Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Resentment Toward Austria
Did he have any resentful feelings toward Austrian culture?
He certainly did. He, he felt very bad about his brother's death and he felt that they were all hypocrites in, in the way they were acting afterwards. And so he was very resentful. He never went back. Never set foot in the place again. One time he had thought he would if uh, if the money from the social security didn't go far enough, he did consider to go back and live with the woman who took care of us because she'd asked him to. He never doubted her sincerity. She was sincere.
Did your mother consider.
No.
taking up the practice again?
Uh, that at that time she couldn't because uh, Michigan had laws against us because of the Canadian doctors. So they wanted you to go back to school and she didn't feel she had the strength to go back to school. She worked at the North End Clinic for free. And as long as she worked there she got a lot of satisfaction because you know, your work, you define yourself by your work. And we moved farther she couldn't get there anymore and I think that uh, that shortened her life, I really do. But now they accept doctors from everywhere. They've changed.
Take a test.
Yeah, but not go back to school.
And they called her "Doctor."
Yeah.
D...do you remember any of the people that she. Or did you maintain relationships with some of the people that either your father or your mother.
Uh, well most of them were dead you know, being in that age group, outside of that one patient and my aunt who was not Jewish who stayed in Vienna. And then they had a barber who uh, who notified that my mother that my father-he was not Jewish. And his wife was the sweetest thing alive and she felt awful about it. She never felt any other way but awful. You could tell who felt at that time, you know, trying to help out. And there was a uh, uh, a mother of a schoolmate of ours who was also friends with my parents and she was uh, a socialist and in great danger herself and she was very helpful. She was the one who persuaded my parents not to wait out the affidavit. She said, "Go, go." My father wanted to come directly. That would have been easier. 'Cause England was difficult. They didn't have a work permit and so they had to live off what little I had. It wasn't a lot. So they'd been through some very meager times, when they were used to more physical comfort. But all of that becomes very minor. And you don't whine about not having this or that when you're alive and the others aren't.
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