Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
The Anschluss
Do you remember whenthey rode in?
Yes. Distinctly.
Were you on the street?
I was uh, visiting a friend and I had-didn't know.We didn't have the radio on. When I left her house I was walking on the streetand somebody came up and said "Heil Hitler" and I wondered what was wrong withhim and then I met another friend and he told me that Hitler had marched in.And then there were many more who said "Heil Hitler." And I came home and wewere just overcome. We didn't know what to do. So we did nothing. You know,there was nothing to do.
On the day of theAnschluss were the streets-I know the streets were packed.
The next day.
Oh, that was the nextday.
Yeah, this was evening. It happened near eveningand uh, it was quiet and there were a few people out and they were all wearinglittle swastikas on their lapels and greeting everyone they saw with "HeilHitler." And then it started to get progressively worse, that the signs wentup. You couldn't go there, you couldn't sit on a bench in the park. And I wasattending the university and they uh, made us sit in the back. And then finallythey gave us the money back. They wouldn't let us attend at all in April. Theycancelled it, they cancelled the semester. And then we just sat home and, uh.
When they forbadedoctors from.
Yes, they took.
to care for Aryans
They didn't let my mother practice period. They hadthem take down the sign and they wouldn't let 'em. Not, not just Aryans, butanyone.
Because she was not onlyJewish, she was a woman as well.
I don't know if that entered in. If it did I wasn'taware of it. But they made her stop practicing.
This all happened veryfast.
Very fast. They, each day there was something newthat would come up and each day we thought, well, we can work around that one,you know, thinking what are we going to do, where are we going to go. And wedidn't have a lot of overseas connection. We finally dug up a cousin of mymothers whom we hadn't heard of in I don't know how many years. And to, to getan affidavit
In the UnitedStates.
to be able to get out. Yeah, my parents had theaffidavit, I didn't. I went to England. My brother went to Argentina. Becausemy father had the foresight to feel that we should get out regardless of wherewe go. But out.
Before the Anschluss?
No, after the Anschluss, he said that we had toleave. That once they stopped us from going to school, there was no point inbeing there. And that was in about April '38 when they said that we could notattend anymore. And so there was really nothing to do and my father was on apension from the bank and they took that away.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn