Marianne Rossen

Mike: Did you grow up in Berlin?
ROSSEN: First we had an apartment, and then my parents bought a big villa. Then I was sent to Switzerland with my nurse because they didn’t want to have a little girl running around, which was fun [fine?]. And then we had this villa in front of the Ruhr. In ’36 we moved to an apartment near the Grunewalds, [inaudible] a very nice area. And while I was in England they had to give their [inaudible] to an apartment in town.

Mike: Was your family very religious?
ROSSEN: Not at all.

Mike: Not at all?
ROSSEN: No. My grandfather was so Orthodox, my mother hated it, and she said, “My kids can do anything they want to.” Never went to synagogue. Like I say, I went to mass every Sunday with Nanny. My nanny was with me, I think, from almost when I was born until I left for England, 17 years. She was fantastic. Then we had two maids, and a cook, and a chauffeur, and a gardener.

Mike: What did your parents do?
ROSSEN: My father owned his own bank. He was a banker.

Mike: So your father was a banker and your mother was a . . .?
ROSSEN: A lady of the society.

Mike: How far back do your early childhood memories go?
ROSSEN: They go back until since we left the apartment, so that would be since I was five and a half.

Mike: Five and a half, so that . . .
ROSSEN: I know things better 60, 70 years ago, but I forget what I did last week [laughter].

Mike: They did tell me that . . .
ROSSEN: It’s amazing.

Mike: I think it’s a common experience.
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: Yes, some things suddenly come back to you that you . . .
ROSSEN: Especially names. And somebody says, “What’s she look like?” “She has gray hair and glasses.” “Well, they got a hundred of those in this town.” I’m not good with names.

Mike: So your memories will take you back, but as you were obviously very young, clear back to 1927 or so.
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: What we’re interested in is when you were five, six, seven years old. I want to build a little picture of how you were raised and when you began to be aware that things weren’t right.
ROSSEN: The thing was, I never was aware. We lived out in a very fashionable suburb, and my nanny raised me very sheltered, very strict. I wasn’t allowed to look out of the window. Little ladies didn’t do that [laughs]. The chauffeur took me to school, brought me home. They never had any parades where we lived. But then I think it started in ’36 with the Olympic games.

Mike: So you lived in a very nice part of town?
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: And you didn’t have any parades coming by there?
ROSSEN: No.

Mike: OK.
ROSSEN: I didn’t take anything very seriously, I don’t think. When you’re a little girl . . . 

Mike: And you had a nanny at a young age? 
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: So you had her in those years.
ROSSEN: Yes. The nanny, like I say, was with us until I left for England. I had all my meals with my nanny. I hardly ever came downstairs except to say hello to guests and then go back upstairs. Except for Christmas. We celebrated Christmas in my family.

Mike: You did?
ROSSEN: Yes. What’s so amazing, we had a Christmas tree from the floor to the ceiling with real candles. Can you imagine?

Mike: Really? 
ROSSEN: Never had a fire.

Mike: What kind of schools did you go to?
ROSSEN: I had ordinary public schools, and I wanted to be a doctor, so I went to what they call gymnasium. You go until you’re 18, but we were expelled before that. So I went to regular school, and then I went to what they call lyceum, and from the lyceum, gymnasium because I had Latin. I had French, Latin, and English at school. I tell you, European education is for the college.

Mike: Yes, I’m sure of that.
ROSSEN: I had to leave school in ’37. I was 16. I went to a Spanish business school, believe it or not, but since I’d been to school part time in Italy, it was very difficult to unmix the Spanish and the Italian.

Mike: Yes.
ROSSEN: So then I wanted to be an interpreter. I thought that would be interesting. I taught a little German in the British army. You know, ordinary things like, “Come here. Go there. How much?” This kind of thing to our soldiers. Somehow, if you don’t speak the languages, you forget. I’m bilingual in German, have a little Spanish, a little French. That’s about it.

Mike: Were you ever asked to leave school?
ROSSEN: Yes, our principal held us in school as long as possible, and then he was told that’s it, we must go. I was 16. 

Mike: So you were a Jewish child in their eyes. You were a Jewish family and a Jewish child.
ROSSEN: Right. And he was such a wonderful man. If the Führer spoke, usually the kids would listen to it in a big hall, and he thought they should listen to it with the family, so he sent them all home. But what he really meant was, “I’m not going to force a Jewish girl to listen to his speeches.” He sent us home. He was a wonderful man, but he had to go too, later.

Mike: He was a principal of which school now, the gymnasium?
ROSSEN: Yes. I have a whole book of my school. Am I on film already?

Mike: Yes.
ROSSEN: I was going to get that. I have a book of my school.

Mike: What was the name of the school?
ROSSEN: I was just going to look it up. Can we turn it off a minute?

Mike: Sure. I’ll get it for you. Which book is it? If I could ask you that name again?
ROSSEN: Yes. Hildegaard. We’ll have to write it down.

Mike: I’ll take a picture of that. If you’ll hold it up for just a second. OK. Thank you.
ROSSEN: The thing is — oh, he was [Czech?]. I went back. They had pictures from our school, the teachers. When I went back in the ’50s sometime, they had two plaques on the front door of the school, right there. They were in favor of the Jews. It said that they had to let them go. They put up the flags to remember the Jewish students. I thought that was fantastic.

Mike: So you were 16 years old when this happened, but . . . 
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: Clearly you would have become aware of . . .
ROSSEN: I was [inaudible]. Here is a very small one — when I went back to — here’s the plaque, and they put roses on, the German students, and that’s myself and a friend. We went back together for the 50th anniversary or something.

Mike: That must have been kind of emotional to go back to your school.
ROSSEN: But then I had been back. See what happened. I should really start to prove [inaudible]. My parents didn’t think it was very safe for me to stay. They were aware. My father, they took the bank away, and all his money. So they sent me to England as an au pair. You know what an au pair is?

Mike: Yes.
ROSSEN: Which is funny because of the maids and the nanny and the cook, I had no idea about cooking, cleaning, or anything. But the lady in England was very nice, and she taught me. But I was very homesick and I wanted to go home and see my parents. Well, that was unheard of. People in London used to point the finger at me. My friends, “She’s crazy. She wants to go home.” And that was in June of ’39. So I went to the German Embassy, and I said I would like to go home and see my parents, and the guy said, “Why don’t you go?” I said, “I’m not going unless you give it to me in writing that I can come back out.” So anyway, he said, “We’ll have to see about that. You go home, and if you don’t hear from us within a week, we can’t do anything.”

Mike: Was his attitude . . .?
ROSSEN: In London.

Mike: Yes. He was a German. Was he helpful or . . .?
ROSSEN: Very. He said, “You have a sick mother, don’t you? And a sick father. He’s almost dying, so you want to go home and see him.” Anyway, he put it on real thick, so they gave me a piece of paper [inaudible]. He put a “J” on my passport because I didn’t have one. When I got back to him, he gave me a paper in three parts. He said, “Put the paper in your passport over the J. It says German Embassy. They’re not going to bother you. Then when you come back you give us the bottom piece of paper.” I thought that was very exciting. I treated everything like an adventure. 

Well, I arrived on a ship. I had a return ticket on the Bremen or some big ship. And I saw my mother down on the pier. I couldn’t believe it. My mother was a lady of society. She owned six fur coats. She had a massage every week. They had a party every week. And here she was in a German dirndl kind of dress, and her hair all tied up around the top, very German looking. I’ll show you later. I have a large painting of her. That was my mother. The first thing she said to me, because we had to go home on the train from Bremen or Hamburg, “Don’t open your mouth. Don’t talk.” That’s hard for me. She didn’t want me to talk about anything. 

So we got to the apartment, which was a fairly small apartment. After a while I was so uncomfortable. I noticed what was going on, and I wanted to go back. But in Germany, if you left as a Jewish person, you had to have your luggage sealed. They would inspect what you put in your luggage and seal it. Permission for that would take about five or six weeks. I didn’t want to stay that long. So my mother took that paper from the German Embassy. She says, “Come on, we’ll fix it.” We went to the Department of the Interior, and she spoke to some man behind the desk. She said, “My daughter is here from the German Embassy; she doesn’t have time to get her luggage.” “No problem,” he said, and he stamped this paper with all kinds of swastikas, and [inaudible] and so forth. I thought it was exciting.

When I got back to England — another thing mom said, “Let’s have a cup of coffee.” So we went to this little restaurant, and I was about to sit down. She said, “No, I want you to sit here because I want to watch the front door. I think some friends of ours are going to join us.” Well, I didn’t think anything of it. When we left to go outside, there was a big sign, “Jews are not wanted in this café.” That’s why. She didn’t want me to see that. 

Anyway, I left. It was sad, but I left. I got to the — I think it was Portsmouth, or one of those in England. The first thing the customs man said to me, “You’re Jewish, and your luggage isn’t sealed?” Not thinking I said, “Yes, I have this permission.” I gave him the permission with all the swastikas. I must have been stupid. So he made all these little notes and he said, “Go ahead.” 

Then when the war started — September 3, 1939, I’ll never forget it — they started to intern German nationals, Jews as well as others. First they had to go to a tribunal. So I went to the tribunal, and the judge knew everything. He knew that I had come in with unsealed luggage. He knew that I had the permission from the German embassy to go in the first place. I was amazed, really. British intelligence is something else!

Mike: You would have been about 20? 19?
ROSSEN: In ’39, 18. 

Mike: 18.
ROSSEN: So I went through the tribunal, and I’ll never forget. They asked all kinds of questions. What the judge said, “It’s not for what you may do, my child, or what you’ve done, but for what they might ask you to do” — he meant the Germans — “that we must intern you during the King’s pleasure” [laughs]. I didn’t even know what that meant. Anyway, I wasn’t allowed to go home and change clothes or anything. I went by car. This was in southern England. We drove to London, and I said to the lady detective next to me, “Where am I going?” She said, “Holloway.” I said, “What is Holloway?” She said, “You’ll see, my child.” She wouldn’t tell me. Now it was getting dark. I’ll never forget. We slowly drove to this beautiful castle — I thought it was a castle — until we went through the doors and they clicked. Then I realized I was in Holloway prison, which is the highest security prison for women in England.

Mike: Really?
ROSSEN: And here I was. I had to take a bath and leave my clothes behind. A doctor came to see me, and she was very disappointed that I didn’t have any lice in my hair. Then I walked down the corridor with another prisoner to my place. I won’t call it a cell now, because I didn’t know what. I said to the young lady, “Why are you here?” She said, “I tried to kill my landlady, but she didn’t die, so they only gave me three years.” She was a British girl. Then she looked to me and said, “Why are you here?” I showed her my card, and it said “Offense: Alien.” “Ooh, blimey!” she said. “She’ll never get out” [laughs]. That was [present?].

Mike: You were in a prison, not a camp?
ROSSEN: No, they didn’t have camps for women. This was in November of ’39.

Mike: Was that the reason then?
ROSSEN: That’s the reason I was in prison. There were other German-Jewish people. There were also Nazi girls. There was a girl who would always say — they called them guards, the people that locked you in — I was in solitary confinement with a bed, a table, a chair, and a washstand, and that was it. If you had to go to the bathroom, you had to ring a bell, a flag would come down, and a guard would come and take you to the bathroom and wait until you were finished. There was a Nazi girl who always said, “You wait until Hitler comes.” We were mixed up, the Jews and the Nazis. One day the guard said to me, “Come with me, [Hartog?], I’ll show you something.” We went down the hall to the cell. The flag was down. She opened the door with a key, and she said, “What do you want?” And the girl inside said, “I have to go to the bathroom.” The guard said, “Now you wait until Hitler comes.” She shut the door [laughter]. I thought that was a tremendous sense of humor. 

Anyway, we were there. To begin with, the only time I was outside was to walk in the yard. I had to stand on the table to look out of the window; it was really awful. But in June of ’40 there had been camps for women and men on the Isle of Man, which is an island between Ireland and England. We were sent there, and my God! From my little cell, we stayed at a hotel. All the internees stayed at a hotel. Sometimes two women had to sleep in the same bed, and that started all kinds of interesting relationships, shall we say. But after prison life, it was fantastic. We could walk around. There was barbed wire at the end. That was the only thing that told you that you were, you know . . .

Mike: So the hotel was on the Isle of Man?
ROSSEN: It was on the Isle of Man. There were several hotels. We were 4,000 women.

Mike: 4,000!
ROSSEN: We were near the seaside. We could look at the ocean. It was gorgeous, really. I joined a theater club, and every Sunday they allowed the husbands to come and visit the wives — for a cup of tea, nothing else. Then we put on a little theater show.

Mike: That hotel, did that have a name, do you recall?
ROSSEN: The town did, St. Mary’s.

Mike: Let me take you back just a second just to get the dates right. When you ended up in Holloway, do you remember the day that you went in?
ROSSEN: I do. 18th of November, 1939. I was 18 years old. My birthday’s in February, so I was almost 19.

Mike: So you were there about six or seven months?
ROSSEN: I was from the 18th of November to the fourth of June. I’ll never forget those dates.

Mike: And then to . . .
ROSSEN: They took us by train. I was amazed that there were other internees from other prisons too. And then by boat across. It was very interesting. I was there from the fourth of June until February, 1942, so it was two years. The British wanted volunteers for the army, and I volunteered, but I’m blind in my right eye, so the doctor said, “I can’t pass you.” I said, “Why not? General Wavell” — who was a very famous general in Africa — “only has one eye.” And she said, “Well, this is between you and General Wavell” [laughter]. I came out and I came to London. I knew my cousin, but I didn’t want to stay with them. I stayed at what they called a refugee home, several young ladies.

Mike: So that’s since they let you out of the Isle of Man?
ROSSEN: Yes. All of a sudden. Don’t ask me why.

Mike: Everybody?
ROSSEN: No. 

Mike: Just you?
ROSSEN: Several other people, but I have no idea why.

Mike: They didn’t tell you.
ROSSEN: When I was in the Isle of Man, I couldn’t correspond with my parents, and when I left I was then a prisoner of war. When I left, I couldn’t correspond with them anymore, so I had a nervous breakdown. I remember the first day I joined. I volunteered for the army. They passed me. I sent the doctor a postcard saying General Wavell number two managed to join the army. 

I was in the service for two days with all the shots, miserable. I had a nervous breakdown, and I really lost it. I remember the doctor coming to me and asking me questions like, “Mr. and Mrs. Brown,” and I would give them the right address. They would give me an address, and I would say, “Oh, so-and-so lived there.” So he knew it wasn’t a complete, whatever you call it, loss of the brain. But I imagined things. I loved to eat eggs. I was not allowed to eat eggs because of a certain medicine. So they gave me a plate and an eggcup, and I’d sit up in bed and eat an egg that wasn’t there. After three months I was back to normal. But it was a difficult time, because when I got better, I kept saying to the nurse, “Do you hear bells? Do you hear this?” because I thought I had imagined things.

Mike: What actually brought you to the edge of a breakdown? Was it just . . .?
ROSSEN: Misery. Toothache. A high fever. 105 for over a week.

Mike: You were sick?
ROSSEN: I really was. All the injections they give you. It all came together, and I just broke down.

Mike: Right. I know it was very difficult for you to be away from your parents, not knowing what was happening to them, too.
ROSSEN: Right. Anyway, here I was in the army, and they thought I was quite intelligent, made me a sergeant, and I would train little girls to be soldiers. I was a drill sergeant, can you imagine [laughs]?! But because of my eyes — I’ll never forget that one time they were in front of me lined up, and I wanted somebody to come out and do a certain thing. I looked at her and said, “Come on,” and the girl on the right of her came because . . . [laughter]. Well, anyway.

Mike: Where were you stationed?
ROSSEN: First I was stationed in — oh, God, this escapes me — Yorkshire somewhere. Then I was transferred to Wales. I was in [inaudible word]. I was in the office. The Yanks came in ’41. We were so excited. He said to me, “What are you doing in the army?” I said, “I’m a clerk” [pronounced British style, clahk]. “Oh,” he said, “you’re the lady where we call up to find out the time?” He thought I said clock [laughter]. What they call clerk [pronounced American style] in England.

Mike: Yes. 
ROSSEN: So then, let’s see, we’re going towards ’45. I volunteered to be an interpreter. I was sent to interpreter’s school and that’s very interesting. You have to do four things at one time.

Mike: To interpret German?
ROSSEN: Yes. You have to listen what was said, translate it, speak then to the person you’re interpreting for, and listen to the next sentence. But after eight weeks of solid training from morning to night, you could do it. It was no problem; it was amazing. So they sent me over with the army of occupation, but before that . . .

Mike: Go ahead.
ROSSEN: The war ended on May 8th, and we all went downtown. Are you familiar with London?

Mike: Yes, I was there last year.
ROSSEN: Downtown, Whitehall, where all the government offices are. We went downtown, and we yelled, “We won, Winnie [Winston Churchill]! We won, Winnie! See Winnie over there?” So he came to the balcony, and he held up his — like this [gestures, possibly the V for victory sign] — and we were so excited. There were so many people there you couldn’t faint; there wasn’t room.

Mike: And this was on May 8th?
ROSSEN: Right after — it was May 8th or 9th, I forget which. So we wanted to walk back to our villas, that’s what they called where we were living, and I was so happy. I got home. There was a letter from my sister, and she told me that both my parents had died in a concentration camp. So from being up there, I was all the way down. Very, very sad. Anyway, they sent me to Berlin with the army of occupation, can you imagine?

Mike: Do you remember when you went over?
ROSSEN: To Berlin? I think it was in June of ’45.

Mike: You became an interpreter, and you were interpreting for whom?
ROSSEN: I went into conference interpreting. But they had a shortage in the pool’s head office, so they made me a clerk.

Mike: You were an interpreter in ’42, ’43?
ROSSEN: No. Wait a minute. Where am I? I was released. I went into the army in April of 1942. I was a clerk.

Mike: Right. For a long time.
ROSSEN: Yes. And then in early ’45, before the war was over, they wanted conference interpreters, German-English. It was a raise. So I volunteered, and after I was through school, the war was over, and then they sent me to Berlin in June of ’45.

Mike: So they knew they were going to need people like you to occupy; they knew where the war [inaudible] . . .
ROSSEN: It was just amazing what they must have known. Anyway, being in Berlin was kind of strange after I left. Can you imagine?

Mike: It must have been. The Russians were there, right?
ROSSEN: Ah!

Mike: They had torn it apart.
ROSSEN: Listen. We were not allowed to go out in the evening alone, not because of the Germans but because of the Russians. They were unbelievable! And yet, some of them were like children. They would go up to a German and say, “Uhr, uhr,” which means watch. They wanted to take it. The guy said “No uhr. Keine watch.”  “Oh,” the Russian said. He bared his arm, and he had about four or five uhrs, and he gave the German an uhr. They bicycled. They loved to run the bicycle. They were amazing, but you couldn’t trust them.

Mike: When did you get to Berlin, then?
ROSSEN: The first week — I forgot the date — of June, 1945. 

Mike: Wow.
ROSSEN: They still had bodies in the river. Everything was from the bombing.

Mike: Tell me what you saw.
ROSSEN: I saw all these broken-down places with  — what do you call the things you build with? — the stones were neatly stacked, complete devastation.

Mike: And the people? [Inaudible.]
ROSSEN: Well, I didn’t talk. I was mad. I was angry. I had very little contact with the Germans, but I wanted to see my very best friend that I had from school. I went to her house, but it was occupied by the British. The gentleman told me where she moved to, a few streets further away. I went there, and when I knocked at the door, I think her mother almost fainted. I was in British uniform. It was quite an experience. But anyway, I wanted to see the manager of the interpreter’s office, because I wanted to do the actual translating. One interesting thing, in Berlin they have these overhead undergrounds, [like] the “els” [Ls] in Chicago.

Mike: Yes, I know what you mean.
ROSSEN: The U-Bahn in Germany. It was very cold; it was the winter of ’45. There was a Russian soldier. He played with the door, and the Germans were going like this [gestures]. They were cold. I was sitting in a British uniform and completely forgot where I was over there, and I said to one of the German girls in my best German, “The next time he opens the door, give him a push.” In German. Then I realized what I had said. I left on the next stop. I mean, in British uniform, you don’t do that. 

Anyway, it was interesting, and then the following year I had enough points — let’s see, I went in in ’42, so that was ’46 — I had enough points to get out of the British army, and I volunteered with the American. They wanted people for the criminal investigation department, people who knew German. I can’t tell you too much about that, but I went to the secret ink unit in Frankfurt, which was very interesting. We would treat letters with chemicals to find messages.

Mike: These are German archives you’re going through?
ROSSEN: Yes. Ordinary letters. People who [inaudible], and it would say on it that they had been tested, but you couldn’t see it when you saw the paper.

Mike: So these are letters being sent out from . . .?
ROSSEN: From German girls. From German men. Anything. We looked for secret ink messages, because there was an uprising coming, and we had a department that listened in on telephone conversations. It was called the Criminal Investigations, CID. And that’s how I met my husband.

Mike: What were they trying to prevent?
ROSSEN: An uprising, catching forces that were working . . .

Mike: I had always been under the impression that the German population had been beaten so thoroughly that they just had no stomach for more war.
ROSSEN: I wouldn’t say that. There were some of them that . . .

Mike: Were you trying to find Nazis?
ROSSEN: Yes, exactly. I also remember going into the Checkpoint Charlie. It was under the Brandenburg Gate [inaudible] division. I wanted to see my father’s office, where his bank was. It was on the other side in the financial district, and I’ll never forget. I was the only lady that went through. There was a big square, and here were all the cameras — the Russians — on you. It was terrible. I couldn’t wait to get back out. The GI said, “Welcome home!” I said, “Thank you.”

Mike: The Brandenburg Gate marked the [line?] between east and west.
ROSSEN: Right. One of the entrances. That wall was really something. They had people escape over it and all that. I went to our house; it was all bombed out. I have pictures. 

Mike: Of your house?
ROSSEN: Yes. It was quite something. 

Mike: But emotionally, from the time you arrived back in Berlin, it must have been a terrible thing. You had lost your . . .
ROSSEN: Mike, I am very strong. I’ve had great upsets, not physically like Diana and all that, but mentally, emotionally. Somehow I inherited my mother’s sense of humor. My father couldn’t laugh. When you’re through, you’ll have to look at the book [with pictures?]. My father collected paintings. My mother collected antique furniture. And now when I say antique, I mean 1600 and up to Victorian stuff. I was never allowed in her dressing room. There was a beautiful pale blue day bed that belonged to Marie Antoinette. But anyway, I went to the bank and the building was all blown apart. It was hard for me to go home. See, here’s a picture of before and after. This was my home where I lived as a child.

Mike: Gee whiz! That’s a . . .
ROSSEN: Isn’t that something?

Mike: Let me take a picture of that, if I can do that.
ROSSEN: Before and after. You can’t get that, can you? You want me to hold it?

Mike: Yes, just hold that on your lap. I really would.
ROSSEN: Yes, and that other picture.

Mike: That’s fascinating. Just hold that one. It’s separate. We’ll do that separately.
ROSSEN: You can’t get them both.

Mike: Here we go. I’ll just back up a little bit. Got it. Then I’ll do this one. I can put them together . . .
ROSSEN: I see.

Mike: And this is at?
ROSSEN: This was when I was stationed there.

Mike: The house was taken from your parents, obviously.
ROSSEN: Yes, we had to move out.

Mike: Did you ever hear anything about who lived in it?
ROSSEN: Yes, we got money that the kids, my [brother and I ?]. It was taken for — they called it al zir [? inaudible]. It means Christianized or whatever. I thought it was interesting; it was such a beautiful view.

Mike: Beautiful home.
ROSSEN: Yes. Later when you’re through, you can just — oh, I know what I was going to say. My mother collected antique furniture, and we used to sell a chair or two and live on that for months. The money. My mother was great. She would say, “It always was too crowded in that corner. I’m glad that chair is gone.” That’s what she was like, and that’s the way I am. Something dreadful happens, and I treat it as an adventure or something. It’s amazing.

Mike: I can’t imagine what it must have been like, though, for you to go back and to be in Berlin, and to have your childhood memories, and to know that your parents had been murdered, and to see all of the . . .
ROSSEN: Remnants.

Mike: This is what’s left of what the Nazis did. To see the people, and — it must have been horrible.
ROSSEN: I think it was the first time that I really realized what happened. Kristallnacht I was in London. I read about it. But somehow, emotionally, I wasn’t involved until then.

Mike: Do you remember when you began to hear about or found out anything about the death camps and that whole thing?
ROSSEN: Not until they were liberated. We didn’t have any friends or relatives that were taken, or at least I didn’t know about it. Like I told you before, I was so sheltered. They must have known, but they wouldn’t let me know.

Mike: Yes. So many didn’t know until after . . .
ROSSEN: That’s true, too. But somehow it never affected us or our family. We were very lucky.

Mike: You spent your time in England. You were either in the service, or you were in a women’s detainee camp, so you wouldn’t have gotten any information.
ROSSEN: No. The letters I received through the Red Cross, while I was there, I still have a couple of cards which I sent to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. I thought it would be good for them to have some of them. They were very pleased. But the letters my parents wrote were about the weather and stuff like that. They never — well, they couldn’t have, because I’m sure they were censored, too.

Mike: So you heard from your sister, did you say? How did she find out?
ROSSEN: That’s another story.

Mike: Maybe we should pick up your story and come back to that?
ROSSEN: No, I’ll tell you now. It’s not that long. My sister was 25 when I was four. My dad was . . .

Mike: What was her name?
ROSSEN: Gerta [spells out]. She married a Swiss composer called Heider [spells out]. I have to laugh at something. Anyway, I was an aunt when I was born; she had two little boys. She had always said to my parents, “Come on. Get out. Get out.” My father was very proud. He was a big, well-known man. He didn’t want to go and live on somebody’s charity. At last they found somebody who offered to take them [inaudible]. So I don’t know.

Mike: So she found that out.
ROSSEN: No. My father and mother were first sent to, I don’t know what they called it, a camp in Czechoslovakia which was called “Show Camp.”

Mike: Theresienstadt?
ROSSEN: Yes! There you go. Very good.

Mike: OK. Theresienstadt. 
ROSSEN: My father died there because — first of all he was very old, and didn’t have enough food and all that. My mother was transferred to Auschwitz. There was a lady that lived with them in the same house, and at one time they had a list up saying, “Anybody want to go to Switzerland? Sign here.” My mother and father wouldn’t sign. They thought it was a cover up. This lady signed, and by golly, she went to Switzerland in exchange for some trucks. Her name was — it’s on the Holocaust list — Gertrude Ella Hartog [spells out last name], and she was a nee Katz, like our . . .

Mike: Vera.
ROSSEN: Like our mayor used to be [Vera Katz, former mayor of Portland].

Mike: Wow.
ROSSEN: And I know that one day I got a letter from Yad Vashem saying they had discovered that they mixed it up. The dates were wrong. I wrote back to them, “I’m sorry, that’s not my mother,” because I saw a card from a different date. So they weren’t entirely up to date, either. I don’t know if I really — I would like to let it rest in a way. I know that my father died. What’s the other name for Theresienstadt? Terezin or something, isn’t it?

Mike: So in ’46, you were still helping the Americans then?
ROSSEN: Right. And what I was telling you, it was near Frankfurt. It was a very famous — I don’t know if it’s still there — company called I.G. Farben, remember?

Mike: Yes.
ROSSEN: You know that whole building was completely intact. This amazed me, with all the bombing around. And this building they made it into an officers’ club. That’s how I met my husband. We used to go there all the time. It was a high-rise thing, completely intact! Isn’t that amazing? That’s what I call “precision bombing.”

Mike: There was probably another reason.
ROSSEN: They knew that was the headquarters. My husband was in the Corps of Engineers.

Mike: American Army?
ROSSEN: Yes, and he was across the river from where I was. I was in a place called Offenbach, and he was on the other side. But we met on a blind date, and we used to go to the IG Farben. And then we used to go to a place called Castle Kroneburg, which was beautiful. In the mountains. They also made it into an officers’ club. That’s how we met.

Mike: So this would have been 1947?
ROSSEN: ’46. All this was ’46.

Mike: So Germany was still a pretty broken place.
ROSSEN: Yes. Very. I bought a beautiful ring for a carton of cigarettes. A lot of black market going on. There’s one thing, I never trust a German my age. A Jew is different. But another one. There’s one living here. She’s a lady, and she said to me, “If you ever want to talk German, come up to my apartment.” I said, “No, thank you. I’m an American. I talk English.” It’s been 53 years since I was naturalized.

Mike: 53 years. 
ROSSEN: Yes, 1954. It was the year when they had so many people naturalized. They even had it in Yankee Stadium.

Mike: Yes. But at any rate, you met your husband-to-be then in ’46 there, and then what happened?
ROSSEN: Well [laughter], it was interesting. We got married, and we thought we got married. We found out that his wife never signed the divorce papers. So we had to undo it. Unfortunately, I was pregnant. So my contract ended. These days, you know how it is, you have your babies first, then you get married if you’re lucky.

Mike: Right.
ROSSEN: But in those days that was a very, very difficult thing. My contract was over in April, or March, and I went back to England. I had no money. I was pregnant. I had some friends, and I tried to commit suicide but then changed my mind because I was afraid I might miss something [laughter]. I tell you, I’m a funny person. It worked out all right. I worked, the baby was in a nursery, and I saved my money, paid for my ticket to the States. I had a cousin — my father’s sister married an American — I had a cousin in New York who sent me an affidavit.

Mike: So you needed to be sponsored?
ROSSEN: Yes, you did. You couldn’t have ingrown toenails, and what was the other thing? TB. I have the cutest picture of my son, ten months old sitting there. So that’s how we got to America. This friend that I met — she no longer lives — in the CID, she said, “Why don’t you come and stay with us?” That’s how I got to Portland. She lived near Killingsworth. Anyway, not far from Vanport. I arrived in ’48, and I remember that we could see the houses floating down the river.

Mike: I think that’s about when we got here.
ROSSEN: Yes?

Mike: Yes, I was just a little guy.
ROSSEN: I came over on a ship. I bought the tickets. The Manhattan, I think it was called. I wasn’t crazy for Portland, and I moved to San Francisco. In Portland I met a young man. I married him, but he turned out to be an alcoholic. Like my son says, “Mother, you sure pick the winners” [laughter]. It was true because he would cut his wrists, and I didn’t want my little boy to grow up with this.

So then I worked in San Francisco for the California Physicians’ Service [Blue Shield]. Then my grandfather’s estate was released. They needed somebody to go over and represent the heirs. My brother didn’t want to go, so I said, “OK, I’ll go.” And I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if I met my husband somewhere? It was army, army, army. There was no other word. So I wrote to the Department of the Army. I had his number and all that. They told me where he was, at Fort Hood. Well, the lady I went with has family in San Antonio. We went to Europe. We went through Dallas. I wrote to my “husband,” said I was near there. One night I came home from the office, and there was a phone call — I couldn’t believe it — from him.

Mike: So this was the man you married in Germany, the father of your first child?
ROSSEN: Yes. He met me in Dallas, and I remember saying to him, “What time is it?” And he looked at the watch, and he went like this [gestures]. I said, “It’s all right.” He said, “Look at the watch.” It was the watch I gave him when we first got married.

Mike: Really! 
ROSSEN: I tell you, it’s a roller coaster.

Mike: So you got back together?
ROSSEN: For a while [laughter]. 

Mike: I think I know the end, but I don’t.
ROSSEN: When you’re an officer, what do you do in the officers’ mess? You drink and you smoke. He drank and smoked himself to death.

Mike: Yes. Alcoholism is a tough disease. It’s hard.
ROSSEN: And smoking a pack a day. We had a beautiful house in Virginia. I have a painting there from it, and it was sad. So there you are.

Mike: That’s weird. We ended up in Virginia, too, before we came here.
ROSSEN: Oh, really? I lived in Alexandria, right across from Mt. Vernon.

Mike: We were in Charlottesville.
ROSSEN: Oh, yes. I remember one day my husband was mowing the lawn and a car came along, and the man looked out of the window and said, “You see that Washington’s place?” “I’ve asked for ten years, but he isn’t home right now.” He had a sense of humor, too.

Mike: I forgot to ask you back earlier on, did you have brothers and sisters? 
ROSSEN: Step. They were half. My father and my mother were married before, and then they married each other. My mother had a son and my father had a daughter.

Mike: Can I get their first names?
ROSSEN: Yes. My brother got [inaudible]. It was Frank Orna, and my sister was Gerta. I don’t know if she has another name or not. My father collected Dutch Flemish paintings from the 1600s.

Mike: Twenty-one of them?
ROSSEN: He had 31 of them, and we have recovered two. This is a copy of one. It’s mentioned in the article by — you can have this. I have an extra one.

Mike: Really? Thank you. I might just put it in here if I can take a picture of it. Yes.
ROSSEN: And this is another one that we found in England, by [Michaux?]. Sotheby’s put it at large, and it took us three years to decide what to do. They wanted the first 35,000 pounds. So we finally decided, what’s the use of fighting so long? Let’s go ahead.

Mike: That was one that you kept then, or your father? 
ROSSEN: No. That one we got through the auction, and we gave it to Sotheby’s, his store. They sent me this catalog.

Mike: And that’s the painting?
ROSSEN: Yes. He sent me this, not the frame, but a reproduction. Can you imagine? The size? They paid $100,000 for it, in the auction. This little picture? Well, there’s some in there worth a million. I wish when my father had. I wish we would find more.

Mike: Do I understand correctly then, this was yours? Your father’s?
ROSSEN: Oh, yes.

Mike: And it was seized by the Gestapo, as it says.
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: Were you in England when they began taking his business and the home and everything else?
ROSSEN: No, I was still in Germany. I was still living with them. It started in the early ’30s.

Mike: So you knew that was happening, and . . . 
ROSSEN: But I didn’t understand why.

Mike: Really?
ROSSEN: Like I say, I was brought up so sheltered in life.

Mike: So they didn’t talk to you about that? It was . . .
ROSSEN: Oh, no.

Mike: Not a subject of conversation.
ROSSEN: I didn’t realize that we had less chairs or — there’s one interesting thing. Have you ever heard of a book by Nicholas — she is unbelievable — called The Rape of Europa?

Mike: No, I haven’t read that.
ROSSEN: She talks in that book about our neighbor who was a Jewish art dealer. Apparently he collaborated, and I didn’t know that. He was our immediate neighbor. I loved him and his wife. They had a little boy, Tommy. He was my best friend. I was the only girl that was invited to his birthday parties. We were about the same age. He later became a lieutenant in the British Army. We lived all these years next to him but didn’t realize he took some of my father’s paintings and “sold them at an auction,” which he didn’t. I think that was one of them. It’s called The Letter by Michaux — no, oh dear, I get them all mixed up. Anyway, who painted The Letter? Tuborg [?], or the School of Tuborg — something — and we’re still looking for 29 more paintings.

Mike: Really? 29 of them?
ROSSEN: The New York Banking Department has a special section that helps people locate paintings. They have been wonderful.

Mike: I wanted to ask you . . . 
ROSSEN: If you’re interested later, you’ll have to have a look at this book.

Mike: I will. I’d love to.
ROSSEN: It’s really beautiful. I want you to look at my mother, too. I have her paintings.

Mike: Hold it [inaudible]. You’re just fine. Just like that, yes.
ROSSEN: I have a painting of her over my bed, and the reason . . .

Mike: Your mother was a beautiful woman.
ROSSEN: The reason I got it is — tell me when . . .

Mike: That’s fine. OK. Got it.
ROSSEN: It was destroyed, but the album was in my suitcase. I took it to, when I was over here quite a while already, to a painter in New York. I can remember the coat and everything. I told her the colors, and wait until you see it. She made a wonderful painting. My mother was a real, if you don’t mind saying, she was a real character.

Mike: Full of life.
ROSSEN: Absolutely.

Mike: [Inaudible.]
ROSSEN: Something else. Like I’ve said, I’ve had almost millions, and many days I had no money for a postage stamp. This is very interesting, too. This is my mother’s dressing room. This little pale blue couch was Marie Antoinette. This is a picture of my brother that a painter painted after the Blue Boy by Gainsborough.

Mike: So your father must have been known as a patron of the arts?
ROSSEN: Absolutely.

Mike: Because that was the thing to do.
ROSSEN: Yes. As far as I know, he didn’t acquire any new ones, since they all must have been — at least I don’t remember a new picture hanging anywhere.

Mike: Having lived through all of this time that you’ve lived, because you were witness to quite a bit — I keep coming back to Germany and June of 1945; it must have really, really been something — but you have seen a lot of horror, and you’ve seen a lot of heartbreak, and . . .
ROSSEN: Yes. I haven’t actually seen it. How should I say? I didn’t encounter anything; I’ve been very lucky to be brought up away from all of this.

Mike: You were young, and as you say, you were [inaudible].
ROSSEN: Everything was an adventure to me.

Mike: There must have been moments of great sadness for you, though. It must have been terrible.
ROSSEN: Yes. Like I say, I was completely out. I didn’t — and then the other one, when I didn’t want to live anymore, when I was in England with my little boy. What are you going to do? You’re a single mother and you have no money. I thought it was terrible for him more than me. But then I was afraid I might miss something, so I turned the gas back off.

Mike: You were right. You would have missed something.
ROSSEN: I know.

Mike: When you went to England before, on your trips, did you have friends in England? Did you have family at all?
ROSSEN: No. When I went to this lady as an au pair, I didn’t know anybody. Then, while I was there, my grandfather discovered an old friend. He was also a banker, my grandfather. In Hanover. I have an uncle who I adored. He had two children, my mother and a boy, my grandfather. Anyway, he discovered a friend in England, a banking friend. He wrote to him, and the gentleman was very nice. He said, “I want her to live with us.”  Do you know London? Hampstead Heath, a very nice place. And from being an au pair, I was picked up in a Rolls Royce. I had my own room, my own bathroom. It was amazing! But my brother wanted me to be — he bred dogs, dachshunds. He went to America with the German ice hockey team and played. I don’t know any more about that, but anyway. He wanted to be in New York, and he didn’t like being in the banking business, and he was out of money, so he came home. He also came home in ’35. Then it wasn’t so bad yet. And he took two little dachshunds with him, and they had an affair on the ship, and three or four little puppies. He walked them in — what’s that big park in New York?

Mike: Central Park.
ROSSEN: Central Park. My brother is 6’4” and he had these little pups. He sold them in a half an hour. And he said, “I’m going to the dogs.” And that was his business. He was quite famous as a breeder.

Mike: He was in the right part of the world for that.
ROSSEN: Yes, Pennsylvania. And then he was in the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA. He was injured in some experiment and had a bad heart. He died in ’67. But I just adored him; so did my son. He thought his Uncle Frank was it.

Mike: Uncle Frank. So he survived, and then you had . . .?
ROSSEN: My sister had two. They’re both dead, my nephews. And that’s it. I have one cousin in London and one cousin in Spain.

Mike: And where did Gerta go?
ROSSEN: Gerta was in Zurich.

Mike: So she stayed in Switzerland?
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: And she had been married to a Swiss composer.
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: Right. You come from a rather cultured family.
ROSSEN: Yes. Well, she was so — she was a professor of history of art. If you didn’t know who Rembrandt was, she wouldn’t even talk to you. She took her little boys to the museum instead of the park. She was so opposite from me. We never got along that well.

Mike: I meant to ask you, when you first went to Germany, you went with your nana? Not your nana, but your . . . 
ROSSEN: Went to where?

Mike: When you first went to England, did you go with . . .?
ROSSEN: Myself.

Mike: I see, the first time.
ROSSEN: Yes, to be an au pair. That was in ’38. I went all by myself. Now, I spoke English rather well, because besides my nanny, there was a lady who worked with us twice a week. When I say, “Ask my girlfriend and I,” we did nothing but speak English. I loved American music, films, and when I came to England, I had an American accent. I had to get rid of that. And when I came to the States, I had to get rid of some of my English words. It was funny. Same language, but completely different.

Mike: Now you’ve been back to Germany?
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: When did you go back?
ROSSEN: I used to go back every year, or every year and a half, because I love to travel and I had money. I don’t have much money now, and I don’t want to travel anymore. The stuff at the airport and all that is just too much.

Mike: How did you feel going back and just looking? Did you go back to Berlin?
ROSSEN: I was trying to think. Since I went back right after the war, I was already used to what I saw. Like I say, what amazed me was, it may have been ruins, but the ruins were neatly stacked — typically German. I only went back to see my dear, dear friend who died in ’87, but I’ve been back since with other friends, and I was trying to think where I stayed. I can’t remember. But at that time I was used to seeing all the stuff already. I’ve been all over the world; I have a map in the kitchen that shows you where I’ve been. You wouldn’t believe it. I did a beautiful round-the-world trip. I was never in Baghdad, but I was in Iran.

Mike: Really.
ROSSEN: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, you name it and I’ve been there. South Africa. Cape Town is a beautiful city. I took my son to Buenos Aires. My uncle, my mother’s brother, had come to Buenos Aires. A lot of Jewish people went to . . .

Mike: Yes.
ROSSEN: Yes, he was one of them, and he was very ill. He needed blood, and I flew down with my son and we donated blood. In those days I had money.

Mike: Yes.
ROSSEN: Nowadays I live on a budget. That’s me. When I had money, I spent it. When I don’t, I budget.

Mike: Do your grandchildren know much about your story?
ROSSEN: I don’t think so.

Mike: They don’t know too much?
ROSSEN: Like I say, I wish I could write. I have written little stories. My son has a book of little stories, but it would be wonderful for them to have a [inaudible].

Mike: It was pretty rough.
ROSSEN: It was interesting! Like I say, I treat everything as an adventure. I seldom get depressed these days. My kids live right up here. I’m very blessed. I can’t get awfully upset about things.

Mike: You treat it as an adventure, but . . .?
ROSSEN: We didn’t look into the future. We used to say in England — because the siren went off every night — we used to say, “Today we live, tomorrow we die.” I mean we actually celebrated December of ’41, when the Americans — we couldn’t have lasted much longer.

Mike: Were you in London at all until the bombing was happening?
ROSSEN: Yes. I’ll never forget. I was sitting in a train. I was looking out of the window, and another train came by, and thank God it did. They have these bombs that —they flew . . .

Mike: The V2. They were the buzz bombs.
ROSSEN: There was the one and the two [V1 and V2]. This was the one that just exploded. I mean, let’s face it, Mike, the Holocaust is happening in Darfur, and it’s terrible what people do.

Mike: It’s interesting. People who are survivors, witnesses, whatever, because a lot of times they’ll say, “Well, it’s happening in Darfur.” And I’ve always thought to myself that it’s somehow different. What happened there in the Holocaust was such an institutional thing.
ROSSEN: Yes.

Mike: It was a determined effort to wipe out . . .

ROSSEN: Not only that, they were intelligent people. I think the army or what it is in  Darfur, they’re just beasts. They’re not — let’s face it, the Nazis were intelligent, just went the wrong way.