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ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 3 [Date not labeled] Page 3 with the NS Bay,(ph) which was the Dutch Nazi Party. At least four, five times, so, it was tenuous. And, and the reasons they had the raids, they didn't want to betray us. They did not. They hoped that if they were caught, at least that we children would be safe.

Q: And the Dutch, just before this interview when we were talking for a couple minutes, you mentioned that it was a small percentage of the Dutch who, who actually didn't betray Jews. Can you talk a little bit more about, | mean, obviously that's how you survived, right?

A: Was because we were not betrayed. | need to stress, I, what, what my sense about Holland during the war was based on, based on history, basically, data and in retrospect, is that there was a small percentage perhaps five, five percent, if that many who actively tried to help Jews if, I'm not sure there were that many, who were, who risked their own lives. And they were truly the noble, the very noble people, because it's hard to ask people to do that for others. So, about five percent perhaps that, I'm not even sure it was, were that many, that actually, actively did something.

My feeling is that 80 percent didn't care. I'm not saying that they would have betrayed but also that they didn't care. But we had a significant, | would say fifty to twenty percent who were traitors. A huge percentage that were part of the, they belonged to the NS Bay(ph) which is the National Socialist Party, actively, who actively worked with the, with the Nazis, with the Germans and betrayed Jews.

Most Dutch Jews probably were betrayed by Dutch rather than those were in hiding.

| think they, they said something like 35,000 were in hiding, 15,000 were betrayed. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 4 [Date not labeled] Page 4 That's a significant number. Probably mostly by the Dutch. Dutch people who got a few dollars for it, a few guilders which the Dutch thing. They got guilders so each person had a, had a monetary value attached. And Holland only now is coming to terms with the fact that as a, as a people, they were not, they were not all that, | hate to say this, they were not all that different from the German people in that a lot of them just turned their heads. Most just turned their heads, let it happen.

Q: Did you ever talk to Betty Booka(ph) about this, later?

A: Oh yes, oh yes.

Q: What were her thoughts?

A: Well, she was truly one of the extraordinary heroines, a remarkable woman who, because of her background, the Quaker background, she was British, one of the Cadbury(ph) families. She couldn't tolerate what was happening. From the very beginning, she couldn't tolerate this kind of injustice and absolutely, absolutely made it part of her, her life, her commitment to save as many as she could. And this was who she was. _ This was her, her mission in life and that's what | gather, was true for most of the rescuers. They saw something happening that was so intolerable to them that, that they could not live with themselves and let this, let this happen to others. And they, they, they basically did what they, they did what they did because they couldn't do anything else. Those are the rescuers.

Q: How many people did she save, do you think?

A: Oh, she, tens | would say because, | didn't realize there were other Jewish children in the house, course we didn't know that there were. But there were others, she hid ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

Anita Frank 5 [Date not labeled] Page 5 other Jews and helped others to hide others and there was a whole system the

she and her husband Case(ph) created. They, they. there was a group of Jewish children living close by that they took care of and tried to save. So they, throughout the war, went out of their way to, to save, to save Jewish children.

Q: And could have died themselves.

A: Oh yes, as a matter of fact, one of the terrifying stories was that, there was a, an act of sabotage. Some, some underground, members of the underground blew up a, a train with Nazi munitions and they, they took Case Booka(ph), in to, to the prison and they said, "unless those who had planned this act, this sabotage and who had done it, that, that Case Booka(ph) would be shot. And one of the, one of the, one of the perpetrators of this, of blowing up, who blew up the train was a young Jewish man. And he gave himself up. He did not want Case(ph) to be killed. And he was immediately tortured and shot, this young man. And he was part of the, he was in the Underground but he was Jewish, also.

Q: What year was that?

A: In 1943.

Q: My God.

A: Yeah. Oh yeah, they endangered themselves, the Bookas(ph) endangered, anybody who hid Jews endangered themselves. And the family, it was interesting cause | just spent, as | said, we were in Holland in April, just, just a few months ago and | spent quite a bit of time with the daughters, three of the daughters of the Booka family. And | asked them if they knew we were Jewish and you know what? They ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 6 [Date not labeled] Page 6 really didn't. They, it wasn't discussed, it was never discussed. They just knew that they, that they had to help hide people. But it was all, it was all hidden and it was just part of their, of their ethic that they would not cooperate and collaborate with the Nazis and they would do what they could to help those in need.

Q: Do you think Betty and Case(ph) didn't tell them just, to not give them information that they might betray by mistake?

A: Right. Nottoimplicate. Right. And it was Betty by the way, it was, in retrospect, it was Betty who insisted doing this, not Case(ph). | don't know, we're not even sure Case(ph) knew we were Jewish, because they took in other children. It was Betty who did it.

Q: What kind of woman was she?

A: Extraordinary, a gentle, little, beautiful, sweetest face in the world, kind, caring, concerned, loving, extraordinary woman who, who just, she couldn't do anything different. And we stayed in close touch with her after the war and she came to visit us and whenever we went back to Holland, of course, we visited her until she died.

And, and the interesting thing about her is, she was so concerned about others that in some way, she neglected her own children. She had eight children, they had eight children themselves and, and that, you see that often in those who are truly committed to the well-being of others that, very often, there is some, you, you sort of assume your own children will manage. So | think, |, | think there's some bitterness there now, among her children.

Q: You sense that when you talk to them? ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 7 [Date not labeled] Page 7

A: Yeah. Yeah, they admired her, they loved her very much but | still have a real sense that they themselves did not probably, did not get what they needed because Betty was so concerned for, for others. You only have so much energy.

Q: Did you ever see her show emotion during the war over the situation?

A: No. No, because basically we were told never to tell anybody and so, we didn't except those little lapses. And | didn't even know that she knew we were Jewish. | can remember, and that was, that was just the whole thing that | was so torn up about. | mean, we were told never to tell anybody, so as far as we were concerned, we were non-Jewish children living with these people and | had no idea who knew and who didn't know. So | couldn't tell anybody. So it was that, that horrendous fear of being discovered that stayed with me and the inability to talk to anybody about it, for two years. So all! knew was that we had to be there because we'd be killed but | did not know that Betty knew we were Jewish. It turned out she did but really, most others didn't, in the family.

Q: Have you seen any of the other children who stayed in that house at that time?

A: No. Yeah, well no, that's not true, where, as a matter of fact yes we did, | did, just in, in April. Eric, Eric State(ph) was there, the whole time we were there, my brother and | were there. Eric lived there and Eric has, he had a, | don't know, | think he had a serious illness and so he's, he's, almost a form of autism and he's now, so we saw him, | saw him for the first in 50 years. We visited him in his, in his apartment. In Julia,(ph), no it was Kondia Booka(ph) and | went to visit. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 8 [Date not labeled] Page 8

Q: But your brother went with you to Holland? Who, who did you say went with you?

Or did you go with your husband?

A: Oh with my husband.

Q: Oh, okay.

A: No, no, my brother tragically just died. My, the, my brother with whom | was in hiding, Norman, just died April, May 28", May 29" of pancreatic cancer.

Q: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

A: Yeah, yeah, that was very sad and that was the terrifying thing of going to Europe and knowing, not knowing whether he would live. He didn't, he did live until we returned and we were able to be with him but now he tragically died.

Q: Oh boy.

A: Yeah.

Q: You said that your, your father said your mother's couraged, courage saved the family.

A: Yeah.

Q: Can you elaborate on that please?

A: It was my mother, my father admitted that he was in total despair at times and that when they were in hiding in Falkenburg, well in the first place, she saved my father's life by taking the, | talked about that on the tape, taking the Cross of Merit to the, that her father had earned in World War | to the German commander of our town. And who in effect excused my father from that transport where they took first, they first took the men to, totally debilitate the families. And so she did that and then my father ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 9 [Date not labeled] Page 9 said many times that during the war, when in effect the, the police would come and when in effect they were told to produce papers that they couldn't produce, and when in effect these threats were made of transporting us, of, of interrogating us on the train because they notified my parents this might happen, that my father said she, he would just be in despair and my mother just would support him and encourage him and say, "No, let's, lets go and see what we can do and let's contact Frompinksteron(ph) but be careful about it," and she just, she just, she just is the one who, who persevered. She's the one who said to Pete, this policeman, "Pete, you don't want to know these questions, don't ask us." | mean, she would come up, it's almost like her intuition allowed her to do the right things at the right time.

Q: Because that was dangerous.

A: Exceedingly dangerous. It would have been the end of it again. I, had he been with the Nazi, the NS Bay(ph), that would have been the end of the family. But she took risks, somehow almost intuitively knowing what was to, at the same time, she didn't want him to continue asking because she did not want him to know this information. So it was just amazing.

Q: | wonder what, how he answered to his superiors when he didn't get ...

A: He said things are fine, probably. Probably went back and said things are okay, and looked at the papers and things are okay. He covered up for them, whoever this Pete was.

Q: Amazing. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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A: But then after the war, my mother suffered horrendously. She never recovered.

Then she had her nervous breakdowns and then she turned from really this, this very positive, | gathered from my cousin who still lives in Holland who adored, who lived a year with my parents before the war, who, she just said my mother was the most loving and positive and, and, and affectionate woman. But after the war, she just, that was all. | can't say it was all lost, she remained very caring but she became so bitter and so unhappy and so distraught, so desperate.

Q: Well, your family had a very difficult time in those early years right after the war.

A: Terrible.

Q: Economically, housing ...

A: Terrible.

Q: What were, besides the British censorship job, what were some of the other jobs your father did?

A: Well, he didn't, | think that was his first job. We came, we were liberated in, in September, September 17", "44, in Lindbergh,(ph), in Howtem(ph), we stayed and then we moved to, we moved to a house where the, where the, traitor's house where he was in prison and the woman was forced to take us in. Then in April of 40, "45, just before, just before the end of World War Il in, in Holland which was May, | think it was May five, May 5", when Holland was liberated. In April we went to, back to

and we lived in this bombed-out house and his first job there was with English censorship so my mother was left alone with us. And then he came back from that and then he went back to the Ferda(ph) which was the, the clothing factory ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 11 [Date not labeled] Page 11 with whom he'd worked before the war so he went back to them and then, after that, he left them and went to another clothing, worked for another clothing manufacturers, as a representative.

Q: A salesman?

A: A salesman, yeah. They called them factory representatives. He would go to stores and, and, and, yeah, sell their, their line of clothing.

Q: Which probably, or was that a difficult job after the war given the, the economy of the country?

A: Yeah, it was very hard but he had some old customers who when they, who had, as a matter of fact one of his customers was very helpful to us during the war. They hid some of my parents" silver and they lived in Lindbergh(ph), northern Lindbergh(ph), and Findlow(ph), and they were, they were very helpful to my parents.

So when my, my father again took that job, they, | think they bought from him. He was a lousy salesman. He, he should never have been into sales. But it was his whole family's business but my father was an intellectual and he should never have been a salesperson. He was, hated that, wasn't good at it, totally honest, totally ethical, totally non-pushy, totally not the characteristics of somebody who's going to make it big in sales, exact opposite. Oh, I'm probably insulting salespeople now.

Q: So, in other words, those first few years, economically your family was, would you describe it as on the edge?

A: Oh, we were continually on the edge. | mean, we came back with nothing. Our, my, my mother, because she came from a very wealthy family had, had, we'd lived ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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in this house and my mother had all these gorgeous things which were all mostly taken away, also by Dutch people who didn't return them to us after the war. "After all," they said, "you gave them to us." And so, like my parents knew who had taken the, the bedroom set, which was a gorgeous bedroom set, people absolutely refused to return these things to us. _ It's hard to believe that Dutch people, support from what they called the Commission or something like that so we got a little bit of money but that was not until | think a year afterwards which allowed my parents to buy some furniture. We never got any reparation, we were never got a penny for what happened to us during the war. Not from the Nazis, not from the, not from the Germans, we call them Nazis, not from the Germans, not from the Dutch government, except a, a little bit that allowed my parents to buy some furniture. And, and the reason we survived the war was not because my parents had any money but my, my aunt and uncle in, in Ossin(ph), my father's sister and her husband who had been very close to my parents. They made money available to us and their two daughters survived the war. One is the, and one tragically killed herself after the war. Another, another consequence of the war. And, and, and, they in effect allowed my parents to survive because my parents did have to pay for us. Not much, but they paid the Bookas(ph), | saw the, | saw the records, they paid the Bookas(ph) to have us stay there. And of course they had to live themselves. But that was made possible because my aunt and uncle who tragically were taken out of, they were both very ill and taken out of the hospital and put in cattle cars and died before they got to, to Poland. And that, and so that money was gone by the end of ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 13 [Date not labeled] Page 13 the war and it was, it was very rough financially, there was no money until my father sort of got back into selling some stuff and so we lived carefully. And, and then when he got his new job, he did okay, he did, actually remember one year we actually made enough on commissions that we had a little bit of extra which allowed me to go to Paris, in 1940. | was fifteen so that must have been 1951, before we came to America. One of the soldiers who had been in the Liberation Army in Lindbergh(ph), a wonderful young man, Jewish, and we had stayed in touch with him and he'd gone back to America, married a journalist. And they went to Paris. They, and they lived in Paris and invited one of us, and as the oldest girl | had privilege, to come and spend six weeks in Paris. And | remember, finally, my parents having little bit of extra money they could afford the train fare to, to Paris. It was a big adventure and it was the same summer they were able to rent a, a cabin on the beach. So | remember there was the one summer that we had a little bit of money. But for the rest, it was, it was minimal.

Q: Do you remember the food that you ate before the war, during the war, and right after the war?

A: Not before the war. It was good food. My mother was, she had some help and my aunt, my mother's only sister, they had gotten her out of Germany in 1936 so she lived with us for awhile and my parents, and my mother's parents lived with us. So | think my mother's mother did much of the cooking until she died in 1938. But it was the Dutch eat potatoes and the, the staples really were bread and potatoes and a little bit of meat, porridge, food like that, vegetables. But meat was very ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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expensive. Eggs were very expensive so you didn't have much of that so it was mostly the carbohydrates. And then during the war, | remember very clearly getting minute portions of butter, it was margarine, just like perhaps two tablespoons of butter, that, the margarine had to last us the whole week. So, I, |, what | remember were the, the extreme small rations we had and how you had to just be so careful that you just took a little bit and put that on your bread. And, and again, mostly what we ate were bread, potatoes. That, that was most of our staples. It was, | think severe vitamin | think we lacked, had severe vitamin deficiency. Not, probably not protein, not, protein yes but not calorie deficiency but certainly vitamin deficiencies which manifested itself in me when | was in 1943, we went to visit our parents for Christmas. It was the first time we went to see them and we were hit by a sleigh.

We were watching people coming down the hill and we were hit by a sleigh and it made a huge gash in my leg and it got horrendously infected and that infection lasts from Christmas to Easter. And | remember Betty taking me to the doctor every week. | just had sores all over my legs and | just didn't heal. And | think that had to do with, just deficiencies, vitamin deficiencies, more susceptible to illness. And then after the war, there were severe shortages again so really the whole time that | was in Holland until 52, things were rationed. | can remember seeing my first orange, getting it from the Americans, as first orange. Seeing my first pineapple in 1949 or so, in a store which was just sort of put there prominently and | not knowing what a pineapple was, so very simple foods after the war when, after things became, Holland was in horrendous shape because of the war. And it took a long time and ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 15 [Date not labeled] Page 15 that's where the Marshall Plan was so incredibly helpful. It took a long time for the economies of Europe to begin to recover from the horrors. And | can remember, we would have meat once a week. And we'd have one chicken which we'd divide and we'd get just a little piece and we'd have an egg if we were lucky once a week. We would have cheese though, cheese and jams, those things were our favorite.

Q: Do you think your gaining a bit of weight in California later at all was a compensation for that lack of food?

A: Hadn't thought about that. Yeah. You live with shortages and then all of a sudden this, [talkover] unending supply of food. Yeah, it became my, my salvation.

Some salvation. But that, that's, that's very possible, yes. This, like, eat it now because it may disappear. Hadn't thought about that to be honest. | just, | knew it became a crutch for me and it was my antidepressant but it became like food was something | could fill my empty soul with.

Q: And all those years of lack.

A: Yes. Yeah, makes, it makes sense.

Q: See, maybe | should have been a counselor.

A: Yes.

Q: Just kidding. Letme see what else | have onthe war. Time. | wondered if after the war you had any recurring dreams or nightmares? Or during?

A: | don't remember about the dreams and nightmares. What | do remember were feelings of | will never leave my parents, meaning | couldn't imagine that | would ever marry and want to leave my parents, that they represented my safety, my base, my ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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solidity, my comfort. And that | had a very strong sense that, that, that they, that they represented all that was good for me. And, and | think that had to do with not having had them during the war, not being with them. | remember being, of course, horrendously ashamed and I've talked about that, | think. [End of side 1 of tape 1].

Okay, so these, these, the feelings and that, that, so that involved fear and also it was because during the war, I, | had this real sense that | had to be perfect, that | couldn't make any mistakes, that | couldn't do anything wrong, | mean that was, as long as | just stayed perfect, that wouldn't, | wouldn't be killed. | mean, | wouldn't betray myself, or even more so, as long as | stayed perfect, nobody would betray me to the Germans, nobody would think | was a bad person and, and betray me to the Germans. And that sense of having to be this perfect child became part of who I, who I, | was after the war. And it meant that | couldn't assert myself. | was afraid of, | was afraid of asserting myself. And | remember having a feeling of, crazy, that | saw other children doing, doing bad, quote, bad things, not terribly bad but being disobedient or being rude and | can remember thinking, and | was about 11 years old. | can remember thinking, why can't | be like that? Why can't | be a little bit bad? So, so, clearly, there was, there remained an overriding fear in me that | had to be, | had to be good, | had to be perfect, otherwise something bad was going to happen to me. But there was also something in me already that said why can't | be like other children? And, and that, that need to please others, that need not to disagree with others stayed with me. And then, | remember one occasion. We were playing ball on the street. Tennis balls, we had tennis balls. And a woman ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 17 [Date not labeled] Page 17 was riding her bicycle and she, she hit one of the balls and she fell and she was pregnant. And she, she ripped her stockings. And | can remember, she came and she was really angry at us and | can remember saying to her, "Well, you should have looked out," or something like that. | was being rude and it was like, it was almost like something in me said, now is your opportunity to be rude and it was most inappropriate really. | mean | chose the wrong person and then, but she came into ourhouse. My mother was very felt, was very apologetic and paid for new stockings and stuff like that. And thank heavens the baby wasn't harmed. But, but | can remember that was my one moment of rudeness. But the way, the way this came out was, and | mentioned that, was that | became immobilized in school. | stopped learning. It was just like something in me got just so blocked is, the ability to be who | really was. And I'm not saying I'm a a bad person or | wanted to be rude, but |, this, this sort of need to, to, to speak up for what you think or what you want didn't have, |, | just couldn't do that so that sort of came out then in school where | just became emotionally, just horrendously blocked. | couldn't, couldn't study, couldn't work and there, not being this perfect person, not being this top student which | always have been, I, I, that was just something | had no control over, | felt, so, |, | felt very bad about it because | knew | disappointed my father because he had such high expectations of me. But at least | felt | had no control over that.

Q: For a long time.

A: For along time, yeah. Fora long time. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 18 [Date not labeled] Page 18

Q: You mentioned that a key turning point was making the friendship with Elizabeth Dixon(ph)?

A: Yeah.

Q: Are you still friends with her?

A: No, I'm sadly enough not. She, we had a, so we were great friends until | married my husband and then she went through a very difficult time. She got divorced and I'm afraid that, of, | went to go and visit her one day and, well, | don't particularly want to tell the story. But very unfortunate things where she got furious with me for not having notified her. | did, | wrote, | called her, | wrote her. She said to me come anytime you want to. | took her at her word. | sent her a card from, from New Hampshire where we were then, saying we'll be there on that day, and we got to the house and she had tickets to the ballet or something. And wrote me this furious letter about how inconsiderate | was and thoughtless | was. And |, I'm afraid that this, she, because of her own miseries, she projected a whole bunch of her anger of me and | had been sort of the good little girl. | mean, | was the one who just adored her and admired her and, and just thought a world of her and then when | married, | became this independent woman and no longer this adoring creature who needed her as much. And | think that type of role, | mean, | may be analyzing it too much.

But it was very tragic, this soon after a marry, this, after | was married, | just, our relationship changed. And it ended, sadly enough.

Q: And yet you said the friendship was key for you. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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A: It, what was key was that after, after coming to America and having my ego totally destroyed, | feel, no, that's nonsense. Having my ego severely damaged even further by Henry Coster(ph) who, |, | think | told that story where, basically he, when |, when | was promised | could go to the opening of the rope(ph) and then was told to stay home with Peter because he was sick and, I, | dared, here, for the first time, | dared complain. | dared express some of my needs and that was literally the first time I'd done that. Since, since the war because | had been so careful, | have no needs. | just, | just managed, | just coped. |hadnoneeds. So there, _|, first time that | remember basically going to Peggy Coster(ph) and saying, "I'm really sad, | really, | really had been looking forward to this and I'm really unhappy." And then Peggy telling Henry Coster(ph) that | had complained and Henry Coster(ph) calling me in and telling me | had no right to do that. That devastated me. That absolutely confirmed the fact that | had no right. | had no right to complain. | had no right to express my feelings or express my needs and it, that stayed with me for years and years and years and make me feel | had no value. Until | went to the Soviet Union and with, and Elizabeth Dixon(ph) was there on the second exhibit, no it was the first exhibit, and where in effect she seemed to really like me. And she was lonely there and she was a real friend to me and I, she provided me with a home and | remember very distinctly thinking she is a person of value. She values me so there must be some value to me. |, | absolutely went through those thought processes. And then that, that was enormous boost to me, that she'd really cared about me, the first person in this country to really do so. And that was a long time after I'd been here, ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 20 [Date not labeled] Page 20 that was in 1962. That was ten years, ten years after I'd come to this country, that, that's, that's when | really began to feel there had to be something worthwhile in me.

Q: How do you view Henry Coster(ph) now in your life?

A: Well, again, I'm intensely grateful to him because he was our sponsor and he made it possible for us to come to this country. And coming to this country, notwithstanding the miserable first ten years, was liberation, was, was our, was for me true liberation. Because eventually allowed me to come, become the person who | am today. Tragically, he, so there I'm very grateful to him. But tragically, he was, he's part of this Hollywood garbage dump. And, and what a fake life those people lead. Nothing is real, nothing is authentic. I'm exaggerating as usual. But very little is authentic and, and, even, naive and innocent as | was when | came to California, living in this fake environment, even | knew that these people weren't real.

Even | knew that these expressions of interest meant nothing. And so he, he did not, and I'm not blaming him, but he clearly and neither did Peggy, | think, Peggy is a, was a sweet, she was always very sweet, | need to stress that. But, but Henry ruled the roost. And | don't think he had any sense of what was going on with me at all. And I don't know whether | can blame him for that or not. | don't blame because | don't hold him, he did what he knew how. But you know, you live, you grow up in that world of fakery and you grow up in that, you live in that world where all these people play pretend and so little is real and people don't even know what is real and what is not real. And | gather there now, there's a group now, stars that may have a somewhat stronger grip on reality. But in those days, it was just about as fake as ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 21 [Date not labeled] Page 21 you could imagine. Yeah, | don't think he knew any better, so, |, | prefer to look at him and say thank you for bringing us to America. |, | like not, | don't, | don't focus on the bad.

Q: But no, no one in that family ever asked you about your wartime experiences?

A: No. Never. That's, that's what | mean. We lived, it was like secrets. It was like, it was like, that was, | think, the horror of, of the war years. It wasn't just the war years, it was afterwards when quote, nothing had happened. _It was as if we had to, we had to continue our whole lifestyle as if nothing had happened. As if we had just had this normal kind of life. And so that's what we believed, that we just had to go on as if nothing had happened to us. And so we couldn't ever get in touch with the horrors of the war and we couldn't even, we, we couldn't even, sort of begin to think about it and say hey, how did this impact us? Because it was never talked about, it was never discussed. In contrary, on the contrary, we just had to go on and we had to be good, good kids and we hadn't, shouldn't cause anybody any problems.

Q: Have you maintained any contact with his children since you left the babysitting job?

A: Well, yes, as a matter of fact, Peter the younger son, Nicky, Nicky tragically died.

He was a psychiatrist and died of, under very unfortunate circumstances. And Peter and his mother Peggy were here a year and a half ago, almost two years ago. They, they came to visit for the first time, the first time I'd seen Peter. Henry Coster(ph) died in, about ten years ago. But Peggy was, was very nice to see her and Peter came with his wife. So we had a lovely, lovely reunion here. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 22 [Date not labeled] Page 22

Q: Did you guys talk at all about, was she surprised, for instance to see how much you changed and grown and so on?

A: Yeah, | think so, escept(ph) what was so amazing is my parents had four children, and Henry Coster(ph) had two children is really, that given our circumstances, is how well the four of us had done. And that yeah, that, this little fat girl that stayed with them for year and a half had sort of turned into rather competent human being and, | think they were. But you know what, | could not talk to them about my real experiences there. | could, | did not feel that | could say to them, do you know what happened to me? And so it, it remained superficial. The discussion wasn't a real, sort of recognition of what had happened those, that year and a half | stayed with them it was. Talking about people we knew and things we'd done and stuff like that.

Q: Well, then, they would have to accept some responsibility for not being more sympathetic and understanding.

A: Yes. And | didn't, | didn't, | didn't want to bring this up now. Peter, of course, had nothing to do with it. | always adored Peter so Peter was just six, bless his little heart and he was a marvelous child. So it was, it was with Peggy, and | just didn't want to do that because | don't think she would have understood. | don't think she would have understood. And that's too, when you have just one day together, you don't want to, one evening together, you don't want to bring up those issues.

Q: Right.

A: At least | don't. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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Q: Well, also, there's that, that balance thing where they also sponsored you and gave you this opportunity...

A: Absolutely. For which, in the long run, | mean, | have recovered from that. For totally, for sure, in spades as a matter of fact. And, and in, indeed, | am unbelievable grateful that they made it possible for us to come to this country. So, that's, that's more important to me than the rest.

Q: Did you ever find out more about how your father and Henry Coster(ph) became friends in the beginning?

A: No. Really, all | know is that they had my, they had a friend called, a woman named Tanta Onna Headsfeld(ph), | think her name was. And they met through her and she was my mother's sister's mother-in-law. "Kay, so, my mother's, my mother had a sister, Tanta Powla(ph), it was her husband's mother who was the one who brought my father and Henry Coster(ph) together. And all | know was that was in the twenties and my father was traveling in Germany and the Dutch economy's doing well, reasonably well, that the German economy was disastrous and my father helped Henry Coster(ph). And they were pretty good friends but again, it was really sad because after, when we came to America and when my parents moved to California in 1958, we, in 52 we went to St. Louis and "58 they moved to California.

Henry, really, had nothing to do, they, they really, perhaps saw my parents once every two years. But there was no effort at really having a relationship with my father. Because he was, he was a hotshot director and my father was a lowly,

, let's see in California he ran, he managed a motel. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 24 [Date not labeled] Page 24

Q: What was that like for your parents to come to America and have to take minimum wage jobs and basically start all over once again?

A: That's, I've thought about that a lot. Again, they never had an opportunity to talk about anything so they, like the rest of us, they just did what was expected of them.

And they came to America for us and so my father, my mother who had never worked outside the house, took these job, first job was in a handbag, handbag factory. My father worked in a paint factory, got horrendous paint, lead poisoning there, practically died. They never did anything for him there. They had, cheap(ph) job as custodians, | mean, they had these, my mother worked as a nurse's aide in a hospital. Horrible jobs. Horrible jobs. Never complained. Never complained.

Never even regretted having left Holland because even though that, it must have been just so hard for them to totally shift focus. They did it. They were totally remarkable and, and what, they did it for us. And they, | think all of us, perhaps all of us felt a strong obligation to our parents. That was never ever lost throughout that lifetime that, that we, we also made sure that when we became adults and we were capable, we took care of them. So they never, | bought "em a house in Washington, after they, my father retired from the motel. | lived in Washington. They came to Washington. My sister and | bought "em a house and then | supported "em in the house. And they lived in that house in, in Rockville, Maryland. Nice little house for about, until from 1965 until 1971, | think. And then my sister came with her husband.

They, she had been in the Air Force in Thailand, and then they moved my parents, lock, stock and barrel to, to Florida. And then they lived with my sister there for 20 ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 25 [Date not labeled] Page 25 years. And then after my father died, my mother came and lived with my other sister in Baltimore and her last eight months, she lived with me. That we, | just could not tolerate sending, she was, she had mild dementia, she'd broken hips and she was crippled and |, we could never have put her ina home. |, 1, and she died. Both my parents died at home, thank God. So they were never abandoned. We never abandoned them.

Q: How old were they when they died?

A: My, both, both 90. My father was 90 when he died of a, of a heart attack. My mother was 90 when she, basically she, she had TIAs, transeedischemic(ph) attacks and just these little strokes and, and just mentally was confused but she lived with me and then in, in July she had a stroke which left her paraplegic. And then she died in August.

Q: Did your family speak English while you lived in Holland?

A: My father did. My father spoke three languages fluently. | studied English in Holland and, it was a, | still don't know | did it, studied just for two years, came to America, went to Beverly Hills, California and started school. We came to, we arrived in America December 7. | went to California about December 16" and started school January and | took finals end of January in public speaking and English and | did better than a whole bunch of the kids who'd been in class. | learned English just, justinnotime. Just, | still don't know how | did it but | was pretty fluent in English in a very short time.

Q: What about the rest of your family? ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 26 [Date not labeled] Page 26

A: Notas quickly. My, my mother had the hardest time. My younger sisters learned it in school. When you're young, it's easy to learn another language. My father spoke it. My mother had the hardest time learning English but bless her heart, she did. Unlike a lot of foreigners who just never learn, she did. So we ended up all, in a way that was sad, we all ended up speaking English to each other, instead of Dutch.

But I've, I've kept my Dutch up. I, | can still speak it.

Q: Did your mother also read English?

A: Yeah. Oh yes, oh, devout reader of the paper. Every morning she'd read the paper.

Q: How do you think your parents worked on their recovery? Did you say that they didn't really recover say as fully as you did?

A: My mother never recovered. As a matter of fact, one of the great horrors to, to think about how, how you can never forget, is because you never forget, is that as she became, as she became more demented, | hate that word, as she began to lose her memory more, the past started coming back and she became terrified that the, that the Gestapo was around. When she was my sister she said, "Who are these people outside? Are they, is that the Gestapo? Close the windows, don't let "em see us." When, when she was me, | start crying every time | think about that, is that she, at one point, she was sitting at the table and she said, "Anita," she said, "Did my sister die a natural death?" | know, her sister died in Auschwitz. And | said yes she did.

| mean,| wasn't about to say to her, no she died in Auschwitz. But, and then, and then when friends came to visit and they were very lovely to her, after they left she ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 27 [Date not labeled] Page 27 said, "Do they know we're Jewish?" So she was back, she was back. And then she would sit in the chair and she'd say, "I want to go home." And | said, "Where do you want to go?" And she was thinking, she want to go home to her parents.

That's, that's, and | said, "I'm afraid, I'm afraid that your parents aren't here anymore." And she'd say, "Oh, that's right, they're dead." But she wanted, she wanted something, | know, | know what she, she wanted to go back to a place where she was safe. And really after the war | don't think there was anymore safe place for her.

Q: She'd just been through too much.

A: Through too much. And again, no recognition, no, no acknowledgment after the war about what had happened to Jews. Basically, the message in Holland was to Jews, is come on, why don't you just forget it, just, just, like this woman | heard on television, why don't you just go forget it, go on with your life? And this deliberate effort to, to pretend that what had happened to the Jews was not different from what happened to other Dutch people. And you got that from the Dutch. Well, we have suffered too. Well, they had no concept of the difference between their suffering.

Well, my brother had to hide, yes, my brother had to hide. They had no concept of the difference between quote their suffering. And I'm not saying the Dutch didn't suffer. But I'm also saying that there was no recognition of the difference between what happened to us and what happened to the rest of the Dutch who were not singled out, who suffered as a people, but we were singled out because of who we were. https://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: Why don't you tell that story that, about the restaurant in Chicago where the woman was interviewed after the Berlin Wall fell?

A: Yeah. Well, again, it's, it's, | even heard this from a friend of mine, "Why don't you just forget it?" It's, it's the kind of thing even though | personally feel that | have done extraordinarily well because I've dealt with it for so many years now. I've, I've been able to come to terms with happened and recognize how present behaviors are related to the past and made every effort not to allow the past to control my, my present behavior. But the, the reality is, is that those of us who went through it will never forget. And so to listen to people telling me that we should just forget it, |, | want to shoot "em. And one of the most striking memories is when the Berlin Wall came down, PBS had a program in which they talked about how wonderful it was to have the wall come down but recognizing that, that some of the Jew survivors, the Holocaust survivors weren't so happy about the wall coming down, that in effect, that, that there had been several expressions of deep concern about a united Germany and what that meant. Basically, what it meant to Europe. And, and the interviewer went to an ethnic restaurant, a German ethnic, in Chicago | think it was and talked to this woman and said, well they were celebrating, they were celebrating the wall coming down. And this interviewer saying to this woman, "Well, what do you think?

There are some people who are deeply concerned about this wall coming down, about, in terms of what it means for a united Germany?" And her response was, "Ahh, why can't they just forget it?" | wanted to kill her. 1, 1, not that | never would, because | can't but that's, that was my thought. You miserable witch. If, if | had ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 29 [Date not labeled] Page 29 been there, I, | don't know what | would have done to her because how can we forget?

Yeah, we survived but our families didn't, our relatives didn't. We had, we came to America and fortunately | have three cousins who survived. Two who live in California with their families and one who still lives in Holland and that's it. And, we had to start from scratch. | went to a wonderful wedding yesterday with Jewish family, dear wonderful, wonderful friends and they were blessed. Hundreds, they had a hundred of their relatives there and their families had left Europe, thank God, in the, in the early 1900's, came to America. Even though they'd lost distant relatives, they were able to come with their families and build and have this wonderful extended family and how | envy them because they have got, they've got the cousins and the aunts and the uncles. We don't. We had to start from scratch. We're starting with our little family and | must say, we lost more than most. We lost most, my father had seven brothers and sisters and only he and the older brother survived with some cousins. My mother had just one sister and her daughter and they were murdered so, that, that leaves very little family. And so you come here and you start from scratch. you start from scratch without your, but you also, you have the memories, you don't, you don't forget that. You live with that. I, there, rarely a day | don't think about my, my aunt or my cousins who were murdered. _| just, that's not something you forget and every thing that reminds you of them makes, and those people who were killed in the concentration camps, those are not strangers, that's family. So you don't forget, you can't forget and you shouldn't forget. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 30 [Date not labeled] Page 30

Q: And is it like when you hear someone being so insensitive, like the woman in the restaurant in Chicago, is it like that person is denying your experience, your suffering, your, your loss?

A: Yeah, yeah, right, that's, that's what they do. It's, it's, what kind of assininity is that? What kind of stupidity is that? They should go through something like this for them to understand. And I'm thinking of the horrors of Bosnia. They're not gonna forget. It's gonna be etched in their minds and their memories and they're gonna live forever with the loss of their, of their families and their relatives. They'll never forget. Ruwanda. The horrors of the Tootsie(ph) Massacres. It's just, it's beyond my understanding that people can think these things can happen and you don't remember. Or you're not gonna, you're gonna forget. You can't ever, ever forget.

You live with that for the rest of your life and your children will live with it, like my son.

He's got, well he's got no grandparents and thank heavens | have two sisters and my brother tragically is gone but he's got two children and his wife is still there and his two children each have three children so he's got cousins. He's, he now has cousins for which I'm very grateful and I've got a, I've got two sisters whom | love very much with their families so we have that. And we're in touch, close touch with my cousins in California which is nice. But that's it. And then, and then just knowing that the rest just didn't live their lives but they were murdered.

Q: Have you, how do you reconcile in your mind that a man like Hitler could come to power and convince so many people of this superiority? https://collections.ushmm.org

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A: Well, that's, that's sort of the million dollar question. The way | look at it is that, | think historically...

End of Tape 1. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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Tape 2

A: Well, you asked, you asked why, how, how was Hitler possible and, and | just, as | said we had answers to that, we'd know better. But! mean |, when | put in context is, is we have had two years, two thousand years, perhaps that's a little bit, no, really two thousand of unmitigated anti-Semitism in, in, in Europe, perhaps 1500. Bult, certainly, the Crusades, the, the Inquisition in Spain, | mean, blaming Jews for the plague. | mean it, all you have to do is go through European history and if you look at the Bible, this increasing anti-Semitism, this, this hatred of Jews. You see that developing in the Bible, it wasn't, that was not the original, the original disciples were not, they were Jews themselves. But you see, as, as Rome became Christian, they of course had to, to blame Jesus" death, not on the, the, the, the Romans but they had to blame it on the Jews. And you see this shift, this shift in the Bible itself to an increasingly more anti-Semitic perspective about Jews as Christ killers. And that became the great montra(ph) in, in European Christianity. Both Catholicism, Lutheranism is Jews the Christ killers, Jews the blood-suckers, the Jews the Damned, Jews are not gonna go to heaven, it's only the select Christians who somehow have got the one right answer who are gonna go, who are gonna go to heaven. And so you have the dominant religion which of course Christianity is, in, in Europe. You've got the dominant religion saying of another group of people that they're damned and they're gonna go to hell and they're, they suck the blood of Christian children. It becomes, they become the, the Jews, the dirty Jews, the ones, the dangerous people and then of course with the, with the Christians curtailing the ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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Jewish, the Jewish, the possibility for Jews, jobs, professions and so on, were in a, in effect, Jews can only be, they could lend money because it was dirty for Christians to lend money. So they could do the dirty jobs. And then Jews become successful there, they're being killed because they did. They became the money lenders and you have Shakespeare and Merchant of Venice and Charlotan(ph), that perpetrating those horrors. And, and so you've got a whole culture of anti-Semitism which was, you have it in France with the Dryfuss(ph) Affair, | mean you have it all through Europe. In, in eastern Europe with the progroms, you have it all through Europe throughout with intermittent periods where in effect certain rulers(ph) who'd be tolerant of the Jews because they could use them. So it wasn't unmitigated, | mean it wasn't totally consistent but it certainly was consistent over time with periods of, of, of some, of some allowance to, to let Jews live their lives and flourish. And | must say that's where Holland has had us, on the whole, a, a better history, not perfect but certainly a better history of tolerance for Jews because they did allow the Sofottic(ph) Jews with the Inquisition to come to Holland and Holland has had a relatively, extraodinarily wonderful history of, of religious freedom. And has allowed its Jews to live in relative peace. But in Germany, Germany with all of its, its effort that becoming a nation-state which it didn't become until Bismarck with all of its in-fighting and then, and, and a population which is the same as in Holland, this, this, a population that has as its dogma the Christian belief that if you just, the Calvinistic belief if, if you just do everything right and you follow God's word and you do it, then good things are gonna come to you. And that basically, you obey. It's very ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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important to do what you're told, not to question this sort of authoritarian, sort of ethic of, of, of children must listen to their parents, children must obey, children must not question. Father knows best. So you've got this, this sort of a cultural pattern of not questioning what goes on, a religious pattern of, if something bad happens to people, they deserve it. And then a historical pattern of extreme anti-Semitism, then you've got this great combination that when things go bad, as of course Hitler came to power after this horrendous inflation, well, first the defeat for Germany in World War | which was a horrendous blow to their morale and then, this, this terrible inflation that impoverished millions of people. What you do is you find a scapegoat. And Hitler, Hitler was always a rabid anti-Semite. But people become very vulnerable to, becoming comfortable to, yes, it's all the Jews" fault. Blame somebody else, | mean we do it in this country all the time, is blaming somebody else. Blame the immigrants. Blame, blame the illegal aliens. Blame everybody. Even blame outside terrorists when we're breeding our own terrorists. We have the militia who is so dangerous here. So you blame, you start blaming others. And then everybody else is doing it and it becomes really comfortable and then you obey orders and you don't question and you become self-satisfied and smug because things are getting better. It's not, not difficult then to understand the Jews, the traditional scapegoat in Europe became an obvious scapegoat here. And then with German propaganda, they did an unbelievable job of painting Jews as rats. As vermin. Destroying the fiber of the great Aryan nation. And that propaganda is, is staggering, you see some of those propaganda films. So you put all that together, it's ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 35 [Date not labeled] Page 35 not surprising. It's not difficult to make people hate others. And that's why for me, questioning, always questioning, never accepting what people tell you without really examining the validity of any of it and never allowing others to dictate your moral stands. It's just so vital.

Q: But weren't Jews fully integrated into German society and wasn't there a lot of interchange ...

A: Yes.

Q: So didn't the Nazi propaganda contradict what people's daily experiences were?

A: Yeah. But that didn't seem to bother most people in Germany. That was exactly right because Jews were given a chance. It's been just remarkable. Jews, | don't know how they manage. But they have, they're like that little ball that you put down it comes on up, Jews have always been like that little ball. They just, they just somehow cope. And so indeed, in the early 19, in the early 1900s, there had been a period of, of freedom for Jews and Jews had done extraordinarily well in Germany and they were the heart and soul of the cultural scene in Berlin. | mean that was the great and others, great artists, great painters were Jews and, and merchants and, yes.

Q: Intellectuals and professors [talkover]

A: Oh, absolutely the intellectuals, | mean, my goodness. They came to America, Albert Einstein and many of the great physicists who fled. Yeah, they, they, the Jews had just, had become integral part, | mean my grandfather is a perfect example of that. My grandfather had some stores, was a very wealthy man and a very ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 36 [Date not labeled] Page 36 prominent man in his little town which before the war was Germany. After World War | became part of Poland. Zupolni(ph), it was Simpleburg(ph) then and he had given hundreds of thousands of marks for the German war effort. That's how come he got his, his cross, he got his Cross of Merit which saved my, my father's life, but my grandfather, yes, he was a German. And yeah, right. And so, yes, you're absolutely right. And it's amazing how easy it is to turn that around and so your neighbors whom you, whom you loved before are now become your enemies. You see it in Bosnia, you saw it in Sarajevo, you saw it in Mostar(ph), where Muslims and Croats who'd lived and served, who'd lived together as friends, all of a sudden start betraying and even murdering each other. It hasn't changed. It just hasn't changed. And don't ask me what it is in human nature that allows us to become such animals. I, no, |, | insult the animals when | say that.

Q: Well some of it must be based on a fear for your own security somehow, don't you think? Or, or at least that plays into it? [talkover]

A: | think it's a copout, | don't know, no, no, it doesn't have to be like that. All it has to be is some evil, evil men and it's mostly men who feed into people's stupidity, ignorance and then who will light that what is evil in men and then, and then makes them justify the murder of their neighbors. And they doit. I mean, in, in Bosnia, it's, its happened there. Neighbors murdering neighbors. People been friends.

Explain that. Look what's happening in Ireland still. In the name of what? Religion?

It's not really religion. It's, it's, it's how the, how few people can destroy, no, it's how individuals allow themselves to be destroyed. | still won't, | won't even blame the ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 37 [Date not labeled] Page 37 people because if people weren't so stupid, they would recognize the horror of what these people are pronouncing. We're seeing it here, some blacks, there's some horrendous anti-Semitism of Farakhan(ph) is doing. Is evil, is total evil in what he is saying about the Jews as blood-suckers. And those blacks who believe in that are just as evil because they're perpetrating, they're perpetrating that what makes them possible to kill and murder.

Q: And this, despite the fact that there's been quite an alliance between Jews and blacks?

A: Jews have more than almost any other group has tried to help blacks. And then, and, and as far as I've concerned, because I've, I've been, I'm totally committed to other people's well-being but unless, unless, and they're have been, | must also admit that Farrakhan(ph) is, is not the spokesman for all blacks that there have been many blacks who've spoken out strongly against that and that | haven't heard lately too much that he is continued to spout his, his venom but unless there is a, a total condemnation which some blacks have done, thank God, of that, that to me is evil and needs to be, needs to be dealt with as such.

Q: Did your experiences in World War II cause you to reexamine your relationship to God or to ask is there a just God or things like that?

A: Oh absolutely. I, | don't believe in the God of Christianity and Judaism at all. |, | cannot imagine a God that allows these kinds of things to happen and | think it's man who does it. Basically, | have this very peaceful concept of what I, | look at the world roundly and | say there was something greater than just we humans but | see ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 38 [Date not labeled] Page 38 it as a great spirit of love that allows for all the best in us to flourish. Basically, it's a life on earth here that is the test of what we do with our lives but that in terms of a God, whatever happens to us afterwards, there is no discrimination there. God does not discriminate, a God does not perpetuate evil, a God does not condone, a God is not petty the way the Christian god is, a petty god who says you've gotta do it this way, you've gotta do it that way, otherwise you're gonna be damned. That's nota god, that's a human, that's a human being. That's the kind of petty judgmental pronouncement that humans make but not a god, not a great spirit of love, so, I'm, yes, I'm sort of anti-organized religion as far as I'm concerned. | realize it does a lot of good for a lot of people. | respect people who believe those things, that's their business. And if it brings them happiness and if it helps them be good people, and then, I'm, I'm all in favor. So | don't judge them for what they believe but for myself | absolutely am at peace that the god of Christianity and Judaism is certainly not my god. Because | couldn't live with a god like that.

Q: What is your problem with the god of Judaism?

A: It's a pretty, pretty judgmental god, too, it's too judgmental. It's, it's a god that tells people what to do and what not to do. If you look at it, it's, show your belief in me by sacrificing your, your son, Isaac. It's, it's a punitive god, not, as | said, |, |, people say man was created in God's image, | don't think so. | think God was created in man's image. And that men, and | mean men again, men have used religion to control the world and they have misused, misused God to perpetrate their own evils.

They and, and then as soon as you say you do something in the name of God, then ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 39 [Date not labeled] Page 39 people can't, then, then it's above and beyond, it becomes you no longer are responsible because you're doing for, for, for God, well, |, | think of whatever great spirit there is, that, that how horrendous that has been misused. Because it's, | think religion has been used to, to control and to perpetuate, perpetuate this control.

That's how | think of religion. That's why | can't belong to any organized group. | just can't because even though | know that a lot of good is done in the name of religion, |, | think that the bad outweighs the good.

Q: So you don't go to the synagogue now?

A: No. | don't go anywhere.

Q: Does your husband go?

A: No. He's not Jewish.

Q: Oh.

A: No. We don't. | can't, | just can't. | can't listen to all this and I, |, as a matter of fact, |, my mother, when she was, she had a cancer operation, she was in the hospital and she was not doing well so | went to visit her. My brother, by the way, converted to Christianity and became extremely religious. His two children are very religious Christians. And my mother was telling the nurse who was also a very religious man, Christian, she was telling him about the war experiences and about how we were saved, miraculously saved and his words were, "Well, God must have had very special plans for you." And | just exploded. And | said, "If God had special plans for us, then did he have special plans to let six million other be murdered and massacred?" "No, that's not what | mean!" | said, "You can't have it both ways." ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 40 [Date not labeled] Page 40 We weren't any better than those other six million. If God picked us out then, then that God was responsible and I'm not gonna make that God responsible for the evil of men. That is not what God is all about in my opinion. | can't listen, | can't listen to that kind of stuff because it's putting onto God something that men has perpetrated.

Q: Is there something, in your opinion, about religion, say both Jewish and Catholic and Protestant and all that, Christianity to group them all, is there something that you think also perhaps perpetuates people not thinking for themselves completely and taking responsibilities?

A: Absolutely. Absolutely. You can't think too much. Asa matter of fact, it's really interesting. My son is involved with a lovely young woman who is Catholic and she wanted to, she decided she was gonna be Catholic, she wanted to be the best Catholic possible so she thought of becoming a nun. And then she said, "Well then | better really go and know, read the Bible." And she said she started reading the Bible. And the more she read the Bible, the more she began to see the internal contradictions that, that the Bible is full of because she's a real scholar. She's a real intellect. And she said, she said, then she said she went to her friends and said, "Please convince me how to be a good Catholic," and none of her friends could convince her. And because basically, in order to be a good anything, you can't read, read the Bible from a scholarly perspective. So | discussed it with some very lovely, lovely young people who are also devout, devoted Christians and | said, "Well, how do you deal with this? That the innumerable contradictions in the Bible." And they ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 41 [Date not labeled] Page 41 said, "Well, basically, it's important to study it but you can't go too far because what you need to have is you need to have faith that basically what the Bible tells you is correct. So you can't," they said, their words were, "the theologians who really examine the Bible carefully, they just, they just go too far." So there is a limit to what you, you can read the Bible but don't read the Bible too far and | gather in Catholicism this has been the thing. That's why you had the catechism because the catechism gives you the one correct line. Yes, and then this whole issue of control. As long as | tell what the right way is and if there's only one right way. and if you question, you're gonna be damned. Just think of the power and control involved in that, how dangerous that potentially is. It's dangerous for you when people stop thinking.

When people stop thinking, anything is possible.

Q: Let's see ...

A: Gee, this is really ...

Q: | know, they didn't actually tell me to get so intellectual but to me the, well actually Nina Ellis(ph) did bring up God because she said a lot of people have done some very, very critical thinking about religion since the war. Who lived, why me?

A: Why, why us? Pure unadulterated luck. That's why we survived. Not because God chose us. That's an evil God who would do that and there's no such thing as an evil God. That's contradictory, it's a oxymoron.

Q: And, and she told me that a lot of survivors have had a pretty difficult time coming to terms with God and ... ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 42 [Date not labeled] Page 42

A: Rabbi Kushner(ph) wrote a book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People".

His son who died of this, | forgot the name of the disease but it's where there's the rapid maturing and then death and he also, he also had asked God "Why me?" and also came to conclusion that this, that's not the god of, of really, that's, it's not the god who decides you and not you and |, | must say if | were to pick one religion, well perhaps, | find the eastern religions really more acceptable because they're much less judgmental. Buddhism for example is a, although they, they become then just as controlling. It's not the religion that is so bad, it's the people are so bad. But | still would, | could never, never be a Christian because of its horrendous judgmental perspective. But! could, I, |, Judaism still is the most attractive religion to me.

Q: It is a, an intellectual religion.

A: Yes, it's a questioning religion, it's an exploring religion so it is for me still, it's, it's still the one religion that I'm by far the most attracted to.

Q: Was there a, a Quaker religious class in your school in, during the war?

A: No.

Q: So they didn't push their religion on you?

A: No, after the war, after the war, after liberated | had to go to a Catholic school and boy did they push religion there and again, that's why in this country, this, this separation between church and state is so important because they don't have that in Holland. The, the state supports all sorts of religions and what it breeds is, is, is separatism. Now again the Dutch, bless their hearts, are, are really quite remarkable. They've, they've seen the light and our, have become many ways ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 43 [Date not labeled] Page 43 probably among the most tolerant of all people in this world. I'm very impressed with them, at least the ones I've met. But, but you have to go to Catholic schools, very painful to be only non-Catholics and soon as, course soon as we were liberated there was, we could tell people we were Jewish, then there were immediately excluded.

Dirty Jews, Christ killers. Right smack after we're liberated, the war wasn't even over. As long as we weren't Jewish, it was safe but as soon as we were freed and we became Jewish, it became unsafe again and so that's why we had to hide it. It wasn't safe to be Jewish in Holland and, and, it's very interesting, | just read in the paper last week about a group of young Germans who want to atone for their parents" and grandparents", sins of, they, they have come to America because there are no Jews left in Germany or very few. They've come to America to work in homes for the, forthe aged. Really wonderful. I'mso impressed. And they said that it's, they were so grateful that they were not, they were not judged here. They were so grateful that they were not damned here and they said it was also wonderful for them to get to know Jews because she said in Germany being a Jew is still bad. And | was saying yes, | know it. Even in Holland, people are uncomfortable with people who are Jewish. When | tell people I'm Jewish, you can feel the discomfort. Not all, but some.

Q: And you mentioned in, in your first interview and brought it up again briefly during this one that there's, you, do you still have some discomfort being Jewish?

A: No, not anymore. Totally not. | wear my little hi(ph) around my neck and say to the world this is who | am. If people know what itis. All the time. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 44 [Date not labeled] Page 44

Q: But that took a long time.

A: Forty years. Took me forever, forever. And now | will never deny the six million, ever, ever, ever. So in my heart I'm totally Jewish, I'm just religious wise, I'm not.

But in my heart, I'm completely Jewish.

Q: What about your sisters? Do they practice religion?

A: No, none of us do. We, the town we lived in before the war had a synagogue, had Jewish life after the war, 152 in the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. |, on the little computer you can, you can get those numbers. There were 152 Jews before the war in Braydare(ph), 12 of us survived. Twelve came back and we were six of the 12. | know all the ones who survived, can tell you, even give their names, still give you theirnames. There was no Jewish life left. | remember once after the war, it must have been 1948 and we went at night. It was, | think, was it Yom Kippur or was it, may have been Yom Kippur, we went to, because then there was no, no Jewish community left, no temple, we went to a Jewish service. And we went at night when it was dark, so it was fallen, it was dark and it was just like we still had to be careful not to be seen. That was the only time | remember that we had some Jewish celebration.

Q: What year was that?

A: | think "48. And then nothing after that. There were no Jews left, they killed everybody. So, and then so, you, you combine the fact that the destruction of all your Jewish life and then of all your fellow Jews and then living in the country being a Jew was a bad thing, because that was basically the message to us still, but being ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 45 [Date not labeled] Page 45 a Jew, much safer for you to keep your mouth shut. And as far as I'm concerned, most Jews who siill live in Holland are still in hiding. | went to a conference in 1992, the first conference of the Hidden Children. Five hundred of us were there, in Amsterdam, was a wonderful experience forme. And about a quarter of the Jews, the surviving Jews emigrated to, mostly to America, Canada, Australia and of course, Israel and, and so a bunch of us came back. It was, was wonderful but there were Jews there, survivors, who had know each other and had not known they were survivors. They knew each other as Jews but not as survivors. You didn't talk about it. You went on with your life. You didn't deal with it. I've got, not my cousin, but my cousin's cousin in Holland, | don't want to deal with this, just, just forget it and just from the, my cousin, my one surviving cousin in seething with anger. She is seething with anger.

Q: She hasn't really recovered.

A: She'll never, she'll never recover. She'll never recover.

Q: Are you one of the few people she's spoken to about this?

A: Well, no, | mean, she has, | have asked her questions and she talks about it but it's too painful for her. She survived because she escaped the Dutch concentration camp and she was there with her little sister. And, oh gosh, you think about this.

She was there with little sister, she was there when her parents were taken to the concentration camps, taken out of the hospital, taken to Westerbork, and put on the train to Auschwitz and she begged them to please leave her little sister, was exactly my age, little, few months older, Lainie(ph) was her name. She begged them to ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 46 [Date not labeled] Page 46 please... [End of side 1 of tape 2]... begged her, she, she was, she was, she was at Westerbork, the Dutch concentration camp, she was there when her parents then came. And they were both very sick and they first took the sick and they, to the gas chambers and she begged them to please leave Lainie(ph) with her because that somehow was still possible. Her parents insisted Lainie(ph) would go with them. To Auschwitz. That's what she has to live with. This hard. When we were just in Holland right now, we went to the, May 4" is Memorial Day and so we went to the Jewish Cemetery in Ossin(ph), which is, most of my father's family was all from northern Holland, from Ossin(ph), Emmen,(ph), Hoanigan(ph), that area, and there was, we went to the Jewish, Jewish Cemetery in Holland which miraculously was not destroyed by the Nazis. And they have Memorial there, too, to the 500 Dutch Jews who were either taken to Auschwitz from that little town or those who died in the concentration camp in Westerbork and there is my aunt and my uncle and my, and her, and it's my, my cousin's sister and her parents. And so the great blessing of, of being America is at least | don't have the daily reminders of that either. That at least, here you can, here, not you cannot forget it but at least you don't have the continual reminders of what happened. Where you were, easier.

Q: And what about the other two cousins, you said there's two others who came to America?

A: Yeah.

Q: How are they doing? Where are they? ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 47 [Date not labeled] Page 47

A: Exceedingly well. | must say, we've all done so well in this country. Yeah, my, they, they were my father's oldest brother who survived, he's the only one who survived, children. He had three children. Their son, Bertus(ph), was | gather, just a wonderful young man. He was among the first one killed because he was on the train and made some anti-Nazi remark. When they found out he was a Jew, they were shot immediately. He had two daughters who all, they survived in hiding.

Hetty(ph), the oldest, who just turned 80 as a matter, no, is turning 80 in August 16", she, she married and, and, she married in 1940, | think just before the war broke out.

No, just after the war had broken out. She married July 4" to a very nice guy and then she had a baby in 1942 and that baby was put in, in with hundreds of other, | don't know how many hundred, shuffled from one family to the next, her name is Betty, after her brother. And then there was Sarai(ph), who was 12 and they, they also, they survived on hidings like we did except | think they were, they were not out in the open the way we were. And so they, after the war, we came to America in 1952, Hetty(ph) and Herman(ph) came in 1953. And we left Holland because Holland just, just was not a good place to be in those days. And they, they came to California and did extraordinarily well. Her, she had then three children when the came and those three young ladies all married and have children and have sort of lived the American dreams. However, however, as far as I'm concerned, there is horrendous damage in all of them because of the war. On the surface, they are the absolute, outstanding examples of survivors but | know, | know what horrendous pain they've gone through and how, what horrendous damage has been done. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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Q: Are there any ways that you can describe them when you're with them that you see that come up?

A: | have to be very careful because what's interesting is that Hetty(ph) and Herman(ph) who | adore, just absolutely wonderful people, they did exactly what the rest of us did, is that forget it, forget it. Try to forget it, go on with your life. Don't talk about it, don't deal with it but for heaven's sakes, and | think that has been a hallmark for at least our family, is prove that the Germans, that the Nazis were wrong, prove that you're okay. Prove that you're a person of value. And so how do you prove that? By accomplishing things. And by golly, did they accomplish. But in that effort to accomplish, they, the children, except for the youngest, the two older girls had to fend for, had to fend for themselves a great deal and were to some extent neglected. And not because they wanted to do that but because they, they had, they felt they had to work so hard to, to make it in this country. And they did make in this country. And then all of that tension and all of the pain was never discussed so it, it affected their lives and these girls grew up knowing about their background partly but not dealing with it. Not, it, without it being discussed. And so they become adults and they, they have to deal with it in, in their own way, and, and, again | don't wanna talk about their circumstances because that's not up to me to do so.

But | know, because of my background, that tremendous harm was done and that, there was enormous pain and my, the oldest one, Betty, who is, who, who was born during the war, | mean she knows it, she's done a lot of talking about it and, and she is aware of, of, she's aware of the horrendous pain. And she also's been trying, try https://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection Anita Frank 49 [Date not labeled] Page 49 to do her best and yet has not really actualized herself the way |, phenomenal potential, highly intelligent young woman. They all are very bright, very competent.

But unlike my family, where my parents never were successful, though they spent, so they spent a lot of time with us, we, we have, | think, my sisters, we have all really truly actualized ourselves, intellectually, emotionally. | don't, except for the youngest, who came along young enough that | think her parents had more time for her, the other two just haven't. And | think it's causing, it's caused a lot of pain. And then the war years, again, the, the lack of open discussions, up until lately, up until just the last couple of years, means that there's all this stuff in your background and you, you know something went wrong but you don't, you don't discuss it. You pretend everything is just perfect and wonderful and they're prototype of that.

Everything is perfect and wonderful always. Particularly with Hetty and Herman(ph), when you talk to them, man, it's always perfect.

Q: Like the Ozzie Nelson family?

A: The what?

Q: The Nelson family? What was that show, Father Knows Best? We, in America we had all these programs that made the typical American family seem so perfect.

A: Perfect, yes.

Q: Nothing ever went wrong, noone...

A: Yes.

Q: ever humiliated the family? https://collections.ushmm.org

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A: Absolutely and everybody's always doing, everybody's always doing perfectly and the kids are always great, and this is fine and this is fine and this is fine. That's, you get that particularly from the parents more than from the, from the daughters. And you just, | wanna, sometimes say for God sakes, that's not really what's going on and | know it and how much healthier to be able to deal with it and recognize that there is pain and misery.

Q: And your sisters, is there a contrast in how they dealt with recovering from those traumas?

A: Yeah. I've been by far the most verbal, by far. That's because | have the best memory, too. They, Ingrid is two years, one year younger and Helga's two years younger. So, | was six when the war broke out, Ingrid's five and Helga was four and | have much better memories than, than they do. | also, | also developed myself intellectually, I'm the, I'm the only one who immediately went to college and then to graduate school and ended up with a PhD. They, | have enormous, enormous respect for my sisters. They, they both went to nursing school and became nurses.

But then my youngest sister went on and went to college and got her degree and then went on and became a, a nurse pediatric clinician. So, and this, she is a remarkable young lady, | mean was, she, all of us did very badly in Holland.

Academically, all of us fell apart. And Helga, my youngest sister developed a horrendous thyroid condition and, and stopped learning and stopped, she just, oh, tense and miserable and unhappy. So when, so she didn't go to school anymore.

So she was 14 and missed enormous amounts of school. We came to America, ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 51 [Date not labeled] Page 51 again thank God, and, and, and she, we came to America in December of "52 and the following summer, she was operated on in Jewish hospital and they took out this huge goiter. It was benign and she grew five inches. She was just tiny developed and went back to school and she's a very bright young lady. But she had to, whereas | sort of followed the classic route high school and college and graduate school, she, they went to nursing school which doesn't really, in those days, she didn't go to the university but to a hospital nursing program so they never had the chance to really develop their, oh how do | say this, their intellect in a way that | had.

And so they did it later and then Ingrid also went to college and ended up as a, she, she graduated also from college so they, in their adulthood, they did phenomenally and Helga, my youngest sister is, has just done spectacularly. She worked for the World Council of Nurses and does workshops around the world on delivering primary care in underserved areas. She is a expert on, on infant and maternal healthcare.

Q: But so did their recovery come later if they examined some of these issues later?

A: You know we all have different backgrounds. | was the child who tried to be perfect, so | had this total sense of worthlessness so my recovery had to be believing myself again. My middle sister, | don't think, | mean my middle sister has also accomplished a great deal. Build a business but | think still suffers tremendously from low self-esteem, a lack of self-worth. So | don't think, | don't think she has recovered and they have not dealt with it as extensively. My youngest sister, it's hard for me to say. She functions exquisitely. She is married, has four children, is a grandmother, just, just also has fulfilled the American dream. A wonderful mother, ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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wonderful grandmother, but also | don't think has, we can talk. She and | can talk.

But | don't think she has worked as extensively as | have at sort of making all the connections so | cannot, okay, the way, and so the way it manifested for her that she, like me, when she was raising her children, she also had to be perfect. She also had to do everything right. She also had to cope. She also never could complain.

She's another one of those, and so is my middle sister too, unbelievable women who just do. Just like my mother. But in the process of doing for others, that's not so hot either because then your children don't really get the message that they need to do for themselves so what we have done to our children, we've done too much for our children. And | think that |, more than the others, was aware of that. | think that's the big difference, that in raising our son, that | would, that | was over, | was overprotective of him but from the very beginning | would say to him, "Loren(ph), this is my problem, not your problem. | am sorry that | need to know where you are all the time. It's not because | don't trust you, it's because inside of me, | cannot still cannot believe that you're really, that, that you're gonna be with me. That | just to know. So please, please understand where I'm coming from." So from the very beginning |, | would, | would, when | did those things that could have been destructive, | let Loren(ph) know that it wasn't his fault and that was my problem and because he is so incredibly bright and sensitive, he understood and tolerated that. So he, he has all his life been willing to, to work with me and let me know where he is, | mean that's been the major thing. Let, just let me know where you are and he's always done so, throughout his adolescence. If he would be late, he'd call me up. Never ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 53 [Date not labeled] Page 53 resented it. And, and | think part of it was that | let him know that, | let him know what my problems were because of the war. My overprotectiveness, my fear of losing him. Whereas my sisters, | think did the same thing but in a, they, they didn't quite communicate all these ideas to their children. Now the kids have been, they're fine but, but, but whereas Loren(ph) has extraordinarily high self-esteem, extraordinarily, | mean, is so confident about who he is and so directed and so purposeful and so at peace with himself. |, he is, he is a, he's one of the healthiest people I've ever met in my life. And | think that a lot of it has to do with, with my understanding of my own neuroses. And talking about those things with him from the time he was very small.

Q: And where is he now?

A: Loren(ph) is at MIT. He is a third year graduate student at MIT, in cognitive systems neuroscience. He is a, he is a, he is an incredible, wonderful young man.

Q: And he graduated, did he graduate from Carlton(ph)?

A: He graduated from Carlton(ph). He went here to the Academy, Albuquerque Academy, and graduated from Carlton(ph) College just ...

Q: In Minneapolis?

A: In, in Northfield, Northfield south of Minneapolis. Summa cum laude and the whole bit. Phi Beta Kappa and whatever else and got a National Science Foundation Fellowship which is to, to MIT. Pretty much had his choice of where he wanted to go and has just been this incredibly, incredibly bright, but more, even more important than that, sensitive, aware and healthy. This, this incredibly healthy ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 54 [Date not labeled] Page 54 human being who is the exact opposite of the classic Nazi follower. Loren(ph) doesn't take anything for granted. Loren(ph) will question anything. Loren(ph) will explore. Loren(ph) will research. Loren(ph), | mean I, it's one of the great joys, Loren(ph) thinks for himself.

Q: Which is probably one of your larger goals with him?

A: From the very beginning. We would have, my, Alan is a psychiatrist and I'm in this field also and so we discuss always discuss ideas with him, always. And ask his opinion and he, from the time he was very young, had these remarkable insights into people! Incredible insights into people. But the very beginning we would encourage these discussions and encourage the questioning and, and never insist that he do it our way, just really encouraging to do it his way within a framework of course, of limits. | mean, I'm not saying there weren't limits, there were limits, but, and it's just had such a huge payoff because he's so inner directed and motivated and at peace with himself with who he is. The exact opposite of who | was, it's just amazing.

Q: Does he see the world as a very safe place for him basically?

A: | think he sees himself, which is to me the clue to happiness, he sees himself as being safe in this world. It's not that the world is safe and | don't, | know the world isn't safe but | also now feel safe in this world because | know! can cope. And that's how Loren(ph) feels. Loren(ph) is safe. Loren(ph) is convinced that he can do what he wants to do, meaning, not in that he can do anything he wants to do but that when he sets his, when he sets his mind on accomplishing something, he will accomplish ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 55 [Date not labeled] Page 55 it. He's totally inner directed, he has complete sense, internal sense of locus(ph) control. And, and a complete belief that things will work out for him because he is safe in this world. And it's amazing, | feel safe in this world now, too. It's amazing when you feel that way, how things do go right. And it's not because the world is safe.

Q: Right, | asked the question sort of backwards.

A: Yeah, no, but, | think you're hitting critical perspective from my, because, because we were raised, | mean we, my sisters, my brother and | were raised in this horrendously dangerous world. | mean the world was so unsafe for us and it remained unsafe for so many years and the clue to happiness, the clue to no, the clue to our well-being has been to be able to begin to feel safe in this, in this world.

And that's not an easy transition to make because it basically means you stop looking at the outer world to become safe for you but you, you become safe within yourself.

Q: How do you do that?

A: Hard work. Hard work. It's, it's, as | work with people, that's what | really try and teach them is how do you do that and, and, for me, the, the single most important clue is that when | was so unsafe and felt so defeated, | let the whole world define me. It was Anita who had to be this perfect, obedient, good, accepting, non-creative basically, because if | did anything creative, my goodness, it might annoy people so this trapped in a, in a box person who tried to please everybody and tried to avoid making anybody mad so that at least | would get positive input from others. | mean going back to Elizabeth Dixon is, she, | had to translate that at least she values me. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 56 [Date not labeled] Page 56 Well, if she values me, there must be some value to me "cause | didn't feel it. So it is stopping that, it's stopping looking to others to make you feel safe and begin to really get to know yourself and define yourself. It's at self-definition. It's knowing who you are. It's knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses. It is when people are mad at you, it's not to say oh my gosh, I'm a bad person but to say, oh, you're mad at me. Well, who's problem is it? Is it your problem, is it really something I've done? If it's something I've done, that's something | can learn from. What do | need to, | need to work on changing that so it's not closing myself off from others, it's remaining open to the input that others give me but at a very, on a very limited basis.

Because | recognize that everybody else is probably crazier than | am and to let other people define me, hah! What a joke thatis. | mean we, the Nazis defined us as dirty, filthy Jews worthy of extermination. No one will ever define me again. So it's partly again, it's a reaction to that. Nobody will define me. | will define myself. But within the context of my environment so to avoid becoming this extreme narcissist, you, you want to remain open to input but you want to weigh it against what you know about yourself. That's, and this way you keep on growing and the, and the most wonderful thing is the more at peace you are with yourself, the nicer you can be to other people.

You don't, cause you don't have to destroy others to feel good about yourself. Asa matter of fact, it hurts you to be negative or destructive to others and so you know that those who are destructive, there's something wrong with them. Because if you truly feel good about yourself, you don't, you don't want to hurt others, cause it hurts you if you are. https://collections.ushmm.org

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Q: Did you ever go through any psychotherapy and examine these kinds of issues?

A: Never. I've done a lot of it, no.

Q: And you married the man who is in the field.

A: Yeah. Who never psychoanalyzed me, ever, ever, ever. Whose greatest gift to me | still think is to basically say, Anita you've gotta go take care of yourself. And Anita thought, okay, | don't particularly like that but that makes a lot of sense. And who said, okay, I'm gonna do this and that has been Alan's lack of control over me and lack of need to, to have me be a particular way but whose support for me, for myself, whoever | wanted to become was always there. Was just my, has been my perfect partner. Absolutely perfect partner. | don't think | would be the person | am now without sort of having, without having been with that person who was so wonderful about letting me be who | basically had a potential to be. Was nice.

Q: Sounds great.

A: Itis. It's wonderful, it's rare. It's so rare.

Q: And even more rare probably for people in their fifties and, and in terms of man being that way...

A: Oh yes, and particularly for a psychiatrist. My goodness, after all they know how the world works. As far as he was concerned, he didn't and it was up to me to figure it out for myself. And |, what is interesting in my work with people, I've learned a lot from working with people. They have been my teachers. Right now | work at the medical school. | have a wonderful job at the medical school but when | worked with ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 58 [Date not labeled] Page 58 patients, | learned from them. And | learned what not to do and I, I, | integrated and incorporated all those ideas in my own, in my own behavior.

Q: And that's when you were counseling?

A: Yeah, then |, for years | did counseling. My way. Never anybody else's way, always my way.

Q: What does that mean? What rules did you break?

A: Oh, | broke all the rules. | broke every rule and that is that the classic rules of counseling are that all these worries about transference and counter-transference and all this other garbage and how you need to let the patient come up with all the solutions and how you don't insert yourself into it and how you don't, all these things.

| broke every single one of those rules. And what | basically, what I, the way | perceived it, it was more reeducating people, the way | had to reeducate myself and that is to help people to begin to define, learn how to define themselves and, and begin to appreciate themselves and how, how to do that. I've got a whole schema for doing that and, and | would come up with ideas but always in such a way that | would say look. I'm just gonna share these with you. These are tools. It, everything is in your control. Everything is within your power so always leave you the power and leave in the control with, with my clients. And as a result, | could develop very equal relationships and people never saw me as telling what to do but it was a sharing which was super healing. It, it just, and it was amazing how quickly people, not everybody but an overwhelming majority were able to just begin to look at their life from a different perspective and learn different ways of dealing with it. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 59 [Date not labeled] Page 59

Q: So in other words, you didn't exercise that power that the authority figure or expert has?

A: Exactly, never. | was never the expert. | always let them know they were the expert. All that | had were some tools and some ideas that | was willing to share with them. But they had to tell me whether they fit it, they might not, and | would tell them, look, this may not be right for you. Let me know, you know better than | do.

If we talk about something that, that you don't, you find offensive, let me know. So that it was, | was, I've never been the expert. | mean, and I, in my work at the medical school, I'm trying to teach our medical students, that as future physicians, it's still the patient who is the expert on the patient.

Q: That's novel.

A: It's not the physician. The physician may be the expert on the disease and on some treatment but the patient is the expert on, on what's wrong with the patient and if you don't respect that and don't elicit from the patient what's going on and what they think what's going on, you're gonna lose three quarters of your information.

And particularly true in management of illness is that, always three quarters of that is within the patient's domain. Because | can't prescribe, | mean, that's why | will tell with my clients, | mean | can suggest that you might try this but it's up to you to do it.

Now is this going to be possible for you? And some of them will say, yes and | say well, how do you see yourself doing this? It's letting always your clients come up with a plan, always have them, have them come up with the ideas as much as possible about what's gonna work for them. And have them be in charge of their own healing ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 60 [Date not labeled] Page 60 because only then is there gonna be a chance that they will actually pursue the ideas.

But if | tell somebody else what to do, the chance of "em doing it are very small. It shouldn't, and so to that, and, but where | differ from classic counseling is that | will come up with, | will say, | won't say a lot of counseling is how do you feel about this, how do you feel about this, how do you feel about this. |, like you feel about it is only marginally useful. | much more focus, okay, what are you gonna do about it. I'm much more focused End of Tape 2. https://collections.ushmm.org Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection Anita Frank 61 [Date not labeled] Page 61 Tape 3

A: Well, it's, it's going back to, to my, my the difference is that, and that, that has, that goes back to my history is you need to understand how your past has impacted on you. That's critical because otherwise you remain a victim of your past. But then you need to free yourself from your past as much as possible. Now, | won't ever be able to free myself completely and that's okay because | should never forget. But what | can do and what also my clients mostly need to do is they need to overcome the horrendous messages of their childhood. They need to take control over their lives and so | prefer focusing on the healing process instead of on the, just on the past.

Q: And, and it worked for you ...

A: Exactly right.

Q: And you've seen it work for your patients as well?

A: Yes. It works unbelievably well. Unbelievably well with my clients.

Q: And what is the actual class that you teach, at, is it U and M Medical?

A: | don't teach, | don't teach classes necessarily. | teach on the behavioral scientists for the, we have a problem-based learning curriculum at our medical school.

Q: A what based?

A: Problem-based learning. It basically means that they have, it's a modified problem-based learning so they meet in tutorial groups and there is a lot of responsibility for self learning, for hypothesizing. | mean all the things, all the things ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 62 [Date not labeled] Page 62 that | think are important, thinking, problem-solving, analyzing and my job as the behavioral scientist, | see as my maior job is to, to teach our medical students to see patients at the partners, as their partners and not as diseases because medical school is heavily biological and so our, our physicians are trained to look at the disease process and at very little else. And so my maior job is to keep the patient in mind, and to keep the patient as the focus and to deal with the patient as a partner and not just as the carrier of a disease. And it's very exciting and, and I'm particularly interested in the management treatment part of it where basically the patient should, we should have very different approaches. Physicians have a tendency to tell patients what to do, this is what you should, without explaining much, without looking at a patient's circumstances to see whether in effect they can one, buy the medicine, take, take the medicine. Can they relax, can they adhere, do they understand what's going on? What are the pressures, what are the miseries, what are the situations at home? | mean, you can tell somebody to stop smoking, well, that's not gonna to do a bit of good. You need to understand what role smoking plays in this, this person's life. And are they interested in quitting? And where are they and how often have they tried? So, it's a, it's a much of a comprehensive, patient-centered approach. Very respectful of the patient.

Q: Sounds awfully new to me.

A: That's what most people say. But that's what we are, we hope to accomplish at our medical school and we're succeeding. Our, our young, our medical students are ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 63 [Date not labeled] Page 63 wonderful, wonderful. Not all, but most. And very tuned into this. It's really, it's wonderful to talk with them and, and see their sensitivity.

Q: How old or new is this program?

A: We're going in our fourth year. So. We're having our fourth class. Our, our first class is graduating next year and they're sort of my babies. They're, | came in with them and they're, I'm gonna miss "em a lot.

Q: It's exciting.

A: It is. They're wonderful. It's a great place to work.

Q: It also sounds good on the level that | interviewed a doctor for a story | was working on recently and he said, "People don't realize how prone physicians are to problems; drug problems, stress, enormous, enormous stress." So it sounds like perhaps this gives them some tools to work on their problems too.

A: Yes. Verynice. Yes. Because we expect physicians to be super-human. And they're just people, bright people on the whole, and caring people on the whole. But that's all they are. And one of the great tragedies is is that in the traditional approach, our physicians are taught, it becomes, because they tend to be obsessive- compulsive, they tend to be perfectionists, they tend to be hard-driven and so on.

What they want to do is they want to fix things. And they're happy when they can fix something. And when they can't fix something, they get very unhappy and very stressed and so what happens very often is that, particularly during the dying process when they can't do anymore for a patient, they abandon the patient. Because they can't do anymore. And so you see this avoidance behavior. That's because https://collections.ushmm.org

Contact reference@ushmm.org for further information about this collection Anita Frank 64 [Date not labeled] Page 64 they're uncomfortable. They can't, they can't fix, the other focus for me is is that there is very little fixing you guys can do. If you're lucky you can cut out a, you can cure a bacterial illness with some antibiotics and you can cut out a cancer and you can do, you can do some other things that truly fix things. But most of the time, it isn't as simple as that. Most of the time you just have to learn to work with your patient to make it as, to make it better. But that means you need to be in partnership with your patient. And don't worry so much about fixing it.

Q: And, and don't take all the responsibility.

A: Don't take all the responsibility. Leave the responsibility where it belongs but then behave in ways that you communicate that clearly. 1, that's certainly what I've done in my counseling, always left the power with my clients. Always.

Q: And you learned that through your own experience?

A: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and even in my, that, that has worked so well for me because even when | was, when Loren(ph) was small and | was raising him and as he went on to high school, middle school and high school, we'd have discussions about smoking and drugs and work and I'd say, I'd, | remember saying, "Loren,"(ph), remember this conversation, "Loren(ph), do you think you'll, you'll", well | knew he would never smoke. Because when he was three years old, my husband's ex- brother-in-law came who sat in this house for two days smoking two to three packs of cigarette a day, cigarettes a day and drinking all our sherry. We had a bottle of sherry. And smoking in the bedroom and putting the cigarette, his butts, his butts and his matches next to the bed. Anyway, Loren(ph) came home from school that ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 65 [Date not labeled] Page 65 first day and the house was covered in smoke. It was gray and he said, "Mommy, it stinks." He was three years old. | said, "Yes, that's cigarettes." He says, and | took him outside, | didn't wanna_ be him, | didn't him to be in that environment. Well, | tell you, as far as he's concerned, cigarettes have always stunk. So he never smoked. But then when he went to high school, | talked to him about, | said, "Loren(ph), what do you think about alcohol and drugs? Do you think you're ever going to try those things?" And his response to me was, "I don't know, how can | tell ya?" | said, "Well, what do you think right now? Do you think that you're, that, do you see yourself as experimenting with, with drugs?" "Well, | might." | said, "Well, Loren(ph), | just want you to know, it's gonna be your life that you're gonna louse up.

| mean, it's gonna hurt me but it's gonna be your life, not my life." | said, "You've got this magnificent brain, if you wanna destroy it, you wanna ruin it by getting into drugs, it's gonna be your problem. And | just, it's hard for me to imagine that you would be that stupid." Left it at that. Same thing with working. "Loren(ph), if you decide not to work here, we're paying a lot of tuition, if you decide, | mean, your part of the bargain is for you to, to put in your effort. If you decide not to do that, I'm gonna regret it but again, you're gonna be doing the most harm to yourself. And, and, in the, I'm not interested in paying a lot of tuition for you to louse up so again, you make those decisions." So, early in the game | let him know where | stood, what my hopes were, but always leaving the responsibility with him and he got drunk once in college "cause he wanted to find out what getting drunk was like and that was the first and last time he did it. He hated it. He didn't like being out of control. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 66 [Date not labeled] Page 66

Q: Does he drink at all now?

A: Barely. Nope. Never used drugs. Never smoked.

Q: Coffee?

A:No. Drink, does he drink coffee? |Iknow. Notbecause, we, we offer hima glass of wine. We will have some wine sometimes. He doesn't like alcohol.

Q: Interesting when you have the freedom to abuse yourself.

A: He didn't have to. He didn't have to because he knew that, he knew that as far as we were concerned, he would punish himself the most. If he was, and | used that word stupid several times. | said, "If you're gonna be that stupid or it's hard for me to think that you would be that stupid." So, basically | expressed my total disdain for that kind of behavior. That! could not imagine that somebody as bright as he, and then what I, and the other things | did with him, | always expressed my total confidence in him. | just said, "Loren(ph), you've got this just remarkable", even if he didn't do well, | said, "Loren(ph)", | said, "I just think you have the intelligence that is going to make you shine as you get older. | just believe so strongly in your potential." So that even when he wasn't, when he wasn't working hard, wasn't doing well | never, it was never ahhh! It was just, just my total overwhelming belief in him, as just a young being of enormous value, with enormous value. | wanted to give him everything | never felt or | hadn't felt when | was his age.

Q: Or that you would have felt had it not been for the war?

A: Yeah. | think so.

Q: Sounds like your parents were pretty respectful. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 67 [Date not labeled] Page 67

A: Yes. Yes they were. Absolutely. My father, even when | did so badly in Holland, what saved my life was his belief in me as an intelligent person. | know that. If he hadn't been there for me, the whole time. | knew that he thought | was smart. Even though my, my performance absolutely denied it. It was just like, and then indeed, | did better and better and better after | came to America. It seems like even now I'm doing better and better and better all the time. It's amazing to me.

I'm continually learning. My life is continually expanding.

Q: Well, is part of that because you've recovered so, so much, do you think?

A: | think so. | think so.

Q: And that you've worked so hard on it?

A: Yeah. There's little doubt in my mind that | have freed myself from those evil messages of my past. | truly have because they controlled me. _| truly, | truly have freed myself from those. Totally. Nah, that's not true, not totally. | still have some fears that | can't get out. | still, | still, wnen my husband doesn't come home when | expect him to, there's immediately, my heart just sinks. | still, I'm in terror of losing him or, or my family, my child, yeah. | still have that. 1, | don't seem to be able to get over that.

Q: | think a lot of people have that fear about losing a loved one but do you think yours is greater?

A: Yeah. Because | can try to talk myself intellectually out of it and | just, it just, just, it just, my feelings, the feelings overwhelm me. Even though, statistically, | should ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 68 [Date not labeled] Page 68 not worry about it. But and, it's gotten better. I'm much better now than | used to be.

Q: Have you thought of buying them cell phones for Christmas?

A: No, I'm not, I'm not so worried about Loren(ph) anymore because Loren(ph) now has a, has a young woman in his life who looks after him so | have now a, and for me, instead of a threat to me, it's a joy because there's somebody else who loves him and who will look after him so that it's not totally my responsibility. And | just, it's wonderful for me to know there's somebody else there who cares about him and loves him. So that's, makes, gives me a great sense of peace.

Q: That's great.

A: Yeah. Yeah.

Q: Well, would you like to take a little break?

A: | think that's a great idea.

Q: Okay, I'll just go one by one. | wondered when you left Holland if your family had a thought or talked at all about going to Israel?

A: Never. It's interesting. No. No. America was always the land of opportunity.

A lot of the Jewish, the survivors, the Holocaust, the concentration camp survivors, | think, went to Israel and certainly after the war, the children whose parents had been killed and, in Holland, if, if they had fled to Holland from eastern European countries to escape Nazism, and, and if those parents were killed, the children were put in hiding, those children were all sent to Israel. So, I'm not sure Israel ever came up forus. It's interesting. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 69 [Date not labeled] Page 69

Q: Maybe you just didn't have an opportunity or no one invited you.

A: No. Noone invited us. | don't think iteven dawned on us. | mean, it was going to America really was to a land of opportunity to sort of, my parents felt that there was little opportunity for us in Holland. | think they just wanted to get away from it. So, Israel was, | mean too much stress and tension, | mean you, after all these years, | think it would have been very hard to go to a country where that was still the midst of turmoil.

Q: And still is.

A: And still is, yes.

Q: Let me move this a little bit closer. Is that okay?

A: Sure.

Q: Thanks. And you took a ship [talkover]

A: Oh yeah, the____--_| got so seasick.

Q: | just wondered what that was like.

A: Awful, it just, | remember there were two other Dutch girls and fiancee, left Holland, they were just going for a visit and of course we went with my family. And everything we had, my parents sold the furniture because that's to pay for the voyage so we just had | think, 16 or 17 suitcases and boxes with us, perhaps not that many, nine, | don't know how many. But that was all we had. And it was amazing, it was November and it was rough and all, what | remember most from that journey was just being so sick to my stomach and throwing up in the bathroom. And then when we got to New York, it was sort of amazing too, "cause we got to New York, and Henry Coster(ph) ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 70 [Date not labeled] Page 70 and his wife, Peggy, happened to be in New York for, for film, to watch, to watch films or plays or whatever it was. And they knew when we were, when, | guess they knew that, our arrival time. And, and, but we had no idea they would be there so we really had no idea what to do when we got to New York. So it was really interesting. We were waiting for all our luggage to get off the boat. There | saw this man looking and I'd seen his picture and | went up to him and | said, "Are you Henry Coster(ph)?" And he says, "Yes." And "cause he didn't recognize us and here we_ were, you think a family with four children. But, |, and why, | just remembered him from his picture, so, which was, which turned out to be very nice. He'd rented a big car and found us a cheap hotel. So we stayed a couple of days in New York and then took the bus to St. Louis. And then seven days later or four days later, | took the bus to California.

So, I'm taking a bus ride and coming, coming through Albuquerque for the first time.

Q: Do you remember seeing the Statue of Liberty?

A: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. It was exciting. It was hard for us to imagine what America would look like and arriving New York is so overwhelming, all these buildings. One most terrifying things were the, the ambulance sirens, | mean, because they sound just like our sirens during the war and that was terrifying. Every time we heard sirens, we ducked. So it was really hard getting used to the, to the fire engines and the ambulances, the police cars. That was the most distressing part. Butit was sort of amazing to be in this huge city and | can remember we would buy food and eat in our hotel room. And my mother had some ancient aunts who lived in New York, we visited them. Tanta(ph), they were, as a matter of fact, they ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 71 [Date not labeled] Page 71 were my grandfather's sisters. Tanta Rebecca(ph), Tanta Rosa(ph). And, and then we, and then my mother had some distant cousins in St. Louis who had agreed to help us and so we stayed there for couple of weeks. My parents did and | went to California.

Q: | wondered also if you have, still have contact with that Jewish American soldier you met during the Liberation time?

A: Bob Fenton(ph)? No.

Q: Is that his name?

A: Yeah.

Q: The one who also brought you to Paris?

A: Yes. No, he died, he died of melanoma, | think, many, many years ago. But, and his wife remarried, Mary Fenton(ph) and they moved to the east coast and | think my youngest sister, Helga, has had some contact with her but | haven't. We did, after we came to America because he lived in California and when my parents moved to California in 1958, they spent some time with him. And so they were friends, they remained friends. But then he, | forgot my, and then in 1965, my parents moved to Washington because that's where | was and | think we lost contact then.

Q: And, and how was it that you actually met him?

A: Oh, my sister, my youngest sister Helga would pick them up. |, she, this was, we lived in, in this little town near Falkenburg , in Holland, Lindbergh(ph), and what we would do, the American soldiers, the white soldiers were, were sort of bivouacked in, in a hotel and then the blacks were right across the fields in tents. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 72 [Date not labeled] Page 72 And we'd go down and just sort of stand there, my mother had always told us not to ever ask for anything "cause that was impolite, so, American soldiers just adored us because there were cute little girls, eight, six, seven and eight. And they just looked there, at the, at these soldiers and so we always ended up with the most goodies.

And I'm not quite sure but my youngest sister, Helga, she'd, she'd come home, she just sort of told him to come with us, so, so, one day Bob Fenton(ph) came. One day she came home with a chaplain and said, "Mommy, that's the best | could find." Good taste. So, it was mostly that, it was safe, totally safe for us those days. And we just sort of, I'm not quite sure in retrospect, that we just asked them to come home with us. And of course they would, they loved being in a home "cause these poor guys had been out in a field and so on so, it was fun and it was incredible to meet Jewish soldiers "cause that immediately formed a tie. | can remember, was another soldier named Jimmy. Jimmy would knock us on our head and he also told us that the first one who learned Mary Had a Little Lamb would get ten cents. | won ten cents. And then, first one my father taught me, my first words in English were, he said, "If people ask you if you speak English, just answer, just, just a few words." So my, my first knowledge of English consisted of just a few words. And those were the only words | knew. But! learned English quickly. It's amazing how quickly we picked up.

Q: And Bob Fenton(ph), do you remember anything in particular about that friendship because it seemed lasted, it's beyond ... ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 73 [Date not labeled] Page 73

A: Oh yes, well, what happened in those days is that the, after, they, we had were liberated these soldiers would go to, they went to Germany. And they sent us packages from Germany. And they went into homes and | guess stole, stole clothings. For quite a while, we were clothed in German, dresses and stuff like that.

Sort of hate the thought now but in those days, that was all we had. And yeah, we just, he was just a lovely guy and he stayed in touch with us. He was tall and dark hair, curly dark hair, and just warm and caring and it was just, it, it, you cannot imagine what it is like to look at soldiers and know they could kill you. For four years that they were these dangerous creatures. And then to get, have the Americans come and have them be your friends and your liberators and your lifesavers basically, it's, it's an extraordinary feeling so of course we felt all this love and warmth for American soldiers. They really represented everything that was, well our life. They represented our life to us.

Q: And a Jewish soldier probably himself felt quite a bit, knowing what, what Jews had been through.

A: I'm not sure, that was before they went into Germany, was 1944. I'm not sure they, those soldiers knew. | don't think so. | don't think so. That was before they liberated the concentration camps. | think Auschwitz, the, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz. So | don't think the Americans were as aware. _| think the first German concentration camp, camp liberated was Dachau and then Bergen-Belsen by the British. Was a while | think before the Americans just recognized, whether they ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 74 [Date not labeled] Page 74 even, whether these soldiers actually knew, | doubt, | mean the government and other people knew but I'm not sure the soldiers knew.

Q: And the media wasn't [talkover]

A: No, no, no.

Q: They missed the news story of the century, didn't they?

A: Yes, they did.

Q: Which could have possibly changed the ...

A: Yes, it could have, yes it could have. | know.

Q: Well that's another cause for deep and long rumination.

A: Yes.

Q: How did you happen to choose Russian studies asa_ ...

A: Oh my goodness. Well, | was at Washington University and | remember my first major was chemistry and that didn't work out so well. | decided | wasn't a born chemist. And then | went to French, and then one day | took a political science course and sometimes you just hit your love and | just absolutely became enchanted with political science and | was already a junior in college. And | was just fascinated by the Soviet Union. It was my first course with international relations course and | became fascinated by the Soviet Union. And I'm trying to think why. I, | don't know why. In retrospect the, it was a country that was mysterious, they were, this was in the fifties, | went to college in 54 to 58. So that was the height of the Cold War.

And | think it just grabbed my attention perhaps because of my experiences during the war as it was Nazi power, with the Nazi Germany as a great power, that perhaps, ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

Anita Frank 75 [Date not labeled] Page 75 perhaps | felt that understanding the Soviet Union better might help me do something worthwhile or some, something like that. It was certainly not because | had any Communist interest. It was truly because the Soviet Union represented danger | think and, and another great power and fascination. And then |, then | went to Harvard in the Russian Studies program and | was, and | was right because it was a wonderful choice because it's a, it's a, has an unbelievable history. Russian history is, is unbelievable history. And the Russian, and | spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union and the Russian people are remarkable people in many ways so it, it, intuitively |, | just picked the right country to be particularly interested in.

Q: That's great. That also leads to another question about what you did for the Rand(ph) Corporation?

A: | did research on Soviet Military and Foreign Affairs. | actually read Pravda and

, the papers and translated articles and really tried to come up with themes and sort of whether we could learn anything from the open press. But | was a research assistant to senior researchers in, in Soviet foreign and military affairs.

Q: What does the Rand(ph) Corporation do?

A: Well, they, they were the research organization for the Air Force really. And they primarily did military, they did primarily military and economic and foreign policy research for the Air Force. It was sort of, it was the research arm of the Air Force.

Now they've expanded. They, they do a lot of research in health areas. | still think that their major contractor is the Air Force but they've, they do, they do superb research. They attracts very high caliber people and but now they've expanded to ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 76 [Date not labeled] Page 76 research in education, research on health issues, research on public welfare issues and prison, prison systems. They, they tend to do massive studies. They, drug, drug intervention studies. So they've expanded far away a focus on international and, and foreign affairs issues of, in China, Russia, Europe. | mean they, they cover the whole field to, to now also national issues.

Q: And did you speak Russian as well?

A: Yeah. Yeah. That's what we studied, | studied at Harvard. And then | spent, | spent about ten and a half months in the Soviet Union as a guide in American exhibit.

That certainly helped my Russian a lot. But tragically, I've forgotten most of it now because | haven't used it in so long but one of the great experiences in my life was being a guide on a, ona U.S., part of the U.S. - Soviet cultural exchange program.

Incredible experience. That's where | met Elizabeth Dixon, was in, in Moscow.

Was it Moscow or Leningrad? Leningrad, was Leningrad, were in Leningrad.

[talkover] Near St. Petersburg.

Q: Americans would come over and you would show them around and talk about the history ...

A: No, Americans, Russians. This was a U.S., a U.S. sponsored exhibit, American exhibit in the Soviet Union. So we'd speak to Russians. They'd come and see the wonders of, of America and one of the great experiences, I'll never forget and of course this was still in the early sixties, still the Cold War was raging. One of the, several very powerful experiences there. One was a man came and he was a, he was a Party member and he was telling us about the glories of the Soviet Union and ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 77 [Date not labeled] Page 77 he was seemed exceedingly nice and he asked us about the United States and he asked about unemployment and racism and we were very open about...

[End of side one of tape 3]

Q: Could you go back to you were open about the [talkover]

A: That, they would ask a lot about the negative things: unemployment, racism, discrimination, poverty, etc., etc., and we'd, we'd very, were very open about that unlike the Soviets where everything had to be perfect. But yes, that we had those issues but the way it had been, it was so interesting, on the one hand they were told that they must overtake the United States. On the other hand they were told what a terrible country America was. Now it's pretty hard to overtake a country that is so terrible so there was some internal, were some internal contradictions. But anyway, this guy came and so he asked, he was very kind and he asked all these sort of questions about unemployment and yeah. | talked with him and then | happened to see him outside of the exhibit hall in, in, sort of on the stairs. And we started to talk and it turns out, he's told me he was Jewish. And | said, "Well, I'm Jewish, too." He said, "You are?" And it was just like this total change came, came over him and he said, "Is there really unemployment in America? Is there really any racism ?" | mean, it's just like he's, talk the party line but then when it came to trusting me because he felt that he could, it was just like questioning everything. So that was sort of, yeah, and | said, "yes, we do," but, I, | tried to put in context of yes, there is racism but there's also something we're working on. Yes, there is unemployment but people are not just out in the streets starving to death, we have unemployment. | mean just ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 78 [Date not labeled] Page 78 trying to put an end to, and there's yes, there is poverty. | mean, we've got all the problems but you look, anyway. And so that was, that was sort of a nice story and then another, one of the most touching stories was in, in, | think it was in Leningrad, it was in Leningrad again. The first one was in Moscow, the second one was in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. Where a woman came and wanted a San Francisco phone book and, and | gave her the phone book and she looked up some addresses and, and then disappeared. Just before the exhibit closed, the same woman came back and her face was just beaming. She was absolutely, she said, "I found my sister." And she, her sister had left, also Jewish. The sister had left for the United States before the war and she hadn't heard from her in, that was, this was now 65, in 25 years. And she'd found her sister's name in the phone book, had telegrammed her or called her and she sent, she showed me the telegram from her sister. |, |, she said, "Overjoyed at hearing from you." So it brought, and it, couple of times, some Russians, particularly Jews, found relatives that had gone to America because we had phone books from all over the country, so.

Q: Amazing.

A: Yeah and amazing stories.

Q: Did you feel a particular warmth for the Russian people having sacrificed so much during World War II?

A: Yes. Absolutely. And | think they felt that warmth with me because | could understand them. | mean, what, what they had suffered was beyond imagination.

And so | think they could feel from me my enormous sympathy for them. And ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 79 [Date not labeled] Page 79 whereas for most Americans they did not know Russian history as much nor did they understand the horrors, particularly what Leningrad went through. Leningrad and Kiev turned out that both exhibits went to Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. And Kiev also was just destroyed and of course in Kiev we had the, the horrendous massacre of the Jews at Babiy Yar. And so we went to Babiy Yar and, and it was interesting that particularly the, in Kiev, the survivors, the, the Jewish survivors connected strongly with those of us, we didn't have too many Jews in the exhibit, but connected strongly with those of us who were Jewish. And it was, it was, it was a wonderful thing. It was a real connector. It just transcended, being Jewish transcended nationality.

Q: And the Cold War?

A: And the, and the, and the Cold War. It certainly transcended the Cold War, no question about it.

Q: That's lovely. | wonder if you had any continuing fears that are kind of left over scars or wounds from the war. Like you said you feared when your husband was late, do you still or does a knock on the door ever trigger a fear or a siren?

A: No, no, no. Not those things. And I, and | don't have any idea whether this is fear-related or whether this related to the war but whereas intellectually I'm totally comfortable with making mistakes, emotionally, when people disapprove of something that I've done or angry with me, it still gives me a pang of ahhhh. But | get over that very quickly. It is, but I, but | think that is so common to most of us women and to most people that I'm not sure where that's a remnant of the war years ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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or whether that is, that is a, whether, whether that is just part of being, most, few of us sort of like to be corrected or, or criticized or disapproved of so, | think, | still, there's part of me that still wants to please others even though intellectually | know that's not what | should be doing. But | know a large part of me is still is into, | mean little things. | will be talking to somebody and | won't ever be the first one to walk away.

Just always being aware of who else is involved and including them, it's, somebody says you wanna do that, instead of saying no | can't, | will say | can, I'll try. It's that still, | still, part of me still tries to please more than I'm comfortable with. | think that's part of the war. |, | still think that's part of the old me. But that's, that's about it.

Those are not necessarily bad, bad things. No fears, driving sometimes, | worry about my husband's driving, and I'm always but that's common. No, it's amazing, | really don't. My mother did but! don't. That's one of the great blessings of having been a child. | didn't integrate, at least | did not integrate the horror of the war, | really didn't. |, that's not fair. 1, not the way | would have as an adult because |, as now, I'm totally aware of what happened but as a child all | knew that | would be killed if they discovered if, which is a heavy thing for a child to live with. But | did not understand everything else that was going on. That was not until much later. So, thank God | didn't, |, it's beyond my understanding how concentration camp survivors can live with all their memories. _ It's, it's unbearable and for some it's so unbearable that, in effect, it's, I've heard one of my friends who survived four concentration camps including, as a matter of fact he's a Schindler, he was on Schindler's list for a while.

He's a Schindler Jew. And he survived the Auschwitz and | think Dachau- ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 81 [Date not labeled] Page 81 Bookenvalt(ph) and he says, "I didn't survive." And | totally understand that. Totally understand that. He's living, he lives still. But you don't survive that. So I'm intensely grateful that | don't have to live with those horrendous memories.

Q: I've also noticed and, and again | don't know if this is related at all to the Holocaust or this is just your family, but it seems like there's an extraordinary number of people in your close family who are in caring professions like medicine, nursing ...

A: Yeah.

Q: Psychiatry, helping, helping, helping. Is that just a family trait or is that at all a war and Holocaust related do you think?

A: Huh. You're absolutely right. | have, | think, | think that is in generally true, that's generally true for Holocaust survivors. Many have gone to the helping professions, many have become therapists are staggering, | mean effort to understand the self is to help others. Yeah, you wanna do something to make it, to make this a better world. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. | mean, initially | wasn't, but I've ended up in a helping profession. But even trying to understand the Soviet Union for me was trying to understand something that posed a threat, | think in those days.

Q: And perhaps gives you a measure of control ...

A: Yeah, yeah, understand your enemy. Yes. And | think that's, that's true for many Holocaust survivors, that that's, that's, that's been an area that has been a source of comfort for them is to go into the quote helping professions.

Q: But even then their children too. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 82 [Date not labeled] Page 82

A: Yeah. Well, they get in, inoculated by us. Yeah, because my sister, my sister's, my youngest sister has one physician and one medical anthropologist, one nurse and one molecular biologist. And she's got two PhD, and an MD and a nurse in her, as her four children and my _ middle sister has a nurse, | mean has a medical student, and a, be a doctor, and her other daughter wants to be a nursery school teacher and then, my son, I'm not sure, he wants to just figure out how the brain works.

Q: That could be helpful to humanity.

A: Yeah, perhaps, yes.

Q: But on a very intellectual high plane.

A: Very high plane, right.

Q: Probably higher than my own capacity.

A: Oh, way beyond mine, way beyond mine.

Q: When you were babysitting for the Costers,(ph), | wondered if you actually worked for free and, or...

A: | got twelve dollars a week. | got room and board and twelve dollars a week, so.

Q: And | don't know what the wages were in those days so is that what regular babysitters got, do you know? Or is that, was there a little bit of payback for his helping to sponsor you guys to come?

A: Again, | don't really know. I'm, | mean they paid for my room and board. | mean |, | lived there and that didn't cost my anything and | could save some money, | didn't spend any money. Sometimes they bought me clothes. | never, to be honest, you know what, | never questioned it. And twelve dollars in those days was pretty good ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 83 [Date not labeled] Page 83 and | cannot tell you, | mean, babysitting, you paid babysitters fifty, fifty cents an hour so | think that probably was not an unreasonable amount. Wasa good deal for them because it gave them the freedom to go out and not have to worry about babysitters for their two boys who were six and nine.

Q: Then your parents didn't mind giving up their own babysitter?

A: | wasn't a babysitter, | mean my, my sisters were, | was 16, almost 17, they were 14 and 15 so.

Q: They didn't need you for that.

A: No, not, oh, no, no, no. They, well past that. Besides my parents were, they, they got jobs but girls went to school and my brother joined the Air Force right away and they were home. | mean they, they were home in the evening.

Q: | guess I'm just a little bit surprised that you went so far away from your family so soon in America since you also expressed earlier today how much you determined to stay with your family.

A: Yeah. Again was a, | think it was a real mistake that | did it. In retrospect | shouldn't have done it. But they thought it was a great opportunity for me and | did what was expected of me. It was just, in a way it was an adventure, going to Beverly Hills, California. And again, | did, | did what | was supposed to do. | didn't question, | wasn't, | mean when | look at my own son and all his questioning and all his rebellion and all his, well not so much rebellion but certainly insistence on doing his own thing, |, that wasn't my style. | did what was asked of me and I did it. | didn't ask whether it was good for me, | just, they wanted one of us to come and so | was the oldest girl, ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 84 [Date not labeled] Page 84 | was the obvious one, obvious and by far the most mature one. Although | was so, naive and innocent, | went.

Q: But it was safe too, so.

A: Oh yeah.

Q: And again, all the good food.

A: Oh that food, the ice cream.

Q: You discovered Baskin Robbins?

A: | don't think Baskin Robbins, Robbins had been discovered yet. No but they had a freezer with ice cream. | couldn't believe anybody having ice cream at home.

We'd had no refrigerator in Holland. We had a little gas stove. | mean, goodness gracious, you come from little tiny Holland to this mansion with a butler and maid and aye, aye, aye. | Whata culture shock.

Q: Opulence after so much deprivation.

A: Oh unbelievable, absolutely. Mind-blowing, ridiculous, overwhelming.

Q: Have you done very much reading and studying about the war and the Holocaust since then to try and get more understanding?

A: Yes, yeah, got lots of books. It's interesting, | find it harder and harder to do so.

It just, in my, | think my rage has intensified. That doesn't sound consistent with what I've said because I'm, I'm not, I'm not guided by that rage, I'm not controlled by that rage. But when | read about it, it just, my incomprehension just increases. | cannot imagine, | cannot imagine this actually happening and the older | get | think you sort of have, your child is grown, you've done, you've, you're sort of at a pretty ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 85 [Date not labeled] Page 85 stable level and you can think back on, on life and put it more in perspective and the more | try to put it in perspective, the more incomprehensible it becomes. So | find myself, |, | just find it harder and harder to, to read about it and to certainly to see, to see the films. They're just unbearable. Instead of getting easier, gets, gets harder.

Q: Oh, | can imagine that, | think that makes sense. | mean certainly a person's not gonna grow more tolerant of that.

A: No, exact opposite [talkover].

Q: Reinforces the horror and the anger.

A: Yeah, incomprehensible. That people let this happen, that it did happen. And that | keep on thinking of the million and a half children who never had a chance.

And what this world would have been like if they had been allowed to live because the potential, the unbelievable potential of that population. And they just annihilated it. And all these millions were deprived of living and experiencing love and affection.

And the other thing | think about is |, | cannot bear to think and this happened, this became stronger after, after Loren(ph) was born. It's just, | cannot imagine what it must have been like for parents to see their children gassed. And |, | just, it, it's, or to live with the horrendous fear of what was gonna happen to them. It's beyond my comprehension. | think about that a lot.

Q: I, | think you're right. | think the world would have been a different place. We lost all kinds of gifted people.

A: Allsorts. Allsorts. In Europe, in the horror in some way, Hitler, Hitler succeeded you see. He made Europe youdenrine(ph), free of Jews. That was his, his major ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 86 [Date not labeled] Page 86 aim. And it's not totally free of Jews. | mean, Holland has about 35,000 Jews we think out of a population of 16 million. They used to have ten percent about of its population was Jewish, not it's just a tiny percentage. French has, France has what, half a million Jews, | don't know, probably not that much, what 50 thousand Jews, | don't know. Germany has a few, Poland has practically none and Poland had three million before the war, so. | mean, they, they succeeded. They really succeeded.

And | think the Europe is the poorer for it.

Q: Well also if intolerance has grown enormously because of that, that's another repercussions, lI'm, I'm sure the repercussions and the ripples of what was lost in some ways go on and on and on, if you keep thinking about that.

A: Yes, that's right. It doesn't end. It doesn't end.

Q: And it's all hypothetical ...

A: That's right.

Q: Because you don't know what those other people would have contributed.

A: But all that you can do is look at the survivors and what they have accomplished which is pretty, pretty impressive. | look at my own family and | look at my cousins and you look at the children and it's incredible who these children are. We know the children of the children who survived. It's just, they are incredible people and we're just a tiny percentage. | mean, they're real contributors to society.

Q: How many survivors were there, do you know?

A: Where?

Q: In Europe, Jews? ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 87 [Date not labeled] Page 87

A: It depended on the country. Holland lost, | think, 80 percent of its Jews. France lost about, France and Germany didn't lose that many. In Germany, many of "em emigrated, thank God. Russia lost, Poland lost three million. Poland lost almost 95 percent of its Jews and that was a heavily, the heaviest population of Jews was in eastern, really was in Europe and, and western Russia. And they lost | think that, from the west, probably like, well probably couple of hundred thousand. I've got the numbers actually, I've got the, got a book with all the numbers of, but |, at least half the Jewish population. At least half the population of European Jews was killed and then a quarter, the rest emigrated. So what's left is just perhaps a quarter, if that many.

Q: Yeah, | have a, a wonderful book that, that | read too but I'm not very good at remembering numbers and | just all of a sudden realized that I'd, in some ways always concentrated on the numbers of the victims and the lost people rather than the ...

A: Yeah. [talkover] | think they killed, they killed at least half. | think there were about 11 million Jews. They killed 6 million of us. So perhaps 5 million survived.

They survived in Russia itself, in Moscow, Kiev, not Kiev, but Moscow, Leningrad.

Cause Leningrad lost over a hundred thousand people because of the, the blockade.

Many of whom were Jews. But, but Russia must have lost, I'm sure, over a million Jews, at least. Then Lithuania, all those and "course in those countries were just violently anti-Semitic, Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, awful, just horrible. Awful.

Q: Going back. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 88 [Date not labeled] Page 88

A: Huh?

Q: Going back in time [talkover]

A: Yeah.

Q: What did you do when you were associate director of the Clearinghouse on Higher Education?

A: | started it. I, |, that, for nine months |, that was part of the Eric(ph) System, the clearinghouse system that the Office of Education started then, started one higher education and |, | was the associate director. | had no director so | got the whole thing going. So that was really my major job there was to get the documents. What it does it gets the unpublished documents in education and puts them, and makes them available through publications. And so what it meant, was that's how | met my husband, actually. On one of those trips. | had to, | traveled to various universities and, who had lots of publications and got "em all into the Eric(ph) System and published the abstracts and the syllabi and stuff like that. Was fun. Great job, lots of travel, met my husband so what more and then I, and | only stayed there for nine day, for nine months because then I, | met Alan. | started it in September, | met Alan in October and got married the following May so I'm afraid that | was a, my great job but not a very long-lasting job. But | got a director just before | left so that was perfect. 1, got the stuff, got the thing going and then was able to leave.

Q: And did you meet him here in Albuquerque?

A: Yeah.

Q: You came out here? ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 89 [Date not labeled] Page 89

A: On my one day trip to Albuquerque. The president of UNM, the University of New Mexico was giving a dinner for our group and Alan had just come here as a new psychiatrist for the department and a, and he was invited to this party also because he was a new faculty member and he had been widowed and we met at this party.

It was just amazing and we started to talk and | fully expected him to say oh gee, I've gotta go see so and so. He didn't. | had no interest in meeting somebody else.

So we sort of talked and he wrote and eventually | wrote back and | visited him and | visited him again and that was it. It was very quick. And | was, let's see, 1968, so almost 28 years ago. Amazing, huh?

Q: Really. And, and it sounds like the marriage has been really good for all of your feeling ...

A: Yeah, perfect.

Q: and blossoming.

A: Oh no, not a perfect marriage. But it's been, I, | don't think | would have done as well with anybody else that, that Alan was just pretty much the ideal person in terms of letting me become the person, | think I'm, I, | think that who | am today was exactly the potential that | had as a two-year-old and, and it just has been allowed to blossom.

And that may sound very, very self-serving but | like who | am today. | am very content with the person who | am and | like what I'm doing and | like how | feel.

Yeah. And I'm in control of my life and it's, it's a good feeling of being where you wanna be and being who you wanna be. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 90 [Date not labeled] Page 90

Q: And it's a even greater accomplishment considering what happened during the Holocaust and afterwards, don't you think?

A: Yeah, oh yeah, because who | was after the Holocaust, after the war was the exact, in some ways the exact opposite of who | am today. | was scared, terrified, no self-esteem, just, just, just, just, just totally defined by the world outside of me and, and no sense of self at all.

Q: And even Betty Booka(ph) is that her name?

A: Yeah.

Q: Didn't she tell you that you had changed a lot, the first time she saw you after the war?

A: Yes. After the war, yes. Because those changes, you see during the war, it was, it was totally different but after the war, yeah, she told me after she came to, she came to visit us in America as a matter of fact. She said she felt I'd changed a lot and was clearly, she wasn't happy with my changes.

Q: Too bad she couldn't see you now.

A: Well, |, she saw me after we were married. | was pregnant with Loren(ph). We visited, the last time | saw her | think was "72 and it was wonderful to see her then and | think she saw that, as a matter of fact she commented | was back to her old Leesha(ph).

Q: Right, and, and, so she in some ways still called you Leesha(ph) which was your ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 91 [Date not labeled] Page 91

A: Yeah, yeah, was my hidden name, well the, my name in hiding. Yeah. Old Leesha(ph).

Q: Just a couple more things. When you worked in child development and family relations, what was your concentration or was there a sort of a something that especially you [talkover]

A: Yeah. Family relationships, marriage, child development, infant development. It was, it was the developmental interactional part of, that |, that | focused on. So | taught a lot of courses on marriage and personal development and on family interaction and on child development and on, some on communication and infant growth and development. Oh, human growth seminars and human growth and development.

Q: And was that, was your interest in that at all related to perhaps your own experiences as a child, do you think?

A: Well, again, |, | sort of, | think I'm the kind of person who's easily interested in what goes on around her and so after | married Alan and | was thinking now what am | gonna do with my life and my masters in Russian Studies didn't help me much here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. | decided well I'm go back to school and basically | got pregnant and went back to school at exactly the same time. And just started taking child development courses and fell in love with those like I'd like fallen in love with Russian foreign policy. | just found them fascinating and I've never taken a psychology course at Washington University so, it was just a whole new world opening for me. So again, it just, | found something else that interested me. _| think ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 92 [Date not labeled] Page 92 that's how my life is. I'm, I'm easily interested in what's going on in the world so, |, I've lots of, | get excited about a whole bunch of things.

Q: And you had obviously just starting your family [talkover]

A: It was perfect.

Q: A nice...

A: lt was perfect, absolutely perfect. | remember as Loren(ph) was growing up, keeping track of whether he was on target or not. Thank heavens he tended to be on target.

Q: Did you let him know how he was doing as he went along? Did you say, when he spoke his first word did you say good, Loren(ph), you're a month ahead of schedule?

A: No, but it was very clear to me from the very beginning that he clearly was a very bright child so | was a very proud obnoxious mother, I'm afraid. He, and | encouraged that enormously, interesting. That's certainly part of my heritage is that | didn't care if he was an athlete or not, at all. | couldn't have cared less. What | did care about was his intellectual development. And if he had wanted to punish me all he would have had to do is flunk out of school. Because forme, education has been the absolutely essential ingredient for taking control of life and, and so when he was developing into this incredibly delightful bright kid, End of Tape 3. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 93 [Date not labeled] Page 93

Tape 4

Q: Could you just say that again about what he, he turned out to be as a child?

A: [talkover] He turned out to be exactly the kind of child that | had hoped for. | mean, | don't think | could have designed a child more to my dreams than Loren(ph) actually turned out to be, so what a fortunate parent | am. | give him 95 percent of the credit, I'll take about five.

Q: How much does Alan get?

A: Alan gets, well, he, he's included the 95. Alan gets five, | get five and Loren(ph) gets 90.

Q: Okay. Let's see. | think that might be, oh, |, just | think this is it but 1, | wanted to just ask you to talk about something we talked about before we started the tape and that was your, what you like about America being a self-examining society of sorts.

Would you mind ending with that?

A: Yeah. Well, | think that, that's really significant from my perspective and that is that one of the great blessings from my perspective about this country is, is that we've made a lot of mistakes. You and | talked a little bit before we put the tape on, we talked a little bit about America's role during the war and the fact that the State Department had lots of anti-Semites in it and, and that this country knew, the government knew was happening to Jews and didn't do anything. That | think Roosevelt tried, there, absolutely no support for it, that the Jewish Underground begged the British and Americans who bombed the rail lines and the concentration camps and that, there were no bombs available or some excuses were given why ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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that couldn't be done. And how many lives could have been saved if, if some relatively simple measures had been taken. And that then of course then America invited all these Nazis, these Nazi scientists, Gunter(ph), what is it, Gunter von Braun(ph), that was the guy, to come to America and, and to work on the weapons programs here. And we've hidden, | mean, we still, we're discovering Nazis left and right still. It's pretty late now. So | think this, and of course the, the horror of not letting the Jews and the, they, they, the ones who left Hamburg | think or Bramen(ph) on the, the ship, St. Louis and they were refused entry here and had to go back to an, to Germany or taken to the gas chamber. So, this country has no, has not an unblemished record, far from it in many ways. And that is | think, true in Europe. |, |, | think there isn't, Denmark perhaps, Denmark really had a small number of Jews and they, the king as a leader, behaved nobly and its population followed. They, as a country, get a lot of credit. And, and |, | expect the, | accept the fact that we all make mistakes but what! cannot accept is that we don't acknowledge our mistakes.

| think one of the great blessings of this country is, is we, we allow, we encourage ourselves to examine our past and our policies and our history and we, there is a lot of self-criticism going on. And there is a lot of, we have a lot of controversy and we have a lot of people who have courage to examine the past and to look at the past and to say this is where we went wrong or this is where we didn't behave appropriately. And one of the things that has been so missing in Europe has been that honest self-examination. And, and you even know it, you go to the museum in Paris, the war museum and the, the, the kind of sickening chauvinism of the French ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton

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is just enough to, to appall anybody. And that is a, if you look at their museum, it's as if Charles de Gaulle(ph) won the war. There is absolutely nothing about French treachery. There's nothing about French cooperation with the Nazis. There's nothing about the police's happy cooperation, rounding of the Jews and betraying Jews, there is nothing of that in France. Only now are they coming to terms with it.

In Holland also, Holland is better. It's now beginning to examine its past but it's taken them so long. For the longest time Holland had this, whenever | talked about Holland not having been so, such a glorious country during the war, people said surprised, "Oh, | thought they were so noble." Cause Holland fostered that. We the noble Dutch, we resisted the Nazis. Well they didn't. Some did. Butno whole population can take credit for the enormous courage of a few and, and so, to me, one of the great poisonous, and, and | must admit | think that's where western Germany has, has done a relatively good job is they have a significant number of people who, who are aware of how vital it's been to examine their past. But overall, it's taken them a long time, too. And where in eastern Germany, this hasn't happened at all.

And where you see these, these fascist movements rising. You see it in France, you see it in Germany. It's, it's scary to me. And so, from my perspective that's something that we never must stop doing. We need to always reexamine our past.

We need to learn from history and we need to be critical of ourselves and we need to learn and | applaud this country that, that looks at itself and says, you know what, that stank. That was no good. Many of us, it takes a long while to change, but this is, this is a country that we had McCarthy, that fascist in the fifties, Joseph McCarthy. ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 96 [Date not labeled] Page 96 Eventually, he was brought down. Eventually, we had people of courage who, who brought him down even while this country was scared. And we need to make sure that we never give rise to other fascists like him who will happily destroy whole people because of this irrational fear of, then it was Communism, infiltration of the Red Menace, and it's just, it's just dangerous. And so allowing dissent and allowing disagreement and examining ourselves all the time, | think is what's gonna keep this country on a reasonably healthy path.

Q: And at least acceptance that terrible persecution has occurred and recognizing that that was a mistake.

A: Oh, oh you mean in its own history. Oh sure, | mean slavery and the Japanese.

Yes, | mean terrible, terrible things have happened in this country. Without question.

And, and but the critical, it wouldn't, that would be even worse if we didn't acknowledge our horrendous mistakes and try to make sure that those things don't happen again. And that doesn't mean that we're not gonna continue to have misery and racism because I'm not that optimistic about people to be very honest. I'm just not. But | think that's where our government needs to take strong stands about people's individual rights and privileges and responsibilities.

Q: Does it scare you at all when you see some of the recent terrorist bombings of say the Olympics and the airliner and so on that then civil liberties will be curbed to try to protect the population at large? Are there any possible innocent victims?

A: Yeah, that's such a interesting question. To be honest, | see no infringement of my rights if there're gonna be tracers in these fertilizer things. That, as far as I'm ontactrefieannedjustanmiang er hither btemelortabnattfiexaliaton Anita Frank 97 [Date not labeled] Page 97 concerned, is only sensible. And to put taps on phones of suspected terrorists, that doesn't, we can exaggerate those potential dangers. And that's something that really bothers me. You can look at everything and, and make a huge case out of it and say what if, if, if, yes and as a result you can immobilize people to do absolutely nothing. And so | think we need to be at all times careful that we, that we preserve our liberties but there's also something like the common good. And we must at all times weigh the common good against the protection of individual liberties. And | don't think it's just a one-way street. |, | have a firm commitment to the common good, also, and to my, in my opinion, and that's why with gun-control, | am so strongly for gun-control. | just, just that, this society is so violent and you see it, you see these 12 year old killing each other and killing others. It's just, it's insanity to, to scream about, from my perspective, about everybody's right to, to bear guns versus the, the community's rights to some, to a sense of safety. So again, a balance never, | see that generally is the answer to most of life's problems is to find a balance that takes into account both the common and individual rights.

Q: And that will be continued forever, all those discussions of balance.

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: Thank you, Anita, it was really fascinating to hear you talk. Really appreciate it.

A: Just shows what a blabbermouth | am.

Conclusion of interview.