“Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story,” published by portalwisconsin.org, summer 2002; plus a transcript of my interview with Gerard Friedenfeld

As a 14-year-old boy living in Czechoslovakia, Gerry Friedenfeld was sent by his parents from Prague to England on the “Kindertransport,” the clandestine deportation of more than 10,000 Jewish children out of Nazi-held lands. In 1950, Friedenfeld emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Milwaukee.

Since April he’s been a docent at the Milwaukee Public Museum, greeting and talking with thousands of children who have visited “Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story,” a special exhibition now open at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Gerry Friedenfeld has made Milwaukee Public Museum Communications Manager Shawn Sensiba’s job a little easier. “He is tirelessly devoted to letting people know about this exhibition,” Sensiba notes with enthusiasm. “He has written letters to various newspapers, extolling this exhibit and saying how proud he is to be associated with it and how he wants to get the word out about it. I’m always glad that Gerry is so attentive and takes so much time at the exhibit, and really takes the time to talk to kids.”

A traveling exhibit created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., “Daniel’s Story” presents the Holocaust without use of graphic imagery. “The whole point is to introduce the moral issue without frightening people,” Sensiba explains. “The exhibit is meant to introduce the dilemmas of the Holocaust without looking at graphic physical reproductions and focusing on mounds of bodies.”

As a consequence, Friedenfeld, whose parents perished in the Holocaust, considers the exhibit too mild. “I understand why,” he concedes. “You can’t expose children to this. They might have nightmares.”

When Friedenfeld greets the exhibit’s young visitors, he seeks first to establish a rapport with the children; then he can draw them in and hold their attention. “I greet them with ‘Shalom,’ and I explain to them that as Jews we say 'Shalom’ arriving and leaving, both. So we click right there, 'Shalom, Shalom, Shalom.’ And then I tell them, 'What you’re going to see in the exhibit is a story, a true story to a point. But now I show you the real thing.’

"And I pull out this picture of me with my parents and then their eyes water and they all press close; they want to see it. That’s the moment I reach them.” Adds Sensiba: “Gerry amplifies what they see. In some ways, here’s Daniel, 50 years later. That’s what makes it real. It becomes reality when he’s there.”

Having greeted thousands of children and adults who have visited the exhibit, both Friedenfeld and Sensiba recognize an urgent need for Holocaust education. Sensiba reports that “a lot of people have commented that they are not familiar with the term 'Holocaust’; some kids, but also adults have said this. There is definitely a knowledge gap.”

Now, as fewer and fewer witnesses to the Holocaust remain with us to offer firsthand testimony, Friedenfeld’s indefatigable efforts take on special meaning. “I spend two days a week here at the exhibit talking to five, six hundred children each day, as often as I can,” he says.

On top of this, the 78-year-old Friedenfeld estimates that since the exhibit opened in April, he has had 40 or 50 public speaking engagements. “I invite myself,” he says. “I let [educators and program coordinators] know that I’m available.”

This was the approach Friedenfeld used in contacting the Museum as well. Less than two weeks before “Daniel’s Story” arrived in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an article by staff reporter Jackie Loohauis promoting the exhibit. “A beautiful story,” Friedenfeld recalls. “I called her and I complimented her. She gave me information on who to call and I did. And, oh, they welcomed me with open arms. And I welcomed them with open arms.”

The following interview was recorded in two sessions at the Milwaukee Public Museum, June 28 and July 5, 2002.

A.M. I am curious to know when you were born.

G.F. 1924.

A.M. And the date of your departure from Czechoslovakia was May 1939?

G.F. May 31st.

A.M. And at that point you were in school?

G.F. No. I hadn’t been to school for one year. We were evicted by the Nazis. I hadn’t had any schooling since June of '38.

A.M. And what did you do during that year?

G.F. Run. Be on the run.

A.M. And your family as well? You were with them?

G.F. Yes.

A.M. And what did being on the run involve at that time?

G.F. That means we were evicted from our home and we were in so-called no man’s land. That was a strip of land that belonged to nobody by mutual consent [involving Czechoslovakia and German Sudetenland]. We spent three weeks in the cold in late October and early November.

A.M. No roof over your head?

G.F. No roof, just canvas. It was sent to us by nice people who operated a freight-forwarding business and they used canvas to cover merchandise. And then we were in a refugee camp [in] a converted tannery in a small town, Eibenschitz, in central Moravia. It was a converted tannery, a huge tannery, just like the tanneries here in Milwaukee. No different, all tanneries seem to be alike, because they do the same thing. They ripped out the old machinery, rusty old machinery, and whatever else there was. And they built sleeping facilities for about 600 people. And that all had to happen under rush-rush conditions. And they built showers and water heaters and the kitchen and we started coming in from outlying areas in Moravia, and that’s where we spent the winter.

There was no school, unless some of the refugees taught us. I remember especially one man, an architect, a hunchback; one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever seen, a beautiful face. Rather than rescue his other belongings, he rescued a Victrola, a wind-up Victrola. Did you ever see one? And records. The old 78 [rpm] records. He had them. He introduced me to some of the most sublime music. I’m so grateful to him. At night and on weekends we would gather on his bunk and he played these beautiful records.

A.M. And what were some of the selections?

G.F. Verdi, Rossini, Mozart. I thank him for my introduction to music.

A.M. I’m curious to know how far from the town you had been in these locations were. Were they remote?

G.F. No, no. Nothing is remote in Europe. You mean from the town we were expelled from?

A.M. Yes. And what town was that?

G.F. Lundenburg — that’s a German name — at the most southern tip of Moravia, adjacent to the Austrian border; within walking distance. From there we were expelled to no man’s land, I would say 60 kilometers, 40 miles.

A.M. So not far.

G.F. No. See, the Germans occupied a ring — the Sudetenland — surrounding Bohemia and Moravia. And that’s where 3.5 million troublemakers lived — the Germans. Horrible. For years they screamed, “Heim in’s Reich.” That means “home into the Reich.” The idea was that they were going to the Reich. Instead, what they meant was the Reich would come to them and eat us up alive. That’s what happened. We were sold out by Daladier, the French prime minister, and [British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain.

A.M. These experiences you just described happened in 1938 and 1939. Before that, for, say, the five years preceding 1938, what was the experience for a Jew like yourself and your family?

G.F. Well, we had a so-so life. There was never enough money. My father had an addiction. He did not run around with women, nor did he drink. He played cards. Not for the money. Just for the fun of playing cards with cronies. Now had he done this at night and on the weekends, fine. But he did it in the afternoons instead of attending to his business, which was selling toys and kitchen articles, and he also had two men who fabricated buckets which the peasants bought for milking. In those days, there were no milking machines. Everything was done by hand. My father made milk cans, which the peasants used to move milk from their farms, if you can call them farms — they were really nothing comparable to a farm. So they brought the milk from their homes to the market in our town. They tied these cans on a platform on the back of their bicycles and in the front they carried cottage cheese and eggs and stuff like that. Everything primitive. So instead of attending to his business, he didn’t.

A.M. He was playing cards.

G.F. And this led to constant problems in my family.

A.M. You say that he wasn’t addicted to the gambling aspect as much as just the playing. But was he losing money?

G.F. No. They played for pennies. They played for next to nothing.

A.M. He was only losing money in that he wasn’t at work.

G.F. That’s right. And when there weren’t any buckets on hand and the peasants came to buy buckets, they went somewhere else. So my mother had to take care of the home and the store.

A.M. And what about the developing situation where the Nazis were concerned? In the five years that preceded 1938, after Hitler came to power in Germany, was there an increasing awareness that things were deteriorating, among Jews?

G.F. Yes. For example, at about that time the German school I went to put on a play, “Hans mit der goldenen gans” [translated by Mr. Friedenfeld as “Johnny with the Golden Goose”]. I remember I was given the lead in the play. And one day the lead was taken away from me. And that was the signal. Jews were not wanted in German schools. So my parents took me and placed me in a Czech school. Even there, when I left the house in the morning, for example, I was liable to be beaten up by gangs, both German and Czech. I had a friend who went with me to England later, Adolph Vodak. He was a big, strong fellow. He had arms like elephant legs. So he would meet me at our door in the morning, and we walked to school together. And when the gangs saw him come, they took off because they feared him. He had an unorthodox method of fighting. He did not box, he just swung his arms and whoever got in the way of his arms, that was it. He was my protector, my bodyguard.

A.M. In the town that you grew up in, what sort of Jewish population was there? And was the population of Jews concentrated into an isolated geographic area?

G.F. I think, if I’m not mistaken, we had 120 families.

A.M. In a city of how many people, roughly?

G.F. Twelve thousand.

A.M. So it was a relatively small town.

G.F. Oh, yes. There was only one distinction. And that was a huge railroad crossing; [it] crossed two very important railroad lines, intersections: one from Poland to Austria, and the other line was east-west from Germany to Turkey. So there was enormous traffic. Enormous traffic. And there was a sugar beet refinery and a sawmill. Where did the Jews live? Everything was concentrated. The house next to us was a baker.

A.M. A Jew?

G.F. Yes. And on the other side was the Grand Hotel, which was not Jewish. Across the street was a bicycle dealer, and he was Jewish.

A.M. So it was mixed. You didn’t have a small enclave?

G.F. No enclave. No ghetto.

A.M. Was the economic situation of the families in the town also very mixed? Did you have a range of incomes or would you describe most of the families as working class/poor?

G.F. No. They were shopkeepers. The baker, for example. If my father had attended to his business, we could have had a very nice life. At age six, for example, I spoke German at home, Czech in school, I learned Hebrew in religion class with Rabbi Liftschütz, and my mother wanted to enroll me for private lessons to learn English, and also to play the piano. Well, there wasn’t enough money to do both. So she decided it was more important for me to learn English. A very wise decision.

A.M. And why at that time did she think it was important for you to learn English?

G.F. Because the knowledge of languages in Europe was paramount. Many people thought French was it. Well, I began to learn French later. Do you know what a gymnasium is? Not a gymnasium like we call a gymnasium here for push-ups.

A.M. A high school?

G.F. Well, yes. A special high school. It’s derived from the Greek. Top schools. I think there were four grades of high schools, and Gymnasium was the top. Had I gone on in school I would have learned French in school, too. It was very important to my mother that I become well educated. She guided my education. Not my father.

A.M. And the instruction you received in English. It was part of this European cosmopolitan sensibility more than it was any sort of preparation? Your family wasn’t preparing to immigrate to America at this point?

G.F. Not then, later. In fact, nine years later when I went to England I knew enough to make myself understood. When we worked in the fields, we were hired out by the day, by the week and month. The man who hired us appointed me as foreman, because I spoke English best of the whole group of six. He would give me directions for everybody what to do that day, and I would translate. Knowledge of language is power. The first president of Czechoslovakia, Thomas Masaryk, said — see if I can translate this meaningfully: the more languages we know, that’s how many more times we are human. Because when we travel and we know the language of the country we visit, the people flock to you.

A.M. It’s 1938. You’ve been expelled from your school. By then I would imagine that things had deteriorated on many fronts.

G.F. Yes. At that time the question was should we go into the interior of Czechoslovakia or shouldn’t we? We had a cousin who urged us to come, stay with him. We had an uncle who was a very rich man; he imported tropical fruit and nuts and spices — he had warehouses full. And his home was a picture gallery full of artwork. Did he leave? No. Why not? He couldn’t bring himself to leave; he was so attached to his nuts and spices. And he perished. They asked us to come to them. Well, did we? No. My father said: “I am not a slave of these people here, they are my friends. We went to school together.” Well, he could not have been more wrong. So we stayed. We were there when the Germans marched in.

A.M. And when was that?

G.F. In early October, after Munich, after Chamberlain and Daladier sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

A.M. And at this time I would guess that you had nothing but animosity toward the Nazis.

G.F. I personally?

A.M. Yes. And your family.

G.F. Well, my father had not so much animosity as confusion. “How could they do this to me? I went to school with them.” He was totally out of it.

A.M. But many of your neighbors, your non-Jewish neighbors, would have embraced [the arrival of the Nazis]?

G.F. They couldn’t wait for us to be chased away so they could steal our furniture. When we rented a horse and cart, maybe no bigger than this table, they were waiting for us to go. They didn’t jeer, but —

A.M. And do you think that people, in this example, were motivated only by those practical and obviously greedy concerns, or was there also a political, ideological dimension to it as well?

G.F. Sure. There was anti-Semitism everywhere.

A.M. And would you say that that characterized life before and after the Nazis [assumed power]?

G.F. My father used to say: when it rains too much or too little, when it snows too much or too little, whose fault is it? The Jews. That was the mentality. We were blamed for everything. So we were walking on eggshells.

A.M. As far back as you remember?

G.F. As far back as I remember. In school, everywhere. That’s why we had our own organizations. For example, when I was 10 years old or so I joined a Jewish Boy Scout troop, the Makkabi, which translates to something like “hammer.” And my Boy Scout leader was a young man and this young man was superb. He excelled in everything, as a student, as an athlete; he won everything. He never smoked. And as a result I never smoked. Never. He never drank alcohol. I never drank alcohol, to this day. He never cussed. I do cuss, especially when the lawnmower doesn’t work. He taught me much more than my father did. I’m so grateful to him. He disappeared. His brother, his sister, his mother, all gone. A lovely, lovely man. Superb. There was nothing he couldn’t do — brilliantly.

A.M. Of those 120 families that you estimated lived in your town, Jewish families, would you estimate that most of the members of those families did perish?

G.F. Yes.

A.M. Most if not almost all of them?

G.F. Yes. Because they had nowhere to go. And nowhere to go like I did.

A.M. Before 1939 when you did get away, was there a point where your family was actively involved in trying to get you out?

G.F. If I hadn’t broken my leg I would have disappeared.

A.M. And can you tell me the story about how you broke your leg?

G.F. Well, we were in a refugee camp. My mother put me as an apprentice with a tailor because she though we’ll have to emigrate. The talk was about going to Venezuela, or to Argentina. And the fact is, wherever we went, people need buttonholes and buttons. There were no machines in those days. So she said if our boy learns to sew in buttonholes he can always make a living. So for the next three months I learned to sew buttonholes. Until April 12.

That morning a gate to this enormous complex opened and a number of vehicles, big heavy trucks, came in with German soldiers and they chased everybody out of the building, demanded that we line up in the yard — the men here, women here. And this commander, an SS commander — the worst, they were the worst sadists — just for his amusement he selected about 20 of us; I was the youngest, and he sent us behind the powerhouse that was used in the old days to produce steam for the tannery and he sent us “turnen.” Turnen in German means exercising, but in their language, turnen was beating and kicking and torturing. So that’s what they did. And whatever you did in the hands of Germans there was no walking, only running, because when you run you cannot think. And constant commands were fired at you like a machine gun. So they kicked us and they beat us with their rifle butts and they kicked us in the shins with their jackboots and this is excruciatingly painful. And when they tired of that, somebody saw a ladder, a long ladder lying beside the powerhouse, and they forced us to raise the ladder next to a heap of cobblestones. Cobblestones are, well, granite stones; they’re used for paving roads in Europe. And they forced us to climb up on the ladder and jump on the cobblestones, and whoever didn’t jump fast enough, they would shake the ladder so you would fall and get hurt very badly. So I don’t know how many times I climbed up and jumped, maybe 6 or 8 times, and I broke my leg. Well, they saw that something was very bad, very wrong, so they ordered me to sort of get lost. This was my salvation, that moment, but I didn’t know it.

A.M. And you were able to limp —

G.F. No, no, no. I crawled on my elbows and then my left knee and I dragged my right leg behind me and somehow I made it the whole length of this huge building, up the steps to the infirmary and I passed out there on the steps.

A.M. How far was this?

G.F. One and a half city blocks.

A.M. So, luckily, pretty close.

G.F. Well — [laughs]

A.M. Crawling, of course, it must have seemed much longer.

G.F. With a broken leg. So my mother found me there that night after their ordeal was over.

A.M. She had just searched the different infirmaries?

G.F. She saw me, she said. She saw me crawl. The women were lined up and I crawled behind them and somebody must have brought her attention to me.

A.M. And all of the boys —

G.F. They were hauled off to a fortress. Which looks very much like Holy Hill [a religious shrine outside of Milwaukee]. It was built into a hill, five stories deep and they were thrown down into a dungeon. This fortress was built 300 years ago to ward off the invading Swedes, the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. And the Swedes were the Germans of their day. They pillaged, they robbed; they robbed and stole everything they could. So the Austrians built this fortress to ward off the invading Swedes. And my friends were thrown into dungeons. And one of them was brought to us in the hospital; the Nazis broke his leg on Hitler’s birthday, April 20. And he couldn’t speak Czech, so I interpreted for him. His name was Ludwig Blumenfeld, a lovely young man. The others? I don’t know where they are.

A.M. Why do you think they would have sort of motioned you to get away when they were only going to drop you ultimately in this dungeon? It seems strangely humanitarian. Do you think it had something to do with your youth? You were younger than everyone else.

G.F. Could have been one person who made all the difference. When I broke my leg they called a man who had a Red Cross armband on. He might have made all the difference. I’ll never know. He may have said to the commander, “Let him go.” Who knows? He may have been one of my guardian angels. I sure didn’t bribe him. I had nothing to bribe him with.

A.M. I’d like to ask you about your mother. You said that she had also had an ordeal that day. She was through with her ordeal; she came and found you. What was that, what happened to her?

G.F. I don’t know. Can you imagine a mother who finds her boy beaten with a broken leg? Can you imagine how she felt? Or seeing me crawl on my elbows behind her and not being able to comfort me?

A.M. Having had an ordeal herself that day, was she also bruised and battered?

G.F. No. She had to stand there all day long. April 12, 1939 was the first very warm day of the year and the people had to stand there without food, without water in the sun.

A.M. For a roll call of some sort?

G.F. All day long. Couldn’t move, had to stand at attention. That was how they [the Nazis] did [things]. They degraded people quickly, not slowly. By shaving their heads, by talking their clothes away. [By making] them stand out in the cold or the heat. Without touching them. Oh, they were masters. We didn’t know this at the time.

A.M. How baffling was this to a 14-year-old boy, considering that, on the one hand, you were no stranger to anti-Semitic behavior and you had come to expect some level of abuse. But, on the other hand, this was a level of abuse you couldn’t have contemplated.

G.F. What happened to me by being beaten up by a gang of boys, that’s one thing. But this was really serious. And totally, totally unexpected.

A.M. And how did you confront this?

G.F. I had no time to confront this. I had to obey. When they ordered me to climb up on the ladder, I did. You didn’t dare say no. I didn’t know what was happening in Europe. There was no New York Times to tell the story. No London Times. And even if there was, we didn’t have it. And the BBC didn’t have correspondents in Berlin and Paris. We were in the dark. We had to fend for our lives. Our livelihood. That was it; that was our focus.

A.M. I’d like to ask you about religion. How religious was your family? Deeply religious?

G.F. Yes, indeed. My mother lived with God. She was a very pious woman. She lived with God 24 hours a day. She prayed from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning until she placed her head on the pillow at night. When I went to school she said a prayer, invoking God’s protection for me. When I returned she thanked God for returning me safely. And the same for skating and swimming. She had enormous influence on me, because she didn’t pretend; this was real.

My father, he pretended. He took me to temple on Friday night and Saturday but he wasn’t religious. But at least he took me there and he saw to it that I get a religious education from a rabbi, and from cantor. And I was Bar Mitzvahed, just in time before Hitler. But I was not religious in the sense that my mother was. In fact, later in England, I was in a kibbutz with several hundred children, but not altogether, we were dispersed in different places. In the kibbutz we observed Sabbath; we didn’t pray, we didn’t have religious services, we didn’t have a Torah, but we were very conscious Jews. And when I left the kibbutz for 39 years I was away from Judaism.

A.M. Could you tell me about Mrs. Warburg and the events that led up to your transport to England?

G.F. Well, after my mother found me at the hospital, four or five days later, the commander somehow permitted me to transfer to a Catholic hospital where they set my leg in a cast. And in those days, a cast was a heavy affair, not like now with fiberglass. And all you could do was lie in bed. And the nuns were so kind; nobody asked any questions, nor did the doctor. And there was a young woman, a beautiful young woman, 17, 18, and all I ever saw of her was her face. She had a habit from here to here. She was just the kindest, most beautiful lady, and when she appeared in the ward, everybody’s pains and aches disappeared. And she knew it. She was just so kind. She didn’t laugh, she just smiled, a subdued smile. It was just a miracle how pain just disappeared.

And then as I lay in bed, one day it happened. The man’s name was Roker and the lady’s name I don’t remember. And they asked me if I would like to go to England. I must have told them you have to talk to my parents because I cannot decide this. They probably went to the camp because five weeks later I was on a train to England. How did this happen? Not till much later did I find out that these were agents of Mrs. Warburg and they were looking for children in distress and children whose parents could no longer take care of them. And I was a candidate on both counts.

A.M. Because your parents at this point —

G.F. Who knows what their situation was. But I was in the hospital for four weeks and I didn’t know how they lived in the camp.

A.M. And you never saw them?

G.F. No, I never went back to the camp. I left the hospital to go to England. I also know from my reading that the function of the agents was to convince my parents what they had to — That was it. I asked myself many times, why did the Nazis let us go? Well, they wanted to get rid of the Jews. This was long before they had the horrible machinery set up.

A.M. And what was your experience arriving in England? Were you still in the cast?

G.F. No. When the doctors found out I was going to England they suggested to my parents to allow them to remove the cast because the Nazis will do it brutally, looking for hidden jewelry. So they removed it. Having been encased in a cast for eight weeks my leg was stiff. I couldn’t bend my knee, and I had to learn to walk with two canes, gradually, slowly. In eight days I had to learn to walk, and of course I couldn’t. When I arrived in England I needed immediate medical attention. That’s when Mrs. Warburg took me to her home. She drove me to the hospital, the Great London Hospital in Whitechapel, and the doctors placed a new cast on my leg with a stirrup so I could walk without canes. And then I think it was replaced two or three more times.

A.M. Arriving in England, you settled immediately with the family?

G.F. Mrs. Warburg. She took me and she drove me to the hospital a number of times. And then I went back to join my friends by bus to Engeham Farm in Woodchurch near Kent. That’s where we stayed.

A.M. And how many people were involved?

G.F. I would guess about 80 youngsters and another 10 adults who were all teachers.

A.M. So this wasn’t a sort of foster home arrangement; this was a —

G.F. A kibbutz. I and several hundred of my friends were not placed with English families, we were on farms in England learning to be agricultural workers with a view toward going to Palestine eventually, today’s Israel, to become pioneers, like the Russian pioneers who came to Palestine 120 years ago, in the 1880s. Lord in heaven, how did they ever survive?

A.M. When did you find out that this was what they had in mind for you?

G.F. I learned that in Czechoslovakia because that was my training. This marvelous young man I told you about who was so outstanding at everything, Kurt Nassau. That’s what we did. We prepared ourselves. As little guys, as 10-year-olds, 11-year-olds. That was our future; only it was accelerated.

A.M. As a 10-year-old you considered your future to be in Palestine?

G.F. Yes, we talked about this all the time.

A.M. So your family was Zionist?

G.F. No, I was.

A.M. And that’s what Mrs. Warburg had in mind?

G.F. Oh, yes. Even before she left Germany. She had hundreds of Jewish children go to Palestine. Strongly Zionist. In fact, the number one Zionist in the world at that time was Professor Chaim Weitzman. One day while I stayed with her, she called me downstairs into the drawing room. I walked down with my two canes. And halfway down the steps, I stopped. Who stood there? Professor Chaim Weitzman, the number one Zionist in the world, president of the Zionist Federation. And he was also one of the world’s leading scientists — a chemist. And he was one of my heroes. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She just smiled. “Come down,” [she said]. She introduced me to him. We talked. He talked in Yiddish and I spoke English somehow. In 1948, in spite of British opposition, Israel was declared. And he remained a good friend of the British. I learned from this man. He came from Russia in 1895 to Berlin to study chemistry. And he studied while the others sat in the coffee houses and played chess. Now, did you ever hear from them again? For 50 years he stuck with his goal, the creation of Israel.

Later when we went out to work and dig up gardens when the war began, everybody was urged to — they had a slogan, Dig for Victory, to dig up lawns and plant vegetables and potatoes so shipping space would not be needed to bring in all the food. Dig for Victory. So we dug people’s lawns. Huge lawns, manicured lawns. And they were so happy to see us do that. Today the lawn is manicured and beautiful, tomorrow we dig it up for victory.

A.M. So eventually, you started working as a tank driver with the British army?

G.F. Yes, I joined the British army in 1943 and I became a tank driver.

A.M. You would have been 19 then.

G.F. Yes. I drove a 30-ton tank. A tin can, a piece of junk. So were the American tanks [pieces of junk].

A.M. And you served through the end of the war?

G.F. Yes. We were in France. And we encircled the Germans at Calais, at Dunkirk.

A.M. Were there many other Czechoslovakian Jews in the British forces?

G.F. Yes. Many, many. In fact, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I was best in aircraft recognition. The fighter pilot has to recognize friendly and unfriendly airplanes in a flash of a second, so you don’t shoot down your own planes. We were trained by having projections on a screen, of English and American and German fighter pilots. I was the best in recognizing this. You suppose they would let me become a fighter pilot? [No.] Because I was a Jew. The Polish army was much worse.

A.M. In terms of its anti-Semitism?

G.F. Yes. Now why did I join the Czech army? I didn’t know any better. I was inexperienced; I was a kid.

A.M. I thought you said that you joined the British army.

G.F. I said so. Yes, indirectly [I joined]. We were a Czech unit incorporated into the British army. But technically, I was part of the Czech army under their jurisdiction. I didn’t know they were a bunch of — Here we were all fighting Hitler and yet — Now on the other hand, had I entered training as a fighter pilot in 1943 in the fall, I would have never had the opportunity to fire a shot at the Germans because it would have taken so long. Besides, after the invasion of Europe there were hardly any German planes left in the sky. They were all murdered on the ground.

A.M. You were anxious to get out there and take a shot at Germans.

G.F. Yes. We used to say, we are going to do our bit. The English had a saying, join the army and “do my bit.” When I think back how naive I was, nobody taught me anything.

A.M. What did you do when the war was over?

G.F. When the war was over I made a horrible mistake. I went back to Czechoslovakia to look for my parents. That’s natural. Nobody there. I found a cousin.

A.M. And had you expected to not find your parents?

G.F. I found out in the last six months before the war ended. We began to see people who drifted all over France and Belgium. We heard stories that were hard to believe.

A.M. Just in the last months of the war?

G.F. Yes.

A.M. Up until that point, what did you —

G.F. I had no idea. No idea.

A.M. So you couldn’t have even guessed at the fate of your parents. You feared for their safety, but —

G.F. This was so incredible to absorb. Just like somebody who has never heard of the Holocaust and goes through the [Daniel’s Story] exhibit and then says, “Did this really happen?” We knew some of the things that happened. For example, Jews who escaped from Europe, from central Europe, who tried to get to Palestine and somehow they obtained an old rust bucket; the ship’s name was Struma. And it sank in the Black Sea in 1942. Hundreds of Jews died. I attended a protest meeting in London and a man who was a member of the Zionist Council, he spoke most eloquently, protesting. Here was war, we’re all on the same side, and the British wouldn’t let the Jews into Palestine.

A.M. You said that you had made mistakes. What were some of the mistakes you made?

G.F. Staying in Czechoslovakia, that was a serious mistake. I should have come back to England and taken out British citizenship and I could have gone anywhere in the world, without any quota, without visa, anywhere. Could you imagine what I could have done? [But] I didn’t know any better. I was young. Here is a catastrophic thing that happened to me. About four months after the [European] war ended, in September [1945], I was given two weeks leave from Czechoslovakia. So I went on a truck; there were about 10 or 15 of us, and we drove to England. To France, to Calais, and then on a ferry over to England. And it was hot and dusty. Somehow I contracted impetigo, an infection of the face; it looks horrible. It looks much worse than it is. In time it clears up, but before it does it looks horrible. And an American Army doctor gave me an ointment. I intended to go see Mrs. Warburg, she was the only person I knew. So I intended to go and see her. Maybe I could have gone to school and learned something. My face was so horrible with that ointment, I didn’t go anywhere for two weeks. I may have missed an enormous opportunity.

A.M. What did you find in returning to Czechoslovakia?

G.F. Chaos. People everywhere. The remnants of concentration camps. From east, west, north, south, milling around. Everybody wanted to go somewhere and didn’t know where to go. I had somewhere to go because I had a military unit, that was my home. Parts of Czechoslovakia were smashed from fighting, especially where the Russians and the Germans fought, like my hometown where there was street fighting, house-to-house fighting, room-to-room fighting. My parents’ house had three big cracks down the front, because when the Germans finally withdrew across the bridge that was about half a block from the house, they dynamited the bridge and the houses all along, they cracked.

I went upstairs. My parents’ bedroom was just horrible, straw and human excrement, everything smashed, furniture, and in all this mess there was a brand new copy of Hitler’s Mein Kamf. How it ever got there I don’t know. I ran away from there, I ran to the cemetery. I thought I would go and visit the graves of my grandparents, my father’s parents. I went to the cemetery. There wasn’t a stone in tact; the Nazis destroyed graves. I ran away from there to the train station. I jumped on the first train and out to get away from there. I couldn’t take it.

A.M. How long were you there?

G.F. One day. A few hours.

A.M. Did you return?

G.F. Yes. I returned six months later. I came back and the house was fixed up; the house was really beautifully fixed up. I introduced myself [to the new owner, a plumber], and he said, “Do you want me to move out?”

And I said: “No, you stay here. You owe me nothing. Just keep the house the way it is.” And I’ve never been back.

A.M. Where did you go at that point?

G.F. I went back to my unit.

A.M. This was early 1946. When did you leave the military?

G.F. Spring of 1946.

A.M. When did you come to the United States and how did you arrive in Milwaukee?

G.F. I knew I had a cousin, in America; he was ten years older than I. But I didn’t know where he was in “little” America. And I was in Europe and he didn’t know where I was. Well, one day in 1948 when the Communists took over, I was trapped. I got a letter from my cousin. Oh, lo and behold, how did he find me? Well, I didn’t know this at the time but there were people who made it their business to find members of families and to bring us together. Somehow they brought us together and my cousin, he wrote the letter without ever knowing if it would reach me. He told me he lived in York, Pennsylvania. I had no idea where York, Pennsylvania was. He said he was married and he and his wife had no children. And then he said: “Come to America. Let me be a father to you.” Can you imagine? I was all alone, lonely, and suddenly there was a cousin who says, “let me be a father to you.” So I said yes, I would like that. And he sent me the immigration papers. That was the easy part.

But now here was the United States Congress — these were the McCarthy days, and they had no use for a Jew from Europe and there were a hundred thousand who were waiting to come here. So, what to do? Fortunately, we had a fighter in our corner. His name was Harry S. Truman and he twisted the arm of Congress and who could resist Harry Truman forever? Nobody. So one day in July 1950, Congress passed what became known as the Displaced Persons Act of 1950. We were displaced persons; nobody wanted us. No home, no passport, no nothing. Well, when President Truman signed the legislation he opened the gates to a promised land and six months later I arrived in New York. And after a few days in New York I arrived in York, Pennsylvania for a reunion with my cousin and he had a job for me. I worked as a timekeeper in a company which made metal office furniture — chairs, tables, and file cabinets, all metal. And then [eventually] I came here [to Milwaukee].

A.M. You came to Milwaukee and you’ve been here ever since?

G.F. Yes. I went to work for a miniature Enron. I went to work for 3M Company, and my function was new products.

A.M. I’d like to return to the war. While this was happening, you’re a young person. And there are grave and momentous events happening rapidly in your life. I’m wondering at what point were you able to really absorb this?

G.F. I was so young at that time. I was so wounded by what the Nazis did to me, by depriving me of my parents’ love and affection, by depriving me of a focused education. I was so angry at the Germans. I was angry at my parents because I felt they had abandoned me. A professional lady with whom I worked for a long time, she made me understand that my parents did not abandon me. That what they did was an act of love, to let me go. I didn’t understand it.

A.M. When did you begin to understand it?

G.F. In the early '70s. I was a very angry man, very angry.

A.M. For all of those years?

G.F. For all of those years. Yes. What happened to me?

A.M. Was it something that was on your mind, or was it something you had internalized?

G.F. No, no. I got angry at people who did nothing to me. That’s how I alienated myself from people, pushed them aside. And one day in the [therapy] group, I let myself say, “I don’t want to die an angry man.” And then I knew I needed some real help. I needed professional help, which I got. She helped me so much.

A.M. And this was in the '70s also?

G.F. No, no. This was only about four years ago. What I’m telling you about in the '70s, that was a band-aid. That was coming to grips with the real thing. I’m an entirely different person. Entirely different.

A.M. Today when traumatic events occur, like September 11th, you hear reports on the radio, wherever, that students in schools are given psychological counseling, if they need it. It’s a valid thing to do. As you described it, you had to wait 40, 50 years for this.

G.F. I didn’t even know there was such a thing available.

A.M. And here are thousands and thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people, who dealt with similar circumstances. It’s sort of imponderable to know how they came through. Many people committed suicide.

G.F. My wife committed suicide. But not for that reason. She was schizophrenic. How did this happen? I don’t know. My son asked me last Monday, he said, “Dad, how did you happen to marry mom?” I told him I was alone. I was lonely. She was alone and lonely. So we put two and two together. She didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. All I knew was she was kind to me at a time when I needed somebody. She was a wonderful woman. But so sick.

How did I survive? I don’t know. How did I survive? You know something? The memory of this marvelous lady [Mrs. Warburg] kept me alive, that she cared so much. She gave me a home. She loved me like her own children. I call her my second mother. She focused on a small segment of society, to help us children. My transport, there were 176, from [ages] two to 15. Two! A baby. She focused on the children with the greatest need. And to have been the beneficiary of her kindness. If I could tell the whole world about her, from the rooftop here, I would.

The Warburgs were German-Jewish. And their focus was to help Jews of Germany. And they did everything they could to help Jews escape. But many didn’t want to. They just couldn’t bear to leave their pictures and their possessions and mansions. They perished. Other people who escaped left Germany and went into exile and left all their possessions there. They became depressed.

Not Lola-Hahn [Mrs. Warburg]. Just the opposite. She went into high gear. She went into exile in September 1938 and three months later the trains began to run. Now there’s a magician! The meetings she had with the British government after Kristalnacht — that was November 9th. She met with Chamberlain. And that same day Parliament agreed to allow Jewish children into the country, provided that somebody puts up £50 per child. That may not be a big sum of money, but multiply it by ten thousands. And they did. That happened November 12th. And six weeks later, the first children began to fly from Germany and Czechoslovakia. Fabulous, fabulous. She had connections all the way to the top. Now when I see this, I say to myself, if I had succeeded in visiting her in 1945 who knows what could have happened? She could have sent me to school somewhere. Who knows?

A.M. I have a final question. This is likely to be the last generation of kids [growing up today] who will have the experience of knowing, and talking to, Holocaust survivors. Already it’s something that very few people have intimate knowledge of. What do you think will happen when there aren’t people like yourself to get that message out?

G.F. The same as happens with the First World War, and the same with the Second World War. It’ll be forgotten. And yet we use the slogan Never Again. Anti-Semitism will never go away. It’s been with us for 4,000 years. We live with it; we survived in spite of everything. Fourteen civilizations came and disappeared and Jews are still here.

I’m glad you asked this question, because it’s very important. I don’t have a definitive answer.

© 2002
Stephen Andrew Miles