Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Becoming a Citizen
When your had friends--ha...had your friends now in the--in Detroit, um, I'm going to ask you the same question, did anybody ask you questions about your life before?
Not much, no. We never--they knew I was from Europe and they knew I went to a concentration camp but no. See, nothing like that was taught in high school. I mean I went a couple years to high school here, nothing like that was ever taught to us.
There were no articles in the newspapers then about survivors coming to the United States?
A little, yes, but I don't think they, they...
Husband: They were too young. They were still in high school, they didn't read. No, they didn't know.
...read too much, you know, high school age. No, you know, nothing. Um, you know with us, I would always--I was always asked, "Where are you from?" because of my accent, you know, and, I mean, I speak much better now but when I went to high school it was only a year, about two years at the time and I was still learning. And uh, I spoke uh, German at home. My, my mother learned English but not well so whenever we talked we talked, it was--we talked German, you know, at home I think. And my father had to learn because he was a salesman, I mean, he, he was forced in, you know, into learning. And we went to uh, citizenship classes, all--the three of us, to become citizens. And in fact, um, when Bill and I got married, we went on our honeymoon, the papers came to come down to be sworn in, you know, to take the test to become citizens. So, my parents went and when I came back I told them that I had gotten married so my, my papers had to be changed to Alice Rosen, you know, and everything and then I became a citizen the year we, we got married. It's going on thirty-six years already.
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