"They [my grandparents] went across the Pyrenees, and they ended up in, I believe, Madrid, one of those cities—[Spain] being a neutral country, so-called. And then eventually they got to Portugal, and they ended up getting a ship to New York at…

"They [my grandparents] went through Marseilles and there was a very outstanding American council called Varian Fry, and I’m convinced that they were helped by that person because he helped a lot of people escape. And he was the council…

"When the Nazis took over, for about two years, there were two zones of France: one was the Occupied Zone, which included Paris and most of the Coast, and the other part was the Southeast part and the Riviera and the Mediterranean Coast, which…

"After Kristallnacht, which was November of ’38, my father had already talked about leaving, I think, and when that happened, he said, 'I’ve got an idea. My wife is an American citizen. We might be able to get out through her.' And he was right.  We…

"I was born in Paris, France. My father was a salesman for a fabric company, and they made dresses out of those fabrics, and curtains and things, and my mother was a— I guess you’d call her a housewife. I was born in 1934, and I grew up in…

"He was sort of a playboy kind. He wasn’t [a] very big entrepreneur, but you might call him the black sheep of the family. His first wife had died in New York, and he wanted to see Europe and he wanted to travel the world, so he said,…

"They moved to New York from Columbus, Georgia, during the Civil War, or as they call it here, the War of Northern Aggression. They came to New York in 1865. My great-grandfather had been captured by the Yankees and removed from the scene. My…

"My mother was actually an American citizen, but she was born in France, because my grandfather—her father—was named Alfred Rothschild. He was born in Columbus, Georgia, not too far from here. And the house that he was born in still remains…