Edith Rosenthal Lavender

Harper: Hello. Thanks for being with us.
LAVENDER: Hello.

Harper: Could we begin please by you telling us your name, your maiden name, your date and place of birth?
LAVENDER: Edith Holst [sp?] Lavender. My maiden name was Rosenthal [spells out]. I was born in Wiesbaden, Germany. You want the truth? November 24, 1913, which unfortunately makes me 80 years in a few days.

Harper: Congratulations! Can you tell us about your parents, their names and what they did?
LAVENDER: My father was Leon Rosenthal. He was born in 1875 in a small town near Wiesbaden. My brother, who is an historian and a rabbi, did quite some research already while we were still in Germany a long time ago. We know that the family has lived in the Rhineland since 1600. He [the father] was in the First World War where he got the Iron Cross First Class. He came home from the war a sick man due to a stomach wound. I never knew a healthy father. Both my brother and I were born at the beginning of World War I. I was born in ’13; my brother came eleven months later in 1914. My mother comes from quite a famous family. She also was born near Wiesbaden, and I have some pictures here. She was born in the small town of Kulmbach, which is now a suburb of Wiesbaden, in 1888. 

Her family originally came about 1769 to Germany. They had been living in Bohemia, near Prague, ever since they had to leave Spain. My mother’s family came from the city of Toledo, Spain, in 1492, but they moved to Padua in Italy, where my forefathers were printers of Hebrew Bibles and Hebrew manuscripts. From there they had to leave and went to Bohemia and lived there until Maria Theresa, the queen, had all Jews leave Bohemia in 1765 [actually 1745]. That’s when they went to Germany and took the name Landau because they settled in a small town called Landau. Then from there they moved very shortly to Kulmbach. 

When I was invited by the mayor of Wiesbaden to be their honored guest, come back to Germany for two weeks with all expenses paid, I didn’t want to accept, but my family made me do it. My husband and I went, and that’s where all those books are from. I can show you. We were there for two weeks, and we of course visited Kulmbach and saw the cemetery where all my forefathers were buried. It had been destroyed during the time of the Nazis, but the little town of Kulmbach, which is now called Bad Kulmbach, has some good springs just like Wiesbaden does. They rebuilt it again. There’s a special gate now and a fence, and you have to go to the mayor’s office to get the key. I went there, and we saw the house my mother had been born in. I have a picture of that. My grandfather and great-grandfather had built the house, so our family certainly were no newcomers to Germany. And to be told then after 1933 that we didn’t belong was very strange to us because we were in a way more German than Jewish at that time. 

Even so, I was confirmed, and we belonged to a very fine Jewish congregation. I have some beautiful pictures of the synagogue, which was destroyed November 10, 1938. Now it is a parking lot and they have a little plaque on one side. I talked with the mayor because we were his guests and we saw him several times. I said, “We should really do something else.” He said, “Yes, it’s in the works. We are going to put a real memorial up.” I said, “Don’t you think it’s a little bit late? Now it’s 1992. That all happened in 1938. How much longer do you want to wait?” He had no answer. 

We were about 20 former Wiesbadeners that were invited. Every year they invite 20 people. It was quite interesting. Even though they’re tight, we were in the best hotel. Anything we wanted, we could have. They took us to Dussel Island [sp?] through the tunnels, all the places I had been as a child. They even asked me if I wouldn’t like to stay in Germany. You can imagine the answer I gave them.

Harper: Can you tell me what your parents did for a living?
LAVENDER: My father had a hardware store, and aside from that he also sold machines to bakers, which was his specialty. He traveled a lot when he was still healthy enough in the early 20s, but later on he had to give it up and his brother had to do it. He knew all the bakers in the Rhineland, he sold them huge machines, but we also had a hardware store that my mother was running. They gave it up in 1934 and moved to a smaller place until they left in ’38. When I left, they had already closed it, so in ’36 it was already closed.

Harper: What was your mother’s maiden name?
LAVENDER: Landau [spells out]. Her name was Emilia Landau. Her father was a rabbi for the little congregation in Kulmbach. He worked for them and also had a hardware store.

Harper: And your father’s parents?
LAVENDER: I never knew them. They died long before I was born. I did know my grandfather, the father of my mother. He died in 1921, but he was in what’s called feehandel [sp?]. He bought and sold as a middleman the animals from the farms. He was a …?

Harper: A broker?
LAVENDER: Yes, kind of a broker for the cows and sheep. Jewish people did that very much; he traveled all the time, my father tells me. I never knew him, but at that time they had a horse and wagon, and he walked a lot. He walked from place to place, went to the farmers, and asked them if they had any cows for sale, things like that.

Harper: Do you have any brothers and sisters?
LAVENDER: Yes, I have one brother, Dr. Frank Rosenthal. He was a professor at UCLA and has his PhD. He’s also a rabbi. He had a small congregation on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and later on in the Long Beach area. He has two children. His older son is Elden Rosenthal, who is a lawyer here in Portland, and then he has a daughter Eileen, who lives near Anchorage, Alaska, with her husband. Last year we visited them. I thought they lived in Anchorage, but it’s 45 miles outside in the wilderness. It’s what they like. We have two daughters, Eleanor and Fay. There’s Eleanor and there’s Fay [in picture]. Up there is my granddaughter, and these are my grandsons, two boys.

Harper: In your family, you don’t have any sisters, just the brother?
LAVENDER: Yes, just my brother and me. My father had a big family. There were eleven of them. But my mother, there were only four. Three brothers and one girl.

Harper: What was your religious life like growing up? Was your household religious?
LAVENDER: May I show you some pictures?

Harper: At the end we’ll show the pictures, but if you could …
LAVENDER: Yes, we belonged to a Reform congregation in Germany, in Wiesbaden. Our rabbi’s name was Dr. Paul Latzos [sp?]. I had Sunday School, but not what you call Sunday School. In Germany before the Nazis, it was regulated through the schools. The cantor was also a teacher. He went to the schools and we had two hours each week of religion. I went to my classroom, where there were all Jewish people, the Catholic girls went to a classroom with all the Catholic girls, and the Protestants went to a classroom with all the Protestants. We had two hours of religion. It was a state law and teachers were paid by the state. So we had a quite a good education. I learned Hebrew to read the prayer book. I can still read the prayer book now, and I could read Hebrew when I was in Israel. I could read street signs. I can’t really speak it, but I know enough of Hebrew to understand when I look at a paper or so.

Harper: Did your family observe the holidays, Shabbos?
LAVENDER: Not Shabbos. We had Friday night, yes, just like Neveh Shalom. I belong to Neveh Shalom. Before that we belonged to Beth Israel. Just like they do, Friday night and sometimes Saturday morning. But we had to go to school on Saturday morning, so we went to services Friday night. We didn’t go regularly, but of course Pesach. We had our Passover. We had our Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur, yes. I had a class of about 16-18 girls. I went to lyceum. That has to be paid for. Luckily I got in when you still went to the lyceum from the first grade on. Later on they changed it like here that children have to go to another school from grade school. But I didn’t have that. I went immediately to the lyceum. There were about 16-18 girls, only girls, and out of these, four, and later on five were Jewish. Of course, that was during the 20s. Wiesbaden is a very famous spa. It was founded by Julius Cesar, which is BC, and because it has hot springs it was called Aquis Mattiacis [or Aquae Mattiacorum, Latin for “Waters of the Mattiaci”]. Later on in about the eighth century under Charles, Carlos, whatever his name was, the name was changed to Wiesbaden, which means a bath in the meadow.

Harper: Was your family involved, or active in the Jewish community?
LAVENDER: Yes, we had mostly Jewish friends, even though we also had [inaudible]. My father was once the president of the board. They had terms of one year.

Harper: For the synagogue?
LAVENDER: Yes, for the synagogue. 

Harper: Was your family involved in any community secular activities, or in politics in any way?
LAVENDER: My mother was, like me, very much interested in the theater and opera. She was on the board for a while. My father liked to play cards, and they had a club there. I really don’t remember. They met every Sunday afternoon. He was a very busy man and also a very sick man. So, no, we were not involved in politics.

Harper: Can you tell me about the neighborhood you grew up in? Was it mostly Jewish or not Jewish? What it was called?
LAVENDER: I have pictures of it. We lived in an apartment on the Moritzstrasse [spells it] Sieben [seven]. Which was just about four or five minutes from our store on the Kirchgasse [spells out]. Wiesbaden was a town of about 75,000-100,000, plus the yearly influx of innumerable guests. We had lots and lots of fine hotels, and people came to Wiesbaden to drink the horrible water. It comes out at 170 degrees or something, and you drink that foul smelling stuff. It smells like rotten eggs, but it was famous. We had built during the time of the Emperor Wilhelm, a beautiful Kurhaus [cure house or spa building]. I have pictures if you want to see it. We always had a very fine opera. We had a good symphony orchestra. That’s what I was mostly interested in. I studied the piano from the time I was four years old, and my hope was always to be a world famous pianist. But then when the Nazis came, of course, that all ended with a bang. I had two recitals already before I was 14 years old.

Harper: Did you take private lessons?
LAVENDER: Only conservatory. We had a world famous conservatory in Wiesbaden that accepted me when I was eight years old.

Harper: Can you go into more detail about your schooling? What your school was like?
LAVENDER: May I tell you what happened? When I came back, the school was still there, Lyceum Number One, on Boseplatz [spells out]. There were girls only. Like I say, it was called lyceum. Boys went to the gymnasium. My brother and I went together for a while, then I went this way and he went that way, to the gymnasium and to the lyceum. That school is still there. What can I tell you about the school? It was so long ago. We started French in the second grade, we started English in the fourth or fifth grade, and I took Spanish two years before I graduated. By the time I was through, when I was 16, because I started school when I was five, I was very fluent in three languages plus German. I was very lucky. I got through in April 1931, and due to my father’s, people we knew, I landed a job with a chemical company. It was really a kind of branch, but it was on its own, of IG Farben. They engaged me for my languages, and I was immediately put into the foreign department. I was writing there. Of course, I remember those years much better than my childhood years.

I did belong to something. I forgot. I belonged to a German-Jewish group called Die Kameraden. It was a scout group. That’s what really kept me occupied and made the kids very happy, that scouting group. All my friends came from that group, all girls. The boys also had a group. My brother belonged to it, too, but he belonged to the boys’ group. And of course sometimes we met [the boys and girls], especially when we grew older, the groups sometimes met and had meetings together. Every year we went on trips, walking tours through Germany, singing and playing the mandolin or whatever, sleeping in barns and putting up tents — which I never could do; they always fell down when I put them up — and swimming, and things like that.

Harper: And you said it was Jewish scouts?
LAVENDER: Oh, yes, Die Kamaraden. Later they called it Blau-Weiss, Blue-White, after the Israeli — of course, there was no Israel then — after the Jewish colors. Blue-White, Blau-Weiss.

Harper: I believe you said earlier that your school was all Jewish?
LAVENDER: Oh, no. We were four or five Jewish girls in the class. But we had religion, two hours each week. I started with the languages. My favorite was history. I was very bad in math. In fact, I can add and subtract in my head and I can divide and multiply, and that’s what it is. I never got higher arithmetic or geometry. I just didn’t take the time for it. I was too involved with my piano to study math. I liked biology, I had chemistry, but very little stuck. My forte was languages and history and social studies.

Harper: Did the non-Jewish students in your class treat you differently, or the teachers?
LAVENDER: No, not in my school, but my brother and my husband tell it quite differently. There was no difference with us girls. I went to their houses; they came to my home. Still in all, my best friends were all Jewish, but we had a very friendly life with our non-Jewish neighbors.

Harper: When did you begin to notice a change towards the Jews?
LAVENDER: Not until 1933, not until after Hitler came in. Before that I worked at the Albert’s [?] plant, and they kept me until August 1935. Already in ’33 or ’34, I’m not quite sure, a letter was sent and my boss showed it to me, saying, “Can’t you replace the Jewess Edith Rosenthal with an Aryan girl?” The director of the plant replied, “Yes, as soon as you get me someone who can take shorthand in English, French, and Spanish, I’ll replace Fräulein Rosenthal.” Of course, that didn’t happen, but what happened was I was sitting in a place with maybe four other typists, when I had to type. I typed out everything. I was a very good typist, which probably had to do with my piano lessons. One day I put my work on one side and I went to lunch. When I came home, they had poured ink all over it.

Harper: The other workers?
LAVENDER: Yes, someone. I don’t know who did it. Then we were all eating in the canteen. They had hot food. We went there at 7:00am in the morning. In fact, I left the house at 6:30am and we worked from 8:00am until around 4:00pm. In between we had an hour and a half lunch for hot lunches. But right after 1933 they forbade me to go there, and I brought my own. My boss was a very nice guy, and he put me in a room by myself. There was a door that I could open with a button, which was very unusual in 1933 and ’34. It had a window. I could see who was coming. That’s the way I worked later, alone.

Harper: When did you first hear of Hitler?
LAVENDER: I saw him in’33. He was in Wiesbaden, staying in the finest hotel, and he was talking in the Kurpark [Spa Park].

[telephone rings]

Harper: I asked you when you first heard of Hitler, and you said you saw him in Wiesbaden.
LAVENDER: I went to see Tannhäuser that evening. Now in 1933 we still could keep our, how do you say for the opera? It’s a word in English. When you buy the whole concert series?

Harper: Subscription.
LAVENDER: Yes, subscription. I had my own subscription to the opera. Like I said, Wiesbaden had a long opera season, from September into June, showed everything, but everything in German, not singing in Italian, French, or Russian, or whatever, or English. I had Tannhäuser that night, an opera by Richard Wagner. I walked, of course — we had no car — from my home to the opera house, and millions of people were on our streets. When I came closer to the Kurpark, — because the Kurhaus and the Opera were one big plaza, one side and on the other side — I saw all those people there and I said, “My God. Now I remember, Hitler is here.” I walked on the side of it and had to walk a few steps. I was standing here, and Hitler was down there. He wasn’t farther away from me than the other side of the parking place. I wish I had had a stone and killed him, but I would have been killed, too.

Harper: Can you go into more detail about what changes occurred after Hitler came to power?
LAVENDER: It was in ’35, so I was called on the street by a boy in a car. The boy had gone to school with my brother, even though I didn’t know him. We did go to some dances and sing, and I met him once. He called me a dreckiger Jüdin [dirty Jew]. He spit at me. But that was about all I personally — you just knew that you were unwelcome. You saw the signs everywhere, Juden nicht erlaubt [Jews not allowed]. The Nuremberg laws came out. I don’t think at that time I had to wear anything. That didn’t come until 1938. 

[telephone rings]

You just felt it. I walked through the streets of the town, which I had been walking for — now you mustn’t forget that in ’33 it was my 20th birthday, so I wasn’t really a child anymore. That was also what made the difference when we went back to Germany. This was the first time I went back. Most of the people in the tour were younger than I was — in fact, my husband and I were the oldest on that trip — and they left Germany as children. They were four, eight, ten, maybe 12 years old, but I didn’t leave until I was much older, so I remember so much more.

I remember the stores. In fact, they had the book burning on April the 1st, 1933. The night before, Schwab [sp?] Bookstore called me. Mr. Schwab and I — well, he of course, was [inaudible] — but he knew me because I was in the store a lot. I bought a lot of books. I read an awful lot. He had a lending library too, so I got an awful lot of books there. He called me and said, “Fräulein Rosenthal, do you want to come tonight after dark? I put a box of books away for you. Do you want to have them? They’re books by Jewish authors. Tomorrow I have to give all my books to the committee, and they’re going to burn them.” So he gave me several books. I still have them. Books by Franz Werfel. All the books by Stefan Zweig. I have most of the books in the other room, the older books. These are all English books. Up there are some German books.

Harper: We’ll tape those later.
LAVENDER: He gave them to me. So I went that night and got the books. This time I went back to the store and his son is now there. His son is about my age, a little bit younger maybe, and when I introduced myself, he said, “Ah, I remember my father telling me there was a young Jewish girl who always came and he was friends with her and he gave her a box of books. Is that you?” I said yes. Then he gave me that little book on top there called Wiesbaden. Everybody — I may have been intelligent — I have a very high IQ — and I can be nice. I can also be not nice. But I was never pretty …

Harper: That’s not what Mr. Lavender said.
LAVENDER: He married me because I was a good cook [laughter].

Harper: Do you remember the book burning? Did you see the book burning happening?
LAVENDER: Oh, no. I stayed home. We wouldn’t go out.

Harper: The next day in the street, did you see …?
LAVENDER: No. I just know that on [inaudible Platz] they burned books, but I didn’t go near it. It would be silly. I wasn’t born dumb.

Harper: What was the talk in your family about these occurrences that were happening?
LAVENDER: If we talked about it at home? You see, I was working. My mother was working, which at that time was very unusual, but she was running the store. My father was sick most of the time. My brother, of course by that time, had left already. He went to the university for two years, I think, and then he had to leave, and he went to the Jewish university in Frankfurt. He lived in Frankfurt then, so I didn’t see him very much. 

I talked mostly with my friends. Of course we talked about it, quite a few. By ’34, ’35 my two best friends had left for Israel, for Palestine. They went to a Jewish group, Blau-Weiss, and trained, and in the end of ’34 I remember saying goodbye to them. It was fall or winter; it was cold. It could have been ’35, I can’t remember. They left for Palestine, my two best friends. Slowly the young people were disappearing. They went to relatives in England, the lucky ones. France. We were very close to the French frontier. It was nothing to go to Paris. I was in Paris much more often than I was in Berlin. I was never in Berlin. It was too far away. It was much easier to go over to Brussels or France, to Paris. We went often to Switzerland, which was very close.

Harper: Did you or your friends that you talked among, did you feel concerned for the future? In other words, did you think this was just going to pass, and this was a few rocky years and it would get better? Or did you feel danger, that you needed to leave?
LAVENDER: You mustn’t forget, I was very young. I had lots of friends. We had a very interesting Jewish congregation. We had dances. We could still go to hotels. Yes, we knew — we always hoped that it couldn’t last. Like my father said, “Ach. It can’t last. That Hitler is a fool, you know. He’s a narr [fool]. He’s a fool. He’s an idiot. It can’t last. Look,” my father said, “I was in the First World War. I served for four years” — before that, when he was young — “in the army. What has happened to me? Nothing can happen to us. Nothing.” The thing that was, of course, depressing was that Germany was in a depression just like here that started in ’29. My parents lost a lot of money. They had invested money in Germany, war bonds, and then later on the other bonds, I don’t know exactly. Our money was [inaudible]. We were getting poorer. 

We moved from our beautiful apartment to a small apartment in 1934. I still had my job then, so it must have been the end of ’34. You just didn’t feel free. Here I was accustomed to — the city was mine. I had grown up there; I knew every corner, every park. We did much more in the town, of a size of about 100,000 — maybe we were 75,000 at the time, I don’t know — than kids do today. Mostly kids know their own neighborhood here, and you have to go by car to go to another one. That wasn’t there. You walked. You were there. You could use a streetcar. We had a very nice streetcar. We went into the mountains, we went swimming in the river. There was a wonderful schwimmbad on the river Rhine. We were swimming in the Rhine. 

I’ll always remember once I got a real licking from my mother — not my father; my father was [inaudible word] — it was my mother who gave me the lickings. On a dare, a friend and I swam across the river Rhine. I looked at it when I came back this time and said, “My God. I swam that? I must have been nuts!” That is quite a distance. I don’t know how far. You can barely see the other side. There were some ships, of course. Even at that time, the river Rhine had big barges going up and down. Today you can walk across the river Rhine on the barges. It’s terrible. The Rhine is very dirty now. You can’t swim in it anymore. I came home late. My mother said, “Where have you been?” I said, “Annelise and I, we dared each other, we swam across the river Rhine.” My mother took me and gave me a licking. I couldn’t sit for days. My brother was a good one. I went up in the trees and fell out. My brother was a very good boy. I was a bad girl.

Harper: Do you remember the Olympics in 1936?
LAVENDER: At that time I’d left. I left in August ’35.

Harper: Can you tell us about your leaving? Why you left? How? Who left with you?
LAVENDER: I’d lost my job, and I knew I had to leave. My brother had already — no, he came to the United States in ’36. My brother was in Frankfurt, and he said we’ve got to go. We’ve got to leave. Young people should leave. Our rabbi told us, “Leave.” He went to Palestine later. [Pause.] What was I saying?

Harper: You were talking about leaving.
LAVENDER: Yes. I said, “Where can we go?” My mother said, “I have a cousin who moved to Johannesburg. Why don’t we write to Erik?” Which we did. His name was Erik Falk [spells out]. He sent a letter back immediately and said, “Yes, your daughter is welcome. We’ll give her the papers and she can come to South Africa.” Now South Africa was very far away, much farther than the United States. My mother had two brothers here who had immigrated around 1910. They lived in Memphis, Tennessee. Uncle Berthold and Uncle Rudolph. She wrote to them. My brother Frank immediately got his papers from my uncle, and with her other brother, my brother Alfred and his family went in ’36 to Memphis, Tennessee. Then it was time. 

I knew that I — but I knew him already. I had met my husband in 1932 at a Jewish dance, and he was in Wiesbaden for about a year and then got another job. He was a buyer at a department store, to another town in Koblenz, and left Wiesbaden. But we always wrote to each other. He went to Amsterdam in 1933, and we always were in correspondence. I visited him in 1934. I had relatives also in Amsterdam who I visited and saw Paul again. I wrote him in 1935: “I have to leave. I can’t stay here any longer. If I say anything, which I surely will” — because I always had a big mouth and I knew I would say something; I wouldn’t stand for it — “it’s too dangerous, and I’m going to South Africa.” He wrote back, “South Africa? You’re coming to Amsterdam, and I’m going to marry you. Do you want to marry me? Meet me in Brussels, Belgium.” In April ’35, on Easter vacation, I had a few days — yes, I was still working then — Paul came to Brussels, and I came to Brussels from Wiesbaden, and we got engaged. I went home and I was engaged. I said to my parents, “I’m not going to South Africa. I’m going to Amsterdam.” They liked that much better.

Harper: So then you moved to Amsterdam?
LAVENDER: I had to be in Amsterdam for three months before I could get permission to get married, so in August 1935 I went to Amsterdam. There was a friend of my husband’s, Conrad. He also was getting married. His girl came from Berlin. Her name was Inge. The two boys had rented a small apartment with two bedrooms. The two girls were in one bedroom, and the two boys were in another bedroom. On November 3, 1935, we were married: Inge and Conrad and Paul and Edith, in Amsterdam by a rabbi.

Harper: Your parents stayed in Germany?
LAVENDER: They stayed in Germany, yes, until later. We were lucky to get them out after Kristallnacht. We already had sent them papers. It took quite a while. We had to get affidavits for them. In order to come to America, you have to have affidavits. Our relatives had given already all of them, so my brother, my husband, and I gave the papers for my parents.

Harper: How long were you in Amsterdam, and what did you do in Amsterdam? Were you involved in the Jewish community at all?
LAVENDER: No. I knew very little Dutch. Yes, with the German Jewish community. There was quite a German — we knew quite a lot of people there. All our friends were immigrants like us. You felt best with people who could still talk your language. We knew a few Dutch people, yes, not very well. They didn’t invite us. The interchange was only between the German immigrants. We wanted to know what was happening at home. How are your parents? How are your brothers and sisters? This is what interested us in those years. I remember the ’36 Olympics because for the first time I had a radio, finally got a radio in Holland. Every time I turned the radio on, I heard Hitler screaming. That’s what I remember from the Olympics, him screaming in the radio. We didn’t have television, don’t forget. 

Harper: Was there a German Jewish synagogue that you went to, or were you involved with it?
LAVENDER: We had a German rabbi, but no. The Dutch people, Paul? I don’t remember really. No, we didn’t go to services much in Holland. We were just with the Jews. The Dutch people didn’t really open their arms like Americans did, no. My husband started selling groceries from house to house with a little cart. Later on he had kind of an auto, kind of a three-wheeler, stuffed full of coffee, tea. I did all the packing and buying. I ground the coffee and packed the tea. I made a very nice mistake once. That’s all I remember. I packed soda in the tea bags and he sold several of them. The people called, “That’s not tea.” It certainly wasn’t; it was soda. I didn’t work. I just did all the work at home for him to go out every day and sell, but we knew by ’36, after the Olympics, we knew we couldn’t even — we didn’t feel good in Holland. 

Paul had a brother, he must have told you all that. He had a brother in Holland, Herbert — he’s still alive; he’s now 98 years old in Switzerland — and he left Holland later. We left in ’37. Paul said, “I have an uncle and an aunt in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Why don’t we write them?” He didn’t have the address, so he wrote, “Mr. Max Lavender, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.” And would you believe it, his widow got it! Sent us back a telegram, “Yes, we will give papers. Send all particulars.” That was in September, 1936. 

In January we were called by the consul to come and have an interview with them because they got papers, affidavits for us. As it happened, I was deathly ill. I had one of the worst bronchitis and colds. I could barely see out of my eyes or speak. It was really a very bad infection. We went to our doctor, who also was a German Jew, and said, “Something has to be done. We’re going to the consul tomorrow. If he sees me, he won’t give me the affidavit.” He gave me three pills and said, “Take one in the morning and two just before you go into the consul. You’ll be fine. But don’t ask how you’ll feel afterwards.” It did help. I was fine while I had the interview. Once we came home, I went right back to bed and was sick for two weeks.

Harper: What was it?
LAVENDER: Who knows? He never told me. I didn’t want to know. I said I must be bright and shining when I’m going to that consul. This was our future.

Harper: Why did you want to go to the United States? Did you know that you couldn’t stay in Europe?
LAVENDER: In Europe? With Hitler right next door? Every time I turned the radio — Hitler was not even 50 miles away from me. I wanted to put a big pond between him and me. Oh, no. It was either South Africa, South America, or North America. As we had relatives in Pittsburgh, relatives in Memphis, [inaudible] my brother was already there, of course I’d go to America, the golden medina [country]. Have you ever heard of that word? You go to America, you find diamonds on the street.

Harper: Did you look into going to South America? Did you think about it?
LAVENDER: Well, Conrad and Inge went to Buenos Aires at the same time we left. They went there. No, not really. I had several friends who already had left. One of my best friends had already left, by the way, went to Pittsburgh. He just died two years ago. He was already here, and I knew there was no other country to go to. We knew America pretty well because our uncles and families had visited us. I knew Uncle Berthold and Uncle Moses. I knew them all. There was no doubt in our minds that the place to go to was America. England, France was too close. Maybe we had some inkling, I don’t know. Maybe we were just clever. But Europe, to me, was diseased with Hitler. I didn’t want to even be in shouting distance.

Harper: So you came to the United States?
LAVENDER: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We stayed for two weeks with our relatives, Tom [?] and Marta and two cousins. It was a very small house; we knew we had to move. We moved to a little attic in a three-story house. In order to cook, I had to go down to the first floor, but it was very cheap. I think it was only seven dollars a week. After all, we had no money. We came here without anything. We had about $2.50 each, not much more. Maybe five dollars. But we never — he found a job, he must have told you, he was a stock boy at Gimbles, and my first job was a short-order cook in the basement of a drugstore. 

My first order to cook was mashed potatoes and [ribs?] and pea soup. I was in that basement, a dank, dark basement, starting to cook. I had an English cookbook with me. I knew how to cook, of course, but I thought I’d better have it both in German and English. I saw some big things walking up and down the wall and raced upstairs: “Mr. — I don’t remember his name — some big things are crawling up and down the wall.” He said, “Don’t matter, just shush them away. They’re cockroaches.” Now all my English was very good, but it was mostly Shakespeare English. Of course I could talk, but Shakespeare had a lot to do with it. But I’ll tell you, I don’t think a cockroach ever appeared in Shakespeare. I didn’t know what he was talking about. “They’re probably right in the soup.” He said, “Ah, just fish them out.” 

One week I stayed with my wonderful job, six dollars a week and two free meals. I got deathly ill. I had to give up my first job. Paul still had his first job. Then I got a second job at a furrier. Now this was the Depression — ’35, ’36 — it was very hard to get jobs. Mostly through Jewish family and friends, Paul’s cousins and aunt, they got us jobs. So I got a job in a furrier. They had big pieces of fur, mostly rabbit, I don’t know what it was. They gave me a needle like this, a bent needle, and I had to sew those furs together. To this day, all I can do in sewing, which I had to learn because of my size, is making a hem. I can do that very nicely. That’s as far as it goes. The sewing machine and I are bitter enemies. You can imagine that after one week that needle went more in my hands. I ended up in the emergency room in the hospital. My hands got bandaged. I lost my second job. I said to Paul, “Look here, I’m in a new country, we need some money. You bring home the money, and I lose jobs.” Well, the third job clicked then, at Oldham’s [transcriber wrote Oldham’s, but sounds more like Rutens?] furniture company. I was typing and later on bookkeeping, and that worked out. That was more my line.

Harper: When did you hear of Kristallnacht, and what did you think about that?
LAVENDER: It was in ’38. We were here. We thanked God somehow [inaudible]. By that time my parents came here. My brother was here. Quite a lot of my friends were in Chicago, in New Orleans. I had friends in New York, of course. None of them came to the west coast. Yes! My cousin came to Los Angeles, that’s right. Cousin Anna came to Los Angeles. But to Portland, nobody came. 

At that time I was still in Pittsburgh, what am I saying? Quite a lot of immigrants came to Pittsburgh. We had a club there just for newcomers, and that’s where I met most of my friends. We lived in Pittsburgh until 1946. My children were born there. But of course at the beginning we couldn’t think of having children. No money. 

Even by the time — well, in ’38 or ’39, I wanted a child. I always wanted children. I felt terrible having no children, and then I couldn’t have any. I had to go through several examinations, things to be done, until finally in January 1941, I had something done, and the doctor said, “You try it for three months. I think this should help you.” Within a month I was pregnant — that’s my oldest daughter, Eleanor there [points to picture] — she was born October 31st, 1941, on Halloween. She was only four pounds, but she lived.

Harper: When did your parents come to the United States?
LAVENDER: After the Kristallnacht in ’38.

Harper: And you got them out?
LAVENDER: They had their papers. My father, like I told you, was a First World War veteran. He went down and told them, and they gave him the papers, and they came here on December tenth.

Harper: Did they live with you in Pittsburgh?
LAVENDER: Yes, we rented one bigger house. My brother had come to Pittsburgh from Memphis in ’36 or ’37. He got his PhD in Pittsburgh. He went to Pitt and also worked. By the time my parents came, I was working, Paul was working, Frank was working by that time. We gave the affidavits and then they came. They lived with us. We rented a big old house, very old, very big, three floors with complete kitchen on the first floor, complete kitchen on the second floor, and the third floor with rooms. So we had plenty of space for all of us. Then my baby was born in ’41. By that time I needed my mother because she took care of the baby while I worked.

Harper: When did you first hear about the concentration camps?
LAVENDER: I think in ’38. By the time the Kristallnacht came, I had heard something, but not too much. You mustn’t forget that in ’39 the war started. Even though we could still hear — my husband’s mother and brother had moved to Holland in ’37. We had left already. When our baby was born, Paul sent a telegram, and we got a telegram back in beginning of November 1941, congratulating us for the birth of the baby. That was the last we heard because that was already ’41. Of course, Holland was already taken by the Germans at that time, but we could still write there. That didn’t start until December 7, 1941, that we didn’t hear anymore. Then my husband must have told you he heard later that his brother died in Auschwitz and his mother in Treblinka. They never got out. My parents were here. My mother died. They’re both buried here in the Beth Israel Cemetery. My father died in 1951. My mother was 80 years old. She died in 1968.

Harper: How did you decide to come to Portland? Why did you come here, and how did you come here?
LAVENDER: Pittsburgh didn’t agree with me. You see, I have asthma now, and you can imagine what the clouds of soot and dirt did to me during the wartime. I was coughing and sneezing and couldn’t speak even then. I was a young woman. In 1943 I was 30 years old. Why should I [inaudible word]? I had bronchitis. I had bronchial this and bronchial that. In fact, I was very ill once, very ill. I was even sent away for a week or two to a sanatorium, I was so sick. Near Pittsburgh. Luckily, my mother took care of Eleanor. Pittsburgh was dirty, filthy. My poor children never were clean. I could clean their noses and their ears, their hands. They went out and came in and were covered with — Bessemer, do you know what a Bessemer is?

Harper: Furnace?
LAVENDER: Big chimneys in Pittsburgh during the war. There was Blaw-Knox, Jones Laughlin, all the big companies that built steel. The steel companies were all there. Pittsburgh was a very rich city. Allegheny River, all those. I said, “We have to leave Pittsburgh. My doctor told us. I got to get —.” Then Fay was born in ’45. For three months she had bronchial pneumonia [coughs]. It was an unhealthy climate, and Paul had heard during the war — he was working at Blaw-Knox. They engaged him to build Liberty Ships. 

Now my husband is very good at replacing light bulbs, very good at it, but give him a hammer and a nail, and the nail ends up in the wrong place. He can’t work with his hands. After two days, they asked him, “Isn’t there anything else you can do?” He lost more tools — that ship would have gone down before it was even out of the Allegheny River. He said, “Oh, yes. I’m an accountant, a cost accountant.” “We need a paymaster. Come on. From now on you’re our paymaster.” So he was from 1941 until 1945 paymaster for about 30,000 people. That was a job he liked, and that was the first time we made money. And of course during the war I worked too, did odd jobs.

Harper: So how did you get out to Portland?
LAVENDER: To Portland? Paul had friends who were at Keizer. Keizer and their plant worked together, and he heard from them about beautiful Portland. He got another job after the war ended, and that folded up, too. That was the summer of 1946. He said, “I’ve heard so much about Portland.” We had a Jewish immigrant paper, the Aufbau [spells out]. There was a man named Leo Rosenbaum — he’s quite famous here in Portland — writing about Portland. He said, “That would be nice.” I said, “Maybe San Francisco or Los Angeles.” He said, “I’m laid off now.” That was in July, 1946. I had two children by that time. He said, “I’m going out to Portland.” 

He took a plane, which at that time was not like plane rides today. It took him two days, I think, to get out here. He was received very well. He had friends who came from the town where he was born. He was staying with them. He called me after a week and said, “I landed a job. I’m staying in Portland. Let me stay here for a few months and then you come.” So I was alone in Pittsburgh until October. I think it was around the time of Eleanor’s birthday. On Halloween we were on the train going to Portland. We came here November 1st, 1946.

Harper: And did you come with your parents too?
LAVENDER: No, my parents stayed in Pittsburgh. They were both in Pittsburgh. Frank had moved already. Frank had gotten married in ’45. We couldn’t go all of us. It just didn’t work out. They came a year later. We had them come out. They lived with us. We had to find a place to live.

Harper: Did you become involved in the Jewish community here in Portland?
LAVENDER: Of course. I was already a Hadassah member, but I never really attended; I was just a member because with small babies during the war you couldn’t. I really started with Hadassah here in ’46, and I’ve been president, and now I’m a fundraiser for the Golda Meier group. By the way, on the 20th of March, we have a wonderful show and I’m selling the tickets. I’ve got to sell 200 of them. I’m the chairman. It’s called Chicago, Chicago. It’s a wonderful show; I would like to sell you tickets. Hadassah. I’m not making any money on it. 

We joined a congregation. That was something else. When we came to Portland, I had of course packed my furniture and children’s stuff, whatever I didn’t sell in Pittsburgh, and sent it to Portland. I lived with my parents for a while, and then I came to Portland. My first question was, “Did our stuff come?” He said, “No, nothing here. But I rented a beautiful house.” Which he did, on Montgomery Street, right where now the fire station is. The house is still standing. Empty house. There was nothing in it but a range and a refrigerator, which Paul had bought through family [inaudible word]. Nothing. Not a thing! We had come with two small babies, lots of dirty diapers. Nothing. So I called the railroad, “What’s happened to our stuff? I mailed it a week or two weeks ago. I mailed it long before we left.” “We don’t know.” They called me back late at night, “Mrs. Lavender, we know where your furniture is.” I said, “Where?” “Portland, Maine. When do you want it?” I said, “Tomorrow morning at 7:00am.” 

I phoned them every day three times. It took another week, ten days. In the meantime Rabbi Berkowitz of Temple Beth Israel, we had been introduced to him. Paul had already met him through their mother, and he called his congregation, his people, and they came. They brought me a crib. They brought me beds. They brought me linens. They brought me silver, china, towels. They came one after the other, the congregants came and brought us stuff. So we had enough until my own furniture — finally the man called us in the morning around 8:00am, “Mrs. Lavender, we have happy news for you. Your furniture arrived. When do you want it?” I said, “Now!” By the time my husband came home from work that night, all my furniture was in. I even had my curtains hung up.

Harper: Were you a member of Beth Israel?
LAVENDER: Yes, we were members of Beth Israel for 35 years until we changed to Neveh Shalom.

Harper: And you remained observant of the holidays?
LAVENDER: Sure. Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah. When the children were smaller, we had Succot, Pesach. We have a wonderful Seder every year with my nephew. We are alone now, it’s quite different, but we go to services every week, and Rabbi Stampfer and I have been very good friends. Last year we went with Rabbi and Mrs. Stampfer to Egypt and Israel.

Harper: Tell us about your trip back to Wiesbaden.
LAVENDER: Let me show me some books, may I?

Harper: Can you explain it to us first? Then we’ll turn off the camera and you can show us.
LAVENDER: I went there with mixed feelings. I haven’t forgiven, and I haven’t forgotten. I can’t. As long as I still have breath, I will hate Germans and Germany. I think they haven’t changed. The people we were with were non-Jewish people, all of them. They were very, very nice. They tried everything to make us feel at home. I saw the places I had lived in and loved as a child. Every corner I turned I remembered something: Schwellburgerstrasse, Gutmanstrasse [sp?]. [They wrote back?]: “Wiesbaden is a very beautiful city on the confluence of the river Rhine and Main. We have the Taunus Mountains, we have a very fine climate, very much like Portland. We have a gorgeous spring, summer and fall, and the winters aren’t too rough. Once in a while it freezes.” I remember using my skates once in a while, but not too often. It was a friendly town. 

Before Hitler came, I was very well known. I knew a lot of people, was friendly with a lot of people. I’m a person that likes to talk and made friends easily. Then all at once came that wrench. I remember May 1st, 1933. May 1st is a holiday in Germany, some kind of a holiday, I don’t remember what it is. The night before, Paul — I knew him already — and I and my brother and a girlfriend and another man we knew, we went out and ate dinner. At that time it was perfectly all right. We went to a beautiful restaurant, a Rhine, a fish restaurant, where we had a lot to drink. We drank quite a lot. At that time I was very young. When we came out I was a little bit drunk. I had a little money [purse?] with me in my pocketbook with a scissor. We came by the Nazi flags hanging there with the pom-poms, and I went and cut them all off with my little scissor. I remember Paul and my brother Frank and Herbert, “[Inaudible word] forget it, come on. If someone sees us it’s dangerous.” I said, “Ach, come on, I’m going to take all those pom-poms off.” I’ll never forget it. It’s one of the strongest memories I have of 1933. Otherwise, in ’33 we didn’t feel it very much. 

We went on walking tours, we went to restaurants. I still went to the opera, to the symphony. I worked until August 1935. In ’34 we felt it more. By that time Paul was already in Holland. It got emptier and emptier. More and more of the Jewish people disappeared. Here was one going to South Africa. Another one went to America, quite a few. A few to Palestine. Some of them, the unlucky ones, went to France, to Austria. Quite a few went to Czechoslovakia, to Prague. Prague was a very beautiful city. At that time it was the Czechoslovakia Republic and a lot of things going on. Hungary, wherever they went. But all those people in the end were caught. Holland, wherever. Even the ones who went to Italy weren’t safe, [but] they were safer than the other ones. Quite a few I knew who went to Italy, they got out of it all right. The Italians never were anti-Semitic. 

It got emptier and emptier. You felt it, you knew it, you smelled it. I can’t explain it. I knew one thing, if I don’t get out soon — already Dachau was already there, we had heard about Dachau. That was the only concentration camp. But I knew I would end up in Dachau because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. They called me a dirty Jew, I called them right back and spit right back at them, which I did. Luckily, I was a little girl, very tiny, and they let me go. But they could have done [inaudible word] to me. I knew, any day now, I would start — I said, “God, I’ve got to get out.”

Harper: Do you have any messages for future generations that might see this tape?
LAVENDER: So difficult to give messages. Can something like Hitler occur again? If the times get bad enough, a lot of people lose jobs. You mustn’t forget, in 1935 Germany was in the deepest depression, just like you were here. People were without hope, and here comes Hitler, a man who had the ability to talk, to [inaudible word] people, to draw them, which he definitely had. He had influence, hypnotic. When he talked, people listened and were enthralled by him. Here we were on the sidelines. I could hear Hitler talking, and I heard nothing but roaring and nonsense. 

That paper was all over the place, Die Stürmer by Julius Streicher, that famous anti-Jew paper. It had those terrible Jews, those pictures of Jewish people. I said to someone one day, “Look at me. How am I different from you? Do I look like it?” “Well, maybe you don’t look Jewish, but you are a filthy Jew.” I said, “My family has lived here since 250, 300 years. Why am I different?” My German is as good as theirs; in fact, my German was better than theirs. I’ve read everything. I’m very intelligent. I knew it couldn’t last. I didn’t see any change, even by ’35. Once we were in Holland, certainly by ’38. We came here in ’37. The more water I put between Germany and us, the better. I knew it would end with horror. Of course by that time, we’d heard about concentration camps. I think I knew about the concentration camps by 1940.

Harper: Janice, do you want to ask any questions?
Janice: I just have a few questions to ask you. You said suddenly things began to change. It was like it was your city, your town, you could do what you wanted, and then the attitude changed. Did your Gentile neighbors or friends begin to treat you any differently?
LAVENDER: We moved at that time from the place where we had lived since I was born, and where I knew everybody, to another house. I didn’t know anybody, and I never met them. But it wasn’t my town anymore. There was something strange in the air. Maybe I was sensitive, I don’t know. You felt it. You knew it. Not the way you looked, because I didn’t look any different than anybody else. But when you listened to them talk, you can’t help — when you’re drinking a cup of coffee somewhere, or going in a store and buying your milk, or another store getting your potatoes, the people, they were, “Ach, Hitler. Heil Hitler.” Maybe sometimes [inaudible] Juden. I saw that magazine everywhere. It’s the same as Reader’s Digest here, but bigger. There was nothing in it but anti-Semitic treatises. Everywhere I saw them. Sometimes I met girls who went to school with me — Annemarie Simon, Leise Eberhart, Trudy Marks [unsure of spelling of names] — they didn’t know me anymore. I walked the Kirchgasse, we all walked there, you do that. You bummel [stroll], that’s a German word [spells out]. You slowly walk and talk and look at the windows — window shopping. Here they walked by me, and the boys I knew, non-Jewish boys, of course, had all uniforms by that time.

Janice: What about stores? Were there boycotts of Jewish stores?
LAVENDER: Yes. One after the other had to close. Blumenthal and Co., Wolf and Sohn [sp?], all the textiles, the department stores, Blumenthal and Co. They sold them, kind of.

Harper: Was your father forced to give up his shop?
LAVENDER: Oh, yes. It just died. There was nobody to come in and buy. You can’t keep a store going and pay the rent if you have nobody who buys. They were walking back and forth, big sign, Kauft nicht bei Juden [Don’t buy from Jews]. Who goes in there? Very few people have the courage to do that.

Janice: Did you ever have to wear a yellow star, either in Germany or Holland?
LAVENDER: No, I left in ’35. The yellow star didn’t come in until, I think, ’38. Certainly not before the Olympics.

Janice: You said your parents left Germany after Kristallnacht. What did they tell you about Kristallnacht?
LAVENDER: They were locked up at home. They say nothing happened to them. They wanted to pick up my father about a month or two months before that for Dachau, but when he showed them he was in the First World War and he had the Iron Cross First Class, which they brought with him by the way. My grandson has it now. Jeffrey has it. They didn’t, no. And they had their papers. Nothing happened.

Janice: Did they see any of the destruction?
LAVENDER: Afterwards. I don’t know; I never asked. They wouldn’t talk, but they knew that the synagogue burned, of course. But not too many Jewish people were left. Still, there were some left.

Janice: Just one more question. Did any other family members of yours stay behind, or didn’t survive, or were in concentration camps?
LAVENDER: My father — it was a big family, the Rosenthal family. Of course, some of them had died by that time. Uncle Morris’s family. Otto. My cousin Hans, my father’s sister’s son, Hans. He went on a ship as a cabin boy, and when the ship was in Lima, Peru, he jumped ship and worked there and had a family there. They visited us once. Hans lived there until he died. His daughter lives now in Toronto and his son, too. As a family, quite a few, yes, but my mother’s family were all out, the whole family, four of them: three brothers and my mother. Her family already went out because they already had Uncle Max here who came here in the 1870s and who helped all of them to come. They lived in Memphis, Tennessee. My father, yes, Ricard [?] and family is gone, Morris and family is gone. The others went to Chicago. Yes. They live in Chicago. Quite a few of family [inaudible — interruption due to some loud background noise] ….

[Now they are looking at photos and other memorabilia.]

This is my mother’s handwriting. She had beautiful handwriting.

Janice: Tell us who the picture is of.
LAVENDER: I wish I had my picture. I think it’s in there someplace.

Janice: What are those pictures?
LAVENDER: This is my mother, this is a cousin. This is my father, my mother, my brother in 1927. These are my two cousins. My uncle and aunt were visiting from the United States, from Memphis, Tennessee, Uncle Berthold and Tante Reisha [?]. Can I turn it?

Here we were swimming. I can show you right here. The river Rhine, and we were swimming. There we are. This is me, my mother, a friend of mine. Here’s my brother and me.

Harper: Look at those bathing suits [laughs].
LAVENDER: There’s my mother and my brother again. You can see the river Rhine, big river. Here again are some more pictures of that, with other girls. This is in 1928. Here. You can see the river quite good there. Schierstein. July, 1928. And I have a picture of the same place, how it looks now. Shall I turn it?

Harper: Sure.

Now here’s my mother. That’s a good picture of our little balcony and our apartment. These two were murdered — Auschwitz.

Harper: Who are those people?
LAVENDER: Olga and Willie Strauss.

Harper: Were they friends of yours?
LAVENDER: No, relatives.  Here we are all with the Kameraden, 1929. We lived in a tent. There. We went walking and lived in the tent. We had a very good time. We were very happy children, no doubt about it. In spite of bad times, the war. This was in Heidelberg, I think, or Wahrburg. That must be [inaudible]. I don’t know where it is. Judgenherberge [youth hostel]. We slept there in 1930. Every year we went somewhere else. This is in Prague. It’s still there today.

Harper: A castle there, or is it a church?
LAVENDER: This has a [inaudible word] around it. This again is my parents sitting           at a table, 1932. This is the first picture I have of my husband.

Harper: That’s good. Let’s get that one.
LAVENDER: See what we did there? Terrible saying. He died. I don’t know what happened to him. I never found out. Here, that’s me. There’s my mother, father. Here we are. We were having a cup of coffee somewhere. This is not interesting. I don’t know what happened to him. This was a non-Jewish friend, my best non-Jewish friend, in 1932. Alfred Dukop was his name. I don’t know what happened to him. I looked up in the phone book when I got back to Wiesbaden this year, but of course it wasn’t there. 

Here, my trip with Paul. Here’s Paul. And here he is. It was in spring 1932. It was a cherry blossom [something in German about cherry blossoms]. And here we are swimming again. You see what we did in summer. We were absolutely normal young people in love. But of course it meant something different than it does today.  Here, this was when we went — [inaudible word] July, 1933. We could still do a lot of things. In the beginning, you didn’t feel it. It wasn’t there. Here, vacation 1933. We went to the Black Forest. I think I cut some out there. I don’t know what happened to those pictures. Here, this is a cute picture of me, one of the few nice pictures. That’s in 1933. That’s how I looked then. Have I changed much? A few years older. I wish I knew then what I know now.

That’s the river Rhine. So you can imagine how you feel when you are so bound to a place. I loved my life there. This was in Switzerland. This is Paul’s brother. He must have told you about him, his twin brother. He was murdered in Auschwitz. Doesn’t look like him at all. They were two separate eggs. These are my relatives in Holland. All of them are gone. My Tante Rosa, Freida in Holland. We told them to be careful. When we left in ’37, we told them, “Get out! You have the opportunity.” He was with a big company and had a branch in New York. “Get out!” “Oh, nothing can happen to us. We are Dutch citizens.”

Janice: What happened to them?
LAVENDER: All gone. All gone. This is where I got engaged in 1935 in Brussels. It was a world exhibition, Weltausstellung. Got to hurry up. It’s already 11:35am. This is an old book with a lot of pictures missing. I don’t know what happened to them. Oh, no. These are the first pictures here in Pittsburgh. This is where we lived first in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I can’t go through the whole book.

Harper: Let’s look at some of the other books.
LAVENDER: There’s Paul. There’s Paul again. Look at him. Young man. All my pictures are gone. I guess the kids stole them. I don’t know what they did. I let the children go over the book. Who is that? That is Ilsa! My cousin Hans’s daughter in Toronto. Here is Paul’s family. His brother Herbert, who’s still alive — he’s 98 — his brother Hans who was killed, and that’s Paul, and here am I. This is his children who live in Geneva, Switzerland. They’re still alive. I can’t show you all of these pictures. Now, what else do you want to see?

Harper: I want to see this book. Tell us about it.
LAVENDER: Die Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel. I got these books the night before they were burned, March 31st, 1933. Late at night I went to a store, a rental place and a bookstore. Wiesbaden [address of book store in German]. He had a box of books for me. It says, “Edith Rosenthal, Wiesbaden.” Die Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh, The Forty Days of the Musa Dagh, one of the best books written in this century, by Franz  Werfel, about the Armenians, not knowing at that time that the fate of the Armenians and our fate would be very much alike. Have you ever read this book? It is fabulous. If you can find the time, read it. It is well worth your time. It’s in English. The Forty Days of the Musa Dagh. They have it in the public library. It’s as good as Herman Wouk’s books. This is Wiesbaden there, and give me those other two. No, that big book, yes.

Harper: And when did you get this book?
LAVENDER: Just now when I was in Wiesbaden, they gave it to me. See here’s the mayor, the one who invited us. His name is Achim Exner. This is in three languages, English, French. Wiesbaden is a very beautiful town, see? On the river Rhine. I want to show you one thing. This is in the old city. This is a famous kirche, church. This is a markplatz [marketplace]. That is the place where Hitler talked, from here. You can see it’s gorgeous there. Here, you can see. We visited at this time. They had a market while we were there. 

Ach, here. There’s Wiesbaden. It’s a very old city. This is the oldest piece of the city. This was built by the Romans; the walls are still from Roman times. Here they have a very fine museum. Here, that’s where we took our steamer. That’s just like it looked. That could have been ours. Yes, Cologne-Dusseldorf. We went up and down the river there for two days. This is a famous opera house. You can imagine how that impresses a young girl, going there every week to see an opera. Beautiful. OK, that’s Wiesbaden. I can show you the same. These are the photos I took. This was our group that went, and here’s my husband and me. I can’t show you all the pictures, but this was the house my mother was born in. She was born there in 1888. And this is a street, a little town, a little medieval German town. This is a view of Wiesbaden from very high up. As you can see, it’s a lovely town. 

Janice: Are you glad you went back?
LAVENDER: This was our swimming pool, which was built in 1934, and I was never permitted to swim there. But this time, it was open just for us that day. We finally. We had lunch there.

Janice: Are you glad that you went back?
LAVENDER: I don’t know. This is a place where the synagogue was, the little synagogue, and here it says: [reads first in German, then English] “May this tablet warn you that at all times you have to stand in for the right and dignity of all human beings.” These are stones, very old stones.

Janice: Are you glad that you went back? You were very reluctant to go.
LAVENDER: Yes, but I wouldn’t go back again, let’s say it that way. If another invitation comes — this is in Heidelberg. I can’t show you the whole book, it would take too much of your time. This is a very good friend of ours. This is Manfred Schenk, a famous basso of the Frankfurt opera who was singing in Portland. He was Wotan in Die Walküre, and Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger [operas by Wagner], and Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier [by Strauss]. When he was here, we got to be friends. He stayed with us in our other house and he invited us, picked us up, and we came and we spent two marvelous days in his villa near Frankfurt. There he is again. “Fur meine liebe Edith, Manfred.” [“For my dear Edith, Manfred]. 

And then we’ve got these books. This is a little book I got as a gift from that man. He gave me this book. This is old Wiesbaden. This is the opera house. And this book was given out by a county in Wiesbaden. In fact, here is my best friend, Hannah Kapell [sp?], who is now a great-grandmother in Israel. She has 28 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren in Israel. All in all, I have to say — oh, yes. This was Paul Latzos, our rabbi who took care of us and confirmed me. This was our synagogue that was burned. There’s nothing there but a little memorial and a parking lot. Here, that’s even better. It was a beautiful oriental kind of a structure. And this is being given out by the [German word], by non-Jewish people. I’m not a German Patriot anymore. Now I am a Jew. This was given to me by — and it’s a complete story of what happened, from ’33, all the names of the people who got murdered. That’s given to all the schools, sekündar [secondary], in Germany.  

Let’s see what’s in here. This was a picture they took of our group in the opera house. And there’s the mayor. We were treated wonderful, the best restaurants. Every day they took us to a different restaurant. They drove us by bus through the towns, through Rhineland, through Heidelberg, to Frankfurt, to Worms, to Speyer. They had a program for every day and a few free days too. I can’t complain about anything.

This was the first picture taken when we came to the United States. That was in 1937. In ’35 we were married and in ’37 we came to the United States. Yes, Pittsburgh, 1937. OK, was that good?

Janice: Thank you.