Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991
New York
You were in New York for a couple months.
In a HIAS.
Living sort of by a string.
Yes. Yeah.
In sort of dormitory like.
Yes. Mm-hm. And they did offer you food. And I found that there were free things you could get at the automat like pickles and things they had laying there. You didn't have to die, you could get. And I saw a lot of New York. A lot of things to see, you know when you just walk around.
This must have been very hard on your parents coming from.
It was very hard on my parents.
a genteel culture.
Yeah. It, it was the fractured dignity, I mean there was this humiliation of being drive from your home, but then landing somewhere else. To be poor. To be at the bottom of the heap. That's where we were. And it's hard. Especially for someone like my father to whom dignity is more important than anything else. There was a loss of dignity there.
Did you go to school when.
Uh, not at first. I didn't have any money. But then I started applying and uh, then Wayne I only paid for one year. Wayne gave me a scholarship and I, and then a fellowship, so I went right through and didn't have to pay because at that time there were no people in chemistry. You know, the war started in '42 and so they were happy to have me. So it worked out to my advantage at that point. I was there at the right time.
You got a degree in chemistry.
Yes. Mm-hm. I worked on-I was a chemist for many years and then I taught. So for me, I really didn't lose out as much as my parents did. That generation lost out a lot because they never recovered. They never recovered from the loss of uh, finances or other social loss. Although he did find some people in the Gemilut that he associated with, my father.
That drew him into religion.
Yes.
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