Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Lucy Glaser Merritt - July 8, 1991

What happened at that reunion? Did you raise these issues with some of these people?

No, they, they very carefully did not talk about anything of the Hitler period. They talked-we talked mainly about our old teachers. In fact, one of them sent a rather touching letter saying he always wanted us to appreciate beauty and nature and he was lecturing as if we were seventeen. And uh, what they had, the kind of professions that they had uh, taken up. That's all. Never, never. And that was the, the time of, oh what was that jackass name, the Austrian president.

Waldeim.

Waldeim yeah, Waldeim. Now I did get in some discussions about Waldhiem with my friends. And those who were socialist were solidly against Waldheim and those who were schwarzen were for him, felt that he was being persecuted for nothing. That was the only thing that ever came up. But nothing ever in the uh, during the Anschluss, during those two years. Never.

Um, the twelve to thirteen Jewish students who were in that class, were any of them at this reunion?

Yes, most of them were. One of them had a heart attack

Didn't come up with them either?

No, but we had another reunion in New York. And that was very interesting. The fellow in New York gave a reunion for the Americans. And uh, when we came we did talk about that and a lot. So apparently it was in the back of our mind and we didn't want to discuss it. And in fact they brought up some incidences of uh, hostility that I was, had not been aware of. That one of them won a uh, writing contest and he, he's a very verbal person, still is. And uh, the other classmates said "Oh, you couldn't win it, a Jew can't win a German writing contest." And he mentioned that in New York. He had not mentioned that before. He's now in Israel and has a-holds a double chair in Hamburg and Tel Aviv. Isn't that unusual? And uh, and he was here on a, on a speaking engagement. That's why we all came to New York. But we did talk about it a great deal, about who among the classmates had been the most hypocritical. I suppose that includes us because we hadn't said it either. You didn't want to be unpleasant. You've come such a long way. And so we just pussyfooted around that. [laughs] You talk about the grandchildren, heart disease and, you know, and some of the adventures that we had when we were skiing together as kids. That was part of the curriculum. We had a week in the Alps.

So it's the missing seven years.

It is the missing seven years. They were not touched on, but they were cer...plenty touched in New York when we had that party. And I went and wrote that to some of my friends and they are, and said it was different, it was a different reunion. And they didn't say much about it.