Lottie Waxman

Interviewer:    Good morning, I’d like you to tell us your full name, the date and place of your birth and then some things about your family. WAXMAN: My name is Lotte Waxman and I was born October 3, 1923 in Vienna, Austria.  Our family consisted of my parents and an older brother.  He’s two years older than me.  We lived a very nice and comfortable life.  My father was a photographer and he had at times three studios and my mother helped my Dad in the business.  At home we had a housekeeper which was part of our family, which I will talk about later on.  Therefore, I mention her.  Her name is Heide.  I started school when I was 6 years old and I went to my 4 years elementary school and then …there it starts like a high school, like junior high as we would say here and I had a lot of friends and had a very good life.  Vienna is a beautiful city, most of the people have heard about it.  It’s a city full of songs and dance and it was a happy time.  In the summers my mother, and in the beginning through the first years, my father, we went to Italy which was close to Austria.  My brother who was part of a twin, but the other part died, was quite ill, so the doctor told my mother.  He said she should spend the summers in Italy, the salt water would do him good.  Therefore, we were for 8 years every summer there.  Until my brother was old enough and he didn’t want to go with us any more so he wanted to go to scout camps and all that.  But I still continued in the summers to go with my mother and we had wonderful summer. In the winter, I went every day ice skating and my brother played ice hockey and after our homework was done we went to the ice skating rink and in the evening our parents picked us up and we went home.  My parents were quite religious so I grew up in a religious home and every Saturday afternoon…nobody really told me but I went every Saturday to the youth service in our synagogue.  I liked it.  School, I loved really mostly because of my friends.  I always loved people and I loved to have a lot of nice friends around me.  So, my childhood was really a very, very happy one and thank God for that, because those years helped me a lot later in my life.

Interviewer:    Please tell us a little more about your parents and your grandparents.  For example, what was your mother’s full family name? 
WAXMAN: My mother’s name was Josephine Siner.  It was her maiden name and my grandparents…I never knew my grandfather.  He died very young.  Both my parents came from Galitzia.  This was part of Austria which later became part of Poland.  My mother had an uncle, the brother of her mother who had a big factory in Vienna.  He took my mother and her brother from Galitzia as young people after their schooling to Vienna and they worked there and they loved it there and said they didn’t want to go back home.  So, they stayed then in Vienna.  My father…funny, he came from the same city and his father was a school teacher.  It was like one schoolhouse like they used to have.  It was a house he taught all grades.  They were very small classes and my father first came to Vienna as a young man and then he took his whole family to Vienna.  My grandparents, my uncle, I had two uncles and one aunt, and they all came to Vienna and they all lived not too far from us.

Interviewer:    What was your father’s full name. 
WAXMAN: My father’s full name was Solomon Feuchtbaum.

Interviewer:    When did his family come to Vienna? 
WAXMAN: My father came first around 1905 or 1906 as a young boy and I would say everybody by 1910 was in Vienna, because they all got their professions in Vienna.

Interviewer:    And your mother’s family, about when did they come? 
WAXMAN: My mother’s family stayed in Galatzia.  Only my mother and her brother came to Vienna and my grandmother on my mother’s side, she came to visit us.  My grandfather on my mother’s side died very young so I never knew him.  I didn’t know my grandfather from my father’s side either.  At that time, a lot of people died very young…I imagine they didn’t have the resources what they have today, so because I know my father, my grandfather from my father’s side is buried in Vienna because we always visited his grave.  My parents met around 1910.  But they didn’t get married for eight years later.  They had to wait so long, I don’t know why but they did.  The family of my father most of them, sorry to say, were all killed.  Only one brother.  He came, he was picked up already in April 1938 and went to Dachau.  He was the only one who survived.

Interviewer:    Tell us a little bit more about your parents getting to know each other and married. 
WAXMAN: I tell you I don’t really know what the story is that my mother ‘s family was very well-to-do in Vienna.  And somehow my father was a photographer and he had his whole family there in the beginning to take care of, so as the story goes, my mother’s side didn’t really want my mother to…they felt she could do better. Shouldn’t somebody who has the family, he has to take care of the whole family.  Sooo, and my mother…at that time you listened to your elders…and my mother couldn’t do anything.  But then, as I understand it, they met again after 7 years and then my mother felt she had waited long enough.  But then my father, I mean my mother’s family just loved my father because he was a wonderful man.  My mother always said that uncle who came to us, I knew very well, and it was wonderful and every night when she went to bed she prayed.  She wanted to get a husband just like her uncle was.  And she always said she got it, she got it since she had waited for my father.

Interviewer:    Were both families religious? 
WAXMAN: My father’s family was more religious and my mother was religious, but you know both my parents were.  It was different.  They lived, there were no fanatics.  Like my father laid tfilin every day.  This means, you know, they put, I don’t know if you, very religious Jews, this is a prayer…it is a prayer within the morning and they put something around the head and on their arms and I was fascinated with it, to see that.  And he did that every day of his life.  And once I asked him, I said, “Why do you do this?”  He said, “I promised my Dad before he died…I would do it.” And I’m sure he did it till the last day he died.  I’m sure in the concentration camp he couldn’t do it, but I’m sure the last day he left Vienna, he did it.  My mother on the other hand…But when we went out to eat, my father would order something and then we could see my father would leave and go to the waiters and we were sure nobody said something.  But he got a pork chop instead of a veal chop, you know.  And then if my mother said something, he always said, I never forget it, he said, “My love to God doesn’t go through the stomach”.  And this is how he felt, but my mother would never eat ham or bacon or something.  But she was nice enough to…if he wanted it, we could eat it, outdoor, outside.  But she said, “I don’t want it in my house.  I’m not used to it.”  Like Passover, we changed plates and pots.  I felt they really kept their religion but it wasn’t anything fanatic, you know.  They believed in what they were doing.  And they were good people, which I think is the most important thing in any religion.

Interviewer:    Was Yiddish spoken in your house? 
WAXMAN: No, no, no.  We never spoke Yiddish…therefore I don’t …I understand a little Yiddish because it’s very close to German. And my parents spoke Polish.  And this was the worst thing they could do.  If they didn’t want us to hear something, they spoke Polish.  My brother and I, we didn’t like that.  But it was only German in our house.

Interviewer:    Tell us something about how your household worked.  You mentioned a housekeeper. 
WAXMAN: Yes, we had a housekeeper.  She wasn’t Jewish.  I tell you they worked very, very hard at that time, not like today. I was very lucky she lived till last October in Vienna.  And many times I told her, I said how hard it was, you know there was no washing machines and like in the morning our mother made our sandwiches and we went to school.  But then for lunch our Heide took, we had the meal, the heavy meal during the day in Europe.  So,  when we came home from school, we had our meal and then she had to take the food up to the studio to my parents, which was a ten-minute’s walk.   It was so close, one of the studios, and especially the one where my mother was, I went every afternoon.  And especially there was an ice cream shop across the street, so I loved to go there, because I got my ten cents and I could go over to the ice cream shop.  We were a very close knit family and the one brother of my father, who survived, he was my favorite uncle.  And if I didn’t get something I wanted badly from my parents, I only had to go to him and I got it.  Don’t forget at that time we were not as spoiled as my grandchildren today.  We wanted very simple things.  I went once a week to see him and he came once a week, he and his wife came once a week.  They didn’t have children before 1935 when their daughter was born.  And then we saw our grandmother of my father’s side, came once a week to us. My brother and I, we had to go every week to visit her and when we got older sometimes we felt we had other things to do, but this didn’t work.  And my grandmother was a very religious person.  She had still a wig, you know.  She was a very religious person and she lived in a very big apartment and she lived  with her daughter and husband and three children, they lived all together .

Interviewer:    What role did your mother play in the family?  That is, you mentioned the photography studios, did she work in the studios? 
WAXMAN: yes, yes, yes.  She worked, but everything she knew my father taught her and she had one studio which she was more or less the manager and she helped.  When it came to weddings or bigger things, my father came.  All the studios were not too far away, so my father could, you know, people made appointments.  It wasn’t that people just walked in.  If they walked in for passport folder or something, my mother did it.  And my mother enjoyed it very much.  My mother was, you know, it was her own thing and she was close to us.  We could, my brother and I we could be there anytime we want.

Interviewer:    How did your father become a photographer?  What led him to photography? 
WAXMAN: I tell you something, I never asked, you know, it was many things I wished I would know, but you know when you are 14, you cannot question, you asked.  I imagine he was interested in this profession because he was a very good photographer and his brother, my favorite uncle, he was a photographer.  He had two studios and so I imagine…My brother is a photographer, and I was a photographer, so I imagine it was something they enjoyed it and we then enjoyed it too.

Interviewer:    Please tell us something about the neighborhood that you lived in. 
WAXMAN:  We lived in a very nice neighborhood.  It was at the time, Vienna had 21 districts.  And we lived in the third district which was bordering on the first district, which was downtown Vienna.  And we had beautiful parks and we had really everything.  We were close to the amusement park and we had in our district which I found out years ago, 13,000 Jews.  And the second district in Vienna, which was bordering to ours was the Jewish quarters, which they must have had thousands and thousands of Jews.  But our district was beautiful and you know many times it wasn’t, you grew up there.  When I talk in schools and people ask me, we never bothered or cared who was Jewish, who was not Jewish and many times we found out after Hitler came, who really was Jewish and who wasn’t because there was never any question about it.  So, it was one of the nicer districts of Vienna to live in, because it was walking distance, like we were walking distance to the ice skating rink and to the concert house.  We could walk to the opera, we could walk to the museums and I still do it today when I am there, so it was a very pleasant life.

Interviewer:    What was the street? 
WAXMAN: the Street?  The name was Headstrasse and it was a very old city.  You know Vienna is a very old city like when I go back, I couldn’t for years and years go back, and then I was back last summer and we took our ten year old granddaughter along because we have 3 girls and granddaughters and we want them to learn where they really come from and our culture and it was the first time she said to me, “Grandma. I have to see where you lived”.  And I said, “I don’t promise you that, let’s see when we get there”.  And it was the first time in 55 years that I could go and see the house I lived in.  In 1977 we took our daughter to Vienna and she wanted to do it and when I got to the corner, I stopped.  I said  “Do me a favor, show her.” I just couldn’t, but somehow my granddaughter, I don’t know how but she made me and she took a picture and she took a picture of each window.  I had to tell her that this was the living room, and this was the bedroom.  She took pictures.  But she said to me, “Oh, grandma, what an old house.”  You know those houses, they were walkups, you know so we didn’t know better.  And at that time, I didn’t know anybody who lived in their own house.  I imagine the very, very wealthy who did that.

Interviewer:    Please tell us about your school. 
WAXMAN: Yes, my school, I went the first four years and the nice thing in that elementary school, I had a teacher and that teacher I had for the first three years.  I think she is the one who gave me the lust for school.  She was a wonderful person.  She was really, I stayed with her in touch.  She became 96 years old and I was in touch with her.  Through the war and all the time.  And something special happened with her and I would like to mention that.  When Hitler came and we were devastated and somehow you didn’t want to burden your parents with all your worries and troubles because they had more than we had, and so I ran up to my teacher, who didn’t live far from us and I used to visit her quietly often.  I was allowed to spend Christmas with them.  We had a Christmas tree and this was for me something because I didn’t have it.  So, I was allowed every Christmas to visit her.  I ran up to her and thought, “Oh, I can’t talk to her”.  And she wasn’t my teacher at that time any more.  And when I rang the bell and the door opened, her husband was in the German uniform in the Nazi uniform.  And when I saw it, I stared, and thought “Now this cannot happen.  Not my teacher’s husband.”.  I didn’t want to see her, I didn’t.  And she came running after me and she said, “Lotte, come up.”  I said, “no, I wouldn’t.  She said, “Please come up”.  So, I went up the stairs and we went up and she said to me, “I’m sorry that you saw that.  I cannot help how my husband feels, but between you and me, nothing will ever change.”  And you know this stayed with me for all my life.  And after the war when she wrote to me, she had nothing special there, they had no sugar and nothing.  And I really didn’t have anything either in Sweden, but I wouldn’t eat a meal without thinking I should send her something, because I never forgot that.  But that went, at that time, somebody would say that and it really never changed.  I mean, we stayed, I visited her and we wrote to each other until she died.  So, this was things you never forget.  And then from that school I went to junior high school.  And after junior high school, I had to stop because one day the principal comes into the school and told us were not allowed to stay…Hitler came in March 1938 and we had to leave school in June the same year.

Interviewer:    After you left that school, where did you study then? 
WAXMAN: I was still at home.  I was home until 1939.

Interviewer:    In the more advanced schools, what things did you study? 
WAXMAN: What?

Interviewer:    What things did you study in the last years of schooling in Vienna? 
WAXMAN: What I had…

Interviewer:    What subjects did you study? 
WAXMAN: Oh, we had, we had German, we were lucky see we had languages, we had French and English and I took…I loved it…Italian because we always went to Italy, so I could…You could take things like that, an extra …you know, so I took that and physics and chemistry and math and algebra.  All, I mean everything, all the school subjects.

Interviewer:    Did your parents have political interests? 
WAXMAN: No, my parents didn’t not at all, not at all.  I must say political things were not much discussed in our house.  It was, if anything was discussed, was more religion and not politics.  You know were you satisfied with how it was going.   My parents did a nice living.  They could give us what we wanted.  We were not rich by any means, but we could, if we wanted to travel in the summer, we could do it and we could ice skate, and if I wanted to go to the theater, you know, we had very good theaters and we could do that.  I played the piano and things like that.  No, it was in the evening we were always together.  We ate our evening meals together and but politics were not, were not in our….

Interviewer:    About when and how did you learn about Nazism. 
WAXMAN: I tell you we learned about it early, really because my mother’s brother had moved to Germany.  So she had that brother and then she and his wife and they had three children.  Then there were some other cousins and they came sometimes the cousins sometimes in the summer.  Or we would meet them in Italy and my aunt in Germany, she started to send her children away.  And I remember my mother’s heart broke.  She said, “How can a mother, how can she do it? How can she survive it?”.  You know, she felt it right and one son, one of my cousins went to Israel…two went to Israel and one went to Los Angeles.  This was always the thought, the children should get out.  But see what happened in Germany, what Hitler did between 1933 and 1938, from March until September.  Somebody in Germany, in Vienna asked me last summer.  He said to me…this is a retired teacher who in our district is a curator for the museum and he wants to find out what happened to the 13,000 Jews of our district.  And I tried, since I have a lot of friends, who were born there.  I tried to help him with that.  And I met him for the first-time last year and he said to me, “Why didn’t your father pack up your mother and you kids and…and leave”, he said. I don’t understand that.” I said, “You know, this wasn’t just to pack up and leave.  There was no country who wanted us.”

Interviewer:    Did your family talk about things that might be done once the Germans came in? 
WAXMAN: No, I imagine we were all naïve.  Nobody believed, we believed in our president in Shussnicht, we believed in those people.  If I think back, you saw it really written on the wall, but we didn’t believe in it.  I imagine if you don’t want to believe in something, you don’t.

Interviewer:    What was the first indicator that things were now very different.  After March 1938? 
WAXMAN: I tell you the first one was really that.  It started in March 1938.  A lot of Austrians, they wrote like graffiti on the walls on the streets.  They wrote “Long Live Austria”, or something.  And they called the Jews to clean up the streets.  This was the beginning, when we knew something was going to happen.  Then people started to be deported, like my uncle Edward.  Only one month later, he was picked up and there was no reason, you know, they just…at random they picked up people.  At that time didn’t kill yet.  He came out after 8 months at least.  You could buy out at that time, you could buy visas like we bought a visa for him and his wife for Shanghai, he needed a visa to get out.  At that time the Germans would have let us all out.  The only thing, nobody wanted us.  One day my father came home and said “You know,”, it was right around May 1938…”Australia is taking different professions, one plumber, one teacher or something…”and he said, “They would take me.  They would take a photographer.  But how can I go and leave my family here?  I wish he would have gone, perhaps he could, have got us out.  But no, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t.  My brother and I…at that time, in the beginning, we still had our studio.  So my brother and I went to the Embassy, to the American embassy and took out the New York telephone books and Los Angeles and the Boston.  I don’t know why. But these were the three cities and my mother’s maiden name was Singer.  Our family name, Feishbaum.  We knew there were not  many.  And we took out the addresses out of the telephone books and we wrote.  My mother wrote letters. “Perhaps we are related” and “could you help us Could you help us?” We never got any answers.  Today I understand…I don’t know what I would do if I got a letter you know from far, far away.   We found out later, here people didn’t really know what was going on.  So, I always say Hitler killed the 6 million but the whole world has a burden on it too.

Interviewer:    When did you begin to sense changes in your neighborhood? 
WAXMAN: When we were not allowed to go to school anymore?  Somehow, you know, all of a sudden, the friends stopped being friends.  We were 14 at that time.  We didn’t want to stop being friends, but we were not allowed to see each other, because if somebody would recognize us, a Jew and a non-Jew, we would both be in trouble. In the beginning, we wanted to outsmart them, so we would meet somewhere else, not in our neighborhood.  We would go to the next district and where we saw nobody knew us.  But our parents then said, “Kids, you are fooling yourself.  You know this is silly.”  So therefore,  we just  didn’t see each other.  We called each other and then with Jewish friends they tried, whoever had somebody outside, they tried to leave.  So I had one friend who left.  A lot of people at that time, the first few months, they just left.  Some were lucky and got over the borders and some came back.  It was just luck if the border patrol didn’t look or didn’t want to look.  So, they went but I mean it really didn’t help them much because where could they go?  To Hungary, Czechoslovakia? I mean they didn’t do much.

Inerviewer:  When did your father begin to feel some economic impact from the changes? 
WAXMAN: I tell you then that Krystallnacht, the 9th of November 1938 changed everything.  The studio was taken away.  I mean everything was.  Our apartment was taken away.  We had to leave our apartment in two hours.  It was very simple for them, it was a neighbor on the fourth floor who said she’s tired walking up the stairs. .  She wanted our apartment.  My mother said to her “are you…” and you know we had known these people all of our lives…and my mother said “How can you say that?” and they had the right.  On the 10th of November, that day, they could do with us whatever they wanted.  We couldn’t go anywhere, we couldn’t do anything.  Our neighbor on the first floor, who are Jews and who owned that house, they had to leave too in two hours.  So somehow, I don’t know how we got an apartment where we could move in together.  Then we stayed there for a few months but you know we had no rights or nothing.  They could do with us whatever they felt like it.  So, on November 11th, my father had nothing.  Whatever he worked for in all his life was gone.  We couldn’t get in anymore, they put tape around the doors because he wanted to try to get something.  Perhaps money or something.  We couldn’t.  There was nobody, there was nothing.  He never could enter his studio again.  So at that time, many times I wonder how my parents could live then afterward.  But one good thing I always say, came out of this November 10th.  The world listened.  All of a sudden they saw something is happening.  He’s not fooling around.  Before that, my mother had a cousin in Sweden and she had an uncle…she knew the cousin in Sweden very well, but, she had an uncle in England whom she had never met.  And she had written to both of them, Sweden, for me, for if they could help me and to England if they could help my brother.  And they had written back that they had tried, that they called the State Department, nothing is done.  They don’t take anybody.  And all of a sudden in the end of November comes a letter from my aunt in Sweden.  “Do you still want Lotte to come to Sweden?  Five hundred children are coming to Sweden.” And my mother sent a telegram, “Yes, please hurry.” And the same came from England.  England took 10,000 children between 3 and 17.  And my brother could be one of those.  And by February 1, 1939, my brother finally had his visa and his passport and we went and he left.  And he went to the train station and it was, it was really terrible to see my mother, you know, my mother was heartbroken.  And also I had fought a lot with my brother, but you know, it was a terrible day.  He had to leave and he didn’t know, he knew some English and you know we didn’t know that uncle.  We had no idea what was waiting for him.  But he left and then we came home.  It was in one day.  We came home and there was a letter form the Jewish committee in Vienna and they wrote that my visa is ready and on Saturday 8 o’clock the train, the transport to Sweden is leaving.  And I have to be there by by 7 o’clock.  And my mother read that letter and she said, “No she’s not going.”  And my father said, “You have been waiting a year and my mother said, “No, I cannot have two children of mine leave in one week.  I can’t”.  And my father started up and said, “I beg you let her go now.”  What my mother did the next day, she went to the Jewish committee and she talked to them and she said, “You know this happened.  My son left yesterday for England.  I just can’t do it.  I can’t”.  And they said, “I tell you something.  Do you think your daughter is old enough and mature enough to go by herself to Sweden?” And my mother said “Yes.” And can you pay her ticket?”.  My mother said “Yes.”  She said “OK, we put the visa in her passport and she can go whenever you send her.” So my mother knew that I could get out and she came home and she said “Don’t worry.” And I tell you something.  I wasn’t worried because I didn’t really understand the whole situation and you know I liked better to be home and Sweden was to me that country way up north and very cold.  I mean…this is what I had learned in school. I saw ice bears on the street, I wasn’t anxious at all to go there.  And the language, I had never heard.  So I wasn’t unhappy.  And my father said, every week he said, “You know get her a ticket.  Let her, let her go on Saturday.”.  It was only once a week I could go.  And I tell you our apartment, it’s what used to be a happy home was terrible.  My parents didn’t talk to each other and if they talked, they were fighting about me. And I was thinking, “Oh, my God, what’s going on?”  And my mother, I mean I understand it now since I have children.  She just, it was just for her. She had first get used to it to have her son away before she could do that for to her daughter.  And then one day, in the sixth week this was, she comes home on a Wednesday and throws the ticket on the table and said, “On Saturday, 8 o’clock Lotte’s leaving”.  And my father had, at that time really had given up.  He thought she would never let me go.  And my father said, “Why did you…why, what’s happening?”.  She said, “On that Sunday night, Mussolini was supposed to speak, give a speech.  And at that time rumors were that the war would break out.  And on 10 o’clock when he speaks, I would be on Swedish soil so nothing had happened to me.  So the last few days were very quiet in our house and my mother, you know, I left for Sweden with four suitcases. I mean it was like trousseau.  My brother had the same thing.  My mother felt if strangers had to take me they shouldn’t think they had to give me more than room and board.  Nobody should say that her daughter needed a dress or needed underwear.  She wanted that we should have…My brother had suits, he told me years later, he never wore.  Because we grew, we changed.  But somehow and I have heard that from other people, somehow the mothers didn’t want that people should  think that we needed something, that they couldn’t provide for us.  And that Saturday came and our Heide who wasn’t allowed to work with us anymore, our housekeeper had to stop working in September 1938, and she wasn’t allowed to see us.  But we met at night she really helped sometimes, if we needed some food and we couldn’t get it, she would get it for us.  And she said she’s going to come to the train station.  And I said to her, “Don’t do that.  You know somebody could recognize us.” And she said, “What are you talking about?”  She said, “How do you think  your parents will get home?  I have to be there.  I have to help them to get home.  Have you forgotten how it was when your brother left?”  I said “No.”  But she said to me.  “You know you have to promise me one thing.  I’ll do anything I can to help them over the first few days.  But you have to be strong.  You are not allowed to cry when you leave.  Because if they see you cry, I don’t know how I get them home.” So I promised.  I promised and so that Saturday came and we left and…ten to eight…you know this was the old trains where you can open a window and look out.  And I look out and my parents stand there and Heide and my father…I had never seen my father cry, and the tears came down and I was standing there and Heide only looked at me.  She had only to look at me to tell me “You promise.”  And I wouldn’t do anything and I looked, thank God, it came 8 o’clock.  But that train didn’t leave.  And I thought, “Oh, my God, why?”  And it became 10 past eight and 20 past eight, and 8:30 and I was standing there and I was holding my fist and I didn’t know what to say.  I couldn’t say anymore.  Nobody said anymore anything.  And ten to 9, I just lost it, …and I was screaming.  I said, “What is it with that train.  Why can’t we leave?”  And my mother very quiet says, “Because they know my daughter is in that train and they want to give me an extra hour.”  And I tell you, thank God, in that second, the train goes and I could cry and I was calm.  But this was the last I ever saw, I ever heard of my mother and father.

Interviewer:    I’d like to suggest we stop for a few minutes now and have a little break. 
WAXMAN: OK, OK.

Interviewer:     January 26, 1994.  We’re conducting an interview today with Lotte Waxman.   Lotte tell us about your family connections in Sweden and the way in which all that worked to bring you to Sweden. 
WAXMAN:  When my mother asked her cousin to help me, the cousin, who I called Aunt Edith went to the Jewish Committee and found out that after the 10th of November, they were going to take 100 children.  And she sent a questionnaire to my mother and it was all the dates when I was born and my schooling and there were two things that were very important, a picture.  Now as I mentioned before, it’s my father was a photographer and you can be sure there was a beautiful picture going to Sweden.  It said “hobby” on the questionnaire and my mother wrote that I loved children.  So these were the two things that were important.  Now there were 500 families in Sweden and the sad thing of those 500 were only 140 Jewish families.  360 were not Jewish who said they would take us.  They only had to take us for one year.  Up to today, we haven’t found out why, if they thought that Hitler wouldn’t last longer, but all those families  had to sign for one year.  So, the family who took me was in a very small town in Sweden and she had written that she wanted a 5 year old and a 15 year old.  She wanted to take two children.  So, she got quite a few questionaires and the pictures.  And she always told me when she saw my picture, she said “This is the one.”  She once said “That fifteen year old.” And then she took a five-year old.  And this she sent back to Stockholm and thanks to my mother got a letter, said this is a family so and so in Oshkarshamn wants your daughter.  So my aunt in Stockholm found out too and she got some information, said this nice family .  She wanted me really in with a family in Stockholm, and I wanted that too.  I said I wanted to be near her because I knew her and I loved her.  But she felt, I don’t know why, I was to go to another family and something she heard about she didn’t like so she asked the committee to get me another family.  And this was the one in that small town.  So, she was afraid if she would say, “No, I want her in Stockholm,” they would say, “Listen, if you so choosy you don’t need”.  So, she felt , “This is a nice family”.  What happened when I came then alone, I wasn’t with transport, my mother  had bought a ticket to Stockholm.  And all of a sudden came a telegram the day before I left that said I had to change to Malmo.  This was the first city in Sweden and somebody would pick me up there.  So I wasn’t sure, I didn’t really want to, I wanted to go to Stockholm and see my Aunt and then go to that small town.  But on the ferry between Germany and Sweden, I met a very nice Swedish man, who spoke both languages.  So I told him that and I told him that I’m really supposed to go out to Malmo and I don’t know what happened, I don’t know the language and all that.  So I was really worried, how do I find that man.  It was a man who was supposed to pick me up.  He said, “You know what, I take you down.  We go and look and if we don’t find him, we go back, the train and you go up to Stockholm.  He was going to Stockholm too.  “So don’t worry about it, I wouldn’t.  I would talk to that man and I wouldn’t let you go to anybody who I don’t know for sure that is the man.” And at that time, 55 years ago, you really didn’t have to worry.  There were no kidnapping and so nobody would want that.  So we went down and sure enough, there was a Dr. Sherkolff and I never forget.  And he said, “Yes I’m supposed to come down.” So I took all my things and my suitcases and went out and he put me, which I don’t understand till today, he put me up in a third or fourth class hotel.  And I had never been alone in a hotel.  I had never been in a hotel like that but the only thing he said to me, he said, “You know you came to a lovely family,” he said, “and they’re well to do.” And so I thought “Great.   They’re going to help my parents.” This was my thought.  So, he got me to the hotel and it was late at that time and he said that the busboy from the hotel will take me the next day to the train station, and he’ll give me a sign with my name and I had to change trains.  It wasn’t a direct train to that small town.  And I tell you I never went to bed that night.  I was afraid to go to bed in that hotel.  And I still till today don’t understand that in that big city there wasn’t a Jewish family who could have taken me for one night.  And next morning, at 7 o’clock, that busboy really took me there with my sign on and I went.  I was really the whole day on that train.  It was till 12 o’clock and one and then I had to change.  One o’clock, my other train left and I was supposed to go until 4 .  And it was a local and it stopped at really I felt at every house.  And I must say that I come from Vienna and I knew it was a small town, but I didn’t think there were such small towns.  I was only looking at the time upwards, it’s not 4 o’clock yet.  At 4 o’clock I arrived to Oskarshanin and there, my foster father, a gentleman came and asked me if it was my name and I said it was.  Then he said, “Let’s, uh, welcome”.  And he took me to his house and my foster mother was at that time only 28 years old and she had a two year old little girl, and this girl,  I loved her, you know, I could talk to her.   She didn’t understand what I was saying but I could talk to her and tell her everything.  And this is how I came.  And my foster mother very soon said to me “You know you don’t look like your picture”.  And I couldn’t understand what she was saying.  I said “Why do you say that?”.  So she said, “You know that picture was so beautiful, but you don’t look like it.

Interviewer:    What was the name of the town? 
WAXMAN: The name was Oskarshamn.  It was a town at that time of 9000 people.  My foster parents’ name was Johnny and Amelia Herson and my foster father already was, this was already his second generation,Swedish.  His family came, like all the Swedish Jews, they all came from Russia once, years ago.  And my foster mother came, was really born in New York City.  She came from a Swedish father and an American mother, also Jews.  They were really very, very nice.  But you know it was hard.  I didn’t speak the language.  They both spoke some German and we could understand each other.  So, the beginning wasn’t easy for them or me.

Interviewer:    What brought them to this town? 
WAXMAN: My foster father was born there.  His father had a department store and he took it over.  For him this was the most beautiful town and I mean, it was like Vienna used to be once for me.  This town was for him.  He always said he’s only happy when he’s there.  If he had to go on business away, he couldn’t wait to get home.  It was his home and he had a beautiful store and he had a beautiful home.  It was a beautiful home and I was happy there and quite soon, a few months later, you know when I talked about it that my parents are still there you know, I was hoping that they would help me to get them out.  My parents at that time were waiting for a permit to go to Australia.  A relative who had a friend studying with him at the University in Vienna was an Australian.  He wrote to him and said he doesn’t need any help, he was already hoping that they would get out.  So I lived, I took care of my little foster sister and then came, two weeks after me, came the other five year old.  She came from Berling.  She was a five year old.  Very cute little girl.  Dec. 4, 1994 – and this is what my foster mother always said, she felt 15-year old can take care of the younger ones and she felt it wasn’t time to bring Jewish children into the world.  Therefore, she felt, she took that 5-year old.  The 5-year old was supposed really to be their own and stay with them.  But sorry to say it didn’t work out, because that 5-year old, she was, the Jewish committee didn’t know too much about the families.  So this 5-year old was a very spoiled little girl and was the only child.  She didn’t like our 2-year old.  And she did a lot of things that were dangerous to her.  She threw her downstairs and when I took them to the park I was really scared, you know.  And one day I said, “you know I am really scared to take them because I don’t know what she’s doing.” You know, children do things so fast.  All of us were taken for a year, but if it didn’t work out, the committee would try to get us other families.  It didn’t work out for many of the children, because, you know, it just doesn’t always work that way and that happened so she had to send  My foster father called up and he was heart-broken, he felt it was terrible to do .  But it was really, he had to do it.  So he called the committee and said that if they could try to find a family without children.  This child needs somebody without, she needs to be the only child.  She doesn’t want any brothers and sisters.  So she left.  And till the next day my foster mother called the committee and said, “Send me somebody, a 5-year old if you have from Vienna.  I’m going to take one but it has to be Vienna because I want Lotte’s mother to see that child.” And everybody else said to my foster mother in that town, “Why do you do that?  You had a bad experience and don’t do that again.  You don’t know, you know, a 5-year old.  And she said, “No, I’m doing it.  But I have good experience with Lotte, why shouldn’t I”.  And we got a picture and we got a name and I sent a telegram to my mother that she should look that up the child and she would let us know. And my mother immediately sent a telegram, “Yes”.  I mean if it would have been the worst child she would have said “Yes”.  She’s not going to say “No”.  this child, she came and she stayed and she really became their own, you know.  Later on after I left, they got two of their own children.  So it’s a big family.  I stayed with them for over a year and I could have really stayed longer. I wanted,  at that time my parents were still alive,  and I wanted to become a photographer.  Because I thought that after the war I could help my parents to build up something wherever we would end up.  In that small town they had one photographer and he was pro-German.  So he wouldn’t take me.  My foster parents already at that time tried very, very hard to get my parents in.  See the terrible thing was that the minute the war broke out, that my parents by that time had the permit to go to Australia, but in that minute, because we were German, we became the enemy of Australia, of England.  It is unbelievable that we became, we were German and not Jews.  I have that letter from the passport office in Stockholm, from the British Embassy.  That minute the permit from my parents were not valid anymore.  I mean it doesn’t make sense, but it was that.  So, after a little over a year, my foster parents and I talked and I said  “You know I would love to I had to do something.  I didn’t want to become only a somebody who takes care of children, in schooling here.  In the beginning, I many times say, “We didn’t realize what it meant when we had to stop school with 14”.  Because nobody then had any interest to send me to school.  As soon as I left my foster parents, I had to be on my own.  The Jewish Committee in Stockholm, by that time a lot of those 500 children came back because their year was up.  They opened their rented big apartment and had one woman to take care, cook for us and so we could be in Stockholm and learn professions.  But you couldn’t learn too many professions, they wouldn’t give us permission to do anything.  So I wanted very, very badly to be a photographer and I found through my relative a very good photographer.  He was a Russian-Jewish man who would gladly teach me.  But it took weeks and weeks for the department of interior to give me permission.  They wanted us mostly to be delivery boys and the girls to be maids.  And the Jewish committee was sad about it, because if we were maids we wouldn’t be on their list and they would not have to take care of us.  But some of us just didn’t want to.  So we lived in those, first we had one home for girls and boys which wasn’t very nice but we were happy, we had somewhere to be.  I was really one of the lucky ones who really could learn a profession.  I didn’t get paid, but I didn’t have to pay.  At that time, in many professions you had to pay to learn something.  But I didn’t and it wasn’t such big distances there so I could walk, because the Jewish committee didn’t give us any money.  So, my foster parents once in a while sent me some and we walked to work.  MY center was in Stockholm so I had my relatives there, which was for me wonderful.  I know I went once a week to her and had my hair washed in her house because she had a hair dryer which none of us had.  So I was more lucky than many of the others who didn’t have anybody there.  I stayed with a photographer for one and a half years.  At that time you really had to learn everything.  In the meantime, more and more kids came to Stockholm so they had opened one big apartment for only boys and one big apartment for girls.  But we were all in the same boat.  We all had nothing and we made the best of it.  I always say that my parents, the firs t15 years of my life, must have given me so much security and love and courage that I never felt poor.  When I read some letters that I wrote at the time, when I asked my foster parents to send me a stamp because I wanted to write to them and I didn’t have the money for it.  But I have no memory of feeling poor or something.  I always felt I had it good once, I’m going to get it again. I was always an optimist.  At that time, 1940-41, there came rumors that something’s doing.  People are deported.  My parents wrote “Can you help me”.  My foster parents took a lawyer and he sent out the papers and it always came back negative.  The state Department in Sweden first their department of interior has to give the Ok and then the state department.  There had to be two permits.  It always came back, “No, no, no”.  My foster father couldn’t understand it.  What’s holding it up because he would guarantee for them and all that.  Then in the beginning of 1941 and my parents couldn’t understand it.  “Why, why can’t you help me?”  My brother couldn’t do anything because he was in England.  He was the enemy, he couldn’t do anything.  “So what, why don’t you help me?  Why don’t you help us?”.  They tried really everything.  Then one day in September, end of September, 1941, somebody came from Vienna and said that “Listen if you don’t get your parents out now, it will be too late.”  And I said, “Why? What is it?”.  He said “They are already on a list to be deported.” And I called the department of the interior and told them that and they said they hadn’t heard anything about deportation.  I said, “I can only tell you this lady came yesterday from Vienna and he was older than my parents.  Therefore, she was out.  And she had children there too. so they said “OK, if she can come in and tell them, she had to say under oath, then we’ll see what we can do.”  And I called her and I took a taxi.  She lived outside of Stockholm, and I took her by taxi because she was in bad shape at that time.  She, under oath, she told the story and she said that she couldn’t understand that they didn’t know about it.  Later on we found out that they knew about it only they didn’t want to do it.  And they said “OK.” And at that time every day was very important, and nothing happened.  And then my husband, who was my boyfriend at that time said, “You know I tell you something, we have to, something has to be done.” And we wrote a letter to Prince Karl, who was a brother of our King in Sweden, who was the head of the Red Cross.  He wrote and letter and he told him the story, said what’s happening, why isn’t Sweden taking one couple in.  And he went there with that letter to the Red Cross and a few hours later I had an answer.  Prince Karl said he looked into it and why it never was OK’ed was because I came through the Jewish Committee to Sweden and only the Jewish committee can help my parents to come in.  It has to be the same way I came in.  They have to help.  So I called my foster father.  I said, “Listen, this and that.”.  He said, “I’m coming to Stockholm.  He came up.  He went to the Jewish committee. I had asked them before to help and they wouldn’t do anything.  He came in and he said, “Listen, now we have a letter, black and white.  We need you.  It doesn’t cost you a penny.  I’m taking care of everything, but you have to do something.  You have to sign, or do something.  Get in touch with the department with the interior or with the state department”.  And there was a man and he was a German Jew was sitting there and he was in charge of it and he said to my foster father, “I’ll think about it.  I’ll look into it.  Let Lotte call me at 5:30.”  He knew that my foster father’s train back was 5 o’clock.  And my foster father said to him, “You know what, I want the OK of it.  I want you to sign it, do something.” And I called at 5:30 and he said “No”.  I was just beside myself.  I knew every day was important and I went next day to the Jewish committee.  I worked around the corner from them.  I went there, nothing.  No, No, and after I went there I still get letters from my parents, “Why don’t you do something?” They couldn’t understand it.  “Don’t you want me? Don’t you want us?  What is it?  What is keeping it?” And perhaps after 5-6 days I went every  lunch hour, I went to the Jewish committee begging them.  No.  And I was sitting there and the CPE of the Jewish committee, who knew me, some of  those big shots from the Jewish committee sometimes came to those homes I lived in.  On Friday nights they wanted to do something nice, they came to ask how we are.  So he knew me and he said when he saw me, I imagine he could see on me something was wrong, and he said “Lotte, what happened?  What is the matter with you?” And I told him that I need the OK from this office.  And by that time it was already November and he said, “Come to my office.” And he took out a letterhead where it says you know Jewish Committee Stockholm with and address.  And he said, “Special, I’m not allowed to do it, but I just don’t care.” And he sits down and he writes a letter that he knows me, that I’m two years in Sweden, that I’m an honest person and I’m working at photography and I must come from good stock and my parents must be honest and all that. And he signed that letter and I took that letter.  I ran to the state department with that letter and three hours later I had the permission.  I had the visa for my parents.  When I got that I asked him, send it by telegram to Vienna and I sent a telegram to my parents and this was the 4th of November and I was sure my parents were coming and after two or three days  my boyfriend and I went to the bus station where there came once a day a plane from Vienna oder Berlin to Stockholm We went to where the bus came from there came in to the city.  We were standing there waiting and everybody came out we always asked, “Anybody from Vienna? Anybody from Vienna?” “No”.  On the 5th or 6th day a young girl came and I said, “Are you from Vienna by any chance?” She said “Yes”.  I said, “We’re waiting for my parents, you know they got their visas 5-6 days ago.  I said, “We’re waiting.  I know they were packed.  They were ready to come.” And she said, “How old are your parents?”.  I said, “fifty and fifty-one.” And she looked at me and she said, “I’m sorry.  I said “What do you mean you are sorry?”  she said, Last week a new law came out.  No Jews under 60 are allowed to leave Austria or Germany.”  And this was true.  My parents never made it out.  On the 23rd of November the same month, they were deported and killed.  If the Jewish Committee would have done that letter a week earlier, they could have saved them.  I wasn’t alone, I mean, it wasn’t only my parensts.  There were many, many others.

Interviewer:    Why was the committee so slow, so reluctant? 
WAXMAN: They didn’t want any more Jews, and especially the German Jews.  This was the terrible thing.  The German Jews were afraid if there are too many Jews in Sweden, it would be bad for them.

Interviewer:    Were the people in control of the Jewish committee Swedish Jews? 
WAXMAN: Yes, yes and no.  The immigration in most of the things that money buys was Swedish Jews, but it really in the immigration was 6 German Jews and  one,  he took in his whole family, nobody else’s family died.  But I can tell you something else, that Jews, Swedish Jews.  There was a clique, they didn’t want to have anything to do with German Jews.  When I tried to get a guarantee for my parents, I felt I was in Stockholm.  I didn’t want my foster parents to pick the whole burden.  We needed at that time, I think it was 200 Crowns, a month as a guarantee for my parents, because it was very important they should not be a burden to the state.  I said to my foster father, you know, I’m going to try to go to some of the rich Jews and see if they wouldn’t give 10 or 20 Crowns a month, which wouldn’t have been anything for them.  I really tried that.  I felt I could do it and I came to one Jewish man.  I don’t really know his business.  He had a big office and I went there and we kids knew exactly who were  the wealthy people.  I went to him and I told him and he said to me, I’ll never forget it, he said, “You know what, I don’t care, I don’t want to do that.  Why should I sign something? I asked other people and I couldn’t do anything.  I couldn’t get anything and then my foster father said, “Forget about it.  Don’t get upset.  Let me take care of it.” And what the Jewish committee did in Sweden as long as we lived in those homes, for the holidays, for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, New Year and all that, they wanted to do something nice for all of us.  They sent us to those rich Jews, the Swedish Jews and we didn’t want to go.  You know, we didn’t have home and family, we didn’t feel like we needed to beg for a meal.  But they didn’t cook that day.  If you wanted to eat you would have to go.  They wanted us to go.  They meant well, I’m sure.  You know they thought we would have a nice holiday.  And they came with lists out where we would go.  The list I got was Passover, I never forget that, was the first evening was the man who told me he doesn’t like to sign anything.  “No.”  So I called the lady who was in charge, who I knew, who was a lovely woman and I said, “Mrs. Uberg, I cannot go to those two people to those two families.” And I told them what.  And she said, “You know, Lotte, you don’t have to be ashamed that you want to help your parents.  Let them be ashamed, that they wouldn’t help you.” And I begged her, I said, “Please don’t make me go there.” And she said, “I want you to go there, Especially,  the first evening, “ she said, “You know there will be there a rabbi, a head rabbi, we had two, the head rabbi and there will be a beautiful Seder and I want you to have fun, I want you to enjoy it.”  So I had to go and when we came, they had their own house, a beautiful house, they lived in, where the diplomats lived.  And he was standing with his wife in front of the house and when I went there I saw everybody in a long dress and I had a short, red dress.  This was my best dress I had, and I went there and he recognized me.  So he thought I would come and ask again for something.  So I went in and I thought now, at least when the rabbi here said who am I, he’s going to be nice.  In Vienna, a rabbi, if he would have heard there is a child you know there, he would have been nice.  I was introduced, I never forget that in my life, not Lotte Feuchtbaum, but as the girl from the Jewish committee.  I thought I’d die.  I thought, “My God, I have a name.”  But the rabbi didn’t care, he didn’t hardly look at me.  Then we sat down for dinne.  I don’t know how many people were there.  I was on the furthest corner I could be and I had that rabbi and his grandson, next to me, was 5-6 yers old.  I tell you I ate the soup, then I thought, “I don’t care.” I just left.  I said, “No, I’m not going to sit there.  I don’t need that.”  Next, another friend of mine, she was supposed to go with me to that other family, who I had called and she said she couldn’t help me, but at that time when we came in the hostess, she came over and said, “Lotte, you called me last week or last month didn’t you?”  I said Yes, I did.” She said, “You know I’m sorry but we have signed so many of those guarantees that they don’t take them anymore, because we wanted to help as many people as possible and if you need anything now, please let me know.”  I said, “No thank you, my foster parents take care of it.” But at least she acknowledged and she made me feel very good.  Then after those two days, we all said, “We are going to go on strike.  We are not going to any, we don’t need that” Then New Years came and they moved.  New lists came out and there was a family I knew who had a very good looking son, and the son had a lovely fiancée.  They were in a Jewish club where we too went.  They were known, they were good dancers.  I said, “Sorry, I’m going.” I want to meet them because you didn’t had a chance to meet those people in the club because the Germans stayed together and the Swedish.  I said, “I want to go there.” And this was 1941 and I stayed every holiday with them until when I got married and until we left Sweden.  So this was a very, very nice experience.  I was very, very, lucky in Seeden. I met great people.

Interviewer:    Tell us about meeting the man who you fell in love with? 
WAXMAN: He had a friend in that home, in that orphanage, or whatever you want to call it.  He came to visit him and we met, but you must know he was 15 and I was 16.  I was learning to be a photographer and he was at that time, remember they couldn’t get into many different occupations,  so somebody took him, he should become a baker.  He was in a restaurant.  We met, but you know nobody had any money to go out or do anything.  We met, but it was nothing really.  We really became first friends when he saw how I started to try to get my parents.  Then he started to help me and he was one of the few lucky ones.  He came out with his parents and with his sister.  He had an aunt of my mother-in-law, who was a founder of the Save the Children after World War One.  She was in charge of the Jewish committee.  She started those 500 children, thanks to her connection with Save the Children, she got those 500 children in.  And she got a sponsor for the family.

Interviewer:    Where did that family come from? 
WAXMAN: They came from Berlin.  My mother-in-law comes from Vienna which was very nice.  My mother-in-law’s father was a very well known Opperetten.  He wrote operettas.  So he lived in Vienna, so she was born there.  But my father-in-law he was born in Schlesien.  But they lived in Berlin and they were really lucky.  My father-in-law  worked with Sweden before the war, so he traveled a lot, so he tried to get money in.  He had money hidden in his hat and things like that.  Because he couldn’t work until after the war.  So they had a very hard time.  My mother-in-law tried to do babysitting and she did some flowers out of material and all that.  I mean everybody tried to but they were really from the beginning.  I mean they never thought that something serious would come out.  They thought they were two children.  I don’t think they wanted anything should come out in the beginning.  But it was very nice for me because they were always very nice to me and my foster mother.  My mother-in-law always said, “I always wanted a daughter like you.” And I always wanted to say, “I don’t want to be your daughter, I want to be your daughter-in-law.”

Interviewer:    When were you married? 
WAXMAN: We were married.  In Sweden at that time, when you are 21 you had to go at that time to the King to get your permission to get married.  They don’t have that anymore.  Usually only people who were pregnant or something did that.  So we waited, since I was a year older than my husband.  We waited till my husband was 21 and this was the Sunday after his 21st birthday.  In Sweden you have to be three Sundays in a row in the church.  You have to be called up because it could be said my husband would have promised somebody else marriage.  So we had that done immediately because we only waited because by that time we’d known each other for 5 years or more and we knew that was it.  Don’t forget at that time we were 21 or 22 but I mean we were much older, you know what my husband went through with me the whole thing with my parents and because after my parents were deported, today you would say it was a nervous breakdown, but at the at time, you got sick and my foster parents talked to my boss at that time and said “Give her a leave of absence, and let her come home.”  I went home towards that town for 6 weeks because I just had to.  I had to cope with it because I felt life was finished for me at that time.

Interviewer:    Did you know at that time what deportation meant? 
WAXMAN: No.  I knew somehow my mother wrote, this was the letters I translated.  She said,  “you will not hear from me for a long time.  Don’t worry. “’ I didn’t know at that time.  At that time they didn’t have gas chambers. Auschwitz and all that started 1943, 1944.  So I mean we knew it was, I knew all of a sudden, that I would never hear from them again, but we really didn’t know that.

Interviewer:    But did you read about things going on in Poland and the Soviet Union at that time?  How prisoners were being treated, or how Jews were being treated out there? 
WAXMAN: Yes, but very little. Sweden, I mean now the books are coming out, two years ago it comes out that they knew it all.  They knew, they knew what was going on, they knew that people were killed, But nobody, I mean, nobody knew it, nobody,

Interviewer:    But in the newspapers you read nothing? 
WAXMAN: There was nothing in the newspaper.  It was nothing in the newspaper.  Nobody had any idea really what was going on.

Interviewer:    Did people in the Jewish community or Jewish committee talk about this kind of thing?  There must, there were rumors I think. 
WAXMAN: There were, there were…if they knew about it they wouldn’t say anything. I tell you we were so naïve.  We went in the evenings after work.  We went like I went to different classes.  One was in a school kitchen.  We thought after the war we would go to those concentration camps and help the Jews out.  Help to start a new life. I went once a week to those kitchens and once a week we had first aid, we went to hospitals.  I mean everybody thought, you know, we had big groups, you know, we were ready when the war was over to go to Poland, to go to Russia, to go to Germany, Czechoslovakia, and all that.  I mean we were ready to go and help all those.  We had no idea what was going on.

Interviewer:    Did you know that Danish Jews came into Sweden? 
WAXMAN: Yes

Interviewer:    How did you learn about that? 
WAXMAN: We knew that all of a sudden that it changed with the Danish Jews.  The  Norwegian Jews were killed.  They went to concentration camp.  It started first with the Norwegian Jews, they were the first who were occupied.  Some walked over the border, but most of the Norwegian Jews were killed.  Then the Danish Jews.   I tell you we just had an article somebody sent us from New York and it said it was the Danes, they didn’t want any more Jews either.  They were like the Swedes, only in the last minute when the Danish Jews were deported that they really were fantastic.  We had some relatives  in Sweden and they were taking care of.  Perhaps you know that Himmler talked to a German Jew who lived in Sweden, We got out to Sweden after the war in May of 1945, we got thousands of Jews from concentration camps.  In those white busses and I went to those camps in Sweden, I went to those camps and there really the whole story came out.

Interviewer:    Is that when you learned the whole story? 
WAXMAN: That is when I heard the long story.

Interviewer:    Summer, May 1945? 
WAXMAN: Since May, 1945, I tell you.  What it was at that time, we who have been there for a period, at that time already a few years, we had something they called Self-Help, this was from German and Austrian Jews.  And we really helped each other.  We had bazaars, if the older people needed money.  So we did things like that.  And then it came out.  Selp-Help sent letters when those thousands of Jews came from concentration camp. They were more dead than alive.  Many, many came to the hospitals.  We did whatever we could do.  We had, couldn’t help them with material.  We didn’t have anything.  But we could visit them.  So I went there, first my husband went.  He was on his way to summer job and he said he’s going to stop at one of those camps.  We had started to correspond with these people and when he came there, to one of those camps, one couple said, “You know I would love to get married.”  They lived already together in the ghetto and all that, but they want to get married.  And my husband wrote to me and said What would you say? We had already planned to get married in November 1945.  “What would you say if another couple, one of those, would get married?”  I said, “Fine”.  And we will find out what’s needed because nobody had papers.  So I called our rabbi and he told me what I needed.  And I said I have the feeling we will have a double wedding.”  When I came down to that camp and all of a sudden it was four couples that wanted to get married.  And very nice people, I mean all of them.  For them it was a miracle that they were alive.  The bad thing was only they told me every day, everybody told me their stories.  I hadn’t mentioned yet that my parents were one of them.  You know, we were told “let them talk, let them get it out.”  But then when I rented a small room outside of the camp.  Everything they told me went into my parents.  You know I saw them hung.  I saw them shot. Everything you told me, my parents became that.  But then in the end I said, “You know, do me a favor let’s talk about we’re here now.  Let’s talk about, let’s make plans”.  And so they all wanted to get married.  They wanted to get married in a synagogue.  This was for them something.  They were not really allowed to leave that camp.  They were well taken care of but they didn’t know the language and anything.  And what happened, we had to get them to a church for three Sundays, they had to do that.  I called the priest there, the minister and I told him that.  I said, “Listen and you know now we have a chance to help eight people become human beings again, you know, and that time really everybody in Sweden, Jew or not Jew was there for them.  You know this was a miracle you could see it, thousands of Jews.  It was only younger people, there were very few older people and no children.  And he said, “Can you tell me that they have not been married before?  What are you doing? You don’t know anything about these people.  There can be wives or husbands somewhere.” I said, “I don’t know.”.  So he said, “You know, for every one of those eight you have to bring me two letters that people have known them for the last five years.”

His was easy in a camp, you know where each wanted to help.  So I came there with sixteen letters, and it was very far.  I had to call Stockholm to ask somebody.  I think I called this Self-Help and said, “Listen, is there a chance I could get some money for a taxi or something to get there?” So we went there, we entered the church and then those eight people went three Sundays, I don’t know how many hours they walked to that church to hear their names.  Then I went up to Stockholm and I have pictures from newspapers, from a magazine and they had really married in Stockholm synagogue.  The biggest day Stockholm synagogue has ever seen.  I mean it was something really, it was something wonderful, the sad thing was I only had a brother.  Nobody else had anyone.  My name somehow got in the paper and in Sweden you had to be registered with the police.  People called the police to find out where I am.  So they could find out where I was working and people called and told me they would come there and get ties and pocketbooks.  I mean the whole Stockholm became, I will never forget that.  But before when they came a jeweler, a Jewish jeweler in Stockholm had called and said that they could come in and get rings.   Before we go wherever we go, we should try out some rings.  And my father, my father-in-law at that time said to me, “be careful, when they go in in such a place.  It was like Tiffany in New York, It was THE store, the jewelry store.  He said, “Be careful you know you don’t know these people, who are animals for so long.”  And you know I never forget, we came into the store and one of the girls wo was staying with us, one of the couples, she went over, looked at all the rings and every piece of jewelry.  “this is a piece of bread, this is a half pound of butter, this is an onion, this is a cup of soup.  Come let’s organize.”  They didn’t call it stealing, they called organizing.  I thought, “Oh, my God, my father-in-law was right.  I shouldn’t have taken them to that store.”  But nothing happened, she talked about it, you know for her every piece of jewelry was something to eat, this was how they could live through…they gave their jewelry away in the concentration camp to get something to eat.  So that was all very nice, but none of them stayed in Sweden.  One couple went to Australia, and one to South America and two couples went to the States.  One is in new York, she’s the one who organized.  So then we really became all their friends.  You know they really wanted to help and everybody helped.

Interviewer:    What did you learn about the fate of your parents? 
WAXMAN: I tell you this is really where I started to mention that.  I know I asked everyone, “Who’s from Vienna?  Who’s from Vienna?” And there was one.  He was really in charge of all of them.  He was a very, very nice man.  We became very close.  He was from Vienna.  I said to him, “Tell me, when did you get to …He said he came from Vienna to Riga, to where it said, where I knew, where I heard that my parentts were going in the end of November.  With the transport we could find out between his date and my date, that he came with the next transport to Riga.

Interviewer:    So, 1941? 
WAXMAN: 1941.  And he said the day before.  It was always done that way.  The day before a new transport came to those…at that time they called them ghetto…Riga had a ghetto.  He said, “They killed them off to make room for the next one.”  So he felt that my parents couldn’t live long, which I was only grateful, this is really today still I have that one wish, that they didn’t live long, that they didn’t have to suffer long.  So if it is like he thinks it was, that they didn’t live long, because he came with the next transport and they were gone.  But when I went to Vienna, I found out that somebody, it’s a woman who saw my mother, she was the last one to see my mother.  When my mother knew that she would have to go in a few hours.  They were all caught up in schools as I understand.  You know, they were first from their homes, or they had to go themselves to schools and from the schools they came into cattle cars, and were sent out.  And she feels that at that time the rumors were, in Vienna, that the people who went into those cattle cars, that those cattle cars never got to Riga.  They went into the Canube, they just throw them into the water and they drowned because they couldn’t get out of them.  So, I don’t know, the Red Cross after the war said it was Riga.  This is what it says on the paper.  When I was in Vienna last August I met this gentleman who wants to find out what happened to 13,000 Jews in my district.  I met him in the Jewish Agency in Vienna.  He was sitting in a small room like that and there were drawers with papers.  He said to me, “See what’s all around you?  There are 60,000 names of the 60,000 Viennese Jews who were deported and killed.  And he is going through it, he’s looking I feel for something he’s not going to find.  First I saw it, I looked, I mean it was all closed and I didn’t see anything and we talked.  And then I said, “Can I look?  Can I look at my parent’s papers?” and he said , “Do you want to?”.  I said, “I think, otherwise when I leave, I think I wall say, why shouldn’t I?”.  And there were only four Feuchtbaums, there were my mother, my father, my aunt and my cousin.  It said exactly what I knew, it said the names, they each had a number.  I mean, the Germans were very thorough.  It said they left on the 25th of November, 1941 to Riga.  And then there was a day, 8th of May, 1945 was on all four.  And I said, “Hey, what is that, what is that date? “  He said, “This is what is on all those 60,000 papers, this is the last day of the war.  This is what the Germans say was the day of their death, which I mean is not.  I tell you when I saw that I said to him, “Tell me what you want.”  You know he wanted things I should do for him.  I said, “you know, I have to get out, I have to get out.”.  And he said to me, “Can you imagine, I sit here.”  I said “You know, up till now I felt you were really great to do that, but you know,” I said “you can do it.”  I had to get out, you know.  And somehow I don’t know why but especially my little cousin, she was born 1935, she was 7 years old, when she was killed. He said that when he saw that he said, “This what’s the worst.  When I see the kids.  When I see those papers of the children.”.  And I took the subway back where I really stayed and there my husband was and our ten-year old granddaughter, and I looked at that 10-year old girl, and I had to leave, I had to go in another room.  I said, “you know my little cousin couldn’t become 10 years old.”  This is the children, this is something you cannot understand, how anybody could kill children.  It’s one and a half million.  This to me was …I came out and I said, “You know I think this is it for me for Vienna.  I don’t think I need to see that.”  When I went out of that room at the Jewish Agency, I was very,very upset because to see something where it says 60,000 pieces of paper and it tells you tht those people were killed.  So, to me this was the end for me to go to Vienna.  Then, months later, in October, our Heide died.  But we knew that she was very ill.  She really brought me back.  I never wanted to go back to Vienna, but she brought me back.  Then, what I did in Vienna is I have a family grave there.  My grandfather from my father’s side was the first one in that grave in I imagine, the 1920’s it must have been.  I took the old stone away because it was only Hebrew on it and I put a new one there without the Hebrew.  I had to put everything that was on the old stone on the new stone, and then my uncle, my favorite uncle is buried there.  Then I have under my uncle’s name, I have “In Memorium” I have his wife and his daughter and my parents.  Because I feel although they don’t lie there, but they should be, their names should be somewhere that we know that they have lived once.  This was always also a reason to go to Vienna to visit that grave.  And if I ever go back it would be for that reason.  But the people I have in Vienna now are really only the three daughters of our Heide with their families.  They promised they’re going to come to visit here, so I don’t have to go back.

Interviewer:    Did the Austrian government make any compensations to your family for its losses, its financial losses? 
WAXMAN:  Once years ago they gave some money for their debt and it was really ridiculous.  But Austria in the beginning, the German paid, gave a lot of money but the Austrian did not.  But I must say the Austrian are doing it the last 10 years.  I don’t know if they have tried to.  You can never pay for a death but they do and you can have first with the schooling and then they give pensions for whoever worked there.  I mean they were trying and I know when it was their fiftieth anniversary of the German invading Austria, they wanted to give a gift.  I don’t remember if it was $200 or something to each born Austrian.  I heard about it in a New York German Jewish newspaper, the Aufbau.  And there it said, where you could write.  And I wrote and then they wrote back that you’re only allowed to earn so and so much money, then you could get it.  I didn’t send anything because we were at  that time still, I don’t think I was working but my husband was still working, so he made too much money.  If he would have so little money they wanted, we couldn’t be living.  So when I got in Vienna, after I heard about it, I went first to talk to them.  I couldn’t get to anybody, but I called them and I said to somebody “you know I think the thought is nice to give $200 but then you shouldn’t put some rules in that you’re only allowed, I don’t remember, $10,000 a year to earn. “You know nobody could live with that money and she said, “You know, we know that now.  We had no idea, we made a big mistake, I’m sorry.  We have heard from many people and you know what to do, after your husband retires, why don’t you send it in.”  So, I thought, “Why not?  $200 is $200.  But then I didn’t hear from them and then I got another letter.  It said that we had too much money or something.  So I got really mad.  I said, “I don’t need those $200.”  But I wrote a very nasty letter and I wrote to them “You know, how can you dare talk about money.  I lost everything.  I lost my parents, what do you want, what are you talking about?”  And my husband read the letter and said, “You cannot send a letter like that.”  I said, “I can.  I don’t need the money.” He said “They wouldn’t answer you.” And then all of a sudden I got a check for $600.  So that letter must have done something to them and I thought it was so ridiculous to talk about it.  So, like other cities invite their people to come to, I imagine you have heard it.  Vienna is not doing it.  I think they cannot do it.  There are too many Viennese people.  Salzburg did it last year.  It was very interesting.  Soon after that we came to Vienna there was an article in the paper that there were some people already over 90.  There were 40 people, 40 Jews went to Salzburg, invited and everything was very nice.  The mayor of Salzburg talked and then one man, German, Austrian who lived there went up and he said to another man who is a professor somewhere in the States.  He said to him, “You know I always felt bad that I called you Sowjude, you know, terrible Jew or something.  I’m so glad that I can ask you to forgive me.”  But that American, Viennese-American, he didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saying, “Oh, OK.”  He said, “You know so many called me that word.  I don’t remember if that was just you.”  So he would not say “I accept the apology.”  But a lot of German or the Asutrians say they didn’t know about it either.  Vienna, the sad thing is when I’m in Vienna and I look around, what really Hitler has done.  He always said he wants to have it cleaned of Jews, Judenrein, this means “no more Jews”.  And he really did it, you know.  Where we lived, where we had one of our studios in the third district, there were really one Jewish store next to the other, the shoe store and the candy store.  There is nothing left of all those.  There are very few Jews living there.  I understand it, I couldn’t, wouldn’t want to live there either.

Interviewer:    How did you decide to come to the United States? 
WAXMAN: How did we decide?  You have to be young and in 1949, the United States was paradise for Europe.  It was really.  And a lot of people traveled from the States to Sweden and I remember my husband was the youngest kitchen chef, he never became a baker, he became a cook and then a chef.  He was the youngest chef in Stockholm.  And people came over when they came from the States and said, “Ah, this is the profession for you, you should go to the States.”  My husband has two cousins who we were close to, like brothers and sisters and they went too.  They were generally forty-seven, they went to theStates and they wrote to us and we missed them and they missed us, but we had our parents, my in-laws, were in Sweden.  So we were really thinking, “Can we do this, can we leave Sweden?”.  But somehow everybody said “This is the country and when you get there, the first year you’re going to be millionaires.”  So we were here now for over forty years.  We are not millionaires but we love it.  So, one day in 1948, at that time we needed many affidavits because we were already a family, we had our son who was at that time a year old.  My father-in-law had a brother here, in New York.  So we wrote to him and he said he would love to have all the nieces and nephews here.  So he wrote that he would help us and he would send an affidavit.  So one day  my husband went to the office of his Dad and said, “You know, Dad, we would love to go the States.  We think we could give our son a better future.”  Sweden was a small country and my husband was already a chef and to have money, to have something of your own, we knew we couldn’t do.  We wouldn’t have for many, many years.  So my husband said, “You know we would love to go.  What do you think?”  And my father-in-law said, “You know it’s not a bad idea, but don’t say anything to Muttie.  Don’t tell Mother anything.  Prepare it and see if you need, I’m sure for three people you need more than one affidavit.  First do it, but don’t tell her anything.”  And we did.  We got three affidavits together and then we told my mother-in-law and she was heartbroken.  She did not like the idea that we go, but we were set.  We thought things were so fantastic in this country.  We heard that Frank came back, a Swedish friend from New York and she said, “Ach, those private nurseries there, where Peter would go, they’re fantastic.  They have a bus who picks up the child.”  You have to be young and naïve.  So we decided and in the end of 1949 we left Sweden.  We were there for 10 years and we could have become Swedish citizens and that looked very nice for us because we were stateless.  We had no citizenship, nothing.  But for the States you didn’t need it, because it went after the quota, where you were born.  At that time we had a lot of those people I talked to from the concentration camp who had come.  And somehow we felt Sweden is a small country.  If we become citizens and then leave that country we could make bad blood.  We could perhaps do something that would harm the people who come after us, they had five years to go.  Over five years to go.  And then perhaps Sweden would think, “They get citizenship and then we leave.” So we decided we wouldn’t become citizens.  They asked us and we said “No, we are leaving.” So we never became citizens.  Our son was heartbroken because he felt he is a Swede.  But Sweden is one of the few countries when you are born in the country, you don’t become citizen.  You are the same citizensip as your parents.  So on our son Peter’s birth certificate is this big letters that he’s Staatless.  This is his birth certificate.  But we didn’t and after five years we became American citizens.  Our beginning in the States, like with everybody else, who came to the states, wasn’t easy.  They did not wait for us to come.  Because my husband had a recommendation for the Waldorf Astoria.  So we came and we lived in a hotel in New York and I remember our son wasn’t feeling good, was two years old at that time.  I think we arrived on a Thursday or something and Friday morning my husband said, “You know I’m going to go to the Waldorf.”  I said, “No, don’t leave me alone here.” I said, “Wait until Monday.  It’s enough if you start to work on Tuesday.” You know, he thought he had a recommendation, he’s going to start.  He got on Monday to the Waldorf Astoria.  But they told him he should first have six months American experience and then come back.  This happened to him for months.  Nobody wanted him.  He needed American experience, but he never could get it.  Nobody gave him a chance.  So then he started to send letters to I think 30 or 40 restaurants in New York and hotels, he sent copies of his recommendations.  Then he got a lot of answers.  All of a sudden the union was open, he could get in.  Then he got it and he started as a kitchen man again.  So, then as soon as he had a little higher position, our daughter came.  We wanted very badly to have another child.  What I did the first eleven years in the summer, I worked in children’s camps where I could take my children along because New York is not a city in the summer to have children.  So we stayed.  We did that for many years.  I did that for many years and my kids had really nice summers and we stayed in New York.  My husband always says, “Sorry, we stayed too long.”  And then our son, after he tried, his master degree he took in Seattle.  He went for his master’s in Seattle.  His undergraduate he was in a university in New York at Stonybrook.  And he talked about how beautiful it is outside of New York and our daughter was an undergraduate in Michigan in Ann Arbor and she said too, “We don’t, we are not going to come home anymore.  We want to live outside of the big city.”  So then we thought, “If you want to be out, we want to get out too.”  And then one summer we  went on our vacation to Denver and at that time Colorado had the best climate we heard.  We wanted already to go somewhere where the climate is good and all that.  But it didn’t work out.  Then we were just lucky that somebody here in Portland heard about my husband and the company and came to New York and offered my husband to come here.  And we came 20 years ago, and I’m happy every day we are here.  Our daughter graduated Michigan and then went here in Eugene to law school and lives here with her son, her husband and three children.  But our son, he has that wanderlust like his parents and he asked us 22 years ago, when he was in Seattle and took his master’s at that time, the Australian government came to those schools and needed teachers.  They asked if he would like to come for two years.  He asked us, he said, “Listen, can I go?” We were still in New York.  We said “Sure.”.  We couldn’t say no because he could tell us we left our parents in Stockholm, so we said “Yes, Go for two years.” And it’s 24 years! But oh, he’s happy there so this has to be.  So I’m glad and I tell you it is really the courage and the love of my parents who made it all possible. You know, I first find out after I had my own children what it meant for a mother to send her children away.  I mean to countries you have never been in, to families you didn’t know anything about.  But, they really saved us, I always say they gave us life twice when we were born and when they sent us out.  What’s now somehow sad is that I feel when once I close my eyes that nobody will remember them, because my children, will know about it but you have to know somebody, you have to know a person to really remember.  But I’m really very lucky, our 12 year-old granddaughter, she’s 12 and a half.  She is very,very much interested in the Holocaust and all that.  She has written about it in school and a few weeks ago they had to write about their own culture.  Each child was supposed to write about their own culture and the teacher gave them a questionnaire and she sent me that and she asked me, “Grandma can you please fill that out.”  They asked what I liked in school.  I mean they really wanted to know everything but one question was: What do I remember most about my youth.  My youth.  I called her and I said, “Jennifer, that question you know what I answer.  I could only answer that I remember most was to leave my parents.” And she said, “Sure, grandma this is what I’m writing about.  Which she did and the interesting thing was a few weeks ago, she got it back and she got an A-plus on it but not only that, the teacher called her and said, “You know, yours was really so interesting, your project because I have read about it, but I have never had any personal contact with anybody.”  And then she immediately volunteered me for the 7th and 8th grade school.  She volunteered me at her 6th grade, But I was on Monday in a private school and the Arvel School in Lake Oswego and talked and I was amazed about the questions those children had.  So I think it’s very important that children will learn about it.

Interviewer:    What must all of us learn?  Out of your life experience? 
WAXMAN: How my life?

Interviewer:     What must all of us learn from your life experience? 
WAXMAN:  You know, when I talk to children what my last thing is what I tell them?  That they can see when they listen to me what hate can do.  And that it doesn’t matter, what color skin we have, it doesn’t matter if you have blue eyes, brown eyes, round eyes, slanted eyes, we are all God’s children and we don’t have to love each other, but we should like each other and we should respect each other.  This is, I said, if we could get that through to people, if this could happen, perhaps those six million didn’t die in vain, that something good would come out.  But if you look around, it doesn’t look it.  It doesn’t look it.   This is the only thing, we have to learn to live with each other You know we can learn so much.  I know what I learned from going to Sweden, and coming here.  We can all learn from each other’s culture.  Everybody has something to do and something to give.  This is, I think, what the most important thing. When I was at the Anne Frank exhibit, when it was here, I had one day, it was a grandma, a son and a granddaughter. I was sitting like here and there were chairs around and the grandmother was sitting next to me and I talked about it.  When I got excited, she would pat me. She would hold my arm and it was something, you know, we understood each other, because she went through the same thing in a different way as what I went through.  Her son asked me after it was over, he said, “Can it happen again?” and I said, “You know what, let’s wait until Tuesday, what Measure 9 is going to say” And thank God, at that time, it was defeated.  Really you cannot tell if it never can happen again.  I am not sure, I’m not sure.  Because there’s so much hate around us, you know it, it’s terrible.  You know, also at the Anne Frank, at first I didn’t want to do it.  I volunteered in the bookshop because I used to be a sales associate with Lipmann and Freddy and Nelson, so I thought I know how to sell.  But then Eva Rickles who called me that first Sunday, Sheila couldn’t come, so I should help.  I should tell my story and I said, “Oh, I don’t want to.” I hadn’t talked to my children about it because I didn’t want to, but I did it.  When I saw the reaction, then I really felt it was necessary you should.  At that time I remember a couple came over and they said, “Tell me did you need counseling, did you go to a psychiatrist?  How did you get over it?”  I said, “Listen, at that time nobody had money for a psychiatrist and nobody went to a psychiatrist.” But I said, “My parents must have given me such a security and love and all that, that I really didn’t need it.  They made me so strong to somehow to get through it.  And for this I’m eternally grateful.”  And then my foster mother taught me something after my parents were deported, when I came back for six weeks to recuperate there.  She said to me, “You know, remember when you go back now, people like to laugh with you, but they don’t like to cry with you.”  When I cried, I cried when I was by myself.  When our son went to Vienna, he was a student, his junior year in Sweden and then he went from there to Vienna.  He wanted to see, our Heide had to show him everything.  He complained bitterly.  He said I didn’t talk about my home and everything.  Heide at that time wrote a very nasty letter to me, She wrote, “How could you? You had the best parents in the world.  Why didn’t you tell them?”  And I wrote back to her “I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want my children to see me cry.  I wanted to have a happy home, like I had.”  Therefore, I never did.  It’s first really with Anne Frank that I could talk about it because it is something you know people say, “Time heals” but time doesn’t heal.  Not something like this.  Sure we have all to lose our parents but then you have a grave but something like this you never get over.  This is something you carry with you in your grave,  Was it the wedding, was it when my children were born, was it bar mitzvah?  The thought of it’s why.  Why can’t they enjoy it?  Why can’t they be here.  So this is a sad, sad thing.  And they were only fifty.  They only lived half a life.  They could have lived so much longer.

Interviewer:    I’d like now to ask Enny for other questions that she’d like to ask if you don’t mind. 
WAXMAN: No, not at all.

Interviewer:    We will give you a copy. 
WAXMAN: Oh, because I promised my granddaughter.  I said that because I made a tape for my son that I promised her I would give her that.  She’s the oldest of the girls and she can have that.

Interviewer #2: One question came to mind, Lotte, you were trained as a photographer.  Were you ever able to work in some kind of. 
WAXMAN: Yes, I worked in Sweden for eight years until a month before our son was born and then I worked in New York, but only a short time.  I couldn’t because Peter was only two years old when we came and he had to get used to the climate and all that.  We wanted him in a nursery in one of those private nurseries.  I went to clean house only to pay for that.  But this is what you have a dream like the university, college, you cannot, I mean you cannot believe what this meant for me.  You know I have only read about college.  I only went to school until I was 14.  I never felt stupid.  It was for me OK.  I couldn’t go to school, I had to work.  I had to live.  But when my kids and especially Peter, he was the first one.  When he came home in junior high school and he asked questions and I could not answer.  He didn’t mean anything, but he said, “Boy, all the other parents can help their kids.” I didn’t wish that on anybody.  I mean he understood later on that I couldn’t help myself.  So, I couldn’t.  So what happened then with my photography.  Until he got used to it, he went to the nursery one week, the next week he was sick.  So I lost the job.  You know the photographer wouldn’t wait for me.  I wanted him to be in the nursery, so I then took care, I took all the children only really for him to learn the language.  You see he only spoke a few words of Swedish.  How much can you speak when you are two?  So we wanted him to learn that, so he went to school and he had to get used to the climate and then he was fine.  After a year, he was fine.

Interviewer #2: I have one more question: 
WAXMAN: Yes?

Interviewer #2: When you said about your children growing up here, were you as a mother able to sing the nursery rhymes and songs to them that mothers would, of the country that you lived, how did you compensate for that? 
WAXMAN: I tell you, I’m not a good singer.  I don’t have a good voice,  (laughs), So I don’t think my kids lost much.  And then I tell you something, I worked then when my daughter came.  I worked in a camp in the summer.  They had a kindergarten in the winter.  So I worked there.  I took her with me.  She was only, one and a half, two years old.  I started there.  So I learned those songs and the children never, I must say this was never, they laughed, they still laugh about my accent, you know.  So this was never how they felt, you know we could do things for them, perhaps other kids didn’t.  We sent both of our kids to Sweden.  We sent before they were 12.  At that time you could go on half a ticket to Sweden, so we sent both of the children, you know, so Peter one year and he spent time with my in-laws and with my foster parents.  And Ruthie did the same thing, so I mean they had advantages.  We immigrant parents, we always said, you know, our kids had the best of two worlds.  You know, the German are much stricter, I think it wasn’t me, I wasn’t strict because my parents were not strict, but my husband was brought up very strict.  He was strict, I mean today you know, he was many things much too strict.  I can tell you one thing if you have time.  An episode.  Peter went to college and it was the first year and he came home for Thanksgiving and I couldn’t wait to get my son home.  You know, the first time he was away from home and I waited and everything was so nice at home and he came and opened the door and he had sideburns.  When my husband saw that I thought “Oh, my God, what’s happening?”  And my husband said, “Go in the bathroom and shave them off.” Our son comes home and he goes in his room and he slams the door.  Then Ruthie got mad because she felt that Peter had the right to have sideburns.  So she got mad and she went in her room, slammed the door.  Then I said to my husband, “Was this really necessary, Couldn you let him tell him later.  You opened the door and …”.  So my husband went in the bedroom and slammed the door and I was standing there, you know, I was thinking.  I was looking forward to that evening.  But then Peter was, is always  a good kid.  He went really into the bathroom and took it off and then came in the living room and we were talking and he said, “You kow the boys and I (he roomed with American Jewish boys)…he said, “You know they told me that, we made a bet.  They said your parents will not let you do that.”  So, then he said, “you know this is what happens when you have immigrant parents.” (laughs) So, he was the oldest, like our cousins, he was the oldest boy.  So we learned then and our cousins too.  I mean, he was the one who, today he laughs about it, but I’m sure he suffered.  One day he was a counselor in a camp and he came with a beard and he had a hard time, but then when he took his Master’s degree, he was on his own, he had a scholarship for his Master’s, we only helped him with little things when he needed it, but he was more or less on his own.  We had our silver wedding anniversary and my in-laws came.  My husband surprised me and sent Peter a ticket to come home.  I opened the door and here he was standing with, he had like a Lincoln beard, but my husband couldn’t say anything more because he was on his own.  My husband said always, “As long as I pay for you…” This was the German, you know, this is how you do it, you know and so they had the good and the bad things, but I think they learned it and today we can laugh about it.

Interviewer #2: Thank you Lotte.

Interviewer #1: Thank you Lotte. 
WAXMAN: Thank you.

Interviewer #1: Ok, now there are things to be… 
WAXMAN: In 1942 the Germans took away our citizenship.  They didn’t want us, everybody who was outside of Germany and Austria, so we became Swedish.  It’s an alien’s passport and it shows here that we had every year, we had to go to the Swedish, this was really the police in Sweden.  Where we had to get an extension on our visa.  It was you can see here from 1942 to 1943 to 1944, to and 1945 until 1949.  Every year.  And then when I wanted to learn to be a photographer, I had to have the permission to become a photographer.  First to learn it and then after I got the title or whatever you want to call it, I became a photographer.  I had to have another, permission to do that.  They were very, very strict.  They would not let anybody work without a permit.  Not that we took away any jobs of any Swedes, but they wanted that.  And this goes till the day we left Sweden.  We never became Swedish citizens since we didn’t need it to come to the States.   This is, this used to be our family, My parents, my brother and me.  And this was around 1930, I would say and then there is a picture, thank you, thank you, thank you.  This is a picture of my mother with us children and for many, many years, every Mother’s day I took that picture out of that album and put it on the table and put some forger-me-nots or lilacs  which were my mother’s favorite flowers. Interviewer:     Photograph of a diaper (laughs) 
WAXMAN: Yes, she was 7 years old when she was deported from Vienna and killed.

Interviewer:    It’s aunt and your cousin.? 
WAXMAN: No, she is my cousin and her mother is my aunt.  They lived in Vienna close to us and we saw them a lot.  And she is one of the casualties.

Interviewer:    What’s her name? 
WAXMAN: Her name is Tosca Feuchtbaum and her mother’s name was Regina.  And they were deported in 1942, in May and never heard of again.

Interviewer:    What’s the man’s name in the photograph? 
WAXMAN: He was my uncle and he was a photographer and his name was Adolph Feuchtbaum.  This was the father.

Interviewer:    OK 
WAXMAN: Thank you.  This was the letter my mother wrote two days before I left Vienna to introduce me to my foster parents.  And she wrote all kinds of things, she wrote that I was very tall for my age and what schooling I had and she begged my foster mother to try to help me because I have never been away from home.  And she wrote too how hard it is for her to let me go.  But she wrote that in times like that the heart of a mother has to keep silence and do what is right.  This is her letter.

Interviewer:    Ok, all right. 
WAXMAN: OK.  And this are the two last letters my mother wrote to me.  This one and this one.

Interviewer:    Do you still read them? 
WAXMAN: Yes, I do, I do.  I shouldn’t but I do.  When I translated them, I read them.  And then this is the last words my 7-year old cousin wrote to me before she was deported.  And this is something terrible, if you think about a little child, she was 7 years old.

Interviewer:    What does it say? 
WAXMAN: Excuse me?

Interviewer:    What does the note say? 
WAXMAN: What it says on, “Dear Lotte, I was so happy that you wrote to me.  Please write soon again.  Many kisses.  Tossie.  Thank you, I think this is from Sweden, March 27, 1940.

Oskarshamn, March 27, 1940

My dear foster parents: Today it is one year since you have opened the door to your home for me.  And it is hard to express my thanks to you in words.  But I want to try to say thank you for everything you have given me.  I can’t mention everything, but most of all I want to thank you for trying to help my parents get out of Germany and help us to have a brighter future.  It didn’t work out that way, sorry to say, but this is all in God’s hands now.

You were so nice and I could have my friend Beate here and we just loved so to be together again after leaving our home and family.

Dear Foster parents, now it is one year and a very long year since I left my dearest parents, my Wien, my friends, and everything I loved and I’m sorry I can’t help but being very sad on such a day.  I never knew that homesickness can hurt so very much, but I imagine this is how it is when one emigrates.  Believe me, I’m really happy to be here and I have got a second home, but it is a very big difference, I can’t help that.  I like you a lot and your home and at times it feels I have been here for a long time but it is a large difference between my home here and my home with my parents where their love was always around m.  But I have lost that, lost it forever, I’m homeless.  Yes, and if I call Oskarshamn sometimes my second home, but it isn’t, my real home I left one year ago.  I’m not sure you can understand that but I just can’t say that I’m so happy here without mentioning my homesickness.

Thanks so very much for everything and I hope you enjoy the flowers and you understand what I wanted to say with those lines.

Love and hugs, Yours,

And these are the last two last letters from my mother: (reads)

(Transcriber’s note: the following two letters were copied verbatim from the typed translations supplied by Lotte Waxman, retaining a few obvious typographical errors.  In a few places, Lotte’s reading departs slightly from the typed versions.)

Wien 18 November 1941

My dearest Lotte,

In two days we are going to travel and I want to write to you darling one more time.  Please, please be brave and don’t grieve that all the work you did to get us out was for nothing.  God decides over everything and we are not allowed to question that.  Be smart, darling because only the thought that we’ll see you children again makes us strong and gives us courage.  Tell Jimmy (he’s my brother) that he shouldn’t be sad.  God will not leave us because God has to help such a wonderful, honest and (g) good Dad.  Please don’t worry if you don’t get any mail for a while, be (s) sure I’ll do everything after our arrival to write to you if it is possible.  We are going with many friends.  I’ll miss your nice letters therefore it will be so wonderful if we with God’s help will be reunited.  Enjoy your youth, because the thought that you are not going to grieve will give us courage to be able to live through it.  We are sorry we gave you lots of troubles and this is hard for us.  Tante Dely and Edith will continute to be good to you and you are my clever girl.  You have to listen to me and be level-headed.  You have always said, “Keep your head high and be strong”.  We will be it (g) and you children have to do the same.  Promise me that and do it.  Take care of yourself, go skiing a lot and go dancing.  Say thank you to your foster parents for everything they have done for us.  We send regards to your boss and thanks for what he tried to do for us.  The same goes for the Jewish Committee.

You dearest Lotte, I kiss you so strong that you have to feel it.  Floh (Heide) has your pictures and will write to you.  I didn’t see her any more, but wrote to her.  Give Jimmy many, many kisses and tell him never to forget his parents who only worked and lived for you both.  We’ll see each other again, I’m sure of that. Many, many kisses and God bless you both. Mutti.

The second letter came two days later:

Wien 22 Nov. 1941

My dearest Lotte, Before we leave I want to hurry up and write to you once more.  Lotterl and Jimmy stay healthy and strong.  God shall bless you and shall take care of you and should help us that we’ll be reunited with our children.  You have tried your best to help us but it was in vain, but will be so much nicer then once we’ll be together again.  We have hope and trust in God who will not forget about us.  We beg you with everything you believe in, don’t grieve, our sunshine, because only so can we carry the heavy burden which was put on us.  We want to see you again as our beautiful daughter, therefore you shouldn’t be sad and have courage and believe in God for sure will not leave us.  Since the 11. We haven’t had a letter from you and our biggest wish is that we’ll get some mail from you before we leave.  You are not allowed to despair when you’ll not hear from us for a long time, I’m afraid.  Martha had courage too and you have to have it too.  Thank God daily that you and Jimmy are so happy.  I should say hello from Neuwirts, Tante Camilla will not forget you, you should write to her.

Floh (Heide) has all the pictures and I gave her everything else.  No mail can reach us so you have to wait till you hear from us.  We are healthy and full of hope that we’ll be able to see you children again.  Lotterl, we have one wish that is to see you children again.  We believe in it and have such a strong belief in God who will not leave us.  Please, please take care of yourself and persue (sic) all the sports if possible.  You must and you will be very happy in your life.  Thank your dear fosterparents for everything they did for us and God is going to repay them for all their kindness.  Say hello to your boss and thanks too.  We thank Ernest that he is such a good friend to you, stay good friends.  Tell our dearest Jimmy that we are always with our thoughts together with you both and give him many, many kisses.  To you dearest child million kisses and I say, stay healthy.

Mutti   This was the last thing I ever heard of my parent, of my parents.  And I wonder if they really had such a strong belief in God.  This is, I will never know, or if they only wrote that because some…I feel that all those people somehow that they didn’t lose their belief in God.  But I hope they did, I’m sure it would help them, if they didn’t.  So I think this is…