Margaret Salomon

Harper: If we can begin by you telling me your name, your maiden name, your date and place of birth?
SALOMON: Okay, my name is Margaret Salomon. My maiden name is Müller, and I was born in 1910, May 5. 

Harper: And the name of the town in which you were born?
SALOMON: Düsseldorf, in Germany, the Rhineland.

Harper: If you could tell me about your house, growing up? Who lived in it?
SALOMON: My parents, Simon and Flora Müller, and my two brothers, Hans and Walter.

Harper: Can you tell me when your parents were born, and where?
SALOMON: My parents were born in 1878, both, and my father came from Herleshausen, Thüringen. My mother came from Ober-Ingelheim, near Frankfurt. 

Harper: Did you ever meet your grandparents?
SALOMON: No, my grandparents both were gone before I was born, they died very early on both sides. 

Harper: Did you know anything about them?
SALOMON: Really not very much, my father’s parents died when he was about 10 years old, and I really don’t know what they died from, if there was a disease or something. So really haven’t got too much knowledge about that. And my other grandparents died early, I think before my mother was 21 years old. That’s about all I know about them.

Harper: Do you know where they were from?
SALOMON: My grandparents? Well, they both lived, on my father’s side, in Herleshausen, and my mother’s side in Ober-Ingelheim. 

Harper: Can you tell me about your family’s means of support?
SALOMON: Yes, we did have a very nice men’s store, men’s clothing, and we had between 30 and 50 employees. My father started it from scratch and built it up to, really, a very, very nice and well-known store in Düsseldorf.

Harper: And your mother worked there?
SALOMON: My mother worked at the store also while my father was in the war between 1914 and 1918. My mother kept the business going.

Harper: So your family was above middle-class?
SALOMON: A little bit over middle-class. We were, let’s say, well-to-do people.

Harper: I’d like you to describe your neighborhood and, not only the name of your street, but what it was like, what the mix of Jews and gentiles were, if the synagogue was nearby?
SALOMON: Well, we lived in a very famous street in Düsseldorf called Königsallee, which means “King’s Alley,” and there were mixed Jewish and other people. You couldn’t really say it was one way or the other. Later on we moved to another very nice neighborhood and street. It was right on the Rhine, and in the apartment house where we were living there were three Jewish families there.

HARPER: Was there a synagogue nearby?
SALOMON: Yes, it wasn’t very far. It was about. By car, less than 10 minutes, five minutes maybe, even. It was not very far, the synagogue.

Harper: Was your family religious?
SALOMON: Not very religious. We kept the holidays and we were well aware of being Jewish and participated in Jewish affairs, but we were not really very religious.

Harper: You didn’t keep the Sabbath in the home?
SALOMON: No, we couldn’t on account of our business. We had to work there so we couldn’t keep those things up, but we kept the holidays up. Other than that we mixed with Jewish people.

Harper: Did your family belong to a synagogue?
SALOMON: Yes, we belonged to the synagogue.

Harper: Do you remember, was it a Reformed synagogue or Conservative? Or what you would call today Conservative or Reform?
SALOMON: I would say Reform.

Harper: Was it big?
SALOMON: Yes, it was a pretty good-sized synagogue, I even remember the name of the Rabbi, Dr. Eschelbauer. 

Harper: Do you remember the name of the street it was on?
SALOMON: Kasernenstrasse.  

Harper: Do you have any idea what the Jewish population of Düsseldorf was?
SALOMON: I really forget that, I don’t remember anymore how many Jews. There were a lot of Jews in Düsseldorf, but I couldn’t tell you how many. I have no idea anymore. I’m too long gone from there.

Harper: When you were growing up do you remember if the relations between Jews and gentiles was friendly?
SALOMON: Most were friendly. We did not have too much trouble with antisemitism, but I even had in school one teacher who was definitely antisemitic.

Harper: But in your every day life?
SALOMON: No, we did not have trouble with that at all, and with our business, very seldom had any trouble with that.

Harper: Can you describe any secular activities your family was involved with, maybe politics or athletic clubs?
SALOMON: No, my parents absolutely were – I always said they were married to the business. They were from morning to evening all business. This was really the only recreation, I should say, which they did. We belonged to sports clubs, I belonged to the Maccabee there, and so did my brothers, so we were pretty active in those things but not my parents.

Harper: Did you belong to any Zionist youth groups or anything?
SALOMON: No, absolutely not. 

Harper: Can you tell me more about your father’s military experience?
SALOMON: Yes, pretty early he had to go to the military. You know, you had to go, and it was pretty early that he got into it. Now I don’t know what you call that. [Pauses] He was caught, somewhere in the military, and he was imprisoned, and he was for over three years, imprisoned. Even when everything was over, he was still kept in there and it was about several months later that he came finally out. I think from, if I’m not mistaken, he was held prisoner somewhere in Africa.

Harper: So he was a prisoner of war?
SALOMON: Yes, he was a prisoner of war, and later on he got the Iron Cross. [Sarcastically] Much good did it do him.

Harper: Was he fighting in Africa?
SALOMON: I really couldn’t tell you. I don’t know where he was caught, and how he ended up there I don’t know.

Harper: So when he was gone it was just your mother running the household?
SALOMON: Yes, my mother was running the household, and the business, and everything else. And there were three children, two brothers and I, so she had her hands full.

Harper: And he came back then in 1918?
SALOMON: Yes, and I even didn’t recognize him anymore when he came through the door and we were expecting him. I ran to the door, opened the door, and then I said to my mother “There is a man outside, and he wants to talk to you.” I didn’t recognize that it was my father. Well, I was four years old when he left.

Harper: Did the war affect him? Was he wounded or anything?
SALOMON: No, he wasn’t wounded, thank God. But he came home and he had a, what is it called? A headache, he always got a headache. I don’t remember the name of that kind of headache, and that stayed with him all his life. From time to time he had those headaches and he had to close everything, keep everything dark, until he got over that.

Harper: Do you think his being in captivity caused those problems?
SALOMON: I’m pretty sure so.

Harper: Can you tell me about your schooling?
SALOMON: Yes, we had a school not too far from where we lived at that time, and I went there, normal schooling. Unfortunately, I became sick when I was about 10 years old, and very often had to interrupt the schooling and had to have, what do you call that? In home? At home? Somebody came at home, a tutor, so I had normal schooling otherwise, like everybody else, and went until I was about 16 years or so, went to school. I did not go to college but I went for a year to Switzerland to study French.

Harper: After you were 16?
SALOMON: Let me remember. I was even older than that. I think at that time I was 18, when I went for one year. They called that Punktionat; that is an all-girls school where you go. So then I learned French and got a better education, let’s say it that way.

Harper: Isn’t it like an elementary school? Until how long?
SALOMON: It is the same as you have here. You go (I don’t know what you call your first classes) until you are about 10 or 12 years or whatever, until you are in the higher class school, like you do here. And so that’s the same thing over there, until you finish.

Harper: And you finished at 16?
SALOMON: Yes, I think, I don’t remember exactly, either 16 or 17.

Harper: Before you went to your program in Switzerland, did you work in your father’s store?
SALOMON: Yes, I helped out and worked there. And right after school I worked there. Then I went pretty much afterwards, not too long afterwards that I went to Switzerland and stayed there for one year.

Harper: Besides this teacher you had who was antisemitic, did you experience any other times?
SALOMON: No, besides that one teacher really, I didn’t really have much trouble. But you could feel she was antisemitic. She kept your grades down quite a bit because she did not want to give Jewish children decent grades when they really should have. But she tried everything to keep it down.

Harper: How many Jewish students were in your class?
SALOMON: We might have been six or seven Jewish children there.

Harper: Did you have any Hebrew school? Did you go to a religious school as well?
SALOMON: Yes, yes, we did. We went every Sunday morning and had our Hebrew school, and learned everything that you learn in Sunday schools.

Harper: But in the public school there were no religious studies?
SALOMON: No. Well, there was religion for the other children, but we had that hour free because we of course did not go into those classes. But then we went Sundays and our Sunday mornings were Jewish, as a matter of fact in the synagogue. 

Harper: Before we move on I want to find out is there anything about your childhood that you want to include? Did you go on vacations?
SALOMON: Well, we went sometimes on vacation. We went to a place called Nordernay. It was on the Nordsee, a wonderful beach there, but only with one of my parents, because, on account of the business, we could never go together. So, during school vacations we went sometimes with my mother to those vacation places. And otherwise we were pretty busy with our Maccabee deal with the sports. We were always busy with those things. Later on I became interested in watersports and I had my own little boat, and so did one of my brothers, had his own little boat. So we were busy with those things.

Harper: Like a sailboat?
SALOMON: No, it was more like an outboard motorboat. We exchanged boats with our friends, some had other boats, other different sailing boats. So we exchanged. They could have ours, we could have theirs, we had a lot of fun with that. We lived right on the Rhine, so that was nice.

Harper: Do you remember first hearing about the Nazi Party or Hitler?
SALOMON: Oh, yes. 

Harper: Can you tell me about that?
SALOMON: It started pretty early; let’s say already by 1933 you knew something was going on.

Harper: But before that, in the ‘20s. Did you ever hear of his Putsch in Munich in ’23?
SALOMON: Well, no. At that time we really didn’t notice it. We were too young at that time. But we really started beginning in the 1930s, then we started feeling something wasn’t right. But we never did think something would come out of it. It was one of those things where you think – well, you forget it, or just don’t mention, or it will go away. You never thought something would come out of it, but it did.

Harper: Do you remember your parents ever talking about it, or do you remember witnessing any marches, Nazi marches or rallies or book burnings?
SALOMON: Oh, yes. We saw those things, and my father always said “Oh, that blows over. That can never be, that is too ugly that it can turn into anything. That blows over.” And we waited for it to blow over. It didn’t. It got more and more, and it got to the point where we couldn’t go anywhere besides our Jewish clubs, it was the only thing we could go to. We could not go to movies, or to restaurants or so on; we couldn’t go there because it just got too bad.

Harper: Let me interrupt you there. So the first time you became aware of Hitler was in the ‘30s. Do you remember when, exactly?
SALOMON: No, I really don’t remember. We noticed more and more that there was antisemitism. But of course we never thought it was possible that something like this could happen. Several times before when some people made an ugly remark you got used to it and you said “Well, you better not listen to it” and forgot it. But it got more and more, you couldn’t forget it. You read the papers, and you heard, at that time you didn’t have that much television, so you heard, you read the papers and you listened to the radio, and you knew something was going on.

Harper: Do you remember Hitler becoming chancellor in 1933?
SALOMON: Oh, yes. We noticed it, and we still didn’t take it very seriously. After that we were always hoping it would blow over, and didn’t pay too much attention to it. But then it got more, and more, and we noticed. We had an employee in our store, which were there for long years, and one day she went to one of those Nürnberg [Nuremberg] meetings, and when she came back she said she’s not going to work for Jews anymore.

Harper: Do you remember what year that was?
SALOMON: No, I don’t remember what year that was, but it must have been, I’d say, about ’36, ’35. So, she was with the company for long years. When she came back she refused, said she was not working for Jews anymore, and left. 

Harper: Before the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, did you notice anything changing before then? I want to understand before 1935 and after 1935.
SALOMON: Yes. Well, what you notice of course was those meetings they had, when they marched through the streets in their uniforms and things like this, and you noticed those. But even after that you still didn’t take it seriously; you still didn’t think it could happen in Germany! You thought those people were too educated to go for something like this. But Hitler had something hypnotic on himself, and people saw him more and more, they said “Oh, this is something fine, we’ll go for this.” And times weren’t too good at that time, so of course you need some reason for it. So, of course, the Jews were the ones who did it.

Harper: So can you tell me specifically how your life began to change? If you remember dates of when you weren’t allowed to go to the movies or restaurants?
SALOMON: Well, I wouldn’t exactly know the dates, but by about ’36, mostly, it really started that you heard that you couldn’t go to the movies anymore. They said they won’t allow movies for us, so you wouldn’t dare going there. And you didn’t dare going into the restaurants or places, you know, those coffeehouses that they have over there, and you sit an afternoon and talk to people. At that time you noticed you couldn’t do that anymore, and people looked at you and you were afraid to go there. And that started more or less by about 1936.

Harper: What about your friends or your neighbors? Did they start treating you differently?
SALOMON: No, I wouldn’t say so. We didn’t at least. I wouldn’t say other people didn’t, but we didn’t at least have any trouble with this. But I must say we had mostly, even though we were not very religious, we had mostly Jewish friends. So we didn’t feel it from the others.

Harper: At this time, around 1936, did your family discuss with you the dangers or was is it still the discussion ‘oh this will blow over’?
SALOMON: That’s what my father always said, he always said, “These things cannot go through, it will blow over.” He didn’t believe something would happen until, really, the end. They didn’t believe. Well, my mother yes; my father didn’t. It came to the point when we noticed we had to think about going somewhere else, leaving the country and going somewhere else. Every time I tried to talk with my father about that, we said, “Listen, it is getting to a point where we have to think about leaving the country,” and then he said “Are you crazy? Where would you get anything like this? You are well off here, and you have a beautiful business. Where would you get something like this if you just leave everything and go into another country where you don’t know what it is, and what you will do and so on? This all blows over; let everything be the way it is. Everything blows over. Forget it.” He did not think it would come to what it really did come to.

Harper: How about your friends, do you remember their opinions on what was going on?
SALOMON: Yes, we had some friends and my older brother had some friends. As a matter of fact, two different friends. They were from Polish heritage, and they told him “You better get used to the idea, you have to get out of here, we know what it is, my parents come from Poland, and they know what it means, and it doesn’t look very good here, and we are leaving.” One told my brother, what did he say? “When you think you have it all…” or something like this “… then you will find that you are still here and cannot go out anymore, and we are in another place and built ourselves a new life.” And it came to that, they were gone and then we struggled to find a place where we could go.   

Harper: Ok, so your father didn’t want to leave.
SALOMON: No.

Harper: Your mother wanted to leave?
SALOMON: Well, she left the idea open. It was an old-fashioned marriage, where what the father did was right. It came to a point at one time where we said “Father doesn’t want to do anything and we have to see on our own what we can do.” Now, we had everything in the business, everything.

Harper: Wait, can I interrupt you? You and your brothers decided, “Hey, we need to do something?”
SALOMON: Exactly. 

Harper: I want to know why you made that decision, how you made that decision.
SALOMON: Well, we saw what was going on. We saw that the Nazis got bigger and bigger, and we saw there was no future there for us in it anymore, and it got too dangerous. So my younger brother (he is not younger than I am but from the two brothers is the younger one), was in Düsseldorf. The older one was – we had a second store in Essen, and he was working with that store in Essen, and lived in Essen. So the younger brother and I, we said “How would we get any money and buy a visa, if we could buy one?” In Germany at that time you closed your store from one o’clock to three o’clock, you went home, and you had your warm dinner at noontime. So we decided that we would, after dinner, go back to the store and keep the store open and the money which would come in at that time from customers, we would steal from our father. We would take that money and put in our pockets. We told my mother about that, we said, “Father doesn’t want to listen, he is not doing anything, he is not putting money away so that if the time comes then we have any way to buy visas or to do anything. If we have money which we need to do something…” So we went back to the store and we got some money. We found a Dutch man who worked for the queen, and travel arrangements and things like this, and we found him, and he took money which we had, and brought it to Holland, and put it in Holland in a bank. That gave us the possibility that we could do something when we wanted to leave the country, that we had some money. 

Harper: What year did you do that?
SALOMON: I think we started with this in 1937.

Harper: So you were 27 years old.
SALOMON: About, yes.

Harper: Was that a difficult decision to do that?
SALOMON: It was a very difficult decision to do this because normally we would have done nothing like this, but did not see any other way to have money in case we all needed to go and leave, that my father finally would see the light, then we could tell him “Father, we did this so in order that we are able to leave the country and go somewhere else.” But it didn’t come to that, of course.

Harper: Where did you want to go at that time?
SALOMON: Wherever where we had an occasion. We didn’t have any choice where we wanted to go. The only thing was: where would we find a country who would say, “Okay, you can come”? America didn’t want us.

Harper: Yes, but where did you want to go, regardless of where you could or could not go? In your mind, did you want to go someplace? Did you want to go to the United States? Did you think about Palestine at all?
SALOMON: No. We did not think about Palestine. We were thinking about the United States, to go there. But as I said, we needed somebody who would help us get there, and we had to take anything we could get. I had a cousin and she left I think in 1938. She went to Chile. Before she left she said, “If I can do something for you, I’ll let you know.” Then one day she wrote to us, “I could get visas for Bolivia, and I would advise you take it right away, and take it for all the family. Don’t wait.” My father didn’t want any part of that. We would have had to send money there, and he said, “Well, I don’t trust that, maybe they don’t have any money and they want some money. If you want to you can do it for you.” My older brother had a visa for going to the United States, through a friend. But the other brother and I we decided we were going to do it, and we wrote them back, “Here is the money,” which we had taken from he business, of course. That way we could pay for the visas, and we got the visas. But my father said, “First do it for you, and if that turns out right, that you get your visas, then we’ll do it for us.” In the meantime of course, you’ll notice, that we didn’t have any choice anymore. But by then it was too late.

Harper: If I can interrupt you here, can you tell me what was going on in your personal life at this time? Were you married? Living with your parents? Dating?
SALOMON: I was living with my parents and I was married at that time. My husband went with a relative of mine to Chile, but our marriage wasn’t that good, and I decided I didn’t want… I found out things afterwards when he was gone which were not to my liking, and I decided, “I’m not going.” So, I wrote to him that I wouldn’t come and got a divorce.

Harper: So how old were you when you got married first?
SALOMON: I was married in 1934.

Harper: So you were 24?
SALOMON: Yes. I was married for two years and then when he left I didn’t go afterwards.

Harper:  Where did you meet your husband?
SALOMON: Well, this is not this one. The first one, we met through our watersports. We had our watersports and we were there, and that’s when I met him. 

Harper: Was he Jewish?
SALOMON: Yes. He was Jewish. Even so, we were not very Jewish, let’s say, very religious. But that’s one thing, I would never have married somebody else.

Harper: What year did you get your visa? To Bolivia, did you say?
SALOMON: Yes. A visa to Bolivia, and that was in ’39.

Harper: Okay, can you tell me, before we start there, can you tell me about Kristallnacht? Did you witness it? What happened, what you saw, and how your life changed after that?
SALOMON: My brother from Essen came and said, “Something is going on, and I’m afraid to stay at home, and I better stay here.” So he stayed overnight, and that night the Nazis came into the houses where Jewish people lived, and he went out and made the Hitler salute and passed by them, and left, then went right away home to his wife and he had a small child. After a while, my other brother said, “I better get out and get the car and stay out of the way.” So he left. And he was, for some reason or another, we could never figure out why, he was the only blond in our family, so he could easily go out without anybody recognizing him as a Jew. My parents and I, we were in the apartment, and then we heard terrible screaming from another Jewish family, where the Nazis were in. We didn’t know what they were doing over with them, what was happening and so on. But we left the apartment, and in Germany you usually had your laundry room way upstairs. So we left the apartment and went upstairs into the laundry room and hid there. Then when everything was quiet, and it was already morning, we came down to our apartment, and lo and behold, nothing happened in our apartment, everything was fine. The other Jewish families, they did all kind of damage to the apartment. They must have forgotten us. 

Well, we left the apartment, my brother came and picked us up, and we decided what we were doing was cruising around the streets. We passed by where our business was, and that was in shambles. All the glass was broken; all the windows were broken; the inside just was terrible. Everything was taken out of the places where it was and was thrown on the floor, but we did not go in. We just coasted by. The employees were there, and saw what was going on. But we coasted through the streets, and I was hidden, looking more Jewish (my parents didn’t look Jewish at all). I was sitting on the floor because I was afraid. 

So we did this for quite a long time, and when we finally went back to our home, somebody remembered that they had forgotten our apartment. Everything was down in the street. Everything. There was not a cup, a plate, or anything left in the house. The furniture were all apart, and demolished. It was one big mess. Everything was on the floor. But what could we do? We had to have something. We got out of the car and took what was still usable, like the mattress and things like this, and brought it back in the house. We took the furniture and put it all in one room, and had it all set there in the one room, and we made the best out of the rest of the rooms, what we could do. There was nothing we could do anymore. The reason they found us, we had one employee at one time, and we had to let him go because he was stealing, and the others told us about it. So, my father had to let him go, and that was his revenge. He remembered that they didn’t destroy our apartment, and he found enough other Nazis who went in and did it. The featherbeds were opened and all the feathers were let out.

Harper: How soon did your father go back to work, or try to go back to work?
SALOMON: We went the same day, back to our store.

Harper: I thought you didn’t want to go inside.
SALOMON: Afterwards. After we saw what was in the house, we back to the business and tried to make the best of it, and tried to put it back together as much as possible. Then we were told we had to sell the business within one week.

Harper: The government said that?
SALOMON: [Snorts] Government? The Nazis said it. They told us it has to be sold within one week.

Harper: Did someone come to the door? Did they send you a letter?
SALOMON: I don’t remember anymore how it was. I think they sent some people over who told us “as Jews, you cannot have that business anymore, and you have to sell it, and you have no permission anymore to have that.” So, how can you sell a business in one week? Not even as destroyed as it was, and we had to put it together first. And I really don’t know how long after that it was, so we had to sell the business for a ridiculous price, because you couldn’t get a decent price, what it was worth or anything. You just had to give to the one who gave you the most money. What we got for it, we had to put in the bank and we never got anything. 

[Phone rings; Salomon asks Harper to get it; recording cuts off then resumes.]

Harper: So I believe we left off… 
SALOMON: That we had to sell the business, and that we sold it for a ridiculous price, and even that money we had to put in the bank, and we never saw the money. It had to be given to a certain place in the bank, and we never got a penny out of it. They confiscated the money, and we never got anything.

Harper: So at this time did you have your visa to South America already?
SALOMON: I had my visa to go to Bolivia and my brother and I were supposed to go together, and a friend of ours also. We were supposed to go together, and in the last minute they kept my brother back and he had to have some special extra paper for some reason, I can’t remember why, but he could not go on the ship, which we luckily got. It was very difficult to get a place on a ship to leave. They held him back, and he came about six months later, but he couldn’t go at the same time as we did.

Harper: Before you start your story, I want to know, first of all, why you decided to wait after you got the visa, and then how long after Kristallnacht did you go?
SALOMON: Well, the Kristallnacht was, as you know, on the 9th of November. The anniversary is pretty soon, in about two weeks. We had… did we have the visas already when we had the Kristallnacht… I think so, I don’t know anymore exactly if we had the visas by this time. We had to have first a ship where we could go with. You couldn’t just go; you had to have permission to go, number one. And when you packed your things, you had permission to take several things along, or they didn’t allow you to have those. That all took time; you couldn’t just go from one moment to another; it wasn’t possible. But that night was a horrible night. I remember, when we went upstairs, to the laundry room, there was a window. We looked out that window, and we saw fire and we said, “Oh, there is something burning there.” And we couldn’t really figure out what it was, we were glad we saw something burning that way they hopefully wouldn’t see us. We found out later that it was the synagogue that was burning. We saw that burning. So that is… that night was too horrible to even think about it. 

I had one relative who lived not far away from Düsseldorf, in a small place, and he was a very known businessman. His daughter-in-law was living with him; her husband was already gone to Holland. She and the baby were at home, so that night she took the baby, she was barefoot, she had nothing on, and left the house, and asked whoever it was, and by accident it was the Nazis, to help her. Something was going on in the house. They broke into the house and so on. Well, it turned out they killed her father-in-law. In that house, they killed him right there. If she hadn’t left the house, maybe they would have killed her and the baby too. That was the Kristallnacht. There were many people who were killed that night.
 
Harper: Did you have any of your family members, uncles or anything, arrested that night, do you know?
SALOMON: I wouldn’t remember that anybody was arrested. I think in Essen, I don’t know if it was that night or shortly after, but my other brother was arrested. Luckily for some reason he got out. But he was arrested for a while.

Harper: Where did they take him?
SALOMON: To jail. He was taken to a regular jail because he did tell someone some Nazi jokes, and that was the reason he was arrested.

Harper: So you decided to leave as soon as you possibly could.
SALOMON: As soon as we had our ship that we could go on, we left. Then as I said my brother couldn’t go with us, so a friend of ours and I, we left alone.

Harper: And your father was still convinced this would blow over?
SALOMON: Well, by then he had his doubts. He put his Iron Cross on and so that might help that people think, “Well, he can’t be so bad after all if he has an Iron Cross from the War,” but it didn’t help him anything. So he knew it was time, and he said once we were gone, to try as much as possible that we could get visas for him. But in the meantime, they found out when we got to Bolivia, they found out that our visas were false visas. Some high officials in Bolivia falsified papers and gave it to people. After we got in there, we couldn’t care less if they were false or not, we got out from Germany and we’re there. But of course there was no possibility getting anything else. We tried everything. It was not possible to get anything. 

Harper: So tell me about your trip to Bolivia. When you left Germany, you took a train from  Düsseldorf?
SALOMON: We took a train from Düsseldorf to Hamburg.

Harper: I’m sorry, do you remember what day exactly you left?
SALOMON: It was in… I think my brother left on the 10th and we left on the 19th of May. In 1939. Either ’38 or ’39.

Harper: Must’ve been ’39.
SALOMON: ’39, yes. ’38 was Kristallnacht, so it was in May of 1939. That is when we left. When we packed I had one of those, I don’t know what you call them here, big boxes where you put everything in? I had a Nazi standing there, looking at everything I put in my luggage. I had some things which I would have liked to take, which I got for wedding presents, and I wanted to take those along. He said, “No, you cannot take that.” And I had to leave it there.

Harper: What were those things?
SALOMON: I don’t remember. What was it at the time that I wanted to take? What was it? What I wanted to take… I think I wanted some china, something like this, but I couldn’t take this. I don’t remember whether it was, but he staying there looking at everything that I took, and some things, no, I can’t take them. So I had to leave it. So, we left and we went from Düsseldorf to Hamburg, and took in Hamburg the ship and left. [chuckles] The funny thing was this friend of ours, when he was there, he had to take his clothes off completely and they checked him over, all over. And luckily he didn’t have anything with him. Then we got on the boat and had to see what was going on.

Harper: How long did the trip take?
SALOMON: I don’t remember anymore, how long we were on that ship. I have no idea anymore. Three weeks or something? We went first to Chile, and from Chile we had to take a train to Bolivia, and that went up, up, up, higher, and higher, the altitude. I got so sick. We took a ticket, third-class or whatever we could do, they took the ticket, and they said, “You cannot take third-class, you have to take first-class.” And I said, “listen, I have to take what I can pay for, and nothing else. If I can afford first-class, I will go with third class-no matter if people do that or don’t do that.” “Well, the Indians go third-class.” I said, “I don’t care. Then I have to sit with the Indians.” Anyhow, I got so sick in the train. The people who got first-class got paid from the Jewish whatever it was. At that time I hadn’t learned to take anything from other people, and I said, “If I can go with third-class, I will go third-class.” And we didn’t have much money. We paid the visas and we had to leave some money in case my parents could go out, so we did what we could. Then I got so terribly sick that someone from the first class, it was a doctor, as a matter of fact, he said “You have to lay down; you cannot stay here.” He took me to first-class and he gave me his place. So that’s the way we got to Bolivia.

When we left the train in Bolivia, then a committee was there which took the people and “Where are you going? Where are you going?” and so on, so that where we got…

Harper: So you were there with a number of German refugees?
SALOMON: Yes, we were quite a number coming all the time.

Harper: Who were you with exactly? You were with your friend and your brother?
SALOMON: With a friend, not with my brother, he couldn’t come along.

Harper: Who was this friend? What was his name?
SALOMON: Walter Salomon. 

Harper: You knew him from?
SALOMON: Yes, we were friends, we were altogether friends from the Jewish club and so on.

Harper: You were traveling together?
SALOMON: Yes. So we had to see where we could stay and where they told us we could stay, in Bolivia. We got there, I was feeling miserable from that altitude, which I was not used to, and my husband looked – well, at that time not my husband, my friend – looked around and saw a restaurant and looked and saw a piano. He was a good piano player, so he talked to the owners which were Jewish, from Austria, from Vienna, and he said, “Can you use by any chance a piano player?” And they looked at him and said, “You are a piano player?” And he said, “Yes, I am!” They said, “Okay, sit at the piano and play something, let’s hear it.” And he played the piano and had a job within two hours there. He had a job.

Harper: So he became the piano player in this restaurant?
SALOMON: Yes, he became a piano player there, and that of course helped a lot. 

Harper: Wait, so you got off the train in the town. What town was this?
SALOMON: Hmm [pauses]… Isn’t that awful? [pauses] Well now, that is ridiculous. I lived there for five years! [pauses] I hope it comes back, I can’t remember. [laughs]

Harper: The point I want to get at is, this town that they took you to, was it a designated town? I mean, why did you stop in this town?
SALOMON: Well, that is the first stop where the train stops. And that’s where everybody got out, all the refugees got out there, that was the place where they went to. It was a main town in Bolivia.

Harper: Was it a city?
SALOMON: It was a city, yes, a good size. Well, for Bolivia a good-sized city, and there is where we stayed.

Harper: So did you get an apartment, or stay in a hotel?
SALOMON: First we got, from the Committee we got a place where there were 60 people, 60 people in that place, and so on. That’s all, in one big room, there wasn’t anything. I think, men were here, women were there, and that was it, no matter who it was. So that’s where we were the first night, and then my husband said: “Uh, uh, that won’t do.” We tried to get somewhere, an apartment, and even so that we weren’t yet married, we knew each other well enough that we could do that. So that’s what we did the next day, we got a little apartment.

Harper: Did you have to pretend you were married?
SALOMON: They didn’t even ask; the Bolivians didn’t care. And when I tell what the apartment was, you wouldn’t believe it! It had a very nice living room, and a dining room, and a kitchen, and everything was one room. Not as big as this one here. Maybe from there to over there. And that was everything, in that room. There were two beds, one was that way, one was that way, and when I went to bed, my husband had to go out – I mean my friend had to go out – and when he went to bed, I went out. So, that’s how we learned to live with each other. A toilet for the whole complex, I don’t know how many apartments they had, maybe 15 apartments or so? One toilet for all of them. And not a toilet where you can clean up, it just went down the hole. That was the hygiene in Bolivia [laughter]. You had a little thing where you put water in, outside you put the water in, inside there was no water. And that way you washed yourself. If you had to, it was better than living between the Nazis. So, we learned to live that way.

Harper: And how about the language? Was it difficult to communicate with people? 
SALOMON: Well, my husband was very good with languages. I mean, at that time, my friend. He spoke perfect French and through this he took some lessons in Spanish, not many, but he took lessons in Germany before we left. He learned very fast, the language, and when we got there he spoke already pretty good Spanish, so he had no difficulty learning Spanish. Even through that I learned French, which in the meantime I forgot a lot about it because I didn’t keep it up. I had a little bit more difficulty to learn it, but I learned it, and you can communicate with people if you have to. You learn a lot if you have to.

Harper: So he was working as a piano player. And what were you doing?
SALOMON: In the beginning there was nothing that I could do there. There were enough people already who got all the jobs there were to do. What did I really do there? [pauses] I did something, I know that. [pauses] There was some laundry, and I helped out a little bit in that laundry and then when my brother came we had occasion to buy this laundry. It was not a laundromat like here. You have a few Indians who take in, let’s see, 30 pieces of laundry, they have around their backs, and deal with what they have around in those… I forget what they call those little things, and put the laundry in. Hang it on their back, go to the river, and wash the laundry on stones. It’s good for the laundry, to wash them there, and dry them on the stones, then in the evening they come back and bring the laundry back. Then the laundry is cleaned and you have some people, some Indians there, who iron the things and fold them together and then the people pick them up. So we built up a little business in the meantime, after my brother came, not before that. That’s what we did.

Harper: At this point, had you heard anything about your parents?
SALOMON: Yes, we had letters from my parents in between, and first they were all to my brother in America, who was in the meantime in America, and he sent the letters to us until we had a connection with them. So we heard from them, and it was getting worse, and last night I read some of the letters. “Try to get some way to get us out [from] here.” My parents moved then, to Duisburg, because there was a brother of my mother’s that lived there, and they moved together because they had to save whatever they could save to make it as cheap as possible. Because everything was gone, our business was gone, that Kristallnacht we lost everything there was to lose, absolutely everything. [pause, papers shuffling.] There is this one. 

Harper: So how long were you in this town, in Bolivia?
SALOMON: We were there five years exactly, and after five years I could not live there very good, any more. I went down to about 65 pounds. The climate wasn’t good for me. We tried if we could get something to go to Argentina. What we had, originally, in mind anyway. But then we couldn’t get anything that said we could go there. So my husband, through his piano playing, which he kept up, and then, besides the piano playing, he had another job there, and we tried to find that we could go to Argentina. And he had an acquaintance, and he said “Listen, I’m going back to Argentina…” – his business was done, whatever he did in Bolivia, I have no idea – “… and can I do something for you?” And [my husband] said “Yes, I wish you could take a friend along.” His wife was already back in Argentina, so he said “Oh, I can take her as my wife, because I have the passport which says that she is with me here, and she’s already gone.” So that’s what we did. I got with him, we got to the border, and there was another man with his son who wanted to go to Argentina and didn’t have a visa either. 

Well, we got to the border but I didn’t know that man. There is a place where you have to change planes, one goes to a certain place in Bolivia, and from Argentina that train comes to that certain place, and there you have to change from one place to another. Well, I had the luck, the man from […] the Argentinean border said, “You don’t have a passport. You can’t go.” And he kept me. I couldn’t go. So I was sitting there, at the border, and didn’t know what to do. So I thought I’d take the next train back, because I’m sitting here, there is nothing I can do. Then that man who also was caught, with his son, and couldn’t go either, he said “what are you going to do?” I said “I’m going back with the next train. What can I do? I cannot sit here.” And he said “I’m not going back. I’ll find a way how I’ll get over.” I said “Which way will you find?” [pauses] He found a way. He said “We go a few times back and forth, back and forth, and then when they know us well enough that they know we are coming, and we are going, then we disappear and go with the train, as soon as the train comes.” And that’s exactly what we did. We went one day, during the night, over to that place where we had to change to the other train. We went there and waited for the train to come, went into the other train, and went to Argentina. 

Harper: Was Walter already in Argentina?
SALOMON: No. 

Harper: He was…?
SALOMON: Still in Bolivia.

Harper: You weren’t married at this time?
SALOMON: No.

Harper: So, this was five years after you arrived?
SALOMON:  Mhmm.

Harper: So what had you been hearing about your parents, and what had you been hearing about what was going on in Europe?
SALOMON: Well, we knew what was going on in Europe. Of course, we read the papers; we knew what was going on.

Harper: You knew about the extermination camps?
SALOMON: Oh, yes, we knew. I mean, we didn’t know exactly like we know today, but we knew about the camps. We didn’t know they were extermination camps, we thought they came into those camps and… one day we got a letter which said… in that letter, I was looking for it this morning, I could not find it, that is where [my father] said, “Well, this will be our last letter from here. We have been notified that we will be picked up tomorrow morning, and where we go, or what becomes of us we do not know. We only hope that we can get into contact with you.” And that was the last we ever heard.

Harper: Do you know what year that was?
SALOMON: I think it was ’42.

Harper: Now do you have any idea where they went or where they were killed?
SALOMON: No. I got – I’ll show you the book later on – I got a book and there for the first time I found the name of my father. And I never found the name of my mother, and that I cannot understand. I know they left together. What happened afterwards, once they were in what they called a train, which was an animal wagon. What came from then I have no idea. If they separated them already there, or what happened. At one time somebody told me they had seen my mother in Dachau someplace, but I doubt that very much, I don’t think so. I think my parents end, it was right away; that they killed them there and then.

Harper: So you think that they were taken to a camp in Poland?
SALOMON: I show you where. [sound of microphone being put down, walking, undecipherable talk, recording breaks.]

Harper: I think we left off by you telling me that you received a letter from your parents. What year was that again?
SALOMON: I think it was 1942.

Harper: And after that you never heard anything?
SALOMON: No, that was the last I ever heard from my parents.

Harper: Did you hear anything from the Red Cross or anything?
SALOMON: I tried through the Red Cross, and we tried from other things where they said you would find out, but what I didn’t try to find out was from Israel. That I never did try to find out. But we never could find anything; not my parents, not my husband’s parents. He never found out. And a sister of his, she was killed. For my husband, two of his sister’s came back from the concentration camps, the third one did not come back. But one of those sisters… she… when she was still in Germany she had a baby, and that child was two years old, and got sick. She could not find a doctor who would help that child, because it was a Jewish child, and they didn’t allow the doctors to help Jewish people. So the child died. And when she was sent to the concentration camp she was pregnant. When she had that child, she had to stand up and they took the child, tossed it in the air, and a bunch of teenagers had to shoot at the child. The one who got the best shot got a medal. Now how do you like that?

Harper: Do you know what camp that was in?
SALOMON: No. No, I don’t remember what camp it was. It was somewhere in Poland. But when she came back, later on her husband was killed, her mother-in-law died, and as a matter of fact she was here at one time, visiting us. Later after a few years, she got very mentally ill and that way she died. But how can you get over something like that? It’s no wonder when somebody got mentally ill.

Harper: If I can go back to Bolivia?
SALOMON: Mhmm.

Harper: So, you escaped, essentially, to Argentina?
SALOMON: Yes.

Harper: So this would be 1943, around that?
SALOMON: From ’39 to ’44.

Harper: So, before you left, you knew your family in Germany was dead?
SALOMON: Well, they disappeared. We knew that.

Harper: I mean, in your mind, did you know they were most likely going to be killed or did you think that they would come back. Did you have any idea?
SALOMON: By that time we did not have any hope that we would find them again. We knew they would not come out because how could they survive something like that for that many years? By then we knew that there was not much hope left.

Harper: And you and Walter, were not yet married?
SALOMON: Well we then… as soon as we got to Argentina we got married.

Harper: How long was it between the time you were in Argentina and then when he came to Argentina? How long were you in Argentina by yourself?
SALOMON: Oh, he came after a few weeks. It was maybe at most a couple of months that I was alone in Argentina.

Harper: Oh yes, I wanted to ask one quick question about Bolivia: was there a synagogue?
SALOMON: Yes, yes, there was. Though calling it a synagogue was maybe a little, eh. But there was a place where Jewish people met and where they had services. 

Harper: Was there a rabbi?
SALOMON: I think he was a rabbi, yes.

Harper: Tell me about Argentina.
SALOMON: Well, Argentina. Of course, we were financially better off when we got to Argentina than when we got to Bolivia. I mean, I knew we had made money, not a lot of money, but at least enough that we could move from Bolivia to Argentina. The life in Bolivia wasn’t easy. You think about 100 to 150 years backwards. I told you about the bathroom. There is in a complex where there is maybe 15 so-called “apartments” which are really one room – not apartments, they are one room. You have one room, and that is your apartment. All the same people use one so-called “toilet” with nothing else there. So you can imagine how clean everything is, and how hygiene is over there. At least, at the time when I was there. By now it might be a lot better. I hadn’t seen a bath in five years. You just sponge-bathed, but having a real bath? You don’t have that. We had one, yes, in that apartment, in that complex was one bathroom with even a tub, but there was a family – I think they were from Iran – and they had about six children, and they used the bathtub. No hot water, you don’t have running water there, you fill the tub with hot water. They used that for all six children in that same bathwater, and the parents on top of it, that used up water, then they left that bathtub without cleaning it. So I preferred not to have a bath in that bathtub, and I wasn’t going to clean that bathtub for them. My sponge bath was a lot better than that! So, no bath in all that time. You can exist with… [pauses] Things were a lot better when we got to Argentina.

We found a nice apartment in Argentina. I have to go back to Bolivia. We had another arrangement there, we had two rooms, one on this side, a garden on top of the house. What do you call that? A place that you go when the weather is nice?

Harper: A balcony? A sun deck?
SALOMON: A sun deck, that’s what it is. We had one room here, and another room here, and between was a large sun deck. 

Harper: Was this in Bolivia?
SALOMON: It was in Bolivia, yes, it was when we lived a little bit better.

Harper: I’m sorry to interrupt; were you and Walter still living together? Did your brother have his own place?
SALOMON: No! He lived with us! We lived together, yes, we lived together. There was one bed here, one bed there, one bed there. The guys had to get out when I got dressed, and I got out of there when they got dressed. It was very easy to do. Sometimes when we were a little bit disgusted with meals and so on, we said, “Ahhhh, if it were only this way, and this way…” But then we told ourselves, “Well, how would everybody who is still in Germany love to come here and live this way as we are living? They would gladly exchange places with us.” Then we got over that little idea from what it was. But you have to get used to living like that. Then we got to Argentina and my husband met a former acquaintance of his, and they had a big, big, business in meat. Sausages and things like this. He started out playing the piano in a nice little place where a lot of those people from the Old Country came and sat at evenings there. That way my husband met those people. They said right away, “You know something, why don’t you come and work at our place? You can play us piano on Saturday evenings, and come be an employee of ours!” So that’s how he started working in their place.

Harper: When did you get married?
SALOMON: Right away when he and my brother came to Argentina. Right away we got married.

Harper: Can you tell me a little about this? Had you fallen in love together before that, or was it random and did you jut say “hey, let’s get married,” or what was the situation exactly?
SALOMON: We got used each other, I mean living together, and going through all this together, losing our parents and going through all the misery with the Indian people and the life over there and so on. We had a lot in common, and we knew each other already, very well, from Germany. He came visiting us in our house in Germany. We knew each other very well. We were like brother and sister, and that was the way we did live in Bolivia, like brother and sister, not like lovers or anything. When I left for [Argentina] and they stayed back, and I got the first letter from my brother and him, he wrote that they both missed me so much, and he wanted to marry me when they get to Argentina, and that’s what we did. 

Harper: You agreed with it right away?
SALOMON: I agreed with it right away. I knew we were meant for each other, and we knew each other long enough, so that’s what we did.

Harper: Did you get your own apartment then?
SALOMON: Oh yes.

Harper: Did you all still live together?
SALOMON: We still lived together, we had an apartment and my brother lived with us all the time until he left for the United States. My [other] brother wrote to him and asked if he didn’t want to come here and live in the United States, and that’s what he did.

Harper: Where did he move to?
SALOMON: Here to Portland.

Harper: Oh.
SALOMON: Because my [other] brother lived here in Portland. So he moved here, to Portland.

Harper: What were you doing then, at this time?
SALOMON: In Argentina? In Buenos Aires? Well, I was working in a fashion store, on the famous Florida Street. They were all the elegant stores there, everything. I met a friend from Düsseldorf, I met her by accident somewhere, I don’t even remember where. She asked what I was doing and so on, and said, “Would you like to have a job there? I can get you a job there.” And I said I would gladly take it. So I worked in that store, saw a lot of elegant people, and made some money. My husband had two or three jobs there, and my brother started out in… what was it, what they had? [pauses] Ceramics. We met a relative in Argentina and he had a ceramics place and he said, “Why don’t you come in and work with me there?” So that’s what he did. 

Harper: Were you involved in the Jewish community at all, in Buenos Aires?
SALOMON: No. I was not. I knew a lot of Jewish people. Automatically you get into those places where you meet Jewish people, so those people, while my husband was working, we met a lot, and we went to the synagogue. But like I said, we weren’t very religious, we didn’t go to the synagogue every Saturday or so on, only on holidays or special days and so on. That’s when we went to synagogue and belonged to a synagogue over there. I don’t even know the name anymore. Too many different places to remember in all those years. After all, I’m already… I came in the end of 1949, I came to the United States, and I still have a bad accent, as I know. [laughter]

Reich: It’s a very nice accent. [Harper laughs]
SALOMON: Oh, I don’t know if it’s so nice. If I could help it I wouldn’t have it, but it’s the best I can do after going through all the different languages.

Harper: Were you happy in Buenos Aires?
SALOMON: Yes, we were. It was very nice, I couldn’t complain. And coming from Bolivia to Argentina, I mean that was different like day and night. There you came into some culture you didn’t have in Bolivia. But I came here because both of my brothers wrote, “Why don’t you come here to the United States, to Portland? We three are all that’s left from the family, there is nobody left. So why don’t you come here?” So I told my husband, “It’s up to you. If you want to go, we are going, if you want to stay in Argentina, we’ll stay.” I know we had some difficulty with the new language, and Latin… wait, not Latin, English, was not a favorite of my husband, because he was in Latin languages. So one day he said, “You know something? We haven’t got much to lose, if we have to lose, it’s just jobs, but other than that we haven’t got anything to lose. Why don’t we go to the United States?” So I was glad that he decided to do it, and today I’m even more glad that he did because over there I would be all alone, here at least I have some relatives, nieces and nephews.

Reich: I’d like to interject a question: were you involved in the Jewish community in Argentina?
SALOMON: No. No, I was not.

Reich: But you were aware of the community?
SALOMON: Oh, yes, definitely, I was aware of those, and I really didn’t have enough time to get involved in those places. 

Reich: Were the Jews that you knew mostly western European or eastern European Jews?
SALOMON: Mostly western. Through the job that my husband did where I was telling you before we became good friends. That one who has the big sausage factory, or meat business. I had been there two years ago. That was enormous. The father of that thing, who built that place, is gone, he’s not living any more. But the two sons have run that place, and they really made something out of it. Enormous. I was there two years ago and saw it. It is unbelievable. So I’m still in contact with those people, and they became good friends of ours. So we got more into the friends and things like this, and became involved in those. But they were nearly all western European Jewish people. 

Reich: Were you there while Perón was in power?
SALOMON: Yes. Perón, yes.

Reich: Do you remember any instances of antisemitism while you were there?
SALOMON: Well, there was always a certain kind of antisemitism. While we were there we really had no trouble with that at all. Absolutely none, not like it is today. That’s why I said I’m glad I’m not there anymore. I was there, as I said, I think it was two years ago, maybe even three, when I went there. But I didn’t like it from the beginning anymore. Not only was there the kind of antisemitism, there was so much dirt in the streets, and I said, “For God’s sake, how is it possible for so much dirt to be in the streets?” So the way it is, I just don’t like it anymore, I couldn’t wait to go back. I was there for six weeks, and I was glad when I came home. There is nothing better than good old America. There is absolutely nothing better, and we better watch out, because what the skinheads and all this that’s going on, it started out in Germany that way. There were only a few, and then there were a few more… we better watch it.

Harper: You said you had something to tell us, while we were in the kitchen earlier?
SALOMON: I had what?

Harper: When we were in the kitchen you mentioned you had something interesting to tell us.
SALOMON: Yes, that was the thing with my sister-in-law, with the child that they killed. I just remembered that at that time.

Harper: Ah. Okay, so, you came to Portland in 1949?
SALOMON: Yes, in December of ’49, Christmas time. That was when we came to the United States. 

Harper: You got jobs? Did you have children?
SALOMON: No. The reason we didn’t have children was on purpose. Because if we had children I wanted to give them at least something of what I had, and if I couldn’t give my children that, then I’d rather not have children. I don’t want to have children when I have to live from the hand to the mouth. Now we had to start again; first, we left Germany and started again in Bolivia. The second time, we started in Argentina. And the third time, we started here. Then we were too old for children. As I said, we wanted to give our children something or didn’t want children. And I don’t regret it. My father one time gave us these words, he said, “The children you do not have, you don’t have to love, and the children you do have, you wouldn’t want to miss for a million.” The ones I don’t have, I don’t miss. I have relatives here, I have a very nice nephew who lives five minutes from here, on Erickson. I can walk over and 10 minutes I’m here. Then I have Gabby, and family, and then her brother Ralph, who is my financial adviser. [laughs] In a way, that he comes every three months and watches that I pay my taxes. When tax time is here he sees that my tax papers go to an auditor who takes care of it, and tells me how much I have to pay. So you see, I have everything I need.

Harper: When you moved to Portland, where did you live and what did you do?
SALOMON: When we came here to Portland, I had one brother who rented a house for us, including him. He was the one who always lived with us. He said, “Do you mind, or would you like that?” I said, “Of course you’ll live with us again!” So he did live with us again, and he was working, and as a matter of fact bought into this business and dry cleaning plant. So I got a job there, in that place. My husband started out… there was a place here called Joseph’s. A plastic company. He worked in that company in the beginning, and then at one day (I don’t remember how that came to), he became a salesman for a plastic company in Los Angeles. Later on I gave up my work with the company, with that cleaning place, I worked in this place, they had several little stores, and I worked in one of these, as a manager, in those dry cleaning stores. Then I gave that up and my husband became a salesman after a while. We didn’t like that he was working all the time, he was on the road and I was home alone, so we decided that I would go on the road with him, and that’s what I did. I got myself a little line and then worked with my husband on his line, and that’s where we started out.
   
Harper: You were still based in Portland though?
SALOMON: Oh yes, we stayed out in Portland all the time.

Harper: How about your brother, did he get married?
SALOMON: My brother got married, unfortunately to the wrong woman. Non-Jewish, and that didn’t turn out to be very happy. Unfortunately he died pretty early in life, in his 65th year. He had cancer and he died. My other brother passed away when he was 76 years old, Gabby’s father. They had a grocery store, a little grocery store, and that was that. 

Harper: Where in Portland did you live?
SALOMON: We lived on the east side, on I think it was Ninth Street, where we used to live. We rented a very old house with a nice big ground around it with fruit trees. It was very nice. It was a lot of work but it was very nice, we liked the place. After my brother got married he lived with us.

Harper: And how long did you live in that house?
SALOMON: Hmm. That I really don’t know any more, how long we lived there. Quite a time. Then we bought our own house, and as a matter of fact, that old house, we did buy that house. We didn’t rent it, we bought that house. For a while I had my boss living with us, and my brother, so I had two persons. But then my brother got married. And how did we get rid of that boss of mine? [laughs] I don’t remember any more how we got rid of him, but then we bought another house which didn’t have so much work. Then, as I said, we went on the road and were gone a lot.

Reich: Did you ever hear from your first husband?
SALOMON: No. Thank God, no. [laughs] Don’t want to know what he is doing. 

Harper: I assume your husband passed away?
SALOMON: Eight years ago.

Harper: In Portland?
SALOMON: Yes. Here in Portland.

Harper: How old was he?
SALOMON: 84. But nobody believed that he was 84, he looked much younger. We found out, from one minute to another, we had a pretty bad car accident, which wasn’t our fault, but it was a pretty bad one, and then we found out that my husband had cancer. We didn’t know before, and he didn’t know before, thank God. Then it went very fast. Upwards hill. He passed away within three months of that, that he knew he had cancer. Within three months he was gone, and I’m glad for that because we always promised each other that we do not end up in a nursing home, and I had a big fight with my doctor at that time, when I had to bring him into the emergency [room]. And the next day my doctor told him they couldn’t keep him long because they couldn’t do anything for him anymore. I jumped at him and said, “Don’t you dare put him in a home! If you don’t keep him here in the hospital, he comes home!” He said, “You can’t handle that.” I said, “You leave it up to me what I can handle! But he is not going into a nursing home!” But thank God within two days afterwards he was gone.

Harper: And you’ve been living here ever since?
SALOMON: I waited two years and stayed in my house. But after two years I sold it and I wanted to buy a condominium, but then somebody, a neighbor, we’re good friends, told me about this place, and I said “Nuh-uh, I’m never going into a house like that. But I can look. Why not? Looking doesn’t cost me anything.” I called up another niece, one who lived by here and I said, “Would you come with me, to go there and look at that place?” and she said, “I would gladly look it over!” Because she was thinking about her mother. And when I saw that place, I was thinking, “I am an idiot. Why should I buy a condominium?” Here I have everything. All my friends passed away. Every single one passed away. I said “Why shouldn’t I go and do something like this? In a condominium I am just as alone as I am in the house.” And the next day I called up and I said, “I’ll take it.” Ever since, I’m here, and I’m not sorry that I took it. Well, Gabby’s mother said at that time… well, I said to Gabby, “If you want to see it, why don’t you come and go with me and see the place?” She said, “I would love to do that. Can I bring mother along?” I said sure. So she brought her along, and the first thing her mother said was, “I would never move into anything like that!” That was it. Gabby wished she would have, but she didn’t. And she didn’t because my brother lived with her in that apartment, and that’s why she isn’t leaving that apartment. And she is afraid she’ll give up her… what do you call that? … Independence! She will not give up her independence. I didn’t give up my independence! I can do here what I want to, I can go when I want, and where I want, and I can come back when I want, I have a key here. I haven’t given up anything. 

Harper: Do you have any questions?
Reich: I was going to ask; when you were living in Argentina, or even after you came here, were you aware of the shelter it was providing for Nazis?
SALOMON: Oh yes.

Reich: You were aware of that when you were in Argentina?
SALOMON: Yes, we knew that. We even knew where they were, and we tried not to go into any of those places. We knew very well what that was, that the Argentineans let those people come in there and let them have shelter. We were well aware of that.

Reich: Was the Jewish community vocal about that?
SALOMON: Well, they didn’t make too much out of it. We wanted our peace, and we thought they’d get older and die and that’s the end of them. They checked it out, they knew what was going on and where they were. I mean, they were very well aware of it. 

Harper: When did you find out about the destruction of the European Jews?
SALOMON: We knew that when we were leaving.

Harper: But when did you fully realize?
SALOMON: We realized when we left, when we went away. We knew that. I mean, there were people, like my father was, they didn’t want to believe it and they didn’t believe it would ever come to what it did come to. But we were well aware of what was coming, that we had no future, that the Jews had no future in Germany any more. 

I went back to Germany, I don’t remember exactly the time, when we heard about, and got into contact with my two sisters-in-law, in Germany. I told him, “You have to go and see them. I am not coming, because I don’t have anybody over there any more, but you have to go.” He went, and he came back after eight days, and he said, “You never send me alone anymore. Anywhere! I am not going!” He didn’t like it at all. It was his sister’s, I think it was her 75th birthday, and they wrote that we should come, and so on, and then we decided. My husband said, “Don’t not visit and send me because I will not go. Either you go with me or we are not going.” And I said, “Okay, we owe them that much, let’s go.” And that’s what we did. We went, and when we were there a few days, I said to my husband, “How would you like to go for a week to Spain? Let’s have a nice time in Spain.” I said, “I’m not going to stay here until your sister’s birthday, not in Germany. Let’s go some other place.” So we went to Spain for a week, then we came back and had that birthday there, then we went home again. I did what we had to do to see them, but I said to my husband when we came back, I said, “That’s the last time I ever go to Germany.” I found one of our former employees, and they gave me a nice welcome to Germany, but in everyone I saw, the people in the street, I thought, “Was that one of them?” I just didn’t trust anybody while I was there. Absolutely nobody. I couldn’t wait until I got out of there. And I still don’t trust them, no matter what. 

Reich: Did you go to Düsseldorf?
SALOMON: Yes. 

Reich: Did you see your old house?
SALOMON: Well, I didn’t go to the old apartment, but I went to our store, which was in the meantime, a very small store. They parted it. While we had the business, we took apart from another owner to our business so that we had more. But they parted it again, and it was nothing anymore. That was the old town. I’ll show you a picture [rustling sound]

Reich: We’re actually almost out of tape.
Harper: Okay, why don’t we wait and you’ll show us the picture later?
Reich: Let’s just finish now.
SALOMON: Okay.

Harper: Well, I think we’re pretty much finished.
SALOMON: Yes.

Harper: Did you leave anything out?
SALOMON: [chuckles] Well, I wouldn’t know. I know that maybe tonight when I’m thinking about that I’ll say, “Oh! We could have talked about this, and we could have talked about that,” but… It’s a long time back. It’s over 50 years back. So not everything is in your mind any more. You remember them when certain occasions come up, you remember that.

Harper: Do you have a message for future generations who may be watching this tape?
SALOMON: Well, my main message is: Watch what is happening here in America, don’t let the skinheads and everything that belongs to them get out of hand, because that is the way it started in Germany. There was a very small group, and you didn’t pay any attention to them, and the rest of it, you know what happens. So watch out for something like that.

Harper: Well, thank you very much.
SALOMON: You’re very welcome.
Reich: We can do more another day.