Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991

Have you been back?

Yes, I've been back three times.

When you went for your reunion.

I went in '58 and I went in '76 and I went in, for the reunion in '87. And I could have gone now when I was in Portugal, but somewhere I had lost the desire to go. Because this very good friend, the one who, who came to us on the Crystal Night he had died and I felt that he was the heart of Vienna as far as I was concerned. I didn't want to go back.

This was the friend from school?

Yes. He was my first boyfriend. I was sixteen and he was sixteen.

When he came to your house what did he say?

Well, he had come in concern to what happened, what he had heard might happen and he wanted to know how many members of our family had been harmed. And he tried to find out where my father was but he couldn't. So he was offering support.

Did he offer to hide you?

No, no.

???

That would be very difficult. In fact, my aunt, who is not Jewish, my uncle's widow, told me that a friend of hers had asked her to hide them and she said I can't. And she told me that she couldn't because it was everyday and you would have to take care of them totally. And she herself felt that she was under suspicion because she was the widow of, of someone who was Jewish. So she was the only one who-my aunt was totally honest person that she would even bring it up. It must have been terrible for the other party. But my, my, the patient of my mother's whom I had seen in '58, he had been hidden by several people a few days at a time. In one of those transfers he got caught. But he-there were people who were willing to take that risk. It's an enormous risk. To, to do someone a favor even if it's risky once in a while isn't bad. But have to do it everyday at the risk of your own family, it's very hard. I can-it's amazing that any of them found shelter. Really astonishing. And you know that the punishment was very severe. There was no due, due process of law, no recourse. You were gone, you were gone. They would pick 'em up and that would be it.