Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Life Under the Nazis
Do you remember seeing swastikas...
Oh, yes.
...banners, things like that.
Yes. I remember seeing swastikas, I remember seeing uh, again, I didn't understand, you know, what the Der Stürmer was, these, these awful newspapers...
Sure.
...where these awful...
The Völkischer Beobachter...
They were, they were posted and uh, uh, I'm trying to think whether they were-there must have something because as I say, my sister went to the Jewish school. I did not because my parents already anticipated that we would go to England. She's barking ???.
No, it's okay.
Lie down, Penny, lie down. Don't want to mess up your tape.
Oh, it's okay.
Um, so I knew things were going on, but I didn't really quite, quite understand. I knew that Nazi was not a good word uh, but other than that, no, no, not, not really.
You never heard your parents talk about...
No, I think in those days one didn't talk as much-one didn't explain as much to children as one does now, I, I believe.
I have an eight year old and, and it's a constant explanation about everything...
Yeah.
...so I understand.
Uh, one thing that's very interesting, my uh, one of my grandsons lives in East Lansing and they had a project on the Holocaust and he volunteered me to speak to the class and I wasn't very keen, but I did. And I told the incident um, the children were about ten years old when I was asked to do this, and I told the incident about the tram and one of the black girl raised her hand and said that she could identify with that.
Really?
Yes, because that's what happened to black kids in the south. And so, at first I was very reluctant to do this little presentation to the school, but it went over very well. And, as I say, this little girl identified and all the kids, "Ooh, that's, that's interesting." They could identify because I was their age when I was not allowed to board the tram, so.
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