Frank Liebermann was born in Gleiwitz, Germany, in 1929. Frank experienced rampant antisemitism as a young boy in Nazi Germany. He was not allowed to play in parks or swim in local pools and soon became a target for bullying by his non-Jewish classmates. Frank and his family were able to immigrate to the United States in 1938, just before Kristallnacht.
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Welcome. Thank you for joining us for First Person Conversations with Holocaust Survivors.
My name is Bill Benson. I have hosted the Museum's First Person program since it began in 2000. Thank
you for joining us today. Through these monthly conversations we bring you first-hand accounts
of survival of the Holocaust. Each of our First Person guests serves as a volunteer at the Museum.
We're honored to have Holocaust survivor Frank Liebermann share his individual personal account of the Holocaust with us. During
Frank, welcome. Thanks for agreeing to be our First Person today. Frank: Glad to be here.
Bill: Frank, we have so much to hear from you today so we'll start right away. You were born in Germany in 1929 just four years before Hitler came to power in 1933.
Will you tell us about your family and your early life in your hometown of Gleiwitz?
Frank: Gleiwitz was located between the place where my parents came from. Now it was between
Beuthen where my father's family lived and Oppeln where my mother's parents and siblings lived.
Bill: And here we see your parents, right? Frank: Yes, this is in Spindlermuehle
which is a resort place which was about three hours from Gleiwitz
and my parents loved to go there. They had both skiing in winter and hiking during the summer.
Bill: Tell us, tell us more about your parents, Frank, please. Frank: My father was a physician,
an ear, nose, throat surgeon. My mother came from a family which had
lived in Oppeln for well over 150 years, and they had a family business which
celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1933. The sign there is J.J. Orgler.
It had upholstery materials on the right, and
belt, drive belts on the left, Treibriemen. And of course leather for various areas of,
from shoemakers to people who made fancy equipment out of it.
Bill: And as you said, the business in 1933 celebrated its 100th anniversary in the family.
That's incredible. How about your, how about your other side of your family, your paternal
grandparents? Frank: My father's parents had a small hardware store
where my grandfather was the salesperson and my grandmother was
bookkeeper. They sold basic hardware and also baby furniture and baby carriages, et cetera.
Bill: I notice you have a, being a kid, you've got a bandage on your knee there in that photo.
Frank: I probably, I probably fell playing tag or doing something of that kind. Nothing serious.
Bill: It sounds like you spent a good deal of time with your grandparents on both sides. You knew them.
Frank: Well, my parents bought a small car mainly to visit
both parents and stay in touch because Gleiwitz had a streetcar network where you could get
along anywhere and there were very, very few cars. That's the reason I frequently rode my bicycle and
went around, around town by foot. Bill: And this was the family car here?
Frank: This is my grandparents' Steyr which was particularly nice because it held a lot of people and we used it for various excursions.
Bill: And that's, that's you with your maternal grandmother in that picture right? Frank: Yes. Yes. Bill: Yeah. Frank,
tell us some. about some of the activities that you and your family did. Frank: Well, I said we did skiing. We liked hiking.
And one of the excursions with that Steyr was to take
go to local forests and look for mushrooms because my grandmother loved to cook with mushrooms,
and you've probably heard that some can be quite poisonous. So my grandparents and my mother's
siblings were quite adept at knowing what to pick and I still remember that at the end of the
picking, we put everything on a table and anyone could veto a mushroom which looked maybe
borderline or whether, where they weren't sure. So with many meals we never had any problems.
Bill: But you didn't have to argue for or against a particular mushroom. It was just the right to say, "Not that one."
Frank: Exactly. Everybody had veto power. Bill: Veto power. And you love mushrooms to this day I believe.
Frank: Yes I do. (Laughter) Bill: In 1933 the Nazi regime began to enact antisemitic laws limiting the participation
of Jews in German public life. But in Gleiwitz where you lived you were in a
unique situation because of post-World War I border agreements between Poland and Germany.
The two countries had signed a treaty that protected minorities in this border region for a
15-year period. Tell us how this treaty affected your family in those first years of Nazi rule.
Frank: This treaty was signed when Poland was really re-established. It used to be a country
and then became part of Russia and Austria, and when it was re-established, the borders
had a lot of people from, who spoke other languages. So there was a 15-year period
where people could move and were guaranteed not to be harassed on either side of the border
until they chose where they really wanted to live. That was after the plebiscite.
Bill: So, so essentially there was this agreement that for a 15-year period minorities,
Jews, and others would be protected from discrimination for that 15-year period,
but eventually that 15-year period, you knew this, was going to end. Frank: It was in the summer of 1936
and my parents and several friends decided it'd be a good idea to be out of the country during that
time to see if there would be any violence. So we took a vacation in Denmark, and when we came back
a lot of things had changed. We knew it was coming so one of the things that I remember vividly
was that I was told I had to learn how to swim because we might have to take an ocean voyage.
Bill: Meaning your parents are already thinking about the possibility of moving.
Frank, during that period before the treaty ended, in the rest of Germany, of course,
the very harsh antisemitic laws were in effect. What was your life like during
that period? Was it relatively peaceful or, or what during that period before it ended?
Frank: It was relatively peaceful. We did change to an all-Jewish
school in three, the elementary school, in three classrooms within a school building.
There were also, we knew what was going to happen
that we'd be restricted from going to parks, playgrounds and we made it,
we made preparations for its coming but didn't know exactly how severe it would be.
Bill: Right. And one of the things you shared with me is during that period, kosher butchers
were allowed to keep their shops open in that part of Germany where you were located. What, what did,
tell us what your community did to support that kosher butcher that you had in your community. Frank: Well there were about 1200 families, and in order, and there was just one
congregation. In order to support those people who wanted to be kosher,
everybody decided that they would use a kosher butcher whether they were kosher or not
in order to keep them in business and help out their neighbors.
Bill: You know Frank, the parallel in my head is if suddenly we were told the Civil Rights Act
of 1965 would expire tomorrow that, that you could go back to doing what happened prior to that,
that's the situation you sort of faced. So when that treaty ended, how did it affect you?
Frank: A lot of things changed. When we came back, there was a lot of graffiti on
the store windows of Jewish shops. There was a "Stuermer" display.
Bill: And that was a publication, right? Frank: "Der Stuermer" was Goebbel's propaganda newspaper which showed Jews as having been
particularly ugly, almost rather satirical figures and were basically universal propaganda. Also
there was almost complete censorship. You weren't allowed to listen to foreign radio stations
and there were a lot of laws restricting movements and what you could do. Also bank accounts were
frozen that you could only withdraw whatever was considered necessary for your livelihood.
Also there was a Brown Shirt stationed in front of our apartment house where my
father also had his office threatening people with loss of jobs and all kinds of things
if they wanted to go to the office. My father also lost his ability to collect
insurance. Germany always had socialized medicine which meant that the government
deducts a tax and you're entitled to go for any treatment when it's needed.
So if you couldn't collect it, he basically knew that he couldn't make a living.
Bill: So between blocking people from going to his practice, taking away his ability to
collect insurance, his hospital privileges, basically put him out of business as a physician.
Frank: Correct. Bill: Frank, during, once the treaty passed, of course, along with all those other brutal
restrictions, there were also laws that affected education of Jewish children.
Jewish students were restricted to the numbers that could attend German public schools
and you described a moment ago that you were attending essentially a Jewish school inside a larger school. What changed for you from, from in
school once those rules took effect? And I think we have a picture of your first day of school.
Frank: Yes. Those cones that everybody's holding were filled with candy
in order to make school sweet. Bill: Which of course some, now is not going to be very sweet for you. Tell us,
tell us what it was like for you to go to school at that point. Frank: Well, of course Jews lost all rights and protection of the police.
Therefore it was important to be safe primarily to stay away from groups. Individually we were hard to recognize, but
for instance, going to school we were told to come five minutes after school
started and were dismissed five minutes early so that we could disperse and get home safely.
We basically had a good education, the classes were fairly large because we had
to do with limited space. One of the things which I do remember was that
the most critical time and dangerous time was doing a forced recess around lunchtime
where we found it was where boys were on one side, girls were on the other and we found it to
be relatively safest to be just between them near our teachers to have some degree of protection.
Bill: Frank, thank you for that. You mentioned a little while ago that
in anticipation of maybe taking an ocean journey you learned to swim. As the laws became
more restrictive and harsher, your parents began to think about and look for ways to leave Germany
including your mother took a trip to Palestine. Tell us why she went there and, and what happened.
Frank: Basically she went there with her brother in order to
investigate what the possibilities were and found out that there was
a doctor for about every hundred people. So she came back and pretty much eliminated Israel, or rather Palestine, as a place to go
because my father enjoyed his practice of medicine and that's when we thought of going elsewhere
preferably the United States if we could get an affidavit in order to be able to emigrate there.
Bill: So Frank because of what you just said your father did end up making a trip to the United
States in January of 1938 to see if it would be possible for the family to immigrate there.
But the immigration process was very complicated in the 1930s.
Discriminatory quotas limited how many people could immigrate to the United States from various countries. Different quotas, different countries. For all potential immigrants
the bureaucratic process was onerous. It required large amounts of paperwork and most notably
visa applicants had to get the affidavit that you spoke of. Frank: With that affidavit, he went to the American consulate in Berlin
and got a number to be called up for a physical and
the actual visa which, by the way, was going to be good for 120 days
if and when we got it. We waited for
a couple of months and nothing happened. And my father called a friend and said,
"Is there anything that I can do to expedite this because I'm really getting anxious. I
can't make a living and things are getting much worse." So he suggested getting a box of candy
for the secretary to the consul, a certain Fraulein Schmidt.
He proceeded to get, get a nice big box of candy and a month later still nothing happened.
He called his friend again and said, "Didn't you put a hundred marks into it?"
Bill: In other words, put money, money into the box of chocolates. Frank: Into the box of candy. So she got another box of candy and about two weeks later we were
called to the consulate to take a physical in order to get the final approval of the visa.
At that point my father took the next boat to the United States and
took, got a first, the cheapest first-class ticket because at that time
they still had rules that if you were visiting the United States you could take a fairly substantial
spending allowance which you could then take into the United States.
Bill: That was if you sailed on a German ship, right? Frank: Correct. Bill: Right, right. Frank: The North German Lloyd.
Bill: Frank, what, what motivated your parents to make the decision that your father would go
in advance without the two of you? So you two, you and your mom, stayed behind.
Frank: Well, the requirements to practice medicine is to take the state boards
in, in the field and he picked Ohio because they passed fifty percent of the applicants
which was a fairly high percentage. So he left early in order to save
money. Again it was a depression, he couldn't work, and he had to live off this
spending allowance. He rented a room in Cleveland for five dollars a week and used the medical
school of Western Reserve University as a lot, for the library because he had taken English
during his college days and was proficient enough to read, read well and
get a head start. While it was just you and your mother, your mother was having to make all the preparations for moving so would you talk a
little bit about that? And I do want you to tell us about the incident where you broke your arm.
Frank: We had a garden plot on the edge of town which about half a dozen families, the same people
who, by the way, went to Denmark during this time, which we could use as a playground and
had a cherry tree and a pear tree and it was kind of a recreational area at the edge of town.
Playing tag I broke my arm. Of course
I was fiercely independent, I didn't tell anybody. I just said, "I want to go home"
and rode my bicycle. And of course one couldn't call
an ambulance or anything like that because that, you probably wouldn't get serviced.
Bill: Right. Frank: Therefore I was able to ride with one arm. My mother immediately called the orthopedist
in the local hospital whom she knew because with professional
events they had dinner with them, and she thought that was most likely place to go.
When she called him he said, "Sorry I don't treat Jewish patients. I can't help you." She
frantically called various other places and did find somebody in Beuthen which,
where my father had grown up who said, "Take a taxi and go to the back entrance
of the Catholic orphanage in Beuthen. I'll see you there and I'll take care of it,
but be sure to go through the back entrance because I don't want to be seen with you."
He did set my arm and gave my mother instructions what to tell my pediatrician when
she took the bandage off after about six weeks and gave me physical therapy and my arm is
in fine shape. In fact it bends even better than my right arm. Bill: Frank that, that little incident you just described speaks volumes. Something as
straightforward as a broken arm in a child, it was that difficult to get care for you.
You can imagine what it was like for other, other Jews who had any kind of severe illness or anything.
Thank you for sharing that. As a child, what gave you strength to get through those difficult days?
Frank: My parents gave me a lot of independence. In other words,
cars were not a danger so that I pretty much went to see friends, go to the playground,
do things by myself. And you develop instincts of what you could do and what you couldn't do,
and I must have had the right instincts because I managed very well.
Bill: So Frank, here you are with your mom. She is having to try to figure out
what she could take with her to the United States, to arrange that, which was an ordeal.
I would like you to say just briefly what that involved because I think it's extraordinary what
it meant to take anything out. You had to pay an extraordinary tax. And I want you to tell us about
how your grandparents reacted to you and your mom and dad moving to the United States and
when when you last saw your grandparents. Frank: Well first of all, the rules at that time were still relatively lenient
that you could take anything along that was, that you had been using and rather if
you paid a hundred percent tax on its value. Now since money was frozen, it really did,
we used it in order to try to make life as inexpensive when we got to the United States
as possible. My mother arranged for a lift which is like a container today
in which we were able to take basic furniture, my father's office furniture like
instruments. She even was able to buy a new audiometer which is a machine which tested
hearing loss. It was one of the things I liked to play with in the office
because you could turn it on and off various frequencies in order to test the whole range.
It was a brand new invention at the time that he used very well when he got to the United States.
Bill: So your mom is, she's trying to make sure she can take things that are going to be essential to the family and essential to your father getting started in his practice. We have...
Frank: Correct. She also arranged for the packing. Friends, by the way,
offered to pay, rather, to pack my bicycle which I was very fond of, and said that they
can put it in a small box to make it, to take as little room on the lift as possible. So they
brought it to us and when the lift came, a customs inspector
checked everything off to see that it was properly taxed and then sealed it
and it was shipped off to the United States. Bill: Frank...
Frank: This was the beginning of October. Bill: We have a a photograph here of you with your mother and your maternal grandparents.
This I believe was taken the last time you saw your grandparents.
What, what do you recall of what that was like for you and for your mom? Frank: Well, my grandfather was quite upset that my father was taking his only daughter
to a place where, to a place that's very far away but did understand the circumstances.
We stopped there. This is already a suit that I got for immigration.
It came with a pair of shorts which were usually what kids wore and also a pair of knickerbockers
of the English style which went pretty far down. And
this was kind of a goodbye photograph and my mother's brother accompanied us to the ship.
The ship was able to sail. You made it to the United States and you and your mother were reunited with your father in
late October of 1938 and your family settled in Ohio. Tell us what the adjustment was like
for your family, and for you particularly, to establish yourself in a new country a new life.
Frank: Again I considered it an adventure. My mother told
me everything would be better when we got to the United States and
after a rather perilous sea voyage where she was sick and wasn't able to get out of the cabin for
four days, because in October that was the hurricane season and we had a very, very rough voyage,
but I considered everything an adventure.
Bill: And we have we have a photograph I think coming up that that sort of summarizes for you what your adjustment was like.
That's what we'd call an all-American picture, isn't it?
Frank: Actually my father picked us up in New York and after the
two-day sightseeing trip in New York, where for five, for five cents you can could get on
the Fifth Avenue bus and go through Central Park, the Empire State Building, and a lot of New York,
we proceeded to Cleveland where he was studying and where we stayed for about three months because
he was booked to do his state boards in December.
Bill: In December. So Frank before you move on to that, of course, you hadn't been in the
United States very long you were in Cleveland for a very short while when you were home and
your parents were out, and a phone call came from Germany. Tell us about this.
Frank: My parents went out for the first time. I believe it was a Wednesday in order to get a
special of the midweek sale of a movie, I don't know whether it was 10 cents or 25, but that was their
first going out. And they asked a neighbor to kind of look in on me every half hour.
At about nine o'clock that night the phone rang. I answered and it was a person-to-person phone call
for my mother from my grandparents. That was probably the longest hour of my life because I knew something was definitely wrong
since nine o'clock at night was three o'clock in the morning in Germany and
they called person-to-person which there were two classes at that time
when phoning was very expensive. You could call station-to-station where the person answered
and whoever it was, it was connected. If you really wanted to get a particular person,
you called person-to-person which was about two, three times as much but obviously
the news wasn't going to be good. Finally my parents came back at about 10 o'clock
and heard the news from my grandparents that the business had been confiscated,
that two of my mother's brothers were imprisoned, and that the business and that
things were in shambles. And this was what's known as Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass"
when hundreds of synagogues were burned down,
stores were confiscated, and that I consider is the beginning of the Holocaust.
Bill: And that was the night of November 9th through 10th, 1938 just literally about two weeks after you arrived in the United States. That must have been so,
just so terrifying for your mom and dad to, to know that that was going on with the rest of
the family in Germany. You would, as you said, you remained in Cleveland while your father is
preparing for his boards so you started school while you were in Cleveland. What was that like
for you? I mean, first of all, you're in not only a new culture but a new language.
Frank: Well I had been tutored for about four months when we definitely decided to,
that we were able to leave for the United States. I'd been tutored in English so I knew some English
and as a prequel at that time there were no TESL or programs for speakers of other languages,
so they simply put us back about a year. And I was very happy to have a very, very friendly and
helpful third grade teacher, Miss Manuel, who spent some time after, after school to help me
and to figure out what I knew and what I didn't know and where I needed help and where
in some cases I was
ahead depending on the curriculum. Frank, your father, now he picked Ohio because they passed fifty percent,
one half, of those who took the state boards but your father fortunately was one of those who did pass when he took it, so you then, your father, it was time for him to
rebuild his medical practice in Ohio. So tell us what that was like for your father
to begin to rebuild his practice. I think you moved to Dayton, Ohio to do that.
Frank: Right, he moved to Dayton because there was no Jewish ear, nose, throat surgeon and
it was suggested that that would be a good place.
He did open his practice on Valentine's Day 1939 and
that's when we started our new life. Bill: But it was a rocky start there for a moment with his practice. Please tell us about that.
Frank: All right. At that time the key to legitimacy was to join, to be accepted in
the medical society. He immediately put in an application for it and the result was that
they decided to have an emergency meeting on a Friday night where they passed an ex-post-facto
law requiring citizenship for any new, for any new members.
The process of becoming a citizen takes five years, so that obviously
was meant to do a roadblock for his resettlement in Dayton. Now
one of my favorite sayings is "When you get a lemon, try to make lemonade." As it happened somebody called the Dayton Herald or the,
the Journal Herald, I think the two had merged, which was the Republican morning newspaper.
And the reporter came in, rather called, that he wants to see his credentials.
He came in on Saturday morning,
spoke to my father probably for about half an hour to get his background and said, "Thank you."
The next morning the Dayton Journal Herald had an editorial captioned, "Freedom of Opportunity in
the United States" in which they described what had gone on, the fact that the meeting was on a
Friday night which was restricted to some Jewish physicians and that this law had been passed. And
Monday morning, my father had 11 new patients.
Bill: As a result of that editorial appearing in the newspaper. Frank: As a result of that editorial.
Bill: And that was the start of... Frank: And I have been a great supporter of a good free press.
Bill: I can see why. Frank, as we get towards the end of the program,
several other things are really important for you to share with us. As you described your,
your father was unsuccessful in getting other family members out of Germany. Please tell us
what happened to your family members and then about his, what he did to bring people out of
Germany after the war which is just remarkable, but first tell us about the rest of your family.
Frank: Unfortunately none of them really made it. My mother's
two twin brothers were both on an Italian ship on the way to Shanghai which was one place where
one could still go. At the time when the Nazis invaded France and Italy decided to
declare war, and therefore the ship couldn't get through the Panama Canal.
Bill: Suez Canal, right. Frank: And they went back and we never knew the exact history except that a few years ago when
the archives came out, I did find out that the two brothers, Heinz's wife, and daughter
all ended up in Auschwitz. My grandparents on both sides went to Theresienstadt.
My father's father died almost immediately when he got there, and the other ones were
transported out in 1944.
We didn't know this until after World War, until the war was over because
again, you just didn't hear anything. Therefore my father couldn't do anything for his family
but by that time he would, by the end of the war, there were many, many
displaced persons in various camps who couldn't get back to the places where they came from.
And he was a volunteer head of the Jewish Family Service in Dayton and gave, I think, 107
affidavits of guarantees that people wouldn't be on welfare during 1945
and through 1948 when the crisis really was the most severe. And as a result was a very proud
recipient of the international HIAS anniversary reward, award together with President Truman.
Bill: So President Truman and your father were recipients of this award. Frank: There were five.
Bill: Five and they were two of them. And, and Frank, just so our audience understands,
107 people came to United States successfully because your father made that
commitment, financial commitment to support them if need be and gave them the affidavits. That's
just remarkable. How did the effects of harassment that you experienced as a child, how do they affect you today?"
Frank: I'm very sensitive to any injustice and
I guess it gives me an outlook that if everybody does well,
we all do well and it's helpful for our,
for our country and the world and
I believe in supporting
the general welfare wherever I can. Bill: Frank, I have just one more question for you today and that is: in the face of rising
global antisemitism, tell us why you continue to share your first-hand account
of what you went through, what you experienced during the Holocaust.
Frank: I think it's important
and I kind of repeat that if everybody does well, we all do well
and I try to fight tribalism and injustice because it makes, it's just good for the general welfare.
That's why I support the Museum. I also like to say that the Museum is a wonderful institution
because it fights injustice and calls attention to it and I just think it's a wonderful institution.
Bill: Frank, thank you so much for being willing to be our First Person today. You have shared with
us as much as you could in this one hour and there was so much more for you to say, but you have given us such a powerful look at what it meant to try to, when you made the decision that you wanted
to get out of Germany how difficult the barriers, the hurdles that existed and, and just thank G-d
that you and your mom and dad were successful, and thank you for sharing that with us.
Transcript
Welcome. Thank you for joining us for First Person Conversations with Holocaust Survivors.
My name is Bill Benson. I have hosted the Museum's First Person program since it began in 2000. Thank
you for joining us today. Through these monthly conversations we bring you first-hand accounts
of survival of the Holocaust. Each of our First Person guests serves as a volunteer at the Museum.
We're honored to have Holocaust survivor Frank Liebermann share his individual personal account of the Holocaust with us. During
Frank, welcome. Thanks for agreeing to be our First Person today. Frank: Glad to be here.
Bill: Frank, we have so much to hear from you today so we'll start right away. You were born in Germany in 1929 just four years before Hitler came to power in 1933.
Will you tell us about your family and your early life in your hometown of Gleiwitz?
Frank: Gleiwitz was located between the place where my parents came from. Now it was between
Beuthen where my father's family lived and Oppeln where my mother's parents and siblings lived.
Bill: And here we see your parents, right? Frank: Yes, this is in Spindlermuehle
which is a resort place which was about three hours from Gleiwitz
and my parents loved to go there. They had both skiing in winter and hiking during the summer.
Bill: Tell us, tell us more about your parents, Frank, please. Frank: My father was a physician,
an ear, nose, throat surgeon. My mother came from a family which had
lived in Oppeln for well over 150 years, and they had a family business which
celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1933. The sign there is J.J. Orgler.
It had upholstery materials on the right, and
belt, drive belts on the left, Treibriemen. And of course leather for various areas of,
from shoemakers to people who made fancy equipment out of it.
Bill: And as you said, the business in 1933 celebrated its 100th anniversary in the family.
That's incredible. How about your, how about your other side of your family, your paternal
grandparents? Frank: My father's parents had a small hardware store
where my grandfather was the salesperson and my grandmother was
bookkeeper. They sold basic hardware and also baby furniture and baby carriages, et cetera.
Bill: I notice you have a, being a kid, you've got a bandage on your knee there in that photo.
Frank: I probably, I probably fell playing tag or doing something of that kind. Nothing serious.
Bill: It sounds like you spent a good deal of time with your grandparents on both sides. You knew them.
Frank: Well, my parents bought a small car mainly to visit
both parents and stay in touch because Gleiwitz had a streetcar network where you could get
along anywhere and there were very, very few cars. That's the reason I frequently rode my bicycle and
went around, around town by foot. Bill: And this was the family car here?
Frank: This is my grandparents' Steyr which was particularly nice because it held a lot of people and we used it for various excursions.
Bill: And that's, that's you with your maternal grandmother in that picture right? Frank: Yes. Yes. Bill: Yeah. Frank,
tell us some. about some of the activities that you and your family did. Frank: Well, I said we did skiing. We liked hiking.
And one of the excursions with that Steyr was to take
go to local forests and look for mushrooms because my grandmother loved to cook with mushrooms,
and you've probably heard that some can be quite poisonous. So my grandparents and my mother's
siblings were quite adept at knowing what to pick and I still remember that at the end of the
picking, we put everything on a table and anyone could veto a mushroom which looked maybe
borderline or whether, where they weren't sure. So with many meals we never had any problems.
Bill: But you didn't have to argue for or against a particular mushroom. It was just the right to say, "Not that one."
Frank: Exactly. Everybody had veto power. Bill: Veto power. And you love mushrooms to this day I believe.
Frank: Yes I do. (Laughter) Bill: In 1933 the Nazi regime began to enact antisemitic laws limiting the participation
of Jews in German public life. But in Gleiwitz where you lived you were in a
unique situation because of post-World War I border agreements between Poland and Germany.
The two countries had signed a treaty that protected minorities in this border region for a
15-year period. Tell us how this treaty affected your family in those first years of Nazi rule.
Frank: This treaty was signed when Poland was really re-established. It used to be a country
and then became part of Russia and Austria, and when it was re-established, the borders
had a lot of people from, who spoke other languages. So there was a 15-year period
where people could move and were guaranteed not to be harassed on either side of the border
until they chose where they really wanted to live. That was after the plebiscite.
Bill: So, so essentially there was this agreement that for a 15-year period minorities,
Jews, and others would be protected from discrimination for that 15-year period,
but eventually that 15-year period, you knew this, was going to end. Frank: It was in the summer of 1936
and my parents and several friends decided it'd be a good idea to be out of the country during that
time to see if there would be any violence. So we took a vacation in Denmark, and when we came back
a lot of things had changed. We knew it was coming so one of the things that I remember vividly
was that I was told I had to learn how to swim because we might have to take an ocean voyage.
Bill: Meaning your parents are already thinking about the possibility of moving.
Frank, during that period before the treaty ended, in the rest of Germany, of course,
the very harsh antisemitic laws were in effect. What was your life like during
that period? Was it relatively peaceful or, or what during that period before it ended?
Frank: It was relatively peaceful. We did change to an all-Jewish
school in three, the elementary school, in three classrooms within a school building.
There were also, we knew what was going to happen
that we'd be restricted from going to parks, playgrounds and we made it,
we made preparations for its coming but didn't know exactly how severe it would be.
Bill: Right. And one of the things you shared with me is during that period, kosher butchers
were allowed to keep their shops open in that part of Germany where you were located. What, what did,
tell us what your community did to support that kosher butcher that you had in your community. Frank: Well there were about 1200 families, and in order, and there was just one
congregation. In order to support those people who wanted to be kosher,
everybody decided that they would use a kosher butcher whether they were kosher or not
in order to keep them in business and help out their neighbors.
Bill: You know Frank, the parallel in my head is if suddenly we were told the Civil Rights Act
of 1965 would expire tomorrow that, that you could go back to doing what happened prior to that,
that's the situation you sort of faced. So when that treaty ended, how did it affect you?
Frank: A lot of things changed. When we came back, there was a lot of graffiti on
the store windows of Jewish shops. There was a "Stuermer" display.
Bill: And that was a publication, right? Frank: "Der Stuermer" was Goebbel's propaganda newspaper which showed Jews as having been
particularly ugly, almost rather satirical figures and were basically universal propaganda. Also
there was almost complete censorship. You weren't allowed to listen to foreign radio stations
and there were a lot of laws restricting movements and what you could do. Also bank accounts were
frozen that you could only withdraw whatever was considered necessary for your livelihood.
Also there was a Brown Shirt stationed in front of our apartment house where my
father also had his office threatening people with loss of jobs and all kinds of things
if they wanted to go to the office. My father also lost his ability to collect
insurance. Germany always had socialized medicine which meant that the government
deducts a tax and you're entitled to go for any treatment when it's needed.
So if you couldn't collect it, he basically knew that he couldn't make a living.
Bill: So between blocking people from going to his practice, taking away his ability to
collect insurance, his hospital privileges, basically put him out of business as a physician.
Frank: Correct. Bill: Frank, during, once the treaty passed, of course, along with all those other brutal
restrictions, there were also laws that affected education of Jewish children.
Jewish students were restricted to the numbers that could attend German public schools
and you described a moment ago that you were attending essentially a Jewish school inside a larger school. What changed for you from, from in
school once those rules took effect? And I think we have a picture of your first day of school.
Frank: Yes. Those cones that everybody's holding were filled with candy
in order to make school sweet. Bill: Which of course some, now is not going to be very sweet for you. Tell us,
tell us what it was like for you to go to school at that point. Frank: Well, of course Jews lost all rights and protection of the police.
Therefore it was important to be safe primarily to stay away from groups. Individually we were hard to recognize, but
for instance, going to school we were told to come five minutes after school
started and were dismissed five minutes early so that we could disperse and get home safely.
We basically had a good education, the classes were fairly large because we had
to do with limited space. One of the things which I do remember was that
the most critical time and dangerous time was doing a forced recess around lunchtime
where we found it was where boys were on one side, girls were on the other and we found it to
be relatively safest to be just between them near our teachers to have some degree of protection.
Bill: Frank, thank you for that. You mentioned a little while ago that
in anticipation of maybe taking an ocean journey you learned to swim. As the laws became
more restrictive and harsher, your parents began to think about and look for ways to leave Germany
including your mother took a trip to Palestine. Tell us why she went there and, and what happened.
Frank: Basically she went there with her brother in order to
investigate what the possibilities were and found out that there was
a doctor for about every hundred people. So she came back and pretty much eliminated Israel, or rather Palestine, as a place to go
because my father enjoyed his practice of medicine and that's when we thought of going elsewhere
preferably the United States if we could get an affidavit in order to be able to emigrate there.
Bill: So Frank because of what you just said your father did end up making a trip to the United
States in January of 1938 to see if it would be possible for the family to immigrate there.
But the immigration process was very complicated in the 1930s.
Discriminatory quotas limited how many people could immigrate to the United States from various countries. Different quotas, different countries. For all potential immigrants
the bureaucratic process was onerous. It required large amounts of paperwork and most notably
visa applicants had to get the affidavit that you spoke of. Frank: With that affidavit, he went to the American consulate in Berlin
and got a number to be called up for a physical and
the actual visa which, by the way, was going to be good for 120 days
if and when we got it. We waited for
a couple of months and nothing happened. And my father called a friend and said,
"Is there anything that I can do to expedite this because I'm really getting anxious. I
can't make a living and things are getting much worse." So he suggested getting a box of candy
for the secretary to the consul, a certain Fraulein Schmidt.
He proceeded to get, get a nice big box of candy and a month later still nothing happened.
He called his friend again and said, "Didn't you put a hundred marks into it?"
Bill: In other words, put money, money into the box of chocolates. Frank: Into the box of candy. So she got another box of candy and about two weeks later we were
called to the consulate to take a physical in order to get the final approval of the visa.
At that point my father took the next boat to the United States and
took, got a first, the cheapest first-class ticket because at that time
they still had rules that if you were visiting the United States you could take a fairly substantial
spending allowance which you could then take into the United States.
Bill: That was if you sailed on a German ship, right? Frank: Correct. Bill: Right, right. Frank: The North German Lloyd.
Bill: Frank, what, what motivated your parents to make the decision that your father would go
in advance without the two of you? So you two, you and your mom, stayed behind.
Frank: Well, the requirements to practice medicine is to take the state boards
in, in the field and he picked Ohio because they passed fifty percent of the applicants
which was a fairly high percentage. So he left early in order to save
money. Again it was a depression, he couldn't work, and he had to live off this
spending allowance. He rented a room in Cleveland for five dollars a week and used the medical
school of Western Reserve University as a lot, for the library because he had taken English
during his college days and was proficient enough to read, read well and
get a head start. While it was just you and your mother, your mother was having to make all the preparations for moving so would you talk a
little bit about that? And I do want you to tell us about the incident where you broke your arm.
Frank: We had a garden plot on the edge of town which about half a dozen families, the same people
who, by the way, went to Denmark during this time, which we could use as a playground and
had a cherry tree and a pear tree and it was kind of a recreational area at the edge of town.
Playing tag I broke my arm. Of course
I was fiercely independent, I didn't tell anybody. I just said, "I want to go home"
and rode my bicycle. And of course one couldn't call
an ambulance or anything like that because that, you probably wouldn't get serviced.
Bill: Right. Frank: Therefore I was able to ride with one arm. My mother immediately called the orthopedist
in the local hospital whom she knew because with professional
events they had dinner with them, and she thought that was most likely place to go.
When she called him he said, "Sorry I don't treat Jewish patients. I can't help you." She
frantically called various other places and did find somebody in Beuthen which,
where my father had grown up who said, "Take a taxi and go to the back entrance
of the Catholic orphanage in Beuthen. I'll see you there and I'll take care of it,
but be sure to go through the back entrance because I don't want to be seen with you."
He did set my arm and gave my mother instructions what to tell my pediatrician when
she took the bandage off after about six weeks and gave me physical therapy and my arm is
in fine shape. In fact it bends even better than my right arm. Bill: Frank that, that little incident you just described speaks volumes. Something as
straightforward as a broken arm in a child, it was that difficult to get care for you.
You can imagine what it was like for other, other Jews who had any kind of severe illness or anything.
Thank you for sharing that. As a child, what gave you strength to get through those difficult days?
Frank: My parents gave me a lot of independence. In other words,
cars were not a danger so that I pretty much went to see friends, go to the playground,
do things by myself. And you develop instincts of what you could do and what you couldn't do,
and I must have had the right instincts because I managed very well.
Bill: So Frank, here you are with your mom. She is having to try to figure out
what she could take with her to the United States, to arrange that, which was an ordeal.
I would like you to say just briefly what that involved because I think it's extraordinary what
it meant to take anything out. You had to pay an extraordinary tax. And I want you to tell us about
how your grandparents reacted to you and your mom and dad moving to the United States and
when when you last saw your grandparents. Frank: Well first of all, the rules at that time were still relatively lenient
that you could take anything along that was, that you had been using and rather if
you paid a hundred percent tax on its value. Now since money was frozen, it really did,
we used it in order to try to make life as inexpensive when we got to the United States
as possible. My mother arranged for a lift which is like a container today
in which we were able to take basic furniture, my father's office furniture like
instruments. She even was able to buy a new audiometer which is a machine which tested
hearing loss. It was one of the things I liked to play with in the office
because you could turn it on and off various frequencies in order to test the whole range.
It was a brand new invention at the time that he used very well when he got to the United States.
Bill: So your mom is, she's trying to make sure she can take things that are going to be essential to the family and essential to your father getting started in his practice. We have...
Frank: Correct. She also arranged for the packing. Friends, by the way,
offered to pay, rather, to pack my bicycle which I was very fond of, and said that they
can put it in a small box to make it, to take as little room on the lift as possible. So they
brought it to us and when the lift came, a customs inspector
checked everything off to see that it was properly taxed and then sealed it
and it was shipped off to the United States. Bill: Frank...
Frank: This was the beginning of October. Bill: We have a a photograph here of you with your mother and your maternal grandparents.
This I believe was taken the last time you saw your grandparents.
What, what do you recall of what that was like for you and for your mom? Frank: Well, my grandfather was quite upset that my father was taking his only daughter
to a place where, to a place that's very far away but did understand the circumstances.
We stopped there. This is already a suit that I got for immigration.
It came with a pair of shorts which were usually what kids wore and also a pair of knickerbockers
of the English style which went pretty far down. And
this was kind of a goodbye photograph and my mother's brother accompanied us to the ship.
The ship was able to sail. You made it to the United States and you and your mother were reunited with your father in
late October of 1938 and your family settled in Ohio. Tell us what the adjustment was like
for your family, and for you particularly, to establish yourself in a new country a new life.
Frank: Again I considered it an adventure. My mother told
me everything would be better when we got to the United States and
after a rather perilous sea voyage where she was sick and wasn't able to get out of the cabin for
four days, because in October that was the hurricane season and we had a very, very rough voyage,
but I considered everything an adventure.
Bill: And we have we have a photograph I think coming up that that sort of summarizes for you what your adjustment was like.
That's what we'd call an all-American picture, isn't it?
Frank: Actually my father picked us up in New York and after the
two-day sightseeing trip in New York, where for five, for five cents you can could get on
the Fifth Avenue bus and go through Central Park, the Empire State Building, and a lot of New York,
we proceeded to Cleveland where he was studying and where we stayed for about three months because
he was booked to do his state boards in December.
Bill: In December. So Frank before you move on to that, of course, you hadn't been in the
United States very long you were in Cleveland for a very short while when you were home and
your parents were out, and a phone call came from Germany. Tell us about this.
Frank: My parents went out for the first time. I believe it was a Wednesday in order to get a
special of the midweek sale of a movie, I don't know whether it was 10 cents or 25, but that was their
first going out. And they asked a neighbor to kind of look in on me every half hour.
At about nine o'clock that night the phone rang. I answered and it was a person-to-person phone call
for my mother from my grandparents. That was probably the longest hour of my life because I knew something was definitely wrong
since nine o'clock at night was three o'clock in the morning in Germany and
they called person-to-person which there were two classes at that time
when phoning was very expensive. You could call station-to-station where the person answered
and whoever it was, it was connected. If you really wanted to get a particular person,
you called person-to-person which was about two, three times as much but obviously
the news wasn't going to be good. Finally my parents came back at about 10 o'clock
and heard the news from my grandparents that the business had been confiscated,
that two of my mother's brothers were imprisoned, and that the business and that
things were in shambles. And this was what's known as Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass"
when hundreds of synagogues were burned down,
stores were confiscated, and that I consider is the beginning of the Holocaust.
Bill: And that was the night of November 9th through 10th, 1938 just literally about two weeks after you arrived in the United States. That must have been so,
just so terrifying for your mom and dad to, to know that that was going on with the rest of
the family in Germany. You would, as you said, you remained in Cleveland while your father is
preparing for his boards so you started school while you were in Cleveland. What was that like
for you? I mean, first of all, you're in not only a new culture but a new language.
Frank: Well I had been tutored for about four months when we definitely decided to,
that we were able to leave for the United States. I'd been tutored in English so I knew some English
and as a prequel at that time there were no TESL or programs for speakers of other languages,
so they simply put us back about a year. And I was very happy to have a very, very friendly and
helpful third grade teacher, Miss Manuel, who spent some time after, after school to help me
and to figure out what I knew and what I didn't know and where I needed help and where
in some cases I was
ahead depending on the curriculum. Frank, your father, now he picked Ohio because they passed fifty percent,
one half, of those who took the state boards but your father fortunately was one of those who did pass when he took it, so you then, your father, it was time for him to
rebuild his medical practice in Ohio. So tell us what that was like for your father
to begin to rebuild his practice. I think you moved to Dayton, Ohio to do that.
Frank: Right, he moved to Dayton because there was no Jewish ear, nose, throat surgeon and
it was suggested that that would be a good place.
He did open his practice on Valentine's Day 1939 and
that's when we started our new life. Bill: But it was a rocky start there for a moment with his practice. Please tell us about that.
Frank: All right. At that time the key to legitimacy was to join, to be accepted in
the medical society. He immediately put in an application for it and the result was that
they decided to have an emergency meeting on a Friday night where they passed an ex-post-facto
law requiring citizenship for any new, for any new members.
The process of becoming a citizen takes five years, so that obviously
was meant to do a roadblock for his resettlement in Dayton. Now
one of my favorite sayings is "When you get a lemon, try to make lemonade." As it happened somebody called the Dayton Herald or the,
the Journal Herald, I think the two had merged, which was the Republican morning newspaper.
And the reporter came in, rather called, that he wants to see his credentials.
He came in on Saturday morning,
spoke to my father probably for about half an hour to get his background and said, "Thank you."
The next morning the Dayton Journal Herald had an editorial captioned, "Freedom of Opportunity in
the United States" in which they described what had gone on, the fact that the meeting was on a
Friday night which was restricted to some Jewish physicians and that this law had been passed. And
Monday morning, my father had 11 new patients.
Bill: As a result of that editorial appearing in the newspaper. Frank: As a result of that editorial.
Bill: And that was the start of... Frank: And I have been a great supporter of a good free press.
Bill: I can see why. Frank, as we get towards the end of the program,
several other things are really important for you to share with us. As you described your,
your father was unsuccessful in getting other family members out of Germany. Please tell us
what happened to your family members and then about his, what he did to bring people out of
Germany after the war which is just remarkable, but first tell us about the rest of your family.
Frank: Unfortunately none of them really made it. My mother's
two twin brothers were both on an Italian ship on the way to Shanghai which was one place where
one could still go. At the time when the Nazis invaded France and Italy decided to
declare war, and therefore the ship couldn't get through the Panama Canal.
Bill: Suez Canal, right. Frank: And they went back and we never knew the exact history except that a few years ago when
the archives came out, I did find out that the two brothers, Heinz's wife, and daughter
all ended up in Auschwitz. My grandparents on both sides went to Theresienstadt.
My father's father died almost immediately when he got there, and the other ones were
transported out in 1944.
We didn't know this until after World War, until the war was over because
again, you just didn't hear anything. Therefore my father couldn't do anything for his family
but by that time he would, by the end of the war, there were many, many
displaced persons in various camps who couldn't get back to the places where they came from.
And he was a volunteer head of the Jewish Family Service in Dayton and gave, I think, 107
affidavits of guarantees that people wouldn't be on welfare during 1945
and through 1948 when the crisis really was the most severe. And as a result was a very proud
recipient of the international HIAS anniversary reward, award together with President Truman.
Bill: So President Truman and your father were recipients of this award. Frank: There were five.
Bill: Five and they were two of them. And, and Frank, just so our audience understands,
107 people came to United States successfully because your father made that
commitment, financial commitment to support them if need be and gave them the affidavits. That's
just remarkable. How did the effects of harassment that you experienced as a child, how do they affect you today?"
Frank: I'm very sensitive to any injustice and
I guess it gives me an outlook that if everybody does well,
we all do well and it's helpful for our,
for our country and the world and
I believe in supporting
the general welfare wherever I can. Bill: Frank, I have just one more question for you today and that is: in the face of rising
global antisemitism, tell us why you continue to share your first-hand account
of what you went through, what you experienced during the Holocaust.
Frank: I think it's important
and I kind of repeat that if everybody does well, we all do well
and I try to fight tribalism and injustice because it makes, it's just good for the general welfare.
That's why I support the Museum. I also like to say that the Museum is a wonderful institution
because it fights injustice and calls attention to it and I just think it's a wonderful institution.
Bill: Frank, thank you so much for being willing to be our First Person today. You have shared with
us as much as you could in this one hour and there was so much more for you to say, but you have given us such a powerful look at what it meant to try to, when you made the decision that you wanted
to get out of Germany how difficult the barriers, the hurdles that existed and, and just thank G-d
that you and your mom and dad were successful, and thank you for sharing that with us.
This conversation has been edited in length for educational and classroom use. View the full First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors program here.
