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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 3

Q: You talked a fair amount about your childhood in the other...

A: See, I don't remember what I did. So, that's about really about my father. And then in one of the interviews, I did tell them that when the Germans came in, he was the head of that five member committee. So, I don't want to repeat myself.

Q: Yeah.

A: So, this is about all I can tell about my parents. And I might have talked about my brothers, but this is the answer that what my father did, and so on.

Q: I wondered if you knew about your grandparents and about your family's history in Hungary?

A: Ihave pictures of them, but very little. I really don't...I have a picture of my grandfather and grandmother on my father's side and no pictures on my mother's side. I know absolutely nothing of the family history on my mother's side, except that she had two sisters and we were close to the sisters. But not previously what happened to the father or mother or when they died.

Nothing. My father's mother died when I was five years old and I do remember that, because, you know, in Jewish funerals, you know, there was a black casket, and we were... but when my grandfather died, I do not remember that. I think he died, might have died before I ever was born.

Q: Do you know what brought your parents both to Eger?

A: No, sorry.

Q: Okay. Going on with the summary of your experiences. So, you did talk some about your brothers and then after the German occupation in March of 1944, you were moved into a ghetto.

Lived there for three weeks and then you were taken to a brick factory, called Kerecsend. And there for a few days, then from there, loaded onto cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz, where you were separated from your parents. You worked in the kitchen in Auschwitz.

A: Not right away.

Q: Not right away?

A: First I was in Birkenau for a month. And then from Birkenau in a lager, which was called A Lager. And two weeks after that I got in on the kitchen work. So that had to be, we were taken out in June, July, it had to be about toward the end of July.

Q: In January of 1945, you were forced to leave Auschwitz to go on a Death March towards Ravensbriick. And you were at that point, with a group of four other girls, who you had kind of become close with, right?

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A: Closer, but I really mainly, that close to one, who she worked with me in the kitchen, who I still keep contact with, who lives now in Israel. She was from Yugoslavia, actually, from the town of Isad (ph), which nowadays is very much in the news. And she's really the one, who I kept close.

If you would ask me what were the other girls" names, I do not remember, and I do not know, and...

Q: Do you know what became of them?

A: Nothing. I never kept in touch with any of the others, except one other girl, who was from our hometown. And I don't even believe we worked in the kitchen together, but towards, during the Death March, we ran into each other. She was older than I am. She used to be a seamstress.

And in my stories, I think it's mentioned that on some of the train rides, after we were already liberated, we were together. And I do know what happened to her. And she lives, she remarried.

She had a husband earlier and then she remarried and they, to my surprise, they lived in Berlin.

And he died in the meantime. I think he was an artist. And although I never thought I want to go back to Germany, but at one point, with some friends from here, we did a two weeks tour in Germany, which took us to Berlin, too. And my, another friend who knew of her, gave me her address and phone number. And I wrote to her and she came over to see, visit me in the hotel.

That's the first time I have seen her after Auschwitz times. And she still lives in Berlin. She's much older than I am, so at times I've heard that she's kind of ill. So, I don't know what she's doing. I have a feeling her husband was originally from Berlin and then, you know, I think they were getting money after the Holocaust and they made their home there.

Q: What was her name?

A: Rosenfeld, Bezsi. Bezsi's like Elizabeth and Rosenfeld was her last name. That was actually her name from the first marriage. That's the way we always knew her and I do not know what her next husband's name was. So, we called her Rosenfeld, B6zsi and she was from Eger. So.

And that's all. I never kept up with anybody else. I don't know what happened to them. But I agree with you that I did talk about five girls a lot together, but they were not from my hometown. And as I said in my stories, that my memory is not that good. Certain things are very vivid in my mind and certain things like it never happened. So, I can't give you any names.

Q: How did you become so close with Ilus!?

A: She worked... yeah, I remember, she worked in the kitchen and we met. And she's exactly my age and somehow we liked each other. And then what has happened, that after that people were separated a lot, transports were leaving, and my husband's two sisters were in Auschwitz, but they were taken away to Germany. And they worked like, the so-called forced labor, now in factories or whatever. But then we came so close and when people were separated from their so- called loved ones, of course our parents were gone, but we didn't know exactly what happened to them. We somehow decided that we just never want to separate from each other. And we did become good friends to the last minute. And I told you that, maybe, or I might have said it in the video, that my husband thinks that maybe I survived because of her and she thinks maybe because of me. But she was a bright girl and lot more outgoing or spoke lot of languages and " Born Ilus Fleischman; later lived in Israel and changed her name to Ilana Fried.

4 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 5 therefore she was very informed of lot of things what were happening after the January so-called Death March. She met people more, and so, I got some information from her, which she remembered and I never remembered myself.

Q: Was her situation similar to yours, in that she had lost her parents, she had been separated from her parents in Auschwitz, and they were... ?

A: Yes, and I do not remember the details of her background, although we used to talk about that, I assume. But I do not recall it. Well everybody lost their parents the same way, but I don't even remember if she was taken out with her parents together or not. So, I cannot give you any information about that. Then later she got married and they moved to Israel. And we kept up.

In fact, last year I was in Hungary and she came to Hungary, to Budapest and spent a week. So we saw each other then. And unfortunately now, she lives in Netanya. Have you ever been in Israel, yourself? And the last I heard of her, she was hit by a car. And she doesn't have any family anymore, because she never had any children. Her husband died years ago. She might have a niece or some, so she was very, very down with the idea of that she had enough already during concentration camp. And she was first in the hospital for a long time. Then she was in some sort of a nursing home situation, because | think she had a broken hip and whatever. And in that age, she's very little and fragile. And then she is now back in her apartment. She doesn't like to write, but she calls once in a while and I write. I write more than I call, because in a short conversation you cannot... but she's somewhat better, but pretty depressed by the whole situation. Because she says it was very painful, and really nobody who can take care of her except nurses would come to the place. And so I felt very sorry about that, because I used to say that and now she must have felt the same way, that one tragedy was enough, how many more do you have to have? And for her, you know, that was an additional something that she certainly wasn't looking forward to. That's all.

Q: You mentioned about that time that you were in Auschwitz, that you didn't fully believe what was happening there. And as far as... as far as your relationship with Ilus, did she believe, was she more informed than you were on that?

A: Well Ilus I met later, somewhat later, not even in the beginning of my kitchen work. Later, because I worked first in one part of the kitchen, then in another part. And I think we met a little bit later. But I don't know, you have talked to a lot of Holocaust survivors, and I don't know whether I'm just so naive or I was so naive at the time. Because you know, I even read right now, just last week, I read a book, you probably read it, Night of Eli Wiesel. Have you read that book?

Q: I actually have only read parts of it.

A: Well, it's a very easy. And I read that just in Nashville, while, you know, I had a little time to read it. And you know, the stories I hear of people, you know, when they arrived and they would see the smoke and they maybe right away would have known what that is. Or maybe if somebody told them, they believed it. Well, I am either very naive... I could never have believed anything like that. We did see the smoke, and the people who were there already, the first two or three years, they of course knew exactly what was going on. They were from Poland 5

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 6 or Russia and they would tell us. But I assumed that they were kind of jealous that we were coming just in the last minute of the war. See, they were already suffering for three years and suffered quite a bit, you can imagine. And whoever survived that three years, they were pretty tough and kind of mean. Because a lot of the kapos in the barracks were Jewish refugees, I mean not refugees, but prisoners from way back. And I used to think that they just want to scare us, or they tell us stories which is so unbelievable. So, I never thought about that since my parents disappeared that first day, that they would have been burned.

Q: Do you think that was important for your survival that you didn't believe it?

A: Well, [hope so. It could be. And we didn't read about this that much, you know like I listened or read different kind of stories about people. Even, even this Eli Wiesel said that in Hungary they did not know anything about Auschwitz. We did not know anything about Auschwitz. And I don't think my parents did. At the same time, my parents were very protective, too. They were the type of people that they didn't want to scare you. Even if they would have known a little bit more, they did not discuss that. And if we would listen to the Voice of America, which I said in my interviews before about what's going on and we would hear Hitler screaming and yelling.

The concentration camps were not... we did not know anything about it. Like when we're in the train, I never knew where we are going, and I never was afraid that it's going to be Auschwitz, because I did not know anything about that. And I am talking only about myself. You can talk to somebody else maybe and they have an entire different... and you want to know my feelings.

We were going somewhere and it was miserable, but we didn't know where.

Q: Can you tell me, can you trace in your memory, how it happened that you became aware of what Auschwitz meant?

A: I mean, later in... when we would have believed that they really...? I can't remember when that came to our mind, you know. For a long, long time we thought that, you know, our parents are somewhere in another camp and taking care of the kids who were also taken away from people.

Well, I was the youngest, and I didn't have, but as I told you in one of the stories, that my sister- in-laws had little children, a four and a six year old. Well, they wouldn't have imagined that they were burned in the gas chambers. They would have thought that the mother was taking care of the kids in a different kind of a camp. When did we came to the realization? Toward the very end. I think maybe even during the Death March, and we heard this over and over and over again, we assumed maybe. But it wasn't that it just happened one day. And I never remember really, crying that suddenly now I might not have my parents anymore. It is just... everything was so gradual that I couldn't recall anything like that. And I wanted to get back to Hungary.

By then, I kind of knew that I'm not going to find my parents there, but I had big hopes that I would find my brothers, because I didn't know what happened to them. Of course, I didn't find them either, and I have mentioned that in some of my interviews. But when did that happen? I don't really know. (Doorbell rings.) Oh gosh, would you turn that off for a minute?

Q: Well, I wondered if you got to any point where you, even if it was years after the war, where you cried for them? That it hit you or that you felt safe enough to really mourn.

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A: Yeah, well I could even cry now, but see what it is, that what amazes me, that during that time that we were in that camp and so many horrible things were going on, I don't remember really ever crying. You know? The shock was so great. And afterwards, see, when I got back to Hungary, there was just, it was such a trauma, the whole thing, that you know, it was almost like you were, like you were under the influence of some sort of magical thing that everything hit you all at once. And so, I don't, of course I, even now, and you know I have pictures, or when I couldn't find my brothers. But it's funny, I wasn't... it's not funny at all, but I apparently didn't cry that easily. I mean I might have held it back more. And the tears come now, for example, I see a program on television, not about the Holocaust, but about something, a little kid getting hurt or little... I can so easily cry and have tears, you know, over that, but with this big event what happened, that was just so much, that I... I didn't... like that we go to the cemetery when we are in my hometown, because they have a memorial for the adults and then they have a special one for the kids. My family's names are on it. And it's just, you know, you're just under, it's a shock kind of, which never left me for ever, ever and ever, you know? Then I had other traumas yet, which I might have talked about it or I might have not. But I don't want to jump ahead of myself. You ask me the question.

Q: Okay, well I'm not concerned about sticking to a chronology, so you can talk about...We'll just get back to the chronology when...

A: I don't know, I think that what made me survive, that I must be kind of tough. Or maybe I was brought up in a nice family home and I didn't have any upsetting situations. But I think it has a lot to do, that some people are stronger for some reason and some people are not that strong.

And I was able to handle many situations which for other people might have been very dramatic and I could do it. So, it must be my personality that I was able to... to survive, no. No?

Because you can get sick and you can die or they can kill you. But maybe the feeling that you don't give up easily. Or it's like in my story, I might have said some that we had lice and we would spend hours trying to get rid of the lice. Or if we were starving, you know, I was able to... then I was lucky that I didn't get really sick. I mean, that I don't think has anything to do with one's personality. You may be stronger, and I'm a pretty strong person. But in those days, you know, being out in January and February, you could have gotten anything and just died, but I didn't. And that I considered luck. I don't think that it's a personality. Somebody who is stronger, maybe can endure all that. So I'm not sure exactly what might have caused that, that I was able to deal with it better than maybe the other people, who even now, maybe... I hate it that they have nightmares about it and they remember all the horrible things. I think about it a lot and I remember them, but I deal with it, except sometimes it looks to me that, that wasn't me. That had to be somebody else, because up to this moment, I can't believe and can't understand how in the world somebody can survive it. And then talk about it later in life. It's... I have a hard time understanding that and I still feel that way.

Q: And somebody pretty young...

A: I was not that young, you know. I really not a 15-year-old kid. I was in my 23s or 24s. So, I was mature enough to deal with it, but I worried about... see after the... and as of today, I'm going to say something to you, I just thought about that. They died the way, you know how they did. And at the same time I tried to compromise with it. I mean, I'm not trying to forgive Hitler 7

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 8 ever, or what happened to us. But if I saw younger people with their mother doing the same things I was doing and they would beat that mother or that mother was starving, you know? Just the thought of that for me would have been horrible. So, the way I think now that they suddenly were killed and they didn't suffer. That makes me feel almost better than if I would have gone with them maybe for half a year and then slowly they would have died. Because they were in their sixties, they weren't young. Some people were only maybe in their forties. But when I was born, my mother was already forty years old, so she had to be 63 some years old. And in those days those were already old people, but they were healthy people. I never seen them sick or, you know, in bed, in fact, with a sickness. So, to me, seeing them suffer right next to you would have been almost worse. I mean, I don't know if anybody ever felt that way. Because if they could have survived the whole thing, that's a different story, but at that age, not many older people could survive it. So.

End of Tape 1, Side A

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 9 Tape 1, Side B

Q: This is tape number one, side B of an interview with Ann Low Klein. Well, let's, I have some questions about the things that you brought up, but let's try to get back to them later and we" ll get back right now to the summary, to just finish saying what happened to you during the wartime. I believe when we left off, we mentioned that you were on a Death March. You were forced to go to Ravensbriick with this group of other girls and then we went off talking about what had become of them. So, you were in Ravensbriick for about three weeks.

A: Ravensbriick for three weeks.

Q: And then to Malchow for about two weeks. And then there was a lot of traveling around to various places.

A: Well, either walking or in open trains. The open train was right after the Auschwitz, the evacuation of Auschwitz, because I remember it was very cold and the trains were open. And I have already told that story, so I don't want to really repeat myself. The camps, unless you really would want to, I haven't looked at my notes again, many of the names I got from my friend, Ilus. Because she remembered names very well. But Ravensbriick really was the most famous one, but nobody... it wasn't really a camp for us anymore. It was gathering places. And wherever, like what you mentioned near Dresden, this Malchow, it wasn't that we were supposed to be working there or we were supposed to be doing anything there. It was just a stop during the wandering around or the trains and so on and so forth. So, the last part of it, which I (coughs) excuse me, I already mentioned before, on the open field, where I ran into a lot of the... even some people from my hometown, by then there were no camps, it was just... but by then the weather was a little bit better, because it was springtime. So we wouldn't suffer from ice and cold and so on. But our main and worse situation was in ice and cold and snow, trying to stop and sit down and possibly freeze to death. Is where my friend, Ilus and I kept ourselves from trying to avoid that if possible. Because we were told that, that can happen. But after that I couldn't tell you any of the real camps because then we ended up in Wurzen and that was...

Q: And then finally you were actually liberated during that time of wandering, the last two weeks of the war, you were liberated by American Army in Wurzen, Germany, where you stayed for about three weeks. And you were recovering from an infection to your arm, to your finger. Oh yeah, that finger nail is still...

A: It's still gone forever, yeah. And so those were the start, and I show that to you. This scar was my tattoo number and this where my hands are very worked up, there is a little scar. And a little scar right here, where the pus had to be taken out, because I would have... okay that was another way you could have died. I had blood poisoning, but with that surgery, since by then we were liberated, and they did it. If the war would to have gone on further, longer, I don't know what would have happened to that arm. But I never thought about it then either, except that was very painful. And that was taken care of in Wurzen. And after that, it took a while for that to heal, I assume. And I never did get my finger nails back, but that should be my biggest problem.

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Q: You described going to a Czech parachute camp, where British soldiers wanted to take you to England, but you went to Hungary instead because you were hoping to find your family.

A: Well, because, yeah, well, we were, they wanted to help us and that was only this friend of mine and myself. And yes, I remember that very clearly. They gave us real good food, I mean really food what we had never had before. Because, as I told you before, in Wurzen the first thing was I would eat the bag full of sugar and I would eat pickles. I mean that's alone a reason too, not to survive, I think, but then again, maybe I was strong or I don't get sick that easily. But after we heard about a transport, maybe from that area, leaving toward Hungary, we left them a note and we told them "Thank you very much, but we're going to try," and we got on the train. And that was a few more weeks of Czechoslovakia and all over the place. If I would look at my notes, I might even get some ideas around Bern, for example, but I don't think it's that important and that would really stretch it out. But the train was going slowly at different places. Now, my friend, the reason she remembered more, first of all, she spoke languages better. She spoke French, she spoke German. She was from Yugoslavia. She spoke the Slavic languages, so in Czechoslovakia she could understand some of the Czecho... so, she found out a lot of little things, exactly where we were. And I was immobilized because of that surgery on my arm. So my arm was all tied up, so I didn't run around as easily as she did. Like, the train would stop and then some people would bring up some food. That was, of course, after the war was over. Or she would go down, they asked her down to a kitchen and they give her something to eat and then she would bring some. But I just stayed put, because it was kind of hard for me to get around with that. And that was painful, because those things had to heal. But you know it's

because that's the way I remember, and any other questions I" ll be glad to help you.

Q: Just on the subject of your strength and being strong enough to survive that and also having the luck to survive it. I was wondering about your, how you thought of yourself and how you remember yourself before the war. You mentioned that during the war you just didn't cry and that now you can cry at little things. But before the war was your personality that way? Did you ever cry then?

A: No, I don't remember that I was... I wasn't pampered really, by my parents, although they had the means. But I remember... I don't think I was really spoiled. I was spoiled by them not to share bad news. So, that's one thing I remember so well. Like my older brother was ill, had some sort of a lung problem in his high school year. They took him to Budapest and the lungs had to be filled at that time, you know that was more complicated. They never scared me with all that. Or I remember my younger brother, who was four years older than 1 am. He once, he lived in another town, worked also in a bank. And he must have gotten sick with some sort of a so-called blood disease where the white cells were more than the red cells or so on and I didn't quite understand the whole thing. And my parents would talk to them on the phone and I think they were worried about what was going on, but then he got well. But they never, ever shared the worry with me, so therefore I was not exposed to anything bad, ever, up to that point. You know? My parents lived together and my brother... we were... it was a close-knit family, but not a spoiled. You know, like my father had probably enough money, but I made a big deal of asking for money. I remember I would say and that they laughed about that. That's not important to the interview, but I would say, "I have a real, real, real big favor to ask, and a real 10

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 11 big favor to ask." And they didn't know what it was I wanted, ten cents or 25 cents. I mean, I made a big deal about it, you know? So up to the last moment that was the way I was brought up. My bad parts was my Catholic high school at the last year, which also was in my interview, because one of the nuns was very anti-Semitic and that hurt my feeling very much. But there again, I didn't cry. I couldn't object to it. It wasn't like nowadays, people protest. So, I had to kind of swallow it and live with it. So, I don't remember ever being very upset or that I got hurt easily, you know, like some people get hurt over everything. I had friends and they liked me and I liked them and somehow that's the way I was brought up.

Q: So it wasn't as if the war came and you became a different person?

A: No, I think my personality was kind of strong all my, but I didn't have to. It was easy to be strong when I had all the comfort. It's different. From ghetto time on, it hit us. It's just like for everybody else. But you might have had interviews with some people, maybe they had a bad childhood or maybe somebody was abusive. And who knows? I didn't have any of that. It hit me at the time when the Germans came in. And I read that other places, too, people didn't imagine it could happen to you. And we never imagined that it could happen to us, whatever was happening, everything was gradual. You know, the giving up your whole place, the ghetto, the brick factory. It just... it hit you and we had to face it and I did without any, you know, any crying, temper or fighting it. The only upset points I would have, and would see again my parents sitting in front of our ghetto home, where it was raining and they had to leave their stuff.

I always used to think that they had all the nice things and now you just have to leave it there.

So, I always felt more sorry for them than for myself at the time. That's the way I remember.

Q: What about when the war ended and you started trying to just go about your life? Did you feel as if you were transformed? You were a different person than you had been before?

A: Well I was in a way like, by the time I got back to Hungary, to Budapest and I realized that I don't have... I really realized that my parents are gone and my brothers are gone. And I have mentioned in some of the interviews how I found about what happened to my brothers, so I don't want to repeat myself to that. But everything was still completely like a dream type of a thing, because I remember that people wanted me to meet friends and get together with them. And I was just like, like blindfolded. I did what I was told. I didn't have my own personality, you know. I don't remember much about the time, you know. And I was in Budapest for a whole year before I came out to this country. And some things are fairly vivid in my mind, some people I don't even remember. I just really don't remember. I don't know if I ever mentioned it, before the war they wanted me to marry somebody. Did I say that? I don't know whether that's important, but there was a real good friend of ours, a family. He was a lawyer and they were rich people. And their nephew got married to a girl in my hometown, who is still alive now somewhere. I never see her anymore, but she lived in Israel. And that person who was marrying the girl brought his cousin. And they lived somewhere in the Yugoslavian area and they were big farmers or landlords, landholders and very rich people. And they all decided that that would be a great situation for me.

Q: Who decided that, your parents?

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A: That's... no, the couple, whose nephew was marrying the one girl and brought his cousin. And they had a big dinner, a get together. And I don't know that should be in the Holocaust Museum, but... briefly I would say it was a big dinner and I sat next to that guy and enough that he invited me to go to where he lives and meet his parents. And my mother and I took a train and we went with this guy... can't even remember his name anymore. It was beautiful. They waited for us with a sleigh. So, I liked, only thing is the sleigh rides in the snow. And at that time, of course, I knew my husband by then, because we were growing up together. We came to the United States and I liked him. And I certainly didn't like that guy. He was like about ten years older than I am. And so on the way back, on the train, I used my personality, where I might have cried, and told my mother, "I absolutely don't want anything to do with this situation." And they accepted it. They didn't force me to do that. But I think I was very upset and I might have cried then. On the train home I kind of said, "No way do I want to do that." But then after the war, people wanted me to meet a friend and so on. And it's very vague in my mind. I can't remember. I love music and somebody, my husband's wife, they got married just before the war. Not my husband's, I'm sorry, my brother. And she got me some opera tickets and I liked opera at the time, it's a season ticket. And I went to all that because I was told to do but I didn't have my heart in it. You know? It was just something that I was so vague and my girlfriend, and I think I might have said that. She was my good friend, who is still a friend of mine and I still see her all the time. She sometimes comes to the United States and I have been visiting her.

Q: What's her name?

A: Her name is, her maiden name was Fleischman, Ibi. And the very interesting thing is that my friend from Yugoslavia, her maiden name was Fleischman, too. Isn't that strange? And then she married, the woman in Budapest, married a furrier and his name was Fischer. And they had a furrier business and when I arrived back to Budapest, I went down. And I remember one thing, that I stood against a wall and of course, they never knew what happened to me. And I think it was very vivid in my mind and I told my story to her. Then she hired me. She gave me a job, and I worked in that place. Oh, I don't know, just help out and they taught me how to make patterns for fur coats. You know there is a way to do that. And I worked in that furrier place until it was time for me to leave Budapest to come to this country. And I might have, you remember my tape? I must have told in it that I got a letter, letters from my sister-in-laws, where they were happy that I'm going to becoming a member of the family. And then I got a letter from my husband where he asked me to come out. But my Budapest time, that year and a half, I had to go back to my hometown. I had to give up my apartment. I had to sell things which were so dear to my parents and cost, must have cost a lot of money. I practically had to just give it away. It was inflation time. And so, | got rid of all that. I got some money out of it, not very much, very little. And then I...

Q: Yeah, you did talk about that in the interview with...

A: ...with Mary K.

Q: ...Mary K.

A: Yeah, I must have.

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Q: But I thought it would be a good time too, for you to say something that you haven't talked about in either interview, which is how you met Sandy and how long you've known him.

A: Well, "ve known him from the time he was a little boy. He's a year older than I am and we lived just a block away. And at that time, he used to play the violin and I used to play the piano.

And we belonged to the same music school. And we did by then, like I was teenager, maybe fourteen and he might have been 15 and a half. And we had some pieces that we played together and then there would be a recital, and we did... so those are the ways that we really... and then we played tennis together and his sister was a friend of mine, who is... in fact, she's coming August the 5", She now lives in Argentina. She was one of them who had a little child and lost the child, and she's coming to visit. And then he fell in love with me more, when, you know, you're 16 or 17. And before he left, and he would ask me, he said he's going to marry me. And of course, he was only eighteen and I was sixteen and a half and he left to the United States. So, all kind of things could have happened. But I remember we went to Budapest at one time because I had to... no, he had to go after his papers, because he had an uncle in Washington, D.C., who brought him out with a student visa. And then he went to school in Washington. And so, for a while, until 1941, he would write very frequently. And like, I think I might have mentioned that for my birthday, he would ask his mother and she would send a bouquet of a hundred red roses, which at that time... she paid for it. And I think it wasn't as expensive as it is now. But then the war came in "41 and after that, I never heard from him. First of all, you couldn't get letters. He was in the service, in the Army, Air Force, actually. So, that was about, but we played ping pong together. I mean, Eger is a small town and the Jewish community wasn't really that big. And by then when I graduated from high school, we really didn't keep up with our non-Jewish friends that much.

Q: Had you, did you feel about Sandy the way that he felt about you, in those early days?

A: Yeah, I did, but I was a little bit, I remember at one point, I mean, I don't know why that Holocaust Museum has to know about it, but I remember I was telling my friend, the one who still lives in Budapest and who I'm close to, he was very much after me. And then you know how sometimes you get tired of it, you know. He wanted to be with me a lot and so on and so forth. And then my friend said, "Just stay away, pretend that you're not interested," and then he will change being after me like that. And he did just that. So, he stayed away and then I suddenly thought to myself, well it's more than... you know, I really didn't want to stay away.

So, I felt the same way toward him, but see I was younger and I went to a Catholic high school, and we had friends after that. And I had a boyfriend later, whom I really liked very much, but differently than Sandy. Because he was the kind of guy I would have never wanted to marry.

And he flirted with one girl and then with another and then with a third one. But he was that type, you know, that it was more like being impressed by he was somewhat after me, but at the same time I would know that he would be after a divorced woman and have two other girlfriends here and there. So, he wasn't very stable. So I would have never, ever have considered...

Q: When was that?

13 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 14

A: That was after Sandy left. It had to be after 19... between 1939 and "41, and then I guess, I'm not sure what happened to him. Then of course, he never survived either. But I would have never... it wasn't a serious situation. I would have never considered...

Q: What about after the war when you were in Budapest, were you thinking a lot about Sandy?

A: See, then, in concentration camp and I told you that, we only thought about food and never about boys. And after I got back, it wasn't very much after I arrived, see, that I got those letters from my sister-in-laws. And the first time that he wrote to me, which I still have that letter, in which he asked me and gave me the choice of, that he thought about that he wants his sisters come... I think I mentioned that he went to Bergen-Belsen to get his sisters. And he took them to Casablanca, because he was stationed in Casablanca at that time. And then he wanted to have the girls come to the United States, which didn't work out, because one went back to Hungary.

The other one stayed and married somebody there. But he kind of thought that I could come out and we all could live together. We would get married. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, we could always separate. See that was ten years after and you know a lot of things happen during ten years. So, when I got that letter, you know, I never had a second thought that that ought not to work out.

Q: So, you weren't afraid that maybe you'd both changed in that almost ten years?

A: I wasn't afraid of it, but it helped me not to be afraid of it, that I didn't have to leave anybody behind, and that's very important. If my parents would have been alive, I don't know whether I could have that easily leave. Because at that time, you know, America was pretty far. And... or my brothers, I didn't have anybody to leave. I mean I didn't have that feeling that, "Oh my God, what would be my choice?" So, when I got that letter, I right away thought I'd like to come.

And not because I wanted to come out to the United States, but I knew him well and I felt like...

you know I never had a second thought that I ought not to do this. But I didn't have my parents anymore to leave. I didn't have my brothers to leave. I had maybe a friend or so, but I didn't mind leaving her. So, it was a test again that I was hoping that it will work out. I wasn't absolutely sure about that, but I wanted to come.

Q: What were your ideas about the United States or preconceptions about it? What had you expected?

A: Well, Sandy has written to me while I was Paris for six weeks, practically every day, and gave me a lot of ideas of what's going on. And two things were interesting...

Q: Maybe I should just interrupt you to point, to say that, for the sake of the tape, that after the war you spent a year or so in Budapest.

A: Between Eger and Budapest, but I stayed in Budapest with an aunt and an uncle, who took me in.

And to Eger I only went because I had to give up my apartment and I had to deal with that. I had an uncle, my father's brother, who moved into our apartment after... and he was the first who came back. So a lot of stuff that I have left, that I found maybe pictures or something like that, it could be that it got into his hands.

14 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 15

Q: What was that like, to return to Eger and have to deal with that?

A: Well, the first thing, for example, was tremendously strange, but I do remember that we had help in our house, when I was growing up, and my mother tried to make me once in a while to, to help a little bit. I think she wanted to train me to become eventually a good housewife. I think all mothers like to do that. And I remember that one day she was making me dust the furniture in the bedroom, although all my friends were downstairs already, down on the main street walking.

And I kept on looking out and I was just upset that I couldn't be there. I could have done dusting the furniture in two seconds, but instead of that, I was fooling around and I wished I would be down with my friends. So anyway, I was procrastinating that kind of stuff apparently, like many other kids, I didn't want to maybe do what my chore would have been. After I came back and I had that big apartment, and I remember I worked like a dog. You know, we had hardwood floors. And at that time, you know, you didn't have the kind of waxers and the facilities and the vacuum cleaners like they have them now. I remember I had a brush I put on the one foot and I waxed the floor. And under your other foot, you have a rag. I mean, you never saw anything like that, but...

Q: Had anyone lived in that house during the war?

A: Well, yes, different people lived in it and then they moved out and when I came back, my uncle was there. But I tried to get the house back in the shape like I remembered that it was before.

And all I could, always, and I think I cried at that time, if my mother just would see now, how I'm trying to take care of the house, when earlier I wouldn't even want to dust the furniture. So, I was very proud of myself. And you know, I mean, I don't remember the crying spells, but I would get very emotional, even now that I'm talking about it. If she just could have seen now what I'm doing, when I really didn't have to, but I did it for myself or maybe to just the way the place looked like before. I wanted to put it back into that same shape.

Q: It sounds like, over the years, it's kind of been, that your parents have been with you and a lot of times, you think about them looking on the things you've done.

A: I do, I even could cry, see, right now. But when you're in the middle of it, you know, I think I just took it the way I had to. But yes, of course, I mean I do think about them a lot.

Q: Did you sell that house?

A: That house wasn't owned by us. Our first house what we lived in, which was very pretty and very big, with a big garden, that was sold. This apartment, I think, belonged to, as I said, it was above the bank. And I think that was rented. So, I didn't sell anything there. I had to sell furnitures. And I had to get rid of all that, but the apartment didn't belong to us. And I wrote, I gave, I talked to Mary K. about that, I think.

Q: Yes, you did. So you were talking about when you came to the United States or I interrupted you. You were talking about how, well I wanted to say for the sake of the tape that when you 15

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 16 were leaving, heading toward the United States, you spent six weeks in Paris first, and that was in 1947. Right?

A: 1946. I left in November and arrived to the States in 1947, January. So, I left in November and by the time I arrived here, I mean to New York, it was January the 20". That was very hard six weeks for me, because I was alone. It was cold.

End of Tape 1, Side B 16

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 17 Tape 2, Side A

Q: This is tape number two, side A of an interview with Ann Lew Klein. Since you talked about your experiences in Paris when you did the interview with Mary K. Tachau, I wanted to focus on, you also talked about arriving and what happened once you arrived in the United States and the scary experience that you had being detained before you were let off. (Laughing.) You did talk about that.

A: Yeah, so I don't want to repeat that. That was just for one night.

Q: One thing that I was particularly interested in was that it looked like... let me check my notes.

But it looked like you arrived, you arrived in the U.S. on January 20".

A: Yes.

Q: And then you were married on January 29"?

A: The 29".

Q: My goodness. So, how did you, was it difficult to... and also you mentioned that Sandy was in finals at that time. So, he was extremely busy when you arrived. How did you... when did you have time to catch up together?

A: Well, I have also managed... I must have told in the interview that he had an uncle in Washington, so I stayed with them. And that was very hard for me too, as I mentioned, because I couldn't speak the language. And they were friendly and nice with me, but when you can't communicate... I mean, everything is so strange when you are at a new place. But what I must say now, and I don't know if I ever said it. That I still, at this moment, I have this kind of a feeling that I compare things to the 1944 situation. And I always used to think that's very hard, but how much better it is than it was then. So, everything in all my life, since then, I compare it to, lots of times. That if I was able to take that, my God, I should be able to take this. It wasn't that easy, but he, after school he would come over and then we would go out. Then we would try, it wasn't that easy, because ten years went by, but we knew we were getting married, and it was... you had to adjust to that, too. Plus I don't think I talked too much about my experiences then. And he loved music and we talked about music, so on, and then we had a very small wedding and I must have told that to Mary K. And so, it was just something that I could adjust to things, easier I think than maybe many other people. And if something is a hardship or like, you could say, "My God you haven't been with him for a long time, that must have been hard." Must have been hard to be in a home, a nice home in Washington, D.C. with an American woman and a Hungarian man, but who has been in this country since age 14, children who wanted to be nice to me, but it's hard. And it was hard, but I adjusted to that too. And I mean I didn't suffer, because I thought this is for, toward the better. And I always compared things like that, even as of today, I put things on a scale in my mind, and how would it be better, you know?

And so | adjust to things easier, I think. See I don't know whether I told Mary K. about my Bloomington experiences or did we talk about that?

17 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 18

Q: Just a little bit. You mentioned that you were living in a trailer with no running water and Sandy was in Graduate school at that time?

A: Yeah, yeah, so I don't want to repeat it again, but to me that's a hardship. I mean not... I had a nice home at home, we always had running water in bathrooms. In Auschwitz, we didn't have anything. In the Bloomington campus, living in a trailer, in a tiny, little place, where I had to bring the water in at night and go to the john and take a shower. And not many people who were brought up in this country with all the comfort would accept that.

Q: Did you talk with Sandy about your experiences during the war?

A: Oh, I'm sure I did, but I don't recall it exactly when. I'm sure. And, you know, but I don't think that I talked about it all the time. And as I mentioned, I didn't talk to other people for a long time about it, till the opportunity arose that I would, maybe this subject matter would come up.

But that was years and years after. But I don't think this was my topic of conversation that I would talk about that all the time. I probably thought about it a lot, but I didn't. And when my kids were growing up, I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to make a big emphasis on that I'm Jewish. They knew it. I mean, we are Jewish. But because you are Jewish, something like this could happen. I didn't want them to grow up like that. My older daughter was, later on in life, objecting to it that I was holding many things back. I did not want them to feel that they would be persecuted just because they are Jewish. They knew I was Jewish and Sandy was, but I didn't make a big deal about it. So, I was holding back. I didn't tell them stories about it till they got much, much older. Now they all have the tape and they know about it. But I didn't feel that, that should be important. I didn't want to make them worried and unhappy as time would go on.

Q: Did you feel safe in this country?

A: I did, except in my interview I might have told you that I got ajob. Did I say that in Washington, D.C. to do alteration at Garfinkel Department Store. And you had to fill out the application and they asked what religion you are. And I think I wrote down, or I might put a dash, but I was very worried about that. You know, I thought to myself this country is a safe country and it's a free country and why do they want to know? What could be the result of it?

So, for a very long time, for years, and I told that in one of the interviews, I worked in that place and I was afraid that they were going to ask me what church I go to. I wouldn't have lied to them.

Q: Yeah.

A: But it concerned me that this should be a topic of conversation and what could be the result if they find out that I'm Jewish. And that worried me for a long, long time. I thought that in this country, everything is free. And I also told you that when I... in my interview, I'm sure, that when I arrived to New York and we were waiting for a cab to go to the railroad station and my little suitcase was stolen. Did I say that?

Q: Uh uh.

18 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 19

A: Okay, well my uncle in Budapest gave me a lovely, nice black patent leather, little overnight case with red leather lining. And anything what I had valuable which people gave me, maybe jewelry and I can't remember, as presents or Sandy's sister has given me certain things from her mom, was in that. And I held onto it in Paris. I took care of all my belongings. And when we arrived in New York and a second uncle of Sandy and his son, waited for me and came with us to the railroad station. And by then I felt I don't have to watch that much anymore. I think I just didn't take care of my things as much. And when they were putting the things into the cab... I didn't have that much belonging, but that little black suitcase was missing. So somebody as we were talking right next to the, on the railroad station waiting for a cab to come, must have picked it up and they stole it. And that disappointed me tremendously, because I thought this country is very safe. Things like that, it would not happen. Because Sandy always used to write to me that they put a 25 cents down near the newspaper and nobody takes that 25 cents and you can just get your paper. So, I thought no crime is happening in this country. And that was one of my disappointments. The other one was the Ellis Island and I had to be there. And he also wrote to me that the uncle had a black, they had a black maid. And he said to me that, you know, you gotta be, if you are going to meet her... because I've never seen black people. And he just kind of tried to make me realize that, well, we were very liberal, in all this, in our upbringing, and Sandy was too, that you got to be very nice and not make difference between a black and a white. And then when I met her, of course, she was very nice, but that was the first time I ever seen a black person, but I was already warned by Sandy that you got to be very nice. They're just like whites and they can't help that they're persecuted and stuff like that. So, I was prepared for all that. And I tell you, in this country, in Louisville, Kentucky, I was terribly disappointed at one time. I met a young couple, Jewish couple, who invited us to their house. And I don't know where they are now and they seemed like they were prejudiced against blacks from their talk.

And I couldn't believe it. I could not understand it as of today, and I know there are very many Jewish people who are prejudiced towards blacks. Now, I know. I couldn't believe that anybody who is persecuted themselves, how can they be prejudiced towards somebody else.

And that was another disappointment in my life that I couldn't understand that.

Q: That was the first time you had been confronted directly with that kind of person?

A: That was already in Louisville, so that was several years after. At the Bloomington campus there were black people. And... but when somebody would make a remark like that, it was some sort of prejudice remark and I was very surprised. I didn't know that Jews could be prejudiced, but I know they are. I mean they could be, but it surprised me very much. When you said, "How did you take, were you satisfied with everything in the United States?" Mainly, yes, but little things like that. That it's not as free and not as honest as I thought the way they were described to me at the time.

Q: Let me ask you, you had, you had come to this country and begun to kind of settle down and live more of a normal in quotes, life...

A: Well, not very normal. In Washington, yes, we had couple of apartments and we worked hard to get it. Little apartments. But when we moved to Bloomington, Indiana, that's when we had the trailer, because he would have liked to get housing for married couple. But they were hard to 19

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 20 get. They were not available all the time. So, I stayed in Washington with a friend of his for a few weeks after he already had to be in school by September. And I had a baby by then, my son, Andy, was born May the 4", 1948. And when did you come to talk to me last time here?

Q: It was maybe a couple of months ago?

A: Was it after January or was it before?

Q: After.

A: Did I tell you that my son died?

Q: No, I don't think you did.

A: My oldest, this one, I'm just talking about.

Q: Oh, I'm sorry.

A: That was, that's why I wondered if it was after January, then you had to be here before January, because I would have mentioned it to you. But I'm not sure when you were here.

Q: I don't remember either.

A: So, anyway my son was born. His name was Andy.

Q: Was he named after your brother?

A: Yes, kind of, because my brother's name was Andras. In our family, cousins and so on, I don't know why, but so many people name their children... in Argentina it's Andres, in Hungary it was Andras and in the United States it was Andrew. But I started it. I named him Andrew. His middle name was Allen. So, I stayed with a young couple for a few weeks in Budapest, and Sandy had to be already, not Budapest, in Washington. He had to be in Bloomington. And the only thing he could get was that trailer. So, he didn't want me to stay in Washington that long, and so I think I took the train, at that time trains were more popular, with my baby, who was five months old when we moved to Bloomington.

Q: And you lived in this trailer with a five month old baby and no running water? How did you manage?

A: Well, that is where I am tough. I never thought that a baby should not have a bath, so every single day I would go and get the water, put it in that little bitty sink... that whole trailer was not as big as this porch. Not really.

Q: And this porch is about 20 feet long...

A: It could not have been that big.

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USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 21

Q: ...by 15 feet.

A: And I don't know whether the Holocaust Museum is even interested in that kind of stuff. I just tell you. One section of it was that if you opened the studio, gosh that made a bed. That's what we slept on. Then the middle part was just a little sink, a tiny, little sink and some sort of a cooking facility, tiny. And the third part of it was, it was kind of those round top of the trailers.

The campus, I heard, bought them all from somewhere for a dollar apiece. And we paid 25 dollars for that. The third part was just big enough for a little crib, so I don't think it was as big as this. Might have been half of the size. I was very... I accepted that, too. And you know, I used to think, well now I'm free and I'm not in Auschwitz. Some people wouldn't have lived like that, they rented an apartment maybe, housing place. Then they complained all the time that the landlady told them that they use too much water and they have the lights on too long. And we were kind of feeling that we do whatever we want in that little trailer. And so that was somewhat our own, 25 dollars, all utilities included. You couldn't go any better. And Sandy was making, getting some kind of a, you know he was on the G.I. Bill. And then in graduate school he did some sort of a little extra work. So, the G.I. Bill paid his tuition. Maybe he got a hundred twenty-five dollars or whatever, 150 dollars a month. So the 25 dollars was for rent and then we lived on the rest of it. (Laughing.) But again I just accepted things better than a lot of people. My God, if I would see my friends" children now living under that condition, they would think, "My God, I can't live like that." But we did. Then we moved into another trailer which was a little taller and we didn't bump our heads all the time. Might have mentioned it, too. And then we got a Hoosier Court apartment, where we had two bedrooms and a kitchen and it was normal, for $42.50. And that's where we lived then all during the time we were in Bloomington.

Q: A couple of questions, one is you talked a little bit about how you felt, and there were a few examples of how you were kind of hiding your Jewish identity. You had your number removed, your Auschwitz number removed from your arm. And you talked about how when you were working at Garfinkels you didn't, you didn't want to talk...

A: I worried because I, see now I can talk to anybody and I don't care, you know, that I would be denying my religion. At that time, I worried, you know, what could be the consequences of that?

Or I mentioned that, maybe in Mary K."s interview, but I will say when we moved to Louisville, Kentucky and we lived in the South end, so that was in 1953. And I was in concentration camp in "45, so that was almost eight years after. And we had a neighbor next door, she took me around, showed me the Iroquois Park. It's a pretty city. They had a child my son's, Andy's age.

And she asked me what church I go to. And I told her, "I don't go to any church, I'm Jewish." And I said it without any worry. But I thought to myself, if she still will speak to me after this, I'm okay. Ifnot...? See, and that was eight years after that.

Q: What about your own relationship with Judaism? Did you do anything to, any, go to services?

A: I'm not, not in Bloomington, Indiana. It went through my mind a lot of times, what so many other refugees might have told you, maybe not, some people might have gotten more religious.

Some people might have had some doubts. Where was God when all this happened? So that went through my mind a lot. Now, Sandy's family was Orthodox and they were very religious.

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 22 When he came to this country, he asked his uncle, the first Rosh Hashanah, that he would like to go to the synagogue. And the uncle, since he was married to a non-Jewish person, said, "I'll ask a friend of mine. He'll pick you up." Well, in Hungary, when you went to the temple, you first of all didn't go by car. You couldn't drive on that day. So, somebody picked him up and took him to the synagogue. It was not a, it was not a Conservative one. And maybe the men did not wear hats, maybe they did. The men and the women were together, not like in... even where I belong to... his family was, they were Orthodox. Mine were not. But in our synagogue, the women sit upstairs and the men sit downstairs. So, he was very, very disappointed. An organ in the synagogue, music, I mean everything, just what he never had before. And somehow it didn't remind him of anything he remembered. And that turned him off somehow. I mean, maybe shouldn't have, but it did. So some people could be considered very religious and they keep it up. He didn't. When I came out to this country, we did not belong to anything, at all. And I somehow didn't miss it, but when my kids were getting to be Sunday school age, and that was already in Louisville, Kentucky, then we did join a synagogue at the time.

Q: Which one did you join?

A: At that time it was called B'rith Sholom. It was not a Conservative. But we did, because I felt like the kids ought to have some Jewish background.

Q: It was not Conservative? Is that what you said? Or it was?

A: Let's see, which is the least religious?

Q: Oh, Reform?

A: Reformed. It was Reformed. Conservative is more religious. But there you would go and it was the type, again, it reminded me more of a Protestant type of church. You know, it was just so strange to me and of course everything was in English and very little in Hebrew. But we belonged there and I went to the holidays and took the kids. But since we did not observe it, the way some, and I don't know how religious your family is, so I'm not comparing myself to anybody else. I'm just telling it to you. Therefore I didn't expect my children to become that religious either. I took them to Sunday school, because I felt like they should have that background. But the Sunday schools at that time, at least where we belonged, was not anything that I would think desirable. The teachers were just volunteer people. The discipline was not very good. The kids could do anything they wanted to and if they left Sunday school and they walked over to an ice cream place and they came back. I would hear stories like that. And that disappointed me, because it didn't leave any impression on them. Now, the Sunday schools now that, let me see, my daughter, Linda, is married to a Jewish guy. And they do belong and I do too, now, to Temple Shalom, which is actually one branch of the B'rith Sholom, which long time ago closed up. And Adath Israel and B'rith Sholom merged and it became the Temple, which is a big and fancy one and a lot of rich people belong there. And the Temple Shalom is a lot more Reformed and we do like our rabbi very much. And I go on High Holy days. I don't go that often, but he's a real nice guy. And Linda's kids go to Sunday school. And the teachers are nice. They learn a lot more and they like to go. My kids didn't like to go, because they just didn't get anything out of it. And I'm sorry about that, but that's the way it was. Now, my son- 22

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 23 in-law here, Mark, actually even teaches Sunday school at that same place. And I felt like I wanted to join. Sandy wouldn't have cared either way. I said, now in my older age, I kind of felt like... because I'm not so religious, but I have my, a traditional background, which you can never ever get out of your system. So, it's not the same as the way I remember the high holidays in Europe. Everything was in Hebrew and I remember on Yom Kippur, I would go and visit my family while they were sitting, all day long at the synagogue. We were not Orthodox. We didn't keep kosher, so... and I like that. Because I knew a lot of religious people who... like in Sandy's family maybe they didn't eat in their home, but they would go out and eat stuff that they really shouldn't. Or Mark's family in Brooklyn, they were very religious. They kept kosher.

When they come to visit to Louisville, we would go out for dinner and absolutely never failed that the father would not order maybe bacon or ham or that kind of thing. And I felt like that's kind of, you know, it's not really true. Either you keep it or you don't keep it. They were very nice people. They're both dead now and I liked them very much. But my family wasn't like that. We ate anything and we weren't... and I kind of like that. I don't know whether you're religious or not, very religious or not.

Q: How did you get from Bloomington to Louisville?

A: Well, we were living in Bloomington from 1948 to 1951. My daughter, actually she's coming tomorrow from Seattle. She was born in 1950 in Bloomington. Andy was born in Washington, D.C. "51 we moved to Marion, Indiana and spent one year there. And I might have told that to Mary K. Sandy was having to do his internship in Psychology at the VA Hospital, so we lived there for one year. The rents over there were a lot more expensive now than in Bloomington on the campus. And his pay was a little bit more, but not very much and I had two kids by then.

And many of the wives of the people who were there on internship, did some work at night. And I wanted to do some work myself. And there was a glass factory, the Forbes. They manufactured all kinds of bottles, just beer bottles, little bottles and so on. And I got a job there.

I never done that kind of work, but I did it. And I went to work at six o'clock in the evening. He came home from the VA at 4:30. So, he took care of the kids and I went to work at six and came home at midnight.

Q: My goodness.

A: And that was kind of hard work, but again I wanted to do it. And the only reason I wanted to do it because I wanted a couple of things that I felt like I can't afford. I wanted an ironing board, which happened to be the Mary Proctor ironing board, which was expensive at the time and actually not very long ago it finally broke on me. And Sandy would have liked to have a good camera, so I decided I would work, because nothing extra like that we would have had enough money. I'll work for a month or two, I thought, but then I couldn't leave the work. And I worked all the way until it was time for us to leave. I can't remember what the pay was. I do know that it was really cold in winter time, because you had assembly lines and close to a door and it was freezing. And it would have, have you ever seen a Charlie Chaplin movie, you know?

Like where the best part of my work was when there was something wrong with the assembly line and the machine stopped. And there would be a space. Otherwise you just had to constantly pick up the bottles, check them for a minute, like this, and put them in a box. And you could not stop. Then somebody would be coming and relieve you in order to go to the restroom. And I did 23

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 24 that from all the way till the end of our staying there, which was sometimes in the middle of summer. And we went back to Bloomington, Indiana, because he had to get his Ph.D. See that was just a year internship. Not much to be told about that year. You know, I had two kids and I worked and he worked, so not much was happening.

Q: Did you experience any anti-Semitism at all during that period?

A: No, not there. But I don't think in Marion, yet, I talked to anybody about that. First of all, we knew a few people, but we didn't make too many friends. And the subject never came up. And I was so busy with the kids that, you know, I didn't talk about it, or... I remember we were renting in Marion, a National home for 92 dollars. And I was sick one time with strep throat.

And Sandy got a call somewhere about some pay raise, something. And he got so excited and he was doing the laundry. And we had some sort of washing machine that you had to stop it in between all the periods. And suddenly the water overflowed and the water was coming all over the whole National home, you know, it's... I don't know if you know what they are like. They are pre-fab houses, so they're not very super, but it was nice. It was like a two or three bedroom little house with a modern kitchen. It was very nice. So then not much happened in Marion and we went back to Bloomington, Indiana. And we bought a car. That was our first time that we had a car already in Marion. And I learned, actually practiced, how to drive at the VA, because it was just a nice big campus that no traffic. But my real experience for learning how to drive was still in Bloomington, Indiana. For five dollars, we got like a course, and I learned how to drive, but since we didn't have a car, I couldn't practice it. So, in Marion we did have a car and I practiced how to drive. And I went back to Bloomington, Indiana, I got my license.

End of Tape 2, Side A 24

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 25 Tape 2, Side B

Q: This is tape number two, side B.

A: So then we... how did we get to Louisville, your question was. A friend of Sandy's heard about a job and he was offered that job. It was a post-doctoral fellowship at the Child Guidance Clinic here in Louisville. And his name was Fred Kanfer and he was more an experimental psychologist, not a clinical psychologist. And he did not want the job and he mentioned it to Sandy. And so he came to Louisville and he applied for it. And he got that job at the Child Guidance Clinic, which was for one year only. And that was kind of very nice. We lived in an apartment in the South end, it's where I met the person, who I first felt like, she still must like me, even so that she found out that I was Jewish. Now that was many years later. And the people at the Child Guidance Clinic were very, very nice. They are all older social workers or psychiatrists or psychologists. They practically took us in like a family. They had lot of family get-togethers. And we didn't go out otherwise. Because then my daughter was born, Linda was born, in 1954. So we moved to Louisville in "53 and we still lived in the South end when she was born. And our assignment was only for one year. And now my story is really important here, but I couldn't see myself moving in September when she was supposed to born in September. And we didn't have much money because that pay was, you know, quite little. And our apartment at the Washington Park apartments was already then eighty-two dollars and ninety-five cents or so. We had to pay utilities, too. So I told Sandy just anything he could do.

And by then I could walk to the grocery, because it was right behind our apartments. I could walk, we had one car, I could walk to the pediatrician. And I never did anything else, like go to town or do that kind of stuff. And I said, "I wish we could stay just at least maybe for one more year, so we don't have to move just exactly in September." Because they usually would have seminars and then people would go to those seminars and then people come with job opportunities. So Sandy would have had to go to one of those things and find a job. And we would have had to move. Well, it was very, very hard even for me to imagine and so, the Child Guidance Clinic gave him a part time job. And at Norton he worked part time and in one other hospital it was part time. I mean, just very little, here and there. Then he met two psychiatrists, who needed somebody and they became our friends, too. And they needed somebody who would do some testing for them. And they offered him to try and see if he would like that. And he tried it and they offered him a nice salary and that's how we stayed in Louisville. He worked with them for a long time. And those psychiatrists are still alive and they are very nice people.

We're still friends. And Linda was born in "54, so I didn't have to move away. And then we stayed in the apartments until 1957. And we were looking for a house and we found this and we have been here ever since.

Q: What year was that, that you moved here?

A: 1957. So, from "53 to "57 we lived there. At that time, I didn't have my fourth child, yet. Now there is, if you have any questions about our stay here, you can ask me. And then... but you ask me, because I don't know what you want.

25 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 26

Q: I wondered about when you first arrived and you talked about, you mentioned a little earlier, you had a taken a walk through Iroquois Park and so forth, and it occurred to me that at that time, Iroquois Park was segregated and black people, I think, were not...

A: Was it?

Q: Yeah, I read something about that. I was wondering if you noticed segregation in Louisville and whether that, because you had mentioned earlier that it made an impression on you that black people were treated differently than whites.

A: Tell me, when was the Civil Right Movement and the Martin Luther King, and when... you know I've been watching those programs all the time, but I don't remember the dates. When was it that finally, really, for example, black people didn't have to sit on the back of the bus and all that? Do you remember dates like that?

Q: It was different in different cities, and I'm not sure exactly for Louisville. But probably mid- 1960s, early 1960s.

A: Because I remember the Civil Rights movements in the "60s. I didn't, it didn't leave any special impression with me. I didn't go anywhere much, you know. I was very busy with the kids. And I didn't even watch, well we didn't have any television at that time, I remember. It was later.

And when you get busy, I spend a lot more time now, listening to the news and being involved.

But I was a very conscientious mother and there was just a lot to do. By then I had three kids and you know, diapers and just... I was very, very busy. And since Sandy worked, day and very many times in the evening, he wasn't really that much of a help. He couldn't. In summertime we would go one vacation, we did every year. Because his uncle in Washington had a summer home in Annapolis, Maryland and he offered for us to go there. So, we would leave in the evening and drive all night to get to Annapolis by next day. And we would spend two weeks there, which was again, some mothers might have been complaining about it, but I did not. It wasn't really that easy on me, because, you know, I did the cooking and it wasn't a luxury. But the kids had a good time, you know, Sandy would take them out and they would fish and maybe they go on a boat ride. But Linda was still a baby, so I was really more like a mom over there, than it was a really exciting vacation. So, we had done that for many years, till my youngest one was two years old, and then they sold that place. But no, I did not remember anything that I was that worried about that. And when we come to schools maybe, you might like to... and I will have a really important story, too, about my oldest son, Andy, who... the school was nearby us here, where we live even now. That's where he went to elementary school.

Q: What was the name of the school?

A: Belknap, Belknap Elementary School, which is no longer existing, the building is there, but no more. And all my kids went to that school. Then, we, well in the South end, I'm sorry we lived.

Andy went to, isn't that funny, I forgot the name of it, now. There was an elementary school there. And he was in fourth grade when we moved here. And my youngest daughter, I mean Elizabeth was two years younger, so she went to kindergarten over there. And the name would come to me later, but I don't think it's that important. So in here, since we lived all our life here, 26

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 27 let me just talk about that. They went to Belknap Elementary School. And then to, and Andy finished here. He was in sixth grade. And he met some really nice friends on our street. Then they went to Highland Junior High School. Now, the friend, who we met here and became friendly with Andy was two years older. Non-Jewish people, he was very liberal type. And he started a club. I don't know how much you know about social clubs. We belonged to the Jewish Community Center, too. Sandy was pretty against those things, but he always said, I wish they would ask them and I wish they could refuse it, meaning, you know... because he had problems, you know, as a child psychologist with kids, they're so upset and depressed over that they were not included in one of those clubs. And those social clubs were horrible things, but they existed.

So, my kids were invited to it, but they weren't terribly active at the Jewish Community Center.

For example, they had those, it's really not important to even talk about. But Andy's friend started a new club. It was called the Princeton. And there was no question that blacks should not be a part of it or Jews should not be part of it, he was that kind of a kid.

Q: You mean there was no question, that of course blacks should be part of it?

A: They should be part of it. I mean his was an integrated club and that was his main concern, that anybody, Jews or blacks should be able to... whether they did or not, I'm not sure. But Andy was Jewish and he was part of that club. So, he finished, that was junior high school and I cannot talk forever about anything. Then he went to Atherton High School and he finished that.

And he was in the marching band, but he never liked to wear uniforms. He had had to, would have, but they were just kind of... that psychiatrist's son, who gave Sandy the job, he had a son Andy's age. And they were together in the marching band. And they would carry their uniform.

They wouldn't be caught dead putting it on and go like that. I'll try to make that all brief. He graduated from high school in 1966 and went away to college to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He left in September. I got him all ready, with clothes and everything else. By then I had my youngest one, who was six years old, because he was born in 1960...

Q: What was his name?

A: Robert, the younger one, who is now living in Nashville. Well, my big tragedy comes now, that in September he moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. Friday before Thanksgiving in November, Sandy left, went to Atlanta to a psychological meeting. I was just cleaning up all the leaves in the yard, got a call from Appleton that Andy was in an accident. Well, what happened, that they lived on the dorm... and there was a church, which was already barricaded and people didn't go in there, but sometimes they did, with the idea boys will be boys. One of Andy's friends asked him if he wouldn't mind coming up there. And Andy says, "Oh, I've been there last week. I don't want to go." "Oh, come on, I don't want to go by myself." That kid wanted a light bulb. I mean silly thing, it doesn't make any sense. They went up into the place. It was barricaded, but people went in all the time, because it was kind of like a hiding place. And they were way up high and he stepped on a false ceiling, that was... he was in the front and the boy was behind him and he fell through, 35 feet. And I got the phone call. They wanted me to say that anything they can do, that I should give my... I said my husband was out of town. So I want to make that story kind of short, but it was...

Q: What year?

27

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 28

A: It was in 1966 in November. So, I got into my car, quick went over to that psychiatrist friend of ours, who was just recuperating from pneumonia. | told him quick what happened. He was trying to reach Sandy in Atlanta. He called the hospital. He told them, they do whatever they need to do. (Coughs.) Stop it now for a minute, I'm going to get some...

Q: Go ahead.

A: The reason this is important, because at that time when this happened, I thought to myself, the Holocaust was enough. And I didn't expect to have another something like this to happen. But I handled that pretty well, too. But I remember when the telephone calls were done and my friend's wife offered that she'1] come with me to Appleton. And I said, well maybe that's not necessary. We left John Bell, Dr. Bell is the psychiatrist who reached Sandy at the Atlanta airport and he turned right back around on the airplane. So my friend, his wife, took me to the airport and we felt if he will be on that plane that we were supposed to be taking, then Nancy would not come with me. In the meantime, I had to leave my six year old son, Linda was ten and Elizabeth was twelve. But at that time, Sandy has a sister, whose daughter just graduated from high school, who was Andy's age. And she came to stay with us for a whole year. And that was the year that she was staying here, from Buenos Aires, Argentina. And she had a hard time to adjust, too. She was very homesick. But at that time she already decided she's staying. Now, she was a, she was, she liked to cook, and she was... well, I had a help in the house too, not all the time, but a couple times a week. So, I just packed my stuff. I remember the kids all standing next tome. And I thought about cold weather and warm weather and I packed my suitcase. And with her, with Kathy being here, who is 18. No, I'm sorry, Elizabeth was sixteen and Linda was twelve and Robert was six. So, anyway, I said, "I just have to leave." And I was hoping that everything will turn out okay. And I'm still seeing the kids standing there, they were, you know, of course terribly worried. And I went to the airport. Sandy was on that plane coming back from Atlanta and we flew to Appleton, Wisconsin. It was in the middle of the night. We didn't know what we were going to find. And it was, you know, really heartbreaking in a way, and we...

somebody took us into the hospital and Andy was under all kind of wires. And he was in a coma actually for about three days, completely out of it. And Sandy stayed with me until he was coming to, and... not that he was better, but he was not in a coma anymore. And one very important story I must tell you. The day we arrived, of course there was an article in that, in the Appleton paper. And somebody called the hospital and wanted to meet the parents of this young boy. And that was a Catholic family, a mother and a father, who had also four children, but they were already older and out of the house. And they came to the hospital and not even knowing me or Sandy, they offered their house. They lived pretty close to the hospital. That I could stay with them. And they were wonderful. And now see, something like that makes me cry. I was there for six weeks and I could walk from the hospital to their home. The kids were out of her house already, so she had a place. I could talk to somebody at night about how things are going.

And otherwise I spent the whole day in the hospital. See the result of all this was, that eventually, I mean, his spinal cord was injured and he became a paraplegic. But we didn't know that for a long time, you know. I don't know if you know anybody, when people are this sick, that for example they have movements in their leg, which is just nothing. It doesn't mean anything. But sometimes I would talk to them on the phone all the time. See Sandy stayed for a little while and then he went back home. So, I talked to them on the phone all the time and 28

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 29 eventually I got, and I still have that, I never wanted to throw it away. I thought now when Andy died, then maybe I will throw it away. I can not. I have letters and letters and letters people wrote to me, to the hospital. And I still have them. In fact, just a little while ago, I re-read them.

I never, never could open those letters until just recently. And they were helping with the kids and they were bringing food for them and you know, they were... the kids were wonderful.

They were behaving very nicely. And so, I was there for six weeks. At Christmas time or holiday time, they came, all of them, to Appleton. And that's the only time we stayed in a hotel, because this family, named Alice and Art, children came home for the holidays and there was not enough room. But that made it so much easier for me. And of course, I couldn't sleep well and I got some tranquilizers from this psychiatrist doctor. Which even maybe even two pills couldn't make me relax enough. But I there again was... I don't think I cried. I was under tremendous tension all the time, and not knowing what the outcome will be. Appleton was finished. Finally we decided that we can bring him home. So, with an ambulance we brought him home to Louisville. And of course, he couldn't sit up or anything like that. I mean, it was... he was paralyzed from waist down. But at that time he wasn't absolutely sure about it, but they gave him a final test. And the final test showed that the spinal cord was completely severed, so injured, and that doesn't look like, you know, it can be ever... but making the story short, we put him here in Louisville, into a hospital, which at that time was the St. Anthony Hospital. We had a friend who was that kind of doctor who dealt with this kind of injuries, except... he was a wonderful man, he was a friend, but he didn't know enough about the whole deal. Because I remember we were very disappointed. The hospital, like the orderly put him, in the bathroom, put him on the toilet and left him there. I mean his back was... he shouldn't have done that. He was there for six weeks and at the very end, our friend, the psychiatrist, made arrangements at the Rusk Institute in New York City. That they can transfer him there. Which they did, and just very briefly, before they left, a nurse offered, private nurse will stay with us for the weekend, before Andy goes, because Andy wanted to come home for the weekend. Well, that woman was absolutely, she should have never been a nurse. She tried to show, she said that she had a daughter who had polio and that daughter of hers walked after a while. She kept on telling Andy, if you have faith, you will be walking again. Well, she should have never said that. And then we were over here in that weekend in my house. She made him, with crutches and braces, stand above behind the wheelchair. And Kathy, who is a big, heavyset girl, sat in the wheelchair.

And he wanted to prove something, that how much he advanced. Well, with the braces, he couldn't walk, but she made him stand up. So, then he sat in a chair in the living room and he says, "Boy that feels good." And the nurse says, "Maybe it feels good for you, but it's not...

maybe it feels good, but it's not good for you." And Andy says, "Maybe it's not good for me, but it still feels good." And the woman got so angry, that came out to the kitchen and says, "I'm leaving." And I went out to the kitchen... yes, I did cry then. I gave her the check, what I owed her. And I couldn't believe it, he was sitting in that chair upstairs. And Sandy calls home, "How is everything going?" And I says, whatever the nurse's name was, she left. "I'll be right home." So, he came home and we had some real good friends, who are still our friends. He used to be our family doctor and his wife, and Doctor Eskind and his wife came over because they knew Andy's going to leave. And they wanted to say good-bye to him. And Andy's sitting in the chair. I tell them the whole story. They couldn't believe it. And finally Sandy and Harold Eskind help him down... we have all those steps... helped him down to the bedroom. And Harold says, "Ill come over tomorrow morning." See she was supposed to be here and help us getting him ready. I mean, you know, with a paraplegic, it takes a long time to do that. And 29

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 30 Harold said, "T'll come over early in the morning, because I'm not sure when the plane was leaving." And we said, "Oh don't worry about it. We'll just get up an hour earlier," or whatever. And Robert that night, who was only six, slept in the TV room right opposite of our bedroom. I mean, he was upset and he was worried. And he woke up with a hundred and four fever. And so, as I said, loud, I said, "God, we sure could use Doctor Eskind now. And as I said that, apparently our living room was open and he did come anyway. And he was walking in and he says, "Here Iam." That was, you know, like an angel coming from heaven. He helped us get, he helped us getting Andy ready. He gave Robert a shot, I think, whatever he needed. I didn't go with them. It was only Sandy and Andy who flew to... the Ruskin Institute did marvels. He was there for six weeks. Luckily his mind was completely well. They taught him how to drive.

They taught him how to get dressed. They taught him complete independency. And Andy used to be a very stubborn kid as a young person. When he wanted to do something, he wanted to do it right then. And that helped him tremendously in his accident. Of course, he decided and I have a beautiful paper, which he wrote, then later he... I don't want to jump ahead of myself, but he learned how to do all this. He got a car. It had a hand control. And he was home the first year. He used to have a girlfriend from Myrtle Beach from before his accident. He says he wants to visit her. And we begged him, it's too early, yet. I mean he... all by himself to go to North Carolina or wherever the girl lived. He says, "If I would know that I'm going to walk next year, I would wait, but since I know I'm not going to, I want to do it right now." He got in the car, he drove over there. I said, "Please call us the minute you get there." He did. So, anyway he was really unbelievably... you know, I still say that. Then he went back to Lawrence, he went back to Lawrence University for a semester. And he did very well, but it got very cold there in Wisconsin and the snow was so high, that he couldn't even get out of his dormitory to get to the, like to the classes. So, Sandy sent somebody, a young man, who moved him back and he was transferred to Houston, Texas. To the University where the climate is different. So, he went back there and he finished college in three and a half years, instead of four. I mean, he made up. And in summer time, he went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and spent summer school there. And one summer he went to Boston, to Harvard, just for a semester. So, he made up all his lost time. He finished and then he moved out to California. He was very independent. He did everything on his own. And in the beginning, he didn't really want to come back that much.

I think the memories and all that. For example, he was fighting that we shouldn't put an elevator in the house. He didn't want us to move and we didn't. We tried to put an elevator in, but with this split-level it wasn't that easy. And when he would come home, he was so matter of fact of anybody who wanted to help him, lift him up. I mean, he got used to the idea. Then he decided he's going to go to Social Work school. And he applied to Kent Social Work School (ph) and that's when he wrote... I could give you that, I mean just for your own fun. When he applied to the school, he wrote a beautiful paper, which now after he died, Sandy made a bunch of copies of them. And just since you're interested and all, I give you a copy of that and also a newspaper clipping after he died. He got interested in California and don't ask me why, with a Lyndon LaRouche political group. I don't know if you ever heard of him or not. But he met tremendous amount and good friends through all those years, who became so close to him, that in the beginning, I wondered what they are like. But then later on we met them. They became, besides the political adventures, they were interested in poetry. And Andy also loved music, became more and more so. He had a selection of CD's bigger than we have. And he, first they lived in San Francisco, then they moved to Livermore, California and I visited him there. I met some of those people. And then they moved to Los Angeles and I was there. Now just a year and a half 30

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 31 ago, couple of years ago, he had to have a surgery, a bladder surgery. The doctor recommended him, that if he wouldn't do it, then eventually his kidneys would become infected by it. He decided, we asked a lot of informations whether is that a good thing to do. And everybody recommended. And I went to Los Angeles. I stayed with him for three and a half weeks, while he had the surgery. When... Sandy and I went together and then after Sandy had to leave and I stayed. And the people were very, very nice. They gave a big party. And they were singing and they read poetry before he went into the hospital. Then after that they kept on coming all the time. They enlarged the bladder, took a part of the intestine and made the bladder bigger. So, anyway, that was the... whatever they had to do. . In fact, both of his doctors were Jewish, just so happened that from the name I could tell. Nice, nice people, very nice. And he was in a hospital in Los Angeles, in a Mexican, you know, there were a lot of Mexican and Spanish speaking people there. And I worried a little bit, because he didn't have to pay a penny.

It was, you know he was... since he was a handicapped person, he had all the facilities there, which were paid. And they were wonderful. So, I was pleased with that. He recuperated. We went home and he worried that his appetite is not as good as it used to be. I said, "Don't worry, I mean, they messed up your stomach. You'll be all right." So, my big job was cooking for him, plus showing him the CD's, which one he wants first. And we played all day long. The people he lived with, he had two roommates. Andy never got married, two guys. They were very nice.

Then I came home. Then I have never seen him afterwards, but he was all right. He was going to come back. And one day, on a Sunday, January 24", I get a phone call from his roommate.

And Chuck says, "I have very sad news for you." And I said, "What?" I thought he might have gotten sick again and then I would have gone out to be with him. Well, he died in his sleep. He didn't wake up. It was a Sunday morning, from Saturday to Sunday. Saturday night, he was in the office and they were doing some kind of an experiment. They were really bright, intelligent people. How they got involved with Lyndon LaRouche...

End of Tape 2, Side B

31

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 32 Tape 3, Side A

A: And I dealt with it, but I remember when I got this news I couldn't believe it. And I still right now, when I say to you that Auschwitz seems like a dream and it wasn't me. Sometimes I think of this and I said, "Is it really true that he's no longer alive?" But then again, I measure certain things. We used to worry, what will happen to Andy when we die, and this group falls apart?

My daughter, Linda, she's a nurse and she says, "Don't worry. ["ll take care of him." Well, Andy didn't like to be taken care of. He could do everything in the world on his own. Anything.

Driving, shopping. I mean you wouldn't believe it, if I give you something about this, you wouldn't believe it. Like we have a friend here, who took him on a Sierra weekend, canoe trip.

And in the mud, she pushed the wheelchair and he would get into the canoe. I mean, there was nothing that he would not want to do. He was just brave. And when I got this note, I mean I couldn't believe it. And we didn't know quite what to do. We had Sandy's sister here from Hungary for three months, who was eighty-four years old. She took this very hard, plus she was too old to travel. So, my youngest son, Robert, offered that he'll come with me to Los Angeles.

And we flew over there a week later. That was the end of, it was January 31" that they had a memorial service for him. And it was really very, very nice. When I went into that room... and I know Jewish funerals, well that wasn't a funeral, just a memorial. They had some flowers.

They had a big poster of Andy. He was very involved with... he loved Shakespeare, and they were very intellectual, but at the same time they were just nice, nice people. And we had a lovely... the whole memorial service lasted for three and half hours and about 11:30, well everybody decided, it's time to quit. But there were speeches and people were sending letters and all the letters were, some people read poems. The day when this happened, in Andy's house, they were meeting for a poetry reading group, at 11 o'clock, every Sunday. And Andy didn't get up on time, so they were kind of thinking that he went to bed late, maybe he just didn't wake up.

But they... and they wondered why, but they weren't going to wake him up. And later on, a few hours later, when he still wasn't up, Chuck opened his door and he was in bed, asleep. And he had died maybe about maybe three, four o'clock. So, he did not take good care of his eating habits, I think. He loved all the things which are really not that good for you, butter and salami.

He exercised, but only in the wheelchair, naturally. And he just, it had to be a, it was his heart, you know, like he must have had clogged-up arteries. Although when he had that surgery, they checked him out and he was okay then. I mean, there were no problems, but that was a year and a half later. And that's really what happened. Now you can ask me all kinds of questions.

Q: Did you ever feel angry after that, at that point? You talked about...

A: I felt angry when he had his accident, but not really angry. I just could not accept, I thought that one... you know, just there is so much one person should take. And I felt to myself, it's not fair.

But in the meantime, I realized that it's nothing fair, you know, this friend of mine, who was going to take me to Annapolis and who was very sympathetic and they had four kids and one of them was a good friend of Andy. Their older son was coming home, not even a year afterwards that this happened, coming home from college, and was in a car accident and died in a car accident. So, Nancy said she always, she... at that time, I talked about this at the airport. We were waiting for the plane to come. I told her the same thing I'm telling you, that I thought that, you know, that I had my share and it's just not fair that now this had to happen. And Nancy after that realized, it's nothing is fair. There is no... whatever...

32 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 33

Q: Justice?

A: Justice. Whatever is assigned for you, it will happen and you cannot say, just because this happened, nothing else would happen. So, I'm now prepared and I hope nothing else would happen, but after he died, I wasn't angry about that, I was more angry about his... well, not angry, but sad when he had the accident. Because no matter how he accepted it and he was great by it. And I will give you that, I really will give you, because you seem interested in it. The way his friends talked about it all. That he never married. If he would have been old in the wheelchair, he would have needed help, you know. Those people were his friends, but they were not the family. If we would have died, we would have wondered. So, I used to think about that, what will happen to him. And he lived on the absolute minimum, you know? Like my youngest son, Robert, he has a big house, he has a boat. And he's an administer, I mean a hospital administer, administrator. Andy, nothing, he didn't, you know he was in the 1960s. When the Civil Rights movement was... he was paralyzed... from Texas, he took a bus to Washington, D.C. when they had the march. And in the bus, his toes got burned, because his foot was close to the heater and he could never feel it. And Sandy was saying, "Do you think you have to go or you want to go?" I mean, he was there. He said, "If everybody would feel like that they shouldn't go and use all kinds of excuses, then nobody would be there." So, he just... causes were terribly important to him. And now you have to just ask questions. I can't talk to you about anything.

Q: Well, I asked about the anger, because it's striking to me that you came out of the war and you had lost, your whole family had been killed. And that was, of course, a terrible, terrible blow, but my impression of you, from what you've told me, is that you were very calm throughout.

And then you jumped right into marriage and you had kids and you moved and you settled down.

And then losing your son to such, to this...

A: Well that's, as I said, that can, if I think over all that six weeks in Appleton and now, you know, I mean we got hundreds... well, then we had a memorial service in Louisville, after we came back. And I told you that we now belong to Temple Shalom. And when this happened, we got the news of Andy dying. Linda and Mark, my daughter and husband came over, and I said, I would like our rabbi to know this. And Mark called, his name is Stanley Miles. He's a very nice guy, turned out that he's Andy's age, lives around the corner. And he says, "I'll be right over." That was at night. And I said, "You don't really have to come, but I wanted you to know it," because I was thinking then, that I would like to have some sort of a memorial service or something for him in Louisville. And he came over and he was visiting with us. And he really didn't know, he knows my daughter and her husband, better than he did us. Because as I said, we're not such a, that we go constantly to the synagogue. But I was terribly impressed with him.

And he was so nice and he learned a lot about Andy's life, because we told him. We said we would like to have a memorial service and we did, in the Temple. February 28. See, that was January, but then we wanted... my daughter from Seattle came home. And Sandy has three cousins that, psychiatrist's kids, who were in Washington when I arrived. And we keep, you know, in touch and they like us very much. Without us asking, they all wanted to come and I was very touched by it and they did come with their families. And we had to get all that put together, so it was February twenty-eight. And it was in the newspaper and then it was in the 33

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 34 Jewish Post, you know we have a community paper with the community center. And there must have been over two hundred people at that. I don't even know, because I sat in the first row. I never looked back. And the rabbi was... and we played some music, the kind of things that he liked. And it was like a string quartet of Schubert. The name of it is, "The Death of a Maiden," and I used to joke with him. I said, "When I die, that's what I want them to play." And he liked it too, so we did that. And the rabbi was very nice, talked about us, talked about Andy, as much as he learned from us. He met him, actually, once, because my grandson had a Bar Mitzvah two years ago. He's now 15, when he was 13 years old. And Andy came for that. And then the rabbi asked him to read something at that occasion. So, he met him. He knew he was in the wheelchair, but otherwise he didn't know that much about him except what we told him. That I'm not angry... I don't know. I'm not that type, I think. I don't get really, I don't have many people that I don't like or that I get angry with. I just accept things.

Q: What about, you mentioned earlier, that you've taken trips back to Hungary. Have you?

A: Oh, a lot of times. The first time, I didn't want to go back, maybe ever. But in 1971, I decided I go back. The first time a friend wanted to take me to the house where I was living up to the age 12. It's... the houses in Europe are closed up, you know, the big doors and you can't see inside.

So, that person rang the doorbell and I was very reluctant to do this. And somebody came to the door and he says, "Well this young lady lived in this house long time ago." They took me in. Of course, nothing was the way it was at the time, because in the meantime there was a war. There were chicken and pigs, you know like. We had flower gardens then. But what I appreciated, they wanted to know if I wanted to go inside and I said, "No thank you." I really didn't want to go back, because it was just, I remember those years so much and I just didn't want to. And during the communism, you know, they divided the house. That was a big house, so that house was divided into about three or four different sections. I didn't want to go in. And then the next time... that was in "71. Of course it, I mean the first time, it was really hard. I didn't want to run into anybody who I used to know from olden time, but luckily they died. You know like, I would have never wanted to run into a police official person, who was in charge of making us go to the ghetto. The Germans gave them the orders, but somebody had to carry it through. Well, I never, never ran into them. I never saw anybody. Old friends of ours, who we really liked, we kept in touch with. And we had a very, very, very good friend... this year was really hard for us, not only that Andy died. And we had a real good friend in Hungary, who was from our hometown, who was a musicologist. And all our trips we took in the last few years... we were in Spain and in Italy and in Sicily and in Greece, several times. We did that with that couple. He was a few years younger. His name was George Kroo and we loved him and his wife and he loved us. And one day I got a phone call from his daughter that his father died, he had a heart attack, at work. So Sandy went to Hungary to his funeral. He was married to a non-Jewish girl, but we loved them dearly. So, I never even want to go on any trips. And we had another good friend in Washington, D.C., who was George's friend, our friend, he just died. And had cancer.

I mean, it's just, about four people from our life, who were kind of close to us, they all died within one year.

Q: I wanted to know about, after you moved to Louisville, did you have any contact with other Holocaust survivors who were living here?

34 USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 35

A: I had a Hungarian friend, who was pretty neurotic and she was supposedly in Auschwitz maybe for a month and then she was taken away. We didn't really talk too much about it, but I didn't have really close contacts with people. Then I had another Jewish friend, she died too, in the meantime, who survived the Nazism in Budapest. Hiding. And that's a different way of doing it there, you know, that like the Anne Frank. So we once in a while talked about it, but we did not talk about this like all the time. And I don't know how the other people, who now I see them once a year, when we have this... either at the movie theater or at the Jewish Community...

every year it is somewhere else. Where they have the Shoah, July, no not in July. They usually have it here, somehow in May. We had ours just not too long ago. And in Hungary they have one, always, exactly the time when the ghetto was evacuated and taken away. Then in the cemetery they have a big... and I've never been there at that time. And then people come from Budapest, people who lived in Hungary before, I mean in Eger before, who had relatives. They would come to this. But, no I really don't have any contact with any of the other Holocaust survivors here.

Q: And is that occasion of going to the annual Yom ha Shoah event...

A: Well, yeah...

Q: _...it's much easier for you to do this?

A: ...yes, to me, yes it is.

Q: _...to see the other people...

A: No, not that, it's for me, that's one way for me to remember my parents and my family. That's one way, like some people light candles. Some people can go to a grave. In fact, when Andy died, they cremated his body and it came back. And there was a question, how and where?

There is a beautiful cemetery here, it's Cave Hill Cemetery. And I didn't know that Jewish people can be buried there. But it's a beautiful place. In Spring it is beautiful, in Fall it's beautiful. There is a lake, a lot of sculptures all over. And it's just that people come and visit without visiting any graves. And I've heard that Temple Shalom has a lot. When I heard that, I figured, well Jews must be... and then I had some friends whose husbands are buried there. And we decided we're going to do that. And Rabbi Miles... Robert by then wasn't home, but my daughter, Elizabeth was here. And we went out to the cemetery and we did a private funeral for him with Rabbi Miles. Then at that time he didn't have a marker yet, but then several months later, not several months, maybe a couple of months later, I got a call from them. By the way, the girl who is in charge of that cemetery, has been working there for twenty-five years and she is Jewish. She knew Rabbi Miles very much. She was very, very nice and helpful. And we ordered a marker and that's there. Now, in fact, when Robert was home at Fourth of July weekend, we went out there, and he looked at it. And I'm sure... my daughter is coming tomorrow for just ten days and we will go out and I took a picture of that marker. It says, Andrew Allen Klein, above it "Andy" and the date that he was born and the day that he died and there is a little menorah.

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Q: That makes me think of a question which may seem a little odd. But you don't have a grave to visit for your parents or for most of the members of your family. Does that make it important to you to have that?

A: That's why I wanted Andy to be here.

Q: And what about for yourself?

A: Oh, well, if you're really interested in that, Sandy used to be the type of guy who would say, I want my ashes in the parks and in the river. When this happened, we never talked to Andy about what he wants. We never thought that he's going to die before. The girl, I forgot her name now, at the cemetery says... she wasn't pressuring anybody, but she says, "Many times people don't think about it now, but later on suddenly they think they would like to be maybe near a dear one from the family. And then there is no place for it." And she just thought she'd mention. I kept on thinking and thinking. And Sandy's sister was here at the time from Hungary. And I said to her, "You know I really would..." I thought about it a lot. When we die, Linda and will the family just throw our ashes... I thought about this, but I never made a big deal about it. So I said to Sandy one day, "You know, I wouldn't mind to get two lots next to Andy's." And he didn't object to it and we did that. So we have him and then two empty lots, which we paid for. And we, of course, would like to be cremated. I mean a long time ago, I decided. So now I feel good, that at least I know what our kids need to do with us.

Q: Do you think that is a special comfort to you because...?

A: Yes.

Q: _...your parents, you don't have places.

A: And I thought, see, we went out on Andy's birthday for example. I mean I'm not the type, who would going out every week. But it gives me a comfort to know that he is here and he's close to us. And now that we decided to do this, and in fact Robert was kind of, almost funny... "Let's all get a place." And I said, "I don't know," but we do, and if they do that... I mean Sandy will be eighty years old next year. Eventually we will die. I mean, we're in fairly good health. At least it makes me feel good, first of all that we belong to a Temple, secondly that if our kids want to visit our graves, since we cannot. I don't know where my brothers are. I don't know where his parents are. It does make me, give me a comfort. And I'm not sure why, but it does. And I'm glad that he agreed on this, because I thought he's going to give me a hard time. And then the kids, what are they going to do with us? Throw our ashes all over the place? And I don't know where my brothers are. I don't, I mean I know where my parents are, but we can't visit them ever, and so, anyway.

Q: Did you ever, have you ever visited Auschwitz?

A: No. I never visited Auschwitz, but I did visit Dachau, one time when we were in Germany. He wanted to go and I went with him. We took the train. There were a bunch of people on the train, young students. And it did come up that I was there. And they asked me questions, but it 36

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Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 37 somehow, again... I didn't cry there. It just was so manicured and it looked so different. And we were in Austria, last summer, with an elder hostel group and there were hardly any Jews in that group. But they had planned to go to Mauthausen. And we did that. And I saw there the gas chambers. Well of... it's hard for me to explain it. It's almost like that's not me. You know, it's almost like I couldn't have been there. I mean I know I was, but I just, that's the way, maybe, it's easier for me to deal with it. I just can't imagine how anybody can go through it and then be here to talk about it. And I'm not the only one, a lot of people who... and it was, you know, the barracks, I peeked into some of the barracks. But, you know, I mean, it was so much worse than when I was there. I mean when I was there it was so horrible, that any of this thing now, which is a museum, it's just, it's hard to imagine that people really were there. But that was at the Dachau camp, where I went in. Some people, German people were sitting next to the entrance, in their houses with flowers and all. And I would walk by them and they looked maybe old. And I used to think at that time, I wonder what they knew. How much they knew? Did they know what's going on in that camp? Stuff like that goes through my mind all the time, even now. And Sandy gets very... if he runs into somebody who's old and maybe it would be a German, then he would never trust them. He would think he might have been a Nazi or whatever, you know. So, you never can get that out of your system. But slowly we are getting older and not that many people... and that's why I talk to many schools about this. And that's why I'm doing this, too. That I think there ought to be a way of people to know what happened really, after we die. Because there are not that many people left who survived it, slowly. I'm seventy-seven years old and young people were killed. I'm not saying in Theresienstadt or some of those places, because families were together. And a young person might live to be 90, and still... but in Auschwitz there were no kids, not one.

Q: Did you ever have the desire to visit Auschwitz?

A: No. I... we went to see Schindler's List and I saw it a couple times. And then from the Temple, people went. And somebody interviewed us, but there were some young people in the group and one girl said that she visited... I think her grandparents might have been survivors. And she went to visit some concentration camps and she was in Auschwitz. And I said, "What did it look like?" And she says, "It has a souvenir shop, you can buy all these things." No, I really don't have the desire to go. I see it on movies or on film. And it must look so different, you know? I remember the railroad tracks as we arrived. I remember that incident where Mengele was turning you, sending you to the right or the left. I remember the barracks at the time, but now it's probably, looks completely different.

Q: So when you want to, when you're remembering your parents and you want to visit them, and you don't have that. What do you...is there a place that you go? Or is there something that you do?

A: I can't accept... around the time, you know, when they took us away. No, well there is no place, you know, really that I could. That's the reason that I didn't want that to happen to my children.

That they wouldn't have a place to go. I think about them. See, we were taken away June twelfth or so, and I think about it a lot, but I do not talk about it. You know, many, many times.

It's just like with after Andy died. They did that beautiful music, and I have a tape of it, see, because we put it on tape. And I go down to my basement and I turn on that cassette when 37

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 38 nobody is there. And I re-hear it, and you know, then if I want to shed tears or cry over it, I do.

But I don't... I'm never the type who does that very much in public.

Q: Did there come...

A: Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad. I don't know.

Q: Did there come a point when you felt that you had to talk about your experiences, your memories?

A: Well it came after, many years later. The very first time, I think I talked about it, that we were going to Cincinnati, to an art gallery, and Mary K. was with me and another friend. It was a two hour ride and somehow it came up and then I told them. When I used to walk with neighbors and friends and they have known me forever. So, years and years ago, we would walk for maybe 45 minutes and one of my friends, not Jewish, asked me if I would talk about it. So, I said, "I'll be glad to," and for many, many weeks that we would walk, we stopped at a certain point and then they wanted to know the rest of it. So, by now it doesn't give me any problems to talk about it. When some of the schools ask me, I did. I couldn't begin to tell you now how many times I did speak in schools. Once at the Catherine Spalding College, once at St. Andrews Church and mainly then on Jewish situations, of course. And they might have a Jewish student there or not. And now, I'm completely at ease with myself and I can talk about it. Once ina while I kind of get a lump in my throat, you know, but I can do it.

Q: Did you...

A: And I'm glad that I can, because Sandy's sister, the one who is coming from Argentina now, she completely held it back all the time. So much that if the subject comes up, she just completely bursts out crying. She couldn't talk to her kids about it... they know... or to her grandchildren about it. And her granddaughter said, "Why don't you make a tape of it," because she was with me one year. Sylvia, she's now about twenty some years old. She told her grandmother, "Why don't you make a tape of it? Maybe it would be easier for you." And everybody tells this to everybody, but it's not easy to do. I would have never just done it, if Mary K. wouldn't have insisted.

Q: Was it important to you, personally to do it?

A: I, I, it's nice. Like, for example, I have a neighbor two houses down, who is from Vienna and who left Vienna, they took all of her things away. And she ended up in Shanghai. I said, "Why don't you tell your story?" She can not. And all alone, unless somebody asks you, it's very hard to do that. But I'm glad. I am glad that I did it. And I'm glad that there is a record of it, maybe for the future generation. I mean, I don't care whether I would have it or not, but... so, I think it's... and that's why they make such a big deal about that now. Of course, a lot of people go back with transports to Auschwitz, and so I don't have any desire to do that.

Q: How do you, how do you feel about living in Louisville?

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A: I like Louisville. I do like it and I don't. Wouldn't like to live any other place. I've not been in too many places in the United States, but Louisville is a nice town. And we made a lot of friends. Now that we're getting older we don't see them as much anymore. And luckily one daughter lives here and the two grandchildren, you know. I have in fact, a little one will have a birthday tomorrow. He'll be seven years old. And I'm invited to go to a cave for the birthday party. But I like it here. I mean I am satisfied and I wouldn't want to live any other place anymore...

End of Tape 3, Side A 39

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 40 Tape 3, Side B

A: ...Democrats, okay? Now if when we were younger and we would get together and like let's see, during some of the presidential elections, we would all get together and everybody was for that same person. We used to think everybody, like long, long time ago, Stevenson was running and we all liked him. Then he didn't make it and we were so surprised. So we don't have any, non- liberal friends, but you run into a lot of people like that. And that doesn't mean that we are not friendly with them. But as we get older we don't really... I used to have parties and now when my kids come home, we get together. I'll be pretty busy, so I'm glad you came today. Cause from tomorrow on, I'll be kind of busy with my daughter and her 13-year-old is coming from Seattle. And they usually... my kids here come over. And I was just now in Nashville with Robert, so... excuse me, so...

Q: You keep pretty busy.

A: Yeah, I keep busy, and I...

Q: When you first moved to Louisville, how did you integrate into the community here? How did you make friends? And was it with the Jewish community only?

A: Well for a while, no, not really. We lived in the South end and we didn't, some people through his work would come and look us up and so on. When we moved to this house, then we met more and more people and they would invite us. But we're not the type that we congregate only that they have to be Jewish. As I said, that thought, if anybody would be an anti-Semitic person, I would never want to have anything to do with them. But that's not the kind of friends we ever would have. And after, you know, I got used to the idea and everybody knows we are Jewish, I mean it's not a problem anymore. And our kids, too, they have mixture of non-Jewish friends and Jewish friends. Now, my son, Robert, in Nashville, he married a Catholic girl. Now, he is the least. He's the one who came with me to Los Angeles. And he said that he learned more about Andy during that three hour memorial service than he ever knew, because he was just a little boy. And then he got away, Andy got away, you know, went to college and then he moved to Cal... so, I was very, very glad that he could come with me, that he wanted to come with me.

And it made a very big impression on him. We got through music or through the universities or through work, that we made friends, you know, but it.... and some of them are Jewish, some of them are not Jewish. So it's... we have some very, very good friends, who we still get together sometimes, have dinner out. He's almost ninety years old. And on their second marriage and they're Jewish. So, it's not a matter that it has to be Jewish or not, but it has to be the same type of people.

Q: I'm going to say something about... I have a question that I have to explain a little bit first. I think and my assumption would be that most people living in Kentucky don't really realize that there's a group of Holocaust survivors who live in this state. And most of the Holocaust survivors who live in the state, live in Louisville. And I'm wondering if you've had a chance or an opportunity to travel outside of Louisville or to talk to people who have been kind of surprised, who know that you're a survivor... like for example, if you speak to school groups, have you had experiences where you've found people, where you've spoken to people outside of 40

USHMM Archives RG-50.549.05*0005 41 the Louisville area, who maybe wouldn't have expected that even a Holocaust survivor lives in the state?

A: Well, there's some schools that I've been speaking to, the teachers have been very, they're mostly non-Jewish people. A lot of them maybe half black, you know. And they prepare the kids, most of them. They had Holocaust pictures on the wall. They were studying it before they asked me. So they were somewhat, and then they would ask a lot of questions. And I did it once at Highland Junior High School. There were 150 kids in the group and all 150 wrote me a thank you note about it. And I have all that. I have a box this full of all that kind of thing. They, one black kid, for example, said, "Can I touch you?" I said, "Yes you can." And he said, "At least if somebody would say sometimes that the Holocaust did not exist, because we talked about that, at least I can say yes it did. Because I touched somebody who was part of it." So, it made me feel good that they were thinking about that. And they hear once in a while stories where people don't want to believe. And that's the only reason I'm doing it, because it would very much bother me. And then, you know, I was very affected by this Yugoslavia problems, too, with this Kosovo deal. Because it was so similar to what we have gone through. And there were... there again, and I don't know how you feel about it, some people who hate our president and hate the Democrats, would be very much against that he started this bombing and he started invading and going in. I had very mixed feelings toward the end, when the bombs kept on falling and maybe innocent people were killed. That bothered me, but at the same time, I thought to myself, if anybody would have tried to do and stopped at least part of it. They would have bombed, let's see, the railroad tracks, when the train was going to Auschwitz. Not necessarily mine, but hundreds and hundreds of them. It could have maybe stopped something. And nobody did anything. And therefore, because I feel that way so strongly, I was saying that they did the right thing. Although it's a very complicated situation and it's never going to be peace in that part of the world. And even my friend, Ilus, we talked on the phone once and she was upset--now that surprised me--over the bombing. And she was not, she didn't feel like I do.

Q: The bombing of Kosovo?

A: Kosovo. And she said, because she was from that part of the country, and she said something that, those problems go back to eighteen whatever and there will be never peace. And Albanians and so on and so forth... that this is not going to help and the bombing just causes more, you know, destruction and so on and so forth. And I was surprised by her saying that, because maybe there will be never peace, but at least it showed something to the world. That's the way I feel. That something like that has to be stopped. Whether they completely can stop it, you know, one doesn't know. But I... it bothered me, the bombing. It bothered me, but then every time I watched the news where people were happy that they were being helped, it made me feel good. Because just some food given to them or the shelter or the whatever, what would we have given if somebody would have rescued us during the year. And what would those other people have done, who were there for three years, if that could have been stopped? That's the way I feel, whether that satisfies you or not.

Q: Yeah.

A: Yeah?

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Q: I also wanted to ask you, after you arrived here in the United States, did you want to have children? Was that a goal of yours? Or did you have any other goals?

A: My husband (laughing) wrote me the long letter, when he invited me to come. And since he loves music so much, he even said that he would like to have six children. Like he wanted like a quintet or whatever. And after four, I think, we decided that's plenty. But yes, I was, you know, kind of, not in a depressed mood, that I went always, you know I had certain kind of a fate, will be the way it is. Like I believe more in fate. Like in Auschwitz, I never tried to, this would better or that would be better. Whatever has to happen, would happen to me. Yes, children we wanted to, but I'm not going to tell you that we exactly had it when we planned it. Because then it would have taken a long time for us. Because he didn't have much money. I didn't. When do you feel now you are ready to have children? That you really can afford it? So, I'm glad just exactly the way it happened.

Q: It seems to me that you've been overall just very accepting in your life of the circumstances...

A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Q: _...and not had a tendency to try to make something...

A: No, no, no, no. I really am and I think that's what helped me through, if that's a possibility, plus luck. I mean you can feel this way and get sick or they can shoot you and then you can have a hard attitude, but if that didn't happen to you, then maybe that's the reason. And why I was like that, I don't know. But from whatever I told you, maybe that's the conclusion you come to.

Q: Do you have anything else that you would like to say?

A: No, except you poor soul, you're probably starving.

Q: I'm okay, I had breakfast. (Laughter.)

A: But that's just what happened. I can give you some cheese. I can give you a sandwich before you leave. And I'll be happy to.

Q: Thank you. Thank you and this concludes our interview with Ann Klein.

Conclusion of Interview 42