Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Life Before the War
Um, what, what was your life like from--if you can remember at that, that young an age--before the war?
Before the war? Not too much. Uh, we lived in a nice home, I saw, I saw my grandparents a lot--with my mother's uh, parents. And I remember going to school. And I don't know if you know but in Germany when you start school you start with a big bag of candy, it looks like an upside down dunce hat. Did, did you ever hear about that?
Mm-mm.
And I remember them taking pictures of that and playing. I was six years old, you know, how much can you remember? But I certainly remember the day they came--well, came and took my father to Dachau, at first and they left us alone. And um, my mother tried to run the business because that's how my parents met. My mother was in business with her father--she already drove a car in the, in the 1920s, my mother drove. And that's how, how they met and--but we lost the business because my father was in Dachau and then my father came back from Dachau and by that time I remember we were already wearing the armbands with Jude on it already.
Must have been 1940s.
Mm-hm. We already had to wear them because my um, uncle had already left from what I remember my father saying and they kept urging my parents to leave. And when my fathers business was good at the time and by the time he decided we should leave it was too late. The just didn't let anyone out anymore.
When he went to Dachau, was that uh, in 1938 do you know?
Yeah I think so.
Was it for Krystallnacht? Is that what...
Yeah, I think so because he was there and then he came back home. I do remember him coming back home. And then when they came and got us uh, big trucks, you know, like an army truck came. And my grandparents, my father, mother and I, and they put us into the truck. And I remember they tore the whole house apart, I mean they just vandalized our whole house at the time.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn