Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Rose Green - May 21, 2008

Life Under German Occupation II

It's a long time. So we're sort of up to 1939, I think, when the Germans came in. Were there anti-Jewish laws passed?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you remember what some of them were?

First we were married uh, in uh, January the 19th and in three or four months they took away the licenses from my husband. He couldn't, he couldn't do any businesses anymore. First of all they took away--he supplied the army with meat for many, many years. There were Christian uh, butchers there and my husband had a concession for many years, because he was the best at, you know. And he could always supply them very well. So...

And were children still going to school?

Pardon?

Were children--Jewish children still going to school?

Yes. There were Jewish schools.

Jewish schools.

Jewish teachers at Jewish schools, yeah. My uh, my brother just came out from, from the university. He went to University of Prague and uh, he was, he was teaching one of those Jewish schools too, you know. He wasn't--didn't have a teacher certificate or anything but he had enough knowledge to, to study.

Did anyone talk about Palestine?

Oh yeah, we always--we were always Zionist. My father was a big Zi...Zionist.

Was that--were there discussions at this, at this point about...

Going to Israel?

...going to, going to Palestine?

I don't know. I wanted to go. I had a boyfriend when I was very young and he, he was big Zionist. He wanted to go and he was talking--wanted to talk me into going to Israel with him and uh, my mother wouldn't hear of it because there were tsores, big tsores in Israel.

Of course.

Yeah. So, you know.


© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn