Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
Memories
When you went back to Vienna did you walk the streets?
Yes, I went back to the place where the SS hadchased me when I was trying to apply for a passport. You know.[doorbell rings]You had a, you had a, yeah I ???
Tell me about your goingto get a passport and being...
Yeah, you had to stand in line all night. And thenin the morning they came and chased you again. So that all those who had stoodfaithful enough suddenly were at the end. I went back to that street to seewhere the terror was. And there wasn't any more terror. I was not afraid of thestreet itself. And I remember being terrified because the SS came and chasedus. Even though they had told us we should line up and we line up all night andthen they chase you to rearrange the line. But I did get the passport formyself and for my parents.
So these were AustrianSS-man.
Yes.
in black uniform.
Yes. Yeah.
When they chased youwhat happened?
Yeah, for no reason. They just wanted to disturbthe line. Keep going, they said. So we move around all the other streets andthen come back because we knew we had to stand in line here when that officeopened. [laughs] So we did. And they did that a couple times and then they wentaway, just to amuse themselves. Or maybe that was part of their plan to make itmore difficult to get a passport. You also had to have a clearance from the taxpeople to say that you didn't owe anything. And all sorts of proofs before theywould ever let you get a passport. If you had a business it was even worse Iunderstand.
When your parents leftcould they take any money with them?
Oh, they couldn't. Couldn't. They wouldn't let themtake it.
So they left destitute.
Mm-hm. We all did. I didn't have enough money tobuy a cup of coffee in Brussels. And my parents had to leave everything behind.And when we arrived in the States our total fortune was five dollars for thethree of us. But they did, the relatives were there and then the HIAS did takeover. I looked for the HIAS when I was in New York, but I couldn't find it. Iwonder if they still have a place there.
I don't know. I don'teven know if they still exist.
We had big rooms where they housed families. Theyhad screens around it if it was a family. And I met-ran into a classmate there.When we, I had assumed he was in Brazil and he thought I was in England and wecame together [laughs] in a HIAS.
So you, how many dayswere you there?
Oh uh, we came here January the 1st. We landed justbefore Thanksgiving. So we were there a couple months.
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