All Stories: 571
Stories
Planning an Escape
“Apparently, my grandmother spoke to my grandfather about it and really wanted to leave and, because he didn’t really believe this was happening in his Germany, he refused to leave. And then as I understand it, they were visiting in the summer of…
Life Changes for Jews
“So apparently my aunt was aked to play the Christmas angel in her school Christmas play, and as I understand it my grandmother went to talk with the rabbi to make sure this was okay, and he said yes. And then there must've been some sort of…
Fürth in the Days of Youth
“So, I visited with my mother in 2002, and they lived actually really close to the town square, around the corner from a department store actually that, we went there to buy an umbrella because it was raining when we were visiting. It was near the…
Opa: The Red Baron
“He originally signed up to be in the cavalry, and as I understand it, the cavalry was not exciting enough for him, and so he then switched to the air force and became a bombardier. He definitely won medals, and I know he was really proud of his…
Work Before Nazi Control
“He was the owner of a textile mill that was in Hof, Germany, that had been owned by his cousin David Regensburger and I don’t know how it is that he inherited it. I know that he worked there, that he had done an internship and come to the United…
A "Mixed" Jewish Marriage
"I don’t know if my grandfather’s whole family came at the same time, but I believe he came in 1909 and he was the second of I think there were nine children, several of them died in fires and maybe there was a stillbirth, but I believe there…
Childhood
"Mother and Dad started dating again after the war, and with Grandma Fred’s coaxing and Mother’s proposal they were married and started a family right away. We three children were born two years apart. So my parents went from the war to domesticity.…
Coming Home
"I grew up in the South but I couldn’t wait to get as far away from that Southern lifestyle as I could get. So, I moved to California, lived there twenty years, flew to Honolulu for ten years. Got as far away as I could get. Then Bob’s business…
Vietnam
"The Vietnam War was very different. When my brother, Wayne, was drafted, I became a war protester, joining student sit ins and running from the police who tried to break up our demonstrations. Wayne served two years in Thailand as a medic. I met my…
Home Front
"After my dad’s father died from a measles epidemic, his large family of five siblings and his now single mother Frederica lost her farm during the Depression. During the war, Dad’s sisters went to work. The older sister married…