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Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005

Q: An-And your mother's family?

A: My mother's family, my ra -- ma -- sorry. My maternal grandfather died at 55, although my grandmother, interestingly sur -- not only survived the war, but managed to escape with us, and lived to 96, in New York. Her -- she had one brother, who is still alive and he and his wife also survived, separately from us, but are st-still alive, although they've lost their son who was born in Santa Domingo, and there's a story there, too.

Q: Well, now let's talk about your parents. What kind of work did your father do?

A: Well, my father was educated as a lawyer, he had a degree from Warsaw law school, and actually was in the same class as the former late Prime Minister of Israel, Begin, although I'm not sure they knew each other, but around the time that my father graduated, which was coincidental with around the time I was born, that is the mid-30's, Polish a-anti-Semitism became much more pronounced in degrees.

And as a result of that, he could not practice law in Poland. So I think he just managed real estate properties for my grandfather, including the one that we lived in, that I mentioned earlier.

Q: And wa -- did your mother work?

A: No, no. My mother, who is still alive, she was born in 1912, and so will be 93 this year, unhappily suffered from postpartum psychosis when I was born, so I

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

didn't see my mother -- although I didn't hear about this until much later, until around the time that I was two, two and a half. Although she re-recovered quite well, and in a very stressful time as we know war is for anyone, managed without any mental problems. She's had psychotic episodes since, but she's come back from all of them.

Q: How did your parents meet?

A: I-In this climate of what might be called upper middle class, or even upper class Jews, there was -- e-everyone went to school together, starting at a -- at a young age, in their -- their -- my parents are almost exactly the same age. And these -- Polish Jewish assimilated culture, as it was explained to me, people did not pair off until they married. So they did things in groups, went into the woods to find -- excuse me -- edible mushrooms. Took vacations together, and -- as teenagers in -- at the Baltic in a resort known as Sopot, S-o-p-o-t. And then, in their early 20's they paired off and my parents paired off and married. I think my father was -- my parents were 22 at the time. My father, by the way, was the youngest of six or seven, I for -- forget, two of whom survived the war, besides my father, but did not escape, they were -- they were in -- in the ge-German labor camps in Germany, two sisters. And at that time, un-under Polish Jewish tradition, you weren't

Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005

supposed to marry until your sisters married. So this was an elopement because it was a-against the tradition of the family. But somehow 1-it all worked out.

Q: How would you describe your parents? Di -- wha -- were they re-religious? It sounds like maybe they weren't.

A: Li-li -- my father was not an observant Jew, nor is my mother. However, they insisted that I have a Jewish education and I was -- at that time we didn't have Bar Mitzvahs, we had something called confirmation. So I went through about a seven year program at Temple Emmanuel on Fifth Avenue and 65" Street, which started actually shortly after I arrived in the United States, and ended when I was 13.

Q: So were they politically active in any way?

A: I wouldn't say so. My --

Q: L-I'm talking about the very early years in Poland.

A: Oh, in Poland?

Q: Yeah.

A: No, no. There was no opportunity, other -- y-you know -- you -- you mean in terms of -- of the -- the Bund or something like that? No. They -- they were not, at all, no. A-A-As the war approached, as -- strike that -- as it became clear, or clearer that Poland was in jeopardy from an -- German attack, the Poles made some Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005 decisions which changed my parents fortunes greatly and to the worse. Pole -- the Polish government passed a decree in -- I believe in the summer or spring of 1939, which was aimed at Jews, and to a lesser extent at Germans who controlled almost all of Polish industry at the time, that hard currencies, non-zlotys, held abroad by Poles, had to be repatriated and converted to Polish money, the zloty. That law was, as you might imagine, not totally adhered to. In fact, there is now quite a number of cases involving funds that were put in Switzerland in secret accounts by precisely -- by contemporaries of my grandfather who were faced with this situation and whose heirs are now either receiving or just seeking to prove that -- that these funds were theirs. But any event, my grandfather had considerable sums abroad in -- particularly in Switzerland and in New York and London, i-in the order of millions of dollars. And in part because he was a Polish patriot and in part because he was fearful of not breaking the law, all of this money was repatriated to Poland, and there were no funds in New York, there were no funds in any other place. So, when my parents eventually arrived in New York with a one week visa to stay in the United States, they were -- they were destitute, pa -- financially destitute. Interestingly, my father -- a-as you recall, in 1939 there was a World's Fair in New York, and the ability of Poles, particularly of -- of people of means to get U.S. visas to visit the World's Fair was -- wa -- things kind of opened up, you Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005 could -- you could get a -- a visa to go to the World's Fair, and you could take a ship from Poland or from France and come here tha -- in the summer of 1939. My father proposed to my grandfather that he -- when this law was passed, that he sign hi -- these assets over to my father and that my father come ostensibly to visit the World's Fair, but he had the impression, which was probably correct, that if he was sitting in New York with four or five million dollars, that you could probably find a -- a ways and means not to get kicked out. But my grandfather vetoed the plan and I often wondered how my life would have changed if -- for the better or for the worse, had he said, all right, go to New York, and if they had arrived in New York in that fashion rather than in the rather different circumstances that brought us to the United States.

Q: Did your parents ever talk to you later about anti-Se-Semitism that they experienced when you were still too young, obviously to know about it, before September "39? Did they tell you of any incidents that happened?

A: Well, as I said, he was unable to -- to practice hi -- the profession to which he was trained, but --

Q: Any specific personal -- do you know what I mean? Very, very personal instances?

Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005

A: I don't think so because they were living in -- in -- pretty much in isolation.

Now, I put isolation in quotes because if you have a -- a million fellow Jews in Warsaw, you can find your way around. My father's resentment against Poland, which he held until his death in 1993, was really centered around Polish anti-S- Semitism that was displayed after the war began, and during the war. And he wrote many letters, some to the New York Times, some of -- of which were published, to the Jewish publications and so on and was e-extremely active in Jewish charities during his life and gave a -- a -- particularly the United Jewish Appeal. And so his - - his resentment was that [indecipherable] resentment is that the Poles aided and abetted the systematic slaughter of Polish Jews.

Q: What is your very first memory? You said you were born in November "35, so what di -- can you recall the very first memory?

A: Yes, I remember as a very small child being in pa -- with -- not with my mother but with a -- a nursemaids in -- ah, there was a beautiful park near where we lived called park Lazienki which is still there, and I remember the peacocks in the park.

But one of my earliest memories is of the Stuka dive bombers bombing Warsaw, and the noise, and seeing the bombs fall on the city and seeing the bombers, because they were -- dr-dropped their bombs from very low altitude and they would dive and then pull up and it was an extremely -- but the noise of the Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005 airplanes and noise of the bombs made an impression for someone who was living in central Warsaw.

Q: So we're talking about September deg39?

A: Exactly, we're talking about the first two weeks of September, 1939. And I have only very hazy memories of my -- our flight from Warsaw east. Mos-Most of that is not recaptured memory so much as what I've been told by my parents.

Q: No, it's obvious that we know that many of the things you're telling us when you -- before you were born obviously, and when you were very young is what you learned fro-from your -- your parents. Did -- did they tell you that they tried, besides the New York World's Fair, tried to get out in any other wa -- any other way?

A: No, my father was very much a man of the world, I mean he -- he tr -- had the Encyclopedia Britannica at home, so he spoke some English, which was a -- a great benefit. He spoke Russian and German. He traveled some with my grandfather. I was conceived on a cruise to the fjords of Norway. So he was a -- h- he -- the radio at that time -- and I remember my father telling me about listening to the speeches of Adolf Hitler on th-the radio, of course. Warsaw was not that far from Berlin and everyone had a shortwave set so you could listen to -- to the German radio, and my father being fairly fluent in German could understand ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion Interview with Andrew Glass me February 14, 2005 Hitler's speeches and how mesmerizing Hitler was, although he disagreed with, obviously with everything that he had to say. So they were ris -- I would say my father particularly but my mother as well, were resourceful people who, at a very critical stage in the war, in the first weeks of the war, took some dramatic steps to save their lives and my life. And we can talk about that if you like.

Q: What language did you speak at home?

A: Oh, that's funny, because when my mother was ill I spent a lot of time in my grandparent's home, and that was the -- a poly --

Q: Glot.

A: Polyglot. Sorry. Polyglot household with Polish, of course, but also English, French, German spoken, and I remember as one of my first memories actually, or -- 1-I -- I don't know if it's a memory or if it was reported back to me as that I asked my grandfather Jadush, which means grandfather in Polish, wh-when will I get my own language? The idea being that I had to converse with the nanny in French and with the maid in Polish and others in Russian and German and so I had -- I've never had a particularly strong facility for languages, but as a child I did.

Q: So now you're saying that your first recollection is when Warsaw was being bombed, and did you -- again, you were so very young, but were your parents comforting, did they explain anything to you?

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

A: No. I -- w-wa -- when the war -- as you know, when the war began in the first week of September, my father, who had somewhat impaired vision and was also Jewish, for both those reasons was not drafted into the Polish army. But -- and the war began, either -- I'm not clear whether it was on a volunteer basis or on a draft basis, was inducted into a kind of home army or home civil defense corps, who- whose primary task was to fill sandbags around public buildings and to clear the rubble from the German bombings. And t-to put up defenses as it were against -- ba -- sandbags against th-the prospect of -- of other public monuments and buildings being bombed in subsequent days. In any event this was almost a full-time job, he just was rarely home, as that was reported to me. In about the 12" day of the war, he was working alongside a stranger who happened -- a Gentile, who happened to be a taxi driver. And they began talking about what a good idea it might be for both families to get the heck out of Warsaw, since the bombing was continuing and intensifying, and since the evidence from the BBC and from German radio, if not Polish radio was that the G-Germans were coming closer and you could hear the artillery fire from three sides. So the problem was that the taxi driver didn't have any gas for his taxi. And this part was always -- I never could get my father to quite explain whether he had a stash of gasoline or he had a stash of gold, or he knew how on the black market to get it, it was always fuzzy. But the bottom line is, my 3

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

father procured gas for this taxi. So taxi plus gas meant that both families fled in the dawn hours of September 13". I think a day or so, or maybe hours before -- you can check it -- the -- the bridges across the Vistula were severed. Warsaw itself held out against German attack until the end of the month. And some people also escaped by boat and so on and found ways out. But basically we left and traveled east, around the time that that opportunity shut down. Others traveled south toward Romania and survived, but we traveled due east until the taxi ran out of gas, and then we separated from the taxi driver and his family and we somehow got a horse and cart and kept going east.

Q: Let's talk a little bit more about your leaving Warsaw. You again were very, very young. Do you remember that, and if so do you remember your emotions and the understanding of -- I mean, you were just a toddler.

A: I was just a toddler, I was just four, I only cou -- one can has -- have memories from that time, particularly if there's an abrupt change in your life, and I have very sh- shady memories of that time as -- but later on, that is a year later, we ended up across the border in Lithuania and I do remember living in Lithuania quite clearly, and everything since then.

Q: Do you -- did your mother ever tell you what she brought with her -- when a family has to leave a home like that so suddenly, what your folks took with them?

Interview with Andrew Glass 8 February 14, 2005

A: Yes, she did. They took nothing. And th-the -- in that there's a story, because my father's pants, with -- the ones that he was wearing when they fled were part of a -- a temporary exhibit at the Holocaust Museum some years ago on a group of about 2200 Polish Jews who fled, who were able to reach Japan, and many of whom, not all, but many of whom survived because of that. And so the point of putting his pants in the exhibit was that that was the only thing he had and that was the only pants he ha -- he wore f-from the time that he left Warsaw, I think, til the time he arrived in the United States. They were rather good pants, but they -- they saw a lot of adventure through the -- here and there.

Q: D-Do you have any memory of that taxi ride with the other family?

A: Very faintly. Just remember being picked up at -- somehow, and bundled in a -- in a crowded black taxi and remember crossing the bridges. I had never been to Praga, which is the suburb of Poland that is directly east of the city, and so I think I have a slight memory of crossing the river, but that's it. No, not really.

Q: Did you have a favorite toy with you, do you know that?

A: [had no toys, nothing, no. When I returned to Warsaw, well after the war, and went to the apartment that I grew up in -- well, I di -- I lived in til I was four, I was able to recall the apartment vividly. I mean, exactly where my room was, where the kitchen was, where the a -- the attic that was there which they didn't know about, Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005 because it was on the top floor, and had been sealed. The apartment itself had been divided during the communist period into six apartments, with a kind of a -- a frozen glass partitions going down the central hallway. But the -- the -- arriving at - - at the apartment house, I had no problem finding the -- the elevator, which was still the same elevator, finding the apartment -- I think there were three or four apartments on each floor, finding the right apartment and then finding my way around the apartment, even though it had been substantially remodeled.

Q: During the bombing in the first weeks of September, was your neighborhood as -- a-affected, damaged?

A: I don't know. No, I think that the bombing was mainly around the public buildings, which were a few miles away. Of course, o-over time, and particularly in 1944, the entire neighborhood, save for my house, apartment house, was leveled, and I may as well tell you why. A-Around the corner from the apartment house there was and still is a gymnasium, a high school which became during the uprising of the Polish Home Army, the hundred or so days that the Poles fought the Germans, while the Russians sat on the east side of the river --

Q: You're talking about 1944.

A: I'm talking about 1944. That was -- that was the hi -- that was a -- a major military headquarters for the Germans. So the Germans were systematically

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

blowing up the city, that part of the city that had not already been blown up in earlier fighting, or in con-continuing fighting. But the German officers needed a place to live, or sleep anyway. And so our -- our house, which was directly around the -- around the corner from the gymnasium was designated as a billet for Nazi generals, and therefore, while it had a lot of bullet holes in it, some of which were still evident when I returned to Warsaw in 1977 with President Carter, that was one of the few houses in central Warsaw that did survive.

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

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Andrew Glass. This is tape number one, side B. And we were talking about how your family left Warsaw in the taxi and then the gas ran out.

And where were you then?

A: Well, as you know, around September 17" or 18, the secret codicil of the mos -- Moscow-Berlin axis was put into play, the so-called Molotov-Ribbon -- Ribbentrop Pact --

Q: Right.

A: -- under which the -- the Soviets invaded from the east and there was a line or demarcation, so we soon found ourselves among Soviet troops who were headed

Interview with Andrew Glass a February 14, 2005 west while we were headed east. And this was also a risk because we were evidently bourgeois, educated, and there were -- I would say my father told me, and I have no firsthand knowledge of this, but quite a few arbitrary arrests of people who they just didn't like, or who the local Polish peasantry turned in, or whatever.

And that was a risk, so you really didn't want to s-stay in Soviet occupied Poland, and we managed to find our way -- illegally, of course -- across the border to Lithuania where, once we were in Lithuania, the Lithuanian government accepted us as Polish refugees.

Q: D-Do you remember any of the towns that you passed through, or did your parents tell you later, or do you have any recollection of that part of the journey?

A: No, none at all. I think part of it was by train, and part of it was on foot. Some of it was on -- by horse and wagon. I do remember Wilno quite -- quite well though, which was the --

Q: So that was your destination to -- to --

A: That was the destination and that was where we stayed when we were in -- in Lithuania. Now, what's important about that time is that at the time we arrived in Lithuania, although there was a strain between the Polish and Lithuanian governments having to do with the arrangements after World War I, we were ra-

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

rather well received, and my father was able to actually earn some kind of living by buying and selling stuff. And --

Q: What kind of stuff?

A: Diamond rings, and gold and people wanting to -- currency manipulation, dollars and British pounds and so on. He was operating on the fringes of the galaxy, but during that time there was a progressive tightening of the noose by the Soviets. At first it was to insist on a change of government that was more friendly to the Soviet point of view, then that government invited, quote unquote, Soviets to open bases in Lithuania and eventually that led to a de facto Soviet occupation much like the S-Syrians in Lebanon and then finally to annexation of Lithuania as a SSR as the Soviet Socialist Republic, which it continued to be until 1991. So we lived through all of that, and during the time we were in Lithuania, the -- the Soviet presence and the s -- importance of the Soviets materially increased. Now, my father, if 1 may continue, didn't stay in Lithuania because he was -- and again, he was very vague on this, whether he was in the underground, or whether it, as is mostly presented to me, that he wanted to get his father out, who was in Warsaw.

So he made his way through the Soviet and German lines, back to Warsaw on two occasions, and returned to Warsaw in the | -- winter of 1939 - 1940 and tried to convince my grandfather to leave with him, and with my grandmother as well, and

Interview with Andrew Glass _ February 14, 2005

they refused, and gave reasons why they wouldn't go. The reason is that basically they survived World War I, and while there were privations and problems, and several armies swept through Warsaw, the Prussians, the Austrians, the Russians and so on, basically civilians survived and were not considered combatants. World War II, of course, had a much different aspect. And so the idea of going into the Polish countryside, which was believed to be anti-Semitic and dangerous, th-the idea of leaving his townhouse slash mansion was unappealing to my grandfather, who was then in his late 50's.

Q: So now you are in -- you said in Vilnius? Is that where you settled in Lithuania?

A: Yes, but there's a st -- there's a story involving my father's second trip back in the winter of 1940. At -- by that time, the Polish Lithuanian border was patrolled both by Soviet and Lithuanian troops, but not jointly. And on his way back from the second, futile mission to Warsaw, he was walking along the railroad track in the snow with the pair of pants that ended up in the museum, and he was a-a- arrested, I guess, or -- by a Lithuanian patrol. My father said that had he encountered a Soviet patrol there would have been no question that he would have been shot, because he had no proper papers or -- you know, he was a Pole at -- with -- at least suspicious, and probably a spy. Any event, the Lithuanians, according to

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

my father's story, took him to their outpost, gave him his watch and gave him his money, gave him his shoes, and was kind of held there for overnight, and in the morning, not knowing what his fate would be, the -- the captain, who was somewhat educated, said, we've been thinking about your situation and what we've decided is that we're going to ask you a question. And based on your answer to this question, quite frankly, we're either going to sh -- let you go or shoot you. Which was -- kind of concentrated his mind. So the question, which my father repeated in Lithuanian is, or was -- [speaks Lithuanian here]. Is Roosevelt -- President Roosevelt a Jew? And my father's response, according to my father was, what a silly question, why would you ask me a question like that? Everybody knows Roosevelt's Jewish. And then they said, all right, get out of here. And he walked in the snow in his socks and somehow made it back to Wilno. So that -- I think that story is worth mem-memorializing because it epitomizes -- you say in Polish [speaks Polish here], which means, yi -- it was such a time, which never existed before and will never exist again. [speaks Polish here]. And that was a -- a vignette from that time.

Q: So then he got back to you.

A: Yeah, then -- 0-of course there was -- there were -- he was looking to get -- I mean, knowing that the Soviets were tightening their noose around the -- Li- Interview with Andrew Glass * February 14, 2005 Lithuania and that it was an unhealthy place to -- to remain and of course the story of the Lithuanian Jews is a very sad story, very few, if any, survived after the Germans invaded in June of 1941. So in that winter, he en -- made a really great effort to try to get out and we were very fortunate that through a strange series of circumstances we were able to leave. And it -- we may be described as a trifecta i- in the sense that there were three elements to -- to it, and if any of the three elements failed, we would have not survived. The first element was a -- a Dutchman who was the honorary consul of the Dutch government in Lithuania and whose job was to sell Philips radios. And he decided that anyone who applied could get residence in Curacao which was then a Dutch colony. Course, what was not known is that the governor of Curagao was not allowing anybody to get in, but you could get a piece of paper that said you had residence status or invitation to become a resident of the island of Curagao. And with that piece of paper you could then seek transit visas to get to Curacao. You needed basically three visas. You needed a Russian -- Soviet visa, you needed a Japanese visa, then you needed to cross the Atlantic and get an American visa to get you to CuraC/ao. So there was in -- and this is very well known and we don't have to go into detail about this, there was a Japanese council in Lithuania, in the Lithuanian capital, kow -- kow -- Kowsis?

Interview with Andrew Glass a February 14, 2005

Q: Kaunas.

A: Kaunas -- named Sigahura, who -- who | -- whose widow I met at the Japanese embassy some years ago, and who issued 2200 of -- of these transit visas to Japan, which he did wi -- against the express orders of the Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo -- to Jews. And our names and the record is there, it's on the internet, too.

We got three of these, and with that -- that was two -- two parts of the trifecta. The third part -- and this part is less well known and deserves to be discussed in some detail, was to get the Soviet -- permission from the Soviets to leave Vilnius and to travel to Japan. And they were selling a package deal, where you got the visa, and the ticket on the Trans-Siberian railroad, which at that time was something like a 16 day trip from Moscow to Vladivostok. And if you ask what I remember, I remember that trip very vividly, because it was in the winter of 1940, and it was very cold, and I guess I was tur -- just turning five. So the first problem was how to get -- because the Soviets said, the only way you could get this -- and we needed 600 dollars for three visas, the only way you get six -- the only -- excuse me, the only way the Soviets would do business with you was in dollars. And any resident of Vilnius who was caught with dollars on his or her possession was automatically shipped to Siberia, but not with a visa, and so it was a kind of a catch 22. You needed the dollars in order to get the visas, but if you had the dollars that was

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

prima facie evidence that you were -- had illegal currency and you were subject to immediate arrest. My father -- I don't know if this is part of this -- I guess, surviving the Holocaust, so we can go wi -- through this if you like. My father came up with an ingenious plan. He had a double envelope. He put the money in an envelope, and in the o -- in the outer envelope he said, this money is to be used solely and only for the purpose of attaining three exit visas and tr-tr -- or rather, transit visas to -- through the Soviet Union. And some of these visas were granted, and some people were arrested, as I was told. And some visas were not granted, but they were not arrested. Almost all the interviews took place around three or four in the morning tha -- you were summoned to the KGB headquarters where all this was happening in downtown Vilnius. And among the questions that were asked was, if you do go to the new world, if you do get to the United States, w-would you be interested in helping us, helping the great Soviet Union complete its mission of liberating the world. In other words, would you s -- become a -- a spy, or an agent. So this was a very difficult time. And the third part of this trifecta, I think my father is proudest of having navigated that particular rapids. And so we did get those visas, and we did go to Moscow, I do remember Moscow in 1941.

Q: Let's back up a little bit. So you're -- before you get onto the Trans-Siberian railroad, do you have any other memories of Vilnius?

Interview with Andrew Glass 8 February 14, 2005

A: Well, just the apartment that we lived in, and eating a lot of bread and salami, which I -- and cheese, which is what I think we survived on. And I have some pictures I think, still, of -- one or two pictures of that would -- somehow survived from there. Oh, there was also a -- a document which has survived, asking my father to bring back some kind of salamis or something from -- from the United States, I guess, I don't know, but there was -- there was a -- a request for, you know, send -- send food back to Lithuania, so -- from -- from a Japanese diplomat.

It was all a very strange time.

Q: And what -- was it a fearful time for you as a young child? And -- and if so, did your parents explain then what was happening?

A: No, not at all. I have to stress it was not fearful for me, I felt quite safe, and i-i-is -- I had a sense of adventure. I mean, I -- one of my memories is, as the train pulled into Vladivostok and we were being carried, because there was a considerable distance from the railhead to the pier, where the Japanese ship was going to take us to the west coast of Japan, and being carried by my father, you know, because it was too far to walk and it was quite cold --

Q: Te-Tell me more about the train ride.

A: Train ride was interesting that -- that -- that -- that were great [indecipherable] of ours on -- on the train wi-with tea, so I -- I was introduced to tea and I -- ever

Interview with Andrew Glass 4 February 14, 2005

since then I've been a tea drinker. And there was also a yeshiva, a whole yeshiva of about a hundred or so of th -- among these 2200 who were on the train and who kept pretty much to themselves, but I remember the -- you know, the black coats, and the --

Q: So there were 2200 Jews on this train leaving?

A: Oh, no, no, no, there might have been at most several hundred, but there were 2200 exit visas issued. So not all the people who got exit visas got Soviet vi -- not all the people who got -- excuse me -- not all the people who got transit visas from Sigahura made it t-through Russia. Some didn't try, some tried and couldn't and th-the -- the visas were staggered over some time and so the departures were staggered over some time. So we were, I think, toward the middle, but I -- th-that's a -- ""m not sure of that.

Q: So what -- when did you actually leave? When did the train depart? Do you know the date?

A: Pretty much. Backing up, we left Japan [buzzer] [inaudible] -- we left Japan in 1941. We left Japan in the latter part of April 1941 on the Kamakura Maru to sail to Honolulu and eventually to San Francisco, arriving in San Francisco, I think, in early May of 1941. We arrived in Japan in December of 1940, and we were in the Soviet Union about two months until we got the train, so that meant Interview with Andrew Glass 6 February 14, 2005 that we probably left Vilnius around octo -- middle of October of 1940, or about a year after the war began.

Q: So you were there for almost a year in -- in Vilnius?

A: Yes, except for the time that we were in -- making our way to Vilnius --

Q: Yeah.

A: --but I would say the better -- yes, the better part of a year, yes.

Q: Mm-hm. Any other memories of the train ride, or we exhausted that?

A: Y-Y-Yeah. I remember being -- we were in --

Q: Did you sleep in beds?

A: No, no, there was a -- second class cars and -- but I remember arriving in -- the Russian winter, as you know, starts fairly early, so it was the latter part of November, 1940, in Novosibirsk where the train stopped, and it was about 40 below. And the only thing for sale at the station, which I bought, or was bought for me, was moroshne, ice cream. It was, I think an interesting -- I've later been back to Novosibirsk and remembered that.

Q: Did you have warm clothes?

A: Well, the train was warm. The train was fine.

Q: And your parents were able to get you cl -- more clothes to wear when you were in Vilnius?

Interview with Andrew Glass degdeg February 14, 2005

A: I-I don't remember being cold. And we were there basically during the spring, summer and fall, so we were there during the warm weather.

Q: And you always had enough food?

A: We always had enough food. And a -- and a -- a sense of I -- sort of suspended animation. I mean, remember my father was -- and mother were 28 at the time. So they were just young people, and they were gaming the system, to try to figure out how to survive, and -- and did.

Q: So now you've gotten off the train in Vladivostok?

A: Oh, there's also an interesting story about that, which is that there was a small group of Jews living in Japan as traders, who had been there for quite -- quite some time and were [indecipherable]. And the Japanese required a rather large bond, a security bond, or -- for each person who got off the boat, to ensure that they would not become dependents of the Japanese state, or to ensure that they would leave when their Japanese visas expired, or whatever. Anyway, they had to come up with a lot of money per capita tax or bond. And there -- somehow, there was -- the last guy off the boat was a Gentile and had somehow got mixed in with this group of yeshiva people and with my parents, who were traveling. I would say there were maybe 300 people on the boat, that would be about right.

Interview with Andrew Glass a February 14, 2005

Q: All the people on the boat were the ones who had been on the railroad, is that correct?

A: All the people on the boat were the ones who had reached Vladivostok from Moscow on the train, which took 15 days to cross.

Q: Wh -- wa -- were there other children on the train that you played with or talked to?

A: I don't remember any, no, no, I don't re -- there may have been, but I don't remember any. I remember children on the Kamakura Maru because there was also a -- a zoo that was traveling to San Francisco -- or not a zoo, a circus, and there were tigers and lions in cages on the -- on the deck and so I remember playing with the kids and with -- with the wild animals as it were, but -- and seeing how close we could come without getting swiped. But just to finish, so these -- so my father again, told me the story that this one Gentile fellow, who somehow was also a refugee, but wasn't affected -- didn't -- didn't have the same story as we did, th- th-the Japanese -- th-the -- the Jewish Japanese said okay, we" ll take him too. In other words, why -- why would we send him back to Russia? Even though he's not Jewish, we'll take care of him.

Q: So you land in Japan, and how long -- and t-t-tell -- tell about the life there.

Interview with Andrew Glass *s February 14, 2005

A: Well, [remember Japan very clearly. This is, of course, pre-war Japan. I remember downtown Tokyo very well. And I remember, in fact, riding in a trolley car, they had green trolley cars and we were passing the imperial palace, the trolley car passed in front of the palace, and all of the ri -- passengers got out of their seats and bowed in the direction of the palaces toward the emperor. And I remember asking my mother why weren't we bowing too, and said well that's, you know -- she said something in the effect -- effectively, that's not our thing, that's the local thing and we don't do that. But I remember the department store Takashima, where there was a 14 story department store that was -- had a -- a three story slide on the roof, and how exciting it was for me to slide -- walk up the ladder -- and my parents let me do it, slide down these three stories, so -- that was a time when my father's main occupation was finding a way out of Japan. And he managed to do

so by getting a residence visa to the Dominican Republic, who were -- at that time the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo was interested in Europeanizing and bringing in educated Europeans into -- into the -- Hispaniola. And so we were granted three visas, residence visas to the Dominican Republic, and on the basis of that visa, we got one week transit visas from the American consul in Tokyo. So that when we got off the Kamakura Maru, we could get on a train in San

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

Francisco, change in trains in Chicago and then take a train to New York and then take a ship to the Dominican Republic, but we never did that.

Q: Did you know you were going to the United States? You, as a child.

A: No. No, I didn't. I mean, I knew I was crossing the Pacific Ocean and I have very clear memories of -- of Pearl Harbor and Honolulu when the ship docked there for a couple of days, bu-but -- before it went on.

Q: Well again, I -- obviously you still were very young. Did the United States mean anything? Did America have any meaning for you in any sense?

A: No, not at all, it was just the great adventure, that we were traveling. I mean, we'd been on this train, and now we were on -- and living in Japan was a lot of fun, cause I was kind of a street kid, and learning Japanese very quickly. And then being on this boat. And that took about, oh, three weeks to cross the Pacific. It wasn't a fast boat. And it was a lot of fun, I mean, I would go with my parents into these very hot baths which the Japanese had, and then you'd get out of the bath and have a cold bucket of ice water thrown on you. It was a lot of fun. I didn't feel I was a refugee in that sense, no.

Q: Were there other Jewish children there that you played with in Japan?

A: I suppose so. I -- I remember playing with Japanese kids, but this was a -- you know, a lot of the Japanese -- a lot of the people in our [indecipherable] did not

Interview with Andrew Glass *deg February 14, 2005

get these Dominican visas. Some of them got Dutch visas to go to the Dutch East Indies. And they suffered terribly, many of them died, wi -- after the Japanese invasion of what is now Indonesia. The ones, the [indecipherable] people, the ones who could get visas to nowhere, when the war began about six months after we left Japan, went to Shanghai and spent the war in Shanghai. None of them stayed in Japan. And the Jewish community in Shanghai, I just know anecdotally, while had many privations, basically survived, too. Many of them made it to Australia, South America, some to the United States. So it's literally, I mean,

and quite clearly a -- a Diaspora.

Q: Mm-hm.

End of Tape One, Side B

Interview with Andrew Glass * February 14, 2005 Beginning Tape Two, Side A

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer collection interview with Andrew Glass. This is tape number two, side A, and I was just wondering if you had anything more to say about docking in Hawaii and staying there for a little bit.

A: Well, these are events that took place 65 years ago, so forgive me, but young people are impressionable, and of course this was what, about six months or so, a little less than six months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so we saw it.

Seeing the Pacific fleet was very impressive, too. A-All those battleships and aircraft carriers in one place. Probably not a good idea, but that was where they were, and we -- I think we -- my father must have had some money, a little bit of money, because he chartered a -- or hired a taxicab and we kind of took a trip around the island to just s -- go to Diamondhead and -- and see. It was one of those beautiful spring days that you have in Hawaii, so I have a clear memory of that. And then a -- of course a memory of arriving in San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge, and -- but we were there just for a day or so before we got on a train to -- to New York.

Interview with Andrew Glass * February 14, 2005

Q: While your father -- while your parents and you were traveling, did you sense any concern or any worry or any tension about their having to leave their families back in Poland, and were they aware of what was happening there?

A: Oh well, there wasn't an -- this was early in th -- relatively early in the war, and while we knew that the -- the Nazis were anti-Semitic and we knew that a lot of Jews had left because of that, we had no idea of the Holocaust, per se, no. My father wanted very much to get his family out because he feared for their lives, this early. But he had no direct evidence other than, as we know, the creation of the ghetto, the -- the tightening of the noose, as it were, the -- m-my grandfather never went to the ghetto, it -- they -- when it became clear he couldn't stay in Warsaw any more, they went to a small town in eastern Poland where they were eventually shot in 1943.

Q: Do you know what town that was?

A: I can find out, and my father told me, but I -- it do -- it doesn't -- but h-he f -- they f -- after the war, my father was in contact with people who were there at the time and remembered the round-up and when -- when they were shot. So they were never in -- in a death camp, they were just hauled out of their -- where they were staying and -- and killed. Incidentally, I had a maternal great-grandmother who, at the time the war began was 103. And she ended up in a small town not too far from

Interview with Andrew Glass 8 February 14, 2005

Warsaw, and when she was 104, she was doing some, what might be called relief work. She was bringing food to Jews who were hiding and something like that, never fearing for her own life, but there was a curfew. After dark you were subject to arrest or worse, and she was summarily shot. So she ended her life with a German bullet at 104.

Q: What was her name?

A: I -- can look that up for you. I have it in -- in my computer, but it doesn't come to -- I think ste -- Stefania, something like that. Stefania Glass.

Q: So you're in the United States, and your -- you've left California, you said, and you're on your way to New York?

A: Yeah, I was a kid in -- in New York, and my father an -- tried to find some work. He contacted my -- his father's broker, my grandfather's broker, who -- I -- I don't know if they lent him some money, they possibly did. But since my grandfather had millions of dollars invested in Wall Street, they -- until he pulled it out, they -- I mean, they wrote a le -- a letter of reference for my father, which he sought to use effectively with the immigration authorities stalling them from deporting him because we were illegal aliens. And while that case was pending against us, trying to get us to leave the country, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and started World War II. And under American law at the time, my father, 4 Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005 who was a lawyer, as I said, was familiar with American immigration law, and we - - and then -- st -- st -- Justice Department had every right to deport us. But under U.S. law they could only deport us to the country that we had immediately entered from, which was the empire of Japan. Or our native country, which was the Poland that was under German occupation. So they said you had to leave, but there was a catch 22 there in our favor. They couldn't tell us where to go, cause there was no place to go. And then, during the war, of course, th-there was -- as you know, under the immigration law there was a Polish quota, and that Polish quota for immigrants was subscribed until something like 1960, 20 years. But President Roosevelt signed an executive order that basically said that unfilled slots, that is people who were supposed to arrive say in 1942, but didn't arrive because they were trapped behind German lines, an -- those slots could be filled by people who have -- who are otherwise of good character, never mind how they got here. And on that basis, I think around 1943, while we were still in limbo as it were, we emigrated to Canada and re-entered as le-legally with -- with these immigration visas that were given to us in Canada. And then in 1948 we became U.S. citizens, five years later. I became a U.S. citizen, 1948.

Q: What was your first impression as a child of New York when you arrived?

Interview with Andrew Glass ss February 14, 2005

A: Oh, it was great, great place, my -- you know, my a-a-abiding goal at the time was to become fluent in English and that time I -- by that time I was six, I think and so I didn't speak any English. And I picked it up, and both my mother and father worked, so I was very much during that time, a street kid on my own. And that was fine.

Q: What part of New York Did you settle in?

A: Well, we lived in -- very shortly after we arrived, we had a small apartment at 315 West 74" Street, which put me in the same school district as you were in, P.S.

9, although I think under somewhat grander circumstances. But, so I was a student at P.S. 9, and we lived on what's known as the Upper West Side.

Q: Did you feel very different from the other children, having come from Europe?

A: No. And remember, we all had the common experience of the war, that we were -- there was rationing, gas rationing and rubber rationing for tires and so on. And my father was working in a defense plant in Brooklyn, so the main occupation, the main thought as I had as a child was that of World War IL, and that was a common experience with all of us.

Q: Was your mother working?

A: Yes, yes, they were both working, and I had this curious experience of being there -- how to put it? There are children who grew up in very modest

Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005

circumstances and whose parents somehow became wealthy. Or, whose -- or who had parent -- who, as parents were poor -- as children, excuse me, before they became parents were poor, but they made it as adults. And so there's often this business of Edward my son, you know, whatever the kid wants, he can have. But wi -- I lived in the reverse, that my parents were -- grew up extremely wealthy, and were extremely poor. So they lived poor, but thought rich. And when you lived poor and thought rich -- you think rich, you do certain things that you don't otherwise do. For example, they never thought that it would -- that I should have some kind of babysitter. Well, they hadn't had the money for babysitters, so I just was, from a very young age, I was just left alone. And that -- apparently survived, SO --

Q: What kind of work did your mother do?

A: She was a dressmaker. She learned how to sew, and she made custom clothes for Henri Bendel.

Q: So, did she work out of your apartment?

A: Part of the time. Most of the time, though, she worked as a seamstress in -- at Henri Bendel.

Q: And their English was good also? They picked it up easily?

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

A: Yes, yes. Funny story, my father's ni -- name was Marian and it was spelled -- it was a very common Polish name, M-a-r-i-a-n, and he was in the World War II New York phone book as Marian Glass, and so he would get propositioned by the sailors coming through and so on. So -- but I remember fr -- and so he changed his name to Martin, self defense. But I-I remember ver -- by clear memories as, you know, seven, eight years old, of playing in Riverside Drive, which was a training facility for the army and the navy. And I would kind of march along with the soldiers who were living in the -- what is now the Hotel Beacon, on Broadway.

And they would march down 74" Street, past the Schwab mansion. We lived across the street from the Schwab, into Riverside Drive, and there was a -- kind of a parade round there, where they would drill and I would become the mascot of these young soldiers who were getting ready to go abroad, fight.

Q: Did your -- did you feel different than the other children, or did you tell the other kids where you came from, or did your teachers know, or di-discuss that with you, with your parents?

A: Gail, I tried very hard to hide my identity because I wanted to be accepted as an American. I made up stories that I was a descendent of Andrew Jackson because our names were the same. I-I was seven or eight. Seven maybe. A -- by eight I guess I -- I knew that that wouldn't work. Six, seven. But I never discussed my

Interview with Andrew Glass 8 February 14, 2005

background with any of my friends. I was an Am-American like they -- they were, and I -- I wa -- I suppose I repressed all of that, but that wouldn't be the right word, I was just -- I didn't want to be different, I didn't want to stand out. I wanted to excel as a student and all of that, but only on the same terms as everyone else.

Q: Would you describe yourself as an independent child?

A: Extremely so, and of course living in New York in the 1940's ma-make you even more de -- independent, so I thought nothing of walking over to Broadway, putting a dime or a nickel, I don't remember what it was in -- in the trolley car fare box. Or maybe at that time kids didn't pay, and just going down to Times Square on my own as a seven year old, eight year old. I was a street kid, and I knew how to get up and down Broadway on the trolley car. On w -- about the time that I was eight, my mother would give me a quarter on Saturday morning so I could go to the newsreel, which was at 72"! and Broadway. And so, as a very young person, my experiences of the war were watching things being blown up by -- as the war progressed.

Q: Well, since you had come from that part of the world, how did that affect you?

Was it very frightening for you to sit in the movie theater, and did you identify with them?

Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005

A: No, it was just exciting. Was just -- I si -- m-maybe one reason why I later gravitated to the newspaper business was that I was interested in the news as a child. But I didn't -- I -- I was not a fearful child, I was -- I was quite -- I mean, one of the things that I would do as a child, since I was left alone a lot, would be to throw matches out the window. And I was pretending that I was bombing. I mean, I wa -- and because the matches would fall four stories and light on the concrete below, and start little fires actually -- sometimes the fire department came -- in the rubbish. And that was the way I amused myself.

Q: Because you had remembered planes coming over when you were young, or why do you think you did that?

A: Well, I mean, we can get into the psychological and psyche -- psychiatric aspects of this, but I-I -- who -- I played at war, and war was play, and it was not fearful.

Q: Yeah. Did your parents re-react in front of you as the war kept going on and news kept coming out about Jews in Europe, did they express that to you?

A: Not -- Gail, not to my recollection. I -- I had no recollection of the Holocaust except after the war as a teenager by -- you know, I was 10 when the war ended, 11 maybe, and b-by then of an age when all of this made sense to me, but -- and then ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion

Interview with Andrew Glass "deg February 14, 2005

of course my sister -- excuse me, my father's sister, my aunt, who survived, Helene -- Helena, s-survived the -- the war in a Nazi work camp, what did they --

Q: La-Labor --

A: Labor --

Q: Labor camp.

A: Labor camp. And her husband Joseph somehow made it to Italy. They were separated, and fought in -- in General Anders army in [indecipherable] was wounded in Montecassino, and --

Q: Oh.

A: -- and they survived the war, so they -- they somehow made it to -- to England and my father helped them, but they had a daughter named Christina who's now about three years younger than I, who they left with the housekeeper, their housekeeper and she survived the war in Warsaw. And then the housekeeper wouldn't release the -- Christina, who was brought up as a Christian, as Catholic.

And my father sent 5,000 dollars to Warsaw, which at that time, 1945, was a lot of money. So somehow he got her to England. And she grew up in England. I met her when I was 17 or so when I was in England, and then they moved eventually.

They moved to Australia and she's now living in Australia, but quite ill with Parkinson's Disease, but has children and the children are doctors and doing very

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

well. Another sister, Genya was also -- survived the war, also made it to Australia.

Through the Soviet -- was arrested by the Soviets and released when the war began -- when -- when -- when the --

Q: Liberation?

A: No, when Hitler attacked -- Operation Barbarosa. And so there was a bunch of people who were in labor camps i-in northern Siberia who somehow made it -- I don't know how, because it wasn't my story, but they made it to Persia - Iran.

From there they went to India where my cousin Peter was born. Also did not sur -- deceased now, but -- so Genya and her husband made it to Australia, where Peter became a doctor and a lawyer and a diplomat and eventually became the Australian ambassador of the United Nations. He was Australian ambassador to Vietnam during the Vietnam war, and ended up as the head of the civil service in Australia, which is a very big deal under the Australian system. And unfortunately, he died of brain cancer in Seattle in 1997. But we were cl -- we were very close.

Q: When you were going to school, the teachers obviously knew your place of birth was Poland. Did they ever say anything to you or treat you any differently than the other children?

A: Not to my recollection, although we spo -- I must say, we spoke Polish at home, and I'm s -- while I don't use Polish, if I -- "ve been to Warsaw, I've -- and other Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005 Polish cities four times, with the Pope, the Polish Pope, as a ri -- as a journalist, so whenever I would tr-travel there, I would -- Polish would come back quickly and I've conversed with the Po-Pope in Polish, with no problem. So --

Q: So it sounds like you felt very American pretty soon on?

A: Yeah, yes. I mean, I labored at not being different, and that was my highest priority. And --

Q: Did you know any other refugee children at that time?

A: [had a close friend, Robert Eisenthal, who was also in our class at P.S. 9, who came from England then by way of Belgium, whose parents -- whose father was Polish, mother was, I believe, English. And we were close friends. That -- that was in --

Q: Did you exchange stories and talk about what you had been through?

A: No, but you know, there were these th -- we were poor, they were rich. His first cousin Henry Geltsaller, who -- with whom I went to Yale, and who also died, yeah, lived on Central Park West, and so when we visited Henry, who was our age, it was kind of grand. But other than that, no. I mean, we were -- I-I -- I -- I would -- treated myself and was treated as an American.

Q: Okay, the war is now over, it's 1945, do you remember any celebration of your parents, or anything specific about that time?

Interview with Andrew Glass * February 14, 2005

A: The only thing I do remember is -- and I was about 11, is -- at the -- that time the New York Times had the war news on page two in official communiques, issued by -- e-every day there was a communique by each of the combatant governments, including the Germans, and I re -- I -- I would read that. And so the war was very, you know, important in that way, and remembered the wa -- the fact that the windows in the school had masking tape on them in case we were bombed.

And so I remember asking my parents now that the war was over, I asked my father, would newspapers still be published. That was a serious question because the -- I thought of newspapers as being war news, I didn't equate it with any other kind of news, and I didn't see any need for newspapers after the war. The newspapers were to tell us about the war, and so no war, no newspapers.

Q: So you don't remember any specific celebration that your parents had that the war was over?

A: Well, th -- | have a very clear memory of my parents crying at -- at A-April 12", I think it was, of 1945 when President Roosevelt died. Kind of -- that was the only president we knew, and of course he, by signing that executive order, allowed us to stay in the United States, which was becoming precarious. So that's a clear memory, Roosevelt's death. And after that I just grew up.

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

Q: And then more and more came out about the Holocaust. How did you -- you or your family react to tho -- that news?

A: Not really, I mean the -- the -- the thing that affected me most about the Holocaust, frankly, was as an adult traveling to Israel, and particularly being with Jimmy Carter at the Yad Vashem. And I don't cry as an adult, but I did cry then, and I was one of a few reporters, and I think Carter may have known my story, or I may have said something to Jody Powell that -- without really going into it, why it was -- it was -- I said -- I think I said it was important to me personally to be at Yad Vashem with President Carter, and would it be okay. And so I've had these adult experiences. Another one I had of a similar nature was in 1993 when I happened to be in Warsaw with Vice President Gore i-in which Gore and the Israeli president at the time, made a speech a-at the memorial for the -- the Jews on the 50" anniversary of the -- of the ghetto uprising, which was celebrated in Warsaw, and I just happened to be in Warsaw at the time, not for this, but Al Gore and so on, so I was with Gore. And a-as a Washington Bureau Chief for the Cox newspapers. And so I remember being very much affected by that ceremony, and crying. And -- and -- and just th-the thought that with -- with very few changes in parameters, that I could have been in that ghetto. And, you know, going to the Holocaust Museum and seeing children of my age walking in that large -- y-you Interview with Andrew Glass *8 February 14, 2005

know what I mean, the -- the large kind of photograph, blown up photograph of the ghetto with the trolley car coming through and everyone wearing the armbands and so on. I-I could easily see myself being there and that -- I would end on the note that it was really quite remarkable that I wasn't there, and that we are having this interview as I approach my 70" year.

Q: So you continued your schooling in New York. You -- you finished elementary school and then what happened?

A: Joan of Arc Junior High School, Bronx High School of Science, Yale College, and then a career in journalism followed -- a -- a short time in the army.

Q: And did you share -- as you were growing up in high school and in college and so forth, did you share your background with other people? Did people know about that?

A: No. No, the only place I shared it was on my passport, which said I was born in Warsaw. But, no.

Q: Purposely, or you just didn't think it was important?

A: It was just part of my li -- my father, when I was a young adult s-said to me, I have just three requests of you. And one of them was, never f -- never go to Germany. And the second one was, never buy a German car, although I think he said germ -- Mercedes Benz, but he meant German car. And he also asked me not

Interview with Andrew Glass %deg February 14, 2005

to marry outside the faith. Tho-Those are the three -- he said, otherwise you can do anything you want in life. But guess which one of those requests I've honored in -- in life. None. But we got along fine.

Q: So you said you chose to go into journalism, and you thought maybe it related to your experience as a child following the war news?

A: Well, just an exciting way of -- of -- as a high school student I worked at the New York Herald Tribune delivering ads and picking up the weather map from the weather bureau at the battery, and I earned enough money to travel, which I often enjoyed. So I traveled through western Europe, didn't go to eastern Europe til qu-quite later. But I never thought of myself other than as an American, and the experiences of the war was, I would say quite honestly that I [indecipherable] thought about it until this interview, I suppose I repressed them. People have asked me, why didn't I write about it, and that's a good question, I just didn't. I mean, I was a writer, and I -- I read stories in the New Yorker that have -- about similar subjects that have -- might say less poignancy or even less relevance than my own story, if it were told that way, as a personal history. But I -- I just didn't do it. I didn't want to. And why, I'm not quite -- e-even to this day I'm not quite clear why.

End of Tape Two, Side A

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005 Beginning Tape Two, Side B

Q: This is a continuation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer collection interview with Andrew Glass. This is tape number two, side B.

A: Well, what I'll say is that over the years I've gotten to know quite a few Polish diplomats. I've interviewed the Polish president, I've interviewed the mayor of Warsaw, prime ministers and so on, and spent time in Poland. Parenthetically, my father and mother traveled a good deal. My father was an international businessman, but he never returned to Poland, never returned to germa -- ne-never returned to Germany. Traveled to Israel quite often, England, France, Italy.

Australia, of course, where were had family. An-an -- or they would meet in Honolulu or Easter Island or somewhere. But I got -- as I said, I got to know quite a few Poles over the years, including the Pope, and so my view of the Polish role during World War I, quite honestly I would say, is a lot more nuanced and quite different than my father's -- what I regarded and still regard, I suppose, as a one- dimensional view that all Poles are bad. So generational-ly we never agreed, but we never talked about that.

Q: Becau -- you never talked about it because?

A: Well, because it was -- I mean, my father's mind was made up on the subject

Interview with Andrew Glass %8 February 14, 2005

and there was no point in my saying look, there were also Poles who, unlike the ones that you condemn -- I mean, he made a great point for the fact that Hitler felt comfortable cre -- setting up death camps in Poland and to my knowledge, I guess, Czechoslovakia, but th-that was -- th-the -- that he didn't feel comfortable in having say, death camps in France or Denmark or anywhere not on German soil that wasn't Poland. And so that -- that weighed heavily with my father, that Auschwitz was in Poland and others, may -- five, six major death camps. And that, you know, th-the numbers there are very stark. There was, at the time that the war began -- I told you earlier [indecipherable] story of our flight, there were 3,100,000 Jews living in Poland. And while it's not -- the numbers are not quite precise, they range between 100,000 and 150,000 who survived out of that total, who were in Poland when the war began. Some had left to go to Israel, some had escaped earlier, but of the number that were there, | mean, you can do the math. It - - it -- it -- it's a very small -- and so, that has kind of created in my mind, Gail, a -- how to put it? A fact that I have a -- a -- a get out of jail free card. That e-every day that I live, statistically I shouldn't be alive. And so I-I would, over time, as a journalist, I would find myself in some very dangerous places, like Detroit in the middle of a huge race riot, which was more of a National Guard riot, but that's another story. Or in Afghanistan with the Soviet troops fighting the mujahideen.

Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005 Or in the first Gulf War with the scuds coming over, and everybody kind of hiding, and I felt no fear. And I -- you know, the reaction was, you know, why -- why were these people kind of afraid that they're going to die, bec -- and you know, rationally there was a real risk that one of these mujahideen bullets that was meant for the spiznars would hit me cause I was in the -- harm's way in each of these cases. But I felt kind of like who -- well, you know, I'm -- I'm living on borrowed time anyway, so what? And so I'm sure that it wou -- it's not going to happen but if I was in Iraq today I would care less about my personal safety.

Q: Which feeds into a question I was going to ask you a little later, is, do you think you're a different kind of person than you would have been if you hadn't experienced the childhood that you had? Let's say that you were born in the United States and had a very relaxed early childhood. Is this because of what you did go through that you had these feelings?

A: Well, it just -- as an a -- I suppose as an adult, the realization that I was a survivor and that the chances of surviving statistically in my particular case, 2200 out of, I think 600,000 in Lithuania, almost all of whom died. I mean, the odds of getting out were -- in the first instance out of Warsaw and in the second instance out of Lithuania, third instance not being arrested in -- in the Soviet Union as -- as o-obvious bourgeois, and the fourth instance leaving Japan just at the right time or

Interview with Andrew Glass *deg February 14, 2005

not, a-as many in that group of 2200 choosing to go to the Dutch East Indies, it seemed like a good -- good idea at the time. I mean all -- or Shanghai -- all of those were just, you know, five cushioned billiard shots, to arrive in San Francisco, destitute financially, but -- but healthy and -- and ready to, you know, start a new life. So I think honestly, that realization came to me only as a -- as an adult, or at least as a teenager, not as a child.

Q: You finished college, and then did you say you went into the army, into the service?

A: Yeah -- no, I finished college and I went into journalism and then I was drafted and I served in the army, but never abroad. And then I went back to journalism and eventually went to the New York Herald Tribune, which in 1962 sent me to Washington as -- that time, I was also married and we've been -- been here since.

The Herald Tribune folded. I worked for awhile -- four years for the Washington Post, and then I worked for -- on the hill for a couple of years for Senator Javits as his press secretary and Senator Percy as his administrative assistant. I returned to journalism in 1971 and worked four years for the "National Journal" as an editor - - it's still going. And then in 1974 I joined Cox newspapers, which founded a bureau here and I worked from 1974 to 19 -- to 2001 for Cox newspapers, 21 of those years as the chief of the Washington bureau. And had a year at Harvard as a

Interview with Andrew Glass * February 14, 2005

fellow and then worked, and still do, for The Hill newspapers as a writer and for a while as the managing editor. And I'm looking for other things to write about, but not the Holocaust.

Q: Y-You talked -- yo-you said you haven't written, and you just said, and not. Can you just elaborate a little bit more, why not?

A: Well, I -- I don't know. I mean, I -- obviously I should. I wrote -- I think I wrote one column about ca -- it was a column about immigration policy in California and how illegal aliens were being treated badly. And I told a little bit of my story, not a lot, but I mainly concentrated on my mother -- excuse me, on my mother-in-law, who was also an illegal -- is -- I mean, I made the point that we were illegal aliens and that my father-in-law and mother-in-law were illegal. And she returned to her native Italy after the war -- which was devastated. They were -- the family was from an area just south of Naples called Terra Del Greco, just in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii and so she came back and then she wanted to return after about six months and her papers, as they say, were not in order. And they wouldn't let her on the -- on the ship and so I think my sister's brothers went to see a congressman who was the head of the State Department committee that arranged for the State Department to get money. He was State Justice Commerce Appropriations Chair John J. Rooney. And they pointed out to Rooney that

Interview with Andrew Glass ~ February 14, 2005

nobody asked about the citizenship when two of my wife's brothers were killed in World War II, and so why were they raising these questions now? And so Rooney made a -- a call to the State Department and -- or passed a private bill, or -- no, I think he just made a call to the State Department, she was on the next boat back from Naples. And I told that story in a column that I wrote about, and that made an impression on me that, you know, here were two relatively successful -- a Harvard educated psychiatrist and a Washington Bureau Chief who were, you know, from illegal aliens, so give me a break. So that was -- but that was a 600 word column, so that [indecipherable] ma-made an impact, on me anyway.

Q: You said you have a son, did you -- when he was very, very young, up -- even a toddler, did that bring back memories of what you had to go through when you were his age?

A: No, but one story, my am -- as I said, my -- my grandfather's house, there was a housekeeper who, when this house -- mansion really, was taken over by the bil- billeted Germans, she was of course, thrown out. And she managed to save a cottage cup -- two, I think. And so after the war -- a-a -- and a lot of this -- this -- this cottage cup was from mid-18" century, and quite valuable, but more valuable as silver, just to melt it down. And a lot of this stuff was melted down because these people [indecipherable] but she saved it. And so my father helped her, of Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005 course; after the war they sent her money. And so when I went to Warsaw he asked me to look her up, she was in her mid-90's by that time. And she insisted that I take these cottage cups back with me, one of which I gave to my father. I don't know what happened to it, I don't have it, maybe my mother has it. And one I kept myself. And my son, who was a toddler -- a little older than a toddler, but about the same age that I was when I arrived here, said Daddy, when you die, can I have this cup? And that was a profoundly imp -- imp -- it impressed me. It impressed me.

And of course his mother was Catholic and I was Jewish and we had to decide whether we're going to rear him as a Catholic or as a Jew, or none of the above, and so we reared him as a Jew, and so he is a Jew.

Q: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Has he been to Poland at all? Have you taken him and shown him Warsaw?

A: No, I don't think -- he's been to Prague, he's been to Berlin a couple of times, he's going to Berlin next week. But he's never been to Warsaw. I'd like him to go.

Q: Do you consider yourself a Zionist?

A: No, no, I consider myself an American. I have no Zionist feelings. And I've been to Israel quite a bit, but only as a journalist, not as a Zionist. Not recently, but a lot during the time of the -- the war and the -- and I've gotten to know many Israelis, I mean, we lived literally behind the Israeli ambassador's house, which

Interview with Andrew Glass " February 14, 2005

didn't used to have a fence when the ambassador was Yitzhak Rabin. So we got to know Rabin, largely because my dog would often -- our little puppy then, would often end up in Rabin's backyard, so we would have to retrieve him and I got to know Rabin that way, but also professionally wrote about him, and visited with him when I went to Israel.

Q: When you -- when you are in Israel, do you feel any connection to the country?

A: No, I mean, no -- none -- no, no, no --

Q: Or is it just another foreign country?

A: Well, it's a special place. I feel more at home there than say in Saudi Arabia, but that's because it's a western democracy that has McDonald's and -- and parliament, the Knesset and so on. Not because I'm Jewish or anything like that.

But I've had close friends who made aliyah and who lived in Israel and I visited them when I was in Israel for other pur -- not pa-particularly to see them, but while taking -- taking in -- of course, some of the family, distant cousins ended up in Israel, so --

Q: Are you angry that you had to go through a difficult time and the res -- some of the rest of us didn't have to go through that time? And that your f -- you had the losses, extended family losses that you had?

Interview with Andrew Glass degdeg February 14, 2005

A: A-A-Anger, or regret or remorse, I-I -- I -- not anger. I mean, we drive a Mercedes and I pointed out to my father one time -- and a Mercedes saved my wife's life in an a -- in a terrible collision, but that it's really been built by Serbs.

Na -- and if there are any German workers in that factory near Munich, they -- they weren't around during World War II, so --

Q: Are there any sounds or sights that remind you, that bring back any memories of -- well, let's say the -- the -- the bombing, that very early sensation that you had, or your travels in Europe? Anything today that triggers it?

A: The bombing? Well, you know, going to Warsaw and seeing pictures as you have of -- of the devastation -- of all those cities, I mean, I -- I ma -- one of my clear memories [indecipherable] is going to Europe in 1953 which was what, six years, seven years after the war?

Q: Tha-That was your first trip back?

A: Yeah, as a 17 year old, and seeing, you know, devastated cities and seeing the damage in -- in central London, seeing even worse damage along the Belgian coast where we were cycling, Ostend, Brussels, so on.

Q: And how did you go, did you go with your family?

A: No, with a -- just with a friend, just a-a -- as a -- just as -- for a three month trip.

But you know, that brought the war back very, very clearly. And I remember going

Interview with Andrew Glass *deg February 14, 2005

to Italy where we stayed in youth hostels and a door would open very slowly and the proprietor or the prop -- say Tedeschi, which is -- so she knew we weren't Italian -- which is Italian for Germans. And we say no, no, Americani. Oh, Americani, bene, bene, bene, you know, so [indecipherable] couldn't -- so being an American in that -- in Europe at that time, eight years after the war, I guess, ended, was still quite an experience.

Q: Do you feel Polish in any way?

A: No, no. I mean, I'm on the list, so to speak, every time there's an event at the Polish embassy, they invite me and sometimes I go. And I've been to the ambassador's home -- he lives in the neighborhood -- for lunch and dinner and that kind of thing. And I -- I-I -- I -- when I was president of the Gridiron Club and sat next to President Bush -- this was in 2001 -- you get to invite, you know, whoever you want, and I just kind of, you know, on a lark I invited the Polish ambassador to the dinner, he had never been to a Gridiron dinner, didn't know what it was. And I - - I made a joke, you know, Polish joke, and that they wanted not a -- a -- a Polish president, they wanted a president with some polish. And Bush was very gracious, he said that he -- he had been president then for just about three months and he told me off the record -- well, not off the record, just told me that he was planning to go to Poland, which was news, no one knew that. And I had -- one of the things I did 57

Interview with Andrew Glass

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was to set up a -- a bureau in and within the bureau of [speaks Polish here] which means election newspaper in Polish. And so we had a correspondent there because Cox had invested in -- in that newspaper after the fall of communism, helped them out. It was -- turned out to be a very good investment, we're de-investing it now, but made a lot of money. Anyway, I had something to do with that. So we -- we had this -- and I would make trips to Poland to help the newspapers set -- set it a -- set up and exchange news, so I gave that news to the Gazetta correspondent who was working in the Cox bureau, and so they had a big exclusive that Bush was coming to Poland on a -- on -- on -- on good authority. I couldn't -- couldn't give them my source, but I said, you can take it to the bank, I know it's true. The guy I talked to knows what he's talking about. And so I've had lunch with the Polish ambassador and so on, and we talk in Polish or in English, it's -- and it's -- and I'm comfortable with that.

Q: And are you comfortable when you're in Poland walking on the streets of [indecipherable]

A: Well, it's interesting, because you know, I'm identified as an American and I've -- most of the trips I've taken to Poland would have been with -- with the first President Bush, or with President Clinton, or with Jimmy Carter and I would just be a member of the White House press corps, and they would make comments and ontectnetonancedjusetneey for tarher biormatoerabouttfisestecion

Interview with Andrew Glass *deg February 14, 2005

believing that what they were saying wa -- and I -- you know, I would say nothing, but then when I would leave, I would make a tart remark in Polish and their jaws would drop. So that was fun, you know, to be a kind of a hidden Pole --

Q: Uh-huh.

A: -- as amember of the White House press corps.

Q: Yeah.

A: But other than that, no.

Q: What are your feelings when you're in Germany?

A: Normal. It's the largest country in Europe and I've been going to Germany -- I star -- I guess I started going when we -- the economic summits started, which was in the late 70's, and they would -- as you know, they would rotate and one would be in Bonn every seven years, so I would go to Bonn for that. And then I would go with Carter to Berlin and I think I went with President Ford to Germany, I don't remember that, but I've been there quite a bit. And recently on holiday with my wife, who just loved Berlin. And my son is going to Berlin next week. He's an MBA at Columbia and the class is going to Germany on some business trip. And he wa -- also had a scholarship to Heidelberg and learned German at Yale, so -- all of that was after my father died.

Q: Mm-hm.

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Interview with Andrew Glass

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A: But, speaks really fluent German.

Q: Do you think there are any lessons to be learned from what you experienced, what your family experienced?

A: Well, there's got to be existential lesson of -- of how life is precious and how -- without getting too deep about it, how the road taken and the road not taken can make a very big difference in life. And -- and the randomness of who survives and who doesn't survive, co-coupled with the low odds of survival have made an impression on me, but not as a child, or even as a -- as a teenager, but more as an adult, and particularly late in life, which would lead to things like an interest in doing this interview.

Q: Why bef -- in -- in the years past, did you not feel the need, or did -- o-or why is it now that you feel more? Because of the stage of life we're in?

A: I don't know, I mean I -- I've just taken it in, the Holocaust Museum. We became friends with a couple that had a -- a lot to do -- a Baltimore couple that had a lot to do with setting up the museum and they became close friends of ours. And then I-I was on the convention plat -- convention arrangements committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors and I arranged for the editors to have a separate and -- tour of the museum when the museum first opened, and of -- also for Ted Koppel to lead in a very interesting discussion at the museum about

Interview with Andrew Glass degdeg February 14, 2005

Holocaust denial by the American press during World War IL, and particularly the role of the New York Times. So I had a -- you know, I've had a -- a -- a role -- a role that -- that way.

Q: Y-You're talking about now, for instance, the New York Times not giving as much space in the paper to what was happening. Does that make you angry?

A: No, but it's been well documented and they -- they didn't want to be -- a -- a-- a friend of mine, Alex Jones wrote a book about history of the New York Times, and he was the creator -- cur -- cur -- curator of a program at Harvard that I participated in, the Kennedy School of Politics as a fellow, and of course he has a lot in there about the Times not wanting to identify itself as a Jewish newspaper during World War II, and so that was --

Q: That -- does that elicit any emotional feeling in -- in you?

A: Truthfully no, no. Just -- one of the things, Gail, as you become a journalist, at least in my generation of journalists is that you -- you -- you -- y-you step out of your skin a lot. You feel that you're a somewhat classless person and that the very rich and the very important bear no special role in your life to the homeless person, they have equal balance. And I feel that very strongly, I always have. And I -- i-i-in the sense that as a leader, a bureau chief and so on, I've tried to inculcate leading by example, that you, in the younger generation of journalists, not to be in awe of -- Interview with Andrew Glass *" February 14, 2005 of the rich and powerful and not to be -- look down at anyone who is in trouble or in -- in jail or in -- in modest circumstances, treat them all the same, the same. And perhaps in my own background, you know, that growing up poor, but with a rich mentality if you will. That may have had something to do with why I became a journalist, I don't know. It's too deep for me.

Q: When you go into the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, does it give you any sp -- di-different feelings?

A: Well, as I said, particularly the view of the Warsaw ghetto and the br -- the role of that. I've recently visited the -- not a Holocaust museum, but a German -- a museum recently o -- that opened in -- in Berlin that traces the story of Jews in Germany, and I felt no particular -- I didn't have that feeling. But I've been to Warsaw and talked to people who are trying to create a Holocaust museum against some odds in -- in Warsaw, and so I tried to help them with the -- the sense of giving them some -- some support.

Q: Did you have any connection with Professor Jan Karski when he was living in Washington and teaching at Georgetown?

A: Yes, I knew him and I talked to him. I met him at the embassy, I had several meals with him. I met him also in Warsaw when he was back there, not that long ago, shortly before he died. I knew him. He was a very important figure, yup.

Interview with Andrew Glass deg February 14, 2005

Q: Did you feel a Polish connection to him, being born in Poland yourself?

A: Well, I feel a connection to Poles and -- and I'm Polish, I mean that -- it says in Who's Who in America, born in Warsaw, so that won't go away. Maybe the listing in Who's Who will end, but being born in Warsaw, well, that stays.

Q: Well, as you say, is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanted to say on the tape?

A: What I wanted to say Gail is that I've been interviewed in different circumstances on -- and I m-mainly been on the other side of that microphone, and I don't recall a more thorough, professional interview than the one that you have just concluded.

Q: Thank you for saying that, and thank you for doing the interview. This -- this concludes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum interview with Andrew Glass.

End of Tape Two, Side B Conclusion of Interview