Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991

so when he heard of this possibility of getting out, he said go. And in Austria when a father says to an eighteen-year-old go, you go. It was never any question. I'm surprised how unquestioning I must have been, but that's what he said and that's what we did.

So what did go mean?

Pack your bags and go to England. Leave.

Well, so you went to a train station first and then.

Yeah, we went to this train station and my mother was near collapsing. And then when we came to the German border they took off all the Jews and uh, they did a body search. They were looking for gold, which I didn't have. And then they made us miss the train. So I was in Aachen. I missed the train. So when I finally did get the train to go over to go to Brussels to get the boat to go to England. And when I got to the station in England there was nobody there waiting for me because the train I was supposed to have come on I missed. And so I wandered around London and a policeman pick me up. And he thought I looked foreign, of course, and I couldn't speak English, so he took me to the HIAS, the home there.

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then they uh, they found out where I was supposed to go and they gave me a ticket and put me on the train.

Now you were alone on this train.

Pardon?

You were alone on this train.

Oh yeah.

And traveled through Germany.

Yes.

Were you frightened?

Well, I was looking out to see if there was something I could see. But I, I knew that the critical point was the border. So it--just holding my breath until I got to the border and when I got out to Belgium it was such a feeling to be free again that I didn't have any money so I couldn't even buy a cup of coffee, but it was such a relief to be away from that, to not have to look over your shoulder. And then of course, you worry about the rest of the family that's left behind. My brother left the next day.

So you-but you knew what was going to happen to your parents.

No, I didn't know until uh, we could correspond again. Once I got to my, my place in Exeter there was a letter waiting for me. They had written me.