Lisa Kallai - January 28, 2008
Anti-Semitism
Do you remember any anti-Semitism in the streets or in the school?
Uh, not...yes and no. That is to say not really personally in my immediate vicinity until after the Anschluß. There was...I was attacked once by a group of boys from a parallel class.
Physically they...
Well, surrounded...they were all Hitler Jugend and they had weapons and...well, knives or whatever...and they surrounded me in the street. I somehow managed to escape or maybe they weren't all that serious, I don't know. Um...
And this was before Anschluß...
...but this was, this was af...this was just after the Anschluß. But I mean, these weren't people that I was personally connected to, this was a pair of boys from the parallel class. And um, in my school, at the s...at the s...I think a very interesting phenomenon. We were two parallel classes...randomly divided...and in our class uh, there was no anti-Semitism...no obvious anti-Semitism let's say. Uh, in parallel class they demanded...immediately after the Anschluß they demanded the Jewish children should leave school immediately. We were allowed to finish the school year. In our class, the children worked...did all sorts of jobs...to get money and to give us parting presents. And these were two parallel classes just randomly divided. Obviously ring leaders of different types in the two classes I think.
Do you think the teachers had anything to do with it?
I don't think so. We had the same teachers.
Ah.
No, I think it was just the children and I think that's a very interesting phenomenon.
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