Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Knowledge of Adolf Eichmann
When you were still in Vienna d...do you remember the. Had you heard of Adolf Eichmann?
Adolf Eichmann, no. Never heard of him.
When they, when the Germans opened up a Jewish immigration office.
No, we didn't hear about that. I didn't hear about Adolf Eichmann until I saw him on TV here. Didn't hear about him.
That's where he started his career, in Vienna.
Yeah, I know, I know.
Uh, so you were not affected then by this, this forced expulsion.
I wasn't aware of it. No, no. I had never had a run-in with them. It, it, it, it was totally random. Even the people whom they released and the people whom they took in the camp. And I think that concept really was part of the system to have it totally random so you couldn't figure out a way out. Now the uncle who survived was a real no-goodnik of the family. He was a gambler and he lived by cards. And he survived with his wife, his six-year-old son and a daughter born in '39. He passed himself off as not being Jewish and he played cards with everyone. And whenever they started to pass out identification cards for food or anything he would move on. He said no papers. He never wanted to ever have any papers. He survived. 'Cause he had no vested interest. He was the one, the black sheep of the family. He had you know, nothing to lose. When he contacted me years later, he had lost total contact with us. My brother's name appeared in The New York Times when he won a Guggenheim. And my uncle's other cousin saw that name and remembered ???, and so they called him up and asked him what his grandfather's name was. And so that's how we contacted my uncle again.
How did your brother get from South America to...
Argentina? He went from Argentina when we were here. We tried to send for him an affidavit form but we couldn't until the war ended. They wouldn't let-allow him to come before that. So he came in '45.
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