Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Last Days in Germany
Okay, let's move ahead then a little bit. So 1935, '36, your, your father and your mother get permission to go to England, so they, they leave you and your sister. Where did you stay?
We stayed with my-I had my two grandmothers.
Mm-hm.
Each one of us stayed with one of the grandmothers. And then uh, oh excuse me.
We can pause it, it's fine.
Excuse me.
No problem.
[interruption in interview]
Okay, let's go back to-you were talking about you stayed with one of your grandmothers and your sister stayed with another.
Yes, and I was-and my, my parents had arranged for me-I was not in-must have been on vacation-anyway, my parents had arranged for me to get some English instruction. There was a, a woman who I later found out her English really wasn't that great, but I, I, I was given the rudiments of English instruction during this waiting period. I don't know why I wasn't in school. It must have been just a very short time that I wasn't in school, because, as I say, my sister did go. She was transferred to the Jewish school so um, because she stayed longer. I didn't stay that long and other than that I can't really remember. I think we were aware that the Brown Shirts, the nasty picture of the Der Stürmer on the advertisements, the word Nazi, the "Heil Hitler," that all this was not, this was not good. But my parents weren't-I guess they wanted to protect me. They weren't that specific about, about it. I became much more aware-of course, I was getting older too after I left for England because, as I say, my-there was one brother and-who was left behind and he perished with his family. And uh, all the other, I mean, I knew there was a lot going on that my parents were trying to get these people to come out of Germany. So as I grew up I, I, I was much-became much more aware. But before I left, maybe they didn't want to say too much to us, maybe they didn't want us to say the wrong thing to the wrong people. So they didn't really uh, explain very much. I would think nowadays a nine-year-old, a ten-year-old would ask more questions.
Yeah.
But one, one didn't in those days. One, one, one didn't divulge all one's worries to one's kids.
Sure.
And of course there was no-there was a radio but there was no TV. So one was much more sheltered, I think.
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