Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Life in Heidelberg
And he took me home and um, then I, you know, I saw--went in the kitchen and was looking for the supper dishes and I was looking for--and the housekeeper tried to explain to her what I wanted so uh, finally I was told that they do not keep kosher. And, so then at first I began asking if I could eat out of a glass plate or can I have a drink only out of glass and then I wouldn't eat certain things. And uh, I was just told point blank, "You either do as we do or don't. I mean, I mean, we're not kosher and this is what we eat and if you want to eat and survive here, you're--you have to do it." My father did belong to a shul in Germany and he went on the holidays and everything but he wasn't overly religious.
They weren't Reformed Jews.
No, I don't think--he might have been Reformed but he did...
Husband: He was conservative, I mean, he, he called her every holiday, he called her every holiday...
Conservative? Yes, I would say. He definitely followed every holiday and he was even involved in Germany in shul at Heidelberg ??? it was a handful of Jews, but there were not that many Jews there, you know, and um, so he sent me--I started school there and he had a tutor for me to learn German again. But what happened before I even arrived back to Germany, my father and his friend had gone to one of the American Red Cross meetings, you know, where there were other, um, German Jews and other Jews that had come back and the young--there were young girls that that gave them doughnuts and coffee and everything. And, um, they were approached by a couple of uh, young girls and they got to talking and the girls said that they were Jewish and that--they asked what their name was and their last name was Hollander, and my father said, "I was in a concentration camp with a Holl...Hollander." And it turned out that it was her uncle, not her father. And her father was Fritz Hollander who, in fact I think he was killed, um, just before the end of the war, near--the, the father was killed. And uh, so the girls said, "You must come home with us and meet our mother and tell her that, that uh, you knew our, you know, my uncle." And he had survived and he had gone to Israel. Yeah, he survived and went, went to Israel.
The uncle.
The uncle Hollander, right. And, um, anyway, he went there and met, met their mother and they befriended and one thing led to another which eventually they ended up getting married. My, you know...
In Germany.
In Germany. And um, but...
[interruption in interview]
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn