Joseph Findling

Harper: If we could begin by you just stating your name, telling us your date and place of birth.  
FINDLING: I am Joseph Findling, and I was born June 21, 1928 in Cologne, Germany.

Harper: Can you tell me about the street you grew up on? Do you remember the name of it?
FINDLING: Yes. When I was born I think we lived for a couple of years at what’s called #2 Peterstrasse, which is Peter Street. And that was in the old city of Cologne. That’s the medieval city and extension of the Roman colony. Cologne was about 2,000 years old, and we always lived in the old city. And from there we moved as the other children were born to #9 Hosengasse, which no longer exists. After Cologne was destroyed by the allied bombing they never re-built that street. And we lived there until I think the fall of 1937 and then we moved to 52 Alexianastrasse and that’s at the corner of Mauritiussteinweg. The lot is there, there is no building. The last I know it had not been re-built. We didn’t own a house. We always lived in flats. My parents were not wealthy people. My mother was illiterate. My father was an ordinary worker, held a variety of jobs, none of any duration. You want me to continue?

Harper: Well, can you tell me growing up? First of all, who made up your household?
FINDLING: Well, my parents. Wolf David Findling. My mother Etla Findling. She was born a [Goetesteiner?]. Both of them were from Poland, or what was then Poland. My father was born in 1901 in Frysztak, which is a little hamlet near Jasło in what was then Austria-Hungary and became Poland in 1918. My mother was born in Praga, which is the industrial suburb of Warsaw on the other side of the Vistula. 

My father came to Germany toward the end of the First World War. He told me the story of having gotten on a train and hidden under a bench as he crossed the German border. The Germans during that war did occupy Poland most of the time. And I think he got to Germany about 1917. 

My mother got to Germany after the war. Her parents had died in I think 1917 – ’15, ’16 – somewhere around there. I think there was a cholera epidemic in Warsaw at that time, and she lost her parents at that time. I think she was nine at the time. She was born in 1904. Maybe 10. And she was placed in the service doing day work. Some relatives on her side that lived in Germany brought her and her younger brother Charles to Germany where she grew up. 

I think in 1927 my parents married and I was born the year afterwards. After me came Fanny who was born November 3, 1929. Then Fanny was [Fannyvaga]. Then Siegfried who was Simcha and he was born December 4, 1930. And then came Martin, that’s [H. Meyer] who was born August 8, 1932. That’s Marlene’s – my niece’s – father. And then after him, in 1937, I think May 6, was born Regina – Rivka – and she lives in Oregon, Grants Pass. And that’s it. There were three boys, two girls. And an uncle. My mother’s brother also had a room with us in our flat. He was the only one that had any real money because he had started a little business and he would help us out once in a while. And when times got bad, by him we lived. 

[Whispering and shuffling between Harper and Miller…]

Harper: Can you tell me about your grandparents? Did you ever meet them?
FINDLING: No. Obviously my mother’s parents died before I was born. Her father’s name was Joseph. I was named after him. I have the name of her mother at home. I don’t recall it off hand. I never met my paternal grandparents. They stayed in Frysztak. My father I think had several brothers, one sister. I never met any of them. I was there this spring to try and locate things, but I know his name was Meyer. I don’t recall her name if I ever knew it. I knew he had a brother [Schmoll]. I think there was a brother [Avrom], and there may have been one called [Parner], I don’t recall that for sure. I don’t know the sisters name. I never met them. 

Harper: So you mentioned your father was a worker. What sort of thing did he do for a living exactly?
FINDLING: He did a variety of jobs. I remember him working in a butcher shop, or in a retail butcher where people bought meat. He cut meat. 

Harper: Was it a kosher butcher?
FINDLING: I am not so sure it was a kosher butcher. It could have been, I am not sure. He also worked in an establishment that cut wood and made frames. He was a frame maker. After 1937 he lost his job in any event because the last establishment where he worked was Jewish-owned and was taken over by the Germans. You have to remember that Cologne was in the de-militarized zone that was created by the French after the First World War. Hitler marched into the Rhineland and re-occupied that region I think in April 1936. So that’s when Nazism officially was established in Cologne. Although there were Nazis there, there were also Communists there and they hit each other over the head many times. Adenauer [Konrad Adenauer], who you may have heard of was one of the premiers of Germany after the war, was the mayor of Cologne at that time. So on a whole until the Nazis officially arrived, until the Germans had taken over, though there were problems, they didn’t have any official sanctions.

Harper: Before we start with that I want to find out some more info. So it sounds like your family was poor?
FINDLING: We were poor, that’s true. When I went to school we would get assistance. I went to a parochial school although I didn’t learn Hebrew though I don’t quite understand it – it was a Jewish school. But we went to Hebrew school after classes. I got milk in the morning, we would have milk. I know we were poor. I was aware of that even then. And after school we would go to what was called a Hort. Its an after school thing. The Germans have a name for it. I think the concept originated in Austria. Hort, which was an after school place where children could go, young people could go, study and you also got your evening meal. And I think it was designed for parents who were both working and to keep their children until it got dark, until they got home and they had a meal or whatever. So we did go to that. 

Harper: In your first house or flat that you grew up in, what age were you when you moved?
FINDLING: I don’t think I was much older than three or four by the time we moved because I recall my being there and I recall Fanny being there so that would take us to 1929. After that I remember we were living at the Hosengasse so I think I probably couldn’t have been older than three at the most before we moved to the Hosengasse.

Harper: Can you remember one of the neighborhoods that you grew up in? What was it like?
FINDLING: Oh yes. We were in a very poor neighborhood in the old city and there were a lot of poor Jews living there, as well as poor Germans. There were gypsies living in that neighborhood. It was around what you would call – they had a square called the neuer markt, that was the new market. But actually in 10 minutes you would be where the Cologne cathedral would be so you could walk down there. It was within the old walled cities. 

If I walked in one direction, when I went to school, I would pass the gates of where the wall stood and they had an area called the ring. The ring circumference, from river to river, the medieval wall. The walls were down, the gates were still standing at the entrances. If you walked toward the river in the center where the Cologne cathedral stood, what we would call downtown, you came to the Roman section. 

There were Roman ruins that archeologists had started to uncover right next to the Cologne cathedral. And they are still there because I have been back and I could see them. And even near my neighborhood there were some Roman ruins so it was within what they called the old city, alte Stadt. Beyond that it was a more middle class area. 

Where we went to school was a more middle class area. There was a synagogue not far from school, which I think was Reform, which was rebuilt. Where I sang in the choir was in the old city. Although it was a very prosperous nice looking synagogue on the Glockengasse – they call it Glockengasse because…gassa is a small street, like an alley. Glocken means bells because there was a building standing there that had carillons and automata. I don’t know if you are acquainted with automata – those things were built in the middle ages when clocks were first put into towers. They build these human figures that when the hour struck they would walk around and move and things like that and then the bells would play. It was very elaborate. So the Glockengasse was right there. 
Also on the Glockengasse – if you ever heard of au du Cologne, that’s where the most famous au du Cologne, trademark 4711, that’s where it was manufactured. And their headquarters was also on the Glockengasse and there was a synagogue there – I don’t know the name of the synagogue, but I sang in its choir until the synagogue was burned on Kristallnacht. We would practice at the Reform synagogue on the Romerstrasse which is still there. I went to cheder also within the old city. So by and large our life revolved within the old city. 

And people had little shops, you walked to the corner and you bought milk, there was a cheese store on the corner on the Hosengasse. We lived across from an institute for the deaf, it was a school. Next to us was a little milk store. And around the corner on the Sternagasse you could go to the baker and buy bread, rolls. So it wasn’t unusual for my mother to give me the pitcher and say get a litter of milk. That’s how you bought milk, you bought it by the pitcher. Or go there and get a few slices of cheese. By and large when I was young I would go to the store for my mother. 

I liked to walk; I roamed the city of Cologne. I knew it well. I knew the old city. Amazingly, when we went back, I remember when I first went back in 1983 I went with my brother Fred and his youngest son Darren, Marlene’s brother. And I could find everything. I would show them where everybody had lived and where the relatives lived, where you went to school. It’s like I had never left. It was so imprinted on my mind and I understand now why. Because in a sense history came to and end.
 
You know, you live there so many years and then it stops, bingo. And so everything is frozen. Whereas when you normally grow up, I guess, there is no reason to remember because you move on gradually from here to there and there was nothing significant that occurred that throws your mind. I guess time was frozen. 

But we had relatives there. Our great grandfather on my mother’s side lived until he was 93 years of age. He died in 1938 after his family moved to the United States. He was a Talmut [a student]. And I remember whenever I would visit there the first things out of his mouth he would ask me if I had said modeh ani, did I say my morning prayers. And he would go up in his room and he had the Talmud there with all the commentaries in the margin and he would try to explain it to me. And the room stank of cigarettes because though he lived to be 98 he smoked what he called [word unclear], he smoked cigarettes constantly. 

We had a lot of family there. The man was a very successful man at one time. Originally he moved to Germany in 1870. He was born in 1844. He moved to Germany in 1870. His brother moved to England. I didn’t know until recently that a third brother remained in Poland. His name was [Tabaksmann, Mottel Tabaksmann]. 

As his name implies, the ancestors must have been in the tobacco business because he and his friends started rolling cigarettes and peddling cigarettes. And either he or his friend or together they invented a little cigarette rolling machine. At that time, the late 19th century, cigarette smoking started shifting from only women smoking to sometimes men smoking. And they started being very, very successful. It became one of the first large cigarette enterprises in Germany. And it got to the point they were so successful that it was necessary for them – this is what I hear, you know when I was a child – for him to work on a Sabbath, and he didn’t want to work on Shabbos. So he and his partner had a party and he gave up everything to become a malamat [teacher, usually of kids]. 

His partner, around the time of the First World War, sold the business. But in recognition for the help that my great grandfather gave him he established a trust and that helped him eek out an existence between being a malamat and having a half way decent life. He had sons. He married several times, at least twice that I know of. He had sons by both. The sons were very prosperous, some of them, by the First World War. They were good Germans; they invested in the war effort. They bought gold bonds and of course when Germany lost the war they lost everything because the bonds weren’t redeemed. And then came the German inflation so they reduced to near poverty. They had to start over again. 
One of his sons had two daughters, I knew them well. They lived not far from me. They were two maiden ladies. They lived in one little room and it was overstuffed with old Victorian furniture, if you can imagine that, with antimacassars on the couch. Nobody visited so I don’t know why they needed anti macassars. It mystifies you. Antimacassars were little laced little things that they put on couches because people used to put pomade in their hair, men, called macassar. Also coloring. So if you leaned against the couch it would rub off on the lace, not on the couch. 

They had their mementos of shells from when they were a little wealthier and went to the seaside and all that. And they always used to complain about that they could never marry because of their father, their dowry was gone. When he lost everything after the First World War the dowry was gone, so they were living there and I remember that. Then he married again and he had a whole new group of kids who were more my uncles and my mothers age. So we had family there, mostly on my mother’s side and we would visit. 

After shul, on Shabbos, I would walk around. Sunday was visiting day. And promenade day. Everybody would promenade in Cologne – that was a famous thing to do. You walked on the ring and people walked on the ring (which had very nice shops). And to be seen, I guess just like in Spanish towns or in Mexico called [passeo]. You know where people walk around a square and greet each other. Daughters would be seen, young men would be seen by the daughters. This kind of thing went on. We would go to, they had a place called a Völker Garten, peoples garden, we could go there until Jews weren’t allowed to go anymore. Course we still went. 

So, I knew Cologne well. I loved history. I would go to all the old buildings, wherever I could find. I visited the Christian church just because that was history. I learned history. In school they would tell me something about history and then I would go see the actual thing to learn. There was always the Rhine. You walked along the Rhine and you saw the boats coming down the Rhine. Cologne was a fairly busy inland port. It was a trans-shipping point, it was a rail center. So there was a lot going on. And I think for the family, though we were relatively poor, I think that before Hitler came in and took it back, that probably was a relatively prosperous time even for us. People were working. I was born after the great inflation. So all that stopped and changed after ’36. 

Harper: If I can interrupt you here. It sounds like you grew up in this mixed neighborhood. 
FINDLING: Very.

Harper: How was the relation between Jews and Gentiles?
FINDLING: I don’t recall it being that good. When I first went to school I don’t recall having any problems. But I think that even a year or two before Hitler came – well ’34, certainly by ’35 – in our neighborhood there were Nazis and we would fight with them. They would attack us but we would also attack them. I mean if we caught them we’d get revenge.

Harper: You mean you and your friends?
FINDLING: My friends, sure, sure. 

Harper: Did you have just primarily Jewish friends?
FINDLING: I think, yes. They were kids I went to school with. And my father was a Chassid. He went to a shtieble and I’d go to shul with him and I knew kids from there. From cheder, my regular school. Some of them lived in my neighborhood. Now, in my regular school we had a lot of middle class German kids that lived outside – Jewish kids – that lived outside the old city. Much better off. I knew more about them later on when we would start convoying them to school. But at that time I wasn’t that conscious of them. 

But we would fight. Mainly fists and all that, it wasn’t anything that organized. I don’t recall any great adult Nazi participation in that kind of thing that later occurred. What I do recall was that my father was sort of a fellow traveler. I can’t even say whether he was a communist but he certainly was a fellow traveler. What we would call here a fellow traveler, alright. Very sympathetic to communism. He used to listen to Radio Moscow and he and I would talk about it. And the Nazis would have a rally – I remember one time walking down the street and there were the Nazis with the brown shirts and all that and the German flags on one end of the street, and the communists at the other end of the street with the red banner. They met in the middle and they were beating each other blue over the head. I don’t recall my father participating in that but we watched it. So that was going on. There were street fights between the Communists; I don’t know maybe socialists too. Definitely I know between the Communists and the Nazis. That was on the adult level. But after April of ’36, after Hitler marched in, then it changed very rapidly. 

Harper: Again, let me interrupt at this point. It sounds like your family was observant?
FINDLING: Oh definitely, yes. 

Harper: Can you describe to me what, on a day-to-day basis, that meant in your family?
FINDLING: Well, I was taught, and in fact I did, I wanted to be a good Jew. I remember very early on getting up early in the morning and trying to say my morning prayers. I don’t know how observant I was but I did this on a regular basis. I recall trying to do that. I would go with my father when he would go to shul every Shabbos, Friday evening. The Shabbos he would go to shul, and then in the evening it would be havdalah. That was the shtieble, Chassdic. Every time a [ruf?], I don’t know if that means anything to you, you know some holy man, some learned rabbi from Poland, would come with a kittel and a fur shtreimel [hat]. They had these wide fur hats and everybody would turn out in that little neighborhood, which wasn’t far from where we lived, to listen to him. So that’s where I went basically to shul until I started singing in the choir. 

How I got to sing in a conservative shul, which is what the Glockengasse was… Its not that there wasn’t singing among the Chassidim, that was part of the thing. Particularly Saturday evening. I knew a lot of it. I can’t recall them right now but if I heard them, the [niggins?], what we called the melodies, would come back to me. 

Friday morning I would often go with my father to the Heu Markt, that’s the old market, the hay market, that was right by the Rhine river. And he would buy a carp, he would buy a chicken, we would take it home. The Schochet would come and slaughter the chicken. I would often watch my mother so it must have been before I went to school because I remember sitting with her and watching her prepare the carp for gefilte fish. She would tell me parts of the carp, so I remember that she would explain things to me. She would make her own noodles. And we would have lokshen with noodle soup she would make. And kneidlacher [matza ball soup] and she would make a helzel, which is take the skin from the neck and you stuff it with the flour and the chicken fat and then you cook it in the same pot. Usually the chicken was boiled. It was one pot, everything went in there. 

That was the one time of the week when we would have meat that I recall. Once in a while I think they may have felt prosperous, she would send me to the store and I would buy lunge – lung. Organ meats. Or I would buy some kind of meat that turned up into a stew. Whether I went to the kosher store or not I can’t tell you. You accept things like that without thinking. It’s only in retrospect that you wonder. We spoke Yiddish at home. My parents spoke Yiddish to each other. I don’t think they ever really spoke German very well. My mother I don’t think ever learned how to write. My father was literate, he could write. So it was a…I don’t have any problem with that life. It was partially a Polish type of life, you know, transported into Germany.  

Harper: Besides the religious life, was your family involved in any Jewish community activities?
FINDLING: I think peripherally. I recall going with my father to some – this was before Hitler came in – to some meetings in terms of Zionism. And there was always a pushke, a box at home, where you would put change for Israel. In the blue tin box where you would drop a few cents in there for Israel. There was a Jewish-German paper that they used to get. I don’t know if it was weekly, monthly or what but I remember it. But personally whether involved, no I don’t think so. I think toward the end, when my father didn’t have work anymore, we were somewhat dependent on Jewish…There was a social service, a Jewish social service there that we were somewhat dependent on. I recall that. For some food. I recall where their office was because I would go there sometimes. But were they in an organized fashion part of a Jewish organization? I don’t think so. I never had that impression.

Harper: Did you ever get the impression that other German Jews discriminated against you in any way? To your parents coming from Poland, Yiddish speaking. Did you notice any tension like that? Was there ever anything like that? 
FINDLING: Not that I was conscious of at all. Even when things got very bad and we kind of helped take some of the kids to school, there was neither a thank you nor any opposition to it. We just did it. I don’t know why we did it. To this day I can’t understand how it came about. But, see, I was a member of Hashomer Hatzair. A small group, maybe the babies going into that. So we did have meetings but that was just me. Once a week we would meet. We had a leader and we would take hikes. We would go to various places. And they would tell us about Israel, he would tell us about Israel, and there was some study of that. Then he himself went to Israel and after that nobody really took his place. But I think that that’s where the basis came for our helping other kids go to school. And going back, when every day got to be a battle going to school and coming back. But that was later, that was about ’37. 

Harper: Was your father involved in any political organizations?
FINDLING: The only thing I can think of is not on a formal basis. I think he was just sympathetic to communism. I know he followed the civil war in Spain very closely because we would discuss it. One of the songs that I learned – I wasn’t conscious of it at that time, but later I knew that that was the song – dealt with the German equivalent of here in the United States what was called the Lincoln Brigade. In Germany was called the Thälmann Battalion. And they had a song and he knew it. I learned it from him. So that was about the extent of his political activity, as far as I know. I don’t know whether he did anything beyond that. I kind of doubt it because I think my father was a very frightened type of person and I don’t think he would have had the courage to really openly do things like that.  

Harper: Did he serve in the military at all? In Poland?
FINDLING: No. No, because he left Germany before the Polish state was established. But I do recall his showing me a photograph of his brother [Parner] in Polish uniform. So that must have been a younger brother. Or somebody who went into it – maybe not necessarily younger, older or whatever but somebody who remained behind and was called up for Polish service. He wasn’t there anymore when Poland became a state. Although he did have Polish citizenship, that was it. Both of them had a technically Polish passport. 

Harper: Did you go to Jewish school the whole time of your schooling or did you start out at a public school?
FINDLING: It was the Jewish school all the time. All the time, on the Litzastrasse. That was a Jewish school. 

Harper: Was that decision that your parents made?
FINDLING: They made.

Harper: When did you first remember hearing of Hitler?
FINDLING: Oh, a long time before he actually came in because I was there when he entered the Rhineland. I bumped into that. But I knew him, I recognized him so I had seen photographs of him, obviously. I had heard him on the radio. My uncle always had a radio. He lived with us, he had his own room in our flat, we always had a room for him. He had a radio. I spent a lot of time in my uncle’s room because he had books, which my parents didn’t have, and I could read them. I don’t remember whether I understood or not but I read them. He had a radio and I loved classical music and I would sneak in his room when he was at work and try to and find and listen to music and I would stand there conducting the orchestra. I had never been to a concert but somehow I knew that you had to conduct the orchestra [laughing]. So…where are we? I am drifting now.

Harper: Well what I wanted to know, is before ’36…
FINDLING: Oh Hitler. I had heard Hitler on the radio many, many times before ’36. On the radio, speaking. 

Harper: Before Hitler came to Cologne, do you remember your family every discussing it or your family being concerned at all?
FINDLING: Yes, there was fear. I don’t recall any specific mention but there was no doubt that there was this oppressive fear of Germans, of Hitler, of everything that National Socialism represented. I was conscious of it, I knew that. I recently had some talk with some kids I was with in France and they mentioned that they were totally oblivious of it until just around 1938. And were kind of amazed how much more conscious I had been of it. I think it was because they lived more in a middle class setting and I lived in what you would call the slums where maybe people were more outspoken in their hate. You could feel it more. 

I remember that day that Hitler walked in. I knew what it was. I knew exactly what was happening and I remember running home and telling my parents and there was no doubt in my mind that they were all – we had company at that time – and when I came in I told them that you know Hitler is on the neuer markt, he is parading there. They knew, they knew and the expressions of fear it was all there. It was there before. We knew, increasingly, gradually it came there but… and then it only intensified but I have often thought that maybe children, because they have no previous frame of reference, nothing to overcome in terms of memory, I think as children we are more sensitive to what was going on. And the sense of what it meant, although we didn’t fully understand it, certainly not, than the adults were. They had things to deny. They had another frame of reference. And we talked about that after Hitler came, not before. But after we did talk about it. 

Harper: Can you describe for me when and how things started to change? Do you remember the first thing?
FINDLING: Very, very quickly after ’36. We were still living on the Hosengasse. I remember going to the corner store, I had known about it, that a decree had issued that people were not to sell to Jews. But I had kept going to that corner place where we bought cheese, and butter. I remember one time coming in there and wanting to buy some butter and there were other people there in the store. And the wait person said, “I can’t sell this to you anymore.” She wasn’t hostile, she seemed, you know, it was like she regretted it. I had the distinct impression that had these other people not been there I would have been able to buy it. But certainly that happened very quickly. Then you couldn’t go into the park. We used to go to the Volker Garten, then little signs sprung up all along the park on the path. Juden nicht erlaubt – Jews Not Permitted. Now my father and I did go. But then one time we were there – he stopped going, I continued going because they never bothered me – but I could understand why. We were there one time, he and I, and some SS people came up and started yelling at him and they threatened, they started picking him up and they were going to throw him into the lake. That was one of the defining moments of my life because you know when you are a child your parents can do no wrong. They are always right. They are there to protect you and that was the first time I realized that my father was helpless. That there was nothing he could do, that he could not even protect himself. They were going to pick him up and throw him in the lake.

Harper: Did your father – I mean he had a beard?
FINDLING: No, no, no. He didn’t have a beard. He didn’t have a beard. He shaved every day. He was poor, his clothes were poor whatever. Maybe they knew him, ok? My father looked like I do. You look at my father, you look at a picture… I don’t know in the sense of who… He certainly didn’t look like the stereotype of a Jew. I don’t know how they knew, ok. Maybe he just had a look of fear in his eyes when he saw these black uniformed guys. They were SS. I was frightened of them. 

But when they started doing that there was a woman sitting on a blanket not far from them, a German woman, and she got up and she started screaming at them. I don’t remember exactly what she said but the sense of it was that they should not do this, that she was the wife of somebody higher up and that she would not permit this to happen, and they left. So to say that all Germans were bad at that time is not really true. She spoke up. 

I know when we lived in the Hossengasse before we moved in 1937, upstairs from us was a fellow that I know had been an engineer, aviation. But he was a socialist, a real socialist. And he had refused to work in the German armament industry. His sons became SS people. It puzzled me at that time because I didn’t understand why were they SS and he… You know, everybody in the house knew they were Germans, that he was a socialist and he wasn’t going to do that. But later they were shot while I was still living there because the rumor was (and I don’t know if its true) that they were in the unit near the border and they were helping Jews to smuggle out of the country and they were SS. I very early on knew that there were some Germans that did not go along with that, but most did. 

You couldn’t buy, you couldn’t shop, except you did it at the sub rosa, or you went to some little Jewish store that was still operating until Kristallnacht. Before, no actually before Kristallnacht all Jewish had to shut down but they would still operate behind shutters. Because I remember one time around Passover – this was Passover 1938 – we were living on the Alexiannastrasse at that time, and at street level there used to be a little tiny convenience store, grocery store. And they had shut down. No Jewish store could operate. When my father would take me to have my hair cut we went up the block and we went upstairs to the third floor where the barber in his own home cut my hair. The Jewish store kept operating behind shutters. They would close the shutters in the front room. 

And before Passover my father rented one of these push carts and they made up bags of matzah, Pesach stuff. I remember he woke me up at a very early hour, two o’clock in the morning or something like that, and we loaded those bags on the little pushcart and I sat in the front with a candle while he pushed this cart all around various areas of Cologne. Then he would carry the bags in to various people so that they could have Pesach. I think we finished maybe about two or three o’clock in the afternoon. So for about 12 hours we were doing that. They weren’t allowed to run businesses even before Kristallnacht. He lost his job. For a while they allowed him to collect unemployment compensation but then they even stopped that. If you were a Jew you don’t collect anything. 

Harper: And at this time was there any discussion that you remember of your family’s safety or were there any plans to leave the country at all?
FINDLING: Not at home. Not at that time, no. I became aware of it because I think it was the summer of 1937, the social service or something made arrangements for me to spend a week at what might be called a camp. It wasn’t really a camp. It was just like a big building out in the forest near Frankfurt, called Hofheim. And while we were there I spoke to other children and they would start talking. One of them I remember said, “We are going to be leaving very soon. We are going to Greece.” And somebody else mentioned going to Mongolia. Manchukuo – I am sorry, not Mongolia – Manchukuo. That part is part of China now but the Japanese had called it [Manchukuo]. 

So when I came home I asked my father, “Why is it that people are all running away?” And he mentioned that those that had money were trying to go out of Germany if they could, you know, to go to America or wherever. My own relatives were leaving for America, those that had a little more. At school I became aware, shortly there after, that the classroom was getting emptier and emptier. People were leaving. One day you see a kid in school, the next day they were gone. Nobody would say anything. They were gone. So I knew people were leaving. Around that time, maybe by spring of ’38, my father, one time we went to what I thought was some sort of consulate. I don’t remember what country it was but you know a consulate has a flag of a foreign country and I felt it was a consulate. He walked in, I waited outside, and he came out. I think he also one time took me to some…I got the distinct impression it was some kind of a Jewish organization and I had the impression he was trying to get to Palestine. But, so that is the extent of our involvement in leaving, ok, at least at that time. I was conscious that other people were leaving. 

Harper: But you don’t remember discussing it with your parents? Or do you?
FINDLING: No. What I remember discussing with my parents was after my father was taken. Then I took over and insisted that we had to leave. That was after October 1938, just before Kristallnacht. 

Harper: Why don’t we take a break right here and I want to pick up… Yes, lets keep this in mind, your father being taken away. 

Harper: Ok, if we can begin with you describing what happened in 1938.
FINDLING: As I told you, people couldn’t practice their business anymore. They couldn’t work. My uncle who had a little clothing store called it billiger laden – the cheap store. They kicked him out of his own store. So he had no more work. I was in school, in what remained of our school. I think it was October 22nd or 23rd, around there, 1938, when the teacher called me up front. [Name unclear]. That was his name. And he said I should go home. And when I got home my father was packing a tiny little valise and my uncle was also – we were living then on the Alexianastrasse, uncle lived right across the hall – and he was also packing. He had been ordered to report to the police station, which was not far. And what the Germans had done is that they said all Polish nationals must – at least one person, if the whole family were Polish nationals, or the husband and wife, at least one person had to report. They were being deported. So my uncle sewed a little money in his coat; they were allowed 10 marks I think, each. Which is about $2.50 at that time. And they were being kicked over into Poland. So I wanted to go with him and he said no. I had to stay here, it was now my responsibility to look after the family. I walked with him to the police station and begging him all the time to take me and he is saying no, no. But he said, “You know this will blow over. Its like a progrom.” This is the way they looked on it. I mean in their frame of reference, that it would blow over. So at the police station there were a lot of other men. And they had these busses and within a few minutes he had to get on the bus and the busses drove off and I went home. 

Harper: Was that the last time you saw him?
FINDLING: That was the last time I saw him. We got a postcard from him. He wound up at Spongene, which was a place on the border. Historically I now know, and my uncle who survived told me that they marched them across the border. The Poles didn’t want them. Beck [Jozef Beck] at that time was the foreign minister of Poland and he didn’t want them. So they marched them back across to Germany. Then the Germans marched them back across. And finally I guess because of international pressure Beck allowed them to stay. They threw up some barbed wire around an open space and that’s where they were. Nobody stopped them from going into the village. My uncle has told me that he went into the village and he dug out some of the money from his coat and exchanged it. He gave some of it to my father. He told my father that he was going to go to Warsaw because he remembered that he had some distant relative there who was a coal dealer. But his idea was to try to get in touch with the Jewish organization. He still had a passport, a visa to England. Since he had someone, he had a store, he did used to take vacations and his visa to England was still good for a few months. So he was going to try to get to England. My father said he was going to go home to his parents in Frysztak. And that is what he did. 

My uncle went to Warsaw and he hung around the highest offices where they had a ship leaving from Gdynia to go to England to Palestine with the 15 halutzim. And they told him to come back and if there was an opening maybe they could stick him on. So it was his luck that one of the guys got sick and couldn’t board the ship. So they told him we will put you on the ship but as soon as you get to England, you have to get off because we have no papers for you to go to Palestine. So he wired this girl that he had met when he was in Belgium on vacation some time ago, at Blankenburg. Millie. They got along well, corresponded. Millie met the boat when it got to England, told the English custom people that he was her cousin. She will be responsible. It was all eye winks and whatever and he ended up in England as an illegal. And for about six months he lived in England, sub rosa. And then when the war started, he volunteered for the English army. He rejoined and that’s how he met the English branch of our ancestors [laughing]. Remember there were two brothers! One went to England. 

My father was in Frysztak. I think we got one letter from Spongene, we got one letter from Frysztak. In the meantime I had two great-uncles. [Mottel’s Tabaksmann] sons by his second marriage who had evaded the order though they were Polish nationals they had not reported. Everybody else had already left for the United States. [Yokina Tabacksmann], his son by his first marriage, had gone to the United States. Goldsteins had gone to the United States. The [Rambolinskis] had gone to the United States. So all that was left was Herman and Jack [Rambolinski] who were there illegally. And they gave us a little money. They dropped by once in a while because we had nothing. Social services helped a little bit. We still went to school although we were kicked out from our old school and we wound up in some derelict building somewhere else in the neighborhood where we tried to function. There were like a handful of kids left. 

Harper: I am sorry, if I can interrupt you. Could we go back to finish what happened to your father in Poland?
FINDLING: He moved to his family. I think he tried coming back through Germany to join my mother later in Belgium. And I think he was apprehended. That is what I understand. He was apprehended and kicked out. Whether that is true or not I don’t know. I have no way of knowing because everybody in Poland disappeared. The last I heard of him was a letter I got, June 22 1941, when I was in southern France where he sent me back some papers that he had to execute so that I could leave for the United States. After that there was absolute silence. When I got to the United States I was allowed to send, through the Red Cross, 25 words. I sent that as soon as I got here to let him know I was here. In 1943 I got some kind of message back which I never saw. Somebody from the Red Cross told me over the telephone that the village doesn’t exist anymore. Which was a mushegaas. I don’t think that that was true anyway. So after that there was silence. Until 1993. 

My niece, my brother’s daughter, Debbi, was a counselor in L.A. She was very much involved in Jewish education. And she had already participated in a March of the Living and this was her second time she was participating in a March of the Living to go to Poland to visit all the camps and while she was there in Krakuf [Krakow], she hired a driver and she hired an interpreter – and Krakuf [Krakow] is not that far from [name of town – where his father was supposedly at with his parents] and she drove to Frysztak. And she and the interpreter started walking through the village, little bigger now, knocking on doors. And she asked the same question, “Does the name Findling mean anything to you?” Some were friendly, some were not. Nobody had heard and finally she got to one door and they said, “You have to see Roman [Grodick].” And they showed her where Roman [Grodick] was. He was a man about 80, lord knows how old he was and he said, “Yes, yes. I know Findling. David Findling. He was my friend.” 

He must have been obviously older than my father. If he was 80 in ‘93 maybe he was younger, who know, younger I guess than my father. And he said enough things, she called me immediately afterwards. And he knew my grandfathers name and he knew the names of two of the brothers. Whether they were close friends, who knows. But he knew them. So there was some veracity there. And he told her what had happened. was at that time from what I know, and I have checked later in Tel Aviv (you know there is a museum of the diaspora and you can look up things), that whole area was about 90% Jewish. Not just Frysztak, all the little villages around there. And the long and the short of it is that the Roman [Grodick] – he was at first suspicious and all that, he wondered why Debbi was there. Then it turns out the reason he was suspicious and afraid is because he was living in the same apartment that my grandparents lived. It was a house with three separate flats. But then when she told him she didn’t want anything, just information, he loosened up and he told her that they had rounded up all the Jews one day, and they marched them to [town name unclear]. [Town name unclear] is about 10 kilometers away from Frysztak. There was a catholic cemetery there and they had them dig pits and then machine-gunned them into the pits. All of them. And she gave me that information [choked up] and I told her, “If you go back, I will go with you.” 

So this spring I went with her as a counselor. I am not an observant Jew but somebody had to say kaddish [choked up]. So we went. I knew my mother had died at Auschwitz. That I had found out a long time ago. So we did the same thing. We started from Warsaw, hired a driver, somebody who was recommended. The driver spoke English we were told. He spoke English the way I spoke Polish – two words at a time. But between his little bit of Russian, my little bit of Russian, his little bit of German, my German, my few words of Polish, we communicated. He didn’t know why we were going. I wasn’t going to tell him because you never know what you can meet in Poland. So we drove down to Frysztak. It was a very, very interesting experience. I had never been to Poland. 

When we got to the square, there were some cab drivers there, and I had him call out that we want to speak to [Roman Grodick]. One of the cab drivers ran up and he says I am his son. And he told us that [Roman Grodick] had had a stroke and he was on his death bed. And then his daughter came and Debbi remembered the daughter because it was the daughter that had shown her where to go to [town name unclear]. Because she had gone there to the mass graves. So they took us right across the street there, it was the old Jewish cemetery, and there’s nothing. I mean there are some gravestones. You stumbled into them, the overgrown vegetation, you can make out… no that’s the new cemetery. The old one was down on the other side of the valley, on another ravine about a kilometer away. We went there too. And the only gravestone you find there that you can make out was lying on the ground. It’s the only one that’s marble and you can make it out because it’s got the sign of the Cohen, you know, with the hands. And deeply incised [in the] marble was lettering. I couldn’t read it; it’s an old one. All the others were bits and pieces. Looked like there was a remnant of a mikveh there but the synagogue is gone. You know in Poland those old places, wherever you found a cemetery you found a synagogue. There is nothing there. 

In any event I saw [Roman Grodick] but he couldn’t communicate. And he didn’t know what was going on. His wife showed me some photographs [chuckles], history of a life. There was nothing there. I asked him, to the driver, you know, “5,000 Jews used to live in this area, is there anything left? A Kiddush cup, a mezuzah, anything?” Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I don’t know what happened to all that stuff. Even the Polish museums, the ones that were founded under communism have very little – a few Kiddush cups, maybe one siddur. You know, there is nothing there. This was a rich country, there were three million Jews living there. We found one synagogue on the way back. Was held together – was a big synagogue, famous synagogue – held together with wire to keep it from crumbling. It’s a Jewish memory. 

Interestingly enough, when we were at Auschwitz for the march there were a few Poles there. Two dozen marched with us. And I went up and thanked them. Somebody had to say something. It’s a memory. We went by that one synagogue that was falling apart, I found it when we were driving back. I saw the cemetery and we knew there had to be a shul there. And some people whom had been back, because some of the gravestones were restored and a memorial was there carved. When we were at [town name] I was saying kaddish, there’s 16 plots there. 16 mass graves in this Catholic cemetery. And somebody is taking care of them because there were shoots of iris coming through and it was separated from the catholic part, but somebody was taking care of it. Wasn’t totally neglected. There was a sign up front, in Polish – they haven’t change yet all the communist signs but there was a sign up front in Polish – it doesn’t talk of Jews. It always talks of Polish nationals. Victims of the war. But on that one for the Frysztak, there was a stone in Hebrew and Polish, talked about the Jews of Frysztak. So when I finished saying Kaddish [choked up] I said to Debbi, “I got one candle left. Why don’t we light the candle for all the other Jews and you say Kaddish.” So we went to the next plot and there was a brass marker there. I didn’t think anything of it, first time I was there, but she started going bananas because she said, “That’s new, that wasn’t there before.” So we looked at the marker and found the name [Gittle] Findling and on the bottom it said – and there were a whole bunch of names that this marker was dedicated to, the Jews of Zmigrod – it was put up there by Max Findling, USA. So, you go there, it’s the first impression, you go there to say Kaddish and you find life. Maybe mishpocha. It wasn’t mishpocha but what difference does it make for what’s left for old mishpocha? So that was, that was it [crying], that’s my father. Nobody left there, nobody survived. At least from his family that I am aware of. But that chapter is closed now. I am glad. 

My mother…we made it out of Germany. I don’t know what you want me to talk about now. He was gone. I went to my uncles, the two that were left, and I said give me some money. I heard a rumor, picked it up in the neighborhood, that if you got to Hague in Holland that they would shelter Jews. I mean you are a kid…So I went to my great uncle and I said, “Look, give me some money, I will buy a ticket and I will try to go to Holland, to the Hague. If I get there I will send you a postcard and you can send the other kids.” Meshugaas, crazy. So he gave me the money. And I bought a ticket from Cologne to The Hague. What I thought I was going to do was when I get to the border I would do the same thing that my father had done, I would hide under a bench. I go into the compartment, there were women sitting there, they still had somewhat lengthy skirts. I sat there and a Dutch woman next to me starts speaking to me and she wants to know what I am doing traveling alone. I guess it’s strange to have a 10 year old go on his own. So I told her, I didn’t hold anything back. She said she was Dutch and I told her. I asked her I said, “When we get passed the German border, or when I get to the German border, will you let me crawl under the bench and hide behind your skirts.” “No, you don’t need to do that, I will take care of it. I will get you over the border.” 

We get to the German border and the SS man comes in with the frontier guards and he looks at my kinderausweis – you had to go to the police station to get a card with a picture on it that says you are Jewish – and he looks at it and he says, “Good luck, good riddance.” Then we go to the Dutch border and I am begging her to let me hide and she says, “No you wont need to do that.” The other people in that compartment are also involved, they hear what is going on and everybody is assuring me – most of them were Dutch – “Its alright, we will get you over.” So the Dutch frontier guard comes on and they start talking and he says I have to get off. And they beg him, there’s a hullaballoo, this woman is crying, she offers to bribe him, and he tells her I am going to arrest you. She said her husband was a somebody and the frontier guard was an honest Dutchman – he wasn’t going to break the law. He took me off the train and he took me in this little cabin and they fed me and they wanted to know why a little man, a kleiner Mann like you wants to leave a wonderful place like Germany. So then he put me on the evening train back to Cologne and at nine o’clock I was back.

Harper: Was this…
FINDLING: Before Kristallnacht. It was in October.

Harper: Do you want to take a break, do you need a Kleenex or anything?
FINDLING: No, that’s ok. 
It was getting hard. I think my mother was not straight anymore. I don’t think she was thinking right anymore. Sometimes my great uncles would come, leave a little money or a little food. Sometimes I would steal food. We would still try to go to school. One morning we were going to school, we hadn’t gone a block when some kids from our school were coming back and said, “Don’t go to school, don’t go to school. Go home.” So we went back. And then I look out the window – we were on the third floor – I look out the window and I see all these people surging in the street, breaking glass, frightened. My mother said, “Joseph you go out, you got blonde hair, they won’t recognize you, you go out, you find out what is going on.” 

So I went out and it was very easily apparent what was going on. I mean it was very organized, these guys were going down, they had little booklets in their hand, and the crowd following them… They would say that’s a Jewish store and they would start smashing the glass and tearing the place apart and looting and people behind them would go in and loot. And down the street, the Mauritiussteinweg was a very good-sized department store, it was Jewish, and it was gutted. So then I went to the Romerstrasse – near the school, the old school – where we used to practice for the choir, and that was burning. Somebody was climbing up on the cupola, and he was trying to remove the Magen David [Mogen Dovid] and the fire people were there, they weren’t doing anything, but it was burning. They must have put it out because it was rebuilt pretty much right after the war. I saw it again, years later. So from there I went to the Glockengasse to where I sang, that was on fire and they were burning books and Torahs. 
So I went home and I told my mother what was going on. 

Just then I hear this noise outside, the screeching of breaks, and I look out and there is a steak [referring to Beefsteak Nazis] truck that just pulled up in front of the door and a bunch of SS men were jumping out. We barred the door, just locked it. And off the kitchen we had a little hallway where the toilet was and where we hung some clothes – [chuckling] you do such stupid things – and we all went to hide there under the clothes. 
Then I hear they were banging on the door. And then I realized that the baby wasn’t with us. I could hear her whimper. So I went back in the kitchen, she was sitting on the middle of the floor, and she was starting to cry. They were banging on the door, so I clapped my hand over her face to keep her from making any noise [crying]. They are banging. And then its quiet. And Reggi isn’t moving – I thought I had killed her, cut off her breath. She was ok. She was ok. Then I told my mother we have to leave. We absolutely had to leave, we can’t stay here anymore. They are going to kill us. If I ever had any certainty, I knew we would die if we stayed. So, how? 

I came up with a plan. I told her, you know, those two uncles that we had – Jack and Herman that had remained – they used to go on false papers [to Belgium]. One of them had a girlfriend that lived in Liege, just across the border in Belgium. And I said lets send them a telegram telling them we are going to come on the train to Liege. Liege and Auchan, I knew this, are like maybe you and Vancouver, ok? I mean they are close to each other. And the people living in those towns across the border could cross, on a daily basis, without having to have visas or stuff like that. I knew that. Tell them we are going to go to Auchan, we’re going to stay on the train. What we are going to do is we do it on Christmas day, the 25th of December. 

The reason we do it on the 25th of December is because all the Germans get drunk on Christmas. That was my frame of reference in my neighborhood. It always seem to me that every Christmas Eve they would be in the bar throwing money around. Crazy. Childs play. So she sent the telegram. And she got one in reply that they should meet the train. Ellie and Sala – they were German gentile women, friends of my great uncle. And they had moved to Belgium. The plan was that she and Reggi would stay behind. I would take Fanny, Fred, Sigfried and Martin with me. The reason she would stay behind with Reggi was to give credibility to our plan. We would buy round trip tickets. We were getting on the train to visit relatives just for Christmas day in Liege and we would come back. She would get off at Auchan with Reggi. Because what mother lets her kids go forever? That was the plan. And I was sure that the Germans would be drunk. 

So I got some more money from my great uncles, we bought tickets, no luggage, just our clothes. Just like I had gone to Holland, no luggage. And we got on the train. And at Auchan, the frontier person comes on. I still remember the man how he looked. He was a lot along the dumpy heavy side. He was bald. He was red as can be, as a beet, and he stank of schnapps. He was drunk as a [hoodah]. And he starts arguing with my mother that you can’t let these children go and she tells him that they are coming back this evening, do you think I am nuts and I would let my kids go by themselves? And they argue and as she and Reggi are edging off the train, he ahead of them, the next thing you know we are on our own. And the train moves between the border and they want to cry and I stopped them from crying. I wouldn’t even let them cry. I was afraid that somebody would notice and it would blow the plan. 

And as the train moved between Auchan and Liege, Sala came in, greets us. She doesn’t stay with us, just sits in another chair. See when the Belgian frontier people came in she starts talking to them. I don’t know what she said, I don’t know if she bribed them, but we got across. That evening we spent in Liege with them. The next day they took us to Brussels and turned us over to the Jewish organization. They took us to the coast, to Middelkerke, which is a resort town, not far from Ostend. And there we were in a home with a lot of other Jewish kids who had come from all over. Some of whom I later wound up with. They were kids from Austria; their parents had shipped them in, some of them quite legally. Apparently there were Jewish organizations that had persuaded the Belgian government to let Jewish kids in. I didn’t know anything of that. And we were there for about three or four weeks. I didn’t hear from my mother, I didn’t know what was going on. I kept writing postcards. And then Fanny and I were put into a Gentile home, foster home, outside of Brussels. Braine-l’Alleud, which is right where the Waterloo museum is, where that pyramid is to commemorate the Waterloo thing. 

Harper: Can I interrupt you – was this 1939?
FINDLING: Beginning of 1939. January 1939. Later I found that Fred and Martin were put into a so-called orphanage run by the Jewish organization called [name unclear], where they remained. And I joined them years later. I joined them in May of 1940. They wound up there about January or February 1939. Fanny and I didn’t last very long in that home, maybe a couple of weeks, I don’t know why. Maybe it was only intended that it be temporary. Then we came back to Brussels and I was put into a Jewish family in Brussels and Fanny was put into a Jewish family in one of the other quarters. Brussels is divided into various sections. So she stayed with the grocer in Singel, and I was with this family in Molenbeek on number 11 Boulevard Leopold Deux. And I went to school. We had gone to school briefly when we were in Braine-l’Alleud, I had been stuck back into the first grade so I could learn French. In Brussels I was stuck in a regular school. I was there for about six months. I don’t know I didn’t stay there longer. After six months in the summer, or June of 1939, I was put into a public orphanage in La Louviere, which is about 30 kilometers north east of Brussels. There I stayed until April 1940. Went to school there. 

In the meantime my mother had finally sold what little pieces of furniture she still had left and in April of 1939 she had paid a smuggler to smuggle her over. Before that she had paid someone to take Reggi across the border. When we were moving between that home where we had stayed in Braine-l’Alleud to Brussels, we stopped at the Jewish agency and there we found Reggi. She had just arrived. As I recall, I was told that she had been brought in by a traveling salesman who had brought her over. How he brought her over, under what circumstances I have no idea. Reggi at that time would have been maybe two years old, or just short of two. Or maybe no, she was born in May of 1937… ’38, ’39… just short of three. No, two. Yes, ’39. Just short of two years of age. 

In any event, my mother eventually wound up in Brussels. Fanny had to go live with her because my mother didn’t see me very much because I was in La Louviere, she couldn’t afford it, she was doing day work. She was working as a domestic. She persuaded the Jewish agency to take me from that public home in La Louviere and put me in with Fred and Martin in that [name unclear]. And I wound up there in April. Within three weeks the Germans attacked Belgium. May 10th. We could hear the sirens were going; there was no doubt that Belgium had been attacked. You went outside, you could see the German planes flying over head. The flag was flying, the anti-aircraft guns were shooting at them. 

I had been looking forward to – I had even bought a present for my mother to give her for mothers day because mothers day was coming up. I never got to give it to her. She came to see me on May 13th. And she wanted to know whether we were leaving – our group, the orphanage – was going to leave Brussels. I told her I hadn’t heard anything, I had heard no talk of our leaving. Later I found out that she picked up Fanny (I mean Fanny lived with her). Reggi was living in an infant home. She must have panicked. I have no explanation for what my mother did. She picked up Fanny and she started walking toward the coast to get to France. We had some relatives in Paris, that’s where she wanted to go. So she walked toward the coast and she walked along the coast and then she apparently got cut off, as I can reconstruct it from what Fanny tells me, they got cut off by the German advance that made that encirclement of Dunkirk. So they were trapped and eventually they made their way back to Brussels. 

The following day, after she had seen me, I guess the older people persuaded the director of that home that we better get out of there. We had kids from infants to 22 years of age. 20, 21, 22, so there were kids of various ages who were living there. They called up the girls’ home. There were girls living in another area of the city in a similar home and they told them to come over and meet us. Don’t pack clothes, just pack food. And we were told put on an extra pair of socks, put on an extra shirt, but don’t take any clothes. Whatever you carry will be food. We all met there and we got on a streetcar or most of the time we walked. And we got to the gare de Schaerbeek, that’s a train station. Out of confusion, people milling around by the hundreds, thousands. Military trains there with wounded. Other trains with soldiers. You could hear the guns, artillery. The Germans were reputed to be in [Tiere Limon], which is 40 kilometers away. And we were at this train station. Apparently somebody had made arrangements for the last three freight cars of a goods train to be reserved for us. And we climbed into those last three cars. Those were the goods cars from World War One vintage that had the lettering on there “40 Men or 8 Horses.” [says it in French]. We got on there, and I was assigned to the little kids. I was short of 12. And myself and three other kids my age were assigned to be with the little ones. The girls even had younger kids. I think [Tony Sour] was all of two years old, or three. There were a lot of little kids. 

And the train moved out. And the next morning we wound up I think it was [name unclear – could be Tournai] near the French border. There had been some bombing there. We could see some ruins. And the train stopped. Train stopped a lot of time. It was after all an unscheduled train. It just went whenever it could. And some British soldiers came up to us. Not many, about half a dozen. And they wanted to know if we were hungry, did we need some food, and they started giving us food. One of the kids said to them, “No, no you need it.” And they said, “No, rear guard.” They were the rear guard, I guess they figured they weren’t going to make it. So then we went on, that morning we crossed over into France. Stop and go, by the evening we were in I think it was Lille, and then there was an air raid. The Germans bombed the yard. We were lucky we weren’t struck. The train moved out during that air raid. And then the next thing we know we were in Normandy. 

Harper: I am going to have to interrupt you – we are going to have to change tapes. 

Harper: Yes, if you can pick it up. You were explaining about Normandy. 
FINDLING: We were entering Normandy. The whole journey, from Brussels to where we wound up took about four days. And probably as the crow flies probably is about 600 miles. As I told you the train was unscheduled. It stopped, and stalled, start, stopped, and started. Military goods or whatever, movement, obviously took precedence. We went into Normandy and we were out of food. Apparently the girls had not been able to resist taking clothes instead of food so we ran out of food. But luckily for us as each time the train stopped – and mind you this was a long train and was full of refugees, not just us – people would come out of the little villages and they would be bearing, particularly in Normandy, they would be carrying these baguettes and cider. They would give us the bread and the cider. Sometimes the cider was a little volatile and we got a little drunk [laughing] but we had liquid and we had bread. 

First we were at Le Havre, then we went down to Normandy. Then we wound all the way down, almost, I think we were at Boulogne. And in Boulogne – we got there in the evening – and in the train station there was it seems to me like a big battalion. That’s hard to believe, but there were a lot of troops, Senegalese troops. It was the first time I had ever seen a black person. And they all came by our wagons and each of them gave us a can of sardines. That helped. It was very nice. 

The train kept moving. We got to Bordeaux. Then it moved inland and we got to Toulouse. Then we went south to Villefranche-de-Lauragais, that’s about 30 miles south of Toulouse, and that’s where it stopped. And we all had to get off. 

Then we were loaded on some transport busses, just the kids, the 100 of us. There were about 50 girls, 50 boys, plus some adult staff. We wound up in a village called Seyre [he spells it] para Nailloux. Seyre near Nailloux. About seven kilometers southwest of Villefranche-de-Lauragais. That’s a little farming community dominated by a beautiful castle. And all the land was owned by the castle owner, [Monsieur de Guispa]. Everybody in the village worked for him. They were his field laborers. And he turned over a couple of buildings in that village to us, maybe three, empty, that he used as granaries or whatever. And we got straw from the farmers. 

You know, French farms – the barns are behind the village, ok? And they go to the fields. There is nothing like we have in the United States: a building on the farm itself. Everybody lives in the village and the farm is all around. It was a very small isolated village. 60 people. And we more than overwhelmed them. They gave us some straw, we spread the straw in our buildings. The girls took over a couple of buildings and the boys took over the one building on the corner and that’s where we slept. 

There wasn’t much food. Some of the boys got jobs with the farmers, helping the farmers. [Monsieur de Capell], allowed us, he had park area around the castle as well as field. He had about 300 acres, 900 hectare. All labor intensive although there was some machine drawn thing but they were drawn by oxen. We divided the kids into groups. There were the little ones, the middle ones, and the big ones. I was in the middle ones among the boys. Our assignment was to go in the park everyday, his park, and we kept it clean. We kept the underbrush clean, we could pick up the fallen twigs, whatever, and that we could use that or our heat, for cooking. If we found any big branches we were supposed to cut them up and stack them along with his other wood that he used. Course when he wasn’t looking we would bring some big ones back too. He probably knew but I don’t think he cared. I met the gentleman later on and I don’t think he minded. 

Harper: If I can interrupt you, how did you get hooked up with…you know you said there were arrangements made for the train…who organized this? 
FINDLING: I heard later that the director of that home in Brussels was [name]. I don’t think he was a Jew. I think he was Belgian. He and his wife, Giselle, ran that home. Then there were also, in the girls home, there were some Jews working there. Eli [Oshka…] – no I don’t think Eli [Oshkalevitz] worked there, he was a social worker with the Jewish organization in Brussels. Madame Franc, Elka Franc, worked there. Her husband was an agronomist – Alexander Franc – they had gone to Israel earlier in the ‘30’s. Found that it wasn’t socialist enough for them, came back. They were Belgian; he was a Belgian national although originally Elka had come from Berlin. There was a Madame Leah, a [Monsieur name]. I don’t think these people were Jewish, they were Belgian. Madame Leah was a good Communist I found out later. They all were involved in either the girls or the boys home. I have since learned supposedly that Alex Franc had a brother. Alex Franc was called to service in the Belgian army and he called his brother and arranged for us to have those wagons. You are asking me questions I don’t know. Obviously some arrangement was made.

Harper: Do you know if the OES or the children’s aide society did anything, or that French group?
FINDLING: I think it was basically the Belgian Jewish organization. I have learned since then that at that time when these kids were coming into Belgium, even before the war, various groups cooperated. Jewish groups, Belgian Protestant groups, Belgian Communist groups, and Belgian labor groups, cooperated in helping. Certainly during the war they all joined forces in saving children. Many, many children, Jewish children in Belgium, were saved because these groups worked together. The Catholic Church, the Protestants, the Socialists, the Communists, and the remnants of the Jewish organization – HIAS and other Jewish social organizations did all work together. To some extent aided and abetted by the Germans. Now I am giving you what I have learned since then – I certainly didn’t know that at the time. 

The Germans aided and abetted them because it was their intent to kill the Jews. On that they were united. But there were two different schools of thought in this. There was the one school that said lets all ship them to Poland and kill them and kill them right then and there and to hell with them. Then there was the other one that said well you know you have to give an appearance of civilization. You are going to upset the apple cart if you are going to tell people you are going to get killed. It is better to do it by deceit. So they offer Jews work in Poland, shipping them east. Or go to Germany to work. My cousins Joe [Curshinstein’s] father even volunteered. He said, “Oh you going to live in Germany, you going to work, blah blah blah,” and he volunteered. Disappeared. And then they said we are going to ship you to Poland. After there weren’t any more volunteers they said to the adults, the parents, we are going to ship you to Poland, you are going to work in Poland. But if you want to leave your children here that’s alright. They even helped the Jewish organization, or winked as the Jewish organization set up orphanages for these kids. 

The idea was that after you get rid of the parents then of course you could say well the parents are well settled now and working and we are going to send their kids there to re-join them. However, as 1942 went into 1943 went in 1944, people did escape from the camps and the word filtered out that death awaited you in the east. So many parents deliberately knew if they were called they were going to die. When they came to the apartment to arrest them, they didn’t report. They came and they had these raids on the street where you block off and cordon off a neighborhood. And anybody that was caught that was a Jew – you had to wear the star and even if you didn’t wear the star if you had no identification papers they didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt, you were gone. So parents started giving their kids away to the neighbors, to Gentile friends. This is what happened to my sisters. 

I mentioned Eli and Sala, those Gentile acquaintances of ours. They told my mother, there is a woman in Ghent, a Belgian, and she is with the underground and she will place the children. She helps place children. So my mother gave her Fanny and Reggi and they put them in Catholic convents. From the standpoint of the nuns, there were those that wanted to save kids. And from the standpoint of some, you know if they grew up to be good Catholics that’s all the better. But that’s how many kids were saved. Now, there were a lot of organizations involved in Brussels, I am sure. In Holland and certainly in Belgium. In France I found out later there were groups of children scattered throughout France in various homes. They either were there to begin with when the Germans invaded or they came from Belgium or whatever. They were gathered together. Many of them were protected by the local population. 

We were in the south of France in Seyre in an isolated area off the beaten path. I don’t know whether the farmers around there knew we were Jews. Some of the older kids worked for them, brought home food. And we eked out. When we got there it was spring, summer was coming. We learned that you could eat nettles; there were certain kind of nettles that you could eat. The ones that sting you and leave blisters. So we would put some socks on our hands and we would pick the nettles and we would boil them. And then we picked up what the French call [name], which look like Jerusalem artichokes but they really are a type of watery potato that they used to feed to pigs.  We would peel them and then we would cook them. They were mainly water – and they would give you the runs. And I don’t know whether we got the runs because we ate [name] or because we didn’t have proper nutrition. We all got sick in the sense that we got scabies. In the summer the wells dry up in that part of the country so we drank wine. We had a little bit of water and if you were I think 10 or under you got half water and half wine. And if you were 12 and older you got straight wine. And it was just ordinary wine, one year old or whatever. That was a grape growing region at that time as well as wheat growing. There was food growing. There were berries – raspberries, blackberries. We would pick them. Farmers had fruit trees growing. When they weren’t looking or when they went to church on a Sunday morning we would raid their trees. I think they knew it. Some of that wood we brought back – some of those logs we brought back from the park…we borrowed saws and the older kids sawed those logs in half, drilled holes in them and made benches. And we made tables like that. We struggled. Our clothes were falling off our backs. We found a place where we could wash by the mill and we would wash there. We didn’t really have much soap, we didn’t have any soap. And found out that if you took some fine sand and rubbed just so, you could get a little clean. We had scabies. I don’t know if you know what that is but we had it. I know I caught the third degree burn because my shirt was rags and it was very hot. 

Then in September the director [name], his wife was pregnant at the time we had left. [Now] he had a second baby and they decided they would go back to Belgium. They loaded up on a cart. Whatever money we had left he took and we were left alone. Monsieur Franc was there, he had left… Just before he left, or before the armistice, the division of France occurred after the armistice, you know June… A group of soldiers had joined us. Remnants of units. A few British, a few Belgian, mostly French troops. And they stayed with us for a while. They were trying to reorganize them and we helped them. I remember helping load the bullets in machine gun belts, things like that. And I think Monsieur Franc had found his way to his wife. And he and his wife became our directors. Along with whatever staff remained. Eli [Oshkalevitz] who had joined us – he was a social worker in Belgium, he had come with the girls group to escape. Madame Leah, [name], they stayed. And we had started the rudiments of education. The older kids would teach the younger ones who would teach the younger ones yet. Mostly oral education. We would work half a day and then study, if you were young enough. The older ones would work all the time, they could. Bring food. 

Then shortly after [name, the director] left, Monsieur Franc made contact I think in Toulouse with the Swiss Red Cross, with the Quakers, and we started getting some help from them. Before that, I think we had some help from the Swiss Red Cross because I remember we each got a knife. Breakfast would be two slices of bread and three olives. And that was lunch too. And we used to, I remember there sitting with our knives, used to slice these olives and put them on the dry bread. And then you would save the pit with whatever food remained on them, that you would suck in the evenings. It’s nice, you know. That was the food we ate. We got some corn from the Quakers and I remember one night, I don’t know if it was illegal or whatever, we lined the road to watch while they took the corn to the mill to be ground. And that gave us polenta. All you need for polenta is just water and heat it up. Add some salt and that’s it. So we would have polenta. 

But after September, after the harvest was in, things were getting cold. There weren’t any more berries. And pretty soon there weren’t any more wild plants to pick, no more nettles, wild onions. We would pick wild onions. So there wasn’t any more of that. The Quakers shipped us some jeans. Those old fashioned American farm jeans with the bibs? We got those. They shipped us some wool and the girls started knitting sweaters for all of us. Some of us had nice knitted sweaters, some of us…[laughing]…but hey, it was good! We got some planks and we started making some structures where we could make… I guess you would call it now a futon frame. You know a little frame and lay some planks across it. Then we got some ticking, stripped material and we would stuff it with straw. That was going to be our bed. I don’t recall whether we had any blankets at all. We might have had a single blanket. And we would push two of those futons together, they were small, and three of us would sleep together. We had a lot of jaundice, a lot of people got jaundice. I was lucky I didn’t get jaundice. 

Harper: Were there any medical…?
FINDLING: No we had no medical. I remember because I had that severe burn and it was starting to get infected and all we had was a bottle of alcohol. I think Madame Leah took care of me and she rubbed the alcohol over it. It stung as all hell. And we didn’t have any bandages. What she used was binden. Binden is a German word. You know in the olden days before they had cotex or before they had tampons, women used to wrap themselves in bindings. It was a binding they used to wrap around themselves when they had a period, their menses. So we borrowed those from the girls. Many of the girls had these binden. And that’s what I was bandaged with when I had those burns on my back that were infected. And every morning Madame Leah would tear them off again and put alcohol [laughing]. But it healed. It healed. 

Harper: But doctors never came? I mean, how did these people with jaundice…?
FINDLING: Yes, what happened was – that was later. French department of health in Vichy, France saw to it that we got some kind of shots. It escapes me now what it was we got them from. But we got a series of three shots, and they injected us around the clavicle area and I think we also got some vaccination.

We had lice, so what we did is all the little kids, under 10, had their hair cut, completely off. And the way you treated the lice is after you got the hair cut they used to put Vaseline or something on their head and wrap them in a binding until the lice were all dead. You know, I guess if you were bald or you had short hair the lice didn’t survive or whatever. I don’t recall if I had lice or not. I don’t think so. I never lost my hair so I guess I didn’t have them. 

The first winter was horrible. I mean I was really only there one winter, but it was a horrible winter. We were very cold, our shoes had worn out. When you are kids pretty soon your shoes don’t fit anymore. So they brought us what was supposed to be sabot, wooden shoes. And, oh, I was so happy I thought I was going to get some wooden shoes that had leather uppers. You know, fancy. Well after the first rain it turned out that these leather uppers were cardboard. Anyway, we got rid of those and we finally all wound up with wooden shoes. And they had little inserts but mostly what you did is you stuffed straw in the wooden boots and then you put your feet into them and you stayed relatively warm. You know I mean, relative. It was cold. All I can say, mercifully, winters in southern France are not very long. It gets cold in December, January is the worst. And in February it is already starting to warm up. So I am sure part of our discomfort was due to that we weren’t eating right. 

At that time we found out that there was an organization in Switzerland called the Comité d’assistance à la population juive frappée par la guerre – Committee to Assist the Jewish Population Struck By the War. And what you could do is you could write a letter to your family, to your parents. You addressed it and then you put that envelope into another envelope sent to the Comité d’assistance à la population juive frappée par la guerre with your number, you had a number. They in Switzerland would then open the envelope and re-mail the letter as if it were coming from Switzerland. It would have a Swiss address on there, and Switzerland would have your address, and they from Switzerland, which was neutral, would then mail stuff. It took weeks for an exchange to occur. I wrote to my mother. I think all together I have about three letters from my mother and I have a postcard and one letter from my father. 

At the same time we also learned that there is a possibility that some of us could go to the United States through HIAS. But what we needed to do, apparently the American government insisted, was that we needed to have permission from our parents. After all we were minors. So they insisted that we get something from our parents that had to be countersigned by the authorities authorizing us to go to the United States. So I immediately wrote to my mother and father and asked them to do that. I don’t remember when it was but we were still in Seyre, we hadn’t moved. And then you wait. 

In about February, apparently there were some kids that already had the answer, and about 10 of them or more left to go to America. That lady that I just visited last week in Berkley, for some reason her father and mother who were in Berlin either paid their way out or whatever or they already had an existing permission to come to the United States. They got out of Germany and picked her up in Seyer and took her to go to the United States. Spain, Portugal, and the United States. So a group of 10 left. And just about that time the Swiss Red Cross rented a castle further south toward the Pyrenees – Château de La Hille in Montégut-Plantaurel. And some of us went there. 

I was scheduled to go with the first group, but I got a boil. That’s another thing we always got – boils. And we lanced them. We took a knife and you lanced them until all the pus came out. Blood poisoning, you know we had heard that if you see a blue line running up then cut it [laughing] otherwise if it gets to the heart then you are dead. I did that twice. Once on my leg I cut myself with my knife to make it bleed. But somehow we didn’t think anything of it. Later on when I look back upon that my hair stands on end, about the kind of medical treatment we gave to ourselves. 

I went with the second group to Château de La Hille. I think I left there in March or April. And the first group already dug a cistern in the courtyard so we could have some water. We dug latrines. And there was even some land and we could dig up the courtyard to make a garden. And what this place was, it was a fascinating place. It was a castle that had stood empty for lord knows, maybe 20 years. The Swiss Red Cross rented it. The outside, the castle walls, dated back to about the 14th century. Crenelated, with ruined corner towers. Beautiful entrance. And the inside structure, which was L-shaped, about three stories high, I would think probably was 17th century, 18th century structure. 

Harper: What was that castle called?
FINDLING: Château de La Hille in Montégut-Plantaurel – de La Hille. And Montègut-Plantaurel [he spells it]. It’s near Palhais [he spells this as well]. It’s in Ariege, the Department of Ariege. Before we were in the Department of Haute-Garonne, so this is closer to the Pyrenees. Only about 50 kilometers from the Pyrenees. In the lower Pyrenees the mountains start to get rolling mountainous. You could see the Pyrenees everyday on a clear day. Beautiful country, absolutely gorgeous country. Very fertile. There was a little land attached to it. 

Harper: I am sorry again, what year did you go there?
FINDLING: 1941 now. We immediately started working the land. 

Harper: Had you heard anything from your mother?
FINDLING: No I hadn’t heard anything about my request to come to the United States at that time. I would get a letter once in a while, “Everything is ok,” you know, this and this, “Times are hard…”

Harper: Just so I am straight here, your mother and…
FINDLING: My two sisters…

Harper: Oh, both of your sisters were in…
FINDLING: Were in Brussels.

Harper: Oh, were in Brussels, ok. Your sisters were living with a foster family, is that right?
FINDLING: Not yet, no not yet. They were still with my mother. It wasn’t until early 1943, after I was in the States, that she put them out into convents. 

So we started farming. We had one field, we started planting it with vegetables. We dug up the courtyard, started planting that with vegetables and we had I think more help from the Swiss Red Cross. In fact I think they took over the direction. They sent somebody there to be the director of the organization. We had more teaching, we formalized our educational process a little more, and we got some little notebooks where we kept notes. I have those, I saved all of those. I wrapped them in French newspapers to save the outer cover and I think I gave them to my niece Debbie, my brother Fred’s daughter.
 
Now it was getting warmer, it was the summer. In the morning we would get up, we would wash at the pump. We would each get a little bucket and we would walk in the fields where the farmers kept their cattle and picked up gold. Gold are the patties, cow patties. You picked them up and you put them in the barrel of water and you make tea. And then you scoop that tea up, rain water ok, you scoop that tea up and you put it around your plants to water your plants, to feed the plant. Good food. We used to call that ramasser de l’or –picking up gold. So we did that and then we would go in the woods and we’d pick up broken branches for cooking. We would have our classes in between. Some of the older fellas went to work for neighboring farmers, either for money or food. 

And it was Spring again and we had more help from the Swiss Red Cross so although we weren’t eating high off the hog, we ate better. Once in a while we might even have a little meat. Not meat, what they did is they gave us what we would call jowl bacon. Not Jewish fare ok, nobody kept kosher. It’s fat with a little bit of meat. It’s like bacon but mostly fat. You used to put that in cubes and you mix it with polenta or spaghetti, we had spaghetti pasta. Sometimes you could put a little cheese in it so you got a little protein. When the berries started coming we would mix berries in it. That’s what we did the previous summer. When we’d pick berries you mix it with polenta to give it a little sweetener. So we ate better I think than the previous summer. And we walked around a little more, we stole fruit from the farmers when their fruit trees started bearing. So we did that. 

And then in August, one day we were on a walk. On August 16th we were coming back from a walk and the other kids from the castle come running to me and meet me at the gate and they said, “You’re going to America, you are going to America!” Before that I got the permission. June 20th I got a letter from my mother and included in that was the permission, countersigned by the German government of blah blah, military authorities. That was the day before my birthday. June 22nd, the day after my birthday I got the one from my father in Poland permitting me to go to the United States and I gave that to the director. And that’s where it stood until August 16th when the kids came running out saying, “We’re going to America, We’re going to America.” And that evening I took the clothes I had on my back, nothing else. I took my notebooks. Madame Franc told me to study when I get to America and we left. 

Now since then… I just saw a video in Berkley, the German television had made a video of the reunion of survivors of that castle, that group. And the way they presented it, it kind of romanticizes it, the thing that we lived by our wits by our skills and we were united in our endeavor and I think it is romanticized. We went on a day to day basis. We were aware of what was going on, we were scared to death, we did hear the news, we had a radio. We would all gather around in the big room and we would hear [Speaking French – call signal from Radio Andorra], I still remember the call signals from Radio Andorra. Or we would listen to the BBC. BBC you got news. 

We were, keep in mind, in Vichy, France. That was the one by Marshal Pétain. The Germans weren’t there. Did we think, did I think, did we talk about the Germans might come and take over that part of France? No, I had never heard that. Were we aware of what was going on outside? I doubt it because I know one of the fellows, older fellow, Edgar Chaim took a bicycle and decided he was going to try and get back to Berlin. He got to the border between Vichy, France and German occupied France and they turned him back. And he learned something there that it might not be a good idea and he came back. Did we know what was going on? No. One of my French notebooks is wrapped in a French newspaper talking about the Warsaw ghetto. It’s an article in a French paper, which shows the division and shows that bridge, you know how the Gentiles cross over the Warsaw barrow and they propaganda about the Warsaw ghetto. 
Did we have any idea what was going on at that time? No, I don’t think so. Were we aware of the war? Absolutely. When the Germans invaded Russia I know we talked about it at length and we had divided opinions about whether the Germans would beat the Russians or the Russians would be able to resist and conquer. And we couldn’t resolve it. And we finally said well in 20 years we will know and we will get together in 20 years and we will talk about it. We followed the fighting between the British and the Germans in North Africa. We remembered the Siege of Tobruk. So we were very, very keenly aware of what was going on. 

Did we feel any personal danger at that time? No. I felt very safe except that I knew, that there were outside of our group, there was the unknown. Certainly I didn’t want to get back to where the Germans were. I don’t think anybody wanted to get back to where the Germans were. If you had asked me why not I couldn’t probably have replied other than having that vague feeling that I had in Cologne that we would die. When I thought about that did I think of the death that we have since known, the Holocaust, no? I thought of a personal death. But that they would systematically do what they did? I don’t think that crossed anybody’s mind. I don’t think anybody knew. So the next day, or that same evening, the six of us, there were seven, no there were six, seven – one of the girls got sent back from Marseilles, so there actually wound up to be six of us.

Harper: Were your brothers…?
FINDLING: My two brothers and I, Max [Krolieg] and his sister, and I think Rosa [Blau]. We went to Marseilles. First we went to Toulouse and I think [Madmoiselle Nef], the Swiss director took us to Toulouse, and from Toulouse we went to Marseilles. We wound up at the Hotel du Midi which was kind of a flea bag where we joined kids from a handful of orphanages and children’s homes throughout France, maybe southern France, all situated as we. We spent about three weeks there, we went to the American embassy, the issued us an affidavit in lieu of a passport. 

On September 1st, we got on a train, they gave us two little tins of pate and a baguette and we went toward Spain. Crossed the Spanish border, we were in Barcelona briefly, then we got to Madrid. Took us off the train in Madrid and took us all to a wedding in Madrid. I don’t know why, maybe they think its good luck to feed the poor, maybe its part of their cultural tradition. We went to a wedding and an after wedding meal. We were all fed at this wedding in Madrid. We spent the night there I think at some convent or a church. Back on the train and then we wound up in Lisbon. 

In Lisbon we stayed at the [name unclear], which was a girls secondary school, boarding school. Except it was summer, school hadn’t started yet so we were there. It was marvelous going through Lisbon. It had been a long time since I had seen a city with lights on. People walking around. We ate like pigs [laughing]. And on September the 9th we got onboard the [San Pepinto]. We were supposed to go on the Niassa but it was on the [San Pepinto]. It turns out I was beginning to suspect that the [San Pepinto] might have been owned by HIAS because everybody I have spoken to since them came over on the [San Pepinto]. Same boat. 

We stopped over night at Casablanca and then we went on. The ship was brightly lit because Portugal was neutral. Outside of Bermuda we were stopped by a British frigate. They sent a boat and inspected us. Then we entered Bermuda, Hamilton. Didn’t stay there long. And on the 23rd of September we saw the American shores and we met the pilot boat loaded with porters and television people, or not television but movie people. They came on board and they plunked us down and they asked us questions. And I gave a little speech about who I was and where I came from. Then we landed in New York and everybody got taken off the boat except my younger brother Martin who was sick. 

They took Martin, Fred and I and shipped us to Ellis Island. We spent the day in the big hall that is now so memorialized. I was going through all the phone books of New York looking for my mishpocha, my relatives. And I knew one of them, the Goldsteins lived in Bayonne. And after a while there were so many pages of Goldsteins, the same names, and it was hopeless. 

The next day they shipped us to Pleasantville, New York which was a Jewish orphanage. Or not necessarily an orphanage but like kids had single parents or whatever, and kids who were gone mostly for the summer. We stayed there while they looked for homes for us. And one morning I find my relatives there. They had gone to a movie and had seen that newsreel. That is how they knew we got here [laughing]. So three weeks later they shipped us all, my two brothers and I, to Detroit because that was the only place they found somebody that was willing to take three kids. So we wound up in a foster home in Detroit. We didn’t stay in that foster home, I only stayed there one year. Fred stayed a few years, Martin stayed a little longer. They all wound up in better foster homes. I wound up on my own by the time I was 15. I wasn’t cut out to be in a foster home anymore. I guess I was too independent or whatever. 

Part of the problem was that the social workers… and they told me they admitted as much. I became a social worker myself for a while before I became a lawyer. They admitted as much after the war… They didn’t really know what to make of us. They thought we were nuts. They didn’t know what had gone on over there. And they just assumed if you kids lose your parents then you are traumatized then they do this. You know, if you are an American kid and you have a parent die… but they had no idea until after the war what went on and they told me had they known before we would have been treated differently. But at 15 I was on my own. I went to school and I worked after school. Paid room and board, $17.50 a week. Jewish social services paid it’s foster parents well. I was drafted in 1946 and when I was discharged nine months later because Truman declared the war over, I applied to university on the GI bill of rights, but you know you got one year after three months in service, plus one month for each month that you were in service. So I had actually 12 + 9, 21 months. So in the summer I worked. I stopped collecting the GI bill. I stretched that and accelerated my studies so I graduated in three years. I worked all the time. 

Harper: When did you find out about the full scope of the Holocaust and then about your mother? And did your sisters make it out? 
FINDLING: After the war. 
Yes, they made it out. 
First I got a letter from my sister Fanny and it had been addressed to me Joseph Findling Boston. I don’t know how it got to me, I can only speculate how it got to me. I suspect that there must have been hundreds of letters that came from people from Europe that were addressed in like fashion. And there must have been a concerted effort made by the post office along with immigration and naturalization to find these people. Knowing that these letters came from over seas from a war zone. I suspect that the postal service traced me down through immigration and who knows what but the letter got to me. At the same time I also got a letter from my uncle in England that wanted to join the British army. I had stayed in touch with him also through Switzerland during that part of the war when I was in France. I knew he had married and I knew his address. So once I got here I corresponded with him in England. He had also heard from part of my family that had survived. 

Ok, Jack and Herman and their mother had been in hiding and they were paying somebody so much a month to stay alive. They knew that Fanny was in some kind of a catholic home or convent and they wrote to Charles. Fanny remembered Charles’ address in England and wrote to him. But I got her letter first and she told me she was in a convent, she was going to become a nun. And she told me where Reggi was, what convent she was in. So I immediately started trying to get help from the Jewish organization to bring them over here. Get somebody to sponsor them. That wasn’t difficult. And by February of 1947 we had brought them here. I picked them up in New York. You talk about coincidences, they came over on the same boat, the Marine Raider, that took me to Korea in 1946. [Laughing] Of all the ships. In any event…

Harper: So, what did you find out about your mother?
FINDLING: I found out about my mother – I knew she hadn’t answered. Fanny didn’t really know what had happened because Sala kept visiting her and didn’t tell her. She kept saying, “Your mother is ok, everything is fine.” And it wasn’t until after the war that she found out her mother wasn’t going to come back. 

Course the first thing I did was every Jewish agency had these lists of people who had been found in camps. You go week after week looking at lists and you don’t find anything. I went to the Red Cross and they didn’t find anything. I found out from my cousin Joe [Kirshenstein]. 

Joe [Kirshenstein] survived. He had been in Belgium. He was my mother’s nephew. And Joe had been picked up and he had been sent to Malines [also known as Mechelen]. Malines was the concentration camp, the place in Belgium where the Jews were assembled for shipment to Auschwitz. When Joe got to Malines he didn’t know what the hell was going on, 1942. He didn’t know anything about Auschwitz or anything. He was just waiting. They let them walk around. So he walked around the camp and they had a tailor shop and various little shops and he walked by and he noticed that in each of these little establishments they are run by Jews, Jewish prisoners. 

So when he walked by the tailor shop he asked the fellow, “I am here and I would like to keep busy. Do you have any work for me?” And the tailor said, “Can you sew button holes?” And Joe had learned a little bit of the needle trade. And he said, “Well I can sew button holes to some extent,” and the tailor said, “The major of this camp, the commandant, wants a new coat and I’ve got to have the button holes sewed by such and such a day.” He said, “Help me to sew the button holes.” So he sewed the button holes. And when the major came to pick up his jacket the tailor told the major, “Look I got this young fellow, he can sew, why don’t you let me keep him as a helper?” So Joe survived. He remained, [cattery?]. And he wasn’t shipped. But he saw my mother come and go. By then he knew, you know, if you [cattery?] you know. By then he knew what they were shipping them for. She was picked up July 31st, taken to Malines, shipped out the same day. She got to Auschwitz August 2nd and was killed immediately. You know they do one right, left, and it was just immediate. 

Harper: Have you been able to find her name listed in any sort of…?
FINDLING: Yes, her name was listed in Belgium as Jews of Belgium who were killed. And I found out through German archives, that’s all fairly recent. In Belgium some of the Jews in Belgium did a systematic search through the records and I found out from them and I have got the paper and the information that they day she was picked up what transport she was sent and how many were killed that day. Though there is no surety she was killed that day, but there is no reason to believe that she wasn’t killed that day because I think on her transport there weren’t any women that were kept for labor. The Germans also have some records that I was able to get and these are records of Jews of Cologne. Next to her name they have “dead” and next to my father’s name they have “disappeared.” There is no record because when they machine gunned people they didn’t take names or anything. They just disappeared. So for him it took us almost 40 years to find out. Her we knew fairly soon. 

And the only ones that really survived were, Joe [Kirshenstein], my uncle, her brother in England. Jack and Herman [Rambolinski] and their mother. That’s it. All the other relatives in France, Poland, I don’t know whatever was left in Germany, I don’t know if there was anyone left in Germany, they were all dead, there’s nobody else that survived. 

Interestingly enough, my great grandfathers third brother who remained in Poland, in March of this year I found his great grandson. So interestingly enough, all three brothers’ descendants wound up in England to some extent. I have met the English family that [Mottel’s] brother who went to England founded that branch. My uncle Charles is the sole survivor of [Mottel’s] branch from Germany in England other than me. And then Maurice, his father was a rather wealthy person in Warsaw from his grandfather and had shipped him to Israel, to be educated, to Palestine. When he finished his education he shipped him to France where he got his engineering degree at the University of Toulouse. When he finished there he decided to take a two week holiday to England. The war broke out and he got stuck in England. Never got back to Poland, everybody else in Poland perished. He was the only survivor. 

Harper: And you stayed in Detroit?
FINDLING: I stayed in the Detroit area. I was in service. I was called, as I said, in the Second World War. I was called back for the Korean War. 

Harper: Did you serve in Korean War?
FINDLING: Yes, I didn’t go to Korea that time. I served in the medical corps at that time. I was at Texas and at Denver, the hospital in Denver, and then up here at Madigan army hospital in Tacoma. Then I went back got my master’s degree in social work and then got married and then the next year I decided social work wasn’t my cup of tea…

Harper: If I could interrupt, is your wife Jewish?
FINDLING: No, no my wife is not Jewish. That’s another story. But in any event she is Dutch, Dutch descent. That probably shouldn’t be surprising. It occurred to me lately that it probably wasn’t surprising. In any event I became an attorney, practiced law for about four years and then became an administrative law judge and that’s what I have been doing since about 1964.

Harper: Are you retired now?
FINDLING: No. I retired once from the juvenile court system to take another job as a director of the Michigan Unemployment Compensation Appeals. And did that for 10 years and then decided I didn’t want to have any administrative responsibilities anymore so now I am just hearing cases. That’s what I have done the last five years. 

Harper: Have you told this story to your family?
FINDLING: In bits and pieces, when they ask. My children have not asked very much. They are just getting of an age where they are starting to ask. My brother’s daughter, Debbie, the one who is very much involved in Jewish education, she has sort of turned out to be the family historian and she has asked more. Marlene here, who lives here in Portland, that’s my brother Martin’s eldest daughter who is also an attorney, she is asking a lot more. Course she is getting of that age, 35 and older, she is having children of her own now and I think that is what precipitates this sort of thing. So when they ask I tell them. 

I kept a journal when I went to Poland earlier this year and some of the things appear in it, at least how I became separated from my father and why I was going to Poland. At one time, when I was in college, I had written it all down. As what I knew at that time. And I don’t know what happened to that. It was about 40 pages long, typed up. I was going to save it as a memorial. And then it disappeared. To this day I can’t figure out what happened to it. I haven’t written it down again. 

My secretary was urging me to dictate it to her and she would type it and I didn’t think that that was fair. I was going to sit down and start knocking it out on my PC but you get home, at my age, and you’ve worked all day, and you are tired. It’s hard to do. I don’t know whether I could have done it. But I am glad I am doing it now, at least for them. 

I think it’s nothing, you know. There are people who went through a lot more than this. This was just very, very fortunate. Crazy escapes. If I have learned anything it is that nobody knew, really knew, very few really knew what was going to happen. Survival was random. My cousin Joe and I, we’re basically in agreement, but we dispute a little bit. I say survival is random, he says yes you are right survival was random but if you did something, if you moved yourself, you had a better crack at it than if you did nothing. I don’t know if he is right. He did something in a sense. He refused to go with his father when his father volunteered to go to work. I think it was pure chance that he happened on this tailor. There’s been so much written, there’s so much I have read that say, you know, people seem to rationalize their own survival as being based on something they did or didn’t do. And I haven’t reached that conclusion. I think it was totally, totally random. 

Harper: Were you ever bothered or perhaps maybe still bothered by survivor’s guilt? Do you think you could have done more?
FINDLING: Guilt in the sense…It’s hard to say what you mean by guilt. In the sense that I would say I know, as a fact, that had this not happened, had I grown up in Cologne, Germany I would have been lucky to be a factory worker. Maybe at best have a skill trade if that. Instead I came here, I became a professional, my brothers became professional, all lawyers. We are all wealthy. It’s been a wonderful life. In that sense I feel guilty because it’s as if I benefited from what happened. 

But on the other hand how do you do otherwise? You come here and say well because that happened I am going to pour ashes on my head and mourn the rest of my life? And so again that’s fate. You do with what you have and you do the best you can for yourself and for your family and you start all over. We came here, three of us, and then the two girls. I have four boys, Martin has four children, Fred has four children, Fanny has one and there are 13. So three became 13 and those 13 are having children and we will grow. There were few, and we will grow. Wasn’t it said like the sand on the sea? On the beach? So we are growing, you start all over. 

Guilt to live, no. Nobody should feel guilt to live. It was random. And I think it’s pointless for people to say that Jews should have resisted more. They did. They didn’t resist anymore than any other group, any other population, any other culture, any other nationality. They did what they could which was to stay alive. And then they committed suicide if they couldn’t. You know we talk about the Warsaw uprising – that was a mass suicide. They would rather die fighting than … die on your feet instead of your knee. Suicide nonetheless. I am not condemning them; I would never condemn them because I agree with that. But no, Jews have no need to feel guilty. There is nothing to feel guilty about. You survived. The fact that we survived is a miracle in and of itself. Random as it could be that after such organized slaughter that we survived. I don’t have any illusion. I am not saying this was unique. Slaughters have occurred from time immemorial. It’s denying history that it hasn’t occurred. The only difference between this one and those that preceded it is that never did a state systematically organize this and plan it the way this was planned. That’s why just to have survived and to go on is an achievement in and of itself. No one should feel guilty, alright? I mean parents did what they could. My mother fled, left us behind. Am I to blame her? If I were in her shoes would I have done differently? She panicked, she did what she could. And when she realized that she could do no more, she put the girls away. She put the girls in what she thought was safe keeping. I think she knew at that time that she might not survive. She and many others did then. No, I have not guilt about that. 

Harper: You said earlier that you are not an observant Jew or a practicing Jew. Is that…
FINDLING: That’s qualified, ok. I have lived as a Jew. I said that to all the groups of kids in Poland. I have not gone to synagogue, I don’t observe the High Holy days. I go spend Pesach with my brother. But I have lived as a Jew in terms of what it takes ethically to be a Jew. I have done that, because as far as I know it is the only way a person can live and be a human being. I don’t think that those ethical considerations are unique. I think other cultures contain them. I think they are universal. I don’t believe in God in the formal sense as something out there. I think that is a copout. I think that if there is a God that God is you, us, the totality of us and how we live creates God. And to say that you are good and the other person is bad and if you are good then God comes, the messiah will come, that’s a copout because you don’t take any responsibility then. Only if you take responsibility for everything that you do, day in, day out, and if everybody does the same, will there be what we call God. Call it an idea, call it whatever you want. And what happened in there was that not God abandoned man, but man abandoned God in the sense that they stopped living like human beings. 

Harper: Do you think your experiences have helped shape those opinions that you have?
FINDLING: My opinions?

Harper: As you were explaining to me, your ideas about God. Or do you think your experiences have helped influence those thoughts?
FINDLING: I would think so. I don’t see how you can divorce your life’s experiences from the conclusions you draw out of life and the summation you make of life. I was an atheist when I came here. I was a very, very religious person by the time I was 10. But by the time I was 10, by the time Kristallnacht came around I had given up. I had already at that time said there is no God because if there was God these things would not be happening and there was nothing that happened between then and the time I came to the United States that convinced me otherwise. 

And then who is God? You know all the Gods. When I had questions when I was 10 years of age I already knew something about the others. I told you I went to their churches, I went to find out historically. I did the same thing in Belgium. I studied them. You don’t give up something without study. And the conclusions I drew you hear me say. There is nothing unique about how Jews should live. It is the synthesis of human evolution, every society, every culture except the most primitive, that you come to that have reached a certain level of development, have reached the same conclusions. If you cut through all the formalities and the embellishments that they put around them. I will continue living as a Jew. I don’t know how to do anything else. 

No, I would never convert because to convert to what? I don’t think my wife who was born a Christian and was a very, very religious person at the time we married. But she came to the same conclusion over time. We never talked about it. It’s just something that happened to her, just as it happened to me. Why did I marry her? My aunt in England could never understand. I married her because where I was living at the time, and the people that I met at that time, the Jewish girls didn’t want me. You know it’s biological to be married at a certain time. And when I was in high school I started dating. I didn’t know at that time but I went to a high school that had basically middle class, upper middle class Jewish children. Although striving, many of our co-religionists during the war had little businesses. Butcher shop, grocery store, they made money during the war. They moved up socially. They wanted better things for their children. 

You ask a girl out for a date, she says, “How will I know when you are coming?” “Well, I will ring the doorbell.” “Well what car are you driving?” “Well I am not driving, we are going to take the bus.” You get a call saying I got a headache, I can’t go out, make it some other day. Or you go out once, the second time its no. If you go out you come home and the family would ask what does your dad do? I don’t have a father. What does your mother do? I don’t have a mother. What are you studying? I am studying to be a social worker. Oh… I don’t blame them, I understand it. Families want what is best for their children, ok? They forget that their children are not marrying a family, they are marrying a person. And ultimately the person they are marrying decides what’s best. I mean the character of the person. This happened all the way through college. 

I have never yet had a Jewish girl go out, at that time, twice with me, during that time I went to school. At the time I went to school – I went to a city university – I think most Jewish kids were being sent to school, at least in the city, to get an MRS. And I wasn’t it. I am not saying that’s the way it was all over the country. I am sure it wasn’t, but that’s what happened to me. It’s what happened to Fred, to my brother. He went to Morocco, to France to find a wife. She was born in Morocco, he met her in France. I married a girl that turned out she later was from an upper middle class family, I hadn’t the faintest idea where she was from, but she took me for what I was. She knew I had nothing, and it worked. Did we raise our children any particular religion? No. We raised them in no religion other than ethics. My children shared the same way of living that I do, which I call a Jewish ethical life. And there’s no difference between the way my wife lives and the way I live. And they turned out good. 

Harper: In conclusion here, do you have any message to future generations who may be watching this tape? 
FINDLING: I have a message of hope. I think that this generation, your generation, are going to see, I know it sounds crazy, I think its crazy when I even think of it, but I think I see signs. You are going to see real peace. You are going to see the possibility of an end of war as we have known war. I think that a change is occurring among people. For the first time in history… you know, always before the interest of the state dictated whether war would be or would not be. You have now seen two, three, five years where American policy has been to intervene for the sake of life. To intervene whenever possible for the sake of humanity. I have no illusions about he UN. They waste a lot of money, they do a lot of garbage. But for the first time in human history you have an international organization that is trying to help people, to intervene for the sake of peace. You have smaller nations that are willing to lend their troops to serve as peacekeepers. This is something that if you look back in history this is unusual – very, very unusual. 

When you think back that slavery was part of human existence as far back as you can go in history and that every nation, every people enslaved other people, and that between almost the end of the…between about 1700 something and 1850 or 1860, in a hundred years, slavery for all intents and purposes was abolished as a human institution. We don’t eat each other anymore. We don’t sacrifice each other anymore. Those are basic changes that occurred on an evolutionary basis. Not physical, but you know there is other evolution beside just pure physical evolution. So the hope that I feel is that we are entering an era where wars as we know them will cease. Yes, people will fight. We still have urban guerrillas, we have killings. But the mass wars that we have seen, no. 

I think people are starting to sense that it is no longer cost effective to fight wars. It is too expensive. Both in wealth and in lives. That if we ever have a war again, the cost will be prohibitive and we will rent the planet a wasteland. We will lose if we ever go to war again. We will use atomic weapons. Everybody knows that. That is known and I think everybody knows that. Will that stop somebody like Sadam Hussein or some urban guerrilla from exploding an atom bomb? No, no. I hope it will stop them but it may not. But I think as nations yes we will enter an era of peace. And that’s the hope I have. And you would be surprised. People feel so down at the heel now that everybody’s getting poorer that they can’t live as well as their parents. You are going to be entering a golden age. I am telling this to American kids. I can sense it, I can feel the growth, for whatever its worth. If I have to leave a message, that is the message. 

Harper: Great. Thank you very much. 
FINDLING: Alright, you are welcome.