I wanted to make sure that no outsider could ever hurt him - that I never wanted to be in a position where I could, where I would could ever have done something that might have uh prevented harm coming to him. And that immense relief that I have, feel, now that he's seventeen - he's taking karate and he's you know, gorgeous kid. Uh but I feel in in in knowing that he can take care of himself the intense - that that strong feeling. And it's interesting because my cousin, her daughter was born in 1942 and she was, she was shifted around to thirty different families and her parents were in hiding when she was born, and this little baby was just shifted to - they survived. Uh, and she is, she's 46 or something like that - she's younger, about six years younger than I am, and she and I have exactly the same reactions as we don't, we we saw each other last uh September - we don't take anything for granted. We don't believe that everything is just going to turn out OK. We feel strongly that we need to do whatever it takes to make sure things do work out. Uh when after I I when after I married in "69 uh my husband uh when he would come home late or it was or not appear when I had expected him, I would just be terrified that something had happened to him. Irrationally. Just not really believing that I could be this lucky. Not really believing that my life could be so rich and so full, that I could be so lucky to have a wonderful husband and then this incredible child that we do have and we have, you know, we have a wonderful kid uh who's just just everything I could possibly hope for in a child. And and and it's still hard for me to believe that I should be so lucky as to have all that.

Q: How did you come to move from Washington to uh Albuquerque?

A: Well, my husband - I uh, after I met Elizabeth and after I began to sort of establish a sense of self - let's see, | was 26 years old - uh I moved to Washington and in Washington I was with the Rand Corporation here, and then I worked for the Xerox Education Division, and I went back to the Soviet Union uh in 1965 as a guide in the American exhibit, and I just started to

blossom. I mean it was just like life just - I really took hold of life. And I started to date, and I started to enjoy life and I started to make lots of friends - I mean it's just my life just turned around slowly but surely. And uh I moved to New York. I I worked for Xerox in Washington and then New York, and then got - I didn't like New York at all - moved back to Washington, DC and my last job was as associate director of the Clearing House on Higher Education. I started the clearinghouse here as a matter of fact. And didn't have a director, so I got to do a lot of traveling, and I met my husband uh in Albuquerque, on a trip to Albuquerque. Uh he had just - he's a psychiatrist and he had just started uh work at the uh Medical School at UMN uh in Albuquerque, and he and I met and uh I was 32 years old and I had just decided I probably was never going to get married, and that was OK because I was having a wonderful time (laughter) and so I met him and within a very short time we decided to get married, and so I sort of gave up my job and my friends and everything and I really had a wonderful life in Washington. Loved it out here. Gave all that up to go to that that one place I said I would never go to which was Albuquerque, New Mexico. And uh I did. Of course there wasn't much I could do there with uh my Master's in Russian studies, so I figured if you can't fight them you join them and I decided to go back to school and I got a Ph.D. in, with a focus on child development/family relationship and I have - we've been there for the last 21 years uh and I teach at the University part-time and and I do some counseling part-time and it's amazing because my whole focus on family relationships/child development has made me so aware of the horrendous impact of the war years and all the things that ideally should have happened after the war that didn't happen, how much pain could have been prevented if people had been more aware of the horrendous impact of - even the, let me compare...our experiences are nothing compared to concentration camp experiences. They're nothing compared to the experiences of an Anne Frank living in in hiding for two years. I I, we've got to be among the most fortunate Jewish survivors. Uh there's no question in my mind and even with that unbelievable fortune uh the damage that was done and then the - and this may sound so corny but the unbelievable blessing of coming to America, which for every single one of us has been a God-send. As you know, I mean we came to America and we were truly freed here. And even though I went through a difficult time, that was not America's fault. That was just a you know continuation of of bad patterns but it was - America freed us up and America helped us prosper. Not financi...not just financially because we're all doing just fine, but emotionally and spiritually and in every every way possible. Uh I just, you know, I just I still cannot believe our our our our unbelievable fortune. Then I met a man which is really interesting, because Alan, uh although we have our differences because we're very different people, but he was just the ideal person for me because he let me know from the very beginning that uh I was going to be responsible for my own life, and he's a psychiatrist, and he wasn't about to quote "take care" of me. He wasn't about to uh you know quote "make me happy" or be responsible for my well-being. What I mean by that is he let me know that I was in charge of me, and that was the best thing he could have done for me. He never he never enabled me, he never uh fed into my feeling sorry for myself or my feeling inadequate or my feeling ineffective or my feeling not valuable. On the contrary, he he just uh you know unlike many men he never expected me to serve him. He never expected me to cater to him. He respected me and he expected me to respect myself. Now sometimes he's a little bit too tough with that, but but

the basic message was and I remember early in the game, I I knew that either we would get divorced because uh you know he didn't play my game the way I thought most men do. I mean a good example is oh soon after we were married uh oh I was unhappy about something he had done - I don't remember - and I was crying and I was in bed and he woke up and he said what's the matter. I said, na, you don't love me, or something like that. He said I'mtired, _, I'm going to sleep. And I walked out of the bedroom and I went to the bedroom at the other end of the house, and I waited for him to come. He never showed up.

And I was furious. What do I do now? He's not following my game plan. And I thought well, you know, he didn't know what I expected him to do, and so I thought OK - I'm going to you know I'm going to pull one on him, so I got a cup of coffee and I served him a cup of coffee, which surprised him, because I wasn't following the rules, and I asked him, I said after we had talked, I said why didn't you come after me. He said look, you made the decision the decision to leave the bedroom. I respect your decision. I assumed you didn't want to be with me. I wasn't going to impose my personality on you by being on you. I said well didn't you know that I wanted you to come after me. He said no, I knew none of that. The only thing I knew was that you left the bedroom. You wanted to be alone. One of the most valuable lessons I learned in our marriage. It meant don't play games with me. And I learned - you see that's where self-respect comes in, is you you act honestly and you're straight. You're real.

You're open. And you're, you're honest.

Q: Can you tell me briefly about what happened to the rest of your family, ...

A: Yeah.

Q: .. your siblings and your parents?

A: Well, my parents--again incredible. My parents went to St. Louis. My mother, who had never worked outside the home, immediately got a job in a purse factory as a laborer. My father, who had been in business in Holland, worked in a paint factory in St. Louis. Got terrible lead poisoning - horribly sick. Survived, thank God; but we knew nothing about Workman's Compensation, so we never got anything for it. Uh, then worked for years as a custodian in a school in in in uh University City and worked as a gardener. I mean, they...and my mother worked as a nurse's aide. They both went to the lowest level uh jobs basically uh that that...you know; because they weren't... My father was in business. He wasn't trained for anything else. But with that uh the value wasn't on education so we all you know pooled our money together. I went to Washington University, got some scholarships and uh got through there with a little bit of their help. But mostly, earning money during the summer myself and then the scholarships to Harvard. My, yeah, two younger sisters both went to Jewish hospital nursing school and got their RN's from...from the hospital. They went...didn't go to college.

My brother is an interesting story. He had to join the Air Force uh and immediately after we arrived because he was of of uh military draft age. He went to Japan. Met a Japanese girl.

Wanted to marry her. The rabbi refused to marry her, them, because she wasn't Jewish, and he converted and he became a very religious Christian. Uh still is. He, that caused a big rift in our family initially because he was pretty fanatic about it and he wrote things like, you

know, you if you Jesus you know what was Jews were damned if you don't believe in Jesus you're damned and all that other stuff. Didn't endear him to me but uh he has just totally changed. He's still a very strong believer. He has two children, both of whom are very religious Christians, but there is full acceptance now of the fact that that's not not anything that I can go by, I mean that I, under no circumstances do I uh do I follow any kind of Christian beliefs and uh he respects our position and we respect his position so our relationship now is is a wonderful one. It, for him it was the right thing. He was the most lost of all, because he had nothing. He didn't do well in in high school. Anyway I was the more successful one, and and again with no understanding of the psychological uh after-affects he he was really damaged enormously I think by the war and that whole sense of self and he got a lot of support through his religion and I'm very happy that he got that. And so now he has his own church in Denver, Colorado. He, both his children are married. He has got six grandchildren - three each. My un middle sister, Ingrid, has her own little business - it's Delight Punch (ph)- in Orlando, Florida. She's an extraordinarily enterprising young woman.

Uh has three, but really two children. She adopted a little girl in in Thailand. She and her husband were both in the Air Force. She is a nurse. Went back and got her respiratory therapy degree and uh uh she has two natural born children - I'm saying the third one has not been a very happy experience sadly enough, but the two children that were born to her and her husband uh are now nineteen and seventeen, and one is pre-law and the other one is pre- med. And my youngest sister, Helga, uh has married young. She was 21, married uh also a doctor. Uh, and has four children. She...she's the one who had that horrible thyroid disease.

She is unbelievable. She uh I think graduated from high school with one year of high school.

I mean, just; but was able to... After nursing school, she married Dick, bore four children, went back to college, got her BS degree, got her Master's degree as a pediatric clinician. And Dick, her husband, is an internist and he's now a . And they traveled throughout Africa. He, he's been...he's been in Ghana. He's been in Uganda; and now, for the last ten years, they've been in Geneva, Switzerland where he's with the World Health Organization uh doing extraordinarily well and she works with the International Council of Nurses uh setting up workshops, primary care workshops for nurses all around the country, uh all around the world. Phenomenal. I mean, she has blossomed intellectually, emotionally, socially. They have four children. Her oldest son is getting his Ph.D. in immunology at Case Western. Her second, her daughter...her oldest daughter, is a nurse. The second daughter probably will get a Ph.D. She has a Master's in Medical Anthropology, and will get her Ph.D. in Public Health. The youngest one is in medical school. So they're all in the field.

And our son is uh seventeen; and he is a wonderful, is a brilliant student. Is going to go to Carlton. He got an early decision to Carlton College, and probably will study uh uh physics and philosophy. So our children have done extraordinarily well. Uh they're magnificent - all of our kids are just magnificent kids. You know, and I think of all the children who are not born. I'm thinking of all the millions who are not born and who you know have never had a chance to... We treasure our children, you know; and I think that's also part of our past. To all of us, tremendous value in our children. And all of our children have ...are just extraordinary kids.

Q: Well, thank you very much.

A: OK. That's it.