Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
The Anschluss
Do you remember when they 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 street and somebody came up and said "Heil Hitler" and I wondered what was wrong with him 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 we were just overcome. We didn't know what to do. So we did nothing. You know, there was nothing to do.
On the day of the Anschluss were the streets-I know the streets were packed.
The next day.
Oh, that was the next day.
Yeah, this was evening. It happened near evening and uh, it was quiet and there were a few people out and they were all wearing little swastikas on their lapels and greeting everyone they saw with "Heil Hitler." And then it started to get progressively worse, that the signs went up. You couldn't go there; you couldn't sit on a bench in the park. And I was attending the university and they uh, made us sit in the back. And then finally they gave us the money back. They wouldn't let us attend at all in April. They cancelled it, they cancelled the semester. And then we just sat home and, uh.
When they forbade doctors from.
Yes, they took.
to care for Aryans
They didn't let my mother practice period. They had them take down the sign and they wouldn't let 'em. Not, not just Aryans, but anyone.
Because she was not only Jewish, she was a woman as well.
I don't know if that entered in. If it did I wasn't aware of it. But they made her stop practicing.
This all happened very fast.
Very fast. They, each day there was something new that 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 we didn't have a lot of overseas connection. We finally dug up a cousin of my mother's whom we hadn't heard of in I don't know how many years. And to, to get an affidavit
In the United States.
to be able to get out. Yeah, my parents had the affidavit, I didn't. I went to England. My brother went to Argentina. Because my father had the foresight to feel that we should get out regardless of where we go. But out.
Before the Anschluss?
No, after the Anschluss, he said that we had to leave. 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 not attend anymore. And so there was really nothing to do and my father was on a pension from the bank and they took that away.
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