Shlomo Libeskind

Posner: Well, I’m glad you agreed to do this. Maybe we should start at the beginning. Tell us where you were born, and a little about your parents.
LIBESKIND: At the beginning, I will tell you where I was born, but then we will go to what I remember, because I don’t remember being born. I was born in a small town in Poland called Piotrkow Trybunalski. That’s how you pronounce it in Polish. This town has the distinction for us as Jews in that more than 30% of the inhabitants before World War II were Jews. There is a very large cemetery that we visited a couple of months ago when we were in Poland. Another distinction of this town, is that it is included in a Jewish Encyclopedia, with all the towns that had to do with Jewishness. Jews came to this town maybe in the twelfth or thirteenth century. There were pogroms, killings. Also, the first ghetto in Poland was in that town. 

My parents both came from seriously Orthodox families. In my father’s family there were eight. I think on my mother’s side there were seven. They were all, of course, raised Orthodox. But only about half of the siblings stayed Orthodox. My father was totally secular, completely. I know that of my uncles and aunts, some were secular and some were seriously religious. Amongst my father’s siblings, I just want to count, seven survived out of the eight which is really miraculous. 

My uncle, whose Hebrew name was Avraham, adopted the Polish name Janek during the war. This is very relevant to what happened to me during the war, because we called him Janek. On his grave in France it says Avraham. He was a very charming young man. He had many Polish friends. He had friends in the Polish underground, the Partisans. And he lived in Warsaw, right before the war. Well, maybe before the war started he was in the army. But when he got rid of his uniform, that was the right thing to do, he stayed in Warsaw. He had many connections, and many friends, and made some money in business as a young man. 

He was able to save the members of the family who did not look Jewish, by getting us and some of my aunts and grandparents Aryan papers. These were papers that showed that we are Christian. On the genuine papers, where it says the religion must be listed, it says the religion of Moses. I don’t know if you knew about that. It doesn’t say Jewish. There were quotas in universities and other quotas, even in regular high schools. I’m the only child of my parents and he was able to get us papers that we are Christian. My mother had a genuine paper that was not falsified because some Christian woman died, and they were able to take her ID and, by a very artistic or professional way, put my mother’s photo on it. But my father didn’t get that same name. He got a different one that was not genuine. I got a different name. And the story was that my father and my mother are not married and I am a love child from an affair that my mother had before she met my father. And each of us had a different last name. Mine was Maciek Modzelewski, a very Polish name. So that’s my father’s family. As I said, seven survived and one uncle, my father’s brother, was in many different places. He looked Jewish, that’s the problem. He was partially in the ghetto. And my uncle, the one who was so clever and connected, was able to take him out of the ghetto and let him hide with a Christian family. He just moved a lot. He was not in a concentration camp. But my Aunt Chana, in Polish was Hancia, very Jewish name (no woman who was Christian and Polish would be called Hancia). . . . And by the way even after the war, if you were a Jew, you were not a Pole. You were a Jew! I think now it’s different because they are a little worried about the public opinion.

Posner: Where did your parents meet?
LIBESKIND: So, my parents met in Piotrkow. In that town. I don’t know if it was through some connections, that the parents knew each other? It’s interesting that both of my grandfathers were trading in cattle, kosher cattle. They did not butcher them. They were trading in them. My grandfather on my father’s side lived in town. This is very relevant to what happened to us. 

My grandfather on my mother’s side, my mother’s father, lived in a little village about five miles from town. He was the only Jew in the village. And he was liked. So that had a lot to do with what happened to him. He survived the war. My grandfather on my father’s side also survived the war. It was not obvious that he was Jewish. He didn’t look Jewish, it’s interesting. He was blond, somewhat blond. The trouble was that he lived with us, my father and mother and me, during the war. And he liked chicken. Because he was trading in all kinds of cattle, probably chicken as well. He told my mother, “Look, look at these two chickens.” In Polish, two, like in Hebrew, there is feminine and the masculine. And for the chicken you put the feminine because it’s not a rooster. And someone overheard him, so they immediately knew that we were Jewish. Because who would make such a mistake? Someone whose first language probably was Yiddish and not Polish. After that my uncle, the one who is so resourceful, took him away from us, and put him in the ghetto. Because the ghetto was not liquidated yet. Then took him out of the ghetto and put him back to us because it was dangerous in the ghetto. And he pretended that he’s mute and deaf. Because it was dangerous to speak, you know. So, he didn’t speak and hear so he wouldn’t have to answer if somebody asked him something. Because his first language was Yiddish. So, he survived the war. 

My grandmother, his wife, did not survive the war. She was taken with my aunt, who was sixteen at that time. They were taken, I don’t know much about it. My aunt who was sixteen, in Polish she was called Ruszka, Rose.

Posner: Your parents, after they were married, what did they do?
LIBESKIND: After they were married, my father was a merchant. I’m not sure, maybe he worked with his father in the business. My mother was a bookkeeper. She learned. Incidentally, before my mother got married, no maybe it was after—it was with my father—she wanted to go to Israel. She wanted to visit Palestine. To go to Palestine, you had to have enough money to show you would not be a burden on the British. She didn’t have the money. My father didn’t have the money, so she asked her father, my grandfather. He said, “I’ll give you money for anything but not for that; it’s such an unreasonable thing to do.” That you would go to this desert to be amongst Arabs that would kill you. He didn’t want to give her the money. 

What I remember from my mother’s family; there were seven siblings. One sibling converted to Christianity which was a terrible thing for the parents. Converted to Christianity a few years before the war. My grandfather said, “She’s not my daughter anymore, I don’t want to see her again.” And he did see her before he died. She survived, she was living with nuns, I don’t know whom. And there was another aunt of mine who I remember very well. She was seventeen; she went to another town, not to be recognized. But for some reason she came back to Piotrkow. She left something, nobody knows why. A Polish man recognized her and pointed it out to the Gestapo killed her on the spot by the train station.     

Posner: What year were you born?
LIBESKIND: ’37.

Posner: So, your parents got married.
LIBESKIND: My parents got married, and my father worked, and my mother. Someone gave me a photo, I probably still have it on my computer, of my mother and father swimming in a river near Piotrkow. I was not born then. That was very sweet to see. We were in the ghetto in Piotrkow. What the Nazis did was they made the conditions worse and worse gradually. You probably know about it. They didn’t do everything immediately. They didn’t want panic. That was their strategy. At first it was sort of okay to live in the ghetto. Then we heard that things were going to get worse. And we heard rumors about concentration camps. So, we left the ghetto and we went to the village where my grandfather, my mother’s father, lived. And we stayed there. I have some very good memories from there. It was fun for me to be there in the village. 

Then one day, I don’t know after how long, maybe a few months probably, we found out through some contacts that the SS found out about us and would come after us. And at that time, it was decided that people do whatever they feel was right for them. So, my uncle with these connections, Janek, with these wonderful connections, lived in Warsaw. He already gave us contacts to go to Warsaw, how to proceed and he would help us. So, my mother and I left the moment we heard the SS are coming. My father and my uncle on my mother’s side, my mother’s brother, felt that it would be safer to go to Russia, because Russia was not invaded right away by the Nazis. So, they went to Russia; as men, they were safer and they separated from us. My grandfather went to a neighbor whom he knew well and that neighbor hid him in his barn for the entire war. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, said she’s not going anywhere. She’s staying in her house, she does not want to go anywhere, and of course we never heard from her. My father later joined us because things were very bad in Russia too, especially for newcomers, Jews and so on. 

But in any case, this I remember, I was probably three years old. We were walking to another town. We were walking in the dark, we were very tired. My mother had some belongings and could not carry me. I remember knocking at a door of some people to see if we could stay overnight. They said “no.” So, we walked all night. Early in the morning we arrived at the train station to go to Warsaw. We didn’t want to go to Piotrkow because people knew us, but to another town. Also, I remember that my mother was asked by the Polish police to come to their quarters. Asked me to sit on the bench and wait. What happened there, I know from her much later. They interrogated her, we know you’re Jewish but we’ll let you go. Because no Christian person will be so tired and walking at night. You give us everything you have, all the money and the jewelry and we’ll let you go. That’s what happened. So, we just took a train to Warsaw. Then I don’t know where we went. I know we went somewhere. We got an apartment and my uncle gave us money and connections. And my father joined us after a couple of months. 

We were around Warsaw for the entire war, moving from one place to another. Once, as I mentioned, my grandfather was with us and we had to leave because he did not know Polish well enough—made mistakes, grammatical mistakes. Other times we left because there were rumors that people knew that we were Jews. Other times for other reasons. One reason was, probably already it was maybe ’43. I was six years old and kids were playing and asked, what do we want to be when we grow up? And you know, they all said things. One wants to be a soldier, another a policeman, they were kids, they were boys. Another one said fireman. Things like that. And I said, “I want to be a banker.” The reason for banker was because all the time we were short of money and had to go to the bank for money. And the kids didn’t think about it very much, but somehow the parents found out from one of the kids. They came to my parents and said, “You’re Jews, no Christian kid would say they want to be a banker.” And my mother was mad at me, but not for very long. 

My mother was incredible, with chutzpah, you know what chutzpah is. And that’s how we survived. She was bold, she was daring. With chutzpah. She was not afraid of anything. She probably was afraid but didn’t let it show. We left the same day. The same day. They said, “If you don’t leave that day we will call the Gestapo because we’re afraid.” So, we left with belongings. Then I heard a story, I don’t remember, from my mother. She left the belongings in some place and came back and there were questions asked. But again, she had chutzpah. She said, “How dare you even think we are Jewish?” And things like that. Anyway, we moved to a new place. One thing I remember that was traumatic—certainly there were a few things that I remember that were traumatic—and one was when we left the village and walked all night. And my mother was scared and was tired, and I was tired and they interrogated her at the train station. That was very traumatic. But most of the time I was not worried because my parents were protecting me. That’s how it felt.

Posner: You said you were in Warsaw for the entire war.
LIBESKIND: Most of the war. All the suburbs of Warsaw. There were a few months I was not in Warsaw. So that was one time I was worried. The second time when I said I was a banker and because of me we had to leave right away. And the third time, we were still in another place in a suburb of Warsaw. I remember the owner of that house, a big house with another separate house. It was like a farm, but he was not a farmer, he was a veterinarian. My mother thought he knew that we were Jewish but he was kind. 

One day my mother was very anxious. She said to me, “Go hide in the outhouse. Don’t ask questions, just stay there until I say you can go out.” And I did. I didn’t know why. My parents were very anxious and afraid. And I don’t think they told me after I got out. They told me, “You can get out now.” But after the war I heard the stories. The story was they heard a German command car coming with SS. My parents thought they were coming for us. They wanted me to survive. But it turned out to be that they came in the car with two Jewish women. They took them out of the car in the village. They shot them there in the village and left. That was another time I was scared. 

There was another time. In 1944 there was a Polish uprising (not the Ghetto uprising, that was earlier), against the Germans. Do you know about it? By the way, we were in Poland, we were in Europe, we came back a few months ago. There is a new Polish Museum in Warsaw. It’s really worth seeing, designed by Daniel Libeskind, a famous architect. I don’t know the family connections. It’s the history of Polish Jews. Also, the Ghetto and the Polish uprising. It was clear that the Germans were losing the war. A river divides Warsaw in two parts. I think in English you call it Vistula, but in Polish it’s Visla. The Russians were already on one side, the Soviets; the Germans were on the other side. But the Poles don’t like the Russians. They did not want them to liberate them; they wanted to liberate themselves. So, they revolted. And the Russians just looked; they were mad that the Poles did not somehow coordinate with the Russians. The Germans just destroyed Warsaw entirely, completely because they were so mad about the revolt. 

My parents were in Warsaw during that revolt. I was with a Christian family outside Warsaw. Their reasoning—that’s what my mother told me, I don’t remember them telling me—but their reasoning was that the war is ending. It’s clear that the Germans are losing, but they want to kill as many Jews as they can. So, they felt I would be safer with a Christian family. Somehow there were connections. My uncle knew that family. They were paid. They were safe and wouldn’t give me away. So, I was with them for a couple of months, I don’t know how long exactly. 

But then when the Germans completely destroyed Warsaw, they evacuated everyone from Warsaw. So, my parents went somewhere, I don’t know where. And I was in the suburbs with this woman and her daughter, because the father was sent to Germany to work. We were sent to a village, I don’t remember the name of the village, but I know it was away from Warsaw. And I was worried that my parents would not find me. How would they know? No choice. We went in this village and the farmers were very nice; we lived in this one room I don’t know if they were to the woman and her daughter, but to me they were very nice. My mother thinks they knew that I was Jewish because I didn’t want to bathe with the boys. I was careful. One day the woman and her daughter told me, we are leaving. My mother later told me that they were leaving because the farmer’s wife was jealous that she liked the farmer. The woman said to me, “You can stay or you can go with us, because the farmer said you can stay.” What do I do? So, I talked with the farmer, with the family. They said, don’t go with the woman and her daughter, because your parents will never find you if you go. Because the Germans are very accurate. Very organized. They have books and it will say where everybody went. But if the woman leaves, the Germans won’t know and it will not be possible for them to find you. So, I stayed.

Posner: That’s a big decision for a six year old.
LIBESKIND: Six years old, yes. So, I stayed with them. They were just wonderful! You know, in every country there are wonderful people, there are awful people. There are awful people in Israel, too. They reassured me that my parents would find me, because of accuracy. Indeed, my father was ill already with leukemia. So my mother appeared one day. I couldn’t believe it. The anecdote at that time was that the couple took me to a shoemaker to make shoes for me. You didn’t buy shoes, they were made, at least in the village. I was so excited. They were nice shoes. But when my mother came, the shoes were not ready. We had to leave without the shoes! I have that regret. 

That was very close to the end of the war. I don’t remember what happened after that. I know that my father was ill. We went to another apartment. In that apartment my uncle, who looked Jewish, stayed with us for some reason. But he didn’t go out much. At the end of the war, the owner of the apartment where we lived said, we drink Vodka. The Poles do like vodka; so do the Russians. They have something in common. And we toasted to the end of the war. And he said, “I was just outside, looking around and there are so many Jews. Hitler did not finish his job. It’s unbelievable.” So, we went when the war ended there. The agreement was, whoever survived would come back to the city where we lived, and we would meet. My uncle who hid us was very clever. He arranged for an apartment, and we all met in that apartment. Another anecdote! At that time there was no public transportation, only Russian cars. But we did have vodka, bottles of vodka. We would wave the vodka and the Russian cars would stop and pick us up. The driver and whoever was there next to him, would drink the vodka while driving. When they finished the bottle, they told us to get out. But we got to Piotrkow where we lived for a while. One day someone rang the doorbell. And I opened the door, because the adults were busy. And there I saw, two skeletons. Seriously, like two skeletons. They didn’t look like people. And I ran back and was crying. It happened to be my aunt and uncle, who survived the concentration camp. And their daughter who was maybe a year younger than I was, had stayed with us, with my mother and father for a year or two. Maybe less. And she was crying a lot, because she used to be with her grandmother, who was also my grandmother. And she was missing her grandmother. And she went back to the grandmother and they were both killed. 

Posner: This is after the war?
LIBESKIND: No no, that was during the war. My Aunt Hancia and her husband. You know they were childless. And after the war they had another child. Naftali, and he lives in Israel. We saw him in Poland. He came to Poland. So after, is that still interesting? After the war. After the war we moved to Lodz. Lodz is a Poland town, usually in English it’s pronounced Lodz. But in Polish it’s “Woodj”. Basically, most of the family, on my mother’s side moved to Lodz. They had a business with cloth material. Lodz was very well known before the war for manufacturing material, textiles. Actually, the richest Jew, probably other than Rothschild, had a factory there. And we visited that factory when were in Poland recently. I don’t know if that’s the reason my parents went to Lodz. It was a bigger city. 

My father had leukemia, as I said. There was a rumor that there is a cure in Munich in Germany. There is a professor in a hospital that had an experimental drug. So, we in ’47, maybe it was ’46 even, I don’t remember, we crossed the border illegally. But it was possible to do with bribes. To the American zone, to Munich. We stayed in Munich for a year. My father died in Munich. The drug didn’t work. So, he is buried in Munich. We went to Munich, Debbie and I, and with my mother, too, many times to visit his grave. So, after he died, my mother was kind of lost what to do. It was ’47. No immigration to Israel. It was still under the British. It was easier to get to the US. Even if you get to other places, Canada was much friendlier to Jewish survivors—Canada and Australia. But my mother was worried, what will I do there? I said, “I want to go back to Poland. My family is in Poland, I want to go back to Poland.” So, we went to Poland. On the border we had some money, not much. They took everything. So, we went to Poland without anything. That was ’48. We were in Lodz again two years. ’48, ’49, 1950, we immigrated to Israel. 

We immigrated to Israel with my grandfather, my father’s father and my cousin. Her name is now Roni, Hebrew name. She lost her father during the war. Story all itself, how. She and her mother survived, accidentally. They took all of them to the concentration camp. But because there was a mixture with Poles and Jews, they made a mistake. And they separated all the men and women. So, my aunt and her daughter, my cousin, survived. But my aunt, her mother, died of cancer after the war. So, we went to Israel. Things were not easy in Israel, then. It was 1950. Fortunately, we were not in Ma’abara. You know what Ma’abara is? In Hebrew, it’s temporary, they were housed in the temporary places. Have you seen the movie Saleh Sabati? I will lend it to you. Kind of like camps. It’s a movie from that time. A very interesting Israeli movie. We didn’t have to go there because my aunt and uncle had already come to Israel earlier. And they had some money and they bought an apartment. And we stayed in that apartment for a couple of months. 

My mother didn’t know what to do. Bookkeeping in Polish did not transfer to Israel, to Hebrew. She didn’t know Hebrew. She put me in a kibbutz. It was the largest kibbutz, called Givat Brenner. It was the largest kibbutz in Israel. And I was what you called Aliyat Ha-noar. I don’t know if you have heard about it. Aliyah is “moving up to Israel” Ha-noar is “the youth.” So, maybe more than one hundred kids my age, a little older, younger, went to that kibbutz. They were kept together, separately from the sabras. Our curriculum was to learn Hebrew. Other things, like the Bible, but mostly Hebrew. And I was there for only four or five months, because it was bad. It was very bad. The conditions were really bad. We lived in kind of wooden houses that came from Sweden. In Hebrew it’s called Sefrin. They were infested with bugs. We were bitten by bugs. It was really maddening. The main reason I wanted to leave there. We studied Hebrew in the mornings, but I was with kids. They wanted to separate us, so we’d converse in Hebrew. I was not with the Polish kids with the tendency to speak in Polish. I’d be with kids from other countries. I was with Hungarian kids and Romanian kids. But it turned out they all spoke Romanian. Even the Hungarian ones. They spoke Romanian. I didn’t understand anything. I just learned how to swear. So, I was very unhappy. 

I knew that in order to survive and do well in Israel, I needed to learn Hebrew quickly. I thought I didn’t learn fast enough. So, I asked my mother to transfer me to another kibbutz where I was with kids who were born in Israel. So, my second kibbutz was Mishmar HaEmek. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it. It’s a kibbutz that belongs to the movement of Hashomer Hatzair. You’ve heard about it. The Young Guard. It’s a whole movement of kibbutzim, it’s a little different now. They were Marxists. So they were really Marxists. But the kibbutz had a good reputation as far as education. So, I was there with kids who were born there. And I learned Hebrew very fast. That was really good. It wasn’t perfect. In any group of people, with kids it’s the same way. There are some nice kids and some not so nice kids. Some of them called me “the diaspora boy,” you know. And the emphasis there was on agriculture and on history in a certain direction, a more Marxist direction. They wouldn’t let kids get matriculation. You know in Europe, in Israel, in order to go to a university, you have to have matriculation. The kibbutz kids, now it’s different, the kibbutz did not allow that. Then what would they do, they would leave the kibbutz. So it’s not a good idea. I moved to a city. But there were many good things about the kibbutz. I learned Hebrew very fast. And part of the day was spent on working. And one of the jobs that I had was to work with goats. So, I was a shepherd with goats, and I was also milking them, and I really liked it. I also have good memories from the kibbutz. 

By the way, there is an anecdote now, I don’t know how important it is, but it’s interesting. When Stalin died, the head of the school took all the kids and he had an announcement. The announcement was one day after Stalin died. He said, I didn’t want to spoil the day for you. He said, he died Friday and they didn’t want to spoil the Friday. It was now Saturday. It was a day of mourning. I don’t know if we sat shiva. They realized later who Stalin was. 

So, I went to Hadera, it was a town between Haifa and Tel Aviv. My mother worked in a hospital. Again, I couldn’t live with her because she didn’t get the right quarters. It was one room, it was small, so she arranged for me to live with a family. But I would see my mother every day and I would eat dinner with her. It was good and school was good because the kids had a lot of respect for me because I knew math and I could help them with math. On the kibbutz, when they played basketball, I didn’t know how to play. The two groups were arguing who would not get me, because I would spoil the game. In Hadera, in the school, the captain of the team, he was very tall, a sabra, he would do anything for me because I helped him in math. So, I graduated from the high school there. That was good. Then I went to the army. Tzahal. Tzahal Israel. You know, it could have been worse. The basic training was very difficult. Dayan was then the chief of staff. His idea was you had to break the kids who came to the army. Really give them a hard time. It was six months, but I survived. I was in the infantry, but after a while I became a communications person and I was stationed during the Sinai campaigns, I was stationed on the Sinai strip. We were in trenches on the Gaza Strip and we could see the Arabs from there. But that was before the Sinai campaign. But there was a feeling then in the army that another front would open up and the Syrians would attack. And I was in communications and they needed people in that area, so they transferred me to the boarder with Syria. I was lucky.

Posner: Sinai, that was ’56?
LIBESKIND: ’56, yes. I was lucky because some of my friends got killed in the Sinai campaign, wounded, but nothing happened in the north. And I didn’t have to kill anybody, or anybody injured. That was two years and three months. Then I went to the Technion [Israel Institute of Technology]. I would say briefly, but it’s not that important to my survival. I went to the Technion. I studied engineering first, then I switched to math. I got also my master’s degree, and got married. My master’s advisor was Elisha Netanyahu. Elisha Netanyahu was the uncle of Bibi Netanyahu. So, he was sort of like Netanyahu. And then after I got my master’s, we had a child. We wanted to go for a Ph.D. We thought it would be interesting to get away and go to America, especially since one of the professors who liked me from the Technion was on sabbatical in Wisconsin. He said, “That’s the place you should go. I know a lot of people there. There are many Jewish professors.” There were about 90 faculty in Wisconsin in mathematics.

Posner: What year did you go to Wisconsin?
LIBESKIND: It was ’65.

Posner: ‘65? That’s the year we came here.
LIBESKIND: Really? Wisconsin had a lot of Jewish professors. Amongst them was a professor who was on sabbatical at the Technion. So, he knew me. That was nice. I remember we just came and he invited me to a party at his house. It was not common to invite graduate students to faculty parties then. I don’t know, do you want to know more, how I got here?

Posner: What was it like going to Wisconsin?
LIBESKIND: I loved Madison, I was there four years, and my son grew there. And my daughter was born. It’s very emotional. Because even though I got divorced, the years that the children were growing.

Posner: It’s an important time.
LIBESKIND: I’ve never gotten emotional about it. Very interesting. They were good years. My marriage was still ok. I don’t know how ok, but it seemed ok. Then from Wisconsin, my first job was at Michigan State University, it’s a big university. Then when I met the Goers, they were friends, at Michigan State. I tell you what, we planned to go back to Israel. And we didn’t want to get too far, to the West Coast, because it’s further from Israel. Then my wife said, Aza—she’s sabra—that she wants to study, she doesn’t want to go back yet. She waited for me to finish, she wants to study. She was working on her bachelor’s degree, then my second job. I got a visiting position in Michigan State because I said I don’t want any permanent tenure track. Because this is betraying Israel. If I get a tenure track, then I don’t want to go back. I didn’t even want to think about it. But she wanted to study and stay longer, there was a strike in Detroit, you know, and they didn’t have enough money. And there were no permanent positions, so I got a position at the University of Montana. It was really a very nice place. And we got a divorce there. That was very strange because I was at a meeting, a Congress in UK and I met there a German mathematician who said, “Oh, you’re in Montana. Montana has the highest divorce rate in the US.” At that time, I didn’t know yet. I contributed to it. After a year, we got divorced. That I will not get into. It’s good that we did, for me now, but it was hard for me. My wife, Aza’s idea mainly. It was hard, but I survived.

Posner: How many children do you have?
LIBESKIND: Two. My son Ran, it’s Hebrew: Ran. And daughter is Nureet. They are both here, in the states. After that, oh I went back to Israel for two years. To the Technion. From ’74 to ’76. But the children were in Montana. Their mother was going to school and got her master’s. And I would go back and forth and the children would come every summer back to Israel. Which is good. They learned Hebrew. They both know Hebrew, which is very nice. And they have an identity. We are not religious. I’m an atheist. But the Jewish identity and the Israeli identity is important to me. In Israel, I wouldn’t dream of going to a synagogue. But here, that’s the way to be connected with Judaism. That’s the American way in the diaspora. 

Posner: How long did you stay in Montana?
LIBESKIND: Two years in Israel, one year on a grant in Boston, Cambridge actually, and one year on sabbatical in Amherst in Massachusetts. So there were, I don’t know, maybe twelve years I was associated with Montana. Then I thought, I need to be in a Jewish environment. People in Montana were incredibly nice. People are nice here, but no comparison. It’s a small town, smaller university, and people were just absolutely amazing. How friendly, and inviting and wonderful. But I wanted to be with a Jewish community and there was none. At the university, services were once a month in a church. They took the cross off, and put up some Jewish stuff. That was it. I don’t even think there was a Torah, just a Magen David. So, in ’85 there was a position here [University of Oregon] and I came in ’85. Since then I’ve been many times in Israel. Debbie and I went to Israel. I am very blessed. Not only that I am with Debbie, but that she shares with me the love for Israel. And she’s very good to my children. And our grandchildren are our grandchildren. I am very blessed. I had girlfriends that were not Jewish and I took them to Israel, one in particular, that I was very serious about. But you don’t get this understanding of things from someone who is not Jewish. There was a war with Lebanon and she got really upset about the Israelis and so on even though we were in Israel for a couple of months.

Posner: It helps, not necessarily, but it helps.
LIBESKIND: Exactly. You can’t be sure that everyone is Jewish for sure. There is one thing to criticize Israel and another thing to love and support Israel.

Posner: And do so at the same time!
LIBESKIND: Exactly.

Posner: So how would you describe the impact of your early years on the rest of your life?
LIBESKIND: I tell you what, perhaps the best way to describe it is a little anecdote from German. Because we spent a year in Munich and after a year when we went back to Poland. Let me start with Poland. Because I lived in Poland, and by the way the trip we just did to Poland we went to the place where I lived and it was very moving to me. So, we lived with my mother and father’s friends. My mother and I. We lived kind of communally but we had separate quarters. We lived in a villa. A house. Usually in Poland they have the big story houses, several stories. And there was a cleaning lady and she was ethnic German. Lived in Poland, born in Poland, but of German descent. So, of course, when the Nazis came, they loved the ethnic Germans. I think the men were drafted to the army, to the Nazi army. So, her husband was in the Nazi army. She had a son who was maybe a year older than I was. His name was Egon and I really liked him. We played together for a long time. There was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with him. And one day my mother and mother’s friends, which were all Jewish, said “You play with Egon? Don’t play with him, you’re forbidden to play with him again!” I said, “Why?” “He’s German!” “And what did he do?” They said his father was in the Wehrmacht. I said, “He [Egon] was not, what is his guilt, where is his guilt?” I continued playing with him, they didn’t know. In hiding. 

Another anecdote that I remember was in German in Munich. We took a train to Lager. Do you know what Lager in German is? A concentration camp. But why did we take a train to a concentration camp? Because the concentration camp became, it was American Zone, and it was a temporary place for Jews who survived the camp. And they had a whole commerce, thriving there. Food and things. You could not buy anything in Munich in ’47. There was hardly any food. We were rationing. We would go there. And I remember how it was. They would yell in Yiddish, “Lebedikfisch.” You know some Yiddish? You know what Lebedikfisch is? Alive fish. And on the way, there was a man selling ice cream. Not in Lager, before at the station. But I see that all the people who were buying ice cream from him, my parents would buy ice cream for me and some of the other Jews that we know. But why are the others not buying ice cream? I was told, “They don’t dare to. They are Germans. They wouldn’t dare to buy ice cream from a Jew. They are afraid.” So, I thought that was ridiculous. That was ridiculous. That is a long way to explain my way to look at it. My outlook. The same in Israel. That I want fairness to the Arabs. And I want to be fair and I think politically leaning left. Because I think that is being good to other people. And all the evil that was done, we have to change it by being good to each other.

Posner: That makes sense.
LIBESKIND: So that’s kind of my outlook on things. At the same time I understand where Israel is coming from and what is happening. I can defend Israel. I can also criticize Israel. I criticize Netanyahu. The Gaza war that he initiated was entirely unnecessary. And now here is my bias. I am emotionally more attached to Israelis than Palestinians, of course. Of course, I want the best for the Palestinians. There were more than 2,000 Palestinians killed during the war in Gaza but there were 67, 68 young Israeli men who got killed. And that pains me terribly. Much more than the Palestinians. What can I do. Intellectually I am upset about it and I blame Netanyahu for that. So that’s kind of a long answer to my outlook on things.

Posner: I think that is very helpful. Because one reads it is hard to be a survivor. When I first read a book about a woman who survived and she was tormented for the rest of her life, it was an education for me because I thought, “Well, she survived, she should be happy.” I was young and ignorant. The impact on life is huge.
LIBESKIND: But you know, it impacted me, no double about it. I suffered during the war but it was nothing in comparison to people who were in concentration camps. For me, my father dying was much worse than anything during the war as a child. Oh, and another thing that maybe answers your question how I look at things. You know, Germany admits, today’s Germany admits, Merkel in particular, but not only her. Admits what they did and the evil that their forefathers did during the war, and to Jews in particular. And they of course gave Israel compensations and some individual compensations, and I got some too, not much, but I got. But to Israel it was extremely helpful. Extremely helpful. The compensations. Israel is thriving today. No doubt, to a large extent because of Germany’s help. And everywhere you go in Germany you see that they admit what happened and they feel bad about it. And the German tourists that come to Israel. On the other hand, in Poland, even though there were many Poles, you know the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, as a country they don’t. Not enough. They feel, to some extent, we found some little things that they do. But not enough. As a country they don’t admit that they collaborated. To a large extent. They also resisted but they also collaborated too. France admitted much more than Poland of their collaboration. But Germany is really doing its best to deal with what happened, in many ways. So, I am more comfortable as a Jew telling people I am Jewish in Germany than in Poland.

Posner: One never knows the unexpected results of different acts.
LIBESKIND: Yes.

Posner: Is there anything that I didn’t ask you, anything else?
LIBESKIND: No, not really.

Posner: How do you feel about being Jewish in the United States right now?
LIBESKIND: Well, one has to understand a couple of things. The Jews of the diaspora love America. I mean America was the Golden Medina. I was dreaming about America. I loved the GIs in Germany. You know, they were so kind. They were just wonderful. Israel had very incredible relations with America. So, I have very positive feelings about America. I have lived all my life in places that were university towns. And as you know university towns are quite different from some other places. But I lived in Boston too, and I did not encounter any antisemitism in Boston. Not in Amherst, Amherst is small, but Boston is not. And you know there were a few incidents in Montana. A young man told me, “You know, go to this place to repair your car, they will not Jew you down.” Or something like that. Mostly the antisemitism for me as a Jew is more from what I hear than what I experience myself. I have no problem whatsoever. Some people will change their name a bit, to not be a Jewish name. Shlomo is a very Jewish name. I’m very proud to tell people what it means, that it was King Solomon’s original name and they changed his name when they translated the Bible. So, I feel good as a Jew. Of course, you hear things with the Nazis. And that was awful.

Posner: The academic world was probably a very good place. Especially mathematics. To be a Jewish scholar.
LIBESKIND: Yes. There was one thing that bothered me in Wisconsin. A couple of incidents that bothered me. One was, I had a friend, and we took courses together. And he was a gentile from Chicago. He said that he can recognize any Jew he meets by looking at the person. And I knew, because I was interested, I knew who was Jewish in the department and who was not. So, I quizzed him, and he was fifty percent wrong, so that taught him a lesson. There was another incident, and that was not antisemitism. That was something else. It was another graduate student, I knew he was Jewish because of his name. We were at the elevator there, waiting for the elevator, and I kind of talked about being Jewish, who was Jewish and who was not, and he was, “Shhhh.” The same graduate student after the Six Day War, emigrated to Israel, he is at the Haifa University and is now retired.