>> Today is Thursday,
October 31st, 2019.
And I am here at the Sturgis Library at
Kennesaw State University with Susan Berman.
We will be recording a legacy series interview
focused on Susan's mother's family.
Could you please state your full name?
>> Susan Heinemann Berman.
>> And do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, absolutely.
>> Great. Could you please
tell me when and where you were born?
>> I was born in Brooklyn,
New York in 1948.
>> And before we talk about your childhood,
we're going to go back a bit
and talk about your mother's family.
Could you please tell me your mother's name?
>> Ruth Simon Heinemann.
>> And when and where was your mother born?
>> She was born in Cloppenburg, Germany in 1925.
>> And could you please tell me
your mother's parents' names?
>> My grandfather was Carl and my grandmother was Selma.
>> And what was her maiden name?
>> Her maiden name was Katz
and their last name was Simon.
>> And can you tell me a little
bit more about her family?
She had sisters and when were they born?
>> Yes. She was the eldest of seven children.
She had three sisters and three brothers.
>> And this Selma Katz? Yes.
>> Uh-huh. And how did she and Carl met each other?
>> Well, they both came from fairly prominent families,
and the Jewish community was rather small.
I'm not exactly sure how they first met,
but, I guess they made a good pair. I never met them.
>> What brought their family to Cloppenburg?
>> My grandfather, his family was in the cattle business,
and he wanted to,
I guess, have his own area to operate his business in.
And they may have done some research,
but they decided Cloppenburg would be a good place.
It wasn't too far from their families,
but they wanted to start their family anew.
>> And do I understand correctly that
your grandfather also bred horses?
>> Yes. And he supplied the principality with
the horses that they needed for the town.
And he was very well-admired and well-respected.
>> What was their neighborhood like?
>> Well, we went back in 2007,
and again, in 2010.
They lived in the center of town.
There were about 15,000 people in the town.
There were nine Jewish families,
and they had a synagogue.
They had a cemetery as well behind the synagogue.
They were upper middle class.
And they went to a parochial school,
my mother and her sisters,
they were taught by nuns
about 10-minute walk from their house.
And they were just like any other citizens,
they were German, they were Jewish,
and they had a good relationship with their neighbors,
and they lived a very comfortable life.
>> So tell me a little bit more
about your mother's sisters.
Where did she fit into the family?
>> Well, my auntie,
Edith was the oldest,
and she was born in 1922,
and then my mother came along
three years later, Ruth, in 1925.
Then the next youngest was my aunt Edie,
Hilda, and she was 15 months younger than my mother,
so they were almost like twins.
And then the youngest was Elsa and she was born in 1928.
>> And your grandmother,
did she keep house,
did she work outside the home?
>> No. She didn't work outside the home,
she directed the operation,
so to speak, of the house.
I believe they had a cook and I know they had
a nursemaid and she ran the household,
she ordered the food,
maybe somebody else went to get it,
they kept Kosher,
and they followed all the Jewish holidays.
The girls went to Hebrew school.
They weren't required to study
religion at the parochial school,
but they had their secular studies there.
>> And what did your mother tell you about her childhood?
Was she close with her sisters?
>> Yes, there was a bit of rivalry between her
and Aunt Edie because they were so close in age.
And my mother was a bit of a sickly child and
she had trouble with her eyes
and other ailments at times.
And so my grandmother would take her to
an adjacent town to be seen by the physicians.
And often they would go shopping
afterward and my grandmother
would look for some very attractive dresses.
And then she would look for
the material so that she could have a seamstress
come and make them for the rest of the children.
And she told me that
the seamstress was treated very well,
she was there for one or two weeks,
and she was given a lot of
treats that the girls weren't able
to obtain and she was treated like gold.
>> And I remember you telling me a story
about carriage rides that they would
take sometimes after Shabbat?
>> Yes. My grandfather
and my grandmother would take the girls to
synagogue on Saturday morning and
then they would come home for a bit of a nap.
And then my grandfather would often
take the girls for a carriage ride,
and they would go to
get ice cream or candy or visit somebody,
either a relative or friends in the town.
And my mother, Ruth,
one time, she thinks she had permission,
but she wasn't sure,
she took the carriage and
decided that she would visit some of her friends herself.
And I believe when she got home,
she was instructed that
was not the appropriate thing to do,
and she may have been punished for it.
But she said she had a wonderful time. [LAUGHTER]
>> So was she very comfortable with horses, then?
>> Yes. They had their own horse named Faust,
I think it was F-A-U-S-T,
and there are pictures of them on the horse
and she speaks very fondly of that horse,
she really loved it.
>> So how did the family feel about the rise of Nazism?
>> Well, according to my mother,
when Hitler was elected as president,
then became chancellor and commander in chief
in 1933, and so forth,
her parents were very concerned about the rise of
this man who didn't seem
[NOISE] qualified to be the leader of Germany,
but was very anti-semitic and very
biased in his race prejudices.
And they were concerned about what this
would lead to and rightfully
so because of what happened after.
>> Did they ever think at
that time that they would want to leave Germany?
>> Well, initially, my grandfather
told his family that as long
as he had a piece of bread that he was staying.
He was a German.
One of his brothers had
been in the Army serving in World War I,
and he was subjected to
shrapnel and later died at an early age.
And then another brother also fought for Germany.
And they felt that they were Germans,
they were law abiding citizens
and that this was their home.
And then things began to change.
Slowly, but surely there were
edicts and laws that were passed
that brought attention to
the Jews, but negative attention.
And they were restricted from going to
the parks and libraries and public places.
They weren't wearing the stars yet,
but that came later.
They had to have documents with
them and they were stamped with a big J.
They weren't allowed to hold any civic positions,
and many of them were fired from other professions.
Then the populace was
encouraged not to frequent Jewish businesses,
and that affected them economically.
>> And did that affect your mother's family directly?
Did your grandfather's business suffer at this time?
>> Yes, it did because I think
maybe surreptitiously he did
meet with some of his non Jewish clients.
But he had such a fine reputation and people
enjoyed dealing with him and he
wanted to serve the community but eventually,
it got harder and harder to do.
And there was a point where in 1936,
the girls were not allowed to
attend the parochial school any longer.
My Aunt Edie, who was the oldest was almost
through a school there so I think they made an exception,
but my mother and Aunt Edie and
Ilsa had to go to another school in Oldenburg.
>> And what was that like for them?
How did they commute to Oldenburg?
>> Well, they had to get up,
my mother tells me,
at 6:00 AM in the morning.
They took their bicycles to the train station,
which was a few blocks away from their house,
and then they would take a train for
about an hour to this community.
Once they got there,
they had to walk another maybe a mile or so
to get to the synagogue and where the school was located.
And Aunt Edie and
my mother were in the same grade because I
think my mother was held back one year because of
her illnesses and so they rode together,
and then Ilsa would have her class at
9 o'clock so she could leave a little bit later.
>> And how did
the family receive information
at this time about what was going on.
Were there newspapers, radio?
>> Well, the press was taken over by the government.
They squashed freedom of speech and expression.
They weren't allowed to assemble, to protest anything.
They heard somewhat through the grape vine.
Of course, all the newspapers were portraying the jews,
the gypsies, the slavs,
the communists as enemies of the state,
and the economy was very bad.
And a lot of the Jewish people
owned businesses, they were professionals.
And it stirred up a lot of
anti-semitism in the community.
They had a phone and they kept in
very close contact with
other members of the family in other towns.
>> And did they have family elsewhere
in the world at this point in time, too?
>> My mother, my grandmother's sister,
we called her Tanta Elsa.
Her name was Elsa Meyerhof, her married name.
She had immigrated in 1933
to Florida with her husband and two children.
And I think that
she was the only one except for a cousin that
lived in town in Cloppenburg as
well with his wife that went to
Cuba about maybe a couple of months
before my grandparents tried to go.
>> So we'll get into that a little bit.
But first, I want to talk about Kristallnacht.
What did your mother tell you
about her experiences on that terrible day.
>> Well, on November 10,
1938, she got up to go to
school in Oldenburg and her sister wasn't feeling well.
So she ended up having to take the train and go
through the process of getting to Oldenburg herself.
And she didn't notice anything unusual when she was on
the train but when she started to approach the synagogue,
it was in flames and she was in shock.
She said, the building was almost burnt
down and then she heard the fire engines coming.
So I believe they were told not to
intervene until the buildings were almost gone.
And she didn't know what to do.
She looked around, she didn't see anybody she knew.
So she decided to go to
the place where the rabbi had had his home,
not too far from the synagogue,
and she knocked on the door and a woman answered.
She didn't recognize who she was,
but she thought it must be the rabbi's housekeeper.
And the woman looked at her like incredulously,
"What are you doing here?"
And she said, "Well, I've come to go to school."
And she said, "Don't you know what's going on?
Come in and we'll talk about it."
Well, my mother was 13 at the time,
and of course, this was just totally out of the ordinary.
And so the housekeeper
asked her if she knew of anybody in
her neighborhood in Cloppenburg that she could call
that was not Jewish because they had
cut a lot of the homes,
the telephone lines to
the Jewish people that she could
find out if everything was all right at her house.
So my mother did comply and she called
a neighbor and the woman answered and she said,
"Your mother is home,
" and hung up the phone.
And at the time,
it didn't seem like anything
unusual because her father would have been at
work but the housekeeper was
satisfied and sent her back
home telling her to be very careful.
While she was on the train,
she noticed a lot of the Gestapo,
the SS, the police
there were bragging about things they had done.
They had broken into a total of
7,500 businesses throughout Germany
and crashed the glass,
and that's why it was called the night of broken glass
and they had looted the stores and
placed swastikas and symbols
and slogans against the Jewish people,
don't patronize them and so forth.
They had arrested the men
throughout the German community from,
I believe, around 16 or 17 up.
And of course, she wanted to be
very meek and fade into the seat.
She got home and the first thing she noticed,
there were swastikas all over her house.
And it had been a beautiful home,
and it was prominently centered in the middle of town.
And then she noticed that all the shades were drawn
and this was very unusual for this time of the day.
And she walked in and the first thing she
heard were the sobs of her mother and his sisters.
They told her that shortly after she had
left to go on her journey,
there was a knock at the door and the Gestapo had said,
they wanted to see my grandfather.
I believe he was still in bed.
Well, they followed my grandmother into
their bed chambers and he got dressed hastily.
They said, he had to come with them.
And they didn't even give him time to put his shoes on.
Now, this man was 54 at the time
and I don't know about his health exactly,
but at that age to be treated that way.
So he was shoved in the back of a black car
and taken away and they were all in shock.
And my mother had
come home to tell them what happened to her,
and she could hardly get the words
out so they were very distraught.
And that's the story of the arrest.
>> And so when were they reunited?
>> My mother never saw her father
again and what happened was,
my grandmother got wind of a project that
had been started by
the English government that
was called the Kindertransport.
And they were sending trains
to Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany,
and so forth to save children from 1-17 years old.
And I believe my grandmother
had to make the decision that she
could only send two of her children,
and she had four daughters.
My grandfather had already been arrested,
so she had to make the decision herself.
And it reminded me of Sophie's choice.
Her name was Selma,
and I can't imagine how she made the decision.
She was 10 years younger than my grandfather.
So she was 44 at the time.
And so she prepared the children as best she could.
I guess she felt that since the two girls,
the middle ones were so close,
they were the same age,
and they had shown a lot of responsibility in the past,
and they had good manners and she felt they had
the best likelihood to go on this journey.
>> And so then Ruth and her sister [OVERLAPPING]
Hilda were prepared to go on his journey,
[OVERLAPPING] and this was only a few days
after Kristela, is that right?
>> They left on December 2nd,
and this happened on November 9th and 10th.
>> So what did
your mother tell you about that experience?
>> Well, it was very traumatic.
She and my aunt were very homesick.
They had a hard time leaving their family, their country.
They had taken some English lessons prior
to that because eventually,
my grandfather came to the decision that
they would need to leave and they had
applied for passage to the United States,
but they had a quota number and they had to wait.
And in the interim,
my Tontiline Elsa, who was already in Florida,
she heard about what happened on Kristallnacht
and she swore in
her heart that she would try to do everything she
could to help the remaining members of her family,
particularly the eldest one of each of
her brothers' and sisters' children.
So they were fortunate to have her as an ally.
But my grandfather was eventually
released from the prison and when he came home,
he decided that they needed to leave immediately.
>> So which prison was he in?
>> I believe he was in Sachsenhausen near Berlin.
But getting back to the girls,
they had a very harrowing experience.
They could only take one suitcase
apiece and very few belongings,
and they wore numbers
on their coats to identify them as kinder.
They left on December 2nd from Hamburg.
My Aunt Edie went with them on
the train but when the train stopped in Cloppenburg,
she got off and they didn't know if they'd see her again.
And then they went on with
1,000 children on that transport.
And they got to the border of Holland and
Germany and the soldiers there,
the German soldiers, they boarded the train,
and they harassed the children.
Some of them taunted them
and opened some of
their suitcases and took whatever they pleased.
It was a very tense time.
And my mother tells me
that they were both so homesick that
one would cry and the other would console that one,
and then she would stop and she would
cry and the other one would console her.
So once they passed the German border,
they got into Holland,
to the Netherlands, and eventually,
the train stopped,
and there were thousands of people at
the station wanting to
give the children a little support.
And they brought cookies and candy and
sandwiches and passed them
through the window of the train.
And my mother said,
this was the first time that she'd
experienced any kindness in so long,
and it really touched their hearts.
They eventually got to the Hook of Holland in
Rotterdam and they boarded
a ship that took them across
the English Channel and onto Dovercourt, England.
And that was a summer camp with cabins,
but they weren't heated.
And the crossing itself was quite terrorizing
because the seas were so
rough and she said the sailors were getting sick,
and then they were homesick and seasick,
but they were just sick.
>> So once they got to Dovercourt,
what was life like for them?
>> Well, they were assigned to a cabin and there were,
like I said, 1,000 children on this transport.
There were already children that were
there from other countries,
and what they were told to do
was to make themselves as home as much as they could,
and that people would come from other parts of
England to take them back to their communities.
Now, the most important thing to
my mother and aunt Edie were
that they stayed together
because they had lost so much already.
And a few days went by and eventually,
a group of compassionate Jewish citizens
from the town of Harrogate,
which is in the northeast corner of
England came and they were willing to take
25-30 young Jewish religious girls
back to their community with them.
And so because they wanted to stay
together and they had a very strong faith,
they decided that these were
the people that they would put their trust in.
>> So they went with them to Harrogate?
>> They went with them.
>> So meanwhile, back in Cloppenburg,
your grandfather had come back from
Sachsenhausen and had made
the determination that they had to leave.
>> Exactly.
>> What did they do next?
>> Well, they found out about a ship.
A special ship that was going to be sailing to Cuba.
It was through the Hamburg lines.
And can I take a break? I need some water.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm sorry.
[NOISE]
Sorry. [OVERLAPPING]
I'm talking so much.
How are we doing so far?
>> We're doing great. [NOISE]
>> Thank you.
>> So we can start with back
in Cloppenburg right after your grandfather came back.
>> Well, my grandfather was released.
I'm not sure exactly how long he
was in the concentration camp,
but they heard about
the ship that was going to be
sailing from Hamburg to Cuba.
It was leaving in May of 1939,
and they did everything they could to book passage on it.
Apparently, the passages the tickets
were sold out almost immediately because I read
several books about the St. Louis.
And they had to pay
an exorbitant amount of
money and they needed so many documents.
But the main thing was
the money and they had to get landing certificates.
And they had to go to the Cuban Minister of Immigration.
And apparently, this man was
not a very ethical person because he had been
charging a good bit of money
and been taking bribes under the table for some time.
And the Cuban president got wind of it and decided that
he would invalidate a lot
of the documents that this man had issued.
But the passengers didn't know about that at the time.
Not only did they have to buy passage
on the boat one way,
but they had to buy it on a round trip ticket.
And there was a rally that took
place in Havana a week before the boat sailed.
And there were many speeches about how
the immigrants were not
welcome in Cuba because of the economy.
And they told 40,000 spectators and many more that were
listening to it on the radio that they needed to fight
the Jews and until all of them had left.
So Hitler knew about this along with
the US consulate and they let the boat sail anyway.
I figured he must have thought, well,
if I'm gracious enough to let the boat sail with 900 and
some Jewish passengers and they reject them,
people will know that nobody wants the Jews and they'll
understand how my government
is trying to get rid of them and why.
>> And did your grandfather and the other passengers,
did they know about this rally or was
that kept from them?
>> No. It was kept from them.
And they went about
their business organizing so that they could leave.
And I have pictures of them boarding the boat.
So it was the four of them.
My Aunt Edie, my aunt Elsa and my grandparents.
And by this time,
Edie was 16 and Elsa was 11, I believe.
And they were just so relieved to be on that boat,
thinking they were finally out of the clutches of
the Nazis and that they were going to freedom.
And of course, my grandfather's cousin, Julius Frank,
who we called Uncle Julius because he was
much older than normal cousins were,
were already in Cuba.
So they were looking forward to being reunited with them.
And then eventually they hoped the girls that were in
England would come to the United States,
and then they would be reunited with them.
And it didn't work out quite that way.
>> And they were still planning to wait
in Cuba for US visas?
>> Right.
>> So what did you
learn from your aunt
about what life was like on the boat?
>> Well, she said there were a lot of young people.
And she said that they had parties every night.
This was a luxury liner.
And it was taken over by the Nazis.
So they flew the Nazi flag.
They had a big picture of Hitler in the dining room.
But the captain was a very compassionate man.
He was German, but he wasn't
necessarily on board with the administration.
And he told the crew after they
sailed that he wanted them to treat
these passengers with dignity and to
be honorable to them
and to treat them as if they were any other passengers.
They weren't Jews refugees.
And that's what they did.
And they took down the Nazi flag.
And I understand on Shabbat,
which was Friday night dinners,
they covered the picture of Hitler up.
And my youngest aunt,
apparently had a good time also because just recently,
I found a picture of her with
several young children that was taken on the boat,
and she looked very happy.
And it gave me satisfaction to see that,
even if I knew that later on,
it was going to be heartbreaking.
>> So when they arrived in Cuba, what happened to them?
>> Well, according to this Henry Gallant,
whose book I was reading,
he said that they got the passengers up early.
They got there on the 29th, I believe,
of May and everybody was very excited.
They had packed their suitcases.
They had brought them on the deck,
and they were awaiting
permission to leave to go to the land.
And just I guess maybe 24 or 48 hours prior to that,
the passengers had learned that there was trouble in
Cuba and they might not be able to dismbark.
So Henry describes the air
as being very humid and
tropical and very different from Germany.
And they were waiting on deck for
hours upon hours and
it was getting very hot and stifling there.
And not everybody, I imagine knew about it,
what was going on initially.
But there was a committee
formed by some of the passengers,
and they reached out to
the Jewish joint distribution committee
through Cuba and the United States.
And they dispatched two individuals that came to
try to negotiate with the Cuban government.
And the Cuban government was not all that ethical.
And they made many demands.
And at one point,
the individuals thought they
had reached an understanding.
But then the terms of the agreement were
changed and time ran out.
They also told the ship's captain through communication,
telegrams, and so forth,
they did not want to negotiate
while the ship was in the Cuban Harbor.
So slowly but surely they pulled up their anchor and
they headed for Florida because they were
hoping the United States would be more compassionate.
When they got to the coast of Florida or close to it,
they could see the lights of Miami.
And they were so excited again.
But they sent a telegram,
the captain did,
to President Roosevelt, and there was no reply.
And then eventually they heard from
the State Department that despite the fact
that all of these people
had some documents to come to the United States,
they hadn't met all of the immigration requirements,
and they would have to be sent back to
their respective countries until
their quota number was available,
and that the United States had excepted all of
the refugees from Germany for that year.
By the way, my Uncle Julius,
his name is Julius, but with the J.
He rented a boat and he went out to the ship to try
to see if he could see his relatives on there.
And from my Aunt Edie's account,
Elsa was running up and down the ship,
trying to get his attention.
But it was to no avail.
So then they even appealed to Canada and they
were told pretty much
a similar situation was happening there.
The United States had been through the Great Depression,
they were very anti-immigrant, anti-sematic,
and they were afraid for
their own livelihood that these educated people might
be coming to take their jobs and certainly
at maybe a less amount of pay than they had.
And they didn't even take the children.
>> So they knew they had to go back to Europe.
When did they find out where they were assigned?
>> Well, at first,
they were running out of food and water.
And there was one man that jumped overboard.
Well, they were still close to Cuba.
He slid his wrists and jumped overboard and
the Cuban government sent somebody out there to
rescue him and they took him to a hospital in Havana.
But these people were very
desperate and they were so distraught.
So the captain knew
that if you took them back to Germany,
their fate would be sealed.
And he made a worldwide appeal.
And finally, four countries relented.
That was France, the Netherlands,
Great Britain, and Belgium.
And there were 28 people that
were allowed to disembark in
Havana because they had the documents that were approved.
Twenty two of them were Jewish,
but the rest were not.
And so they had to fill out
documents when they found
out that these four countries would split them.
And they had to detail who they
had in various countries that they might not
become dependent upon the country's welfare system
because they didn't have much money left at all.
And my mother,
it was my grandfather that had
a cousin that had gone to Holland.
And so they put that down.
They had wanted to go to England
to be with their children, of course,
but everybody wanted to go there
because they seemed like the safest place.
So eventually, Holland took
181 passengers including my
two aunts and my grandparents.
And they went to Antwerp and then on to Arnhem,
which is where this cousin
lived and they lived with them for some time.
>> And once they were back in Holland,
were they able to communicate with
your mother and your Aunt Edie
and let them know what had happened?
>> Yes, they were.
And there were several letters that went back and forth.
But at one point, they stopped coming.
And my mother and Aunt Edie feared the worst.
>> And at this point, had
Hitler launched his campaign and invaded?
>> Yes, he had invaded many countries in
Western Europe including the Netherlands in 1940.
And slowly but surely
he instituted all of the same rules.
So it was harder and harder for
Jews to live there as well.
My Aunt Edie, fortunately,
was in touch with
a friends of theirs that had immigrated to England
with their children prior to them
being becoming passengers on the St. Louis.
They had offered her the opportunity to become
their house daughter and travel with them to England.
And they were willing to sponsor her.
And so she got in touch with them and explained
what had happened on St.
Louis and that she was in Holland.
And they asked her if she still wanted
to come and be with them.
And she said, yes.
And so her paperwork did come through and she was
able to leave to go to England.
And she took the last kinder transport
to England from Holland.
And she did get to see my mother and her sister again,
and that must have been a wonderful reunion.
And she stayed in Coventry for a while.
And then eventually, her papers came
through to the United States,
and that was because my Tanta Elsa in
Jacksonville had made that opportunity come to pass.
>> So ultimately did your family
learn happen to your grandparents and your aunt, Elsa?
>> Well, as it turns out,
the Nazis were eradicating the Jews at
that point in all their occupied countries
as well as in Germany.
And in 1943, I believe it was May 18,
they were arrested and they were
sent to Westerburg which was
a concentration camp and
also a transit camp to other concentration camps.
And I believe they only were there a night or two,
and then they were sent to
Poland to Sobibor concentration camp.
And on the 21st of May, they were asphyxiated.
And my mother and
her sisters didn't find out officially that this had
happened until the early 1950s when they
received a letter from
the Red Cross that confirmed their suspicions.
>> So then they had gotten already
kind of their last letter from the family.
>> Yes.
>> And was this after your aunt Edie had immigrated.
Did they hear from their mother
and their father and their younger sister?
>> Yes, they did.
They did correspond with them quite a bit.
And the last letter,
I have a copy of it,
I told the girls in
England that they had a lot of faith in
God that the girls Edie
and Ruth should not worry about them,
that they would be fine.
That they should be strong and work very
efficiently and that their family loved them very much.
And then there was a postscript from my aunt,
Ilsa, who was 15 by then,
saying how much she enjoyed hearing from
the girls and that
she was as tall as her mother by that time.
And she wanted them to send her a picture
of them in England and asked my aunt, Hilda,
who had graduated from the schooling that the hostel
provided and sent her
on to become a beautician how long her training was.
And she signed it love and kisses Ilsa,
and that was the last time they heard from them.
>> So tell me a little bit about your mother and
your Aunt Hilda's schooling and what they did in
England to get ready
to try to make a life for themselves.
>> Exactly. Well, at first,
they didn't know much English,
and they were sent to school,
but they caught on quite quickly.
And they had been put in grades that were
below what they had been in Germany.
But I believe they were advanced and put in
the appropriate grades once
they became more proficient in the language.
They lived in a home with,
it was like an orphanage.
They had a house mother,
and she was quite strict.
She made sure that the girls took
care of themselves and their rooms and so forth.
But she wasn't ugly about it.
And they went to Synagogue on Saturdays, and eventually,
sometimes because they dressed
alike and they were so cute,
people would invite them back to
their homes for Shabbat meals.
And sometimes they even got to go away.
One time, my mother said
that during the week of Passover,
they were off from school,
and that's when the dietary laws
are even stricter than normal.
They're not allowed to eat bread and
anything with any yeast or anything in them.
There was a boarding house that was outside of Harrogate,
that was quite beautiful and well preserved.
And they invited the girls to be their guests for a week.
And they went there and they had a wonderful time.
I believe they may have been the only children.
Many wealthy people from other parts of England had
come because during Passover,
you have to change your dishes and so forth.
And they would often just go away for
that week and not worry about it.
And so eventually, as the trip was coming to an end,
the patrons of that boarding house
took up a collection for the girls.
And they gave them several hundred pounds.
And my mother and my aunt were thrilled.
They thought that they could put
that in a bank account and
they were saving anyway to come to America.
And that would be a very big contribution.
But when they got back to the boarding house,
the house mother asked them
if these people had given them any money.
And my mother said, Yes.
And she said, well, where is it?
And so she handed it over to
the house mother and she said,
that money was not for you.
That was for all of us because we have
expenses and they wanted to help sustain.
So they were a little disappointed.
And then my mother had
a tonsillectomy while she was in England.
It was about a year after they
got there in December of 39.
And since it was so close to Christmas,
and the nurses took a shine to her.
And they kept her in the hospital a
little bit longer than she needed to be.
And apparently there was this Princess Mary,
that was George the fifth's daughter
that lived somewhere in the area,
and she had brought a number of special gifts
for children that were
in the hospital during the holidays.
And she asked the nurses to choose
the people that she felt were the most deserving.
And they decided that
my mother was one of those children.
And she got a beautiful,
large gingham sewing basket.
And my mother loved to sew as
she became a seamstress and a milliner, a hatmaker.
So this was a very special gift,
but she had to leave it behind at England
because when she eventually came to America,
she couldn't carry it along with her.
>> Did your family ever find
out what happened to the basket?
>> She probably left it in the hostel,
and it was used by other people.
>> So after all of this education,
your mother was a seamstress and
a milliner and your aunt was a beautician?
How did they eventually
make their way to the United States?
>> Well, when they graduated from the school,
they were assigned to becoming
apprentices in various businesses.
And Harrogate was a very popular location for tourists.
They had spas and very fancy salons there.
And so my aunt became very proficient
in her beautician work.
And my mother worked in a very fine store as well.
My Aunt Edie emigrated,
I believe in 1940 I'm not sure exactly when to America.
And by then, my Uncle Julius
who had been in Cuba and his son and
his wife had made a home for
themselves in Forest in Illinois,
near the Rockford, Illinois.
And so my aunt went to live with
them and she continued to apply her trade.
She went to school for beautician as well,
and Edie, this is.
And she saved her money so that she
could afford to bring her sisters over.
And Tanta Elsa, who was in Jacksonville,
appealed to the synagogue to tell them
about her nieces and nephews that were
in Germany and then eventually in England,
and she asked for anybody's help that would be willing
to sponsor them because she was not a citizen herself.
And a very generous philanthropic family
named the Ms. Rockies
volunteered because they were very fond of my Tanta Elsa,
who had become a caterer,
and she was the only kosher caterer in Jacksonville,
Florida for 35 years.
And they said that they would be willing to sponsor them.
So my mother and Aunt Edie from England,
when they first got to England in '38 wrote a letter,
to these Ms. Rockies and
said they were so appreciative that they
were looking forward to being reunited with
their parents because at
the time their parents were still alive.
And they would be in touch,
and then the war eventually broke out in
England and they weren't able to leave.
And then in 1944,
my mother wrote a second letter to them
because they were still willing to sponsor them,
and at that point,
they suspected that their parents were already
gone and they were still very much
in gratitude that these people who didn't know them
personally were willing to bring about their immigration.
So they left in December of 1944,
and they were in a convoy of
five battleships and two
of them were destroyed by enemy fighter.
Fortunately, theirs was not.
And they immigrated to Nova Scotia Canada to Halifax.
And they arrived in January of 1945.
And then they went through
Vermont and they got all the stamps.
They had all of the immigration papers,
and then eventually went to New York where my Aunt Edie
was living temporarily because she had met my uncle,
Ruby, who was a musician in the USO.
And she had gone to a dance once in Rockford, Illinois,
and she was a beautiful woman
with blond air and blue eyes,
and he saw this woman and
he didn't have to play that night.
So he asked her to dance and he
fell in love with her almost immediately.
And he was from Brooklyn, New York.
But he was in the Army.
So he went overseas and actually saw
my Aunt Edie and my mother at one point,
he'd already become engaged to Aunt Edie,
but he brought them stockings and some of his rations,
and they liked him immediately, of course.
But they were met in New York by
Aunt Edie and her
soon to be mother-in-law, Mrs. Babbage.
And Mrs. Babbage was from Russia.
She had immigrated herself some years
prior to that with her sisters.
And they owned a coat factory.
And so she made sure that the girls,
my mother and her sister had coats and
purses and she gave them
home cooked meals and was very gracious to them.
And then they went off to Illinois to
see Uncle Julius as well.
And they lived there for a while.
>> That's wonderful. Do you want to take another break?
>> Yeah. I got it.
>> And then after that,
we can talk about how your mother met your father.
And how it was like for her in America.
>> Do you also want to know
how my Aunt Edie met her husband?
>> Let's stick to your mom's story right now.
>> Okay.
>> And it fits in then.
Tell me what life was like for them in America.
>> Well, they were living in
this small town in Illinois.
And they were just so excited to be with family again.
Uncle Julius was a wonderful man and his wife was
beautiful and very compassionate.
And they had some other relatives also in that town.
And they were just so glad to
be away from all that tension
and stress that they had felt.
Of course, they were so sad
that their parents weren't with them.
But my mother went to work at a store in Illinois,
I guess, it's a seamstress.
And my two aunts by then were both beauticians.
And it must have just felt rather comfortable for them to
be reunited because Uncle Julius
lived in the same town as them in Cloppenburg,
and they used to walk to his house.
So they were not only relatives,
they were neighbors,
and it was another generation that they could look to.
And eventually, my aunt wanted
to plan her wedding, Aunt Edie.
So she moved back to New York
and she asked both of my mother
and Aunt Edie if they'd like to come to be with her.
And so they did.
They moved to New York,
and they found an apartment where they stayed together.
My aunt got married in '45 to my uncle.
And they went to a synagogue that
was a German refugee synagogue.
And there was a man that
kept staring at them during the service.
And this was my Aunt Edie and my mother.
And eventually, he approached them
and asked them if they were
the Simon girls from Cloppenburg.
And they said, yes,
and they hadn't recognized him
until they got a full view of him.
And he was a very good friend of their dad's.
He used to also deal in
cattle and he would come with his son.
And normally, people would just
come and deal with them and then go back to their towns.
But because they were such good friends,
they had stayed actually at their house.
And he was so delighted to see them
and they were so surprised.
And he had met
some other people that were also from Germany,
and they had a son that was in the army and they
wanted this particular man,
Sally Gernsteimer, to meet Aunt Edie.
And he fell in love with her
and they got married eventually.
And my dad was the president of the youth group there,
the young adult group in the synagogue.
And he met my mother,
I believe, through the synagogue,
and also because my mother,
after my aunt Edie got married,
she had to find a place to stay herself.
And she found the German family
that lived in Brooklyn that had an extra room,
and they had a daughter that was about her age.
So she rented a room from them.
And the daughter apparently had a crush on my dad.
But when my dad met my mother,
he became overwhelmed by her.
And so the daughter wasn't too happy,
but eventually they got married.
>> So what was your father's name?
>> Manfred Heineman, but everybody called him Fred.
>> So tell me a little bit about
your father's life in Germany before he came to the US.
>> Well, he was born in 1922,
and he lived in a town called Treuchtlingen,
which was in Bavaria.
And they had a very comfortable life.
My grandfather sold baking supplies and eventually,
his brother was born in 1933, Harry.
And my grandmother had studied to be
a nurse and she was helpful during World War I.
My grandfather was also in the army in World War I.
>> And their names were?
>> Sally and Sabina.
My grandmother's middle name was
Freeman and their last name was Heineman.
And my father said he
was about 11 when Hitler came to power.
And he had been enrolled in a school in
Treuchtlingen and was studying.
And when he was 13,
he became a bar mitzvah and then
the German government shut
down the school that he was attending.
And the family decided
that they needed to be in a place that had more Jews.
So they moved to Munich,
which was not that far from Treuchtlingen,
but it was a major city.
And my father graduated from eighth grade.
And then there was
a special school that was started for older children,
and he attended that ninth grade.
And it was taught by professors
from the university that were Jewish that had been fired.
And he told me
that Henry Kissinger's uncle was one of his teachers.
And after the ninth grade,
he wasn't able to attend school any longer.
And so his father
knew of a person that owned a restaurant,
he wasn't Jewish,
in Munich that was very well thought of.
And he was starting a school for
confectionery and baking technicians.
And so my father attended that school.
And he became very,
very proficient in his trade.
And then my grandfather
said that he needed some practical experience,
and he had a friend that was a baker,
and he convinced him even though he wouldn't pay him
that he would like
to get some practical experience for his son.
So my father would get up at
four in the morning and would
ride his bicycle to another part
of Munich where he would pick up
breads and cakes and pastry and deliver
them to private homes and
to restaurants and hotels and so forth.
And so on Kristela knocked,
again, November 10, 1938,
he got up as normal and rode to
the bakery and he didn't notice anything unusual.
He picked up the breads
and so forth that he was supposed to,
and delivered them to the various locations.
And he did say that because of
his route was in another part of Munich,
there were no synagogues on that side of
town or any Jewish businesses.
So he wasn't aware until he got back to
the bakery around seven in the morning
that anything had occurred.
But my grandmother had called the baker and said she
wanted my father to come home as soon
as possible when he got back from his route.
And she explained to him that several synagogues had been
burned and that the Jewish men were being arrested.
So my father rode back to his house.
And when he got there,
my grandmother told him that
my grandfather had already come home once,
and she told him to go back out because
the Gestapo had been
by looking for him and they wanted to arrest him.
So my grandfather was wandering
the street and eventually came home.
And he said he was tired,
and he was resigned to the vet that he would be arrested.
And my grandmother wouldn't hear of it.
She said, take Fred with you.
They said that they would be back.
And so he did.
He took my father with
him and they went back on the street,
and my father said that
the Gestapo must have been watching the house because
they'd only gone a half a block when the black car
pulled up and they asked if he were Herr Heineman,
and he said he was.
And he said, well, you'll have to come with us.
And they started to arrest my father as well.
And he said, well,
you don't want to take him with you,
let him go home and they said,
no, he's tall enough.
And he looks appropriate enough to come with us too.
So my dad was one of the youngest,
and they went to Gestapo headquarters,
and they were put in jail.
Their overcoats were confiscated,
all their personal belongings,
and they were hungry because they hadn't
eaten since the morning before.
And I don't know that they gave them any food.
And they held them there in the jail until they had
enough men to transport the next morning to Daco,
which was one of the first of the concentration camps.
And my father filled out some papers for
the claims conference to see
if he was entitled to any reparations.
And he described what happened at the camp.
I'm not sure if my grandfather worked or not,
but he said that he didn't do
anything except three times a day,
they were required to assemble in the center of
the concentration camp and stand at
attention for 2-2.5 hours at a time.
At that point, when they first got there,
their head was shaved and they were given
black and white striped uniforms that were very thin.
And this was, of course, in November.
And they were made to stand at attention.
They couldn't cough, they
couldn't sneeze, they couldn't whisper.
He said he was beaten up when he
first got to the camp and he was
kicked in the head many times
and some of his teeth were knocked out,
and he suffered many years later
from several strokes and a brain tumor and so forth.
And we feel that since
it occurred usually during that time of year,
that this was trauma from his previous experience.
And eventually, my grandmother who they had
applied for immigration and
they had quite a low quota number.
But it seemed like people that had higher quota numbers
were being called to immigrate and they weren't.
And so they figured out that
somebody again was taking graft
to make it more
comfortable for the ones with money to leave.
And she went to Stuttgart to
the US consulate and told them that
her husband and son had been arrested and she had a
four year old at home
and she was not going to put up with this.
She wanted them to assure her that in
the next couple of months
that the number would be called.
And she got the documents that she needed.
And eventually, my father was
released after about three weeks in the prison,
and then my grandfather
was released about three weeks later than that.
And they came to America in July of 1939,
and my father wanted
to go back to Europe to fight the Nazis.
He wasn't a citizen yet.
So he had to apply for citizen free
and he got the necessary paperwork done,
and he enrolled in the army.
And I have a picture of him in his uniform with
his parents shortly after
they arrived in Brooklyn, New York.
>> That's an amazing story, too.
So your parents met in Brooklyn?
>> Yes.
>> And they married? [inaudible]
>> March 23, 1947.
>> And how sooner did you come along?
>> A little over a year later, September of '48.
And they lived in a small apartment
and they decided that my dad
would try to be a baker on his own.
He opened a bakery.
The lived above the bakery.
But they didn't have much money
and they borrowed about $500 to get started.
And apparently they got an order for some cakes and
pastries for a Bar Mitzva and they prepared everything.
But then there was a terrible snowstorm and they
couldn't get to make the delivery.
So they lost a lot of money.
And unfortunately, they closed
the store and my dad went to work
for another baking company called Kosher bakers.
And he worked there for quite a while.
And then he decided he wanted to get into sales.
And meanwhile, we had moved to another apartment,
we'd moved to Queens for a while.
And then in 1954,
my brother was born.
And I was six.
And he unfortunately had down syndrome,
and he was very severely handicapped.
And it was very hard on all of them.
But particularly my dad
because this was his son
and he'd been through so much already.
So they made the decision to have him
institutionalized because they couldn't
meet his medical needs.
And we would go and visit him.
And he was a sweet little baby.
And it really broke my heart
because I was so looking forward to being a big sister.
>> Did you have other young family members,
cousins from your aunt's side
that you were in touch
with or you [inaudible] playing with?
>> Yes. My Aunt Edie and
her three daughters lived in Brooklyn with my uncle.
They lived in the bottom part of a two-story house,
and on the top were my uncle's parents,
Mrs. and Mr. Babbage,
and I would go there quite frequently to visit them.
And my middle cousin
in that family was about nine months younger than me.
And they had Sandy who was born in '46,
and Karen that was born in '49,
and then Janice who was born,
I believe, in '53.
I really enjoyed going there.
And also, my grandparents,
my father's parents,
eventually bought a restaurant.
It was a little candy store and luncheonette.
And of course I was the only grandchild,
and they would treat me like a queen.
And I loved going there.
My grandfather would make
home-made ice cream in the basement.
And they had a pickle man,
and they had a jukebox,
and the guy that brought the 45s,
he would give me the records afterward,
and I would help them behind the counter,
and I have such fond memories of that.
>> So did your parents ever talk
about what had happened to
them before they came to the US?
When did you first learn about the Holocaust?
>> Well, not for a long time.
When I was in high school,
there was a mini-series called the Holocaust on TV.
And I began to get curious
because I knew that they were from Germany,
but they never talked really much about their past.
And so I began to ask them questions,
and eventually the story came out.
But my dad, in particular,
was very closed about his past,
and after we moved to Marietta,
and I was in my mid-30s or even early 40s,
he sent me a videotape one day,
and he said, you should watch this,
and it was him explaining what happened to
him during the Holocaust.
He was talking to
seventh and eighth grade children that he didn't know,
and he'd had it videotaped,
and that was really the first time I
heard what had happened to him.
And of course, he didn't elaborate too
much because these were young children.
But it was an out-of-body
experience because here was my dad,
and he was talking to
strangers about it when he'd never talked to me.
>> So did you then do more research to find
out what had happened to your family?
>> Well, they eventually became more forthcoming.
We had 37 relatives,
I believe, that were killed during the Holocaust.
So the great aunts,
the aunts of my mother and
her sisters became so much more important to us.
Some lived in Texas,
some lived in Florida,
some lived in Illinois and so forth.
And we would get together
periodically and celebrate things,
and the stories would eventually surface,
but not without a lot of pain.
Then my Aunt Edie took sick,
she got Parkinson's in,
I guess, in the late 80s.
And as she deteriorated,
it became more and more important for
us to get together with family.
And my uncle Ruby is the historian of the family,
and he saved a lot of documents because my aunt,
when she immigrated from Holland,
she brought some very precious things with
her because she was
the last one to see my grandparents and my aunt.
And also, apparently, there was a ship
that had left Cuba prior
to the St. Louis that had a lot of things
on it from my grandparents that they had put in storage.
Of course, they weren't allowed to retrieve them,
but my Uncle Julius paid
dearly to have those things come out of storage,
and he saved a lot of them.
>> All of this part of
your experience unfolded over time,
what about your life?
How did you come to Georgia?
Well, just if you want to sum up,
we left you growing up in New York.
>> Well, eventually, my father took a job as
a salesman in a company
that was based out of Pittsburgh,
so we moved briefly to
Pennsylvania while he was in training.
And then he was assigned the New England territory.
So we moved to Massachusetts.
And in 1963, much to my delight,
my sister was born.
And she was healthy and she was beautiful,
and I was so excited.
I was 14-and-a-half by that time.
So eventually they were looking for
colleges for me and nursery schools for my sister.
And I came to
graduate from Framingham South High School,
and then I went to college
at Bryant College in Providence,
Rhode Island, and I was studying to be a secretary.
And the second year that I was there,
I was introduced to my husband, Steve Berman,
and after dating for some time, we became tinned,
and then eventually he asked me to marry him,
and we became wed in 1969,
we're married just over 50 years now.
We moved several times,
my husband was working for Pepsi Cola.
And we first lived in Rockland County,
New York, just over the Hudson River.
And he worked for Pepsi,
I worked for General Foods.
And then he went in the Army,
six weeks after we were married.
He was in the National Guard,
and he hadn't gotten his papers yet,
it was during Vietnam,
and he didn't want to go to Vietnam,
so he finally found
a unit that would take him in the Bronx,
and he left me on August 4th,
1969, six weeks after we were married,
and I was only 20 years old.
And meanwhile, I had changed my name,
I had gotten a new job,
I'd moved to New York,
and he was just 10 minutes from
where he had grown up, in Rockland.
His mother was a widow,
unfortunately, and he had a younger brother.
And so they were the only ones that I knew,
and I was lonely to say the least.
So eventually I decided I was going to go back home,
and I put a lock on the door of the apartment,
and we kept paying the rent,
and he went to Fayetteville, North Carolina,
and then subsequently was
trained at AIT in Fort Lee Virginia.
And he finally got out of the Army in December of 1969,
and we were reunited,
moved back to New York,
and I guess it's about April or so.
>> No, in June a year later.
>> Yeah. In 1971,
that he decided to pursue a different type of career.
He'd been in touch with people in the field
in the areas districts of the country.
And one of the gentlemen,
he took a liking to
Steve and asked him if he'd
ever consider moving out of New York,
and Steve said, for the right opportunity.
And he went for an interview in Cincinnati,
and we moved to Cincinnati when he got the job.
And we loved it there,
and I felt like we were more on an even keel because
he wasn't 10 minutes away from his parents, his mother.
And we felt like we'd made it
because the rent was only $10
more than the apartment that we had in New York,
but we had an extra bedroom,
an extra half bath,
we had a balcony and a fireplace,
and it was wonderful.
And I got a job. Eventually,
he got more ambitious and wanted to be promoted to
becoming a district manager and applied for it,
and we were transferred to outside of Wausau, Wisconsin.
And we started to think about a family,
and things weren't going too
well in the fertility corner.
So I went to a specialist,
and I was put on some special medication for that.
But I'd asked my doctor whether
we should consider adoption,
and he said, that might not be a bad idea,
so we also applied for adoption.
And eventually, we got our son, David.
And he was almost three when we got him,
and we were delighted that we were finally parents.
And then under the care of the doctor,
I did get pregnant,
and then we were transferred to Buffalo,
New York, and we moved there in December of '74.
And I gave birth to Dan,
our youngest son, on July 4th, 1975.
And so we were overwhelmed.
We'd had two children,
within less than a year
or a little bit over a year and moved.
And fortunately, I found
a good friend to confide in and to help me.
She was a former nurse and she had children of her own.
And she got me through all the tumultuous times.
But how did we get to Georgia?
From Wisconsin, we went to Buffalo from Buffalo,
we were transferred to Connecticut.
And in 1978, Steve said,
how would we like to move to Atlanta?
And by that time, I'd had enough of the cold
and I had heard really good things about Atlanta.
So we did get a job in Atlanta and we moved to
Marietta and we lived there for 26 years.
And Steve eventually left
Pepsi and went to work for several other companies,
and I went to school at Kennesaw State University,
starting in 1985,
and I was working and raising the family.
And eventually, in 2004,
I graduated with a degree in marketing.
So that was a real feather in my cap I felt.
And unfortunately, my father had passed away in 2001.
He, as I said, had three strokes,
a brain tumor and pituitary gland tumor,
and he was very successful in business.
After he got the New England territory
for this one company and worked there for 15 years,
he wanted to go out on his own.
And so he became a broker for
several companies in the baking industry.
And one of them was a flavor house
outside of Chicago, Illinois.
And they were so impressed with
his expertise and his character because he was
a wonderful man and very honest
that they asked him to come to work full time for them.
And so he discussed it with my mother.
My sister was only eight at the time.
And they picked up roots
and planted them again in Dundee, Illinois.
And my father was extremely successful.
He became the sales manager,
and then eventually the executive vice president.
But he had to retire early because of medical things.
And then they would go back and forth to Florida for
a while to become
snowbirds and then eventually move to Florida.
>> And your sister, what was her name?
>> Her name is Julie.
And she's one of my pride and choice.
She lives in Raleigh now.
She's married to a wonderful man named Richard Posner,
and he is a few years older than her.
And they live outside of
Raleigh in Cary, North Carolina.
And she's a very successful business person.
She also sells advertising specialties.
And we get together as much as we can.
And my mother, two years ago,
moved to Marietta and
she lives in a retirement community,
and she loves it here.
She's 94.5, and we
hope that she'll be around for many years,
but we're really excited about her
celebrating her 95th birthday.
Unfortunately, she lost Aunt Edie earlier this year.
Aunt Edie had a stroke.
But they were very close
and she's the last one of her family.
>> So your story is epic.
It covers a lot of different things.
What has your family story
meant for you and for your family?
>> Well, we've always been a member of a synagogue.
I feel very strongly about my faith and about
the obligation to perpetuate our beliefs.
And I got involved at
some point with a number of immigrants that were
from the Soviet Union in
the 70s and 80s we wrote letters to
the authorities and tried to get
them to let them out and we were quite successful.
And then once they got to America,
we would help them get re-acclimated and acculturated.
I'm very proud of my mother.
She is a strong woman.
She's been through so much.
But she has a lot of character,
and she goes to synagogue every week.
And her former Rabbi is writing a book about her,
which we hope will come out in the next few months.
And we're going to call it Embracing Faith.
My sons are now 44 and 48.
The youngest one is married.
He got married to a wonderful woman named
Betsy Steed about a year ago.
And David is still single.
They're both in the entertainment field in New York.
And I try to impress upon them the importance of keeping
the family traditions alive and honoring
those that sacrificed their lives
so that we could live ours in freedom.
>> What do you think that students or visitors to
our museum should take
away from learning about your family story?
>> I hope they'll come to understand that there
was a lot of tragedy that the family endured.
But they never gave up their belief in God.
And my mother has shown me and
my aunts through their actions and
their lives that we need to be accepting one another.
We need to be tolerant.
We need to reach out and embrace our neighbors,
our friends that we shouldn't be prejudiced,
that this can lead to catastrophic situations and to
really understand that these many people
that were killed for being
different than the norm, so to speak.
But we all come from the same source and we need to be
very dig diligent about
our personal human rights and
to be suspect when things don't seem right,
and to try to correct the wrongs of other people
and explain to people that we
don't necessarily have the
same that are not on the same page, so to speak.
That we have a dialogue with them.
And we try to work things out the best we can and
communicate and not shut one another out.
And we pray for world peace and for unity.
>> What is the story of the St.
Louis in all of this specifically to you?
>> I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.
>> I was just going to ask within all of this,
what does the story of the St. Louis mean to you?
>> Well, we know that
many people have tried to immigrate,
especially now on the southern borders,
and there are many people suffering from Syria,
from many places in the world.
And I believe that the St.
Louis was just so symbolic of what
can happen to people that are fleeing from the despots of
the world that have a real concern for their safety,
and that we should
try to be as compassionate as possible.
And if we can't let everyone in,
at least increase the quotas so that
more people can come because we are a country of
immigrants and it strengthens us to have
different points of view and in different ethnicities.
The St. Louis really hits
home much more so than ever before.
>> Well, that's wonderful.
Thank you so much for telling your story and
sharing your thoughts with us. I really appreciate it.
>> Thank you. And I
think you have a wonderful museum here,
and I'm very proud to be associated with it.
>> Thank you.