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ADALBERT LALLIER April 24, 2008

Q: Very nice to see you.

A: My personal privilege.

Q: Tell me when you were born.

A: May the seventh, 1925.

Q: Oh, so soon pers --

A: I shall be 83 years old in two weeks.

Q: Right. And where were you born?

A: I was born in a little village by the name of Botos, B-o-t-o-s, Hungarian village. It means the place in which you trade, in Hungarian.

Q: Place in which you trade.

A: In which you trade, yeah.

Q: So where is that near?

A: That is presently in northern Serbia, just south of a town that the Hungarians call Szabadka.

Q: Is there another way to spell Botos?

A: No.

Q: No.

A: B-o-t-o-s, the Serbs spell it with a little hook on the S.

Q: I see.

A: But it means absolutely nothing.

Q: Right. And how big a town was it?

A: Oh, about 1500 people.

Q: So, really little.

A: We had a big -- we had a big estate, my family had a big estate and we were -- during the summer we were in Botos and my mom just -- she was highly pregnant and she developed her pains, and suddenly I was just popped out at the wrong time and the wrong place.

Q: [indecipherable]

A: Right. And -- but very seriously speaking, my mom had given birth, she was a very tiny lady.

My dad was six foot two, 180 pounds, my mom was never more than 95 pounds, and after she gave birth to my brother, who was three years older, she was told never again to conceive because she had great problems with my brother. And somehow I -- I happened, and -- I had that from my grandmother. She was told by everybody to abort, to abort, to abort, because she'd die in the process. And she said no, no, no, no, no. So I popped out, she survived, but she was so weak she never recovered. And eventually, five years later she died of galloping pneumonia, because she had no strength left. So from --

Q: Galloping pneumonia.

A: Yeah, galloping pneumonia. She was gone in six weeks because she had no defensive mechanism left.

Q: Oh --

A: And I was feeling guilty --

Q: -- so you were five years old.

A: Sorry?

Q: You were five years old when she di --

A: I was five years old, yeah, and I was feeling guilty for many years, because of my mother dying so soon and leaving me. The big tragedy in my life was that.

A: Did your father remarry?

Q: You see -- my father eventually remarried, about 25 years later. Looking, looking, and looking from av -- as I was growing up he was always looking, and eventually found a woman.

Of all of the races in the world, he found a German woman and got married to her in 1955. So from 1930 when my mom died, on the 14"" of May, he was not married.

Q: Yeah, so --

A: So he married in 1955.

Q: You were --

A: By that time he was a refugee, and having met that German in Austria, he decided to move to Germany.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Because she had the job and he was still looking for a job, because he took refuge, you know, because --

Q: Right.

A: Anyway, it was in Botos and we were living in Suboditsa in Szabadka and then we were living in Modbaskirk where my grandmother, my father's mother, had all kinds of properties.

But we originally come from Tameshwar. Tameshwar is Romania.

Q: Right.

A: And after --

Q: That was where your father was born.

A: That's right, where my father was born in a village, a now big estate next to Tameshwar called Bukavitz. We had a big, big horse spread. [indecipherable] raising horses for racing and raising horses for the guard of the emperor. At that time there was still an emperor before 1918.

In mid 1918 with the Treaty of Trianon, that part of Austria-Hungary, Hungary fell to Romania.

The second part fell to the so-called Yugoslavs, eventually it was lost. And the third part was retained by Hungary. And in 1941 when the Nazis attacked Yugoslavia, Hungary quickly recouped two of the three parts --

Q: That [indecipherable] right.

A: -- including the Barcika, borders within the Barcika. So it reverted back to Hungary.

Q: Right.

A: So most of my education except three years, I have in Hungaria. I had had no education in German whatsoever because we had nothing to do -- we were Hungarian bourgeoisie of Huguenot background.

Q: And your father's name was Cornell?

A: Cornelius, Cornell.

Q: Cornell.

A: Cornell Marie.

Q: Cornell Marie.

A: Yeah.

Q: And so he comes to --

A: And my grandfather's name --

Q: Yes?

A: -- was Jean Joseph.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Still following the French tradition.

Q: Right.

A: So my grandfather was still three-quarters French. My grandmother was Austrian-German.

She was Madame Fultilga. Constantine Fultilga. And my mother was Hungarian, as Hungarian as they come.

Q: And from Szeged.

A: That's right, from Szeged.

Q: From Szeged.

A: Yeah.

Q: Which was also small --

A: Oh, she was a tiny little lady, so I still -- I mean, I'm a grown-up male --

Q: Do you remember -- do you remember her as a --

A: Sorry?

Q: -- do you remember her as a child?

A: [remember my mom, but I remember her mainly very, very ill lying in bed, and there being pl -- less and less of her, except she had my face, she had dark eyes, dark hair and kind of -- I remember her nose becoming -- I didn't know what it meant, dying, I mean I was five years old.

Q: Right.

A: But she was lying there and just suddenly she was just there, she was dead. And I -- I remember about two or three weeks before she eventually died, she stood up and baked for me and my brother -- and there is a fruit which is like a big pear, but it's not pear, they call it quitten in German. It makes marvelous jam, but it is not liquid jam, it is [indecipherable] jam and you can cut it into slices, and it melts on your tongue.

Q: Really.

A: So she stood up for that, very painfully she was doing that, with the helper, Sophie, was our lady for all purposes. She had been with the family for two generations. It -- even at my time she already about 60 years old. She eventually died at about 92 or 93, she had always been in the family. And she and my mom made that quitten [indecipherable] they'd call it. And I grabbed it and sliced it up and brought it out to the street to my -- for my friends --

Q: Right.

A: -- because it was a delicacy and I remember my mom looking at me with -- very sad I understand, but I [indecipherable] I ha -- I made that for you. And I just kept on smiling. And I was called, as a child, naturally in Hungarian, the smiling country.

Q: The smiling country.

A: Mosoly orszag.

Q: Really?

A: Mosoly orszag, because before my mom died I had to smile just to cope with that problem of her illness, and after she died, my dad tells me I was smiling at everybody, hoping that somebody would touch me and be good to me.

Q: Oh.

A: And Mosoly orszag in Hungarian is a very poetic term. It doesn't exist in any other languages. Orszag means world, country.

Q: Yeah.

A: Mosoly means smiling.

Q: Smile --

A: Smiling [indecipherable]

Q: Smiling country.

A: And I still retain -- and my grandson, the second son of my son --

Q: Yes.

A: -- is exactly the same with the smiling.

Q: Exactly the same kind of -- were you close with your father?

A: I was very close to my dad. My dad was sportsman, a horseman. He taught me very early horsemanship and sportsmanship and [ hit it off --

Q: So he was really --

A: -- really well with my dad.

Q: You did.

A: And my brother was more independent. Do-Don't forget please that in the 1920's and 30's, fathers were absolute rulers in the family.

Q: Yeah.

A: As had been their fathers. And the father would count -- the mother's words were listened to, but they nev-never really amounted to much, except they had to be faithful to their -- to their husbands, right --

Q: To the husbands, yeah.

A: -- remain [indecipherable] right. And my father always thought he knew exactly what my brother and I would have to do. My father kept on telling me that I would have to become a doctor of jurisprudence, and then I would have to go to the Hungarian minister of external affairs to become a diplomat. And he was -- we had big places in which to live. My brother the room and the bathroom, I had my room and my bathroom. And my room was the diplomat en zimmer.

Q: Right.

A: That means the diplomat's room.

Q: Right.

A: My brother was the engineer's room, although my brother had no interest in engineering at all, so he and my dad were always fighting about. My brother was pigheaded, he was born in June, June 22(tm), and he said, I want to be a merchant, I want to be a merchant, and I don't want to be a -- my dad said, but in ou-our family there are no merchants. And my brother said, well, we'll see about that. And -- and I don't know if you're interested in that, but my poor brother managed school just barely, out of spite. He was very, very bright. Was brighter than I would ever hope to be. And he barely studied and somehow he made it, so with my father's position, who eventually recognized that my brother was not qualified to be in the gymnasium.

Gymnasium is the Hungarian term for university preparatory, secondary education, [speaks Hungarian here], you see. My brother was eventually put into the [indecipherable] Akademia, into the commercial academy, happy like a lark. Fell in love with his ma -- language teacher, did a no-no, was expelled from school, and promptly talked my father into getting him an apprenticeship in one of Austria's famous coffee peddling chains, Meiml, and becoming Meiml, M-e-i-m-l. Great coffee in Vienna. If you go to Vienna, go to a Meiml coffee shop, is to -- second to none. And they also specialize in special imports, fruit and vegetable imports from the tropics, so my brother's dream was suddenly fulfilled. He was an apprentice, high class evide -- Meiml is high class, high class apprentice at Meiml and said eventually I'm going to take over the store. And I recall by the time my brother was around, what four -- 17 - 18 years old -- he was born "22, so it must have been 1939 I think, right? Suddenly he kept on a pyramid great oranges, one at a time. And I was Baylor at home. Baylor is annelbare, okay? But baylor in Hungarian is much cuter, and annelbare sounds hard. Baylor is somebody that you know of. The white one.

Q: Right.

A: Baylor -- in Slavic Baylor means white collar, okay, so anyway -- and my pet name was Urchika. Urchika means the younger brother. The elder brother is called Bandiko. So when my brother came home --

Q: So who called you Urchika?

A: Sorry? Urchika --

Q: Urchika.

A: I was ur -- Urchika.

Q: Urchika.

A: That's right.

Q: And who called you that, your brother?

A: My -- everybody.

Q: Everybody.

A: The whole family, I was Urchika, and because it was a status symbol. I was the second son.

The second sons had no rights, they would inherit nothing. But they were cute [indecipherable] and the brother was Bandiko. Bandiko in Hungarian means the young [indecipherable] while he was growing up. At 15 - 16 he slowly became Bandi, the one expecting to inherit everything --

Q: Every --

A: -- and therefore carry on the names and the tradition, except he jumped off the tradition wagon, wanted to become a merchant, right?

Q: Right.

A: And he brought home, I have to say [indecipherable] means, here you are, Urchika, a great orange for you. Oh I loved my brother. And then he fell in love. Whatever I knew, I was -- he was 19, I was 16.

Q: 16.

A: Totally innocent, unlike the boys and the girls today, I was just a dreaming little boy, wanting to work [indecipherable]

Q: But he wasn't so innocent.

A: My brother was a bit more experienced. He got expelled from school because he fell in love with a -- there was a beautiful Hungarian teacher [indecipherable] she was teaching French and he was enchanted by her upper structure. And somewhere along the line, during the intermission, he [indecipherable] dared stick his hand up, and with the no-no.

Q: Yes.

A: Right?

Q: So he was kicked out?

A: But he eventually got [indecipherable] it was recognized as a juvenile prank, you see, and she kind of liked him, too. Anyway, he then fell in love with a Jewish girl. And that was something very serious. I remember her hair, it was so shiny, dark jet black and big, big, big, big eyes. And I think she was the love of his -- she would have been the love of his life. And that was in 1940, I remember, and suddenly I didn't get the oranges, she got the oranges

Q: She got the --

A: [indecipherable] and then --

Q: So tell m --

A: So in the -- th-the Germans, or you --

Q: Let's go back a little bit.

A: Yeah.

Q: Let's go back to your -- your father. You said you -- that you were close to your father.

A: My father -- my father was a confirmed monarchist, Austria Hungarian style. He had been to the military academy, the -- like the Sandhurst equivalent was in Vienna Neustadt.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And in Budapest, it was two stages, one year each, and he was second lieutenant in 19 -- early 1918. He fought in the first World War, a second lieutenant, and was hoping to have a career, because we had -- our family had had established solid linkages with the family, the royal family, with the imperial family because they were -- my family was in horse breeding, especially horses to be picked from which the grenadier guard horses would be picked --

Q: I see, I see.

A: -- for the guard of the Kaiser. And he was hoping to enter the -- the -- he was the only child of his grandmother, but the fifth child on my grandfather, because my grandfather, Lallier grandfather's first wife died --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- after giving birth to --

Q: Four --

A: -- four children.

Q: Right.

A: And then he married -- my grandfather married my father's mother, with whom sh -- sh -- he had only one child, my father.

Q: Right.

A: And since the other four children were two daughters and two sons, they'd already by tradition taken on their professional training. My father would have been the one to join the army, and become a soldier, right? But he had also finished university, in terms of a law degree equivalent, but he never got a law degree. So he was a second lieutenant and the one disturbing news I hear, which had great influence over him was that after Hungary capitulated and the Bela Kun regime took power, my father demilitarized, was still wearing the officer's uniform without the insignia, was accosted by a bunch of commies in the -- the central part of Budapest, was put up against the wall to be shot on the spot by the communists. And he tells me the League of Nations representative, [indecipherable] Pallavicini, from Italy originally, happened to have been driving through and happened to witness the almost killing of my dad and some other former officers, and saved him.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: So my father didn't get shot.

Q: Right.

A: And eventually the Bela Kun regime was -- was defeated by Horthy -- not the nicest of all nice in the world, but highly more -- much more acceptable to [indecipherable] traditionally than the commies ever would. My father became an avid communist hater. All his life he was a communist hater, and especially after the Soviets took power. And during the second World War, be Tito taking power. And the Romanians falling to communism. My father knew that we'd lose everything and we lost everything. We lost the possessions in wa -- in -- in Romania, we lost the possessions in Hungary, albeit late in 1940, except for a villa. And do you know Hungary at all? Lake Balaton?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Lake Balaton used to have great, great inland sea. We had a beautiful little country house right on the lake, and lost everything what is not in Serbia today. And we lost even one particular very i-important little domain down on the Adriatic Sea. We lost everything. And the most painful loss was evidently the horse breeding, because not only did we lose that, but with the Soviets advancing 1944, they destroyed the whole thing, it was just [indecipherable] in Romania, and stooped -- stole all the remaining horses.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: So we were left -- my grandmother was left only with two factories and one large estate, which we then lost to the Titoists.

Q: So [indecipherable]

A: So we are what we consider -- they would have called us higher bourgeoisie.

Q: Yeah, yeah.

A: In Hungarian terms.

Q: So you were quite well off.

A: We were very well off, yeah, but that's why -- that's why you see --

Q: Yeah, but where were the hor -- where were the horses? I mean, why wa --

A: They were at Tameshwar. Tameshwar --

Q: Tameshwar.

A: -- is Tymiswar --

Q: Right --

A: -- today.

Q: Right.

A: And di -- whe -- and my dad was born on the Salas, the village by the name of Bukavitz.

Q: Right.

A: And the whole estate, the major estate of the horses was there.

Q: Was that close enough to Botos so he would just --

A: Ah, no, no, no --

Q: It wasn't.

A: Oh, a -- about -- let's see, no, but that would be about four hours car drive.

Q: So what was he doing in Botos?

A: He -- after the war, th -- we had a problem.

Q: Ah no, dur -- bef-before.

A: You mean, after the first World War.

Q: Yes, after the first World War.

A: It's a very important question, that.

Q: Yes.

A: Hungary having disintegrated, and big parts of Hungary having been chopped off, people living in the chopped off areas had to make a choice of citizenship. My father never wanted to give Austrian hi -- Austro-Hungarian citizenship, but Austro-Hungary didn't exist any more. It was either Austria or Hungaria, or Romania, or -- they were still calling themselves the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slavines. I think only in 1929 did they became Yugoslavia. Never loving each other, even killing each other in -- in Belgrade Parliament --

Q: Yeah.

A: -- would you believe that? Anyway, so he was traveling back and forth to try to take care of the estates, but with the estates being in [indecipherable] because of expropriation rights, especially minorities who had visibly remained Austro-Hungarian in spirit. My father was one of

those traveling back and forth, who remained Austro-Hungarians committed to the crown that didn't exist, committed to the [indecipherable] in Budapest that didn't exist, but loving Horthy, because Horthy was claimed by the Hungarians to become the personal representative of the crown, the Hungarians still hoping that one of the sons of Oto, the last Kaiser, would eventually be invited back in. Which never happened, right?

Q: Right.

A: So moving from one place to another, he sometimes took jobs. He spoke his five or six local languages, was [indecipherable] useful. So he worked for awhile. For the Hungarians he worked in administration. For the Romanians he didn't work, he -- [whisper]

Q: He said what?

A: For the rom -- he'd never work for the Romanians.

Q: The Romanians, he wouldn't do that.

A: Gossip has it that if you want to go to a really corrupt country anywhere in Europe, you don't have to go further than Romania.

Q: I see.

A: Right? And he also worked for the Serbs in Dubocka where I was born --

Q: Right, right.

A: -- you see. And his last post there was, from what I remember, was -- you know kuntai, a -- in the United States you have the states and the states have some divisions.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: Of the main subdivisions, of te -- 10 - 15 - 20, we lived just on one or two towns. And back home did have a chief administrative [indecipherable] officer, which is called a landrat in Austria.

Q: Right.

A: There's no such title, but I would call him a -- a -- a legal officer, chief legal administrative officer of the whole region, containing up to 20 villages of one or two towns. Th-That was his last job.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: You see, and it qualified him as a civil servant, but he never got any promotion, even though he was -- my dad was, intellectually, a very self possessed person. Highly trained -- you know, it's in the blood after all generation [indecipherable] and some of these [indecipherable] for some time bloomed forth a very fast thinker, very energetic, great sportsman, great writer. He thought he was great in everything, including his hating the communists. But his hatred of communists didn't prevent us from losing everything. I've learned not to hate anything. But it's easy if you have nothing, how can you -- you either hate everything or you hate nothing.

Q: Did you grow up in Botos?

A: I -- no, I was wa -- I think I grew -- was in Botos three years, and then we also had a smaller place in a place where my mom died. Where did she die? Parage, P-a-r-a-g-e. Parage in Hungarian, I don't know what it means. I -- it's just a name on that tiny village. We had another place there and she was -- you know I -- wait now, I -- now I remember, actually. In Parage we had a house, several hectares of land and a -- a well 200 meters deep.

Q: That's a lot.

A: Now that's a lot of da -- depth, right? And how do I remember that? At me -- watermelon time, our male servant, Ilya was his name, he was a Slav, kept on lowering the watermelons 200 meters down in the rope to have them ice cold before bringing them up. And I remember that because my mom's illness was somehow linked with that deep well, but I've never found to what

extent. | remember the water was enormously cold. My grandmother sometime splashed my brother and I. She was in that time there too. And I [indecipherable] frigid. So maybe -- did she take her bath in ice cold water, which Ilya had just brought her in a some -- something like that, she developed galloping pneumonia, she was gone.

Q: Right.

A: She died in Parage, she was buried in Parage.

Q: I see, and swe --

A: Even though we had no linkages with Parage whatsoever except that little place, which we eventually lost.

Q: Right. And after Parage, then where?

A: After Parage we went to Brimuk, which is another Hungarian village in the Bauska. And from Brimuk he then -- he was transferred over, he went back to Tameshwar for two years, which was about "32 to "34, and then he went back to our remaining properties in [indecipherable]. That was in the Barnot. Barcika is in the middle, Barnot is to the east of that.

Q: Right.

A: [indecipherable] the Serbs call that Petrovgrad then, today they call it Zrenjanin, in which we had two factories. And those were, because of its -- this possession's gradual by the heir countries of parts of Hungary. We had lost everything in Romania and we had lost the thing over at the Adriatic, right? There still remained one house in Vienna, I remember that in the 19 district. And we remained within those two factories and those two factories were the last remnant because some -- some of the other possessions that we had had, because of the -- the -- the Great Depression. We lost part of that because of the Great Depression, including participation a particular [indecipherable] if I remember, in Tameshwar. I think I even have a

photo of something that looks like a [indecipherable] building. And so we were hanging onto those -- hanging onto those two factories, but --

Q: And what -- what -- what did those factories produce?

A: They were -- one produced textiles and the other one producing valves and -- what do you attach valves to? Cylinders.

Q: Cylinders.

A: Valves and cylinders.

Q: So there's a vast network of --

A: It was a nast vetwork

Q: -- [indecipherable] family --

A: -- of the capitalistic investment viable during the course of the Austro-Hungarian empire, because it was a solidly established 32 million dollar -- 32 million peoples" market. And with the disintegration of all that, the market potential had disappeared. The Serbs would never trade with the Hungarians. Through Romanians nobody would trade because they never pay. The Austrians had no money left, so the whole system gradually disintegrated.

Q: Right, right.

A: Like you're hanging on your good -- then you could declare bankruptcy. All I [indecipherable] personally, what I saved from that is knowing how to ride a horse, even had my own horse for awhile, and memories of what a great life it would have been if it hadn't been for that stupid Hitler.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Because we had -- we had -- you know, in choosing where to live, you recognize that people are people are people, and that people, being individualistic, have a right in their own

nationhood. And one who believes that [indecipherable] if they believe they're distinct enough and if they believe that they can maintain themselves without leeching off other countries, neighboring countries, then they rightly hold -- need a nationhood.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Right? But in my father's eyes, it was the empire or nothing.

Q: I see.

A: Right? He never had any chance of any promotions anywhere, right? And I think he left this whole area as a refugee because A, the commies would have gotten him, they'd have [indecipherable] right? He had a gran -- he had a mother who was a very distinguished lady of society, and she's -- he just couldn't st-stand the risk of Tito Hungarian communism getting hold of my grandmother.

Q: Right.

A: You know? So he escaped to Austria and --

Q: With her?

A: -- and [indecipherable] toward the end of the war, and then eventually [indecipherable] he met that German, fine looking. I think sh -- one -- she's one of the few good Germans [indecipherable] she -- met her, fell in love with her, had his mother with him all the time. Had enough means to establish himself. And because of his languages and the legal training, he eventually won a post with the German federal government. Now, I resented that very much.

Actually, if you want to know something really specific, my father was a -- a German speaking Austrian, speaking German like an Austrian, just like me. But he has already established credentials at a time when West Germany needed men who would go through these Denazification rituals -- I call them rituals on purpose because some people thought that it was

foolish because they let the big Nazis go and ritualize the little Nazis had never done anything to anybody. And my father was, for awhile, I think 12 months in the area of Bavaria, a Denazification judge.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Now was it that because he was known to become -- been an anti-communist all his life and by 1947 the Cold War had broken out? Or was it because of his special legal knowledge, or was it because of his languages?

Q: Right.

A: But one way or the other he was the -- he was the -- the [indecipherable] local for Denazification president and he was doing that for 11 months. And I -- I had difficulties with that because he was not a German. And difficulties with the notion of his living in Germany. Why wouldn't he have stayed in Austria? And he said to me -- we talked about it several times after I found him, you see, because don't forget I was prisoner of war for a year.

Q: Right.

A: British prisoner of war. So eventually I -- after they let me go in August 1946, so I was putting in a lot of to finally -- finally I discovered he was in [indecipherable] why do you have to go to Germany? And he said, because I love her. I said, don't you forget everything else? Don't you forget what has happened? He says, in Austria communists lived -- the communists were right in Vienna and I'm -- I was afraid. They almost killed me once, I wanted to be safe enough, and well, Germany was safe enough. So I visited him three times in the course of 30 years.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I had my personal reasons for not feeling home [indecipherable]. She was a great lady, Edith, but my father and I didn't -- you bu -- beautifully put -- said question, my father and I

were very close. Spiritual very close, mentally very sharp, very close, sportsmanlike very close.

And we were kind of principled. My brother was more a merchant [indecipherable] but live and let live. And we went -- we went apart because of that. And he also told me -- I told him, look, I've had enough of this [speaks Hungarian] in Hungarian. [Hungarian] means real pig [indecipherable] I'm going to go to Canada. Adalbert, you are the only one I have.

Q: Right.

A: Now it's you who is number one. I said, so what, because my broth -- well, your brother is dead. So I said, what do I do with that, I'm number one, we have nothing left. He says, oh yeah, you have pride left, you have family tradition left and you will do what I want you to do. So I said, what do you want me to do? You stay in Germany, and go to university in Germany and try to become a diplomat. Me? A diplomat in the German -- no. I said, Dad, no. I prefer anything to that. His eyes popped out and said [indecipherable] you want to emigrate? You lose your civilization if you go to America. I says, oh really? Six months later I was [indecipherable] and he never talked to me again for five years.

Q: Wow. We have to change the tape.

A: Very -- End of Tape One

Beginning Tape Two

Q: Let me go -- let me go back --

A: So I told you about my brother and h-he loved that Jewish girl.

Q: Yes.

A: And yeah, well, they forgot to mention. So the Germans, as I said, just to update that [indecipherable]

Q: Yes.

A: -- April 1941, the Nazis came in, took possession of the Barnot, gave Barcika and Barnya back to the Hungarians. The bridges were already built for the Hungarians, then we had to come in the Barnot, we were living in Montbachkirche, and we were all waiting and I was already anticipating going to Budapest to study, because I finished my -- was about finishing my high school, very well finishing my high school. And suddenly the bridges were torn off and the Germans said, we will remain occupiers of the Barnot for the time being. And that's how that [indecipherable] division was created out of this -- that peasant [indecipherable] w-we were called [indecipherable] all of a sudden. And within six months, the Jewish people disappeared.

Q: From Barnot?

A: Yeah, and from the world, yeah. And including the little raven, shiny haired beauty that my br-brother was so terribly in love. How can I say terribly in love, delightfully love in with. And upon inquiring, my father told me that he had learned from the Germans that they were picked up for their better safekeeping. Put up in some brick factories, usually. The main brick factory was in Poncho, which was Ponchoway in Hungarian, just off the -- off the Danube river, on the -- north of the Danube river, from whence they suddenly disappeared around September, October 1941. And we never heard of the [indecipherable] again. But we had not heard anything,

shooting or gassing or anything, they were just gone, you see. [indecipherable] was the first case of a massive enleve mon, in French. Enleve mon means the picking up en masse and they transport them, carting them away [indecipherable]. But not the Jews were first ones to have been -- how do I know that? My father had, wherever -- whenever he was in Bachkirche, he had a card round. Every Tuesday night they were playing cards, one of the four guys, four guys, everything. They were drinking, they were smoking, they were banging the table like the way men were supposed to do to [indecipherable]. One of them was a mathematics teacher by name of -- by nam-ame-ame -- by the name of Frankel, he was a Jewish guy. And he always managed winning. It made my father very angry. But they kept on playing for years. Now how do I know that? I was the one serving them the wine.

Q: I see, right. And he used to take it --

A: And then Frank -- Frank was a great math teacher, was my math teacher. He had the ge -- built me -- geometric models from potatoes. He brought in a potato, cut off it's last thi -- see, you see what an arc is? You see -- you see, you can measure that along -- he loved it. He in my mind was a very influential creator of curiosity.

Q: Right.

A: He was [indecipherable]

Q: So why don't you -- when you -- let's go back to when you were a kid.

A: Yeah.

Q: What did you like in school? You liked mathematics.

A: | like -- oh, I -- I loved every -- I'm a linguist by -- by -- by -- by -- by -- by [indecipherable] by-by -- by birth.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And I love mathematics. I'm a great chess player.

Q: Really?

A: I'm told I'm an A level chess player.

Q: Great.

A: [know Tam.

Q: Yeah.

A: But I never joined a chess club because I hated the smoking and drinking --

Q: Right.

A: -- you see. And I -- I was the Magill champion ping pong two times in a row, was Magill chess champion two times, it was an unusual combination.

Q: Right.

A: Ping pong and chess have nothing to do with each other. I love -- my father introduced me into -- you know how I survived the war? I knew how to take care of my body.

Q: You knew how to take care of your body?

A: Yes. You want to have a confession? Never engaged in any se -- any sexual relation until I was 22 and a half. Why?

Q: And you think that helped, why?

A: Why? Because so many guys in the war decimated, they were pulled back from the front, the first thing they did, half dead, pulled back from the front, went to the whorehouses. So they were always caught in between having [indecipherable] because the food was also terrible. And yet they lined themselves up. For miles they were lined up for a whorehouse of five or six or seven women, right? Horrendous experience. When I saw this at ma -- I won't have to do anything

with that. And then I met my -- my potential first wife, for whom I saved myself, and who had saved myself unknowing for me.

Q: Right.

A: And we got married to each other in Vienna, right, in 1948.

Q: 1948?

A: Totally innocent.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And yet loving each other, believing we just couldn't live without each other.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And she said -- I said, but what do we do now, after the wedding reception, she said, just let -- in Hungarian, lets nature take its course.

Q: That is sweet.

A: Had two babies with my wife, you know. Henrietta.

Q: And was she Hungarian?

A: She was German speaking.

Q: She was German speaking?

A: Yeah, that's right. Her grandmother was Hungarian.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: But her father was German Volksdeutsche, yeah. And I married her in Vienna. And -- and I must also say she was blonde, blue eyed, which is curious for me because when I was destined or selected to go on officer's training in the Waffen SS, there still was a requisite that to be a real Waffen SS officer you had to be blonde, blue eyed.

Q: Right.

A: And [indecipherable] 80, and all those things. And I was just the opposite of that, looking like a Gypsy amongst all those blondes. And I had to go to a special commission, a racial investigation commission. [indecipherable]. And they looked at me and said, you don't qualify, just the color of your hair, the color of your eyes. And th-the other said, but we need young man who knows ports and have been in the war [indecipherable] anything? So they checked my -- they checked my protruding brain, oh good brain capacity.

Q: I see.

A: Why would Adolf worry about good brain ca -- brain capacity [indecipherable] good, impressive brain capacity, fine bone structure. Too French, but with a bit of training, the bones will be okay. Fine muscle structure, but his outside looks have to be improved upon. So they passed me with the condition that within three or four years I'd have to marry a light blonde German.

Q: I see.

A: With whom I would have to procreate four children, watch this one, one of whom would be purely blonde, an improvement of the race. Another one would be half blonde, also an improvement, but two would remain hopeless, they said. Hopelessly non-German looking.

Q: [indecipherable] non-German looking, right.

A: And it was th -- several times in my life in those -- those terrible three years in which I was really feeling abused and angry, as I said, who are they to tell me what kind of woman I should marry? I mean it -- you know, this was really trespassing upon my personal is -- guess what? I was released from POW camp, made it to Vienna as fast as possible to go back to school, right, at the university because I'd had my gymnasium, right? And who do I see at the -- round street corner just marching away, a little blonde kid with her mother. And I look in the [indecipherable]

went around the corner, never had a [indecipherable]. Something compelled me to trace myself back [indecipherable] and that was that little blonde blue-eyed kid.

Q: Really?

A: My two children are blonde blue eyed.

Q: Blonde and blue eyed.

A: My looks have improved.

Q: Right, right.

A: But, by my voluntary choice, that's different.

Q: That's different. When you were raised, were you raised as a Catholic or Protestant?

A: I was raised by my grandmother going to Catholic church, but on Protestant principles. She said, we have to go to church, there is no Protestant church in the area, but we pray to the Protestant God [indecipherable]

Q: Was that confusing to you?

A: No.

Q: No.

A: No --

Q: You knew exactly what it meant?

A: -- no, to me -- to me -- you could -- what appealed to me, you could stand up tall and raise your eyes to the heavens and talk to your God, hoping to talk to -- directly by talk to. To me the pope was not essential.

Q: I see.

A: To me -- because I had to learn the little catechism, you know the catechism? Catechism was what the pope wanted us to believe, not letting us be free to choose what we wanted to believe.

Q: Right, right.

A: So [had no use for the catechism.

Q: So --

A: And between the two of us, I'm very critical of the 10 commandments, that they were -- the way they were spelled out.

Q: I see.

A: But we have a personal responsibility to God, but it also gives us the right and the [indecipherable] to ask, God, where are you?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Didn't talk to me. So --

Q: So, did you ti --

A: -- don't ask me questions about religion, I'm -- at the present time --

Q: But when you were raised as a kid --

A: Re -- organized religion is an organized attack by the ones who know how to use people, to brainwash people --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- for self profiteering purposes. It's a dismal use, dismal you -- it's not right.

Q: But you didn't have this --

A: And what was happening with Catholic clergy is just atrocious [indecipherable]

Q: But you didn't feel this as a kid.

A: No, as a -- as a kid I was -- I was happy to stand tall.

Q: Right.

A: Because my -- my grandmother was an individualist.

Q: So did you -- did your grandmother sort of take over --

A: She had -- yeah -- yeah --

Q: -- partly raising you after your mother passed?

A: -- and after my mom died, my grandmother was the ruling influence in our lives, but too much emphasis on discipline --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- too much emphasis on tradition, but great emphasis on respect for ladies.

Q: I see.

A: Obviously ladies --

Q: Was this your mother's mother, or your father's mother?

A: My father's.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Oh yeah, she was a lady of stature.

Q: Okay.

A: As my grandfather wouldn't have married her, you see.

Q: Right.

A: She says [indecipherable] Baylor, you have to make sure to learn how to distinguish between a lady and just an ordinary woman. Trouble is, in Vienna, the ladies were in the [indecipherable] district, the ordinary women were in the second district.

Q: See, that's the only way you --

A: And she said, eventually she said, there is nothing wrong learning how to -- going to the girls in the second district.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: I never did.

Q: Right. You never did --

A: But she would -- and my grandmother hired two professional educators. I was six years old, my brother was nine years old, that we had had for about seven years each. One of them was six foot something, big moustache, legs like that and she didn't like my jumpy attitude. I was a fast learner, I wanted to learn fast, to play games fast, and eventually it was so bad she couldn't corre -- she tied my legs to the chair [indecipherable] onto the chair, said you will now sit for an hour because I want you to sit for an hour and do exactly what I want you, I said, but I've already finished. That's not the is-issue. You have to follow me, you have to -- I am the one to educate you, to bring you up, therefore, you have to learn discipline. Oh, I hated her. And then -- but -- at night she said, never go out in the dark, because there's a guy waiting for you with the knife. She was terrified of the dark. Eventually my father let her go. The other woman was okay.

Q: So does this mean you --

A: The other woman was a loving girl, a loving woman by the name of Anna Fayis, also complete -- very Hungarian. She really made a Hungarian out of [indecipherable]. She was from -- she was also from Szeged, right. Blonde woman, she was an educator, very tough but very fair, and very decent. She didn't mistreat us. But she was almost like a mother substitute, except my father was loafing around, so she could kind of not handle my father, you see [indecipherable].

But she was a very strong influence and she survived the war and went back to Hungary and I corresponded with her until 1963, when she died.

Q: So did this --

A: And from her -- her, I was able to retrieve some of those photographs there.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Because she had somehow managed to save some of the things that the commies had taken out.

Q: Some of the photographs, right. So did this mean you didn't go to school?

A: Sorry?

Q: Thi -- thi -- did this mean you didn't go to school, that you were home --

A: No, no, no, I didn't -- no, I -- I did go --

Q: You went to school as well?

A: -- I greet -- did go to a high, high -- the Hungarian school was a very [indecipherable] school.

I have a matriculation --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- from a Hungarian secondary school, which was a good enough school to give me immediate admission to the university in Budapest --

Q: I see.

A: -- which was the most famous university, [indecipherable] university in Prague, and the Vienna University in Austria.

Q: Right.

A: And eventually, after I was released from prisoner of war, I went to Vienna with that certificate, I was admitted immediately to the --

Q: To that school, right.

A: -- university to study, guess what, law. I always told my father, I don't want to study law, I don't want to study law, I don't want to study diplomacy, I want to study [indecipherable] political science. He said, you will study law [indecipherable]. So eventually I took --

Q: So you stayed.

A: -- took up law and political science, but then I dropped law, I found law -- law is boring.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Anyway, I have a very good --

Q: But you liked st --

A: -- high school condition.

Q: -- but you liked studying as a kid.

A: Oh, I love -- I loved studying because, first of all, my brain was very flexible. I don't know whether it's that French stimulus or a Hungarian -- it's a -- some kind of a mix of the French and the Hungarian that keeps you jumping all the time. Everybody says, Lally, your metabolism is fantastic. You never sit back and do nothing. Absolutely right.

Q: Right.

A: Now, what I know is what nobody else knows. You know why I always keep on jumping?

When the Germans marched into Austria -- Austria was a leisurely people. On the whole most of them are good-willed people, they're a lot of fun, kind of like the French is and the -- the Italian.

So they went Nazi for awhile because they needed jobs and maybe because of Hitler and all that, but on the whole they are a more leisurely people than the ever -- the Germans would ever hope to be. The Germans quickly built [indecipherable] and mortars into the behinds of every one of us, right, to make us move like the Germans. I think they forgot to take one out. Keeps on making me jumpy. But I was a good student and a very -- I loved the Latin. At that time they still had six years of Latin, four years of Greek, and I loved the -- the -- the classicists. Greek mythology has great significant in my life. I really believe in Venus. | also believe in Pallas Athena because to me the ideal lady is a combination of Venus and Pallas Athena, you see.

Brain-wise and otherwise. And also loved games, so in order to be able to do everything within

the constraints of a disciplinary upbringing, I had to be fast in learning to get away from those ropes.

Q: To get it -- right, right.

A: And how to be good at sports, to have an [indecipherable] with my dad, that was kind of de- emphasizing studies, he really wanted to just play soccer, obviously, being a left wing and the -- in the high school soccer team, also playing soc -- ping pong and also playing chess. My father taught me how to play chess. After two years he stopped, he said, I can't stand it any more, you keep on winning all the time. Very [indecipherable]. So I was a fast learner and with the languages, you grew up with the Hungarian and with the Slavic, and with the Romanian and with the German and with the -- whatever French there had been in the family still [indecipherable] my -- my grandmother, father's mother always called an umbrella a parapree. A strange term in Austria, right? But that's the way it was, so I wer -- grew up with five languages and I still commanding -- have added to that English and some Russian because when I was at Columbia University I was taken up into a special program in which my capacities, like music capacities, will be brought to full bloom by [indecipherable] and they -- they were going to employ me by the Rand Corporation to become a -- some kind of a spy about eastern Europe, understandably so. The Americans want to pick the brain that can instantaneously prove useful. They knew, the Americans, about my forced induction in that, but th-they forgave me. And I have to tell you that

Q: Right, right --

A: -- that's a latter part of the story.

Q: -- you're right. So you --

A: 1 -- I loved studying. But back home the limits of studying was within the context of your socioeconomic structure. You needed to know how to understand that, but don't worry about things outside of that. It was not universal education. It was parochial [indecipherable] empire in U.S. education. The Kaiser is on the top and you always have to bow to them. Somewhere along the line I dropped that. Why do I have to bow to a Kaiser if I don't have to bow if I want talk to God? And Canada and Magill broadened my attitude to become a Universalist attitude, the essential foundation being peace among humans.

Q: Right.

A: Because all humans have red blood. It makes no sense at all to shed human lifes, or -- blood is equally red, why -- why -- why shed it? That's -- that's me today.

Q: Was there a lot of racism and anti-Semitism when --

A: Oh no -- no --

Q: -- when you grew up?

A: -- the -- the -- in the Hungarian society, the -- the austro -- the Austro-Hungarian empire during the reign of Franz Joseph the second promoted Jewish people to very visible posts in industry, even in banking [indecipherable] for exam -- we had the Austria branch of the [indecipherable]. And they even gave them barisees exceptionally with appropriate financial payments. If we wanted [indecipherable] graf, a count, you had to pay three times more than you'd had to pay. But there were quite a few very successful Jewish businessman who had become barons and were living -- and their ladies -- living a [indecipherable] lifestyles, with free entry to the [indecipherable] and to all the privileges, to parliament and all that. But amongst the masses, especially in the east, the most part there was there the [indecipherable] there was always greater anti-Semitism.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: The Hungarian peasantry was very anti-Semitic. That's an issue that hasn't been fully explored yet. The Jewish people, the Jewish potentates, I call them potentates in Hungary, right, they were not enemies of Hungarian ordinary peasants, because the peasants were living in a feudal system. The big enemies of Hungarian peasants were the Hungarian aristocrats. The Hungarian aristocrats were explicitly anti-Semitic, unlike the Viennese aristocracy.

Q: Yes --

A: You see, by then, any feudal system, remember, five, 600 years ago had its basic principles resting on the Jews killed Jesus, therefore we have to exterminate the Jews and we have to keep them in place. We have to let them prosper then we'll rob them blind. So a necessary evil, it has to be fully controlled. That is a feudal system. With the enlightenment period, this emphasis on the Jews killed Jesus, therefore we have to kill the Jews has disappeared [indecipherable] in particular in Italy, and of course, particularly amongst the more educated classes of the German speaking Protestants, right? But the Catholics were hanging onto that well until [indecipherable], it's the truth, you see, so you're raised in a situation like that, you see Frankel, the mathematic teacher playing a -- pleasurably yelling as much and drinking as much, and I-I knew he was Jewish, but he was member of a group, of an in-group of the higher bourgeoisie, and behaving like it too. Like the guys had all the rights, the guys have all the powers. They could misbehave, they can be drunk, right? Get into all kinds of mischief and yet they were excused because they are men, and presumed to be just.

Q: But was there a --

A: [indecipherable]

Q: -- was there a difference in class?

A: Sorry?

Q: So if your father would think about a different class of Jews --

A: Ah well, the -- the -- no, no, the -- the -- we never knew of the existence of just the ordinary poor Jewish people who were Orthodox.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: We were with the cultured Jewish people. Li -- never brought up the question in my mind, except many years after the second World War of how much discrimination there must have been between the Jewish people who had arrived --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- in the uppermost classes and the little Orthodox bearded ones still living in the villages in Poland and Hungary. I remember one instance in New York City, I'll tell you about that later on.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: A Mr. Rosenberg.

Q: Okay.

A: You must have heard that name Rosenberg, one of the greatest [indecipherable] in New York City ever, who was a German Jew, who was able to get away with special arrangements with the Nazis, with all of his paintings, set himself up in New York City, right? Had a glorious daughter, brought -- bringing her up on the -- on the west side, right?

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: Bringing her up in the -- spoke only -- he was Prussian German. As Prussian German as any Prussian German would want to be, brought up his daughter in America speaking the Prussian German accent. I met her when I was at Columbia University and living in International House, she was a frequent visitor because she had a guy there that she knew, was -- she was musically

inclined. His daughter fell in love with the creator of the song, the boots are for -- the boots are for --

Q: Marching, or [indecipherable]

A: -- stomping, or the boots are -- anyway, the guy who wrote that was a little Jewish guy [indecipherable] from Poland. Eventually brought the guy home to introduce the guy to his father as the potential fiance, he, the father, the German Jew from Prussia kicked him out saying, this rabble, my daughter will never ge -- never get married.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Brought up [indecipherable] but to answer your question, class-wise, if you're at a certain elite level, Jewish or not, made no difference at all, just like in England. There are in British parliament from Jewish lords, I know, successful bankers, successful businessmen who I know.

Q: So you were not raised in the situation -- your -- your --

A: No, I was not in a situation in which you would say a Jew is all good or bad. We didn't know about the poor Jews in Poland.

Q: But --

A: They were simply nonexistent. And the ones that are socially acceptable, they were just like everybody else.

Q: But when you're a early teen --

A: And you know what's an interesting thing?

Q: Yeah?

A: The Jewish people that I knew of a certain rank, they were Hungarian nationalists, or Austrian nationalists, or Serbian nationalists or Romanian nationalists, even though they were Jewish. But the Hungarian Jews was really Hungarian. What else could they be? So la --

Q: When you say they were nationalists --

A: Sorry?

Q: -- what do -- what do you -- what do you mean when they -- when you say they were nationalists --

A: Well, they -- they are --

Q: -- do you mean --

A: -- the -- the -- the -- Hor -- the -- Horthy's regime was very much in support of Hungarian Jews.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: You see? By the way, the interesting statistic is also Bela Kun was a Jewish Hungarian, but he had gone communist.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: So maybe he had gone communist because he thought that somebody had to do something liberational for the little Jewish people who were poor, barely living in the modern [indecipherable]. I know -- I never studied that, but th-the -- a very serious question arose in my mind some years ago, and I been looking at that. I have caught in Vienna many years ago when I was visiting a display of Austrian Jews who had per -- been persecuted by the Nazis, who had disappeared, who had been killed. As again, the Austrian Jews had been able to get away. 80 percent of the Austrian Jewish intelligentsia was allowed to get away. The poor Austrian Jews, literally almost all of them perished.

Q: Cause they couldn't leave.

A: [indecipherable] because they were not able to get away.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But at the same time, seems like it's some kind of an imbalance. How come Rosenberg was able to get away with everything, and tens of thousand of poorly Jews are killed?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: It just -- something is lacking there, som-some feeling of responsible -- responsibility is lacking.

Q: Did you feel a change once Hitler became chancellor in Germany in deg33? Did something change in Hungary?

A: Well, they were all [indecipherable] they were all -- except -- except for the ones who were caught as having been anti-Hitler, those who had been able to get away anyway, right, to the anti-Hitler areas. But the ones who stayed inside, mostly they were caught and executed. The others were solidly marching, e-even the Austrian. He gave us jobs, he is wa -- our own li-life and blood. He gave us hope, he is keeping the commies away and Cardinal Innitzer, who was the chief Cardinal of Austria during -- at the beginning of Hitler's era, I remember the main platz of Vienna -- the main platz, the main square of Vienna, the -- the German troops, including the Austrian divisions were lined up, waiting for the blessing of Innitzer, which bri -- Innitzer willingly and happily gave them, sending them to eastern front to save us from -- civilization from -- from the godless communists.

Q: But what --

A: And they were marching in line because the Catholic church officially never disapproved of Hitler.

Q: Mm-hm. But what did you feel like as a kid? What -- what you --

A: I was a kid when Hitler came to power --

Q: Right, you were --

A: -- it was 1933, I was eight years old --

Q: Right --

A: -- I didn't know anything about anything --

Q: Right, but when you became --

A: At 16 -- 16, my main preoccupation was to get as a student to Budapest and study in Budapest. And then in terms of my -- the original ideas, join the Hungarian external affairs department, become a Hungarian diplomat.

Q: Right, I'm -- I understand that, right.

A: And everything else I have no concern for. The Germans were far away, I --

Q: But aren't things ha -- aren't thing happening in -- in Hungary, even though the Germans have not --

A: Oh, the -- the --oh yes, the -- one the thing I remember, everybody in the late -- in the mid and late 30's, every man was suddenly wearing some kind of a uniform. And everybody wearing a uniform, marching together, were trying out yell everybody else. There were no weapons. There were just brutal encounters and -- between the uniformed communists, uniformed blackists, which was the Austrian National Traditional party, and the uniformed retro -- the socialists, but not as red as the communist redshirts, right?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: They were beating each other up, and then the Austrian Nazis, the brownshirts rounding them up. There was a melee in the streets virtually all the time, especially 1935 - deg36 - deg37, when Dollfuss was assassinated, right? Where the Nazis were -- become numerous enough to want to take power by force, right? Everybody is -- were out in the street yelling and qui -- and -- an-and beating each other up.

Q: And what's happening to you and your friends?

A: To?

Q: I mean -- to you and your friends.

A: To me and my friends --

Q: I -- I mean, I -- are -- is -- is there something --

A: -- well, I was then -- I was then in my -- Motsbachkiruk was like a little peaceful enclave.

You mustn't forg -- we mustn't forget that. A northern -- southern Hungary and northern Yugoslavia and westernmost Romania were an agricultural society. In an agricultural society you have three or four intelligentsia on the top, like the ones who run the district [indecipherable] education. You have then the professional groups, you had -- and then you have the merchants, and then you have the priests and then you have the peasants, right? And they're all kind of falling in step with the needs of an agricultural society. Rebirth in -- in March, April, planting the crops, gathering the crops, having the crops gathered in September, having a great feast, all of them drinking themselves to death and then stopping for the winter and waiting for the renewal on following March. International happenings like Hitler and communism, they're too far away to worry about, except the members of the intelligentsia and of the property class. My father was always worried about the communists taking away everything. He didn't worry about Hitler.

Q: But the --

A: Because Hitler's system was a capitalist system. State capitalist system.

Q: Mm-hm. So he didn't worry about it.

A: Right? Hitler would only dispossess people if they became anti-Hitlerian, but he will let German capitalists prosper, just look at the Krups and all the others, how rich they got.

Q: Mm-hm. Okay, let's change the tape.

End of Tape Two

Beginning Tape Three

Q: I think when we were stopping I was asking you about anti-Semitism in Hungary --

A: Yes.

Q: -- and whether it was class based. Do you recall some of the laws tha-that Hungary started promulgating against the Jews in "38 and deg39?

A: After -- no. No, hu -- no, under how -- hung -- under -- for a while -- well, I was very young then, but I was aspiring to go to -- to university in Budapest. I --

Q: No, I'm just asking if you remember --

A: -- Ido not recall --

Q: You don't recall.

A: -- I don't -- do not recall any quote unquote anti-Jewish laws before the Germans would gradually force Horth-Horthy into doing that. And that would have been 1943 - 1944.

Q: So you don't -- you don't recall the -- the laws that were restricting Jewish professions, or --

A: No, I don't recall that.

Q: Right.

A: I don't recall that.

Q: Okay.

A: Ido recall laws of marginalization in which Hungary insisted that every non-Hungarian name and person carrying that name should, just like in French [indecipherable] that, and adopt to the national language, the language of the nation.

Q: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

A: And in the course of that change their name to a Hungarian sounding name.

Q: Right. But you don't --

A: And many of the Jewish people were then taking on Jew -- Hungarian --

Q: Hungarian names.

A: -- sounding names.

Q: I see. Okay, but you don't recall [indecipherable]

A: So what did they do? Instead of calling Kirschbaum, they called themselves the Hungarian equivalent of Kirschbaum, you see?

Q: What did they say?

A: Kir-Kirschbaum is a cherry tree.

Q: I see.

A: Right? Would have been a typical name, you see.

Q: I see.

A: You see. But I don't -- not before -- I think it was only 1943 I think, that the Nylas party, the Hungarian Arrow Cross --

Q: Right, Arrow Cross party, right.

A: -- oh, what was the guy's name? I'1l remember the name in a minute. The Nylas party emerged and with the Nylas party emerging, underwriting Hitler's anti-Jewish policies, right?

Q: Right.

A: It could never been a Nazi party because Hungarians don't qualify as -- as ethnic Germans, right, right?

Q: But the Arrow Cross part -- right.

A: The Nylas party [indecipherable] the Nylas party, eventually they took power. Then the massive edicts against the Jewish population, leading to the wholesale -- wholesale

transportation to the camps in 1944, was very viciously started and conducted. And the Hungarian gendarmerie were a very, very important factor in rounding them up.

Q: Right. Were you reading the newspapers when you were growing up?

A: Yeah, I-I was reading newspapers, yeah.

Q: But not a lot.

A: Well -- well yeah, I was reading the sports pages a lot. I still -- I still remember the three Hungarian gold medal winners at the 1936 Olympics. Che --

Q: Really?

A: Oh yeah, the three of them. In swimming, and -- on the 100 meter swimming, in the discus throwing [indecipherable]. Oh, I was also taught by the 1928 Olympia medal -- gold medal winner in the saber, I was taught how to fence.

Q: Really?

A: Yeah. So [indecipherable]

Q: So in "36 you're only 11 years old?

A: Yeah, but they -- you start early.

Q: But you -- you're paying attention.

A: You start early, yeah.

Q: So did --

A: [remember -- I remember the names in sports. I remember some names in -- in politics, but Id -- I don't remember before 1939 - "40, I don't remember having read intensively international politics.

Q: Right.

A: Because as I told you, peasant society, we were well off. We had saved the two factories, we were giving jobs. My granny was contented. I was having my regular vacations in our house in [indecipherable] had seen that little Hungarian girl, kind of feeling more and more like a little guy growing up and I was watching my brother. It was a nice little life.

Q: Was a -- right, and it was a bit protected in some ways.

A: And [had the possibility of eventually landing in Budapest if I get a job --

Q: Right.

A: -- and acting like typical Hungarian [indecipherable] a man of the -- not saloons, mans of the - - the -- the ball scene.

Q: Right. Did you go to the movies?

A: I did go to the movies, and --

Q: Did you like the movies?

A: -- I -- well, the one movie I saw, I was about 11 years old [speaks Hungarian here]. The boys of [indecipherable] in Budapest, which was a tragic story of a Hungarian little girl from the village, typical of feudal society, desperately wanted to get away, getting away from this to the city, working in a textile factory, and being raped by the foreman. And I had no idea what that meant, I was 11 years old, but they showed the various scenes in which he was kind of being very crude and rude to her and I burst out crying. And then the little boys got together, having heard of that, and decided to beat up the bastard [indecipherable]

Q: The --

A: Beat up the man who did it to her.

Q: Uh-huh, who did it.

A: And he gave her after the fact, just a bar of soap, and she looked totally destroyed. And that movie | thought will shatter my heart. I felt so terrible about any man doing something like that to a little girl, in a setting which I was raised to believe again that little girls from the good families are untouchable until you are married to them. There's nothing wrong with the little girls in the second district, you see.

Q: Right.

A: And I broke out crying. My dad was in the movie, he pulled me out and said, boys don't cry about things like that. I didn't really understand what it was about, but -- and -- but then we -- I saw Tom Mix several times.

Q: Tom Mix --

A: You wouldn't know, you are too young.

Q: -- right. No, no, I do know Tom Mix. I do know.

A: Tom Mix was my big hero --

Q: Yes.

A: -- right, and I loved that big black hat that he was wearing, right, all black and white. So he was the ultimate proof that the good in the United States shall always prevail --

Q: Always prevail, right.

A: -- over the bad. And somehow I said, oh gee, I wish they had a Tom Mix right here, to teach that bastard a lesson, you see.

Q: Right.

A: And we saw -- we had American comics, which were eventually prohibited. And amongst the comics I liked Flash Gordon and Mandrake the Magician, you see. So there was that American freedom of spirit --

Q: Right, right.

A: -- beckoning, but not forceful enough for us to have wanted to say from our class, I have to drop everything and we'll go to America --

Q: [indecipherable] right.

A: -- be part -- part and parcel of that spirit.

Q: Did you see the 1936 Olympics on film on the news?

A: I saw the Olympics on film, oh yeah, oh boy, it wa -- was so [indecipherable]

Q: What did --

A: On film, yes, because there was no television --

Q: Right, right.

A: -- you see, and I -- I was [indecipherable] the three Hungarian [indecipherable] why don't I remember the German [indecipherable]? We had nothing to do with the Germans.

Q: But let me ask you something, when you watch this -- the -- the 1936 Olympics --

A: The film? I was very impressionable.

Q: What did you think of that?

A: I was -- I was overwhelmed by the notion that systems in the world, the American system -- I glorified Owens. All my friends loved Jesse Owens, and they all criticized Hitler for not personally pinning a special medal on Jesse Ow --

Q: Right, and what did you think?

A: -- because he -- they -- it was not a matter of righteousness, it was a matter of, there is something in America which should allow even a black man -- and the rumor had it that the blacks didn't have it easy in America in the 1920's - "30's.

Q: Right.

A: You should allow some specific black men to have the specialized training to make use of their natural talents. And that was kind of almost like a renaissance type of belief, you know.

Q: And did you ha --

A: If you have the talent, you're worthwhile being developed.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: All systems would have that. The East Germans made use of that premise too, but -- so we loved Jesse Owens. We had no feeling for the German athletes, but we necessarily rooted for the Hungarian. And would you believe it? A nation of 10 million had -- were third best amongst the gold medal winners?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: They were our national heroes.

Q: So what did -- what did you think of the fact that Hitler didn't pin the medal on Jesse Owens?

A: Oh, he didn't [indecipherable]. Hitler was to me an alien figure.

Q: He was an alien figure.

A: You know, I remember my dad was rooting like crazy, yelling like -- my dad was a very [indecipherable] civil gentleman, he -- he got carried away when the Hungarians were winning the gold medals. He said absolutely nothing when the Germans were winning their medals, and I think the Germans came first best there.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: First best, they had the largest number of medals, but [indecipherable]

Q: And what were you hearing about Hitler from your father and from other people?

A: Oh, th-the fi -- the film -- I think I saw the film a year later and for what I've seen through it, and it may influence my reasoning, it was one of the most creative films ever as a documentary,

bringing you all kinds of new nuances of moviemaking, including attempts at early [indecipherable] things like that. And the glorification scenes of the flags and all that. There's a lot of glorification of flags in the United States today, so maybe the Americans learned from her, right, how to do all those things.

Q: You're talking about Leni Riefen --

A: But the -- the politics of it -- the politics of it remain hidden in the background, you know why? Because Berlin was selected unanimously to become the site of the 1936 Olympics.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And all the democratic nations, having underwritten that, my family had no reason to question.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: It was 1936. Hitler had already shown his muscle. The Zargebeit have got back, the [indecipherable] have gotten back. He -- the Austrian [indecipherable] is already working on, right? And there were all kinds of Nazi things, plots all over the world, right, even United States [indecipherable] starting to show its ugly head, right? So we had all the major -- there were [indecipherable] countries approving of that. You would say, well, things are normal. Hitler seems to be accepted, it's a sporting event --

Q: So that --

A: -- maybe just like the one now in China, right?

Q: [indecipherable]

A: And if it's a sporting event, whatever excesses there may have been against the Jewish population, right, the Kristallnacht in 1934, that would have been a singular bad experience in

history, but it will never reoccur. The opinion was the world was at peace with Hitler because he hadn't yet --

Q: Kris-Kristallnacht --

A: -- pulled the rug under any of the other [indecipherable]

Q: -- right, Kristallnacht doesn't occur until 38.

A: It's in 1938, I was 11 years old.

Q: Right, right.

A: You see, and th-the movie, I remember the movie, it really glorified, I thought as a kid, the exceptional human contents of exceptionally gifted athletes, and kind of an ideal to which you would aspire.

Q: You're talking about Leni Rie --

A: It never dawned upon me, the Aryan thing, never dawned upon me.

Q: You're talking about Leni Riefenstahl's --

A: That's right --

Q: -- film about the Olympics.

A: That's right, that's right.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Now, if we had been told then, warned then, that is actually a Riefenstahl type of propaganda on behalf of Nazis --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- I'd have had, maybe, as a fairly creative thinking 11 year old, a second thought. I never discovered behind that -- beyond -- behind that, the intent.

Q: Right.

A: Now, was it an attempt to -- by Hitler, through Riefenstahl to blind everybody? Was she an instrument of Nazi political power manipulation? Well, she was then about -- about 25 -- 28 years old, or something like that. She could have fallen under the spell of Hitler and done exactly what Hitler wanted her to do without anybody else catching on. Now how do I rem -- how do I look at the Olympics these days?

Q: No, I really want to know what -- what it was like for you then?

A: What I would have done? If I had been --

Q: Beca -- beca -- no, I mean who -- who -- when you were 11 years old. You were thinking about sports --

A: No, but oh, if -- if -- if I had been --

Q: -- so it's not a political issue.

A: -- oh I'd -- I would have loved to have been 17 - 18.

Q: T -- so that you could have gone.

A: As good as I was and I would have loved to be part of the scene.

Q: Right, right.

A: Now, would I have loved that because I had dark hair and brown eyes, and winning the -- winning the [indecipherable] championship in world Ping Pong, not because I was dark haired, but because I would have been best at it.

Q: Right.

A: And that's exactly the point.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Wanting to be best at something has nothing to do with race or creed. You have the talent, develop it, but it doesn't make you better than anybody else.

Q: When the Germans --

A: Oh, I'd have loved to have been part of that movie, why not, glorifying sport.

Q: Of that movie.

A: You were in -- you're in -- you're -- as long as you're engaged in sport, right?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: You cannot -- you're not supposed to -- not engage in sex at the same time, right? Nor are you engaged in racism.

Q: Mm-hm. But clearly there was a racist element in that.

A: Oh, but surely it was, on hindsight.

Q: Yeah, right. But -- but that's not what you noticed then.

A: No, no, I didn't notice that, I was just carried away with the Hungarians having an incredible performance.

Q: But you saw something about Jesse Owens, you and your friends. You saw that -- that Hitler would not put on -- give him the medal, cause he was so angry that --

A: Well, at the -- the -- please don't forget, at the level of 11 year olds, the German yo-youth were already in the Hitler youth.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: We were boy scouts.

Q: Right.

A: In Hungary there were boy scouts, there were no Hitler youth. Actually, in Hungary there never were any Hitler youth. In the Banar there were Volksdeutsche Hitler youths equivalent, but that's a very -- way secondary, lower com -- con-consideration. So if you're a boy scout, you're a Universalist, you kind of look at the Hitler youth we knew, but there were no movies about the

Hitler youth. You" ll notice all placards, you received placards [indecipherable] say, well they are doing the same, they said they all look so blonde. Why do they all look so blonde? But they didn't go beyond that. We were Hungarians on the -- of all kinds of mixed. You have light blondes, dark blondes, you have Slavic looking types, you have Gypsy looking types, all kinds of [indecipherable]

Q: So in "38 when the -- when Hitler -- when there's the anschluss --

A: Took Austria.

Q: -- in Austria.

A: Yeah.

Q: Wh-What do you think?

A: It had no import on us --

Q: No import.

A: -- except my -- my grandmother was saying oh, now business will become a bit better.

Q: Will become better?

A: Yeah. Well, when Hitler invaded Austria, I [indecipherable] in the world invaded consciously, not liberated okay, it's a big difference.

Q: Ri-Right.

A: An German -- Austrian German would say liberated. [indecipherable] invaded Austria, occupied Austria --

Q: But there was no war.

A: -- our business was improving, because --

Q: But there was no war.

A: There was no war, right, but there was massive unemployment. And Austria had needed access to the German market --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- who were fully employed under the auspices of the state. Exports, subsidies, you name it, Hitler had that. Chalke had worked on the policies magnificently. All of a sudden Germans are getting money and gold from all over the place, but they weren't satisfied, right? And part of that over-spilled into Austria, part of that into the agricultural economies, because the agriculture economy needed machinery. In exchange for the machinery, they delivered to the Germans [indecipherable] for butter and whipping cream. I remember after the Germans came into Vienna, six weeks after there was no whipping cream left in Vienna, which was a major catastrophe, don't laugh at me. The Germans took it all. But they paid for in cash.

Q: So what happens to the Jews in Austria --

A: So business improved.

Q: Do you know th -- do you know about that?

A: The what?

Q: What -- what happened -- do you -- do you hear, as a ki -- you're what, 14 years old?

A: No, that was 1938? I was 13 years old.

Q: 13 years.

A: Almost 14, yeah.

Q: 14. Do you hear about what happens to the Jews when it -- when the Germans --

A: Oh no, there was -- well, in Austria -- I was not in Vienna itself in 1938, but there was a disquiet. Mr. Frank expressed -- sometimes he came with very sad face to his -- to card games with my dad.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And it lasted for about two years, and then it suddenly just gone, I've t -- "ve told you that.

Q: Right, he was disappearing.

A: But we heard from friend in Vienna that the Jewish people had disappeared in the course of June, July 1938, literally overnight. And all those ghastly scenes about the broomsticks, you know, having to clean the streets --

Q: Right.

A: -- you know, wash the roads [indecipherable]

Q: Right.

A: -- underneath, that those excesses had happened, but the observation there is that sa -- I remember some of the Austria monarchists saying quite critically, if the allies hadn't destroyed Austria-Hungary, the Jewish pogroms would never have happened.

Q: Well, how about --

A: -- because the Jewish population was at peace during the r-reign of Joseph -- Franz Joseph the second, was at peace with the community at large.

Q: But ha -- that's --

A: -- and were fully [indecipherable]

Q: -- how was that an --

A: -- that, but only at the level of the higher bourgeoisie. So they were in Hungary, even though less so, because the Hungarian aristocracy was very opposed to the Jewish rising influence in financial services especially, right. But with the disintegration of the empire, right, somebody was made the scapegoat, and Hitler succeeded, I think -- I'm just jumping here -- succeeded in

convincing the only Austrian working class person without a job that Hitler's proposition that the German Jews has benefited from the first World War equally applied in Austria.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Namely that there was Austrian Jewish person who had benefited from the first World War.

But that is absolute nonsense, because with Austria-Hungary being destroyed, everybody lost.

But Hitler and the Nazis in Austria were able to exploit that. And as you would expect, manipulating those uneducated brains into ou-outbur -- outbursts of hatred, led to the scenes of the Austrian mob forcing -- with the policemen just looking on, right, forcing the Jewish persons, including the highly intelligentsia Jewish person, including the very skilled doctor, and [indecipherable] to kneel on the streets and clean on the streets in Austria.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And then there were no hue and cry. By the time there was no hue and cry when the Jews suddenly disappeared because anti-Semitism, latent amongst the peoples, masses at large, was brought on very forcefully by Hitler's own presence.

Q: And is your father surprised at what happens?

A: My father was lucky. My father was -- he was, I think -- how should I answer that? Frank was a very good friend of his. | remember there was a Jewish dentist [indecipherable] Beshker, who was a very good friend of his. My father said previous, as I mentioned to you, that Hitler would be -- would be a good means to keep communism at bay and help us save our properties. But then with respect to the Jews, I think he was contented to know -- too contented to really believe that when the Jews of the Banar disappeared, that what the Germans had claiming, including the Volksdeutsche German representative, that they were being rounded up for their own safekeeping, that's where it stopped.

Q: And w-what if --

A: I think he fell into that trap, if we --

Q: Did you -- did you fall into it as well, given that he said that to you, that you thought, well --

A: Well, I -- Ib -- I -- I believe -- I -- I still feel aggrieved about what happened to that little Jewish girl that my brother was in love with. And I re -- I ca -- I saw my brother crying many, many, many times, and I never saw him smiling ever again. But I thought that was a singular case of a boy loving a girl, without referring to the girl being a Jewish girl. So --

Q: Mm-hm. And di -- so, did you talk with your broth --

A: So I was -- I was -- well, let's see now, this would have been 1941, in June 41 I was 16 years old. We had -- I had no Jewish guys actually at all in the Hungarian school, but we couldn't have had that because they had disappeared in the summer of 1941.

Q: Right. So did that --

A: No, let me just see --

Q: -- was that shocking to you, that these, all of these people just were -- disappeared? Or not?

A: Shocking? Well, absolu -- I'd have to go back in my memory cells.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: What -- what about that disturbed me -- well, also kind of made me feel neutral? I think I -- I must have kind of felt well, that's the way things are these days.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: If they say -- and we knew that the superior force had come in, if that is the way things are happening, that is part the way -- ay -- oh, you, I have the answer. I was much more concerned about the Germans, the Nazi Germans coming in and hanging hundreds of Serbs accused of

being communists, all over the main market squares in Montbachkirche, in Boch, in -- there are three major cities in the Banar. Montbachkirche, Notchkinken and Ponchua, right?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: They were hanging hundreds of Serbs, rounding up in the streets, without any cause whatsoever, and let them hang there for days, with placards saying this is how people will end their lives if they raise their fists, or whatever, do something against the occupational force of the Germans. I was so perturbed about that, visibly in front of our eyes, that the disappearance of the Jewish people was not really knowing where they're gone to.

Q: You didn't see it, you couldn't see it.

A: There was no rumors about their [indecipherable]

Q: Right.

A: There was no knowledge of concentration camp.

Q: There wasn't?

A: I think the much greater evil was the hanging of all these Serbs --

Q: I see.

A: -- because they were left hanging there.

Q: So there are no rumors about concentration camps in Germany?

A: There were nothing.

Q: Nothing?

A: Nothing at all. Nothing at all. Only noise -- [indecipherable] got to mean something very bad eventually, after the fact. Namely, the [indecipherable] kills.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: They were rounded up, as I mentioned to you already in Montbachkirche, Libriken and in Ponchua. So somehow they got over the [indecipherable] linked with the idea of -- that's from where they were eventually disappeared, and nobody knows where.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But there was no talk at all about concentration camps. Don't forget, the only concentration camp existing, the earliest one was Dachau 1936, and Dachau was not for Jewish people. The Jewish camps, I think, were being opened up -- Flossenbiirg 1939.

Q: Well, there are -- there are Jews who go, but those are not the first Jews --

A: That's right.

Q: -- in deg33.

A: That's right. So actually the -- the -- the -- the -- the -- regretfully of cour -- in the -- the extermination camps --

Q: Were much -- there later. Right, right.

A: -- were only 1941 - deg42 - 43.

Q: But the -- the -- the general concentration camp system, which is huge in Germany by the time "39 comes, and 1940 comes --

A: Yeah, but it was -- that was --

Q: Do you hear about that?

A: It was -- it -- it goes back to that but th-the -- the -- f-from what I've read since then including Charter's book on Hitler and all that, the -- the main intention of the early concentration camps is to make it a point to which to -- into -- which to enclose completely, the enemies of the state political. Communists, reactionaries, anti-Nazis, generally speaking. And eventually the

unterklass, namely the Gypsies, in that order, and only eventually the Jewish people, in camps of their own.

Q: But what do you hear w -- that's what you read later, but what do you --

A: That's right.

Q: -- hear when you're growing up, about those camps, anything?

A: No, I --

Q: You don't hear anything.

A: -- knew nothing about it at all.

Q: Nothing.

A: No difference. Absolutely nothing. Actually, I was -- I was drafted in 17 -- in -- in June -- June 1deg, 1942. I was in the Balkans, in the Prinz Eugen division all this time, until September 1944. In September 194 -- the Soviets broke through Romania into Serbia and their -- our division was massacred, being put up against the [indecipherable] 90 percent of the personnel we lost fighting the Soviets. In that time being in Yugoslavia, I knew nothing, I'd seen nothing about concentration camps. The first concentration camp I did see is on my way to the officers" school.

We were supposed to be -- this was early in January 1945 -- supposed to be in Nuremburg.

Nuremburg was bombed the hell out of on the 11" and 12" of January, so we were rerouted towards the end of January to Leitmeritz. And on the way to Leitmeritz in the Czech repu -- northwestern Czech Republic, we are -- there was only one road leading to Leitmeritz, and on the right hand side the road was Theresienstadt. And remember sitting in the lorries, about 10 - 20 of us in the lorry, and we were told at a certain moment on the road, now you must look to the left, you're not allowed to look to the right. And army being the army, we looked to the left, but some

of them, why don't we look to the left? Because there are Jewish people there, not supposed to -- you are not allowed to look at them.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I remember that, that was end of January, around 20" of January, 1945.

Q: deg45, mm-hm.

A: And that's when this notion of Jewish people, huh, concentration camp came up in the mind.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: Right? And then we talked to each other and some of them who had been in the Soviet Union on the eastern front for several years had come across concentration camp in eastern Europe, in Poland, right? And that day they interconnected as ah-ha, this must be a concentration camp.

Only eventually did we learn that it was Theresienstadt.

Q: Right.

A: But Theresienstadt was a, quote unquote, model concentration camp, to which the Red Cross dignitaries were invited, showing them off, even Jewish plays, Jewish theater, Jewish opera, Jewish musicians and things like that. Nobody talked of the [indecipherable] of the small fortress, which was the extermination part of Theresienstadt.

Q: And what about going to Auschwitz?

A: Sorry?

Q: Many people from Theresienstadt were sent to Auschwitz and gassed, right?

A: Oh -- oh yeah. Yeah.

Q: So what happens to you in 1939 when you find out now -- now you are 14 --

A: Yeah, I'm 14.

Q: No -- 14.

A: Yeah, 14. 1939, 14.

Q: You're 14.

A: Yeah.

Q: And the Germans attack Poland and begin setting up ghettos. Do you know anything --

A: Well, first of all, your -- maybe we shouldn't leave Austria. Don't forget, my dad was an Austrian Royalist Monarchist who was looking down at Hitler.

Q: Right. But --

A: But with the absorption of Austria --

Q: -- but he would say that --

A: Wait, wait.

Q: All right.

A: With the absorption of Austria into Germany --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- an impossible combination happened in the mind of one, who was an Austrian Royalist, namely, throughout 800 years of history, Austria had never been subjugated to Germany.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And a real Austro-Hungarian would never want any part of Germany, because that's the way history was. Either you're a German -- an Austrian Imperialist, or a German Imperialist, and you will never forget that Bismarck, upon being asked personally by the Kaiser representative in 1898 if he would concern that Austro-Hungary join Germany, the new Reich in an economic union, said Austro-Hungary will never qualify for a deve -- for an economic union because they are an underdeveloped, backward country. A real Austro-Hungarian would never forgive the Germans for that. And my father never did. At the same time he said, well, Hitler is Austrian.

Why don't you look at it from the point of view of Austria bringing Germany into the fold?

Ridiculous.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: How can a little country absorb a huge country and not grow ill over that, right? So ina certain sense my father's attitude as a Royalist, in my eyes, was compromised. I didn't know how to explain it then, but I see it today. But at the base of that was my father's hatred of Bolshevism, because don't forget, in the -- in the si -- the trigger for my dad actually was reawakening him to the threat of Bolshevism in the -- the civil war in Spain. There is official knowledge that they burned about 300 churches, the communists, three major cathedrals, violated at least 10,000 nuns and killed 5,000 priests and bishops. Now, we had no use for Catholicism, but as a Christian you would say, if communists can do that in that country, they're a threat for all of European civilization, because Spain was part and parcel of western civilization, for the better, worse, the everything, in spite of the horrible things they did in South America.

Q: We're going to have --

A: What?

Q: Yes, I'm sorry, we're going to stop.

A: Very, very important.

End of Tape Three

Beginning Tape Four

A: You know, you might be asking this question, how about the economics of Hitler? How many people got to support Hitler amongst the previous so-called high bourgeois circles? Because he was jobs, he was economics, he was foreign currency and he was international power. Most of them did.

Q: Y-You rolling? Okay.

A: So what place did greed play?

Q: I don't know, does -- does -- did it play a lot? Did you see it?

A: Well, I just tell you that, sure. From the Hitlerian policies of full employment, everybody who had suffered from [indecipherable] unemployment would benefit.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So the job creation prevailed over -- from the mental principles of morality. Never look beyond the day after tomorrow. Everybody was cashing in, especially on foreign exchange. Even the Jewish people --

Q: But now -- now --

A: -- early in the Hitler regime were cashing in on foreign exchange.

Q: Right.

A: And Hitler forbade them to exchange in foreign exchange dealings, right? Cause he wanted the so-called pure Germans to have full control over foreign exchange [indecipherable] supporting the national interest because the Jewish people would then take the foreign exchange and then deposit it abroad, right? So the first distinction, actually racial discrimination, actually [indecipherable] openly professed that against the Jews, was [indecipherable] recognition, that the money, foreign exchange, has to be kept at home, and those who sabotage that had to be

imprisoned or even hanged. So Kristallnacht was just a small example of what was really happening in the background, and that has never been researched. And eventually the Jewish people fell into step, you see? They had to give up their own disposition of foreign exchanges, they had to report like everybody else, but they had lost the trust, because some had been able to manage to deposit substantial dollar accounts, right? So the German Germans got mad, right, and went after them because they were Jews, not because they were capitalist financiers. So the greed -- and everyone was on the bandwagon. Land prices were going up, so you bought land prices cheap, reselling them at higher values. There were certain guarantees by the Hitler regime. If your direct recourse as a high ranking party member you could that -- get all the financial funding you wanted to get to -- to -- to do this [indecipherable] right? It paid there for bec -- to become a party member and move up high in the rank because you were a talented foreign exchange administrator. You got these medals of this and that and everything else. And with the greed, there was the greed for Jewish accumulations of currency, Jewish accumulations of -- of the fine arts especially, and the disappearance, in a very short period of time, period around -- when was that, 1930 -- 1940 - 1941, of all those very famous [indecipherable] in Berlin, Jewish art dealers, right, with the Germans sequestering all that, even though they let go guys like -- like Rosen-Rosenbaum -- Rosenthal, right? So with that greed, the greed became massive, plunder, all the [indecipherable] Jewish properties to start, then the properties of the Polish aristocracy, and then looking beyond that, the plundering of westernmost Russia. Great cause for invasion, the invasion wasn't about eradicating communism. The invasion was the Germans, the -- Hitler needed all the raw materials he could lay his hands on, and whatever world there was, including the -- including the wealth creation in the -- in the Ukraine under -- under top level agricultural soil. Plunder was at the base of it. Typical medieval warfare.

Q: So, in 19 --

A: And everybody jumped in the bandwagon. My grandmother made a profit [indecipherable] the extra jobs and the extra contracts, right? So the question of morality? Hitler didn't say he wanted all that because he was going to major -- wage a major war. Oh, by the way, have you noticed something interesting? That great courageous, purely racist superior German nation was only winning wars against little countries that were little and totally unarmed. So where is the big heroism? Killing all the you -- the Poles in six weeks? The ger -- the Yugoslavs in four weeks?

Hungarians, just walked over, Romania walked over. Big deal. The Frenchies were unprepared, right? And they were comparatively a much smaller country, right, smaller industrial capacity and that. So what about -- many of the Germans today still claim -- oh my God, I know from the trial, most of the Germans have -- Viel trial, most of the German opinion hasn't changed.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: We are a heroic nation, look at us tha -- to some of them, it's the -- some of the veteran -- we were fighting the whole world. No other nation could have been able to do it. How stupid. But nobody knew that in 1938.

Q: So if -- in -- between --

A: You know the domino effect? Hitler was the first practitioner of the domino effect --

Q: Domino effect.

A: -- the countries that had no problem [indecipherable] sorry, I may have gone off the tangent.

Q: Between 1939 and 1941, so ?39 the Germans attack, the Nazis attack Poland.

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: And then in 41 they attack the Soviet Union. What's happening to --

A: Well, the -- first of all Austria, Austria my f --

Q: Well, that's deg38.

A: -- my dad -- my dad learned how to live with that. He was a realist, but he sa -- quietly he remained an Austrian Imperial [indecipherable] of the Kaiser.

Q: But I'm asking about you, because --

A: And that was that.

Q: -- but -- but you --

A: And openly -- openly, like many others he said, we need Hitler because we can use him. Okay

Q: But what happens to you --

A: This applies 1940 just as much.

Q: -- but what happens to you between 1939 and 1941, before --

A: Same opinion, the same opinion --

Q: The same opinion as your father.

A: -- got even more prevalent because Hitler had brought law and order, he had kicked out the communists, or imprisoned the communists, or exterminated the communists except for the few who were getting away to the Soviet Union. And the bourge -- bourgeoisie, I think if I can generalize like that, from my own family's point of view, they were saying well, at least he has given us jobs, he has given us law and order and he has given us the perception that the commies have diminished their influence in central Europe, and that the possibility of a Spanish civil war reoccurring, destroying the aristocracy and the -- the bourgeoisie -- our bourgeoisie in central Europe has been -- has been put to -- brought to a halt.

Q: And did you want Germany to come into Hungary?

A: I was never a German watcher, my -- my dream was always to go to Budapest and play the first fiddle somewhere along the line in Hungarian foreign policy, which would have been a very difficult thing to do because the Hungarians hate the Romanians. The Hungarians hate the thought -- my God, the Hungarians hate the Gypsies, and many Hungarians hated the Jewish people.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So being a Hungarian diplomat, it may -- may not have been a wise choice at all, on hindsight.

Q: Right.

A: But that thought is what --

Q: But that's what you were thinking about.

A: -- was my ability to get away from the peasant way of life and don't forget I had two uncles in Budapest and they had very important government posts, so I'd be like in good hands in Budapest.

Q: Right.

A: And my father always said [speaks foreign language here] You have got to become a somebody, you've got to become a somebody because you are number one, right, after the war and I said -- well I've already mentioned that to you, see. And before the war, to become a number one [indecipherable] you had to go to Budapest, which was the capital city closest to [indecipherable]. And then it was hort -- Horthy was, for me, until 1944, when the [indecipherable] replaced him, a person that I could trust because he had [indecipherable] of Bela Kun, he had provided Hungary with enough economic benefits for association with the Germans

and the re-association with the Austrians. And he also kept the riffraff, Romanian riffraff and things like that kind of at bay. So I could live with the system.

Q: Mm-hm. But when -- when the Germans attack Russia in 1941, before you get into the Waffen SS --

A: Before that Yugoslavia comes in, don't forget please, April 1941.

Q: Yes, yes.

A: That changed everything. The real -- that -- the German attack on northern Yugoslavia and the marching through Romania demonstrated to me that the German power was overwhelming and it couldn't care less about the individualism and the natural character of the smaller nation.

They would just march in, right, occupy them and brutalize them. And with the first hanging of these dozens and dozens of Serbs, and letting them be hanging there on the market for days and days and days, demonstrate to me that there was something about the Germans that you had to be frightened of.

Q: So you become frightened?

A: But the only way -- I became in that sense anti-Nazi -- anti-German German.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But that was no different because most Austrians throughout the history were anti-German, right? But --

Q: But that wasn't true now.

A: -- the feeling that f -- the feeling strengthened to me. So I was looking at Budapest even more, saying that the Serbs had been defeated, they have become impotent, where else can I go? I'd -- I was just about to finish my high school education so I was hanging onto the dream of going to Budapest and shedding this Barcika and Barnard be -- and being in the core country of

marginalization. I would have been happy with that. My education was getting to it, and the influence of Anna Fayish, was a lady the second [indecipherable] that raised me, right, was strictly a -- Baylor, you go to Budapest, you'll be okay. And I thought going to Budapest I'd be able to kind of hide from all these things. And the first thing you know they drafted me.

Q: Well, let me ask you something. How -- how do you accommodate for both thinking that when the Nazis come in --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- they do things to individuals --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- that your -- you're no longer safe as an individual any more.

A: Not any more.

Q: And -- and the world in which you want to live by then --

A: You see, but don't -- don't forget, at that time being an individual still meant something in -- in -- in -- in soci -- societal layers in which you could claim to have some residual rights, if you were V.I.P., cooperating with the Germans. You were guaranteed as long as you cooperated. If you were somebody highly critical of the Germans, or [indecipherable] to the Serbs, they pick you up and shoot you. So -- and there was no in between. You were either there or here. To be in the middle and have no opinion at all would be perhaps true of the peasants who were working.

If you were in the bourgeoisie, one way or the other you were visible, right? You were out in the open and you necessarily were expected to wield an opinion. Now, the opinion couldn't be like -- I have -- I have not seen i-in the Barnard where I was living then, any Hungarian leader marching in the street and telling the Germans it is wrong for you to hang all the Serbs. They were keeping their mouth shut. I have never seen a Protestant or a Catholic preacher, priest or

bishop, and there were several bishops in a large area, going out and telling German [indecipherable] German, you mustn't do that, it's inhuman. So they were hold their mouth shut as far as possible if they had no dependents and linkages with the Germans.

Q: So --

A: But the ones in industry, the ones who were delivering wheat, the ones who were delivering the wines to the Germans, they necessarily were okay under economic advantage. And you know, in circumstances like that, unless you have economic survival, you have no survival. Now, this is a horrendous statement to make. If the economic survival depends on your -- is the outcome of your unwillingness to pinpoint the evil, and come out and say it is wrong. Cause if you had done that, they shoot you.

Q: So there was not --

A: So it was absolute power. I was faced for the first time in my life with this. I didn't know the concept. I know now the concept of what is absolute power. I'm not saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's one of the aberrations. But, I was faced with absolute power, and seeling -- seeing all those dead ones, the disappearance of the Jewish people, the quiet and furtive disappearance was a -- o-of lesser significance. Not because they were Jewish people, but because it was invisible, if right in front of your nose, what horrendous thing the Germans could do. At the same time they were all marching. I remember the black uniforms in -- in Montbachkirche, the t -- main town hall was a great old traditional building, Austrian style.

Beautiful all kind of statues and beautiful columns and that -- and they were -- the main gate was about 10 feet wide and there was a German black uniform left and right, beautiful blonde, and a - - they were handing -- selling [indecipherable] white -- white whatever you call it, a piece of the leather strips of that --

Q: [indecipherable] wait th -- one -- one second, one second.

A: Absolute power.

Q: What -- can you hold?

A: Okay. Sorry.

Q: Okay.

A: They looked as an example of absolute power in practice. You were terrified just looking at that.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And then some b -- would be partisan Serbs killed one of them. In return Germans rounded up 200 and hanged them on the following day. Just picking them up in the street of Montbachkirche.

Hang them up on the main square. And then you're a 17 year old kid, or a 16 year old kid, you say well, what is happening? I know there was one moment in which my brother and I, with all this mixing of things, we put on -- we -- I was able to obtain a little French flag, and I put the French flag on my lapel because I wasn't a German, I wasn't really a Hungarian in Hungary, I was a Hungarian living in the Barnard at that time. I certainly wasn't a Serb, I don't want to look as a Romanian, which I possibly do. I wanted to say I'm special, I'm French. Trouble is, the French had already been defeated, so it didn't really mean much.

Q: Right, right.

A: But it was my brother's and I kind of demonstration of something that we're, hey, we're a bit different, right? We are neither this, nor this, nor that. And certainly not German.

Q: And what did your brother think of all this that was going on?

A: Oh, he was so happy in the store, the -- because in terms of purchasing power, the -- I remember the [indecipherable] store had greater and greater difficulties getting oranges, and

getting all the select merchandise because once th-the Germans came in, all these so-called necessities for the bourgeoisie were disappearing, and ration cards were -- ensued, right? So my brother's concern was how do I help keep a store afloat that has become the meaning in my life?

And how do I get oranges to my lady friend -- lady friend in the old traditional sense, right?

Maybe touching, maybe [indecipherable] but nothing more than that [indecipherable] the girl that I love, where oranges cannot be any more obtained because of the German embargo on everything.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: You see? So it was looking -- it was looking very miserable, and I told you I had seen him cry quite a few times after she disappeared --

Q: Would you -- would you have called yourself apolitical at that time, in a way?

A: I was -- well, if apolitical by definition means you have no interest in politics, no.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I was surrounded too much by the first indications of absolute terror, not to take time out and think about the consequences. But having nowhere to turn, having nowhere to go, in that desperate situation I was looking more and more at Budapest as my safe haven, sort of imagining that Hitler would never do it to Horthy. And two years later he did. And I remember that the Germans established a local police by the name of some kind of a national guard populated or -- or peopled by Volksdeutsche and the chief of that was a -- a lawyer trained in Dubocka, in the adjacent province, a Dr. Wright, who had gotten his PhD [indecipherable] in German, in Nazi Germany became -- came back down -- if you look at the typical Nazi, what do you see? A huge chin, a small forehead, a big belly, strong legs, eyes bulging forward like that, and cruelty in the face. He declared himself general of the police, right. He came to our home in March or April

1942 and said, Colonel, if you try -- I've gone on record with that, even in German court -- Colonel, if you try to hide your brother -- your son -- your two sons, you will be declared magaroni. Your sons, don't try to get them over to Hungary, we" ll hide -- we'll find them, we" ll put them up against the wall, we'll shoot them. And made my father shut up. And our name got onto the list. And I'm often -- I've often wondered, I still wonder, if I had been the father, being told that by a brutal looking Volksdeutsche nobody whose son is a general of the police, what would I have done?

Q: So what did he do?

A: He did nothing. He lived through seeing our names put on, then he talked to us, he said, you know, the time has come to let you know that communism has become a threat. Look at all these partisans killing all these Germans. You have an obligation going back to the empire, to keep the [indecipherable]. And that was that.

Q: So that meant you had to join --

A: He gave up on us.

Q: Uh-huh. So that, were you then conscripted?

A: He gave up on us, yeah. I [indecipherable] very often, and I've often wondered -- and my brother said, absolutely I will not go, and my father said look, if you don't want the whole catastrophe of the whole family, because Wright was a -- oh Wright was, by the way, c-caught by the partisans early in 1945.

Q: Who was --

A: Irwin Wright, Dr. Wright.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: The con -- so-called -- self declaimed general [indecipherable] police [indecipherable] were caught and unceremoniously hanged for repeated brutality and -- and crimes against humankind.

He personally was involved in many tortures of presumed partisan leaders. I remember those stories kind of, kind of. He deserved what he was getting, but it was Wright who really caused [indecipherable] my brother's eventual dying.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: You see. And -- but again, I -- I'm -- I -- I'm -- I'm against people ca -- getting some criminal types and hanging them on the tree, but I think the partisans were absolutely right to hang him.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Pll go on official record, I told the German judges that. See, he was -- he was -- he was -- he was -- he was a criminal, not just --

Q: So why did -- why did this guy -- oh, there he is. Okay. [tape break] I'Il check it out.

A: Yeah.

Q: Okay. All right, we're ready. You [indecipherable]

A: So, just to let you know that even though I've always suffered with this -- this notion that since I don't have a PhD in philosophy, I'll never be first class.

Q: Right.

A: But at least I'm linked to somebody who is.

Q: Yes, right.

A: Okay, we go --

Q: Tell me, why did this guy Wright go to your father to say that he better -- that you two -- that you two boys would be put on the list.

A: Because my father was a visible member of the community, equally at home in the Hungarians speaking and the German speaking, having a mother who was Austrian German and therefore, by the Hitlerian laws had given offspring to a half German, who had given offspring to quarter Germans, because Austria had been absorbed into Germany, had become Germanized, and in terms of the racial profile you had to go back seven generations to prove that you were Aryan, right?

Q: Right.

A: We were qualified, classified as half Germans.

Q: But it sounds fe --

A: Wait, wait, wait --

Q: Yes, okay.

A: -- as half Germans. And since they needed everybody to get the 27,000 Volksdeutsche recruit

Q: Right.

A: -- to fill in the numbers of our division, they had to reach out for persons well beyond the pure Germanism of the really simple Volksdeutsche, who were a hundred percent Germanic, right?

And since my father was a visible member of the community, going to him, to gave an example - - he [indecipherable] Wright was g -- was given example to others --

Q: I see.

A: -- who were like of mixed blood, to make sure. And depending on how my father would behave, they would then also fall into step.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So my father, as I already mentioned to you, proved that [indecipherable] morally, he said you're obliged to, because Austria-Hungary was always there to defend western civilization from the [indecipherable] from Asia, right, so the war ca -- secondly the church approves of tha-that, the church demands that, God demands that, and thirdly I'll tell you, there is no choice, period.

And there was no way out. There was nowhere to go.

Q: Right. So do you receive a notice to come?

A: Ah yes, yes, it was a notice, yeah. After Wright came I think the notice came about a week after, saying that the notice was a formal notice of induction and the notice of you shall present yourself -- my brother was, I think, on the first of May and I was on the first of June.

Q: And were you in the same division? The Prince Eugen division?

A: Sorry?

Q: Were you in the same division?

A: Yeah, in the same division, yeah. It was strictly that the whole Barnard was used for the setting up of the Prince Eugen division, yeah.

Q: Right.

A: And the Prince Eugen has very special significance in Austria's history, because it was he who beat the chur -- the Turks, and expanded the Austrian bi -- b-boundaries to include the -- that whole area into Austria-Hungary.

Q: Right.

A: Right -- right around the Danube river, beyond where the Romanian boundary is today.

Q: So your -- your brother and yourself both get letters --

A: That's right.

Q: -- at the same time.

A: Everybody, everybody --

Q: Everybody gets letters.

A: -- everybody -- I think actually letters were sent out to those who had better schooling, because we, the graduates of -- even though I was in Hungarian school -- so it had no business in using me at all, because it was the induction of the Volksdeutsche. The Volksdeutsche were all linked with the Volksdeutsche shul -- schools that were established after the Germans came in, and they were established with the Germans in using the -- the Nazi oriented leadership of the Volksdeutsche then, to set up German schools following the right German examples. And those who were in that school when [indecipherable] German speaking. I was in Hungarian school and they drafted me even though I was -- and my brother had already finished high school.

Q: But you were considered Volksdeutsche in some way.

A: Yeah, ah -- th-they were -- in their declaration they had to refer to me as Volksdeutsche as they would have had no right whatsoever to draft me.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: So Iam an honorary Volksdeutsche, declared so by the Hitler regime. Big deal.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Spoke some German, but the German was not -- I can show you all my photos, all my photos the back wall -- on th-the back page they have Hungarian language.

Q: But did you spea --

A: [knew German, but I was by now means -- I was very far from being -- and I didn't understand German German. They are completely different [indecipherable]

Q: Uh-huh.

A: That's why I was demoted [indecipherable]

Q: And where were -- where were you and your brother sent at first?

A: My brother went first. He was already in the -- he was -- he was forced to go to the artillery regiment. I re -- I remember him, remembering visiting when he was in [indecipherable], he was about 80 kilometers above where I was and I remember seeing the -- the barracks where he was.

He was inside the barracks, holding on desperately to the steel partitions, looking like the guy, I've got to get away, I've got to get away. And I was cry. And I went with my father, my father said nothing, just stony face, but I saw in my brother's eyes that he was so terribly unhappy. He ran away three times, and he took phone calls from my dad every time and the third time they almost shot him, but then, upon repeated phone calls, they decided they would demote him from the signals into a punishment battalion. And he stayed with that until he died.

Q: And what is -- what is a punishment battalion?

A: Punish battalion is a battalion which was set up specifically for those who don't -- don't perform military duty according to regulations. Those who have been captured trying to escape, or known to have been wanting to escape, or those who have been escaped and then captured.

And it's -- the survival rate was then maybe 10 percent. And I remember my brother's face, I remember my brother's face, I think he came there when I was visiting also in the -- that was a kind of second -- around the 25" of December 1944, when I was being brought up with a couple of other officer candidates from these front lines in the Balkans through a little village on the Danube river, where he was stationed with his battalion. And I had found out where he was and we saw ourselves maybe for a half an hour and we talked about what can we do, where can we go. And he told me look, you'll be behind the front, you better go because it'Il save your life.

And he said, as far as I'm concerned there's nothing I can do because there's nowhere that I can run to.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I left him there, I -- feeling terribly guilty not -- not to have stayed longer, but we couldn't stay together longer.

Q: Was he able --

A: Not to stay longer, to -- to find a way out.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: My main reason for going to officer school was it was safely behind the lines [indecipherable] and the chances of survival were 90 percent. I -- I simply had to survive.

Q: And you had a choice of what kind of regiment you were in?

A: Well, you can -- no, if they -- they say that you are picked to go, you have to go, but there are many reasons why they would go. Some would fall in the river, say oh thank you very much, I want to die for Hitler, I want to be an officer for Hitler. Others will just stand there, you know, say nothing. Command is a [indecipherable] command, and their system was a command system.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: I said -- I said nothing, I just said yes. I was actually surprised because I wasn't fitting in and I'd been demoted once for not understanding the German well enough, and yet somehow they, I don't know --

Q: So how do you get demoted fr --

A: -- oh, you know why they picked me? I had -- I was one of the few remaining who had high school graduation, and by the law of induction into officer training, you were still expect to have had at least high school.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I had happened to have had high school, so they put me into, and there were seven or eight of us picked.

Q: You --

A: Seven or eight out of 42 graduates, all of whom had perished. All the others had already died.

Q: What was training like?

A: Training?

Q: Mm-hm. Was there any?

A: I mentioned to you my love of sports. And I found myself in a nation, in UNRRA [indecipherable] bossed around by those eight foot tall Germans with shoulders like that, waistlines like that, legs like that, being able to run a hundred yards in five seconds or at least so they claim. And I said to myself -- oh, by the way, by that time I'd already been called Gypsy, Balkanaiser, pork eater, bacon eater, you name it [indecipherable] just because of my looks.

There's something -- and they told me you've got to be able to prove something, that you're equal and competitive, at least in something. So I took them on with their marching 10 kilometers in 40 minutes, with fully -- things loaded, I never lagged behind. In no time -- "m very [indecipherable] my hands [indecipherable] I was -- in no time I was very, very good at the Morse code.

Q: Oh.

A: Oh, well, I was in signals.

Q: Right.

A: Wireless. You see, there were signals wire, telephone, civil Morse code. Oh, I outdid the Volk Germans. There was one Volk German guy by the name of -- what was the name? I should know [indecipherable]. Anyway, one, the real Volksdeutsche, who terribly wants to be like a

Reichsdeutsche. His hair was [indecipherable] like that, he was reddish blonde, blue eyes, big nose sticking out, big shoulders, and [indecipherable] Nicholas his name was. And he always said, Lally, you're a magaroni, you just can't do -- you just can't to it. And I looked and I said, you know Nicholas, I proved to you that as a magaroni I can do it. So ou -- I beat him every time in our speedwriting, in the -- in the signals. That was fun. And I beat him every time in long marches, and I beat him every place else. Here was my personal challenge to prove to me that even though in their eyes I was only a Gypsy kind of a looking guy, deep inside myself I was a man, I was a human being, you know? And they were all smoking [indecipherable] and they were all womanizing. Our jackets, the military jackets had a small pocket on the inside, inside of the left. Condoms.

Q: Right.

A: [have no idea where they bought the condom, but -- so the -- the commanding sergeant comes and says, this weekend you will be allowed to go out. There are two of them in there, make sure that you use them because I" Il -- I'll check on you if you did or not because for the fuehrer you've got to procreate children. No questions about who the girl will be, no question if they would be willing or not, no question married or not, you've got to do it. And I had a -- gained a good friend, Walter Meyhallowicz, whose grandfather had been Serb, but who had been Germanized because of two German mothers marrying into the clan. He was a tall guy, black, black, black, like a Gypsy looking. So we kind of stuck together because we were -- both looked [indecipherable] right? So I looked at -- Walter said, what are we going to do with that, he says.

He was two years older, I don't know if he had experience or not. So he said, we'll find us a new End of Tape Four

Beginning Tape Five

A: So the sports kept me -- helped me keep myself in good shape, and I was also somehow, even though I'd been raised very pr -- in a very protective environment -- we had a maid, we had a junior maid, we had the [indecipherable], the Jack of all trades man. We were not allowed to do physical labor. I was never allowed to go to the kitchen because [indecipherable] all that stuff, right? I didn't know -- I didn't learn how to fend for myself.

Q: You didn't?

A: No, I hadn't. But then, in the army your rations aren't really adequate if you want to keep your body in good shape. So somewhere along the line observing others, and there was an older Volksdeutsche, a ba -- farmer, who really knew how to find potatoes and things like that, so I was learning very, very quickly. And on the front I always knew how to have a few extra morsels of bread in my pocket, like to chew at. And I always knew how to have extra newspapers to wrap around my feet, because the German boots were totally pervious to cold [indecipherable] you had frozen feet in no time. But we discovered if you wrap them in paper on top at -- on top of the sock, your chances were 90 percent better of not getting your toes freeze -- fro-frozen off.

Q: Right.

A: And with that you somehow learned how to handle life, even in the most difficult circumstances. And again, not smoking was a very great contributor to being able to develop some kind of resistance against the terrible cold in Yugoslavia, and then also on the southeastern front; 40 below zero in that, you know? And it -- I had this extra energy also because of the [indecipherable] rations. To go through the darkest times and always kind of wanting to show that even though you guys think I'm an untermen -- in my eyes I'm not an untermenschen. I didn't want to prove that I was a Nazi. I would never want to be a Nazi. I didn't look like one,

right? Or behave like one. But I wanted to prove I'm a human being, I shouldn't be looked down at.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And a very as -- na -- strong motivating factor was that we were compelled to read the "Mein Kampf". We were compelled to read the what, the f -- the mi -- m-me -- me -- mama -- "The Mythos of the 20" Century," by Rosenberg, right? And we were compelled to enjoy indoctrination every day, all with the same thing, heil Hitler this, heil Hitler that. But they will never have an opportunity to do anything with the brains that we still had for purposes of learning. And somewhere in my mind there was -- an increasing part of my brain had became completely aloof against their attempts to take my mind over completely and make me completely embrace their serial ideology. And one of the clinching moments came when the officer investigating my racial purity told me who I would have to get married to. Cause it may not be important to you, it may not be important overall within the context of the Holocaust, but somewhere in my mind there was enough of a defensive mechanism in which the I wanted to be me, and in which there was still enough scope left for the brain to fill in the void and to undo the damage caused to the other part, whichever it was, the left or the right.

Q: So --

A: And the killing in the panzergraben was a second major determining for that. You see, I still ask myself how come I knew, after witnessing all that killing, after losing most of my friends in the war, after witnessing some of the atrocities, including some -- a couple of Germans had their genital parts cut off by partisan female. Another partisan female had a big stick stuck into her [indecipherable]. After witnessing all that and becoming completely immune to any perception of morality, how come I knew when Viel was doing the killing, that it was wrong? But I knew it

was wrong, but I was so terribly scared at the same time. I knew it was wrong. I was scared. So I was just petrified. What do you do with that? So, just like my dad when Dr. Wright came, I decided nothing -- I decided I do nothing, because I wanted to survive. And I talked to Rabbi Poupko about that, a very senior conservative rabbi in Montreal. I asked him, what would you have done, Rabbi? He |-liked my testimony, he liked my -- he said, Adal -- al -- Lallier, you really have courage. I said, it's not courage, it is [indecipherable]. Well, I say it's courage. I say, what would you have done? He said, in the eyes of the Jewish interpretation of God, one's own life always comes first. Now, I don't know if he told me that, if it's true or not, or if he told me that to appease me, to decrease my pain or my agony, but he told me, you were absolutely right trying to si -- preserve your life, assuming that would have become a creative life. You didn't want to waste that. And he said, the fact alone that you finally decided to speak up proves that you were right in keeping your mouth shut, because if you hadn't, they would you put a -- put you up on the spot and shot you. So, good excuse, but I still did nothing.

Q: But --

A: Why didn't my father try to get us away? Maybe because he wouldn't have had -- oh who -- who -- wh-who -- I don't know, there were no airplane, there were no flights out. Would have to be -- I don't know, there were no boats on which to go, we were in the central Europe. So how do you get away over three or four, 500 kilometers of -- of territory that belonged to the Hitler Germans? How do you do it? I-I don't know.

Q: Well, let's go back and tal -- and tell me a little bit more about what the -- the training, the ideoli -- ideological training was like. You were all forced to read "Mein Kampf."

A: We were all -- we were given lectures, ideological lectures. Weltanschauung, you can write that down, but the term is well known. Weltanschauung.

Q: Right.

A: You know that from philosophy, right. Weltanschauung was an obligatory course throughout the four and a half months training of Pinuna. And the weltanschauung is really teaching us how to take the oath of fealty to Hitler, not question anything about that and -- and to exercise com- complete commitment to the oath, even willingness to die for it.

Q: And what was the oath?

A: And that was -- we had the physical training -- I -- I liked the physical training. But what I liked about the physical training is to find out that I too, coming from the nowhere, could do it almost as well, even better than some of the German Germans did. And that's where the Olympian image rose in my mind, you see.

Q: But were you feeling conflicted being in -- in what is a Nazi group?

A: No, no, I was --

Q: I mean the Waffen SS is a Nazi --

A: -- Iwas -- no, no, they were Walter Meyhollowicz was a may -- racially mixed. He never became a Lowd Nicholas. Lowd Nicholas couldn't become a Nazi fast enough.

Q: I -- well, yeah, well I don't -- I don't mean that everybo -- every person like you was a Nazi, but it's a Nazi division.

A: Yeah.

Q: Right? Did that feel very conflicting to you to be in something like that? I mean, were you yourself torn --

A: You mean -- no, I -- that -- no, th-the -- already -- I've come a -- already on record saying that when they finally -- and ""m kind of jumping now --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- eventually the oath of fealty was taken for the division as a whole --

Q: Right.

A: -- and for the signals [indecipherable] battalion as a whole.

Q: Yes.

A: And I have reasons to believe that I was the only one who said quietly, so that no one would hear me, instead of I swear the honor of Hitler, I sweared the Miklos Hort-Horthy.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: So I -- I pled my f-f -- oath of allegiance to a guy that I believed in.

Q: But not [indecipherable]

A: See, in that sense I was an exception. And alone saying Horthy, I was not professing myself on behalf of Nazism, but Horthy-ism. But Horthy-ism too, on hindsight, was a semi-feudal Fascistic state -- state of mind, with an absolute dictator on the top. But it was not based on racial impurities or --

Q: Right, right.

A: -- racial discrimination and that. It was just Hungarianism, but I was very -- I was feeling happy with that, but I was also feeling happy that nobody had overheard me.

Q: Right. But you also had to read Rosenberg, who was clearly a racist.

A: Oh, on Rosenberg we were not read, but we were read excerpts to --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- during the weltanschauung.

Q: So did you then learn what the racial feeling of Nazism was?

A: Well, we were -- we were being told. Learning means you are taught how to think for yourself.

Q: No, no, not necessarily. I mean, sometimes --

A: Oh well, my interpretation --

Q: -- it can be bad learning.

A: I brought you a printout of my appointment as a full professor --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- in which I speak about the teacher and learning. Anyway, to use that term in quotation marks then, right.

Q: Right.

A: Well, they're trying -- they were t-telling us --

Q: What --

A: -- how to see things.

Q: Right.

A: And the only way to see things properly was the way they were telling us. I remember a philosophy professor [indecipherable] some years ago, appearing and saying Lallier, when I go to my classroom I tell them, I am the one who knows it all, on th -- only to listen to me. Pll examine you on those questions and you'll know it all. So I'm the one that you have to repeat in order to pass. Same thing there.

Q: Right.

A: But this guy was in a democrat -- by the way, he happens to be an American who didn't want to go to Vietnam.

Q: Did most of the --

A: Anyways, he ra -- he raised that.

Q: -- did the most of the guys with you --

A: Sorry?

Q: Did most of the guys with you in the regiment -- in the division rather, believe --

A: Well, I-I have to be specific on that.

Q: -- what they were t --

A: First of all, not all graduates of the ha -- German high school were of intellectual or bourgeois stock. About 80 percent of them were a peasant stock.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: So they knew th -- knew the stuff they had to learn to earn their diploma, but they were not really literate persons who could think for themselves. And I say that -- most of those of the peasant stock fell completely, wholesale for what the Nazis were feeding them. And Lowd was one par -- very particular example. You see --

Q: Was there a Waffen SS song?

A: Be -- sorry?

Q: By the way, was there a Waffen SS song that was sung? Something like if others prove I'm tr

A: The Waffen SS by that time had become a propaganda tool by which they were hoping to entice the physically more capable and mentally more alert to volunteer for service on behalf of - - and I'm being very formal in that -- on behalf of defending western civilization against godless commu -- see, I still have it in my blood. At the same time, since the really noble ones fit in that perfect image were being killed in Russia left, right and center, they badly needed replacements, so in no time, by mid-1940 th-the standards were being reduced. No more [indecipherable] 76.

No more shoulders like that, waistlines 32, feet like that and [indecipherable] like that and blonde and all that. They were taking left, right and center. And more and more of the small

Mediterranean, Gypsy looking types were got -- gotten in. More and more compromising admissions by people of half blood, that first of all, you had to have half blood, then you had to have quarter blood, the-then you said, unless there was a Jewish grandmother you" ll be taken whatever your blood com -- blood combination is. But one restriction remained. You shouldn't have had a Jewish grandmother. And even that restriction was eventually raised, right? O-Or erased. But I remember you had to go back seven generations to prove it -- prove that you're pure Aryan. But all that -- most of that had fallen by wayside mid-1943.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And the existence of the Waffen SS [indecipherable] commissione [indecipherable] was only [indecipherable], which even today's Waffen SS veterans" paper keeps on emphasizing. They have a publication, every month calling -- calling it "The Volunteer." And they still believe that fact is a -- a hundred percent of those who have been in the Waffen SS were volunteer.

Q: Were volunteers.

A: 20 percent were perhaps volunteers.

Q: So you still get their newsletter?

A: So I was feeling -- I -- no.

Q: Yeah -- no.

A: But I have an American friend who interestingly is somehow enamored with -- a very highly positioned federal -- federal employee in the western part of the United States, very highly positioned, who had written a history on the milder, non-criminal parts of the Waffen SS, namely the -- the signals formations, and til -- for what I recall, the signal formations never even ever raised a weapon against anybody, because my job -- our job was to be there and play with this thing. There may have been shooting at [indecipherable] once in awhile. Anyway, he wrote a

book about the Waffen SS signals [indecipherable]. And it is from that -- and he asked me to read through that, I met him through somebody else. And out of that I retrieved [indecipherable] information, the list of those who had been in the concentration camps, and I didn't tell him that, it's none of his business. I mean, I'm free to do with that, unless I want to republish the whole thing, in which case I'd have to mention his name, see?

Q: Right.

A: But --

Q: So did they ti --

A: -- he is an American, he's -- I find him a bit strange. He is not a Nazi, but he believes a -- he fall -- fell for that slogan that the Waffen SS [indecipherable]. I've been writing innumerous proof to the contrary, but he is an [indecipherable] and -- but he had made a significant contribution exploring a subject, and being able to distinguish the evil ones from the not so committed ones to the ones who were there against their will, but who somehow seemed to have survived the war, even though serving against their will or something like that.

Q: Did they teach you to s --

A: But he hasn't written me since my last letter in which I -- I told him, absolutely told him, you finally have to get away from the lie that the Volksdeutsche were volunteers. He would normally write me four times -- once every four weeks, but I haven't heard of him for the past eight weeks, so maybe he found that my attitude was becoming too pushy [indecipherable] speaking the truth. But he's an 0 -- he's an okay guy. He's an okay American.

Q: Did they -- did they teach you to shoot?

A: And he told me he's going to vote for -- for Obama, so I don't know if that makes him more okay or not. Sorry?

Q: Did they teach you to shoot?

A: Oh yes. We also -- we had the signals training, we had the ideological training, we had the physical training, which I absolutely was very happy with, and we have the skills training. The -- all the weapons you can possibly imagine in -- from the pistols, for would be officers eventually, it's essential training. You had the carbine, which carbine question came up during the court, because I insisted it was the [indecipherable] carbine and some of the Nazi Germans counter- insisted that the Waffen SS had never had [indecipherable] carbine, but the judge graciously -- Winkler, took my explanation, having discovered through some not Nazi experts that they were Czech carbines, which we may have been using then, or he may have been able to use. And we had the Mitryettes, and we had especially the Sturmgewehr. Sturmgewehr was a 1944 production, very similar to the Soviet AK 457 which could spit out, I think 57 bullets, smaller bullets, in about three seconds, or something like that. And then we had also shooting with -- with -- what you call those little pipes? Mortars?

Q: Uh-huh.

A: And we had grenade shooting and we had special training ones, they became quite frequently distributed, the anti-tank weapons. The Panzerakate and they call it [indecipherable]

Q: But you were not -- you were not then put into a regiment to shoot, you were -- you were -- you were --

A: No, no, no, I was not in an infantry regiment.

Q: Right.

A: I was strictly tied to the headquarters of the division communicate -- in communications.

Q: And where was --

A: Only two times was I engaged in active two week warfare --

Q: And where was --

A: -- against the Russians.

Q: Against the Russians.

A: That was -- yeah, again, that was in October 1944, in which we hadn't really learned -- we had followed the partisans, we had not -- not been engaged at the headquarters level in facing any [indecipherable] formations with T -- T34 tanks and the whole bit the Soviets were throwing at us, and in three days of fighting we lost 90 percent of everything. We lost 90 percent of our trucks. My truck was the only one to have survived the -- the massacre [indecipherable] because I was skillful enough -- I was the driver -- I was skillful enough to hide it behind a church, and I was lucky enough to have escaped being directly shot at by -- I was -- had to cross a bridge, and that -- right to bridge there were dozens of German vehicles destroyed by anti-tank fire, and I was next in line to be shot at. And I had my five guys including my [indecipherable] in the truck, and I was driving like a madman, trying to hit the bridge, but before I made a sharp turn, I decided to stop just for a brief moment, I don't know what made me stop. And at that moment I stopped the shot of the anti-tank weapon buzzed by the front of the windshield of the car. And then I just so -- noticed that, they needed about 17 seconds for a second shot and I accelerated and got away. I was the only funkwagen who was saved from the whole division. The division had 37 of wireless communication trucks.

Q: And they were all --

A: They all got perished and about 2500 guys died in three days, including a guy by the name of Lisi, who stuck his neck out in front of the truck, was hit in chest on with the grenade, he just disintegrated.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: He was one of the very gifted high school graduates and he was a bourgeois son, he was a very nice guy who was -- who was there I think for defending his motherland and his father's properties from communism, and he was not a Nazi. But Lowd Nicholas was a Nazi.

Q: And where -- after your tra -- how ma -- how many weeks were you in training?

A: We were trained until for the first of June -- actually, 15" of June, first of June I was drafted, 15"" of June we were sent up to [indecipherable] and we were sent back down, totally contrary to our expectations because we thought we'd be engaging against the Soviets, they sent us down to Serbia to fight the partisans who had by that time become very numerous. Because as you know, Hitler's having invaded the Soviet Union, Tito immediately declared war on the Germans under horrendous, horrendous circumstances for the partisans because they were nobodies, they had nothing, and yet they survived somehow. Tito is to me a -- a remarkable man, the way he took on the Nazis, but he also let his people suffer because it was because of the odd -- killing of some odd German soldier, the Germans were hanging hundreds and hundreds of innocent Serb civilians. And Tito added to power, exterminated the whole Yugoslav -- the whole -- the entire Yugoslav bourgeoisie. You see, Tito is a major was criminal, but without Tito the war couldn't have been won the way it has won, so I'm kind of caught in between. One of my big images about that he -- from the war is an image that I retrieved from a book written by one of Tito's p- primary assistants [indecipherable] Angelis. You may have heard of Milo Angelis. He had a book on wartime memora -- memor -- memor -- memoirs in which on one particular cage -- page, there is a Serb young man about 18 years old, with a typical Serb cap, dressed like a poor peasant, standing under the gallows with that German officers surrounding him. And just before he died, he raised his hand like that, and he died like that. Now, if I ever wanted to have a photo over which I'd cry about the absolute courage in the face of actual power, that guy is my hero in

my mind. He was a total anti-Nazi, he who died because he believed that what Germans were doing was wrong. Trouble is his death was caused by T-Tito's partisan killing one or two Germans. And this guy was rounded up in a small village chacha and hanged with many of the others.

Q: But you want to blame ti --

A: An unforgettable picture.

Q: -- you want to blame Tito and not the Nazis?

A: Sorry?

Q: Do you want to blame Tito and not the Waffen SS?

A: No, no, no, I am blaming the Nazis.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: They had no right to capture the 200, right? At the same time, amongst the 200, there was one who dared raised his fist and tell the Germans face to face before they hanged him, but they didn't prove merciful. They're being told [indecipherable] that you're dead wrong, you're killers.

Q: When --

A: I should send you that picture, perhaps.

Q: Mm. When -- when you were in the Waffen SS in yu -- in the former Yugoslavia --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- in Serbia, did you know what Pri-Prince Eugen regiments were doing, the division was doing in Yugoslavia?

A: Oh, well, in the -- in the --

Q: I mean, what sort of reports --

A: -- we were the center of communication and our major task was to communicate between the various parts of the division, the various battalions and regiments about how to arrange the warfare against the partisans.

Q: But it was only --

A: So it was strictly, strictly for two and a half years, from September 1942 to October 1944, we were engaged strictly against the partisans, under murderous circumstances.

Q: So you --

A: We had no idea, because we are too far away in the center, no idea what atrocities were being committed by the various -- by the two regiments, or the two battalions, the various battalions.

Q: So you didn't --

A: But we did drive through villages that had been completely destroyed, and we knew that that is the price that the Serbs were -- most of the partisans were Serbs, right -- the Serbs were payi -- paying for what they were trying to do to the Germans and those were the [indecipherable] that the German Nazis were imposing upon them, finding two or three partisan that -- even burn the whole village. And that was a fact of life of war, but that's the way I -- my interpretation was, that is what the war is about. But deep inside myself I always knew that the Germans had no business being in the Balkans, because I had carried forward, for me, the recognition when the Germans occupied Austria, it was upsetting history upside-down. The Germans had no business being in Austria, but the fact is, it was absolute power and I'd become part and parcel of the absolute power. So in a certain sense I was directly underwriting the absolute power by communicating messages.

Q: Right.

A: But since I didn't see the destruction and dying in front of my eyes, this -- I kind of -- th-they remained kind of aloof of that. So I was only a communicator and not an executor. But all of that came forcefully, right in front of my eyes because of Viel and his killing in the panzergraben.

Q: So do you think in the -- some way you became numb during that period in Serbia?

A: Yeah, one th -- one -- one becomes -- you see one death your -- you vom -- excuse me, you -- you vomit.

Q: Right.

A: You see two de -- two dead, you vomit maybe a couple of times later. You see 10 dead --

Q: You stop.

A: -- you have a look and say, well [indecipherable] this is my friend. And if the friend is still alive, you quickly go there and hope that you can talk to him or soothe him, or talk to him or his mother or something like that to make him die in peace. If you see a hundred dead, hanging, which I had before they drafted me --

Q: Right.

A: -- you'd see, well, if these were my people, what would I do with them? I'd take them off the hangers, I suppose and I'd give them a decent burial, that's all that we can do.

Q: Right, right.

A: What happened to all those people in the church, burned to the stake, who felt that it was wrong? They had no choice just to bury them quietly, didn't they? I'm not absolving Nazis of their guilt.

Q: Right.

A: But the hanging, the burning, how far back does that go into history? And why would an educated nation like the Germans, the highest proportion of PhDs of any of the nations of that time, follow a pattern of medieval savagery? How does one explain that?

Q: Because a PhD doesn't protect you --

A: Yeah, well, well -- well --

Q: -- clearly. So you -- you were in the Waffen SS in the Prince Eugen re-regiment?

A: Yeah, I was in the Waffen SS --

Q: Was that in deg42 to f--

A: -- but please don't forget, the Waffen SS was the seventh division.

Q: Right.

A: We still were given the Waffen SS blood group tattooed in.

Q: Oh, you were.

A: But we were never given a Waffen SS number, because to be truly a Waffen SS officer, you have to have your number.

Q: No number, uh-huh.

A: So if you would call that a gross act of discrimination, call it that. I don't view it like that, only [indecipherable] say it as a proof, they needed cannon fodder --

Q: I see.

A: -- they got the cannon fodder by force, without giving them equal legal protection. They had even promised German citizenship. None of the surviving members of the Prince Eugen got the citizenship unless they qualified by living in Germany after the war for five years. So did they treat the [indecipherable] as untermenschen? I want to go on official record, they treated the -- Reichs Germans treated the Volksdeutsche definitely as untermenschen and repeatedly called

them speck-fresser, bacon eaters and sigoina and balkinazer, including myself. And it was so bad that the highest commander with -- of the Waffen SS, the SS [indecipherable] haupter eventually had to pass an order all the way down asking the officers to finally put a stop to these discriminating references to the Volksdeutsche. And why that command? Because they still had a hundred thousand Volksdeutsche that they haven't drafted yet and that they didn't want to lose.

The bodies, they were needed to fight th-the Soviets in the conditions of increasing despair.

Q: Now, you were promoted twice, am I right?

A: Well, I was promoted with everybody else, first to Sturmin and then to [indecipherable] yeah.

Q: Right.

A: I wasn't promoted out of ranks. Actually, my first promotion, so-called, was delayed because after they were sent down -- I was very good in signaling, in my Morse codes, so I was picked to be amongst the first group to be sent on to Serbia. And I was standing -- like I was sent on two weeks before the second group was to follow, it was a stage, kind of transportation of troops, 20,000 plus men. And I was up standing night guard over my teraf -- my -- my -- my Morse code machine, and suddenly a phone call came in by somebody with a guttural German and gave me a command that I didn't understand. And you can't say, excuse me please, would you repeat that?

And I said, Jawohl, and I did nothing. The following day the sergeant in charge called me and says, Lallier, as of immediately, you are demoted to become a muli-fuehrer. A muli-fuehrer was a -- a mule attendant. So, with my glorious knowl-knowledge of m -- the Morse codes, whatever they would be, it would have been useful, I found myself in a stall with about 300 muli -- mules and mule attendants, about 30 of them, none of them having finished even elementary school. All of them having great hands, great backs, great understanding of their -- of their animals, but I

must maybe worriedly say, because it sound like discrimination, not much of a developed brain power.

Q: We have to stop there.

End of Tape Five

Beginning Tape Six

Q: You were a muli-fuehrer after SS man?

A: Yeah.

Q: So you were a muli-fuehrer for six weeks?

A: No, I was a SS man while being a muli-fuehrer.

Q: Oh, you were both at the same time?

A: There was no promotion. If you're a muli-fuehrer you get no promotion.

Q: I see.

A: Until November 1942. And then they picked me up because they thought I may have some brains because they must have looked at my high school certificate graduate [indecipherable] so put me into training as a truck driver.

Q: As a truck driver.

A: Yeah.

Q: Okay. In 1942, when you were -- between "42 and deg44 --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- the end of "44, you were f --

A: I was in the Balkans.

Q: -- in the Balkans.

A: Yeah.

Q: Did you hear anything about what was going on in the east?

A: No, there was no --

Q: Did you -- did you know about killing centers?

A: -- no, we were --

Q: No.

A: -- so busy fighting the Titoists who were becoming more and more numerous because of the German stupid policies of fighting the whole population. We had the position like in Iraq. In ord -- in -- in order to -- instead of making the population love you by being good to them and not hanging them, they did exactly the opposite, right? It became slow work, and the German command always referred to the partisans as bandits. Bandits who are f -- waging illegal warfare, totally contrary to international agreements, right?

Q: Uh-huh, right.

A: And disagreement about the bandits, international, goes back about 150 years, without the question ever being asked first, well what are the countries doing in those countries in which these bandits emerged in the first place.

Q: Mm-hm. So --

A: Lam very concerned about, you know, international diplomacy, because that thing about banditry in occupied countries is a direct consequence of the imperial party -- including [indecipherable] Austria-Hungary, having conspired to look at local uprises against foreign domination as an illegal act at the mercy of countries that occupied the country. It's not right.

Q: Right.

A: Anyway, so we were there fighting the partisans, totally pursuing this Iraqi type of policy, I must say honestly in -- in Iraq and -- and in a -- and in a -- in -- in Vietnam formerly, and it was hopeless because the more you hang the more young people would say, we don't want these bloody bastards and we were part and parcel of the bastards. So eventually we had to keep on retreating, retreating and treating because the Germans were doing badly, justifiably so, and the Soviets finally, the U-Ukrainian front, about three million men broke through 150,000 German

line, some of it being kept open by the Prince Eugen, two or 3,000 remaining men, so we were retreating like mad. I still had my -- my communication truck. I was taking care of the truck because if you have a truck you can get away much faster than running for your life.

Q: Right, right.

A: So slowly but steadily we moved towards Croatia, the then Croatia, today Croatia. And once we reached the rina dri -- th-the river Drina, I got the call with the six other guys from the remnants of the graduates, the high school graduates that we'll be commanded as of tomorrow to go through Vienna to Nuremberg to officers" school. Oh, I never got any medals, by the way.

Q: You were commanded to go to officers" school?

A: Yeah.

Q: And what was --

A: I was -- yeah, I was picked up, this was mid-December 1944, on the -- on taking back.

Q: So the German are -- the Germans are losing but you're now sent to officers" school?

A: Yeah.

Q: And why?

A: Don't forget -- no, no, no --

Q: What did -- what --

A: -- don't forget, we were fighting the Soviets --

Q: Right.

A: -- we were being heavily decimated.

Q: Right.

A: There were only six or seven high school graduates left. The German officers corps in the Waffen SS was heavily depleted --

Q: Right. So they wanted to --

A: -- by all those [indecipherable]. So they needed any garbage. And for the first time they declared themselves that even Volksdeutsche so-called, an honorary Volksdeutsche would be picked --

Q: To what?

A: -- as possible candidate, but they were put in through the first phase very rigorously is to sort them out, if they would found -- be found unqualified to become German officers, right?

Q: So do you --

A: And so I was one of the six or seven.

Q: So you go to officers" school?

A: Well, yeah, th-they call it cadet school.

Q: Cadet school?

A: Yeah.

Q: Where was this?

A: Oh, the cadet school was supposed to have been in Nuremberg, so we took -- we took a train ride from Croatia through Zagreb to Vienna, from Vienna to Nuremberg. We arrived in Nuremberg two days after 2,000 allied planes had bombed the whole city to the smithereens, killing 35,000 unsuspecting pro-Nazi Nurembergese, right? And we stayed there for two days picking up -- they used phosphor bombs. Would you want to know what a body looks like after it got burned up? No, I wouldn't -- I'll tell you. Facial features remain exactly the same except they are charcoal black.

Q: Right.

A: And the bodies are [indecipherable]. So we were picking them by the thousands and putting them into a pyre and burning eventually to the -- into ashes.

Q: Right.

A: And after two days the clearance came. Oh, they also dropped the bomb and a -- an air mine, which was a new invention. An air mine can destroy by air pressure, a thousand people in an area of about 100 square feet, and they dropped an air mine onto the SS luncheon barracks.

Q: Hm.

A: There were about a thousand SS personnel and all of them died with their eyes blown out of their heads because of the air pressure, and we had to clean up that mess. Anyway, the -- we weren't in the area, that was two days before. And then we were told we would go by lorry from Nuremberg directly into Chekia to go to Leitmeritz, because the officers" school, including the first stage, namely the cadet qualification part would have been delodged from Nuremberg, which was totally destroyed, to Leitmeritz, which was safely in the background from all activities, even though the Soviets had broken through, they were still 200 kilometers away. So Walter and I, he was in the group, he looked at me and I looked at him, says, gee, we'll finally be safe. We'll finally survive. And then, on the way over, about 12 kilometers outside of Leitmeritz on the -- still on the western side, the [indecipherable] from the west, suddenly we're told, augen nach links. Eyes to the left. Varoon, why? Juden -- I remember the off suf -- off sub officer --

Q: They said Juden?

A: Yeah, just said Juden. [speaks German here]. You are not allowed to look. To retain our purity as Aryan officer candidates, I suppose, right? You mustn't look at the [indecipherable]

Q: Yes, but Waffen SS were also in concentration camps.

A: Well yes, but not the real Waffen SS. The concentration camp guards, not Waffen SS, they were special guards, if you know the SS [indecipherable]

Q: Right.

A: But there were Waffen SS personnel --

Q: Right.

A: -- amongst them who had been wounded, who had even volunteered, or who had been otherwise assigned in administrative posts. If you go through the lists you will discover that, right, right?

Q: But you couldn't let --

A: So I -- I beg your pardon ma'am, SS, concentration camp guards were members of the Allgemeine SS.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: The Waffen SS were supposedly, 99 percent of the time, 99 percent of their -- of their per -- presence as soldiers, preoccupied to fight in the east and the west.

Q: But you're being ironic.

A: But about 600 of them over the course of the three, four years of the war did do service in the concentration camps.

Q: Do you think --

A: And we went directly to the officers" school, and the first time it hits us, Juden, the question came up between Walter and I, what's that? And being young men who had survived three years of partisan warfare, we'd say [indecipherable] Juden? Why aren't we allowed to look? And we arrived in Leitmeritz with that question, and eventually -- that was end of January 1945.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: By mid-March we knew.

Q: What did you know?

A: The concentration camp.

Q: You knew that it was a camp, I get it.

A: Because on the 18"" of March, we arise in the morning at five o'clock and told, you are going to go on guard duty, eight to nine kilometers away. You've got to line up immediately with weapons which we will distribute to you, because weapons were not generally distributed unless you were on the front lines, right, we'll give the weapons to you, we will board the lorries and we'll drive westward to pick up prisoners. And after driving for about three-quarters of an hour we suddenly see a fortress-like building. Manifesto, small fortress. And all kinds of activities in front around six -- 6:30 in the morning on the 18", right? And Waffen -- and SS guards coming out and prisoners -- and prisoner of war coming out. I think all of them, with the Jewish and -- you see, and then we said to ourself, what's that? And then Viel, who was our commanding officer, concentration camp Theresienstadt, our duty is to supervise 1500 to 2,000 inmates digging an anti-tank ditch, which the high command thought would have to be dug to hold back the Soviet tanks from a breakthrough. Suddenly, two things realized upon us. Number one, we had to supervise prisoners, which is not what officers are trained to do. Officer training is to become officers to fight the commies. Not being [indecipherable] you looked at those people they were ragged, they were kind of -- th-th-th--their -- their -- their -- to -- clothing was kind of all torn up, they were starving looking, they were t-totally inwarded looking. They were kind -- barely able to walk. And we were -- forgive me for saying that -- we were representatives of a mighty ideology, right, fighting the communists and that, we should be on the front. And serious questions were raised, but you were given the command, so they were coming out, 1500 to 2,000

of them and we were si -- surrounded and marched with them where the commanding officer was -- told him to march. Concentration camp, for the first time. And only then did we know that there were actually two concentration camps, Theresienstadt, the model camp, which the Germans were showing off to the Red Cross volunteers.

Q: But that's only for a few days.

A: And the smaller --

Q: It's -- it's only a model for a few days.

A: Well -- well --

Q: Right.

A: -- get technical now. All I remember is that I had read a book by a guy name of Adler, who was in Theresienstadt, who was able to survive that, who wrote a couple of chapters in the book, "Theresienstadt" --

Q: Right.

A: -- areference to the Red Cross commissioners being told and being displayed the Jewish people happy like a lark. And -- but we didn't know about that. But what we did know is that there was the Theresienstadt with about 10 to 15 thousand persons and the kleine feste with two to 2,000 to 2,500. And the kleine feste, one rumor had it, were destined to be exterminated, but they also contained non-Jewish people. Some Soviet prisoner of war who had gotten -- got even some Britishers, I also understand even an Australian was locked up in the kleine feste. Anyway, it was the killing grounds, and it is those people that we are to supervise. So we did. On the first day nothing untoward happened. They had equipment, it is not true that they did it with their hands and -- and then [indecipherable] had the appropriate shovels and that, but we were spaced every 20 meters on both sides of the ditch, get -- becoming deeper and deeper. But on the second

day we were brought back and that's at -- now, lunch at two o'clock, Viel suddenly started shooting, where I was standing.

Q: Viel started shooting. Did y --

A: Ah, yeah. We were -- we had talked about the service [indecipherable] guard service, and very, very unhappy because some of the soldiers claimed they had gotten medals of heroism fighting the commies and that and suddenly they're only prison guards. It was not compatible which wa -- what we thought was the eth -- ethics of the international recognized ethical form of behavioral officers. But we didn't ask any questions. The questions would be asked on the following day in the evening when, after having witnessed and/or heard the killing and pointed at Viel through the testimony of at least two of us, we decided getting back to Leitmeritz, to the high school for girls where we were stationed with the preliminary station of the officers" school, when we decided to send a delegation to the commanding officer, and not demanding, asking for an explanation.

Q: We have to stop the tape.

End of Tape Six

Beginning Tape Seven

A: So in the training, you know --

Q: Yes?

A: -- th-the cadet stage of officer training, we had weapons training, specialized weapons, the new Sturmgewehr, which is the assault weapons, I've mentioned them to you. And -- but we each had to learn how to. We had training with bazookas because the Soviets had been breaking through, the tanks -- we didn't have me -- Germans didn't have enough tanks left. And since they had broken through the Carpathians the bazookas were our last means of defense and the bazookas were the long, long pipes, as well as the Panzerfausts, we learned that. And we were also being taught officers" strategy in military tactics at the lowest possible level. That is, we were being elevated to recognizing that being a soldier is not quite like being an officer. An officer has to provide leadership. We've given -- we were given ideological education, not any more Nazi ideology, but repeatedly they emphasized respect for international law, respect for warli -- war making practices, respect for war cri -- no, disrespect for war criminality. We were told that an officer's duty is to prevent war criminal act from happening, right, and an officer will eventually get married and become a noble representative of a new Germany, no more Nazi Germany, right?

Q: This is -- the is the -- this is the late training?

A: All that in the perio -- yeah, in the prem -- between January and end of March 1945.

Q: deg45, right.

A: And this they say. And we also had, because we were being trained to become eventually, members of the officers" school for signals officers, we were being given technical education.

We had to bypass some very serious technical questions concerning telecommunications,

communications and radio wireless equipment, right? And that's where mathematics came in, right?

Q: Right.

A: So I was able to handle that, right? Not because of Nazism, it was strictly a profession, right?

So -- and all that within the context of most of us having been happy not to be on the front any more, but having higher chances of survival, as was indicated by the dislodging of certain other officers" school to safer and safer areas, right? So we were all trying to hang on, I was trying to hang on, I didn't want to fail and be sent back, which happened to several of us, right? In the -- Walter Meyhollowicz failed. He couldn't handle it any more because I think he was so big he would have needed 300 orders of potatoes, he was starving. So he failed the exam, was sent away to the front, the Soviets captured him. He spent 10 years as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union, and somehow managed surviving, can you imagine that? Anyway, so -- and then suddenly we found ourselves on the second day witnessing a plain act of murder. We got together -- sh-sh-sh -- in the evening, and --

Q: So it's -- re -- re-explain that time. You're standing on the side of those --

A: I-I'll -- Pll come back --

Q: Okay.

A: -- to -- one minute, Joan, let me just finish this.

Q: Right.

A: So, and Barouka Kuno, a fair minded soldier, he was not a Nazi, he was from the tri -- he was a Sudetendeutsche.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: He was one of the three who was sent to present his petition to the commanding officer of the school, and we'd get the answer two days later. Now, I'll stop here, I'll go back. Okay, so on the second day we went back, we were brought by white truck. A number of prisoners, we didn't count them, I estimate between 1500 to 2,000. At the same time the ti -- the ditch was supposed to be two kilometers long. Now, two kilometers long is 2,000 meters. If you have 2,000 prisoners half starving, how can they possibly dig with just to shovel one meters worth of 20 meters across and up to two meters deep? So something -- my numbers may not be correct, or maybe the Germans were thinking that these guys were ready to work their butts off, hoping to survive.

Anyway, So we were again posted every 20 meters. I was on the right hand side, another guy was on the left hand side [indecipherable] both sides, and we had the weapons in our hands, and just watching them. Now, I was very close to a group of seven, and one of the seven -- like, they were a bit separate from the others, and the ditch was maybe about a meter deep, something like that, but unequally so. And the officer group was standing a bit higher up, about 20 meters away, with Viel among them, including the commanding officer of the school, and they were kind of chatting and looking and chatting and I was standing. I had to look this way, not that way, because once you're told where to guard your post you couldn't move even a foot of that. And if you had to make a pee you have to ask for permission to leave or to turn around. And suddenly I -- noticed that big, big guy with a big dark red beard, and just urging the others on to work, to work, to work. And one of the guys was -- the first one who got killed was a tiny little guy, almost no face left, like blue eyes, a little sparse hair, no chest, barely moving, t-tiny, maybe around 50-ish. And suddenly, I look -- I look at that, I hear something, there is Viel. Oh, we had put our weapons away for lunch, then we got our weapons back, but there were still some pyramids there because lunches were taken in sequence. So Viel goes to a pyramid, grabs a rifle,

and there could be more than three, could be four or five. So one of the witnesses said oh, when you grab a rifle of the three, the others four fall down. He took one of the four or five, stood up straight, aimed that and I said to myself, what -- wh -- I didn't know the word what the hell is happening, excuse me, what's happening. And I said, well maybe he's just limbering up or something. It was a muddy day for -- you know, springtime, mud in the river -- gri -- ditch.

Raises the weapon and aims towards me. I didn't even duck because I said, what will -- and suddenly, he aims -- it doesn't take long to aim. And so I hear the shot and the little guy just falls down. Didn't even just hear the pop, falls down. He kind of fell down forward, and the military law is, if you hit the chest or the heart, you always fall forward, you never fall backward. Okay, so second shot, second guy falls down. And then a third shot, the big guy. And the big guy had stood up straight and he was looking at the officer, and the officer was looking at him. The big guy had the shovel, the officer had the gun. So the officer pulled the trigger, hits the big guy, the big guy falls down, stands up, raises his hand. Viel aims, shoots the second time, the big guy falls down. Stands up -- no more raised arm, stands up, still keeps on staring at Viel. Big guy.

Legs like that. He must have been a capo because he looked better fed than the other guys. Viel, third time, plomp. Was in the face, whatever, fall down in the mud. Three shots, plus two shots, five shots, three dead guys. Foosh. Five shots. Carbine is not empty yet. Keeps on shooting, all the seven guys dead. He missed one shot, right? Puts the gun back, the carbine, goes back to the [indecipherable]. The officers had looked, turned around, joined the group, continued the discussion. Seven dead guys. A little while later, I'm standing there, I'm looking at the [indecipherable] I'm looking at the guy behind me, in front of me [indecipherable] the thing.

What the -- what -- what happened? What happened? Deep inside myself I was like a stone.

Unable to bel -- unable to think. Wha -- I thought I'd a -- I had an active mind, my mind never

falls asleep. I just -- petrified. I had never seen a dead Jew in my life. Suddenly I see seven dead Jew -- I never wanted to see a dead Jew. That's not why I was in war. All I was in war, to keep the commies off central Europe. Some of the commies were Jewish commissars. There was, as you well know, Hitler's personal command to kill the Jewish commissars, right? Never seen one, alive or dead. There were seven Jews. Say nothing, continue my guard duty. Didn't di -- don't step off the thing, cause you're not allowed. But -- I hear a noise. A two wheeler. A death cart.

Typical of concentration camps, I found later on. Okay? Four guys were pushing, prisoners, Jewish, death guard -- it s-seemed like standard procedure. They'd appeared from the nowhere, they were coming closer and closer, nobody touched them, nobody told them anything. Came to the ditch -- went to the ditch, put the cart -- I think they even got it somehow into the ditch and grabbed the little guy who had died first, no problem, two guys lift him up, bango on the [indecipherable]. Grabbed the second guy -- they needed all four of them to lift up the heavy guy. They had problems lifting up the heavy guy, so finally the [indecipherable] got him and the one, two three, all seven, turned the cart around, marched away. Death cart. Standard instrument of picking up the dead during the Nazi regime. Now, not even the commies in the Spanish Civil War were doing things like that.

Q: Were there --

A: So, we were officer candidates. We had been told repeatedly, abide by international law concerning warfare, abide by this, abide by that. The rules -- an officer's thing is to prevent things like that happening. My own leader of inspection did the killing. And it was my own, I was part of the officers" school.

Q: So he was training you?

A: Why did he do it?

Q: Why?

A: Was he a German German? Was he a Nazi German? Had he lost his mind? Or, my [indecipherable] finale -- my latest conclusion; he had been so brainwashed by his own system that we [indecipherable] because he had been made officer in the Dachau camp in 1938 -- he had been so brainwashed to have believed, like many Nazis, they had become master of life or death of the untermensche, and that he was responsible to no one. And the tragedy over that is evidently the tragedy of seven dead Jewish people, innocent as they were, especially, but tragedy that nobody brought it to trial. Two days later, the officer of commanding school said, what has happened, has happened. If you survive the war, if you win the war, we are not accountable. If you lose the war, you're going to be dead anyway. So you got away scot-free. And we in our deep ourselves, including Barouka, who claimed in Ravensburg that he had been in the hospital, he had never been there, and the judge accused him -- accused him of lying directly into the face of modern German democratic law, right? Even Barouka said it was wrong, what had happened.

Q: Who was Barouka?

A: This is no -- Barouka Kuno, one of the witnesses --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- who was quite close to me. He was a decent guy. I was counting on him to back me up.

Suddenly he looks at me, he says, Lallier, you were a traitor. This never happened. So -- so, we went through the last four weeks of the war, totally, totally having -- I had totally lost belief in any trace of humanity on the part of the Germans. So just look at the sequence. Hanging all those Serbs. Massacring the partisan women. There was one more [indecipherable] massacring the partisan women. Anyway, I'll -- I'll become -- come to they murdered -- killing -- oh, t-talking about human rights and that. And that -- oh yes, killing all kinds of partisan, burning the villages,

and then seeing this guy killing seven unarmed, half starved people in their tattered rags, could only have meant that the guy had suffered dementia, which is legally excusable, they put a guy like that in a nuthouse, right? Or the ultimate evil condition of believing that his destiny was to be the ultimate judge over the life or death of people, especially [indecipherable] defenseless people. So he, to me -- Viel was the -- remains the ultimate example of the evil that the Nazi system can inculcate in human minds, making them believe at the individual level that not only Adolf, but they as their emissaries had the right to kill on sight, without being accountable to anybody. Now, counter argument, as I learned from the critics at Ravensburg, a Waffen SS officer will never do a killing like that unless he's ordered to.

Q: Who said that?

A: The defense lawyer. Now, he raised the question that was Viel ordered by the superior officers in -- still living in Prague to do the killing to find out how the cadets would react. Would they react like true Nazis and clap? Or would those be weeded out who may have negative inclinations. Because the SS officer corps will need to have undoubtedly component members who are ultimate Nazis to whom what Hitler says is the absolute right. I have no answer to that because the commanding officer eventually lost his life, the last day of the war in Prague, but the question was raised at the court, you see?

Q: Well, let me ask you something.

A: Yeah?

Q: Either way, whether Viel did it on his own, or he did it because he was ordered, does it really make a difference?

A: Yes. yes.

Q: Why?

A: Because in all armies, if the order is given, you have no choice but to do it.

Q: Do you have --

A: Including the American Army.

Q: Do you have a choice if you think it's a war -- if it's a war crime?

A: Please look at Vietnam.

Q: I don't want to look at Vietnam --

A: I want to look at Vietnam.

Q: -- I'm looking at this, I'm looking at what constitutes --

A: I would say that in the German order --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- of military conduct, and war conduct, the order has to come from a superior officer, period.

Q: But you were -- you said you were -- you were -- been trained -- you were --

A: We were questioning --

Q: No, no, no --

A: We were -- I say, there were two choices.

Q: But what's a war crime? Tell me what a w --

A: A war crime?

Q: -- wh-what were you car -- what were you trained is a war crime?

A: War crime is what Viel did to those seven Jews, that's a war crime.

Q: Yes.

A: I can't give you a purer, clearer --

Q: No, I understand that.

A: -- definition of war crime.

Q: But you were also just being taught. You were going to cadet school from January -- from Mar -- what is it, March 19?

A: That's a -- from Jan -- end of January to mid-March.

Q: March of 1945.

A: That war crimes -- an office -- an officer's duty, to prevent --

Q: Prevent any war s --

A: -- any [indecipherable] from committing a war crime.

Q: Right. So isn't he committing a war crime?

A: He, in our eyes was committing what we would today call a war crime.

Q: But wouldn't you have called that --

A: At that time I called it murder.

Q: Wa -- but still, it's the same.

A: Sorry?

Q: It's the same, a war crime is a murder, isn't it?

A: Well, no.

Q: No?

A: No. A -- a war crime is a murder in a situation in which a war is properly conducted in the Judeo-Christian interpretation, according to the laws of Judeo-Christianity, in which you kind of go contrary to the laws and do the killing, even though the war crime legal setting would not allow you to, or not order you to.

Q: Well, let me have th -- let me ask s -- to you in another way. Did you now begin to believe that what the Nazis were doing, or the Germans were doing under the Nazi regime was committing war crimes wholesale?

A: Well that, yes.

Q: Is that what you finally believed?

A: It was a wholesale -- I was going to conclude that particular example, and the hangings in Yugoslavia, and that partisan little woman, and the others who were -- oh yeah, the hero, my little Serbian hero, were an expression of the endemic attitude of the German Nazis to kill on sight without any feelings of accountability.

Q: And is that what you finally believed [indecipherable]

A: And -- and that's what I finally believe and that is why I have difficulties with the modern German system, because at court most of them doubted my honesty of the testimony. Most of them called me a traitor. Now, what is that an indication of?

Q: Well, that's --

A: They're trying to white -- they were trying to whitewash poor Viel.

Q: Well let me -- okay, let me ask you this. You -- when you were captured, right, at the end of the war.

A: Yeah. By the Brits.

Q: By the Brits.

A: Yeah.

Q: You told an office --

A: 1 -- I prudently arranged to be captured by the Brits.

Q: By the -- I -- oh, really?

A: Because they were closest to my home.

Q: I see, right.

A: Right.

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Q: Right. Okay. So you're captured by the Brits, and you tell some officer --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- British officer, I gather?

A: Yeah.

Q: What you saw.

A: Yeah. Not only him.

Q: Not only him.

A: Also to the -- to the s -- C.I.C. guy Brown, Major Brown [indecipherable]

Q: Who was an American.

A: -- and also to the -- to general -- two star American General Wood at the UNRRA in Vienna, and also to my personal self-appointed confessor, the abbot of the Benedictine monastery, yeah.

Q: All right, so you -- you tell four or five people. It's a number of people.

A: I told one, two, three, four people, yeah.

Q: Four people.

A: Yeah.

Q: Okay. And you're 20 --

A: I was -- the first one that I talked to --

Q: 21 years old.

A: -- I was waiter. The first one, the -- the Brit was in the summer 1945, I was 20 plus three months.

Q: Right. Okay.

A: And by that time I had confirmed my first feeling that I experienced while I was looking at the killing.

Q: Which was?

A: That it was wrong.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Now, wrong means, in the strict sense of definitions, war crime.

Q: Right.

A: Crime against humanity is even better.

Q: So -- so is that one of the first times that -- that a moral clarity came to you during --

A: That came at the moment if I were -- in which I suddenly matured into recognizing that all the previous moments --

Q: Was wrong -- were wrong.

A: -- were exactly the same.

Q: Exactly the same, mm-hm.

A: Endemic. You know the term endemic?

Q: Yes.

A: ["ve been learning English all my life, I --

Q: Yes, yes, endemic is a good word.

A: -- endemic to the Nazi Germans.

Q: Right. When --

A: Should I say to the Germans?

Q: No, I don't think so. I don't think that's fair.

A: Because we now have to have full understanding --

Q: Right, I --

A: -- that the Germans suffered under Hitler, right?

Q: No, no, because --

A: They were the major people suffered under Hitler, right?

Q: No, that's now why. It's --

A: They hated him.

Q: No.

A: Oh yeah.

Q: I'm not talking about the Germans who lived at the time, but to -- to condemn all Germans who lived afterwards --

A: Why didn't the ju -- why didn't the judge in Ravensburg lock up the seven or eight who said I was lying?

Q: You can't just lock up people because they say you're lying.

A: Please [indecipherable] mine idea is not speaking the truth in front of court --

Q: No, it's -- you can't --

A: Okay.

Q: You can't do that. So, when did you find out, between 1945 and by the time you leave Europe in 1951, when do you find out --

A: Yeah, October 1951.

Q: Right, when do you find out about the gassings?

A: The gassing?

Q: Yeah.

A: Why are we suddenly stopping the war crimes?

Q: No, no, I'm going to go back to the war crimes. First I want to know -- I want --

A: You will? You promise?

Q: Yes, I promise you. I want to get some sense of --

A: Very -- I was working -- I was working, I didn't know about the gassing until I finally got hold of the Vienna [indecipherable] in which 1940 -- when was the Vienna [indecipherable]? I was in a POW -- no, actually, I found out in the pre -- British POW camp, in the course of the winter 1945. There was a Jewish guy who had worn a British uniform, who went around -- it was an officers" camp, actually.

Q: Mmn-hm, mm.

A: Went around in Graz, Wetzelsberg, okay? And I wa -- have to tell you about that too. Very close to Tito Yugoslavia and very close to the Brits being terribly worried that Tito is -- will o- occupy that part of Austria and declare them Europea -- the Yugoslav sovereign territory communist, and the Brits didn't want any of that. So what did they do? They fed us -- made us do all kinds of military and non-military exercises, even told us -- not me specifically, there were senior officers that they'd have to keep us physically ready to once again take up fighting against the Tito, and brother did we ever hate Tito. Giving us the weapons to get Tito's attempts to come to the north and push him all the way back. So we had a pretty good time learning English at the same time. And I say those British officers were wise officers, and the one who went around asking was a Jewish Austrian who went around wanting to know if any of us had been to a concentration camp, and if anyone's of -- of -- had ever seen people, Jewish people being gassed.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: Now, I don't know what the others told them, but I could only tell him that I myself never did see because I was never close enough in the Polish area where those things were happening.

Q: But that was new for you to hear.

A: Yes, that was news to me to hear and it only confirmed -- the term endemic is very late in my life.

Q: I understand.

A: But I would now say it only confirmed what I was getting the impression then, Nazi Germany was about. The absolute right to kill or gas, without accou -- without accountability.

Q: Right.

A: And they were a Christian nation, equally Catholic and Protestant, which in itself raises many other questions. They were not all mitleifer, you know the term mitleifer?

Q: Mm-mm.

A: In Denazification a key term that excused you for having been a major con -- mitleifer is one who happily --

Q: Run along.

A: -- runs along.

Q: Right.

A: Everything the benefits.

Q: Right, right.

A: And 90 percent were declared mitleifers.

Q: Right, right.

A: I was declared a juvenile. I didn't even qualify mitleifer.

Q: A juvenile, yes --

A: Yeah, yeah.

Q: -- cause you were a kid, right?

A: 1-- [have my Denazification document.

Q: But did that -- you know, it's one thing to see one person committing a war crime.

A: Yeah.

Q: It's another to think about a policy that becomes when millions of people --

A: Well, it's a leap -- it's a leap of -- not leap of faith.

Q: It's a leap.

A: It's a leap of -- of mal-intent, yeah.

Q: So quantity and quality matter here.

A: You know, it is a -- both matter. I -- I was kind of -- could go off completely on that tangent.

Doesn't in true human loving.

Q: Excuse me? That --

A: In true human loving, quality and quantity are very closely interlinked.

Q: Yes, they are interconnected.

A: Right, and the purer the loving, the closer they're intertwined right? Okay. At any age, right?

Q: Yeah, yeah, right.

A: Right.

Q: Right.

A: Okay, so let's go back to that. The -- it takes a bit of training in philosophy to be able to answer the question of individual acts of crime, generally I prefer crimes against humanity.

Q: Right.

A: Okay? Even though Holocaust is a very exceptional kind of crime against humanity, okay?

Between individual acts of crime against humanity and a whole system gearing individuals to that. And there the conclusion is simple. Remember the lady who wrote the book on Proletarianism?

Q: Mm-hm. You mean --

A: Wasn't her --

Q: -- Hannah Arendt.

A: -- conclusion --

Q: Yes.

A: -- that for an individual to act criminally, the whole system must be set up on a criminal base.

Q: Right.

A: So there is your answer. Viel, you could say, couldn't help it. He had been convinced by his superior that what he was doing was right. But that -- wait, wait -- that, in any military strategy will then put the blame on --

Q: Right.

A: -- the commander in chief --

Q: Commander in chief, not the -- not the individual.

A: -- of the United States armed forces, right?

Q: Right, right, right.

A: Well, that's not how it works.

Q: Right.

A: Because in simpler terms, at any level you've got to have a direct command from the next superior officer, which means to say it never gets to the top. But in the Hitler system, the Wannsee conference was the top.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And types like Viel, deranged completely of -- not deranged, hateful completely, or not, or maybe hurting from a sev -- very severe stomach wound that he was still suffering with, may

have been said to have lost his mind. I looked into his eyes, they showed absolutely nothing.

They didn't show lust to kill. I think that the guillotine manipulators must have had the same look of --

Q: Of nothing.

A: -- absolutely no feeling.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: It's not human being that we are killing, chicken that -- even chick -- killing chickens would be wa -- awaken some feelings in you. So, was he an executor on his own behalf, or was he only executing what the system had told him was right?

Q: Did you have a class --

A: Did I accuse the system in Ravensburg?

Q: Did you?

A: I did.

Q: Yes. That was later.

A: Sorry?

Q: That was later, many years later.

A: That was later. At the same time, it had to be said.

Q: Yes. We're going to have to stop the tape.

A: Yeah.

End of Tape Seven

Beginning Tape Eight

A: So was he ordered, or did he do it on his own?

Q: Well, that we --

A: And there is no answer to that.

Q: -- we may never know. We"! never know.

A: No, well see, but again, military discipline tells you he couldn't have done it on his own because B, he would also have reduced the efficiency of the anti-tank diggers, by reducing their numbers.

Q: Mm-hm. Di --

A: And one of the arguments of the defense was exactly that. Lallier is lying, because no officer will go contrary to the need to keep efficiency as high as possible.

Q: I see.

A: I found that a very contrived --

Q: Wa-Was anyone else shocked, in that ditch?

A: Oh, they were sh -- oh, there were reports from the Czech legal proceedings following the whole catastrophe of the small fortress of Theresienstadt in which tens of thousands of people, Jewish people mainly, lost their lives.

Q: Now what I ne --

A: It is a continuum, a continual --

Q: Right.

A: -- killings during the seven or eight days of the digging of the ditch.

Q: But, I mean --

A: But we were there only for two days --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- and on the first day I heard nothing --

Q: Right.

A: -- in my section.

Q: Right. So you don't know when a --

A: And two kilometers is long enough not to be able to hear clearly, right?

Q: From somebody else, right.

A: And in my section -- this killing happened in my section on the second day.

Q: Right.

A: But court proceedings which to pred -- demonstrate that many people -- I even have a listing of the seven dead, plus others who were killed somewhere else at different times --

Q: Right.

A: -- at the same ditch.

Q: Right.

A: Endemic. So ki-kil -- he -- Viel wasn't the only one, but the Czech courts tried several of them, and hanged several.

Q: I see.

A: In 1948 or 1940 --

Q: Right.

A: -- no, 1950-51.

Q: When you went back to this cadet training --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- the second da -- after that second say when you saw the killing --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- did you ask about the killing?

A: No, I went back with -- I went back on the following day, requisitioning a bicycle from a public stand off the main church in Leitmeritz with another cadet offi -- cadet 0 -- candidate by the name of Schultz, Sep Schultz, a real Nazi-like Volksdeutsche, to go back and find out if it's really true what happened, right? And we went into the klanifesto, into the small fortress to ask some questions, and we were allowed to go in because we were fully uniformed, right? So we went around and we came across a couple of subalterns who looked at us like as equal because we were not yet officers and who showed us, well this is the wall against which the shooting is done. That is the wall in which [indecipherable] and the wall against which some of the hanging is done. This is where some of them perished trying to jump across the fence. And we discovered that it really was an extermination camp. But we never went to higher command, because given our lower -- lower rank, we were just happy to have been tolerated in there asking a few questions. And we decided that -- we didn't just quietly disappear, but it strengthened our resolve in waiting for the answer by the commander of the school, right, to really find out what we got to be involved in against our -- our perception that officer candidates don't do things like that, are not ordered to do things like that. Now, the second question is, why would we have been sent there in the first place? There were other military uniform -- military units in the area. And I'm coming back to the main thesis. I think I'm right in presuming that the real Nazis in the Waffen SS command wanted to give a last minute test to our affiliation with Nazism as an ideology.

They wanted to find out which of us would continue falling into step and which of us could be considered untrusty and maybe put up against the wall. And you know what, given the devilnish -- devilish -- devilness of the system, it's a plausible intellectual question.

Q: Is there -- is there a problem? Wait one second. [interruption] So you're asking the quest --

A: So the second interesting question is, was it possibly aimed at testing the cadets for their allegiance to Nazism, separating those who continue believing in Hitler's absolute ideas about the right to kill from those who would have had some doubts. And hoping to sort out those who would have some doubts.

Q: But then wouldn't you have seen this happening more generally? Why just you f -- why just you? It's only two of you.

A: I-In -- in a tot -- i-in a totalitarian system it is very difficult to distinguish between generally and non-generally. The system in its totality exists and under each many interpretations --

Q: Right.

A: -- right, will be imposed upon people. And it could well be that in the whole Waffen SS, attempts like that were being made throughout the war, but I can only talk about our own experience, and within our own experience. This clash di -- in our deepest inside between discovering what is wrong, about which we could do nothing, and trying to make sense of why it happened.

Q: Right.

A: And I'm still trying to make sense as to why anyone, supposedly an officer, supposedly abiding by international agreement and warfare and on and on and on, not committing crimes against humanity, why would a person li -- do that? He didn't sound -- look like one who had gone crazy. So, a cold blooded killer? In Nazism there was no such thing as a cold blooded killer. Viel --

Q: Who -- how do you know there weren't a variety of kinds of killers under Nazism --

A: Well, I would only --

Q: -- some cold blooded.

A: -- Lwould only -- I would only look at Viel and I would recall during the hangs of the Serbs, the presence of German officers from the Wehrmacht, who were standing there and looking at the shooters and executioners the way the other members of the officers" school were standing there looking at Viel doing the shooting. Irresponsive. Would you call that irresponsive?

Q: What, if they didn't do anything.

A: Showing no -- showing no --

Q: No, showing no emotions.

A: -- emotions, right. Morally -- what the [indecipherable] morally untouchable is the wrong term. Lacking any morality --

Q: Morality, maybe --

A: -- is the term.

Q: -- maybe. You know, you said, this was off camera, you said your father taught you fairness, but not humaneness. You think that's true? Do you think it took you a lifet --

A: My father taught me that humaneness can only live in a system of a discipline committed to tradition.

Q: Nothing else.

A: Nothing else. He was an inveterate traditionalist --

Q: Traditionalist, uh-huh.

A: -- who had failed, even after the war to recognize, that even Austro-Hungary, in many respects, was not a noble entity.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: But he needed intellectual refuge in a world -- in most [indecipherable] much worse than Austro-Hungary had ever been. Austro-Hungary was a haven of righteousness under the eyes of that beautiful looking white beard and white [indecipherable] Kaiser, right, who la -- loved his wife that he had so tragically lost. You see, he never saw beyond that. Why would he else -- why else would he tell me, Adalbert, if you ever go to America, you lose your civilization. To him civilization meant something that --

Q: Something else --

A: -- had existed before 1980. Would he care for the freedom and equality of Serbs on crosses [indecipherable]? No.

Q: No.

A: No.

Q: So, it would have --

A: He never seemed to care about the blatant discrimination against the Jewish people, because he is a standard example to say well, one of my friends is a Jewish guy, he teaches mathematics.

Q: So it didn't really get to him?

A: No.

Q: What the -- the Nazis had done.

A: Well, he was hoping, like many of the others in the higher bourgeoisie that Hitler could be very useful safeguarding the rights of the higher bourgeoisie to exempt higher status --

Q: So whatever crimes might have been committed were not -- either they weren't necessarily crimes, or they were necessary crimes.

A: Well, they -- they would say there are no crimes -- there are -- nothing can be regarded a crime that is done -- undertaken in order to preserve the system that you believe is the best.

Q: Mm-hm. Right.

A: And don't forget, as a Christian person, he couldn't possibly propose that what the pa -- Pope said do and done to one and a half million women burning them at the stake, that that was an ultimate evil. And he was a Protestant.

Q: Right. When you told these people what you had seen --

A: Yeah.

Q: -- these four people.

A: Yeah.

Q: What did they tell you?

A: By the Brits, he said --

Q: The Brits.

A: -- he said look, I have a job to do. I remember it [indecipherable] job to do. I have to take care of you guys and I have to keep you in good shape. He was Scots, I think. I found it very funny for guys to be wearing skirts, you know, but I liked them, I liked them. Gave me a chance to learn English as fast as possible. And he says, I have a job to do. Don't ask me, don't bother me, don't bother -- he said, bother, he said [indecipherable]. So I said, but sir, you know -- said, oh, no, no, no. [indecipherable] said, okay, I'll report it. Remember [indecipherable]. Major Brown, C.I.C, Bamberg, 1946, October, November. They send me back to Bamberg because I had become homeless. I had lost my Austrian citizenship because I hadn't been born in Austria, right?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I was -- I served in the German army, without, thank God, getting the German citizenship. But they sent me to Bamberg because as a so-called Volksdeutsche, they couldn't

send me back to Yugoslavia. I wouldn't have gone back to Yugoslavia, right. So I went back to - - I went up to Bamberg against my will and a year later I couldn't stand it any more, I went down to Vienna, crossing the border illegally and that was that. Oh, I even wrote a letter to the Austrian president saying that as a former Austrian, I beg your pardon, but I do wish to live in Austria. Could you please accommodate me with a permission to cross the boundary illegally?

And would you believe it, I got a letter from President's of Austria office saying Lallier, you are welcome because so many of you young ones died, we badly need replacements. Never asked any questions, right? Anyway, so in Bamberg I had to report to the C.I.C as per my release, I have to be entrusted to American or British authority for reeducation. Cause they must have recognized that I had a brain that might be potentially useful for reexamination. So that [indecipherable] me, you see?

Q: Right.

A: So I went to Brown and Brown turned out to be a German emigrant. Spoke fluent German, oh he spoke such a beautiful Rhineland German, it was a pleasure to talk to the guy. And o-over the course of time -- met him quite a few times -- the Germans gave me no job because I had been in the Waffen SS [indecipherable]. Suddenly they said well, SS [indecipherable] welcome. I have to wait until the [indecipherable] which I got in [indecipherable] not from my father. And -- so there was no inside work on that. And so eventually we talked about the -- America. I took to the guy, he was very intelligent. I liked his ways and he was so leisurely. He was so different, not [indecipherable] officer German, I -- Major, I said wow, Major is staff officer. You know, we are [indecipherable]. And he liked me, he said Lallier, you are -- in German [speaks German] I can reeducate you, do you like America? I said, I know nothing. I know a bit about the British, but I did see American soldiers and officers lie on their stomach playing dice. He says, oh yeah, we

love doing that. Would you like to do that? It was a sale, right? He said then, a little while later, and would you like to work for us? And I said, yes please, I need job. I need job badly. So he gave me a job as a stoveman in an American infantry company stationed in Bamberg. And stoveman was the most dangerous job in the army because they used gasoline stoves and every third of them was expected to explode into the stovemen's faces, right? And I said, stoveman?

Sounds good to me. All the food you can eat, he said. So I got the job as a stoveman. I did a very good job. Not even one stove exploded while I was working in Bamberg for nine months. And he was pleased, he says, you seem highly useful, your English is getting better, your German and other languages, how about working for us? I said, doing what? He says, well, certain things we like to find out. You were in the Waffen SS for instance. What if we sent you to Switzerland to explore the escape routes of some higher SS officials through Switzerland to Latin America. And I'ma humble guy, | [indecipherable] thinking of generals and colonels and all this. I said, why should I do that? He said, because you seem like a guy who can cross boundaries and fact find without being caught, and -- would you like to do that? I said, well, why not? Where should I go?

He said, well, go to Switzerland, try to get across the border. Make sure that they don't catch you because the Swiss will put you in jail for being Waffen SS [indecipherable] and I'll give you 200 American dollars. And try to fact find in the Basel area if there may have been someone on the streets, through which some of these Waffen S -- these SS [indecipherable] he emphasized strongly, seem to have go -- escaped and then to Latin America. So, he said, I'll give you two weeks to find out and report back to me. And I -- I found it very amusing, here I am a nobody -- oh, and he said, and if you do a good job on the other assignments, I'll try to get you a visa to emigrate to the United States. Now, I am a living example of an early shift United States policy in 19 -- late 1946, by which time the Cold War had began.

Q: The what?

A: The Cold War --

Q: Min-hm, right.

A: -- had began. I'm looking at some so-called criminal elements in the German army, and enabling them even to come to the United States on behalf of the mo -- of defending democracy for a greater cause which might prevail over the presumed war criminal tha -- d-during th --

Q: This -- and they al -- they allowed -- they allowed --

A: -- mind [indecipherable]

Q: -- inveterate Nazis to come in, so --

A: -- you see. Oh well, I was -- veterate or not --

Q: You were not that, right.

A: -- I certainly wasn't venerable.

Q: Right.

A: Anyway, he was smiling at me and said, would you like to emigrate to United States eventually? I said, well, I have no home, I don't know yet, but I had just fallen in love with my wife, eventual wife --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- said no, not yet. And he said, well, but I-I will inter -- look at that. Then he said, if you need any other type of employment, if things go well I will give you a highest recommendation as a re-educable person. I was 21 years old.

Q: Right.

A: Not yet in the prime, okay? So I went to -- across the border, swam across the river. Boy, that Rhine river is terribly cold. Boy, is it ever a fast river [indecipherable] on the other side. Went to

the next monastery, I won't tell you where. I promised I would never talk about that. And th-that why a -- Austrian is a bit like Swiss, kind of pretending that I am kind of a sta -- refugee of some sort, I was going around and fact finding and I did discover that one of the monasteries had been quite instrumental on behalf of Catholicism --

Q: Right.

A: -- not Protestantism --

Q: Right.

A: -- to ferret out some of those people.

Q: Right.

A: Most of those facts have since become quite well known, including the persons involved, right?

Q: Right.

A: And I got my evidence, I went back to, and I said to Mr. -- Herr Brown, I said Herr Brown -- I didn't call him Major -- Herr Brown, I have the evidence, and he took careful note of that, and then I became serious, and I -- look, I have a problem. I don't want to stay here, I want to go back home. I can't go back home, cause Tito is still there. I want to go back to Austria to study, but I need your help, I said. And I also need to talk to you about something that had happened.

And this was -- by that time it was June -- no, March 19 -- oh, February 1948. So I had been with the [indecipherable] often working in that American company [indecipherable] company. And by the time he had told me about the American presidency, election for demo -- oh, I loved it, I just swallowed America wholesale. And he was delighted. And I said, look, I've to tell you about the thing that had happened. In 48, the Czech Republic was falling to communist hands. Hungary had fallen into communist hands so the threat was evidently the thing that we had tried to fight

against. Soviet Union expanded and become reality. And [indecipherable] look, the Soviets are expanding, I'm feeling terrible, I've lost my home, I don't want to go to America, what do I do?

And I said, what do I do especially? I have to confess to you that I had witnessed that murder.

What murder? In the Panzergraben. Oh, you witnessed a murder in the Panzergraben. I said yes.

Well, who? I said -- I gave him the story exactly, the big body guy, Viel and all that. He looks at me and says, I believe you. And I said, you better believe me because I don't believe it was right and I've got to clear my conscience because I believe it was wrong and I believe the guy should be apprehended, and I named the name. He sits back and says, Lallier. Lally. The Cold War is on. I am glad that you are saying that because I can -- I'm counting on you. We need guys like you cause you never know about the Cold War. And he says, our policy is to report these things about what the Nazi had done, to higher levels. My job here is to reeducate you, and talking to you to pass on any useful information about you to the higher ups. I will report what you have just said, but there is nothing more that I can do about that because I am not a war crime discrimination -- I am not a war crime investigator. So what -- I left it in his hands. In March 1948, I crossed the boundary, went to Vienna, found a little job, found my little eventual wife and decided that I would approach -- I'd heard from friends about the United Nations refugee organization in Vienna. I went there in person [indecipherable] I remember. And I learned that the commanding officer was a general, two star general by the name of Wood. And by that time I had handled a British major in the col -- in the prisoner of war camp, I'd handled a C.LC. major, and once you have handled a C.I. major, you can talk face to face to an American general.

Q: Right.

A: Right. So I found myself speaking very fa -- low level English, asking for an interview with the chief of the mission [indecipherable] mission in Vienna, and they almost fell over. And I

said, please, I speak languages, please, I know many refugees, please, I know many Jewish refugees, please, I want to talk General Wood. And would you believe it? General Wood received me. There was another proof that the American system will have even generals lying on their bellies, playing the dice, hoping to win. So with me, play the dice.

Q: Right.

A: I went to General Wood's office, bowed to him, no [indecipherable] any more, right, bow to him. Adalbert Lallier, looking for a job. He says, what languages? I said Hungarian. Good. I said, Serbo-Croatia. Good. I said, little Czech. Oh, he says, very good. We can use you. English, he listened to me, he said, you learn fast. I said, also French. He says, oh Monsieur Delong will be your boss. He'll love you. Right? But he said, right now I cannot take you because I need to find out who you are. So, I said please, please, I need job badly. Anything is better than cleaning stoves.

Q: Right.

A: Two days later I pass by, I am invited back to General Wood's office, he says, I just got a clearance from the C.I.C. Bamberg. A guy by the name of Brown, he says. Not his real name. I said, I know. He said I should give you any job. He said Lallier can handle any job, you can trust him. Right? So he gave me a job, two weeks as a volunteer without pay to clean up all their backward records on all immigrants through the Vienna refugee center for the past two years.

And he said, unless you can do it in two weeks, I won't take you. I can tell you one thing, in my life, it was not only the Jewish dimension, because by that time I had talked to [indecipherable] cause I was hanging around waiting for the job, th-the ones with the beards, ones with the smile, ones who pretended they were -- had been jewelers in Budapest, most of them Hungarians, because they were escaping en masse. And so I had heard of the fortunes and misfortunes and I

decided Lallier, God has sent you, God. There were times and still are believes -- [indecipherable] in which I believe God is, period. Okay? God wants me here. So I worked for two weeks without sleeping an hour and got himself a filing system from the AA to the ZZ in all countries, including the American emigration part, not just the Canadian part. Oh, he was so impressed, he said, I'll give you a back pay for two weeks in Austrian shillings. I think he gave me a thousand shillings for two weeks. And he says, I appoint you as of immediately, chief of the Canadian desk. And I never asked him, as a Canadian should, what business have you as an American to appoint me to the Canadian desk? I was so happy. I had my own second, even brought her a picture, I think, Mrs. -- Madame Friedman, oh, if I had -- hadn't met my wife, Madame Friedman would have been a great substitute. Never had anything with her, though, she was young married too. Anyway, so I got my secretary and in no time I was wielding all my languages.

Q: And you were in the --

A: Taking on the refugees.

Q: -- an-and you --

A: And I was that --

Q: So you were working in the international refugee work commission?

A: -- I got the job from 19 -- I think October 1950, or July -- August 1950 to Septem -- to October 1951, in charge of the Canada desk, fully authorized to interview candidates, report to Mr. Delong for a second confirmation of acceptance and then proceed on my own to bring the refugees to Salzburg, being the Canadian desk, to present them to the Canadian consul generals, and there were two consul general. They were a St. Laurent, who happened to be a then nephew of Canada's Prime Minister then, and a Mr. Klassen from Toronto. And upon my first

presentation of my first case, who happened to have been Jewish, we took a liking to each other, because I was well staged, I had the documentation and I wanted these poor refugees to come to Canada, period.

Q: I'm going to have to stop you, however.

A: Why?

Q: Because --

A: Again?

Q: Yes.

A: Gee, it goes fast.

Q: Every -- it goes very fast.

End of Tape Eight

Beginning Tape Nine

Q: Yes?

A: General Wood also told me -- I had my report from C.I.C. Bamberg, from Mr. -- from Mr.

Brown, concluding --

Q: Where is -- where is C.I.C. --

A: C.L. -- no, no, General Wood told me, upon giving me the job --

Q: IL understand that.

A: -- that he had received the report from Mr. Brown.

Q: Yes, and where is Mr. Brown?

A: In Bamberg. He was the C.LC --

Q: Bombeck?

A: Bamberg, in Germany.

Q: Bamberg.

A: That is B-a-m-b-e-r-g.

Q: Ah, okay. Bamberg.

A: To whom I had to report for reeducation.

Q: Right.

A: And he said under all I am pleased, and I know that your statement about the killing was passed onto higher authorities, leave it in our hands. But to you it is now to prove that you can do the job, because we're so behind that we desperately need a guy with your languages, but it's to you -- for you to prove that you can do it --

Q: Right.

A: -- and that you deserve my trust.

Q: Right.

A: I think that is the first time in my life, in my then life that anyone looked at me, man or female, male or female, eyeball to eyeball, believing that I could do things right. And you don't know the feeling of liberation. Through General Wood, I just absolutely loved America.

Absolutely loved America --

Q: Why?

A: -- because at that time that I first asked myself, why did I have to have this terrible episode on the side of the Nazis?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Cause it makes no sense.

Q: Right.

A: Intelligent design. It certainly doesn't seem to have been, does it?

Q: Been very intelligent.

A: I lost my brother -- I lost my brother --

Q: Mm-hm.

A: -- don't forget. I haven't even mentioned that yet. Anyway, so I worked my head off the first presentation went very well. I -- I had an Austrian identity card, so I had no problem crossing the Soviet demarcation line, which was very, very, very tough, and often had to ferry the refugees illegally, giving them false identification papers. Most of them turned out to be Hungarian Jewish. Some je -- Czech Jewish, a very few Yugoslav Jewish. I [indecipherable] about 300 of them. And often the Jewish people were, as you would expect, jewelers, merchants, silk producers, merchant general, one banker. None of them agriculture, none of the textile laborers, but owners of textile mills.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Canada at that time needed cheap labor. They needed shoe workers, textile workers, so there I went --

Q: Changing.

A: -- looking at their documents --

Q: Right.

A: -- and, textile worker, shoe worker, woodworker, ba -- anything you say, I would put in.

Some of them looked so brilliantly, other than workers, but the consul general were just happy to have -- because Canada suddenly was losing, as they did United States, their restrictive policies as [indecipherable] Jewish people. Unfortunately at the same time, and it is not very well known, they were also lifting the total restrictions on members, former members of the German armed forces, including the Waffen SS.

Q: The Canadians were.

A: Canadians and the Americans.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Into Canada alone, more than 2500 former Waffen SS members of the Ukrainian division were transported over by special agreement with the Brits, who had captured them and kept in Britain, not knowing what to do with them because the Soviets had shot everybody else upon being returned, you see, so with special agreement, Jewish people were being let in, but the Nazis were also being let in, or the presumed Nazis, right? Including some of whom, from the real eastern Europe, who had turned out to have been members without saying so, right, of some concentration camp and Einsatz commandos, right? So I'm looking at that parallel, wondering about the Canadian approaches between 1947 and 1949. Was it just to get as many bodies as

possible to replace the lost bodies during the war, right? And kind of wanting to be equal. So many Jewish people, so many non-Jew, I don't know, but the fact is that I did tell the Canadian consuls upon several visits who I was because they had to look at my background to find me trustworthy, right? They knew about the incident about the killing and they thought I was okay, I was doing a good job and eventually they told me, quite soon, Lallier, you too will have to come to Canada, we need guys like you.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: Your wife is -- you're married -- you're already -- your wife is pregnant. So we look at the past, we know you have committed nothing wrong. Come on over as soon as you can. And the [indecipherable] to Vienna was being abolished at the end of 1951, so I decided in October 1951 to come over here after getting the -- I had my big row with my father about that, right? He didn't want me to go. So I went anyway. So I came over on the second of October 1951, after having falsified or not falsified -- hundreds of doc -- immigration documents, and brought personally quite a few of them across the Soviet demarcation line, often at the threat of being captured by the Soviets. But I knew my way around the bridge baca -- you know, the Linz bridge was the key thing. You could only ferret people over without proper identification during the lunch hour, because on the east side of Linz was a big steel factory which the cho -- Soviets had reopened right? And during the lunch hour, because feeding was poor on the east Soviet side, thousands of workers crossed the bridge and went to the western side where the food was much better, American zone. So it is there that I ferreted out many, including Mr. Goldstein and Mr.

Goldsmith, who had been a very preeminent jeweler in -- in Budapest and who eventually got to Montreal and opened up the -- the coffee shop, which had become very famous as a little coffee shop, on Drummond Street. Anyway, so they wanted me and the Americans, in the meantime,

didn't let me loose. The general said, Mr. Lallier, I understand you also work under special conditions and special cases. I says, well what do you have to offer? By that time I had my baby, you see, my daughter.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And he says, well, there is a guy in Czechoslovakia by the name of Ruberchinsky. He is a chief expert on tensile wires. I had no idea what tensile wires were. Now I know. Those are wires, stretched wires that use as guidelines for precision shooting long distance cannons. The Americans has no experts like that. Ruberchinsky they -- absolutely they needed to get away from these Sovietized Czechs, who wanted absolutely to keep him there for the Soviet Union. He says, if you ferret Ruberchinsky t -- out to the west and into our safe hands, to the ameri -- American zone in Vienna, I guarantee you an immigration visa for the United States as a refugee.

And boy was that ever a challenge. I knew the boundary area, I knew some peasants. Peasants are good to know. I know that from my boy -- life as a child, you see. And I knew -- had some contacts on the Czech side of the boundary. By that time it had become communist, you see, this was, my God, early 1951, and they needed Ruberchinsky and I got Ruberchinsky through contacts and I arranged Ruberchinsky to be brought by lorry and then by oxcart to the boundary and then [indecipherable] I crossed the boundary into a quick Austrian ready available cab. We went to Vienna, I deposited him in the office of General Wood and he almost fell over. And I had for -- had phoned the Canadian consulate and said, I have a guy here from the Czech Republic -- from Czechoslovakia who is a tensile experts, wouldn't Canada use them? And they said, we want them. So there was a tug of war between --

Q: Between the two.

A: -- the American and the -- and the American offered him a huge factory, right, already made, right to take over. And then I asked -- so Ruberchinsky got his American visa in no time, and General Wood looked at me and said, you know, Lallier, I know about your past, but you really, really have done a good job of getting yourself reeducated, right? You know, I'm really happy about that. I'm really happy about that. Anyway, so Ruberchinsky went to the United States and I decided I would come to Canada because -- Ill be honest about that, some of the American presence had become so militaristic that I got to be concerned a bit about the message of true democracy on the one hand, which I lovingly embraced, and the military regime perpetuating itself because of the feeling of universal power. And having experienced the German attempt to universal military power, I decided I'd had enough of that. No more C.I.C.. I had a couple of minor jobs, one of them included somebody else that I had been able to bring through the Soviet zone in Vienna across the -- you know Vienna?

Q: A little.

A: Th-The Danube -- the Danube canal is in the middle of the tho -- town --

Q: Min-hm, right.

A: -- the nine district, right? And I had brought him to the demarcation line and the Soviets had somehow g-gotten hold of that, and the Americans were waiting on this side, so I was able with the American to pull the co guy, with the last bit of our strength across the demarcation line to save him from the west and he was almost -- he almost died with fright because the Soviets were hanging onto his legs on the other side. So then I decided I'd had enough. My wife says, look, I want peace and quiet; my daughter had been born. So I came to Canada and -- wanting to study.

My credentials were good, my English was much better, my French was okay for Quebec, even though Quebec's accent is different from the French [indecipherable]. And I was a Protestant, so

in Quebec I found that Protestants were not really welcome, so I kind of deemphasized that.

There was no immigration of French Protestants into Quebec from 1529 to 1929, can you imagine that? That's another thing that I didn't know about. Anyway, so I found meni -- menial jobs. I worked in a color dye factory, I worked in a -- in the gold mine. I worked as a shoe cleaner, I worked in a -- as a vacuum cleaner salesman. And I worked as a car washer. And let's see, I worked one more dirty job, in a barrel factory, I was a hole puncher. Concerned, cause I had learned a bit about democracy. I had been told about Jefferson. I had been told about the Constitution. I had been told about the duality of Canada, and my mind was so empty. I had known nothing about the systems. That kind of pleased my soul. And I was married, I had responsibility for the family. My wife was a haute couturiere, she had no problem finding a job.

So I decided I would work with Steinbergs as a store manager for awhile to get money and go back to school. I went to the French university for admission, speaking in European French and having to answer -- one of the first questions was what religion are you? You are from Europe. I said well, look, I'm of [indecipherable] origin. He said Protestants study at McGill. We cannot accept Protestants. And that was that. So my desire to match my heart with some of the French blood rest -- remaining in it, with the French heart of Canadian, didn't work. I went to McGill speaking colloquial English. Good for selling vacuum cleaners, but not good for studying Burke and Hume and Locke. And looked at the guy -- who looked Jewish, you know guys who look Jewish, who happen to be Jewish, right? You see it on their eyes. I said -- Solean was his name, Dean Solean, the first Jewish administrator at McGill in 1954. Okay, big, big difference. There had been no Jewish administrators before then, so McGill was kind of opening up. I said please, Austria born, speaking all kinds of languages, working for [indecipherable] America, please, I want to finish college. What certification do you have? Well, I ha -- in Vienna I studied two

years at the university -- and that's very impressive. It's like three years over here. So he looked at that, he says, look Lallier, I will accept you for a B.A. in economics and political science, and I'll put you into honors economics. Oh, I felt so pleased. You know what honors economics is?

It's a special degree, undergrad, leading you direct into graduate school. I phoned my wife and said, oh my dear, I haven't even started, but already I have honors.

Q: Right.

A: So I said yes, honors, oh wow. He says, but you first must spend another year learning English, because if I take you right now you'll fail, and I don't want you to fail, I see that you don't want to fail. So I ya -- I said, so what do I do? And there was something that I will never forget. Dean Solean looks at me, jee -- Jewish Canadian, free to have the first dean job at McGill, in a society in which the Jewish people were not easily accepted. Tells me, you know, Mr.

Lallier, Canada's a great, free country. Do whatever you want. But come back the first of September 1954, I'll take you. And I said, great, free country. Nobody ever in my life had told me it's a great free country, you're free to what to do. My conversion to democracy and human freedom and individual freedom started blooming, but deep inside, the shame of what I had witnessed never died. So I went to McGill [indecipherable] learning English day and night, I was working 70 words a day, and with that good mind of mine it's working well, even s-started to write in, the [indecipherable] professor was very, very, very protective of me and encouraging.

And I landed with a very high quality B honors economics, political science. Wrote out a few letters of reco -- of application. Lo and behold Columbia took me without restrictions, but with the restriction to study in the Russian Institute. Why? Lallier, we know that you know languages, we badly need you for your east European languages to be trained as a specialist in Soviet affairs, but you have to learn Russian. And I had a Russian teacher at Columbia who was a

young lady refugee from Leningrad. I don't know how she made it, oh she was so beautiful, I was studying Russian day and night, including some coffee sessions with the young lady, right, I remember that. And I felt I was really taking to Russian, everybody was pleased. So I got my Master's degree in economics in one year, which was unusual. I had my Russian [indecipherable] certificate in one additional year, which is unusual. And I was fully qualified for my Ph.D. in economics. All of that in two years. And then I got tired. The United States got the war in the Vietnam. I was suffering under this blatant expression of militarism under false philosophic and moral premises of [indecipherable] theory and all of that stuff, and I'd become a person who had highly admired Jefferson, on the one hand, in spite of his dubious background lately, right, but also Locke. I'm a [indecipherable] by conviction. And I decided I would come back to Canada, take up a teaching post, fini -- post, fish -- finish my doctorate somewhere along the line, but prefer a country of peace. Even though the country was supplying all the napalm the -- America needed to bomb the hell out of Vietnam. So I came back home, came across some of my refugees that I brought here, including the guy who had opened the coffee shop, who gave me a permanent table like in Vienna. Adalbert, whenever you come -- in Hungarian -- this is your table, I give you my personal services. And he was very grateful. And some others I kept contact with, who was very grateful, and I had no problem getting my citizenship, even being invited to speak at a citizenship ceremony in both languages -- both official languages, no Austrian any more, did that. Recognizing the French Canadian identity, but also the need of English Canada to remain strong and united, so they liked that. So that was 1957. I went to the United States, lived in New York for three years, 1960 to 1963. Had a very good time on Broadway, working part time in a -- in a p -- ina -- ina chicken and sparerib store, a Jewish store on Broadway just off Columbia in which the owner told me, when you sell expensive cheeses,

always leave your thumb on the scale. And I told him, I can't do that. He says, if you want the job you'd better do that, but also got a ska -- part-time ta -- I was very good at Columbia, actually, had an A average, at the graduate level. And the professor that chaired then said lall -- Lallier, you're really a very smart kid, he said, even though you're a bit older than the average kid, he says, I recommend you for a teaching job at Brooklyn College. So he got me a Brooklyn summer job [indecipherable] college, 1962 in the summer -- 1961 in the summer. And he said, I prefer you to stay in the United States and you don't need to have your doctorate in economics because with your advanced degrees, graduate degrees in international politics, I want you to work for the Rand Corporation. And the Rand Corporation is the air force's secret service, I wa - - didn't want that. And I hope, I beg you to understand why I made up my mind that I would not continue living in the States. I love America for its ideals, for its honesty, for the greatest of, especially President Roosevelt. Not so much the subsequent ones. And for the liberating me, for a chance to develop my mind. But I prefer maybe being a small country member, because small countries can always prevent themselves from stepping under the toes. Big countries, by their size alone, cannot do that. I'm a friend of the United States, I am very highly respective of you for giving me the honor of having this discussion and making my confession once again, hoping to convince you that when I applied that job -- for that job in General Woods's office, God had given me a mandate, and I'm very serious about that, to try to undo, not so much my feelings of guilt, cause you can't do feelings of unguilt if you cannot prevent the killing of innocent people, but trying to do my best to ease the suffering of many of the Jewish refugees, especially those from Hungary and the Czechia -- and Czechoslovakia. And I think I have been able to follow through on my mandate in doing that, and thereby easing my pangs of conscience, hoping that eventually the maker, in the Christian tradition St. Peter, will look at me and say, oh Adalbert

you old rascal, you didn't do anything, did you? But you at least tried to redeem yourself and to help a people badly needed help [indecipherable] crucial time. It wasn't thousands of them, it was maybe just a couple of hundred. And the couple of hundred have had children, some of them I know even eight to 10 children. And it seems that they have forgiven me for doing nothing, even Rabbi Poupko. My conscience is still not pleased, because when you have to be a man, you have to be a man, even though it costs your life. I've had moment -- in English you have the statement, if a man is a chicken, he is not a man. At that moment I was a chicken.

Q: What do --

A: Tm still -- I'm still ashamed of that.

Q: What do you think you could have done?

A: Sorry?

Q: What could you have done?

A: I don't reflect about that, it's a matter of just sentimentality. The Rabbi Poupko tells me, if you had decided to talk, you wouldn't be here witness to a crime, and a criminal would remain unpunished, and maybe a whole system would therefore remain unpunished. So in a certain sense, he'd say, Lallier, be practical about thing. You may have decided not to talk because you knew you had a higher purpose than that. You had to become a witness to something awful that had happened, and that was what your life was about. But even though it intellectually sounds -- sounds very satisfying, to stand there and to look at the man killing, right in front of my face, seven innocent people one at a time, it's a horrendous experience.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: It makes you lose your belief in God -- believe in God, because God would never allow a thing like that to happen. And it makes you lose your belief in basic simple human dignity.

Q: Is that --

A: Now, the happy thing about that is maybe the -- not happy, the positive about that is I didn't know those seven people. I know they were Jewish. But if I had been able to discover who they were, in the eyes of some, their names alone would recreate them as human beings who had been there with a purpose, who had never fulfilled a purpose. Because if you say -- there's a big difference between seven de -- and not the seven dead Jews, and saying Mr. Cour and Mr.

Steinberg and Mr. Sweinberg and Mr. That or Mr. This and That. They are human beings in their identities as they were. Their lives are recreated. One can even proceed and find out who they were, what they had done, what they had achieved for the good or the bad. And if they had had relatives or not [indecipherable] or not. And lo and behold, after the trial, two persons came forth, one claiming to be the granddaughter of the grandfather which she hadn't known what had happened to except that he had died somewhere in the -- in the concentration camp.

Q: How did -- how did you find out what the names of those seven people were?

A: Oh, through -- through the documentary. Oh no, that I found out going myself and my -- I was sent as a Canadian delegate to the Czech Republic as a expert in financial -- international finance to Prague through Casel, which is an arm of the Canadian development -- international development agencies, to help some of the Czech bankers democratize their procedures and bring them up to par in terms of capitalistic banking practices. I spent six weeks in Prague consulting with two very senior bankers, both of whom by -- were, by the way, communist party members, but who had mellowed down to capitalistic practices and wanting to learn about them.

So I was teaching them how a Canadian banker practices, and I spent six weeks there, and on the second week I le -- decided I'd go back to Leitmeritz, I'd go back to Theresienstadt for the second time to fact find and to reminisce. And I went back and I found the site. I found the

masses of graves and gravestones and all that. And that's when I decided I would not continue living with myself with that feeling of shame unless I finally spoke up and --

Q: And that's what made you speak up?

A: -- made my confession. And I came back from Prague in August 1997, and in December, on December first, I arranged with Rambam and with a friend lawyer of mine who happens to be Hungarian Jewish, who cord -- who had known me for many years and with Rabbi Poupko to make my of-official confession about what had happened. And the rest follows all of that.

Q: I read a report, but I had no idea whether it's true, that you spoke to a former Waffen SS person, to ask about --

A: Oh yes, oh yes, no, no. I had written -- no, no, that was after that, because once you have come out into the open, there are certain repercussions, but also legal requisites, namely, I had to make up my mind, do I sue, or do I not sue. Right?

Q: No, I don't --

A: Or do I [indecipherable] the Germans to sue.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: Right? But to sue is a procedure going through, at the first stage, the consul general of Germany, of the modern, democratic, decent Germany, and go for two or three interviews so they can squeeze me, if it's veracity or not, or if I'm lying --

Q: No, no, I was a -- I was asking -- what I read was that you asked a former Waffen SS person -

A: No, no -- yeah, th -- but I'll come to that --

Q: -- permission -- ah.

A: -- no, no, no, but Pil -- I-I""ll -- I'll come to that. Not for permission, misinterpretation.

Q: Okay.

A: But -- but in following through the legal preparation, legal proceedings as to how to go about, officially I had to find out from the senior, still living, the Waffen SS highest commander, what his post-war view were, namely, when I wrote -- I think it was 1998, okay, about a killing of this sort. So on the one hand I wanted to feel him out. On the other hand I wanted to play this -- this red herring of military hierarchy and the level of responsibility. So I wrote him a personal letter, he was General Kumm, he was the second [indecipherable] general of my division, but it took him away from [indecipherable] and he wasn't hanged because of that. The seven other commanders were all hanged by the Titoists, and I think justifiably so, including a German Field Marshall. So I wrote to Kumm and surprisingly got an answer. I said, I have to account for you as the highest remaining Waffen SS ranking officer -- he was a brigadier, at the brigadier level, to account for you for the deed by Julius Viel then and then, involving seven Jews that they killed in the Panzergraben. And -- not for permission, okay, I want you to tell me if, from what you know about military discipline and military command structures if this can be looked at as a war crime. He wrote me a letter, personal letter, signing it. I have original letter in his own handwriting, from a Waffen SS brigadier who has since died about two years ago at the age of 92. He says, Dr. Lallier, because I put in my full credential to make it [indecipherable], he said, Dr. Lallier, I am reporting received of your letter, your inquiry, and all that I can say is that in my view -- I'm translating now from the German -- in my view, any Waffen SS man or Waffen SS officer who commits a war crime ceases being member of the Waffen SS. Which means to say, he says, that friendship ends amongst Waffen SS officers, where war crimes are committed.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Now, an interesting statement, because he himself was commander of the division in which many what we call today war crimes had been committed.

Q: Right.

A: Now, had he learned anything in his long [indecipherable] life in which the Americans never touched him, he never was in prison, because he was Germany's major s -- expert in partisan warfare, which the Americans were trying to learn about as much as we can, as we well know, right?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Okay? Now -- or, did he have any other intentions like finding a cheap way of apologizing?

But he in fact told me, you go ahead, because a war crime is a war crime, you have my blessing.

I didn't need his blessing.

Q: Right, right.

A: But I needed him to reveal himself. And you know, given the command structure, once a brigadier tells me it's a war crime, the ones below him cannot say it's not a war crime. There is a trouble with that. Everybody below him who were at court --

Q: Said it was not.

A: -- told me I was lying.

Q: Right. Stop the tape.

End of Tape Nine

Beginning Tape 10

Q: When you decided to sue this man --

A: Yeah. [indecipherable] yeah.

Q: -- right, so Viel could go -- is it Feel, or --

A: Viel.

Q: Viel.

A: Yeah. The Germans use that V as a ff --

Q: Asa ff.

A: Yeah.

Q: Is that the first time your family found out about that you had been in these kinds of situations?

A: Ah, I had -- well, my -- I had really no family. My family was my wife --

Q: Right. And your two children.

A: And my fi -- my wife had already di -- died.

Q: Oh.

A: She died in 1975 with a brain tumor.

Q: And had you said anything to her about --

A: Inever discussed my wife -- with my wife my military --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- experiences.

Q: Right.

A: Because our love was a pure love and I -- I don't want to -- she knew that I had been in the Prinz Eugen, but she also knew herself, being half Volksdeutsche that conditions was that -- th- those of ca -- total, total oppression and total one handedness on the part of the Germans.

Q: And was she Hungarian?

A: She was happy, she loved me for being able to get away with my life.

Q: Right.

A: And you know, she is also -- | remember -- you remember I told you I was try -- I was raised in a cir -- circumstances of giving true ladyship ultimate consideration as a person, as a civilian, as a civil gentleman, right?

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And I've been able to convince her she -- that she was the greatest lady in my life. And I think really very happily with that concept. In return, she gave me love and the children.

Q: And sh -- you had two children with her.

A: You see [indecipherable] but my children are ya -- my children know.

Q: Right. But they fa --

A: My son I told, but he is 10 years younger than my daughter.

Q: I see.

A: But my daughter I didn't tell about because she had had some upheavals in her life, I didn't want to burden her with that.

Q: Uh-huh.

A: But after I came out with the confession, she came and said, Dad, you were absolutely right, I am completely on your side.

Q: Yes. Why do you call it a confession, do you think?

A: Because, as a Christian --

Q: Since it isn't your act.

A: -- as a Christian, to feel in a situation which you desperately need to talk to somebody who will listen to you with feeling and with anticipation of being able to do something for you, you empty your soul. You empty your soul to get rid of the feeling of the sin that you had committed.

And it is only upon m-matching the minds, he, the confessor, believe that you are honest. You, the confessee are giving an honest information. There's a higher level of togetherness in which the forgiveness is given by the authority who is raised in the culture, then educated to understand and to give you forgiveness. I'm not a Catholic, I wouldn't believe in having to go to church to confess my little [indecipherable] that and the priest would tell me -- tell me all about it.

Q: Right.

A: You see, I'm not that, but I did go to [indecipherable] who was -- who was a Pryor of the Benedictines, which had been my school and ho-hoping for understanding, but his answer was -- and when I told him about the crime, he says, Adalbert, you have got to build your postwar life.

What has happened had happened, he says, you cannot change that, it's in God's hands. Now this is not an answer that I would consider satisfactory, right? But at the same time the urge to go to somebody who is a potentate, I use the term potentate. What is a potentate? Kind of somebody assigned by God to fill in the particular command position where human needs are looked at and decided positively creative.

Q: Okay.

A: I wanted to empty my soul for somebody to say, Lallier, we recognize your agony. We cannot forgive you, we are not God, but we'll pass on the message that on the whole you have tried to

be -- to be -- to become and remain a good guy. Confession. I want to die, I'm 83 years old almost, with somebody coming to my coffin and say, at least you gave me that job.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: Simple as that. And I-I -- I have living witnesses [indecipherable] the kids, Evan and Frederick, I'm trying to keep the candles lit. The Jewish people are special people. They suffered a great deal at the hands of the Catholics, it wasn't right, all of it under the false premises that Jesus had been killed. I asked myself often that, did Jesus deserve being declared a God? I prefer the Jewish version, he was one of the prophets whose image as somebody, changed unto a godlike image, for whatever extra powers that might involve or imply. So that's not in the right way, I don't even know if Jesus would have wanted to be declared a God. So I'm much closer to the Jewish interpretation of God, it's the one thing that I have problems with, the notion the Jewish God is kind of desperately absolutist. Like we can bargain for everything, but God is the absolute command, we'd never even dare contemplate to make a counter-proposal. God to me is somebody I can talk to, God is somebody will -- who will understand because God by nature is good. God is not a command person. God is a guide. And God created Eve and Adam, I don't know in which sequence, was it a guide who would eventually --

Q: [indecipherable]

A: -- knowingly put their hands together?

Q: I don't know. There are two stories.

A: He may have been jealous of Adam, you see.

Q: You know, when you talk about confession, it -- it's -- it's interesting to me because you didn't -- I don't know whether you've f -- th -- whether your -- I don't know exactly what your guilt feelings are, maybe you don't either. In some ways you feel guilty because you feel you

were a coward, you didn't do something. But you also didn't do something against somebody. I mean, you didn't kill -- you didn't kill these Jews. But it also feels as if your feeling of guilt spans larger than that one incident --

A: Oh, no --

Q: -- that's it's m -- that it's --

A: -- no, th-th-th-th - it -- clearly, the one incident is the sample, which demonstrates to you that the incident itself took place in a context in which the broader reality --

Q: Right.

A: -- reconfirmed the evilness of that reality.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

A: It's the one particular example of an evil empire that I was part of. I don't know why, but I was part of that. And the -- the feeling of guilt was, in a certain sense, arose from the feeling of impotence -- after impo --- feeling la -- impo -- I'd so desperately want to do something, but I'm unable to do anything because I'm totally petrified in my state. Now, what do you do with that?

You just swallow hard, just swallow hard and by swallowing hard you get to believe that if you had done something, they may not have gotten killed. And Rabbi Poupko, I told you Rabbi Poupko exactly, Rabbi said Lallier, that doesn't follow, if you had done something they may not have killed. Because if you had done something about the first one getting killed, they'd kil -- they'd have killed you and the other six anyway. But I cannot accept that because again, th-th-the harder view, a man being a man, in a context of a civil society in which killing is murder. And racially induced killing is the ultimate crime, let's say. Extermination of a whole people. What does a man do with that? Do I grab the gun? I didn't grab the gun. And I watched the other six.

So, by doing nothing, Viel was able to do whatever he had wanted to do.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And that's where the pain is.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: That's where the pain is. And that's where the confession comes from.

Q: Right. Are you angry at people at Concordance College for not --

A: Oh, Concordia, well --

Q: From Con-Concordia, I'm sorry.

A: I've become -- you're looking at me, I've tried to be a man of peace, using a Locke high discourse.

Q: Whose discourse?

A: Locke.

Q: Locke's discourse?

A: Locke high discourse.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And his proposition that even in most difficult circumstances, negotiation is far preferred to shedding the red blood of the opponent. I believe that since we all are red blooded, we have no reason to say she is Jewish, she is Muslim, she is Christian, she is this, she is that, cause we are all red blooded people, which may be where the problem is, right? And I've convinced myself being red blooded means eventually we" ll recognize that shedding our red blood reciprocally is making no sense whatsoever.

Q: But when I --

A: It's the same blood. I shed your blood, I'm also shedding my blood at the same time.

Q: Right.

A: So negotiation is much better, but negotiation means trust and confidence and the time to achieve, hopefully, a positive end. You see? See [indecipherable] I'm a realist, I will die having my positive belief that the recognition -- that we all have the same -- we all share in the same red blood, will put an end to the killing because it [indecipherable] recognize since is our blood as well as yours, shedding it is not just sinful, it makes absolutely no sense, solves no problems.

Q: Right. But what I mean is is there seem to be some people at Concordia who don't -- who don't believe --

A: Well, there are five guys -- five guys, who including MacIntosh for some reason didn't like me, I don't know. You can't like everybody all the time, some dislike me, some [indecipherable].

He wanted to be the authority of the department, he used four junior professors to sign that letter with him that I was a war criminal, and that my confession was only the tip of the iceberg.

Totally complete nonsense, right? At the same time, he acted hatefully without ever talking to me about fact. He only went by what he read in the paper, and he had been a [indecipherable] colleague of mine with whom I'd coop -- cooperated on many occasions, so I don't understand.

Maybe -- he may be a Scots Canadian, one of his -- whose relatives may have died at the hand of a Nazi during the war, I don't know, I didn't inquire. But -- but to proceed from that with a general accusation, which by the way the university has strongly apologized for in writing in the newspapers, right? There is a big difference, I think. He is an uncompromiser. I would have -- I would have been happy to talk to him and give him my personal rendition, including the rendition of my suffering, hoping that he would say, well Lallier, you were caught in a bind. I don't know what I would have done if I had been you, but I-I don't know, but I can see you -- that you weren't a contributing cause to that killing. But what [indecipherable] me specifically, his being the chair of the promotions department, he used his power of the chair to induce four

young professor who needed his recommendation to get a promotion and tenure, which they thought they would only get if they cosigned the letter.

Q: Right.

A: And that's where human unfairness to the highest degree comes to play, and in my view academics don't behave like that. At the same time, look at the academics.

Q: Right.

A: Look at the guy who told you -- remember what I told you some little while ago? But -- Iam God, all you need to do is know what I tell you.

Q: Right.

A: So he was a hateful person [indecipherable]. He just happens to be a hateful person. In my [indecipherable] I say St. Peter will make him burn.

Q: Do you feel less guilty?

A: I feel -- I feel, let's say, about Concordia, I was pulled out from my teaching at a very bad time in my life. It was a time in which I had really convinced myself that I had become as a teacher a -- an incessant contributor to convincing students that developing their own ability to reason was the only way to go.

Q: Mm-hm.

A: And you develop your reason, but always inculcating them with this need to ask question, to confirm fact. And to become critics of whatever fact [indecipherable] represent, namely, to think for themselves. In my whole life since I was released from the British P.O.W. camp, was an attempt to catch up with those four years that I had lost completely, right? And develop a mind that I could use on benefit -- for the benefit of the development of mind of young ones equally capable of giving a sharp eye, and if necessary a critical look at ings -- what things is, in the

honest desire to find solutions along the peaceful planes of finding solution. I think ultimate intellectualism, not ism as a [indecipherable] ul-ultimate levels of intellectual reasoning are the only way to bring about world peace. Because i-in the mind that one recognizes that which brings up possible, and that it is possible to achieve all kinds of ends without shedding human blood.

Q: Right.

A: And Jewish people with this dispro -- not disproportionate, remarkably high proportion of philosophers and [indecipherable] not just Einstein, but a whole bunch of other, including the atom bomb makers, the-they -- they have an exceptional gift. I don't know how many of the refugees that I was able to bring over here, whatever the pretext, have had children like that, but I'm happy that quite a few of them had eight or nine to 10 children.

Q: Well, I want to thank you very much for being willing to talk --

A: Great, great talk.

Q: -- to talk with me.

A: But please don't forget, for three years I served the evil empire. And part of that was a conviction naturally, an honest conviction that serving that empire would put a halt to what I still believe is an empire equally as equal -- equally equal -- equally as evil, namely godless Bolsheviks.

Q: Mmn-hm.

A: I don't know what my contribution any worth. I'Il have to watch my students and see what becomes of them.

Q: Okay.

A: And I admi -- my -- the gratitude is on my part because for a lady like you I must say that, respectfully speaking, to fly all the way from Washington to Montreal, even though weather conditions are [indecipherable] as you had anticipated, right, it -- it -- it -- it is very impressive and it also honors me beyond what I deserve.

Q: I thank you for that --

A: Really, I really, really --

Q: -- thank you very much.

A: -- admire you --

Q: Thank you very much.

A: -- for many, many respects, and especially our contact [indecipherable]

Q: Wait a -- you don't want to -- you don't want to get up yet.

A: Okay -- well, I do -- I had to stand up.

Q: I'm sorry. No, no, it's fine.

A: It's a sign of respect.

Q: It's fine.

A: If l were asking to dance, I'd have to stand up and bow.

Q: You'd have to stand up, right. Well, thank you again.

A: Thank you very much for asking.

Q: Okay, now what we're going to do, is we're going to look at the photo -- [tape break]

Q: So just tell us who that picture is right there.

A: Okay, these two are my mom, Hungarian, and my dad, Austro-Hungarian.

Q: And this was -- can you just say what day it was. It was the --

A: When they got married. This was about 1924 -- oh no, 19 -- sorry, 1921.

Q: Okay.

A: Yeah. Cause my -- my brother was born in 1922, so [indecipherable] 1921.

Q: So this is your mother, Dr. Lallier?

A: Say again?

Q: Just a --

A: These are the photos of my mom and my dad, 1921.

Q: Okay, perfect.

A: This was Omar at the age of 84.

Q: And who is Omar?

A: 84. My father's mother. It's my father's mother. Grandmother, at the age of 84.

Q: Would you say this is my grandmother?

A: Again?

Q: Yeah.

A: This is my grandmother, my father's mother at the age of 84.

Q: Who's that?

A: This is my grandmother and my brother and myself in 1933, three years after my mom died.

Q: Is this the dog?

A: Oh, oh, the dog. And Tookie.

Q: So -- so it's your grandmother on the left --

A: Yeah.

Q: It's your brother next, it's the dog, Tookie.

A: Yeah.

Q: And it's yourself on the right, right?

A: That's right.

Q: Perfect, okay. How old -- how old are you there?

A: I was -- here, I was eight years old, my brother was 11. That was in 1933.

Q: So tell me who these people are.

A: Okay, my gr -- my grandmother and my grandfather, mother's side.

Q: And what year was this?

A: 1947, Hungarian.

Q: Just tell me who it is from left to right.

A: Okay, my dad, Andre my brother, myself and Mom in 1933.

Q: Who is on the left?

A: On the left I'm a 10 year old, just about to enter gymnasium. On the right I'm a graduate at the age of 17 of high school, in Hungarian parade uniform.

Q: Okay, and who is this [indecipherable]

A: It's the Hungarian lady who brought us up. Her name was Anna Fayis. Anna Fayis.

Q: And what -- what year is that?

A: Hungarian lady -- oh, what year? This must have been around 1938.

Q: Left to right, who is that?

A: Yeah, myself, 1940, with two ladies, young ladies from similar families and on the right my brother, 1940.

Q: And what's your brother's name?

A: Andre.

Q: And this is just prior to the -- to the German invasion, you said? It was just prior to the Germans invading?

A: Huh?

Q: It was just prior to the Germans invading Hungary?

A: This is one year before the German invasion.

Q: But not -- they didn't invade Hungary --

A: 1940 --

Q: -- in deg44.

A: Not -- that's right. Oh that's, no, well, they were in Germany -- [break]

Q: So who is this, Dr. Lallier, on the left?

A: On the left, after one year in uniform as a truck driver. And the second one as officer cadet in early 1945.

Q: So this is when you were in the Waffen SS?

A: That's right. [break] -- on the left, after one year in Waffen SS uniform, a truck driver then.

And on the right, officer cadet, February 1945. You notice how thin my face became over the course of two years. Also sad looking. And a full head of hair.

Q: Okay, just two more.

A: This -- that picture was before the killing.

Q: Yes.

A: But after having witnessed [indecipherable] sight in France.

Q: What is this picture [indecipherable]

A: Yeah, ancestral home in France.

Q: It's your anc -- your ancestral home?

A: Sorry?

Q: Whose ancestral home?

A: That is my -- our ancestral home. We're from France originally, from -- from [indecipherable] is the area called [indecipherable]

Q: This gives one a sense of how wealthy your family really was.

A: Well -- most of the Protestants were engaged in a trade like banking, which the Catholics were not allowed to do. And the popes were always in need of money.

Q: I see.

A: And eventually the Catholic nabobs got so jealous of the Protestant French making all that money, they decided to do what the Catholics were doing to the Jewish people, dispossess them and cut their throats.

Q: Tell me again.

A: This is my marriage, with Henrietta in 19 -- November 1948. The mom of my children.

Q: You make a lovely couple. She was Hungarian?

A: She was -- no, she was German speaker, an Austrian.

Q: Okay.

A: But her grandfather -- no, her grandmother, grandfather's side was Hungarian.

[indecipherable] judging by her temper, he must have been.

Q: Just tell me who this here.

A: Yeah, this is my family photo. My son, his son number one. My daughter, son number two, and my daughter-in-law, proudly Irish Canadian.

End of Tape 10 Conclusion of Interview